Chapter Text
The first time Luke saw Julie Molina was on the first day of their freshman year at Los Feliz. He was admittedly high as shit and tripping over his own feet, and the guitar strapped to his back wasn’t doing him any favors, but at least he was chill for once in his ADHD ridden life. It’s not like he was usually that high, but after being accepted into the Los Feliz Music Program, his nerves were off the walls. So when he bumps into her, eyes red as the flannel he was wearing, he doesn’t even process that he stopped walking.
He looks at the doors leading into the school wondering why the hell they aren’t getting closer when suddenly his world comes crashing down on him when she speaks.
“Um? Excuse me?” She speaks carefully, but the annoyance in her voice is prevalent enough for even his dumb ass to notice.
He looks at her. She looks at him. He clocks that it is bad for her to look at him because he remembers the eye drops in his pocket that he forgot to use before he got totally blasted and now she can see that he’s high and he can see that she’s kind of gorgeous and he’s really ruining this for himself and—
“Uh… Alright then. Bye.” And then she walks away.
Luke fully forgets how to move.
It takes what feels like an hour to start walking again, which ends up being a mindfuck when he finds out that he’s only five minutes late to his first period. He makes a total fool of himself bursting into CP Bio like a man on a mission, which apparently was well received when stifled laughter fills the room at his entrance. He realizes that his guitar is still strapped to his back and stands at the door for a concerning amount of time deciding whether or not he’s about to run out and drop it off in the music room or commit to his entrance.
“Young man, where are you supposed to be right now?” The teacher seems ticked off at the fact that he’s been standing silently in the door frame for way too long looking bug eyed.
“I’ll be right back, don’t go anywhere.” Luke speaks absent mindedly and before he knows it, he’s running all around the school until he finds the music room, having completely disregarded anything he learned at orientation or the tour of the school he got months ago.
He swings the door open to the music room and oh my god she’s right in front of him again. She’s looking at him annoyed, and all he can think about is the fact that she’s also in the music department. He, unaware of his volume, very audibly asks, “Why am I here?”
The girl is confused and he hears the teacher say something about how inappropriate his actions are but this girl is now pointing at his chest and he’s completely invested in her. He places a hand on his chest, finding the guitar strap, and loudly shouts, “Oh shit, right! My bad!”
The teacher is baffled.
The class is dying laughing.
He remembers the teacher is Mrs. Harrison.
He has Mrs. Harrison twice a day.
Fuck.
He rushes to the rack of instruments at the back of the class and places his guitar down with the clarinets and trumpets because he’s also realizing that he has to go back to CP Bio and what is he even doing here again?
He’s running out the door but catches himself as he’s about to leave. “Uh, I’ll see you in fourth period.” He points to Mrs. Harrison, who is honestly speechless.
He goes to close the door, and then stops himself again. “And after school.”
He goes to close the door, and then for a third time pokes his head back into the room. “Rock on!”
He shuts the door to the cacophony of laughter that erupted in the music room, but more importantly to the girl he’d end up seeing not one hour later in second period English.
—
Bio went quickly after his dramatic re-entry, and after he manages a heartfelt apology that he pulled out of his ass. The teacher seemed endeared enough that she placed him in the front of the class. Too heartfelt, got it. Luckily, up in the front row is where he met a very disgruntled Alex Mercer. It didn’t take much conversation for Alex to lighten up to Luke, and at that point Luke was thinking that he must just be incredibly charismatic or something because how the hell did he keep getting away with these antics.
Turns out Alex is a drummer and also in the music program and Luke is really lucking out today with who he manages to bump into. The bell rings after they’ve realized they share a love of 90’s rock and pop punk, and as they leave Alex asks him not to smell so loud tomorrow. Luke shrugs and saunters off.
And then he realizes he’s alone in the hallways and the ringing in his ear about five minutes ago might have been the end of passing period bell.
So now he’s running.
And he eventually finds the door to his English class, but when he swings it open he finds that the only open seat is next to her and suddenly Alex saying he reeked of weed was terrifying. So he’s running again, trying to find the bathroom to, he doesn’t know, maybe lather himself in soap? It takes two minutes before he realizes that he passed the bathroom a minute ago, and goddamn, maybe he shouldn’t’ve have smoked the whole joint. Or maybe he shouldn’t’ve have eyeballed how much zaza he put into it, or maybe coming to school practically in the sky was a bad idea to begin with, or maybe—
Oh, there’s someone else in the bathroom. And he has cologne.
“Bro spray me.” Luke says without thinking. The guy with the cologne looks confused and then recoils his nose.
“Jesus, you smell like Venice.”
“I know. Please spray me.”
“Oh, sure.” Cologne man spritzes Luke generously. “Are you a freshman too?”
“How’d you know?” Luke is completely flabbergasted.
“I saw you through the window of the geometry room running around like a madman.”
Oh my god people can see him.
