Chapter Text
Trevor Wilson was suffocating.
He stood in a room full of oxygen, door open wide, bringing fresh air in, and Trevor couldn’t breathe. The Molina’s studio held so many memories it was dizzying to look around, taking in being back here as he hovered by Rose’s piano.
Everything looked exactly the same.
Alex’s drumkit glared back at him, sporting the new Julie and the Phantoms logo. Luke’s guitar and Reggie’s bass sat on their stands, in perfect condition. There was a rhythm echoing in the back of his mind- when he closed his eyes, fighting it away, an image stormed in of their last sound check, so loud it nearly knocked him off his feet.
Opening his eyes, Trevor looked up, and he could practically see Alex sitting with his legs hanging over the edge. His saw Luke, knees curled up to his chest and tears running down his face one of the nights after he had run away from home and Reggie, curled up in one of the bean bags after fleeing from yet another fight at home.
He saw all of them jumping around, celebrating booking the Orpheum.
He could see himself pacing, working on lyrics as Rose tweaked chords on the piano at one in the morning, trying to finish record after record.
He could remember walking in here and seeing Julie for the first time- Ray had been trying to get her to sleep for hours and Trevor put her right to sleep within a few minutes of playing guitar. Ray had been just as furious that Trevor was the one who was able to get her to rest as he was relieved. Trevor’s heart had fluttered with pride in a way he hadn’t expected.
He could remember holding Rose on the sofa as she broke down, shaking in his arms after she was diagnosed, confessing to him how scared she was. The next day he had held Ray, just the same. Only around him were they vulnerable enough to be afraid.
“Bobby?”
Trevor’s hand fell from the top of the piano as he sucked in a sharp breath, but just as he began breathing again his chest tightened at the sight of Ray, lingering in the doorway of the studio.
“I saw your car out front,” Ray explained, “when you never came to the door, I figured…”
His eyes swept around his wife’s studio, and a pang of guilt hit him, knowing it wasn’t any easier for Ray to be out here than him.
“I’m sorry, we can-“ he nodded toward the door, but Ray shook his head, drawing in a deep breath.
“No, it’s actually…it’s nice, being out here.”
Ray shut the garage door behind them and both of them stood in silence, glancing around the room. Wondering if they were truly alone.
“Do you think they’re here?” Trevor finally asked.
Shrugging casually, Ray retorted:
“I’m not the ghost expert. You wanna take off the sunglasses?”
No.
Not that the sunglasses hid anything. The entire world saw straight through him, always- especially Ray did. He slipped the glasses off his face, letting their eyes meet and he stiffened as he watched Ray size him up.
“Hi,” Trevor greeted, his voice shaky with uncertainty.
“Hi.”
No matter how hard Trevor tried to push them away, it always took one look for Ray and Rose to send his walls tumbling down. Used to, he enjoyed giving them that power, he thrived in the protection they offered him. Now…it was terrifying. Feeling hot with anxiety and restless, his fingers fell back down to the piano keys, feeling out random notes on Rose’s piano to get out nervous energy. Trevor dared to glance over, to watch Ray watching him, and he stopped playing abruptly when he realized Ray wasn’t watching him, he was staring at the piano.
“I’m sorry,” Trevor breathed out quickly, his hands shooting up from the keys. “Julie probably wouldn’t want me touching her stuff.”
“You were the one that bought it.”
A sad smile crossed Trevor’s face as he remembered the day he led Rose out here, to her new garage and revealed the baby grand waiting for her. Her laughter had seemed to echo for miles as she threw her arms around him, and Rose had practically been glowing as she slipped onto the piano bench and immediately jumped into playing Billy Joel.
“Rose loved this piano.”
Ray’s voice was raw and close, and Trevor looked up to find him lingering closer to the piano. He wondered how often Ray came out here, just to sit and be with her spirit. Taking a leap of faith, Trevor sat down; he had always felt more comfortable talking with a guitar in hand. A piano would suffice, for now.
“I used to joke that if we had a fire and she had to save either me or the piano, she’d save this piano in a heartbeat,” Ray teased dryly.
“Yeah, she probably would have.”
