Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Willow contemplates throwing her alarm clock against the wall as it shrills next to her but knows that her dads would be upset if she broke another thing. She sighs before tapping the angry machine. Quiet permeates the room as she finally swings her legs out of bed to start the day.

After performing her usual bathroom routine, she’s left staring at the clothes in her closet as if she was going to make an actual fashion choice (she wasn’t). Vaguely she can overhear her one of her dads, Gilbert, saying “Love you dear, see you after work.” to her Pops right before he yells to her, “Willow, love you! Remember to get to school on time!”

The teenager couldn’t help rolling her eyes even though he couldn’t see her. “I’m seventeen, I’ll be fine…” she grumbles to herself, before yelling down a return “Love you too!”

She finally changes out of her pajamas, pulling on dark jeans and a light gray long-sleeve before donning her usual yellow jacket. She finally picks up her phone from her desk and notices messages from Luz and the group chat.

Luz’s message was a simple ‘Goodnight Willow <3’, which she must have missed last night, but left her smiling nonetheless. In the group chat Gus had sent a message saying ‘Guys, meet me at my locker in the morning! I’ve got something you show you ;)’ . Which left Willow wondering what the younger boy had gotten into this time.

Willow finally makes her way out of her room and heads down to the kitchen, passing by her Pops who is sitting at the table deep in a book. While her other dad had gone off to work, it seems like her Pops, Harvey, had busied himself with breakfast, judging by the crumbs lingering in his beard. She grabs some cereal and an apple for breakfast and eats them quickly to avoid any morning chit-chat with him.

When she finally gets up to grab her car keys, he looks up at her and smiles. “Good morning, my little sprig. Hope you have a nice day at school.” He says in a soft tone. 

“Thanks. I’ll try, but you know how school is.” She answers, and he chuckles in response.

She grabs her bag and heads outside. She shivers for a moment as she gets into her car before turning it on and heading out.

The school halls are brimming with the usual morning ruckus by the time Willow is making her way to Gus’s locker to meet up for his ‘surprise’.

She spots the group standing down the hallway and gives them a glance over.

Luz is dressed in jeans and a red shirt that matches her usual beanie; She’s still wearing that oversized drab green jacket of hers. The girl looks half-dead with the way she fights to keep her eyes open and her open yawns show off her teeth.

By her side there was Amity, who is not looking much better. Willow notes the bags under her eyes.  For once Amity’s actually wearing a jacket of her own – a black leather jacket, which only added to the punk-ish look of the piercing-riddled teen. Besides the jacket she wore a pink shirt with the words “Don’t care” printed boldly on the front, paired with black leggings. Her hand is clutching onto one of those blended coffee drinks that definitely could rot your teeth out. 

Gus, the boy of the hour, once again seems to have the morning pep that everyone else was lacking. He was wearing a dark blue Hexside hoodie and for whatever reason was wearing the hood up. The younger teen was practically bouncing in his excitement while the girls eyed him wearily.

Once she reached the group, she greets them with a simple “Hello” and a wave of her hand.

Immediately Luz straightens up and suddenly seems energetic. “Willow!” She nearly pounces on the shorter girl, wrapping her up in a strong hug, sneaking in a kiss to the top her head. Willow grips her girlfriend in return as the girl bends down further to rest her head on her shoulder, gently rocking her.

For a moment, Willow’s eyes catch Amity’s, who looks away quickly. She acts uninterested as she slurps at her drink, but her posture is stiff.

Willow finally pats Luz on back, “C’mon, that’s enough of that. Let’s see what Gus thought was important enough to get us all here” and Luz pulls away looking only mildly pouty.

The boy slaps his hands together with enough force to make them, and several other students, jump. He squeaked out a “Sorry!” before he cleared his throat and continued on.

“I have gathered you all here today for something important...something that I’ve been trying to get my dad to agree to for ageeeees, and finally got him to say yes to!”

The girls all glanced at each other, wonder what the hell this guy was going on about.

“It’s time…for the big reveal!” He gripped his hood and twirls dramatically, before pulling it down with a “TA-DA!”

There, on his ears – new, shiny black stud earrings.

Willow had to bring her hand up to her face to hide her smile at his dramatics but spared him a “Nice!”. Meanwhile, Amity had given him a sleepy thumbs-up of approval while nursing her drink, and Luz had a hand under her chin as she peered more closely at his earrings.

“Is this what happens when we leave you alone with Amity for too long?” Luz hummed.

Amity poked her tongue out in response - a glint of metal showing - which only proved Luz’s point.

Gus puffed up, indignant. “No! I just think they’re cool – and the rest of you have earrings too!”

Luz chucked and reached over to ruffle the boy’s hair. “Relax, man. They look good – maybe when they are all healed up we’ll get you like, some skulls or something –“

“Okay, Luz, we can’t turn him into some kind of emo prince.” Amity spoke up, oddly stern.

Luz turns to face her directly, “That’s a lot coming from you, miss Blight” and gives her a smirking grin.

“Not in the mood, Noceda”

Willow heard the warning in her voice and did not want to deal with these two bickering so early in the day, again, as had been happening more and more often in the last few weeks.

She raises a finger, “Guys, don’t start” and one of them huffs as she continues, “Spare me some peace and quiet this morning? It’s way too early to deal with your shit.“

The girls at least have the decency to look guilty. Luz has shoved her hands into her pockets and is lightly rocking on her heels. Amity is looking anywhere that isn’t Luz or Willow, feigning interest in a rather scuffed floor tile.  Gus looks between them with an arched brow, surely wondering what sort of ‘girl drama’ he is missing out on.

Gus, be glad that you’re not in on this. She couldn’t help thinking to herself.

“Well, now that whatever THAT was is over…I’m glad you guys approve! Getting my dad to take me to get these done was some serious work. I have…way too many chores to do now.” He looks downtrodden for a moment, before perking up again. “I’ve got to get to class, but we should hangout later this week!” Then he’s off on a run with a wave of his hand.

Amity shifts on her feet and pulls her phone out of her bag. “Yeah, it’s almost time for first class. See ya.” She throws a lazy peace sign and walks away, leaving just Luz and Willow standing next to the lockers.

“You’re still coming over tonight, yeah?”

“Yeah! Actually, I have something I want to show you tonight- something super awesome!” She says, waving her hands in emphasis.

Willow eyes her for a moment. “Did you get a secret new piercing too?”

“No!!!” and Willow doesn’t hide her smug smile as Luz’s face darkens and the girl falters in her flustered state.

“Relax, Luz. As fun as it is to watch you shut down, we do have class.” Willow gives her a moment to recover, then pulls her in for a hug, which the taller girl returns eagerly. They pull apart, Luz flashing her finger guns, and head off to separate classrooms.

Sometime later, Willow pulls into her driveway.

“Let me finish this song before we go in!”

Luz bounces energetically in the passenger seat as she finishes the 5^th replay of that catchy pop song that was her current favorite. At first Willow had found it strange, but at this point she knew it was just one of those Luz things; She appreciated her girlfriend’s mannerisms, even if they were often at odds with Willow’s more stoic nature.

After the music finishes the two headed inside, with Luz stumbling slightly on her feet as she hurriedly pulls each of her shoes off in the entranceway, placing them gently by the doorway before she bounds away deeper into the house.

Willow repeats the motion with more grace, before she goes to see where her girlfriend had disappeared off to.

As it turns out, she hadn’t gone very far when she spots the teen in the living room. She’s crouching in front of the couch, brown eyes locked intensely onto the green eyes of an orange puffball.

“Luz…you’re never going to win a staring contest against Pumpkin.”  

“I will…someday…can’t show any weakness…” One of Luz’s eyes twitched.

There was a sudden bang from the kitchen and Luz jumped then groans as she realizes her loss to the cat, who she swore was looking smug at her from her cushion perch.

Gilbert popped his head out of the kitchen, holding a towel that he was using to clean sauce off his glasses.

“Oh, I heard you come home! Sorry about that, dropped a pan. Nice to see you again Luz, hope you’re looking forward to dinner.”

At this moment, Harvey appears from the kitchen too, brandishing a metal spatula in one hand while he wipes his other on his apron.

“Looks like it’s going to be a little while girls, we’re going to need to re-do the sauce.”

“Fine, we’re just going to go up to my room while we wait.” Willow answers.

“As long as you remember to the follow the rules!” He responds sternly, pointing his spatula directly at Luz.

Luz immediately stood up straight and answered, “O-of course, sir!” while rubbing her neck.

Willow felt sympathetic to her girlfriend’s plight. It had been about two weeks now since she had informed her dads that her and Luz were dating, and the men had taken it upon themselves to go into full ‘papa bear’ mode. They had given Luz a rather terrifying speech about ‘doing no wrongs to their baby girl’ and that witches could be ‘very creative in their methods’ when needed. Willow had found it all very mortifying, but the sight of the girl being lectured by two shorter men was at least very amusing. After the ‘ground rules’ had been established, the men had slightly lightened up on her, but it was still fresh in everyone’s minds.

She decided to spare her by grabbing her by her backpack and tugging her along to her bedroom. As they entered, she gently closed the door until it was barely cracked open – just enough to keep her dads happy.

The glasses-wearing girl stalks up to Luz, who just blinks at her, before she grabs the front of her red shirt to pull her down.  Luz gets the hint as she bends further to press her lips against her own, wrapping herself around the other girl.

Willow was not into public displays of affection like Luz was, but this. This was always nice. She smiles against the slightly chapped lips that are pressing against hers, moving her hand to knead against Luz’s shoulder for moment before pulling away.

The dreamy look on Luz’s face after their kisses always added to her enjoyment. Her silly dork. Still on cloud nine even after the two had been dating for over two months now.

“Homework first?” She asked.

Luz snapped out of her daze.  “Hell no! Let’s relax first.”

Unsurprisingly, Luz’s idea of relaxing was to snuggle against her girlfriend in her small-ish bed after they had dropped their bags. Willow laid back against her pillows, one hand holding a copy of Poisonous Plants of North America, while the other was being held captive by Luz’s larger fist.  Said girl was curled up against her side, pressing her face into her middle, while the girl was humming some tune to herself which Willow thinks sounds suspiciously like the pop song she had on earlier.

She looks away from her book and glances down at their joined hands. She loosens her grip to ghost her thumb along the dark skin, tracing along some scars that grace the back of the other teen’s hand. She shifts again to rub against the lighter skin of Luz’s palm, enjoying all its warmth and callouses.

Luz lifts her head up from Willow’s stomach to peer up at her. Willow can feel her shaking slightly, probably restless from sitting still for too long. Apparently the girl had decided it was time for some small talk.

“You know, I’ve always found it funny that you’re almost a little clone of Gilbert.”

Willow chuckles as she closes her book and tosses it away. “Yeah, I think Pops was always a little grumpy that I look just like Dad, but Dad said it was just compensation for having to deal with those 9 months of ‘pregnancy hell’. I think most of what Pops gave me was his metabolism.” She pokes into her own stomach for emphasis while Luz squeezes her middle, this time shaking in laughter.   

There’s another topic bouncing around in Willow’s mind, but she’s not sure how she wants to tackle that particular issue yet.

“What’s on your mind, hermosa?”

Well, she’s been caught. Might as well try to go about it in a lighthearted way.

Willow starts out by saying “Did you notice Amity wearing that leather jacket today?” with a grin on her face.

“Oh”, Luz’s cheeks darken slightly, and she turns to hide her face in Willow’s stomach as she murmurs “Yeah. She looked pretty hot in that.”

Before they had officially become girlfriends, they had sat down and talked out expectations to make sure they were on the same page. At some point Luz had nervously told her that while she wanted Willow to be her girlfriend, she also felt some sort of attraction to Amity. Willow was not really surprised, having watched the two grow closer over the months and recognizing that she herself could still see the attractive appeal of her ex-girlfriend despite how things had gone between the two.

“Mmhmm. A girl in a leather jacket. A weakness of every sapphic out there.” She chuckles lightly.

Willow thinks Amity would probably kill the two of them if she knew the girls talked about her like this, but it would be more out of embarrassment than anything else. She ponders how to steer the conversation in the direction she wants when Luz does it for her.

“Man, I don’t know what her issue has been lately. I feel like I’m walking on eggshells every time we hangout.”

There it is. Willow is pretty sure she knows exactly what the issue is, but it seems like Luz has still not put two and two together.

“I’ve tried talking to her about it, and she just acts like everything is perfectly fine!” Luz balls up her hands in frustration.

Willow reaches over to run her fingers through Luz’s hair, comforting the girl as best she can. Yeah, that sounds just like Amity, she thinks to herself. The absolute queen of refusing to talk about things bothering her, especially messy feelings.

She decided that maybe Luz just needed more time to figure things out and deflects the conversation. “Eh, maybe she’s just been stuck in one of her bitchy moods. Oh, didn’t you have something you wanted to show me tonight?”

“Oh!” Luz lights up, then rolls out of the bed with a thump onto the floor. She scurries over to her bag and rummages around until she pulls out a stack of papers and haphazardly dumps them on Willow’s desk.

“Come ‘ere!” She takes one of the larger papers and unfurls it, spreading it out, “Take a look at this!”

Willow comes over to take a look at what appears to be a map, with a bright red circle marking some sort of mountainous area.

“I finally got Eda to stop fucking around and be more serious about helping me look for places to find glyphs. We think we found a new site where the old witches used to gather together up in the mountainside. It is supposed to be some sort of cave system that they used for travel through the mountain – and supposedly to perform special rites away from ‘prying eyes’ of the non-magics.”

“Okay, so what’s the plan here?”

“Well…I was thinking, group hiking trip? Me, you, Eda, Gus, Amity – if we can get her to agree to it. Four or five of us should be able to tackle exploring the cave system; it was abandoned a long time ago. We’ve got that break from school coming up soon so that’ll give us some time to make the trip.”

Willow pretends to think about it for moment, before nodding in agreement. “Well, if you can get everyone to agree to it, I’ll come along.” She knocks her shoulder against her playfully.

Luz bounces excitedly, happy at her girlfriend’s answer.

“Alright, I think we should finally do some homework”

Luz just groans in response.

Well, a trip like this could be interesting. Willow mused as they settled down with their work for the evening.

Chapter Text

Luz shifts around, growling as she felt a something jab her in the side. This damn old couch could be such a curse. All she wanted was a little more sleep, but it seemed like the furniture just wanted to fight her this morning.

She resigns herself to waking up, sitting up to untangle herself from several blankets that she had buried herself under last night (curse Eda and her refusal to properly heat her own house).

The girl takes a moment to stretch out her limbs and back, enjoying the satisfying sound and sensation of her joints cracking. After working on her shoulder, she pulls her arms in to flex them proudly for herself. Between working for Eda and fighting with the gang, she had really started to build some muscle. Something Luz from a year ago would have never thought possible, or her dumb old bullies who told her that she would always be a twig.

