Chapter Text
Chapter 1
The Phantoms just finished playing the Orpheum, and Julie just wants to be with her family.
She tries so hard not to think about the guys and how they won’t be there anymore, and it works. Her family does an amazing job at distracting her and they seem so damn proud of her. She feels so loved by them and is just so grateful for everything. Her aunt, Victoria, had to leave and take care of her kids, but certainly not before kissing Julie at least 5000 times and congratulating her 5000 times more. The amount of times she heard “your mama would be so proud right now” followed by big, teary eyes was uncountable.
She appreciates her aunt though, there’s no other person she wants to have in her life other than her tía to smother her with love.
They made their way back home, and Julie wanted nothing more than to jump into her bed and sleep all that adrenaline off but she needed to do something before she could do that.
“Hey Julie, can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Yeah sure, but I gotta go do something first.”
“Ok, I’ll wait up.” Carlos says, “don’t ghost me,” he says with the worst wink one could make.
Julie is star-struck. Is she just overthinking this? Now, how would Carlos know about this? It’s probably fine, right? He doesn’t know? No. He doesn’t know.
“Just a second,” she says skeptically, giving her father a kiss. She makes her way to the garage. The place she loved so much while the boys were here. God, she hated using past tense. But if she didn’t start now, she’d delude herself into denial and that is not good. She remembers how it was with her mom, and she does not want to live through that again…
Whatever she was expecting to gain from visiting the garage was not what she got. Because the guys were still there.
The shock she went through when she heard one of the guys answer her gratitude-speech was unbearable. So was the overwhelming feeling that they were going to die just about now with those jolts.
“Why… Why are you here? I thought you crossed over- Why didn’t you cross over!” Julie’s eyes began to fill with tears. The guys groaned with another jolt going through their body.
“No! NO!” Julie yelped.
“I guess playing the Orpheum wasn’t our unfinished business,” Alex explained.
“Point Caleb” Reggie announced.
“We wanted you to think we crossed over, so, we pretended to” Luke's pained voice and face says all that it needed to make Julie want to cry her little heart out, “we just… we had nowhere else to go.”
“We thought you’d go straight to bed,” Reggie says.
“Yeah well,” Alex began, “I knew she was gonna come out here, but nobody ever listens to me-” another jolt. Julie jumps back and says: “You have to save yourselves right now. Go join Caleb’s club, please,” if she could, she would shake them right now and hopefully rattle some sense into them and if that doesn’t work, she’d drag their asses to Caleb’s club herself. But she can’t do either of those things, so the only thing she can do is beg: “Please, It’s better than not existing at all.” She looks around at the bodies that are not doing anything yet to stay alive; “Please just go! Poof out! Do something, please! Do it for me,” she pleads.
“We’re not going back there.” The breathing in the room gets heavier and heavier.
“No music is worth making, Julie, if we’re not making it with you,” Luke stands up, “no regrets."
Julie closes her eyes, sniffles and for some reason, she jumps up to hug Luke. “I love you guys” she sniffles once more.
She enjoys the hug and then realises: she’s hugging Luke.
She steps back and looks at Luke,”how can I feel you?”
“I-I don’t know,” Luke smiles. “I feel stronger.”
The other guys stand up and touch Julie. The guys start to glow.
“What…” she smiles, “what do you think this means?”
“I think the band’s back.”
They all chuckle. “You guys think we could try hugging now?”
“Yeah,” they hug each other- no, they embrace each other, because this has been anticipated for far too long. Julie stayed up at night fantasising about something like this. About how the guys could magically come to life and they can have their moment. Not that the guys are alive now, right? What does this mean? She’ll have to worry about that later, because this moment, this moment right here has to be cherished.
“I like this”
“Me too”
They break away from each other and the marks given to them by Caleb start disappearing.
“What do you think that means?”
“I think that means we’re free,” Alex says, relief flooding his body.
They hug each other one more time. The hug turns into them jumping around because they “played the Orpheum!” They whoop and jump and finally they talk about what this means.
“Is this crossing over? Are we just alive again? I don’t think I’m alive. I feel the exact same way as I did when I was a ghost” Alex says.
“Try walking through the door and see,” Julie recommends.
Alex tries it and succeeds. “What? Well, I guess we’re still ghosts…” Luke says, “but we can now touch you?” He walks up to Julie and cups her face. Just to see if he still can.
“Yeah,” she does the same to him and smiles, “God, this feels good,” she sighs and lays her head on his chest.
“I guess it’s because that’s all we wanted to do. Just to feel something, and that something just happened to be Julie. Maybe crossing over doesn’t mean heaven, just that we get to have a better life as ghosts” Alex theorised.
“That sounds about right…” Reggie says.
“Guys? You have no idea how happy I am right now,” Julie whispers.
The guys agree and after the last tears leave Julie’s eyes, she yawns.
“Ok, you really need to go to sleep,” Luke says. Julie answers with another yawn. Luke chuckles and opens the garage door for her.
“I love you guys…”
“Yeah sleepy head, we love you too, now go!” Reggie says.
Julie goes to open her front door with the biggest smile on her face. She almost forgets that Carlos wanted to talk to her, and she slumps down on the couch before yelling: “Carloooooos!!! Come here, what’d you wanna talk about?” Carlos runs downstairs and plops himself next to Julie.
“I know about your secret.”
“I don’t have a secret, Carlos,” Julie says. Was she faking confidence or was she too tired to care about anything? Nobody knows.
“Then what’s this?” He pulls out a flyer that has the guys and another person on it. That’s Carrie’s dad when he was younger, she learned that from Luke.
