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The first time it happens, Willie chalks it up to nerves.
Alex is new to the whole ghost thing, Willie reasons. He might not still be super comfortable phasing through doors like it’s nothing. It’s been forty years since Willie had any sort of pulse, but he knows it would be pounding right now as he puts on a casual front, swinging his arm forward and then back to grab Alex’s hand.
Alex jumps like he’s been shocked with static electricity, eyes flying down to their joined hands and then back up to Willie’s face. He doesn’t pull away, though, and the tension that appeared in his shoulders is gone as quick as it arrived, and then he smiles, so Willie knows he’s good.
They’ve hung out three or four times since they first met on Sunset Boulevard, and Willie has decided he’s starting a catalogue of Alex’s smiles; this one is new. It’s shyer than the “Grateful You’re Answering My Questions” smile Willie got on the bench, not touched with laughter like the “Oh, This One Time” smile Alex uses when he tells stories about his bandmates. This one is startled, a little awkward, but soft and open, and Willie has a good feeling in his chest that Alex doesn’t share this smile with a lot of people.
Willie knows that if he lets himself keep staring at it, though, it’ll become the “Kissed Right Off My Face” smile, so he tears his eyes away from Alex and tugs them both into the museum, never letting go of his hand.
Somehow they’ve moved from palms clasped to fingers interlocked in the five seconds before they jumped through the doors, and Willie can feel the rough drumstick calluses on Alex’s palms and fingers, some edged with torn skin and others worn to permanence with the passage of time, all now permanently affixed in whatever state they were in when Alex died. There’s a large one right on the pad of Alex’s thumb that keeps brushing over the back of Willie’s hand, smaller ones tucked into the insides of his knuckles, and Willie wants to memorize all of them, all these little reminders that Alex bled and breathed and played music and was alive.
Willie kind of wants to never let go of Alex’s hand ever, but he didn’t drag Alex to this empty museum just to be weird and hold his hand, and Willie’s already caught sight of three different potential jumps that look just sick enough to impress the cute boy to his left, so it’s with some reluctance that he releases his grip on Alex to put his helmet on and cruise the gallery.
Willie finds himself tracing the smooth lines of his own palm later, after Alex leaves, remembering how the calluses felt against his palms and the way Alex gripped his hand, hesitant at first but then with intention, like even if Willie hadn’t grabbed his hand, Alex would have wanted him to.
=
When Willie grabs Alex’s hand at the Hollywood Ghost Club to help launch him over the tables and onto the dance floor, there’s that same initial shock that flies through Alex’s body, but it’s gone too fast for Willie to even be conscious of it, swept away by the adrenaline of the music and the way Alex is smiling at him, looking alive. This is the closest Willie has to any sort of home turf in the afterlife, and Alex is here, eyes lit up under the glow of the stage lights. Willie wants to take the memory of Alex’s face when he got up to dance and etch it frame for frame in stone: Alex’s tongue pressed against the side of his cheek, the way his bandmates cheered and jostled his shoulders but Alex’s eyes stayed on Willie the entire time. Willie didn’t know his cheeks could flush anymore, doesn’t know how it’s possible, but Alex sends him reeling that way, pink and warm and like he’s glowing.
Willie squeezes their hands together briefly, finding the callus on Alex’s thumb and sweeping his touch over it quickly enough to make it seem like an accident, and he swears he hears Alex’s breath catch above the roar of the music, their eyes meeting like an electric charge.
Luke and Reggie find themselves swept away by dance partners right away, and Willie’s just summoning up the courage to grab Alex and show him all the partner dances he knows when a lifer in a steel gray ball gown asks him for directions, and Willie has to show her to the stairs. He ducks and weaves his way through the crowd, laughing with delight as he watches Maya shred on the piano, and then Caleb catches his eye with a flashing grin and jerks his thumb towards the dance floor.
And there’s Alex, being twirled around by Dante, feet flying, and his smile is wide and startled and Willie wants to be the recipient of it so bad it aches. Fuego appears out of nowhere to catch Alex by his other hand, and Willie finds himself bowled over by a wave of ice cold envy, that anyone else should be granted the privilege of Alex’s touch without earning it.
Alex catches his eye and brightens like a fucking sun, beckoning Willie onto the dance floor, but the dancers twirl everywhere and everyone wants to touch Alex and Willie is in stupid, hopeless, maybe-love after knowing this boy for two weeks and it’s all too much, threatening to knock him over, so Willie tries to salvage what’s left of his crumbling foundations and bolts.
=
Willie doesn’t get to hold his hand again until suddenly it might be for the last time ever.
