Chapter Text
Depending on who you ask, it either happens very gradually or the very second the boys walk through the Molinas’ front door for the first time.
In the very least, what starts it all is a complete accident. The boys aren’t in the music program, and Julie has only ever heard vague rumors about the three of them as individuals and a threesome. Luke has a bad, cocky attitude, Reggie does and says really weird shit, and Alex is annoyingly worried about every single thing in his life. And, on top of all of that, they are disarmingly close to each other—where there is one, the other two will soon follow, if they aren’t already right there to begin with.
Julie, admittedly, could care less about them. She has college-level classes, she has the music program, and she has Flynn, so everyone and everything else is pretty irrelevant to her past the acquaintance level. Any whisper of, “I heard Patterson’s one detention away from being expelled,” and “Yo, I heard that Alex kid left in the middle of Chemistry because he started crying, what a freak,” goes in one ear and out the other. They’ve never spoken to each other, and Julie couldn’t tell someone what the three boys even look like if asked.
And then, one sunny afternoon, Flynn leaves school early to go to a doctor’s appointment and Julie is left to her own devices in the music room. The theatre kids are putting on an extravagant production of Wicked and almost everyone involved in the music program is now involved in the musical, so she has the entire room to herself while they’re off rehearsing. Julie decides to try and work through a difficult set of lyrics that have been bothering her, and is sounding out various things on the piano when she hears a loud crash, several swear words, and then:
“Dude, you have a human wrecking ball of a voice!”
Julie’s hands drop onto the piano in surprise, and an unpleasant, cacophonous noise follows that makes her flinch. She leans around the piano’s open lid, ready to tell off one of the careless freshmen always trying to poke around in here, and then stops.
There are three boys in a heap on the floor. One of them, blonde and wearing a lilac shirt, is half-sprawled across a chair and half-sprawled onto the ground; the second, this one with a black leather jacket and a scuffed pair of combat boots, is laying flat on his back like Charlie Brown; the third boy is struggling to his knees, hair a wild mess and what looks like a guitar case strapped to his back. Despite the spill they just took, he’s grinning like he just won the lottery.
Julie says nothing, just stares and stares and tries to comprehend what the hell is going on here. And then, because she can’t help herself, asks:
“Is that why you three just did an epic Crash Bandicoot into the chairs?”
The boy on his back says: “That was uncalled for.”
“But not entirely inaccurate,” the blonde one concedes, finally righting himself. He’s tall, and has an undercut, and Julie thinks she should be intimated by him but he reminds her a lot of a golden retriever. “We, uh, heard you playing. Out in the hallway.”
Julie raises her eyebrows. “I figured, since you all decided to… drop in.”
“We tried to be sneaky about it, but we’re not exactly subtle guys.” Guitar boy gets to his feet and practically teleports to where she’s still sitting. “But seriously—you have an incredible voice. And you shred on piano.”
Julie realizes, with a little surprise and a lot of personal betrayal, that she’s fighting back a smile.
“Thanks. I’m still working on the song right now, so it doesn’t really sound that great yet.”
Blondie is helping the last member of their posse to his feet, but he stops long enough to look over and tell her: “If that’s what your songs sound like while they’re in progress then the music industry is in for a rude awakening.”
Leather jacket sends Julie a wink. “Especially when we make it onto the scene, too.”
She shakes her head, completely and utterly baffled. “Who are you guys?”
“Sunset Curve,” the one next to her says, and something about the proud tilt to his head and his smug smile makes Julie feel like she’s experiencing deja vu, but she has no idea what prompted it.
Blonde boy sighs, exasperated. “She meant our names, idiot. I’m Alex.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m Luke.”
Luke holds out a fist towards her, so Julie bumps it, trying not to let them see her reaction to this clarifying piece of information. If the blonde guy is Alex, and this guy next to her is Luke, then the last one must be—
“And I’m Reggie.” He makes the I’ve-got-my-eyes-on-you gesture at her, but the severity of it is lost when some of his carefully styled hair flops onto his forehead. “Do not, under any circumstances, call me Reginald.”
“Reginald.” Luke teases.
“You’ve seen me naked—you’re allowed to call me that.”
“Wow,” Julie says, while Luke splutters. “I knew you guys were tight, but that is a new level of friendship that I wasn’t expecting.”
Luke holds both hands up defensively. “It was against my will! Reggie forgot to lock his bedroom door.”
“You forgot to knock!”
Alex hooks an arm around Reggie’s shoulders and tugs him over to the piano. Julie thinks that this is not the best idea, since Luke and Reggie might be ramping up for an actual fight, but she says nothing, just watches them come closer with wide eyes. While the other two continue to squabble, Alex smiles down at her, and she feels oddly soothed by the expression.
“You’ve heard of us, then?”
