Work Text:
It’s been a long day. Too long, with more emotions rushing through her than Julie expected to fit inside her body on a single given day. Her legs tingle even now, like all the fear and grief and relief are just waiting to burst out of her. She remembers her organs cramped into one big gooey ball inside her as she walked onstage, and the relief when Alex, Reggie and Luke came back and got their moment. She remembers the tears streaming down her face when she found the boys in the garage, and her arms around Luke’s neck, a glorious victory in a moment she only expected misery from.
A long day, yet sleep won’t come. Not even exhaustion.
Her feet kick the blanket away. With a soft oomph, it lands on the ground. She doesn’t bother to pick it up. A few days ago, she found a hoodie underneath all the costumes in her mom's chest. The green cotton is long washed out and no longer soft on her skin as she slips in, but it's still more comfortable than any of her own jumpers.
The staircase creaks under her slippers. The hallway is darker than her room, almost pitch-black. She bumps into the railing once, biting her lip so she doesn’t shriek. Frozen on the step, she waits. And waits.
The only thing she can hear is her own heartbeat.
Pulse drumming in her ear, she reaches the front door.
The streetlights cast blurry edges of light and shadow on the front yard. Walking between all the plants her parents chose when Julie was just a toddler, she glances up at the moon and all the stars in its silent company. Maybe it's the hour of day, or the rush of the night wearing off, but it feels like they’re casting a little magic into her world. Even if she’ll shake her head at the memory tomorrow, she sends a quick thank you to the sky for bringing her band back.
As she breezes down the stairs, the sight of their studio brings a smile to her face. Just hours ago, looking at it taught her a new kind of pain, the tears burning in her eyes. Now, her heart somersaults with joy. A few weeks was all it took, and nothing in her life is the same. A few weeks, and they have built so many memories, more than she could ever save and hold onto in a single song.
It won’t stop her from trying, though. Surely, the boys are awake – she could start right now. Her hands reach out for the handle, eager to move, to write and play with a new motivation, when she hears him. Luke.
“Okay, maybe I am, just a little bit. But I’m still a ghost! So what am I supposed to do?”
Oh.
Her hand still lingers on the handle. The metal is cool to the touch. Too cool. She lets go. There’s Alex’ voice, muffled. Slow. Serious. Maybe writing a song can wait. Maybe ghosts need space sometimes, too.
She forgot her keys, and now the door is locked.
Groaning, Julie sinks down to the ground. Of course she left her phone on the nightstand, and of course the boys must have their ghost group therapy talks or whatever it was that she almost interrupted, right when she could use their couch to crash on.
Closing her eyes, she breathes in the cold air.
The night’s not lost. She could go back and knock on the door, give them a warning. Ask Luke if they kept some blankets, or if he would lay down on the couch with her, if he’d keep her warm till the morning, his arms wrapped tightly around her, her nose buried in his chest…
“Are you okay?”
“Argh! You need to stop that!”
With a chuckle where his mouth should be serious, Luke cowers in front of her. “I’m sorry. Everything alright?”
She sighs. “I locked myself out.”
“Tried to sneak out to another gig, huh?”
“Haha,” she pokes her tongue out at him, to which he responds with a laugh that makes her want to do it again. “No, I just couldn’t sleep.”
“Weird. Neither could I.”
Now it’s her laugh that pearls through the night. He looks pleased with himself, and happier than she expected him to. Then again, she has no idea what he could’ve been talking about before.
Glancing at the door, she heaves herself off the ground. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this here,” she whispers. As she holds out her hand for him, her breath hides in her lungs. What if he’s just air to her again? (Cute air, she remembers telling Flynn. Very cute, indeed. But now that his touch is no longer an impossible daydream, air won’t be enough to wipe out the fire on her skin.)
His eyes sink down to her hand. Linger there.
She takes a deep breath.
His hand passes right through her.
No word in either language she knows seems to grasp the rainstorm in her mind. If she can never touch him again, if this one time was all she got… how is she supposed to live with that memory now? How is she supposed to deal with it until it fades away and leaves nothing more than a bitter taste on her tongue? How is she supposed to look at him and think of everything she could have had? His hug felt too good, too much like home to not crave more of it.
With his eyes on their feet, Luke mutters, “Maybe it’ll work again tomorrow?”
