#and never brought up that he was writing unsaid emily?

[missjoolee]

I'd like to think that Luke's way of coming up with new songs is the same as @thedeathdeelers way of coming up with juke ideas. I.e. Inspired by literally anything he sees or hears, sometimes devolving/evolving in a private chat, and sometimes dropping a finished one so unexpected it brings you to your knees. 

[juliathephantom]

good guy bobby is something i think is underrated. he can be a good villain for alive aus, but on the other hand, he was a part of the band. canonically, the first thing he says is encouragement about how great they were playing after the soundcheck and he clearly was close enough to luke to be involved in unsaid emily rehearsals (a super emotional and deeply personal and private thing). the guys treat bobby with the same closeness and affection as each other and are hurt and shocked by the perceived betrayal (which implies a good relationship- they wouldn't have been so surprised if bobby wasn't their friend).

i don't think bobby is a bad guy. he was a kid who lost his three best friends in a freak accident and probably feels a ton of guilt both about them going to get street dogs (he reminded them that they were going because he wanted to flirt with rose and if he hadn't, would they have gone?) and about not dying with them (survivors' guilt), on top of the depression and trauma of losing them in such an unexpected and horrible way on a night that was supposed to be really really good and special.

he has a therapist that he sees so much that he can just drop in (which makes me think he's his therapist's only client) and carrie doesn't even blink when he says he's going to see dr. cristal while clearly distressed. he's traumatized and depressed and that's really, genuinely hard.

personally, i think bobby is a good dude who went solo with the guys' music as a tribute to them. luke canonically just wanted to connect with people through his music and i think bobby was trying to do that for him. i headcanon that luke had writing credits on the songs he wrote and that the album(s) were dedicated to his family (which julie assumed meant like his parents or whoever but really meant the guys). i mean, they never actually checked to see if they got writing credits and i know that's not something i look at on songs.

and honestly? never mentioning the guys is super understandable. i wouldn't want to talk about that kind of trauma to the public (no way i'd let it get brought up in interviews) and julie is a kid. there's a really good chance that bobby talked to people about the guys (for sure his therapist and probably adult friends- ray and rose?) but why the hell would he tell a kid about the night that he lost his brothers all at once? i bet carrie grew up with stories about the guys that would have been her uncles, and i bet julie heard some of those stories, too, but probably second-hand or whatever (from carrie) and didn't have the context and details to realize who they were about.

good bobby trying to manage fame that he honestly might not want without the guys but is dealing with to honor his brothers makes more sense to me than stealing the songs (especially because legally, as the only surviving band member, he has the rights to the songs).

[blush-and-books]

Luke Patterson has never written a love song, and he never will. 

(No, seriously, quit laughing. He doesn’t write love songs, and he isn’t going to every get the chance to -- not when his last night on earth is tomorrow.)

The crumbled pieces of paper in his hands don’t even hold the musings of a love song, regardless of whatever Alex and Reggie have said to him as they’ve peered over his shoulder. It really is not a love song. 

It’s a proper goodbye. 

Luke had been seriously toiling with the issue of how to part with her, how to let her part with them, and the obvious conclusion had been through a song. A song, to be left in the garage before they took off to the Orpheum and did what they needed to do to avoid destruction. 

(As if leaving Julie involuntarily wasn’t already tearing him apart. The jolts were a relief compared to the look on her face when he confessed their mistake of visiting the Hollywood Ghost Club.)

He didn’t anticipate any issues until he started writing and could hardly stop; followed by rapid scribbles blocking out words that were reaching beyond what he wanted to say. He didn’t realize how hard it would be to catch the drippings of ink that professed how her voice had hooked him from the first note sung; how he’s wanted to hold her hand every single day he’s known her.

This could not be a love song. He could not let it become a love song. 

The worst thing that he could ever do to Julie -- and he has put her through it -- is write her a love song and leave it for her to find when he’s gone. 

So, he would write a goodbye. And the sonnets and prose would just have to be left unsaid, because there did not need to be two broken hearts here if it could be avoided. Luke’s could take it. 

He didn’t want Julie to have to take it, too. 

And so a completely unromantic song was stretched between his fingertips, thanking her and praising her and telling her she would be okay because she’s Julie Molina. 

(She’s Julie Molina, and he’s Luke Patterson, and he loves her. He knows she can do this. If anyone can, it’s her.)

But in the dim dark of the garage, the only light being from the driveway lamps whose glow dusted through the studio windows, Luke seriously started to understand that by this time tomorrow, he would be gone. He would be gone, and Julie would be alone, and--

Would he even still be able to feel love for her from... Wherever he would end up? Would he remember?

He doesn’t want to forget. He doesn’t want to cross over if it means he’s going to forget. 

(Another jolt seizes in his chest. He does not seem to have a choice.)

Luke Patterson tries every day not to be selfish. He’s not selfish, he’s really not, he just wrote the love of his life an entire song that doesn’t once even mention how much he adores her--

But he’s dying a second time tomorrow night. So when he poofs out into the driveway and glances up at Julie’s bedroom window, clarifying that it’s dark and she’s asleep, he allows himself to go the distance and finds himself in front of her bedroom door. 

It’s as close as he allows himself. 

(Is it too much to ask to just get to say it? One time? Before he knows he doesn’t have the right to anymore?)

Julie is asleep on the other side of the door, she’ll never know -- but at least it’ll be out there. Somewhere, in the universe, in the place that brought him to her. 

When Luke leans forward and presses his forehead against the soft wood of her door, he pretends she’s right in front of him. 

“Julie,” he whispers, so quiet, barely audible to himself. “I love you, Julie.”

He tries to have as much conviction in his voice as he can when he is whispering. Because he means it. He means it, and whoever in the universe that is listening needs to know he means it because if they don’t know when how will she?

His cheeks start to feel wet. Luke is quick to remember that his forehead isn’t leaning against Julie’s, that she’s not there, that she is cluelessly sleeping on the other side of the door. 

He doesn’t linger. There’s no reason to. 

---

Julie’s love song played on repeat in her head as she lay still, awake in her bed. 

Life can be so mean, but when he goes, I know he doesn’t leave.

Only, he was about to leave. He didn’t really have a choice, but... He was leaving. This time tomorrow night, Julie would once again be alone in her bed, and this time, she would be truly alone once again. 

The boys would have crossed over, and there would be no more band, no more Alex one-liners or Reggie’s antics with her father, and no more Luke. 

Life is currently being extremely mean. 

As she drifts in and out of consciousness, mind buzzing from Luke to the Orpheum to her mom and back to Luke in a vicious cycle, Julie thinks she hears a soft patter against her bedroom door. 

Her muscles tense as she freezes, waiting for another noise. There’s a whimper, a whisper, and she doesn’t know if it’s a person outside off in the distance or--

“I love you, Julie.”

The voice sounds too much like Luke. She likes this dream and she hates it, because it’s not real but he sounds like he’s right there, passionately proclaiming that her soft smiles and secret glances weren’t unrequited. 

She can pretend, just for tonight, that he loves her. 

Tears are streaming from her eyes and onto her pillow before she is given the chance to remind herself that it wasn’t real. Just the thought, the idea of it being right outside of her door -- her heart throbbed. 

Silently, with barely any noise coming out of her mouth, her frowning lips allowed four words to break up her silent sobs:

“I love you, too.”

---

The next morning, with dried tears and high emotions, Julie asks Luke to do her a favor. She asks him to do it, just him, because she’s convinced that deep down in his soul, he loves her too. 

The universe just had to tell her because he couldn’t -- not the night before he was leaving her forever.

When he tells her that he would do anything for her, the words feel snug against her ribs. 

“I love you, Julie.”

She wants him to do it because she loves him, too, even if she can’t say it. Her mom probably knew it would happen, hell, Alex and Reggie probably see it too--

She just has to hope the universe will deliver the message like it did for him.

And maybe, if they’re lucky, it can be the last thing he truly knows before he crosses over. 

(She hopes it can be a happy thought to him -- she wants the last thing he feels to be something good.)

---

Tags: @willexx @unsaid-emily @lydias--stiles  

[ruzek-halstead]

i remember it all too well

julie has a hard week, but luke is there with excellent cuddling abilities. 

masterlist

It had been a hard week for Julie. While her music career with the boys was starting to take off, she was still a high school student first and had assignments and tests she couldn't ignore. On this day in particular, it was nearing one in the morning and Julie's eyeballs were burning with the need to sleep. But she couldn't, not yet. She had finished an essay for English nearly an hour ago, and she still had to study for a Biology test. At this point, she wasn't sure she was going to make it.

"Okay, what about this?" Julie let her head drop onto her textbook. The boys knew how much she had to get done tonight, and out of solidarity, they were lounged around her room to keep her company. It would have been fine, except Reggie was unable to stop talking at all times, Luke had his guitar and he also had an inability to stop strumming it. Alex recognized she needed peace and quiet, so he shushed his best friends every once in a while. But then Luke started creating riffs for a potential new song, so Alex forgot all about silence and started hitting any surface in the room that could substitute for his drum set. "That sounds sick, dude! Let me get my bass!" At the possibility of having a full-out jam session in her bedroom while she was trying to memorize the human body systems, Julie had to say something. "I really appreciate you guys sticking around, but I think I'm going to head to bed soon," Julie told them with an inevitable yawn. "I'll see you all in the morning." Julie avoided Luke's intense gaze, because he knew her too well. Of course she wasn't planning on going to bed yet, but if they thought so, they would retire for the night. "Okay," Reggie agreed, walking over to Julie to drop a quick kiss on the crown of her head. "Good luck on your test tomorrow! You're going to kill it, like always." Julie sent him a soft smile in return. "Thanks, Reg." "Yeah, you're going to do fantastic," Alex praised, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. "You're the smartest person I know." "You're dead. You don't know many people," Reggie pointed out, staring in confusion. Alex whipped around to glare at him. "Yeah Reggie, I think she knows that." "Anyway, goodnight Jules, see you in the morning!" When she heard the tell-tale sign of their poof, she turned back around to hit the books. But she had been staring at the respiratory system for ages now and it just wasn’t working; she was so exhausted, her brain wasn’t retaining information anymore. “Hey,” Luke murmured quietly. Julie felt his hand crawl under her curls to the nape of her neck in a comforting gesture. “It’s time for some sleep.” His hand softly rubbed at the knots in her neck, then joined his other hand on her shoulders. Julie hummed in satisfaction. It had only been a few weeks that their entire dynamic changed and she was able to feel her newest best friends. And ever since then, they always found an excuse to be in touch with each other. It was amazing how close they’d all gotten immediately after the boys appeared, especially when they had no physical connection at all. Now that they did, they were sure to take full advantage. Luke was especially appreciative of his newfound corporealism. He had always been told that he was very touch-oriented; it was how he liked to show his affection, and it absolutely killed him and that he wasn’t able to do that with Julie. They became so close, so fast, and while it only strengthened their connection further, he could only imagine the possibilities if he had more of a physical ability. But now that he did, he used it to its full extent. “I’m not ready for this test,” Julie moaned, leaning her head down further. It allowed Luke more access to rub the tension out of her shoulders, but he feared her uncomfortable position may only do further damage to her spine. “Your test is during last period. You can study at lunch and during your free period,” he suggested. He had never seen Julie so physically and mentally exhausted and it genuinely worried him; he just wanted to take care of her. “Flynn even offered to help you.” Julie nodded her head. Truth be told, Luke’s ministrations coupled with her utter exhaustion was leading her to fall asleep right there and then. “Alright, it’s bed time,” Luke decided. He guided a sleepy Julie over to her bed and pulled the covers back so she could crawl in. Her curls fanned out across her pillow and he sat at the edge of her bed, mostly to gaze. For the first time that night, she looked so peaceful and he couldn't help himself when his hand snuck up to caress her cheek softly Julie leaned her head closer to his hand. "My brain is so fried. I don't even know what I don't know anymore." "Do you need anything else? I can sneak you that pint of Ben and Jerry's. I don't think Reggie's eaten all of it." "No, I don't want that," Julie replied. She took a moment to study his face, then met his gaze with a soft smile. "I could use a good cuddle though, if you're up to it." Luke kept his facial expression neutral and ignored the way his heartbeat accelerated dramatically. If it was what she needed, who was he to deny her that? Julie scooted over to the other end of the bed to give Luke room to slip in. He leaned back against the headboard and watched quietly as Julie gravitated towards him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head soundly against his chest. "Thanks for being here, Luke," she whispered lowly. Luke brought his arm down to wrap around her. "Of course." The silence was palpable, but it was nice. Luke's hand was softly caressing her arm, and as her breathing deepened, he was fairly convinced she fell asleep. Hypothetically, he could just poof out. But then Julie would quite literally fall through the space he was occupying and it would probably scare her awake and ruin all the relaxation they'd just accomplished. So instead, he started to extricate himself as easily and quickly as possible. But Julie held out; her grip tightened around his waist and he wasn't able to pull himself away. "Please stay." Luke was never good at saying no, much less to girls, and especially not to Julie. "Are you sure?" Luke chuckled nervously. "You got somewhere else to be?" She teased in an airy, sleepy tone. "A hot date, maybe?" He snorted. "Only if you count Reggie. He likes to cuddle too." Silence surrounded them again, and this time, he was certain Julie fell asleep. He was glad she was finally resting; it had been a tough week and he hated nothing more than to see her suffer and not be able to help (school was never his thing). Eventually he dozed off too. When Julie's alarm clock went off on her phone a few hours later, Luke jolted awake. He wasn't used to waking up to a blaring alarm, he was hardly even used to waking up at all. They never used to sleep before, but with their new abilities, along came a weakness. Julie rolled over to turn off her alarm, and when she looked up, she was definitely not expecting to see Alex and Reggie, sitting quietly at her desk with amused expressions. She squealed, relying on her instincts, which happened to be throwing the closest object in her possession (her phone). It hit Reggie square in the gut and he doubled over in pain. "Jesus Christ! Were you guys just watching like weirdos?" Luke finally noticed them as well, watching in amusement as Alex held Reggie up. "Oh, we used to watch you sleep all the time," Luke commented, solely because the horrified look on Julie's expression was worth it. "He's kidding," Alex added with an eye roll. "We are here because Luke didn't come home last night and we were worried sick." Reggie seemed to have recovered from his injury because he was smirking as he said his next few words. "But clearly, we were worried for nothing because he's fine." "Julie took good care of him," Alex teased. Julie's eyes flickered between the two, then back to Luke, who was holding back his own amused smirk. "I have to get ready for school. Get out of my room." "You're not even offering breakfast?" "OUT!" But even as they all filed out of the room, Julie sent Luke one more appreciative glance. 

x

haha, thanks for reading. just a little something i felt like writing. 

tagging: @grootsgillespie || @jayhalsteadcpd || @moreflowersthanweeds || @well-hes-just-too-cute || @echocharm17618 || @leopard-print-slippers || @jandthephantoms || @scribblingfangirl || @n0wornever || @simpformolina || @only-trust-fictional-characters || @snowmione18 || @tellurphantoms || @knitsessed || @carriewilsons || @elitharavenclaw || @wakeupfantoms || @uselessnerdnherblahg || @anotheronechicagobog || @katie-navarro || @bookwormswillruletheworld || @lmaohuh || @unsaid-emily

(p.s. this is everyone on my juke taglist, please let me know if you’d like to be removed so i’m not clouding up your notifications unnecessarily!! :)

join my taglist here

[bluefirewrites]

I’m sorry that you don’t feel good about your thesis presentation ☹️ I hope you feel better soon! My juke head canon is that one day Emily is clearing out some of Luke’s things and she finds the first guitar that they gave him. She asks Julie if she wants it because knowing that it’s going to someone who shares Luke’s passion for music makes her feel better. Then Luke teaches Julie how to play with it 🎶

Yes.

