Chapter Text
It's been a week since they've returned to New York, and Maya still hasn't said a word to Lucas.
It started as a continuation of their game, an exasperated huff and roll of his eyes when Lucas would say something to her and get a blank stare and dead silence in response. Riley would laugh and ask him what he was expecting; Zay would make bets with Farkle on how long she'd last. And through it all Lucas would shrug, say that if she wanted to be immature he wasn't going to stop her.
But on Lucas' birthday, something inside of him snaps.
He's turning fifteen, a stark reminder that he's a year older than the rest of his friends, and Riley, aghast at Lucas' initial plan to just go to the movies as a group, wants to throw him a party to celebrate. She's decorated her rooftop with fairy lights, a string of green and blue and purple lighting up the dusty floor. There's a table of chips and dip in the corner, cans of soft drink stacked upon each other in a cooler on the ground, and Shawn even came over to fix the speaker so that a playlist of Lucas' favorite country songs could wash over the myriad of teenagers huddled together on the roof ("If he didn't deserve my silence before, he definitely does now. Carrie Underwood, Riley!" Maya had huffed, legitimately contemplating "accidentally" breaking the speaker cord as some sort of civic duty so that she could save everyone before it was too late). Riley excitedly invites every single person in their grade, tells Lucas not to worry about a thing as she somehow plans the entire night for him in four days, and Maya marvels at how well Riley knows him, how good she is for him, and reminds herself she's doing the right thing by making sure she keeps on stepping back.
Maya's standing alone in the corner on the roof, silently sipping from the can of Coke she's only drinking to give herself something to do. She watches as Farkle talks animatedly to Smackle by the door leading back down to Riley's apartment, waving his hands around as they debate on something. Zay is trying to choreograph some sort of ridiculous dance routine with half the kids in their class, clapping his hands enthusiastically as Yogi and Dave master a dance move that involves pirouetting and hand movements and God, it's just about the most embarrassing thing Maya's ever seen, and she reminds herself to film this later so that she has ammunition to use against Zay in a few years. She glances over to Riley at the snack table, expecting to see her talking to Lucas, but instead Charlie is throwing chips at her and she's trying to catch them in her mouth, a glow in her eyes that Maya hasn't seen since Riley had described her kiss with Lucas to her months ago. Riley throws her hands up in the air triumphantly as she finally catches one in her mouth, and Maya can hear Charlie's soft laugh as he looks up at her in admiration.
Maya sighs, crumpling up her now finished Coke can as she checks the time on the phone. The numbers 9:43 blink back up at her, and she groans, realizing that the party is only halfway through. She's in the middle of debating whether or not she should sneak down to Matthews' apartment and spend the remainder of the night watching TV with Topanga when she hears the voice she's been avoiding all night.
"This spot taken?" Lucas says softly, fiddling with his coat pockets as he hesitantly leans against the ledge Maya's standing next to. She just shrugs noncommittally, forcing herself to keep her eyes away from his. Instead, she trains her gaze on Zay, who is now (unsuccessfully) trying to breakdance in the middle of the dance floor that Cory and Shawn set up. After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Lucas groans, running his hands through his hair in frustration.
"Come on, Maya, are you seriously not going to talk to me?"
Maya sighs, pushing herself off from the wall she was leaning against as she begins to make her way to Riley, or Farkle, or anyone else who isn't Lucas, but he grabs her wrist, pulling her back to him. She lets out a squeak in surprise at his assertiveness, glancing up at him as incredulity pools in her eyes. There's a fire in his eyes she hasn't seen since the school board tried to cut the arts program as his hand squeezes hers, his thumb gently stroking the bone protruding from her wrist.
"I'm serious, Maya. I get it, you're mad at me. But are you seriously still going to ignore me?"
Maya wants to say something, wants to just forgive him and forget all about it as long as he keeps looking at her like that, but all she does is blink repeatedly, mouth gaping open as she tries to form words that would be good enough to make up for a week and a half of silence. Eventually she shuts her jaw, swallowing heavily as she drags her gaze away from his, instead electing to focus on the movement of his Adam's apple dancing in his throat.
