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The way they figure it out is… unorthodox, for sure.
It all starts when Reggie sleeps with a girl sometime when the four of them are all living in Bobby’s garage. Bobby’s only really there for moral support - Trevor and Joe Wilson are absolute darlings, and would probably give each of the four of them a whole wing of the house if they thought any of them would accept it - and Alex and Luke really could be at home, if they were willing to wade through eddies of barbed comments and echoing silences. Reggie’s the only one who’s there because of the physical impossibilities of living at home, so when he stumbles back through the door and towards the sofa they’ve all insisted he sleep on with a girl pushing him backwards, her mouth on his, they don’t make themselves known and embarrass him, they just neatly file out into the washer room, expecting them to kiss for a while and move on.
They can hear everything, but Bobby doesn’t have his key to the main house because they usually climb in through his window just for the thrill of it, and the only way out is back through the garage. It doesn’t end with kissing.
Bobby’s the first one to go, face colouring an odd mix of deathly pale and a concerning green, and for a moment, they all consider the real possibility that he might throw up, and then the girl moans and Alex is curled up next to Bobby, hands over his ears and face scrunched up.
Luke withstands the longest, even if his jaw is clenched and his face is probably the picture of discomfort, but then she starts talking, and it’s odd, because they don’t hear a peep from Reggie, but she’s vocal, and she doesn’t stop, and Luke grabs a wash basket, and his shoulders convulse as he heaves. Nothing happens, but he staggers back to sit on the other side of Alex, letting the other boy wrap an arm loosely around him. Usually, his heart would be skipping a little bit, and orange would be climbing up his throat, with Alex wrapped around him like this, but he’s hiding his face in Alex’s hoodie before he can acknowledge it, and his mind is occupied by the sounds making their way through the door.
Eventually, Reggie appears as the door swings open, face ashen and expression drawn. He sits down on the other side of Bobby, heavily, unusually mindless of how little touch Bobby liked when he’s uncomfortable. “I hated that,” he whispers, and Luke sees something in Bobby change, like a switch flipped. The severe discomfort is wiped from his face, and instead of leaning away from Reggie, he practically lifts him into his lap. He doesn’t look comforted by the touch, not like Luke is by the weight of Alex’s arm across his shoulders, but Bobby’s weird, and Luke is at least a little bit into Alex, and if Luke mentions it, the switch that’s just been flipped on to allow him to comfort Reggie Will be flicked back off, and then Alex and Luke - notoriously less accomplished at deadening themselves to their emotions - will have to try and step up.
Bobby’s not speaking English, Luke doesn’t think, not proper English anyway. It’s a weird mishmash of words that don’t really make a coherent sentence at any point, but the tone is soothing, and Bobby isn’t trying to make Reggie talk about it, because Bobby probably can’t imagine anything worse, and Luke can just stare at the wall opposite, Alex warm against his side, and consider why the fuck he just heaved into his laundry basket because he heard a girl having a good time.
He knows he’s not gay, so that can’t be it.
He’s seen Alex and Reggie’s sister side by side and he knows he’d have a hard time making that decision, but he’s beginning to realise that “that decision” might be more along the lines of who’s hand he wants to hold, than anything further.
It’s… an interesting conclusion to come to.
He’s not entirely sure how he feels about it.
It’s not that he thinks sex is necessary for a relationship - Bobby came out to them all as ace three days after Alex helped Luke find the word pansexual - but it’s just… Carrie had gone through a phase a year ago, when she’d been trying to figure out how to ask Flynn Joia from her Food Tech class out, when she’d gotten into love languages, and how people want to give and receive affection, and she’d gone from telling Bobby he was an acts-of-service type guy who didn’t want people to love him back unless it was in lovingly crafted insults and pisstakes to looking Luke straight in the eye and telling him he’s a people pleaser who loves and wants to be loved with touch and physical affection.
