Y'all enjoyed the first story with Lucia and Amelia, so I tried to write a funny awkward family dinner scene and ended up with 3.5k of fluff and bad communication. Enjoy!


Today's the day. Lucia is going to tell her mom about her girlfriend, and everything is going to be fine. Camila will take it in stride and invite Amelia over for dinner without hesitation, and Amelia will be charming and brilliant and instantly win over her whole family, and her sisters aren't going to be weird at all …

She's trying that whole "manifesting' thing, and it isn't working, because she knows everyone involved. Amelia is insufferable half the time, and the other half the time she's not talking because Lucia is either throwing things at her or making out with her. Camila is – well, Camila is probably not going to approve of Amelia, to say the least.

"Hey, mom, I have a girlfriend and she gets in trouble with the school all the time, but I swear that doesn't mean she gets into fights or anything. Except all those times she got into fights with me. Okay, that's not going to work. Mom, I love you and I want you to know that –"

"Want her to know what?" Vee asks from across the room, where she's sitting on the couch doing crossword puzzles, and Lucia jumps.

"Victoria Marta Noceda, what did I tell you about eavesdropping?"

"It's not really eavesdropping if you're talking loudly in a room I happen to be in," Vee says, and Lucia scowls at her. "'Islanders who end in rebellion,' eight letters. Any idea?"

Lucia shakes her head and gets back to worrying. Hell, maybe she should just never tell Camila. It's a high school relationship, it's not like they'll be together forever, and they come within seconds of breaking up every day.

"Look what I found!"

Luz bursts through the door, holding her treasure high.

"It's a rock," Vee says, and Luz draws herself up, looking offended.

"It's an astonishingly rare rock, created millions of years ago in the vast volcanic furnaces below our feet."

"Or maybe it's just a rock," Lucia snaps. She thinks about walking out, slamming the door to her room, and flinging herself down dramatically on her bed, but that's too cliché even for her.

"Let's not fight," Vee says. "Luz, you think the rock is cool, and that's what matters. Lucia, you should tell Mom what you want to tell her."

"It's a little more complicated than that," Lucia says with a groan.

"Then I'm going to finish my crossword in peace," Vee says, and promptly starts muttering about adjectives like Lucia isn't even there.

There's nothing for it. Lucia is just going to have to walk straight up to Camila and tell her. "Hey, mom, can my girlfriend come over for dinner tomorrow?" Simple, straightforward, and to the point.

Camila gets home from work and Lucia smiles at her and makes small talk and offers to take her coat, and Camila looks bemused but doesn't say anything. If Camila's in a good mood, she's more likely to be okay with it.

There's a lull in the conversation over dinner at some point, and Lucia makes up her mind. It's now or never.

"Mom, I, uh, I have a friend."

"Congratulations?" Camila says, taking another bite of salad, and Lucia mentally self-flagellates. Of course, when all she wants to do is rip off the band-aid and get this over with, her mouth has to desert her.

"Well, not a friend, I guess. Or technically a friend? I'm not sure –" Lucia cuts herself off and nearly bangs her face into the table from sheer frustration. She doesn't get nervous and tongue-tied over admitting stupid things to her mom. Most of the time.

"Is it a boyfriend?" Camila asks, and Luz giggles from the other side of the table. Lucia glares at her.

"Well, no, she's not my boyfriend," Lucia manages. Her brain is screaming at her just say girlfriend! She's your girlfriend! Say it! It's one word! but her mouth remains uncooperative.

"Is it a girlfriend then?" Camila asks, and Lucia nods. Okay, well, that was easy. Camila looks like she as more questions, but she's not asking them yet, and the worst part is over.

"Lucia's got a girlfriend," Luz singsongs. Lucia groans and buries her face in her hands. Of course. Somehow, in all her worrying, she managed to completely forget how her sisters would react, and now they're reacting exactly the way she expected.

"Who is she?" Camila asks, mercifully shutting up Luz.

"Her name's Amelia Blight –" Lucia begins.

"Oh, I know her sister!" Luz says enthusiastically. "Amity's so cool. And you used to talk about Amelia all the time. Don't you hate her or something?"

"What? No," Lucia blurts out, before she can think about it. Actually explaining whatever happened that led to them being in a relationship is beyond her, if she's being honest.