They shared a smile. It was like Ray took it as an invitation and he slipped into the space beside him on the piano bench. Trevor immediately tensed as soon as he could feel him in his space, and he tried to hide the tension by feeling out the chords to the various songs Rose had taught him over the years. His piano playing was good enough to get him by, but his chords didn’t ring out nearly as beautifully as Rose’s did. As he finished one set of chords Ray reached out, pressing down on a note, his fingers fumbling as he tried to work out what might have possibly been “Mary Had a Little Lamb” before giving up, shaking his head.
“It always blew my mind that your wife was a Grammy-winning songwriter, and you could never even play Chopsticks.”
Ray let out a laugh that sounded so sincere, so him, after all the tension between them, that it sent shivers up his spine.
“I always thought that balance is why we worked out,” Ray offered. “She was one of the best musicians I’d ever heard and I…took really nice photos of her.”
Silence fell between them as they sat, impossibly closer than they had been in years for the second day in a row. He could practically hear Rose, encouraging him:
Just talk to him, mi amor.
I don’t even know where to start, Rosa.
“How do you think she does it?” Ray spoke up suddenly, wondering out loud like half the conversation had already been going on in his head. “Julie…how does she bring the ghosts to life? I never see them around the house, but they’re with her on stage like she brings them to life when she plays with them.”
Trevor blinked.
“Do you think it’s just these ghosts?” Ray rambled on quietly.
He hadn’t even looked at it that way but Ray looked so desperate for answers, with is face scrunched up, lost in his thoughts. He had clearly been thinking about this a lot. He looked and sounded deliriously tired and an old, second-hand guilt crept in as he wondered how much sleep Ray had been getting lately.
“I don’t know,” Trevor finally offered, feeling useless.
Ray hesitated for a long moment and truthfully, Trevor was wary of trying to theorize with him. He was pretty sure his ideas about the ghosts would only make him even more worried. At last, Ray blurted out:
“Do you think Rose could see them?”
Mouth agape, Trevor stared, trying to comprehend the sheer amount of nerve Rose would have had to have to keep something like being able to see ghosts a secret from him, after all they went through together. Even Rose wouldn’t be that cruel.
“Ray, if Rose was able to see ghosts all those years, after everything, then she better get her spirit ass down from Heaven, because I have some serious words to share with her.”
“You’re right.”
He let out another tired, exhausted laugh, and Trevor was beginning to realize that he shouldn’t have been so nervous about coming over here and feeling completely out of place, trying to have this conversation. Ray was just as out of his depth here. Letting out a long sigh Ray stood, running his hands over his face and Trevor watched as he wandered absent-mindedly around the studio. Checking on the plants. Staring at Rose’s old knickknacks. Gazing up at the loft.
“Have you felt them, at all?” Trevor asked. “In the house?”
Ray shook his head.
“I guess there have been weird…things,” he admitted after a thoughtful moment. “Like my keys showing up as soon as I’ve realized I’ve lost them. Pillows that will move around, and I didn’t remember sitting them somewhere else. And…my car radio is always set on country music station.”
Trevor snorted, though his heart pounded as it hit him: this is real. The guys really were ghosts, living amongst the Molina’s.
“Reggie,” he mumbled.
“Do you think she’s safe with them?” Ray finally asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft. His eyes flashed up to meet his, tinged with a fatherly fear that Trevor could understand all too well. “If they’re here, to get revenge on you…is she safe with them?”
“She looked pretty safe with them at the Orpheum.”
The comment came across more coldly than he meant, but Ray didn’t falter. Taking a deep breath, Trevor retreated.
“Look,” Trevor sighed, “probably the moment Luke came back as a ghost and realized how crazy talented Julie is he begged her to join his band. There’s no way they didn’t tell her about me. They probably thought playing the Orpheum would be a nice little slap in the face to me.”
“You think that’s just it?” Ray asked, hopefully. “They came back to play the Orpheum?”
He shrugged, not knowing how to respond. The theory certainly felt a lot nicer than the ghosts of my dead band are out to hurt me. It was the only thought that had calmed him enough to ease himself out of the panic attacks last night: the idea that maybe the guys simply needed to come back and play the show they never got play and maybe they could pass on.
“You were pretty freaked out last night,” Ray went on, gentle now as he leaned against the loft stairs.
“It was like they were right there,” Trevor replied stiffly. “They just looked so real.”
