Things get a whole lot quieter when they leave.
Not bad quiet, just quiet.
Lapis doesn't talk much, but you weren't really expecting her to. She spends a lot of time on the silo roof, the barn roof- really, just anywhere off the ground. Sometimes, she flies off into the trees and comes back when it gets dark with leaves in her hair.
You don't ask.
You don't talk much either, but you’d rather keep Lapis from being unhappy than potentially muck it up, because you’re still not certain where you stand with her.
You just set to work fixing the hole in the barn and quietly mourn the loss of your tape recorder.
In fact, that's probably the major reason you're not saying anything.
Sometimes Lapis sits on the roof above you and watches you work, and neither of you speak, but it still feels like some sort of conversation.
She even hands you supplies on occasion.
-
You find yourself thinking a lot more than you should about Malachite.
You don't dare ask Lapis about it- she still seems unsettled, like one of those carbonated beverages in the dusty far corner of the barn. You'd learned the hard (and cold, and wet) way not to open one right after shaking it, so you apply the same principle.
All you know from Steven and the gems is that Malachite was green and frightening and wrong- though the latter was something you could've inferred just from the looks on everyone's faces when you'd asked.
You never fused back on Homeworld; even if it was deemed necessary (which it never was), Peridots didn't exactly get along, and it's not like anyone else was itching to fuse with you, limb enhancers or not.
The idea fascinates you from a technical standpoint, of course, but even more so, you just always wanted to know what it was like.
Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl fuse like it's recreational, so you imagine it must be somewhat nice, at least.
You frown at your reflection in the smaller-than-average-lake surface and wonder if Lapis would ever fuse with you.
(Certainly, you're better than Jasper, right? She'd never take out a roaming eye for Jasper.)
You wonder if you even could do it properly.
-
You've been partial to sleeping ever since Steven showed you how. He made you a nest of old pillows and sheets in the loft space of the barn, and when you curl up in it and shut your eyes for long enough, you start to see things- "dreaming", Steven called it. Every single time, you find yourself piloting a sleek craft through a foreign, starless patch of space, gliding silently past dark celestial bodies. Sometimes you're alone, but more and more you find yourself aware of others on board. Their shifting shadows flit past on your screens when you're not looking, and the ship moves on in silence.
It's...cool.
You think.
You're awoken suddenly from one such dream, and when you blearily look up from your nest, Lapis is standing over you, eyes wide. She looks different, you think, even in the dark.
"Come look!" She says, cold fingers slipping in between yours so she can pull you up.
Outside, the night sky is almost alive, riddled with strange, momentary slashes of light.
"What is it?" She asks you, both of your gazes fixed on those streaks of light. Your fingers are still interlaced, you notice, and then you try to stop noticing.
"I don't know," you whisper, feeling oddly and suddenly reverent.
She glances toward the silo, then back at you.
For a moment, you watch her hesitate from the corner of your eye, and then wings sprout from between her shoulder blades, hovering half-shapes of water reflecting the lights in the sky.
You blink, and suddenly her arms are under your shoulders, crossing tightly over your stomach.
“Hold on,” she says, and your hands find vice grips over hers when those shining wings lift the both of you off the ground.
Cold air rushes past your face, but Lapis is colder still. You are dizzy as you ascend and you can’t be quite sure what’s contributing most to that.
You think you can feel her laugh against your back. You shut your eyes.
-
The roof of the silo still retains some warmth of the day. It smells of sun-baked-and-rusting metal and dust, and you brace your palms against the surface nervously as Lapis sets down beside you.
The usual silence falls, a curtain for that short, dizzying performance, and the lights rend the sky into two temporary halves before you, like the stars are catapulting themselves across the night.
“Sorry about your tape recorder,” she says after a while, turning to look at you.
It doesn’t register for a moment, as the sliver of moon catches your gaze and thoughts of everything burst their banks again, and then your head snaps in her direction.
“Oh, it’s- it’s fine,” you say, and believe it.
She tilts her head so it’s resting on your shoulder, which you cannot imagine is especially comfortable considering she’s taller than you. Your hands twist into odd shapes in your lap.
You stay there until the- whatever it was- ends and the sky returns to sparse, static blinking, just before the horizon begins to blur and lighten from blue-black into a hazy purple.
Her fingers slot in-between yours before she dives from the roof, and you wonder what it all means as the ground approaches at a terrifying rate.
You wonder as she falls into a long-limbed sprawl on the barn floor, as you resume your position in your nest, and long, long after.
-
Things are different after that night, you think, in some way, odd and unspoken but not unpleasant.
Lapis just seems more physically close to you, laying in the grass near you as you work instead of on the roof and sleeping a little closer to your nest.
Most notably, however, she actually starts watching Camp Pining Hearts with you.
With a sigh, Lapis lays herself- cool and heavy and soft- across you on the couch, and you'll have to ask Steven why your heart rate has been increasing so often lately.
You blink down at her and suddenly recall a conversation you'd had with Steven a few weeks ago:
"I don't understand the difference."
"A house is just a place where people live. Home is a feeling."
"A feeling? Of what?"
"It's like...all warm and fuzzy, like a blanket. But the blanket is in your heart."
You'd sighed. "I still don't get it."
He'd patted your shoulder. "Someday."
You still don't understand what a blanket in your heart is supposed to mean (or how it would even get there), but you certainly feel something when Lapis turns her head to look up at you, ocean-eyes dark in the dim light.
You're not entirely familiar with the idea of “fuzzy”, either, but you do feel warm.
Warm despite the fact that Lapis Lazulis' body temperatures run as cold as their words.
You meet her gaze for a few moments before gulping and forcing your gaze back onto the television, even though it's season five .
Lapis watches with veiled intrigue, turned sideways on the couch. Her cool fingers find their way onto your thigh halfway through episode 2, and you suppress a shiver.
For a while, you sit in silence, trying to focus despite the plot-stagnating snoozefest that is season five. It's not for another hour or so that either of you speak, when Paulette and Percy start meeting in secret (again).
"What are they doing?" She asks, and you recognize the confusion in her voice, the same breed as yours, when you were still frightened and fresh-fallen from beyond.
"It's called kissing," you say. Grumpily, too, because it's Paulette and Percy. "It's how humans express...affection."
Lapis hmmms low in her throat, eyes still fixed on the screen.
You glance down at her and wonder about kissing her, but only for a moment.
Steven's explanation of that hadn't made much sense either- if it wasn't fusion, then you didn't understand why anyone would partake in it.
Frankly, you thought it looked a little uncomfortable.
But, then again, you didn't (and still don't) even understand fusion fully.
Earth is a strange place, and everyone on it- humans and gems alike- act strangely; you'd left it at that.
Looking at Lapis, though, her face lit by the faint white glow of the screen and the length of her body draped in shadow, you suddenly want to try it.
Just to know what it's like, of course. An experiment, that's all.
You wonder about kissing her for just a moment, and then you stop.