Work Text:
After his parents stopped noticing him, Reggie began to demonize relationships.
Even now, 25 years later, the sour love between his parents still haunt him.
Sure, he jokes with Luke about his chemistry with Julie. Luke is rarely knocked off balance and its fun to see what the mere mention of Julie does to him.
And of course, he’s rooting for Alex and Willie. I mean, why wouldn’t he? Willie is fun and kind and makes Alex smile. He makes Alex less nervous and Reggie would be a bastard forl not to want that for his friend.
And when things work out, he wants to be happy for them. He does. He really, really wants to feel it.
But its not there.
Because whenever someone he loves enters a romantic relationship, it only means one thing for him: redundancy. He becomes obsolete.
He feels terrible about these feelings; they’re petty and self-centred, but they’re relentless.
So when Julie and Luke finally get together and Alex has Willie back, he knows he should be happy for his friends, for his bandmates and brothers…
But instead he feels ostracized, out of the loop.
And that’s why he decides to take a walk one evening.
It starts with band practice, with some new melodies that were yet to be attached to any lyrics. But over time the session devolves. beginning with Julie and Luke bickering over the chord progression.
“I can’t go that high, Julie,” Luke argues when Julie’s hand moves towards the upper end of the keys and plays an E#.
“Just stretch, you’ll get it.”
A coy smile grows on Luke’s face. He hooks his thumb around his guitar strap as he lifts his eyebrows. “Oh, I see what this is. You just want the song all for yourself, don’t you, Molina?”
As usual, Reggie and Alex share a good natured smile. This again, huh?
But then Willie arrives and Alex’s concentration is gone - “wait so, how do you do that board flippy thingy?” - and Reggie complies with the script by rolling his eyes, as usual.
And then he stands there, holding his bass, plucking his strings absent-mindedly, testing out some chords Luke had mentioned earlier, watching the two couples interact.
Alex lets Willie tap on his drums, while Julie and Luke share the keyboard stool, messing with keys and notes and chords.
And watching them like this, seeing them so close to one another like this…
There’s a crashing in his ears. He feels that same tension from ‘95 bleeding through time to find him. The whole world was compounding on him, the studio imploding.
This again.
As calmly as he can, he places his bass in its regular stand and slowly backs out of the studio.
Luke is the first to notice. “Hey, Reg, you going somewhere?”
The entire room stops what they’re doing to look at him. Reggie hesiatates
“Uh,” he says, befote throwing a nochalant thumb over his shoulder. “Yeah, I thought I’d just go check on Ray. Or Carlos. Carlos has this sweet new game that I’m, like, dying to try out, so.”
Luke raises an eyebrow. “Okay. You want me to come with?”
“What? No. No, no, it’s cool. It’s good.”
Luke eyes him for a moment. “Okay, well, come back soon, okay? I wanna run some idea past you for a cool new baseline I’ve been thinking about.”
“Sure.”
Reggie finds himself on the beach, outside the bike rental shop that used to be his parent’s house. Even with the walls gone, he could still imagine it - pale blue cladding, a porch with his dad’s favourite chair, a burgundy front door.
And inside? Shouting, smashing plates, air filled with kindling.
He sighed, turning his back on the imagined house and looking out at the sea. He dropped onto the sand and wrapped his arms around his knees.
He’d always liked watching the sea when he was younger. Whenever his dad said something purposely terse, or his mum let the casserole burn, he’d come out here, and just stare ahead.
They didn’t notice when he went out. Even when he came back inside and found his parents were watching TV, sitting side by side, but never touching, not anymore.
“Reggie,” his mom would say.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t forget to do your homework.”
A few hundred metres away, sat a circle of teens around a small campfire. The embers provided little respite from the overcast night. He heard a girl scream as her friend grabbed her around the waist, quickly followed by a giggle.
He wiped the back of his hand across his cheek.
“There you are.”
Reggie couldn’t bring himself to look up, instead he dropped his chin to chest and exhaled slowly.
Luke - always Luke - dropped down besides him, knocking Reggie’s shoulder with his own.
“Thought I’d find you here.”
Reggie sniffed. “You found me,” he said, with a choked laugh. “I just thought…” He nodded at the campfire teens. “Thought I’d check out the cookout, see if there were any cute girls.”
Luke chuckled at that, which made Reggie smile somewhat. “Any luck?”
Reggie shrugged a shoulder. “Haven’t quite made it over yet.”
Luke nods. “Lifers,” he says, understandably.
Another soft poof and Alex is there, too. “Hey guys, we having a band meet? What’s going on?”
Reggie sniffs again and wipes his nose on his sleeve.
“Dude, you okay?”
He nods and gestures to the teens and the fire. “Just some ash in my eye. It’s cool.”
Alex looks over his shoulder, first at the circle of lifers, then further back, to the bike rental place. “Ah.” He turns back and softens. “I get it.”
The three sit there for a while, listening to the laughter of the teens and the gentle roll of the ocean.
“You guys should get back,” Reggie says eventually.
“Get back?” Luke asks.
“Yeah, I mean, Julie and Willie will be wondering where you went, right?”
Alex sighed and Luke put his arm around Reggie’s shoulders. “Nah, we’re here with you. They’re both fine.”
Alex nodded and bumped his knee against Reggie’s. “Yeah, dude, you’re priority.”
And that’s it, that’s the one that breaks him. He puts his hands over his eyes and dissolves into himself. Luke rubs circles on his back and Alex leans against him.
“Let it out, dude,” Luke says.
After a while, Reggie takes a deep, shuddering breath. Luke squeezes his shoulder and makes Reggie look at him.
“You never have to be alone, Reg,” he says. “We’re together, no matter what.”
“Isn’t that what they say?” Alex asks. “Those who die together continue to haunt the living together or something like that?”
Reggie snorts. “I don’t haunt, I hang out.”
“Yeah, sure, cause you were just hanging out when you caused Tià to have an aneurysm, huh?”
“That was for Carlos.”
“So, you still planning on joining the party?” Luke asked, jutting his chin at the beach teens.
Reggie swallows and shakes his head. He plucked at the uncharacteristic sweater he was wearing - now that Julie could touch them, Reggie was a big fan of stealing her sweaters. “Nah, I don’t think I’m dressed for it.”
“You wanna go back?” Luke asks. “We can stay, if you want.”
Reggie shakes his head again. “I’m good.” He smiled at Luke, then at Alex. “Thanks, guys.”
“Anytime,” Alex says, putting his pinky out for Reggie to hook. “Brothers, right?”
Across the beach, the circle of teens talk amongst themselves, unaware of three of the three phantoms sitting in the sand, mere meters away, fingers locked together in a playground promise.
One girl uses her mobile data to show another girl a youtube video. “They’re Julie and The Phantoms, my sister goes to school with the lead singer.”
“No way, really?”
“Mhm.”
“I have a friend in Sweden who says the drummer is his sister’s boyfriend,” one of the boys offers.
“Sweden?”
“They’re holograms.”
“Damn. That’s kinda sick.”
When the teens crane their necks to peer the small phone screen, they fail to notice when the fire stutters and bows in the direction of the bike rental shop.
And nobody notices the departure of three ghosts who refuse to fade into obsolencey.