Who’s scrawny now, dumbasses?

Honestly, past-Luz would probably think she was lying if she could tell her everything that had happened in the last six months. Accidentally discovering a magical world hidden in plain sight? Convincing a crazy-ass witch to train her, who also just lets her pass out on the couch when her mom was busy at work? Getting friends who beat-up monsters with her and getting a super cool girlfriend too?  

Luz gets distracted from her inner monologue by a growling coming from somewhere in her middle. Oh yeah. She last ate last night with Willow and her parents, but that was forever and a day ago.

From the couch she can lean over just enough to get a view into the kitchen. On one of the counters was a food container – she could see one of the muffins her mom had dropped off after a visit the other day.

Score!

As she made the move to acquire her target, she caught the tell-tale sound of clawed feet tapping along the floor from somewhere in the house. She narrows her eyes suspiciously, before dropping down to the floor as quietly as possible.

Luz creeps towards the muffin, her brain helpfully supplying her with her own stealth music. She makes it into the kitchen without incidence and thinks to herself, almost there.

And that was the moment something rams into her side and knocks her face-flat onto the kitchen floor.

“I want the last muffin! The King deserves it!”

Luz comes to her senses quickly enough to roll over and grab fistfuls of tan fur. The little demon makes an enraged sound as she attempts to hold him in place.

“King! My mom made them, so I get the last one!”

“No! Mine!”

So her morning starts off with a scuffle with a little weird dog-deer demon thing, all over a single blueberry muffin.

Eventually she gets fed up with his claws ripping holes into her pajama shirt and pins him to the floor using his good horn. He ends up flailing his limbs as he throws a fit, which Luz may have found cute if he wasn’t being so annoying this morning.

Then Eda walks in, looking thoroughly unamused.

“You two woke me up…because of a stupid muffin.” She murmurs, pinching her nose in frustration.

Luz releases King and tries her best to not look guilty as he scampers off. “Sorry, Eda. Hunger brings out the worst in all of us.”

The older woman looks at her seriously but quickly breaks off into a laugh. “Kid, I’m used to this by now. I always forget to leave two for both of you…must be old age, and all that.”

The teen decides she should at least do the decent thing, and grabs the muffin and cuts it in half for her and King. He accepts it begrudgingly, with some mumbling under his breath, but it seems like he’s satisfied.

She takes the time to enjoy the rest of the baked good, quietly observing Eda sitting across from her, sipping at that witch cider drink of hers.

“Soooo…have you got your little friends to agree to go on this trip of yours?”

The question leaves Luz staring at her hands as she sighs.

“Well, Willow said yes, of course. Gus, in his own words, never turns down the chance for ‘shenanigans’. The only person left is Amity, and she’s rarely answering my texts right now.”

“Ah, the Blight girl giving you trouble again? Not sure why you would even want her on this trip – remember when she set part of the forest on fire? Doesn’t seem like someone you would want to take into nature with you.”

“For one thing, it’s not like caves are super flammable once we get through the hike, and for another, the forest fire was an accident that she felt super bad about!” She answers, crossing her arms.

Her mind immediately falls into that particular memory.  

*******

The youngest Blight had gotten into a fight with her mom and stormed off into the forest. A particularly strong emotional burst had caused the girl to produce uncontrolled flames, which caught in the trees.  A small portion of the forest burned to a crisp before the blaze could be contained.

The fire had confused the local firefighters, and no cause was ever officially given.

After the humans had cleared out, Amity had called Luz and Willow to come with her to visit the destroyed region.

The girl looked particularly small as she explained to them that she wanted to know if there was anything that could be done to help the forest after the damage she had done.

While Amity was explaining this, Willow had been occupying herself with examining the damage, cautiously touching blackened trunks and looking quietly at the black and grey covering the forest floor. When she heard the reason for why Amity wanted them here, she shook her head and told her that nothing could be done.

Luz watched in shock as Amity collapsed in on herself, falling down to the singed ground. The girl had shifted into her witch-form and her now pointed ears pinned themselves to the side of her head as she hid her face behind her knees. In a less-serious moment, Luz would tell her she looked like a green-haired hedgehog.

But this. The sight of her made Luz ache. Her palms itched, wanting to reach out to her, comfort her. Luz’s own feet held her captive, unsure of how to approach the distressed witch. Things had gotten better between the two of them, but she had never seen the girl like this. So vulnerable. Would she like it if Luz reached out, held her – no, no, maybe, who knows?

Twigs snapped as Willow approached Amity, the plant witch settling down in the ashy earth next to her. Luz could only look on in surprise – she would not have guessed that Willow, who typically radiated a ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude, would be the one out of the two of them to actually make the move.

She listens as Willow spares some gentle words for Amity, who was still hiding her face. Willow takes a moment to dig around in the filthy grass around her before she picks up something in her hand. The girl then gently grasps and pulls one of Amity’s hands towards her, easing her fingers open before pressing an acorn into her palm. It had somehow escaped untouched from the blaze.

Willow quietly launches into an explanation about how nature was equipped to deal with fires, that new life would quickly replace that lost in the flames. There was nothing to be done for the plants, because, well, they would do it themselves.

During this speech, Amity finally lifted her head up. She still looked upset, but not quite so severely. Her face looked unusually young. While Willow cradled Amity’s hand within her own, she swore she could see a dusting of color lingering in Amity’s cheeks.

A strange feeling grew in her chest as she watched the exchange play out. Was this like what the two girls had years ago, before Luz was in their lives? A glimpse into what the witches had been like before life had twisted them into the jaded teens they were now?

Luz didn’t know what to do as she gazed down at the girls huddling together, watching as Willow took off her jacket to place around Amity’s shoulders. Luz was stricken by how lovely the two looked in this very moment.

The feeling grew stronger, roaring louder in her chest. It wasn’t a bad feeling. But it made her palms sweat unpleasantly.

Her brain anguished, trying to put a word to what was happening to her. She wanted, she wanted-

*******

The sound of someone clearing their throat ripped her out of her thoughts.

Oh yeah. She had zoned out in the middle of a conversation with Eda. Oops.

“Back in the living realm, kid?”

“Yeeeep. Sorry about that. Anyway, I’m going to try and find Amity today and see if I can talk her into it.”

Eda gives her a thumbs up and goes back to her drink.

Luz hoped she had some luck on her side today. She might need it.

School was boring the whole day.

At least Luz managed to rope Willow and Gus into helping her stay on a lookout for Amity around the school. The Blight had so far been successfully hiding away from her, but the more people they had on the case, the better.

She finally felt her phone vibrate in her pocket and pulled it out to read a text from Willow: ‘One unruly piercing-riddled princess, spotted in the athletic fields’.

Boom, let’s goooo.

Her fingers typed out a quick thank you, then added a message asking her girlfriend to meet her in the greenhouse after she dealt with Amity. She’s hoping for a victory kiss.

She gathers up her things and quickly heads out of the building. There is a fair number of students out here, but it doesn’t take her long to spot a lion’s mane-worth of green hair pacing around in the field.

Luz strides over to her, yelling out “There you are, Blight!”

Amity jumps and turns to stare at her, surprised that Luz has managed to find her out here.

As Luz closes in on her, she starts out “Look, I’ve got something to talk to you about-“

“Don’t care.” is the only thing Amity says before she stalks off.

Luz huffs and follows after her, then the other girl turns and gives her a challenging look before breaking out in a run.

God, what is she even playing at today? Luz wonders as she chases the girl around the field, fighting to avoid stumbling over the poorly maintained ground and dodging other students who were just too used to these two’s bullshit.

They both knew that Amity stood no chance of outrunning the other girl. She was just being difficult for the hell of it.

Luz decided on a little payback for this nonsense. Once she was close enough, she tensed then pounced, grabbing the other girl and forcibly dragging her down into the grass.

Amity thrashes, huffs, and finally growls out a “Ow! What the fuck was that for?” as she jabs an elbow into Luz’s ribs, making her wince. The taller girl takes a moment to rearrange herself so she’s draping most of her weight across the Blight’s back, hoping to deter her from wiggling away.

“You’re complaining, when you’re the one who is making things difficult for no reason?” She spits back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why aren’t you answering my texts or anything? What did I do?”

Silence stretches on for a moment, before she gets an answer. “…sorry. My phone’s been acting up lately.”

It was such a pathetic, weak excuse.  They both knew it. But Luz wasn’t about to call her on it, especially in the middle of a school field of all places.

“Look, I know you’ve been stressed out about something lately, but I have a favor to ask you.”

Amity groans, then tells her “I’ll listen, just get off of me, please. You’re too damn heavy.”

Luz shoots her a grin before she scrambles off her and helps the girl sit up. Amity takes a moment to look disgusted at the dirt stains on her clothes and Luz just manages to bite back the temptation to tell her that at least it wasn’t blood this time.

“Soooo…I was thinking, that for the upcoming break, maybe I could get the gang to come along with me for a little adventure. Me and Eda think we’ve discovered an ancient witch site in a cave system. Might be a good chance for me to find a new glyph or two!”

“…and you want to drag me along on this?”

“Yeah, I mean you might be all…” she gestures vaguely at all of Amity “…but you’re one of us, and you’re also like, one of the most powerful witches I know. Willow and Gus have already agreed, and Eda will be there too for some extra support…”

Amity closes her eyes and hums like she’s mulling it over.

Too bad for Luz that the other girl catches her off guard by reaching over and yanking her beanie down over her eyes.

“GAH!” and she can hear Amity’s laughter, a pleasing sound that had become rare lately.

She fixes her beanie, peaking out to see Amity was now standing over her, looking far too amused.

“Yeah, I’ll come along. I’ll probably have to give my parents some dumb reason, but it’s better than sitting around while you guys are gone.”

Luz is sure she’s giving Amity her biggest, dumbest smile.  It’s making her cheeks ache.

“Cool, I’ll get more details to you later.”

It seems that Amity takes that as her cue to leave, as she just nods with a “See you later” before starting to walk towards the school parking lot.

“…and actually pack your own things this time!” Luz yells at her retreating back.

Amity just turns around mid-walk to stick her tongue out at her as an answer before she continues on her way.

Luz pumps her fists, imagining a triumphant song playing. She’s glad that for as weird as she’s been lately, Amity agreed rather easily to come along.

Time to go find Willow. She wants that victory kiss too.

Chapter Text

Amity really wants her usual morning caffeine more than anything else right now.

Somehow, Luz’s eccentric mentor had ended up being the driver for their little ‘adventure’. Apparently, Willow’s car couldn’t be trusted with the several hour trip, Gus was too young to drive, and Amity’s currently banned from using one of her family’s cars.  Eda is a pretty shitty driver, and Luz has to remind her several times that traffic laws exist for a reason. Who let this woman have a license?

At least the car is mostly quiet. The radio is off for Willow’s sake, who had drifted off in the backseat with her and Gus only about an hour in. The lack of music didn’t seem to be bothering Luz, who was rocking her body in the passenger seat anyway while she’s staring out of the window.

Gus is silently playing one of his handheld gaming systems, showing off the screen for Amity to watch. She wasn’t as well versed in video games as Luz and Gus were because her parents had claimed it was “mindless nonsense” growing up. Even if she’s not really sure what is going on right now, it was giving her something to do at least.

Eventually they wind up at a parking lot that lies in the outskirts of the mountain. Amity scrambles out of the car to finally be able to stretch out her limbs again, and she actually helps unload the various bags that everyone would be carrying on their trip up the mountain.

Eda turns around to face the group.

“Alright, kids. The goal here is to trek up to the cave entrance, scope out the area little, then camp for the night, as we have discussed previously. I don’t want to hear any complaints on the way up unless you’re bleeding-out or poisoned!”

“Uh…why would we be poisoned?” Amity asks.

“Have you met these two?” Eda points at Gus and Luz. “They’ll probably see some shiny berries, eat them, then BOOM, ill teenagers that I’ll have to keep from dying.”

The two teens crossed their arms with indignant huffs, but they couldn’t completely deny some of the dumb things they had gotten up to in the past.

Willow speaks up, “Don’t worry Eda, I won’t let them die of stupidity. Today, anyway.”

Eda spares her a wink and a thumbs-up for the effort.

“Time to get moving!”

The hike manages to be relatively uneventful, serving more as a nice chance to see nature than anything else. Willow would point out plants along the way that were native to the area, and pocket seeds when she could find them. Much to Luz’s delight, and Gus’s bane, the group even came across several snakes along the way. Thankfully no one was mauled by wolves or found poisonous plants for snacking. But everyone is a little tuckered out by the time they had made it up the mountainside to a clearing in the trees.

There is the cave entrance. It is a large, dark, gaping opening that would have looked otherwise normal if not for the signs that dotted its entrance, some of which read NO TRESPASSING and DANGER: KEEP OUT.

Well, that’s not ominous at all. Amity thinks to herself.

Eda waved it off, “I’m sure that they are just trying to keep out noisy people. Imagine if a bunch of humans wandered in there and found all the witch goodies?”

The teenagers glanced at each other, but said nothing.

Outside of the angry signs around the cave, the campsite is rather boring. Amity couldn’t help but think that Eda had hyped it up a little too much. Outside of dirt, grass, and a few rocks, nothing noteworthy except that the area is thankfully flat enough for them to sleep on later.

“Ah, it’s too fricking cold up here for me.” Eda complains, rubbing her arms.

“Old age making you sensitive?” Luz teases.

“Oh, sass from the lump that lives on my couch? I could change that arrangement.”

“Hey now! I know you’d miss your kickass apprentice...” Luz strikes a dramatic pose that looks like it’s straight out of some anime, “…and my mom’s visits.”

Eda holds her chin in thought, “Yea, I think I would miss Camila…”

The group drops their stuff on the ground and set about exploring the area a bit while under Eda’s command. There’s not much here that’s noteworthy, all things considered. Maybe that’s another reason why humans would avoid visiting this spot.

The chill of the fall air worsened, and eventually they had to go collect wood to start a fire. Somehow it had turned into a competition between the teens to see who could collect the most. Amity just used it to her advantage to have to collect less material of her own, even when she had to suffer the gloating from Luz after she ‘won’.

Now she is sitting on a rock, watching the same girl making pathetic attempts at starting a fire. Gus is sitting next to the older girl, cheering her on despite the lack of improvement over what seemed like twenty minutes.

Amity’s enjoying her free entertainment when Willow speaks up.

“Couldn’t you just…?” She gestures towards the pile of wood.

“What, and miss out on this?”

Luz is currently leaning back and clawing her face in frustration, groaning about how they made it look so easy in the movies. Gus pats her knee and reassures her that they probably won’t freeze to death, which just makes Luz slump in defeat. Amity feels a familiar affection for the boy, who is like the little sibling she’s never had.

Eda sweeps in and rescues them from fire-starting duty, complaining about too-slow teenagers and their lack of survival skills.

