Chapter Text
Eda was waiting in Luz's living room when she dragged herself in through the front door behind Raine.
“There you are!” Eda scowled and Luz winced. Her headache had only just begun to dull back to normal hangover size since her aunt had finished yelling at her a mere half hour ago. “Do you have any idea how fucking worried I was when we came here you weren’t here?! And wouldn’t answer your phone!?” she snapped as Luz plopped heavily onto the couch and buried her face in her hands.
Raine disappeared into the kitchen as Eda rolled herself in front of Luz, still scowling.
“Well?!” she snapped.
Luz sighed heavily into her hands before looking up. There was still a hard look in Eda’s eyes, despite her softened scowl.
“You look like shit…”
“I feel like shit,” she murmured, scrubbing roughly at her face.
Eda leaned back in her chair and silently regarded Luz before letting out a sigh that was just as much exasperated growling as anything else.
“You talked to her?” She asked and Luz nodded slowly. “And?”
“She’s gotten worse lately… had sepsis… She didn’t want to be my burden… it was just like you said. She was trying to push me away so I wouldn’t have to see her like that…” Luz’s voice tightened. With what, Eda couldn’t be sure.
Frustrations, anger, sadness, confusion, and nausea all flickered across her face too quick to distinguish from each other.
“So… what are you going to do?” Eda asked, cocking her head as Raine came back into the living room with a glass of water and a couple of pills that they handed over to Luz, who took them with a small, grateful smile.
It was short-lived though as she pushed herself back to her feet.
“I dunno… we didn’t really get to talk because I feel like I got hit by a bus… and her brother and sister were there,” she grumbled. “I told her I’d come back tomorrow to talk… right now, I just want to go take a hot shower and lay down.” She turned and dragged her feet across the floor to the stairs. She stopped at the steps, one hand on the banister, and glanced at the older couple over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry for worrying you guys…,” She looked between them.
“We’re just glad that you’re alright.” Raine smiled.
Eda pursed her lips and tapped her long nails on the arm of her chair. Raine glanced down at her before giving her a gentle nudge and jutting their chin out at Luz. Eda sighed.
“No I’m sorry, Kid. I shouldn’t have given you anything to drink. Especially considering the headspace you were in last night. That was… more irresponsible of me than usual. I’m sorry,” she said.
“It wasn’t your fault…” Luz sighed. “I made that decision… I’m gonna go lay down.” She turned and trotted up the stairs, every bounce in her step made her stomach churn, despite knowing that there was nothing left in it. She had left all that back in Amity’s room.
Her room was quiet and dark when she opened the door. The blinds were still drawn tight against the outside light.
She needed a shower but she didn’t feel like she could hold herself up long enough to even get through it. She slugged back the aspirin and water Raine had given her before kicking off her shoes and crawling beneath the covers. She felt weary down to the bone and her emotions were ragged and aw at the edges.
She and Amity still had stuff to talk about, that was certain but the largest, most gaping of her wounds had been sewn shut, despite still feeling inflamed.
The life-draining bleeding had stopped at least.
She pulled the blankets up over her head and buried her face into the pillows, content to stifle herself in the darkness in an ill-fated attempt to make the pounding in her head and stiffness in her body go away.
Eventually, it lessened enough and it hardly took long for her to drift back into unconsciousness.
She stayed like that for a long while.
At least until later that afternoon when the shrill ringing of her phone dragged her from the murky depths of unconsciousness by the nose.
She groaned into her pillow before slowly prying her face out of the hot fabric, it stuck to her cheek, wet with drool. She slapped her hand around on the bed aimlessly, searching for the damn device as it screamed at her. Finally, her fingers brushed it and she grabbed it, dragging it over to her head.
“Hello?” she grumbled.
There was a long pause on the other end and she was about to hang up and slam the phone down when a voice finally came through the speaker.
“Mija?”
Luz’s eyes snapped open and she did her best not to hiss into the phone as light-filled her eyes.
“Heyyyy, Mami, how’s the honeymoon?” she managed to ask as she pushed herself up onto her elbows.
