Chapter Text
Those who are dead are not dead
They're just living in my head
And since I fell for that spell
I am living there as well
-Coldplay
Ray sat out the last of the groceries, running over Rose’s recipe to make sure he hadn’t left anything out. His wife had been kind enough to leave him not only her recipe book full of her family’s traditional Puerto Rican recipes and all of the kid’s favorites but had written him out a step by step, dad-friendly recipe guide. It didn’t stop him from royally messing up something as simple as rice and beans, but cooking did make him feel closer to Rose. She had been trying to teach him more before…before everything went really wrong. Before the diagnosis, her death, Julie’s depression. Before the ghosts that Julie still didn’t know he knew about.
Instinctively Ray stopped, scanning the kitchen carefully for any signs one of the ghosts had joined him. He was pretty sure at least one of them liked to hang out while he worked at the table in the morning over breakfast, judging by the number of coffee mugs that had refilled themselves. He had come into the kitchen at night multiple times to find the fridge door open on its own, and how many times was he sure they were out of bread yet there was a brand-new loaf sitting on the counter? But there were no strange movements, no distant sounds of guitars coming from out in the garage, no country music playing itself on the stereo. He wondered if the ghosts realized he knew they were there yet; whatever the case, he was certain he was alone in the house now.
Although Ray knew he was alone he still he grabbed for two mugs for tea, and without realizing it he made tea exactly as Rose would have, too strong for his liking but he sipped at it anyway. If he let himself get too lost in the quiet of the house while the kids were at school, he’d start to get too lost in his own head, swept away by decades worth of old memories until suddenly Julie would come bursting through the door after school and he got nothing accomplished. Again.
Determined to be productive today- and to feel a sense of normalcy- he decided to bark on a true cooking challenge: trying to make Rose’s famous sopa de pollo y fideos. It was a recipe passed down from her grandmother to her mother to Rose and Victoria, and she had actually made him sign a contract swearing he would not only never give the recipe away but her sister could never even know he had it. But Rose had wanted him to have it, to be able to fix Julie and Carlos their favorite soup when they were sick, and he wanted him to be able to give them that without having to call Victoria every time one of them had a sore throat.
His wife was the best.
Only, after the second try, he was beginning to wonder if his wife had pranked him by leaving him a phony recipe. What he tried to make yesterday barely tasted as good as Campbell’s; he could practically hear Rose laughing at him.
Buen intento, mi amor.
Halfway through making another test pot that afternoon, Ray already knew it was useless. He wasn’t sure how the contract was supposed to work after she died but considering she had managed to send Julie ghosts he didn’t want to tempt fate, but he knew it was time to call in reinforcements.
Ray was almost certain that at some point in the twenty-five years that they had known Trevor Wilson, Rose had at least shown him how to make a copycat recipe. He couldn’t count the number of hay fevers and flus he and Rose had seen Trevor through in the years they lived together, not to mention the years Trevor and Carrie lived with them in their current house and the number of times the girls were both sick. Every time, Rose would make her famous soup- the soup was such a staple that he was almost certain Rose had taught Trevor how to make it for Carrie once they moved out on their own.
At the least, it could be a good icebreaker for him and Trevor to talk again. After seeing his old friend at the Orpheum and having a heart to heart about their ghost situation, he really did hope it would pave a way for the two of them to be good friends again. Ray knew that losing Rose was impossibly hard for Trevor, who had known her almost as long as he had- had loved her, even. Trevor had an intimate relationship with death that Ray had hoped he would never go through himself, but after losing his wife, the mother of his children…he was beginning to understand how easy it was for Bobby to go completely off the rails after losing his friends. The past year, it was all Ray could do to keep his own daughter from slipping too far into depression, let alone helping Carlos, Victoria (never mind helping himself) that he, admittedly didn’t have much mental or physical space to reach out much to Trevor. After reconnecting with him, Ray felt like he had practically abandoned him after Rose passed, and it just felt right that they tried to stay in contact this time around.