"Girls, why don't you get your homework started while Lucia and I do the dishes," Camila says. Luz and Vee obediently troop away, grumbling, and Camila gives Lucia that look over her glasses that has always been able to terrify her into talking.

"Did you hate her?" Camila asks, picking up a few plates and taking them towards the sink. She's no longer looking at Lucia, which makes lying much easier.

"No," Lucia says, mind scrambling to come up with an excuse. "Uh, we like to joke about being eternal enemies, because one time I borrowed a pencil from her and forgot to give it back."

Technically, all of that is true. Lucia borrowed a pencil from Amelia back in sophomore year, forgot to give it back, and then spent the next eight months using that pencil and that pencil alone whenever she was in class with Amelia. It drove Amelia crazy, especially when she asked for her pencil back and Lucia looked down at it with an expression of calculated innocence and said "This isn't your pencil. I've been using it for months, and if it were your pencil, surely I would have given it back to you by now." One time, she made Amelia's face turn purple with fury, and when she woke up from her in-class nap her hair had been chopped off. But that's all behind them now. Lucia still hasn't given the pencil back, but she's sure Amelia forgave her.

"Well, that's nice," Camila says. "How long have you two been dating?"

"A few weeks, I guess?"

"You guess?" Camila turns to look at her and Lucia shrinks back. "Did you forget how long you've been together?"

"No, of course not, I'm just nervous." Well, that's not a lie. Lucia is genuinely very nervous, primarily because Camila's going to be very upset if she realizes just how antagonistic their relationship is. And by mentioning Amelia, she has pretty much guaranteed that Camila will want to meet her, and she's no longer sure if she can trust Amelia not to be an asshole for more than ten seconds.

"Don't be nervous, mija," Camila says, coming over to hug Lucia, and Lucia accepts the hug but pulls a panicked face at the wall. "I would never judge you for who you love."

Oh, she's entirely misinterpreted Lucia's nerves to be about coming out. There are worse problems.

"Thanks," Lucia manages, burying her face in Camila's shoulder to avoid screaming. Homophobia, she could have handled. But when Camila actually meets Amelia, she'll have all sorts of opinions about how it may be fun, but Lucia really shouldn't date someone who she fights with all the time, and the bad part is that she might be kind of right.

"We want to meet her and let her know she's always welcome here," Camila is saying. "Lucia, honey, it's okay, don't cry. You know I dated a girl back in college?"

"You dated girls?" Lucia yelps, her panic momentarily forgotten. "Mom, you like girls?"

"It was college," Camila says, but then she gets a vague, distracted smile that means she's reminiscing. Lucia takes that as an opportunity to flee and plan her next move.

Amelia Blight is not scared. Amelia Blight doesn't get scared. The feeling seizing at her heart and keeping her feet from taking another step towards Lucia's house is … allergies.

Lucia has a family, apparently. And apparently she has a nice family, who want to meet her girlfriend. Amelia put off accepting the dinner invitation for a week, terrified that accepting would mean she has to invite them to her family's house for dinner, but she can't delay any longer, short of catastrophic accident.

Amelia weighs up the pros and cons of breaking her leg, before realizing that she's being ridiculous. Nothing bad is going to happen. What is she worried about?

Amelia's feet feel like lead, but she forces herself forward and knocks on the door before she can back out. It looks like a nice house, with a few trees in the front yard. Lucia opens the door, thankfully, and Amelia nods awkwardly at her.

"Hey. I'm here. For dinner. Because you invited me. Unless I got the date wrong, in which case I'll leave."

"Come in," Lucia says, and she looks just as anxious and queasy as Amelia feels. "And, uh, please try to be nice to my family."

"Well, unless they're all as determined to push my buttons as you, that shouldn't be an issue," Amelia says, taking her shoes off and lining them up precisely with the wall. There are other shoes strewn around: Lucia's scribbled-on Converse, professional-looking flats, lime green jelly sandals. None of them are lined up or, indeed, organized at all, and that gets on Amelia's nerves.

"You have a lot of buttons, and they're all very large and on hair-triggers."

"Hair-triggers? That's ridiculous! I am incredibly reasonable and stable of temperament, and you better take that back before I –"

Amelia stops, aware that she's being counterproductive, and also that Lucia is laughing at her.

"That's not very nice of you," she says with a haughty sniff, rather than stooping to Lucia's level this early on.

