Chapter Text
It hadn't been the five of them for a long time. Sure, they were all still friends – he would even go as far as to hope they were all still close – and everyone they knew seemed to think the High Five was something infallible, but people on the inside, people like Lucas, knew better.
Things had never gone back to normal after Texas; he had begun to think the country itself was some kind of curse. It seemed to be Lucas, mostly, who was affected, and it was almost surreal when he realized that he was being slowly iced out of the group. He had no doubt it was unintentional; Riley would never, for one thing, but the bitter part of him sometimes theorized that she was a little too sweet and kind and heartfelt about everything, as if she thought it would hurt less if she sugarcoated it.
The lines had been drawn in the sand before he'd even had a chance to notice them, much less have a say. Still reeling from the announcement of Maya's feelings, awkwardly not even from the girl herself, he'd been caught unawares by Riley's claim that she loved him like a brother. And just when he'd begun to come to terms with it, when he'd allowed himself to think he might actually have a chance with the blonde beauty, they'd erased those lines and drawn up new ones without even considering him.
“We're better as friends, Lucas,” she'd said firmly, after only one date and two unfortunate smoothies. And Riley had just kept calling him her brother and unwittingly trying to cause him bodily harm.
That hadn't been so bad, back when they'd thought they were doing what was best for their friendships, but then it seemed like Maya was avoiding him and Riley never wanted to answer his questions and he started to hate being around Farkle because his supposed best friend was always giving him a look he could never quite figure out.
Watching the three of them interact from a distance, he had come to the devastating epiphany that he would never stop being the new kid. So Lucas relied more than ever on Zay, the only one who really knew who he was both in Texas and New York, and that was that.
It was hard for others to detect, but he noticed the way they tiptoed around him now. The Texans and the New Yorkers, always perfectly civil, but something was missing. The spark that made them legendary was gone.
So when Maya Hart showed up at his door – even more surprising was that she was alone, something she made sure never to be whenever he was around – Lucas, scholar athlete that he was, didn't know what to make of it.
“Hi, Huckleberry,” she said, almost nervously, which was usually unlike Maya, but there was nothing usual about this situation. Not anymore, at least; there had been a time when she'd stop by his house just to say hi to his mother and eat her cookies straight out of the oven. Judging by the look on her face, they were both surprised at how easily the nickname slipped out.
“Maya,” he replied, struggling to keep the confusion out of his voice. He stepped aside to let her in, pleased at how naturally playing the gentleman now came to him, only realizing at that moment that her eyeliner had smudged at the corners and the eyes themselves were rimmed with red. “Are you okay?”
“Of course I'm okay, Ranger Rick,” she snorted, but this time the nickname felt much more deliberate, like a kind of deflection. “I'm not one of your baby horses, you don't have to take care of me.”
He couldn't help it; he'd wanted to be a veterinarian almost his whole life, and while there was nothing animalistic about Maya – though even she would admit to having a wild streak that sometimes needed to be reined in – she was tiny and beautiful and exactly the kind of person you had a natural instinct to protect. Lucas was perfectly aware, though, that she wouldn't hesitate to unsheathe her claws if he said so out loud.
A lot of things had changed for them since middle school, but he was confident that Maya Hart, at her very core, had not, and for that, Lucas was grateful.
If she wouldn't talk, then he knew from experience that he had no chance at making her. Maya had many, many talents, but her best by far was at bottling her feelings up. It had been years since he had held her face in his hands like he would never let go – sometimes, if he looked at her too long, he could almost feel the tingle in his fingertips again – and she had let their moment happen and then tucked it away someplace where even he, an active participant, was not allowed.
“What are you doing here, Maya?” he asked, entirely out of curiosity rather than annoyance, and wishing he could force himself to stop saying her name. It was too short for his liking, the two syllables not enough to satisfy him when he hadn't said out loud in so long.
She stepped further into the house, craning her neck slightly as she glanced around. “Your mom isn't home, is she?”
“That depends on what you're planning to do,” he responded. His mother was, in fact, not home, and Maya would figure that out soon enough, but it wasn't like she'd answered his question, either.
“I'm not going to do anything,” she replied in a voice that very much sounded to Lucas like she was up to something. “Honestly, your faith in me is astounding.”
He didn't know what she was doing here, acting as though this was still normal for the two of them, but he wouldn't let her pull him back into their little game quite so easily. “What are you doing here, Maya?” he repeated, much more seriously now.
“I –” she started, and then swallowed her words. “I missed you.”
Lucas could only stare at her.
