Chapter Text
“You- You can see him?” Julie shrilled.
In an ironic twist, Luke was the one having to rub his eyes to make sure he was not hallucinating here. And yeah, Carlos’ eyes followed the movements, albeit with a judgmental lens.
The younger Molina answered Julie with a scoff, “Uh, yeah?”
To him, it was a dumb question. This time he inched forward, sizing Luke up and the Cupid wilted slightly at the weight of the stare. He shouldn’t be afraid or intimidated, but the fact that it was Julie’s brother, another human that could see Cupids, had him on the defensive.
“Now, how come I can’t bring Ayesha here today but you brought home some boy toy for birthday dinner. Does dad know?”
“No. Dad doesn’t-” All the words caught up to Julie, and Luke could only assume that this Ayesha was Carlos’ girlfriend. Because she was quick to shut down that parallel, “And he is not my-”
“Boy toy?” Luke spoke for the first time since the discovery. The term irked him so much and he scrunched his nose, “I prefer ‘hunk’ to ‘boy toy’, thank you very much,”
“Luke, that’s not what’s important right now-”
“Who you callin’ boy toy?”
Carlos crossed his arms, not outright acknowledging Luke yet. As if his presence annoyed the younger Molina.
Then, Luke went right up to Carlos and flicked him on the nose, checking if he was corporeal as well as visible. Julie yelped out a ‘hey’ but she was just as stunned as Luke when his fingers snapped and made contact with her brother’s nose.
Carlos winced and reared back, clutching his nose, “Ow? What the hell?!”
“Okay, what is with you humans?” Luke was starting to lose it.
A double anomaly?
This was getting way freaky! The mystery had grown more complicated and he just might be overwhelmed by the knowledge.
Luke dragged a hand down the length of his face,“Gods, can someone please tell me what’s going on?”
“Well,” Carlos started, “I show up, with smushed tres leches, to find some frat bro in the garage with my sister, and then he flicks my fucking nose!”
“Carlos? Mijo, is that you?”
Their dad was outside, having just left the house upon hearing Carlos’ arrival.
“Yeah, dad!” Carlos called back, though his eyes never left Luke’s face. He cocked his head from side to side in a taunting manner, “And with Julie’s boyfriend apparently!”
“Boyfriend?” Their dad muttered, confused.
Julie’s hands clenched and unclenched at her sides, and Luke could tell she wanted to wring her brother’s neck for that comment. Her dad opened the garage doors before she could resort to violent measures to keep him quiet.
She covered up her frustrations with a plastered smile and a strained laugh, “Carlos is just kidding around. There’s no one else here.”
Her dad conducted a visual sweep of the studio, indeed finding no one, “Huh. I swore I heard someone in here singing with you. The song sounded great, honey. Glad you can make use of this old space.”
“Thanks,”
Carlos gawked at how their dad glazed over Luke’s existence. He lifted his arm to point, “He’s literally right there-”
In a slick and quick maneuver, Julie restrained her brother whilst thrusting the plastic bag at their dad, “Carlos brought the cake!”
“Great!” Her dad accepted the bag (and did not take a look inside, thank goodness), “And I just finished up the food, so let’s dig in, yeah?”
“We’ll meet you inside,” Julie all but shoved her dad out of the garage before Carlos could get in another word, “Need to catch up for a sec.”
If the man noticed something amiss, he didn’t show any signs of it. And with a jaunty walk back to the house, he was gone.
“Do we need to put dad in a facility? He totally ignored him!” Carlos’ eyes narrowed at Luke, “Are you a ghost?”
“What? No!”
“Don’t bullshit me, I watch Unsolved,”
“I, uh-” Luke deferred to Julie, “Your call, boss.”
“He’s not a ghost! I’ll tell you later but for right now, we need to be here for dad,”
“Oh, like how you were just now?”
Julie was not in the mood to be baited, “Carlos…”
And it might have been due to the tone in her voice, one that Luke could liken to how Harrison would speak to him sometimes- with authority and finality- but Carlos folded after seconds of intense staring between the two siblings. They could have been communicating in their own way, which Luke watched with fascination.
“Fine!” Carlos surrendered with an aggravated groan, “I’m guessing dad has no clue. You haven’t told him about this guy.”
Julie blinked at him. He blinked right back. Then her nose twitched.
Carlos sighed.
“Okay. Whatever it is, I’ll keep it a sibling secret. But not for free. I’m not doing the dishes after.”
“What are you? 12?”
Carlos quirked a brow so eerily similar to how Julie would, and Luke was now convinced that it was a Molina family trait.
Then it was Julie’s turn to relent. She rolled her eyes, “Fine. I’ll do the dishes.”
“Sweet. Later,” Carlos left to go to dinner, sending one last look at Luke, “You too, whoever you are.”
“It’s Luke!” he shouted after him.
All he got was an uninterested wave of the hand, “Yeah yeah. Whatever.”
They waited until Carlos entered through the back door before speaking again.
“How is he so blasè about all this?”
“Or a better question: how come my brother can see you?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure that out too,” Luke gestured lamely at her, “There’s-There’s two of you?”