Yes.

YES.

Julie gets a message from Facebook from Emily Patterson asking her to come by this weekend.

She's a little nervous, thinking since if Emily knows her way around Facebook, it wouldn't take too long for her to snoop around on her profile and eventually find some post linking her to the band.

Luke comes with her of course, to ease her nerves and to see what his mom could possibly call her down for.

Emily greets her and ushers her inside. They make small talk, asking each other how they're doing and Julie notices this certain energy around Emily. She seems lighter, happier.

Luke's puzzled too, but it warms his heart to see his mom not grieving him anymore. He smiles as his mom keeps trying to offer Julie snacks- because that is so her.

"Look, Julie. I want to say thank you again. That song you brought over... it helped. It really did,"

"It's no problem"

"It made me come to terms with things. And... well, for years I didn't dare to..." she stops and for a moment Luke spots the familiar sad expression on her features, but she takes a deep breath before continuing.

"I didn't dare to go in his room for the longest time, to sort through his things. But I actually was able to go in and..." then Emily scurries down the hallway and comes back with a guitar.

Luke's eyes widen, "That's my guitar. My first guitar." He didn’t think he would see it again.

Emily goes over to Julie and hands it to her, "This was Luke's,"

She inspects the guitar, covered in band stickers and even with a pick tucked under the strings.

"I want you to have it"

"No, Emily. Are you sure-?

"You said you write music. You're a musician too? Like Luke,"

"Yes. I am"

"Then he would have wanted for you to have it"

Julie looks to Luke who could only nod, getting teary eyed at the interaction.

She didn’t have the heart to tell Emily she didn't know how to play. And she knew better than to refuse the generous gift, after everything it took for Emily to to get to the point where she’s healing. 

So Julie takes the guitar home and Luke wastes no time in teaching her how to play. 

He’s the best teacher, super invested in Julie’s progress that she’s inspired to practice everyday until her fingers were numb. And of course, it didn’t hurt to have the cute ghost getting all close and personal while learning from him. 

Now it was common to stumble upon Julie jamming out on the guitar rather than the keyboard. 

Luke even encourages her to go out busking for a day after months of practice, to see how she does. She was nervous at first to say the least, but she knew that Luke only pushes so she could do better. (And she ended up making enough money to buy some McDonalds for her and the family afterwards. Success!)

Luke notices that there’s something else fueling Julie’s desire to learn the guitar. It couldn’t be just because his mom gave her the guitar. Or him teaching her. 

He sits down and straights up asks her why while she was tuning the instrument. She stops and sets the guitar aside. 

“It was my mom’s instrument,” she nods to the six-string over in the corner, “That was hers. I wanted to learn before, but I missed my chance when she...” Luke lays a comforting hand on her knee, and she smiles, turning to him, “I have another chance now. And I want to make the most of it.” 

And with that, Luke throws more songs at her to learn, taking being her teacher more seriously, like he wouldn’t rest until she was just as good or even better than him. 

He even tries easing her off his old acoustic and to try playing her mom’s. It was tough at first, but now she’s rocking out on her mom’s guitar and Luke doesn’t mind that he rarely sees his old guitar anymore. That guitar was meant to be a starter anyway. 

Then one day, Julie comes up to him, with a nervous grip on his old beat up guitar. 

“Jules, what’s up?” 

“It’s Mother’s Day this weekend,” 

His eyes landed on his guitar, noting the switch, “Oh, I’m so sorry-” 

Julie shakes her head, “No. I’m fine. Really, it’s just...you might think this is a bad idea, but...” 

“You can tell me anything,” 

She sighs, “Can you teach me how to play ‘Unsaid Emily’?” 

Luke stalls. It’s silent for a moment. 

“H-How... how come?” 

“I just thought... since your mom hasn’t heard it. Not really, and I just... I just want to thank her. For giving me your guitar. Look, I know it might not be appropriate, but...” she looks at her mom’s acoustic on its stand, “she helped me.”

Luke says nothing, instead pulls Julie into a hug and they stay there in the middle of studio until he steps away, leading her to the couch and he teaches her ‘Unsaid Emily’. 

They rehearsed it for the next couple of days until it’s time for Mother’s Day. 

She and Luke visit Emily with Luke’s old guitar in tow. She sits down on the couch, with Luke beside her, grinning timidly. 

Julie goes to thank Emily, explaining that she had been practicing nonstop, that it was because of her gifting the guitar, Julie has been able to connect with her mom. 

Emily’s eyes soften once hearing that Julie’s mom has passed, “Oh dear, i didn’t know,” 

“It’s ok. This day... it’s hard for me too,” Then Julie props the guitar up on her knee, “I’ve been practicing something, I want to play it for you. If that’s okay?” she’s mostly looking at Luke as she asks. 

Emily smiles wistfully, “Go ahead, sweetie. i would love to hear you play.” 

Then Julie starts strumming the chords. She decides it’s better for her not to sing the lyrics, just letting the music speak for itself. Her eyes are laser focused on the strings, not wanting to pull her focus away for a minute. She’s determined to play this perfectly. She owes it to Emily, to Luke, to do the song justice. 

When she finished playing, she finally looks up. Emily had gotten closer to couch while she played, hand to her mouth while tears form in her eyes. 

Julie doesn’t have to tell her what the song was. Emily already knew. 

At first Julie thinks she overstepped, playing the song, but then Emily envelops her into a hug, and she could tell from the sounds, that the woman is crying tears of joy. 

She steps back and for a moment, her eyes flickered to behind Julie and it takes a second for Julie to realize that’s where Luke have been sitting, and he’s still there, crying too. 

Julie looks back to Emily, who blinks rapidly, shaking her head, “Oh sorry, dear. It’s just, for a second, I thought I saw...” 

“Saw who?” 

Luke sits up straighter, surprised. But the woman gives no indication to having seen him move. Whatever magic that made Luke visible to his mom for only a moment was gone. 

Julie glances at the guitar and then back at Emily, “It feels like he’s here. Doesn’t it?”

Emily nods slowly. And in that moment, Julie feels a strange sensation, a weight around her shoulders, snaking over and encasing her arms. Like a hug from behind. 

She knows it couldn’t have been Luke, for he is right beside her, holding her hand. 

In awe, Julie smiles, her free hand reaching for Emily’s, “It feels like my mom’s here too.” 

Mitch Patterson comes home hours later, bearing many gifts for his wife, knowing that this particular day would sting more so than the rest. But he arrives to find Emily and Julie huddling over the dining table, giggling over a box of old photos. 

“And this is Luke at the Johnny Appleseed show at school. He played a farmer,” 

Mitch is shocked to see his wife talking about Luke so openly, and so happily. This never happens on Mother’s Day. 

If only he could see the ghost of his son, standing on the opposite end of the table, arms crossed and appearing mortified at the events unfolding before him. 

“Mom” he groaned, knowing full well that she can’t hear him. 

Emily continues showing off the photo to Julie, “Wasn’t he cute?”

Julie smirks at him, “Sooo cute.” 

Luke shakes his head. He’ll let this slide. 

After all, this turned out to be a pretty good Mother’s Day.  

[sunset-curve-fantom]

Unsaid Emily- Luke x Reader

Luke Patterson was one of the most genuine, funny, musical people you had ever met, except he was a ghost. His buddies and him were killed by tainted hotdogs in the ‘90s and now, now they were making their comeback in 2020 with the help of Julie and yourself.

When Luke left this world, he left his parents behind with an uncertainty of how their child lived in his final moments. They had been fighting at the time, so there had not been much communication between them for some time. They hated the direction their 17-year-old was heading, and instead of being understanding, they made Luke was feel trapped, like they were trying to change his greatest love in life, his band and more importantly his music.

You had been blissfully unaware of how much Luke was truly hurting until his birthday, which happened to be today because there he was sitting on his parent’s counter, hot tears running down his face. Your heart broke seeing him so upset, you never realized how much Luke was really hiding behind his façade. He was trying to make up for the life he never got to live, they never saw him play or get married, to grow old. He lived a life that was cut abruptly short, and he would never forgive himself for walking out that night.

The more Reggie and Alex talked about the past, the more you realized that Luke spent a lot of time at their house. Like he was trying to make new memories with his parents who could never see him in the way you do. In their eyes, he was gone but in yours he could never be more alive.

So here you were, waiting for Luke to return to garage. You asked Julie and the boys to let you talk to him alone, the bond you had was something special and you felt he would open up to you more. Focusing on the book in front of you, it felt like you had been waiting forever. You knew he it was his birthday so he would be gone for most of it, so you just had to play the waiting game.

No sooner did you finish the last page of your chapter, did Luke poof into the chair next to you. You could see that his eyes were puffy, and his face was red from all the crying. You knew he was hurting but you did not know how to even approach him. He seemed shocked to see you sitting there by yourself, usually you were off with Julie or the boys.

He shifted in his seat trying to hide his sniffles, “Hey Y/n, I wasn’t expecting you to be here”

“Well… I thought we could talk. I just noticed you’ve been kind of distant and I wanted to make sure you were okay” you said honestly, you truly just wanted to make sure he was okay, or more so check to make sure he would be okay eventually.

He just sighed at me, trying to avoid my statement, it was clear he didn’t want me to be involved with his pain. He would rather keep it to himself than burden someone else with his problems from beyond the grave.

“Luke, please. I just want to help…” you said again, trying to get him to open up. He couldn’t get this all pinned up inside of him, eventually he was going to explode, and it was going to be fatal for everyone involved.

He was avoiding your eyes, afraid of opening the flood gates and not being able to close them again, he had been crying for days and he didn’t want to cry in front of you.

“I really just don’t want to talk about it, please just drop it”

“Luke… I know… I know it is your birthday, I know where you have been all day… so please don’t lie to me” you said, sitting on the coffee table in front of his chair, you could see his eyes rolling.

“Seriously. You and Julie preach about boundaries and you stalked me. Really y/n?” He said, the anger clear in his voice, so you did the one thing you could think of. You reached out to him, and surprisingly your hand rested on his knee instead of going through him.

The look of shock mirroring on his face as he placed his large hand onto yours. It was a sense of comfort, something he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

“Luke… I know I didn’t… I mean I know I shouldn’t have spied on you. But I am worried about you, I know it’s your birthday and you spent most of your day at yours parents. I can’t even begin to imagine how you are feeling, but I am here for you, every step of the way. I know it doesn’t mean much but- “Luke cut you off.

“It actually means more than you could ever know. I never talked to the boys about my parents, so it is nice to have someone who knows. My parents… when I left this world I left on bad terms. I was doing something that they didn’t want me to do. They wanted me to finish school, get married, basically have a life worth living. But I was so focused on my music and the band, that I walked out. I walked out and that is the last memory they have of me. I walked out that door and I never came home…” He was choking back his tears; you only gripped his hand tighter. You just wanted to take away this pain, so you just stood up wrapping your arms around him.

You could feel his tears on your shirt, you pulled back wiping more of them away with your thumbs. He caught your gaze, “Please… don’t tell the boys. I don’t need any more pity”

You felt a frown appear on your face, “Luke, I don’t pity you. I know how hard it is to lose someone, and I just want to be here for you. Did you ever show your parents your music, or write anything for them?”

He pulled away from you, so you just sat back down on the coffee table. “Whatever I wrote for them, it would never matter. My music was nothing to them, it was always the one thing that drove me away. They regretted buying me that guitar the moment I started playing. They lost me, and they will never forgive themselves no matter what.”

You couldn’t help but feel tears pool in your eyes as well, you wanted nothing more than to take back the past, to give your life for his, for a moment to make up with his parents.

“I wrote one song; it was for my mom. It was right after I ran away, and it was everything I didn’t know how to say to her. But now, she will never hear everything I wanted to say, she was so important, and I just left her there”

You processed his words, you knew exactly what song it was and tomorrow you were going to give that piece of art to his mom, and hopefully it would heal some of the open wounds in her heart. You hand already made up your mind about that.

*Next day*

You woke up early, before heading across town. You knew if you waited later in the day, that you would change your mind about this. You knew Luke would be mad, but you felt he needed this to heal, and so did his mom.

You quietly pulled into the Patterson’s driveway, trying to keep your nerves under wraps. You shut the car door and made your way up the drive. You were almost to the front door when Luke poofed in front of you. The look he gave you was not exactly good…

“What- why are you here??” he questioned; you could barely look into his eyes. You knew he would be angry when he found out your reasoning.

“I wanted to help- so I brought Unsaid Emily with me for your mom. I think she deserves to hear everything you couldn’t say to her. You can be mad at me, but I need to do this for you and for her” You said with confidence before rigging the doorbell, Luke just scowled at you. He was going to give you an earful later.

Moments later the door opened, and there stood a man. He was older from some of the pictures you had seen, but he was Luke’s dad, and you knew that.

“Hi, may I help you?” He spoke softly

“Yes, Hi. My name is Y/n, Y/n Y/l/n. My friend lives in the house where Sunset Curve used to practice, and I found something that you might want.” You said, feeling the hot tears pool in your eyes as you saw him suck in a deep breath.

He stepped aside letting you in, Luke followed in behind you.

You picked up a photo on the table, “Is this your son? Luke, right?”

He nodded before talking, “He was about 2-years-old in that photo. He was definitely a light in our life” A small smile fell onto your lips; he was the light of your life now. Even in death, he was the most perfect, and incredible person you had ever met.

Before you could speak again, you saw Luke’s mom come into the room, “Hi honey, did I hear the bell ring” she just offered you a small smile.

“Yes, this is Y/n and her friend lives in the house where the band used to rehearse. She brought something for us” He said to his wife, who looked at you with wide eyes.

“I assume you must be Emily?” You asked, sending Luke a look across the room. You could tell he was holding in a breath.

She nodded, before you continued, “I was cleaning out the garage and I found this song. It is called “Unsaid Emily”, I could happily sing it for you… if that’s okay?”

“Uh- could you maybe wait a moment, I have something you’ll need” Luke’s dad said, before retreating out of the room. He quickly returned with a guitar in hand.

“it was a birthday present for Luke, we never got to give it to him. It would be wonderful if you could play it for us… if you can play?” His dad said, handing you the fresh guitar. You caught Luke’s gaze across the room, he was in shock. He always thought they hated his music.

Taking a deep breath, you sat down in front of them with Luke’s lyrics in front of you. It took you a few minutes to tune the guitar before you began singing,

First things first

We start the scene in reverse

All of the lines rehearsed

Disappeared from my mind

When things got loud

One of us running out

I should have turned around

But I had too much pride

It was like as soon as the song started, it had come to an end. You could swear you could hear Luke still singing the song, like he wouldn’t be able to stop.

“You have no idea what you have given us…” Luke’s mom said, playing her hand on yours. You just grabbed it tightly.

