Work Text:
Victoria had accidentally stepped into the role of running interference for Ray. At first the casseroles being dropped off had been genuine and gratefully received. Victoria was dealing with the grief of losing her little sister as well as trying to help Ray deal with two distraught children who couldn’t believe their mum was no longer there. It had taken all of her energy to do this and she’d all but moved into the Molina household to help support Ray. So the steady stream of dropped off foods from friends and the parents of Julie and Carlos’ friends had been welcome. Four months down the line, she’d started to come out of her fog of grief and started not only cooking for herself but also the Molinas. It took two months later for her to realise that food was still being regularly dropped off and that the tenor of those dropping them off had changed slightly to single parents who eyed Ray a little too hungrily. However, she’d shrugged and grimaced a little before smiling slightly when she thought about how funny Rose would have found the situation. Her sister definitely would have nudged her shoulder and said, “See, I married the hottest guy.”
It wasn’t until she had seen Ray visibly shrink back from a pushy baseball mom who was patting his forearm and flipping her hair flirtatiously over her shoulder as she handed over tupperwares of food to Ray. Victoria’s protective instincts had kicked in and she’d barrelled over, a bright and very fake smile on her face as she’d thanked the mom for being so kind and thoughtful. Ray had sent her a relieved smile and stepped slightly behind her.
They hadn’t spoken about it however Victoria took that as her cue to get a little more involved, turning up to Carlos’ baseball practices and Julie’s parents evenings and fending off the advances of single parents who hoped Ray was over Rose enough to move on. And he wasn’t. Any time Rose even mentioned potentially putting himself out there and he would deliberately change the subject. She got it. If anything were to happen to Jen then it would take her years, not months, to recover. Plus she might be biased, but Rose was the best and how did you replace the best?
So she continued on, helping Ray fend off all and any romantic interest. As soon as he indicated he was ready to date again then she’d happily step back but until then she was in what Jen called her “mama bear” mode.
----------
Everything continued on normally until a couple of weeks ago. First there had been Carlos’ obsession that the Molina house was haunted which Victoria had shrugged off as Carlos processing his mother’s death but then The Incident had happened. She still struggled to fully explain what she had seen. Ray had found it amusing and assumed that Carlos was playing nothing more than a trick on her with the help of one of his friends. But ever since then, she’d started to notice more and more things that just didn’t add up around the Molina household. There were the weird ways things would move when her back was turned and the music that would spring up when no one was in out in the garage studio. She had asked Julie about it once who had responded in an even stranger way than Carlos did when anyone mentioned ghosts around him. It was all very confusing and she was one more odd event away from going to the botanica.
“Mijos,” she called, coming in through the door with some pollo guisado. Instead of either Julie or Carlos, she was confronted with two boys who looked vaguely familiar but she couldn’t quite place. For a brief second she focused on trying to figure out where she had seen them and then the realisation that two boys she didn’t know were standing in her brother-in-law’s kitchen and her heart kicked into overdrive and her hands shook so much that she dropped the food and let out an ear piercing scream.
“Oh my God,” the blond one said, putting his hands over his ears and cringing. “Now I know where Julie gets it from.”
“Tia,” the one with the leather jacket said, putting his hands out in a disarming gesture. “Please don’t be scared.”
“Dios mio,” she whispered as black spots danced in front of her eyes and her head whirled dizzily for a nauseating second. Clutching the countertop, she stared at the two boys who hadn’t moved and stared back; the blond with an anxious look on his face and the leather jacket boy with an excited smile.
It then came to her where she had seen them. At the Orpheum a couple of nights ago on stage with Julie. “You’re the band,” she stated, her voice still a little shaky but her breath was starting to regulate.
“Yep,” the dark haired one said perkily with a finger gun salute. “The phantoms in the flesh.”
“Ray didn’t mention you were coming. Where is it you’re from again?”
“Switzerland.”
“Sweden.”
Victoria narrowed her eyes even more suspicious than before as the two boys faced each other and the blond one glared and exclaimed,”Reggie!”
“What?! I can’t help it if I can’t remember. It’s not like we ever made it to Europe.”
“Julie is going to-”
“Julie’s going to what,” her niece said, walking into the house. She then froze as she caught sight of Victoria. “Tia,” she said, drawing the word out awkwardly and staring bug-eyed at the two boys. “What a surprise!”
“Reggie said we were from Switzerland when I said Sweden!” Blondie complained.
A horrified look flitted across Julie’s face as her eyes briefly met her aunt’s before skittering away awkwardly.
“So I was thinking that we add this before the brid-”
A third boy stopped suddenly too as he followed in, a battered black journal open in his hands. This was definitely Julie’s band as Victoria recognised him as the one who had stared at her niece as if she’d hung the moon when they’d been on stage at the Orpheum.
“So your aunt is here,” the lovestruck one said and took a little hoppy step towards her with a charming smile breaking out as if about to introduce himself when the blond put an arm across his chest.
“Reggie messed up.”
“Dude!”
“I got hazy on the details,” Reggie protested.
The panic from the four kids was visceral and Victoria had to bite the inside of her lip to stop an amused smile breaking out. She shouldn’t find it so entertaining but it was.
