#some peeps from discord are well aware of how much this man has taken over my brain XD

[lazypastrys-thingymajingky]

When your favorite Shrek character from the 2010s has found its way back to the surface of your brain and decided to stay there

Yeah he got me on chokehold so I had to draw him for an entire week TwT

[cuthian]

Becoming a Memory, Becoming a Treasure Chapter Five

Thanks for the love, guys!

Here's the next chapter. I have no idea when more is going to be up. I'll try to be fast though!

Love

Annaelle

PS Love to the peeps on the JatP Discord server for telling me let Luke use pet names on Reggie ;) You know who you are.

FIVE

“Wherever a Beautiful Soul Has Been There Is a Trail of Beautiful Memories…”

—Ronald Raegan

ALEX

He followed Willie to the museum again, hands pushed deep into his pockets.

“You know,” he said as Willie walked straight through the closed doors and into the empty museum. “I’m really starting to think you have a thing for breaking rules, Willie.”

Willie grinned at him over his shoulder, bright and handsome and shit Alex was so gay.

“You,” Willie said teasingly, turning to poke Alex in the chest, “love it.” And Alex… Yeah, Alex couldn’t really deny that. His crush had been obvious from day one, and the only thing that had made him feel better about it was that he’d been pretty sure it was reciprocated.

Then, of course, there had been the whole mess with Caleb, and much as he wished he’d just grabbed Willie and kissed him then and there, he hadn’t and now here they were—

Still very much interested in one another, but still not quite together.

It was kind of embarrassing at this point. Even Luke and Reggie had gotten their heads out of their asses and told each other they were in love with each other.

Alex really should be able to tell Willie the same—especially considering they had all but done so already. There really wasn’t another way to interpret the long, intense gazes and the hugging and the ‘I’d do anything for you’ or the ‘I’d have followed you anyway’.

“Maybe a little,” he told Willie with a grin, and the other ghost laughed delightedly, hitting him on the shoulder lightly before jumping on his skateboard and rushing off into his usual parkour of the museum while Alex went to find the bench they always ended up on so he could watch. Willie looked free as he skated, wild and untamed and delighted, laughing as he went and watching him made Alex’s chest clench—in the best way.

“You’re looking wired again,” Willie told him when he’d jumped the bench and came to a stop in front of Alex, tossing his helmet and grinning at him.

Alex sighed. “Yeah. Yeah. It’s—remember Reggie’s sister?” When Willie nodded, Alex explained everything that had happened on Saturday, and the fallout—Reggie barely making it back to the studio before he broke down in tears and spent the entire night crying in his and Luke’s arms, Julie’s anxiety about their future only adding to his own, Luke being so focused on trying to make Reggie smile that he complete forgot about everything else…

“Shit man,” Willie shook his head. “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” Alex chuckled wryly. “Yeah, it does.”

“Come on,” Willie said suddenly, getting to his feet and holding his hand out to Alex. “I think you need to yell again, and no better place,” he swept his arms wide in a dramatic gesture that made Alex smile despite himself, “than an empty museum.”

“Willie,” Alex sighed, but he let himself be tugged to his feet anyway.

“Come on, hot dog,” Willie coaxed, grinning widely at him. “You remember how this goes.”

Before Alex could say anything, Willie threw himself into a loud, piercing yell, just like he had the first time they’d done this, and Alex couldn’t help but smile at this beautiful weirdo before he yelled too. The first scream that he forced from his lungs was short and explosive, and Willie grinned encouragingly at him, grabbing fistfuls of Alex’s sweater before he screamed again, louder and longer and Alex couldn’t help but join, screaming his frustration about being unable to help Reggie, about the uncertainty they lived with now that Caleb had reluctantly agreed to a temporary truce and now that Maggie knew about them but hadn’t contacted them at all, about how he wished he was brave enough to just kiss Willie already—

He fell silent with a gasp, panting, and Willie smirked at him, fists still clenched in Alex’s sweater, and suddenly Alex was so tired of overthinking. He nearly lunged forward and curled his fingers around the back of Willie’s neck, tangling them in the other boy’s long hair, smashing their lips together in a messy, breathless kiss.

It lasted less than five seconds, and really, Alex barely had the chance to relish in the feel of Willie’s soft lips on his before the latter pulled away, his eyes wide and startled—and damn it.

