Animals are plotting your demise

“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?”

Reggie looks confused; Luke looks surprised. “Who’s we?” Reggie asks, baffled.

“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.