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It’s stupid late in the human realm.
Like “Luz only wakes up for cereal or existential dread” late.
The kitchen is quiet except for one sound:
scritch… scritch… scriiiiitch.
Luz shuffles in like a raccoon wearing pajama pants.
“Hunter? Dude, it’s—” she checks the stove clock, “…2:39 a.m. Why are you awake? Why are you making that noise?”
Hunter jolts like she’s a federal agent busting down the door. He slams his notebook shut instantly.
“N-NOTHING. Don’t look.”
Which, naturally, activates every feral neuron in Luz’s brain.
She leans.
He guards the notebook like it contains nuclear codes.
“…Whatcha writing?” she asks, voice suspiciously casual.
“Nothing!” he blurts. “Just… journaling.”
Luz freezes. “Wait. You journal?”
Hunter blushes. “It helps. Or it’s supposed to. Feelings are… complicated.”
Luz, touched “That’s actually really—”
But then she notices… the handwriting.
The corner of a page sticks out, and it’s full of dramatically swoopy, aggressively fancy cursive.
Like “national treasure” cursive.
Like “belongs under museum glass” cursive.
Luz blinks.
Slowly.
“What… what is that?”
Hunter looks down at the page, confused. “My writing?”
“NO,” she says, grabbing the notebook he yelps. “Hunter, this looks like the freaking Declaration of Independence. Why do your letters have curls?? Why do the curls have curls??”
Hunter stares at her, genuinely baffled.
“…Is this not normal writing?”
“NO!” Luz almost screams-laughs. “This is how ghosts write in horror movies, Hunter. This is how old men in powdered wigs wrote treaties. You write like a guy named Bartholomew who owns a quill.”
Hunter’s face goes red. “Well—sorry—I didn’t know it was weird! It just… comes out like that!”
Luz flips a page before he can stop her, and Hunter practically tackles the journal to the floor.
“LUZ STOP—IT’S PRIVATE—”
“Wait—WAIT—did that line say ‘Willow is the light of my life’—”
“NO IT DID NOT,”
Luz shrieks into her sleeve.
Hunter scrambles to his knees, hugging the journal to his chest like it’s a life raft.
“Luz, I swear on everything, if you tell anyone—”
“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” she wheezes, still half-laughing, half-squeaking. “But OH MY GOD, Hunter, you’re so— you’re so gone for her.”
“I AM NOT—” he starts, then immediately stops, because his voice cracks like a dying flute.
He clears his throat. Softer, miserable: “I’m… not.”
“Oh, yeah, totally,” Luz says, nodding sagely with the world’s fakest serious expression. “That’s why you’re journaling like an 18th-century poet about her. Completely normal friend behavior.”
Hunter glares at her and tries to stand up while still holding the journal, which is difficult because he’s doing that thing where he curls around it like a shrimp.
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” he mutters. “It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s cute,” Luz corrects. “Embarrassing would be if you wrote, like, a sonnet.”
Hunter stiffens.
Luz squints. “Hunter. Hunter. You did not write a sonnet.”
He looks away.
“You WROTE A SONNET?!” she shrieks in delight.
“IT’S NOT— IT’S NOT A SONNET IF I DIDN’T MEAN FOR IT TO BE A SONNET,” Hunter protests, which is the worst possible defense.
Luz is vibrating. “Do. Do you rhyme things with her name?”
Hunter looks at the floor. “…maybe.”
“Oh my Titan,” Luz whispers, hands on her knees. “Give it. Give it to me. I will literally die if you don’t let me read it.”
“No,” Hunter says, backing up like she’s wielding a weapon. “These are my PRIVATE FEELINGS.”
“I’m your friend!”
“That’s WHY you’re not allowed to read them!”
They stare each other down.
Silence.
Then Luz softens — like actually softens, not fake-softens.
“Hey,” she says gently. “I’m not trying to make fun of you. You like Willow. That’s… really sweet. And writing helps. I get it.”
Hunter relaxes. A little. Barely.