“Your names, not your band.” Julie feels the need to specify, even though it makes something in Luke deflate and makes her feel weirdly guilty. “Just in passing, though.”
Reggie’s face changes at this, goes from playful to guarded in the blink of an eye. “Oh, so you’ve heard about us from other people in school? Nice.”
Alex’s sunny expression shutters, too, and the rest of Luke’s bravado fades, leaving behind weariness. She doesn’t know them, but seeing this transformation makes her wish she did, makes a sick feeling grow in the pit of her stomach at the sight of their coldness and, underneath that, their fear.
She speaks with as much honesty in her voice as she can manage. “I don’t pay attention to rumors. I actually don’t know anything about you guys, other than your names. I didn’t even know you belonged to them until just now.”
They just look at her, closed off but also like they want to open back up, so she gives them a friendly smile.
“I’m Julie.”
For whatever reason, this makes Luke laugh. “Yeah, we know.”
“Oh?”
Alex explains, “Mostly because of Carrie and Flynn. We have a class with both of them and they’re always fighting. Sometimes Carrie brings you up in the heat of the moment, and then Flynn threatens to, um—”
Alex doesn’t continue after that, suddenly unsure of himself, so Reggie finishes with: “She threatens to exorcise her. As in demons, not jogging.”
“That sounds about right.”
“And we’d have to agree,” Luke jumps in. “Not about the demons part, but that you’re way better than Carrie. That girl and her attitude are rank.”
“I think her choreography is kind of cool,” Alex says. “And the outfits Dirty Candy all wear. Lots of glitter. Lots of sparkles. Two of my faves.”
“Well, thanks,” Julie replies, flustered and a little endeared. “I’m sure you guys rock.”
“We rock the hardest.” Reggie thinks about it for a moment, fingers steepled under his chin. “If we had a place to practice tonight, we could show you. But you’ll just have to take our word for it.”
“I thought we were—” Luke starts, but Alex cuts him off with a pointed shake of his head. “Ah, well. Sorry, Julie, I guess you don’t get to listen to Sunset Curve rock your socks off after all.”
Julie doesn’t know them. She doesn’t know a single thing about them, besides the faintest memory of old rumors about Alex’s shyness and Reggie’s motormouth and Luke’s detention record. She doesn’t know them, but she knows that expression of defeat they’re all wearing, now that they can’t make music together tonight, and she knows what it’s like to watch all of the light slowly bleed out of someone until they’re grey and aching and just wishing for a chance to change things.
Julie doesn’t know them, but she wants to. She can feel their greatness like she felt Flynn’s the first day they met, like she felt Mrs. Harrison’s when she walked into the music room on the first day of school and listened to her speak about the freedom and joy of expressing yourself through art.
“If you guys want,” she starts, hesitantly, “you can come over to my house. We have a studio out back that I use to write music in. You can dazzle me with some of Sunset Curve’s greatest hits.”
“You mean that?” Luke asks, just as hesitant.
“Yeah. It’ll be fun.”
The three of them look down at her, almost like they forgot how they got here and have no idea what’s transpiring as a result. But then Reggie lets out a deep breath, and Alex’s sunny smile returns, and Luke gives her an expression of such gratitude that it makes Julie’s face go hot, and all three of them say as one:
“Let’s go!”
~.~.~
That night, the boys do end up blowing her away with some of Sunset Curve’s greatest hits, and then she takes a turn blowing them away with a song her and her mom wrote together before Rose passed, and then they end up working together to finish Julie’s WIP, and then suddenly a month has passed and Julie can’t imagine life without them. Alex, Luke, and Reggie become a mostly-permanent fixture in her house and studio, and it’s like they were meant to be there all along, like Julie has been walking through life in a semi-daze until the very moment she met these three cosmic, wonderful dumbasses. It’s like Flynn opened her eyes and woke her mind up, and the boys reached into her heart and turned it all the way up to one hundred. She loves them so much it hurts. And so does Flynn, after her initial shock wears off from finding out that Julie basically took the three most notorious outsiders in school under her proverbial wing.
(“You just adopted a bad boy gang!” Flynn had yelled, frazzled. “Julie Molina, you adopted a group of John Hughes villains!”
“Do you really think those three are capable of being bad boys? Really?”
“Yeah, I do, actually!”
Julie had had to keep herself from laughing because the boys were in the studio with them, tinkering around on the old drum set she basically gifted Alex since he’d been playing on a cheap starter set only. “On the way home from school today, they all stopped and asked if they could pet this woman’s dog and Reggie and Alex both cried. Like, shed tears. Over a dog.”
Flynn had looked at her, and then at the boys, who couldn’t stop running their hands over the drum set and making various ooh ahh shiny noises.
“Well—just be constantly aware of your surroundings! If they try any funny business, I’m telling your tía, and then your dad, and then Carlos, and then the police, in that order.”)
