Chapter Text
Julie’s eyes fluttered open to find herself face to face with her boyfriend. Luke looked so peaceful when he slept, so much more so than he looked last night when he turned up at her window at eleven o’clock with red-rimmed eyes. It had been a hard night for everyone, and now it was only five minutes until her dad would be up to make sure everyone was getting ready for school.
Even so, she couldn’t help but to enjoy this: the most peaceful part of her day. Reaching out, she ran a hand through Luke’s hair to gently wake him up.
“Julie,” he groaned in protest, though his eyes fluttered open anyway. He smiled at her anyway.
She greeted him awake with a kiss.
“My dad’s gonna be up soon,” she reminded him.
Luke let out another groan of protest and rest his head against her shoulder before he mumbled:
“Guess we better wake the children, huh?”
“Yeah,” she giggled. She nudged her younger brother, who was sleeping at the foot of her bed, with her toe. “Carlos, wakey wakey.”
“Reg,” Luke called gently to his best friend and Julie’s older brother. ““Wakey wakey.”
Reggie was pressed against Luke’s back, his long arms hugging both of them and his foot pressed against Carlos’ face, trapping them in the same cuddle pile they all fell into after Luke appeared in the middle of the night and Carlos woke up with nightmares.
Carlos and Reggie both made a series of unintelligible sounds. Her little brother curled up at the foot of her bed to try to stop her from nudging her while her adopted brother buried his head into Luke’s shoulder like a baby.
“Still dreaming,” Reggie sleep-slurred. “I’m dancing on ice cream clouds.”
She and her boyfriend stifled laughs, their eyes twinkling at each other as they tried to figure that one out.
“Don’t make me bring out…the tickle monster,” Julie sing-songed, wiggling her fingers.
At the foot of the bed Carlos shrieked with laughter as Julie did a ninja-like move to jump down to his part of the bed and her brother’s feet- which he promptly stuck in her face to scare her away. It worked.
“Gross!” Julie complained.
“Now you know how it feels to wake up with a foot in your face, Reggie!” Carlos whined.
“Not my fault I’m tall,” Reggie protested, laughing between each word from Luke tickling his ribs. He squeaked. “Luke! I’m up, I’m up!”
Both her brothers clambered out of bed.
“See ya at school Luke!” Reggie called.
He ushered Carlos back to their room to get ready for school but not before Carlos poked his head back in the doorway just to stick his tongue out at them. Of course, Luke did the same back. Julie just shook her head.
“Guess I better go,” Luke sighed.
Yet he kissed her deeply, giving no indication he was ready to do such a thing.
“Luke,” she sighed, breaking away. Her eyes lifted up to study his. “We will see you at school, right? I have my music performance.”
Stammering, Luke anxiously rubbed at his neck, giving himself away. Today, Julie had to play for her spot in the music program. She already got herself out of the last week of performances; it was really now or never for her, and Julie had no clue how she would do this without Luke. She still hadn’t sung since her mom died, she couldn’t.
And she couldn’t let her thoughts go there either, or she’d get stuck in a dark spiral that she didn’t have the energy for right now.
“You’ll see me in music,” he finally promised.
Julie knew what that meant: he would literally only show up for music class.
“You can’t skip all the time like last year,” she warned him, “do you want to get suspended again?”
He looked caught. She knew he didn’t like to let her down- she just wished he was as concerned with not letting himself down. School and Luke didn’t have a good relationship. Neither did Luke and his parents or Luke and…anything that wasn’t her, music, or his best friend Reggie, it seemed like.
“I’m trying, Julie,” he told her. “I’ll see you in music.”
Luke gave her a final kiss before he climbed back out the window.
Ray only felt half-awake as he got dressed that morning and headed into the kitchen to see what he had to make for breakfast. His sleep schedule had been completely off lately. It wasn’t the grief dreams waking him up anymore, it was just not sleeping. Like his brain forgot sleep was a thing he had to do. He didn’t want to wake or worry his kids so he spent the night trying to read until he finally fell asleep after midnight.
Regardless of how he was doing, he had four kids to get fed and off to school. He was on auto-pilot as he shuffled into the kitchen, only to be greeted by a smell that told him Carlos forgot to take the trash out last night. He grabbed the bag and headed outside...and ran right into a teenaged boy who was climbing down his tree.
“Morning Luke,” he greeted, bemused.
“H-hi Mr. Molina,” Luke stammered, fidgeting with his hands, “I was just um…inspecting the tree! You know, to make sure it’s safe and all, after bad storm a few days ago.” He pounded against the bark. “Yup. Still solid.”
Ray bit back a laugh.
“You know, you could have just told me you were sneaking in to see Julie before school,” Ray offered.
Luke blushed.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing!” He declared. “I just…thought I’d inspect the tree first?”
His daughter’s boyfriend grimaced at his own pitiful lie. Ray let out his laugh and decided to let the kid off the hook. He liked Luke, he was pretty sure the kid was about the only reason Julie made it through her mom’s death. Luke was ambitious and full of life, he believed in himself in a way most kids never found out how to.
“You know you’re always welcomed to stay, Luke,” Ray told him. “You don’t even have to sneak in, we have a front door and everything. We even have this thing called a guest room. I’m sure Alex wouldn’t mind you bunking with him.”
Alex was fostered only last week. He’d gotten a call from a social worker about a teenager in the hospital who had been kicked out of his parents’ house needed a home. Ray was in a questionable place to say ‘yes’ to taking in yet another teenager, but Alex was basically living in a hospital room until social services could find somewhere for him to stay and Ray did still have a foster license. Given that Alex was seventeen, used to having his own space, and felt completely out of sorts after being kicked out, Reggie offered to let him have his room so he could have some privacy. Independent and quiet, Ray heard a lot less from Alex than his other kids. He really hardly even knew him. But it was different, fostering teenagers, he had been warned. What Alex needed from him might be completely different than what Reggie needed from them when he was taken in at seven years old.
