#Lapis please understand that Pyrite is an exception because she makes it a 1/3 rather than 1/2 thing

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Don’t talk to me about shadows right now okay because. I’m still working on figuring it out. Also the teeniet bit of cel shading you’ve ever seen in your life. I think the reason I didn’t like it last time was because I was doing it wrong...not sure if I was any more successful this time. Maybe a little. 

Anyway, here’s part one of my intended Tainted Waters series~. In which Lapis and Arsenic breach the subject that neither of them is really good with. But not all the way. Story stuff under the cut. 

pose reference 

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            They sat in the barn’s loft near the windows, Lapis with her legs curled up to her chest, Arsenic leaning back on her hands. They both gazed silently out at the yard below, where the Crystal Gems (as Lapis still wasn’t comfortable calling herself one and, historically, Arsenic had once been just the opposite) were trying to devise a scientific solution to Peridot’s distinct combative deficiency. Lapis felt a bit guilty for not helping them brainstorm, but she didn’t expect she would be of much use, all things considered. Her eyes lingered on Garnet for a few seconds, watching her gesture to the others and display the gems in both her palms. As much as she tried not to, she was thinking about it again. And Arsenic noticed.

            “Hey,” she said, moving closer across the wood-planked floor to sit next to Lapis. When Arsenic’s hand met hers, she blinked out of her distraction and looked up. “There you are. What’s up?”

            “Um. Nothing,” Lapis said, working her fingers through her girlfriend’s to hold her hand.

            “Liar,” Arsenic laughed.  “Come on.”

            Lapis was quiet for a few seconds longer. “Do you ever think about”—she took a deep breath—“fusing?”

            Arsenic stiffened and pulled her hand back. A clear enough response. “You mean as a concept?” she asked, still trying to treat the matter casually.

            “I mean you and me,” Lapis clarified. Now that she’d started the conversation, she was compelled to see it through.

            She had been trying not to bring it up, no matter how many times she came back to it. Arsenic had never suggested it herself, and she admittedly had complicated feelings of her own about the idea. But now and again, she remembered the time she had seen Ruby and Sapphire together, how in love they were. And that was what had created Garnet, who was so self-assured, so grounded. It made her wonder: what if fusion with someone she cared about could be better? What if something beautiful could come of it with the right person? Someone she trusted. Someone she identified with. Someone she wasn’t afraid she would hurt…. Toxic as she was, Arsenic was the only one who fit all of those criteria.

            In answer to her question, Arsenic easily lied, “No.”

            Lapis frowned, skeptical. “Not ever?”

            “Nah. It’s never turned out well in the past,” she said. This was very true, though it might have been more accurate to say she was bad luck for her partners. Her nature had always made her difficult to even be around, to say nothing of fusing. “So I tend to avoid it. Better for everyone that way.”

            “…you’ve fused with Pyrite,” Lapis pointed out, and Arsenic blanched.

            “I guess,” she muttered. “A time or two. Pyrite is…sort of an exception. It doesn’t usually go that smoothly—and besides, even if we can hold it together for a while, it’s not like it’s easy for her.” Silence for a few moments.

            “You think I can’t handle it,” Lapis concluded eventually.

            “That’s not it.”

            “Don’t lie to me,” she snapped, hands clenching against the floor as she curled in on herself. “I get it. You think it’s too much. You think Malachite…broke me.”

            “That’s not it,” Arsenic repeated more firmly, sitting up to address her properly. “It’s me. You know what I’m like; I wasn’t made to mix. Fusing with me is hard, and it can be…traumatizing—”

            “Pyrite is the most fragile one here. She seems to handle it fine.”

            “It’s not the same for everyone. I don’t have to tell you that.” How else could she prove her point without giving a demonstration of how bad it could get? It wasn’t that she didn’t want the experience. Like she was trying to protect herself or wasn’t interested in seeing Lapis that closely. But she knew herself well enough to know that fusing, for her, was selfish, maybe even cruel. Having seen what could come of it and knowing about Lapis’s last experience with fusion—she couldn’t put her through that.

            She moved closer to push her long fingers through her girlfriend’s hair. “I don’t doubt that you could handle it. You’re the strongest Gem within a thousand parsecs of this planet. But I like how we fit together better like this.” She leaned down, offering a kiss, and after a few seconds of hesitation, Lapis accepted it.

            “Yeah,” she said softly when they parted. “This way’s good, too.” Maybe it was actually better for their relationship if they kept a little distance…but she couldn’t help thinking that didn’t sound right. 

...

A/N: Thank you for joining me for Distressed Gay Rock Theater. Tune in next time when we’ll see Arsenic’s taller but more fragile girlfriend have a somewhat different conversation with the more insistent blue one.