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willexmagic · 4 years ago

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Willie’s very forgetful.

If anyone asks, Willie tells them it comes with the fact that he’s been dead for forty years and sometimes little half-memories will slip through the cracks, washing away in the onslaught of California rain. But Willie still feels the phantom touch of his mother wrapping a chain with a key around his neck and patting his cheek, her thumb rubbing gently against his cheekbone as she sent off a little ten year old boy with unruly hair and cherry socks out on his first joyride on a rickety little board.

(keep reading on AO3 or under the read more)

When that little boy grew older and his mother got busy or didn’t care as much or maybe a little bit of both, he kept an old marker in his pocket, the clip having long since snapped off. He’d leave doodles across his arms, little messages and reminders written in his scrawled, half-illegible handwriting.

Even now, Willie still finds the marker in his pocket. He hasn’t had a need for it in a while, never having anything important or meaningful worth jotting down, but just uncapping it brings back that sharp smell that lifts him out of a fog, and as he spins it around in his fingers on days when he feels lost and alone and a little less human, the faded stormy gray of the ink rubbed across the surfaces of the museum makes Willie feel a bit less lonesome. Like he’s left a mark skipping across the limbo he exists in for someone, somewhere to find the jumbled thoughts of a ghost boy and wonder who he was.

Maybe other people will remember him when he forgets about himself.

Although one day, after forty long years, his fingers move on their own accord. His thumb slips against the edge of the cap, popping it off and revealing the tip, and in the crook of his arm he writes, meet the boys where alex and i met at eight.

Willie doesn’t think he’ll forget. Not after Caleb pestered him about making sure everything was perfect, not after Dante triple-checked his reservation with him, definitely not after the quick bounce of his head that Alex gave him, that one shake removing a few strands of golden blonde hair from their neatly tucked position behind his ear. Willie definitely doesn’t think he’ll forget the way they shook in the wind, enjoying their newfound freedom.

But it’s nice to remember.

And Willie finds that Alex is something he wants to remember.

During another late night when he’s alone in the museum, his back against the cold stone floor and feet resting on his skateboard, bored after hours of journeying through his makeshift home, he finds himself etching drawings and notes across his arms.

A baseball cap against his palm, resting backwards.

i would’ve still followed you like a lifeline across his veins, the emotions behind their meaning flowing through him like his blood did, once.

Dates, scribbled in the nooks and crannies of his joints. The day he met Alex, the day they first went to the museum, the day he found out Alex was free and they crashed into each other, clinging as tightly as the first hug but comfortable in the knowledge that they’d get to hold onto the warmth this time.

Funny, how Willie never used to keep track before. June would slip into December and 1992 would slip into 2007 and he never bothered to care, never bothered to take note of the world moving around without him.

But Alex slowed time down, and Willie wanted to remember it.

The boy in question poofs in so suddenly that the marker slips from its home in between Willie’s fingers, the doodle he was in the middle of working on suddenly and abruptly halted in progress.

He lets the marker roll to a stop as he tilts his head down to look at where Alex has his resting against his torso. He quirks an eyebrow up, asking a silent question, and Alex releases a long sigh. “Nothing to do.”

Willie knows Alex’s language, and so he knows that nothing to do really means questioning his existence in the universe at two in the morning when the world decided it wouldn’t give an anxious ghost the small comfort of being able to turn off your brain for eight hours a day.

But maybe the world did give Alex some sort of comfort, because Willie watches the mild panic fade into curiosity as Alex’s gaze travels up Willie’s arm. “What’re doing?” he asks, voice low as if he wants to hold this conversation close.

Willie blinks, not realizing Alex hasn’t ever seen him make notes before. He wonders what’s going through the boy’s mind as his eyes freeze on the words Willie had written just moments before: thank you, willie.

“Just doodling,” Willie answers, as if the word doodling encapsulates the way writing down these memories feels like reliving the warmth that spreads through his limbs at the way Alex says his name, like it’s a treat, a candy for the tongue to savor.

“Isn’t all this ink bad for you?” Alex asks, his eyebrows furrowing as he thinks of the toxins a boy from the 80s wouldn’t know about.

“Dude, we’re dead,” Willie reminds him. He reaches for the marker, pressing it into Alex’s callused palm. “I think you’ll be alright.”

Willie’s expecting Alex to inspect the marker, perhaps try to unravel the secrets of how it’s still working and not run out of ink by now. Or maybe Alex will draw something on his own arm, a doodle of his drums or his bracelet or maybe a reminder that he’s got band rehearsal tomorrow.

What Willie doesn’t expect is for Alex to turn his body slightly, rest his fingers carefully on the exposed skin of Willie’s stomach where his crop top has ridden up. The touch sends chills through his entire body, leaving him with that fuzzy warmth he so often associates with Alex’s company.

Alex presses the marker on his skin, writes carefully in a slow, neat print, mindful as to not press too hard and unintentionally hurt Willie.

He leaves behind three words.

i love you.

#julie and the phantoms #jatp #jatp fics #netlixwewantjatp2 #willex week #willex #willie jatp #alex mercer #fics #mine #willie #alex #otp: i'd do anything for you

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willexmagic · 4 years ago

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21 + Willex? :D

KJ!!! <3 i’m assuming you want touching since you liked that one!

21. kissing the other’s brow (still accepting prompts from here and here!)

“You look like you’re gonna fight someone.”

Alex looks up at Willie’s comment, suddenly distracted from the laser-sharp focus on Willie’s board. He blinks at Willie, confused.

Willie laughs with his whole body, the motion somehow leaving Alex so flustered that he almost forgets about the board under his feet.

Almost.

He feels Willie’s arms on his shoulder, curling into his jacket as if trying to ground him, but all he can think about is the fact that he’s on unsteady turf, the wheels of the board threatening to slip out from underneath him.

“The more you overthink, the sooner you’re gonna trip up,” Willie instructs, as if believing in the power of a magical ghost skateboard is gonna prevent Alex from tripping and planting face first onto the cold concrete of the museum floor. He knows Willie won’t make fun of him even if he does, but the anxiety creeps into him. Will it hurt? Will he cut himself? (If that’s even possible, but with Alex’s luck, it probably is.) Would Willie even let him touch his board after this? Or would he laugh and say, “Looks like you’re not cut out for it,” like his parents used to?

The distant, twenty-five year old memory of unexpected disappointment cuts sharply through him, leaving him questioning himself.

“Woah, hey,” Willie says, poking Alex’s cheek in an attempt to draw him more out of his spiral. Alex wonders if Willie knows what he’s doing, can sense Alex’s underlying emotions instantly, or if he just happens to be the exact comfort Alex needs. “Stay with me, hot dog. It’s not gonna be that bad. You want me to show you how to push off again?”

Alex shakes his head, furrows his eyebrows more. “No, I can do this. I think.”

Willie suddenly moves his hands to Alex’s face, cradles his cheeks with the softest touch, and Alex is spiraling again but for completely different reasons, his mind blanking on everything else except cute boy, pretty boy really close and smelling like coconut and pine.

Willie tilts Alex’s head down, kisses him right against his brow where his frustration lines are deepest. “Relax, alright? Like I said, no stress. Just ease into it.”

Alex knows it’s never been that easy to just tell himself to relax and then follow through with it, but the brush of lips against his head calms him like nothing else does, steadies the quickly spinning world so easily. “Okay,” he says, quieter than before, the frustration dripping out of him. “Let me try again.”

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