Work Text:
Julie doesn’t even look up when her bedroom window slides open.
“Stop,” she says, turning the page of her Music Theory textbook. “You are twenty-six years old. Climb back down and knock on the front door like an adult.”
There’s silence, and then a wet, shaky breath, and Julie looks up to see her queerplatonic partner crouched on her windowsill, tears streaming down their face.
“Oh my god, Luke!” She abandons her homework immediately and scrambles out of bed. Luke lets her help him through the window, but then as soon as his feet hit the floor, they crumple forward, sobbing into Julie’s shoulder.
“Baby,” she coos, rubbing circles into his back. She kisses their wet cheek, murmurs, “What did she do?”
Luke shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“No, hey, come on.” Julie carefully guides him over to sit on the bed, keeping an arm wrapped around him. “Did something happen?”
Luke swipes the back of their hand across their face and shakes his head again. Julie’s heart breaks. She knows Luke doesn’t like to speak badly about his mother, but God. Sometimes Julie just wants to kill that woman for making Luke cry.
She doesn’t try to make him talk about it. After twenty years of friendship, and almost ten of something more, she knows the last thing Luke needs is someone trying to make him put his emotions into words before he’s ready to. Instead, she moves her schoolbooks aside so they can lie down and lets Luke pillow his head on her chest while she sends some texts—one to Nick, letting him know she’s gonna need a raincheck on their date tonight, and one to her mom, asking if she can make some of her cinnamon cookies that Luke likes.
And then she settles down to cuddle her partner, carding her fingers through their hair as he quietly cries out all his tears.
After a while of them lying there, Luke says, “I just want to go home.”
Julie holds him closer. Someone else might be confused—they just left home to come here, and it’s never been very good to them. But she knows him well enough to know what he means—that he’s homesick for something they’ve never had, a place to come home to at the end of the day that feels safe and warm and loves him.
“Soon, baby,” she promises. She’ll help him go home if it’s the last thing she does.