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Lapis was thrilled when Amethyst came home enamored.
No she did not coyly try to hide it like Lapis once had, back before when Lapis was first becoming aware of her feelings for Peridot. Neither did she struggle to realize it in the first place. And of course she held no hesitation in her actions, had such a different past, such a different person, that she never would resist such a feeling.
But Lapis didn’t care. As she saw it it didn’t matter how Amethyst reacted to it; she had a crush all the same and finally Lapis had an opportunity to pay her back for all the teasing she had before endured with her crush on, eventual relationship with, Peridot. Besides, if anything her cutesy, twirly excitement about her newfound feelings made the teasing even better.
She learned quickly all about what had happened. Lapis couldn’t find herself all that surprised by how chaotic of a story it was.
As it went, in Amethyst’s own words, some bitch had sent a meal back. Insisting it was wrong in a list of absurd and overdramatic reasons and when Amethyst had begrudgingly remade it the woman had again found it unsatisfactory. She had asked to speak to the chef and Amethyst, confrontational, brash Amethyst, had been more than excited for the opportunity to tell off a snarky customer.
But, as Amethyst insisted when Lapis raised an eyebrow, she was hot.
Lapis wasn’t exactly surprised that Amethyst somehow managed to shift the situation from an overblown and ridiculous argument into flirting. After all it was Amethyst. As frustrating and miserable and irritating as she was she was a good talker. She had inevitably come home giddy and with a phone number in tow, a dumb smile on her face.
Still, Lapis was a bit surprised that Amethyst would be into what she described her as. A snarky, entitled asshole it sounded like. But then again; Lapis was with Peridot. She wasn’t one to judge.
Over the course of the next few weeks she learned more about this girl. And, even more thrillingly, it was revealed, this time with some begrudged resistance, that she, just like Peridot, was some overzealous science major. In fact, they went to the same school. Even shared a major.
It was thrilling in every way.
For ages now Amethyst had been relentless with her teasing about Peridot’s niche interests, her overindulgence in speaking on them. Bringing up over and over again how much Lapis had hated the fun facts, the deep dives into specific topics, the text books, just months before only to now find those same things endearing. Poking and prodding at Lapis’s nerd of a girlfriend.
It was incredibly nice to get to throw those same exact taunts back at her.
And it was exciting, too, because Peridot was excited about it. When Lapis had told her, offhandedly mentioned it when they sat together in her room, watching some terrible documentary about the genetic nuances of viruses, she was so excited she snapped her laptop shut, jumped off the bed, and started immediately rambling on and on about how wonderful it was.
She wanted to know more than Lapis could ever give her; her name, her specific concentration, her year, her favorite class, favorite organelle, and Lapis, overwhelmed and smiling loosely at the cute little outburst, jokingly suggested the idea of a double date. She should have known that Peridot wouldn’t drop it once she had brought it up.
Luckily Amethyst was down for the idea; always wanting to show off her cooking skills, even if this particular woman didn’t seem to be so far particularly fond of them. Always excited to tease Lapis and Peridot, only more excited that she would now get to do so in front of an audience.
Quickly the plans altered, however, if only because Amethyst’s date, jokingly she insisted when Lapis gave her a wary glance, wanted to go out rather than eat in. Lapis wasn’t one to care, neither was Peridot, and Lapis only slightly dragged her heels for Amethyst’s sake.
Lapis wasn’t so sure about this girl based off of what she had heard so far. Felt a protective need to push her off for Amethyst, to shove her away due to her past behavior and Lapis’s own personal fears of relationships. And, unfortunately, the excitement of a good prod had worn off enough by then for her to get worried. But, with Amethyst’s insistence, she decided that she would give her a chance. She was glad at the very least that she could be there to watch, maybe give this girl a quiet talking too when Amethyst wasn’t looking.
At any rate Peridot was still just as excited.
For the days leading up to their silly little double date it was almost all she would talk about, having dropped her schoolwork nearly entirely to instead speak on the plans. It was another person in her major to hang out with, she would say, stars in her eyes as she smiled, rhapsodizing about the night ahead of them. Maybe she already knew them, she giddily pondered. She hoped they would be friends.