She can tell that her dad doesn’t understand it, doesn’t understand how the boys just waltzed into her life and filled so many of its empty places, but he’s nothing but supportive. Julie suspects, under his nonchalant dad persona, that Ray kind of adores them the same way that she does.
“You really like them, huh?” he asks one night; they’re in the kitchen, setting up a buffet line of sorts for everyone to make their own pizzas, and the guys are playing Sorry! at the table with Carlos. “You’ve been hanging out with them for almost two months straight.”
Julie looks up from her chopping board of jalapeños and banana peppers, curious as to where this is going. “Yeah, of course. They’re great.”
Just as she says this, Carlos ends up sending both of Reggie’s active pawns back to start and he yells while Luke and Alex heckle him. Julie amends: “Well, not at Sorry!, but they’re the best in a general sense.”
Ray smiles, and then inquires, almost off-handedly: “And their parents are okay with them being here all the time?”
Something about the way he says this concerns her. “They’ve never gotten in trouble for it before. Are they… Do you not want them over all the time? Is it too much?”
Ray must see his error, because he’s quick to stop kneading their pizza dough and bump elbows with her. “Of course not, mija. I just wanted to make sure that their parents aren’t worried about them being here on school nights, that’s all. They’re welcome any time.”
It’s then that Julie notices what created such a dissonance when her dad asked after the boys and their parents—she has no idea what any of their parents are like, or if they are getting on the boys about hanging out with her so much. They’ve never said anything that would lead her to believe otherwise. She never even thought to ask.
“I’ll talk to them about it later,” she promises, unease prickling under her skin. “I’ll make sure they’re not getting in trouble for being here all the time.”
She waits until they’ve all made and consumed their pizzas, until they’ve watched the movie of choice (Reggie’s turn to pick, because the boys have earned that privilege in the Molina household by an unspoken agreement between its three occupants; he went with Spy Kids 3 ), until the sun has long since set and most kids would be forced to be heading home now, but all three of them are still here and completely unconcerned and none of their phones have been going off with calls asking where they are, not even once—
She waits until they’re back in the studio, Luke babbling about an idea he got in History for the chorus of a song, to say:
“Hey, can I ask you guys a question?”
They stop talking immediately and turn to her. There must be something giving her apprehension away, because Luke’s shoulders tighten and Alex’s voice is falsely cheerful when he responds with: “Yeah, what’s up?”
It occurs to Julie, milliseconds before the question slips out, that they might think she sounds like the other kids in school. Fishing for dirty secrets on the boys, taking an assumption and running wild with it and not caring how and if it pierces them. She chokes for that millisecond, staring back into Reggie’s panicked eyes, catching a glimpse of Alex’s knuckles going white around his drumsticks, and then it slips out.
“Are your parents okay with you hanging out here so much?”
The effect of these words is instantaneous. Any ease that followed them through their fun pizza dinner to the ridiculous plot of Spy Kids 3 and then out into the studio is gone as soon as Julie asks this question, and she’s met with a silence that is so deafening it makes her breath catch. She looks at them as a whole, and then individually, trying to find some clues, trying to find anything. But it’s like she’s looking onto three stone fortresses, and they are looking back, daring her to try and climb up and find what lies behind them.
“Are you not okay with it?” Luke eventually asks back, voice flat. It’s like watching a polaroid develop in reverse. “Is your dad not okay with it?”
“Of course I am. We both are.” Julie sits on the arm of one of the chairs and knits her fingers together, trying to think of how to say what she needs to say without it sounding like an accusation. “I didn’t mean for that to come out rudely or anything. It’s just—they know you’re with me, right? That this is where you’ll be until, like, 10 on school nights? Midnight on the weekends? And they’re all right with that?”
They don’t say anything, just stare at their shoes or their hands or anywhere that isn’t Julie’s face. The thought of the silence being from anger makes her feel nauseous, but when she continues to look between the three of them, she once more sees that it’s fear, a raw, helpless fear that is shutting the boys down.
She gets up again and walks to where they’re all clustered together around Alex’s drum set. They glance up at her, mouths tight and backs rigid; they look like they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, like they’re waiting for Julie to throw a punch, and it all falls into place.
Julie walks until she’s right in between Reggie and Luke, and then she reaches out and takes one of their hands in hers and squeezes gently.
“Do they know you’re here?” she asks, soft, soft, soft.
Reggie’s fingers close around hers like she is the only thing keeping him from falling backwards off of a cliff. “No, they don’t.”
She doesn’t want to, already feels like she might cry if she does, but forces herself to ask: “Do they care?”
Alex sets his sticks down on the floor tom and finally meets her eyes, looking bone-tired and ragged at the edges. “No. They don’t care.”