(in fact, he wouldn’t have put it past Rose to have purposefully given him a bogus soup recipe that she knew he would need to call Trevor for, in attempts for them to bond again; his wife was just that good)
The doorbell rang and as he opened it, Ray hated how his stomach did flipflops just at the sight of Trevor leaning casually against the porch railing as he opened the door, dressed down in dark jeans and a white t-shirt, his leather jacket hanging around his shoulders.
“Did she make you sign a contract?” Trevor challenged, cutting to the chase.
Ray stammered over his greeting, feeling caught. Trevor lifted up his token sunglasses, rolling his eyes.
“She made me pinky swear over a copycat recipe,” Trevor explained, “so if she made you swear to anything over this, I don’t want to be a part of this. She’s haunting us enough sending us ghosts. I don’t want to tempt whatever other weird demons she might be able to summon.”
Chuckling, Ray simply waved Trevor in.
“I don’t have to tell you the recipe,” Ray offered, “you just have to watch me cook it and figure out what I’m doing wrong. I’m not even sure she wrote down the right thing. I can’t figure out if it was the confusion while she was sick or if she’s messing with me, but some of these recipes don’t make sense.”
“You think your wife may have left you bogus family recipes, just to mess with you?”
“Yup.”
A bright grin spread across Trevor’s face, and suddenly he looked years younger; he looked very Bobbyish, and a shiver went down his spine as Ray mirrored his grin.
“God, I miss her,” Trevor sighed. His eyes dashed around the living room, clearly wondering if they were alone. “Speaking of ghosts…any more sight of them?”
“I’m pretty sure Reggie’s still joining me on car rides,” he mused. “We had a near-miss with someone cutting us off the other day, and the passenger seatbelt buckled itself after.”
Trevor snorted, shaking his head, obviously not surprised at all Reggie would wear a seatbelt as a ghost.
“Nothing strange today though,” Ray assured him. “Julie’s actually been pretty quiet about the band.”
“Yeah, you would think she would be on top of the world after the Orpheum?” Trevor pointed out. “I can’t believe there aren’t managers and agents lining up at your door.”
Admittedly, he had more than a few emails from those very people that he hadn’t answered. He and Julie had compromised, making his email the prime contact for her socials so that he could filter industry inquiries. He knew she was far more popular these days in school, which she seemed to be struggling with- Julie would spend hours with Flynn debating on which new photo should go on Instagram, only to finally post something and immediately delete it. Ray knew his daughter was still in a vulnerable place, after her mother's death and her battle with depression; he was afraid to throw fame on top of that stress.
“She’s taking some time to focus on midterms,” Ray replied. “Sometimes I’m worried if I did the right thing by letting her play the Orpheum.”
There was a pained, haunted, look on Trevor’s face and he immediately wished he hadn’t brought that up.
“You can’t push her away either,” Trevor pointed out dryly, “it’s all about the balance of supporting her and protecting her.”
“Isn’t it always?” He sighed. “I’m still trying to figure out how a ghost band rises to fame.”
“Trust me, with Luke if there’s a will, there’s a way. You really haven’t told her you know about them?”
Shamefully, Ray shook his head, feeling like an idiot.
“I’ve still been giving her space to come to me.”
The comment earned him a smirk from Trevor as he followed Ray into the kitchen. His eyes wide as they roamed over Rose’s old things, the photos still on the shelf and the furniture she had picked out, to replace the furniture in the rockstar’s childhood home. He knew how surreal it was for Trevor to come here, every single time, and that coming here for something as simple as making dinner wouldn’t be an easy thing for him. If he agreed to come, he must be ready to make an effort again. Ray could only hope.
“When was the last time one of your kids willingly came to you with something?” Trevor teased. “Let alone something like ghosts.”
“Yeah, I need to talk to her,” Ray sighed. Stepping into the kitchen, he waved toward the reminder of the ingredients, grateful that he had bought extras. “Maybe this could be a good icebreaker, Carlos will probably finish dinner in five minutes and maybe we can finally talk. Julie would never turn down her mom’s soup.”
“She would if she knew her dad made it.”