“I can say, I write my music in the same place he did. It is a beautiful place full of happiness. I just thought you would want to know that. He lived doing the one thing he loved the most, and that inspires me everyday” You said, pushing the guitar back in their direction.

His dad just shook his head, “Keep it, I think Luke would want you to have it. And please, come back. It is great to hear his music inspired someone, especially someone so gifted”

You were shocked, this was an incredible gift, especially from Luke’s parents of all people.

“I could not thank you enough, I promise I will be back soon… I will try to find more things of Luke’s” you said, gently hugging his parents before heading out the door. You gripped the guitar close to your heart, it was an incredible gift.

You got in your car, and there was Luke. You could see the tear stains on his cheek, you intertwined your hand with his.

“I cannot thank you enough for what you just did… You gave them back a hope, a happiness in their life…” He said, choking back more tears.

“Luke, I did this for you… Don’t thank me. I just needed to do something… I wanted to bring you closure as well. You don’t know how much I care about you Luke.” You said, rubbing your thumb on the back of his hand.

His head whipped in your direction, “Of course I do, your dork. I know how much you care because I feel the same way about you. This is definitely something interesting we have. And I may be dead, but I am not dumb.”

You just laughed at his remark, Luke was always going to be the one who held your heart. He was the one who made your world spin in ways no one has. Luke was your one in a million, and he was going to be that until the end of time.

[winterscaptain]

when you wake up.

Aaron Hotchner x Gender Neutral Reader

a/n: i���m a sucker for protective aaron, alright? sue me. i have checked and double checked, but if i’ve messed up any gender-neutralisms, please let me know! i’d like to thank snow, the academy, and my welbutrin for their spiritual aid as i write these fics at an alarming rate rating/words: teen / 2642 warnings: canon-typical injury, swearing, kissing 

AO3 | Masterlist | Requests Open!

+++

“You know –“ you gasped, grimacing through the pain, “blood is a bitch to get out of a wool blend.”

Aaron pressed his lips together, his forearms flexing as he staunched the bleeding from the gunshot wound in your shoulder with his gorgeous navy pinstripe blazer.

That one was my favorite, you thought with a pout.

He had you propped against a wall, his shirt splattered with your blood. He had torn the collar of your shirt for better access to your wound, and your vest was entirely forgotten on the floor beside you. Emily called the paramedics about seven minutes prior, but the backroads of Montana were not conducive to prompt medical service.

The pain wasn’t unbearable, and surely you’d been through worse.

Shock is a hell of a drug.

Nevertheless, his concern was touching. It had been a while since either one of you were injured – long before you realized you had feelings for each other and did absolutely nothing about it.

It all happened so fast – you had your gun trained on the unsub, who was using the sixth almost-victim as a shield. As soon as Derek and Aaron threw the back door open, he’d shoved the frightened young woman toward Derek and moved really quickly.

Bang. Ouch. Fuck.

“Aaron.”

He didn’t respond and was dutifully ignoring your eyes, focused entirely on the blood gushing through his fingers under your shoulder blade. The hand attached to your injured arm wrapped around his bicep, your fingers clinging to the fabric of his sleeve.

“I’m fine,” you continued. “It’s through and through. Six weeks tops I’ll be back to my old tricks.” 

You brought your other hand to his hair, and he leaned into your touch almost unconsciously. Your thumb smoothed over the hair at his temple, where tiny silver streaks rested in the inky black. You were just teasing him about his greys last week.

“They make you look distinguished!” You insisted. You were behind him as he sat at his dining room table, helping Jack set the table for dinner while Aaron tried (in vain) to review a consult.

“They make me look old,” he retorted in a deadpan.

You raked your fingers through the hair at his temples, massaging his scalp all the way to the crown of his head. He leaned back, his hand relaxing around his pen. With a final pat to the top of his head, you stepped away and returned to the pasta sauce.

“No old man would cook as badly as you do.”

His withering glare made his son laugh out loud, and the look only grew darker as you offered Jack a high-five.

“You’re still losing a lot of blood.” His voice was low and tense, his jaw tight.

Derek hovered nearby, though Aaron had shooed him away minutes earlier. He was talking into the comm, likely getting status updates from EMS.

Offering Derek a weak smile, you let your hand drop to Hotch’s wrist. Your eyes were heavy, but you fought to keep them open. Falling unconscious now would only worry him more.

“Aaron, you need to breathe.”

He huffs, and it’s almost a laugh but there’s no humor in it. “You’re telling me to breathe?”

“I’m breathing just fine.” And you were, focused only on the feel of his hands on your skin and the slow, deep breaths you took to keep your oxygen levels high as your blood pressure dropped. “Breathe with me, please. It’ll make me feel better.” That was a low blow, but you were pulling every card you had to keep him from breaking his teeth with that clenched jaw.

God, you were just so tired.

Aaron’s brown eyes flickered up to yours and softened. He leaned forward, shifting his weight and wrapping an arm around you as sirens faintly wailed some distance away. “Lean into me. It’s okay. You can sleep. I’ve got you.”

You were cheek-to-cheek when you finally passed out, succumbing to the heaviness.

+++

When you woke up, your shoulder ached, and the lights were way too bright.

There was a weight dipping the mattress on your left side and a dark shadow on your right.

You lifted your head slightly to see Aaron fast asleep, his head resting on his arms. You smiled and redirected your attention to your right. The dark shadow was Emily, watching you with a soft smile.

“Hey, champ.”

“Hey Em.”

She gestured to Aaron with her chin. “He hasn’t left once.” There was an implication behind her words, something not-quite suggestive, but understanding.

You ignored it for now. “How long was I out?” You brought your hand to Aaron’s tense shoulder, relaxing there, your thumb tracing back and forth over his baby blue button-down. Your IV line pulled a little, and you retracted your hand to his bicep.

“About two days. Surgery went really well – they just had to patch up a couple of ligaments and set a few pins in your clavicle. Nothing shattered, and no fragments. All things considered, really clean shot.”

Not as bad as I thought.

“He’s been here the whole time? Are we still in Montana? What day is it?”

Emily laughed, smiling broadly. “So many questions!” She counted off on her fingers. “His ass has only left that chair to chase down your doctor and go to the bathroom like...twice. We are still in Montana. It’s Tuesday. We’ll be on our way home as soon as you’re discharged. We wouldn’t leave without you.”

You sighed, adjusting your position on the bed. “Thanks.”

She winked. 

Hotch stirred, and Emily stood.

“I’ll leave you two for now. We’re all out in the waiting room if you want to see anyone.” She kissed your forehead and slipped out, closing the door behind her.

You could see the exact moment he registered your hand on his shoulder. He startled, straightening faster than you could blink. His eyes still bleary from sleep, you watched as he took stock of your entire person, finally meeting your eyes.

“Hi, Hotch.”

“Hi.” He reached for your hand with both of his, careful of the IV in your forearm. He brought your linked hands to his lips - warm, relieved breath washing over your fingers.

You squeezed once, feeling the stress and worry in his grip. “I’m okay.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry I got shot.” Your voice was soft, but the humor behind it was unmistakable.

He huffed a laugh against your hands. “I should be mad at you.”

“You aren’t?”

Just then, a twinge in your shoulder made you wince. Your face crinkled up before you could hide it.

Hotch immediately reached for the call button, his body arcing gracefully over yours, pressing it twice. He looked down at you from under his arm. “No, I’m not.”

The nurse came in, said something about how nice it was to see you awake, and administered some more pain medication. She worked around Hotch, who never let go of your hand.

You had your eyes on him the whole time. His hawkish brown eyes tracked everything – the dosage, the IV drip – until the nurse left the room.

Right away, you started feeling heavy, your eyes slipping closed. “I don’t - I don’t wanna sleep,” you mumbled.

The back of Hotch’s hand traced the line of your cheek in a gentle caress. Your eyes fluttered closed, and you felt his touch fall down your good arm and wind your fingers together. “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

“You should get s’m sleep.”

You weren’t sure if it was the haze of meds or not, but you could swear you felt kisses to each one of your fingertips before you slipped into unconsciousness once more.

+++

When you woke again, he was still there. He was kicked back in the recliner this time, a book in his lap and reading glasses perched on his nose. It was dark outside, and you surmised you’d been asleep for a couple of hours.

“Since when do you wear reading glasses?” Your voice was rough with sleep.

Hotch snatched the glasses in question off his nose and folded them into his collar. “I don’t, usually, but the fluorescents are hard on my eyes after a while.”

You nodded sagely before breaking out into a smile. He offered you one back, one of those sweet, crooked, closed-mouth tip-ups.

Those might be my favorite.

You shifted, scooting over in the hospital bed and raising the head with the remote so you could sit up with more ease. Hotch stood, and you could tell he was trying to give you space as you independently adjusted your surroundings.

You patted the bed next to your hip, and he gingerly sat beside you, crossing his ankle over his opposite knee. He probably didn’t realize, but his entire body was bowed toward you, from his toes to his shoulders. You had always been tuned to each other, like finely-made instruments.

There was so much to say, so much unsaid. This injury was pretty far from a near-death experience, but it was enough to screw your head on straight a little bit.

“Aaron, I --“ You stopped, not sure where to begin. You rested a hand on the knee within your reach, tracing absentminded circles on the grain of his jeans.

Almost three days in the hospital and he’s still wearing jeans.

Well...at least it’s not a suit.

“Why did you stay?” Your words left you without your permission, but maybe it was better that way.

His brow lowered. “It’s my job.”

Your lips tipped up in a small, wry smile. “Bullshit.”

He heaved a sigh. “Fine. I felt...compelled to make sure you were alright.” His eyes were cast down toward the heavy white blanket beneath him. “Every time I got up to leave, I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave you knowing you could wake up and I wouldn’t be there.”

You were acutely aware of the dopey grin on your face.

He looked up at you. “It doesn’t make any sense I know –“

“Aaron.” You stopped him with four fingers pressed to his mouth. It was the first time you’d actually instigated contact with his mouth. You felt the stubble that was rapidly turning into a proper beard, but you were focused on the softness of his mouth. You softened, letting your hand relax against him. “It makes sense to me.”

There was silence for a moment. You just stared at each other, your hand still over his mouth. You were glad your heart rate stayed steady, as the beeping was one of the only sounds in the room.

“Hey, Aaron?” Your fingers weren’t really tracing his lips, but they weren’t...not doing that either.

He smiled and spoke from behind your fingers. “Yeah?”

“The spot between my shoulders is insanely itchy.”

He shook his head, exasperated, and pulled your fingers from his mouth. “Lean up for a second.”

You did, and he pulled a pillow from behind you and put it in your lap. You wrapped your good arm around it and ducked your head down. His fingers massaged across your good shoulder and neck, releasing some of the tension there.

He laughed aloud when you made a (frankly) obscene noise when he hit a particularly sore spot.

“You’re giving my physical therapist a run for his money, Aaron.”

“Good.”

He moved down underneath the sling strap, gently running his nails back and forth over the skin peeking through your hospital gown. It was heaven.

“Okay, you can’t ever stop doing that.”

He continued, scratching lightly up and down your spine “I’m here as long as you want me here, sweetheart.”

The endearment made your heart feel all fuzzy, and you relaxed further into the pillow, your body relaxing as the tension melted out of your back.

He stopped after a few minutes, just smoothing his hand back and forth along the left side of your back. “Feeling better?”

“Much, thank you,” you said, leaning back against the pillows.

He brushed some hair away from your face and hesitated there for a moment. Your jaw fit a little too neatly in his hand. You licked your lips, finding your mouth suddenly dry.

“Y/N...” he said, still quiet.

You shook your head and leaned forward at the same time he did. You met halfway, and he captured your lips with a relieved sigh. He was so careful with you, considering your injury, one hand reaching from your jaw to the side of your head, the other resting on your thigh on top of the thin hospital blanket.

The faded smell of his cologne or deodorant or something very masculine swirled around you. It was a smell you could identify anywhere – something spicy and earthy and Aaron.

Your noses slid against each other as you pulled apart to grin at each other. He pulled you back toward him and your lips met again. Your breath caught as his tongue traced your lower lip. You granted him access, ignoring the embarrassing spike in your heart rate that sent the monitors into a frenzy.

A part of you absolutely wanted to jump him then and there, but between your shoulder and the big window facing out into the hallway, that was a no-go.

You settled for devouring him from where you were instead, taking his lips between your teeth until he was groaning into your mouth. His hands knotted in your hair and you twisted his shirt in your hand. You didn’t think too much about the fact you’d been asleep for two days and therefore had two days of morning breath. The only thing on your mind was the taste of coffee on Aaron’s tongue, the hand planted firmly on your thigh, and the surprising softness of his lips.

It’s not that you thought he’d be a bad kisser, but fuck he was good at it. Almost too good. You craved more and damned your shoulder (again) for keeping you tethered to this bed and unable to wrap him in your arms.

“God,” he whispered into your mouth. “I was so scared I was going to lose you.”

You laughed into him, nipping at his lip again. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

There was a desperate edge to his touch as he took your face between his hands and pulled back to look at you. He kissed you once. Twice. So gently you almost couldn’t feel it. “I’m never getting rid of you,” he said. “Not now, not ever.”

It took you a couple of seconds to open your eyes again. When you did, the warm brown of Aaron’s eyes sank into you, and you almost forgot you’d been shot less than 72 hours prior. “Am I nuts to tell you how much I love you when I’m hopped up on pain meds?”

He shook his head, a thousand-gigawatt smile eating up his whole face. You cupped his jaw in your hand, pressing your thumb into one of his dimples. He tenderly covered your hand with his and turned to press an achingly gentle kiss your palm. “Only a little,” he said. He guided you back onto the pillows, arranging them around you so you could sleep without jostling your shoulder.

The nurse bustled back in and asked after your pain level. You said seven (it was a lie, you’d give it a nine and a half if you weren’t trying to be a hero), and she administered another round of meds. She swept out of the room and your eyes started to close again.

“Aaron...” you whispered, clinging to the last dregs of consciousness.

A kiss to your forehead. Warm breath over your fingers.

If safety had a texture, it would be somewhere between the callouses on his hands and the cool cotton of his dress shirts.

“I’m here.” A pause. “Hey.”

You cracked an eyelid.

“I love you too, by the way.”

+++

tagging: @arganfics @quillvine @stxrryspencer @agenthotchner @hurricanejjareau @fics-ilike @octothorpetopus @ange-must-die @ughitsbaby @rousethemouse @criminalsmarts @dr-reid-ismyspiritanimal @shrimpyblog @genevievedarcygranger @ssaic-jareau @saintd0lce @good-heavens-chris-evans

[ageofevermore]

Unsaid Emily

SUMMARY — and maybe it was the midnight ink on her wrist that tied her to him

WORD COUNT — 1.7k

───── ･ ｡ﾟ☆ﾟ: *. ☽ .* : ☆ﾟ. ─────

They had said goodbye to a child eight years before welcoming the second with shocked and scared hearts. They had promised to do things differently -- to like whatever she liked, watch whatever she watched, and love whatever she loved. They drew no boundary at personal belief when it came to this second child that shadowed the life of Luke, but they made no attempts to forgive and mend the empty spaces in their hearts where they had already done this. They had already gone through first steps, words, and heartbreaks. They had captured Luke’s seventeen years of life in their memory so perfectly watching hers felt faulty. They tried with everything they had to love her as they never loved Luke, but somehow that caused even more of a divide as everything was reminiscent of the deceased first born brunette. 