Nodding, she breaks away. Exhaustion settles in her step where she lightly walked out of the house mere minutes ago. A question lingers in her thoughts as he follows her, but the answer scares her. So, she doesn’t say anything at all. He’d tell her about any new jolts, after all.
The stones of the stairs feel cold through her leggings. Hands hiding in her sleeves, she waits for him to sit down next to her. In a silent prayer towards the moon, she hopes that he bumps against her, or their shoulders brush or his hands greet hers in a sweet embrace. Anything, or everything, as long as she can feel him here.
Their eyes meet.
One glance at him eases her mind and thrills her heart, although she has no idea how that even works. Her body stops in time’s track for a moment, before it releases the tension in a violent shiver.
Immediately, there’s a frown on Luke’s face, barely hidden by the beanie pulled into his forehead. “Are you cold?”
Julie shakes her head. Under his eyes, and that look he gives her, how could she ever freeze?
“Good,” he whispers.
She wonders what he would have done (tried to do) if she said Yes. But he’s glimpsing at the sky now, lost in thought.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t cross over,” she says, watching him.
A chuckle hushes into the air before he sinks his teeth into his bottom lip. His eyes dart to her. Back to the sky. “I’m glad I get to keep writing songs with you,” he admits. Smiles back at her in that one special way that captures her breath, and her heart along with it. “I think we make a pretty perfect team. I feel like I come alive when we’re… together.”
She blinks. He smiles at her, not as brightly as before, but still with these goddamn puppy eyes. A few seconds pass, in which she wonders why these words sound so weirdly familiar. Then it clicks.
Our voices rise and soar so high
We come alive when we’re
In perfect harmony
“Wait, did you go through my stuff again?”
“What?” he pouts, looking at her out of big sad eyes, “No! Boundaries, remember?”
Silently, she waits for him to crumble, under either the guilt of his lie or her stare. To admit he couldn’t resist it, again. But nothing happens. If anything, the puppy gaze intensifies.
“Really?” she asks.
“Really.”
He sounds like he’s telling the truth. Julie turns away, a wave of embarrassment shaking her core. (Or maybe that’s just the charm of his eyes.) “Oh. Okay. Um… sorry.”
Trying to bump her shoulder, Luke passes right through her. It’s not any less heartbreaking than not being able to hold his hand anymore. “Hey, you alright?”
Sighing, she looks at him. “Yeah. Sure.” I just have a crush on a ghost who died 25 years ago and almost died again today and I can’t even tell him, no big deal.
It’s not fair, she thinks to herself – so many words whirl around inside of her, yet none of them manage to take the leap of faith over her lips. Was it not enough to taste the tears on her tongue at the thought of having lost them? Him?
“Um, can I ask you something?”
“You just did.”
Rolling her eyes, Julie fights a grin. Loses the fight.
When Luke grins right back, the knot in her stomach tightens. “What is it, Jules?”
“Did you…” she begins, only to sigh the sentence away and shake her head once. “Okay, so, something weird happened to me recently, and I was wondering if maybe you’d experienced that before, as a… fellow songwriter, even though it’s probably stupid, and…”
“Julie,” he interrupts her, and the softness he wraps her name in takes every word right out of her mouth. “Breathe. Okay?” His laugh echoes in her chest, a gentle sound in the quiet of the night. “What do you wanna know?”
Eyes closed, she takes a deep breath. Lets it linger in her lungs, as she tries to hold on to the expression on his face before it slips away into a blurry picture in her mind. “Did you ever get lost in a daydream? And, like, suddenly you had, I don’t know, a full song in your head?”
“Like my favorite song or something?”
“No, I mean… something new. A melody, lyrics… everything. Just like that.”
When she musters the courage to glance at him, he’s beaming. “You wrote a new song?”
“I…” she stammers, “it just came to me. In dance class.”
Oh.
She shouldn’t have said that.
Turning away once more, she doesn’t see the disappointment flickering over his face, or the smile he struggles to replace it with. All she hears is his dry chuckle. “You know, if I had known you had a thing for Nick, I wouldn’t have teased you about it in school. That wasn’t cool of me.”
Her head jolts back at him, her curls flying through the air. “Wait, Nick?”
