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Julie woke up long after the sun had already risen, her room was strewn with the presents that she had gotten the night before. Her family always celebrated Christmas on Christmas eve, partying well into the morning. It used to be hosted at the Molina household, but after her mom passed - being the one who enjoyed hosting parties the most - the family gathering switched over to her abuelas house.
By the time that they had left their family, her dad ended up carrying a sleeping Carlos into the car. They arrived back home sometime between three and four in the morning, and Julie only had time to help unpack the car before she fell face-first on her bed and passed out.
While they usually just used Christmas day to recuperate, this year was a little different. There were three new additions to the family, and Ray had deemed that they were going to have two different family events. Julie’s phantoms couldn’t be seen by anyone else outside of Ray, Carlos, and Flynn (and only after Julie touched them, for a limited amount of time) but Ray wanted them included in the holiday season.
Presents still sat under the tree, for the Molina kids, for Ray from the kids, and even for her three phantoms. Julie was excited for this year of new traditions that they had been creating, adjusting to the new normal of having three ghosts in her life.
A knock on the door startled Julie into sitting up, “Mija?”
Julie stretched at her dad’s voice, “I’m up! Come in!”
The door cracked open and her dad smiled at her, immediately the smells of a big breakfast wafted over to her, “Merry Christmas, breakfast is almost ready.”
“Merry Christmas!” Julie grinned, “I’ll be down in a minute.”
Ray nodded, “You want to see if the guys are around, too?”
“I will,” Julie agreed.
After her dad shut the door behind him, Julie sat up in bed and regathered her hair up into a messy bun. Rubbing her eyes, she grabbed her phone and unlocked it, greeted first with the time of almost noon, then a text message from Flynn with Merry Christmas along with various Christmas related emojis after it. Julie responded back to the text with the same enthusiasm for emojis along with an Elf movie gif, before shoving her phone in her night pants pockets and standing up, sliding her socked feet into her monster slippers.
Just as she got to the door, she heard the unmistakable sound of three ghosts poofing into the hallway outside of her room. Grinning, she opened the door and almost got bonked on the forehead by Luke knocking on her door.
“Woa - sorry,” Luke said, pulling away his hand quickly, eyes wide.
Julie just shook her head and pulled him into a hug, gesturing for Reggie and Alex to join in, “Merry Christmas guys.”
“Merry Christmas Julie,” They echoed back to her.
“Did you have a good time with your family?” Alex asked when they pulled away.
Julie nodded, “It was great, seeking everyone again. I actually forgot that it was my first time seeing them since-” she gestured between her and her boys, “-everything happened. They all had a lot of questions about you guys. I gave them the usual story - hologram boys I met over the internet. I promised them I’d let them know when our next gig was.”
As it turned out, opening for Panic! at the Disco at the Orpheum opens quite a few doors for you. While they hadn’t signed to any specific label yet, they were in talks with a few different ones. Ray had a lawyer friend helping look through the contracts.
“You guys doing okay?” Julie asked, putting an arm around Luke and her other around Reggie, since they were closest to her. She knew that they were going to spend the morning checking on their own families - with the help of herself and Flynn, they had managed to track down Reggie and Alex’s families a couple months ago.
“We’re good,” Reggie nodded.
“It was a little rough still, seeing my sisters with kids of their own, but-” Alex shrugged, and Luke reached his free arm out and pulled him into their circle, so they were all holding onto each other again.
Luke smiled, “We had each other. We have each other - what more could we want on Christmas?”
Julie squeezed her boys just a little tighter, but heard footsteps running up the stairs, so she didn’t respond. Instead, she spotted, between Alex and Luke, her little brother moving up the staircase, he paused when he saw them, “Everything okay?”
“We’re good,” Julie nodded, pulling away from her boys, “Merry Christmas, Carlos.” A beat later, when the phantoms realized who was talking and that they were visible, they added in their own cheerful “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas,” Carlos smiled, then gestured downstairs, “Dad wanted me to check to make sure you were out of bed.”
Julie laughed and rolled her eyes, “We’re coming.” She looked at her three boys and they nodded.
The five of them made their way downstairs, Ray had already set the table. Although the boys couldn’t eat, they liked the inclusion of having the seats at the table and the plates in front of their spots.
(It was a whole story when they had to explain to Tia Victoria why the table now had extra chairs. They settled on the chairs being for when Julie and Carlos had friends over, but they also knew that she would only buy that excuse for so long.)
The six of them settled around the table, eating and talking and enjoying each other's company. Julie enjoyed being with her extended family, but there was something about this family that made her feel unbelievably happy.
Before she knew it, they were all done eating and Carlos was shepherding them all into the living room. The Christmas tree was settled into a corner next to the couch, the Christmas skirt was only just barely visible underneath the presents that were wrapped around the tree. On the wall behind the couch, there were seven stockings, three of which Julie knew weren’t there last night when they headed to her abuelas house. The top four were for herself, Carlos, her dad, and her mom, the bottom three were labeled with Alex, Luke, and Reggie separately - in a fluffy stocking matching the Molina’s. A whole set.
