Work Text:
Luz, I-
No.
Hi. Will you go to Gro-
No.
This is Amity, would you want to-
Of course it’s Amity, who else could it be? No.
Luz, I have feelings for you. Would you do me the honor of being my Grom date?
Too forward.
Luz, I lov-
WAY TOO FORWARD.
;;
Amity sighs heavily as her head hits the desk with a loud thump. God. Why is this so hard?! All she has to do is write a very short note asking someone to Grom. That's all. So why can’t she seem to do it? Inevitably, her thoughts turn to Luz. How brave she is. How she’s never judged Amity, no matter the mistakes she’d made. How she’s so quick to jump into trouble for someone, anyone she cares about. How Amity has somehow become one of those she cares about. How her eyes are just so brown-
Amity’s head snaps up, face flushing. She needs to focus. Grom is just a day away, really; she’s lost almost all time. She’s known she wanted to do this (to ask Luz out) ever since she’d remembered Grom even existed (which was weeks ago) but she’d avoided the thoughts (and her own feelings) until she literally couldn’t any longer.
She looks over her piles of scrapped ideas. Surely, she can find the right words eventually, right?
“Hey, Mittens, what’s up?” Of course.
It’s Ed, of course. “What do you want?” She asks shortly. She tears another pink piece of paper from the notepad and starts trying again. “Where’s Em?”
“Getting take-out for dinner,” her brother says. He seems to decide that she’s allowing him inside (she’s not) and goes to sit on her bed. Amity can feel him looking at her back. “Mom and dad won’t be home until late, so we thought we’d eat something good for a change.” He pauses for a moment. Amity scraps the note she’s writing and grabs another one. “..I heard a thud in here a minute ago. Are you okay?” And for a second, Amity’s pen falters. For some reason, he sounds less like the (often mean) brother she’s grown used to over the years and more like the one who’d sneak into her room and teach her spells when she was little. She shakes her head. That brother is long gone. He’s probably just trying to get a reaction out of her, like always.
“Why do you care?” Amity snaps back. Edric falls silent once more.
He’s uncharacteristically quiet for a while, then, as Amity slowly grows more and more frustrated with her notes. Finally, after he’s been sitting there for more than five minutes, she throws her pen down and lets out a loud groan, no longer caring if he knows about it.
“Mittens?”
“I just can’t get it right,” Amity says desperately, feeling bitter tears well up in her eyes. She is quick to wipe them away. “No matter what I do, it comes out wrong!”
“Hey, hey,” Edric is on his feet instantly, and she feels his hands rest gently, awkwardly, on her shoulders. “What’s up? You know you’ll nail any essay they give you, rig-” he cuts himself off, and she knows he’s seen the notes. The notes that prove that she’s more than the cold, top student she so desperately wants just to be. The notes that prove people can get to her.
Well. Maybe just one person in general.
“Ohhhh.”
Amity’s ears burn, but her anger trumps her embarrassment as she growls, “Why can’t I do this? It’s so easy. Why is this the thing I can’t do?!”
She’s not really asking for an answer, and he doesn’t give her one. Downstairs, they both hear the door open. “Alright, dinner’ll be here in twenty minutes! I got you both your favorite, and yes, Ed, I got a few not-dogs as well.” Her voice gets slowly louder as she climbs the stairs. “Guys? Where are you-” Amity looks up; Emira is standing in her doorway, giving them both a confused look. “..What’s going on?”
In response, Amity’s head hits the desk.
After a few minutes of Edric explaining the situation (Amity very pointedly not listening) Emira is grinning. “Ha!” She crows loud enough to make Amity jump. “I knew you had the hots for the human! Ed, you owe me forty snails!”
“ Excuse me?” Amity snarls. She musters the energy to lift her head off the desk in order to give her sister a heavy glare. “What are you talking about?”
Edric shrugs. “We had a bet,” he says, “I thought you were too stuck in your ways, still. My bad,” he swats at Emira’s outstretched hand. “You’ll get your snails soon enough; I don't have any on me! And we agreed on thirty, Emi, you crook!”
“I want you both out of my room,” Amity deadpans, blinking slowly.
“Mittens, no,” Emira says dramatically, ignoring Ed for the time being. “We’re here to help you, baby sister! We can’t leave you like this without giving you some of our romantic wisdom!”
Amity feels her ears burn at the mention of romance. “Neither of you have ever dated anyone,” she mutters, half-heartedly.
Emira just gives her a wink and giggles. “Aw, look, Ed, she’s blushing!” Just as Edric says, “as far as you know, anyways.”