As the sun fades away, they use the campfire to make dinner. Luz had been put on food prep duty at her own insistence, saying she didn’t want to end up eating fire-roasted rats during the trip. Amity was offended at the very notion that she would ever eat a rat, but whatever. The other girl did live with Eda half the time, so maybe she’s seen some shit. In any case, the foil pack meals that she had made were…surprisingly good.

Afterwards the group spent time quietly sitting around the flames, listening to the sounds of the shifting wood and watching the flames drift away into the dark sky.

Luz suddenly perks up from where she was laying on her back, an excitable look on her face.  

“Oh, I brought a treat!” And she’s rifling through the bags again before she pulls out marshmallows and chocolate. “Smores! For the authentic camping experience!”

“Grade A dork.” Willow tells her with a smile.

Well, Amity would never turn down a sweet and she knew that Gus wouldn’t either, the boy bouncing in excitement already. Eda gives them an indifferent wave.

They cooked their marshmallows, Amity just sparing her own from being burnt. The assembled gooey smore made Amity hum in delight, while she tries hard to not stare at a chocolate drip that was currently gracing the corner of Luz’s mouth.

She was spared from her thoughts by a thumb coming to swipe the rouge chocolate away. Luz grumbles at the move, but her cheeks are darkened and Willow is looking way too satisfied next to her.

Eda gags at the display of affection, while Amity just feels slightly miserable.

Feeling way too full after the smores, Amity feels like she could drift off to sleep right here under the night sky. But it was cold, and there would be no protection out here from any wondering animals or demons.

The eldest witch of the group clears her throat. “It seems like it’s time to set up for the night. I’ve got my tent, and mister excitable brought one too. I guess you ladies are sharing the big one?”

Yeah, Amity had no idea why she volunteered one of her family’s tents for this purpose, knowing that she would be stuck with them all night long. At least it would be getting some use, considering the family had abandoned camping after it fell out of popularity with the family business partners.

“You’re really going to just let Luz and Willow share a tent?” Gus asks with a quirk of his brow.

“Well I’m sure prickly over here will kill them if the two get up to anything.” She points a thumb towards Amity, “But hopefully she doesn’t make it bloody.”

“No promises.”

Luz just gulps nervously, while Willow maintains a cool indifference.

The tents are set up, and they exchange their jackets for some softer, warm layers of clothing. Gus and Eda bid the girls a good night before they head into their tents. Leaving the three girls to head into their own tent.

Luz takes a moment to set up a few light spheres while they arrange sleeping bags and blankets, peacefulness filling the space for just a moment.

“Do you mind if me and Luz share a sleeping bag?”

Amity tilts her head, pretending to think about it.

“Yeah I guess that’s fine…as long as you two behave.”

“Hey! We might be dating, but we have decency!” Luz fumed, but Willow just nodded and pat her soothingly.

They all settle into their respective bags, using blankets to add extra warmth. Amity undoes her hair tie, shaking her head a moment to let the freed hair settle down. The other girls have gone strangely quiet. Amity spares them a glance to see that Willow is laying against Luz’s side, and both girls are staring at her.

“What?”

“Nothing!” They answer in unison.

After a beat, Willow sighs and takes off her glasses, setting them to the side in a protective case.

“Let’s just get to sleep now.”

Then she witnesses as Luz’s hands grasp Willow and brings her closer until their lips met.  The two melt into the embrace, smiling into each other’s lips. Amity wishes someone would kiss her like that. She feels…sickly?

“I have Eda’s permission to kill you!” She hisses at the kissing pair.

They break apart and spare her a glance with knowing looks. Amity fights the way her mind wants to admire the brilliant green of Willow’s eyes, which she rarely sees unhidden by glasses.  

“Aw…do you want a good night kiss too?” Luz mocks, flashing one of her signature grins.

She flips them off, rolling away from the pair. She hears someone moving around, and the tent darkens as light orbs are extinguished, until there is just a single one left. The person settles back down, and silence once again permeates the tent.

She tosses and turns for some unknown time afterwards, pushing against the inside of her sleeping bag. It’s just a tad chilly in here. She turns over to stare at her tentmates again.

It seems like the others had fallen asleep, with Luz spread out like some sort of liquid. Her loose hair lay wildly across the pillow, and her arms stretched out wide from the sleeping bag. The girl’s chest is home to Willow’s head, where all Amity can see is a mop of black hair. Willow’s arm is possessively wrapped around the other sleeping girl’s torso. The soft glow from the light orb coats them with a warm light.

Amity feels a sharp pang in her chest. She wants to drag herself over there. She wants to listen closely to the soothing sound of their sleepy breathing. She wants to be pressed up against Willow’s softness, wrapped up with her in Luz’s embrace. She wants their warmth to radiate into her cold, shivery body.

She shouldn’t. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

Then, as if she could sense someone thinking about her, Willow is stirring. The witch sits up slightly, blinking groggily as she peers around the tent, before her sight lands on Amity. Willow squints, then an amused smile breaks out on her face.

“Watching us sleep, huh? Kinda creepy Blight…unless you see something that you like?” Her whispers drip with smugness.

“The only thing I’d like right now is for you to get that dumb look off of your face…” She murmurs and turns away, hoping that Willow can’t see well enough to see the blush painting her face. She feels her ears burning.

Dammit.

There’s shifting and the sound of something being dragged, then her vision goes black. She just barely manages to push down a growl as she yanks off the blanket that Willow had tossed over her head. She turns back around to shoot the girl a glare.

“You look cold…” Willow shrugs.

Amity really hopes that Willow is joking, because otherwise that means she definitely saw her stupid red face a few moments ago.

I could use something besides a blanket… she thinks to herself. No, no, push that thought right back down.

“You should sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be one long-ass day. Don’t need you like, slipping on a rock and breaking your arm or something.”

“I don’t break bones that easily…” She hopes Willow can see her rolling her eyes at her, “…but thanks.”

Willow spares her a wink before she settles back down against Luz, who, unsurprisingly, was still sleeping like the dead.

Amity wraps the new blanket around herself and sighs.

She falls into dreams of two smirking smiles…

Chapter Text

There's a chitter-chatter of voices outside the tent, and Luz can only roll over to groan into her pillow in annoyance. 

As the noise forces her to drift to consciousness, she realizes that Willow must have gotten up early and gone outside. Damn. Guess that means she can't sneak in some morning affection. 

Her ears register a shift and a sigh, which reminds Luz, oh yeah, there were other people in this tent . 

She spares a glance at the other side of the tent, seeing the lump that would be Amity. The girl must have gotten cold in the night, as it seems like she's more bundled up than she was when Luz went to bed. 

Luz's sight moves up her sleeping form to settle on her face. The witch's eyes were still closed, and she looks peacefully unaware of the world. Luz can't help the way she sucks in her breath, because wow, Amity is so pretty right now. 

She's not really sure if Amity would appreciate being called pretty by her.

Trying to fight away the thoughts in her brain, she reaches over to grab Willow’s abandoned pillow. 

Doing some careful math in her head, she swiftly flings it so that it lands with a thump! right onto Amity's face. 

There's an almost immediate reward of a muffled angry sound as Amity's ripping the pillow off her face. 

"What the fuck! Can you guys stop throwing shit at me?" 

“Hmm…” Luz rubs her chin like she’s deep in thought, “Nope!”

“Seriously!”

“Maybe it’s just fun to see you mad.” Luz winks at her. 

She takes a moment to bask in the disgusted look being shot her way, letting satisfaction creep into her grin. 

Once she’s done mentally patting herself on the back, Luz notices that Amity is looking particularly sullen, and she feels a spike of guilt. She contemplates what to do for a moment, before she decides to shift closer to the other girl, who eyes her wearily at the movement. 

“Are you alright? Look, I was just joking—” 

Amity just sighs and closes her eyes. “It’s not that, although I would appreciate not having stupid humor first thing in the morning. I’ve just been sleeping horribly lately and hate waking up.” 

“Oh...uh...wanna talk about it?” She offers. 

“You want me to open up to you, here, in a tent, in the middle of nowhere, where the others can surely hear us if they wanted to?” Her tone is painfully venomous. 

“Damn Amity!” Luz’s face scrunches up in angry annoyance, “I was just trying to be helpful!”  

At least Amity looks disappointed in herself. The green-haired girl brings up a hand to rub at her temples, letting out a frustrated sound.

“...I’m sorry Luz. That was uncalled for. It’s just been getting to me.” 

The two take a few moments to quietly take each other in, before Amity playfully pokes Luz in the arm. 

“You could find a nicer way to wake me up.” And all the seriousness of before fades away. 

Luz leans in on a hand, “Oh? What kind of ideas do you have in mind, princess?” She’s flashing a wicked grin at the other girl. 

Amity reddens and pushes the taller girl away. “Luz! I don’t think Willow would appreciate that!” 

Luz is just cracking up on the floor of the tent, much to Amity’s bewilderment. 

When the girl can finally catch her breath, she’s sitting up fully, cheerfully patting her hands against her legs. 

“As much fun as it is to bother you, we really should get up and join the others.”

“Ugh.” 

Amity sighs in defeat, and sits up with a huff. Luz stifles the laugh that threatens to bubble up at the sight of the untamed mane of hair surrounding Amity’s head. At least Luz is satisfied that she has gotten the girl awake, so she can finally start getting ready for what is sure to be a long day. 

When she finally makes her way out of the tent, she finds that the others are sitting around the burnt-out remains of last night’s fire, apparently having chosen to eat granola for breakfast over starting a whole new fire. Eda’s looking particularly unenthused about being awake, while Gus seems to be scribbling away in a notebook about something. 

She feels a familiar spark of delight in her chest when she sees Willow, who’s quietly contemplating some seeds that Luz recgonizes as being the kind she keeps in her pouch for fights. 

In only a moment, she’s at the other girl’s side, grasping Willow’s shoulder gently but allowing her thumb to trail affectionionately against the witch. Willow spares her a small smile with soft eyes, before refocusing her attention on the materials in front of her. Again, Luz finds herself lamenting the fact that she wasn’t getting her full dose of Willow lovin’ today, but at least she doesn’t have to worry about Eda making some embarrassing comment about teenagers and PDA. 

Luz flops to the ground next to Willow, wriggling for a moment until she’s in a comfortable position. She watches as the girl picks up the seeds and examines them thoughtfully. 

“Worried about something happening?” 

“Oh, I know something is going to happen. Somehow shit always happens when we’re all together.” Willow answers, deadpan.

“Hey, at least none of us have died!” Luz offers with a laugh, but she moves her hand to Willow’s knee to squeeze it reassuringly. 

“Kid, don’t jynx us before we’re even started the day!” 

“Sorry Eda!”

Rubbing her neck sheepishly, she turns back to Willow. 

“What’s up with all the serious looks you’re giving these poor plant babies?” 

Willow raises a brow at her, but answers her anyway, “Caves aren’t exactly teaming with a lot of helpful plant life. They tend to be full of fungi, and that stuff doesn’t always like to play nice with magic.”

“So...they’re just not fun guys?” 

Willow just stares at her wordlessly, and Luz makes a mental chalk mark on a board dedicated to terrible puns. 

She’s spared any retort when Amity finally leaves their tent, blinking blearily in the morning sunlight. 

Eda suddenly claps her hands together, and speaks with a surprising amount of enthusiasm, “Looks like the little Blight finally decided to join us! Eat some food and get ready, it’s time to get this show on the road!”

Amity looks grumpy about being called ‘little Blight’, but begrudgingly joins them anyway. 

Sometime later, the group is standing outside the entrance of the cave. Eda is leaning against the warning signs without a care. Amity and Willow are looking particularly solemn, and Luz wishes the two would chill out before she starts worrying too. At least for now she’s filled with energy, hoping that this trip would actually yield something cool and she’s resisting the urge to bounce with excitement. 

“Okay you bunch of unruly teenagers. It shouldn’t be too hard to get to the site.” She pulls out a map which Luz recognizes from their time pouring over old books. “It’s actually pretty straightforward. Parts of the cave system are more complex, but we don’t need to go that deep. So nobody has any excuses to get lost, especially because I don’t want to have to talk to any of your parents!” 

She waits as the teens nod at her before continuing on.

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way, everyone should get their lights ready so that we can head on in. ”

Gus somehow ends up leading the way, apparently a huge fan of the various rock structures in the cave, using his phone to take pictures of each new one he saw. Luz, Eda, and Willow were following behind him, while making sure he didn’t accidentally go the wrong way or fall into a hole or something. 

“How can a kid find rocks so interesting???” Eda asks, exasperated, as Gus points out another unusual formation. 

“Gus just gets real into things, we still love him anyway.” Willow answers with a shrug.

Luz feels glad that Willow expresses the same sentiment that she feels. Gus brings so much to the group, and is one of the only people who could match Luz’s restless energy while bringing a bright optimism to an otherwise grouchy group of teen girls. 

Pulling herself from her thoughts of the younger boy, Luz glances behind them, where Amity continues to linger in the rear of the group. She’s considering delivering one of her usual quips, but she notices that Amity is glancing around at the cave walls and holding her elbows close to herself.

She lets her steps slow so that after a moment she’s level with the normally fiery witch, who only glances in her direction. She expects Amity to say something to her, but no words are spoken. Luz takes a moment to make eye contact with her just long enough to extend out her arm towards the other girl, glancing down at it so that Amity’s eyes would follow the motion. 

Amity stares hard at the offered arm, and Luz is amused by the way that the witch is clearly calculating whether she wants to take it or not. In the end, Amity just smiles up at her with a look of appreciation and Luz pushes down mild disappointment, but she’s glad the gesture wasn’t entirely rejected. 

Ahead of them, Eda calls out to Gus to slow-down as they are getting close to the entrance. 

It is pretty unimpressive in Luz’s mind when Eda finally points out the entrance, which essentially turned out to be a rock wall flagged by two rocks jutting up from ground. Yeah, she could see why humans would ignore this place normally. Eda is explaining how the entrance way needs to be opened in a particular way, which makes Luz perk up. 

“Oh! Do we need to like, perform some type of blood sacrifice to get it to open!?” Luz exclaims, weirdly excited about the idea. 

“Wh-what? Why do you always have these morbid ideas?” Eda pinches her nose, “It’s a witch’s place, you just open it with a certain spell!” 

Luz deflates in disappointment. That’s the least exciting magical key she’s ever heard of. 

When Eda finally gets the entranceway open, the teenagers are awed at the cavernous expanse revealed. 

The area would have been able to fit large groups of witches in its heyday, and it seemed like it was carefully carved into being as there were rock walls forming almost room-like structures within it. The walls are decorated with faded paint, old art, a scattered display of beauty that had long passed. The ground is uneven in spots, but perhaps that is due to a scattering of various artifacts along it. It seems like the place had been abandoned quickly enough that the old occupants hadn’t moved much out of it. 

Luz is hoping that somewhere in this mess there might be something useful, and that she didn’t just bring everyone to see some dusty old junk. 