“…It’s still weird,” he mutters.
“It’s adorable,” Luz says.
“It looks stupid.”
“It looks like you should be signing a royal decree.”
“LUZ.”
She smiles. “Hunter. Seriously. I’m glad you’re writing stuff down. And Willow is… well, she’d be lucky.”
Hunter swallows hard, face pink.
“…Don’t tell her,” he whispers.
Luz taps an invisible zipper across her lips. “Locked.”
Then, immediately: “But seriously. Can you teach me how to do the curly letters? Because that was kind of sick.”
Hunter groans into his hands.
Hunter sits back down at the kitchen table, still hugging the journal like it might bolt out the door. Luz grabs a stool and plops down across from him, pushing a spilled cereal flake with her finger.
For a minute, neither of them talks.
Then Luz says, softer, “So… do you, uh. Want to talk about it?”
Hunter groans. “No.”
“Cool,” Luz says. “We’re gonna talk about it anyway.”
He glares at her, but it’s the tired kind of glare — the kind that means I don’t actually want to fight, I’m just overwhelmed.
Luz folds her arms on the table and rests her chin on them. “You know, you can just… tell me stuff. You don’t have to write it like you’re founding a new nation.”
Hunter rubs the back of his neck. “Talking is… harder.”
“Harder than calligraphy-level journaling?”
“Yes,” he says instantly.
Luz raises a brow. “You literally fought Belos.”
“Yeah, well,” Hunter mutters. “I didn’t have to make eye contact with Belos while discussing my emotions.”
That shuts Luz up for a second.
Hunter stares at the journal cover. “I just… when I start trying to explain how I feel out loud, it gets… messy. And loud. In my head.” His fingers tap the spine of the notebook. “Writing is quieter.”
Luz nods, not joking now. “Yeah. I get that.”
Hunter hesitates, then opens the journal just an inch — not enough for Luz to read, but enough to prove he’s not shutting down completely.
“I write about… everything,” he says softly. “Stuff that scares me. Stuff that confuses me. Just… stuff. And Willow.”
His voice drops to a whisper. “A lot about Willow.”
Luz smiles, small and warm. “She’s easy to write about.”
Hunter huffs a tiny laugh. “She’s… good. Too good. And when I think about her I get this—” He makes a vague gesture at his chest. “—warm, annoying thing here. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“That’s called having a crush,” Luz says.
“No it’s not,” Hunter says immediately.
“Yes it is,” she counters.
“No—crushes are stupid and dramatic and people make terrible decisions and get distracted and act weird and—”
“Hunter.”
“What?”
“You literally wrote a sonnet about her.”
Hunter collapses forward onto the table with a groan. “I hate everything.”
Luz laughs, but it’s soft, gentle. “Hey. For what it’s worth? She really likes you too.”
Hunter startles. “No she doesn’t.”
“She DOES,” Luz insists. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you. She gets all smiley and warm and—”
“That’s just Willow,” Hunter says. “She’s like that with everyone.”
“Not like that,” Luz says. Then, quieter, “And even if you don’t tell her yet… it’s okay. You get to take your time.”
Hunter taps the journal again, thinking. “…Do you think it’s weird? That I write it all down?”
“No,” Luz says instantly. “I think it’s brave.”
Hunter blinks. “Brave?”
“Yeah. It’s scary to admit you feel things. Even to yourself.”
She smiles. “And you’re doing it. In curly letters, but still.”
Hunter lets out a slow breath, like something in him unclenches just a little.
“…Thanks,” he murmurs.
“Anytime,” Luz says. “Now scoot over. I wanna learn how to make the fancy B’s. Mine look like worms.”
Hunter actually laughs — tired, embarrassed, but real — and pushes the notebook halfway toward her without opening it.
“Only the capital letters,” he says. “No reading.”
“Deal.”
And they sit there in the dim kitchen light — Luz practicing dramatic swoopy letters on scrap paper, Hunter helping her draw them just right — both of them a little less alone at 2:51 a.m.