"What can I do? Tell me what I need to do to fix it, and I'll do it." There's an air of desperation in his voice that Maya doesn't think she's ever heard, and she opens her mouth to say something, anything, when Riley bounds up to them, eyes bright.
"You guys are good again?" She squeals, placing a hand on Lucas' shoulder. Maya doesn't miss the way that Riley's eyes dart down to Lucas' grip on her wrist, smile faltering for half a second before restoring itself even wider than before, and Maya is reminded of who she was protecting when she stepped back in the first place.
She finally pulls her wrist from his grasp, the imprint of his thumb burning her skin, and takes a final look at the light dimming rapidly from his eyes before steeling her resolve and turning back to face Riley.
"No," she says quietly. "We're not."
She pushes past Lucas, shoulder bumping his as he stands frozen like a statue, ignoring her urge to turn and look back at him as she walks down the stairs back to Riley's apartment.
***
After his birthday, it's like a switch has been flicked somewhere in Lucas, because he's made it his life's mission to get Maya back to normal.
On Monday, her locker is overflowing with cards. Riley, Farkle, Lucas, and Zay are huddled together by Zay's locker, eyes brimming with anticipation as Maya glares at her locker in confusion. Rolling her eyes, she opens her locker, and dozens of the cards fall to the ground, pooling at her feet.
"Well..." Riley says, eyes wide as she motions for Maya to hurry up, "Are you going to read them?"
She bends down and picks up the first card, the front of which contains a border comprised of cowboys, and reads aloud the handwritten words on the inside. "Company's coming; add a cup of water to the soup."
Furrowing her brows in confusion, her head whips back over to her friends.
"What?" She says flatly after a beat of silence, the tone of her voice causing Zay to burst into a fit of laughter, leaning face down on Farkle's shoulder as he tries to swallow the snickers erupting from his mouth.
"Read them all." Lucas says simply, flashing her a grin.
Maya leans back down and picks up a handful of the cards, each one filled with a stereotypical Texan saying more ridiculous than the last.
We've howdied but we haven't shook.
Let's chaw the rag.
It's time to heat up the bricks.
That about puts the rag on the bush.
Don't dig up more snakes than you can kill.
Even a blind hog can find an acorn once in a while.
Lucas' grin grows wider as she reads aloud each card. "Come on," he smirks. "Let's hear it. Which one are you going to make fun of me about first?" He takes a step towards her, mirth dancing in his eyes.
Maya smiles back sweetly, gathering the remaining cards in her arms. Silently, she walks over to the nearest rubbish bin, happily ripping up each card before dropping them in the trash, and tries to ignore the hurt contorting Lucas' face as she walks into their history class without saying a word to any of them.
Tuesday, she almost trips over her own feet because of the sight at her locker. Her classmates are pointing and laughing at him, but he ignores them as his face splits into a huge smile at the sight of her.
He's wearing a white Western dress shirt decorated with embroidered roses and a stylized yoke on the front and back, partnered with a buckskin fringe jacket. He's tucked the shirt into a pair of stiff, Western-style jeans, hands gripping the belt buckle as he points his cowboy boot covered toes as though he's stepped straight off the set of Wild Wild West. And to top it all off, he's wearing the same black cowboy hat he wore to the 7th grade dance where he gave her the rose, which he tips at her when he realizes she's looking at him.
Instead of unloading the barrage of teasing she's had to repress for two weeks, Maya breezes straight past him, forgoing her only opportunity to grab her books (it's not as though Mr Matthews has ever actually derived his lesson plans from the designated coursework, anyway) as she walks straight into the classroom without a second glance, and manages to keep up her facade the entire day, even when he sits across from her at lunch and she has to physically bite her lip to stop the barrage of nicknames threatening to spill out of her mouth.
On Wednesday, Maya is greeted with the dulcet tone of Big & Rich singing about saving a horse and riding a cowboy over the school speakers as she walks through the hallway. There's balloons with poorly drawn horses in black marker bobbing around the open space her locker takes up, and she watches in amazement as Yogi attempts to skate over to her, twirling a baton in time to the music. She's so caught up in watching Yogi that she doesn't realize that Lucas is next to her until he grabs her hand.