Luke and Alex had held hands at the end of the performance. Reggie had owned the stage, flipping his guitar with ease. And those suits- how was it that ghosts could even change and wear clothes? Weren’t they made of air? Trevor wondered where they even got the suits. An image crossed the back of his mind of a ghost Alex, dragging Luke and Reggie into some shop and forcing them to find something nicer than the clothes they died in for their big show.
“I know,” Ray admitted, “they looked just like any other kids from Julie’s school. How did they haunt you before?”
Trevor hesitated, his stomach twisting as he flashed back to that day, and he told Ray the story.
“They don’t sound that mean,” Ray quipped, bemused. “Maybe they were just excited for their first time haunting you.”
It wasn’t the first time they’ve haunted me, he thought, it was just the first time I knew they were actually there.
How many times had he heard their voices, like a whisper in the wind? How many times had he seen them on stage at his own shows, their shadows playing with him instead of his own house band?
“I literally almost pissed myself,” Trevor grumbled under his breath, and Ray burst out laughing.
That laugh. More shivers went through him.
“I guess I need to figure out what to say to Julie,” Ray said with a sigh. “Why do I feel like this is going to end up with me being the bad guy because I knew all this time and never told her I knew?”
“Cause teenagers,” Trevor rolled his eyes.
Shaking his head, Ray kicked away from the loft stairs, shuffling over to the sofa, collapsing onto it. Trevor watched as he lowered his head to his hands, still trying to wrap his head around it all.
“You’re allowed to be scared, you know,” Trevor pointed out. When Ray didn’t move, Trevor gave in, leaving the safety of hiding behind the piano as he went over to sit next to him on the sofa (on Luke’s sofa). “And you’re allowed to be at least a little annoyed that she lied to you too, about the whole not being holograms thing. I mean, you have the right to know if ghosts are haunting your own damn house.”
“I can’t be mad at her,” Ray stated. As he lifted his head up, he sank back against the cushions; Trevor did the same, gazing at him. “She tried to tell me that she saw ghosts, and I brushed her off.”
“Yeah, of course you did,” Trevor replied, “the same way you had to brush off Carlos thinking aliens are real and Rose being convinced that Mr. Monroe who lived down the hall was a murderer.”
Ray stopped, staring at him with a twinkle in his eye as the memory came back to him; even Trevor hadn’t thought about that incident in years, he didn’t know why it came back to him now. Letting out another sigh, Ray closed his eyes tight, pressing his hands against his eyes. It wasn’t just that the man looked tired, he looked exhausted: he looked done with the world and everything it had thrown at his family these past two years. Trevor knew he had no business trying to pry, trying to come in suddenly caring after pushing Rose and Ray both out for so long but…he couldn’t stand seeing him either.
“How have you been holding up?” Trevor asked quietly, as sincerely as he could. “Really?”
A horrible, wounded noise escaped Ray, like a half sob, half cry of defeat.
“I’m not,” Ray confessed weakly, face hidden in his hands. “I’m not, I can’t…I can’t do this.”
Trevor dared to raise a hand to place on his shoulder, but Ray sat up at the same moment and he drew his hand back quickly, feeling a little caught.
“I see her everywhere, Bobby,” he went on, not even noticing the slip up of the old name. “I hear her, sometimes, I hear her laugh. I see her every time I look at Julie, and it’s so hard. It’s been a year, and it’s still all I can do to get us through each day.”
If Trevor had the guts to be completely honest, he would have admitted that he saw Rose everywhere too. That he dreamed of her. That he went and sat by her grave more times than he cared to admit. If he was struggling this much, he couldn’t even imagine…
“You’ve got to give yourself time to grieve,” Trevor stated softly. Like that wasn’t anything Ray hadn’t been hearing from everyone else.
“It’s been a year," Ray repeated dramatically, shaking he was so frustrated at himself.
Trevor held up an accusing finger to him.
“Yeah, and you’ve spent the whole year just trying to get through each day. You lost your partner in life, of over twenty-five years, in the timespan of months. You didn’t get any say in it. Everything you knew was just ripped from you. You’ve been in shock, Ray.”
Trevor finally fell to Ray’s shoulder, and the other man shuddered at the touch, like an electric shock. It was like that was all it took for the flood gates to open, and Trevor’s own throat closed up tight as he watched Ray allow himself to break down.