Alex caught sight of it first as they entered the living room, he immediately froze and covered his mouth with his hands. Ray and Carlos took their positions - Ray on the couch, Carlos already sneaking under the tree to organize gifts - and Reggie was rattling away to Ray about something or another. Luke noticed Alex’s pause next, “Are you-” He started, but followed Alex’s eyeline and caught sight of the stockings, “You guys didn't.”
Ray smiled at them, Reggie pausing to peer curiously at his friends, “You three are a part of the family, of course we did.”
Reggie looked towards the stockings, it took him a moment longer to realize what was going on, but Julie heard the sharp intake of surprise when he did. Julie wished she knew that her dad was doing this, she was aware that each of the boys had presents under the Christmas tree, some she got for them, and some her dad and Carlos got for them, but she didn’t know about the stockings.
Given that the boys couldn’t touch any lifers besides herself, they engulfed her into a hug. Julie squeezed them back with all the love that she could. She was long past being weirded out that she could feel their tears, even though they were ghosts, their weird ghost physics were just something that she would never understand.
When they pulled away, rubbing at their red eyes, Julie took Alex’s and Luke’s arms and brought them over to the coffee table so they could all sit around it. In Christmas pasts, her parents would sit on the couch with her and Carlos taking over the floor to open their presents, before the rest of their family arrived. When Carlos was younger, she used to be in charge of passing out presents, but as Carlos got older, they settled into him passing out presents while Julie sat and waited.
Now, her dad sat alone on the couch, Julie sat at the coffee table facing her dad, Reggie pushed into one side of her while Luke was on the other, Alex sat to the right, facing towards the three. Carlos was stacking presents around him as he sat at the tree, he liked to pass out the stacks of presents after he got them all sorted.
Julie’s eyes found the Christmas tree ornament that they made this year - her family created one each year, based off of something important that happened during the last 12 months. For this year, their ornament, which was originally a clear, she painted to be the same colors as the Julie and the Phantoms logo, then she drew out three little ghosts. Each of the ghosts were designed as one of the boys - Alex’s ghost had his fanny pack, drumsticks, and snapback, Luke’s had a beanie and his guitar, and Reggie’s had his necklace and bass - the three of them also cried when they saw the finished ornament.
“A tradition in our house,” Ray started, getting the attention back on him, “is for the first thing you open on Christmas to be your stockings. We don’t put gifts in the stockings,” He stood up and turned around, unhooking each of the stockings from the walls, “Instead, we write a letter for the person to read. It can be about whatever you want, a good memory, a thank you, anything.” He turned back around as Julie watched each of her boys faces, looking on the verge of tears again.
While her dad hadn’t told her that he was going to give the boys their own stockings, Julie had written her own letter for each of the boys, having planned on giving it to them after they opened presents and were alone. In a split decision, as Ray turned to pass out the stockings, Julie poked at Luke and Reggie so that she had room to scoot out from under the coffee table, “Wait! I left my letters in my room, can I go get them?”
“Go ahead, mija,” Ray nodded, giving her a knowing smile. He didn’t seem surprised that she wrote them letters without knowing that he was doing this for them.
“You don’t have to wait up to open the letters!” She said, squeezing Luke’s and Reggie’s hand once before standing up, “I’ll be right back!”
After hearing an affirmative noise, she raced upstairs - almost faceplanting from her oversized monster shoes she was wearing - and slid into her room. It was a challenge to not trip on the mess on the floor as she got around to her desk, Christmas gifts and clothes strewn in her way. Sitting on the desk were three letters, each addressed to one of her bandmates, each folded into origami hearts, each a page long love letter to them, telling them just how much they meant to her.
Piling them into one hand, she started to turn away, but added a box of tissues into her other hand because - let’s face it - she knew that the boys were going to be crying again. If her dad gave them stockings and was explaining the letters, she knew that it meant he wrote each of them something. While she had no idea exactly what would be in it, he had told her and the boys how happy he was that they came into her life and brought music back to her. The Molina family wholeheartedly believed that the three boys were a blessing from Rose up-above.
When she made it back downstairs, she knew that she made a good call with the box of tissues. She ran her hand across Alex’s shoulder, dropping his letter from her in front of him, and offered a tissue. He took one gratefully and Julie squeezed his shoulder once before placing herself back between Luke and Reggie, she dropped each of their letters in front of them as they read the message from her dad - front and back she noticed - and set the box of tissues in front of her so that they could grab it when they wanted to.
Carlos had settled the gifts into six different piles and had placed himself at the coffee table so he could read through his letters. Julie flipped over her stocking and pulled out her two letters, one with her little brother's sloppy handwriting that he tries to make nice for the letters, and one from her dad’s cursive handwriting.