“I’m sure he has plenty going on without me,” Luke muttered. He threw Ray a helpless look. “I’m sorry, I’ll get to school.”
Ray offered him a sympathetic smile. He knew things hadn’t been easy for Luke ever since he and his mom started fighting last school year. Judging by the bags under Luke’s own eyes and the bulky backpack, no doubt full of clothes and not textbooks, and guitar slung over his shoulder that things weren’t exactly going as good at home as he tried to make everyone believe.
“Why don’t you come in for some breakfast, and I’ll drive you school?” Ray offered.
With a groan, Luke gave in and followed Ray back into the house. He wasn’t sure that most fathers of teenagers would be excited about their daughter dating a seventeen year old boy who was suspended from school last year and snuck into the house some nights.
But there was always something about Luke that made Ray want to root for him, and Rose always liked him.
“You are going to school right?” Ray questioned Luke before the stepped inside.
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Luke mumbled.
Ray smirked. Good. So Julie had already given him the talk.
“Why don’t you call your mom?” Ray told him. “Tell her you’re okay and headed to school, and if you still need some space we can work out arrangements for tonight.”
Luke let out a sigh of defeat. “Okay.”
He clasped Luke’s shoulder.
“I’m on your side, mijo.”
“Yeah, I know,” Luke threw him a small smile, “thanks, Mr. Molina.”
Alex peered outside his bedroom door, checking if the coast was clear. Rationally, he knew he was in a safe space. He didn’t have to sneak around his own house anymore. But nothing was more awkward than running into one of his…foster siblings…when he was on his own, without Ray as a buffer.
He still couldn’t call himself a foster kid. It was too surreal. Three months ago, Alex was applying to colleges with the help of his dad and baking with his mom. Sure, it had felt like a long time since he had been close to either of his parents, but they didn’t hate him yet.
Now he was sleeping in a strange bedroom, in a strange house, and he was sneaking into a stranger’s bathroom to get ready to go to a brand new school.
So much change.
With the coast clear, Alex dashed over to the upstairs bathroom, only to push the door open and find a boy standing at the sink with a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair damp. He was singing into a hairbrush like it was a microphone:
Tumble out of bed
And stumble to the kitchen
Pour myself a cup of ambition
And yawn and stretch and try to come to life!
Reggie. His new foster brother. Also seventeen. Had been extremely excited to give him a house tour when he first came to stay with the Molina’s. Hadn’t really talked to him since. Clearly didn’t believe in locking the bathroom door.
“Oh, crap!” Reggie laughed when he spotted Alex. “Sorry dude, guess I forgot to lock the door again. I’m not a sink hog, promise. C’mon in.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. He felt more than a little subconscious around guys, let alone guys without shirts on, but he really had to get ready for school. And to Reggie’s credit, he did immediately reach for a black shirt to tug on before scooting over to give Alex room at the sink.
“This is your first week at Los Feliz, right?” Reggie asked him as he dabbed on some shaving cream. Alex couldn’t exactly tell what hair he had to shave.
“Yeah,” Alex replied.
His voice sounded tight and hoarse from not having talked much. He’d mostly spent his time at the Molina’s so far laying in bed and trying to pretend none of this was happening.
“Sweet!” Reggie beamed. Almost as soon as he started shaving, he cut himself and whimpered. “Stick with me and Julie, and we’ll show you the ropes. Lucky for you, we’re just a couple weeks into the semester.”
“Lucky me,” Alex sighed.
It wasn’t that he particularly had a lot of friends he would miss from his old school. He definitely wouldn’t miss his bullies. He did miss his routine, though. He missed knowing who to talk to and who to avoid, which teachers were cool and which weren’t worth your time to try and hack.
Alex reached for his daily inhaler inside the medicine cabinet, blew out a long breath, put the mouth of his inhaler against his lips and breathed in. Reggie watched his every move. He let out a breath.
“Have you never seen an asthma inhaler before?” Alex snarked.
His foster brother quickly shook his head.
“No, it’s just…” Reggie trailed off and awkwardly washed the shaving cream off his face. “I know about the asthma attack and being in the hospital, after…after everything. I’m sorry that happened to you, it sounds super scary.”
He made himself keep breathing. He made himself not remember.
(It had been scary. So scary.)
“Yeah,” Alex stated quietly.
“I’ve been there,” Reggie admitted.
Alex looked up at Reggie in the mirror, surprised. He really hadn’t learned anything about his foster siblings yet, except that they lost their mom last year. Reaching into the cabinet, Reggie pulled out a little tote back, inside which was a little device.
“I have type 1 diabetes,” Reggie explained. “I’ve been to the hospital before in an emergency for it. It was really, really scary, and I had my mom with me. So I can’t imagine being there alone.”
Reggie’s voice got quiet and pained. There was this haunted look in his green eyes. Alex knew Reggie was adopted when he was seven, so he really grew up with Rose as ‘mom’. Now Rose wouldn’t be there the next time Reggie had to go to the hospital, Alex realized. He was pretty sure Reggie was realizing that for the first time too.
“I’m glad you’re here and safe,” Reggie told him.
He quickly checked his blood sugar, which Alex assumed was good because he simply collected his pajamas from the floor and disappeared out of the bathroom.
Alex let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding and stared at himself in the mirror, taking in how tired and pale he looked. It wasn't just that he was in a house full of strangers and starting a strange new life, the reflection staring back at him looked like a stranger too.