Originally posted on AO3; I wanted to wait until I finished it before hosting it anywhere else.

For all intents and purposes consider this an AU where Steven is a normal 16 year old boy (not a gem hybrid) who lives with his dad and who's never seen a gem before.

xx

With the sky ahead of him a soup of smokey black and swirling grey, roiling charcoal waves holding back distant thumps of thunder, the air warm and heavy on his shoulders, it was obvious that it would rain that night. But taking his usual space on the hill at the sandy fringe of the beach, Steven didn't mind. He'd go home soaked, fingers slick from the rain and stiff from plucking at guitar strings, the one he'd gotten for his sixteenth birthday just a few weeks ago, but his head would be lulled and calm and that was all that mattered.

Sometimes his dad accompanied, moreso when Steven was younger and still trying to noodle a ukulele, but he got distracted easily. The harmony would fade and stop, and Steven would find his father staring off into the shimmering sunset, or the faint light of the stars as they filled his eyes. And whenever he asked what he was looking for, he just shook his head, and the stardust was gone like waves pulled back into the ocean below them.

On his own, Steven sometimes tried to look for himself, to catch a glint of whatever it was that wrenched his dad's attention so far away, but all he got for his effort was stinging eyes and weary sighs. Maybe it was an adult thing.

So resigning himself to that, he sat down with eyes low and played the usual melody, the one his father wrote when he was born and, allegedly, based off of Steven's musical cries. Slowly his fingers migrated to other rhythms, not following any one kind of composition, simply gliding to whichever strings suited them best with the summer thunder above and gentle waves below guiding him.

But when he opened his eyes, watching the last of the sun disappear for the day, his fingers slipped.

"What the…?"

The sky that was like that thrumming furnace before was now cleaved in two by a shock of white trailing behind something almost as big as the moon seen from Earth. Steven had seen meteor showers before but this was different, vastly so. For starters, there was only one of them, and it was flinging itself through the atmosphere like a rocket or… something dangerous. And it was sinking lower and lower, as if toppling from space, burning its way through the bloated clouds to reveal the stars glittering behind them… and as Steven pushed himself to his feet, he realised it was heading right for his backyard.

He stumbled in the sand with his guitar weighing him down, panting wildly with a thousand horrible and fiery thoughts in his head, watching the rock so far ahead dwindle in size but shoot faster and faster towards the ground, so by the time he reached the house it had already ploughed through the dirt behind it. A huge trench of mud marked the huge rock's path to where it landed, at the foot of a surprisingly sturdy tree, and Steven was doubled over half with relief and half with exhaustion when he reached the edge of it. Meteor or fallen satellite or whatever it was, at least it didn't hit the house.

And whatever it was… maybe it was the same thing his dad tried to look for.

Then it cracked open, and the mighty sound of crumbling rock was still lingering when he threw himself behind a mound of dirt. He peeked over the very tip of it, barely breathing, watching something emerge from the smoking rock. One arm… a gauntlet of sorts with dangling fingers, weakly rising up and probing the air. There was a cough, a very human sound, and a rough splutter until the trails of smoke cleared and another gauntlet shot up to drag the rest of the being out of the rock. Mint green skin with charred grey stains, a blue tongue lolling from a groaning mouth, and wilted yellow hair in the strangest style Steven had ever seen were the main features of the alien crawling out the wreckage. Then he saw the green stone embedded just below the hairline and just above a cracked yellow visor, those strange floating fingers rubbing it tenderly.

"Uh… hello?" He stood up slowly from his cover, not sure what to expect from the visitor or if he should still be running the other way. But it didn't seem dangerous, didn't even seem to notice him as it frantically spread out a set of fingers and tapped at one of the fizzing gauntlets.

"H-Home...Homeworld, come in… Yellow Diamond? Jasper? Anyone?" The voice was frail and high pitched, definitely female if it was coming out of a human. Steven wasn't sure if he was more surprised at how desperate the alien sounded or at the fact he could understand the words. He watched her, whatever she was, kneel among the chunks of chipped rock and churned mud and the eyes behind her visor widen more and more as something like panic and certainly despair took hold. So she was just as surprised to land here as he was to find her. Knowing that, Steven straightened up and slowly climbed down into the trench, taking greatest care not to send any stones falling down.

"Excuse me, are you alright?" Though he kept his voice low, blanketed with concern, the alien was on her feet- similarly augmented like her hands, the blocky green boots lifting her up at least a head above him- in a second, snapping around to face him in even less time with the visor barely holding back her glare. Steven cowered back more from her eyes than the glowing cores of her palms aimed at him.

"W-who… where am I?" she demanded, all trace of fear dissolved in suspicion. "What planet is this!?"

Steven blinked slowly, cautious that any wrong move could startle her. And he was more worried of that than any kind of retaliation. "Um… we call it Earth."

