Blank Spaces - jatp ft alex/luke & willex

six

Hollywood, California
November 29th, 2020

See, Luke had a plan on how exactly he would confront Julie to tell her about his sexuality, and hopefully she held the answers to his seemingly endless amounts of questions. Or, at least, hopefully her 'google' would.

However, what he didn't anticipate was her finding an old songbook of his. In a more optimistic light, he was sort of glad she did because for one, it contained some songs he had been really proud of—ones that Bobby hadn't even known of, and two, he was never the most apt with his words, preferring to charge them into songs anyways.

The Puerto Rican girl had been cleaning up bits of the loft one morning. School had been out for Thanksgiving break, and the band had decided to pitch in and actually clean up the space they'd been occupying.

Alex was busy organizing different tracks, lyric and notebooks, and any other item that could've used adjustment to make the place seem neater from their jostling around.

Reggie was dusting, spraying, and wiping down surfaces of the nitty gritty spots of the garage.

And Luke? He was supposed to be helping Julie carry down anything they could make useful from the loft down to ground level, however he was instead pacing the floor as Julie rummaged through a box.

"Dude you're doing Alex' model strut, what's wrong?" Reggie asked.

The ghost in question looked up at the window, ignoring the question, and shook his head.

Reggie shared a glance with Alex, both boys confused and unsettled at the off kiltered behaviour of their friend.

"Luke?" The blonde asked, gaining yet again, no response. He put his hand on the brunette's shoulder, shaking him out of whatever reverie he was in.

"Huh?" He asked innocently.

"Bro you've been pacing for like five minutes. Tell us what's going on." Alex said in a concerned manner, with his hand not leaving its comforting spot on Luke's shoulder.

"Nothing." Luke told him.

Alex raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

"Nothing! Really it's just..." He sighed. "I'm trying to figure out a way to tell Julie about, yknow." He explained.

The drummer, although acknowledging what the boy said, was too immersed with the sight behind Luke, his eyes blown wide in nervousness. "Uh, you may not have to."

Luke turned around to see Julie was paging through a leather bound book that rested in her palms.

"Hey, Luke, is this another one of your songbooks?" She questioned.

"Uh... Y-Yeah. Yeah, wow um, god I thought I lost that." He responded, gently taking the book into his own hands.

He thumbed over the cover, taking in the feel of the smooth rawhide.

Alex smiled softly looking at it. He had given the book to Luke on their sixth month anniversary, having saved up his chore money for two months at the time to pick out something nice. He had found it at a hippie looking store on the boardwalk, that had the scent of dozens of herbs, natural soaps, and oils blended together. The book came from a small town in India, which held cows as sacred animals, and used every part of it humanely when it had died a natural death. He fell in love with it immediately, and he knew Luke would too.

The brunette walked over to the piano and opened up pages, grinning at the remembrance of certain songs like "In Too Deep" and "Walk The Line", and various other songs which exposed his most vulnerable feelings in the only way he truly knew how.