She jumps at the surprise contact, and when she turns to look at him he's wearing the same hat as the day before, this time with a different Texan shirt and jacket to accompany it. Trying not to laugh, Lucas gets down on one bended knee, gripping Maya's hand in earnest as he looks up at her.
"Maya," He says solemnly, fighting the grin that's threatening to split on his face, "I think the lengths I have gone to in order to publicly humiliate myself prove that I'm sorry for what happened in Texas. Will you forgive me?"
Maya glances around in bewilderment at the crowd that's gathered, observing Darby's grip on Yogi's arm to keep him upright, Riley's giggles, the group of 7th grade girls swooning over Lucas' efforts, but before she can make up her mind on how to navigate a situation like this, the music cuts out and is replaced with the voice of the principal asking for whoever broke into the office this morning and so politely added their own playlist to the PA system to please come visit him immediately.
"Sorry, ma'am. Raincheck?" Lucas says hurriedly, dropping her hand as he gets up and runs as far away from the scene of the crime as possible. Maya doesn't see him for the rest of the day, and later finds out that his cowboy getup was a dead giveaway that he was the culprit and that he's received two weeks worth of detention for his efforts.
She goes home that night and listens to Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy on repeat, cursing Lucas Friar for being so damn hard to stay away from.
***
There's a cow in the hallway.
It's the end of the school day on a Thursday, Maya is running on five hours of sleep and just wants to go home, and there is a freaking cow in the hallway.
She almost stops dead in her tracks, struggling to construct a sentence that will do the sight in front of her justice, before finally settling on an eloquent "Um."
"I thought you might need some help telling the difference between a bull and a cow," A cheeky voice floats from somewhere above her, and she glances up to see Lucas leaning over the stair railing from the floor above her locker, a gleam in his eyes.
In that moment, Maya almost wants to just give in. She wants to crack a stupid joke just to see his eyes brighten, and she wants to be selfish, wants his attention all on her. But then Riley steps into view, placing her elbows on the railing as she stands beside Lucas and grins down at Maya, shaking her head in amusement.
Maya knows that at some point she needs to stop using Riley as an excuse. Because she is well aware that she's protecting herself just as much as she's protecting Riley by keeping her feelings to herself, because if she pushes him away first, then he can't leave her.
She learned about the fight or flight response once, that in the face of danger it's human instinct to either run away or face your fears head on, and while her current situation is probably not as dire as say, being isolated in a rain forest with a tiger, the fear in her chest almost lets her believe it is. So, flight response kicking in, she rolls her eyes, turning and facing away from him as she opens her locker to grab her sketchbook.
"Come on, Maya. Seriously." There's a hint of annoyance in his voice now, but she staunchly ignores him as she slams her locker shut, instead focusing her gaze on the cow that is still just standing there in the middle of the hallway, no teachers in sight to ask what the hell is going on. Gripping her sketchbook to her chest with one arm, she reaches and grabs the lasso wrapped around the cow's neck with her free hand, twisting the material around her knuckles as she bites her tongue to physically restrain herself from doing what she's most afraid of.
"You know what, Maya?" Lucas snaps in exasperation, pushing himself off the railing and walking down the stairs to where she's standing, still fiddling with the lasso around the cow's neck. "I give up. You're impossible, you know that?"
The small crowd gathered at the lockers, once laughing and pointing, immediately sober once the gravity of Lucas' words becomes apparent.
At the harsh impact of his words, she can feel the tears rimming her eyelids, and bites her lip to stop them spilling over. The selfish part of her had kept thinking that Lucas would just be there when she was finally ready to talk to him again, that he would never be the one to end their friendship on his terms, and the realization that she could lose him in this moment hits her like a ton of bricks. Maya remembers being thirteen, remembers assuring him that one day she'll break him. She just didn't think it would be like this, tears in her eyes and defeat woven into the crease on Lucas' forehead.