“I would have taken it, all it from her if I could have,” Ray whispered, shaking under Trevor’s touch. “She was so sick. I would have gone through it all, for her.”
He had struggled with survivor’s guilt for so long that it hit him hard to hear it coming from someone else. Gripping Ray’s shoulder, Trevor let him bury his head against him. Overwhelmed with his own pain, his own guilt, he fought to describe in words how he knew so well how hard it was to lose someone.
“I know,” Trevor whispered back, “but Rose loved you, so much. You were her world, you and the kids were. She never would have asked that of you. I know a hell of a lot about survivor’s guilt and the minute that you start giving into it…it takes over. You can’t start doing that to yourself. It doesn’t matter how you wanted things to happen or…what should have or could have been. Or what’s fair or not. None of that’s going to help you. All that matters is what you do with your life now.”
Ray let out a sob in response, desperately trying to hide his face in his arms. He was so used to hiding his pain; Trevor couldn’t watch it. He didn’t care anymore, how awkward this was or how unfair it was, for him to come storming back into Ray’s back like this.
“Be there for him, Bobby,” Rose had pleaded, “however he lets you…be there for him.”
It was time for him to start honoring his promise.
Gently Trevor wrapped his arms around him, Ray at first pulling away but he pulled him in tight, raising a hand to cup the back of his neck and lower his head to his shoulder. Ray shook harder, his body wracked by sobs as Trevor held him. Dozens of memories flashed in his mind of Rose or Ray holding him or both of them, practically smothering him in the middle of the night, they held him so tightly as he broke down.
“Rose would be so proud of you,” Trevor told him softly, “I mean, Julie just played the freaking Orpheum. She would be so proud of all of you.”
“I could feel her there, last night,” Ray confessed.
“Me too.”
He held Ray tighter, trying to ignore how right it felt, to be close like this again. He expected himself to be terrified, to even touch him again, but instead Trevor felt an odd sense of belonging, being back with Ray in his arms again.
And that was more terrifying than any ghosts.
“I’m so sorry that I haven’t been there,” Trevor whispered. “I should have as soon as…I should have been there for you.”
With a small laugh, Ray lifted up from him and his body trembled at the loss of contact.
“You broke up with us,” Ray pointed out, “we weren’t expecting anything of you, Trevor, that’s not how normal breakups work. Thank you, thank you for…for this…but I just need to figure out what to do about Julie and her phantoms. I’m not…I didn’t intend to bring you here and make you feel bad. You have your own life now, your own kid. You’ve moved on and that’s okay…it’s normal.”
Trevor tried not to wince at the abrupt change from the use of his birth name, the name they used, to his fake identity.
“You can’t pretend like our relationship with Rose was any kind of normal,” Trevor stated; Ray afforded him another small, harsh laugh. “I should have been there more, for Rose and for you.”
Ray gazed at him, his eyes full of so much pain and regret. It felt like a slap in the face as he stiffly admitted:
“Yeah…you should have been.”
Trevor flinched, but he knew he deserved it.
Chest tight with anxiety, that familiar feeing of I’ve got to get out began to sink in. As much as he had just confessed how wrong he had been, to push them so far away, Trevor felt like if he didn’t get out of this house how he’d stop breathing altogether. He had to figure this out, what all of this meant. It wasn’t fair for him to string Ray along while he did.
His last conversation with Rose still played on repeat in his head, haunting him.
“You deserve better, Bobby, than what you’ve been doing to yourself.”
“Do you still have feelings for him?”
The irony, he thought, how he tried to pretend that all of this was about the ghosts of his childhood.
Trevor stood, trying to figure out how to make a graceful exit, but Ray scrambled to his feet too, speaking up again:
“After Rose…” Ray stopped, swallowing the pain away, “after Rose, Julie couldn’t sing or play again until she met those guys. As confused as I am about all of this, part of me honestly feels…I don’t know, I feel a little at peace with it.”
He knew Ray was reminding Trevor of his own inability to play after losing the guys, how impossible it was to even hear music.
“I know this is going to sound crazy,” Ray went on, taking a step even closer. Trevor didn’t step back. “But it just feels like they were sent to us.”
“By Rose?”
