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Amity has discovered two things in the past week: first that Luz fiddles with the sleeve of her shirt when things get quiet, that she flips the cuff inside out and runs her thumb over the well-worn softness of the inside over and over again until she’s satisfied, and second that having a crush makes you notice things about a person that you never even knew you wanted to notice.
Amity’s always been observant because she’s always had to be; Amity is like everyone else in that she experiences the world as a series of events, but she’s most like herself when she’s able to take those events, run them through a lens, and then categorize them at her leisure. When she encounters something she examines it from every angle, observes it first in its every facet and form and then dismisses it out of hand to the back of her brain where it gets filed away all neat and tidy and firmly out of sight. It’s a science and a habit, one perfected through years of trial-and-error, and it keeps her in line and out of trouble because she always knows what’s going on, as well as when and where and why .
Now if Amity were to define a crush, she’d say that it was intense and involuntary observation. Day in and day out, whenever her mind wanders during free time or whenever she finds herself kept awake at night by piles of schoolwork, whenever she sees anything that’s bright and happy and sweet she inevitably ends up thinking of Luz. And whenever she finds that Luz is right there, right there in front of her and talking to her in that excitable, earnest way that Luz likes to talk, throwing an arm around Amity’s shoulders or tapping at her arm because Luz is straightforward and physical with her affection- well, whenever something like that happens, Amity feels like she’s going to die. Several times over, as her face goes bright red and her stomach churns out butterflies and her heart stutters in her chest with a thump and a rattle and then quick little staccato beats like wings, moving with enough force that she feels it turning up through her throat.
There’s something about Luz that makes observation seem vital and futile all at once, because no matter how much Amity notices about her she always wants to know more. She sees the way that Luz paints her nails in swirls and swoops and she wants to know her favorite color; she sees the way that Luz rotates through a collection of soft-looking bracelets made of thread, some woven through with dizzying designs or broad, broken stripes and once even letters, and she wants to know if Luz makes them herself; she sees the black stud earrings that Luz is always wearing and wonders why those, why over everything else.
It’s constant and thrilling, a thrum in the back of her mind that never lets her be, and Amity loves and hates it in equal measure because on one hand Amity loves to know things but on the other hand Luz is so lively and pretty and kind and pretty and smart and pretty that Amity thinks she’ll never be able to stop noticing her. She’s going to be thirty years old, and then she’s going to be fifty and eighty and one-hundred and she’s always, always, always going to want to learn more new things about Luz. Amity knows herself and all of her habits, has observed herself in full for years and years on end now and has catalogued accordingly, so she knows when she’s beat; more than that she knows when something or someone is going to draw her in and never let her go (Amity works hard but some things just work harder) and she knows when something is going to tug her into orbit and say you can’t leave yet! Don’t you want to see how it ends?
And of the things that she’s found herself gravitating towards throughout her life, Luz is by far the best. The brightest, the most enduring and endearing.
But she can’t exactly say that- what would she even say, what could she even say - so observation it is. Observation and blushing and writing in her diary every night about how Luz smiled at me today and her eyes are so pretty, I can’t stop thinking about them, and when she smiles she does it with her whole face all the way up to her eyes and her forehead scrunches when she laughs and then her nose crinkles and she’s so cute I can’t STAND it-
Regardless, Amity has learned that a crush makes you notice , and today Amity can’t stop noticing that Luz doodles alongside her notes. Her hand is moving in a practiced swing between a half-finished drawing in the margins of her paper and a list of bullet points that cuts straight down the center, and Amity can’t look away. She knows that she’s in class so she should be concentrating, but she also knows that she knows this stuff anyways and while she’d never be so flippant about school otherwise, Luz has begun humming lightly as she writes and that is something very important that requires Amity’s undivided attention.