She had been away at school when his birthday rolled around; for the first time in her seventeen years of pitiful existence she didn’t blow out the candles on a stale chocolate cake. She spent the day away from stories of her brother, and instead  spent it knowing somewhere in the universe he wasn’t being smothered by Mitch and Emily’s persistent opinions. She couldn’t outrun home forever though. An amazing music program in Santa Monica pulled her away from LA for most weeks out of the year, but her mother was persistent that she abandon the dorms and visit home every so often. It was that fear of Luke again. He had instilled so many traumas that even trust with her was unruly and weak. 

She heard the doorbell ring as she was unpacking her pile of homework, the weekend away from school meaning nothing for the multiple classes she was taking weekly. Though the private boarding school was diverse in the makeup of their structured courses, she was still on a tightly wound schedule with instrumental practice and vocals along with mandatory academics like calculus. She hates calculus. She had only started around the corner because she heard the sound of her brother's name roll off of a stranger's tongue. The defined L sound was unmistakable, and partnered with the topic of music, the correlation was undeniable. 

“Yeah. That’s Luke, when he was two.” Mitch explained the picture between the girls grasp, eyes growing damp at the topic of his greatest failure as a parent. Luke was his perfect gift. 

“Do you have any other children?” The girl asked, gently setting the picture frame down and bringing her chocolate eyes up to Mitch’s. The gentleness of her expressions were weighing heavy on the hearts of a family that lived with the memory of Luke on their mind daily. Even with the retelling of his story the only fragment of his existence that she knew, hearing these words hurt.

“A daughter. Lily.” Mitch looked just behind the guest, eyes trailing over his daughter that shared the same midnight toned hair and hard blue eyes as his Luke once had. She stepped past the threshold connecting the foyer to the living room, ignoring the butterflies that spread through her stomach at a certain point across the hardwood. 

“I’m Lily.” She smiled tightly at the girl, hand extended in a polite greeting that was in no way authentic. Her heart was beating her ears, palms collecting sweat at the idea of knowing Luke from somebody else's perspective. 

“Julie.”  The two smiled at each other, both looking equally displaced despite this being Lily’s house, and having been Julie’s personal decision to come. Luke just had that effect on people. His memory made you hurt so deeply that anything other than crying felt wrong. 

“Did I hear the doorbell?” Emily asked, hand softly brushing against Lily’s back. Emily hadn’t even flinched when her child pulled away from the embrace, just accepted what had become routine since implementing the memory and the love of Luke. In remembering one child Mitch and Emily had completely pushed away the other. 

“Mom, this is Julie.” Lily introduced the two, her eyes wandering around the space that suddenly felt so full. She had stood in this same living room for seventeen years prior to the current evening and never had she got the sense of being complete. 

“Hello, Julie.” Emily smiled, looking over the girl standing in their living room with nothing more than a name to her purpose. “Oh, that’s a beautiful sweater.” 

She had never heard her mother speak so freely kindly towards others' clothing. She had woken the same morning, expecting the looks of judgement and unwarranted warnings that band-tees and vans had been the very wardrobe to have taken Luke’s life. 

When she had gotten Sunset Curve tattooed to the flesh of her wrist, binding her life to her brother's memory, they had gone mental. It had been tears of disappointment and pain at the foundation of an argument. They had come around eventually, but only off of the premise that they didn’t want to drive Lily away and watch her face death like Luke did. 

“Thanks. It’s my moms.” Julie looked down at her sweater, fingers softly brushing along the knitted material. By the solemn expression in her eyes, Lily knew that death had been upon her. Nobody bore such a heavy gleam without the persuading of trauma and grief. 

“Julie lives in the house where Luke and the band rehearsed. She was just telling me she found a song that Luke wrote.” Mitch looked down at Julie, all while Lily couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes on her. Looking around the room again, her heart jumped painfully in her chest at the orb of afterlife reflecting from the sun just behind Julie. As she stared into the rainbow colors of the orb, she couldn’t help but feel as though a set of eyes was sharing the encounter with her. 

Blinking away the delusion, Lily’s thumb traced the tattoo on her wrist, her eyes welling with tears. She might have rivaled a ghost all of her childhood, but she missed the soft and tender memories of her brother she didn’t have the heart to relearn. She could love him with everything she had, but never would see ask her parents about his short lived life. 

“It’s a song about a girl named Emily?” 

A tear fell from Lily’s eyes, while warm pools of grief framed the waterline of her blue optics, threatening to spill over at any second. She traced the spot where the orb of afterlife had once floated above the air with streaks of rainbow, but the sun had moved away and stopped casting a spotlight on the space. 

“Emily…” Mitch whispered into the open air of the space, eyes glazing over as he looked down to his wife that had beared two children and loved the first more than anything worldly. “I’m Emily.” She pleaded, although neither she nor Julie knew what she was asking for with her desperation soaked tone. 

“Then I think your son may have written a song for you.” Julie handed over the old and tattered piece of notebook paper that bore the same handwriting as all of Luke’s journals still stashed away in the attic. The same handwriting that lived permanently on her wrist, taking the shape of what his dream had once been. 

“First things first, we start the scene in reverse.” Lily had to shake the thought of music out of her focus, her body so heavily convinced that somewhere in the depths of her home a song was playing softly. The dimension of the vocals she heard was unlike any streaming platform ability, making her wonder if her mother had broken into the vinyls again. 

“All of the lines rehearsed disappeared from my mind when things got loud. One of us running out, I should've turned around, but I had too much pride. No time for goodbyes, didn't get to apologize, pieces of a clock that lies broken. If I could take us back, if I could just do that and write in every empty space the words ‘I love you’ in replace. Then maybe time would not erase me, if you could only know I never let you go, and the words I most regret are the ones I never meant to leave. Unsaid Emily. Silent days, mysteries and mistakes. Who'd be the first to break? I guess we're alike that way. He said, she said, conversations in my head, and that's just where they're gonna stay forever.” 

It was a ringing between her ears that brought the delusion to a standstill. As her fingers curl around her wrist as if to physically grab the midnight ink, the whisper of a voice in her focus becomes too prominent to ignore. 

“If I could take us back, if I could just do that, and write in every empty space the words ‘I love you’ in replace. Then maybe time would not erase me, if you could only know I never let you go, and the words I most regret are the ones I never meant to leave. Unsaid Emily. If I could take us back, if I could just do that, and write in every empty space the words ‘I love you’ in replace, then maybe time would not erase me. If you could only know I never let you go.” She hears the words through herself so clearly, she’s certain the words she can practically feel are the same as what’s written on the page between her mother's fingertips. She doesn’t understand it, but somehow she knows. 

It’s him. Luke. Her big brother. 

Her wrist flashes hot for a second, startling her enough to abandon the tight locked gaze she has on the empty space behind Julie and look down at her reddening skin. “And the words I most regret are the ones I never meant to leave. Unsaid Emily.” 

A cold shock ran through her body in contrast to the searing hot pain circulating her wrist. She sniffled when the last sung Emily sounded through her body, the vibrato sounding so close to her it was paralyzing. When she found her bearings and the jelly like feeling in her legs dispersed to her heart, she looked back up at Julie.  

With one last fleeting glance towards the empty space behind Julie, the sight of a blue-eyed boy looking tearfully beyond herself, calmed the burn in her wrist. She made eye contact with the boy, a name fitting comfortably on her tongue despite the impossibility of it all. 

“Luke…” 

[tillxthexearthxstartsxtoxcrumble]

Let's talk about Unsaid Emily for at least a minute, here.

First let's talk about the impact it would have on his parents.

Imagine your kid, the boy you've raised for 17 years, is so passionate about something that you don't think he can make it in. Even if he's extremely talented, it's a competitive business, you don't want your son to throw his life away for something that probably won't get very far. He gets angry, you fight with him over it several times. One time, it gets really bad. It's Christmas, all your friends are happy and the families are excited, but you're here fighting with your son. In his anger, your son runs away. You watch him shove clothes in his bag and his guitar in his case and he left. You pushed him away. Or in Luke's dad's way, he never got to see his son. He left for work, or to get something from the store, and came back to see his wife crying in the street. Imagine that. Imagine pulling up and seeing her standing there. Your heart drops, knowing the trouble that's been happening recently. But it couldn't be- it couldn't have happened. You send out missing posters of him, hoping he'll come back. You hear rustling outside, and all you can do is hope it's him. You finally get a moment to breathe, trying to distract yourself. Then the police lights show up. You know the worst has happened. The lights wouldn't be there if he were alive. You just lost him, forever. He died hating you because you loved him but couldn't see what he truly wanted. Then, twenty five years of pain later, a girl shows up. It's a normal day, you were doing nothing special, but this day would change it. You get a song, written about you. Given how the relationship ended, you expect it to be angry. His pain, you expect to have to read all the things he hated you for. Instead, you learn he was almost just as upset as you with how it went down. He didn't hate you, he was hurting and wanted you back. He didn't hate you.

Then let's go to Julie's perspective. This person she's known for weeks, the one she's got a crush on because he's one of the nicest people you've ever met, the one who brought your life and joy back to you. The one you write music with, something very personal and special to you. You have a chance to help him, the way you'd wanna be helped. Almost in the way he helped you. You get to this house. The house where all this pain is held. Where his parents are. You know it'll help them to know, you wanna do it. Then, he shows up. He doesn't know what you're gonna do but he trusts you 100% and lets you do this. You see the parents crying, they finally learned he didn't hate them. That he loved them. He got his message to them. He was heard.

Now, Luke's. Imagine, the pain of having your parents tell you the thing you're most passionate about, you wouldn't make it in. That no matter what you'd throw your life away with it. This is your everything. You have a talent, a gift. Your friends, your FAMILY is a part of this with you, but your parents, the ones who are meant to love you most and got you into this, tell you to quit your biggest dream. It's your whole drive, your reason for living. You're tired of the endless fighting, just because you wanna play music. You pack your clothes, and run away. Your mom in the background, you can hear her sobs. It's the last thing you hear before you leave them forever. So you do the only thing you can do. You write. You wanna play it for her, show her how much this means to you. Maybe, maybe then she'll understand. Maybe you can go back, and live your dream with a happy family. But you're afraid. Afraid they won't accept you, afraid they'll be mad at you for running away and leaving them. You feel so much guilt, so much pain over this. Your friends all know you should go back, the ones you spend every day with whom you hide your pain from. You share your song with them, though. They've seen the missing person posters. They don't know what to do for you. You've seen the posters. Each one hurts more than the last. Then, on the biggest night of your life, the night you're going to get big and maybe prove to your parents it's not a pointless dream, you go out for some food, and you never come back. You disappear, and twenty five years later you come back. This wonderful person who you have a crush on is there, you can see she's struggling, and you know how it feels, at least on some level. You help her, you bring music back to her, you have a connection. Then, you go to your parents house one day, and when you turn you see her. She looks shocked to see you, but you're just confused on why she's there. You've trusted her with everything by now, though, so you let her go on with it. The girl you have a big crush on is now in front of both your parents, showing them the thing you wrote. Music, something so personal, it's an extension of him. You sing your heart out, let out all the pain, relive all the memories, and your parents are now crying. They can be at peace now, they're little boy didn't hate them. You can't stay there, it's too much right then. But it was just what you needed. That was enough. They know you love them.

[raiseyourvoicetotherain]

Happy Anniversary -- A jatp fic

Here’s my first Julie and the Phantoms fic, inspired by this post. I hope you enjoy.

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“Maybe we need to put ourselves in danger?” Reggie said, breaking the silence that had lingered over the studio for longer than he was comfortable. “Last time, Julie thought we were all going to disappear forever. Maybe if she thinks that again, she can figure out how she did it before.”

Alex broke out of his blank stare to turn his head to Reggie. He stared at the bass player just long enough to give him time to really think about what he’d just said. When Reggie didn’t seem to get it, Alex said, “Seriously? We’ll just go back to the Hollywood Ghost Club and ask Caleb for another stamp, then, shall we?”

“Yeah, let’s not do that,” Reggie responded quietly, sagging back into his chair. He put a hand to his chest and started to rub it a little, remembering the pain of the jolts the stamp had caused. “But maybe there’s some other way to put us in danger.”

Then Alex turned his head to Julie and gave a look like he couldn’t answer another silly question and he needed her to take this one.

“You want to put a ghost in danger?” Julie asked Reggie skeptically.

Reggie went quiet when he saw her point.

Flynn looked between Julie and the seemingly empty chair she was talking to. “What’s going on?” she asked her best friend.

“Nothing helpful,” Luke said with a roll of his eyes.

Knowing Flynn hadn’t heard that, Julie—less sarcastically—answered, “Nothing that’s going to work.”

Julie and Luke had spent the last hour trying to get their hands to touch, but every time their hands got close, every time they thought, maybe this time, their hands passed right through each other and the two would sigh. Julie could see Luke get more frustrated each time.

Ever since the night of The Orpheum show, the band had spent a lot of downtime trying to work out how to repeat whatever magic is was that had made Julie able to touch the boys, and Flynn able to see them.

Flynn hadn’t originally gone back to Julie’s after the show, but when she’d gotten home, she realized that Julie had seemed fine at the show, but there was no way she was going to be okay when she got home to the studio. So Flynn had gone straight down to the garage when she got to Julie’s and the first thing she noticed was how bright the room was. Then she saw Julie wasn’t alone, she could see the boys with her in a group hug.

“Oh, my god,” Flynn almost screamed when she realized what was happening. But no sooner had she spoken the words and Julie turned around, that the boys vanished.

Ever since that night, Julie had been trying to figure out how to make the boys visible when they weren’t playing—so far, she had only managed slight flickers as her hands passed through Luke’s. She hadn’t been able to touch him since.

Julie looked at Luke now, knowing he wanted just as bad as she did to recreate that magic. He wanted to hold her hand, feel her arms around him like he had that night.

He reached out again for her hand, only for his to slip right through it again. He gave a frustrated groan and turned away from her. He didn’t usually get like this—he actually hadn’t felt like this since he’d found out Bobby had stolen his music—but right now he wanted to hit something. He couldn’t remember being more frustrated with himself in all his life and afterlife.

Not sure what else to do, Luke stormed out through the garage door. Julie tried to call his name, but he kept going until he was outside.

Alex came and stood behind Julie, both looking at where the guitarist had walked out. After a quiet moment, Alex sighed. “So, do you wanna . . .?”

Snapping out of her own frustration, Julie said, “Yeah, yeah I got it.”

Julie walked outside to talk to Luke, and Alex was relieved he didn’t have to go. He’d been trying to support Luke through this, but he never seemed to know the right thing to say. Alex hated it, he was usually the one to know what to say to make things better, but he didn’t now. He didn’t understand what Luke was going through. He was still sneaking around with Willie, trying to work out how to free him from Caleb, but at least when Alex was able to steal a moment away with his dream boy, he could hold Willie in his arms.

Outside, Julie closed the garage door behind her. “Hey, you okay?”