“Since this area was magically sealed, things here should be pretty well preserved” Eda tells them. 

“Ooo, wait, do you think there are any skeletons here!?” Gus dashes off, with Amity and Willow chasing after him, probably hoping to keep him from angering some otherworldly being. 

Eda and Luz decide to methodically go through the different areas of the cavern, and see what they can sort out from the mess of items that are scattered throughout the area. 

It ends up being a slow-going process, leading Luz to kick against a piece of pottery that was likely once a drinking vessel, growing in frustration, then she’s stuck hopping on one foot as the toes on the other burn from the impact. 

At some point the other three teenagers join them again, Gus thankfully having apparently failed to find any bones to bother so at least that was one less thing to possibly doom them. They begin to help sort through the various debris, and Luz appreciates the extra help they offer, even though it’s still super boring to have to shift through all this crap. 

Eventually she asks Eda, “I guess we never really figured out why they gave up on this place, huh?”

“Nope! Sometimes these things just fade from popularity, you know?” Eda answers flippantly. 

“This place seems awfully extensive to just drop off randomly…” Luz murmurs to herself. 

She’s checking along the back wall of the cavern when she finds slates of old wood lying along the floor. They seem easy enough to move, perhaps they once made up something like small desks.  She really hopes she doesn’t get some sort of evil magical splinters from these things as she starts to shift them into a pile. 

When she pulls up one of the larger pieces, she places her hand down against the layer of rocky dust only to feel some sort of crinkle underneath. 

Excitement thrums in her veins as she swiftly works to uncover what is apparently a set of unraveled scrolls. She picks them up and realizes they are in some sort of rune-y language, and groans inwardly at the thought of having to do more translation work. 

Learning about the witch’s of old was cool and all, but it’s not exactly what Luz was looking forward to. 

Luz decides that she really just needs to be patient after she starts looking at a third scroll. Past the strange language sprawling across the page, she finally catches sight of a curved line. One that forms the distinct shape of magic she is all too familiar with. 

“Guys! I actually found something!”

The others come over to see what she’s talking about, but Luz pays them little mind. She’s staring delightfully at the new glyph, pondering what it might be able to do. Testing it would have to wait though, even Luz wasn’t impulsive enough to test an unknown glyph in an enclosed space like this. 

But still...it feels like the scroll is practically vibrating with magic, asking her to give it a try anyway. 

Luz realizes too late that it isn’t the scroll. 

The world rumbles, a wall splits, and everything is thrown into chaos.

Chapter Text

Willow hated the fact that she had been right about things going to shit on this little cave adventure.

She couldn’t see anything. The cavern air is clouded with dusty debris from whatever smashed into it. Her glasses are covered in filth, and she’s hoping the others are not blinded from dust in their own eyes. 

Breathing in the filthy air irritates her throat, and she can’t help the coughing fit it brings on. She can distinctly hear some coughing and groans from the others, even though she is not able to see any of them. At least it sounds like no one got seriously injured from the surprise explosion. 

She needs to focus. She can hear the thing moving about. There’s a distinct clacking of multiple feet that move past her. The creature seems to be making some combination of wheezing rumbles and...squeaks...as it surveys the area. The noise that everyone is making seems like it’s riling the creature up, as it speeds up its turning around the cavern. It’s probably not the brightest thing in the world considering it seems to be too confused to attack any of them yet.

Eda’s voice calls out from somewhere to her right. 

“Get ready kids! Time to see what beasty decided to grace us with its presence.”

There’s a distinct whoosh as Eda performs a spell to clear out the dirty air. Willow’s not too familiar with the type of magic Eda is able to do, but Luz has mentioned that she knows a wide variety of spells. Air purification would be very helpful to have handy though - she’s going to file that one away for later to see if perhaps she can coax some plant to do something similar for her. 

Now that the air is clean, Willow wipes off her glasses, mildly annoyed at the new scratches on her lenses. Ugh, monster now, fixing glasses later. 

When she finally fixes her eyes on the mountain demon currently stomping around the land, she notes that it’s honestly not the ugliest monster they have dealt with, but it definitely is not cute. Its body is long like that of a centipede, with many thickly clawed feet, and segmented by some type of body plate with linings of fur. While the face of the animal is a grotesque caricature, with plenty of sharp teeth within its snout, it seems like this beast is probably some type of mole demon. 

Geez, Willow has only had to deal with the little mole demons that liked to sneak into her gardens. Those things were some annoying bastards, but they were not big enough to just tunnel through a mountain and they were definitely less feisty than the one here. She also knew that while they acted deceptively dim-witted, they were little tricksters. 

Taking stock of everyone else, she sees that Luz is stuffing her prized scroll into a bag they had brought with them for safekeeping. The nearest person to Willow is Eda, who looks just plain annoyed by the interruption of this demon. Amity seems to still be blinking her eyes against the dust, and she can’t quite see Gus from her current position. 

The creature finally decides to turn itself towards Amity, who’s squinting at it with irritated eyes. It lunges at her with a snap of its mouth, which she dodges with a jump. 

“Gus! Do your little distraction thing! I don’t want to light up any of the stuff in here!” She yells as she tries to avoid the snuffling and snapping snout. 

Gus must still be on the other side of the mole demon because she can’t spot him, but she hears his enthusiastic agreement. So does the beast, who turns upon him with a huffing snort. 

He tries to send some illusionary clones to get the monster to chase after them, but it plainly ignores them, and tries to take a bite directly out of him much to his surprise. He yelps and is off on a run to avoid it much like Amity was a moment ago. 

“Illusionary magic doesn’t work on mole demons, you’ll have to try something else!” Willow yells over to him. 

The shout causes the mole demon to turn and face her. Apparently this thing did not appreciate the loud noises they were making whatsoever. 

Willow has to be careful with her limited supplies, but they definitely don’t need to keep having to deal with the damn snapping of this thing. She takes out one of the bulbs she’s keeping in her pouch and lobs it towards the monster’s face. When it gets close enough, she targets it with a hit of magic, triggering it to open and wrap itself around the snout of the raging mole demon. 

Losing the use of its mouth seems to just piss it off more. Now it’s defiantly trying to claw them with any foot it can get into reach of someone. It’s like some stupid game they are playing to  keep out of reach of the claws of the demon, which is now thrashing about. 

“Huh, I guess this is why they abandoned this place.” Eda says, holding her chin in thought. 

“Not helpful at all, Eda!” Luz calls out from somewhere in the cavern. 

“Don’t you guys do this all the time? Where’s the finesse?” Willow wishes she could sound as unimpressed as Eda does right now. 

“Like anybody here has that!” 

“Hey! Gus and I are plenty refined!” Amity answers, sounding like she’s as irritated as the creature is. 

“Amity, you ought to stop lying to yourself!” Luz responds playfully. 

“Guys! Are none of you focusing right now? I don’t want to keep running away from this thing!” Poor Gus sounds like he’s already exhausted. Considering he usually had his illusions fighting for him, this is probably not how he imagined a fight to go. 

“Normally I probably could take this thing out on my own, but I don’t know how those plates might reflect the magic!” Eda answers him. 

Willow thinks she could try and wrap up the whole creature, but the hold may not last long enough for them to escape especially if this particular demon really wanted to pursue them for disturbing it. 

“I’ve got an idea!” Luz calls out excitingly. 

Willow realizes that while she’s heard Luz, she’s strangely missing from her view. While maneuvering around another claw swipe, she finally catches sight of her, who, judging by the grin on her face, has apparently been having too much fun running alongside the wriggling beast and appraising the furry stretches between the monster’s armoured plates. She knows immediately what she’s up to. 

“You don’t need to climb every monster that we fight!”

“But it’s fun!” Luz answers, while taking advantage of an opening to rush in and grab fistfuls of brown fur. “Trees are too easy!” 

Willow can’t help rolling her eyes, although only Eda is close enough to witness it. She can’t help thinking about how it’s some miracle that Luz has never broken a bone or worse from pulling this stunt all the time. At least she gets to admire her girlfriend’s growing upper-body strength as she finds a foothold against the squirming plated monster and hauls herself up. 

“Ugh, is this really what she does when you guys are fighting something?” Eda pinches her nose at her apprentice’s shenanigans. Willow imagines that Luz is going to get some sort of talking to later about fooling around in a battle. 

“At least do something useful while you’re up there!” Eda calls up to her while dodging one of the swiping paws.

“I am! All part of the plan! I've got my glyphs, I’ll hit it with a few, then you should hit it with a blast!” 

Willow watches as she reaches the back of the mole demon, which arches to try and throw her off, but it’s not built for the motion and Luz manages to steady herself there easily. She reaches into one of her jacket packets and pulls out some glyphs that are too far away for Willow to determine which they are. 

Luz stuffs them into the furred crevice between the plates, the demon making angry squealing through the vines still restraining its mouth. She taps them in a quick session then slides down the nearest body plate, thankfully hitting the ground feet first so she can retreat quickly. 

There’s a gross crunching sound as ice erupts from the activated glyphs, traveling around the monster’s center until it was frozen solid. The mole demon has broken through its plant muzzle and is screeching painfully loud, making everyone cover their ears at the irritating sound. 

“Hit it Eda!”

Eda aims a blast of magical energy towards the frozen segment. When it contacts the ice, there is a sickening sound as the body of the demon is split in half from the force of the ice exploding. The screeching stops, and they are shaken by the thumps of the two halves falling to the ground.    

As peaceful silence fills the air, the group collapses too. Amity, Eda, and Willow sit along the ground, while Luz and Gus elect to flop over fully to just lay down.

“Are you alright over there, Gus? You seemed like you were having a hard time!” Willow is just a tad concerned about the boy. 

“I’ll be okay! Just need to...rest a bit!” Gus gives them all a thumbs up, although he sounds winded still. 

“Bleh, I did not plan for a ‘giant mole demon’ on this trip. I swear you kids attract the weirdest things. Luz is definitely doing extra chores for this.” 

Luz groans, “It’s not my fault that thing showed up!” 

”I’m sure all the ruckus we made going through the stuff here probably annoyed it. They have a pretty sensitive sense of hearing.” Willow reflects on the times that she had to wrangle the little mole demons demolishing the roots of her plants. Playing certain sounds would irritate them just enough to get them to come to the surface to be nabbed by the waiting witch. 

“Well attacking us did it no favors. Good thing it’s dead.” Amity says bitterly. 

“Amity! The poor thing was probably just trying to defend its territory.” Luz acts offended on the monster’s behalf. 

“...seriously? It was clearly trying to eat us!” 

“You think everything is trying to eat you.” 

“...ugh, whatever. Not like I am wrong.” 

Willow watches in amusement as Luz decides to crawl over to Amity, and poke the witch’s shoulder. Amity’s eyeing Luz with suspicion when the girl sneaks another hand over to tickle her side. The tired witch is caught off guard at the tickle attack and laughs before she shoves Luz over, looking particularly red in the face while Luz just looks too pleased. 

“Lighten up, Blight. We’re not going to let a big old monster eat you. You’re way too important to us.” Luz tells her. 

Willow feels a happiness pulse in her as she watches the two. Amity’s failing to hide her pleased smile, while Luz continues to beam at her. 

“Ew, how do you put up with those two?” Eda asks her playfully, a knowing tone weaved into her words. 

Willow continues to watch them as she answers “...you get used to it.”

She gets up and walks over to them, before sitting down next to Luz. The girl turns to face her with a questioning look.

Willow wraps her arms around her and pulls in her for a hug. Luz makes a happy sound and squeezes her back, delighted at the show of affection. If there was a little less company around, Willow thinks that Luz should get a kiss for that clever plan of hers, but that’s going to be saved for later. 

“Teenagers are gross.” Eda comments, while Luz sticks her tongue out at her. 

“Uh, guys, not to interrupt whatever you’re doing, but I think something is happening!?” Gus calls out as he tries to scramble to his feet. 

While they have been bantering and trying to relax, they’ve been ignoring the corpse of the demon. There’s a red glowing along the the severed ends of the body, and it’s reforming into a new shape. 

While they all move to get back on their feet, the halves finish their metamorphosis, and they are presented now with two mole demons, still impressive in size but half the length of the original. 

“Really? Is this thing like some type of worm too?” Luz throws up her hands in annoyance. 

The moles don’t seem entirely interested in them this time, but they are huffing and squealing to each other about something. 

“Should we...do something now?” Gus asks with a bit of hesitation. 

It seems they have waited too long, as one of the mole demons rushes forward. They expect it to attack them, but the creature has its eyes on something else. It snaps its jaws around the bag that they had brought with them to carry back any of the things they had found here. 

Apparently now that they are shorter, these demons were able to move and maneuver much better than they were previously. It gave them a sort of cheeky snort as it turned and ran off with the bag in its mouth, its twin chasing after it as they both escape together out of the entrance of the cavern. 

“...what the fuck?” Is the only thing Willow can say to that. 

“Did that really just happen!” Amity yells, stomping her feet like she’s having a tantrum. 

“Ugh! Why do monsters suck so bad.” Luz complains while dragging her hand down her face. “That’s the bag with the scroll in it!” 

“Guess that we should go after them then!” Seems like Gus has recovered from the earlier episode already. 

“I really don’t want to, but it would mean this trip was a waste of time if we don’t try to recover that bag.” Eda considers it for a moment. “But the more we think about it, the farther away those things are going to get. Let’s go and try to follow them.” 

When they exit the cavern together, they can still hear the sounds of the moles echoing off the walls, and they are forced to follow the noises deeper into the cave system. Eventually they reach a point in the tunnels where it splits into a set of two distinct pathways. 

Eda contemplates the two paths. “It sounds like the demons have separated as I can hear sounds coming from both of these tunnels. We would split up, I’ll go with Luz and Gus, while Amity and Willow can take the other way. Be careful as we don’t know which demon is carrying the stuff right now.” 

The teenagers all nod at the plan. Hopefully fighting these smaller ones would be a little easier, even if they split up their fighting force. The groups move to separate and head down their respective paths. 

Oh boy, alone time with Amity. This ought to be fun. Willow can’t help thinking to herself. 

Chapter Text

So far, this trip had involved way too much walking, more than Luz was interested in at this point. She just wants to go lay down for a rest after all this. 

But no, here she is with Gus and Eda following the occasional sounds of the mole demon that was still somewhere ahead of them. At least the mole’s occasional odd sounds were a distraction from listening to the sound of their own footsteps. 

Eda looks ready to be finished with everything, and Luz knows she’ll have to come up with something to make it up to her mentor later. Gus looks deep in some serious thoughts, and Luz imagines he is analyzing the last fight with the mole demon. 

She knows that she should focus too, but she’s just distracted. Luz doesn’t like being seperated from Amity and Willow, although she knows how capable they are. She hopes that they don’t run into any more surprises out there on their own. 

Well, worrying about it is not going to help anything! Let’s just deal with this stupid demon and get out of here! She thinks, shaking her head while trying to steer her brain away from anxious disaster.  

