Australian, vegamaterian, lady person.
Animals make my heart warm.
Mostly Teen Wolf stuff. Plus animals, music and SCIENCE! Check out my science blog:
Science Headdesk
Julie has just moved to the NYC from LA for her first real job with a recording studio. She’s so excited about this job and her big break into the music industry, but she’s never lived this far away from her family and it’s pretty daunting. Luckily, it’s the Christmas season and decorating her new apartment makes her feel closer to her family. It was her mother’s favorite holiday, after all, and ever since she passed away, it was something they’d done to honor her memory. So you can’t really blame Julie if she goes a little overboard, but honestly the lights really brighten up the hallway! Then her neighbor from two doors down hangs up his own lights in the hallway that are twice as colorful as hers - and, look Julie’s a little competitive, ok? No one is gonna show up her decorations. It’s on.
Reggie loves Christmas. His parents had never bothered to celebrate, so the first thing he did after fleeing to the other side of the country to get away from them as soon as he turned 18 was to buy out half of the nearest Christmas display and turn his tiny shoebox apartment into the loudest, most ridiculous display of holiday joy anyone has ever seen. Maybe it spills out into the hallway a little bit. But his neighbor from two doors down is also decorating the hallway, so it can’t bother people too much! He’s just happy to have someone who loves Christmas as much as he does, so he keeps adding more.
Luke is losing his fucking mind. He hates Christmas. He hates the whole stupid season and everything about it. He ran away from home on Christmas Eve three years ago, caught a cross-country bus to NYC and never looked back. So how has it come to this, that his two new neighbors on either side of him have so much Christmas spirit that it is taking over the whole hallway? And it seems to grow with every passing day? When will he ever know peace from this red-and-green glitter-filled nightmare?
It all comes to a head when Reggie starts playing Christmas carols on his guitar and Julie, hearing him through the paper thin walls, takes that as a challenge and busts out her keyboard to play some right back at him. And while Luke can’t take the Christmas of it all, he knows good music when he hears it. So he joins in.
✨ Send me two (2) tropes from this list + a ship and I’ll describe how I’d combine them in the same story ✨
love like a storm // 2300+ words, reggie / julie / luke ot3, pillow forts and comfort
( read on ao3 here! )
No one actually tells Julie that Luke’s afraid of thunderstorms. She figures it out during a particularly violent gale, when Alex has gone off on one of Willie’s daredevil escapades, Reggie has taken refuge in the Molina’s living room, and Luke is nowhere in sight.
“Where’s he gone?” Julie asks, curling into Reggie’s side as the TV flickers on. Reggie’s arm wraps around her automatically. When Julie’s head pillows against his chest, he sighs, the sound rumbling against her ear.
platonic Julie/Alex with "the intimacy of noticing someone’s nervous habits" or "oh, no, we can't, you're working that day"?
hiiii guess who got carried away!! this fic is now also available on ao3. this is for you joy light of my life and also for @silent-silver-slip bc comfort clothes!! huge thank you to @sweetheartreggie for betaing and also for living in my brain.
--
and we breathe in together. alex&julie, 1.2k
“Shit, we can’t do that day either, you’re working, right?” Reggie says, and Luke groans, lying back against the bed holding his guitar like a teddy.
Julie just nods. She’s biting her lip, twisting her fingers together in the hem of her t-shirt over her lap, her phone calendar open on the floor between them. Her new summer job was at her dad’s encouragement, and Alex knows it’s good experience for her, for sure, but it’s not making their lives easy with organizing gigs and Alex can see her starting to sweat under the pressure.
“How are we supposed to balance all this stuff?” Luke sighs. “I forgot how many responsibilities we had when we were alive.”
“You didn’t even do any of them, man, you dropped out of school to live in a garage,” Reggie points out, and yelps when Luke kicks him gently in the side.
“Yeah, like you were doing much better! You had like, one summer job scooping gelato! That’s not a responsibility.”
The two of them start squabbling, gradually increasing in volume, and Julie looks back down at her lap, wincing a little at the noise. Her fists tighten in her shirt.
Look, Alex is, uh... not the calmest person ever. And he’s aware of that! He’s not sure if this self-awareness helps or makes things worse, admittedly, but he is aware of how anxious he gets. He’s also gotten good over the years at reading other people’s nervous signals. For example, how Reggie starts to shy back, zone out, go still and quiet. Or how Luke bounces on the balls of his feet, goes wide-eyed -- if it’s really bad, Luke will stammer like he did when they were kids. Or even the way Bobby used to grit his teeth, settle his face into a blank, unreadable mask, which of course was conspicuous to someone who knew what his face looked like without it.
And Alex is starting to be able to do it with Julie. It’s not always reliable, but he watches her chew her lip, eyes darting from Luke to Reggie and then to him. When she meets his eyes, he can basically see her worry as clear as if it was his own.
