#cpgwrites

Taglist: 

@pandoradeloeste

@genericgirl420

@sizzlingjudgebanditpaper

@ziggy-st4dust

@flibbertigibbety-jibber-jabber

@friendlyfishboy

@bakugouuuwu

@alexacat57

@jaytheunique

@mercale

@teammightypen

He doesn’t really mean to be looking for anything, even if he sounded really suspicious and like he was a total lying liar face when he told Julie and the guys he was just “going for a stroll.” But honestly, it’s a coincidence more than anything that his stroll takes him to the bike rental place on the beachfront that used to be his house. And it’s a coincidence that the pimpled teen working the counter has that day’s mail laid out in front of him for all the world to see. And it’s a coincidence that in said pile of mail is a letter from Evergreen Cemetery addressed to “Archibald Peters or Current Resident.”

He doesn’t actually read the letter (his invisibility these days is spotty at best, and he doesn’t think committing felony mail theft would be much smarter of an idea than making an envelope float in mid-air anyway). He doesn’t know that the letter has anything more to say than “Hey you, know any dead people? Send ‘em our way!”

He doesn’t know it has anything to do with him.

But he goes home anyway— because home is Julie’s house, now— and slides Carlos’s laptop out of its super functional hiding place under his pillow, and looks up the address for Evergreen Cemetery.

And then he poofs into the kitchen and says, “Ray? Will you drive me somewhere?”

The car ride is quiet, mostly because Ray said, “You wanna tell me where we’re going?” when they got in the car, and Reggie said, “Mmhmm!” all high-pitched and obvious, and then never elaborated, and so trying to make other conversation seems rude. He just gives directions, and hums along to the radio, and Ray drives them to the cemetery where Reggie’s pre-ghost body may or may not be buried.

That’s the weirdest part of all of this. Not the mail theft or the bike shop or the idea that Reggie’s parents might have put him somewhere other than the Peters Family plot in Orange County where his grandparents and Great Aunt Barb are buried, but the fact that there is a body, very much dead and scientifically identifiable as his, lying under six feet of dirt somewhere.

He has a body. Now, currently, in most ways even an alive one. And yeah, he’s worked pretty damn hard to get this one, but it still feels really weird that there’s just another one… out there.

“Reggie?” Ray asks as he slows the car along the gravel driveway of the cemetery. “What…?”

He doesn’t finish his question, which is probably a good thing because Reggie’s not sure he has an answer. “Could you…?” he asks instead, staring down at his hands in his lap so he won’t have to look Ray in the eye. “Um. Would you maybe mind going in there and asking if… or, uh, where…” 

He trails off, unable to finish his own question either.

Ray makes a soft sound, somewhere between a hum and a sigh, and nods once before giving Reggie a comforting pat on the knee and getting out of the car.

He’s in there a long time. Long enough for Reggie to get all squirmy and start to feel bad for dragging him into this.

He can only imagine the conversation going on in there: Hi, can you please point me to the grave of a seventeen-year-old who died twenty-five years ago? No, no, I’m not related to him, nor do I have any legitimate connection to him that I can offer you as an explanation for why I’m asking. Please do not ask any follow-up questions.

Jeez. What was Reggie even thinking bringing Ray all the way out here, just on a hunch? As soon as he gets back to the car, Reggie should just tell him to take them back home.

But it’s only a few minutes later that the office door opens and Ray emerges, a piece of paper in one hand. He shakes hands with an older white guy— the manager, Reggie guesses, or whatever the term is for people in charge of the little office at a cemetery— and then heads back over to Reggie.

He gets back in the car, shuts the door, and sits heavily in the driver’s seat without buckling his seat belt or shifting the car out of park. Reggie opens his mouth to say something, closes it again. Shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

Ray hands him the piece of paper. “You tell me what you wanna do, mijo.”

It’s a list— of names and plots, next to a handy-dandy little map of the cemetery. Three are highlighted— Reginald Peters. Alexander Mercer. Lucas Patterson.

Reggie shivers, the edges of the paper crinkling in his tight grip. “These are… Jeez. We’re all here?”

“Seems so.” Ray puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It was sort of a long shot, but I figured I’d ask while I was in there.”

Reggie stares at his name— at his friends’ names— just three lines on a list of ghosts.

He points at the plot number next to his name. “Guess we’re going here then?”

