Work Text:
Amanda is used to thinking women are pretty. She's always noticed how the flutter of eyelashes makes her want to kiss their eyelids into pleased stillness, how their arms make her want to jokingly compare muscles the way men do if only to feel skin on skin, the way the outstretched leg thing played for laughs on TV makes her break into nervous giggles instead.
It's all old hat by now, part of the scenery.
Which is why it doesn't make sense when she's so caught off guard when she gets her first real good look at Johnny Lawrence's date.
She doesn't think it showed, and thank God for her natural social instincts carrying her forward throughout the whole night, but she keeps thinking about it - the undeniable urge to have this stranger pay attention to her, laugh at her jokes and at the manboys in solidarity.
The thing is: Carmen is gorgeous, sure, but there are many gorgeous women in the world, some of whom Amanda has had the pleasure of meeting, as well as meeting. She's sweet and humble and easy to talk to, and God the way she dances could convert a nun so fully as to create a religion for her - but it doesn't make her anything particularly special. Not singular.
The only other person who has intrigued her so much is Daniel, and even he didn't get under her skin until their second or third meeting. But that's the charm of Daniel: he sneaks up on you; you think he's just a goofy non-threatening guy until you find yourself thinking it's a little suave.
Carmen isn't goofy, though very fun, and she doesn't seem cocky enough to be suave.
Maybe it's that she's not exactly non-threatening. Maybe other people, who aren't used to looking at everyone with sharp eyes, think she is, but Amanda can see the steel in her backbone, the determination that lets her stand when no one else would get up. Amanda doesn't meet many women like that: they're either very demure or extremely in-your-face-brash like Amanda herself is, no in between.
A little part of her thinks it might be jealousy. The way Carmen talked about her son, about parenting in general, reminds her of what her mother used to talk about: the easy love for your child, how motherhood brought out the soft parts you might have not known you had. You'll understand when you're older, her mother had said in response to her confusion, a fond smile on her face.
She's older now and still doesn't understand. She still struggles to root out her tender actions, finds it easier to sooth anxieties with carefully non-condescending rationality and humor than to make tea and hug it out. Even easier to make the source of the anxieties disappear, if possible.
But Carmen - Carmen is clearly the woman Amanda's mother had envisioned Amanda would grow to be, full of both the brushes of forehead kisses AND the superhuman strength to pull a car off her son.
Amanda's mother would adore Carmen. Lucille would probably love Carmen - would probably make pointed little jokes about how Daniel should have met her back in the 90s instead.
And Amanda would have to smile, and grit her teeth, even as Daniel came to her defense, and try not to imagine a world where Daniel and Carmen formed a picture perfect family, while she herself was just a business partner, always on the outside looking in.