Ooh would you maybe do "childhood best friends" for Willie/Luke?
One alive!AU for my darling muffin with the most chaos ship imaginable ;D Not sure if it’s what you wanted but I hope you like it anyway (also, I just realised I forgot Bobby but ah well)! <3 <3 <3
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“Dude, will you calm down!”
Alex flicks his hair out of his face, clearly annoyed, and Luke realises only now that his legs are practically vibrating on the bench. He forces them to bounce at a slightly slower pace but he just can’t help it. He’s excited!
Ever since Willie, his childhood best friend, called him out of the blue last week and told him he’d move to L.A., he’s been ping-ponging around like a helium balloon, to Reggie’s amusement and Alex’s eternal suffering. But he’s sure that once they meet him, they’ll get it.
He hasn’t seen Willie since they were like seven but they always had the best fun and drove their parents mental. Luke secretly suspects his parents were pretty glad, actually, when his Dad getting that job in LA meant Luke would be separated from Willie. Luke absolutely hated it! He was miserable for months until he found Alex and Reggie. And he loves them, truly, they’re his band and family but still, Willie is just ... Willie! They’ll get it.
But the thing is, Alex isn’t just annoyed with Luke, and Reggie isn’t just rambling about pizza and horses because he loves them so (though he does). They’re nervous! Alex keeps switching from burying his hands in his hoodie pouch to burying them in the pockets of his pants and Reggie does the nervous fiddling thing with his hands and Luke would never say it but he’s kinda flattered that they see Willie not as a potential new friend but as a threat to their dynamic, as if he would steal Luke away from them. He guesses he has been talking about Willie a lot these last five days.
Luke finally stills his legs and grins at them. “I think you two should relax. This is gonna be awesome, boys!”
Alex flicks his hair out of his face for maybe the hundreth time since they arrived at the beach, sighing in frustration when the wind just blows it back again. “You haven’t seen the guy in a decade. What if he is really weird. Or ... really boring now?”
Luke snorts. “Weird? Yes, probably, like we’re all weird. Boring? Willie? Never!”
Reggie chews on his cuticles until Alex swats his hand away. “We just don’t want to see you get hurt. You know, if he can’t live up to all the hype.”
Luke rolls his eyes and pushes off the bench. He’s just about to turn around to tell his boys again just how awesome Willie is, when he suddenly finds himself flat on the asphalt, spitting out gravel.
“Dude! I’m so sorry!”
Luke mumbles something unintelligent while a strong arms helps him to his feet again, Alex and Reggie already rushing in.
“It’s okay, man, nothing bro--”
He finally looks at the guy who’d caused him to get unwillingly familiar with the pavement and laughs.
“Willie?!”
It really is. All grown up into a gangly teenager and also seriously hot? Luke is thrown again (though only figuratively this time) for a moment, trying to digest that, but Willie’s giggle is just like he remembers it, crinkles around his eyes and joy just radiating off him. Willie leans his board against the now unoccupied bench and unclips his helmet, shaking free surprisingly long hair that somehow really suits him. Luke is faintly aware of Alex gaping next to him and Reggie’s eyebrows rising but then he’s crushed in a tight hug, Willie exclaiming “Hotdog!” and Luke laughs at the old nickname and returns the hug. It’s weird, both of their bodies so altered, but it also feels right.
After a long moment, they break apart with more laughing and back slapping and Luke finally gets around to introducing Reggie and Alex. Reggie is all smiles and eagerness, while Alex is frowning.
“You scraped your elbow,” he says and agressively unzips his fanny pack.
Luke rolls his eyes but sits down on the bench, holding out his arm for Alex’s first aid services while he launches into an explanation on the nickname for Reggie’s benefit, with Willie gleefully providing all the details he would have liked to gloss over. It’s perfect.
It’s been ten years and there’s so much to catch each other up on but somehow it feels like they’ve never been separated, easily falling back into a friendship that’s been lying dormant for a decade, apparently just waiting for them to pick it up right where they left it. Willie also instantly clicks with Reggie, as Luke knew he would, and though Alex seems a bit reserved, Luke is sure he’ll come around. It’s probably just because Willie ran Luke over, which Luke actually finds kinda hilarious. Or because Willie is hot because Alex gets weird around hot guys.
And to be honest, the whole ‘my childhood best friend is smoking hot’ thing catches him unaware at weird moments, too, all throughout the afternoon of hanging out at the beach. Luke tells himself that it’s just because it’s so unexpected (although if he thinks about it, Willie was pretty cute as a kid but that was not something Luke spent much time noticing back then) and that once he’s used to having Willie around again, it’ll just be like with Reggie and Alex, who are objectively pretty people, too.
hello! i'm a huge fan of the cwu verse; your writing is amazing and i wish i could write as beautifully as you do ✨ i was wondering if wedge and luke were previously a couple in the cwu verse or not? or does it just depend on how different people interpret it?
Hi! Thank you so much– I’m so glad you’re into this! And yes, they were previously a couple.
Luke skirted around committing for a while, in part because he had so much grief he was still processing following the death of Anakin and everything that had happened, but Wedge was always there for Luke when he needed him/when Luke came crawling back from some exhausting quest he’d set for himself, and when Wedge ended up needing to take care of Rey, potentially as a single father who had not planned for children, Luke stepped up and helped Wedge both with caring for her and also in terms of the emotional support that Wedge really needed following the death of his brother and sister-in-law and the shock of being trusted to care for their grieving child.
At that point Luke became a consistent figure in Wedge’s and Rey’s life and lived with them for the next two years, until Rey’s disappearance. So that was their most solid couple time– I’ll probably do a whole side story about the Luke/Wedge history when CWU is done. :3 Thanks for asking!