He wonders, for the whole time Bobby is muscling through comforting Reggie as best he can, how that really works if he’s… like Bobby. What does he do if he falls in love with someone who likes sex? Does he work through it, and return every night to his boys so Bobby can hold him and grit out nonsensical reassurances, or does he try to go into a relationship with someone, knowing there’s so much he can’t do, and how much it’ll probably suck for him. He remembers the time Alex had asked him if he could stay the night, and how awful he’d felt the whole night when he’d had to say no, knowing there was something he could’ve done for Alex that he hadn’t, and thinks that a relationship full of that would be worse than never having a relationship at all.
“C’mon, Lukey,” Alex whispers, not moving his arm from around his shoulders, but gently nudging Luke to standing.
Luke blinks, looking up. Bobby and Reggie are already stood up, both still looking… off, for sure, but better. “What?”
Alex leans forward to press a kiss to his hair. “We’re gonna go get ice cream, man, and maybe get hammered.”
“Don’t wanna drink,” Reggie disagrees, shaking his head. His voice is thin and shaky, and Luke wants to find that girl and give her a piece of his mind, even though he’s seen Reggie pretending to enjoy something and knows there’s no way she could’ve really known. “Not. I don’t wanna do that, tonight. Please.”
The three of them nod immediately, tripping over themselves to reassure him that if he doesn’t want to, they won’t ever drink again, and then they’re dragging each other down the pier, spirits lifted by the way the setting sun casts their shadows taller than the legends they dream of becoming, and by the way their voices are magnified by the cave they settle into after they’ve gotten their ice creams, bouncing off the rocks the way Luke imagines they’ll one day echo off stadium walls. The tide rushes in and out and Luke’s socks end up soaked, but he kind of feels like his worries are dragged out to sea with the receding waves, and he thinks of how his dad used to tell him about the white horses of the sea foam, with little mer-knights that slay his demons and make sure the path they traipse back to dry land is safe for them. He knows it’s stupid, but he’s never quite gotten over those little pictures his dad used to paint for him. If he closes his eyes, there’s nothing to prove there aren’t horses in the sea foam and fairies at the bottom of his garden and sirens singing in the dead of night when the moon is high.
He thinks the world is a little bit more bearable when his eyes are closed.
——
They settle into themselves, a little bit.
Reggie and Bobby start dancing around each other in a way that’s fun to watch but that scares Luke endlessly, and Alex grows a foot over the summer and starts filling out his hoodies, and Luke keeps waiting to notice, because tall guys and short girls have always been what he likes, and he’s liked the way the sun catches Alex’s eyes for years, but it doesn’t really make a difference.
He acknowledges that Reggie has a certain something to him, if that’s what you’re into, and that Bobby’s the kind of dark voice and dark eyes and dark smile that appeals to a lot of people even if it isn’t exactly Luke’s cup of tea, and it all feels the same. His boys are beautiful, but it doesn’t matter, because they’re his, and the way that they belong to each other isn’t the sort of way that requires any sort of attraction at all, and he throws himself at Alex. There isn’t even a single flutter in his chest, and the yellow that blooms under his ribs isn’t tinged orange at all, and he almost sobs in relief.
The four of them are inseparable for the rest of senior year, even more than they had been before. They try things - Alex likes slow kisses that don’t get too deep, and Reggie likes anything that doesn’t require any clothes to come off, and Luke is… okay, if not excited, with most things that are above the belt, even if the feeling of a tongue in his mouth is decidedly not his thing, and Bobby doesn’t let any of them touch him for three days after he manages to psych himself up to try a deeper kiss than the soft ones he’s sometimes okay with trading when he’s been in a more touchy mood for a while - and they talk about things - Alex wants to photograph the fog from Mount Tam at dawn, and Reggie wants to meet Dolly Parton, and Bobby wants to learn to make sushi, and Luke wants to surf a perfect tubular wave - and Luke is in love with them in a way that is entirely platonic but that fills him in his entirety. It doesn’t matter about the sex thing, because his boys are the same, and it’s not expected for their friendship, for them to do it, so he doesn’t feel broken for a single moment.