Luke, who had begun throwing stones into the garden, frustrated, sighed and turned to look at her. “You know I want to be able to do this right?”

“Of course, so do I,” Julie said softly. “But even if we don’t figure it out, it doesn’t change . . .”

“Change what?” Luke encouraged when she paused.

With a sigh, Julie only answered, “Nothing.”

Then Luke looked frustrated again. “Nothing,” he repeated. “Right.”

“No, Luke, that’s not what I—” but he poofed out before she could finish.

Reggie stuck his head through the garage door. “Where’s he going? We’ve got practice.”

He was yanked back inside by Alex. “We weren’t listening,” Alex lied after sticking his head through where Reggie’s had just been.

“It’s okay,” Julie answered. Still facing away from the boys, she wiped a tear from her face. “I think I know where he’s going.”

 -

Emily was in the kitchen when Luke poofed in. She was drying the clean dishes to be put away and her hair was pulled back.

The first time Luke had seen her after coming back as a ghost, he was shocked by her now completely grey hair, but what hurt him the most was the look in her eyes. They were as sad as when he used to sneak by the house before he died, but they had an added layer of looking lost.

Now she looked . . . not happier, but definitely not as lost. Luke knew it was Julie who had done that. Bringing his mother that song had changed the whole mood in the house. A huge amount of his guilt had been lifted when Julie had come by, and now it seemed some of Emily’s had been, too.

“Good afternoon, my beautiful wife,” Mitch said, walking into the kitchen. Luke saw he was holding something behind his back and when Emily turned around to greet her husband, he pulled out the fresh bunch of dahlias. “Happy anniversary.”

“Oh, darling they’re beautiful,” Emily said, taking the bouquet from him. “Happy anniversary.”

They shared an affectionate kiss and Luke smiled—forty-five years and despite all their tragedy, they were still so in love. Emily put the flowers in a vase with water and Mitch went to change from his golf clothes. Luke didn’t know, but their anniversary had been such a non-event since he’d died. But with new life in the house since Julie’s visit, Mitch felt compelled to acknowledge the day once again.

As he watched his mom continue to put away dishes, Luke looked past her to the window sill, and saw a folded up piece of paper tucked in the window tracks. She took that bit of paper everywhere with her now.

“I could really use some mom advice right now,” Luke said, sitting on the kitchen bench, leaning his back to the wall. “Julie is . . . incredible. She’s insanely talented, and caring. I don’t have to tell you that you’d like her. I love her, Mom, but I don’t know if I should tell her. I can’t touch her, I can’t hold her—or kiss her. I think she feels the same way I do, but is it fair to ask her for something so complicated? Should I encourage her to go for something normal and just let her be happy with Nick instead?” he said the name with spited jealously. “I don’t know if I could stick around for that.”

Emily continued to clean the kitchen and he wished so badly that she would respond and help him decide what to do. But after a moment, he knew he didn’t need her to.

“I know what you’d say,” Luke spoke with a little smile and shake of his head. “You’d ask me if writing and playing music with her was worth it. That if nothing ever changed, could I be happy with things the way they are?” After a quiet moment, he looked over at his mom. “And the answer is yes, it will always be yes. I’d go the rest of eternity never getting to hold her again, as long as I still got to write music and perform with her.”

Emily finished putting the dishes away and grabbed the coffee pot to fill with water.

“If you could only know, I never let you go,” he sang quietly to her. But as he sang, he realized something new—his mother was singing along with him. Luke sat up straighter, thinking he must have imagined what he heard.

He tried again to be sure. “If I could take us back, if I could just do that.” He wasn’t going crazy, she was singing the tune. Not only was she singing it to the right melody—a melody she’d never heard—but she was singing in time to him. When he stopped singing, she stopped and looked up, surprised to catch herself singing at all.

“And write in every empty space, the words I love you in replace,” Luke kept going, hopping off the bench and walking up behind her as she put a now full pot of coffee on to brew.

She continued to sing with him and he looked at the piece of paper in the window sill with the Unsaid Emily lyrics written on it, still in the same spot. He continued to sing with his mom as he reached over to grab the paper.

“And the words I most regret are the ones I never meant to leave.” Her back was still turned when he tapped the paper out of its place and onto the bench.

Emily turned around to the light noise the bit of paper made when it landed. When she walked over to pick it up, Luke let out a breath, causing the paper to drop to the floor. Emily pulled her hand back, shocked. After she bent down to pick it up, she started to turn it in her hands, looking at it in curiosity.

Luke wasn’t really sure how, but he knew that his mother knew he was there. He reached up a hand and brushed his fingertips on her cheek. Emily gasped lightly, and brought her hand to her cheek.

Her eyes lit up with a joy he hadn’t seen before. Her hand went straight through his now, but for a moment, she could feel his touch.

 -

Luke poofed back into the studio to find it was only the boys. “Where’s Julie?” he asked immediately.

“In her room, why?”

Without answering, Luke poofed into Julie’s room. She was on her bed studying and almost jumped off in fright.

“Jeez, Luke,” she cried. “What are you doing? I could have been getting changed!”

He ignored her anger. “Julie, listen, the coolest thing just happened.”

Whatever happened at his parents’ house, he was so excited about it that Julie realized she couldn’t stay mad at him with that cute, eager look on his face. “Okay, what’s so important?”

Then there was a knock on the door and Julie’s dad interrupted them.

“You okay, honey? Thought I heard a scream?” Ray asked, leaning through the doorway.

“Oh, that,” Julie panicked for an answer. “Just homework frustration, you know? High school.”

Luke stood around impatiently, thinking Ray would leave after that, but then he walked into the room completely and sat on the chair across from Julie’s bed. Why did Ray have to choose this of all moments to have a catch up, bonding session?

When Ray finally walked out of the room what felt like an eternity later, Luke sat on Julie’s bed, ignoring the books and school work she had to move before he sat on them.

“Okay, so I went to my mom and dad’s,” Luke began.

Julie smiled sadly at him. “I figured as much.”

“No, listen, while I was there, I—” Before Luke could continue, they were interrupted again by Reggie and Alex poofing in.

“You guys need to come outside, right now,” Reggie said.

Luke waved them off in annoyance. “Not now, guys, okay?”

“No, really, dude,” Alex said more seriously. “There’s someone here, you need to come out to the studio.”

Alex’s tone stopped Luke short of telling him off again. Who could be here that was so important? Julie got up off her bed and walked downstairs. The boys all followed her instead of poofing out.

When they got to the studio, Luke couldn’t believe his eyes.

 -

Emily had caught herself singing all afternoon and wondered how she knew the music. After the folded up paper with her son’s handwriting all over it had fallen to the floor, she thought of Julie—the precious little girl who had brought her son back to her with that piece of paper.

The first time Emily had read the lyrics, she realized that she hadn’t lost her son like she thought she had. She thought she’d lost him long before that devastating night the police lights had lit up her living room. But with Julie’s actions, she now knew that if not for the tragedy, she might one day have had him back, and that meant the world to her.

Now she was singing to the lyrics she had only ever read. Maybe she’d heard the tune somewhere before. Then she got thinking about it. Perhaps Julie had performed the song before she knew what it was—or she might have even performed some of Luke’s other songs. After making herself a fresh coffee, Emily went to sit at the computer and searched for Julie.

It took less than a minute for Emily to find the girl—once Emily found the right keywords, Julie and the Phantoms was the first hit.

“Stand Tall at the Orpheum,” Emily muttered to herself. “Impressive.” Emily didn’t have to be a musician to know that a performance at the Orpheum was a pretty important event.

“Hey, Mitch, honey,” she called to her husband. He came into the room with his own fresh cup of coffee.

“Everything alright?” he asked.

“Julie played the Orpheum a few weeks ago—I thought you might watch it with me.”

Emily didn’t have to say anything else—they were both thinking the same thing. They were going to support Julie as best they could, to make up for not supporting Luke when they had the chance.

As they both watched the video start, Emily admired Julie’s beautiful speech. The young girl hadn’t mentioned that her mom had passed away, but Emily could tell now, by the way she spoke about her mom on stage, that Julie had suffered that same dreadful loss.

When Julie started performing, Emily and Mitch both began to smile. She was so talented, just like Luke. Definitely not for the first time, Emily wished more than anything that she’d had the opportunity to see Luke perform. If he’d had half the spark and talent that Julie showed, she would have loved to watch him.

Suddenly, Julie wasn’t alone on stage, a drummer and his kit seemed to flash in out of nowhere.

Emily looked at Mitch in surprise. “That’s very fancy,” he noted. But then his eyebrows creased together as he looked closer at the monitor.

Emily looked back herself and saw right away what her husband had. That drummer looked an awful lot like—

Another flash and another performer appeared on stage. “It can’t be,” Emily said.

Mitch and Emily looked at each other, shocked, but also realizing the same thing—if that was Alex and Reggie, did that mean their son would be there too?

Both of them turned back to the monitor, their eyes glued as they watched another figure flash in and out. Emily couldn’t believe it, she must have imagined it. Then the figure flashed in again, still too quick to be sure, but enough that it gave her hope.

Emily’s heart raced and Mitch put an arm around her—his heart had almost stopped.

“I’m going out of my mind!”

There he was.

They watched the rest of the performance, completely speechless. Every second the camera showed Luke on screen, Emily’s heart skipped a beat. She wasn’t even questioning the how or the why, she was just so happy to see her son again.

At the end of the video, Alex, Reggie and Luke flashed off screen the same way they’d flashed in and Mitch looked at his wife, who was still staring at the screen. She had tears in her eyes and he watched them start to roll down her cheek, then she looked at him.

Without a word, Mitch went to grab his car keys and Emily followed him out to the car. Almost fifty years of loving her and she still didn’t have to say a word for him to know what she needed.

They drove in silence as Mitch tried to remember where he was going. It had been over twenty-five years since he’d taken Luke to band practice, but he was sure he still remembered the way.

When they arrived at the house they hadn’t seen in years, Mitch pulled up to curb out front and turned the car off. Emily didn’t move for a few moments.

“Do you really think he’s here?” Emily asked, staring down where she could just see the roof of the garage. “What if . . .”

Mitch took her hand. “There’s only one way to know.”

They got out of the car and walked down the drive.

The large white garage doors were closed, but Emily knew if the boys were anywhere, it was in there. So Mitch opened the door.

The studio had definitely changed since he’d last seen it. A fresh coat of paint and a grand piano he was sure hadn’t been there the last time he’d dropped Luke off were the most notable changes. Mitch remembered the fights he’d gotten into with Luke every time he had come to pick his son up. That boy never wanted to leave.

When Luke had first started practicing with his band, his parents never thought he would want to drop out of school to pursue music. They thought it would just be a high school hobby, and had always treated it as such. Mitch had thought many times over the years how different things might have been if they’d taken it half as seriously as Luke did.

Alex and Reggie sat up, stiff as boards when they saw who had walked into the garage. They looked at each other, staying completely quiet, as if Emily and Mitch could hear them anyway. Not sure what else to do, they poofed up to Julie’s room.

There was no one in the garage when they walked in, but that didn’t stop Emily from saying through tears, “Luke?”

When nothing happened, Emily thought about going up to the house to look for Julie. Then she heard someone walk in and turned around.

Alex and Reggie stayed just outside when Julie walked in with Luke at her heels — they both froze at the sight of his parents.

Luke took a step and stood directly beside Julie. They instinctively grabbed hands, so caught up in the shock of who was in front of them, they didn’t even notice that they were actually holding hands.

“Mom?” Luke said, tears in his eyes.

Emily gasped and put a hand to her mouth. She was looking at him—at him. “Luke?” she said with a sob.

Luke and Julie looked at her in shock, then down at their interlocked hands, then back to Emily.

Family, Julie realized. That feeling of family was all she was thinking of in that moment. How much her family—including her found one—meant to her, how much she loved them, how much Luke loved his.

Emily walked over towards her son, tears streaming. She still didn’t care how—she just wanted to know it was real. She reached out and touched his arm, and she could feel it. He really was there.

“Mom, I—”

Luke was cut off when his mother wrapped her arms around him, crying with overwhelming emotion. He wrapped his other arm around her, not daring to let go of Julie’s hand in case the magic went away. Julie wiped away tears and Emily pulled her in as well. Mitch walked over and wrapped himself around all of them. Emily’s legs gave out then as all her energy had been taken by her tears. Luke carried her down until they were on their knees.

Then he felt Alex and Reggie join them. Emily looked at them, so happy to see her son’s chosen family here as well.

My beautiful boy, Emily thought. Oh, how I’ve missed you.

Even if the magic never worked again, Luke would never be able to repay Julie for this moment. She was his shining star, his savior—and he would love her forever. In that moment, surrounded by all of his family, Luke had never felt so at peace.

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I hope this was alright, please let me know, maybe share it if you enjoyed it? I really liked writing it. If you want to see more stuff, drop me some ideas, and definitely check out my pinned post for more stuff by me. You can also bookmark this story on ao3 here. Thanks for reading x

[ahopelessromantic]

Calm After The Storm ➳ S. Reid

Pairing: Spencer x Reader

Word count: 2,6k

Warnings: none

Your new intern causes you to look back on years of companionship with Spencer and think about what’s still ahead of you. (Inspired by Calm After The Storm by The Common Linnets :))

“Excuse me, are you (Y/N) Reid?” Still on your first coffee of the morning it took you a moment to realise that you had been addressed. With a sheepish smile you looked up from your desk to meet eyes with an unfamiliar face. “Depends on who’s asking.” You joked half-heartedly, scanning the unknown woman’s attire for a badge or visitor’s pass. “I’m Anna, Anna Wilde. We talked on the phone?” Realisation dawned on your face. Anna’s father was a friend of Hotch, he had called in some favours with your boss so she could have an internship in your unit. “Of course!” You smiled and got up to shake her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Do you want to start by meeting the rest of the team right away?”

“So, these are Agent Morgan, Agent Prentiss, Agent Rossi and Doctor Reid. And you already know Hotch, of course. Guys, this is Anna, our new intern for two months.” The team all smiled at her friendly, sensing how nervous she was. It wasn’t every day you met a bunch of FBI agents. After the round of introductions, you took her to the small kitchenette, telling her all about the small kinks the coffee machine sometimes had. “And feel free to ask any question, be as outright as you want. This is a tough job; I don’t want to sugar-coat anything.” She nodded, looking conflicted for a moment before speaking up.“You said Doctor… Reid? Are you married?” You chuckled, flashing her your wedding ring.

“You’re perceptive, that’s good. Yes, Spencer is my husband.” She frowned. “Aren’t there like, policies against that or something?” “Oh, believe me, there are. Relationships can pose a huge conflict of interest.”, you laughed again. “But we annoyed everyone around us with our crushes on each other for so long that everyone was actually grateful once we actually got together. We just had to make it clear that we wouldn’t treat each other differently because we’re romantically involved.” Anna nodded, still looking surprised. “Are you prepared to see some case pictures? We’re about to go into our morning meeting to talk about our next case, but you don’t have to look at anything you don’t want to look at.” Her eyes lit up at that and she nodded decidedly. “No, I’m ready. I used to intern with a surgeon. I can see some blood.” You almost told her that a dead body and an alive, breathing one under anaesthesia weren’t quite the same, but couldn’t bring yourself to do it. She was so young, and so ready to take on the world. In some way, she reminded you of yourself. Young you had been so ready to kick down doors and arrest bad guys when she started out in law enforcement, and it had taken some time for you to find the golden way between enthusiasm and a cool head. But despite her eagerness, or maybe even because of it, Anna actually didn’t do too bad during her first two weeks with your team. She knew how to take orders, something you hadn’t known back then, and also knew herself well enough to step down from a case when she couldn’t stomach it, something you also should have learned way sooner. Once, she even figured out the one clue that had kept you all from figuring out who the unsub was. You were growing to really like her, and she would make a great agent should she actually decide to join the bureau further down the line.