It’s not a far walk. Reggie leads the way, squinting at the map, while Ray follows politely behind. Ray doesn’t berate him or even comment when they get lost, and Reggie only gets them lost three and a half times. Eventually, they find it: a modest tombstone in a far corner of the graveyard, neatly kept with a still-fresh bouquet of lilies propped up against it.

The tombstone reads:

Reginald Alastair Peters

August 18, 1977– July 22, 1995

Beloved Son

Loving Brother

Cherished Bandmate

“Oh,” Reggie whispers, reaching out a tentative hand to touch the last line of lettering. He can’t imagine his parents choosing to spend extra money on that particular engraving, not without some serious coercion, but the only other option is…

“Someone’s been here recently,” Ray says, voice reverent and yet too loud, all of a sudden, in the otherwise silence. He reaches around Reggie to pick up the flowers and place them gently atop the headstone. “So your parents might still live nearby.”

“Maybe,” Reggie whispers, though he highly doubts his parents had anything to do with the bouquet. With effort, he tears his gaze away from his grave and down to the map in his hands. “Um. Can we–?”

He cuts off, swallowing against the lump in his throat, and instead points wordlessly at the plot numbers for his two best friends.

“Of course.” Ray puts a hand on his shoulder– warm, solid, reassuring– and takes the map with the other. “May I?”

Reggie lets it go with relief and wipes his sweaty hands on his pants. The walk between graves will give him a good chance to clear his head, and he’s way too distracted to follow a map without getting them lost way more than three and a half times.

But Ray only takes a few steps before he stops and frowns down at the map. He looks up again, turns a slow circle, and walks just a few feet before stopping again, the map falling to his side. “Oh. Well.”

Reggie goes to see what he’s looking at, and his breath catches in his throat.

There’s a good bit of space between them, but the next tombstone over from Reggie’s belongs to Alex. He continues down the line, and sure enough, the next one down from that is Luke’s.

They’re all distinctly different– Luke’s is the biggest of the three, Alex’s has a Bible quote snaked along the side– but they’re all adorned with fresh flowers, and they all have the same phrase tacked onto the end of their epitaphs:

Cherished Bandmate.

Cherished Bandmate.

Cherished Bandmate.

A cold feeling seeps through Reggie’s bones, not unlike the time he and Luke were playing hide and seek and he won by curling up inside the refrigerator.

“I think I wanna go home now,” Reggie says slowly, feeling shivery and stuck and ghostly in the worst way as he stands at the point of the triangle of his and his best friends’ graves.

“Of course,” Ray says, his voice muffled like he’s speaking through water or from very far away. “I’ll go get the car.”

But Reggie’s already poofed out.

***

He doesn’t intend to bring it up again. Because he’s not entirely sure Luke and Alex would want to know. And the last thing he wants to do is assume his friends are at the same place on the same journey regarding their life, death, and rebirth as he is.

He doesn’t want to hurt their feelings if he’s wrong about his theory. He doesn’t want to make them sad if he’s right.

But apparently Reggie’s not as good at concealing his own feelings as he’d like to think– even though Ray doesn’t say anything, and Julie at least seems convinced by Reggie’s “we were running errands” story, less than two days has gone by when she informs him that the jig is, in fact, up.

He’s sitting cross-legged on the couch in the studio, eating a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream very slowly because Ray made him promise he wouldn’t drip any on the sofa cushions.

Alex is out skateboarding with Willie. Luke is out “chaperoning” (read: mooching off of) Carlos and his friends’ laser tag party. Julie was ostensibly doing homework, which is why Reggie had taken his ice cream out to the garage, but now the doors open and Julie bounds in to join him, plopping next to him on the couch with a warm (if slightly mischievous) smile.

“Hey there, you,” she says expressively, poking him in the arm.

Reggie blinks, slowly drawing the spoon out of his mouth. “Hi, Julie.”

“We both know I’m not very good at beating around the bush,” she says, hands in her lap, “so I’m just gonna cut to the chase. The boys tell me you’re sad, and while at first I tried to convince them that maybe just not everyone thinks the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie is as funny as they do and that’s why you were a little quiet during movie night, the more I thought about it the more I agreed that you haven’t been your usual amazing chipper self… lately… So, uh. You know. You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

“I know,” Reggie says, nodding, because he does know, and clutches his bowl of ice cream to his chest for some comfort. “I, um… I’m not… sad, I just… Okay, so you know how your dad and I ran some errands the other day and I came back early because I didn’t wanna have to listen to his sad Dad Rock the whole drive home and he didn’t have a single good CD in the car?”

