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Here is what Willie knows:
It’s easier to talk to people if he envisions them as having animal souls. They can’t say why, it’s just always been like that. It’s easier to move on impulse and respond quickly to questions if he lets the animalistic side ask him the questions, not the human side.
The need for it goes away, after a while. After they get used to the person, he’s able to see them as who they are, as human.
But it’s selective, it only goes away for people that make them happy, really happy, the people that he loves to be around. The people he’d call his friends, some of them he’d call his crushes.
So when Ms. Henley at church called him unmanly and never going to find a bride, dressed like that , they could close their eyes and picture her snake self, hissing the words at him. He could laugh at it, later, because who can take a snake calling them unmanly seriously?
He only developed the need for an animal for his mom when he realised he definitely was not normal .
Realised that homosexual was the word for him, that there was nothing he could do to stem it, stop it, block it.
His mom was a bear: fiercely protective when she needed to be, loving to her children to a point.
Looking back on when he’d died, they can say that his mom probably cried at their funeral.
Even though it had been only a few months before then that the pair of them had had the mom, I’m definitely gay , talk.
Even though she’d cried when they’d told her.
He hadn’t gone to his funeral, it was too soon after his death.
And besides, he’d found something new and intriguing, some one he could trust.
Caleb Covington had bumped into him on the street and realised that Willie was the kind of ghost that needed a place. An anchor. A hive, if you will.
Caleb Covington had bumped into Willie and shown them to his place, the Hollywood Ghost Club, and Willie had become enraptured by the flashy costumes and the feathers and the music and oh Willie has always loved music.
Caleb Covington was a bee.
A queen bee (in more ways than one), if Willie wanted to be more specific, but they never really focused on that.
Caleb Covington was a hard worker, he was a part of a huge family at the HGC (he was the queen of the family, really), he welcomed Willie wholeheartedly, giving him the stamp and reassuring them that they could come back any time you wish .
Willie had always loved bees. Fuzzy and soft and dedicated. And yellow. Willie had always liked yellow.
Willie started spending more and more time at the HGC, they started dancing for some shows, he was given more and more freedom within the club that they didn’t notice two flashing signs that should have registered and they just… didn’t.
One: a stark contrast to their freedom within the club, Caleb had started limiting Willie’s travels elsewhere; keeping them from skating as often as they used to, keeping them from talking to ghosts outside.
Two, the more alarming one, the one that, looking back, makes Alex grab Willie’s hands to keep them from slapping their face, their arms, because stupid stupid stupid you should have left while you still could, you could have prevented all that pain on Alex and Julie and Luke and Reggie: Willie never stopped seeing Caleb’s bee soul, not in all their time at the club.
(The need for it goes away, after a while. After they get used to the person, he’s able to see them as who they are, as human.
But it’s selective, it only goes away for people that make them happy, really happy, the people that he loves to be around. The people he’d call his friends, some of them he’d call his crushes.)
But it had been easy to trust Caleb, at first, because of the bee. Maybe Caleb had been different, because bees have always been Willie’s favourite, because maybe his mind let it stick around, because bees have always been Willie’s favourite .
So Willie had (stupidly, he mentally adds, looking back) trusted Caleb with everything. Given him anything he wanted so that Willie could stay with the Hollywood Ghost Club, stay within that hive that powered his entire existence as a ghost.
Because he’d seen what happened to ghosts who lose purpose, who have no anchor, who spend centuries looking for their unfinished business and never finding it.
They become nothing less than a husk of what they once were, scouring the Earth as merely a shadow, searching, forever searching, for that which would set them free.
And Willie refused to let that happen to him. They tightened his hold on the Hollywood Ghost Club, let it be their anchor, knew, knew, that as long as he did what Caleb wanted, as long as he kept to himself outside and was a star performer inside, they’d be able to stay.
It’s what keeps Willie awake so many nights, now, that fear, that relentless fear that now that they no longer have the club to be their anchor, they will become like those shells of ghosts .