Amity rolls her eyes and thumps her head back down on the desk. “Whatever,” she says, too tired to continue the argument. “Go nuts.”
“Oh, we will.” Without another word between them, the twins grab some of the other chairs Amity has situated about her room and seat themselves directly on both of Amity’s sides. “Okay! So what seems to be the problem, Mittens?”
“I just-” Amity heaves a sigh. Emira reaches out slowly to take one of the failed notes into her hands, and Amity lets her. “I can’t get it right. It doesn’t matter what I write, or how I write it. Regardless, It doesn’t sound the way I want it to sound.”
Ed smiles at her. “It’ll be okay,” he says, waving a hand in the air, “the solution is probably simple, too. You know that’s how it is with these problems, right? The answer is always right in your face.”
Emira pats her on the shoulder. “I think you’re just trying to say too much,” she says, and Amity turns to face her. “You don’t have to be so specific. It’s Grom; she’ll know what you’re trying to ask even with the simplest of letters.” She also gives Amity a smile, softer than usual. “I understand you want this to be perfect, but there’s really no such thing, kid. You should write something that makes your intentions clear, but it doesn’t have to be soul-searching.” She gives Amity a sharp and significant look. “You’re allowed to be less than perfect, Amity.”
It’s the use of her real name that tells Amity she’s serious. “I-” She tries, but her voice cracks and she quiets instantly. “I know.” She says eventually, but she’s always been a terrible liar.
Emira grips her shoulder a little tighter. “You can,” Edric says, “no matter what they say.” They all know who he means. “No one can possibly be perfect all the time, anyways.”
Amity stiffens. She wants to say, I can be! I swear I can be! But she knows it wouldn’t do any good. Instead, she just sighs again and says, “you’re making this too deep. I’m just trying to write a Grom note.”
The twins obviously don’t believe her, but they’re kind enough (this time) to let the topic drop. Emira says, “well, just try what I said anyway! Simplify your message; it doesn’t have to be as long as your essays, it can even just be, like, ten words or something! Or even less!”
“Yeah,” Edric says, chuckling, “like, for example, Luz, please go with me, I’m desperate here!”
Ah. So the Ed and Em she’s used to are back. “Oh, shut up,” Amity growls, elbowing Ed in the side. He gasps for air - from both her attack and his own laughter - and Emira starts giggling. Amity elbows her, too, just for good measure. “I do not sound like that.”
“Oh, Luz,” Emira gasps, leaping off her chair in order to avoid another elbow, “ please go out with me! I’ve fallen for a human, of all things, and-” she can’t get the rest of it out; now she’s laughing too hard. Beside her, Ed seems to be going into cardiac arrest. Amity’s ears burn a bright red, and she growls.
“Get OUT!” She yelps, glaring at them, and the twins are quick to disappear, laughing all the way. She’s not as angry as she usually gets with them, but she still won’t tolerate them making continuous fun of her.
“Dinner’s in fifteen!” Emira shouts as they head back to their own room. “That is, if you’re done writing to your girlfriend!”
Amity doesn’t bother yelling at her to shut up. It won’t do any good. Instead, she turns back to her pen with a renewed vigor and starts writing again. The twins had been right, of course. She eventually manages to finish one; it’s simple, but (she hopes it’s) sweet.
Luz, will you go to Grom with me?
Amity
;;
*BONUS*
“Ugh,” Emira says; groans. Edric doesn’t need to look at her to know she’s wearing the same expression he is; cold and bitter anger. “I can’t believe we just got stood up!”
“It’s fine,” Edric says, and they both know he’s lying. That he feels like crap because of it. They hadn’t even considered they might be stood up, and now Edric wishes they had, if only to avoid the worst of this awful feeling. “Whatever.”
Emira opens her mouth to say something, but freezes. Edric follows her gaze across the auditorium, where their sister is standing, the human beside her. She’s still got her Grom Queen tiara on; as does Luz, and she’s. Laughing. She’s laughing, hard, and genuinely, and like Ed hasn’t seen in years. He can’t hear it, not from where he’s sitting, but the memory of when they were all younger and happier makes him almost tear up for a completely different reason than before.
“She’s.. happy,” he murmurs, star-struck.
“She is,” Emira says, sounding the way he feels. They watch for a few more moments, at the way their baby sister acts around the human. Ed doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Amity this happy without her burying it under several layers of steel. “Maybe.. this night isn’t so bad,” says his twin, and he can tell she means it. “At least she’s having a good time.”
Edric can’t agree more.