Julie nods.

“Well, I actually sorta made all that up. We went to see where the guys and I are buried.”

Julie’s face falls, her eyes going wide. “Oh. Wow.”

“And I didn’t say anything,” Reggie continues, “because I didn’t really know how I felt about it yet. And I didn’t know how Luke and Alex would feel. I didn’t know if they’d wanna know.”

“Of course we would, bro.”

Reggie felt the spark alighting in his chest a split second before Luke spoke, so the sudden arrival of his friends doesn’t startle him. He ducks his chin, staring into his ice cream so he doesn’t have to see if they’re mad at him.

“Reggie…” Julie puts a hand on his knee. “You didn’t do anything wrong– this is a really complicated situation to navigate. It’s just… we didn’t even know you were looking.”

“I wasn’t,” Reggie promises, but he doesn’t know how to explain himself beyond that. He sets his bowl down on the coffee table and slowly raises his eyes to meet his friends’ gazes. “We’re all together. The three of us, our– we’re not buried with our families.”

Luke’s and Alex’s faces go through several expressions before settling on twin looks of determination. “Good,” Luke says. “That’s how it should be.”

“Will you go back with us?” Alex asks. “Take a look all together?”

In the moment that Reggie hesitates, Julie takes his hand in hers and gives it a warm, reassuring squeeze.

Reggie takes a deep breath, feeling it whistle through live, healthy lungs, and reaches out his other hand. Luke takes it and offers his hand to Alex, who joins hands with Luke and Julie to complete the circle. When the ghosts who aren’t quite ghosts anymore poof out, they carry Julie with them, until all four members of Julie and the Phantoms stand solemn but supported in front of Reggie’s grave.

They take it in. The epitaph. The flowers, a bit crumpled from yesterday’s rain but nowhere near wilting. The edge of Alex’s headstone just visible in their peripheral vision, and Luke’s just beyond it.

“We are all together,” Alex says in awe. 

Luke shakes his head. “Why would our parents–?”

A voice behind them says, “I insisted.”

They spin around. Reggie didn’t hear anyone approaching, and yet standing just a few feet back, dark sunglasses obscuring his expression, is Trevor Wilson, three bunches of fresh wildflowers tucked in the crook of his arm.

He nods toward the grave behind them. “They were gonna take you halfway across the state, and the Mercers wanted Alex cremated, and I wasn’t even invited to the funerals but I pitched a fit. Told them I’d pay for everything– the plots, the services, the upkeep– if only they’d keep you all… intact. And together.”

Reggie’s heart does an Olympics-worthy gymnastics routine inside his chest. “You added the bandmate line?” he guesses.

Trevor shrugs a little sheepishly. “I snuck it in on the paperwork. Don’t think Luke’s dad ever forgave me.”

“Yeah, well, my dad can–” Luke starts to say, and then trails off, shoving his hands in his pockets so it’s a little less obvious that they’re curled into fists. His voice is strained but sincere when he says, “Thanks, Bobby. For doing all that.”

“It’s the least I could do.”

With some hesitation, Trevor steps forward and past them, to lay one bouquet at the foot of Reggie’s headstone.

It feels right, for them all to be there together, paying homage to the people they once were.

Reggie’s glad he found this place, even if it was sort of an accident.

--

@wr0temyway0ut

@phantomwriter95

@littlepetbee

@secondhand-sunlight

@ddaxnggirl

@trustworthytoast

@interestinglittlerelationship

@fangirl17-07

@manualamadrugada

@easybugboy

The gist being: there are people with superpowers. And there are people like Adam. Normal. Boring. Safe, until they’re not anymore.

He’s not worried about it. Not consciously, anyway. He trusts, for reasons he can’t even explain, that Damien really is gone for good, and that even if he weren’t, Caleb’s beating has officially moved him from the “superpower” category to the “boring” one, leaving him no more threatening than any other asshole white guy.

(He does not let himself think about the fact that Damien was as good as powerless when he hit Chloe with a lamp, or how six months later she’s still dealing with the effects of the resulting concussion he gave her. Adam will simply keep a can of pepper spray in his backpack and continue to convince himself that he will never let his guard down around Damien like Chloe did, should their paths ever cross again).

