Gem Steven started humming to bring some sort of calm to his frazzled mind, doing anything in his power to try and stop thinking about how he felt solely responsible for everything that's happened. The butterflies fluttering in around Gem Steven's head some landing on his shoulders. His humming becoming erratic as he was trying to focus on anything other than the horrible memories plaguing his half of the mindscape.
Human Steven turned toward his brother's uneasy humming. He shooed the butterflies by his head, thought the ones on his shoulders didn't seem phased by his waving hand. That was worrying. He snapped his fingers in front of Gem's face.
"Steven... still you with me buddy?"
"Ah!! Uh... oh yea. I'm here for you... we're here for each other..." He nodded his head.
Steven Squared's eyes were closed, his right hand rubbing over his left arm while his brows seemed to tense, while he seemed to be mumbling inaudibly to himself, before he opened his eyes, and cleared his throat. "Th-thanks, Lapis." He nodded, "Yea, Peridot's pretty resourceful... especially when she broke open the smaller tv for scrap parts for the drill... haha."
Steven Squared shifted his sitting position on the ground. His legs crossed in a different position, while his left hand was still tapping the ground the rhythm no longer present. "Right, it's our turn to ask a question, haha." Steven Squared looking at his left hand that was tapping erratically on the ground, then looking at his right hand, it seemed shakier than this morning.
"Ok... mmm... is there anything that was on your mind you wanted to vent about but couldn't bring up since the little one was here? Like any questions or concerns... now seems like a good time to just de-compress and just let it all out, ya know??"
Lapis nodded in reply to Steven Squared mentioning Peridot breaking their TV. It sounded exactly like her to feel like the resources inside of something were more important than the thing itself — maybe Lapis was still just a little bitter about needing to share a space with the kindergartener, though. Either way, the smaller gem was doing more on Earth than Lapis was achieving so who was she to judge?
The azure gem could feel how tense the air was and it only fed into how uncomfortable she was with all of this from the get go. Without Steven there to mediate, Lapis worried how things would play out. She knew she couldn’t just stay quiet until the boy returned; that would only cause more conflict. So she ran her fingertips across her skirt as she tried to answer whatever the fusion was going to ask her.
When asked specifically about something that she might want to bring up to vent or decompress, Lapis looked at the ground intently. “Uh, I’m not sure.” She replied softly. She wanted to ask him why it seemed like they got off on a bad foot, but that felt like a loaded question that had an answer she didn’t want to hear. So what could she say?
“It doesn’t matter anyway. What about you?” Lapis settled on deflection, feeling like that was maybe the more diplomatic approach.