“It seems like it,”
Julie appeared to be trying hard not to let this new development rattle her as much as it was with Luke. It must have been quite a shock for her too. To find out her brother was similarly gifted.
Deciding that it would be a matter to discuss on a day that was not her mother’s birthday, she shook her head then retreated to the piano, where her journal resided.
“Look, for what it’s worth, thank you,” She packed up her materials, “Like no, really. You saved my ass with this song.”
Deciding to switch gears (for now), Luke was happy to circle back to music, reminiscing about their killer writing session.
“No problem. It was fun,”
“So much fun,” Julie seconded, “I’ll try to give you writing credit.”
“Of course. Though the lack of a last name- oh and a birth certificate- would make that kinda difficult,”
“I heard somewhere that a cat got listed for a co-writer for a physics dissertation,”
“Well good for Tibbles or whatever his name is,”
That sparked a laugh out of Julie.
“You’re one helluva writer, Luke,” she said, and it thrilled Luke so, just to hear that compliment coming from her.
He beamed, “Thanks.”
“I gotta go,”
“Yeah. Enjoy your dinner,”
She backtracked, securing the journal to her chest. And with a proud grin and mirth in her eyes, she held her gaze on her Luke, “You wrote a love song.”
He laughed, “I wrote a love song.”
“You did that,”
“I did that!”
“Just think what else you could write,”
And with a wink, she skipped away, and he hoped that the rest of her night would run more smoothly now that the added stress of the song had been stripped away.
Luke lingered in the studio. He made his way to the piano, tracing the corners as he recalled how he and Julie had been hunched over the top, getting lost in the process.
“Imagine what we could write…” he corrected. Now that he had a taste of it, he would be crazy not to write with her again in the future. But if she would let him again… he wasn’t sure.
The ‘24 glistened under the garage lights and he thought back to Julie’s mom. How this day to honor her had almost been ruined by Julie’s job, how frazzled and panicked Julie had been because of it.
He may have vowed to himself that anything to lighten the load, he would do it. Julie was special to him. She was his friend. He couldn’t bear to see her how she was today, so despondent and closed off.
It was tempting. To pop in the Molina house to check on her one last time before leaving, but he wouldn’t. It was her mom’s day and he had already taken up too much of the evening.
Luke closed the piano lid, pushed in the bench, and decided the studio was clean enough so he could make his exit. Right about when he stepped forward, intending to poof away, his leg paused mid-stride.
Wait.
The connection.
Julie and Carlos.
There was something linking them together. By blood. Right? That was it. That had to be it. They were related- and that was something he could go off of. But their dad couldn’t see him. They were still connected, and if not by the dad then-
Luke got to HQ, mentally mapping his course to the Archives when suddenly his shoulder rammed against another Cupid’s.
“Sorry,” he uttered, but nearly wept in happy surprise, seeing who it was, “Hey! Alex!”
His friend stumbled back, eyes wide in panic, “Oh! Hey, Luke. What’s up?”
Luke waited a moment, expecting to see Alex’s eyes squint down to their normal size upon realizing it was him, but no. The other Cupid was… fidgeting.
He punched Alex in the shoulder, “Dude, I barely see you nowadays. How’s it goin’?”
“How- How's what going?” Alex forced out, at a higher pitch than usual, breathy in delivery. “Like the- the general ‘what’, like the general state of my life? That ‘what’?”
Luke blinked. “Yes. That ‘what’.”
Alex crossed his arms, forcing a smile, “Swell. I’m just… swell."
Okay? Why was his buddy on edge? Not even looking him in the eye?
“Hey,” his hand latched onto Alex’s forearm, “Have you been seeing that Trickster?” That could be why he was so rattled.
“No!”
Luke stumbled back, releasing him. They stared at each other.
The blonde winced at the act, reeling it back, “I mean, not-” he coughed, “Not lately.”
Volume and abruptness aside, Luke pressed, “So it… it worked? He backed off?”
“Y-Yeah. Definitely not… bothering me. Anymore,” There was an added something to his tone that Luke, for the life of him, couldn’t translate. And as if sensing the need to talk more, Alex perked up, as if he heard something, “Actually, Reg and I have a case we have to get to right now-”
“We do?” Their other friend just approached them, catching the last fragment of the conversation. That was news to him it seemed.
“They just told me about it. Grab your cello, bro. We’ll get Bobby on the way,”
Alex didn’t wait for a response before making a getaway down the hallway.
“Uh, alright?” Reggie shared a concerned look with Luke. Then he summoned his cello and started after their keyed up friend, “Catch ya later, Luke!”
All Luke could do was wave pathetically after the two, “Okay?”
He continued his trek to the Archives at a much slower pace, his run-in with Alex now paired with his interaction with Carlos weighing him down. He could only handle so much craziness in such little time.
The Archives was close to empty when he entered. Bypassing all the shelves filled with the supplementary material, Luke went straight for the older volumes.
He had a theory.