“(Y/N)?” “Hm?” You answered, still in the middle of writing a report. It was late in the evening, and the day had been eventful. The case had ended in a shooting, a bullet had barely missed your shoulder and given you a nice graze wound. “How do you do it?” It was only after hearing her question that you looked up from your screen. Upon seeing the confusion on your face, she elaborated further. “How do you and your husband make it through all the stress? You constantly have to worry that your partner is going to get shot, or kidnapped, or even worse, die. How do you deal with that?” You gave her a gentle smile and gestured for her to sit, using the short moment of silence to organise your thoughts. “I think… as cheesy as it sounds, honesty is the key.” You spoke. “We never leave anything unsaid, so that we’re in the clear if… something happens to either of us. There’s nothing we don’t tell each other; we’ve learned our lesson with that.” Anna nodded solemnly. >“I think I’ve never met a couple like you. Most married couples I know would have long split up.” You had to chuckle at that. “I think that’s because there probably aren’t any couples like us. Somehow, people think that when you’re married you either hate each other or are constantly overly lovey-dovey with each other. But Spencer is my best friend, my partner. The one person I want to come home to after a long day. He’s kind of just like my sexy roommate.” “Hey!” Spencer called out from his desk across the bullpen. “I heard that!” “Good!”, you yelled back. “You were supposed to!” Both you and Anna laughed, your eyes meeting. “It’s not easy, but I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else. He’s also kind of the only one who understands my horrible working hours.” Anna nodded and chuckled. “Thank you. For being so honest with me, about everything. Most people just belittle me when I tell them I want to join the FBI.” You smiled. “Trust me, I know how you feel. Anything to give you a better picture of the life you have with this job. Do you want to go get some dinner?”

Later that night, after grabbing some orange juice from your fridge at home, your eyes landed on wedding picture that was pinned to its door. Spencer and you had been so young when you had met, barely even adults. Never before had you realised just how young you had really been, until you had seen Anna and how different she still was from your nearly mid-thirties self. The two of you had been so hellbent on proving yourselves to the world back then, so quick to prove anyone who told you what you could and couldn’t do wrong. Basically, the only people you felt safe to relax around had been each other.It had always been obvious that one day, there was going to blossom love between the two of you. Urged on by the pictures on your fridge you got a box from your living room and spread its content across your kitchen table. It was all the memories you had of yourself and Spencer, collected since the very start of your friendship. There were clippings from newspapers, pictures from birthday celebrations, museum tickets from all over the country. A plastic figurine Spencer had won for you in an arcade, a poker chip from when you had taken him to a casino and of course, quickly gotten kicked out again. But your favourite, of course, were the pictures of your wedding. The happiness on your team’s faces, small Henry bearing your rings, the way Spencer looked at you in your dress. He had been your companion for years now, your shelter, and the love you felt for him only ran deeper with every passing day. Working the job you did, the one thing you really needed was someone you didn’t have to question, and he was just that. The keys turning in the front door’s lock shook you out of your trip down memory lane. “Babe, I’m home!” Spencer announced, knowing damn well that you never slept until he was home. He often stayed at the BAU longer than you, always making sure the team hadn’t missed the littlest of details in a case.

“Hey.” You greeted him happily, pressing you lips to his. Your husband sighed into the kiss, pulling you closer. “I missed you today.” He murmured, gaze wandering across your face as if he had to memorise your features all over again. “You saw me a few hours ago.” You chuckled. He scrunched his nose. “Still. It’s been some time since we had a full day off. Are you looking at pictures?” He asked excitedly upon seeing the mess on the kitchen table. “Mhm.”, you hummed. “Talking about you with Anna brought back some memories.” He chuckled, immersed in the pictures spread out in front of him. “I wish I'd had someone like you being so open with me about the job back when I started at the BAU.” You joined him at the kitchen table, sneaking your arms around his waist. “Would you still have joined?” He looked at you, running his fingers through your hair. “I don’t know, actually. What I do know is that I wouldn’t have met you then, and I don’t know if I’d still like my life without you in it.” You felt yourself blush and buried your face in his side. “Shut up.” Not paying much attention to your shenanigans, he took a picture in his hands with a gentle smile. “This one is my favourite.” You furrowed your eyebrows. It was a picture of the two of you on the jet, months before you had even confessed your feelings to one another. You were asleep, face smushed against your seat, and Spencer was sitting next to you. He had an open book in his hands, but in the picture, he wasn’t reading. He was looking at you, the smallest hint of a smile on his lips. You didn’t even know who had taken the picture, probably Emily or Morgan. “I think this was the day I realised I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.” Spencer mused, his trademark shy smile on his lips. You looked up to him with wide eyes. “You already liked me back then?” He chuckled. “You really didn’t know? I felt like I was constantly embarrassing myself in front of you.” You laughed, shaking your head. “That was the time when I was still in denial.” You sighed and looked at the picture again. “It’s going to be eight years since we’ve met soon.” Spencer pulled you closer to his side. “Feels like it was yesterday to me.”

“What happens when an FBI agent gets pregnant?” You laughed at Anna’s question. She had become very comfortable around you over the course of her internship, and you couldn’t even imagine her not being around anymore. “You have to ask JJ about the kids stuff.” “Do you not want children?” Her question took you off guard. Did you even want kids? Of course, right? You were successful in your job, had an amazing partner… how had you never thought of that? The whirlwind that had been your twenties and first years at the bureau was over, and the current calm after the storm seemed to be a good time to think about it. Anna disappeared to ask JJ some questions about being a mom working for the FBI and the day went on, but her question didn’t quite leave your thoughts. Even when her internship was over and she went back to university, her words still echoed through your head. The young girl seemed to have given you a new appreciation of your life and had especially caused some thoughts about adding more to it.

“(Y/N), are you okay?” You bolted up from your thoughts, eyes zoning back in on Spencer’s face. “Huh?” You hummed stupidly. He deadpanned at you. “First you’re not able to look anywhere but the witness’s baby bump, and just now you were looking at my nose for ten minutes straight. Is everything alright?” You chuckled nervously, tucking your hair behind your ears. You had been staring at your husband’s face without an explanation. “I, uh…” You looked around the jet, making sure that no one else was listening in on the two of you. “It’s embarrassing to talk about.” Spencer just sent you a look. “We’ve been married for years and worked together for even longer. I thought we had gotten past ‘embarrassing’ a long time ago.” He did have a point; you had been the one to hold a big speech to Anna about honesty. “I…”, you sighed. “I was thinking about how cute your nose is, and if our baby would get it if we were to have one.” Your words seemed to completely catch him off guard. For few moments he just looked at you in frozen shock. Then facts about genetics started spilling from his mouth. “Actually, up until this day scientists can’t predict what a baby will look like based on its parent’s dna, but the philtrum is around 62% likely to be inherited from the parents, the tip of the nose 66% even. Additionally, considering the fact that male genes are generally more aggressive than female, ones it’s actually quite likely that a child of mine would have my nose.” Upon seeing the look on your face, he grew quiet. “But… judging by your expression I’m starting to realise that that’s not really the answer you had in mind.” You smiled at him, feeling your cheeks grow hotter by the minute. “Not really, no.” He gave you a long look, then sighed. “Do you think we’re ready for that? I don’t know if I am.” You took his hand, squeezing it gently. “You would be an amazing dad, Spence. I don’t think anyone really has an idea what they’re getting themselves into when they decide to become parents. And yeah, I think we’re ready. I mean, we have stable incomes, an amazing support system… and I’m not really getting younger.” “Statistically, you’re still of great age to birth children.” He cut himself off and shook his head. “Okay, I heard it myself this time, this is making me nervous.” You pressed a long kiss to his hand. “Relax, my love. I’m not saying we have to get to it right away. I just know that that’s something I want now, and I wanted to talk to you about it.” He nodded. “Maybe it wouldn’t even be too bad if it happened soon. If it happens it happens, right?” You laughed incredulously, but then thought back to all the times Spencer had held the Team’s children with nothing but fascination and adoration in his eyes. Maybe he had been playing with the idea even before you. You watched his gaze space off into the void. “I have so many books to read.”, he said with an empty expression. You chuckled, looking at his nose again. He really had a cute nose. And it wouldn’t be too bad if your children inherited his eidetic memory, too, you guessed. While Spencer stared out of the window, probably trying to remember everything he had ever read about pregnancies and parenthood, you leaned back into your seat and closed your eyes. Whether you were going to get pregnant and be prepared for it or not, you had the best soulmate by your side you could wish for and there was nothing you didn’t trust the two of you to accomplish. You were so ready for the next challenge that was going to be baby Reid.

[blush-and-books]

The End of Julie and the Phantoms - A [very long] Theory

The core of this theory was inspired by many posts that I have seen saying that Julie’s “everything was a dream” shirt may have insinuated that nothing happening on the show is actually reality. I brought my series finale pitch to my dear friend @willexx who then helped me develop this headcanon into something I cried about during lunch. 

It starts out pretty heavy, but there are some little light things here and there because it’s what the himbos would have wanted.

We start here:

In the last episode, the boys are ready too cross over. It’s an emotional moment for everyone, they’re crying, Julie is sobbing, and we as an audience have definitely seen better days. With one last “we love you, Julie,” a flash of light overtakes the garage space, blinding our screens. 

The scene flashes to Julie lying in bed, waking up from her ringing alarm. 

She is visibly confused, clearly wondering how she got to bed when the last thing that she remembers is the boys’ painful departure. When she reaches for her phone to turn off her alarm -- it’s a school day -- she quickly notices the date:

It’s the same day in 2020 that she met the boys, that she was going to clean out her mom’s garage, and that she had to perform to keep her spot in the music program. 

So, none of it was real?

Not exactly. 

The experience was a sort of dream-like saga that was designed for her to be able to grieve on her own, and rediscover her voice in her own way. But just as the panic sets in that it was a complete figment of her imagination, the feeling of cold metal on her left hand becomes too hard to ignore: One of Luke’s rings. 

Reggie’s leather jacket is hanging in her closet.

Alex’s fanny pack is slung across the back of a chair. 

But when she runs downstairs, clad in her dinosaur slippers, rushing to the garage to see if the guys were there -- they aren’t. They have crossed over. 

As she moves through the day, she’s a new Julie, but everything else is the same. Instead of a baseball cap and low ponytail, Julie throws on her black jeans and Reggie’s leather and lets her hair run wild. She’s displaying a confidence that Flynn hasn’t seen in a long time, that seemed to have hit Julie overnight. 

Julie sings Wake Up in music, and keeps her spot in the program. She doesn’t oogle Nick in the halls and she tells Carrie off when there’s an attempt at an insult made. 

Real or not, the boys helped her. They did their job. 

When she gets home, and Ray irks her about cleaning the garage or selling the house, she is quick to insist that she doesn’t want to move and that if he needs her for the rest of the night, she’ll be in her mother’s studio.

There aren’t any instruments except for the piano, and the space has the original layer of dust that it had before her and the guys started using the space again. Julie feels empty. But she reminds herself that the ring on her finger is real, extremely real, so she retraces her steps that she had taken in the first episode and tracks down the Sunset Curve demo CD, puts it in the stereo, and plays it. 

Nothing happens. Or, at least -- nothing that she could see.

The camera pans up as Julie is hard at work to organize the garage, and we see the boys in the chairs on the ceiling, watching over her fondly. 

~This is where @willexx started to throw in some epic ideas~

The boys are real, and they have crossed over, which renders Julie unable to see them. However, in her reset reality without them, no one remembers Julie and the Phantoms or the fact that the boys existed in the first place. The boys, while she can’t see them, visit her and try to make contact with her as much as they can, even though their times with her are limited since they are supposed to be on the other side.

She’ll feel a ghost of a touch on her hand or her hair, and know that Luke is there. When she’s in the car and the radio is on a country station, she knows that it’s Reggie. In a journal for school, a small “okay” will be written in the corner of a page, and it is Alex. These little notes keep her going, and she’ll just sigh and say “my boys,” and leave everyone around her confused. 

Sometimes, when she wakes up in the morning, the demo tape can be heard playing in the garage. Somehow she’ll get filled with hope that if she runs into the garage, the boys will be there rocking out without her like she used to scold them for left and right -- but no one is there. Ray comments that the stereo is broken and Julie has no choice but to nod along. 

One day she finds Luke’s songbook that had been buried in the plastic garbage bags of the boys’ belongings. She still brings Unsaid Emily to his parents, and she cries herself to sleep that night. 

When Julie blows up as a solo artist, she actually records Unsaid Emily, and she records Bright, and all of the other songs that her and Luke wrote together. Luke Patterson is in the writing credits for many of the songs, where Trevor never bothered to list him, and a part of Luke is at piece. 

On the two year anniversary of Rose’s passing, Julie finds Luke’s “angst flannel.” Ray asks where she got it; she tells him a thrift store. But it feels warm, like all of the guys are there, hugging her. 

Another morning, she could swear that Luke and Reggie are strumming out Flying Solo on level one volume, and once again finds herself darting to the garage with no good excuse except to keep her hopes up. They, unsurprisingly, aren’t there -- but a note is, that says “you’re a star, Jules. We love you.”

The handwriting is messy. She knows it’s from Luke, who probably fought the boys to even write the note because he just wanted to talk to her even though they need to move on and his handwriting is awful. The note gets tucked into the pocket of the flannel, and when she needs to be reminded that she’ll be okay, she pulls it out of the pocket and holds it tight. 

Before every show, she reads the note, and mumbles a little prayer to them wherever they are -- even if no one else believes they are real. 

When Luke’s flannel starts to lose it’s original sweet scent of Emily and Mitch’s house, Julie spends an hour crying on the floor of her bathroom. A faded orange beanie appears in her room the next day. 

Little notes from Luke appear here and there, but never from any of the guys. In the shadows where she can’t see them, Alex tells Luke that in order for both themselves and Julie to move on, Luke needs to stop leaving her notes -- so most of the ones that Julie finds are even more messy than usual, like Luke was trying to write them without the guys noticing. 

During one of their forbidden conversations, Julie says to Luke: “hey, I never told you this before... But I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t know what I would do without knowing that you guys were still around. I think I would have lost my mind, and would have been convinced that I went crazy.”

Luke could have ran to Alex, repeated Julie’s tearful words, and given the drummer a fat “I told you so.” But he doesn’t. Julie’s validation is the only validation that he needs. 

Whenever her and Carlos and Ray make an extra seat at their dinner table for Rose, Julie imagines, deep in her mind, that it is for Reggie too. Reggie deserved a seat at their table; deserved to be a part of their family. A family that would have loved him.  And when a fork falls off of the table, Julie knows he’s there. One day, Julie asks Ray how he would have felt about having another son. He responds confused, and Julie gets tears in her eyes, and neither of them bring it up again.

