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homebody-nobody · 4 years ago

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close my eyes and jump

I did it I wrote fanfic for a children’s show about ghosts because i have add and it was either this or slam my head against my environmental engineering homework until i finished it or it finished me. Anyway, please read this idk i think it’s cute (also pls give me ur thoughts in the tags/reblogs/comment on ao3 I crave that sweet sweet feedback) ---------- There’s been no time for them to talk about it, barely any time for her to even think about it. Their immediate next concern was Caleb and the stamp draining the life from her boys -- her band, her second family. Also, she couldn’t touch him before and something -- anything -- it felt impossible, too absurd to even consider. But now, he’s solid in front of her, tangible under her hands, his fingers tucked between hers. And that… that changes things. -------- ao3 ------

“This is still so weird,” Julie says on a half-chuckle as Luke’s hands hover above hers. They’re sitting on the couch in the studio, facing each other, legs crossed and feet tucked under. Their knees are touching, as are a good portion of their lower legs, and, for a ghost, Luke is surprisingly warm, the heat of him seeping through the layers of fabric and spreading over her skin. Alex and Reggie fell asleep hours ago, the latter draped across a beanbag in the loft, the former with his head on the pillow he kept in his kick drum as a muffler.

Julie had barely noticed when the other two boys had drifted away and fallen asleep. After they’d discovered that the boys were solid, they’d collapsed onto the couch in a pile, reveling in the feeling of weight and warmth. She ended up tucked under Luke’s arm, her back pressed to his chest, Alex fully in her lap, Reggie leaning up against Luke’s legs, none of them wanting to let go. They talked and laughed and made plans and Julie’s heart ached when she realized that these boys -- her boys -- had just faced death a second time and were still fighting for their dreams. She went quiet with the heavy understanding, and Luke, talking to Reggie, traced his fingertips up and down her arm, holding her tighter to him. She tucked her face into his shoulder and inhaled the smell of him, flannel and old spice, paper and echoes, unsure of how he could feel so solid and real against her but reveling in the moment.

Her dad had come in at some point, and she’d gone in and had a snack while he gushed about her performance and told her how proud he was of her. She’d changed for bed for appearances sake, but as soon as she heard his bedroom door close, she was sneaking back down the stairs and out to the garage.

Now, with the other members of their band passed out (ghosts didn’t technically need sleep, but it still feels nice and helps them retain a routine), Julie and Luke play a game Julie’s dad taught her and Carlos to waste time in line at Disney World when they went when Julie was eleven. Julie flips her hands up and slaps the back of Luke’s with frightening efficiency, and he laughs, pretending to be hurt before they switch places. She’s pretty sure he keeps letting her win just to feel her hands on his.

“Good weird or bad weird?” he asks, as he wiggles his fingers and Julie jerks her hands back, giggling.

“Okay, so maybe not weird,” she relents, settling her hands back above his, but closer this time, so her fingertips are just brushing the heels of his palms. The light brush of skin sends goosebumps up her arms that have nothing to do with Luke being a ghost. “Different,” she settles, her eyes darting back to their game when she looks up to see him staring at her.

“Different good, or --” he says, making an attempt, biting his lip when Julie’s too fast for him. “Different bad?” Their palms are touching now, and Luke’s fingers are long enough to brush her wrist. His hands are so much bigger than hers, strong and nimble with years of practice dancing across steel strings, fingertips so callused they’re practically numb. He drags them across her palm, until the pads of her fingers hook on his, and she curls their hands together.

“Different good,” she says, the words rushing out on an unintentional breath. Luke knows her voice well enough to hear that it’s sitting higher in her chest, like when she’s reaching for one of her earth-shattering notes, or -- he realizes, with a sheepish smile he has no chance of keeping off his face -- when she’s nervous. Julie twists her fingers in his, pushing them up until they’re palm to palm, pressed together. Her hands are small in comparison, the same short fingers and wide palms as her mom, a pianist’s worst nightmare, but she makes it work, and makes it work well.

She’s so warm, and soft, and he never wants to stop touching her.

“That would be kind of difficult,” she says, “with school and everything.” Luke swallows hard, realizing he said that out loud.

“No one would see me,” he jokes, keeping his tone light but maybe half-serious. They both keep their eyes on their hands, twisting and tracing and intertwining before pressing together again. If he looks at her, he’s not going to be able to not kiss her, and since he’s not totally sure where she stands on that and his impulse control is historically a little iffy, he’ll stay in safe territory “I won’t even trip Nick.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, cause I believe that.”

