Chapter Summary: "I'm going to take you out when this is all over Amity, I promise. No monsters, no mysteries, no deadly duels, it's going to be the most mundane slice of life date ever, and it'll be awesome."
Luz makes good on her word.
With peace finally returning to the Boiling Isles, Bonesborough enters its rebuilding phase. Unfortunately, the destruction from Belos is extensive. The Construction Coven provides all of the power glyph stickers that they have, though witches with other sigils still aren't able to use them. Nevertheless, everyone bands together to get to work. They split into groups and start working on cleaning up Hexside, building and painting stores in town, and replacing broken windows.
Amity of course helps as much as she can during the day, she wants to get Bonesborough back on its feet. By night, she meets with the Collector to work on rebuilding the portal to the human realm. She helps gather the resources and after a few all nighters, they're able to get the portal set up. When Amity opens the portal door and recognizes the familiar Connecticut trees, her heart soars. She knows two Nocedas who will be very excited.
The pure expression of joy on Luz's face makes all of the sleepless night worth it. Amity leads her gently through the portal with a tug of her hand, taking her home. Could it one day be Amity's home too? She's still not sure. There's plenty of time to decide.
With the portal fully functioning, Luz and Camila return to the human world. Luz has to return to school, which has always sounded somehow stricter than Hexside. After that, Luz visits as frequently as she can to help with the reconstruction and to spend some time with Amity. This is the first time in their relationship where things feel somewhat normal. Well… as normal as a town in ruins and living in separate universes can be. Luz always makes even the most unusual things feel normal.
This is how Amity finds herself having lunch in a bustling diner which she's told is styled from the 80's, whatever that is, with a giant filled drinking glass placed in front of her. She's been told that this is called a milkshake, though she's never had one. It's brown in color with two straws sticking out the top, one dangling towards her and the other towards Luz. She's holding Luz's right hand with her left as the two sit across from each other in a small booth. They're also sharing a large side of fries, which are fresh and delicious. Regarding the milkshake, she eyeballs it warily. What brown animal was killed to make this?
Luz grabs the straw nearest to her and takes a loud slurp. "Yup, that hits the spot," She smiles and waggles her eyebrows, "Don't wanna try?" She teases, giving Amity's hand a gentle squeeze. "I promise it's good."
The upbeat song which was playing winds to an end, replaced by some boy band group that Amity can never remember the name of. Their songs are all cheesy, but lately Amity's started to find the lyrics somewhat relatable.
"Alright." Amity doesn't want to let Luz down, returning the hand squeeze with one of her own. She pulls the straw towards her with two fingers, she did learn about straws from her prior time in Connecticut. She sucks tentatively, surprised when the drink is freezing cold. It's sweet, basically all sugar. Amity curses internally for being nervous. "It's good!" She assures Luz, "Though not as good as Fairy Pie."
This draws an exaggerated shudder from the other side of the table. "Never again." Luz grimaces. "I still have nightmares you know!"
Amity has learned that it's okay to eat other animals, but typically they have to be deceased and altered so they don't look like an animal anymore. She gets it, but also humans are kind of a weak species. She smiles at Luz's reaction. "I didn't know. It took me hours to bake that pie."
"Awww so cute," Luz sticks out her tongue, "You had a crush on me."
"I did," despite the fact that they've been together for a while at this point, Amity's ears still blush pink from the confession.
Luz beams from ear to ear, her smile lighting up an already bright room. They hold eye contact for a moment, which Luz breaks to take another loud slurp from the milkshake they're sharing. She pulls her hand away from Amity, choosing to point her thumb and index fingers in L shapes and uses them to frame her face. "So, you're probably wondering why I brought you here, Blight." This is followed by another eyebrow waggle.
Amity is confused for a moment, "Wasn't it to get this?" Speaking of which, it's melting a bit and starting to look like liquid soup.
"Partially, yeah!" Luz grabs a handful of French fries, "but that's not all!" Luz chews and pulls a folded piece of white paper from her pocket. She unfolds it slowly and passes it over to Amity. "I haven't forgotten my promise to you. No monsters, no mysteries, no deadly duels, the most mundane slice of life date ever. I wrote down all of the most cliché date ideas I could think of, and well…" Luz rubs the back of her neck with one hand sheepishly, "I thought we could do all of them in one day to make this date as amazing as possible. Sharing the milkshake was the first thing on my list."