When Julie and Flynn go to Pride together, Julie wears Alex’s fanny pack even though she hadn’t gotten any signs from him since they had all moved on. He still doesn’t reach out afterwards, too overwhelmed by her gesture to think of a way to properly extend his gratitude and love for the girl who is keeping his spirit alive -- but Luke lets her know that he was grateful. 

Luke still visits Julie like he visits Emily and Mitch. And on Luke’s birthday every year, Julie goes to a little bakery after school and buys herself a cupcake; sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to light a candle and sing happy birthday. When she lights the candle, the candle gets blown out. Every year after that first year, she gets candles that you have to turn on and off so that Luke can’t ruin the moment. 

(He ends up throwing the fake candle on the ground out of retaliation.)

Julie is so emotionally stable for the most part that the complete change is a shock to Ray. He tries to ask her what happened, but she always acts like nothing happened and then hides in her room for hours. Sometimes, she makes random little comments out of the blew and Ray has many conversations with Victoria on whether or not he should have Julie seeing Dr. Turner again. 

At her first solo concert, Julie walks into the dressing room to find “Stand Tall” written three times, in three different handwriting styles, in red, pink, and blue. The message in blue is the messiest by far, and is followed up with a heart. 

The name of Julie’s first album is Phantoms. 

[clarawatson]

Summary: Derek Morgan proposes a simple question after a particularly bad case:  “If you could bring anyone here, at this moment, who would it be?” Words: 1017 Trigger Warnings: Aaron Hotchner laughs.