Peridot found it endlessly frustrating that Lapis kept forgetting her name, or else Amethyst had never told her, she genuinely could not remember, but Lapis found it cute to see her get annoyed about it. And even when she teased and poked at Peridot and her excitement over this silly little double date, a non-idea really, even when she worried for Amethyst sake about this girl and her less than stellar personality, she was excited too.
She was happy to see Peridot happy. Happy to see Amethyst happy. And even if she didn’t know who this girl was, felt a protective little sting of dislike towards her preemptively, she was happy to do something simple and fun like this.
A double date, she found herself smiling about it while Peridot rambled. Like something she would have read about in some exaggerated children’s book in middle school, would have daydreamed about in high school, would have wished for when things were bad and she was starting to believe that all relationships were a disaster waiting to happen. It was a little idealization, something cute and pure and nice, that she had always wanted to experience.
She was excited to finally have the opportunity.
**
On the day of, the plans, in a very Amethyst style, were quickly altered at the last possible minute. Something about work and her shoes meant Amethyst left Lapis and her’s apartment hours ahead of time and she decided to meet her date early, rather than all of them driving together. And by the time Lapis pulled into Peridot’s apartment to pick her up they had, for some reason, decided to go ahead and get a table an hour and a half early. Peridot had read the texts to her as they drove with a frantic note in her tone, rushing to read and squinting her eyes, but Lapis could only roll hers.
“Let’s just hope she waits for us to eat,”
Yet even when the two of them sat in Lapis’s car, rushing to get there quickly, both vaguely annoyed, Lapis was kind of glad. It was nice to get to drive alone with Peridot, even if she often did get to do so, without Amethyst’s snarky added input. It made it easy to hold her hand as she steered, coily flirt, to get herself all the more excited as they worked their way over to their double date. It left her feeling free, lifted and happy and good, and they went into the restaurant, hands interlocked and laughing as Peridot rocked on her heels, squealing in excitement.
Unfortunately that elated feeling hardly lasted, as when they approached the table, Lapis having spotted Amethyst and the back of this mystery woman’s head from across the room, Peridot’s smile quickly dropped.
“Pearl?” she had asked as they reached the table, coming to a stark halt in her path. Her face contorted in disgruntled confusion, her eyebrows pulled taut, her lips curled down unhappily.
“Peridot?” the woman, Pearl apparently, spoke quickly in response. Her own face falling in quick distaste; her tone accusatory.
It was not what Lapis had been anticipating, especially if the two had ended up knowing each other as they seemingly did. She had anticipated a miserable collapse into a fast, bouncy conversation. One which went over her head and had a few too many internal references. This, Peridot’s quickly falling face, Pearl’s sniveling nose, was not at all what Lapis has been expecting.
After a brief, panicked glance between Amethyst and herself, Amethyst broke the silence, shifting her gaze from Lapis to Peridot with a tentative, “You know each other?” falling from her lips.
Peridot scoffed, a heavy, bitter sound, as she crossed her arms, “Unfortunately,”
Pearl laughed coldly in response, rolling her eyes, “You act as if I’m the one who made life miserable,”
Peridot’s eyes grew wide in an instant, her eyebrows shooting up her face, her hands raising quickly to make a wild gesture, “You were!”
Pearl shook her head quickly, her face scrunching, “You know that that’s not-“
“It is!” Peridot interrupted, shouting quite genuinely at Pearl, effectively drawing the eyes of a majority of the patrons in the restaurant. Lapis quickly grabbed at one of her arms, which she had tossed above her head as she had shouted, before the pair could argue any further. Pulling it down into her body she drew Peridot’s attention away from the woman and a soft pinkish color began to rise on her cheeks.
“Let’s sit down, yeah?” Laps asked tentatively, softening her voice and giving Peridot a gentle, if slightly skeptical, look as she continued to grow red in the face.
She nodded, following Lapis into the booth seat, scooting awkwardly inward with a long, serious glance at Amethyst’s date across from her.
As they settled, as Peridot and Pearl grew increasingly angry in the face as they sat across the table, Lapis gave Amethyst another wild, frantic look. Trying her best to display her confusion, her panic. Hoping Amethyst somehow would know what was going on better than she did.