True to form, she scowled back at him. “Don't take that the wrong way, cowboy. We're supposed to be friends, aren't we?”
“Sure,” Lucas replied dryly. “That's what we are.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Maya demanded, a hint of panic in her tone.
“Nothing!” he lied, for the sake of calming her down. When his mother did get home, the last thing she needed from an already stressful day was to find the blue-eyed hurricane she hadn't seen in years breaking down on her floor.
“I'm not Riley,” she said simply, which could have meant a hundred different things, but he assumed it was something along the lines of you don't have to pretend for me.
“Trust me, I know,” he replied, his lips twitching unwillingly into a smile. It was almost worth it when she smiled back tentatively, and then she started speaking again.
“We were good together before you came,” Maya said, and it was already starting to sound like the beginning of one of her rambles. It sort of seemed like the direction she was going in would be a little bit of a slap in the face, but Lucas was willing to listen. She hadn't spoken this much to him in so long. “Riley and Farkle and me, I mean. And then you showed up and shook us up, you know, and then, well, Texas happened –” Neither of them would look at the other then, but he was almost amused at how hard she was trying to remain nonchalant. “And we said we'd all stay friends, didn't we?”
It wasn't like they'd made some blood oath at the girls' sacred bay window, but Lucas was sure those words had been uttered. “We did,” he agreed.
“So why did you stop?” Maya accused him bluntly. He'd always liked that she was the only one, besides Zay, who always got straight to the point – Farkle hid his meaning behind big words, and Riley never seemed to actually say what she meant, for fear of hurting someone's feelings – but this wasn't fair, because she was wrong.
“You're blaming me for this?” he exclaimed, not even infuriated so much as shocked that the truth could be so misconstrued. “Maya, you and Riley were trying so hard to step back that you just kept going until you'd left me behind!”
“We stepped back because our friendships with you were more important than who got to date you,” she snapped, “and we thought you'd feel the same way! Except as soon as you realized you weren't getting either one of us, you bailed.”
It wasn't true and so it shouldn't have bothered him as much as it did, but the fact that Maya seemed to believe it wholeheartedly made his blood boil. “Don't you dare come into my house and tell me that I intentionally tried to get between you and Riley!” he shot back, having always had a little bit of a dramatic side. “I did some stepping back of my own, you know.”
She laughed derisively. “Yeah, right out of our lives.”
“Riley was avoiding me, you were avoiding me, Farkle was always with one of you being, I don't know, the shoulder to cry on –”
“I never cried over you,” Maya cut in, looking offended.
“If it mattered so much to all of you, why did it take you two years to come here and start up a fucking conversation, Maya?” he demanded, ignoring the interruption. Screw being Mr. Perfect right now; there was nobody to pretend for anymore.
“Lucas,” she said desperately, her voice barely more than a whisper, “you can't possibly think you aren't important to the group. I just thought Riley needed time and she needed us to be there for her, without you. But it wasn't the same – remember when I told you that I didn't want anything to change?”
How could he forget that night and that campfire and that look on her face, the most hopeful he'd ever seen her, the gasp she'd made when she moved in close and he had reached for her. It was all Lucas could do just to nod.
“Well, things changed,” Maya continued bitterly. “I should have known everything I want ends up burnt to the ground. And I thought Riley would fix it because that's what she does, you know? But she didn't and the longer I waited the more awkward it seemed and I didn't know what to do or how to do it, I just knew we needed you back.”
She stopped to breathe and he made the mistake of making eye contact and just like that, Lucas couldn't look away.
“Anyway, here I am,” she finished, fidgeting under his gaze. “I'm sure I did this wrong, though, since I'm shit at apologies, and you seem kind of …”
“I'm not mad,” Lucas assured her quickly. “I was never mad, just hurt. And very confused, but that happens a lot with you.” He'd taken a chance with that statement but Maya laughed, which was reward enough. “Does Riley know you're here?”
Her face fell instantaneously; he felt like he'd ruined the moment but knew he'd probably been deluding himself into thinking they were having one. “They don't want me back in the group, do they?” Lucas said flatly. He wouldn't let Maya know how much that hurt him, wouldn't let her feel guilty for another thing that wasn't her fault.
“You were never out of the group, Huckleberry,” she said firmly. “And if, hypothetically, you were, then I want you back.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Lucas asked, a sense of trepidation and elatedness coming over him that he only seemed to feel around Maya.
She replied with an air of certainty he found reassuring, though the answer itself was vague and fairly nonsensical. “It means, Hopalong, that I'm really good at starting things.”