A/N: so I found this file from before I started writing Quiet Birds when I wasn’t sure where it was going to go. I was just writing indulgent fanfiction that only I would see. But I thought this jet scene from one of Mom’s first cases with the BAU would be fun to look at.

~~~~~

“If you could bring anyone here, at this moment, who would it be?” Morgan asks after a particularly tough case. No one’s sleeping, or listening to music, or even pretending to wind down. JJ looks up with a soft smile on her face.

“Emily Dickinson, she’d be so fun to talk to,” she says. Hotch hums in agreement, but it’s Prentiss that frowns.

“Are we bringing them on the jet? Wouldn’t she like, freak out, no one’s been flying in her lifetime, right?” Prentiss says.

“I’d invite Einstein,” Reid piques up, oblivious to the rest of the conversation. Rossi deadpans him, and you can’t help but nod an agreement if just to make him feel better. 

“Ice-T,” Morgan says and you know, at that point, he’s just trying to lighten the mood.

“Ringo Star,” Hotch adds. 

“Of course you’d invite him,” Rossi grumbles, but there’s a smile ghosting his face.

“Amy Lee,” Prentiss says. Immediately you find yourself agreeing with her.

“Heck yeah,” you respond excitedly, finding another Evanescence fan. Emily cocks her head at you, but she knows she’s found someone to listen to dramatically sad and beautiful music to.

“Do they have to be real?” Rossi poses, and you find Morgan thinking about it.

“No.”

“Jack Ryan.” There’s a collective murmur and then Hotch says.

“Which one?”

“Harrison Ford.”

“Hotch wore those videos out,” you comment. “Dad had them in this box out the back and he only ever brought them through when Hotch was sleeping in the guest room. I swear he can quote them back to front.” He opens his mouth to prove you right and you cover his mouth with your hand.

“Who’d you bring?” JJ asks, leaning forward curiously.

You think about giving them a dumb answer, like Captain Kirk or Princess Leia, but you know what your answer is.

“Felix,” you say and a curious hush falls across the plane. Hotch peels your hand off his mouth.

“Felix hated flying,” he says. You shrug, thinking about seeing your husband again after all this time.

“He’d put up with it to meet the team, though.”

Hotch throws his head back on the chair. “Ok, ok, you’re right. He’d charm this team right off their feet and then he’d convince Strauss he can do my job better than me and take over.” You lean back on the chair and pout at him.

“That would be such a shame.”

“Who’s Felix?” JJ asks.

“Dead husband,” you say dryly almost immediately, throwing everyone off guard. Hotch watches you intently, then shrugs.

“First off, he’d hate that Dave’s here because Dave’s a ‘cool kid’,” Hotch forms too many air quotes with his fingers. “He’d love JJ.”

“Oh, for sure, he would have died for someone to talk to the media for him.” The cause of your husband’s death floats in the unsaid implication that he died because he didn’t have one. “Morgan?”

“Adored, would have pushed him to have his own team.”

It’s involuntary that you start to laugh. The idea of Felix pushing Morgan to have his own team… He’d done the same thing to Fornell, and when Fornell hadn’t gotten the hint he’d made tiny voodoo like dolls and stuck them all over his desk. You can tell Hotch is thinking it too, because he walks his fingers across his arm and dissolves into a fit of giggles. 

“He made dolls of teams when he wanted to drop hints,” Rossi explains. You and Hotch are too far gone with fits of giggles to stop and explain. You clutch your chest as you try to calm, wiping the tears away from your eyes.

“Prentiss,” Hotch finally says when he gets his breath back.

“Oh, work wife. For sure. Bread and butter.” You think of all the goth things Felix had in storage, when he used to dye his hair black every weekend, how his college room looked like the inside of a witches cauldron. 

“Spencer?”

“Adopted. He would have created a room dedicated to Spencer, he’d go buy a granny flat just so he’d know Spencer was sleeping somewhere safe.” 

Hotch nods, “Remember when someone told him children ask six hundred questions a day and he worried he wouldn’t answer any of them so he just, read facts books for six months straight?”

“That’s not something someone just forgets.” You’re pretty sure you’ve still got all those little facts tucked away in your brain somewhere. “Huh! Garcia!” 

“Garcia would be his spirit animal,” Hotch pinches the bridge of his nose. “If Felix came here, right now, I’d give my job to him in a heartbeat.”

“You know he wouldn’t accept that,” you whisper lowly. “He’d be so mad at you he’d yell at you to see your worth.” You dramatically shake your finger at him, face squished up like Felix used to do at school. Hotch shakes his back, face scrunched up in return, and for a moment you’re teenagers again. Even the team are grinning at your interaction.

“Is this Felix Garza we’re talking about?” Morgan asks. “Never be the source of work coming into your home, Felix?”

You turn to him, nodding.

“Yeah, he had an FBI pep talk day at his house when I was training. It was in DC, I remember because I was supposed to go back to my hotel room but he insisted, said the lasagna—“

“Was the best thing he’s ever seen anyone create,” you finish. Morgan nods.

“You did that?”

“God no,” you laugh. “Haley’s recipe, Felix’s mom’s handiwork, but that was my dining table so it was my lasagna.” 

“He told us that work always has a way of following us home, but we have to ensure that we’re never the ones to bring it through the front door.”

“Or the back,” you add.

“Or your wife will kill you and make it look like an accident,” Hotch finishes, which seems to be quite true considering his situation. You rub his arm comfortingly and the jet falls into silence. But hey, you’ve all had a good laugh.

Well, at least you and Hotch.

[lukepattersun]

I've been reading your jatp posts all day and it's really touching to see how much this show has affected all of us. I could talk about how well written and well acted it is, but many of you have done that way more eloquently, so I won't bore you with that.

I discovered the show quite late, in mid April, and I've always treated this blog as more of a diary than anything else, which is why it's less scary to open up here rather than to my friends and family. It feels safer. Please scroll past this post if you don't want to read something heavy, as I said I'm writing this for me.

In October 2020 I lost a friend in the worst way possible and I still can't wrap my head around it. He wasn't much older than the boys. He was so full of life, so passionate and always ready to cheer you up. He was kind and he made you feel like you had been friends for years even though you had met him 5 minutes earlier. He had an infectious enthusiasm and a huge heart.

I decided to watch the show without knowing anything about it, and I instantly fell in love with everyone. And in Luke I saw my friend.

Then Unsaid Emily came, and it ripped my heart out of my chest, and it was a feeling I was way too familiar with. It brought me back to one of the worst moments in my life. I wasn't expecting it. I had to pause it, lie down and take a break. It was too much, too personal. A mother should never see her son die, a boy shouldn't die so young, and there shouldn't be any words left unsaid.

That scene broke me, but it also gave me closure. It gave my friend - and all the those kids who left us way too early - a voice. And Julie's words to Luke's parents were a balm for the soul, a warm blanket for those days where nothing can warm your heart.

The show's portrayal of grief is so honest and raw and true, and I'm grateful that the writers decided not to talk down to kids. That's how life is: there's love even in loss. There's love everywhere. Under the sheet on a dusty old piano. Inside of a 25 year old CD. In that little box on your shelf. Between the wheels of a skateboard. Inside a chocolate cake. In that dahlia. In the arms of your friends.

There's so much I could say. I won't, though, we all know how special this is. And even if this is it, even if this is goodbye, I'm glad we got to experience something so wonderful. I'd rather have one season only than no show at all.

Happy birthday Julie And The Phantoms ❤️

[funsizearsonist]

Bleeding Ink (Luke angst)

Summary: Luke’s songwriting takes a hit when he gets hurt. He thought emotions made a song better, but he got the proportions wrong. or “Maybe have a little song with those feelings”

Category: Angst 

Fandom: Julie and the Phantoms

Paring: N/A

Word Count: 1,559

Warnings/Includes: Like 1 swear, some mentions of an argument, and some descriptions of ~sadness~

A/N:  I hope you like this! I'm still very new at writing fanfiction so as always, constructive criticism and any feedback in general are much appreciated!! Hope you like it!! 

Mandatory Thanking of the Betas: Thank u for supporting me on this @theolivekiddo!! I probably wouldn’t have posted it if not for you because I have no confidence and I thought it was ~bad~ :P I’m still not so sure it’s good but u convinced me to post it so that’s something I guess

AO3 link here

Please don’t repost my work without my permission, in part or whole. My work can also be found on AO3 under the same username. Thank you!

Jatp taglist: @n0wornever, @calamitykaty, @unsaidmegan, @morganayennefertyrell, @link-102, @crybabyddl, @willex-owns-my-heart (I’m hoping it’s ok to tag y’all bc u said in a post here that you’d like to be added to taglists but I can take you off anytime, just send me an ask :))

Taglist for everything <3: @theolivekiddo

Bleeding Ink

Luke wouldn’t ever admit it to anyone, but he’s not quite the carefree troublemaker people think. The band knew, of course. He never had to tell them, they just knew. Probably because they were his family, they knew pretty much everything about each other. And now Julie knows, too. That’s about everyone he can come up with, besides Willie and maybe Flynn, that he actually knows now, so it looks like his secret is safe. The issue is the carefree part. Because Luke may be a hell of a troublemaker but he cares a lot.

He cares about his family, even through their ups and downs. He cares about his friends, his band; they’re pretty much a family to him too. And he cares, so so much, about music. Music has been there his whole life. Mostly rock, his favorite, but he can appreciate pretty much any kind of music. He’s listened to music throughout his whole life. It made him feel better when he was sad, widened his grins when he was happy, and kept all the in-betweens interesting. 

He only loved music more when he started writing it. Luke started writing music late in middle school, but he would probably kill you if you knew. He always thought it was good he started early to get it all out of the way. It wasn’t really music yet, just putting down words without having anything to say. He still thinks they were less of lyrics and more like pages of word vomit. The old notebooks from that first year or so are probably still lying around somewhere, but Luke would rather look forward than back at all of that. He puts meaning into his music now, and Luke thinks it’s only ever gotten better, especially working with Julie. Except for a short period in the middle where it definitely got worse. 

The thing is, Luke puts emotion into every one of his songs. He thinks you can’t have truly good music without putting at least a little bit of heart in it; and Luke cares so much about all of his music he can’t honestly help it. Writing music has helped him understand his feelings, and it’s his biggest way of expressing them. Usually though, he doesn’t really need music as an outlet or anything. He loves playing the songs he’s worked on, all the emotions that go with them. The electric energy in Now or Never, the reassurance and connection in Bright, the determination and fearlessness in Stand Tall, all of his songs had pieces of himself in them. But he writes them because he wants to, not because he needs to get anything out. Most of the time, at least.

There was only really one instance in Luke’s life where that wasn’t the case. Where he was so overwhelmed with emotion that he had to get it out onto a page before he could move on. Dying and coming back as ghosts, making friends with the girl who brought you back and being able to play music again, only to find your only surviving bandmate stole your old songs, and the whole Caleb thing probably should have done it. The thing is, Luke (and Alex and Reggie) got put through that rollercoaster so fast that he could barely make out emotions from the jumbled blur, much less put them into music. Before he could even say “What the hell is going on here?!” Luke was writing new songs. For their new band with Julie, no less. And he had pretty much gotten past all that drama already, somehow. It probably had something to do with Julie. After all, “No music is worth making, Julie, if we’re not making it with you.”

The time that really got to Luke, was actually part of how he ended up playing up music anyhow. It all started when his mother got him a guitar for his birthday, happy to support his interest in music. Perhaps she didn’t understand quite how deep the interest ran, because she might never have gotten it if she had. He was immediately captivated by it, and within a week Luke had the basics pretty much down already. It didn’t take him long to get even better, and to decide to form a band with some friends. He went home that night, blood pumping fast with excitement, and told his mom the news. It didn’t go over quite as well as he thought.

His mother had already become a bit apprehensive about how much Luke had come to like the guitar, but she had decided not to say anything as she thought it was just a harmless hobby. But then Luke came home and told her he was in a band, and all the fears rushed to surface and spilled over. She never should have had that much of a reaction or been so harsh, but it was all because she cares about Luke. She is his mother after all. And he had already been falling a bit behind on schoolwork, spending all his free time working out new songs with his guitar. That would only get worse if he joined a band, not even considering his future and the bandmates he wanted to play with, and where they wanted to play music, and all sorts of other concerns that came out when Luke told her about the new band.

It really hit Luke hard that his mother was instantly full of criticisms. Couldn’t she just be happy for him? He came home all excited and she instantly twisted it into hurt and anger, which turned their discussion into more of a fight, or at least certainly didn’t help matters. He’s not quite sure anymore exactly what was said that night, but he got the memo- “You can’t ditch everything for a band when you live in this household” - so he lashed back with some venom of his own, and left. It didn’t even take a whole night for him to regret it. 

Biking away with basically only his guitar, the thing that mattered most to him but his mother hated most. Luke only took a good few minutes of furious pedaling to realize that he had no idea where he was going, and he was exhausted. All the fight drained out of him, all the adrenaline faded away, he was just hurt. No more energy to be angry, all the white noise of yelling in the argument cleared from his head, and he couldn’t believe his mother said all that to him. He was so excited to come home and tell his family about his new band, just earlier that evening. It already seemed like so long ago. He felt a little bad about the things he said back to his mom already too, but it was still very clear to him that they were in retaliation. If his mother hadn’t exploded at him for chasing his passion, it never would have happened. He ends up deciding to crash at the Molina’s place. After all Rose did say they could use the garage whenever they wanted. Luke was already almost drowning in this dread about everything that happened, and he was still too tired to really realize it. He just decided to knock out.

It hit him full force in the morning. Luke woke up in an unfamiliar room, confused for about half a second, before getting hit by a tidal wave of “oh, shit.” 

Fighting with his family is what really managed to upset him. Nothing in Luke’s life had ever hit him that hard before. That’s when his songwriting really hit a low point for a bit. He wrote Unsaid Emily once he had gotten himself together as a way to  conclude his feelings on the matter, and a way to say “I’m sorry” to his mom without actually saying it right to her. He wrote the song to summarize everything he had to say about what happened, but he tried to leave most of the emotion out of it. He learned his lesson about not putting his feelings about it all into song.

In the few weeks before that, his writing was closer to the state they were in middle school. Except this time instead of having nothing to say, he had too much he needed to get out, and he didn’t know how to make it into proper lyrics. He poured too much emotion into them. Instead of being a wave of energy over a crowd, they’d be more like a tsunami, too overpowering. Luke was just writing them for himself at that point, even the band wouldn’t see those songs, much less a stage. 

The one thing he could come up with to say on it, looking back, is that’s the thing about being hurt. You have too much to hold inside of you so you bleed your soul out onto paper in ink, but instead of making it beautiful, it just makes the pages dark. All the feelings are just as ugly when you put them down on paper, and once they’re no longer caught in your chest, you don’t want to have anything to do with them. But their ink still stains your hands, and you know they may be gone but you can never forget them. 

End A/N:  I wrote this all at like 3 AM so I wasn't really focused on the quality of the writing and more so the narrative, hope u don't mind that. It doesn't really?? Have a point?? I don't think I was going somewhere with it I just wanted to express my thought on how Luke would be doing. Let me know what you thought! If this wasn't written in the dead of night how could it have been better? What parts did you like about it? If you don’t want to give feedback, that’s fine. Just please reblog or maybe comment if you enjoyed it, don’t just leave a like. Thanks for reading!

[theobxhummingbird]

Hero.-Luke Patterson x Reader.

Summary: Luke’s the reason, he found his forever love.

A/N: Anonymous requested a Luke Patterson x Reader imagine, and here’s one I started writing a day ago. I hope you like it anonymous. Thank you for requesting an imagine. The one that also got suggested, will be posted later, just need to finish writing it. 🥰

Emily and Mitch, have been grieving their son for 25 years. The friendly couple, who everyone knew for their unproblematic selves, were living their biggest pain every day of their lives. Mitch was getting better, but his wife Emily seemed to get worse.

But, until their guardian angel, was sent to look after Emily, everything changed in the Patterson household. The windows were opened and light came in the house. Instead of paying her money, Y/N wanted them to plant a flower, every time they feel better. It was also making them feel better, and their dried out garden was getting a new taste of life.

Although, Emily seemed happy in some moments. Whenever Y/N went home, she closed herself in a room and looked at photos of Luke; their 17-year-old son, who died 25 years ago, without making up with his parents. And it was the biggest pain for the family, to have said goodbye to their son, without saying their sorrys to each other.

Mitch called Y/N and told her that she needs to immediately pay them a visit. Slipping her shoes on, and taking her jacket and guitar bag, barely even putting the jacket on, Y/N was running from her home, to get to the Patterson household. 

When she knocked on the door, Mitch opened fast and led her to the bedroom, where Emily had locked herself.

-This Julie girl came and brought a song Luke had written about Emily. And she hadn’t come out of the bedroom from then. 

-Mitch, I got her. Come on, let’s settle you in the living room. -she said, leading Mitch to the armchair, and giving him a glass of water.

-Emily, it’s Y/N. -she slowly knocked on the door.

-Y/N dear don’t make yourself tired dear. Nothing will work after what I’ve found out about my son. -she cried from the other side of the door.

-Emily, but how am I going to know what had happened if you don’t tell me?

-Y/N, please, I need to be alone.

-No, no more alone. We’ll do this together. Come on, please come out of the room. Is it okay for Mitch to go through two striking pains in his life? His son’s death and the lack of presence of his wife? Come on please, if you love me.

A pair of feet approached the door, and the key clicked, opening the door; Emily came outside with a piece of paper.

-This is the song he wrote me. ‘’Unsaid Emily”. -she said, giving her the paper.

The three of them were sat around the table. Y/N was reading the song, while Mitch and Emily sat quietly, waiting for her.

-Here’s what we’ll do. -she jogged over to the hallway, where her guitar was placed. She came back, and settled herself with it. -I don’t know if the song’s supposed to go this way, but I’ll try and sing it for you okay? Then we can frame it and hang it somewhere in the house. I want you two, to hold hands and close your eyes.

Mitch and Emily did as told, and Y/N started to play. Her voice filled the room, and somehow, magically, a figure approached the table. Y/N’s eyes shot up at him, but after he realized she can see him, his pointing finger was placed on his nose, and gestured her to keep going. 

Y/N’s whole body shook, and she didn’t know if she was the one going crazy, or all of this was real. Luke Patterson; Emily and Mitch’s son, was sat on the chair next to her, crying his eyes out while looking at his parents.

-....unsaid Emily. -she finished the song. The couple opened their eyes, and felt like born again. Y/N gestured Mitch that she got Emily, and he left the table. She quickly glanced at Luke, and he nodded a ‘no’, so she doesn’t say anything to Emily. -Look Emily. We can’t do this anymore, if you don’t help me. Do you ever think how miserable Mitch is, to have his wife fade away from him? Do you ever think about how Luke would’ve felt that his mother’s sinking in her pain because of him? If we’re born for one thing in this world, is apologizing to the people we love. I know, I know by heart, if there was even the slightest possibility of bringing Luke back, you’ll be the first one to do it. But life is some sort of unexplainable power, that no human can explain it. We should fight to stay alive though, for ourselves, and for the people we love. If you decided not to live as Emily, then live for Luke; live for Mitch; live for the people you love. Look, there’s so many days that’ll be filled with sadness for your son, because you always carry him in your heart, since the day you found out he’ll soon be born. Now please, if we’re going to live Luke every day, you need to help me. Will you do that?

The key of persuasion; sweet talk and calmness. Emily nodded her head, and placed her hand on top of Y/N’s. -I will. I will help you Y/N, just because I want to mutually give back everything you need. Taking care of me isn’t easy. We had so many people come for help, but none of theme were like you. They gave up the same day, and you’re still here; sitting across from me and trying to give out all your time to help me. Thank you so much. If you and Luke somehow could’ve met before he died, and if you were his age, then he’ll be in love with you from head to heels.

Y/N awkwardly smiled and glanced at Luke, who was dying in his shyness, -He did what he wanted to in his life Emily. He wrote music. Look, he even wrote what he felt. Music is a feeling, that awakens every emotion in our body. Luke only wanted to show you that this was what made him happy. And from now on, we’ll always play music in this house, okay?

-We will, for Luke. 

-For Luke. -Y/N smiled.

After she calmed Emily down, she came to the kitchen and called Luke over. -How can I see you, one? What are you doing, two? What is going on, three? Can you speak, four?

-I don’t know how can you see me, because only Julie can see us. I came to see my mother, and when you were there I didn’t think you can see me. What is going on? I don’t know, it’s a mystery to me too. And yes of course I can speak. -he answered all her questions. -Are you taking care of my mother?

-Yes. I’m Y/N. -she put out her hand. Luke glanced at it, and he contemplated on shaking it or not, because he knew he couldn’t touch her But the try was worth it, so he went in to shake it. And---he shook it. Magically, he shook it. Y/N seemed to have realized that she’s normally not supposed to be able to touch him and pulled her hand. -Wait. How can I touch you?

-I don’t know. Somehow.

-Are you alive and lying to us?

-If I was alive, my parents could have seen me at the table, right?

-Yes, that’s a logical answer. -she tried to convince herself first, -You’ll be here every day?

-Why are you asking? -he smirked and leaned on the counter.

-Because, Luke Patterson, I can see you and it’ll be hard for me to proceed my job like this.

-See you’re right, -he fixed the collar of his jacket, - any girl would’ve gotten distracted as well if a smoking hot guy like me stood there in front of them the whole time.

-You’re like an advertisement for yourself promotion. And you’re most definitely not serious. -she shook her head, and smirked at him, walking to Mitch and Emily. -Hey Emily. There’s something really important I need to tell you.

Luke rushed to the living room and tried to stop her from saying anything, but Mitch and Emily were making weird faces at her swinging body, -I can see your---sink is leaking water. We should call a plumber before it causes a bigger problem.

-Okay dear, I’ll check it later, don’t worry, -said Mitch, and the both of them got back to watching TV. Y/N winked at Luke, and returned to the kitchen.

-I thought you were going to tell them. -he sighed.

-Jokes aside, I need to really help your mum, Luke. She won’t be better if I don’t get mutual support from Mitch, and mutual help from Emily.

-Thank you for taking care of my mum. -he smiled, while staring deeply into her eyes. Y/N let herself do the same, since what Emily said earlier, it kind of caught her in a warm feeling, knowing the boy’s also listening.

-Uh---you’re welcome. -she said, -I need to leave. See you tomorrow.

After waving a goodbye to Emily and Mitch, Y/N left the house and started walking to her house, where sadly, her drunk mother would be waiting for her. It was an every day war for her, and she kept fighting more and more, but it was the one thing she wasn’t successful at. 

The house was filled with the smell of alcohol, and even a glass bottle rolled to the tip of her shoes when she opened the door. It stunk of left out food, and she couldn’t take it anymore. Leaving her things outside, so they don’t end up stinking like the house, Y/N filled a bucket of soapy water and started cleaning the house. Other days, she tried not to wake up her aggressive mother, but this time she didn’t care. She had enough of her.

-Miss Y/N, you finally remembered the way back to you house. -she sluggishly sat down at the table, barely even making it to the chair, but she did it somehow. -And that you have a mother at home, that maybe is hungry. Make me a toast or something.

Y/N answered to her orders in a calm state, which was confusing her mother every day. She was a bold person, but never raised her voice at nobody. She made her a toast, beautifully wrapping it in a tissue and even squeezed some fresh orange juice in a cup, as well as a cup of coffee for the both of them. Y/N placed everything in front of her mother.

-This time, I’ll talk and you’ll listen, because I’ve really had enough of you living like an animal, rather than a human being, who can take care of themselves if they want to. -she said, and took a sip of her coffee, -I give you a day to think my words through. If, tomorrow I find you in a drunken state, and this house in the same mess as today, I’ll take things into my own hands. Till this day, I didn’t say no to anything you ordered; like a little robot you controlled me around, but this time I am going to stand up for myself. You caused everything that’s happening in our life. We don’t have food some days, because the money I bring home from my job at the restaurant don’t keep up with the bills and food at the same time. I don’t take money from Mitch and Emily, because I just can’t do that to those people, who accept me more as a daughter than you do. Mum, responsibility is being the solution to every problem. And you’re only the cause and wait for others to do things for you in life. Did I ask to be born? No. But here I am, in your life, in this world, now in other people’s lives. Aren’t you a bit aware that your child will ever want to have a parent they’ll look up to? I think you are not, because we’re here talking about it. Until tomorrow, I want you to take a shower, change into some clean clothes, brush your hair, make yourself something to eat if you want to stay alive in this life, and go find a job. I don’t care how you’ll do it, but I want you to come with a result to me. Now, I’m going to prepare my bag for school tomorrow, and go to bed. You’re going to wash the plate and cups, and do whatever you want, or do what I told you. It’s up to you. Good night.

It was the first night, Y/N went to sleep without crying, as well as Emily and Mitch, and it all resulted to being aware of what’s important in life. Luke observed the entire conversation Y/N had with her mother, and couldn’t believe what he’s listening to. She seemed like a bold, emotional, caring person, and it caught him in one big question mark, and the only way of clearing things out, was just sitting alone and thinking about it.

-She’s a hero .-he whispered under his breath. He smiled, it was one of admirement towards a person that’s in his parents’ life. And, it was really unexplainable, and Luke needed time to understand what’s starting to grow in his heart.

Julie was always the girl he thought they were meant to be with each other. And he still thought that way. But as the days passed by, and he got to spend more time with Y/N and his family, he got to know her even more. An amazing person was succeeding in everything she put her mind to in front of his eyes. Her mother woke up from her drunken dream, and started to take responsibility for everything. Even though, Y/N still didn’t give her way for loveable connections with her, they had a communication every day. 

Luke secretly sneaked at night, to watch her play the guitar, or prepare a present for Emily. She even made an album for the family, of all their unforgettable moments. The Patterson garden was now filled with flowers, which meant the talking helped them get better. Y/N persuaded them to go on a road trip, and have alone time with each other, just to enjoy each other’s company. They got a dog, which Y/N found it as a distraction of sadness, and it helped.

She fixed everyone, expect one person. Luke. She trapped his mind, his life, his home, his heart, everything he owned in his life. And he had enough of the feeling that kept growing in his heart. Reggie reminded him every day, that it’s called love, but he never tried to look at it that way. Until, one day, when he observed her talking to his mum.

-I’m so happy. I’m so so so happy, Y/N, and all because of you. -she said and placed a hand to where Y/N’s heart was, -This thing, is golden, and I’m so glad it beats in health every day. You came into our life, and somehow succeeded in changing everything. You changed me, you changed Mitch, you changed the feeling of his home; it’s something really amazing. We love you so much our hero.

-Thank you, Emily, thank you for accepting me in this home, and always looking after me if I needed anything. You’re the best parents anyone could ask for.

-I made a lemon pie, go treat yourself a piece. I’ll finish with cleaning. -she tapped her hand and sat up to go and do her job around the house.

Y/N felt well, after a long time, she felt relaxed. Opening the cupboard, she took out a plate, and placed a piece of Emily’s lemon pie.

-She used to make me a lemon pie, whenever I did well in school, or I listened to her. -said a voice, that made her jump a bit.

-It’s really tasty, let me tell you. -she talked with her mouth stuffed. 

-Let me see. -said Luke, and leaned, placing a kiss to her lips, and pulling away. -Hm, it really is tasty.

Y/N stood dumbfounded, and she couldn’t move her body. It was as if her system stopped sending signals to her brain. Luke took the plate from her hands and placed it on the counter, then taking a hold of them. -For days I’ve observed the fight you led with life, and couldn’t do anything than sit and admire you from afar. Like mum said, this thing, is golden, and it’s really a pleasure to know it’s beating every day. It’s got me trapped in this unexplainable feeling, and I couldn’t get out of it for a long time, Y/N. I love you; all I know is that I love you so much. Being able to touch you is not a coincidence. We’re meant to be. You and I. 

-I know it’s really hard for you, to see another person being able to touch your parents. But I promise you, I touch them and have you in mind. I want them to feel that you’re alive in all our hearts. -she said, and cleared her throat, -Also---our feelings are mutual, and as I see have been for a long time. I just couldn’t bring myself to telling you. But I love you, so much Luke.

He smiled, and his face arose in happiness. He leaned and placed a kiss to her lips, but when he heard Emily, Y/N pulled his hand and brought him behind her.

-Dear, can you bring me a glass of water please? Thank you. -she said, and disappeared in the living room again.

-S-sure. -Y/N said after her.

-It’s really nice to know I’ll have you around from now on. -he kissed her cheek, and spun her to fill a glass of water for Emily. -Bye my hero.

-Bye. -she woke up from her confusion, and placed two kisses on his cheeks.