After she unfolded her little brother's letter, short and sweet, like always - she wrapped her arms around Luke and Reggie, adjusting her legs under the coffee table so that she could touch Alex as well. Carlos’ letter was kind, he expressed how happy he was to hear her music again, how he was glad to have his sister back, and that if she went on tour in the next year, he better be invited to go along so he could skip school. Julie smiled at her little brother and gave him a nod, before pulling away from Luke to unfold her dad’s letter.
As it turns out, she also needed the tissues. The letter from her dad started out the same way as her brothers, glad that the boys had come into her life and brought music back to her, but it went deeper than that. He reminded her about how proud he is to see how far she had come in such a short time, how he knows that - sooner rather than later - she’s going to be selling out stadiums to everyone enjoying her music, and how he’s going to be right there in the front row to cheer her on. He tells her about how he got a snip of that success for her at the Orpheum, but he wants her to be able to experience that without the worry that she was about to lose three of her best friends. He also adds in how she’s growing up into a wonderful young woman, how proud he is of everything that she does, and how he knows that Rose is as well.
By the end of the letter, she is crying enough that she forgot that her phantoms were going to read the letters that she wrote them as well. The first one to get her attention is Alex, he kicks her leg softly and she looks up, seeing that he has tears in his eyes, her letter left on the table. Alex scoots backwards and slides himself around Luke to be behind her, resting his chin on her shoulder, “Thank you,” He whispered.
Julie reached back and intertwined her hand with his, squeezing it before pulling his hands so that the back of his hand was just above her heart, “No,” She mumbled, leaning back into his chest, “Thank you.”
Reggie and Luke finished their letters from Julie as well, Luke first, then Reggie, and she only knew because the order they joined the hug. She had actively worked on their letters for the last week, although since they created Julie and the Phantoms, she was unconsciously thinking about what she would tell them in that letter. The three of them were her family as well, as much as her dad and Carlos were, and she knew that they felt the same way about her.
In her letter, she thanked them for coming into her life, for not running away when things got tough, for being the kind, caring souls that they were. She told them about some of her favorite memories with them, some that included all four of them, and some from the times that she spent individually with each of them. She outlined all the reasons that she loved them and tried to really hit home just how important they were to her.
It took quite some time for them to all calm down, a single glance at her brother and dad told her that they so clearly wished that they could join in on the group hug. Unfortunately, whatever ghost logic allowed Julie to touch her boys did not extend to them - while they could see the guys, Carlos and Ray still passed right through them.
Once each of the boys released Julie, she stood up and pulled her little brother and dad into a hug as well. What could she say? They were a family of huggers, after all.
Eventually, Carlos passed out the presents, and the guys seemed a little less surprised that they were getting gifts as well, although it was possibly just because they saw six piles of gifts behind Carlos. He pushed the presents behind the person that the stack belonged to, leaving it to the side of himself and Alex, and sat their dad’s gifts on the couch next to him.
Carlos started with opening the presents, Julie gave a smile and nod to her bandmates, joining in with her little brother in opening the gifts. A moment later, Luke, Reggie, and Alex started opening as well.
For the first time, Julie understood why her parents were always waiting to open their presents, more interested in focusing on what their kids thought of the gifts they had gotten. She found herself watching her phantoms for their reactions.
For Luke, Julie had gotten him his own dream box, “So you stop trying to dig through mine all the time,” She told him when he unwrapped it. On the outside of it, she doodled images of some of his favorite bands, when he opened it, she wrote ‘Luke’s Dream Box’ at the bottom. Her dad had given him a large stack of vintage picks that had a bunch of popular 80s and early 90s bands on them, “I hate that they're considered vintage as well,” Ray had laughed when he told Luke that he had gotten it at a vintage store, “These are as much idols from my childhood as they are yours.”
For Reggie, she had found a stuffed border collie. Once, when she was just hanging out with Reggie, he had told her that he used to have a border collie before he moved to LA, when he still lived on a farm in Tennessee. At a different time, he also told her that he really enjoyed stuffed animals but, because of his parents, he had to get rid of all of them when he turned ten. Reggie hugged the stuffed dog close to his chest, then hugged Julie. From her dad, Reggie got a stack of popular country singers that she had heard Reggie mention before. Reggie looked at Ray surprised, and he explained, “You’ve mentioned country music in the passing a few times and I sometimes hear you humming country songs.” The big smile on Reggie’s face made Julie wrap him tighter in her arms and rest her head on his shoulder.