She decides to re-focus back on her friend next to her. “What should we do with this guy, Gus?” 

Her question makes him jump and he stares at her in surprise before quickly recovering, placing his hand under his chin as he hums in thought. 

“It’s pretty annoying that my normal illusions don’t work on these guys. But...there are other tricks I can pull, I think.” 

“Oh?” Luz couldn’t help being somewhat intrigued, as she tries to recall what other type of magic she’s seen Gus do. Her unhelpful brain did not want to supply her with that information. 

”Yes! I think I can do something with sounds! Normally I focus on the visual aspects but I think I could channel that focus into more of the auditory part of illusions.”

Luz considers the idea, “What, like make something that’ll annoy it? Or stun it?” 

“Yes, exactly! Might take a bit of trial and error though, but hopefully not much.” 

“Trial and error…?” Luz makes a slightly worried face, “Gus...please don’t tell me that I might go deaf from this. Or have my ears bleed or something.”

Gus ponders it for a moment, “Well...I would say there is a 99% chance that you’ll still be fine.”

“So there’s still a 1% chance of either of those things happening!?” 

“You’ll be totally fine, Luz! I’m an expert at this stuff!” Gus gives her a wide grin and a double thumbs up. 

Luz hopes that she can remember the voices of her loved ones after a sudden hearing loss. 

She still manages to return his thumbs up, at least. 

He’s looking eagerly at her now, which reminds Luz that he’s probably waiting on her to reveal her own plans. Time to pretend her brain isn’t just buzzing with background sounds right now!

“If we’ve got the right mole, I’ll run in and grab the stuff from it when you have it distracted. Then maybe I can hit it with some glyphs once the bag is safe.” 

“That’s it? Where’s the creativity!” He looks super unimpressed. 

Luz crosses her arms in mock offense, “It doesn’t need to be creative, it just needs to get it done!”

“I mean come on now, what happens if the monster keeps doing its weird splitty thing? What are you going to do if you run out of glyphs?” 

“If it keeps splitting up it’s just going to keep getting smaller! I’ll fight all those moles by hand if I have to!” She poses with her arms flexed, which sets off Gus in a roar of laughter. 

Eda finally speaks up and tells them dryly, ”You two are having way too much fun with this.”

“How about you, Eda? Do you have any ideas?” Gus turned to the older witch with an excited sparkle in his eye. 

“Oh, so now you kids want to have a strategy? I think you need to work on that a bit more.” 

Luz frowns at her, “Hey! We’re great strategists, it just got us by surprise before!” 

“Fine, yeah” Eda ruffles Luz’s beanie, letting the girl huff before continuing, “If you need me, I’m here, but really just waiting to see what you kids do.” 

Luz pouts, disappointed that her mentor wouldn’t be showing off more magic. 

She eyes Eda for a moment, “Sounds like you’re just being lazy.” She tells her with a hint of challenge. 

“Hey, watch who you’re calling lazy. I might just let King take all the good food in the house.” She answers, unfazed by the moody teenager. 

Gus snaps his fingers to catch their focus. “Look, I’m perfectly fine to show off for Eda, but let’s just try and finally catch up with this thing.” 

The group falls silent again, and thankfully they still can hear the sound of the mole demon shuffling up ahead. 

Eventually they figure out the mole’s sounds are gradually getting louder, so they know it must have stopped somewhere ahead of them. They shift to walk more quietly, hoping to catch it by surprise. 

The group finally reaches another cavern. This one is spacious like the previous cavern, but its shape is more rough and natural, lacking the refinement of magical carving. This seems to be some sort of nesting area, as the ground is cushioned with straw-like plant material.  

Luz is able to light up the area just enough to see the mole more clearly, which thankfully doesn’t react. The creature is nosing at something on the ground, and Luz realizes that they have gotten lucky as the scroll bag lies there under the curious snout of the mole demon. She’s glad that it hadn’t simply bit through the whole bag at this point and shredded everything. 

She signals to Gus to move closer to it. He creeps along the floor, edging towards the mole while he focuses his magic. She moves in the opposite direction in the cavern, while she notes Eda staying closer to the entrance. 

Gus stops. She stops. Luz watches as Gus is about to release his spell. 

Let’s get this over with. 

“WE DID IT!” 

Gus beams as he strikes a triumphant pose, which looks sorely out of place among the mess that is currently covering the area around him. 

Luz is sitting on a cleaner spot of ground, cradling the precious bag in her arms while she watches Gus move around in excitement. 

He gives her a bright smile and a thumbs up, “See, expert illusionist Gus always knows exactly what he’s doing!” 

“Huh, what was that? What did you say?” Luz asks him with a tilt of her head. 

Gus pauses and looks down at her with a hint of horror in his eyes, “Oh no, Luz!” 

Luz watches as his thoughts finally catch up to him and he points an accusatory finger towards her, “Wait a minute...you heard me just fine in that battle!”

They stare at each other for a moment, then Luz gives him a wink and the two teens burst out in laughter. Eda groans, pinching her nose, before she gestures back towards the entrance. 

"Enough. Let's head back. This whole nonsense has gone on too long already."

Gus and Luz share a glance, and he gives her a wink that tells her that they’ll probably have fun embellishing this story to girls later. She appreciates the hell out of this kid. 

Together they carefully step around the nasty debris on the floor, catching up with Eda. They start the rather long walk back towards where they came, leaving Luz hoping that this is finally it for the day. But without the earlier chatter or the mole beast’s sounds, it ends up being way too quiet. It makes it too easy for Luz’s mind to wander back into the same worries she was having earlier.

“I wish we hadn’t gotten all split up. I hope Willow and Amity are doing okay...” Luz can’t help fussing with the straps of the bag, carefully avoiding the gross spots soaked in monster drool. 

Eda briefly snorts. “Can’t be away from your girlfriend and your crush for even a little bit without worrying, huh? I’m sure they are fine.” 

“Eda!” Luz stumbles, nearly dropping her bag in the process. 

“Wait! What! Luz, you have a crush on Amity!?” Gus pauses mid-walk to stare at her with a wide-eyed look. 

“Ugh, thanks Eda.” Luz says, covering her face in frustration. This was not a conversation that she had thought she would be having today. 

“Does Willow know? How could you do that to our friend and your girlfriend!?” 

She does her best to shush him, while he’s giving her an indignant look. Maybe she should have told him about this before...but it’s not like she was ready for Eda to rat her out. 

“Yes Willow knows!” She answers him in a whisper, fixing him with an annoyed look. 

Gus returns her gaze with his own skeptical look, while he whispers back “And she’s just okay with you having a crush on her ex while you’re also dating her…?”

“Yes she’s fine with it…” Gus raises his brow at her, and Luz has to weigh just how much information she actually wants to give him on the situation. She pinches her nose and lets out a sigh before continuing on. 

“...sometimes I just have crushes on multiple people at once. It took me a little while to really realize I liked both Willow and Amity, but I told Willow about it as soon as possible because I didn’t want it hanging over our relationship at all.”

Gus nods like that all makes sense to him. 

“It was all pretty nerve-wracking but...she understood? Apparently she gets similar feelings sometimes. She told me that she could tell that something was going on there. Then she tells me that seeing Amity change for the better lately brought up some of her old feelings about her…”

“Whaaaat? You both like Amity!?” Gus exclaims, and Luz shushes him back down again. 

“Yea, we talk about it from time to time. What it might be like to have Amity involved. I guess that’s a little bit weird, and we have no clue how she would feel about the idea”

“Okay, so I don’t have to fight you for crushing on Amity at least...” He looks at her very seriously, but gives her a grin a moment later. “I can’t say I understand it, but if you and Willow are fine with it, cool!” 

Luz stands up straight and thumps him on the back while grinning, pleased at his support. Unfortunately, she had totally forgotten that Eda was in the vicinity of this conversation. 

“You know, I have pretty good hearing…” Eda drawls, which makes Luz turn red in embarrassment. “Sometimes people date more than one person. It’s fine if you and your girlfriend want a little bit of wildfire in your lives.” Luz gives her a rude gesture which only makes Eda chuckle more. 

“Eda, it’s not even like that!” 

“Yea, yea...I just think you could actually talk to the Blight about it. Rather than the two of you just fussing around it. I’ve been forced to witness the three of you together at my place and I’m sure that you could have a chance.” 

Luz doesn’t know how to answer that. It’s a nice sentiment, but the idea is still overwhelming. Maybe it’s time to talk to Willow more seriously about it. Would she be okay with it…? What’s the logistics of actually having TWO girlfriends? Wait...ugh, her thoughts are going all over the place again, and she hasn’t even acknowledged what Eda said.

“Thanks, Eda. I’ll think about it.” Overthink it, even. 

At some point they cross the area where the paths had split up the group. Gus and Eda pause there and sniff at the air, which makes Luz stare at them in confusion. 

“What’s up, guys?” 

“Smells a bit smokey now. I bet that Amity had a lot of fun with their mole.” Gus answers, while Eda nods in agreement. 

“Do you think we should wait for them here?”  Luz asks while shoving her hands into her pockets. 

“Well, they could be ahead of us or behind us, it’s hard to tell. It might be best to go to the mountain entrance and see if they meet us there.” Eda tells her, which leaves Luz with a nervous feeling. 

“Alright, let’s hurry up just in case anything happened.” 

The group hastens their movement towards the cavern entrance, and Luz tries her best to push down her concern. 

Soon enough, she’ll see her girls again.  

Chapter Text

Well, this isn’t exactly how Willow had envisioned this trip going. 

Here she is with Amity, chasing after a nasty overgrown version of a garden pest of all things. 

There’s a strange feeling in the air between them, maybe some awkwardness. It’s rarely just the two of them. Usually there is Luz, or Gus, or someone else acting as a sort of buffer between the two of them. No, none of that luxury right now. 

Willow thinks that their friendship has become better again over the span of time since Luz came into their lives. She knows that Amity has softened up some, and she has too. Spending more and more time with Amity was enough to bring back an old feeling in her, one that had her talking cautiously with Luz while they cuddled together on otherwise quiet school nights. 

As far as she can tell, Amity doesn’t seem particularly aware of the couple’s interest in her. She probably can’t tell the difference between the normal teasing she gets from Luz and Willow versus their casual flirting . To be fair to her, Willow and Luz were sort of testing to see how she would react. It’s pretty hard to gauge, because usually it was with a lot of red in her face. 

Willow knows that Amity is into Luz at least, although Willow has been trying to let Luz figure that one out on her own. However, she had no idea how Amity felt about her these days. 

The last time the two of them had been properly alone together was a few months ago. At the insistence of Luz, they finally talked about what had happened in the past. 

She remembers how Amity had drawn into herself and had asked Willow, ‘ Are you still mad at me about what happened?’ , which had surprised Willow. No, she wasn’t mad. Back then they were young, only fourteen years old, each other’s first girlfriend. There were bound to be mistakes, on both sides.  

With some hesitation from both of the girls, they did their best that day to try and clear up some feelings. Let things mend a little more. 

Still, even with things much better now, she couldn’t imagine that Amity would be interested in her again. She might have to settle with being amused with Amity and Luz’s antics at best. 

Willow pushes down the thought that tells her maybe you shouldn’t be so greedy when you already have Luz . Luz herself has given her plenty of speeches about how her feelings didn’t make her greedy, but it didn’t stop the sentiment from welling up from time to time. 

Willow can sense that Amity is staring at her before she hears her speak up. 

“You’re looking particularly broody today.” 

Willow sighs and tries to shake off her bothersome thoughts. “This was just not my plan for the day.” She pauses, then adds, “And I was hoping I wouldn’t be right about something fucked up happening.” 

Amity hums before speaking, “Well, hopefully after we deal with this guy we can get out of here, eat something around the fire, then go to sleep finally.” She then quietly murmurs, “As long as you and Luz don’t keep me up with your kissing.” 

Willow arches a brow, “What was that last one?” 

She only catches a glimpse of Amity’s red-covered face for a moment before Amity speeds up her pace so she’s walking ahead of Willow.

Willow can’t contain her amusement as it seeps into her words, “Wow Amity, that’s a weird fantasy to have.” 

Amity continues to ignore her, seeming content to chase down this mole monster herself just to escape from this conversation. 

Maybe Willow can have a bit more fun. She rarely gets to have Amity on her own, and she’s feeling a tad devious. 

“You know,” She drawls, “It’s fine for you to have a crush on Luz. I don’t mind.”

The normally refined Amity Blight just barely manages to avoid crashing into a stalagmite. 

They don’t stop moving, just because they don’t want to lose track of the demon, but Amity is finally paying attention to her again. 

“Willow! You can’t just say that I have a crush on your girlfriend like it’s normal!” 

Willow shrugs. “You’re not denying it.” 

Amity looks away from her again. “I’m sure that a normal person would be upset about someone else having a crush on their partner.” 

“Well I am definitely weird. And you know that I’ve never been the possessive type. You and Luz have your own thing going on, I can tell. You’re cute when you’re crushing on someone.”

Amity mutters something about being called cute, and something else that sounds strangely like “You don’t know the worst of it.” 

When Willow goes to question that particular thought, the pair realizes that they’ve been distracted a little too long.

At some point, the mole must have reached an open area and paused to wait for its noisy pursuers.  They nearly ran straight into the giant furry creature, stopping short of its angry face. 

The good news is that they are close enough to see that it doesn’t have the scroll bag! 

The bad news is that they are close enough to be in range for it to swipe those large claws and actually hit them. 

Amity manages to jump out the way, and Willow moves back but not quickly enough to escape the claw that slashes her jacket then travels down to tear apart the seed pouch hanging on her hip. 

I hate this damn thing. Willow thinks to herself as she watches the mole proceed to stomp on the seeds under its feet. It’s going to be a pain to try and use them after they have been smashed to pieces. 

But they are in a cave, and caves do have that one dreaded thing she doesn’t like dealing with…

“Amity, try to distract it for a minute!” 

“On it!” 

Willow runs over to a cave wall, placing her hand against it, before she tries to clear her thoughts to focus her magic. She lets it seep out against the wall, prodding gently along it. 

There it is. Some of that stubborn cave fungus. All mushrooms and other types of fungi were an absolute pain to deal with. There is something different about them that made them less willing to bend to the call of magic. Willow is not a fan of trying to coax them out of that state.

Still, there weren’t a whole lot of options right now. She lets her magic poke and prod, asking the fungi to expand outward. She can feel the life force of the mass pushing back against her in an act of defiance, the sensation making her growl in annoyance. 

Willow tries again with her magic, and gets the same response. I’m having a big meal of mushrooms when I get home she thinks to herself, which probably is not helping her focus on the task at hand. 

“Willow, watch out!”

Too late. 

Willow can’t escape. The mole is running at full speed and rams right into her with its strong head. 

It knocks her against the cave wall. She can hear Amity screaming something, then everything is dark. 