Trevor grinned at him and Ray’s mouth fell open, impressed he’d take that shot, just like old times.
“I’m kidding, Ray,” Trevor retorted, “I think it’s sweet that you’re trying to connect with your teenaged daughter and get her to fess up about her secret ghost band by making her soup.”
Okay, so maybe Ray knew it was a lame idea. Maybe if it was Carlos and the Phantoms that idea would work- he stopped, wondering if Carlos did know about the phantoms. It might explain his hyper fixation on ghost hunting…
He shook himself out of it, determined to stay on track.
Trevor hung back, letting him start off the recipe, staying on his best behavior and not peaking over his shoulder at Rose’s scribbles in her recipe notebook. Strangely enough, he felt more relaxed cooking this way, with someone to talk to, not as caught up in his own head.
“Remember when we tried to make that pastelon for Rose’s birthday?” Trevor quipped.
Ray laughed at the memory of Rose’s face, as she tried for a split second to be impressed with their cooking only to actually spit the food back out onto her plate and burst out laughing.
“She actually called Victoria over to have her taste and see how bad it was,” he replied with a distant smile.
To her dying days it was among Rose’s favorite story to tell, it was that much of a disaster.
“You got permanently banned from all special occasion cooking,” Trevor said, laughing. “You know, I used to always wonder if you screwed that up on purpose, to get out of cooking.”
Ray smirked; Rose used to accuse him of the same, but he wasn’t that clever, even back then.
“Okay, stop!” Trevor announced suddenly, grabbing his hand to stop him from reaching for the minced garlic. “That’s your first problem. I don’t know what that recipe says, but I know Rose Molina never used pre-minced garlic. Where’s your fresh garlic?”
He blinked.
“Is that a thing I’m just supposed to have on hand?”
Trevor gaped at him, still holding onto his hand.
“Yes! What are you, new? Rose Molina would have never used pre-minced garlic in her cooking. You really don’t have anything fresh?”
“I have ghosts, not vampires!” He pointed out exasperatedly. “Is there really that much of a difference?”
Shrugging casually, Trevor replied:
“There was to Rose.” Trevor began to pick through the rest of his groceries. “You bought baby carrots instead of whole carrots? And canned chicken? She used to chop up the whole damn rotisserie!”
He blushed- no wonder none of his soups had tasted like hers.
“She did?” He groaned.
Trevor placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
“I’m ordering you all new groceries: we’re doing this the right way. What else do you need to stock up on?”
Just like that, and Trevor was Trevor- not quite Bobby, but closer to his usual self than Ray had seen in a long time, rambling on about clean eating and all of the processed foods he had been feeding the kids. As they waited for the groceries to be delivered they talked, they went through old photos on their phones, caught up on the kids.
And it was nice. It felt like Ray had stepped back in time, and for a split second, despite just talking about Rose and how they missed her, he felt like she could waltz through the door any moment. He could picture the three of them, stepping on each other’s toes in the kitchen as they tried to get the girls fed as toddlers, Julie and Carrie playing at their feet.
“I’ve missed this,” Ray admitted, as he watched Trevor carefully had the very last spice to the soup a couple of hours later. “I hate how things are now, with Julie and Carrie.”
“Yeah, that’s teenagers for you, I guess,” Trevor sighed. “I just wish Carrie would slow down, you know?”
“Slow down?” Ray laughed. “My daughter opened for Panic! At the Disco. I feel like she has so much going on, I can’t keep up.”
“When have you ever kept up?” Trevor grinned. “Did you ever even figure out what happened between our daughters and Flynn?”
Ray shook his head. The best he had figured out was that some time before Rose was diagnosed, Julie, Flynn and Carrie had drifted apart after some kind of epic fight. It was bad enough that Julie had stormed in, demanding that she never wanted to see Carrie again and she didn't want to hear anything about Trevor. Rose had had her suspicions, and they were both hurt that the girls who had literally grown up together wanted nothing to do with each other, but they knew the kids needed space. He just didn't expect their fight to last this long.
