#this is quite literally just a jatp cuddle puddle feat. willie and i love that for them!

[sunsetcurvecuddles]

assuming you're still doing the prompts and i need more of this in my life so

touch starved willie ft willex?

hiii i'm So Sorry How Long This Took but have exactly what the doctor ordered <3

i've been bruised by your light | 1.6k | willex + willie&julie&the phantoms | G

--

Usually, arriving at the studio is the strangest mix between utter, overwhelming chaos, and finally feeling like he can exhale. On one hand, Willie’s arrival is greeted by a blended cacophony of tuning instruments and varying amp volumes, interrupted by cheers when someone notices his presence. The song crash-lands as Reggie yells in delight, Willie!, and Julie twirls around, lights up, almost trips on her microphone cord.

Luke complains about stopping halfway through the song, but with this huge goofy grin on his face, the kind that proves to Willie that Luke actually isn’t mad in the slightest because two moments later he unceremoniously dumps his guitar on the couch to bound over to Willie, hands outstretched, palms up. (The way Luke Patterson acts, you’d think no one had ever hurt him before.)

Finally, once the others have stopped bounding around like puppies with guests, Alex will navigate his way out from behind his drum set. His bright, nervous smile will make whatever Willie risks by coming to visit utterly worth it.

And, well. If the memory of the way they all tackle-hug him, right there on the Molina’s driveway, keeps Willie going on the days when he doesn’t think he can stand it any more, all the sneaking around and the glancing over his shoulder and the cold sweats when Caleb looks at him a moment too long -- then that’s unrelated, probably. If the only way he can hold himself together is by taking a moment, late at night in his own room, to close his eyes and envision these moments, with arms around him and chatter above him and elbows in his ribs and he doesn’t even care, where he’s surrounded by friends and their excitement and love, where his body feels real and the ache that seems to haunt his chest temporarily abates -- that’s his own business.

Today, though, when Willie arrives at the studio, he’s primarily met with an eerie silence. He knows the silence itself contains nothing ominous, and that his own afterlife experiences has left him predisposed to dread, but still. He can’t help the prickling down the back of his neck when he appears outside the studio to no sound at all. Immediately, his brain begins producing worst case scenarios: Caleb found out. Caleb found out and has taken them all as punishment. Someone scarier than Caleb got there first.

He pushes these thoughts aside, and takes stock of his surroundings. He can’t see any signs of a struggle, not that a ghost-struggle would leave many signs. The door is propped mostly closed, but it opens easily when he pushes against it. So he opens it with one hand, the other curling into the hem of his sweater.

The sight that greets him floods him with relief, like warm water dumped over his head, like surfacing out of a pool when he’s held his breath too long. At the same time, it fills him with a longing that strangles him all over again.

It looks something like this: Julie and Reggie are cuddled up on the couch, in a tangle of limbs so tightly intertwined it’s impossible to tell where one vocalist begins and another bassist ends. Reggie’s hair is all messy, like he never lets it be when he’s awake, and he’s drooling slightly. Julie’s still in her exercise gear, so Willie guesses she had dance in last period at school or she just got back from working out with Flynn. Regardless, her clothes have sweat-stains and her cheek, pressed to Reggie’s arm, is all squished up so he can hardly see her face. Luke is plastered on top of the pile, spread across them like a weird impractical blanket, snoring.

And at the end of the couch, bearing the not-inconsequential weight of three pairs of legs across his lap, Alex sits, head tilted against the back of the couch. Always the lightest sleeper of the group, though, Willie has barely drawn a breath in the studio before Alex is squirming, rubbing one hand across his eyes and sitting up, blinking against the light spilling in from the open door. He looks unfairly adorable, and on top of the relief, it makes something in Willie’s chest both soar and ache.

“Willie?”

Alex whispers, but his voice seems to echo in the space. It’s a great practice room, Willie thinks, with these kinds of acoustics. The others don’t stir; Luke carries on snoring just as steadily as before, and Julie doesn’t move. Reggie’s nose twitches, but maybe it would have regardless.

“Hey, hotdog,” says Willie.

Right away, Alex asks, “Are you okay?” even though he’s still waking up and even though, to Willie’s own ears, he sounded level and casual and fine.