The first thing Willow is aware of when she wakes up is the annoying pain pounding away at the back of her head. The second is the heat of the air, then the disgusting smell of burning fur and flesh. 

She’s thankful to open her eyes and find her glasses have survived, even though she has to once again clumsily wipe them off with her sleeve. The motion makes her muscles ache just enough to let her know that tomorrow she would be feeling it, and sitting up against this rock wall is definitely not helping. 

There across the way is the mole demon, or what was the mole demon anyway. The heap of charred flesh doesn’t really count for much now. There are some remnants of fire dancing along the blackened remains, and it is smoking enough that it’s making her throat burn slightly. 

She spots Amity too. Her pointed ears are pressed firmly against her head, and she’s breathing heavily through her mouth, leaving her sharp fangs exposed. With her gold eyes and the smoke drifting across her face, she looks positively dragon-like. To any normal person she would look terrifying . To Willow, she looks fierce, but still beautiful like always. 

Another wave of smoke hits Willow, and unfortunately throws her into a mild coughing fit. This finally alerts Amity that she’s awake, and Amity says something but Willow can’t really hear her over the coughs. 

As the coughing subsides, she looks up again to see Amity rushing over to her, barely having any warning before the girl nearly throws herself into her lap. 

Amity grips the collar of her jacket, and Willow is suddenly struck by how close Amity’s face is to her own. There’s a lot of emotion in those golden eyes, but the expression is so soft; she works to soften her own startled expression, hoping to give Amity something that says it’s okay.

It must have said something , because now Amity is leaning in, and pressing her lips against Willow’s. 

Wow, this is not how she was expecting the day to go.

She only lets her surprise linger for a moment before she’s returning the kiss, placing her hands against Amity’s sides to help steady her. She feels the other girl relax under her palms, then Amity releases her jacket to slide her arms around her neck. 

It’s crazy how right it feels to be kissing her like this. This is the result of something that has been building for some time now. They can talk about it later. Right now, this is wonderful, and that drives the thoughts right out of her head. 

They are lost in each other. At some point Willow pulls Amity closer, and Amity is running her fingers through Willow’s wild hair. For some time, it’s just them and the exchange of soft kisses. 

Unfortunately, reality had to reassert itself at some point. 

It seems like the damaged pile of mole meat finally gave up completely, and the cave suddenly is filled with the sounds of bones cracking as the whole heap collapses inward. 

The girls jump in surprise at the sudden sound, and Willow feels a sharp pain in her lip before the two of them are pulling apart. 

Amity scrambles to put distance between them while Willow wipes her lip and finds herself staring at her bloody hand. Amity stares at her with a horrified expression. 

Willow’s head has a million thoughts going through it. Amity bit me…? was one of the first, before there was a louder oh shit when she remembered that she had just been kissing Amity   in the middle of a damn cave. I’m supposed to be the one with the most self control but I totally let it happen! She should have pushed her away or something.  

The thought of ‘ Is Luz going to be mad?’ swirled up to the surface. They had talked about Amity quite a bit, but never in a completely serious way. And talking about it was way different from acting on it . But...she had reciprocated Amity’s kisses anyway. It felt perfectly natural to hold her close like that, too. She feels guilty, but does she regret it…? 

Ow . The ache in her lip pulls her from her jumbled thoughts. Okay, let’s put this all away for a moment . She thinks to herself, closing her eyes and breathing to clear her thoughts for a second. Alright, back to calm, cool, collected. 

A few feet away Amity had been quietly watching Willow with a wide-eyed look and she starts when Willow turns to look at her. She could practically feel the anxiety coming off the other girl, and knows that if she makes the wrong move, Amity might bolt. 

Willow sighs, before she starts riffling around in her jacket pockets. She ignores the continued worried stare from Amity for the moment, when her fingers finally brushed against what she was looking for. 

“We need to get back to the others, but…” Willow pulls out the piece of candy hidden in her pocket, pinching the wrapper and offering it out to Amity , “you look like you still need a moment.”

Amity stares down the offered sweet, her face shifting to confused. “You’re not mad?” 

“No, I’m not mad. Now take this, I’m tired of holding it.” She impatiently shakes the candy in Amity’s direction. 

Amity moves closer to grab the candy out of her hand before sitting down again, deciding to maintain some level of distance from Willow. She delicately unwraps the hard candy before putting it in her mouth, sighing as the sweetness hits her. Willow is glad that she still had some candy stashed on her. 

While Amity is busy with the treat, Willow brings her own hand up to rub against her forehead, feeling an angry pinch underneath that forces her to close her eyes in a grimace. She may be able to temporarily pack away her feelings, but they still give her a headache. 

It’s not long before she hears a quiet “I’m sorry”, which makes her open an eye to peek at Amity. 

“I’m not uh, used to seeing you go down in a fight like that,” Willow watches as Amity nervously rubs her hands against her legs, “Seeing you awake— I was glad that you were okay.” 

“You have quite the way of showing it.” Willow says with a chuckle, even as the motion makes her lip ache. 

Amity’s face is wearing her usual shade of red. “Shut up! You seemed perfectly happy about letting it happen! ” She tells Willow, indignant. 

Now Willow can feel her own cheeks heating up. There’s no denying that one. Amity looks all too pleased about flustering Willow for once, while she finishes off the candy by crushing it between her teeth.

Amity stands up, ”We should get going now, are you good to move?”

Willow considers it, checking over her body. She’s tired and achy everywhere, but most of the pain is superficial outside of the headache and cut lip. She’s going to need a whole lot of rest, but she’ll be fine. 

“I should be fine, but we should take it slowly.” Willow moves to get up, grabbing a hand offered by Amity to pull herself up. Her muscles and joints protest, but she’s up and ready. 

The two start down the passage and Willow’s thoughts bubble up to the surface again. There is something here that needs to be addressed...

“So you like me like you like Luz, huh?” She asks Amity after throwing a glance her way. 

Amity barely manages to rescue herself from a surprised stumble. 

“You want to bring that up right now ?”

“We have a long walk ahead of us. It’s just the two of us now. Why not?” Willow shrugs. 

Willow watches as Amity crosses her arms, then nervously rubs her hands against them as she mulls over her words. Amity finally speaks up, hesitation in her voice.  

“Yes, clearly I ‘like you’ or that wouldn’t have happened.” Amity answers, shyly looking away from Willow. “Is it really that surprising to you? You’re still the person you were before, just older and maybe cooler. Easy to crush on, like when we were younger. ”

“ Maybe cooler? ” Willow smirks. 

“Fine, definitely cooler. Not, uh, that you weren’t cool before! Just different now!” 

“So smooth, Amity.” Willow snickers. 

Willow thinks maybe she should spare Amity for a bit, let her face actually turn back to its normal color. 

Amity clears her throat, before asking “Well, how about you? Do you...like me?” 

Right. Willow feels her cheeks warm up again and thinks damn, she’s gotten me to blush twice today . It’s perfectly fair of her to ask, given everything that happened. 

Somewhere in her head, Willow is amused by how this is playing out. She remembers herself at fourteen, one sunny afternoon exclaiming to a younger Amity, ‘I like you Amity, do you like me too?’. It’s been a few years since then, but it’s so strikingly similar. 

“Yes, of course.” She starts out, then adds on, “We just weren’t sure how you would take it…” Willow grips her jacket, feeling unusually nervous. 

“We? So Luz knows about it?” 

“Yea, she does. We are upfront about those things with each other.” Willow glances at Amity as she speaks, watching as Amity digests the words that she is saying. 

Amity puts two and two together, and only manages to muster up an “Oh.” in response. 

“Luz probably wasn’t expecting anything like this to happen, but I can talk to her about it. Maybe then the three of us can talk about what’s going on? If you want to, I mean.” Willow asks gently. 

”Yes, please . I’m tired of feeling weird all the time.” 

“I don’t know if that would fix that particular problem of your’s…” Willow teases, while Amity looks slightly offended. 

“Don’t make me start regretting things already, Park.”

“Yea, yea. Plenty of time to do that later.” She says with a wink.  “Let’s just focus on getting out of this place already.” 

They settle back into gentle quietness, which Willow is grateful for, as all that talking was really starting to make her lip hurt more. 

It’s a tiny bit awkward again, but it’s different now. It’s the awkwardness of being stuck alone with your crush when you both know what’s going on. The shyness of stealing glances at each other while being left alone with thoughts about that person. 

Willow came on this trip hoping to help out Luz and maybe to collect some cool new specimens for her collection along the way. Maybe she’ll get something else out of this too. 

She is interested to see where it will go. 

Chapter Text

Luz couldn’t stop pacing, even as the ache in her legs continued to grow.  

She had been doing okay on the way out of the mountain, expecting to see Amity and Willow somewhere along the way, only to make it to the entrance without running into them at all. 

She had stood with Eda and Gus at the entrance for a bit of time, before she started her current track back and forth in front of the opening while the other two fidgeted uncomfortably. As time went on her thoughts continued to cycle through variations of ‘ where are they?’ and ‘ did something happen?’ 

Gus at some point tried to give her a bright, but strained, “I’m sure they are fine!”, tied in with two thumbs up, which Eda just shook her head at while Luz barely noticed the interjection at all. 

After a few minutes of watching her, Eda finally speaks up, “Okay, if they don’t show up soon, we need to go back in and find those two. Not that I think anything happened to them, because they seem like the most competent out of your little gang,” Two sets of offended sounds didn’t stop her from continuing on,  “But I just can’t stand here watching you worry about them!”

“No need to worry about us!” Calls out a hoarse voice, making the group jump. Luz turns on the spot to see Amity and Willow emerging out of the darkness, the two of them walking slowly and gingerly. 

“Willow! Amity!” 

Luz runs up to them, stopping short of colliding directly into the pair. She pulls them both into a rough hug, overcome with relief. She feels Amity tense up at the sudden contact, while Willow lets out a surprised sound as the enthusiastic hug rocks the trio. 

“A little too enthusiastic right after a battle, Luz.” Willow finally manages, her voice coming out raspily against Luz’s shoulder. 

“Sorry, I’m just glad you two are okay!” 

She pulls away from them, leaving her hands on their shoulders. Now she can better take in their appearance- the two’s clothing is caked in a layer of grime, and Willow’s jacket has several tears down the side of it, making Luz’s nerves spike. Amity’s face is smudged with dirt, but Luz’s eyes are drawn to Willow’s face then down to her lips, which bear an ugly gash.

She stares at it in confusion. “How did you get this cut on your lips? Did the mole do this to you?”  

She feels Willow’s posture stiffen up under her hand and watches her eyes go comically wide in a look that Luz isn’t sure she’s ever seen her have before. Strangely, in her peripheral vision she notices that Amity’s face has gone red and she slips out from under Luz’s hand to take a few steps away, looking down at the ground like it is more interesting than anything else. 

Luz watches as Willow tries her best to answer, starting out with "Oh, this thing? Umm…" 

Gus picks that moment to walk over and examine Willow's face too, curiously leaning in close and commenting, "It seems way too small for the mole to have done that!" 

"You're too close!" Willow tells him, gently but purposely pushing the boy away while looking embarrassed over his comment. 

What is going on with Willow? Luz couldn't help pondering to herself. She's usually never this easily flustered. Was she embarrassed over getting injured? It is pretty rare for Willow to be the one with damage after a fight. 

"Gus, look at this cool rock formation I found!" Amity says a little too loudly, drawing the boy's attention and making him run over excitedly to her. 

With Gus distracted for a moment, Luz focuses again on Willow's face. 

"Do you want to talk about what happened while we were separated?" She asks gently. 

Willow looks into her eyes, then looks down at the ground, finally answering "Let's talk about it later, okay?"

"Yeah, that's okay." Luz answers, even as she feels a bundle of nervousness growing in her stomach. Usually Willow was more straightforward with these types of things, so what could have happened this time?

Eda had been quietly watching the interactions between all the teenagers from the sidelines, and finally cleared her throat to get their attention.

"Well, everyone made it out of this stupid mountain, so how about we finally get something to eat?"

"Yeah, that sounds great!" Willow answers with excessive enthusiasm, striding over to stand next to Eda and posing awkwardly next to her. 

While Amity and Willow are still both acting strangely, and she really wants to know why, Luz could feel her own hunger now too. Eda and Willow take the lead back to the campsite, while the others follow behind. 

Man, it's been a long day . She thinks to herself, while staring ahead at the back of her girlfriend. 

She's surprised when she watches Eda lean down to Willow's ear and whisper something to her with a smirk on her face. Even from behind Luz can see the tips of Willow's ears redden as the girl tugs her jacket up around her face. Willow quickly walks ahead without answering Eda, while the older witch tries to unsuccessfully muffle a cackle in her hand. Poor Amity and Gus jump at the sound, but neither are bold enough to ask. 

Well that's something she'll have to ask about later. Also, does she need to talk to Eda about not tormenting her girlfriend, again ? 

Luz shakes her head, trying to clear out her thoughts. 

Let's just get this trip over with and get home. 

After finally eating a campsite "dinner", Luz and Willow are sitting together apart from the group under some nearby tree cover. The meal with the others had been particularly quiet, the group weighed down with tiredness from the day. Luz noted that Willow and Amity sat far apart from each other, and yet again had to wonder what had happened while everyone was separated. 

They are here now because Luz had insisted on checking over her partner for wounds. Despite some grumbles from Willow about being too tired for all the attention she was getting, Luz swore she saw just a hint of color in Willow's cheeks. 

They had gotten Willow out of her normal jacket, which needed to be repaired anyway, so that Luz would gently examine the witch. If this was any other time, Luz might have snuck in a playful poke or tickle, but right now she just had to focus on making sure everything is okay. 

Thankfully, besides the cut on her face, it seemed like most of Willow's injuries were superficial at best. They had to take care of that cut though, they did not want to see that infected!

And so Luz acquired a spare water bottle and dragged her girlfriend aside to get some peace from the others.

The first attempt at washing out the wound went a tad too poorly as Luz fumbles the bottle and sprays Willow in the face, who sputters indignantly. 

"Luz! Be more careful!" 

Willow is just loud enough to catch the attention of the others who turn to them in curiosity from around the fire. Luz waves them off with an embarrassed expression while she tries to wipe off Willow's face with her jacket sleeve. Willow gives her a sullen look for her efforts, then points to one of the rags that Luz had made earlier.  Oops. 

Luz rubs at the back of her neck before getting out, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, let me just try again. We need to take care of this thing." 

This time Luz more delicately tilts the water bottle back over the cut site, letting the water wash over the wound and dribble down onto the ground. Willow is looking a little embarrassed either from her previous outburst or Luz's attention, but she’s at least letting Luz take care of things properly. 

Finally once she is satisfied that the cut is thoroughly washed, Luz picks up a spare rag to carefully dab away any excess water from her girlfriend’s face. Luz feels entirely grateful for Willow's patience at this moment. 