Ray didn’t answer, like it was something he was afraid to say out loud. There was a warmth in the studio all of a sudden, and the sun shone just perfectly over Rose’s display of plants in the window and his heart skipped beats, knowing…
“I know it’s hard for you, them being back, and I know you’re scared and I’m scared too but…it just doesn’t feel like they’re here to hurt anyone.”
“You deserve better than what you’re doing to yourself, Bobby.” Rose’s words echoed back to him again.
Trevor nodded, too terrified to try to speak but too overwhelmed to move.
“I just want you to know…” Ray trailed off, drawing in a deep breath. “Rose and I, we loved the years that we had with you. It wasn’t anything that we were ashamed of or regretted. I know things have been…messy but…I don’t want you to be a stranger, okay?”
He nodded again, stiffly, and when Ray reached out, brushing a hand against his arm Trevor all but leapt back. Heart pounding.
“I’ve got to go,” he whispered.
Avoiding Ray’s eyes he spun around, resisting the urge to break into an all out run back to the car as he retreated.
“Do you still have feelings for him?” He heard Rose ask again.
All this time, Trevor thought that he had moved on, that he had done what he needed to, what was best for all of them. All he had really done was gone deeper and deeper into hiding. Instead of letting himself reach that breaking point he had always run further and further away.
“Why did you leave us?” Trevor froze on spot, too afraid to turn around as he heard Ray’s footsteps catch up with him. “We loved you, Trevor, and you knew that. And I think you loved us too. She’s gone now and…I think the least you can give me is the truth. Between you and me. Why did you leave?”
Ray was right behind him now, but Trevor couldn’t bring himself to turn back.
“You know why,” he shot, wincing at how cold he sounded. “I was halfway across the world from you guys most of the time on tour and you guys…you deserved the world. I never did anything but hold you guys back. We were all ready to move on.”
“We were ready to move forward…with you.”
A dramatic cry escaped him before he could stop it and Trevor finally spun on his heels, rounding on Ray.
“You guys wanted the quiet life, you were ready to settle down and you deserved that,” he exclaimed. “I couldn’t give you any of that, you know I couldn’t have.”
“You were always part of the deal!”
“I couldn’t have been! It was just…it was reality. We were barely into the twenty-first century, Ray, in one of the coldest industries out there-"
“That’s not what you were afraid of!”
His hands clenched to fist at his side, trying desperately to control the anger that rocked him. If Ray had any idea how terrifying it had been, trying to keep all of his double lives in order…
“Of course I was afraid of that! And it’s nothing about being a coward- do you not remember what the press did to me after I got custody of Carrie?” He challenged. “I mean god Ray, the death threats I got just for coming out as bi...of course I was afraid of you guys going through that."
“That’s not what you were afraid of,” Ray cut him off again, more calmly this time, trying to get Trevor on his level. “It's not what you ran from. When you started to become famous, we knew what we signed up for with you, but you always had one foot out the door when you were with us. You’ve never thought you were good enough. I think you left because you didn’t think that you were worth the sacrifice it would have taken. It’s important to me that you know…you would have been worth it. For both of us.”
Breathing sharply, Trevor stared at the floor, desperately avoiding Ray’s eyes.
Because Ray was right. What Rose and Ray had was so special, and for him to try to come in and shake up their world like he did…it wasn’t fair to any of them. His life was so messed up and they were so special- he loved them too much to bring them down with him. Instead of letting them help him he ran, as far away as he could from them, from the Orpheum, from everything.
“Rose loved you so much,” Ray murmured; they were so close now. “You inspired her. She was in awe of you and the strength you have. Taking in Carrie like that…she thought you were an incredible person. It’s important to me that you know that.”
He did know- he knew because Rose had told him, but it didn’t feel right, hearing those things from her after all of the pain he had caused them. Hearing it from Ray now…it was a validation he hadn’t realized he needed.
“It’s hard for me, to be the one left standing,” Ray went on, his voice shaking madly. He knew Ray was calling back to the song. “It’s so hard, to live without her and when I say that I would have gone through all of that, instead of her if I could have, I mean it. But I know I still have a place in this world. You still have a place too. I want to make sure you know that.”