“I thought,” Alex stammered, cheeks burning with an embarrassed blush, “I thought you wanted—”

“Yeah,” Willie nodded shakily. “Yeah, no, I do.” He swallowed thickly, and his eyes fell to Alex’s lips before he said, “Kiss me again, hot dog.” He smirked and added, “Promise I’ll kiss back this time.”

Alex grinned, feeling delighted and lightheaded and exited, and did as Willie asked.

--------------

LUKE

Luke sat sideways on the couch in the studio, back pressed to the armrest, Reggie curled up against him, pressed into his arms, his nose tucked against Luke’s neck, breathing soft and quiet. It’d been the first time in three days that Luke had been able to get him to sit still long enough to fall asleep, and he wasn’t going to wake him up now.

They didn’t need sleep anymore, not really, but they weren’t invulnerable to exhaustion.

Once Alex had returned to them after he’d talked to Maggie, after he’d relayed everything that had been said, Reggie had broken down into anxious, angry, frustrated, sad tears and had spent most of the night crying in Luke and Alex’s arms.

He’d spent the next two days in a morose, melancholy mood, bundled into the corner of the couch in the studio, barely responding to anyone, even to Luke, and he’d started pacing yesterday.

It’d taken Luke hours to convince Reggie to stop rambling, to stop blaming himself for everything, to let Luke take care of him for a little bit, and even longer to coax him back to the couch. Julie and Alex and even Flynn had flitted in and out of the studio, but for the most part, they’d left him and Reggie alone. Luke was pretty grateful for it—he didn’t think Reggie could stand being around anyone else right now, except maybe Alex.

He stroked his fingers through Reggie’s messy hair, relaxing back into the pillows a little.

The consequence of Reggie having been awake for this long was that Luke had been too, and he was feeling the strain of being up and aware that long too.

He rested his head back against the pillow and stared up at the ceiling, with its weird, floating chairs. He understood all too well why Reggie had taken Maggie walking out on them so hard—it’d been… it’d been hard enough acknowledging that they were dead to themselves. None of them had really allowed themselves to think about what being dead actually meant to the people they’d loved.

Luke had tried, with his parents, had opened himself up to that grief because he couldn’t not—

But the other boys… Reggie and his father had parted on terrible terms, and in the last six months before they’d died, Luke and Reggie had both spent every night either in the studio or with Alex. Luke had known, back then, that not being there to protect Maggie from their parents’ temper had broken Reggie’s heart, and seeing her now must’ve brought all those feelings back to the surface.

It worried him more than he could say, and he knew Alex felt that way too.

Luke knew that Julie was worried too, of course, but more in the sense that she didn’t want Maggie to ruin any career she might be able to build in the future before it’d even begun. Alex had promised them all that Maggie had mostly seemed to believe him by the time they’d finished speaking, and that she hadn’t even seemed so very angry anymore, but asking someone to believe that the ghost of their brother that had died twenty-five years previously was suddenly back was a big ask.

Luke hated how it was affecting Reggie.

When they’d been alive and Reggie had sunk into moods like these, Luke and Alex had been able to coax him out of them with their music, with laughter and jokes and group hugs that lasted far too long to be casual—which made sense now, knowing that they’d all, at some point, been involved with each other—but nothing had seemed to help this time until Luke had bodily dragged him over to the couch.

He rolled his head to the side when he heard a gentle plop and found Alex standing in the middle of the studio sporting the stupidest grin he’d ever seen on the other boy. “Well, don’t you look happy,” he said teasingly but quietly, continuing to run his fingers through Reggie’s hair soothingly.

Alex rolled his eyes before settling on the chair beside the couch. “I had a good time with Willie,” he admitted, blushing just a little. “He says hi, by the way.”

Luke grinned, waggling his eyebrows at Alex. “Sure he did. Elaborately? With ton—”

“Okay,” Alex cut him off, waving his hand impatiently, but he was still blushing and Luke had known him long enough to know he hadn’t been that far off the mark. “How’s he doing?” Alex asked then, nodding towards Reggie.

“He’s sleeping,” Luke sighed, looking down at the boy that was, by now, snoring quietly against his chest. “Which is better than the relentless pacing.”

“True,” Alex nodded, as if he wasn’t an eternal pacer himself, slumping down in his chair a little. “Has Julie heard anything from Maggie yet?”

Luke shook his head. “Not that she’s told me.”

Alex heaved a sigh and slumped further, putting his feet up on the table and flashing his drumsticks into his hand to have something to fiddle with. “He’s not gonna be able to stay away much longer,” he said quietly, glancing towards Reggie, who was drooling on Luke’s shirt.