“Yeah. The song? I thought you were saying…”
In the slow ending of his sentence (or, more honestly, in the puppy look he gives her that almost breaks her heart as much as it excites it), she grasps his meaning, and she can’t shake her head fast enough to reply, “Oh no, no, no. No. Nick… no. He’s nice. But when I look at him…” she tries to think of Nick, sweet Nick that she crushed on for so long. All she sees, though, is Luke. “I don’t really feel anything.”
The 100 watt grin is back on his face. If any of her neighbors could see them, they’d yell at him to turn down the light. “Yeah, I get it,” he says, adding, “When I looked at him, I felt super dead inside, too.”
“Well then, do I got some news for you,” she grins back, and the laugh he rewards her with sends her heartbeat up to the sky. Smiling, laughing – it all comes so easy around him. When she thinks about it, everything about her comes easy around him, like the force of his magnetic field is too strong to hide any part of herself. Does it even matter then that he’s technically dead?
“So,” Luke begins, dreading the vowel until her laugh gets stuck in her throat, “A new song, huh? What’s it about?”
She should’ve known. This boy knew no mercy, and neither did the force of his gaze.
“Nothing,” Julie shoots back. Her voice pitches. Cringing, she blinks her eyes shut.
When she dares to open them again, he grimaces at her, lips puckered, eyebrows raised. “Nothing, yeah? Interesting.”
Instead of an answer, she pretends to bump his shoulder.
Except suddenly, she doesn’t pass through him anymore.
A jolt runs through her. A silent gasp. The wonder in his eyes. Her racing heart. The beginning of a smile uncurling on his lips. Her hand in his.
Is she dreaming with her eyes wide open?
“I can feel you,” he whispers, more to himself than to her. His smile widens, all up to his ears. Breathless, Julie just nods, before she finds herself in his embrace. His arms wrap around her, pulling her in until she crashes against his chest and oh. She had no idea it’d feel like this. Strong and safe and soft, and, if she was honest, like coming home.
His chin rests on her hair. “This is nice,” he smiles.
“Yeah.”
They fall silent, the existence of her song apparently wiped from his memory, not that she minds. A tranquility she couldn’t find in her own bed comes to her with ease now. It tugs gently on her eyelids, lures a yawn out of her mouth, a second one, too.
“Tired?” Luke asks. The chuckle in his voice makes her heart sigh with happiness.
“Hmm,” she mumbles into his shirt.
“I can offer you the couch, if it’s of any help. You did say it folds into a bed.”
“Sounds perfect to me.”
To her surprise, the studio stretches out in front of her in complete silence. Turning around, she blinks at Luke. “Where are the guys?”
He shrugs, the smile on his face much more reluctant as he rubs his neck. “Well, Alex wanted to wander around that museum where he hung out with Willie, and Reggie… okay, you gotta promise you won’t freak out, but I think he might be watching your dad sleep. He’s kinda obsessed with him.”
“Daddy issues,” Julie mutters under her breath, rolling her eyes.
“What?”
“Not now.”
For a moment, she feels his eyes on her, and she’s sure he won’t let it go as easily as her song, but then he’s by her side, helping her with the couch.
“Are you comfortable?” he asks as soon as her head sinks down onto the pillow.
“A bit cold, to be honest, is there…” The end of her question still lingers in her throat when Luke tells her to hang on, already sprinting up the ladder, then loudly rummaging through drawers and bags. She can’t help but smile into the dark.
A minute later, he stands in front of her, a wrinkled sleeping bag in his hands. “I knew I still had that somewhere. It’s almost like a blanket,” he explains, avoiding her eyes as he shakes it out, zips it open and carefully tugs her in.
“Thank you.”
Not saying anything, he stands in front of her, ruffling through his hair. Just when she’s certain he’ll poof out to leave her alone, he sits down. Slowly, his fingers settle on her cheek and caress it, light as a feather. “I can’t believe this is real.”
“Stay here with me?” Julie asks in return.
“Of course,” he whispers back.
She’s only ever shared her bed with Flynn and Carlos, and she has no idea – no interest in – who Luke cuddled with in, well, his life. But given how affectionate he acts with the boys, she guesses this can’t be the first time he snuggles up with someone. She wishes it was. What if she doesn’t get it right? What if she snores? Or drools on him or…
“How’s this?” Luke snaps her out of her mind as he shifts around until he’s just close enough for their hands to touch and their knees to bump against each other.