“The cruise has been wonderful so far, I just wanted to call and check on you. Neither Lilith nor I saw you when we left last night and Eda said you didn’t feel well and went home. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I think I just… ate too much cake and my stomach started hurting. I didn’t want to get sick at the wedding so I left. I’m okay, Mom. How’s Lilith?” she asked, quickly turning the conversation away from herself.
“A little seasick at first but feeling better now. She’s waiting on me so we can head up to the deck, I just want to check on my bebé.”
Luz rolled her eyes even as the corner of her lips quirked up. Something about knowing that she had her mom, even when she was lying face down in bed, hung-over and trying to stitch up her mangled heart, was comforting.
“I’m… better now,” she confirmed and heard her mom make a pleased humming noise.
“I’m glad, you take care of yourself and the house while we’re gone… are you sure you’re okay there by yourself?” she asked and Luz could practically see the concerned look on her face.
“I’m fine, Mami. I’ll go over to Eda’s tomorrow night for Christmas so I won’t be alone.” She rolled over onto her back and found the nausea had mostly settled and set herself up.
“Oh, while I’m thinking about it, go into my bedroom and look under the bed. There’s a gift for you there.” Her mother said in a sing-song voice, which made Luz frown. Her mother had already given her a Christmas present: cash.
“Oh, okay?”
“Alright, te queiro. Mija!”
“Yo tambien to quiero, Mami,” she echoed back before the line went dead and Luz sighed, tossing the phone onto the bed beside her. She ran her hands through her hair and sighed before climbing out of bed.
She needed to shower and eat something at some point.
She grabbed her phone and ambled down the hall to the bathroom. A boiling hot shower sounded exactly like what she needed right now.
Maybe if she scalded herself enough it would distract from the pain in her head enough to get her to stop thinking for at least a little bit.
Unlikely but worth a try.
She set her phone on the counter and turned the water on, letting it slowly warm.
Steam started to fill the room.
She chucked off her rumbled and wrinkled into oblivion clothes before hopping in.
She was right.
It didn’t help her forget, though it did help clear her head enough to think. Not about anything she wanted to think about at the moment, but think nonetheless.
She could understand it. Why Amity did what she did, scared as she was and the knee-jerk reaction that followed.
It still made her angry though, that Amity didn’t have enough care or respect for her to just talk to her about it? To make that decision for her by trying to break up with her, in the most painful and confusing way possible at that?
No, she was right to be upset, to be angry. She had given her girlfriend everything she possibly could, how could Amity be so quick to throw it all away? The space behind her eyes throbbed and she had to take a deep breath.
It was a more complicated situation than that. It was, and yet…
Amity didn’t get to decide if Luz wanted to take on that burden or not!
She let out a ragged breath, steam billowing all around her as the nearly scalding water hit her back and plastered her hair to her head.
She was tired and thirsty and just all sorts of things that were making her more irritable than she already had been.
She pressed her forehead against the cool tile and breathed.
Unlike Amity, she was not going to make any rash or impulsive decisions here, for once in her life.
She was going to finish her shower and have some food, whether she felt like eating or not, and tomorrow, she would go back to the hospital and have a calm, rational talk with her.
Were they together again? Had it even been a legitimate breakup considering how short it had been?
All things she had no answers for and she wouldn’t until tomorrow when she could sit down and have a not hung-over and vomiting conversation with Amity.
She really hoped the twins weren’t there either, much as Luz loved both of them.
When she walked back into her bedroom, towel wrapped around her, she caught sight of the wrapped gift still sitting on her bookshelf.
Her Christmas present to Amity.
She bit her lower lip, thinking.
That reminded her.
She quickly got dressed and walked down the hall to her mom’s room and crouched onto the floor, shining the light from her phone into the darkness.
Sitting there, just behind the overhang of the sheets was a small rectangular-shaped package wrapped in mint green wrapping paper.
Luz slid it out and turned it over in her hands. It wasn’t the wrapping her mom or Lilith had used this year.