Willie takes stock of the shaking in his fingertips, the deep pond of hurt in his chest that seems to spring up from inside him whenever he isn’t distracted, the cold sweat of relief down the back of his neck. Thinks that these things should have ended when his life did. “Yeah, man” he answers. “Just didn’t know where you guys were, couldn’t hear the, y’know--” He makes a little high-hat noise with his mouth, just to see Alex’s nose scrunch up in response, “--from outside, so I thought you might be… somewhere else.”

Alex tilts his head, looks at Willie through slightly narrowed eyes. Then says, “Are you cold?”

Shit. Willie drops his hand from where he was rubbing the inside of his elbow, because he hadn’t even noticed himself doing it in the first place. “A little, I guess.”

Alex reaches for him, before looking down at the legs still stacked high over his body, and frowns, in such a comically put-out way that Willie stifles the urge to laugh. His body hums, the relief and the shakes easing off but the ache, the whirlpool chasm inside him opening up deeper. Usually that feeling is gone, once he’s here with Alex, with all of them. Once they’ve all rushed up to greet him, once he’s been knocked flat by their overenthusiastic hellos, like he’s just entered a puppy daycare.

“Here,” Alex says, shuffling down the couch a bit so that there’s slightly more room on his lap. “If you can sit on the arm?”

Willie gets the idea. The arm of the couch looks pretty sturdy, despite its age, and technically Willie is a ghost, so he’s not sure if he weighs anything at all to a piece of furniture. So he sits, sideways along the arm of the couch, and Alex wraps an arm around Willie’s waist, fingers curling into Willie’s hip.

All at once, the feeling, the one that’s usually gone, starts to ebb and fade, like it’s washing away. Willie caves to the instinct to tuck himself closer, presses along Alex’s side until they’re connected from shoulder to knee, and tries not to let the desperation for it show, tries not to crumble apart altogether.

“How long do you have?” Alex asks, voice barely a murmur into Willie’s hair just above his ear. Willie sighs out a longer breath than he meant to.

“Not -- not that long,” he manages.

“How long?” Alex checks again, his thumb swiping up and down Willie’s side rhythmically in a way that lulls Willie under, makes him rest his cheek on Alex’s shoulder before he can even think about it.

“Like, an hour?” Willie lets his eyes close as Alex runs a hand through his hair, not even flinching when Alex’s fingers get stuck a little at the back of his neck and he has to tease out some tangles to continue. “Maybe a little more, but not a lot more.”

Alex presses his face into Willie’s hair. He maybe kisses the side of Willie’s head, but Willie might have imagined it. Luke wriggles a little in his sleep, and it doesn’t burst the bubble Willie had created in his head, more expands it, opens it up just a little more so that instead of it just being Willie-and-Alex inside of his ball of safety, it’s Willie-and-Alex-and-Julie-Luke-Reggie.

“Okay,” says Alex easily. Then, softer, “I’m really happy to see you.”

“You too,” Willie whispers back. He’s turning to goo, he can feel it, as Alex rubs the hand from his waist up and down his back, while the other continues to gently detangle Willie’s hair. He feels… dopey, almost, exhausted from the huge rush of feelings and then the series of reliefs, one after another. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Wanna actually see you, not sleep.”

“Please relax,” Alex murmurs. “I’ll wake you up before you need to go. I’m just glad you’re here with us.”

Alex feels like a blanket, Willie thinks blearily. Or not like a blanket, but the feeling of being with Alex is like the feeling of being under a wonderful blanket. On the inside of Willie’s chest, they feel the same.

Soon enough he’ll have to go back to the club. Prepare for the show that night, make small talk with the other staff, pretend to Caleb like today is any other day. Before he knows it he’ll be in his own bed, lying staring at the ceiling, reliving this moment, trying to grasp every sensation, every phantom touch. Will even try to remember how it sounded when Luke snored, the way that Julie’s toes kept poking him under the arm, how Reggie keeps whispering gibberish under his breath in his dreams, because all of them sound safe and like home.

For now, though, it’s real and all around him. For now, the ache in his chest subsides, and Alex’s hands are gentle and careful, and Alex’s body is warm wherever they touch.

All Willie can do is savour the feeling, so he can remember it better when it’s gone. Until next time he can sneak away to a rehearsal.