Plus the shifty reaction of everyone else in the room had Victoria reevaluating Carlos’ insistence that the house was haunted. Stuff had been too weird and her meeting the band was not making anything more normal. If anything, it was confirming that Carlos had been right. She stared Julie down, looking for some kind of explanation that would make her mentally laugh this off and promise herself that she would never tell Jen her suspicions because her wife would never let her live it down. But nothing was forthcoming, instead Julie looked anxiously between her and the three boys and then down at her feet as she bit her lip. It was almost painful watching her so obviously try and come up with a convincing lie to spout off. Julie had never been any good with lying.
“So Carlito was right,” she eventually said, breaking the silence suffocating the room.
“What?!” Julie exclaimed.
“The house is haunted and these are the ghosts, I take it. Or should I say phantoms?”
The three boys looked at each other in alarm whilst Julie gave an unconvincing chuckle. “Tia that makes no sense! They’re just here for a visit. You know, band bonding and all.”
“Hmm from Switzerland-Sweden.”
The other three all glared at Reggie who pouted a little.
Victoria put her hands on her hips, glared at the three boys and said, “So which of you scared me out of my mind a couple of weeks ago?”
Even without Blondie pointing directly at Reggie, she could tell it was him from the way his cheeks reddened and he looked down like a little boy about to be scolded.
“That wasn’t the nicest thing you could have done,” she said more gently than she’d meant to in the face of his scared reaction.
“Sorry Tia, I was just trying to get you to believe Carlos.”
The other two rolled their eyes but the one in the beanie slung an arm around his shoulders and looked a little defiantly at her as if expecting her to start shouting. It was more endearing than it should have been and reminded her a little of how she would always look to protect Rose when they’d been kids.
So she left it there and turned to Julie instead. “Do I get introduced or not?”
“Oh!” Julie exclaimed. “Oh right. Yeah of course. Reggie you already know. Next to him is Luke and then on the end is Alex.”
The three boys waved sheepishly at her and she allowed a smile to creep out. She tilted her head, seizing them up and said, “So the 90s?”
“Er...yeah, yeah, they died in 1995,” Julie said, a little distracted as if she was still expecting Victoria to start shouting or fainting or something.
However, all Victoria could think about was how she’d been 23 in 1995. A pang of sadness went through her chest as she realised just how young these boys had been when they’d died and how they never got the chance to grow up. You didn’t think about your own mortality at 17 - at that age death was something that happened to old people.
“Okay,” she said quietly before clearing her throat and pointing to the dropped food. “Being ghosts doesn’t excuse you from cleaning that up.”
They looked at each other before Reggie saluted and said, “On it!”
----------
Victoria’s smile dropped once she closed the door with her hip, her hands full of yet another casserole. “Don’t these people ever give up,” she muttered to herself, as she walked through into the kitchen to put it away in the fridge.
“Another one?” Reggie said, from where he sat on the counter.
She was still getting used to finding random dead teenagers in the house whenever she came around, but Reggie was definitely the one she had most contact with. He was often found with Ray or Carlos and felt very much like one of the family in a way the other two didn’t. He was also her favourite. A sweet, dopey child who was always happy to get a bit of attention and help out. She’d taken to teaching him how to cook Puerto Rican dishes and the way he bounced around the kitchen whenever she praised him or called him mijo definitely made her want to look his parents up and give them a piece of her mind. It had taken some talking down by Jen for her not to do so. But then Jen had met Reggie and also wanted nothing more than to verbally tear into his parents. They’d had to hold each other back.
“Some people have no shame,” she replied.
Reggie gave a thoughtful look then and said, “Does Ray know people are still dropping food off?”
“In theory? Yes. However, I don’t bring it up to him and he never asks.”
“Hmm,” he said.
Victoria raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” Reggie said before pausing for a brief moment and then continuing. “She was kind of cute, you know, the woman who dropped that off. What YouTube tells me is a mil-,”
“No need to finish that sentence,” she replied, holding her hand up and grimacing internally. He might be dead but she still saw him as a child.
“Don’t you think you should let Ray take the food? You know, thank the people dropping it off?”
“I could but he’s working right now.”
“Yeah, those wedding pictures came out really nicely,” he said with a big smile. Then he furrowed his brow the way he did when thinking carefully about something. Before looking at her with an apprehensive expression on his face. “It’s just...don’t you think Ray might want to...I dunno...date or something?”
“And you’re worried I might be scaring off potential dates?”
His brow cleared and he huffed out a little sigh. “Yeah, not deliberately or anything. But you are kind of intimidating and you do guard the front door. Julie’s teachers are way more scared of you than they are of Ray.”
She laughed at that. Intimidating aunt was a title she took pride in. “Ah, mijo, right now, Ray needs me to do that for him. He was stressed having to deal with people flirting with him. But I promise you I wouldn’t stand in his way if he found someone he wanted to move on with. However, at the moment, he changes the conversation any time I mention dating. When he’s ready, he’ll let us know.”
“I hope he finds love again. If anyone deserves to be happy then it's him.”
Victoria patted Reggie’s shoulder. “Me too, mijo, me too.”
And when Ray did decide he was ready then she knew she’d have a partner in crime to help her set him up.