“Yeah,” Luke agreed quietly, dragging his fingers through Reggie’s hair again. “I know. I’m hoping we’ll hear something before then though. We don’t want a repeat of what happened with Ray.”

Alex winced, and yeah… that had been a bit of a mess.

The day after Julie had freed them of Caleb’s stamp, Reggie had popped into the house for his usual routine of chattering at Ray while the man made breakfast. Except, this time, when Reggie had appeared in the kitchen, Ray had dropped the bowl with pancake batter to the floor and stared straight at Reggie, looking quite like… well, like he’d seen a ghost.

It’d been how they figured out other people could see them after Julie had hugged them.

They also learned, over the course of a very long morning, where Julie called in sick to school and they spent hours explaining everything that’d happened to Ray, that it was temporary. That they needed to touch Julie again—another hug or something as fleeting as bumping shoulders—and they’d become corporeal and visible again.

Before Alex could say anything, the door to the studio pushed open and Julie came in, chewing on her lower lip nervously. “Oh, good,” she said, sounding relieved. “You’re all here.” She glanced towards Reggie, who still hadn’t moved, and said, “Shit. Okay. Luke,” she looked up at Luke and said, “You need to wake him up.”

“Jules, he was so tired,” Luke sighed. “If it’s not necessary—”

“It is,” Julie insisted, and then the door behind her opened further and Maggie walked in, holding hands with a tall, dark skinned woman, a baby strapped to Maggie’s chest. Luke’s mouth fell open, and when he glanced towards Alex, he saw the drummer was similarly stumped.

“Right,” Luke breathed. “Okay.”

“Are they in here?” Maggie asked, and her voice trembled just a little.

“Yeah,” Julie nodded. “Yes, sorry, they’re just.. Reggie’s asleep, they’re waking him up.”

Luke glanced up towards Maggie, towards her little family and smiled, a little bittersweet, before bending forward and running his fingers through Reggie’s hair a little more insistently. “Reg,” he said softly, shaking the other boy gently. “Wake up, baby.”

Reggie groaned wordlessly and pressed back into Luke’s touch, stretching lazily.

Luke smiled despite himself, pressing a kiss to the top of Reggie’s head. “You gotta wake up, baby.”

----------------

REGGIE

Reggie blinked the sleep out of his eyes, rubbing his cheek against Luke’s chest for a second longer before what Luke had said registered and he froze. “Did… did you call me baby?”

Luke smiled at him, that slow, sweet, intense smile that made several of Reggie’s potentially vital internal organs go all warm and mushy, and rubbed his thumb over Reggie’s cheek. “Yeah, baby,” he said, his voice low and warm and unbearably fond, the same way he sounded when he told Reggie he loved him.

Reggie’s cheeks burned and his heart felt like it was bursting—could he still die from that? Really, the only thing Caleb should’ve done to kill him was make Luke call him ‘baby’—and he needed a second to process, okay? He ducked back down and hid his burning face in the crook of Luke’s neck, exhaling shakily as he tried to deal with the onslaught of feelings.

This whole week had been a very heavy week, emotionally, and Reggie really wasn’t good at this.

Luke just huffed in amusement, curling his fingers around the back of Reggie’s neck and pressing a kiss to the side of his head.

Reggie relaxed a little, at that.

“You can’t do that in front of the others,” he muttered against Luke’s neck.

“Uh,” Luke replied hesitantly, and Reggie looked up.

Luke was biting his lip and blushing and Reggie’s stomach sank even before he noticed Alex sitting right next to them and Julie standing by the door and—

His train of thought halted abruptly.

“Maggie,” he choked, rolling right off the couch in his haste to get to his feet. Luke and Alex both started towards him, but Reggie bounced back to his feet and rushed towards Julie. “Can she see me yet? Have you touched us—is that? Did she see—”

“Oh no,” Julie chuckled, “Only Alex and I saw that.”

Reggie felt his cheeks burning, but Julie took pity on him. “It’s okay,” she grinned. “I was like that too, the first time Flynn called me ‘baby’. It’s fine.”

“Someone called Reggie ‘baby’?” Maggie piped in, eyes wide. “Is it Alex or Luke? Tell me it’s Luke.”

Alex frowned. “Should I be insulted?”