Then Alex meets Willie, and Luke spends two whole weeks panicking that Alex is going to realise that what the four of them have isn’t exactly normal, and that he’s putting himself at a disadvantage every time he brushes his lips against Bobby’s temple in hello and every time he sprawls across Luke to analyse his poem for lit and every time he encourages Reggie through his super-hard maths homework with little kisses.
It’s not like there’s anything behind it, and they’ve talked about it extensively enough to know that there really isn’t anything going on, but Luke knows normal people aren’t that comfortable with their friends, and he knows normal people certainly aren’t happy with their boyfriends being in these kinds of situations.
It turns out, though, that Willie is like the rest of them, and about as tactile as Reggie. He doesn’t want to be kissed, but neither does Bobby, most of the time, so he falls into their little group with ease. Luke likes them, once he stops freezing with panic about losing Alex every time they come by, and they’re funny and smart, and they get Bobby different coloured bracelets so the rest of them can tell how he’s feeling touch-wise, and they drive Reggie to the ER when they all wake up to him laying flat out on the cold floor, hands on his ribs with his eyes screwed shut even though the rest of them are out of their minds with worry, and they let Luke press against them and just be quiet for a while, when the others are being loud when he doesn’t want to be. He’s good for them, Luke realises as he packs up his things, the yellow that he’s always associated with his boys pooling under his collarbone when Willie pops his head through his bedroom door to ask if there’s any boxes to carry yet.
He’s not going to college, he’s never had much interested, but Bobby and Reggie both want their degrees before they give everything up for the band, so he and Alex have found jobs in Massachusetts and the five of them have gone in on an apartment together, and Willie is taking a photography course because the four of them beg him twice a week to be their official photographer now that they’ve started booking decent gigs.
They get a place with four bedrooms and a pullout couch, and they put two beds in the biggest bedroom, because Alex and Willie share, and Bobby and Reggie and sometimes Luke often end up in the same bed when the cold gets too oppressive or they just miss each other, but they need a space for when touching is just… not it, because although it’s really only Bobby who regularly needs a bubble that the rest of them can’t breach, the rest of them wear out eventually, and Reggie needs options of mattress and duvet heaviness, so the fourth bedroom is explicitly a very silent room where personal space bubbles can be extended and are obeyed like law. Luke doesn’t use it often, mainly when he’s been on a date that went badly, or when his dad calls to see how he’s doing, and his mom doesn’t take over at the end like she always used to.
With Massachusetts comes Flynn and Carrie who followed them to the apartment across from them with their friends - Nick, who joints Bobby on the No Touch Armchair, and judges their alloromantic failings mercilessly but incredibly fondly, and Julie, who compliments Reggie’s bass playing before she introduces herself to them, which a sure fire way to gain all of their approval, and sings like she was put on earth just to stand on a stage, and looks at Luke fondly at three am when she’s showing him a poem called If I Should Have A Daughter and asks if he was the boy who lost everything or the boy who started the fire.
He laughs, and it comes out slower than he means, but the kitchen after sundown has always been a bit of a liminal space to him, so he doesn’t try to force it out faster. It feels right, to laugh slowly, when she’s looking at him like that, all crooked smile and earnest eyes. “Neither,” he tells her, voice echoing off the cupboard Reggie left open when he came in for a bagel and left with a box of pop tarts half an hour ago. “Both, maybe.”
Julie’s close enough to kiss, and the awful fluorescent bulb is reflecting off her eyes in a way that makes him hate it just a little less, and for a moment he remembers laying in the garage with his boys, and how much he enjoys every new way he finds to show people he loves them, and in the next moment he’s overcome with the memory of how much he hates tongues in his mouth and fingers under his shirt and how when the girl from the coffee shop he went on three dates with pushed him against a wall and took control, he slept in the fourth bedroom for two weeks, and then he’s turning away.
