Chapter Text
The first time it happened hadn't been more than a month from the incident. He’d thought nothing of it, old nostalgia and fresh pain. It didn’t mean anything. Except….This was six months after that and Bobby couldn’t exactly deny what he was seeing.
Luke grinned at him from the end of the bed, legs dangling lazily over the edge. “You could stop staring, Bee. I’m not gonna disappear.”
Bobby’s words were like ice, crackling and cold as he speared them at Not-Luke. “You already did that.”
Luke rolled his eyes, shaking his head at Bobby’s statement. “I didn’t, actually. I’ve been here all along. You just weren’t ready to look for me yet.”
“You’re dead.” Bobby ground out, fingers digging into his thighs. This had to be a dream. Luke was dead. All of the boys were dead. They had been for nearly a year at this point.
“So?” Luke jumped up from the bed, walking around the landfill of Bobby’s room and glancing at the guitar in the corner. The strings were cut jaggedly, red tipped and tangled. “Death really isn’t that big of a deal. Anyways, we did always say nothing could seperate us.”
“But you’re dead, Luke. And...And I’m not .” Bobby ignored the choking feeling in his throat, the air being clenched from his lungs.
“And that’s great, because your work here isn’t done.”
“My work?” Why was Bobby entertaining this? Why was he answering this dream version of Luke. Because that’s what it haf to be right, a dream?
“Yeah, man. We died, but that doesn’t mean our music did.”
“What’re you asking me?” Bobby growled, pulling the blanket he’d been happily sleeping under ten minutes ago closer to his chest.
“You need to keep our music going, Bobby. You can’t let us fade out.” He was sounding more and more like Luke now, the determined look he always got coming to life in his eyes, “You have to let our music have an impact.”
“There is no music. You’re gone.” Bobby croaked, tears spilling over and down his cheeks in a cascade, a dam broken, not that he’d managed to wall up his emotions yet. The nightmares hadn’t settled enough for that.
“There is.” And suddenly Luke was handing him the songbook, the one Bobby had kept closed from the moment he’d swiped it from Luke’s stuff in the abandoned studio.
“Luke…”
“Use it. You know it’s good. It matters to this world. Don’t let us die out, Bobby.” The irony of the word choice wasn’t lost on him, but Bobby nodded anyway. He’d never been good at saying no his boys.
“Okay, Luke...Okay…”
Luke smiled and in a blink, he vanished. Bobby looked down at the book grasped in his hands and felt the knife in his chest twist deeper. With a sob, he cradled the notebook to his chest.
It didn’t matter whether it was a dream or something else. Not-Luke was right… Bobby couldn’t let them disappear. Their music was important, and it had mattered to all of them so much. Bobby would make sure people heard it, one way or another.