Julie rolled her eyes and turned to Maggie. “I’m gonna make them visible—it can be a little… disorienting, to just see them appear…”

“Just do it,” Maggie said, although Reggie noted that she held the baby a little closer and squeezed her wife’s hand, and he was… relieved to find he wasn’t the only one that was nervous about the conversation and the meeting and just the whole situation.

Reggie exhaled shakily when Luke and Alex joined him in front of Julie, both of them pressing close, Luke’s hand slipping into his and Alex’s hand lightly resting in the middle of his back. They held out their free hands to Julie, who smiled encouragingly and folded both her hands around theirs.

Maggie’s wife—and they really should ask her name, because it was quite bothersome to call her Maggie’s wife the entire time—gasped, and Maggie’s eyes widened, and Reggie knew they were visible.

“Oh my God,” the other woman breathed. “This is real.”

Maggie turned to her with an incredulous expression. “You said you believed me.”

“Well, yes,” her wife said. “But believing is still quite a bit different than actually seeing.” She waved her hand at the three boys vaguely. “This is…”

“A little crazy?” Alex offered wryly.

The other woman just blinked, and Reggie turned his attention back to Maggie. “Hi,” he said shakily, clutching at Luke’s hand. “I’m sorry for last time, I didn’t mean to scare you, I just wanted to explain—I didn’t think—”

“It’s okay,” Maggie said immediately, cutting him off. “I—I get it.” She rubbed her hand over her baby’s back gently—the baby she’d named after him—and took a deep breath. “I… Uh… I have questions. And I—” her lower lip trembled, and the only reason Reggie wasn’t already over there, hugging her, was because Luke was still holding his hand. “—I wanted to talk to you. There’s so many things I don’t remember, that I wish—”

“Yes,” Reggie nodded immediately. “Anything you wanna know.” He frowned and reconsidered. “I mean, as long as I know,” he smiled, “But if I don’t know, Luke or Alex probably do, I mean, they’ve been here all along too, so really—”

“Reg,” Luke cut him off, tugging at his hand quietly, “She gets it.”

Reggie glanced at Maggie, who was smiling faintly and looking between the three of them. “Right,” he said faintly. “Sorry.”

“Maybe we should sit down,” Julie suggested quietly, gesturing towards the couch and its mess of pillows. “I can get those of us who’re alive something to drink too.”

“Rude,” Reggie pouted, but he let Luke and Alex drag him towards the chair and watched as Alex dragged over the massive bean bag they’d relocated from Julie’s room to the studio a week ago. Maggie and her wife—he really needed to ask her name—gingerly took a seat on the couch, Alex plopped down in his chair again and Luke dragged Reggie down onto the bean bag with him.

Reggie couldn’t help but relax a bit with Luke’s arms casually slung around him. He leaned back against Luke just a little and eyed his sister nervously. “So who starts?” He asked.

Everyone chuckled a little at that, although Reggie found it a perfectly valid question.

“I guess,” Maggie said slowly, “I guess I can start. Uh,” she tugged on her wife’s hand lightly and continued, “this is T’Nia, my wife. We’ve been married for six years—”

“Seven,” T’Nia cut in. “Seven in three weeks.”

“Right,” Maggie grinned, her cheeks a little flushed. “Seven.” She then turned her attention to the baby and said, “This is Regina. Reggie.” She looked up with a tremulous smile, and with a start, Reggie realized he was about to burst into tears again.

“You named her after me,” he said hoarsely.

Alex glanced over at him with his eyebrows raised. “You already knew that.”

Reggie pouted and glared at him. “I can get emotional over it more than once, Alexander.”

Alex wrinkled his nose in disgust and Luke snorted with laughter. When Reggie dared look at his sister again, it was to find her grinning broadly, although her eyes were suspiciously shiny. “I can’t believe you guys are exactly as I remember you.”

“Well, it hasn’t—” Alex started, “It hasn’t exactly been twenty-five years for us.”

“We didn’t… appear,” Luke explained when Maggie looked puzzled, “until Julie played our demo. That was a few weeks ago. We thought it’d been a few hours, not years.”

Maggie blinked and sat back heavily. “That’s insane.”

“Yeah,” Reggie nodded. “It was.”

Baby Reggie began to fuss right then, drawing everyone’s attention, and T’Nia rested a hand on Maggie’s. “Do you want me to take her?”

“No,” Maggie blurted. “That’s my emotional support baby.”

Julie snorted an abrupt laugh, but Reggie was just really confused, and a quick look at Luke and Alex told him that he wasn’t, thankfully, the only one who didn’t get the joke.

