it's now or never [julie and the phantoms one-shots]

play pretend~ juke fluff

within a few weeks of julie and the phantom's performance at the orpheum the band was already getting loads of smaller bookings.
the rest of the group said that they wanted a break from performing (alex was still searching for willie, who had disappeared since the last time the group saw him, and reggie was trying to find his family again, wanting to see how his slightly younger sister had grown up in the last 25 years) but luke begged the rest of the band to do at least one of the gigs. it took about two days of him bothering them endlessly or ignoring them constantly before the band agreed to do one performance.

luke, being the ghost he is, decided they would need a new song to perform for this gig and set himself to the task of writing one while julie was at school. he's laid around almost every spot in the studio (in the 90s he'd dubbed them his "thinking spots" and the band knew not to bother him while he was laying in the weirdest positions in the most random areas) and still couldn't find any inspiration. then he remembered julie's dream box and how it was full of song lyrics. he knew julie would kill him (a second death for the musician spirit) for snooping in her room because of "boundaries" but he also knew if the song was good enough she wouldn't mind as much.

luke poofed into julie's room, right next to her dream box, and carefully opened the lid. right on top of everything else in the box (including some glitter and butterflies) there was a paper that definitely looked like lyrics. luke knew it was song lyrics because usually julie's poems were written in a more standard verse that the band had to modify- he knew this specifically from reworking flying solo with reggie- but this paper was written in the standard form of most songs he and julie had written together. luke immediately grabbed the paper and poofed back into the studio.
when he got back to the studio he sat down with his guitar. the song lyrics were messily scribbled, as if they were written down in a complete haze, but there music notation was written nicely in julie's normal swirly handwriting. luke noticed the song was definitely written for piano, which he could barely play, so he began transposing the chords to guitar and writing the chords and lyrics in his notebook. while he wrote in the lyrics luke started actually paying attention to what they were about, and this song was definitely about love, or more specifically a duet.
luke tried to figure out who exactly julie could've been writing the song about. when he came to the realization that it was probably for nick, jealousy began to consume him. luke took a moment to calm himself and decided that maybe he shouldn't have taken that song out of julie's box. he poofed back upstairs with the paper in hand, slipping it back in the box and disappearing from the singer's room, reappearing in the studio moments later.

about ten minutes after that julie walked into the studio, completely oblivious to what luke had been doing for the day, and threw her backpack on the ground by the studio doors.
"hey luke," julie sighed, exhausted but ready for rehearsal. "where are the guys?"

"i'm not sure. i actually wanted to uh... talk to you about something."

"oh yeah, sure, what about?" julie smiled and sat down next to luke, who had sat down on "his" couch.

"well i found-" as soon as he started the sentence reggie and alex appeared in front of them.

"sorry we're late!" reggie exclaimed, pausing and lowering his tone before continuing, "we were looking for willie."
julie and luke just nodded in response before luke stood up.

"we can uh... talk about it later, for now let's start rehearsing!"

~•~

rehearsal went pretty well aside from the fact that none of them had any ideas for a new song for their gig, which luke just brushed off saying they'd figure something out the next day (they still had until friday to have the song written and rehearsed so they could take a bit of a vocal rest saturday before their performance.)