Everything is too fast, too sudden, and Willie doesn’t even get the chance to stop Alex from backing away before suddenly he’s sweeping forward and clutching onto Willie’s shoulders like he’s a buoy in a violent storm. Willie’s brain catches up after a moment. He buries his face in Alex’s neck and Alex smells like springtime, peony and cucumber and rainwater, like things waking up and coming back to life. Willie holds him like a lifeline, like hope of resurrection, and tries not to think about going back to the way things were before, trying to exist around the gaping maw Alex created when he crashed into Willie’s afterlife.
When they pull apart, it's out of some kind of necessity that Willie twines their fingers together. Alex tenses but doesn’t flinch, and Willie wants to ask about it, would ask about it if they had the time they deserved, but they don’t, because the universe is cruel and Willie is selfish and unthinking and so, so in love, and so he doesn’t ask and he settles for squeezing Alex’s hand one more time, memorizing every callus as if the phantom sensation of their hands intertwined might lead him to some sort of healing.
“I’ll see you around, Hot Dog,” Willie says just to watch the blush of indignance color Alex’s cheeks one more time before he forces himself to drop Alex’s hand and skate down the block out of sight. I would have still followed you, Alex had told him on the back of that couch in the Orpheum, face open and vulnerable, the closest he’ll ever come to a confession of what lay between them, and Willie has to force himself not to look back. If Alex could take Willie’s hand and tug him to the other side of whatever limbo this is the way Willie tugged him through those museum doors, Willie would follow him too, because he’d follow Alex anywhere. It just seems like fate has other plans.
=
It turns out, Willie thinks later, standing in the late night dark of the museum with Alex’s callused hands cradling his jaw and their foreheads pressed together, bathed in an impossible golden glow, that fate might just know what she’s doing.
=
“Why do you always do that?”
“Huh?” Alex looks up from the sheet music he’s studying, something Luke had shoved into his hands as he sprinted out of the garage that was just too good for Alex not to read right now. Julie is at school and Luke is with Reggie scoping out new venues for the afternoon, so they’ve got the studio to themselves, the concrete floors bathed in sunlight that turns Alex’s floppy hair to gold. He’s wearing Willie’s favorite shirt, the olive green Bowie one, and his jacket has been abandoned to the back of a chair. Willie is definitely not ogling his arms.
Willie holds up their joined hands before letting them fall again to rest between them on the couch. “Whenever I grab your hand. You, uh, you always flinch a little.”
Alex blinks, setting the sheet music down and suddenly looking self conscious enough that Willie almost regrets saying anything. “Oh. I didn’t realize I was doing it.”
“I didn’t think you did,” Willie says easily, shifting his body to face Alex fully and tucking his feet up underneath him. “Everything okay? We don’t, um,” he continues, fumbling over his words, “if you don’t, like, like holding hands, we don’t have to --”
“No, no, no!” Alex cuts him off quickly. “I like it. Like, a lot. We don’t have to stop.”
“Oh.” Willie knows his face is as pink as Alex’s hoodie. “Good. That’s - that’s good.”
Alex shrugs. “I don’t know why I flinch. Just embarrassed, I guess.”
Here Willie has to pause. “Embarrassed?”
“I guess.”
“About what?”
Alex shrugs awkwardly, bringing his socked feet up onto the couch to hug his knees, their joined hands still tucked between them. “I’ve just always been weird about my hands,” he says, staring at his free hand, Luke’s sheet music forgotten. “I have all those ugly calluses. You know, from my drumsticks. Never liked them.”
Willie can’t help the giggle that bursts out of him, and Alex’s eyes fly to his face. “What?” he asks, mouth quirking up in what Willie’s now categorized as his “I Don’t Know What’s Going On But You’re Cute” smile, and Willie hums.
“Just ironic,” he muses, bringing Alex’s hand up to hold in both of his. “I’ve always loved your calluses.”
It’s Alex’s turn to blush. Willie earns himself a “Museum Date” smile and high-fives himself internally. “Really?” Alex asks, and Willie nods earnestly, turning Alex’s hand over to rest palm up in the cradle of his hands.
“Honestly, man? I’m, like, kind of obsessed with them.” He skims the lightest of touches over the small calluses tucked in the creases of Alex’s fingers and revels in the soft gasp Alex lets out. “Like, you loved something so much,” Willie murmurs, smoothing his thumb over a large one on Alex’s palm below his pointer finger, “that it tethered itself to your soul. Calluses are, like, proof of that passion. You were alive, and you loved this.” Willie reaches with his other hand and traces the edges of the callus on Alex’s thumb. “Even when it hurt you.”
He looks up and Alex is so still in the afternoon sunlight, like he’s suspended in amber. He’s so gorgeous it hurts. “I never thought of it like that,” Alex manages, voice hoarse, and Willie nods, suddenly finding that he can’t speak at all. He brings Alex’s hand up and presses his lips to the pad of his thumb, the seam of his mouth meeting the center of the time-hardened scar. Alex looks like he might faint.
“You really like them,” he breathes, and Willie nods again, not breaking eye contact as he moves, pressing feather-light kisses to the calluses on Alex’s fingers and palm.