Ray’s hand reached out, gently slipping around Trevor’s wrist and his own eyes shut tightly, tears seeping through. Trevor was afraid to open his eyes in fear of the floodgates opening entirely. The gentle hand on his wrist squeezed and it felt like someone reached in and touched his soul, it was so exactly what he needed to hear. Because his fear of the ghosts of his past had nothing to do with being haunted.
Nothing Ray had said was wrong. The worst part was that to this day, his heart yearned to be with someone who understood him like that again but it just wasn’t possible. Because he had been the one who left, he was the one who hurt them and it wasn’t fair for him to be envious of the life they had without him. Or to want to be apart of the one Ray had now, without either of them.
“Do you still have feelings for him?”
The question replayed in his mind, for the hundredth time.
“Yes,” he blurted out, more forcefully than he meant.
His eyes blinked open, tears leaking out; his head felt heavy and fuzzy. Ray was staring back at him, a half, bemused, smile on his face.
“Yes what?” Ray asked.
Trevor let out a shaky breath, realizing he had said that out loud.
“Nothing,” he lied, “just…talking to your dead wife in my head.”
Like he could even deny that at this point. Ray, thankfully, just snorted before replying:
“Tell her I said hi.”
A hand fell on his shoulder, and he jumped in surprise, but instead of turning toward him Ray began leading him out of the studio.
“I’ll figure out how to talk to Julie,” Ray sighed, going right back to square one like all of that hadn’t happened. Trevor glared at the sun as it gazed down on them fiercely, not at all matching his mood as they stepped outside. “If all else fails, we could always hold a séance.”
He was joking, obviously, but Trevor could have sworn he heard Rose answering back: a séance. Sounds fun. Our place or yours?
“A séance sounds fun,” he retorted sarcastically. They stopped halfway up the garage; it still felt like there was too much left unsaid but Trevor felt drained, raw, after everything. “If Julie’s not ready to talk to you…don’t worry about it. I’m a big boy, Ray, I can handle my own ghosts.”
“Can you?” Ray challenged.
“Yeah,” he shot, “I’ve got a ring of salt around the house and everything. I’m good.”
Ray wasn’t buying it at all, not that he was okay with the ghosts or okay, in general, but hopefully Trevor was convincing enough to him that he was okay to go home.
“You’re serious, about the ring of salt, aren’t you?” Ray teased.
“Yeah, the Amazon guy’s probably still wondering why he had to deliver a truckload of salt to the Wilson mansion.”
That, at least, earned him a laugh (that laugh) and his heart fluttered, feeling accomplished.
“Don’t worry about the ghosts,” Trevor stated, attempting to smile again. “If the radio keeps changing to country music, that’s Reggie just…talk to him about dogs or Star Wars or something, it’ll make his day.”
There was a flash of recognition across Ray’s face as he stuffed his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.
“Dogs?” Ray repeated.
Nodding, Trevor explained:
“Reggie loves dogs, he always wanted one. His family wasn’t really…they weren’t dog people, you know?”
Ray blinked.
“There’s a humane association website, showing available dogs, that keeps showing up when I open my laptop,” he admitted.
Of course there was. Trevor couldn’t help but to laugh, sounding almost maniacal. This was too bizarre to be his reality right now.
“Maybe you guys could use a dog,” he shrugged, stopping short. “They're good with trauma and grief, you know? Just don’t get a big dog, Luke’s afraid of them.”
Ray let out an incredulous laugh, shaking his head.
“Country music…Star Wars…no big dogs, got it.”
Reaching up, Ray squeezed his arm gently, meeting his eyes as he fell serious again.
“Don’t be a stranger,” Ray pleaded with him quietly, “please.”
He patted Trevor’s arm before stepping back, retreating back to his home. Another image flashed in his mind, of Rose smiling back at him, one last time, radiant even though she was a ghostly pale. Confident even though she was terrified and he was so scared too, scared to lose the only true friend he had left in this world.
Maybe, Trevor could hope, he had another friend left out there after all.
Trevor turned one more time back to the studio, gazing into the one room that was always a constant in his life. He had been so anxious to come back here and face the memories this place had but strangely enough, his heart felt safer now than it had in years.
His heart also felt more confused than ever.
But he felt safe.
“If you guys really are here,” Trevor spoke up, still and quiet, “be good to them, okay?”
As he turned away from the studio a final time, Trevor could have sworn he hard the strum of a bass guitar in response.