“Only mine,” Luke admits, also clinging to Julie’s hand. “They don’t know where I go, and they hate that I’m out so late, but we—we clash a lot, and I would rather be free here than locked up there. It’s complicated.”
Julie’s heart bursts in her chest, but she still pushes farther, as far as they’ll let her go.
“Will you tell me?”
And they do. They let Julie guide them away from their instruments to the couch, and the three of them squeeze onto it while she perches in the armchair, arms wrapped around her torso like it will keep the hurt out. Luke picks up where he left off, and he tells Julie all about the complicated relationship he has with his parents and they have with his dream of being a musician, and even so, it’s clear that he is the best off amongst the bunch. They fight all the time, but they still love Luke, and he still loves them, but they want different things and he feels like he’s wounding them when he’s there and can’t be who they want him to be.
Alex tells her about hiding himself from his parents, about how hiding that he’s gay from them eventually stemmed into having panic attacks over them finding out and then bled into a generalized anxiety disorder that will remain undiagnosed until he’s an adult, probably, since he came out to them a year ago and nothing has been the same since. He tells her about the words they say, and the words they want him to read and follow, and he tells her that he would rather have all of himself than only a few parts of them.
And then Reggie tells her about how his parents eloped after only a few months of dating because his mom got pregnant, and now it’s too expensive and too inconvenient and too this and too that for them to get a divorce, but Reggie has known they hate each other since he was a kid. And he knows that they’ve hated him for just as long, that he is their greatest failure, a product of their combined woes and mistakes and only serves the purpose of reminding them of this every time they look at him. So he only leaves the house after they’ve both gone off to work, and he doesn’t go back until they’re in their separate bedrooms, drunk and well on their way to passing out. He would rather do anything else than sit inside of his house and listen to his parents try to tear it down with all of their screaming and cursing.
When they’re done, it takes Julie a few times to try and speak again. There are tears stinging her eyes, and her hands are trembling with a combination of revulsion and a fury that is so fierce and so bright that it burns to keep it inside, but this is not about her, so she reels it in as much as she can.
She has one last important question to ask, one that she needs to know the answer to more than she will ever need to track these parents down and go to war with them. So she gets up from her seat and comes to stand in front of them, in front of these three boys who are talented and brilliant enough to change the world, but have lived their whole lives being told otherwise by the people who should’ve been the first ones to tell them. To show them how.
They look up at her, pale and scared and loving despite it all, and Julie asks, “Do you feel safe here?” while praying with everything she’s got that the answer is yes. It won’t change anything, but it will help, knowing that there is somewhere in the Hell of their lives where they feel seen and heard and safe.
They look at her, and then Alex reaches up and carefully takes her hands, the only one who hasn’t held them yet, and he whispers, “Julie, this is the only place we feel safe,” and it doesn’t change anything, but it also changes everything.
She rests her knee on the edge of the couch, in between the sides of Alex’s and Luke’s legs, and then she winds her arms around Alex’s shoulders and holds him as tight as she can. He releases a startled breath against her shoulder, the sound he might have made if Julie told them all to get lost, and then he crushes her close, grabs her and holds on like he might drown if he doesn’t.
On her right, Luke makes a similarly startled noise, and on her left, Reggie carefully touches Julie’s bicep, either to hold onto her or to throw her off. She decides for them and lets go of Alex’s neck to fit her hands around the backs of their heads.
“Come here,” she says, no room for an argument.
The effect of these two words does more than the question she first asked them, the one that sucked all of the air out of the studio. Luke and Reggie fold into her and Alex immediately, wrapping their arms around her back and Alex’s shoulders. Luke’s forehead ends up on the jut of Alex’s left shoulder, and Reggie’s ends up against Julie’s. She can feel all of their hearts racing, either from a surge of affection or from the fear of being thrown away again, and she rests her cheek against the side of Alex’s head and wraps her arms around Luke’s and Reggie’s backs.
They are a mess of limbs, thrashing hearts, and hot, anguished tears, and Julie has never felt more full and more empty than she does in this moment, with the fate of three of the sweetest people she’s ever met resting in the palms of her hands.
“You are always welcome here,” she tells them, voice steady and strong and unquestionable. They tremble in her arms, and she says it again, will say it as many times as she has to. “Always. No matter what time of day, no matter if you think I’m tired of seeing you, no matter if we’re fighting and not speaking to each other. You are always, always welcome here. And I want you to be here. We want you to be here.”
“Thank you,” one of them whispers, maybe Alex, maybe Reggie, maybe Luke, maybe all three of them at once. She doesn’t know who said it, but it means that they heard her and understood her, and it is enough. And someday, when she is feeling less fragile, when the boys will understand that she means it, she’ll tell them that she loves them, and that they are her family just as much as her mami and her papi and her tía and Carlos and Flynn. That they are her home and she is theirs and family is who loves and chooses you no matter what. But for now, she holds them close and tells them she loves them by being a pillar of support, something that they’ve probably never known outside of each other, something that she will give them forever if she can.