Not close enough, she thinks. “Good,” she says.
“I mean, I could keep you warm, too. I’m a pretty good big spoon.”
Of course he was.
“You’re not exactly warm to me, you know.”
Even if she couldn’t make out the lines of his face, she knows the look on his face – another puppy gaze, unlimited confusion edition. It shouldn’t be so cute, he shouldn’t be so cute, yet something inside her melts whenever she looks at him.
“How does it feel, then?” he says. “When you touch me?”
Like touching fire without getting burned, somehow. “Nice. Lukewarm, I guess.”
It takes him a moment to get it, but then he laughs harder than she ever heard before. The sound brings more heat to her cheeks than both his sleeping bag and her mom’s hoodie. She shakes her head at herself.
“How do I feel like to you?”
Hesitating for just a second, he replies with the slightest smile, “Warm. You make me feel warm inside. And alive.”
There’s no way she can fight the urge to wrap herself around him like a blanket now. A sigh escapes his lips as she scooches closer, and his arm quickly finds her back, holding on to her like she’s his favorite teddy bear. And that’s all she wants to be for the rest of the night.
“Julie?”
“Hmm?”
“Do we make you as happy as I feel when we sing? Or when we’re writing songs together?”
“What?” she mumbles, her voice muffled by his shirt. Sleep almost got a hold on her, but now her eyes flutter open while her brain tries to process Luke’s words.
When the meaning hits, it hits in her stomach.
“Of course I do,” Julie confesses, frowning when his grip on her eases. “Why?”
No answer.
“Luke, where is this coming from?”
Her arms drop on the mattress. Her face hits the pillow. No, no, no.
“You deserve better, Julie,” he whispers. “You have the whole world waiting for you. You have Nick waiting for you.”
She’s heard that argument about a hundred times from Flynn. Sometimes even from herself when sleep wouldn’t whisk her away immediately. Her heart shatters hearing it from Luke of all people, ghosts, whatever. But deep down she knows that if he really wants her to change course, he’d have to try a lot harder.
“What if I don’t want better? What if I want… this?” Slowly, as if her hand is holding a breath on its own, she reaches out to him. He closes his eyes, breathing out ever so slightly as she brushes a strand of his hair out of his face. (She never wants to be afraid of not being able to touch him again.)
His fingers just clasp around her wrist when she slips out of bed.
“Let me show you something,” she says as she turns on the lights and marches to the keyboard. It might not be as romantic as serenading him on the piano surrounded by candles like she imagined in her wildest (and most frequent) daydreams, but it’ll have to do if she doesn’t want to wake up the neighbors – or worse, her dad.
Only one step behind her, Luke sinks down next to her. Their shoulders melt against each other, and his thigh brushes hers. His fingers are rapidly drumming against the little bench, tempting her hands to wrap themselves around his.
For the first time since they met, she realizes he’s nervous. It makes her nervous, too, gives her a sick feeling in her stomach that quickly threatens to flood every part of her body. If he thinks he’s not enough for her, will he be okay with finding out he’s so much more? Or will it be too much?
Her hands hesitate to settle on the keys.
“I’m sure it’s great,” he chuckles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and his eyes don’t reach her.
Now or never, she thinks as she draws one last breath.
Step into my world
Bittersweet love story about a girl
During the second verse, she hears him gasp. Feels how his knee trembles against hers, how his fingers dance over her thigh for just a moment. His gaze never once leaves her, and as she carries on with her eyes fluttering shut, she imagines the puppy look that suits him so well.
You’re more to me
We create a perfect harmony
The last note fades quickly into the night, and in its departure, silence falls between them. Her hands sink into her lap, but he doesn’t try to catch them.
She feels like she’s trying to breathe underwater.
“Wow,” Luke mumbles after what feels like an eternity. “Just… wow. That’s the song?”
A nod is all she can muster.
“It’s a duet, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you just came up with that in dance class?”
Another nod. Maybe that daydream will never fade from the cinema screen inside her mind. Does she want it to?
“You are crazy talented, Jules,” he declares, nudging her. Involuntarily, she glimpses at him, only to be taken away by the softness radiating from him.
“Thanks,” she whispers. Her voice cracks.