"Lucia! Don't make your girlfriend stand outside in the hallway!" someone calls. A woman with bobbed brown hair and glasses, an inch or two shorter than Amelia, appears in a doorway. She smiles broadly when she sees Amelia and rushes over.

"Welcome, and sorry about the mess. Kids, you know?"

"Thanks for inviting me here, Ms. Noceda," Amelia says.

"Call me Camila. I'm only 'Ms.' at work."

"Okay," Amelia says, smiling nervously. Camila looks a lot like Lucia, but softer and with more lines around her eyes. If Lucia ends up looking like her in thirty years, Amelia wouldn't mind.

Why is she thinking about thirty years in the future? She and Lucia don't even like each other, really. They're in a relationship because kissing Lucia is fun and it gives her something to do that doesn't involve sitting at home with her parents.

"Are you all right?" Camila asks, and Amelia nods hastily, realizing she's been zoning out.

"Sometimes it takes her a minute or two to remember how to talk," Lucia says, and Amelia forces a smile at her.

"Or perhaps it just takes me a minute or two to decipher your inane ramblings," she says, feeling fairly satisfied with the retort, and then realizes that she's trying to be nice.

"Dinner's nearly ready. Both of you, go sit down and get settled in," Camila says, before heading back into the kitchen. Two heads pop out from another doorway, then hastily retreat when Lucia glares at them.

"My little sisters," she says. "You know how they are."

Amelia doesn't. Amity is, or was until recently, quiet, decent, and responsible, always an ally against Edric and Emira. The last few weeks, she's started getting odd and wandering around with her head in the clouds. Amelia's been trying to get to the bottom of that mystery for a while, but it's hard to extract information from Amity without it turning into a shouting match.

"Hi, Amelia!" one of the little sisters calls cheerfully, apparently undeterred. There's a scuffling sound on the other side of the wall, and then an overdramatic whisper of "We are secret agents, recovering all information necessary to determine why Lucia's temporarily lost her mind. We do not speak to the enemy!"

"I'm not your enemy, I promise," Amelia calls, and Lucia shakes her head.

"Well, first off, any enemy of mine is an enemy of theirs. Sisterhood pact. And Luz is just being stupid and pretending to be a spy, which is normal, you know, just what she does –"

Lucia continues with a story about how Luz once got a pair of binoculars for her birthday and scared the next-door neighbors into thinking that a hitman was after them, but Amelia's stuck on one word.

Enemy. Lucia thinks they're enemies.

Maybe she's overreacting to a dumb joke. Maybe Lucia's just being honest; it's not like they're even friends, after all. Lucia's little sisters think she's lost her mind, and maybe they're right. Maybe Amelia is an idiot who thought this meant a lot more than it does, who thought that maybe bringing someone to meet your family had to mean that they're more than people who hate each other and also kiss.

"Dinner!" Camila calls. The little sisters, Luz and the other one, troop out from behind the wall, sneaking glances at Amelia. They're clearly twins, and they look almost exactly like Lucia back in ninth grade, down to the mischievous sparkle in one's eye.

"Hi, Amelia!" the one without the sparkle says again. "I'm Vee, and I'm sorry about all that. Luz was joking, right?"

"Yeah, I was joking. Sorry if I scared you," the other one, Luz says, hastily.

They're apologizing, which fourteen-year-olds don't usually do unless under duress. Amelia must be looking very unhappy, she realizes, and tries to rearrange her face into something casual, open, and fun-loving.

"It's not a problem, you guys didn't scare me at all!" she says cheerily, aggressively tilting her eyebrows upward.

"Okay …" Luz says, looking a little alarmed. Amelia sighs and takes up the back of the line of people heading towards the kitchen, and tries to put all thoughts of enemies out of her head. She's meeting her girlfriend's family, and they're nice people who want to meet her.

The dining room is fairly small, with big windows that let in the fading light. The table in the center looks like it's seen better days, and most of the plates have a chip or two in them, but it feels like people live here, not like they're a perfect paper-doll family that gets set up once in a while for visitors to look at. It's nice.

It feels like a family dinner, which makes sense because it is. They pass around chicken and salad and pasta, and Camila asks how school went and Vee proudly tells them about the model helicopter she built.

"How was school for you, Amelia?" Camila asks, and Amelia panics a little.