He has enough other things, better things, to focus on– his Yale application, and then finals, and then preparing to live away from home for the first time ever, and on top of all that, his boyfriend– that for six months, he manages to think about the safehouse incident as little as humanly possible (nightmares notwithstanding). And not once does it occur to him to make the connection between almost being kidnapped by a whackjob mind manipulator and something his mom said to him almost a year ago when he first got her to sit down and talk about atypicals with him: Sometimes abilities start to manifest after instances of trauma.

After all, making said connection would require Adam to admit (even just to himself) that he experienced a trauma, which he has no intention of doing because that would mean he’s even more fucked up now that he already was.

Besides. There are two kinds of people in the world. People like Caleb. And people like Adam. An atypical ability “starting to manifest” is just something that was never going to happen to him.

Until today.

He’s at Caleb’s house, which is always a little bit complicated because Caleb’s parents (not to mention his nosy little sister) are way more likely to be home and “interested in what you boys are up to” than Adam’s. They try not to complain about it, because it’s sort of a miracle that the Michaelses’ only reaction to Caleb’s endangerment at the safehouse was “no more therapy” and not “no more boyfriend,” and the last thing Adam wants to do is give them any reason to change their minds on that, but it is annoying. They’ve learned to be quiet.

Caleb’s sitting up against the headboard of his bed, facing the “just ajar enough to be plausibly called open” door, while Adam straddles his lap, poised purposefully on his knees to be able to roll off and into the desk chair placed strategically next to the bed at the slightest sign of someone approaching.

Like I said. They’ve got a system.

Adam usually enjoys kissing Caleb more than he enjoys just about anything, but he’s not feeling it today. Not even in a “his depression is bad so every sensation is muted and foggy, much less his libido” kind of way, but just like… he’s preoccupied by something.

Caleb must notice, because he breaks the kiss and takes Adam’s face in both his hands so he can look him in the eye. “Hey. You all right?”

Adam opens his mouth to lie, but if he tells Caleb he’s fine then they’ll go back to making out, and he’s not sure he actually wants to do that. So instead, he says, “What am I feeling right now?”

Caleb gets the little crease between his eyebrows that Adam loves and hates in equal measure that means he’s really focusing in on his empath ability. Adam knows him well enough by now to be able to track the turning gears behind his eyes– he can see the moment when Caleb separates his own feelings in his chest from Adam’s and starts to analyze them.

But then his frown deepens, and he says, “I… don’t… know.” His eyes meet Adam’s. “Purple. And like… stretchy. It’s not an Adam feeling I’ve ever felt before.”

Adam sits back in surprise, hands falling away from where they’d been looped around Caleb’s neck. “Wha– seriously? We’ve known each other over a year. I thought you’d have felt all the Adam feelings by now.”

“So did I,” Caleb says, frowning into the distance again. “It’s weird.” Adam’s stomach flips, just as Caleb adds, “Oh, shit, now you’re– sorry, I didn’t mean to make you, like. Feel bad. New feelings are probably super normal.”

Adam rolls his eyes, trying to brush away the guilt eating at him, and whatever he’d been feeling before– the purple, stretchy distraction– intensifies.

“So, uh… what is that feeling?” Caleb asks, rubbing absently at his chest, like Adam’s emotion is causing him some kind of physical discomfort, which does not help much on the “Adam not feeling like a burden” front.

“I don’t know,” he admits, climbing all the way off Caleb’s lap to sit cross-legged in front of him instead. His feet were starting to fall asleep, and his hands feel a little numb– he wrings them, trying to rub feeling back into his fingers.

“Is something on your mind?” Caleb asks, laying a comforting hand on Adam’s knee.

“No,” he starts to say, because there isn’t really except for the fact that he feels a little weird all of a sudden, cold like there’s a draft and a little unsteady, but somehow what comes out of his mouth is, “Damien.”

“What?” Caleb says, voice sharp and close in Adam’s ear in a way it wasn’t before, even though neither of them has moved. “You were thinking about Damien?”

“No!” Adam says, for real this time, and then winces, knowing Caleb can feel the untruth, and amends, “I mean, not– I guess, not consciously, just… I guess maybe I’m always thinking about him? In the back of my mind?”

The purple, stretchy feeling inside him– and damn Caleb’s stupid emotion color metaphors, but that is a good way to describe it– expands even further, pressing tight against his ribs like it’s trying to break out of him, and maybe Caleb can feel that too, because he takes Adam’s hands in both of his.