Amity reads through chicken scratch notes, hyper aware of the anticipation radiating off her girlfriend as she takes another drink from their shared milkshake. Luz has written out about ten activities, some which she easily understands such as 'hold hands walking through a park' and others which she's never heard of such as 'go bowling' and 'play laser tag.' That last one sounds dangerous.
Why do they need to cram all of this in one day? Amity's not sure, but she can't bring herself to question it. Not when Luz put so much time into planning this and is clearly looking forward to it. She smiles and passes back the list, "Alright, I'm game. What's up next?"
"We gotta finish the shake first, my silly Sweet Potato." Luz pushes the glass towards Amity. "Here, I think I've been hogging it."
Amity takes another sip, only about a third of the drink remains. "You're fine, I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's different than what I expected, but in a good way."
The two of them spend another ten minutes chatting happily in the diner and finishing off the milkshake. Luz pays and they head out through the diner's front sliding doors.
The warm spring air greets them, birds are chirping in nearby trees and a gentle breeze is blowing, it's a perfect day to be outside. Amity breathes in deeply, she'll never get tired of the freshness of human spring.
Luz takes Amity's hand and excitingly points across the street. "That's our next stop!" Amity follows her gaze and sees a warehouse sized building with a large neon sign that reads 'GRAVESFIELD LASER TAG.' In small letters underneath it says, 'It's to die for!'
The activity she was worried about immediately shows its face. Amity's gut is skeptic, the slogan is… concerning to say the least. Images of Luz getting beaten by Belos flash through her mind and her chest suddenly feels like it has a ton of bricks laying on top of it. She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, happy that Luz's attention is across the street and she hasn't noticed Amity's reaction. Everything is fine, Belos can't hurt them anymore, they're safe. How can she ask about this carefully without upsetting her girlfriend? Amity takes another deep breath in and speaks, "Luz, not to question your judgement, but have you been there before?"
Luz nods, her eyes finally shifting back to look at Amity, "Yahuh, tons of times. Why?" Her eyes soften as she looks up and down Amity's face, "Are you okay?" Luz fully turns back to grab Amity's other free hand. "We don't have to go if you don't want to."
"It just doesn't seem safe, with lasers and all." Amity looks down at their joined hands. "I don't want us to get hurt."
She looks up and sees that Luz is smiling again. "You're so cute to worry, but laser tag is perfectly safe!" Luz reassures her, "The lasers are just beams of light, not real lasers."
The tension Amity didn't realize she was holding in her shoulders drains and is replaced with embarrassment from being so silly. This is the human realm, of course even things that sound deadly actually aren't. "Sorry about that, let's give it a try."
Luz boops her on the nose, "You don't need to apologize Sweet Potato, you can always tell me when something is bothering you. I'm glad you care." Luz leans in and kisses her on the cheek. "Okay let's go! We've got some children to DESTROY!" Her raise in volume is accompanied with a fist shaken dramatically towards the sky and Amity can't help but to laugh jovially at Luz's goofiness.
Her chipper mood completely returned, Luz leads Amity across the street and into Gravesfield Laser Tag. The interior is poorly lit with dim wall lights. It has high ceilings, dark carpet, and arcade machines lining the walls and in neat rows throughout the room. Amity reads the names of the games as they walk by, most seem to have a unique gimmick attached. Noisy children are running down the rows, throwing coins at each other but thankfully miss Amity and Luz. Peppier music than from the diner is blasting overhead that she doesn't recognize.
In the very back there's a large counter and two doors. Another neon sign is above the doors, labeling the entrance and exit for laser tag. The counter also has a sign which says 'signup' and a teen is helping a customer. The teen has curly black hair which matches his staff t-shirt, is a bit taller than Luz, and Amity figures can't be much older than sixteen. Luz and Amity get in line to wait and after a few minutes he frees up, so they step up to the counter.
Now that they're closer, Amity realizes he has his cell phone in his left hand, which he's holding below counter level. How classy. "How many games?" He asks dryly.
Luz's enthusiasm can't be brought down by his lack thereof. "Hi Tyler! Just one please, for the two of us." Luz motions to Amity next to her to make it clear who she's referring to.
Tyler glances over at Amity, expression still uninterested. "K. That'll be fifteen dollars." Tyler accepts money from Luz. "Game just started, so come back in like…" he glances down at his phone which apparently he's forgotten is supposed to be hidden, "ten minutes."
"Let's play some games while we wait!" Luz says happily as they walk away from the counter. "Visiting an arcade was on my list anyway, so this is two birds with one stone. Did any of them catch your eye?"