~.~.~
If Julie thought she loved the boys before their heart-to-heart, it’s nothing compared to how she feels after everything is released. The faint wall they had between themselves and her, even after weeks of spending time together, vanishes completely once Julie opens the front door to her house and tells them to come inside and stay.
Carlos comments on it one night, while Ray is making them his patented spaghetti, and the boys, Julie, and Flynn are all crammed into the Molinas’ living room, playing Mario Kart. Currently, it’s Luke and Alex playing against each other on the ground in front of the couch. The other three are curled together right behind them, and while Reggie is hyping Alex up, Julie and Flynn are doing their best to harass Luke into losing.
“Come on, Patterson, you can do better than that!” Flynn yells, tugging Luke’s beanie down over one of his eyes.
He slaps her away, and then promptly goes flying off the track. “Hey, knock it off!”
Julie starts jostling him by his shoulders. “Dude, go! Alex is almost a whole lap ahead!”
“No thanks to you!” Luke shouts, and sends Princess Daisy hurtling down the track. “This is a conspiracy to let Alex win because he’s a sore loser.”
Alex makes a rude noise. “That’s called transference, dummy.”
“No it’s not!”
“You’re the sorest loser I’ve ever met,” Alex insists, and cheers when Princess Peach hits an item box. He gets some banana peels and immediately flings them out all over the track. “We’ve let you win since second grade!”
“Lies and slander—” Luke cuts off when he hits an item box and is gifted with Bullet Bill. “Ohhhh yeahhhh, baby!”
“No!” Julie cries, shoving Luke’s beanie further over his eyes, but the damage is already done. Princess Daisy speeds through the track until she’s only two racers behind Princess Peach and then Bullet Bill drops her down again. Luke pushes her past the next cart, the one holding Luigi, and Alex screams something nonsensical when Luke starts to gain on Donkey Kong, the other computer racer between them.
“Are you there, God? It’s me, Alex!” Alex says frantically, racing as fast as the game will let him. “Please do me a big ol’ favor and let me win just once against Luke Patterson! Amen.”
Luke says, “God can’t save you now, Mercer!” but is swiftly interrupted by Princess Daisy’s cart doing a dramatic wipe-out into the sidelines. It appears that one of the other computer racers, this time Bowser, got a few of the red shells on an item box and ended up striking Princess Daisy with one of them.
“This is bull—!” Luke starts to yell, and Julie manages to clap a hand over his mouth at the same time that Alex whoops and crosses the finish line in first place. While the confetti and music celebrating Alex’s win go off, he turns to Luke and says: “Victory is sweet, bro!”
Luke lets out a deflating balloon noise and flops backwards into Flynn’s lap, looking at her with utter betrayal. He reluctantly hands over his controller, since she’s the next one up, and tells her: “I hope he picks Rainbow Road.”
“You are the sorest of losers,” Flynn says decidedly, shoving him off of her legs. “How about you pay attention this round and learn a few things?”
He mimics her under his breath, but trades places with her so she can choose a racer. While Flynn is settling in next to Alex and customizing her (Yoshi’s) cart, Luke hauls himself onto the couch and rests his head against Julie’s shoulder.
“I was so close.”
Julie pats his hand the way parents do with their small children. “I know you were, buddy. You’ll get him next time.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Flynn snarks, and then groans. “You really did pick Rainbow Road! What’s wrong with you?”
Alex grins at her. “Hey, it’s fair game! The gays have to play it at least once during Mario Kart.”
“We’re all the gays,” Flynn points out, just as Luke says, “I wasn’t gay enough for you to choose it during our round? Hurtful, dude.”
Reggie leans over Julie and tells him: “I think you should be grateful because if Alex had chosen Rainbow Road for your game, you wouldn’t have made it a single lap, let alone two and a half.”
“Well, that was mean.”
Carlos comes into the living room just as Alex and Flynn are starting their race, and he stops and stares at the sight of them from the entryway. Julie doesn’t see him right away, too caught up in cheering Flynn on and keeping Luke from messing up her race the way she did his. She eventually looks over at Luke after he pretends to bite her arm, and catches sight of her brother when she pretends to bite Luke back.
“What’s up, weirdo?”
Carlos blinks. “You guys are the weirdos.”
“Why?” Luke asks him, glancing over their group.
“You’re like…” Carlos waves a hand, as if to encompass the supposed weirdness of this situation in the simple movement. “Freaking out and punching each other but you’re still, like, super close together. I don’t get it.”