Even though Julie and the Phantoms and the garage is their new anchor. Even though Alex has spent months talking to them and making him feel safe and really, he’s the anchor in all of it. He’s the eye of the storm that is all of the threads connecting Willie to remaining as he is, a full plasma-and-no-blood ghost.
The club had been their anchor for so long, though.
Caleb had been the bee buzzing in their ear, seemingly friendly for so long, though.
Thirty-two years is a long time to be manipulated. Thirty-two years means that he stops seeing the parasitical bit, after a while. Thirty-two years means that he starts to trust the bee more than they used to, the bee constantly hovering over his shoulder, watching, watching, watching.
Thirty-two years means that when they skate into a boy who is nothing less than a capybara, soft and kind and friendly and yet still a little new , it’s like a breath of fresh air, like a drink of water after three decades of being parched.
Thirty-two years also means that the first place he thinks of to help Alex and his boys when they come to him for help is the Hollywood Ghost Club.
Thirty-two years also means that when he goes to speak to the bee about the guys being here, they are apprehensive, and then, when Caleb tells them it’s fine, even great they brought the guys, a feeling of relief washes over them.
Because they’ve been on the receiving end of a jolt before, more times than they can count, and looking back, they think he should have seen it earlier, what Caleb had been doing.
Even though you couldn’t have seen it, love. Not after so long , from Alex.
Thirty-two years means that when he’d approached the bee after they’d seen him put the stamps on the guys, he felt scared .
And after Caleb had said, now, they’ll have no choice but to accept my offer , Willie could feel it rushing through them. The guilt. The pain. The fear .
For the capybara, for his friends, the puppy dogs, Alex, and Luke, and Reggie .
God, he hated themself for what he’d done for so long .
Even now, even after everything has been made okay and they’re falling asleep in Alex’s arms every night, there are times, not often, but still times, when they sob into Alex’s chest, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry I’m so sorry .
Julie’s been telling them to go to therapy for a while. But they’re a ghost, how would that work?
It’s almost laughable. Hi, Mx. Therapist. You can’t see me, but I’m here. You see, I’m a ghost that has been manipulated by another evil ghost for the past thirty-two years, and even though I am finally free from him and with a family that loves me and does not take advantage of me, I still have problems. For example, I often cry myself to sleep in my boyfriend’s arms because I did something awful to him while I was still under control of the evil ghost. Can you help me?
Oh wait, Mx. Therapist, before I forget, I still have trauma about crossing streets without holding someone’s hand .
Even in their head, the therapist fainted and refused to see them.
They really just want to be okay again. The way he’d been before the bee. Before the hive. The way that he’s starting to feel with Julie and Reggie and Luke and Alex being his new family, his new home. His new hive. But it’s slow and every time he starts crying and remembering what he’d done , it’s like nothing’s changed.
It’s like he’ll never be better.
Caleb Covington had been a bee.
Willie had loved bees since childhood. They fascinated him, they were cute and soft and yet still able to work together, thousands of them moving as one, under the command of one queen. Willie trusted Caleb Covington because Willie had loved bees since childhood.
But after thirty-two years, Willie had forgotten what it was like to be stung. How it feels to crave love from that which does not seek to love him. Bees do not love Willie as Willie loves them.
After thirty-two years, Willie had forgotten the feeling of I just wanted to hug the bee because I love it! And it stung me!
Which is why it hurt so much when Caleb put his stamp on Alex and on Reggie and on Luke because that was when they’d started to realise.
Caleb Covington is not a bee.
Caleb Covington is a creature that can pass for a bee at face value, which is what Willie had been taking him at for thirty-two years. Caleb Covington is a creature that stings to get what he wants and even once he gets it, he will continue stinging and stinging and stinging because that is how Caleb Covington works.
Caleb Covington is a yellow jacket.
And Willie has always been afraid of yellow jackets.