Luz’s hair is curling down around her ears, little wisps of it sticking to her skin and larger chunks frizzing and standing up on end. Her brow is scrunched low with concentration and her legs are swinging back and forth beneath the table, catching on the edge of her chair before kicking out again at nothing. Her free hand is tapping at the table, tap, tap, tap , and around her wrist is today’s bracelet, which is light green and patterned with baby pink diamonds that peter off into straight lines. Earlier when one of Luz’s friends commented on them she said that they were fish, but Amity still wants to ask because if it’s what Luz wants to talk about then Amity wants to listen.
(Amity would listen to Luz talk about fish. )
Class lets out ten minutes later, but Luz doesn’t stop sketching. Amity can’t see what exactly it is, just the suggestion of a braid slung over two sloping shoulder-lines, but they’re two very good sloping shoulder-lines and it’s a very good braid and Amity likes to draw too so there’s layers of interest to this and it’s giving her a bit of a headache. As it is she’s trying to lean over the table, seeing if she can’t subtly angle herself until she can see what the drawing actually is, but Amity is a lot of things and none of them are subtle so her chair tips up and her arms pinwheel and she yelps as she nearly falls right over. Luz’s head snaps up and she squeaks too, throws out a hand to grab Amity’s chair and push it back upright before she can hit the ground.
“Woah there!” she says, blinking. “You going somewhere?”
She caught Amity without so much as a second thought- she caught Amity and kept her from falling and then she pushed her back up without straining even a little bit and oh no, oh no, Amity can already feel the giddy bubbles forming in her throat, tickling at the back of her neck.
“NO,” she squeaks. “YES. MAYBE.”
Oh no.
“Ohhhh, I see,” Luz giggles, winking. Amity feels her face flush, feels her lungs constrict and her fingers flex as the bubbles squirm out along her arms. “Keeping it mysterious, huh? I can respect that.”
“Well, you know me. Always changing things up,” Amity says, but her voice comes out all high-pitched and wobbly so any effect that she may have had that was anything other than completely and totally embarrassing is lost. She drums her fingers against her leg in quick succession, taps at her knee with the heels of her hands until her insides get themselves back in order and her thoughts slow down. Her hands feel all tingly and prickly when she finally calms down enough to place them back on the table, and were she alone, she’d probably giggle at that but as it is Amity’s got a reputation .
One that she’s currently running into the ground because Luz is so close, but a reputation nonetheless.
“What are you drawing?” she asks, because maybe if she can direct the attention away from her Luz won't catch on to the fact that Amity was doodling all sorts of variations of Amity Noceda (she went back and forth over that but eventually figured that if she was being honest with herself then she may as well go all the way) in her diary last night.
Luz’s eyes immediately light up and the whole rest of her follows, her shoulders going straight back and her hands scrabbling for her notebook as she lunges to push it in front of Amity with a charged sort of energy that’s bordering on electric.
“AZURA!” she bellows, and Amity doesn’t know what sort of face she must be making (pretty girl close to her, pretty girl talking to her, pretty girl talking about a shared interest ) but her eyes feel wide and her face feels red and her mouth keeps ticking up into an awkward little smile, so she can’t imagine that it’s all that cool.
“Oh! Azura!” she coughs. Pull it together, pull it together. “It looks very, uh. It’s. Um. Good.”
“It’s just something I threw together real quick,” Luz says, rubbing at the back of her neck and smiling big and wide and sheepish. “Drawing helps me concentrate on what the teacher’s saying, you know? Otherwise it just sounds like someone’s running a car engine, like brrrrrrrr. ”
She’s still so, so close but now she looks even happier, and logically Amity knows that Luz would be happy if anyone told her that her drawing looked good but a little part of her (that takes up half her head on a good day) hopes that maybe, just maybe she’s as happy to be complimented by Amity as Amity is to compliment her.
“I think that I finally got her hat right in this one too,” Luz continues, oblivious to Amity’s continual crisis. “Look, what do you think?”
She points to the hat which really does look rather accurate, something that is difficult to do as Amity’s found out after hours and hours of trying to draw that same exact hat on that same exact character. Luz did a good job. Luz is good at many, many things, and Amity likes her so much that she feels like she’s going to crack in two.