Julie tries not to stiffen against Luke and Reggie, but dread fills her immediately when Carlos says this. Not because they’re doing anything wrong, but because she doesn’t want the boys to think that they’re doing something wrong.
Luke and Reggie don’t seem bothered, though. On the contrary, Reggie turns to Carlos and wiggles his fingers in a get over here gesture.
“Come sit with us then. You can hang out and figure it out on your own, little dude.”
Carlos purses his mouth, like he might call them all weirdos again and take off for his room. But then he gives Reggie a cute, bashful smile, and gallops past the TV as fast as he can and onto the empty spot at the end of the couch. Reggie arranges Carlos so that his back is against the arm of the couch and his legs are thrown across Reggie’s and pressing into Julie’s, effectively adding him to their tangle, and Julie’s heart grows three times its normal size in her chest.
When Ray comes into the room a while later and announces: “Time for dinner, kids!” Julie notices the way he also stops to take in their pile, and notices the way he visibly melts at the sight. And when Reggie asks: “Ray, is it okay if I say grace tonight?” and Ray responds with: “Absolutely, kiddo,” Julie feels blessed beyond words for her weird little family and the way they’ve all come together after the darkest year of her life.
~.~.~
The first time one of them spends the night, it’s a regular Tuesday and Julie isn’t expecting it. The boys had tromped home with her for homework, enchiladas, and then a few hours of playing around with a new song. They decided to spend the last stretch of the night watching The Masked Singer, a show the boys are hilariously into, before Luke and Reggie split to head to their respective houses.
Alex, however, lingers; he sees Luke and Reggie off, and then as the minutes start to tick by where he would normally also head home, he sits on Julie’s couch and fidgets. She asks if he’s okay, and he plays it off as coolly as he knows how, which is definitely not cool at all. She gives him ten more minutes to come clean, but when all he does in those ten minutes is start biting his nails and jiggling his leg, Julie gives up on being casual about it. She scoots all the way from her end of the couch to Alex’s and throws a friendly arm around his shoulders, ignoring his startled jump.
“Hey pal,” Julie says, flashing a cheesy grin to lure him into a sense of calm and security. “How’s it goin’?”
“Um,” Alex starts, and then stops, tensing under Julie’s curious stare. “Um.”
They’ve all gotten better at this in the weeks since crying together in the studio, but sometimes the guys still struggle to open up to her or ask her for help. Julie’s usually pretty good at figuring out what they need, often before they do themselves, but then there are times like this where she can’t proceed on intuition alone. She softens her smile into one that is more comforting.
“Hey, it’s okay. You can tell me what’s going on. I just want to help.”
It takes another long minute for Alex to work it over in his head and then say it out loud. Julie lets him have it, never anything but patient and ready to act.
“It’s—my parents.” Alex admits, the last part almost a whisper. “I, I don’t—”
He clenches his jaw, like he can’t decide if he wants to say the words and be rid of them or choke them down and forget all together. The sensation of being seasick rolls in when Alex brings up his parents, but Julie forces herself to keep a calm exterior for his sake.
Alex releases a breath and hunches into himself, tries to make himself look as small as his big stature will allow, before admitting: “I’m scared to go home.”
Julie’s smile slips all the way off. “Did something happen, Alex?”
He shrugs. “Kinda, but kinda not. They’re always the way they are, but—I don’t know. They’ve been really going for it the past couple of days, and I’m just... I have this gut feeling that it’s going to come to a head tonight if I go home.”
She can hardly bear to ask, “Are they going to hurt you?”
Alex shakes his head, but it doesn’t provide any relief. “No, I don’t think they would do that. I think—”
His hands start to visibly tremble, and then his body, and then his mouth, and Julie realizes with a great horror that Alex is crying.
“I think they’re gonna kick me out,” he gasps, voice cracking. “Julie, they’re gonna kick me out, and I don’t have any of my stuff, and I don’t have anywhere to go, where the hell am I gonna go—”
“Hey, hey,” Julie gently interrupts, getting to her feet. Alex tries to tuck even further into himself, obviously ashamed by this display, but Julie just reaches out and cups his face in between her hands. “It’s all right, Alex, it’s all going to be just fine. You can stay here tonight, okay? We’ll set up the guest room for you and you can spend the night. You don’t have to go home.”
“But—but my parents—” Alex chokes out, paling at the mention of them again. It makes Julie’s blood boil. “What if they—”
He stops speaking completely, face crumpling. Alex releases a gut-wrenching sob and Julie is right there, wrapping her arms around his shaking body, pulling him close, and wishing, wishing, wishing she could keep him from feeling like this ever again. So afraid to go home that he’s sobbing over it; so afraid to go home that he would almost rather go home and face their wrath now than be safe with her for a night and face a worse wrath the next. Alex buries his tear-soaked face into Julie’s sternum and cries helplessly, going from curling into himself to curling around her as much as he possibly can in her half-standing position.