Amity does a scan of the room. There are a large variety of games to choose from. Some have wheels for driving cars, some have small plastic guns attached, and there are many others. One close to them looks unique to Amity. She walks over to it with Luz following close behind. The game has a small punching bag hanging at eye level with a large electronic screen behind it. "How about this one?"
"Hmm," Luz raises one hand to her chin, "I haven't done this one before, but it does look fun." Without hesitating, Luz fishes a couple quarters from her pocket and pushes them into a slot under the screen.
The machine switches from a generic loading screen to a menu. They get the option to choose between single player or multiplayer. "Ooh, they have multi, let's try it!" Luz selects it and then a tutorial with instructions pops up next. The game instructs that they'll take turns punching the bag, when it's their turn they have to punch in tempo with the music and with circles that appear on the screen.
To put it briefly, they're equally terrible and are both keeled over laughing by the end of the final song. Amity wipes away a tear as she tries to stop laughing long enough to speak. "I can't believe that we beat Grom."
That sends Luz into a new laughing fit, "For real, I think that was a fluke." The game greets them with a 'Game Over' and rolls to credits. No high score is given, but Amity is honestly okay with it. Her chest feels warm and light, she hasn't had this much fun since before the Day of Unity. Luz seems equally happy, which just makes the whole day that much better.
Amity estimates it's been around seven or eight minutes, so they go to wait near the entrance to the laser tag. A mother with two small children and a few teenagers are also waiting there. The exit door swings open and what must be a party of ten or so children and two parents stream out, chattering loudly amongst themselves. A female teenager wearing a staff shirt follows the loud group out, shutting the door behind them. The kids disperse into the arcade like a horde of beast demons descending upon an already weakened prey.
The teen employee walks over to Tyler with a sigh, exchanging a few words with him as she turns to count the group Amity's waiting with. After a few seconds, she walks over and addresses them. "Alright, you guys ready?" She tries to speak with excitement, which is a step up from Tyler, but Amity can tell her heart isn't really in it. "We'll do four vs four, let's go."
When Amity gets into the staging area, she sees what almost look like backpack straps with no backpacks. They appear to go over the shoulders and around your waist. A plastic gun is dangling from each one, held on by a coiled plastic line, it kind of looks like rope.
Amity then proceeds to have the second greatest best time of her life, the best time still being her first kiss with Luz. It's pitch black except for the distance lights of other players. She runs, shoots, hides, and sometimes sees defeat. Their match time goes by in a flash and Amity feels a tinge of disappointment when the overhead bell rings for them to return to the entrance. Inside the waiting area there's a leaderboard. She checks the board. Luzernator has 15 kills and 2 deaths. Guest 1, she's assuming that's her, has 4 kills and 13 deaths. Luz gives her a friendly shoulder bump as she slides in behind her to check out the leaderboard. "Dangggg you did great! The first time I played I'm pretty sure I got zero kills."
"You did even better," Amity compliments Luz and leans over to return the cheek kiss from earlier. "My hero."
She's rewarded with Luz's usual adorable blush, pink appearing just under her eyes. Amity never gets sick of seeing her like this. Luz quickly snaps out of it with a sheepish grin. "Ready for our next adventure?"
Amity nods and the two of them say goodbye to Gravesfield Laser Tag. The next activity on Luz's list is mini golf, and this is actually something that Amity tried when she was trapped here last year. Luz still insists that it's super cliché and needs to be included even though they've been before, so she agrees they can go there next.
The Gravesfield Mini Golf course is a couple miles down the street, so they jump on the bus. Amity estimates it's late afternoon by the time they hit balls on the first tee. She's ever so slightly better at this than she was at the punching rhythm game. Luz is really talented, which she credits to years of practice since she was little. They finish the 18 holes without incident, Luz with a score of 40 and Amity with a score of 74.
Next is ice skating, which requires another bus ride. Amity watched Luz ice skate previously but was too nervous to try it herself. This time, she decides to be brave, for the sake of Luz's perfect date.
Once they arrive, Luz helps tie Amity's skates and holds both of her hands to lead her to the ice. Of course, Luz isn't a great skater herself, so she holds Amity's hand as they skate but sometimes has to let go to regain her balance. Only once do they both tumble down together, but they end up laughing together as they sit on the ice. Who knew that sliding around on ice could be this fun?
The sun is starting to go down when they leave the ice rink. Camila asked for them to be home by 10:00 PM, so they still have some time. Luz takes her to Gravesfield Pizza next and they split a 'surprise me' pizza. The surprise this time is green onions, pepperoni, and mushrooms. It's kind of a weird tasting pizza, but it's fun because they're together.