She scowled, but some kind of realisation must have started to trickle in as she too was blinking, the scorn dying down as she squinted at him. "A… you're a human?" Her arms and their humming gauntlets lowered, and she looked left and right around the crater she'd made and the leaves rustling on the tree branches hanging overhead, then at the slowly healing rift in the twilight sky. "This is Earth?"

Steven watched her take in the muted surroundings of his home, as if she recognised them in a distant kind of way, and couldn't help smiling. If she knew what a human was, then surely she'd be easy to make friends with. "Yup! I'm Steven-" He stepped forward, but as soon as his foot went down her palms shot back up in front of her.

"Stay back! Or… or I'll blast you!" She was shrieking now, digging her boots into the dirt as the glow in her palms brightened like a pair of stars clutched in her hands, and the stone in her forehead reflected it.

"Hey, hey, calm down! I'm not gonna hurt you!" Steven held his own hands out in the closest thing he could think of to a peace offering, his guitar held on its strap behind his back. But his surrender only seemed to agitate her more, and she gritted her teeth around the tip of her tongue as she clenched her fingers around the flickering flare.

"Not while I've got you in my sights, you're not- GAAAH!" All of a sudden she leapt backwards, shaking her arms like they were on fire, because they were- at least, the gauntlets were, fizzing and sparking between the panels, forcing her to tear them off her hands and throw them aside. Curiously the fingers seemed to drop individually, rolling aside from the main gloves like thin yellow rods. She panted and hissed, waggling her real fingers and checking the bare green skin of her hands. Steven glanced at the discarded gloves, still twitching from arcs of electricity leaping up from it, but at least the deadly glow had died away.

Clenching her naked hands into fists, the alien growled and pointed at him. "Alright, you little clod, you might have managed to break my augments somehow-"

"Actually, I think the crash did that," he tried to point out as she advanced on him and continued her threat.

"But I don't need them to kick your-!" She stopped, as if her boots were glued down or a wall had just shot up in front of her. But neither case was what happened, rather a drop of water had hit her outstretched finger. Then another hit her shoulder, and another on her arm, until the both of them were drenched in seconds as the heavens sealed together again and opened their floodgates in revenge.

"What the… what is this?!" Her voice went quiet and shaking again, as if it were bullets hitting her and not just drops of water. The downpour washed away the soot marks on her skin, leaving behind a fresh green that shivered from the impacts against it, and her stiff hair fell in thick tresses across her stricken face and shoulders. Only her eyes were left dry by her visor, and they were bright with terror all over again.

Steven, on the other hand, was basking in the refreshing shower until he saw the alien cowering back towards her shattered vessel. "Relax, it's just rain!" he said, shaking his head so his curls threw droplets everywhere and laughing all the while.

From the semi-shelter of the meteor, she watched him standing happily in the deluge as if he was dancing on top of lava.

"...Rain?" she repeated.

"Water, from the sky. It's harmless," Steven explained, pointing upwards at the thick clouds starting to fade, the curtain behind the stars pulling back. She blinked, uncertain if he was telling the truth, but tentatively holding her finger out again and letting the water patter softly on it. She stood up again, smoothing back the soaked strands of her hair uneasily, and flinched less with each raindrop that found its way to her. Someone who'd never seen rain before… what else would be new to her here? What kind of world did she come from that didn't have something as simple and cleaning as rain?

"But it can get pretty cold if you're wet, so you'd be better off coming inside," Steven said, kneeling to pick up the gauntlets before the wet mud swallowed them up. The alien glanced down, narrowing her eyes at him with her devices cradled in his arms.

"What are you doing?" It was more curious than accusatory, and it didn't seem she was too defensive over them if they weren't working.

"Helping you with your stuff, even if it's broken just now," he answered. "Then we can get back to the house, and you can get warm and comfortable. And there's food if you're hungry."

But she must have stopped listening at some point, from how her face went blank and her mouth made all sorts of shapes. "You're… inviting me? Into your…'house'? A haven of some kind?"

"Of course. You landed in my backyard, so you're a guest," Steven said with a smile of pure habit. "I'm sure Dad won't mind."

She stared at him, her broken gauntlets, up at the sky still weeping and back at her meteor before looking back at him. "You are… a strange human," she decided, and her confusion only went deeper when Steven laughed.

"You're not the first to say that. Come on, I'll lead the way." He turned to walk back up the side of the trench, struggling slightly with the mud sliding under his feet and leaving him grateful he put something other than sandals on them. But he felt something boosting him up from behind, careful hands around his guitar, and when he was at the top he saw the alien easily scaling the low wall with her boots planted deep in the dirt. He gave her a grateful smile before heading on, slow steps towards the house so she could follow at her own pace.

"You said your name was… Steven?" she asked, uncertainly as if she had to practice most formalities. Maybe that was an alien thing.

"Uh huh," he said, realising how rude he'd been not asking her for her own name all this time. "Do you have one?"

"...Peridot," she answered after another uncertain pause, as if she was embarrassed by it. But Steven liked it, and he let her know what a smile over his shoulder.

"Nice to meet you, Peridot."