Julie lets him let it out, one hand moving back and forth across the plane of his shoulders in what she hopes is a comforting gesture. She lets him let it out, until Alex is shivering and hiccuping, and then she carefully eases back to look at him again.
“I’m gonna go talk to my dad real quick, okay?” she asks, wiping away some of his tears. “I’m not letting you go home like this. Not if you’re this afraid of what they’ll do when you get there.”
“But they might get really mad,” Alex protests, even though Julie can see that he would rather do anything than face his parents right now. “They might—”
The thought goes unfinished, but Julie knows the end of it, sees the image of Alex cowering away and hears the crack of a hand across his cheek like it’s being burned behind her eyes. She almost vomits just thinking about it, and will be damned if she lets it happen.
“You’re staying here. You are not going home when I know what might happen if you do. I refuse.”
Alex sniffles and lets Julie dry some more tears from his face. She’s afraid that he might insist on going home, or play off the very real terror overcoming him at the thought of doing so, but eventually he takes a shuddering breath and whispers: “Thank you.”
Julie is so relieved and so, so angry that she nearly starts crying, too, but refuses to let Alex see her break while he needs her to be strong.
“I’ll be right back,” she promises, and then slips away from the couch and up the stairs to her dad’s room.
Julie knocks softly, hearing the muted sound of Ray’s TV playing behind the door. After a brief pause, the sound lowers and Ray’s voice calls out: “Come in!”
She almost shatters at the sight of his warm, loving face, knowing what she knows now. That Alex is in her living room and worrying himself sick over whether or not to go home. Is facing the danger of never seeing his dad again by his dad’s own will.
Ray’s face goes from warm to concerned in a heartbeat, and then he’s getting out of bed, setting his hands on her shoulders, becoming the shield that Julie could never live without.
“Mija, what’s wrong?” he asks, voice so, so soft. Julie’s throat closes up at the sound of it. “What happened?”
“It’s Alex,” she explains, the words coming out warped and scared. “He—he told me that he’s afraid to go home tonight.”
Ray’s hold on her tightens. “Did something happen?”
“Not yet. But he’s afraid that if he goes home, something will.” Julie closes her eyes and does everything she can to keep herself from breaking down in front of him. “He thinks they’re going to kick him out because he’s gay. But if he doesn’t go home tonight, they might do something worse when he does go home tomorrow. He thinks they might—”
Julie’s voice breaks off and stays there, and Ray just makes a soothing sound and brushes away the tears that she can’t hold in. When she blinks her eyes open again, she sees the same horror and rage building inside of her stretched all across her dad’s face, and finds some solace in the knowledge that he would never send Alex away.
“He’ll stay here tonight,” Ray tells her without hesitation. “And if he still feels unsafe tomorrow, he can stay again and we’ll come up with a plan. But we’ll worry about that when that time comes, okay? Let’s just focus on tonight and taking care of him right now.”
While Ray is fixing up the guest room, Julie goes back downstairs to grab Alex. She finds him still on the couch, staring down at his bitten-down nails and not moving an inch, something that never happens unless he’s completely and totally exhausted. He looks up when she comes into the living room, and the sight of his damp face and his bleak, defeated eyes makes her feel like a livewire, like she might just storm all the way over to the Mercers’ house and scream at them until her vocal cords bleed.
Instead, she goes to Alex and pulls him off of the couch, saying: “We’re getting the guest room set up for you, okay?” And he just dips his head in a half-nod and lets Julie guide him upstairs, grabbing his backpack as they go.
Ray comes out of the guest room just as they reach the top of the stairs, and all of the horror and rage from earlier is back to his usual warmth. He’s holding a pair of sweatpants and presents them to Alex, who takes them with a tiny, tiny smile, but a smile nonetheless.
“We’re the closest in size in this house, so hopefully those fit. You’re welcome to say the night tonight, and any night you need to, okay, Alex? You’re safe here. Every part of you.”
“Thanks,” Alex replies, hoarse but sincere. “Thank you so much.”
Ray takes a step closer and folds Alex up into a hug, instantly becoming his shield, his armor, everything that Alex should have had this entire time. “You don’t need to thank us. Family looks out for family. We will always look out for you. We’re not going to let anyone hurt you if we can help it.”
Alex’s breath hitches, and then he wraps his arms around Ray and starts to tremble all over again. Julie presses a hand against his back, and quietly says: “I’ll go get you a toothbrush,” before letting them have a moment together.
They get him settled in for the night, with Ray’s sweatpants and a spare toothbrush and as many words of comfort that they think Alex can handle, and then Ray goes back to his room and Julie goes to hers. She feels hollowed-out and sick, like she needs to sleep outside of Alex’s room to watch over him throughout the night. And even though Alex made her promise not to, knowing that it would just send them into a panic, Julie almost pulls her phone out to call Luke and Reggie and tell them what happened. She only doesn’t because Alex swears that he'll explain tomorrow at school, since he and Julie will be arriving together with Flynn, anyways, and he'll have to text the boys beforehand so they don't wait for him.