Sitting there, cross-legged on the floor, she pulled away the paper and her eyes widened.
A book?
It had hard, leather-covered sides with her initials engraved on the spine and the front had a cute little bat etched into it. She ran her hands over the cool smooth surface before flipping it open. The paper was blank, thick, and weighty with a slightly scratchy texture like she liked.
“Oh wow,” she mumbled and gave the pages a flick.
Something slipped from between them and fell into her lap.
A piece of paper, little hearts drawn around it in a careful hand, much like the text.
“Don’t stop writing, Merry Christmas, Luz
All my love, Amity.”
Her grip on the paper tightened and it crinkled between her thumb and finger.
She sat there for a few minutes longer before stalking down the hall to her bedroom.
~ ~ ~
Christmas morning the streets were fairly empty as Luz drove down the road toward the hospital, not that she expected anything else at this time of morning on Christmas day.
She had texted Amity before she left and finally got a response back, almost immediately, and it wouldn’t have surprised Luz in the least if she had been waiting with phone in hand to hear from her.
She pulled in and parked but didn’t immediately move to get out of the car.
This shouldn’t have been so hard. She and Amity had spent hours upon hours having long, personal conversations. So why did it feel so hard to face her right now?
She took a breath and climbed out of the car. The small package in her jacket pocket felt heavy where it smacked against her leg.
She got vague flashes of the other night as she walked into the hospital and made her way over to the elevator. Quiet Christmas music was playing somewhere overhead, low enough that if it hadn’t been so unusually quiet, she wouldn’t have noticed it.
Luckily for her, no one must have paid her any mind the other night while she was stumbling drunkenly through the hall, or at the very least it was not the same staff on duty, so no one spared her a second glance as she walked into the elevator.
The elevator doors closed and she glanced at herself on the highly polished surface and could see how tired she still looked. She ran her hands through her hair, smoothing it.
She had spent all of last night thinking about what she wanted to talk to Amity about.
Nothing fun, but necessary. If she had learned anything from her mom and Lilith and Eda it was that there was no point in putting off uncomfortable conversations and letting negative feelings fester.
When the doors opened on the seventh floor, she straightened her shoulders and strode out of the elevator and down the hall.
Amity’s door was closed and Luz hesitated but only for a moment before reaching up to knock.
“Come in.” The quiet voice on the other side called and Luz pushed it open.
Amity was sitting in bed, a book held open in her lap but her eyes were locked on Luz.
“Hey,” she said quietly.
“Hey,” Luz returned, standing awkwardly in the doorway.
“You can come in…,” Amity said as she closed her book and set it on the bedside table.
Luz moved to her normal chair and sat, though still she didn’t say anything, neither did Amity at first. They let the silence build, filled by the slow, monotonous beeping of the machines attached to Amity, who was twisting the blankets between her fingers.
“Are you feeling better?” Amity asked and Luz nodded.
“Yeah, my headache finally went away late last night and I was able to keep down some oatmeal.” She shuffled in her chair, not sure what she should be doing with her hands exactly.
“That’s good…” Amity pulled at a loose thread in her blanket as Luz bobbed her head.
“I’m sorry, Luz…” finally made its way past her lips, making Luz look up.
“I know you are…,”
“Are we… okay?” she asked quietly and Luz’s eyebrows jumped up at the question.
She wasn’t sure she even knew the answer to that. They had talked a bit the other day but it still felt like there was a lot to work out. A lot to work through to rebuild their broken trust and soothe the wounds that had been inflicted.
“I don’t know…,” Luz admitted and it tore at her heart, the way Amity’s face twisted. “I know you’re sorry… but I need more than sorry, Amity… … you hurt me, a lot… I need you to trust me… to talk to me at the very least.”
“I know, you’re right and my brother and sister tried to get me to talk to you too, to tell you about what was wrong… about my fears… but… then I would catch the way they would look at me. Worried, scared… and I… I was already doing that to them, I couldn’t bear doing that to you too.”