"Uh, it went well," she says. That answer would never satisfy her parents, who would demand information on every class she's in, and make sure she's not spending time with the wrong sort of people, but that seems like enough for Camila.

"Little Miss Perfect won her speech and debate competition today," Lucia says, in a tone that's a little gentler than her usual sarcastic mockery, but still sounds harsh.

"Wow, good job!" Luz says, and Amelia ignores her. Fine, they're back on the familiar territory of insults and competition. She can handle that.

"And what did you win? A lifetime achievement award for Worst Haircuts?" There, something sharp and mean but not cutting too deep.

"I seem to recall that most of those bad haircuts were your fault," Lucia says, and something in Amelia breaks.

"Well, what else would you expect from your enemy?" she snaps, or tries to snap but her voice comes out wobbly and like she's about to cry, which is not what she needs right now. "After all, it's not like we actually like each other. Not like we might be friends. Not like you even care about me!"

Amelia shoves her chair back and walks out, because she's just blown up over nothing and ruined their perfectly nice dinner and now they're going to hate her forever. Which is apparently nothing new.

It's getting dark, and she's crying disgustingly hard, and she ends up just walking into their front yard and collapsing at the base of a tree because she can't be bothered to move. For a second there it felt like she belonged somewhere, with nice people who shared food with her just because they wanted to. But no, she's stupid and fucked all of that up and now she'll have to go back to her family and school and all the monotony of everyday life without even the chance to bicker with Lucia.

"Amelia?"

Lucia's standing in the doorway calling out to her, and Amelia doesn't answer and curls more resolutely inward, because she doesn't want to talk to Lucia. Lucia's going to laugh at her and tell her that they never cared about each other and that Amelia's stupid for even imagining it.

Lucia is walking over, still in socks.

"Amelia, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Go back to your family and leave me alone to wallow in my misery, thank you very much."

"Drama queen," Lucia says, but if Amelia weren't currently hallucinating she would swear it sounds … fond? Gentle? Kind?

"What's wrong?" Lucia asks, and Amelia looks up from her knees. Lucia genuinely looks worried; this doesn't seem like she's just waiting for Amelia to break down so she can mock her some more.

"Why'd you invite me here?" Amelia asks. "All you did was insult me and tease me and call me your enemy. Why are we even dating, if you hate me so much?"

"Blight, I don't hate you," Lucia says, and it sounds like she's rolling her eyes. She kneels down in front of Amelia so they're eye to eye. "I mean, I kiss you kind of a lot, so you have some weird ideas about hatred."

She makes a valid point, but Amelia is still honestly just confused.

"But we fight all the time," she says. "I can't remember the last time we had a civil interaction in which either of us said more than five words."

"We're having a conversation right now. More than five words have been said."

"That doesn't count," Amelia says, managing a watery smile. "But if you don't hate me, and I don't hate you, why do we act like it?"

Lucia shrugs.

"It's hard to talk about our feelings. Arguing with you is fun. Boring, lovey-dovey relationships are for straight people."

Amelia almost laughs, and Lucia smiles at her. She's looking at Amelia with hearts practically visible in her eyes, and her real crooked smile is so adorable that Amelia wants to kiss her stupid adorable face until the sun comes up.

"I care about you," Lucia says. "And I like spending time with you. Why do you think I spent two years picking fights with you every chance I got?"

"I care about you too," Amelia manages, her throat closing up. There's a voice in the back of her head, sounding suspiciously like her mother, telling her that Lucia's lying. That Amelia should never tell her, because every piece of information she gives away is just an opportunity for someone to hurt her.

Lucia leans in and kisses her, then pulls away, face still stretched into its odd, crooked smile.

"Come on. My mom is going to start telling embarrassing stories about my childhood soon, and you don't want to miss them."

They laugh together and they bicker about trees and Lucia walks her home (or to two blocks away from home, since her parents have spies everywhere) and kisses her under a streetlight and then says that she looks like she's been through a tumble dryer. Amelia retaliates by kissing both her cheeks, making sure to get big, dramatic smears of black lipstick on them that Lucia probably won't notice until she gets back.

"Stop by tomorrow; we're having stir-fry," Lucia calls as she walks away backwards, then trips over a curb and nearly falls over. Amelia laughs and watches her walk away until she's faded away into the dark.