If he pretends not to notice how Julie looks at him, how his chest feels fluttery and weird around her in a way that makes the little crush he had on Alex in junior year seem childish and insignificant, how her hand on his face makes the world come into focus in a crash of colours he doesn’t know the name on and sounds he can’t match to the names of notes he knows like he knows his boys, then he won’t lose her, not really. Eventually she’ll grow bored of him, and she’ll find someone else, and it’ll hurt, because Luke remembers it took a year to get over Alex and this feels so much more than that, but he likes to think they’ll still be friends after that, which is much better than the push and pull of explaining that his thing with the boys and Willie is non-negotiable and non-romantic, and that he’s attracted to her but he doesn’t want sex or to be kissed like that but this is okay, if she wants to do that, and the desperate need to make people happy that has led to a lot of derisive comments about his intensity and neediness.
Julie rests her hand on his shoulder lightly. “Wanna go see a movie?”
He’s thrown, momentarily, by it. “Jules, it’s three am.”
“There’s a late night cinema, near here,” she reminds him. “They’re screening the angry bird movie on repeat all night. We could get nachos and slushies?”
He reminds himself firmly of every reason he just listed not to get too deep, but then he’s running through the streets of Massachusetts, cackling as Julie chases him, whisper yelling about how they were her maltesers, and the sky is just lightening up a bit, a million miles away from the cramped streets of downtown, and every creeping doubt about maybe secretly being in love with his boys and taking advantage of them is wiped clean from his mind because he’s pretty sure he’s not even in love with Julie yet, but the warmth bubbling up in his chest to a painful degree is the red of Reggie’s cheeks when he looks at Bobby doing something weird, not the soft, pulsing yellow that Luke associates with the four of them.
They make it to the cinema, out of breath from laughing, stitches burning their sides, and Luke has to reel Julie in for a moment just to hold her, cheek itching where her curls are pressed against him, and he feels like he could stay there forever, even though he really couldn’t, because the movie starts in five minutes, and now that she’s mentioned nachos he thinks he might die if he doesn’t have any in the next half an hour.
She takes his hand on the way in, and it’s weird, at first, because Luke is shorter than most of his friends, and usually he’s the one leaning against them and being tugged along, but once he gets used to how delicate her fingers feel against his, he gets swept up in how dizzying it is to be able to just lean across and drop a kiss on her hair. He kind of gets why Alex always does it to - well, he does it to all of them, but when he does it to Willie, he always gets this little pleased smile. It’s a little bit addictive.
Julie holds his hand for the whole film, even when she’s trying to fight him for the last macho, and she holds it all the way back to their apartment complex, and even though their doors are opposite, it kind of feels like she’s walking him to his door, and she kisses his cheek before nudging him inside with a soft, “night, Luke. See if you can get some sleep.”
——
“But It can’t have been a date, right?” Luke asks for the millionth time, head on Bobby’s stomach. “Like… if we date, she’ll want sex, and then she’ll break up with me, and then Carrie and Flynn will have to pick sides and then everyone will hate me.”
Bobby plays with his hair lazily, winding strands caround his finger then unwinding them in a repetitive motion that’s far more soothing than it has any right to be. “I dunno, man, sounded like a date to me. Don’t you think… maybe you’re underestimating Jules? There are five ace flags in our flat, Lukey, and five aces in our flat. She’s smart enough to have worked that out.”
“There are also seven bi flags, but that’s just because Reg is enthusiastic,” Luke reasons, grabbing Bobby’s free hand to play with his fingers. “And, don’t you think it’s unlikely that we’ll have just happened to have found another person like Willie who’s totally chill that we’re all… I don’t know, weird and on top of each other, and that is chill about the sex thing?”
“Lulu, just because you’ve had bad experience with, fuck, what does Wills call ‘em?”
“Exclusionists?”