Luz starts looking at her list again as they eat, laughing when she gets pizza grease all over the paper. "Dang, I wanted to go see The Haunted Carnival at the drive in movies, but it already started." She frowns slightly, "we didn't make it to bowling either, that's okay I guess… We'll just skip ahead." Luz shoves another slice of pizza in her face. "Nexch ue'll ueead tco tche hark." She's near impossible to understand with her mouth full of pizza.
"To hold hands and walk through it?" Amity guesses with an amused tint to her voice.
Luz nods, mouth still stuffed. She chews for a solid minute before swallowing. She grabs her water and takes a long sip. "We can even walk there, no more bus."
They finish eating and walk over to a nearby park that Amity's been to in the past. It's about one mile each direction and has cris crossing paths running through it. Flower beds and trees line the path with a large open field near the center. There are also street lights every hundred feet or so to light their way. They have concerts here sometimes, though Amity's only been once.
As they enter the park, she offers her hand to Luz which is happily accepted, twining their fingers together. They immerse themselves in the quiet atmosphere of the park, enjoying each other's company.
As they near the center of the park, Amity breaks the silence. "You know, I don't think this is very cliché."
Luz glances over and makes eye contact, her light brown eyes shining even only lit by the moon and a distant street light. "Clearly you haven't seen enough human romance movies. I'll make it my personal mission to fix that."
Amity scoffs jokingly and steps closer as they walk, their arms also touching lightly. The field appears before them, "Should we turn back?"
"We have one last cliché activity to top off this date." Luz pauses for dramatic effect and then flourishes to the sky with her free hand. "Star gazing!"
"Oh." Amity's surprised, she forgot that the stars and sky are completely different here than the Boiling Isles. "That sounds nice."
The pair walk into the field, putting distance between themselves and the street lights. Luz releases her hand, but takes it back greedily as soon as they lie down in the grass. Amity stares upwards, amazed at how many little stars appear in the sky. "Do you know the constellations Luz?" she asks curiously.
Luz gasps loudly, "My, of course I do!" She laughs, "I learned them in middle school. During lunch everyone went outside and played, but some days if the other kids were extra mean to me, I'd find myself in the library. I found a book on constellations there and memorized all of them."
Amity's heart drops a little, "I'm sorry that you were bullied." She squeezes Luz's hand tightly.
"Aww, it's okay." Luz smiles and looks towards the stars, "It made me who I am today."
Luz starts to point out constellations to her. She shows her Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, which Amity spots pretty easily. Then she goes into Leo, Hyrda, and a few others which Amity has a hard time spotting.
Eventually, they run out of constellations to identify and just lay there in peaceful silence.
"Hey Amity." Luz lets go of Amity's hand and sits up to lean on one elbow, her eyes looking down at Amity. "I'm sorry that we couldn't do more today. In my head, I really thought we could fit it all in."
Amity props herself up as well so they're face to face and at the same level. She cradles Luz's cheek fondly, pleased when Luz leans into her touch. "We did plenty. Today was amazing, thank you Luz." She leans in and the two gently kiss. As always, a tingle shoots down her spine, the contact making her head spin. "I'm curious though, why did you want to do everything today? We'll have more dates, I don't think the drive in movie will be shutting down anytime soon."
Luz tenses under her touch, glancing away. "Uhmmm… This is going to sound so stupid." Amity silently reassures her with a gentle brush of her thumb against her cheek, silently encouraging her to keep going. Luz takes a deep breath. "Sometimes, I think about Belos, the Collector when they were trying to turn us into puppet slaves, about how close we were to losing everything, how close I was to losing my mom, my friends, and you. And I just…" Her eyes well up with tears, "I don't want to miss anything. I don't want to have any regrets." Her voice breaks and the following chuckle crackles as if forced, "I know it's dumb."
Amity's heart aches in her chest seeing Luz upset, she moves her hand to tenderly wipe away Luz's tears. "It's not dumb, I completely understand. Eda told me after the fight that you disappeared, they weren't sure what happened. That scared me. I'm so grateful that you came back." Amity moves for another kiss, this time gingerly pressing her lips against Luz's forehead. "I'll always be here for you, even when we're in different worlds."
They walk back to the bus station hand in hand. Amity has no regrets with how she chose to spend her day. Even though she'll soon have to return to the Boiling Isles, she knows Luz will always be by her side.
Thank you for reading the first chapter! This is my nanowrimo project for 2023 and I'm planning for it to be decent in length!