Amethyst only returned the expression however, her eyes growing wide as she quickly shrugged, mouthing a rushed ‘I didn’t know!’ at her.
‘Do something!’ Lapis tried to mouth back, gesturing hastily with her head to Peridot besides her, whose breathing was growing loud, almost snarling, with anger.
Amethyst shook her head quickly, ‘You do it!’
‘It wasn’t my idea!’
‘Yes it was!’
Lapis kicked her under the table with a bitter glance. Amethyst pulled her leg back quickly and gave Lapis an evil eye, ‘Hate you!’
When she spoke her angry expression dropped in an instant, however, leaving only a nervous, forced smile on her face, “How do you two know each other?” she tentatively asked, her voice high and strained, drawing Pearl and Peridot’s eyes to her.
Peridot replied after a short beat, her voice blank and flat like Lapis had never heard it before, “We were lab partners last semester,”
And all at once it hit Lapis.
Peridot had, from the beginning of their relationship, probably on the first day of their meeting, constantly spoken of one of her lab partners. Incessantly her speech had centralized on her, on each experiment they performed, each interaction they had, each moment of their knowing.
Lapis found it weird to finally see her after having heard so much about her. But it must be so, this was her after all. Peridot’s Tuesday, 8am microbiology lab partner. The one she hated vehemently.
Lapis had, before, always thought it was silly how strongly Peridot disliked this other, mutual nerd. Found it funny how endlessly she had spoken of her then, even now from time to time, all with such a feverish, intense passion over such small things. A broken slide, a misplaced colony seemed not the terrible disaster Peridot made it out to be and Lapis had found her heated fury, her quite genuine dislike towards her, entertaining at the time.
But now that they were sat across from each other, meant to be having a civil, pleasant double date, Lapis no longer found the overbearing distaste very fun.
“Sounds nice,” Amethyst distracted Lapis’s thoughts, speaking out to Peridot with a forced smile.
“Maybe with someone else” Peridot replied bitterly, rolling her eyes and resting against the back of the booth seat.
“Are you kidding?” Pearl scoffed, leaning forward in her seat with an intensifying heat in her eyes, “You were so controlling!”
“Because you didn’t know what you were doing!”
“I knew what I was doing! It was you I was always having to babysit!”
“I got a better grade than you at the end of the term!”
“You’re a child!”
“Guys,” Lapis interrupted suddenly, realizing with an increasing spike of anxiety in her chest that the two were growing quickly back into shouting, drawing the eyes in much of the building back towards them once again, “You’re causing a scene,”
Both of the women shut their mouths quickly in response. Pearl leaning back into her chair with a soft blush, Peridot leaning closer into Lapis with a pout.
“Sorry,” Peridot mumbled, her voice quiet and gruff.
Lapis reached for her hand under the table, drawing her eyes away from Pearl to her. They softened in response, if only slightly, and Lapis found her chest lightening despite herself. Peridot’s pout, her lip curled down even when her eyes softened, was terribly cute.
“It’s okay,” Lapis spoke to her, her tone hushed, “Let’s just try to be civil, okay?”
Peridot snorted, rolling her eyes as she shook Lapis’s hand off of her’s, “I am civil,”
Pearl laughed at that, a hushed little note, “Sure,”
Yet despite the last added jab the two kept their tone down enough for their waiter to arrive, if with a nervous air in his voice, and for, eventually, their food to come. However, even when they kept to themselves the air was still undeniably tense. Having gone from quick jabs to near complete silence in an instant.
Pushing her food around anxiously with her fork Lapis kept finding her gaze settling on Peridot, on Pearl, waiting nervously for one of them to strike again. Occasionally, too, sending an accusatory glance Amethyst’s way, only to be met with a bitter shaking of her head and a repeat of a mouthed ‘Your idea!’.
It was disheartening. Especially after Peridot had been so excited for this night throughout the weeks leading up to it. Had been so looking forward to meeting this prospective new friend, to reunite, perhaps, with an old acquaintance who she would now have an excuse to grow closer to. Lapis had wanted it for her, too. Even if she was positive that it would be miserable, a conversation she was sure would only grow and grow when Peridot had an understanding audience. Still, it would have been cute; would have been nice to see Peridot make a new friend, find someone she could easily babble endlessly to.