“Guys,” he says, interrupting Luke and Reggie, “can we have a minute?”
“Me and Julie,” Alex says, and before they get a chance, adds, “not girl stuff. I just need to ask her about something.”
He knew making it about him would scare them off. Luke blinks, wide eyed, goes oh shit, sure, okay and Reggie says, “We’ll give you ten?” before he grabs Luke’s hand to poof them out.
It’s blessedly quiet in the room for a moment. Julie looks at Alex, says quietly, “Sorry, Alex. That was all just getting sorta...”
“Too much?” Alex offers.
She gives him a half-hearted smile. “Yeah. Exactly.” She clears her throat and shakes herself. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
Momentarily, Alex falters, high-pitched fumbling. He wishes he was better at this (like Willie is, his brain unhelpfully provides). “I could just tell it was getting a lot for you,” he says, “and if I told them that was why, they would’ve been all over you. And I thought maybe that wouldn’t help.”
Julie lets out a breath and her shoulders relax. “Oh my god, Alex, I love you,” she sighs, sitting back and rubbing her face. “It’s just this new job, and everything – I know Luke wants us to be focused on the band, and I do too! But it’s so much all at once. And I get that I shouldn’t even be upset, because at least I get to have a normal summer job, and not be. Y’know.”
“Dead,” Alex finishes for her, cheerfully.
She snorts. “Yeah.”
He loves her so much. Her hair is all over the place, and she does look more tired than she usually would, but she’s still his Julie, the best thing to happen to him since he became a ghost.
“I’m sorry it’s all overwhelming right now,” he says, shuffling closer to sit beside her. “I’ll tell Luke to back off. He’ll get it, I promise.”
“Thanks, Alex,” Julie says, looking up at him with her pretty doe eyes before resting her head on his shoulder. He wraps an arm around her and rests his cheek in her hair. “I’ll tell him myself,” she adds, after a moment. “I just wasn’t able to really think properly, before.”
“I get that,” he says, because he does. It used to infuriate him when Bobby would cut in and fight Alex’s fights for him, just because Alex got tongue-tied and frozen in the moment. In hindsight, he gets why Bobby did it, since Alex’s hesitations would have cost him in physical injuries, but he still wouldn’t want to make Julie feel that way. “But if stuff’s frying your nerves like that, it’s okay to tell the boys to take a break. Okay? They’ve been putting up with my neurotics for long enough.”
“They don’t put up with you, they love you,” Julie corrects him, “and so do I.” She sounds more like herself than she has all afternoon, and it makes Alex smile, an irresistible thing that pulls at the corners of his mouth like she’s leaned over to do it herself.
“To-may-toes, to-mah-toes,” Alex says, and smiles bigger when she laughs. Softer, he turns his head to press his nose in her hair and adds, “Is there anything I can do?”
She hums thoughtfully and snuggles down against him. Her hand forms a small fist in his hoodie, and they sit there for a moment, peaceful, breathing together.
Alex doesn’t know how to tell Julie how he feels about her. Several times a day he’s seized by the urge to tell her that he’s in love with her… but obviously that isn’t what it is. Because he’s extremely, definitively gay, and he knows he experiences no attraction to Julie at all. She just means so much to him that when he opens his mouth to speak, nothing comes to him that would properly explain what he’s trying to tell her. So he sits quietly and holds her close instead.
Suddenly, she sits up straight, eyes bright. “Okay. I know what you can do to help.”
When Luke and Reggie poof back in, Alex and Julie offer them matching smiles. Julie has colour-coded her calendar to show which dates will work for gigs, and she’s had time to take a few deep breaths. She’s still holding Alex’s hand, and –
“Oh,” says Reggie, in a high-pitched voice, “you look so cute.”
“Thanks,” says Julie sweetly, putting her arms out in a little ‘ta-da’ motion, absolutely drowning in Alex’s pink hoodie.
Luke just stares at her. His face is approximately the colour of the hoodie. “Yeah. It. Uh. Yes.”
Julie bites her lip, but it’s different this time. She’s definitely not nervous now like she was before. Alex shoots a grin at Reggie, who rolls his eyes, equally fond. They’ll figure it out eventually.
“Anyway,” Julie says, pulling her knees up inside Alex’s hoodie and wrapping her arms around them. She looks like a little marshmallow. Alex can’t even tell her off for stretching it, because she hardly is, and because he loves her too much. “Should we get back to scheduling?”
I meant to put this on my last reblog of it but I forgot… Anyway, this has such a Calvin and Hobbes feel to it and it warms my heart because of that association.
kennyortegablog: Thank you @themadisonreyes and Cookie Monster for the virtual hug. You two brought sunshine to my day ☀️ Sending you both a virtual hug and lots of love in return. ❌⭕️‼️