“Any time I bring it up your daughter Flynn looks like she wants to murder her,” Ray quipped. “And Julie looks like she’s torn between wanting to help her and wanting to shut the three of them in a room to sort out their differences. I think Julie misses Carrie.”
There was a fond look on Trevor’s face, that Julie might still want to mend things between their families, but he also looked a bit pained.
“Yeah,” he sighed, “us Wilsons have a way of royally screwing up our friendships."
He carefully lifted his eyes to meet Ray’s, his full of regret and apologetic.
“I’ll forgive you for it all if this dinner turns out okay,” Ray retorted, “I can’t be bested by soup, me está volviendo loco.”
After giving the pot one final stir, Trevor passed over a spoonful of the soup he took it willingly, his eyes widening as he tried it. It tasted almost just like Rose’s cooking.
“Perfecto!” He cheered, feeling relieved that he had managed to do something impressive in the kitchen, even if it had admittedly been with a lot of Trevor’s help.
“You just need practice,” Trevor promised him. “Cooking’s like learning an instrument or a language. You need to put in the time and effort and love.”
Though Trevor said it casually and completely innocently, a shudder still went through him at the word love.
“And tread carefully with Julie and the actual phantoms, if they really think they’re going to get into the business,” Trevor warned. “Do not, and I repeat do not let her sign anything without having a lawyer look at it. Learn from my mistakes.”
Their eyes met in understanding, and Ray did not need to be reminded twice how easy it was for sleezy music producers to draw in vulnerable young acts. He’d never forget the day in 1998 when Bobby came home after he found out that he was not going to be allowed to give the guys any credit for Sunset Curve’s songs and any attempts at doing so would have been a major breach of contract. Trevor’s first contract was the stuff of music business nightmares.
(he’d also never forget that day because it was the first time Bobby kissed him and the first time Bobby and Rose kissed, but he was trying desperately hard to not think about that part of the story)
“Your mistakes are what scare me about Julie getting into music,” he admitted, “Rose was so much better at this kind of thing, she knew how the industry worked. I’m used to mostly working for me.”
“Well, if they get that far I can give you some pointers,” Trevor offered, “I can get you in contact with some good people.”
He threw Trevor a grateful smile as he turned the soup down to simmer.
“I appreciate it, really,” he replied. He crossed his arms as he leaned back against the counter. “Thanks…and thanks for coming over. I mean it, I’ve missed having you around. Obviously, you were a big part of Rose and I’s lives and it’s just…it’s nice, having someone to talk to.”
Trevor was already shoving his dark sunglasses down to his eyes, signaling that he was about to plot his exit, and Ray tensed, worrying that he might have overstepped.
Rose was so much better at this.
But he could practically feel her standing with them, could practically feel her hand squeezing his arm and her gaze, proud that he had taken this step.
“Yeah,” Trevor finally breathed. “I um…I have a meeting, a call, I have to go jump on, sorry to run.”
He almost laughed, Trevor was so predictable, but admittedly the tension growing between them now that the cooking was done was a bit more than what Ray knew what to do with. He only had a few hours before the kids got home and had to be able to pull himself together before then. These days, it felt like interacting with anyone but the kids took everything out of him, let alone actually hanging out with someone and talking about Rose so much.
“No, of course,” Ray replied, ushering him toward the door. “Thanks again.”
As soon as Trevor left he turned around, leaning back against the door and closed his eyes. He couldn’t shake the eerie feeling of dejavu that came with being around Trevor again, the sheer amount of emotions that were stirred up…the least of which, feeling like if he opened his eyes again, Rose would be right there.
That was a nice visit, wasn’t it? He could just hear her say. It was nice, seeing him again.
But when he opened his eyes again, of course Rose wasn’t there, and it was more than he could bare. Hanging his head, he felt ready to collapse right there and just give himself a moment when the doorbell rang again. Ray gasped in shock and forced himself to shake out of it, rubbing his eyes to try to hide any signs of his grief.
