Work Text:
Amity’s relationship with Luz works something like this: Luz does anything, anything at all, whether it be doodling in the margins of her notes or talking rapid-fire about her newest interest or facing down whatever new magical horror has dredged itself up from the depths of the world this time, and Amity's crush on her stutters and swells until she’s flushed and stumbling and rocketing straight off into the stratosphere. It’s a way of seeing the world that she’s not quite accustomed to, an emotion that’s as confusing as it is endearing and as frustrating as it is sweet, but after an extended series of late-night existential crises she’s concluded that she wouldn’t give the experience up for anything in the world. Her crush may be as embarrassing as any one thing gets- the other day Luz bumped into her in the hall and she swears that she nearly died - but it’s as much a part of her as anything else, so she can’t find it in herself to push it away. She figures that she’ll let it run its course, let whatever happens happen, and she’ll work with what she can until she can’t any longer.
But the thing about letting her crush run wild- and the thing about letting herself feel whatever she’d like too whenever she’d like to, something that’s new to her and still a little uncomfortable in the same way as a new pair of shoes might be, or a conversation with someone that you can’t quite remember the name of- is that whenever Luz does anything, anything at all it makes her feel like she’s about to explode. Like she’s grown too big for her body, like she’s so happy that she’s forgotten that she could ever be anything else, like there’s something pressing at the inside of her chest and poking and prodding at her throat, asking very nicely to be let out.
And today she can’t look away because today Luz is sitting on a table and laughing with her friends, and she’s got a bag slumped over into her side and trailing from it and up into her hands is a strand of purple-blue-purple variegated yarn. She’s winding it around her fingers and over a stick-thin needle, and Amity is watching and trying to pretend that she’s not because the movement is kinda hypnotic and the flash of the needle keeps tugging at the corner of her eye and the yarn looks really really soft and she wants to see if it is but she’s also not sure how to work that into casual conversation considering that she is a) on the other side of the room and b) still trying to pretend that she’s doing the schoolwork that she gave up on fifteen minutes ago. She’s resorted to propping a book up in front of her face and staring over the top of it, somewhat obviously because she sort of wants to get invited over and she’s hoping that if she just thinks hard enough in Luz’s direction she’ll tap into some sort of friendship hivemind (that’s a thing, right?) and Luz will invite her over without her having to do something completely terrifying, like express genuine interest by going over there first.
She’ll get there one of these days, she’s sure, but until then- baby steps. Until then she’ll just keep staring as hard as she’s able over the top of a textbook that may or may not be upside down, she should probably check on that before she makes a fool of herself, and she’s going to wallow in her feelings regarding the revelation that Luz knows how to knit, apparently, and that she seems to be really good at it too if the speed and four needles she’s working with now are any indication. Amity knows nothing about knitting apart from what it looks like; she wonders if Luz would tell her about it if she asked, if her eyes would light up like they do when she’s excited, if she would smile in that warm way she does that Amity doesn’t understand and can never quite replicate, no matter how often she finds herself standing in front of the mirror and trying and trying and trying.
From what Amity can figure, she’s not able to mimic that particular brand of open-hearted cheerfulness because she deals largely in restraint. It’s why she’s still alone in the corner of the room, hidden behind her (definitely upside-down, fuck ) textbook instead of having the time of her life talking with Luz and Gus and Willow about the many probable differences between the development of fiber arts in the human world versus the Boiling Isles and the Demon Realm at large, because while she’s sure that the general idea is the same there’s probably some very interesting variation regarding fibers and their sources and the like and Amity may not know anything really about knitting but she does know how to be curious and she does like to learn when that learning isn’t tied to stress. Her interest is all very logical, so she can’t be blamed for the way that she stares.
She can, however, be blamed for what happens next because she’s gotten much less subtle at some point during her inner monologue and as a result her textbook has tilted down far enough that Luz could definitely see Amity staring if she were to look over, and because life is not half as funny as it believes itself to be but Amity is just as unlucky as she thinks she is, Luz lifts her head up right then. They make eye-contact, and Amity dies a little. And then Luz breaks out into a smile and waves her over, and Amity dies again, just for good measure. Immediately she stands on instinct, letting the textbook fall to the table with a heavy thump (and promptly dying a third time, for dramatic effect) and before she knows it her legs have carried her all the way across the room.
“Amity!” Luz exclaims when she’s made her way over. She doesn’t stop knitting, hands moving with a practiced ease as Gus watches with wide-eyed fascination and Willow does much the same. Amity finds herself torn between watching and looking at Luz; she settles for doing both, darting her eyes up and down and trying her best not to look conspicuous about it. “Look! Eda found someone’s knitting bag in a pile of old human stuff, and she said I could have it! Didn’t even make me pay or anything which I really appreciate, because honestly I’m still not really sure how the money around here works. Magical currency is a whole thing if you’re not used to it, lemme tell you.”
