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Julie’s not so sure when it becomes a habit, but at some point, it happens with such regularity she comes to expect it. The faint sound of gentle tapping on the window pane, a familiar face peeking into her room from behind the glass, and Luke’s blinding grin, growing with every step she takes toward her bedroom window.
She’s not expecting him tonight though— not on a school night, and certainly not when she’d stayed out in the studio much later than she was supposed to. And Luke must realize it too, because the fingers of his hand go flying up to rake through the hair that curls around the nape of his neck the moment his name affectionately slips out of her mouth.
“I know ghosts don’t sleep, but you do know that it’s three o’clock in the morning, don’t you?” She asks, trying but desperately failing to fight off the smile that’s already beginning to pull across her own face.
“I know,” he says softly, eye sweeping from her own all the way down to the mismatched socks she’d fallen asleep in. “But I couldn’t stop thinking about that song— the one you’re writing for your midterm assignment? I think I might have figured out that one part that was giving you hell.”
There’s an unspoken question wrapped up in the explanation he offers as to why he’d come calling so late. A proposition Julie had known she’d be agreeing to the moment she’d awoken to find Luke grinning at her from outside her window. But there’s something so endearing about the way he practically vibrates in hopeful anticipation while he awaits her reply. Something that makes her hold his gaze while she cocks her head to the side and pretends to contemplate her next move despite the fact that her mind’s already made up.
“Jules…” Luke pouts when he can’t take the silence any longer.
“Yeah, okay,” she says through a quiet laugh, scooping her songbook up and tucking it under her left arm.
The smile on Luke’s face grows impossibly wider, top teeth digging into his bottom lip as he wordlessly stretches a hand out toward her in silent invitation.
Her fingertips tingle as she slides them across his open palm, the skin of her arms pebbling when Luke’s own fingers curl sturdily around her hand so he can help her out of her bedroom window and onto the roof below.
It’s been a couple of months since Julie had somehow managed to save Alex, Reggie, and Luke from Caleb’s club stamps, and there’d been a small semblance of a learning curve that had come with the boys’ newly acquired solid forms. Even Julie had found herself having to adjust to their new normal. A new normal that now included surprise attacks from Reggie, who loved to poof in behind her and unexpectedly scoop her up in bone crushing hugs, or the weight of Alex’s shoulder pressing comfortingly into hers whenever they huddled up for a band circle. But it’s different with Luke, just like everything is always different with Luke.
There’s a small part of Julie that doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to things like the the way Luke’s hand in hers makes her heart feel like it’s skipping a lap around the studio. There’s a small part of her that hopes it’ll always feel like this— that he’ll always make her heart pleasantly ache just a little bit. A small part of her that hopes she’ll always make his heart ache just a little bit too. There are times where Julie’s convinced that his heart already might. Especially in the moments when she catches Luke’s gaze drifting down toward their clasped hands, eyes alight in wonderment as though he's spent just as many sleepless nights as Julie has wondering about what it might be like if he could touch her. As though he still can't quite believe that touching is a thing that they get to do now.
He clears his throat, dropping her hand before he lowers himself down onto the roof and pats the space to his right. It’s only once Julie’s safely settled down next to him that Luke reaches back to grab the acoustic guitar he’d brought up to the roof with him.
“I was thinking about what you said yesterday,” he starts, fingers fiddling with the tuning pegs of his six-string. “About how you thought it might be cool if there was some sort of breakdown in the outro? What about something like this…”
They make quick work of troubleshooting through the finicky verse in her song for school. After that, her songbook and his guitar get set aside and lay long forgotten.
There’s a part of her that knows that she should get back to bed and try and get as much sleep in as she can before her alarm goes off, but Julie’s in no rush to leave the cozy bubble they’ve created up on the rooftop despite the crisp November air. She almost thinks Luke might be ready to call it a night when he shifts next to her, but her doubts soon melt away when all he does is shrug out of the well-worn flannel he’d donned for the night so he can drape it over her shoulders instead.
“Won’t you be cold?” Julie asks, eyes drifting questioningly to his bare arms after he’s left in nothing but a white cutoff shirt.
“No, but I had a feeling you might be,” he says, reaching out to pull his flannel snug around her when it slips off one of her shoulders.
In her sleep deprived state, Julie lets her eyes slide shut as she turns her nose into the jacket’s soft collar, breathing in the comforting scent of Irish spring soap and Coppertone, the heat rising to her cheeks when she opens her eyes only to find Luke shooting her an amused look.
“It smells like you,” she mumbles sheepishly in response to the question in his eyes.
“Is that a good thing?” He asks.
Julie nods, the motion sending her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose.
“It smells like home,” she whispers aloud. “You smell like home.”
She hadn’t meant to say it, but the words slip out of their own accord before Julie can stop them. She’s too tired to try to walk the sentiment back. She might have tried if they were anywhere else, but there’s something about being huddled up on the roof late at night with nothing but Luke and the moon for company. Something about the moments they share under the stars that makes the idea of spilling the secrets she harbors in her heart seem far less scary.
Luke says nothing, but she doesn’t miss the soft smile that blooms across his face, or the warmth that glows and swirls in his irises as a result of her words. He loops an arm around her waist in an effort to draw her close and Julie goes willingly, pausing only to mumble a weak protest when Luke reaches up to pluck the glasses off of her face.
“Don’t worry, Boss. I’ll keep them safe,” he assures as he carefully hooks the plastic frames onto the front of his shirt.
She tucks herself against his side then, tired eyes sliding shut the moment her head slots into the slope of his neck.
And the last thing Julie feels before she drifts off to sleep is the brush of Luke’s warm lips against her forehead, and the hushed sound of his voice whispering out into the stillness of the early morning.
“I think you feel like home.”