When he opened the door, he was surprised to find Julie’s friend Nick in an absolute panic. The kid looked terrible, with dark bags under his eyes and his hands shaking as they pulled back from ringing the doorbell multiple times.
“Nick?” He asked, concerned as his parental instincts kicking in.
“Is Julie home?” Nick blurted out desperately. He fell forward, gripping the doorframe as Ray reached out to help hold him up. An odd smirk fell across his face, looking entirely out of place with his panic before Nick shook his head, and it was like he was himself again. “No. No!”
“What’s happening?” Ray demanded. “What’s wrong?”
He reached out to grab Nick’s hand before he could fall over and his skin was ice cold. His first instinct was to call 911 but between his icy skin and the dark, desperate look in his eyes when the kid looked up to him, Ray somehow had a sinking feeling what this was related too.
Ghosts.
“You have to warn her-“ Nick shook hard, like he was physically fighting away someone. “He’s coming for her and the band! He’s using me…please. NO! No.”
Nick jerked a few times before collapsing unceremoniously into his arms, like a dead weight, like there was nothing left in him. Reeling, Ray immediately reached for his phone, his heart racing in panic as he dialed 911 but then his phone went black, dying completely. Ray pressed at the buttons, turning it around, trying anything but the device was totally dead. A horrible chill swept over him and he looked up, freezing when he saw that he and Nick weren’t alone anymore.
There was a man standing on his porch, wearing a dark purple suit and funny looking sunglasses, staring down at him with a cruel smile. Ray tried to pull Nick into the house but it was like his whole body was frozen, like the world was closing in and he physically could not move.
“My condolences, for your loss, Mr. Molina,” the man greeted. “Though I could not be more grateful to your wife for sending me these phantoms. If you cooperate better than Nick here did, perhaps we can find a way for you to thank her, personally. I’m sure we can work out a deal when I’m done but for now, I am in need of your assistance.”
The man stepped forward and all Ray remembered was a puff of purple smoke before everything went black.
Caleb breathed in the energy from the fresh body he just possessed, his eyes lit up with delight at how easy that was. He then turned his attention to the now-unconscious teen on the Molina's porch.
“I think a few hours in the Dark Room will teach you a lesson about trying to disobey me,” Caleb shot. Flicking his wrist to send the lifer away, he sing-songed: “Bye for now!”
For a teenaged jock who had actually broken up with the most popular girl in school, Nick was smarter than Caleb had given him credit form. Lifers normally did not have the willpower to be able to fight off his control, bit Nick had figured him out startling fast. Though using Nick to try to get closer to Julie and find out more about the band and how they broke his curse failed miserably, at the least the energy boost he received from the lifer was incredible, slowly healing his damaged spirit from being broken by the band that broke his curse. But his body still wasn’t strong enough on its own, especially not outside the Club.
One thing that using Nick had shown him was that he had to tread carefully with getting too close to Julie and the Phantoms. The phantoms were strong enough to fight him and they had absorbed too much energy from him after breaking the curse, trying to possess them would be a waste of what little strength he had left. While he could get near Julie using Nick, he could sense how incredibly powerful she was. No, it would be much more effective to continue to use those around her against her. By possessing the lifers he could user their energy, preserve his strength and infiltrate from within. Going after his target’s father next was risky but after all, was there a stronger power out there than a parent’s love for their child? He could hear the father’s distant cry, deep in his subconscious, demanding his family’s protection. He’d do anything.
Anything.
His lips- Ray’s lips- turned up into a wicked grin. Caleb would start slowly and go for a little test drive, just to see how cooperative Ray Molina would be, but he could see his plan forming together. If he played his cards right, this move could be his best one yet. He’d keeping letting Julie and the Phantoms think they were safe, for now. He would keep Nick at arm’s length- no use wasting a perfectly good source of energy. Then he would show Julie how much she had to lose if she and the band kept fighting against him.
“You really should have been honest with your daughter, Mr. Molina, about being aware of phantoms,” Caleb sneered, “it’s a dangerous business, dealing with ghosts. It’s not something you would want Julie navigating alone, but don’t worry…we’re in this together, now.”