“What?” he laughs, “I’ll be nice,” He ducks his head and leans into the next sentence, a movement that seems instinctual rather than planned, and even for such a beautiful boy, such a gifted performer, he’s still gawky and lanky and seventeen, still just a kid. “I promise.” But he’s biting the inside of his cheek, and Julie knows if she had the courage to meet his eyes, they’d be twinkling with the kind of mischief that always leads to something ridiculous.

They lapse into silence, and while it’s not uncomfortable, it’s not easy, either. It’s -- weighted. After Julie rejected Nick -- which, she remembers on a sharp inhale, he does not know about -- and went to go visit Luke’s parents, and their conversation after… There’s been tension between them. If she’s being honest, there’s been tension since the garage party, since she hasn’t been able to get the way he looked at her out of her head, the way she hums the guitar riff when she knows she’s alone, the way she remembers his eyes flickering between hers and her lips.

There’s been no time for them to talk about it, barely any time for her to even think about it. Their immediate next concern was Caleb and the stamp draining the life from her boys -- her band, her second family. Also, she couldn’t touch him before and something -- anything -- it felt impossible, too absurd to even consider. But now, he’s solid in front of her, tangible under her hands, his fingers tucked between hers. And that… that changes things.

“Speaking of Nick,” Julie says, before she loses the courage to do so.

He stops fiddling with her fingers and leans, just barely, out of her space. Luke is always bouncing, twitching, bouncing his leg, twiddling with something, chewing on a guitar pick -- the boy never sits still; but, he holds her hands still in his lap, and that’s how she knows he’s really listening, every inch on him edge, waiting for what she has to say. He doesn’t say anything, just nods, barely.

“He asked me out.” The air goes out of him at once, and even the warmth of him seems to pull away. He’s not looking at her, but she watches the shutters close in his eyes, blinds coming down over the light and joy that had been pouring out of him all night. And then, she takes a breath. “I said no.”

His eyes snap up to hers, and brown gets lost in grey-green, and he thinks, one out of countless times, that nothing is as warm and soft as Julie’s eyes. “You --” He swallows, and licks his lips, and has to take another half a breath when she watches him do it. “But I thought --”

She shrugs. “He asked me if I liked somebody else, and…” Julie thinks back to the conversation, watching herself reject the boy she’d liked since middle school, Luke’s smile in her mind’s eye the whole time. “It felt wrong to let him get his hopes up when --” Luke readjusts, his sunshine-smile creeping out as he realizes what she’s talking about. She likes him. She likes him!! Gripping her hands tighter, his shift brings him closer to her, and as he nears, her brain short-circuits, throwing out the rest of her sentence to focus on his eyelashes, long and dark, every single one of her (few) functioning brain cells wondering how they don’t tangle together when he blinks.

“When?” he prompts, and he’s leaning closer, putting his lips right there but making it her choice, even pulling their hands out of the way so he can angle himself closer to her.

“When I…” But how is she supposed to finish a sentence when he’s so close she can feel his breath across her face, making her shiver, and how do ghosts have breath but now’s not really the time to care about that because he’s dragging his thumb over the first knuckle of her index finger and he’s so warm and close and real that it doesn’t matter that he’s dead and she’s not and it doesn’t matter what Flynn says and it doesn’t matter if this makes sense because she’s wanted to kiss him for so long and now she can and he’s right there.

If Luke had a heartbeat, it would be racing as he waits for Julie to finish her sentence or maybe pull back or maybe even slap him for assuming what he’s doing is anywhere near okay, and the seconds drag on like hours as he watches her eyes and she watches his lips. This feels kind of like the end of their performance at the garage party, except then it was harmless because nothing could happen, not when they were in front of her family and all her friends, not when he couldn’t touch her. It feels kind of like when they got back from his parents house, when he felt like his chest was going to explode and he was going to finally tell her exactly how he felt about her, but then her hand phased through his, and Caleb’s jolt struck down any chance of anything happening at all.

But now they’re finally alone, and he can touch her, and she’s so close and he used to think that he knew what it felt like to hope with his whole chest, when it was still 1995 and he was chasing his dreams with his two best friends, but that was nothing compared to now, with this strong, intelligent, talented, powerhouse of a girl in front of him, that he cares about so much, that he hopes against hope feels the same way about him.

And just when it feels like the clock has ticked down too many times, and the moment starts to wean, and panic starts to settle in Luke’s chest, Julie surges up to meet him. She disentangles her fingers from his and holds his face to hers, her kiss fierce and passionate and unrelenting, the same way she does everything else.

Luke holds one of her hands against his face, trying not to let his smile break contact, feeling like no song he ever writes will really capture how it feels to kiss her, to have her holding on to him like a lifeline, the way their lips move together in the same kind of harmony that makes their music so special. Before she reached him, she was hoping he couldn’t feel how nervous she was, how badly she didn’t want to mess this up, hoped that he wouldn’t be able to tell she'd never kissed anyone before. But now he’s kissing her back, and it feels so easy, so natural, like singing with him, push and pull, give and take, letting him lift her up, pushing closer and pulling him across the stage, pulling him down on top of her as she lays back on the couch.