“I think, sometimes,” Adam continues, words flowing out of his mouth almost without his permission, “I just hate that he got away with it. Like, okay, he spent, what, four months? In a basement cell that Mark was trapped in for the better part of five years? Oh, so his only consequence was having to leave town and be normal like the rest of us? Like that’s so fucking bad? Chloe still gets headaches and you’ve got all this guilt to deal with and Damien just has to be normal?”

The more he talks, the more the purple feeling fills him up, and red hot anger right alongside it, and a distant tiny part of himself knows that he should calm down before he says or does something he’ll regret, and that he’s probably freaking Caleb the fuck out right now, but his vision is starting to white out around the edges, and the purple and red warring for dominance in his stomach are making him feel sick, and for a moment or two, the only thing Adam can focus on is the warm, rough sensation of Caleb’s hands in his his.

Adam blinks, and the world turns upside down.

Or, no, wait– not upside down. Backwards. He’s facing the door now– sitting where Caleb was just a second ago. His anger has dissipated, but the purple stretchy feeling is still there, if settled, somehow, like it’s filled him up enough that he can mostly ignore it.

But something’s still wrong.

Maybe it’s that he feels bigger now. Taller. He brings his hands in front of his face and they’re hands he’s never seen before– big, with thick fingers and skin a lighter shade of brown.

Maybe it’s that Caleb’s gone– nowhere to be seen, the room totally empty, the spot on the bed in front of him already growing cold– or that Adam is too.

Because he’s not… quite… Adam anymore. He’s not Caleb, either.

The thing that’s wrong is that he’s someone new.

He scrambles off the bed, stumbling a little on new big feet, and rushes over to the full-length mirror hanging on the back of Caleb’s bedroom door. He touches his face, and those big hands cup Caleb’s stubbled cheeks. He touches his head, and thick fingers tangle in Adam’s messy curls. He’s wearing Caleb’s jeans, tight around the waist, and Adam’s Black Keys t-shirt, hanging just above his belly button like it’s been cropped. He’s gotta be at least six and a half feet tall.

“Holy shit,” he breathes in two voices, and the purple thing inside him snaps.

Adam hits the floor with a shout, curling protectively around himself out of instinct. Next to him, there’s a twin cry and thud as Caleb is thrown to the ground with equal force. Adma pats himself down, feeling his skinny arms and pianist fingers, the shirt that fits and his hair on his own head.

“Holy shit,” he says again, voice high with panic but purely his.

“What the hell!” Caleb agrees, scrambling back away from him. Adam backs up against the opposite wall, giving Caleb as much space as he can without leaving the room– Caleb doesn’t need Adam’s alarm in his chest on top of his own.

Plus maybe Adam feels like something you shouldn’t get too close to at the moment.

“What was that?” Caleb gasps, staring at him with big, wide eyes.

Adam shakes his head. “I don’t know?”

“But that was– that was you, wasn’t it?” Caleb pats his chest, like he’s still trying to convince himself he’s real and solid– Adam knows the feeling. “How did you do that?”

“I don’t know!”

Footsteps pound up the stairs, and Mrs. Michaels calls, “Caleb? Adam?” She raps perfunctorily twice on the half-open door before sticking her head in and sizing them up: Adam cowered against one wall, Caleb still on the floor and huddled up against the other, both of them looking disheveled and wild, like they’ve been up to who knows what. “I heard a thud, are you boys all right?”

Caleb looks from Adam to his mom, and hurriedly gets to his feet. “Yeah! Yeah, Mom, sorry, we’re– we’re fine.” He takes a calming breath, like he’s gotta prove it, and gives Adam a charged look. “Right, Adam? We’re okay?”

But Adma can’t imagine lying right now, not even just to get the adult out of the room so that he and Caleb can debrief in private. He feels wrong still, and monstrous, and so far from normal it hurts.

“I don’t know,” he whispers, and can’t help the first dark thought that springs to his mind:

Is this how Damien felt?

--

TBS tag list (lmk if you want to be added!)

@pandoradeloeste

@genericgirl420

@sizzlingjudgebanditpaper

@ziggy-st4dust

@flibbertigibbety-jibber-jabber

@friendlyfishboy

@bakugouuuwu

@alexacat57

@jaytheunique

He doesn’t know how long it’s been when his hair starts to bother him more than anything else.

