Stuck Out Here With You [Lapidot Safari AU]

Chapter Two: A Warm Welcome

By the time that Steven had returned with an arm-full of kindle wood, and Garnet with some rocks to place around the fire, Pearl had managed to stand the tent after both Greg and Amethyst decided to take a quick breather after wrestling with the elastic poles and tragically failing.

Peridot, begrudgingly, set her pack down against a large boulder as she watched Amethyst struggle with the fire-starter. Pearl quickly fixed Amethyst's technique, and in no time there was a small billow of embers burning into the dry kindle and starting to emit tongues of orange flame.

Sure enough, the temperature had dropped since the Jeep's failure. Peridot had dug out one of the overshirts in her bag and put it on as a second layer, tying a third around her waist for good measure. Absently, she grabbed a long stick from the ground near the stunted shrubbery and began to draw it through the pale dirt. It wasn't doing much, save for scuffing the pebbles.

"Drawing?" Came Lapis Lazuli's voice, and Peridot had to stop herself from jumping a foot into the air when she realized it came from just over her shoulder. It sounded a little sardonic, and from what she could make out of Lapis' face through the edges of her peripheral vision, she was smirking a little.

"No," she sniffed stubbornly, fingers tightening around the shaft of wood as she hoisted it and laid it over her knees. Lapis didn't say if her lie bothered her, but rather reached over and gestured for the stick. "Can I see?"

"Uh-- sure." She handed the stick over, watching Lapis' slender hands seamlessly wrap around the staff. Lapis shifted on the rock, folding her legs up to her chest as she begun to twirl the tip of the wooden stick softly through the topmost layer of soil-- where it was less compact.

Peridot found herself absentmindedly watching Lapis scribble, but before long her eyes had roamed up to look at Lapis instead. Her side profile was. . . uh, prepossessing, to say the least. A sleek, tapered chin, and a sleek, curved nose; her blue hair rolled down and framed her angled face, and her eyelids were lazily hung at half-mast as she watched herself. . . scrape the stick in the dirt.

Peridot also noticed she hadn't brought out a second layer to wrap up in. "Aren't you getting cold?" She found herself saying aloud, before clapping her teeth shut with an audible click .

Lapis looked up at that, pausing her venture with the stick, and glanced over. "A little. I don't mind it."

That answer didn't seem to satisfy Peridot, because her hands immediately traveled down to her own waist, where her third layer was wrapped dutifully around her waist. "You can-- use mine. My flannel, I mean," she said, taking off the thing and holding it outwards to Lapis.

The blue-haired woman looked down at her extended hand with bemusement, and Peridot's lips tightened when she saw how deeply brown her eyes were. It was silent a moment, before Lapis huffed with what Peridot hoped wasn't amusement. "Okay, yeah. Um, thanks. . ."

"Peridot," she supplied, guessing that Lapis' drawling off was because she didn't know her name. Even if she'd said it when the crew had introduced themselves earlier that day. No biggie.

Lapis shrugged on the shirt, covering her bare shoulders. The sleeves only went just past the beginning of her forearm, but she didn't seem to mind. The two went back to watching her scrawl in the dirt, and Peridot had about to comment on how it had begun to resemble a big cat of sorts when Greg called them over.

"Hey, you two! Fire's going now, and we're going to bring out the preserves. How about it, Peridot? Lapis?"

Indeed, the others had gathered around their impromptu campfire, Steven unpacking a lumpy bag that Peridot assumed was full of foods. She didn't know if she had the stomach to eat anything right now, or if it was her hesitance to leave the little bubble she'd found on the rock with her. . . blue friend. Friend? No, crewmate. Whatever.