He pulls back as they situate themselves, Julie on her back, Luke mostly above her but keeping his weight off her by putting himself mostly between her and the back of the couch. Her lips are shining and the most perfect pink, her fingers twisted in his hair. He feels like he could fly, if she asked him to. She lets out half a nervous chuckle, the same one that always slips out just after the boys disappear from the stage. “I --” she tries “was that -- I mean --”

Looking at her, Luke doesn’t think he could answer her question, even if she finished it. He should be used to surprises with Julie, at this point. First, finding out that she could sing, and then that she was such a talented writer, and then such a good friend, and now, not only that she likes him, but that she can kiss like that.

“Was that okay?” she finally manages, and Luke’s mind is so thoroughly blown that the only thing he can do is kiss her again, one arm propping him up, the other hand on her waist, and her hands in his hair, holding him close to her.

It’s so easy to lose himself in her, and he doesn’t know how long it is before he pulls away again. “So okay,” he says, dropping his face to press it into her neck. “Way better than okay,” he goes on, pressing small kisses there in rapid succession that make her giggle and squirm out from under him. He drops to his side and she wiggles so that she’s facing him, his arm under her head, his other hand on her hip, her fingers loosely curled in the front of his shirt. The world feels quiet and warm and just for the two of them, like they can’t hear Reggie snoring from the loft or hear the cars passing occasionally on the residential street, their headlights throwing shadows across the walls and ceiling.

“I’m glad it was --” she laughs again, and it’s better than any music he’ll ever make. “Way better than okay,” she goes on, dropping her voice to mimic him poorly.

He doesn’t rise to the bait like he usually does, knowing she’s still nervous and unsure, desperate to set it right before they can hide behind their humor and teasing once more. “Julie,” he says, and the sound of her name seems to pull her even closer, like the word has its own gravitational pull coming out of his mouth. “You’re beautiful, and smart, and so talented.” She blushes and chuckles and pushes her forehead into his shoulder. Lifting his hand up, he pushes her face back gently, so he can look into her eyes as he speaks. “You’re incredible,” he says, realizing how much he means it when the weight of it spills out of his chest. The next words are automatic. “And I --”

He stops, shocked with himself, and her eyes get big, and if he wasn’t already dead he might wish for it, embarrassment and regret pushing their way up his throat as he realized what he was about to say. It’s too much for her, and too soon, he knows, and he never should have opened his mouth, never should have kissed her, never should have initiated any of this, because he’s dead and she’s not, and the afterlife is such an unpredictable thing that they don’t have any sort of future, and he can’t love her and leave her, not when she’s already lost so much. Inhaling, he opens his mouth, ready to apologize or just blunder his way through too many words without accomplishing much at all, but Julie says something before he can. “Really?”

His eyes return to hers, and that gaze feels like home, blowing all of his worries away with one blink. He doesn’t understand how it’s so easy to think until he looks at her. He can plan to say so much, have entire explanations prepared and then those big, brown eyes settle on him and he’s so mesmerized he can’t remember a single thing he was about to say. He breathes in a shaky inhale, and nods. She crushes herself against him, her head under his chin, her forehead pushed against his collarbone, her wild hair itching his face. He wraps his arms around her, so deeply grateful that he can do that now, that he can hold her and put a boundary around whatever feels too big for her to handle by herself.

She heaves a stuttering breath before pulling back and meeting his eyes. “I --” she stutters, “Um --” and then, biting down a shy smile. “Me too.”

And then, again, joy explodes in his chest and he’s kissing her again, flipping himself underneath her. They’re both smiling too much for it to feel exactly like a kiss, so he just pulls her to him and holds her, and she closes her eyes, her ear pressed to his chest, one arm tucked under his shoulder and the other pressed around his waist.

They stay like that for a long time before Julie starts to feel herself dropping off, and when she whispers that she should get back inside so she can sleep in her bed, Luke asks her to stay, just until the sun rises. So she adjusts into a more comfortable position, laying on her side but mostly on top of him, her head directly over where his heart would be, her face tilted up so her nose brushes the hollow of his throat. One of his arms is around her, the other holding her hand on his chest. They kiss for a while, slow and tentative, learning each other, until she can’t keep her eyes open, and he traces his fingers over her back in shapes that just might be lyrics. As she drifts in the space just between waking and dreams, a heartbeat echoes faintly in her ear, steady and slow -- just real enough that she knows it isn’t her imagination.

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