Bobby nods. “Right, just because you’ve had bad experience with exclusionists doesn’t mean every person you meet is one. And, Jules already knows that the four of us are weird, remember? She’s seen you kiss Reg just because he got you the good donuts, and you had that conversation about squishes and colours, remember?”
“I…” Luke sighs and closes his eyes. “I guess. What… I don’t want to fuck everything up.”
“I know,” Bobby says in the gentle tone he only ever uses to coax Luke into believing things are going well, and yellow creeps up Luke’s chest. “But you won’t. I mean, you’ll probably fuck up a little bit, a lot of times, but that’s how people work. You won’t fuck up big time.”
“Thanks, Bee,” Luke mumbles after a moment of consideration. “I know you don’t like feelings talks, but thanks.”
Bobby doesn’t laugh, but there’s a sharp exhale of air like he would be laughing if he could be bothered. “It’s okay, Lucy. You owe me some gin, though,” he jokes, tugging at Luke’s hair lightly. “Or a chocolate bar. God, I’d kill someone for a snickers.”
Luke opens one eye to deliver what is hopefully the kind of scathing look Alex can do even when Willie is trying to do little plaits in his hair. It’s probably not even close to as effective, but needs must. “You’d kill someone for a mouldy piece of bread.”
“Nah,” Bobby disagrees, but his tone is definitely considering. “Reg would be sad and Allie would panic about hiding the body.”
“That’s true.” Luke relaxes for a moment, then frowns. “So… you think I should date Julie?”
Bobby sighs and flicks his forehead again. “I think you said she felt red, right?”
Luke nods slowly. “I guess.”
“And you pined after Al for a whole year and he never made it past orange. So, I think you need to decide what red means for you,” Bobby said gently. “I can’t decide that for you.”
“You’re the worst,” Luke complains, then kisses Bobby’s wrist lightly so he knows he doesn’t mean it. “Have you even sorted out your shit with Reg?”
Bobby’s quiet for a moment, and Luke can imagine the flush crawling up his cheeks even if he can’t see it. “Yeah, actually. We’re… um. We’re going for dinner on Thursday.”
Luke rolls onto his front. “No shit?”
The smile Bobby flashes him is small, but the fact that it’s even visible tells Luke a lot about how happy Bobby is. “Yeah… You were explaining about Jules being red and us being yellow, and then me and Al were talking about it, and he said Wills is… like. Ugh, what did he say? Wills makes him quiet, like, his thoughts. And then, Jules and Care were pestering me about how my feelings work, which is weird, because they don’t, and everyone knows that, but I guess Reg makes my chest feel weird and tight in a way that’s different to how you guys make my chest feel warm and tight,” Bobby explains, stumbling over his words, cheeks getting redder and redder.
“Aww,” Luke teases, poking his cheek. “I knew you had some feelings in there.”
Bobby rolls his eyes, but he looks happier than Luke has seen him in a while, and Luke leans forward to kiss his shoulder lightly. “Love ya, Bobble.”
Bobby’s smile quietens, but when he pulls Luke up enough to kiss the corner of his mouth lightly, it’s definitely still there. “Love you too.”
——
Luke is pretty sure this is their third date.
Julie’s hair is in a big ponytail that bounces with every step she takes, and she’s wearing his favourite sleeveless hoodie, and an old tank top of Reggie’s, and she’d grabbed his hand as soon as he’d opened the door to invite her inside and hasn’t let go since.
“Jules, there’s,” his heart crawls up his throat, dripping red. “There’s something we need to talk about.”
Julie looks up from the coffee shop menu she’d been studying on her phone. “Yeah? What is it?”
Luke tries to let go of her hand, but when she doesn’t ease her grip, he doesn’t push it. “I’m not. I don’t…”
“Hey, it’s okay,” she reassures him gently, putting her phone down to cradle his face. “What’s wrong?”
He clears his throat, eyes darting everywhere and anywhere that isn’t her face. “I’m.. uh. I like doing things for people, and I like touching people. Care says that’s, she says that’s my love language?”
