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At some point during the night, Luz takes Hunter's hand.
It could be for a lot of reasons. Luz is just this kind of person: she's always draping herself physically over the others, not just Amity. He's seen her hold Willow's hand, Gus' too. It doesn't mean anything different, anything special.
It could be for any reason. He'd had two drinks, she'd have three - Hunter stopped as soon as the world started tilting a little, which meant that he just sat and stared and turned Luz down when she went for her last round. He kinda wished he'd gotten a third one: what he thought was the end of their get-together was only the first half of it. That's just how much they had to catch up to each other, that's just how willing Luz was to talk to him - giggling through her never-ending smile and meeting his gaze with an ease that clenches his chest whenever he recalls the memory.
It could end at any moment. They'd walked out of the place - a bar, or a pub, whatever the difference between them is supposed to be - and headed away from the lights. Away from the pedestrians, dressed in colorful attires that leave a lot of skin uncovered for the evening wind to chill it. The breeze bit a little harder than Hunter usually expected from the summer nights in Gravesfield. Maybe Luz was cold, that was all. He certainly isn't; not anymore. Not with the heat of her palm against his, her fingers laced inbetween like a puzzle piece.
The choir in Hunter's head rings with dissonance. Why does this matter? They've been here before, treading the path following the creek that circles this half of the city. A handful of times with the others, then another couple on their own - and it's never been anything but fine. He's carved a little home here, in the place his ancestors once set their home. But tonight the moonlight is playing in the water, painting the dark stream with white, and Luz is holding him by the hand.
It's dumb. He feels dumb, for so many reasons that he feels he could never stop if he started listing them. On top of all of them is a deeply embarrassing acknowledgment of his place in Luz's life. What could he offer to her? He closed a three year process of therapy a couple of months ago, and he's itching to reach out for help again. He wasn't Luz's first impression of the demon realm. He wasn't her first friend either: that would be Willow and Gus. He wasn't her family either: that was the Owl Lady and the young Titan. He wasn't her first love: that was Amity. He was just a kid she met when a mission went wrong.
Oh, but Luz was his first, in so many different ways. The first time he saw the beauty in magic, and his first act of disobedience towards Belos, and his first confidant. The first one to know that he was a Grimwalker, and to share the secret with him. She's taken him with a stubborn display of kindness that he still didn't believe he deserves, and his life was all the better for it. For her. She's the reason he's here in the first place: alive, and healing from his past little by little.
But what is he, in the scheme of Luz's life in the demon realm? A broken boy she unintentionally put back together. She's risked her life for him, for Titan's sake. What could he ever offer to her?
You wouldn't know, though, from the way she pauses to look at him. Reverence tingling in her eyes, and Hunter's been proven wrong once again.
Her breath is filled with the sweetness of grapefruit as she leans in. The paloma she got at the end, Hunter smells it in her proximity: a scent akin a summer night, concentrated in the warmth of her exhale. When he closes his eyes, there's nothing in this world that can feel more right than this.
Four years after she started flipping his world upside down, she does it one more time.