“It looks good,” she says again, dully this time because if she can’t change it up a bit then Luz is surely going to grow bored of her and wander off to one of the millions of other people that surely must be lining up to be around her. Amity can’t imagine anyone not wanting to be around Luz; it just doesn’t fit with the way that she understands the world, has no place inside of her little spheres of continuity and cohesion. Amity is observant by nature and analytical as a natural consequence, and she and her little world-spheres aren’t about to throw themselves for any more loops, not so soon after the initial crush revelation- she’s not so impulsive, not quite yet, as there is one thing that Amity’s observation has driven her to uphold and that is her sense of self-preservation. Someone’s gotta do it, after all, all the grunt work, all the heavy lifting.
“Awwwww, you charmer ,” Luz teases, and Amity knows that she’s teasing, but Luz nudges an elbow into her side and grins and when she’s this close Amity can see the way that her eyes are such a deep brown that the pupils nearly blend into the irises and she can’t help but wonder how long she could get away with just sitting there and staring and staring and staring, can’t help but want to see until there’s nothing left to learn.
“Well I am a witch,” she says, mostly on autopilot. Luz snort-laughs, draws her notebook back towards her across the table fast enough that the spiral binding makes a sound like death. Amity winces, taps at her leg again and watches as Luz shuts her notebook and carefully maneuvers it into her bag, mumbling something to herself that sounds almost like a song and almost like a story. Maybe it’s a little bit of both, but Amity will never know because Amity isn’t about to ask.
“Hey Amity,” Luz singsongs, “Hey Amity, Amity, Amity, now that school’s out you should come over! I don’t have any of my sketchbooks on me right now but I have a few back at the owl house and I’ve gotta show you this one piece I did that took forever, like a week, and it’s a scene from the fourth book- do you remember the one with the ice? And the big dragon and the-” she makes a soft wooshing noise and holds out a hand, flat and palm up before letting it wiggle and waver back and forth. Amity does know which scene she’s talking about actually, it’s one of the best in a series that is nothing but good scenes, but she’s more focused on the whole going with Luz to her house, like the two of them walking and walking alone and talking to each other all, all alone.
“It’ll be super fun, I promise!” Luz exclaims, and then she looks Amity right in the eye but not in her usual straightforward way; this is a pout in the form of a soft, watery gaze, a little quirk of the lips and a plying, imploring pleeaaaasseee that Amity would say was whining if it came from anyone else, but as this is Luz and she’s made concession after concession for Luz already so what’s one more?
And for a moment, for a soft, frightening moment because she’s so taken in by the novelty and the sweetness and the sureness of it all, Amity nearly gives herself up right then and there: she nearly turns sideways on her chair and scoops Luz’s hands up into her own and says I like you. The scene is so clear in her mind, so centered and lit up and dead-set that for a moment she feels as if it’s come to pass already, like Luz said I want to show you my sketchbooks and Amity said I like you so much that sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe and then that was that and they waltzed off to the horizon just like they did at Grom and then lived happily ever after forever and ever until the end.
But real life doesn’t work like that- real life Amity and Luz probably need to finish school before they go barreling full-tilt to any horizons. Real life Amity has an essay due in two days. Real life Amity has parents who aren’t the best and expectations that weigh heavy as a stone and a name that’s ironic two times over- Amity, like amiable or amicable, meaning friendly but she’s not very nice, and then Blight like you’re a blight on the Blight family’s good name- and real life Amity doesn’t have the time for amateur literary aspirations, especially not inside of her name which she has to lug around with her everywhere that she goes. Real life Amity just wants to sleep for eight straight hours. Real life Amity just wants to talk to pretty girls and read adventure books and listen to bad music and go to Luz’s house so she can see Luz’s sketchbooks.