“I really like you, ” he answers, pulling Alex closer still to kiss the nonexistent pulse on the soft inside of Alex’s wrist. If Willie’s heart still beat it would be pounding out of his chest. Alex goes so easily, like clay in Willie’s hands, and it’s so easy for Willie to take his other hand and draw Alex’s legs out flat on the couch, all guardedness abandoned. Willie slides into his lap, knowing full well that he isn’t fooling anyone, that Alex can feel the way Willie’s breath stutters as he trails kisses to the crook of Alex’s elbow. Alex’s hand falls to the dip of Willie’s waist, the hem of the tie-dye crop slipping up so that Alex’s palm is pressed fully against the bare skin there, and it’s a crime how well it fits, like it was supposed to rest there, like nature intended it.
“I like your hands,” Willie murmurs, and he knows he couldn’t control the words spilling out of his mouth right now even if he wanted to. “I like holding them. I like the way the calluses feel on my palms.” He presses a kiss to Alex’s upper arm where the sleeve of his shirt meets skin, and when he drops it Alex’s other hand flies automatically to the small of Willie’s back, anchoring him like a magnet. Willie meets his gaze and Alex’s pupils are blown wide, eyes so blue Willie could drown in them, and his hands. Willie feels like he’s on fire everywhere Alex is touching him and somehow it isn’t enough.
“I like how steady they get when you play the drums,” Willie hums, steadying himself with two hands on Alex’s chest and dropping a kiss to his shoulder. “I like watching. I love, ” and here he kisses Alex’s exposed collarbone, revels in the catch of his breath, “when you twirl your drumsticks. So easy, like you’re not even trying.”
Willie noses up and kisses the curve of Alex’s neck. Alex’s grip tightens on Willie’s waist, head tilting pliantly to the side to give him easier access. “Willie,” he breathes, but he doesn’t need to say anything else. Willie knows.
“I love it when you hold me,” he murmurs, still trailing kisses up Alex’s neck. “I love your hands on my waist, and my back, and my shoulders.” He mouths at Alex’s stupidly perfect jawline, kissing the corner. “I love your hands on my face when you kiss me.” Another kiss pressed to Alex’s cheekbone, just by his ear. “I love when they’re in my hair.”
Alex inhales sharply and then the hand on Willie’s back is skating up to thread itself in his hair, always so careful and gentle and intentional, even now, when Willie’s got him completely undone. Their foreheads are pressed together, breath mingling in the space between them, and Willie kisses Alex’s cheek again, each corner of his mouth, the lightest touch to his cupid’s bow, and the words that have sat inside of him since that day on Sunset Boulevard and maybe since the universe was created, well, they don’t seem so heavy anymore.
“I love your hands,” Willie breathes, everything around them impossibly still, “because I love you. If you can believe it.”
The shaky sigh that Alex lets out is audible, almost a cry, and then he’s kissing Willie, using the hand in his hair to guide the tilt of their heads and slotting their lips together so perfectly that Willie kind of wants to cry. He steadies himself with an arm on the back of the couch and reaches with his other hand for Alex’s arm. Without breaking the kiss Willie guides Alex’s other hand to cup his face, wrapping his own hand around Alex’s wrist and losing himself in the easy give and take of kissing this boy. This boy, who loved Willie so fiercely that he saved his soul, whose touch unravels him like spun sugar, who Willie could spend an eternity with. He will, if Alex will let him, and Willie just thinks he might.
They separate just enough to breathe, eyes closed and foreheads touching. Willie blinks his eyes open first, slowly, and the sight of Alex right there, flushed and radiant and gorgeous, is enough to knock the wind out of Willie’s lungs. He drops his hand from Alex’s wrist to reach up and brush some of the hair off of his forehead, pressing a kiss to his hairline. Alex hums, leaning into the touch, skating his thumb over Willie’s cheekbone before dropping his hand back to the dip of his waist.
“Wow,” Willie says quietly, the first to really break the silence, and Alex huffs out a quiet laugh. He runs his fingers gently through Willie’s hair all the way to the ends, lets his head flop back on the arm of the couch, blue eyes warm and his smile easy and open, and he’s the most beautiful, devastating thing Willie has ever seen.
“I love you too,” Alex says hoarsely, and then clears his throat. “By the way,” he adds, and there’s the rest of the Alex that Willie knows, always a little anxious but never unsure. Willie’s helpless to do anything but lean in and kiss him again, because he loves him. Golden, gentle, awkward, beautiful Alex, who loves Willie so intentionally, who guarded his heart so carefully even when it had already given itself away, who sees Willie for all his mistakes and jagged edges and broken parts and loves him for all of it, on purpose, but still worried over the calluses on his palms as if they made him anything less than perfect.
Alex kisses him back and Willie’s heart sings, and it feels just a little bit like forever.