After weeks of silence, she finally looks him in the eyes as she steels herself for what she's going to say, voice strangled and broken.
"Lucas, I-"
"Oh, now you want to talk." Lucas says derisively, and Maya can feel her throat closing up at the hurt in his eyes. "Well, maybe I don't want to talk to you now, Maya. Maybe now I'm done with these little games you always want to play."
He pulls the lasso from her hand and she flinches, physically recoiling from his touch. Lucas doesn't even look at her as he leads the cow out the back entrance, and Maya would probably have laughed at how comical the sight was if she wasn't still fighting back tears.
Riley's still standing at the top of the stair rail, jaw slightly agape as she tries to make sense of what just unfolded in front of her. The rest of the students who were eagerly gathered around immediately scatter, sneaking furtive glances at her as they whisper among themselves ("What an unforgiving bitch," one seventh grade girl mutters to her friend, making sure to avoid Maya's seething glare).
"Maya?" Riley says quietly once she reaches the bottom of the stairs. "What just happened?"
Maya is, thankfully, saved from responding to a question she doesn't even begin to know how to answer when they're interrupted by Riley's ringtone alerting her to a new text message. Maya breathes a sigh of relief at the reprieve, leaning her head back against her locker as Riley types out a text in response.
"It's Farkle," Riley sighs, dropping her phone back into her bag. "I'm late to work on the English assignment with him. Come to the bay window tonight though, okay?" Riley squeezes Maya's arm, eliciting a nod from the blonde before heading towards the library.
Once the clack of Riley's heels on the corridor floor has faded into the distance, Maya lets herself slide to the floor, back still against the lockers as she stretches her legs out and crosses them over, letting her sketchbook drop to the floor beside her. She takes a few deep breaths in and out, closing her eyes and reveling in the solitude. She finally - finally - has some time alone; time to indulge in a little self pity before she has to go back to acting like she doesn't care, like fear isn't ignited in the pit of her stomach every time she hears Lucas' name.
Maya learned long ago that the universe has something against her so her solitude, of course, doesn't even last a minute.
"Well, that was quite a sight."
Maya groans internally, cracking a single eye open at Zay's playful lilt as the boy unceremoniously drops onto the ground beside her, drawing his legs to his chest and letting his arms hang over his knees. He fiddles with one of the friendship bracelets that Riley had made him the night he was "officially" initiated into the group. (His initiation process had involved a group sleepover and a dare involving chicken grease and the cat belonging to the rude man living in the apartment below Riley - Maya doesn't like to talk about it.)
"What are you still doing here, Zay?" She asks tiredly, squeezing her eye shut again, hoping that the action will clue Zay in to the fact that she just wants to be left alone for five minutes.
"Well, someone had to arrange for the cow's grand entrance while Lucas was in detention this week. Thought I'd stick around to see how it all turned out. You two really have a flair for the dramatic, you know that?" He flicks his finger against her arm, grinning at her audaciously when her eyes snap open and she flashes him a glare that could kill a small child.
"How did you even find a cow you could bring to a middle school in New York City, anyway?"
"Well, funny story, I actually-"
"You know what, I don't even want to know." She changes her mind, deciding that it's best not to be complicit in his scheme in case the police come searching for whoever illegally smuggled a live farm animal into a middle school, slapping his hand away as he continues to tap his fingers against her upper arm.
Zay smirks in response, letting his head fall back against the lockers as his hand returns back to dangling over his knees, a comfortable silence falling upon the two as they remain seated, Maya's gaze trained firmly on her lap, Zay's gaze on her.
"He used to talk about you all the time, you know." Zay says finally, a rare hint of sincerity in his voice. Maya draws in a ragged breath, not needing to be told who Zay is talking about, and turns her head to face him. She doesn't need to be reminded of the fact that Lucas used to call up Zay and tell him about their gang, doesn't need to be reminded of going home on a high the night they had brainstormed to save the creative arts, a flush on her face as she had stood in front of the mirror and tried his words on for size. Blonde beauty. Lucas had told Zay she was beautiful.