“I don’t know what that is, sorry,”
“Julie come on! I know they’re ghosts! I just have a couple of questions…”
Julie sighs and accepts defeat. Reggie may have mentioned his scare with her tìa and Carlos, so Carlos digging deeper into it wasn’t that surprising now that she thinks about it.
“Fine… what’s up?”
“Do you… do you see mom?” Carlos asks.
Julie smiles sadly and says: “No, I don’t… None of the guys know anything either. I think that she isn’t a ghost. You see, ghosts are only here because they have some unfinished business, and mom maybe didn’t have any. She was happy with her life as it was… And I think I can live with that. To know she was content with us all, and to know we made her happy… I like that,” she wipes the tears streaming down Carlos’ face and then hugs him.
“She’s always with us Carlos, even if we don’t think so. She watches over us and helps us through life. We don’t need her to tell us that to know,” Carlos nods and they hug for a little bit longer.
They sniffle and then they say they’re too tired to do anything anymore so they make their way to their rooms.
Julie pushes off some clothes on her bed and lays down. Does she feel like taking off her clothes and putting on pyjamas right now? No. But will she do it anyway? She has to. She sighs, frustrated and goes into her bathroom. She really is too tired to shower, she’ll do that first thing in the morning, for now, all she can do is lazily brush her teeth and slowly get out of her clothes. Today was a special occasion, so she put on her most comfortable pyjama set. She hugs herself and the cosy feeling underneath her fingers makes her smile. Not only that, but the amazing-ness of today makes her smile as well. The smile still plastered on her face, she leaves the room and finds none other than Luke laying in her bed.
“Luke?” Julie says.
“Oh, hey,” Luke turns to face her, “I was just checking to see if you were asleep.”
“Oh, ok, well, no. Not yet,” she hates how nervous he makes her. She knew she liked him, thanks to Flynn who made her realise it all, but then she knew she liked him since that dance practice with Nick. She literally imagined Nick was Luke and that they were singing together. Because she couldn’t stop thinking about that for days, she wrote down the song that has been eating her up. Now it is hidden in her dream box. Which she now realises is in Luke’s lap. Her eyes widen with horror as she screams: “Luke! You can’t go through my stuff anymore! We talked about this!” She jumps on the bed and bumps into Luke.
“Crap- I forgot, I can touch you now,” she smiles. “I can touch you now… which means… I can hit you!”
She hits Luke in his bicep and he starts to laugh.
“Ok, ok! That’s enough, I’m sorry-” he stops laughing and sets the dream box between Julie and him. “I just… I can’t help myself… You write so beautifully and you never let us see. But you’re so talented… And I found this,” he holds out the folded piece of paper, “Julie, this is the most beautiful song I’ve read.”
Julie smiles to herself and takes the folded paper. She didn’t want Luke reading it, but now that he has, it doesn’t seem bad. It’s clear to Julie he doesn’t feel the same way, but she’s thankful that he’s still talking to her.
“And I’m sure Nick would be very happy to hear-”
“Huh? Nick? Why would he be happy to hear this?”
“Well… you wrote this? About him?”
Julie chuckles and says: “Luke, I’ve said many times and I’ll say it many times more, I don’t like him like that… I mean, sure, he likes me and I had the fattest crush on him until… well, until I didn’t…” what she wanted to say was, until you came along, but she didn’t.
“Well, who’s this about then?” Luke has had a crush on Julie ever since the beginning. I mean, Julie’s freaking gorgeous. Who wouldn't have a crush on her? Ok, he’s lying to himself, of course he has a crush on her and he isn’t going to downplay it. He hopes that the song is about him, but he’s a ghost. Julie must think it’s weird to like a ghost… and that scares him, so he knows he shouldn’t expect the answer to be him.
“I… I-I did write this while dancing with Nick, that’s true… But, when I was dancing with him, I found myself wanting to dance with… well, you, Luke. And then when the image came to my head that it was you I was dancing with, these lyrics started to roll in and there was no stopping them…” she opens her eyes without even realising they were closed and looks at Luke. He looks… relieved.
“I don’t want to make anything weird between us, Luke, so- just- forget this ever happened, please. I’m sleep deprived and I have no idea what I’m talking about-”
“Julie,” Luke whispers and cups Julie’s face, “can I kiss you?”
Julie feels her cheeks turn red, but she nods.
The kiss is nothing like either one of them expected to be like. It feels magical. This is Julie’s first kiss and she couldn’t have wanted anything more. She smiles against his lips and says: “I guess, I guess you might like me too?” Luke laughs and says: “No, really?! What makes you think that?!” he makes the stupidest face that makes Julie giggle. Luke gives her one of his sideways smiles that make her stomach flutter with butterflies.
“Yes, I like you. I’ve liked you for a long time, actually…” Luke explains.
“Well, why haven’t you done anything, then?” Julie asks.
“I thought you liked Nick. Even if you didn’t, I didn’t know if you liked me… But I guess I have my answer now,” he smiles and kisses her again.
Julie then lays down and is ready to sleep.
“Would you like to stay here tonight?” Julie asks.
“Of course,” Luke thought she’d never ask. But she did, and now the smile on his face won’t leave until he falls asleep. He suspects it’ll still be there when he wakes up, because being with Julie is the best thing that’s ever happened to him in a while.
They lie down next to each other, without even realising, they’re cuddling. They know each other so well that there’s no need for words to be spoken to know what to do.
With Luke so close to her, she falls asleep in no time. Luke on the other hand can’t sleep for the life of him. Why can’t he sleep, you may ask? Well, he doesn’t want this moment to end. He’s wanted this for so long, that just falling asleep when she’s here- in his arms? That’s just absurd.
But eventually, after a long while of admiring Julie’s calm face, he drifts into sleep himself.