“Mark?” Joanie calls, rapping her knuckles against the half-open door of her closet turned guest room. Mark was supposed to be getting ready– because Joan refuses to leave the house if he’s still in bed or pajamas, but then she never lets him hear the end of it if she has to cancel on patients, so he at least has to make himself get dressed each morning, even if he falls back into a depressed stupor on the couch the second she walks out the door– but he got stuck at the mirror. He’s wearing jeans, slung low and loose on his hips because Joanie keeps insisting he’ll “grow into them” like he’s five, a t-shirt in his hands. He hasn’t managed to work up the energy to actually pull it over his head yet, but it’s not his scrawny, scarred chest that has him stuck in his own head.

It’s the hair, clean but unruly, reaching almost all the way to his shoulders.

He hates it.

“Mark!” Joan says again, sharper this time, and he startles back into action, mutters, “Hey, sorry, what” as he finally puts his shirt on, his reflection disappearing behind the fabric for a moment.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.” He tugs his jeans up a little. Fixes his shirt over top. Runs a hand through his hair and then shakes it out like he’s touched something slimy.

He still can’t quite tear his gaze away from the mirror, not even to give his sister a more convincing proof of life.

“Okay, well…” Joan hovers in the doorway. “I’ve got a nine o’clock, so I’m gonna get going…”

“Okay.” Mark gathers his hair up into one hand, turning one way and then the other to try and see how it would look short again. “Have fun.”

Joan still doesn’t move. After a beat, she says, “Is Sam coming over?”

Mark sighs and pats his hair flat again, giving up on trying to make it how it used to be through sheer force of will. “No, she’s got plans with Chloe. And frankly, I think she needs a break from my bullshit.”

“Do you want me to cut that for you?”

He was expecting a big sister/therapist response along the lines of now, Mark, if you say all those negative things about yourself, you’ll just end up believing them, so the question startles him enough that he finally looks at her. “What?”

“Your… hair,” Joanie says, gesturing a little awkwardly. “You keep fussing with it. Is it bothering you?”

Mark grabs a belt from his bed and starts looping it through his jeans– anything to not have to look his sister in the eye. “It’s fine, I just gotta get to the barber.”

They both know perfectly well why he hasn’t yet. The idea of sitting in a chair with restricted access to his hands while a strange man brings sharp objects close to his neck just about makes him wanna fall back into a coma.

But he hates looking like someone who lost autonomy over his own life for the better part of five years. He wants to feel like himself again, and the first step in doing that is to look like himself again.

Joan looks at her watch, shifts her weight from foot to foot. “I really have to get going… but when I get home, we’ll talk about this some more, okay? Maybe we can figure something out.”

***

Joan calls on her way home from work (because she’s an insane person who still has a landline) to say “Meet me on the porch. If you’re wearing something nice, change your clothes.”

Mark is not wearing something nice. He changed back into sweatpants before noon, and he’s pretty sure this t-shirt once belonged to Joanie’s college boyfriend Derek. And part of him wants to see the annoyed look on Joan’s face when she gets home and he has not, in fact, met her on the porch, but honestly he’s too curious about what tricks she has up her sleeve to want to waste time pissing her off.

So he’s leaning over the porch railing when Joan’s car pulls into the driveway. She gets out of the car and calls, “Good! You listened!” and Mark becomes painfully aware of the differences between the two of them– Joan in her neat blouse and pencil skirt, heels in hand as she runs barefoot up the drive, versus Mark in ill-fitting hand-me-downs and Crocs.

“Wait here,” Joan commands, rushing past him into the house. “I’ll be right back. Did you have a good day?”

Mark rolls his eyes, not even dignifying that question with a response.

A few minutes later, she emerges, having changed into shorts and a t-shirt, carrying a folding chair under one arm, her other hand clutched around a handheld mirror and a pair of kitchen scissors.

Mark blinks, the pieces falling into place. “Wait, you were serious? You’re gonna cut my hair?”

“Why not, right?” Joan plops the chair down in the middle of the porch. “Either I do a great job and it gives you the confidence to leave the house more, or I don’t and Sam dumps you, but at least the length won’t bother you so much anymore.”

Mark glares at her, but there’s no heat to it. “It has… been bothering me,” he reluctantly admits.

Joan snips her scissors in the air. “Sit, then.”

He sits. Joan plays the Roman Holiday soundtrack on her phone, for some ambiance. Mark closes his eyes, and then, when that paired with Joan’s fingers brushing up against his neck brings back bad memories, stares into the mirror Joan brought so he can see each clump of hair fall away.