Luz, who is still looking at her all expectant and poised, like the anticipation is killing her, and oh Amity has to say something, anything, anything at all because otherwise she really will get herself into something that she can’t navigate back out of.
“Alright. Yeah, sure, okay,” she says before she’s even fully aware of it, and then tries to hide her wince because even if it’s not I like you, it’s close enough and anyone who looks at her for more than a second is surely going to pick up on it. Her near slip is a consequence of circumstances, she’s sure- Luz has a way of drawing her feelings out of her like this, of plucking the ones that she tries to keep hidden right out from behind her defenses, and she resents it almost as much as she loves it. Almost, almost, almost.
“YEAH!” Luz cries, throwing her arms up in the air. “Party at the owl house! C’mon, let’s go find Willow and Gus, maybe we can have a sleepover- hey, do you think that I could convince Eda to let us bake? Every good sleepover has snacks but they’re even better when you get to make them yourselves, and this is gonna be so fun, Amity! Let’s go, let’s go!”
She reaches out a hand and loosely encircles Amity’s wrist, presses her fingers to the pulse point and gives her the biggest smile yet. And Amity is only so strong, and her head feels like it’s been filled with cotton and her mouth’s gone all dry and her thoughts are going round and round before settling on Luz, Luz, Luz, so it is what it is and what it is is inevitable.
“Okay, okay, let me just pack up first,” she says. Only a few weeks ago she would never have even dreamt of doing something like this, but well- things happen, people change, revelations occur and are dealt with accordingly. Life goes on. This is a simple interaction that means much to her by virtue of Luz meaning much to her, and life goes on.
“This is gonna be great ,” Luz says, bouncing on her heels. She still hasn’t let go of Amity, and that means that she has to pack up one-handed but it’s a necessary evil. No point in being adaptable if you don’t ever get to benefit from it.
Regardless- or maybe because- of the way Luz is hanging off her, Amity gets her things packed in record time and then slings her bag up and over her shoulder. Luz looks thirty seconds from bursting by this point, is so bright and blinding and thoroughly excited as she pats her free hand against the table and hops up and down. The minute that Amity is done she’s off like a comet, sliding her hand down Amity’s wrist and to her hand before interlacing their fingers and tugging her off into some unknown direction. It’s a miracle really that Amity doesn’t fall flat on her face, that the weight and warmth of Luz’s hand in her own doesn’t send her sprawling, but she’ll take her little mercies and she’ll make them into little victories and then she’ll write about them in her diary later until everything is as remembered as it’s going to get.
And there really won’t be any logic to it, but there never is; Amity is learning that more and more by the minute. As it is right now she can’t say anything, is too stuck on her feelings and the gravity of her still unsaid words( I like you, I like you ) and of course all the annoying intricacies that come with having a crush on your good friend, so all she can really do is what she’s always done; observe, catalogue, do her best to make sense of things as they come. Every little thing, each seemingly inconsequential moment, each time Luz touches her or looks at her or laughs with her. Just to see what she can make of it all. Just to see what she can learn.
All that means for now is that she’s got to change her list up a bit. Mentally, she begins her revisions, gathers and then places her additions, reorders things as necessary. Starting from item one: Luz tends towards idle movement, crushes make you notice things about people that you’ve never noticed before, Luz is good at drawing, and- most annoyingly, most importantly, whatever emphasis you can stomach- she is so gone on Luz that she does things like agree to go to sleepovers on a whim.
And lastly, the most surprising twist of all and one realized as Luz’s friends come into sight and Luz squeezes her hand once before letting go and jogging off towards them, yelling and waving all the while: crushes can make you irrational, and crushes can drive you to distraction, but as long as Luz is there then Amity can’t bring herself to care half as much as she probably should. But that’s alright, that’s alright. Luz links their arms on the walk back home, and Willow sends her sly looks, and Gus winks when he thinks that nobody else is looking, and even if Amity can’t say it out loud- I like you, I like you- she’s happy, and she’s with friends and she’s with Luz and everything is alright.