“Yeah, I’m Luke.” Luke doesn’t know whether or not to shake his hand or dap him up so he just… Salutes this guy?
“Reggie. I’ll see you around sometime?” Reggie awkwardly salutes Luke back.
“I hope so, you’re one of two people I know here.”
“You seem cool, I’m sure that’ll change soon.” And Reggie was right, but Luke didn’t believe him at the time.
“See ya, Reg!” Luke calls out as he dashes out of the bathroom. He wants to pretend that he just called this stranger a nickname on purpose, but he honest to god forgot the second half of Reggie’s name.
So he’s running for a third time and he swings the door open to his English class and she’s still there. Sitting alone.
The teacher eyes him up and down. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here.” Luke has no idea what he just said.
“I can see that.”
“I have this class. Like, right now.”
“You’ve had this class for the past fifteen minutes. Care to explain why you’re late on the first day?”
“Man, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“I got lost.”
“That’s completely believable, I don’t understand why I wouldn’t be able to believe that.”
“Damn, you’ve got a point.”
The teacher laughs ceremoniously. “Alright, go take a seat.” The teacher scrolls through the role sheet as Luke swaggers over to the empty seat next to her . “Mr. Patterson?”
“Mr. Patterson was my mother. Please, call me my father.” Time stops as he does a thousand calculations in his head trying to figure what the fuck just came out of his mouth.
Time unstops as the class can’t help but giggle. The teacher eyes him up and down. “I’ll just call you Luke?”
“Hey, that’s my name.”
“I’m aware, Mr. Patterson.”
At least the English teacher is cool.
Pretty soon the class is doing icebreakers with their seat partners and Luke is ecstatic to talk to this girl because damn she’s pretty.
He turns to her and she does not match his energy.
“Hey, I’m Luke.” He’s suddenly terrified again.
“I thought you were ‘my father’.”
“Oh, no, I don’t have any kids.”
She stops and stares at him for a moment. Next thing he knows, she’s laughing and he’s laughing because her laugh is so cute.
“You’re really high right now, huh?”
“How’d you know?”
“Let’s think. What could’ve given it away? Maybe your eyes or the fact that you smell like weed and cheap perfume or any of the times I have seen you interact with humans today…”
“You’re very pretty.” Real smooth, Patterson.
She eyes him up and down.
“You’re alright.”
“I’m okay with alright.”
“What’s your favorite color?”
Luke is completely taken aback. “What?”
“Your favorite color.” She’s got a paper in front of her with the icebreaker questions they were assigned and Luke kicks himself under the table for not having a favorite color in anticipation of this moment.
“Oh. Blue.”
“Boring.”
“Dark blue.”
“Still boring.”
“Navy?”
“How desperate are you for my approval?”
“Deeply.”
“Then dark blue’s fine.”
Luke feels his heart skip a beat and suddenly dark blue is actually his favorite color.
“I didn’t catch your name?”
The girl pauses for a moment, deliberating something with herself.
“Julie.”
“I like that name.”
“You’re surprisingly nice for a stoner.”
“Probably because I’m not a stoner.”
“You’re high off your ass on the first day of school. You seem like a stoner.”
“Nah, today was just a special occasion.”
“What’s today?”
“The first day of school. Which means first day in the music program.”
“Ah, yes. You are in the music program, aren’t you?”
Luke looks offended. “You sound surprised.”
“Didn’t mean it like that, sorry. I just didn’t expect to meet anyone in the program until after school.”
“Oh.” It takes a solid three minutes of more mindless chatter for his brain to catch up. “Wait, so does that mean you’re in the music program?”
“You’d be correct in that assumption, yes.”
“Good. I like looking at you.”
“I’m not just a pretty face.”
“Clearly, if you got into the music program. So what do you play?”
“You’ll just have to wait until my demo after school to find out.”
And then the bells rings. And Luke is pissed off that she’s out the door before he could realize that class was over. He couldn’t even manage a quippy one liner goodbye, and now he’s kicking himself because he’s remembering how much of an oaf he made himself out to be in front of her.
Needless to say, that was the solidified start of Luke’s crush on Julie Molina.
He’s very disappointed to find that he doesn’t see her again until after school.
But the rest of his day was alright. He circled back to Alex and Reggie when he needed someone to eat lunch with, and Reggie had another friend named Robert or something and it seemed like they’d immediately clicked into a group. Imagine his surprise when he finds out that every single one of them were in the oh so prestigious music program that drew him to this school in the first place.
He also had a long conversation with Mrs. Harrison during fourth period about the influence of underprivileged black musicians that birthed modern music as we know it. Honestly, he doesn’t know how it started, possibly from his Aretha Franklin shirt, but it ended with her giving him an approving nod and sending him to sit in the front. He has no idea how he keeps winning over teachers that he has outright disrespected but he isn’t complaining at all . Maybe he should come to school high all the time, it seems to be working out well for him.