He watches as the broken boy who was imprisoned, and then trapped, and then kidnapped disappears, leaving in its place… Mark.

The Mark Sam met in 1810. The Mark Joan spent years working to save. The Mark he wants to be.

“Thank you,” he whispers, “for this.”

Joan combs through his newly shorn hair with her fingers. “You can ask next time, you know. You can ask me for anything.”

Mark’s still not sure about that just yet, but he is sure of one thing: Joanie has a firm spot on the Good Things list today.

--

Taglist (lmk if you'd like to be added or removed):

@pandoradeloeste

@genericgirl420

@sizzlingjudgebanditpaper

@ziggy-st4dust

@flibbertigibbety-jibber-jabber

@friendlyfishboy

@bakugouuuwu

@alexacat57

@jaytheunique

Luke glances at his watch for the sixth time in half as many minutes, tapping his foot impatiently against the root of the tree he’s been leaned up against for the last half hour. He told himself when he left the house today that he was gonna be way too early, and that he was therefore going to be bored, because that’s what happens every single day he goes to meet Julie when she gets out of her last class, but sue him, the other option was being bored and antsy at home, and at least here there are pretty trees to look at and he knows he won’t be late.

Adulthood, he’s learned in the year and a half or so since he stopped being part of a full-time ghost band and started being a somewhat functioning human member of society, is like eighty-five percent waiting and fifteen percent being bored as shit.

Whatever’s left after that can be awesome as hell, though.

Across the street from his tree, the doors of the big brick building where Julie has French class swing open, and a crowd of students and/or teachers– indistinguishable because college students’ ages range from 15 to 45, apparently– bustles out onto the front steps. Luke pushes off the tree, leaning forward on his toes to get a better look, and grins when he picks out Julie, coming down the stairs with her books clutched to her chest cause she doesn’t like carrying a backpack around if she can help it, lost in deep conversation with a guy and a girl who look to be about her age.

Luke starts to raise a hand to her, opens his mouth even to call out, but something makes him hesitate.

They’ve been doing this for a few months now– the college thing. Reggie and Julie go to school, because they’re nerds like that, and Alex and Luke stay home and work shitty minimum wage jobs to Provide, and on the weekends they all go in on the band. Luke would be lying if he said he didn’t miss the old days, when Mr. Molina brought three square meals out to the studio and Luke could spend every waking minute either playing, writing, or being with Julie, but he’d at least like to think he’s grown a little, emotionally, since he was a seventeen-year-old ghost, and he knows he couldn’t have had that easy life forever even if he wanted to. And Julie wanted to go to college. And Luke wants Julie to be happy.

And this specific thing– Luke getting off work at the music store down the road just in time to meet Julie after class and they walk home together, occasionally stopping for a delicious treat along the way– has been really nice. It makes Luke feel like a person with a life. He can work a job without wanting to kill himself and walk his girlfriend home from school.

So why does today feel different?

Julie says something to her friends, and the guy laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, eliciting one of Julie’s soft smiles that she usually saves for Luke’s dumbass antics. It makes jealousy burn hot in Luke’s chest, and he drags his gaze away. 

The guy, like every guy Luke’s seen hanging around the college lately, is dressed neatly in khakis and a polo, his hair short around the ears and long in the front so it curls nicely over his eyes, with a leather messenger bag slung across his chest in lieu of a backpack. His loafers probably cost a million thousand dollars or something. 

He’s the exact kind of guy Luke and his friends used to make fun of in high school, the kind of guy Bobby probably would’ve turned into way sooner if he hadn’t spent his best years in a rock band, the kind of guy Trevor Wilson is now. A rich, preppy, cleaned-up asshole. The exact opposite of Luke, with his hair that’s only grown longer since coming back to life and his ratty tank tops and his jeans slung low on his hips, metal chains hanging from them like it’s still 1995. 

Guys like that probably wouldn’t know fun if it bit them in the ass, let alone good music.

But he made Julie smile.

“Hey!” She’s there all of a sudden, with him by his tree, a hand on his arm, her school friends nowhere to be seen. Luke didn’t notice her cross the street. “Thanks for waiting!”

“Sure.” He forces a smile, but he only has to force it for so long– Julie’s warm energy is enough to coax a real smile out of him on the worst of days, and the easy way she hands him her books and wraps her arms around him for a hug and kiss only help the matter.

He’s being stupid. Of course Julie doesn’t want preppy guys like that. She chose him, didn’t she?

***

And yet. 