Their faces are leaning close together, and Luz feels a pang of sadness that she can’t kiss her at that moment. Instead she chooses to bop Willow’s nose, who scrunches her face up at the contact. 

“All washed up! Now I just need to find one last thing…”

She rifles through the bag she had brought over here, sticking her arm deep into it to scrape along the bottom. Not in this pocket! She switches through a few before she finally finds what she is looking for. 

“Aha! I’ve found you, sneaky tub!” Luz exclaims triumphantly, pulling her hand out and hoisting up a container of healing salve. 

Willow quirks a brow, “Where did you get a bunch of healing cream from? I know that Eda doesn’t make it.”

“Oh, uh…” The lid of the tub is refusing to turn under Luz’s applied force, “School...”, she’s trying to open the lid at another angle, “I think the healers were tired of seeing me, so they gave me this for ‘minor cuts and burns’ as they put it. Seems to work better than human medical ointments anyway, but don’t tell my mom or I’ll have to get more...” 

Luz tries one more attempt at opening the jar, applying her full strength to turning the lid, “Ugh, why won’t this thing fucking open!” 

Willow wordlessly holds out her hand, and Luz places the tub in her palm. She watches as her girlfriend easily turns and removes the lid before handing the tub back to Luz. 

Luz feels her face heat up, but she focuses on scooping out some ointment on a finger and leans in to gently dab it against the cut site. She catches a soft look in Willow's eyes that leaves her feeling a bit overwhelmed.

She finishes quickly and leans back, wiping off the excess ointment with a fresh rag. For a moment she twists and turns the fabric between her hands. 

"Soooo...do you want to talk now?" She asks carefully. 

Willow tilts her head, thinking carefully about something before answering. 

"I want to talk about it when we're somewhere a bit more private than this. Maybe when we get back tomorrow?"

"Oh, okay." Luz answers, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth. 

There’s a brief pause, then Willow leans in and places a hand on Luz's knee. 

"It shouldn't be too bad, Luz, I hope anyway. Just would prefer to not have an audience." Willow moves her hand up to Luz's face to give her a gentle stroke.

Luz tries her best to resist melting into the touch. Despite Willow's words, she was still being more affectionate around the others than she normally would be. 

She does let Willow know the gesture is appreciated with a big smile.

Later in the night Luz found herself mindlessly rearranging the pillows and blankets over her sleeping bag. 

After making sure Willow was okay, everyone else had agreed they might as well go to bed as everyone was too exhausted after the long day. That was perfectly fine with Luz, but her thoughts continued to be fuzzy from the day’s events.

She was alone at the moment as Amity and Willow were off somewhere getting ready for bed. Leaving Luz to just wallow in her thoughts. No thank you!

I’m sure everything is just fine! She thinks even as she flops onto a pillow with a groan. 

Luz hears someone fumbling with the tent zipper and sits up quickly, only to make eye contact with Amity as she enters the tent. Amity looks away quickly, and moves to drag her sleeping bag back to the farthest position she could away from Luz’s and Willow’s (when had her bag gotten that close to the other’s anyway?). 

She watches Amity quietly for a moment, admiring her cloud of fluffy hair that was currently free from its normal ponytail. Luz has had way too many thoughts about getting to play with that fluff, and Luz has to shake her head to release that thought from her mind for now. 

With her head clearer now, she notices that Amity is moving a bit oddly while she rearranges her sleeping things, with awkward movements like Amity’s not quite sure what she wants to do with her limbs. 

Luz sits up properly, asking Amity “Hey, you’re not hiding any injuries are you?” 

Amity stiffens up, before letting out a sigh. “No. Just tired.” 

Oh great, what happened?  Luz finds herself thinking again. She knew Amity was being a bit weird earlier, but it’s not like the other girl to seem so spooked out just by talking to Luz. With how Willow was acting too it just had to have been something that happened while they were off on their own, but what? Or was Amity upset that Willow was injured, too? 

“You know...if you’re upset about something, you can tell me Amity.” She tells her in the gentlest tone she can muster. 

Amity picks at a lone thread on her sleeping bag, answering Luz, “Thank you, Luz...just not right now, please.” 

Well, that confirms she’s definitely not getting any answers tonight. She slumps in defeat for a moment, before drawing herself back up. 

“Well whatever is going on, we can fix it later!” She flashes Amity a peace sign, and the girl musters a small smile in return. 

Luz eyes the distance Amity has placed between them. 

“There’s no reason you have to be all the way over there, by the way. I swear me and Willow don’t have cooties.” 

Luz did not expect the bout of awkward laughter from Amity or the flushing of her face, the girl calming down just enough to say “No, no, I’m good being right here!” before sliding down into the sleeping bag.

Luz quirks an eyebrow at the cocooned lump, thinking only well okay then.  

Willow pops her head through the tent opening a few moments later, peers around the tent and eyes Amity’s lump critically before she makes her way fully inside. 

“That can’t be good for sleeping.” She comments to Luz, gesturing with her thumb over to Amity. 

“If Amity wants to be smothered by a sleeping bag, that’s her prerogative.” Luz shrugs. 

A muffled huff followed with a “I’ll be fine.” came from the sleeping bag, making the other girls roll their eyes. 

Willow settles down next to Luz, laying down with an exaggerated yawn. Luz takes that as her cue to snuff out some of the extra light orbs floating around inside the tent until only a singular one is gently lighting the area.  

Luz’s hand wanders over to Willow’s to give it a light squeeze. Willow looks at her sleepily, but she still gestures to Luz to ‘come here’. 

With a happy smile, Luz curls up with Willow, resting softly against her girlfriend’s stomach. 

It’s only been a few minutes before Luz feels Willow fall asleep completely, the girl’s body relaxing further underneath her. 

Unfortunately for Luz, her brain still resisted the call of sleep. She tries her best to clear out any lingering thoughts, but the empty buzz of her brain is not working for her either. 

She’s absentmindedly staring at the sleeping bag lump on the other side of the tent when she sees shifting, and Amity finally pops her head out from her self-made cocoon. Amity catches sight of Luz and her eyes go wide before she quickly rolls over. 

Luz frowns, not sure what to make of that either. 

Tomorrow sure is going to be interesting, isn’t it? 

Morning ended up being a boring affair that Luz barely remembers. She only really recalls a lot of noise and movement as everything got packed up and everyone shuffled into the car. The ride itself was abnormally peaceful for this group, as Luz could not even be bothered to comment on Eda’s driving, while Amity and Willow sat silently on opposite sides of Gus. 

Finally they drove up to Willow’s house and Luz waved goodbye to everyone else, while  promising Eda to have Willow drive her back to the owl house later. Eda told her to behave herself , which Luz answered only with a stuck out tongue. 

Willow’s room would normally be a sort of comfort for Luz, with all the familiarity of Willow’s plants and things around. It was less so at the moment, as she sits crossed leg across from her similarly sitting girlfriend on the bed. 

Luz taps her fingers against her knees while she watches Willow thinking through whatever she wants to say. 

Willow crosses her arms and starts out with “Sooo...you want to know what happened while we separated, yeah?” 

Luz nods a little too enthusiastically, her beanie falling right off her head. 

Willow uncrosses her arms in favor of clasping her hands together while she looks around the room for a moment. “Well, the mole managed to surprise me and knocked me out for a bit.” 

“Oh no, is that how you got your cut?”

“Not quite there yet, Luz” Willow tells her, and Luz mentally forces herself to calm back down. 

Willow continues on, “When I came to after that, there was a bit of a moment with Amity…” 

Luz feels nervous energy building up again, but here it was, the answer to why these two have been acting so strange... 

“...kissed me.” 

Luz blinks. And blinks again. “What?”

“Amity came over and kissed me after she found out I was okay. And I wasn’t really thinking, at all, and returned it.” Willow looks down into her lap, “ I’m sorry to have waited to tell you, but I didn’t want to involve Gus or Eda in it…” 

There’s a messy swirl of feelings inside her, because wow,  Willow and Amity kissed! She pieced apart the different feelings while Willow quietly watched with nervous eyes. She didn’t feel mad about the news, but she did feel a sense of disappointment…

“You kissed Amity and I wasn’t there for it!” 

Willow indignantly throws her hands up with an exasperated, “That’s your first thought??” 

 “Sorry, sorry, my thoughts are all processing at different speeds!” Luz tells her, scratching her chin as if to help those thoughts along. “Okay, so Amity kissed you, but then how did you get that cut?” 

Willow turns an uncharacteristic red, but she answers anyway, “Amity accidentally cut it with one of her fangs...” Luz can feel her own wicked grin on her face, “And Eda totally knew when she saw it! When we were walking out of the cave she told me ‘ You really need to learn how to avoid other witch’s fangs’ ” 

Luz bursts out in laughter, only stopping when the need for air is just too much for her. “I’m glad Eda didn’t get mad, we must not have been as subtle about liking Amity as we thought we were.” 

“No, maybe not.” Willow answers, shifting around for a moment before going on, “But really, you’re not mad about what happened?” 

 “Mad? Not really. Maybe disappointed that we didn’t talk about this more seriously before it happened.” Luz bunches up the fabric of the bed's comforter, “So Amity’s got a thing for you, huh?” 

Willow contemplates her answer, picking her words carefully. “Well, it might not just be me. Have you seen you two?” 

Luz blushes, “Called out by my own girlfriend!”  while Willow laughs. 

“But really the best person to ask would be Amity. Do you want to talk to her?” 

“Yeah, of course I do!” Luz answers, waving her hands around in excitement,  “But what do we want to do? Do we see if she wants to date you? Both of us? We’ve joked about this forever but never really talked about what would actually happen.” 

“I think we should figure out what's most comfortable for all of us. But if Amity does want to be in some part of this, things are going to be different.” Willow says, her voice laced with an unusual amount of uncertainty. 

Luz reaches over and carefully grasps Willow’s hand. “Yeah, things would be different.” She gives her partner a reassuring squeeze, “Whatever happens, there will still be us.”

“Right.” Willow smiles, and finally relaxes enough to lean back into her pillows. “Let’s text Amity and see about getting this over with.” 

Luz nods in agreement before she moves from her sitting spot to get closer to Willow, thinking for a second before deciding to flop down in her lap. 

“Hey there Luz.” Willow says with a tap to Luz’s forehead. 

A wicked thought enters Luz’s head, and she grins mischievously. 

“So Willow...how good of a kisser is Amity?” 

“ Luz! ”  

Chapter Text

She's trapped.

Amity's grumbling and squirming could not save her. 

Instead she just lays boneless under the blanket while her sister continues to lay over her, pressing their backs together. 

Emira hums in approval, drawing another annoyed noise from her sister. 

"I didn't say you could come in here."

"I wouldn't have to come in here if you didn't insist on moping." 

“Don’t know what you mean.” 

Emira jabs a finger into her sister’s shoulder, who hisses at her in annoyance. 

“I know you’ve been rolled up in a little blanket burrito in this bed, on your phone, trying to search “What do you do when you have a crush on a couple and you don’t know if they like you back.”” 

“Wow, really not holding back there sis.” cuts in Edric’s voice from the doorway. 

“Hey! I’m claiming sister time here.” Emira insists, staring him down. 

Amity can’t see what the twins are doing, but she can tell there must be a silent battle going on considering how she feels Emira gesturing around. 

“Fiiiiine.” She finally hears Edric’s voice fading out into the distance. 

Amity picks at the fabric of her bedsheet. “Luz and Willow invited me to have a talk over at Luz’s house.” 

Emira hmms, “So the couple that you like invited you over, and that’s turned you into this?” she says with a teasing tone to her voice. 

“Emira…” Amity groans. 

“I know, I know, just teasing.” 

The sisters lay there in silence for a few minutes. 

“What if it goes terribly, Emira?” 

“Then Luz and Willow are going to have to deal with the twin terrors.”  She answers fiercely. 

“…it’s not going to go terribly though, Amity. I know Luz, and I know Willow, and those two would not mess with you like that.” 

“But I’m coming between them…” 

“If there was a problem,  I’m sure they would have told you before now.” 

“…” 

“All I’m saying, Amity, is that there is no need to be afraid of people who are your friends. As rough around the edges as you guys are, I know you take care of each other.” 

Amity contemplates her words and finally answers. "Fine. But can we talk about something else now?"

Emira raises up her leg and studies it for a moment. 

"...do you think I would look good with a leg tattoo?" 

Amity pulled into the driveway of Camila Noceda’s house and parked her car. Luz had told her that her mom was away, busy working the emergency hours at the vet clinic. So her, Amity, and Willow would have the house to themselves. 

Right. This will be fine. 

She knocks on the door, hears a “coming!”, then a thunk, a second thunk and some cursing. Luz opens the door with a nervous grin on her face. She’s dressed up nicer than what Amity is used to seeing, and she pushes down a thought that whispers into her head she’s looking handsome tonight . Luz gives her an awkward wave with a simple “Hey.”

Well that’s a little weird. 

Luz ushers her in and shuts the door behind her. Amity takes a moment to look around the entryway. It’s rare for Luz to want to meet here over Eda’s place. Amity has always appreciated the calm atmosphere of Camila’s home even as much as she’s learned to embrace the wildness of the Owl House. 

“Willow’s waiting over here…” Luz gestures Amity to follow her into the dining room. 

Willow is sitting at the table, where it seems like she has grabbed one of Camila’s small houseplants. She was gently and carefully examining one of its leaves, cooing something softly to the plant. Amity felt the warmth well up in her chest as Willow finally registered Luz and Amity’s entrance and gently moved the plant away from herself. 

Luz sits down opposite Willow, and Amity copies her. 

The three of them quietly glance around for a moment, like nobody knew exactly how they wanted to start the conversation. 

“If this is about -“ 

“We want to-“ 

“I think-“

The three voices all came out at once, and everyone looked a little sheepish. 

“Alright, who actually wants to go first?” Willow asks. 

Amity’s insides were twisting in anticipation of something that she could only speculate about. It finally drove her to say “I’ll do it.” 

She feels a strong urge to dig her nails down into the table, but doesn’t want to ruin Camila’s furniture. 

"Look, I'm sorry, Luz, Willow, for my behavior lately. Especially with what happened with Willow on our trip. Things have been...really weird lately."

Luz and Willow glance at each other. 

Luz drums her fingers for a moment, before she speaks. "I mean yeah, thank you for addressing that, but we think we're also pretty guilty of feeding into that weirdness you've been feeling. We don't blame you for what happened. " 

"I…don't think I quite understand what's happening here." 

"Luz developed this huge crush on you a while ago." Willow tells her bluntly. 

"Willow!" Luz says as she decides to hide behind her beanie. 

"Me and Luz…even though we have each other, we still have open hearts for others.  So I may have encouraged that crush, just to see what happened…" 

"Luz…crushing on me…but…" Amity's brain just can't keep up. “WAIT. Willow, have you guys just been messing with me this whole time?” 

