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There were so many new things.
Julie could touch them, sometimes, which took him by surprise when he wasn't ready for it. He’d just feel a tiny and delicate hand on his shoulder, or his arm, or in his hair and he'd flinch away because who’s touching me and then he’d see Julie’s worried face and her raised hands and he’d feel so bad. She’d smile at him, and gently rest her hand on him again, and feeling her touch would calm him down immediately and everything would be just like before.
Reggie sometimes came to him with strange questions. They were vague enough to keep him on his toes, but the more “so, how do you know if you prefer, you know, Troy or Gabriella” he’d ask during movie nights, the more he knew what kind of conversation was going to happen. It was new, because despite having had his doubts for most of their friendship (the guy couldn’t sit straight for the life- hah. Nevermind), the fact that Reggie wanted him to help made him feel like he had such a big responsibility - what if he couldn’t phrase his answers properly and scared him? What if he pushed him too far too fast and Reggie felt like he couldn’t ask him anymore? What if one day Reggie got to him at the wrong time and he snapped and Reggie spiralled about being too insistent or something and shut himself off? He knew how bad it could get, and he was worried about messing up in a thousand different ways. But then, when he had answers for him, Reggie would give him such a huge grin, his cheeks heated with bright pink splotches, and Alex knew that he wouldn’t have wanted Reggie to ask anyone else.
Luke could be overwhelming. This was nothing new to him, to be honest. His energy, the way he just threw himself completely in his ideas and somehow always managed to not get in trouble was nothing he didn’t know; the problem was, apparently basically coming back from the dead had given him a new wave of absolutely uncontrollable need to do things and he poured all of himself into new ideas, new lyrics, new melodies, and despite Alex's best attempts to just go with it sometimes it was exhausting. He really tried his best not to snap at him when in the middle of the night Luke descended on him like an Angel of Death to whisper-yell to him his new idea, sometimes for songs, sometimes for “special-effects for the videos” (Julie had started to explain to them how they were going to explain what they were able to do when they shared their songs on the Tube thing and Luke’s eyes had started to sparkle, which was never a good thing) and he loved Luke, he really did, but if he woke him up one more time-
One time he told him. It hadn’t been in the moment, thankfully, but instead the morning after, when he was telling Reggie.
“So, Reg, yesterday night Alex and I were talking and-”
“Actually-” he interrupted, taking in a deep breath because he felt horrible interrupting Luke’s excited rambling, but Julie and him were working on ‘talking about things to better our relationships’ (the whole therapy thing was going great, thank you for asking), “I’ve been meaning to tell you- I love hearing about your ideas, Luke. But… could they be not in the middle of the night?” he could hear the hint sarcasm that was threatening to come out in his own tone and Luke was looking at him with a slight frown and oh god he had done it he had absolutely fucked up- and then a hand was on his forearm and he turned to see Reggie smiling at him. He nodded at him and took a shaky, grounding breath. He turned to Luke again and the frown was gone, his expression open and listening. “I just… sometimes it’s hard to follow you when you’re excited, and I really do love hearing your ideas, but if you could like, write them down? And we could talk about them in the morning?”
There was a pause, and he focused entirely on the way Reggie’s thumb was rubbing on his skin, and he almost missed Luke’s soft “of course”.
He looked up and saw him smiling so wide and brightly that he finally felt like he could breathe freely. He nodded and smiled back, and then Luke was winking at him - the fucker - and going back to explaining his latest idea to Reggie.
Talking was scary, but his boys knew him, so it was okay.
The biggest new thing was, well… hard to explain.
He wasn’t new to crushes. Like, at all.
But yelling in museums, learning to skate, braiding long hair out in the open of the beach when the sun was going down, kissing boys where everyone could potentially see and for once genuinely not caring…
Well, lately he was finding out that new, despite still meaning scary, didn’t necessarily mean bad.