So after school rolls around and he’s absolutely jumping out of his skin. Luke walks in with his newfound posse who just so happened to be all of the instruments in a rock band. Reggie and Bobby pick up their instruments from a rack of guitars and Luke’s left feeling like an idiot when he sees his token guitar case right between the woodwind and brass instruments. Woops. Forgot about that.
He tunes it by ear because he’ll be damned if he doesn’t have perfect pitch by now, even if he’s positively floating off the ground right now.
And then she walks in and immediately sits down six chairs away from him. She shoots him a knowing glance and then turns to talk to two girls near her as if they’ve been friends forever. Luke doesn’t even care that she’s not next to him. He doesn’t. He just wants to see her play.
Alex is called up to play first in his group, and if he isn’t the best damn drummer Luke’s ever seen live. Reggie goes, and he absolutely kills it, too. Bobby eventually gets called up to play, and he frets the board so rationally that it honestly ruins the performance for Luke. Bobby doesn’t even look like he’s having fun. Everybody else so far looked like music was their everything. Bobby’s just playing sheet music.
Julie gets called up. Luke is vibrating with anticipation. He wants to keep his eyes on her as she plays, but Lord knows that if he did, he wouldn’t have blinked for the entire performance. So he closes his eyes and waits for the first note.
It’s a piano. And then it’s her voice. And Luke is gone. He has astral projected out of his body and is currently swimming in sound and Julie is the greatest musician he’s ever heard. She sings to the tempo of his heartbeat, legato and dynamic. The runs she does with her voice send chills up and down Luke’s spine as if his vertebrae were the white keys she pressed as she played.
The song ends. Everyone is cheering her on, louder than they had for anyone else. Luke is speechless. She looks at him and he looks at her. A smile creeps onto her lips.
Mrs. Harrison has to call his name four times before he realizes he’s next.
Luke gets up, still clearly baffled.
“You’re all welcome for this.” He looks around the room. “I am a martyr for daring to go on after Julie.”
The class laughs, though Julie brushes him off with an eye roll.
He places fingers on the frets of his electric six string and then proceeds to play the worst rendition of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ that probably anyone has ever heard. He can hear everyone around him laughing, and the goofy grin on his face tells them that they’re allowed to.
“Luke.” Mrs. Harrison sounds exasperated.
“No, you’re right, that might’ve been too advanced. Lemme pick another song.” Luke searches his brain for a quick minute with a dramatic head scratch.
He makes a little ‘a-ha!’ noise before cranking out the iconic Stairway to Heaven guitar solo. And then he stops, and he starts again a little faster. And then he stops, and he starts even faster. He does this one more time, playing not quite in double time but damn near close. He nods, flips the guitar around his body and plays out the solo to perfection with a passion that is not lost on his audience.
The room is quiet for a long while when he finishes.
Mrs. Harrison speaks first. “Fancy yourself a John Taylor?”
Luke shakes his head with a smile. “I would never be so bold. But I can absolutely shred Flight of the Bumblebee.”
“What’s your best tempo?”
“250, but I’ve only done it once.”
“Impressive.”
“Not half as fast as the world record.”
“Still impressive. Can I expect to see it perfected by the semester’s end?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Mrs. Harrison and Luke are talking as if they aren’t being audited by a classroom full of prodigies that have been stunned into silence by Luke’s display. Not to mention, every single one of them can tell that he’s high. He just pulled off Stairway to Heaven at 175 bpm while off his ass. And he didn’t. Miss. A note.
Reggie is the first to cheer. Then Alex. Bobby’s expression is too confusing for him to make out while he’s this high but Bobby cheers anyway. Everyone else follows suit. He looks to Julie, who is completely captivated. Or shocked. She could also be shocked. He smiles at her smugly, though he doesn’t mean to. It just spreads on his like a plague. She quickly turned her head, but that look in her eye makes Luke think she might be a little bit into him now.
Oh shit.
This totally proves that he’s a stoner, right?
He made this look way too natural and she knows he’s high.
Luke dips his head and sits down, resulting in a tackle from behind from both Alex and Reggie. Alex looks to the other three guys with a smile.
“Should we start a band or something? We’re all kinda great.”
Luke has never been so on board with anything ever.
And everything is good.
He will spend the next three years with his band, gaining obscene amounts of popularity and a quite the sum of spending money.
He will spend the next three years getting high and skating down Venice after killing it at gigs and open mics.
He will spend the next three years writing hard rock songs that fuels his growing anger at his parents.
He will spend much of the next two years couch hopping to get away from said parents.
He will spend the year after that entirely no contact with his parents.
He will spend all of freshman year pining after Julie Molina, and then sulk when she inevitably got a boyfriend that was much less of an emotional wreck than him.
He will not move on from her, even as she grows further from reach.
He will not move on from her, even as the months where they haven’t said a word to each other becomes a year, and then two.
And he will spend the entirety of those years in bliss because even with the conflict and the drama, Luke’s life is good .
And then of fucking course
bObBy
has to go and fuck it all up.