Julie laughs, and for a moment he’s caught up in the way the dim light of the coffee shop catches her highlight as she tips her head back. “Yeah, Lukey, I know. It’s… kinda obvious.”
He laughs shortly and nods, looking down at the table. “Yeah. Um. But… there’s a bit. I can’t. I don’t like sex,” he manages to rush out, squeezing his eyes shut. “And, I prefaced with the first bit because I need you to know the at if there, if there was any eventuality where I could figure it out and make it happen, I totally would because I hate that there’s this huge part of being close to you and stuff that I just - I can’t, I don’t, I can’t-”
“Lukey,” Julie says gently, letting go of his hand so she’s cradling his face with both of her hands. “Me too.”
He opens and shuts his mouth a couple of times, apparently attempting to say the rest of his schpiel, even though the words have dried up. “I-.... what?”
Julie laughs softly and leans forward to kiss his forehead lightly. “Me too,” she repeats.”
“O-oh.” He blinks for a moment, then scans her face for any sign of unsurety or deceit. There’s none, of course - it’s Julie. “So. Um. We’re on the same page, then?”
She hums softly. “No sex, no deep kissing, you kiss your friends, I cuddle with mine, no cuddling in the fourth bedroom?”
“I… yeah.” He nods after a moment, trying his best to stay coherent while his chest explodes with red. “Uh. Yeah. Anything. Anything else?”
“Can you explain the colours to me again?” She asks, twirling his hair around her finger. “I want to… I want to understand it.”
Luke nods slowly and pulls back a bit. “Uh, okay, I’ll try. So, right. Um. The boys are yellow, right? And Willie? I don’t really know how to explain it, but when Reg was doing a lot of research he found something called a squish, which is.. like… a friend crush? I guess? So that’s yellow, and then red is… red is I think romance, and when I liked Alex he was orange, which was weird, and then Care and Flynn are blue, which is probably something like sisterly, or something - oh, and Nick is green. I don’t know what green means.”
“Okay.” Julie nods, chewing her lip. “How do you feel a colour?”
Luke shrugs. “Don’t know. It just feels like a colour. I guess… so, uh. Red is like… the way Reggie blushes when he looks at Bobby is red, right? That’s always been what love is to me. None of parents are really… they were the first example of movie-style love. Squishes are yellow because they make me feel warm and at peace, like the first time the four of us cuddled, when we were seven in this huge field of sunflowers. The memories have colours, and the feelings have memories. That’s how it began, anyway. Now I just… I don’t know. It’s like how… you know when you’re sad about something and it correlates to a specific song?”
Julie nods again. “Like, how when Carrie and Bobby fall out, they both play Ballroom Blitz by The Sweet because it reminds them of each other?”
“Yeah, exactly!” Luke grins, taking her hand over the table. “It’s like that! I don’t know why they have colours, you guys just do. It’s just the best word for it.”
“I get it.” Julie steals his coffee and tries it, smile splitting her face. She’s the most beautiful person he’s ever seen. “I get you, Luke Patterson.”
It’s cheesy, sure, the use of his full name in such a cliche sentence like that, but he kind of understands why it’s become a cliche in the first place.
He kisses her knuckles and he’s pretty sure if he squinted, he’d see that his lips left a red stain. “I don’t get you,” he admits, squeezing her hand gently. “But I want to. A lot.”
Julie smiles brightly, and Luke thinks that if she asked him to, he’d never sing again. If she kept looking at him like that, he probably wouldn’t even mind. “It's gonna take you a while. I’m a very complex person.”
“I reckon I’d be okay with that,” he promises, squeezing her hand again.
——
Luke has been laid like this, arms wrapped fully around Reggie’s waist, face buried in his chest for the last half an hour. “And then she kissed my finger tip and told me I can’t shred them because then it’ll hurt to hold my hand,” he says again, looking up at Reggie, making his eyes as big as possible.