For Alex, Julie had given him a pair of roller-skates. It was actually thanks to Luke that she knew that the drummer was good at roller-skating. Alex had complained, quite a few times, that he couldn’t keep up with Willie on his skateboard, usually just having to run besides his boyfriend. Julie had seen firsthand that Alex was decidedly not good at skateboarding, having watched him attempt to practice on Carlos’ old board that he didn’t use anymore. She explained that to Alex when he looked at her with wide eyes, he rolled his eyes at Luke, but thanked her, saying it would make his (after)life easier now. Julie was surprised at her dad’s gift to him, when he unwrapped a weighted blanket, “It’s not 100% proven,” Ray said, with a kind smile, “but it’s said to help release anxiety. I know you three don’t really need to sleep, but it can also be used when you’re just around and having a bad day.” Julie knew that no one ever really told her dad about Alex’s anxiety, but her dad was also just perceptive of his children, even his three adopted ones.
Julie had been so distracted by what the boys' reactions were, that she forgot about opening her own gifts. With the nudge of reminder from her little brother, Julie continued opening her gifts. Her extended family knew her main interest was music, so they gave her basically anything you could give a musician, strings for her guitar, cleaning supplies for various instruments, sheet music from all across pop culture, her Zelda enthused cousin gave her an Ocarina begging her to learn to play, all that sort of stuff. From her dad and Carlos, they leaned more into her crafting that she enjoyed doing in her spare time.
She got fresh sewing kits, a new sketchbook, high quality art supplies, new fabric in a rainbow of colors. Giving her thanks to them, she was greeted with one final present that was addressed from ‘Your Phantoms’. Looking at said phantoms, she tilted her head and held up the object to them, the shape and weight of a small book. The three in question just smiled at her, waving for her to open it.
Confused, and a little surprised, she opened the gift and inhaled sharply. It was a song writing book, but more than that, the front and back cover were littered with dahlias. Even as she flipped through the pages, she saw a single dahlia in the top corner of every page. When she got to the middle of the book, a small set of earrings fell out, two dahlias, “How did you even get these?” She asked them, setting down the song book to look at the intricate earrings of the two red flowers.
Alex smiled and Reggie shook his head, “Better not question it, Jules.”
“We saw them and thought of you,” Luke added, nudging his shoulder against hers.
“Guys-” Her voice broke, the earrings reminded her of the night of the Orpheum. The color of the flower, though she never told the boys of its importance, was the same color of the flower that the women had brought her while she was crying in the alleyway. When she thought she failed the boys, when she begged to hear from her mom again. It was the sign from her mother that she was watching over Julie and a reminder that everything would be okay.
Luke and Reggie hugged her, and she didn’t bother to try and stop the tears, deciding to tell all of them about her breakdown behind the Orpheum that night. It felt important that they knew how much this meant to her. While she didn’t really want to know how three ghosts acquired these gifts, they had, and it meant the world to her.
This Christmas was definitely a teary one, but a different type of teary than last years. Last year, she was still trying to grapple with her mom’s recent death - the holiday season didn’t even feel real, although Julie tried to put on a happy face - much to the disagreement of Dr. Turner. This year, though, Julie actually felt okay - better than okay, really - she felt stable, and happy, and like the world was turning up.
Later, she and her phantoms were laying together in the loft of the garage on an air mattress in a tangle of limbs. She couldn’t tell where any of them ended and another one started, her head on Luke’s chest, arms tangled with Reggie, legs tangled with Alex. She felt whole while she was with them, like this is where she belonged.
“Thank you for letting us join in on Christmas,” Reggie said, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen around them a while ago.
Julie turned her head so she could see him, “You guys are family, of course you were going to be a part of Christmas.”
“But you have your Christmas on Christmas eve,” Alex said, “You guys didn’t have to put up another celebration just for us.”
“That’s not why we did it,” Julie responded, “We always had a small family Christmas, as well. Just the - just the four of us. We extended it to you guys because you’re family now, the moment you poofed into this garage from the dark room, you became a part of the Molina household.”
Luke laughed, “I remember you trying to kick us out the moment we poofed into this garage.”
Julie shook her head and rolled her eyes, “You know what I meant, Luke. Want to or not, you guys are all Molina’s now,” Smiling softly, she added, “You read dad’s letters, he takes those things very seriously.”
“That letter-” Alex shook his head, smiling fondly.
“Both of your letters,” Reggie added.
“-you mean a lot to us too, Jules.” Alex finished.
Luke nodded, “The three of us always knew that we would have each other, we were the only family we had when we were alive.” He snaked his arm across her stomach, “Getting to be a part of your family now…”
Julie hummed, understanding, pulling each of her boys closer to her, “Getting to be a part of your guys family means a lot to me, too. I know how tight knit you guys are, and you let me in just like that.”
“I love you guys,” Reggie said, heartfelt, his eyes looking at each of the band members.
That seemed to break the rest of them, the cuddle pile became closer as “I love you”s were passed around. Julie tightened her grip on them, although she knew that they wouldn’t leave her, “I love you,” She repeated to them.