She had been described as a lot of things in her life. Tough, rebellious, broken. But never beautiful.
"I know. You told us that already," She says finally, biting the inside of her lip, letting her head drop as her gaze returns to a particularly interesting smudge on the floor.
"No, Maya. He used to talk about you all the time."
Maya's breath hitches at this, her head snapping back up in incredulity as she takes in the sombre look on Zay's face.
"Don't get me wrong," He hurriedly continues once he has her full attention, "He talked about Riley and Farkle a lot too. He'd talk for ten minutes about some story to do with Riley's clumsiness and he'd get all fond and excited. And another ten where he wouldn't stop raving about some college level chemistry problem that Farkle solved without any trouble. But then he'd spend an hour on the tiny blonde who wouldn't stop annoying him."
Maya lets out a breathy laugh at this, imagining seventh grade Lucas' frustration as he vented about her to a clueless Zay. Maybe she had gotten under his skin more than she realized.
"First it was just about how you wouldn't stop making fun of him. Then he was getting all excited, telling me how he figured out ways to rile you up. Then it turned into how he had misunderstood you at first, how he appreciates how passionate you get about the things that are important to you. The next thing I know, he's telling me how beautiful you look when you're lost in your art or that he's worried about you because you're always saying you're fine when people make fun of your home life even though he knows you're not. He said he admires your strength because even though you've been let down by so many people in your life, you still have faith in the ones who stayed. There were times where he'd only talk about you, Maya. I don't think he even knew he was doing it."
All through Zay's declaration Maya felt herself losing her breath. The idea that she had been on Lucas' mind so frequently, that he'd observed nanoscopic details about her, that he cared so much, even back then, wasn't something she was expecting.
"To be honest, I was surprised when I got here and Riley was the one he had an unofficial relationship with. I knew they had gone on a date and everything, but even through the phone I could hear him light up when he spoke about you. And don't - don't hate him for this, Maya." Zay rambles on, barely pausing to take a breath. "Lucas is a good guy. I believe him when he says he likes Riley, but I also think he's subconsciously waiting for his heart to catch up with the story of her falling into his lap on the subway."
Maya raises an eyebrow at this, unaware of how observant and intuitive Zay really was. She always thought he was kind of oblivious, but sitting beside him she knows that this is something that Zay has kept to himself for awhile.
"Hey, don't give me that look." He says defensively, holding his hands in the air in surrender. "My mom's a psychologist! You don't think I've picked up a few tricks of the trade in my time?"
Maya lets out a snort at this, shaking her head in amusement. "I'm sure you have."
"Look. You wanna know something he told me once? He said that Riley scared him when he first met her. Kind of ridiculous, right? Riley's about as scary as a piece of toast. But he was. He said that she scared him at first, but that you've always terrified him. You're important to him, Maya." She can tell Zay's selecting the next few words carefully as he opens and closes his mouth for a few seconds. "I just don't think he realizes yet how important."
He shoots her a cautious look, eyes bulging slightly as though he's trying to convey a secret message. Maya knows that if she wants, she can ask the question that Zay wants her to ask. She can get the confirmation that what was happening between her and Lucas for the past year wasn't just in her head; that he felt it too, whether he was even aware of it or not.
"Well," She mutters after what feels like an eternity. "Toast can be scary if you're celiac."
"Okay, wow, way to miss the point, Maya-"
Maya laughs loudly at the indignant tone to Zay's voice, surprising herself that she was even capable of it as the sound echoes down the hallway. She knows that Lucas would never intentionally hurt Riley, would never let their unofficial relationship stretch on for so long if he knew he liked her best friend instead. But Zay's raised eyebrow leads her to a different conclusion, one more dangerous than she initially thought possible. Exploring the idea that Lucas is holding back because he's afraid of what they could do to each other is something she just doesn't know if she can handle yet.
So instead she just sighs, letting her laughter die in her throat as her head drops to Zay's shoulder; the two of them allowing the silence to envelop them, tinged with unspoken words and the esoteric secrets left hanging in the empty corridor.