Julie feels sick and tired, but she doesn’t feel wound down enough to fall asleep yet, so she gets into pajamas, brushes her teeth, and decides to watch Wreck-It Ralph. She’s just gotten underneath a fuzzy blanket and started the movie when she hears a timid knock at her door, and knows who it is immediately.
She opens the door to find Alex on the other side, looking hopeful and sorry for disturbing her. Her heart clenches at the sight of him, even though they only said goodnight twenty minutes ago, even though he’s in the safest place he could possibly be.
“Hey, what’s up?”
Alec plucks at his hoodie strings without saying anything for a moment, obviously fighting with himself. Julie lets him gather his courage, and he eventually asks: “Would it be okay if I came in for a little bit?”
“Don’t want to be alone?” Julie replies, understanding completely, and steps aside to let him in. “Want to watch Wreck-It Ralph? I just started it.”
“Dude, totally—I love that movie.”
Julie climbs back into bed with Alex and tucks him under the blanket with her, so that they’re curled up together, and starts the movie from the beginning. They rave about their favorite parts, and quote the: “Just because you are bad guy does not mean you are bad guy,” line in unison, and the wildness in Julie’s ribcage finally begins to mellow out, leaving her just tired and not rundown. Alex, too, seems to finally be relaxing, body going from slightly tensed to sinking into the mattress, and laughter coming easily in between their hushed commentary.
They make it to the part where Ralph meets Vanellope for the first time before Alex turns to her and whispers: “Hey, Julie?”
Julie mirrors him, shaking off some of the sleepiness. “Yeah?”
Alex stares at her for a beat, like he’s not going to finish his thought, then smiles and tells her: “I know you said not to thank you, but thanks for letting me stay. It means a lot to me.”
“Of course, Alex.” She worms a hand out from underneath the blanket and rests it against his cheek, so that he knows she means business. “Just like my dad said—you’re our family, and the Molinas always look out for family. No matter what, without question. We’ll go to the ends of the Earth for you.”
Alex swallows heavily, but doesn’t cry again, so Julie counts it as a win. “You and the guys are the only family I have. I’d be lost without you.”
“Me too,” she admits, so quietly that it almost doesn’t come out at all. “I didn’t even realize what I was missing until you three cartwheeled into the music room and stole my heart.”
“We didn’t cartwheel,” he tries to protest, but he’s laughing, so Julie starts to laugh too, and they have to push their faces into her pillows to keep from waking Carlos up. “It wasn’t a great first impression, I’ll give you that.”
“No, it was perfect. You guys let me know right away what you were.”
“Hopeless idiots?”
“I was going for unforgettable. Exactly what I was looking for.”
“Aw,” Alex says, and now he looks like he’s going to cry. “Julie.”
Julie moves her hand from Alex’s cheek to his neck, and when she pulls, he goes easily. They fold into each other, arms wrapping around their sides, Julie’s face pressing into his shoulder, Alex’s cheek pressing into the crown of her head. She runs her hand along his shoulder blades again, to be both affectionate and comforting, and Alex squeezes her so tightly it hurts, but in a good way. Like he’s trying to leave an imprint of himself in her bones and muscles. Like he didn’t become her blood the day they all came home with her for the first time.
“We’re going to figure this out together, okay?” she says. “No matter what, no matter how long it takes, we’re in this together. You’re ours and we’re yours and we’ll figure it all out together. It’s going to be all right.”
Alex hugs her tighter. “Okay, we’ll do this together.” And then, after a heartbeat, she hears her favorite words. “I love you, Julie.”
“I love you too, Alex. Forever and always.”
~.~.~
They must fall asleep, twisted around each other underneath Julie’s fuzzy blanket, because she closes her eyes for just a moment and the next time she opens them, Alex is breathing deeply against her and there’s someone moving around at the foot of her bed. Julie’s still mostly asleep, isn’t sure she’s really awake at all, but struggles to find out who the person in her room is and if she needs to throw herself between them and Alex. She relaxes, though, when they step into the light of her TV and she sees that it’s just her dad. From this angle, he can’t tell that she’s awake, but she can see his face clearly: it’s fond, warm, and a little sad, and Julie feels so safe and so full of love that if she were awake she would probably be crying.
As it is, she just sighs, tucks herself back under Alex’s chin, and lets her dad shut off the TV. She slips back into unconsciousness just as Ray moves to Alex’s side of the bed and pulls the blankets up higher around them, making sure they’re completely covered before leaving them to soundly sleep.