“So you made the decision for me?” Luz asked, an unintentional edge coming into her voice that made Amity wince. “We agreed to talk things out, to communicate, like a couple, remember ?” Luz asked and Amity turned her head away, unable to meet Luz’s intense gaze.
“I know,” she said, head dipping in agreement. “I just… I was scared and it’s not an excuse for what I did and the cowardly way I did it, but it’s why I did it. I just… panicked. I thought I was going to die and I didn’t want you to have to…,” she choked, throat clogging.
Luz stood, moving to sit on the side of the bed, though Amity still didn’t move to look at her.
“I know… I know you were scared and it’s okay to be scared, but you didn’t have to be scared alone. I would have been here with you…”
“I know, but I didn’t want to drag you into this…,”
“You weren’t dragging me into anything, I chose this, Amity. I want to be here, I want to be with you or I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have shown up here drunk the other night and I wouldn’t have spent the last couple of weeks miserable and wondering what I did to make you hate me!”
Amity winced but didn’t turn away this time.
“I am just… so sorry, Luz. I could never hate you… I just love you too much to want to do this to you?”
“This being what?” Luz pressed. “Living?”
“Luz…” Amity started, exasperated.
“No, not ‘Luz’!” she couldn’t help but snap, making Amity jerk back. “I know that you know that this is just life for you Amity and it can really suck, I won’t pretend to understand what it feels like, but I know just from watching you that it sucks.” She took a deep breath, “This is also the reality for you, pushing me or your siblings away won’t make it any better, you’ll just be suffering alone. You shouldn’t suffer alone, Tesoro.”
She reached over and clasped both of Amity’s hands between hers. “Let the people that love you be there for you,” she pleaded.
They sat there for a few minutes, a few stray tears had started to drip down Amity’s face and she sniffled, trying to stop the flow before it could get going in earnest.
“Wh- What if I never get any better, what if I never leave the hospital?” she asked quietly and Luz let one of her hands pull away. Amity flinched, preparing for her other one to pull away too, but instead, gentle fingers beneath her chin, lifted her head up to come eye to eye with Luz.
“Then you don’t,” she said softly and plainly. “And I’ll still be here. I love you Amity and I want to be here. It hurts me more that you don’t…”
“I do want you here,” Amity cut off the rest of whatever Luz had been about to say. “I always want you with me, Luz. I just don’t want you to have to suffer because of it.”
“I’m not. I made this choice, Amity. What does hurt me is when you’re hurting, knowing that I can’t do anything, that I can’t help you, but I wanna at least be here for you…”
“You help more than you know,” she mumbled, leaning into Luz’s touch. “There have been days where I didn’t think I even wanted to keep trying sometimes,” she admitted and it made Luz’s heart give a hard and painful thump in her chest.
“But then you would call or text or show up with a bag of french fries and… things didn’t seem so bad for a while and I… I don’t know what I would do without you…”
She closed her eyes and more tears dripped down her cheeks.
“Then why push me away, Tesoro? Let me be here,” Luz murmured, reaching up with her other hand to hold Amity’s face gently between her palms.
Amity sniffled and nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she gurgled around the increasing tears.
“I know,” Luz whispered, wrapping her arms around Amity’s shaking frame and holding her close.
"I'm sorry too," Luz murmured into her ear.
"hmm?" Amity made a humming sound in response.
"For running in here, drunk as all get out… and throwing up in your trashcan…" she leaned back, scratching the back of her head sheepishly.
Amity snorted, and wiped at the tears still trailing down her cheeks with the heel of her hands.
"It's okay… If you hadn't… I'm afraid of where we would be right now." She sniffled.
"Yeah," Luz hummed and reached up to brush a few away with her fingers.
The twins made their appearance long after the tears had stopped and they entered cautiously when they saw Luz sitting in the bed with Amity.
“Well, everything…. Okay here?” Ed asked, unsure and Luz nodded.
“Yeah, it will be anyway.”
She spent the rest of the day with Amity and the twins, celebrating and enjoying the company.