This is all said quickly, with the cadence of an old joke (that Amity doesn’t know) and without a break in her work. She’s swinging her legs too, something as cute as it is hazardous which is to say very, but Amity can’t bring herself to move away because she’s taken in already by the closeness of it all, by the way that she can see the chips in Luz’s nail polish and the detailing of the half-inch of knitting that she’s cranked out already, by the way that her movements are so practiced and regular that the tiny stitches and multiple needles don’t seem to throw her off at all.
“Did you know that human money stays in fixed amounts, even if you leave it alone?” Gus says from somewhere by her elbow, and Amity jumps a bit. “Doesn’t multiply or sprout legs or learn to talk or anything! Luz tried to explain to me how humans organize it if not by that, but she said that they just use numbers and-” he makes a face, scrunches his nose and then whispers the next bit like it’s a secret. “That sounds kinda boring , dontcha think?”
And then he looks at Amity, and he’s very earnest and genuinely excited and Amity has little experience with either of those things so she panics and looks to Luz, who just nods in encouragement and smiles which only muddles Amity’s brain up even more, and that’s just not fair.
“Yeah. Yeah,” she ends up squeaking out, high-pitched and with the sort of strangled waver that tends to show its (unfortunate) face whenever Amity does something terrifying like try to talk to people her own age. Gus nods, apparently satisfied with her lackluster response, and Luz shoots her a thumbs up that they all see so mission accomplished, apparently. Amity allows herself a second of pride and then shakes it off, turns back to the situation at hand.
“So, uh, what are you making? Um. Knitting?” she asks, voice smoother now that she’s successfully navigated an interaction, even if the words themselves are still a little jumbled, a little messy. She’ll take what she can get, and this seems like a logical next step to success; first a conversation with the girl she likes, next the whole wide world. Foolproof.
“A pair of gloves,” Luz says, and then quick as a whip she’s putting her work down in her lap and reaching out to press her hand over Amity's, raising them both to eye-level and squinting, completely unaffected as Amity’s soul proceeds to vacate her body. Willow snorts a little, and whatever bit of her that was still clinging to her bones flings itself off into nothing. At least Gus seems more interested in the flaking-off letters screen printed onto the old canvas bag than in this very embarrassing but not terrible, actually, she’s dealt with worse situation; at least the frantic dart of her eyes back and forth and the rattle of her breath as it catches in her throat isn’t noticed by everyone. She thinks that someone out there deserves to live in blissful ignorance, and more than that she thinks that after all of this she deserves to live vicariously through the thought of them.
“Gloves?” she repeats weakly as soon as she’s gathered enough of herself to do so. Willow is pressing her lips together now, concentrating very hard on a far-off dot on the wall that may or may not actually exist. Gus has whipped out a tiny notebook and is scribbling down notes off of a label that he nicked from one of the balls of yarn, and Amity is still standing and she is still holding Luz’s hand and she is so far out of her depth by now that sunlight is a distant memory. It’s just her, the soft warmth of Luz’s hand in her own, and the constant, pervasive voice in the back of her head that thinks that she’s going to probably mess this up because this conversation has launched itself right over the realm of things she knows how to deal with and right into the fantasy dimension of pretty girl talking to me, pretty girl paying attention? To ME? Pretty girl holding my hand? and frankly she doesn’t know how to deal with it.
“Gloves!” Luz cheers, raising their still-joined hands. “I didn’t know who they were gonna be for, but our hands are about the same size so they’re gonna be yours now! No arguments!”
“But-” Amity starts on instinct, because her brain is still stuck in talking to a pretty girl mode and she’s not really capable of much more.
“Nope,” Luz laughs, releasing her hands and picking her work back up. Amity stares at her, bug-eyed and completely lost. “I like making gloves anyways, so all of you are probably going to end up with a pair if Eda finds more yarn. Maybe some socks too. I mean I can’t really do anything too big because these are the only needles we found and I haven’t really had time to find out if there’s any craft stores in the Demon Realm-” there are, of course, and Amity makes a mental note to get Luz a list as soon as she’s capable of coherent speech again- “But for now this is all I’ve got, so you’re getting gloves. No arguments! I mean it this time!”
“She means it,” Willow whispers, voice heavy with the world-weary affectations of someone who is having way too much fun with all of this. “She said that after she finished these gloves she was gonna make me a hat and I told her she didn’t have to, and now she’s threatened to make me a whole sweater once she’s found the stuff for it.”
She nods, eyes soft and solemn behind her glasses. Amity nods back because she is not sure what else she’s meant to do.
“I’ve really missed knitting,” Luz says, “So now that I’ve started again I’m not gonna stop , which means that I’ve gotta make everything . Leg warmers. Fingerless gloves. Little stuffed animals. Everything. All of it.”