“So, just out of curiosity…” A smirk spreads on his face as he leans in closer. Too close. His lips look impossibly soft for someone who’s supposed to be just air. “Who’s it about, this bittersweet love story?”
She clears her throat. “You really don’t know who it could be?”
The right corner of his mouth twitches up, but then he bites his lip, shaking his head.
Sighing, she interlaces their fingers. Waits as he follows her gaze. Waits one heartbeat, and another. Squeezes gently.
“Oh,” he mumbles, and stares, and a grin unfolds on his lips and it’s too much, all of it – her feelings, his touch, his smile.
“Julie?”
Poof.
He’s gone.
A shiver runs over her spine, shakes her heart.
The garage door opens.
“Everything alright in here?”
Her dad looks like he just stumbled out of bed, his hair sticking out to all sides, reading glasses perched on his nose. He wears that look she knows all too well from the last year, whenever he caught her sniffling into a sandwich in the middle of the night.
“Oh hi dad!” Julie laughs, although it sounds too fake even in her own ears. “Yeah, everything’s great. Couldn’t sleep, so…” she nods at the keyboard, “you know me.”
“Yeah, I thought I heard you play. Think you can go to bed now?”
There was nothing farther from her mind than sleep, not with Luke ghosting around who knows where, not when the brightest smile she’d ever seen still lit her heart on fire.
But it’d keep her dad from waking up from nightmares.
“Uh, sure. Just, um. One second. I don’t want to forget this one line.”
Luke had left his notebook on the piano, and as she searches for an empty page, she hopes he’ll forgive her for this invasion. Right after the last dog-eared page, she catches a glimpse of her name in-between rushed letters and crossed-out scribbles. She quickly turns the page. Not now. Not today.
If her dad notices the wide smile hushing over her lips, he doesn’t say anything.
Step into my world room
As soon as her dad closes the door behind him, Julie’s smile crumbles. Groaning, she falls onto her bed, face pressed into the pillow. If anything, she’s wider awake than when she left the room. There’s too much she doesn’t know. Her thoughts are a string of lights in the darkness, and she’s the moth swarming around them. She hopes Luke is okay. That they’re okay, and that this doesn’t break their band, their friendship. She hopes he’ll find the note, and that he wants to perform the song, together.
And deep down in her heart, like a treasure chest at the bottom of the ocean, she hopes he’ll let her fall asleep in his arms.
Half an hour later, he appears in the middle of the room, just as she’s hopeless enough to swipe to Instagram’s discovery page. “I found your note,” he says, and Julie almost falls out of bed.
In a second, he’s by her side. “Woah, I didn’t mean to scare you! You alright?”
His hands hover over her shoulders, not quite daring to touch her, before he drops them and fumbles with the hem of his shirt.
“Uh. Yeah. I’m good. Just, um, didn’t expect you. I mean, of course I did! I wrote the note, after all, I just didn’t…” she clears her throat. “I’ll shut up now.”
“And everything’s cool with your dad?” He’s rubbing the back of his head. Shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his smile wavering along.
“Yeah, all good. You poofed out just in time.”
“Good,” he nods. Sighs, as he sends her half a chuckle. “So, now what, boss?”
Now what? She should sleep. She wants to sleep. In his arms, ideally. Looking at him – puppy eyes, mouth softly curled – she thinks he’d be okay with that.
She pats the empty space next to her on the mattress. “Come here.”
“What? But you said the bed is off limits.”
“Luke. Please?”
Watching him is like watching ice cream melt in the summer. He tries to fight a smile as he kicks his shoes off and lies down, but as soon as their eyes meet, it spreads over his entire face.
She can’t help but smile back.
“Hi,” he whispers.
“Hi,” she whispers back.
“You know, I’m glad it’s you who found us.”
“I’m glad it’s you who dropped into my garage.”
His sweet laugh echoes through her room. “I like you,” he confesses as he gently cups her cheek and leans in to press a kiss on her forehead. Blinking up at him in pure awe, she discovers that perfect smile, and how much more breathtaking it is up close.
“Hold me, okay?”
Within a second, Luke’s arms are wrapped around her, and her face buried in his chest. “Anything for you, Julie,” he replies. And so he holds her all night, until the sunlight peaking through her window wakes her up.
She’s never slept better before.