It was well and dark when Ed and Em left, telling Amity they would be back in the morning and waving a farewell to Luz.
Once they were gone, Luz laid back in the bed beside Amity and let out a relieved breath.
She liked the twins a lot but the two of them and their near-constant teasing could be exhausting.
“I know,” Amity mumbled, chuckling, which made Luz grin. She had probably smiled and laughed more today than she had in weeks and it was a soothing balm on her wounds.
“I’m going to have to go soon,” she sighed, turning and burying her nose in Amity’s dull, lilac hair.
“I know that too,” Amity sighed, tightening her grip on Luz’s waist. Her arm brushed something hard in Luz’s jacket pocket and she leaned back, frowning.
“Your phone’s on the table, what’s in your pocket?” She asked, making Luz look up.
“Hmm? Oh!” Luz sat up, pulling out of Amity's grip. “I almost forgot!”
She pulled the wrapped gift out of her pocket and held it out to Amity.
“Your Christmas present.” She smiled and Amity blinked, mouth hanging slightly ajar.
“You got me something?” she asked, confused and Luz shrugged.
“I got it weeks ago… I still want you to have it. Especially now, actually.” She insisted, still holding it out.
Amity lifted a hand, hesitating as she glanced back up at Luz, who only smiled back at her. She took it and slowly pulled away the paper. Her eyes widened but then she snorted, making Luz chuckle too.
“Yeah, I laughed too when I realized.” She grinned as Amity ran her hand over the custom leather journal she held in her hands.
It had her name emblazoned across the top in flowing calligraphy, along with little Stars and crescent moons carved into it at random intervals across its face.
“It’s beautiful Luz…”
“I thought so too. I saw it at a craft fair I went to with Eda and Raine a few weeks ago. The guy that made it added your name to it for no extra charge too!”
“Thank you… but, why? You’re the writer, that’s why I got the journal for you.”
“Yeah, I know but I know that you like your journal and that you filled up your old diary months ago. So, I thought I would get you a new one and… maybe it could be more useful now, more than ever.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… I know that sometimes it’s hard for you to talk to me about these things that bug you or just some stuff in general… so, maybe… when it’s too hard to talk about things, we could write them down and then just read them, like I’ve been doing with my story?” she offered, unsure.
Amity watched her scratch the back of her head nervously before she couldn’t help the smile tugging at her lips.
She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Luz’s cheek.
“I love that idea, Luz, and this is perfect. Thank you.”
“Yeah, well… sometimes I have good ideas,” she chuckled.
“More than sometimes,” Amity smiled and Luz chuckled.
“Well… I should go, Eda is going to be waiting for me after how worried she was the other night when I got wasted…,” she sighed and pulled away from Amity to stand, though the fingers of one hand remained entwined.
“You worried me too when you showed up here falling all over yourself and then the vomiting…” she trailed off and Luz groaned.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be drinking anymore… During was fine but after is not as good a time,” she grumbled and Amity snorted.
“It’s probably for the best…” She nodded.
“I’ll be back to see you tomorrow?” Luz tilted her head and Amity smiled, giving their hands a slight squeeze.
“I’ll be here…” she started to frown till Luz leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to her lips.
“So will I, first thing in the morning with tea and coffee,” she promised.
“I love you,” Amity mumbled and it had a quiet urgency, like asking for forgiveness.
“I love you too.” It was granted easily.
When Luz finally left the hospital and walked out into the cold December, she took a deep, lungful of cold, winter air. It seared her lungs but gave her the jolt she needed before climbing into her car.
What a couple of days it had been.
There was still a dull ache in her chest that she knew would fade in time as her wounds finished healing but for now, she would deal with it.
Amity’s sepsis was on its way out and she was feeling better again but Luz knew that this scare would most likely not be the last.
It would be the last one Amity faced alone though, Luz had every intention of seeing to that.
She knew what she had signed up for and she loved Amity too much to back out now.
No, they would just have to face her problems, and they would do it together. Even if they had a hard time talking about it they would still manage.
It would just take a little…
Paper Therapy