Now she wished she had pestered Amethyst for this girl’s name like Peridot had wanted.
The heavy silence was eventually interrupted, however. After a long while where Lapis simply played with her food, lost in thought.
Yet at the noise, so far only a soft bit of conversation she felt her heart rate pick up drastically. Pearl was addressing Peridot.
“So,” Pearl drew out the word, twirling her food atop her fork as she spoke, avoiding Peridot’s eyes but acknowledging her clearly in her use of a snarky, accusatory tone, “You have a girlfriend now?”
“Yes,” Peridot replied, short and factual as she kept her own gaze down.
“How’s that going?” Pearl said in reply, her tone causal in an overtly accusatory way.
“Great,” Peridot replied, quickly. A low and short noise punctuated by a short raise of her eyebrows and scrunching of her nose.
“Really?” Pearl asked, her pitch raising slightly as finally she pulled her gaze up from her food to look properly at Peridot. When Peridot caught her eye, raising her own gaze as Pearl moved, Pearl gestured at Lapis with her fork, “Are you sure she would agree?”
Lapis found herself taken back, unhappy and unexpecting to be drawn into the petty arguments, nervous at being placed in the middle of their fight. Her heart rate took another sharp increase, her stomach twisted. The feeling only tightened when she noticed how anxiously the rest of the table was looking at her.
Peridot shot her head quickly to her in expectancy, Pearl stared at her with a sneer, Amethyst gaped at her with another wild, panicked look.
“Uh,” she let out eloquently after a moment, unsteady in her words when all the eyes at the table were waiting so intently for an answer.
“She doesn’t seem to,” Pearl added on quickly after, not waiting to give Lapis a chance to elaborate.
“She does!” Peridot called from across the table, her voice loud and sharp as she simultaneously slammed a fist down onto the tabletop. Lapis flinched, eyes going wide at the noise, and she looked anxiously at Pearl, waiting.
“Well, she didn’t say so,” Pearl replied casually, her tone high and nonchalant, shrugging her shoulders without any outwards notice of Peridot’s outburst.
“I-“ Lapis spoke to interject, hoping to jump atop the conversation before Peridot could start shouting, but before she could fully speak Pearl addressed her once again.
“It must be so exhausting having to date such an arrogant, emotional person,” she spoke, her words hushed in mock exhaustion.
Lapis rolled her eyes in response, not wanting to fight, wishing she hadn’t been dragged into their silly little rivalry, that they hadn’t come together for dinner in the first place, but annoyed now, too, at this woman. Because as much as she got it, understood the frustration Peridot could inspire quite first hand, she liked her now. Quite a lot at that.
She didn’t like Pearl’s grating on her. Didn’t like how she had been rude to Amethyst before, didn’t like that she was being rude to Peridot now. And while she wanted nothing to do with their stupid little classroom rivalry that snarky little look, her trying to pit Lapis against her own girlfriend, made her a bit more willing to get involved.
“It’s not that hard,” she replied back firmly, reaching to take a hold of Peridot’s hand under the table, “Besides I think dating Amethyst would be much worse,”
Pearl’s eyes shot up quickly at that but before she could reply Amethyst loudly interjected, a brassy laugh falling from her lips.
“Dude!” she called, mocking offense but speaking with a heavy smile.
“I’m just saying!” Lapis found herself quickly replying, tossing her other hand up in fast expression, her chest decompressing when she caught Amethyst’s genuine smile, “Living with you is chore enough I can’t imagine spending the energy on being attracted to you,”
“Hey,” Amethyst replied, her voice low as she waved a hand casually in front of her, “I’m a great roommate,”
“Maybe in terms of the dinners,”
“Maybe!” Amethyst shouted back, offended but smiling all the same.
Lapis laughed in response and as Amethyst followed her lead she found that Peridot and Pearl now sat at their sides, in a reversal of before, watching as they fought. Although this admittedly wasn’t a fight, just some sarcastic banter between friends.