Now, he heard of the Gods blessing people with extraordinary gifts: Apollo handing out prophetic abilities- turning people into soothsayers, the whole Midas fiasco with Dionysus, etc.
But that was centuries ago, and higher-ups tried to curb direct interferences with the lives of mortals.
(There were whispers of the Gods forcing Zeus to get a vasectomy, and Luke had snorted into his ambrosia when he heard that one).
The Gods could do whatever the fuck they wanted though, and so there was nothing stopping them from still blessing people. He hypothesized that Aphrodite, or some other deity, blessed a certain Rose Molina. That had to be it right? And maybe there were some unforeseen side effects to it, passing it onto her progeny.
Now for the reason why Julie’s mom would be blessed by a God was something he had to look up. He pulled out some volumes, reading into historic examples of such things happening, running through all the possibilities but none that he could connect back to Cupidhood.
A lot of these recent instances would be people wishing to be able to conceive a child. But why ask Aphrodite and not Hera? Well, there was some overlap with the whole ‘Goddess of Fertility’ thing.
After digesting all this information, Luke figured that he would need more relevant, specific information.
“Yo, I need the files on all mortals blessed by Aphrodite between the late 1960s to late ‘70s. Where are they?” he requested from Clive, the circulation assistant, at his desk.
He had no choice but to ask for help. Their database was centuries old and he couldn’t snap his fingers and locate them. HQ ran differently like that.
“Not available,” Clive stated, resuming his writing.
“Not available or not available to me?”
The man lowered his spectacles, “Would the distinction matter?”
Luke growled, “Clive. You little shit. Why can’t I access those files?”
“Because that information is irrelevant to your duties as a Cupid,”
“Fine,” Then he tried another angle, “Okay, how about a file? A case file. On a ‘Rose Molina’. I can still access the records.”
Clive hummed and swiveled in his little chair so that he was now facing the card catalogues. He ran his fingers along the drawers (and there were thousands of them.)
The guy had to pull out a ladder and climb several stories up to access the drawers there and it took a while for him to return. And when he did, Luke waited to be directed to whatever section in this mammoth of a library he needed to go.
“Well?”
“Not available,”
Luke was absolutely flummoxed, “Wait, I don’t understand-”
“There’s no file by that name here,” was the curt explanation.
There was clearly a card in the other man’s hand, and with lightning reflexes, Luke snatched it up.
Molina, Rose, he read. And that was all he could make out. Everything else was redacted. No call number or anything, just streaks of black marker.
And a red ‘X’ in the corner.
The same ‘X’ on Julie’s file.
That- That didn’t make sense. There was no reason for Rose’s file to be in No Man’s Land with Julie’s. Even the dead were still in their records, and as far as he could tell she and Julie’s dad had been happy together, definitely Matched material. There shouldn’t be any problems.
“What the hell does this mean?”
“It means they’re forbidden,”
He whirled around, the new voice drawing his attention, and frustration, away from Clive.
Valeria, with a bundle of files and books, smiled sardonically in his direction.
“Yeah, I get that,” He kept a close watch of the Cupid, who was innocently returning her resources to a more receptive Clive, “But all this trouble-”
“Maybe they’re forbidden for a reason,” Valeria threw out there.
“Why?”
“Orders,”
“Whose?” he grilled. Valeria was important around here, she must have information, “It’s Harrison, isn’t it? The people upstairs?”
She made no telling movements, her expression and body language neutral. Like always.
“You’ve always been a strange one. Curious. Too curious about the humans, about things you should never concern yourself with. Some people may find it to be a… dangerous trait,”
She faced him now, and he could see the slightest ticks of repugnance in her clean, razor-sharp features.
“If you know what’s good for you, then you better quit it.”
His jaw tightened, eyes narrowed, “Are you threatening me, Val?”
The outer corners of her lips curled, amused by the accusation. As if he was important enough to be on her radar.
“I’m just saying. That maybe what you find is not something you’d want to look for. Now, I’m going back to the elevator, and you will join me, or else I would take this up to Harrison,”
If Luke had the choice between flinging himself off the Burj Khalifa and voluntarily doing what Valeria asked of him, then somebody better strap him to a ‘chute.
But he had to keep the heat off of him, so he grumbled and groaned and trudged after her into the elevator.
“Good choice,”
“Whatever,” He punched the buttons, the doors closing on them, “Tattletale.”
Valeria ignored the insult, “There are worse things than desk duty, Lucas.”
“I’m sure there is,”
“We can’t have you up here. We need more on the ground. Matching people,”
“Okay,”
“What we do is important and you’re not… totally inept in your department,”
Luke scoffed, “That’s not a compliment, is it, Val?”
The girl rolled her eyes, “I’m saying… you’re wasting your time pissing our managers off. Once you get your act together, then everything will be as they should be. You using your gifts. As Aphrodite intended.”
Snapshots of red ‘X’s collected in his mind.
“Right,” he said, numb, “Whatever Aphrodite wants…”
Whatever that meant.
Whatever that meant for Julie. For all of humankind.
Valeria may be content with not knowing, but Luke wasn’t. He had to find out.
It was part of his curious nature after all.