***

The next morning before work, Luke finds himself loitering outside the thrift store down the street, fingering the twenty-dollar bill in his pocket that he allowed himself to take from the band’s emergency fund. This counts as an emergency probably, if he ends up going through with it. It definitely feels like one.

He couldn’t sleep last night, was up for hours staring at the ceiling as Julie slept peacefully in his arms, because every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was that asshole in the loafers laughing at something Julie said, the way she smiled at him afterwards. Luke’s not an idiot, or some kind of jealous prick, he knows that people who aren’t him are allowed to make his girlfriend happy, but somehow it’s different seeing her smile at a guy like that versus when she gives the same smile to Alex or Reggie. Luke just can’t help thinking if she ever wishes he were different. Neater, smarter… preppier.

He’s not going to college– that’s just never going to be on the table. But he can get some new clothes, if it’ll make Julie look better to her school friends when she’s standing next to him.

He sifts through the racks of clothes, looking for something he thinks he can wear without wanting to tear his skin off. Eventually, he comes up with what he deems an acceptable outfit– dark slacks, a white button-down, with a plaid sweater vest and a tie. The total comes out to$20 exactly, and even if his friends would make fun of him till the end of time if they ever saw him in it, at least he’ll look a little closer to on par with the guys Julie sees at school every day. 

Because this is, ultimately, always, for Julie. He’s gotta prove to those guys– and to himself– that he’s good enough for her.

After his shift, he changes out of his grungy music-store clothes and into the new ones. The shirt is tight around his arms in a way that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s too small but serves to remind him why he hates wearing long sleeves, and he has to pull up a YouTube video on his phone to figure out how to tie the tie, but eventually he stands in front of the mirror in the public restroom and tries for a smile.

His hair is still too long, and he hasn’t shaved in more days than he can count. He doesn’t look anything like those preppy college guys. But he doesn’t look quite like himself either. 

It’ll have to be good enough. 

His daily wait for Julie to get out of class is filled with extra anxiety today. Instead of chilling by his tree across the street, he walks all the way up to her building and leans against the outer wall, tapping one foot against the brick to keep from bouncing. He glances at his watch about every four seconds.

3:56… 3:57… 3:58…

The doors open, and he jumps, but it’s just a few random students whose classes got out early. A couple of the girls give him approving glances, which helps his ego a little bit, he’s not going to lie. 

Finally, the majority of students start to filter out, and he keeps his eyes peeled for Julie, eager for her to see the work he put in for her. When she does emerge, she’s by herself this time, and she gives Luke a polite, close-lipped smile, like you give strangers, and walks right past him.

His face falls. “Wait– Julie!”

She turns, eyes wide in surprise, and then recognition hits. “Oh my– God, Luke? I– you– I didn’t even–” She touches his sweater-vest, and for a terrible moment, Luke has the crippling sensation that she’s going to laugh at him. But all she says is, “You got new clothes!”

“I… yeah.” He shifts awkwardly on his feet, resisting the urge to tug at his tie, which is starting to feel even more too tight around his throat. His face feels hot. “I… Do you like it?”

“Did you go to the bank or something?” Julie says, which isn’t an answer.

Luke fiddles with the cuffs of his shirt, wanting desperately to tear his sleeves off. “I was just trying to… I thought, you know, you’re around all these smart rich guys every day, and the least I could do was put some effort in when I come to pick you up–”

“Stop,” Julie says, cutting him off, and lays a hand flat on his chest, drawing his gaze up to meet hers. “You got new clothes just to pick me up? What, because guys I go to school with dress like this?”

Luke, aware he’s blushing, nods.

“Baby, guys I go to school with also wear pajamas, or shorts when it’s 20 degrees outside. Only people in the business school dress like this every day, it’s otherwise only if they’ve got a presentation or something. And either way, you’re not one of those guys. You don’t have to stuff yourself into clothes you’re not comfortable in just to reach some ideal nobody even expects of you.”

“But don’t you want–”

“I want you,” she interrupts again, looking him right in the eye so he knows she’s serious. “Just the way you are. And comfortable, preferably. You look like you’re choking.”

“Just a little bit,” he admits, and undoes his tie with a wash of relief. “You really don’t care if I look like I’m in a 90s punk band all the time?”

“Of course not, because you are in a 90s punk band. Basically.” She stands up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “I want you just the way you are, Luke. You don’t ever have to change yourself for me.”

And he believes her.

--

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