Reggie laughs, completely unsympathetic now that he’s got no romantic woes of his own. “Aw, did ickul Wucy get ovewhewed because the pwetty wady was nice?” He teases, pouting exaggeratedly.
Luke whines and buries his face back in Reggie’s chest. “I hate you.”
“You loove me,” Reggie singsongs, and Luke stops being sad to delight in the yellow blooming from his navel to his Adam’s apple, because it’s taken years to get to a point where Reggie doesn’t panic every time one of them jokes about this kind of thing, and Luke is just so fucking proud of him, and he can’t help crawling up to kiss him lightly, doing his best to avoid catching anywhere that might hurt.
“Okay, Lukey, times up,” Bobby calls from the kitchen doorway. “I want my boyfriend back so we can go annoy my dad.”
Luke rolls off Reggie and looks at Bobby, hoping how offended he is is obvious. “Uncle Trev is in Massachusetts and you didn’t tell me?”
Like he’s been summoned, Alex appears behind Bobby, gently kissing his shoulder then elbowing him in the ribs. “Uncle Trev is in town?”
Bobby sighs and exhales steadily, raising his gaze heavenward. “Okay,” he says eventually. “I’ll cancel our reservation and tell dad he’s coming here. Lukey I swear to fuck, if you step one goddamn foot in my kitchen before I’ve finished making a Wellington O’pa can be proud of, I’ll fucking kill you, Alex, you’re making a tiramisu, hop to it.”
Luke let’s his jaw drop, and he hops to his feet. “Joe’s coming? You’re- I- they’re…” he trails off, utterly dumbfounded as to how Bobby could’ve not told them this. “How could you-”
Bobby beckons him forward, and when Luke is close enough, he kisses his forehead lightly. “I don’t want you to feel pressured to introduce them to Jules, and they’re only here for tonight, they’re getting a flight tomorrow morning. We were literally just gonna go grab dinner and then come back. I’m sorry, Lukey, I should’ve told you.”
Luke melts into him, yellow seeping out from the point Bobby had touched. “Its okay, Bee. But, I want them to meet her,” he says immediately. He gets where Bobby is coming from - if he’d had more time to think about it he’d probably have panicked about making it perfect for everyone involved, but this is Julie, and Uncle Trevor and Joe, and his mom didn’t stay on the phone long enough for him to explain how well they’re doing when his dad had called him on his birthday, and while it’s progress, he just really needs someone to be proud of how far he’s come. Someone to see his growth from a scared little kid dry heaving into Bobby’s laundry basket in Junior year to an adult with a steady girlfriend who laughs about allo people with him, and who introduces him to the worlds of sensory experiences and impulsive song writing and a million other ways to be intimate and to say I love you without anything that crosses boundaries. Someone to appreciate that he’s got a really fucking nice apartment, now, with the three best friends his mom had always warned would drag him down, as well as Alex’s partner, who was labelled a troublemaker for their skating in high school but who now takes photos at their shows that have honest-to-God made Luke cry, and he has friends at his work who invite him over for coffee and card games, and even if his mom won’t listen long enough to hear that Luke was right, he knows Trevor will clap his shoulder and kiss his hair just like Bobby does, and Joe will say they’re proud of him and hug him without letting go for ten minutes straight, and then they’ll descend on Julie like they never got a chance to with Reggie, who’s always been practically family.
Alex rests his chin on Bobby’s shoulder, and Reggie appears behind Luke. “You sure?” Alex asks.
Luke glances at each of them. He’s never taken anyone home to meet Uncle Trev and Joe. There’d been a girl in their first year Massachusetts, and a person in the summer after that, and a couple of dates here and there, but it’s never gotten that far, because he always pushes it off. He thinks of Julie and the way she laughs with her whole body, and the way the corners of her eyes crease when she smiles, and the way red bleeds from everywhere she touches him. “I’m sure.”