She punctuates her statement with a jab of her free needle up towards the ceiling, holding it aloft for a few- necessary of course, as any good drama requires commitment- seconds before dropping her hand and laughing in that full-body way that she does that starts in her shoulders and goes down to her stomach and makes Amity feel all warm and flustered.
“You should teach me,” Gus says, snapping his notebook shut and shoving it into his pocket. Immediately Luz’s laughter stops as her head whips towards him with obvious interest. “Maybe. So I can see how real life human knitting works. Please? Pleeeease?”
His eyes are wide and imploring, filled to the brim with all the same excitement from before and even Amity feels like giving in. It’s very confusing, so she looks down at the floor and tries to quell all the strange feelings she’s felt in the past five minutes with her minute knowledge of how to approach feelings in general. The end effect is somewhat like trying to put out a forest fire with a water gun; blatantly ineffective, ridiculous looking from the inside, ridiculous looking from the outside. A fool’s errand, if she’s feeling dramatic; pointless, if she’s fed up with dramatics and wants to get on with her life.
So it’s pointless. Gus is leaned half into the table and looking at Luz and Willow is openly doing the same thing and Amity is doing her best to copy the both of them while pretending that she is not, because she still hasn’t tapped into that friendship hivemind so she’s falling back on trial and error, and the thing about trial and error is that you’re very rarely going to get it right on the first try. Luz looks happy at least, dropping her work in her lap for a moment so that her hands are free to tap and flutter at her sides.
“Oh!” she gasps. “Yeah! That would be fun, that would be a lot of fun, we should do that! We should do that! Willow! Amity! I could show you guys too and then we could have like, movie and knitting nights and it would be so cool it would be so much fun, what do you think? Yeah?”
Amity distantly registers Willow agreeing, saying that yeah, that does sound like fun, and even further behind that she hears Gus’s excited shout and Luz’s thrilled response, and their energy is folding and feeding off of itself and she’s unsure how to keep up with it so she’s sort of shunted herself off to the side in an attempt at recuperation, and it’s all just a little overwhelming. She’s a little overwhelmed. The idea of Luz teaching her how to knit, maybe leaning in close, maybe pressing into her side, maybe placing her hands over her own, it’s-
Overwhelming. Interesting, intriguing, something that she’d like. Overwhelming.
“Amity!” Luz cheers, and she’s snapped back to her body, snapped back to the situation. “Amity, you’re gonna join, right? I could show you how to make a scarf, because everybody’s gotta make at least one scarf, it’s a rule, but then you’d know how and we could make all sorts of stuff. And if we
all
learn then we could make one of those blankets that you make out of squares because I’ve never had the patience to make one all by myself but we could
definitely
manage it if there were four of us, and it would be so much fun! So what do you say? You in?”
She looks as she always does, leaned forwards as if she’s about to break out of her skin and grow into something larger, looking so excited at the prospect of her idea becoming reality that she seems lit up from the inside out. Amity looks away, because Amity is only so strong, and then she nods. Slow and hesitant, tight-lipped because she doesn’t trust herself to not come spilling out with everything and anything she’s ever felt right then and there and that would be messy and embarrassing and she would probably try to run and then slip and fall and be left to wallow in her own mess of feelings forever. It could happen. It definitely could.
So she says nothing in the interest of self-preservation, but the nod is enough for Luz and she gives an excited yelp, places her work in her bag as carefully as can be before jumping down off the table and- after another nod from Amity for permission- gives her a quick hug.
“This is gonna be great!” she cheers. “I’ve gotta go tell Eda so that we can find more needles or yarn or that Demon Realm craft store that’s gotta exist somewhere , and-” she jumps in place for a moment, and then she turns around quick as can be to gather up her things. “I’m gonna go right now because Eda should be back soon and I wanna talk to her as soon as I can so that we can get this going, and it’s gonna be so much fun you guys, but I gotta go so bye !”
She runs off, leaving Amity’s head spinning. She’s reeling a bit, lost and more than a little confused as to what exactly she just agreed to, and so she gives another quick nod to Willow and Gus- she still doesn’t trust herself enough to talk- and then she turns around and starts back towards her desk with it’s measly little textbook and scattered papers and pens. She plays the whole interaction backwards in her mind as she moves, still feeling all strange and turned around and inside-out, and she thinks with a resigned horror that she’s really gone on Luz, like chocolates-on-the-doorstep gone, like love-letters-slipped-into-lockers gone, the sort of gone that has her propping her chin up in her hand and heaving deep sighs and constructing complex daydreams wherein she and the Luz that lives in her head solve mysteries on the streets of a large and winding city and maybe end up kissing once or twice or several times. For plot-related reasons of course, if plot-related reasons included her giant crush and really had very little to do with the plot of her (action-packed, somewhat dense) daydream at all.
But regardless, as she arrives back at her desk and fumbles her- still upside down- textbook into her bag she can think one thing and one thing alone:
What exactly has she gotten herself into this time?