In any sense it seemed to have lightened the mood, quite instantly at that, if only by readjusting the focus of the conversation to them. Noting the effect Lapis jumped on top of it, spiraling into a pile of teases which Amethyst easily returned. And even when Lapis felt scrambled to continue, worried the tension would come back if she let her guard down, slowly the panic floated away, leaving her only genuinely laughing and the air decidedly eased.
And eventually they all centralized in a safe little conversation. Lapis and Amethyst keeping up their well practiced teases, Peridot eventually jumping in, making some silly, and only somewhat snarky, joke about Amethyst from what she had seen, Pearl eventually joking as well, if only to defend Amethyst in a halfhearted sense of retaliation. It backfired of course, all the others, including Amethyst herself, disagreeing with her needless defense of Amethyst’s lesser qualities, yet even then, even when Peridot giggled meanly at her misstep, things kept decidedly cool.
They skittered around conversation, tentatively for a while, when they all seemed to notice how they had entered one. It went not without the occasional jab from either Peridot or Pearl but it was soothed and eventually, as they fell into a sort of circular teasing, Peridot groaning about Lapis’s snoring, Lapis Peridot’s sudden outbursts over things she did not clearly articulate, Pearl Peridot’s sparkly purple pen she insisted on recording data with, and so on, it began to feel genuinely nice. Because now, while Peridot and Pearl were still bickering, they were laughing through it. Peridot admitting that she had been a bit stubborn, Pearl that she was detail obsessed, and slowly the conversation fell quickly into short, giddy stories.
Most of them centered around Pearl and Peridot’s disaster of a lab; them laughing about how much the rest of the class must have hated them. Lapis found herself smiling as she listened, relieved and unable to ignore how nice the sudden tonal shift was. She also had fun listening to all of Peridot’s silly little mannerisms Pearl had picked up on; found herself asking for more, even when Peridot flushed and pushed her away.
Pearl had laughed, though, falling into a heavy list before smiling nicely at Lapis and Peridot, asking Lapis with a gentle, if somewhat nervous smile, if she had any stories she could share about Amethyst.
It was a pleasant twenty minutes. Another easy way to tease Amethyst, bring up the embarrassing stories she could recall, pick at her eccentricities, in a small attempt to pay her back for all the teasing she had to face by her hand over the years. And when she realized that, after her long winded list of all the stories she could recall, that she was here on a date, on a double date with the two of them, it got all the better.
It was nice to toss some of those absurd and needlessly suggestive jokes she and Peridot had so long faced by Amethyst back her way. Besides, Pearl’s quickly flushing cheeks and overstated reactions were plenty fun to watch. And having Peridot laughing at her side, cuddling against her shoulder and holding her hand as she laughed, the sound loud and heavy but so, so cute, was nice too, even if her visible appreciation of it only got Amethyst back into her old teases.
It was just nice Lapis eventually decided. And as they left the little restaurant a few hours after they had sauntered in it was still just as nice. Lapis could hardly believe that less than two hours before Peridot and Pearl had been screaming at one another.
In fact the pair was in quick conversation as they left, talking, as Lapis had expected would happen before, as Peridot had hopped, about some terribly specific fact that sat within their shared major. Peridot’s hand rest in Lapis’s as she skipped out but as she went her focus was tightly on Pearl. She gestured madly as she walked with her other hand, grew into loud outbursts and excited exclamations as Pearl smiled at her. Amethyst gave Lapis an exaggerated look of disdain when they reached their cars, mouthing an exhaustive ‘I almost wish they’d just fight again!’ at Lapis.
Lapis only laughed in response, unlocking her car and seemingly pulling Peridot from the conversation. Her words slowed to a stall and her face fell as she took a long look at Pearl, sighing.
“I’m sorry, Pearl,” she eventually spoke, her words gentle and neatly annunciated.
Pearl faltered for a second, her eyes widening before they softened and she smiled politely, “I’m sorry, too,”
Peridot smiled for a brief second, soft and sweet, before her gaze sharpened again.
“I still don’t like you!” She cried loudly as she quickly jumped into the passenger seat of Lapis’s car with an outstretched tongue. Yet even so, her joking manner was clear in her light, bouncy tone.
Pearl simply laughed, unlocking her own car and getting into her seat, “The feeling is mutual, shorty!”