“No, no, no,” Willow answers quickly as she watches Amity’s face turn angry. “Something…unexpected happened.” 

Luz peaks out from behind her beanie finally. “Unexpected? Pffft. Catching feels for your ex is prime romance material.” 

Amity’s own feelings are certainly on a roller-coaster ride tonight. She might get whiplash at this rate. 

“Luz, could I get a glass of water please?” Amity asks, hoping it will help her sort her thoughts. 

Luz apologizes for forgetting drinks for everyone and, after asking Willow what she wants, rushes off to get them. 

When the glass is placed in front of her, Amity reaches out to feel its cold sides and focuses on that sensation. She lifts the glass and takes a long drink, thinking to herself, huh, this is not what I was expecting out of tonight. 

She sets her glass back down. “So all those things that happened,” she draws a circle in the air lazily, “is because you guys are crushing on me? ”

The other two have the decency to look guilty. 

“We’re sorry about any stress we caused Amity, but yes.” Luz answers. 

Willow speaks up again, “What happened on the trip pushed us to finally confront what’s been going on…” 

“Are you guys going to ask me out???” Amity blurts out impatiently. 

There it was, out in the open finally. 

Willow and Luz laugh, their relief palpable. 

Luz smiles widely. “Do you wanna go out with me, Amity?” 

Amity’s anxiety has faded away into a tender feeling in her heart. 

“Yes, of course.” 

Then, Willow asks gently, “Do you want to get back together with me?” 

Amity’s affection swells as she answers “Yes!”

Everyone grins around the table at each other. 

A thought strikes Amity, and she nervously fiddles with her shirt. “But…you guys have been dating for a while now. I’m going to need some time to reach the same relationship level with each of you.” 

Willow glances at Luz as she answers. “Yeah, we also decided to tone-down me and Luz’s relationship for now if you wanted to date us. So that we could all be on more “equal-footing”, so to speak.”  She explains. 

“Wow, you guys really thought this out.” 

"Yeah, we did our best trying to figure out how this polyamory thing works in actual  practice. The internet helped me a lot. Luz even got books from the library, you know how she likes her research." Willow explains. 

Damn…I should have thought of that one. Amity thinks to herself.

Amity then shakes her head to clear her thoughts for a moment. "So…what now? She asks. 

Luz answers, with an air of certainty, "Now…we stay here for a bit and talk about what we want out of all this. Expectations and all that jazz. " 

"Truly a relationship scholar." Willow comments.  "Yes, I would say so." Amity adds. 

Luz looks pleased, and proud of herself. She offers to get everyone snacks while they settle in for this conversation. 

Amity smiles at Luz as she leaves for the kitchen, then turns to smile at Willow. 

She’s glad that everything ended up okay after all. 

They ended up talking for a long while, but eventually when the serious talk died out they ended up driving out to a quiet part of town, a grassy hillside where they could enjoy the night sky together. The area is gently lit with a few of Luz's light glyphs. 

Amity can't help the nervous look she throws Willow and Luz. Willow is laying across a large blanket thrown over the ground, while Luz sits a small distance away from her. Luz pats the space next to herself, her expression shifting hopeful. 

She takes a breath, trying to calm her nerves. She feels like she barely manages to make her way over to the edge of the blanket, but if the others notice they don't say anything.

She sits in the spot Luz had indicated earlier then lays down by Luz, and Luz looks pleased that Amity has joined them. Luz yawns and stretches out her limbs with a content sound. She settles back and folds her hands over her stomach, giving Amity a thoughtful look with a tilt of her head. 

Amity ignores her for a moment, choosing to let her eyes roam over the relaxed forms of her two new girlfriends. Girlfriends . She'll just have to get used to this, huh?

"I'm so glad that the magnificent Lady Blight has joined us..." Luz begins in a regal tone. 

"Don't make me regret this only 30 seconds in."

Willow laughs loudly while Luz playfully huffs. 

"Would some cuddling today be okay, Amity?" Luz asks gently. 

She swears she can feel her heart race, but she lets out an affirmative "Yes." 

Luz didn't give her any other warning before she wraps her arms around Amity, making her let out a surprised eep! as she was clenched tighter before rolling them over to place Amity between Luz and Willow. 

Amity lays there dazed for a moment. 

"Isn't this what you wanted?" Luz asks teasingly. 

Her surprise wears off, and she reaches up to pinch Luz's arm. 

"Give me a little more warning next time!" 

Luz winces slightly, but still manages to look at Amity with soft puppy-like eyes. Geez, she's going to need to build a solid defense against those. 

"Sorry, I'm just trying to make sure my new girlfriend is getting the attention she deserves."

It seems like this also entails Luz drawing their faces close together, so that she can nuzzle against her cheeks happily. After a moment, their noses softly brush together, and Amity feels her heart skip as she thinks Luz is going to kiss her.

She wiggles nervously against the attention, rolling away from Luz's adorable face just to end up looking into Willow's. Those wonderful green eyes scan over her face, and Amity knows she's taking in the warm blush blanketing her cheeks. 

Apparently Luz would not be easily deterred, as she buried her face into the fluff of Amity's hair. 

Willow laughs, asking "Really, Luz?" and Amity feels pleasantly warm between the two girls. 

It wasn't long before Luz is pulling back, wheezing slightly as she exclaims "Can't breathe in there!" 

Amity looks at Willow and asks her, deadpan, "Does she do these things to you too?"

A smile pulls up the corner of Willow's mouth, turning into a wide grin. "I'm just glad that someone else gets to enjoy all of Luz's energy too."

Oh, she might not ever be able to get rid of the red coloring her cheeks at this point. But Willow is definitely still very much noticing the red right now, if her smug look is anything to go by. 

It seems a mischievous streak hits Luz, and she sneaks her hand against Amity's side. Amity has zero warning before Luz is tickling her without restraint. 

Amity shrieks at the sensation, and tries desperately to escape by squirming closer to Willow. 

Once she's away from the attacking hands, she realizes she's pressing into something soft, and opens her eyes to find she's positioned her face against Willow's chest. Now her ears are burning too, fantastic. 

She braces herself and glances up at Willow, who's peering at her through one open eye. 

"Hi there. Comfy?"

She decides that Willow does not need the answer to that question. Amity just wants her heart rate to go back to normal at this point.

Willow will not spare her. 

“Trying to get another kiss from me?”    

Aaaahhhhhhh!!

Amity hears herself make a strangled noise, buries herself back into Willow's chest so that at least they weren't making eye contact, and now she's seriously hoping she's not going to have a heart attack between these two. 

It seems like the sound at least signals to Willow that they've wound her up too much. She returns to her more serious, quiet side, but still places a careful hand against Amity's side. 

Perhaps Luz and Willow are having some silent communication over her, but she feels Luz shift closer to her from behind. She feels the moment that Luz covers Willow's hand on her side, pressing it down gently so she can feel the pressure from both of them. 

It's such a simple motion, but it’s blissful. 

At some point, someone's stomach rumbled and they had to leave to find food. They managed to find a local pizza shop where they stuffed themselves to the brim before finally deciding it was time to go home for the night. 

They are standing together outside of Blight Manor. Amity and Willow are standing close together while Luz is fidgeting with her beanie once again, shyly avoiding direct eye contact with anyone. She rocks on her heels. 

"Been a long time since I've seen you this nervous, Noceda" 

"It's a bit cute though, no?" 

"Hush." Luz answers, glad that her blushing is less obvious than Amity's. 

Luz straightens up to her full height. 

"Willow Park…may I give you a kiss tonight?"

“My, my, what a gentleman.” Willow answers as she steps closer to Luz. “I think you can have one tonight.” 

Amity, just like she has in the past, watches her partners share a kiss. The feeling it stirs in her is different now than before, although she knows it definitely is a pleasant one. The kiss between them is gentle, and they pull-apart smiling at each other. 

“And I would like to kiss you too, if that's okay Amity.” Luz asks, as she turns to face Amity.  

Amity nods. 

With that, Luz wraps an arm around her to close the distance between them, and Amity’s heart is thumping away when Luz cups her cheek. 

The girl studies Amity’s face for a moment before she slides her hand back to bury it in Amity’s wild hair.  She starts chuckling and Amity arches a brow in confusion. 

“You’re like my own little Pomeranian.”

Amity’s face shifts from nervous to pissed, and Willow is snickering somewhere in the background. Luz realizes too late that Amity’s fangs may just be a tad too close to her face to crack jokes. 

“Luz! Don’t ruin the moment!” 

“Too late for that, pom-pom.” 

“Willow, not you too!”

"Alright, alright, sorry about that Amity…" Luz says, as she once again brings her hand back to Amity's cheek, letting her thumb gently stroke across the soft skin there. 

Luz has to bend down to bring their faces together, and Amity tries carefully to keep breathing. Soft lips press into hers, a moment she's been waiting for that she savors for the brief moment before there's a clink of teeth as Luz tries to tilt her head into the kiss. 

They pull apart instantly, and everyone is laughing together. 

Luz rubs the back of her neck sheepishly, "Sorry, I might need some more practice kissing someone besides Willow."

"I'm sure Amity won't be complaining about that one." Willow drawls playfully. 

Amity’s too blissed-out from the kiss to even dignify that one with an answer. She’s afloat in her own cloud while she watches Willow scratch at her own chin thoughtfully for a moment. 

Willow steps closer to Amity, while Luz quietly backs away. Willow makes eye contact with Amity as she grasps Amity’s hand and brings it up to place a kiss gently on the back of it. 

Amity swears that if she were an animal, her hair would have stood on end. She might have felt just a little bit faint instead. 

It must have shown on her face, as Willow panics for a moment and grabs Amity by her side and shoulder. “Whoa. You okay there?” 

Luz whistles, “Wow, that was a bit much.”

Amity sort of registers that Willow is mumbling somewhat embarrassed about how she thought a hand kiss would be better than a full kiss tonight. 

Amity is happy to know they all have something to learn about all this. 

And that they will get to learn it together. 

Chapter Text

The junkyard is quiet save for the occasional excited shout. The weather is nice, that pleasant level of warmth that spring brings after a rather cold and bothersome winter. She might be a bit biased, though. 

Willow is lounging back against the hood of one of the long forgotten cars stationed here.  She’s feeling her usual sleepiness already, but she’s got a job to do. Maybe she should have taken up her dad’s offer of coffee this morning. 

Luz is standing in a cleared out section of the junkyard. Her bat is resting against her shoulder while she gestures with her other hand in the middle of an animated discussion with Gus who is  nodding along to whatever she’s telling him. Willow could certainly try to pick up the conversation, but if it was really that important they would tell her anyway. 

Willow isn’t too sure where Amity snuck off to this time. She’s probably trying to see if any of these old cars are hiding anything interesting.  Recently Amity has taken a strong interest in mechanical work, much to her mother’s annoyance. Willow was eager to see what Amity decides to do with this new interest of hers. 

“Willow!” Gus calls out, waving to catch her attention. 

She meets his gaze, and he continues on. 

“This time, throw really high into the air so that there’s a big arch!”

Awfully demanding she thinks with amusement. 

She directs her vine to sort through a pile of miscellaneous junk opposite of Luz and Gus. Unlike the other stuff already here, this pile was made of things Luz had “liberated” from Eda’s hoard in the name of decluttering the Owl House. 

The vine picks up a toy, a figurine that was just a little creepy in appearance. 

Willow launches the figurine effortlessly, sending it high into the sky as requested. 

Luz is ready, a focused look on her face as her eyes zero in on the toy. It starts to fall towards her…

The bat hits it with a resounding crack, and Willow watches some of the doll’s limbs fly off in different directions as the main body goes soaring into a tower of metal and slams against it. 

“Three points!” Gus calls out. 

“Only three points!? That was definitely a five pointer!” Luz stomps her foot. 

The two get into a heated discussion on the point call. Willow has absolutely no idea what point system those two have dreamt up today to really offer up any opinion on who is right. 

She settles down heavily against the car and closes her eyes. Who knows how long these two might be at it. 

She didn’t get to lounge long before there was a tapping against the hood of the car. Willow opens her eyes to see Amity had returned from whatever exploration she had been on. 

“You’re not falling asleep on us, are you?” Amity asks, wearing an amused smile on her face as she sits down next to Willow.

“Maybe. Maybe not. 50/50 chance.” Willow replies, pausing a moment to stretch out her limbs before leaning back into the car hood. “Or maybe it's 90/10. It might be your job to drive us home today.” 

Amity chuckles. “Of course it is. Who else is going to do it?” 

Willow felt like she could barely keep her eyes open, but hmmed thoughtfully in response. 

Apparently Luz and Gus must have finally clarified the point issue, as the two were waving towards Willow again. 

Gus yells, “Hit us with another one Willow!”, while Luz dons a fiercely determined look, her body wiggling as she gets into a ready position. 

Willow lazily flicks her finger, and watches as the vine hurls another piece of junk. 

There’s a gentle movement over the top of Willow’s hand, and fingers curl into her own. A pleasant warmth radiates from the contact. 

Amity is certainly not helping Willow stay awake today. Her eyes slide close even before Luz's bat hits the junk, just letting herself enjoy the moment. She listens to the cheers of Gus and Luz as the item soars away into the distance.  

Amity’s voice cuts through Willow’s sleepy haze. 

“Speaking of driving, you know, Gus is just about the right age to start learning…” 

The words jolt Willow, who sits up quickly. “Not with my car.” 

“No, no, of course not.” 

Willow's brain finally catches up and she says “But...maybe with one of your parent’s cars…” 

"Exactly." Amity answers with a mischievous, toothy grin. 

It wouldn't be without consequences, but it's always fun to mess with Odalia.  Willow is certainly down for that any day of the year. 

That line of thinking is interrupted as Luz bounds over and leans between both of them. She kisses each of Willow's and Amity's nearest cheek in quick succession. She pulls back with a smile. 

"What were you two talking about over here?" 

"Driving lessons for Gus." Amity answers. 

"Man, he'll know how to drive before I do." Luz pouts. 

Amity quirks a brow. "But you don't want to drive."

"Fair point." Luz answers, as she clumsily tries to squeeze herself between Willow and Amity on the hood. Willow helps to pull her up as Gus finishes walking over. 

"I heard my name over here, you guys aren't scheming are you?" 

"Maybe just a teeny bit." Willow answers. 

He eyes the three of them suspiciously. 

"Nothing terrible, we swear." Luz reassures. 

"I swear nothing." Willow says with amusement, as Luz lightly elbows her. 

"You were looking forward to learning how to drive, right?" Amity asks. 

"Yeah…oh!!" Gus lights up in excitement. 

The four teenagers sit around and chatter for a bit, before deciding they should head home for dinner.  

Amity does end up driving Luz and Gus home so Willow could actually get some rest. As she lulls into sleep, she reflects on how happy a day it was. For all the ups and downs she's had, she appreciates these moments, and she can't wait for what the future brings.