T’Nia mostly looked unimpressed. “I’m not sure how I feel about you referring to our daughter as an emotional support tool,” she said dryly, but Maggie just smirked and rocked the baby calmly, and before long, baby Reggie was dozing again.

“I’ve a question,” Luke piped up, and Reggie craned his neck to look at his boyfriend quizzically.

Maggie raised her eyebrows, and Luke continued, “You said… at the restaurant… You said you knew. About Bobby. About what he did. Why didn’t you—”

And Reggie heard what Luke was really asking.

Why hadn’t she stopped him from stealing their songs, why hadn’t she told anyone, why—

Why had he gotten away with it?

Maggie sighed. “Luke, I was thirteen. It was his word against mine—and I didn’t have proof. He waited long enough to make sure people didn’t really… remember. And then he only used songs you hadn’t recorded or played in public. I didn’t have your notebooks—I didn’t have anything. I tried, I tried telling Luke’s parents, but they couldn’t prove anything either. I was the only one other than him who knew most of the songs and I only knew them because I spent so much time listening to you guys rehearse.”

Reggie swallowed thickly as Maggie looked down. “I tried,” she said quietly.

“Thank you,” Alex said, and blinked hard because he’d spent all week crying, he was done, he didn’t want to start all over again. “For trying.”

“Yeah,” Luke rasped, and Reggie nodded jerkily, trying not to burst into tears, because that had been the worst thing about learning that Bobby had stolen their songs—no one had remembered them enough to know that they were theirs.

Knowing that Maggie, at least, had remembered them, had known—

It helped.

He sniffed a little and turned, hiding his face in Luke’s shoulder as he tried to get it together. Luke dug his fingers back into his hair and Reggie exhaled shakily before he went boneless against him. “Thanks,” he whispered against Luke’s skin, pressing a small kiss to the hinge of his jaw before he sat up again. Luke smiled fondly at him and rubbed his thumb over Reggie’s hot cheek and Reggie just kind of wanted to melt.

“So it was Luke,” Maggie said gleefully, and Reggie jumped—he’d kind of forgotten everyone else was still there too. When he looked back at his sister, she looked like all of her Christmases had come early.

“You are weirdly invested in this,” Julie remarked, and Reggie pointed to her as he nodded.

Maggie rolled her eyes. “Look, I’ve been wondering what the deal was since I walked in on Alex and Reggie—” Luke made a slightly punched-out noise, and Reggie patted his leg comfortingly, and Maggie continued, “I’ve literally been waiting for twenty-five years to know, okay? I need to know.”

Reggie blinked at her.

She grinned back. “Come on, Reg. Dish. You’re with Luke, right?”

“I—yeah,” Reggie said slowly, cheeks flushing when Luke leaned in behind him to press a kiss to the nape of his neck. “I mean, not until after we came back though.”

“Wait, so you and Alex really were—” Maggie leaned forward eagerly, and Reggie wrinkled his nose and shook his head.

“No. Nope, I’m not talking about this with you,” he squinted at her. “Unless you want me to start asking questions about your sex life?” Maggie blanched so hard Reggie and Luke both burst into laughter and Julie giggled while T’Nia patted her wife’s arm comfortingly.

“Fine, change of subject,” Maggie conceded.

“Tell me about our parents,” Reggie said before anyone else could say anything. “I wanna know what happened after we—after—”

“After we died of extreme food poisoning,” Luke cut in, hooking his chin over Reggie’s shoulder and wrapping his arms around his middle. Reggie winced a little, but leaned back into Luke’s embrace anyway, stretching his leg out a little so he could hook his ankle around Alex’s.

The blond startled at the touch, but shot him a grateful little smile anyway, and Reggie’s chest went all warm and tight and he wished, for a second, that they were alone so they could try that awesome group hug thing again. They hadn’t done that in far too long.

“You didn’t die of food poisoning,” Maggie cut in, sounding a little surprised, and Reggie’s head snapped back towards her so fast he felt his neck crack a little.

“What?”

“You didn’t—” Maggie shook head, looking between them with an expression that hovered between baffled and confused. “You didn’t die of food poisoning. You—” she blinked. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?” Reggie frowned.

“Oh, shit,” Maggie exhaled.

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For those of you that wanted to see these adorable himbos cuddling. 

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Start from the beginning:

Becoming a Memory, Becoming a Treasure:

(1)  (2) (3) (4) 

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