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He doesn't notice them, at first. At first, they're doodles—stick figures at most, and the ones that aren't sweep across his arm, zig zags and graceful swirls and sometimes messy lettering. They're annoying, then, and he can't get rid of them no matter how hard he tries. It takes a long time and Mom's expertise for eight year-old Josh Matthews to figure out it has to have something to do with the magic tying soulmates together. Andrew-from-recess—who often calls him a know-it-all even though he's the one with the best bet at knowledge in the soulmates department—tells him it's the ink one, his posture casual, and then he changes the subject to something else. When Josh continues to pester him about what exactly "the ink one" means, Andrew shakes his head in exasperation but tells him.
After that, he wants to keep them forever.
They're logged in several little journals, the things she writes and doodles, and he doesn't mind them much anymore. If anything, he looks forward to seeing them (though that's in the exception that his soulmate's dad writes over protecting his daughter again. He's probably going to be terrifying). When they stop, often for months on end, he silently prays that she's just gotten her hands on paper and that she's fine, because as far as he can tell from the art she makes now, toeing the edge of the line between doodling I <3 NYC and JQA school spirit designs and full-on vulgar graffiti, his soulmate hasn't had the best life. Sometimes, though, he has to laugh because in purple glittery pen on the back of his hand there's shaky lines composing a purple cat, planets, the stars, and he smiles because maybe that means his soulmate has found a safe place; a safe person. He sorely hopes so.
He's never written anything to her. He's tried, but the words have never chosen to find him, never made it onto his skin, aside from reminders to get to class and classroom numbers he marks as "NYU NOTES. PLEASE DO NOT DRAW OVER." Maya—Riley's best friend, brave and fierce and outspoken—would know what to say. He's never been able to see her without a witty comeback, and... no matter how gorgeous she is, he has to remind himself often, you have to wait.
And wait he does, until suddenly he's walking Riley and Maya home and she turns to look at him for just a second and... there he goes, falling into the deepest feeling he's ever known, and he even dares to think, maybe she's his soulmate.
She stops drawing, for a long time. For too long. He can't get through the day without snapping at someone anymore and he feels lost, in a different way than when Maya's in sight. He hasn't seen her in months either, him caught up in schoolwork and her stuck in webs of things he can only manage to catch strings of. Topanga tells him that Maya seems lost, too, but it's for different reasons than his soulmate. It has to be.
After New Year's Eve, there's a shift in the air. Maya has visited campus just once accompanied by Farkle to ask, quickly while her friend is distracted by the architecture of the whole place, for Jasmine and Charlotte's numbers. Her feelings for him are far from hidden even though (he hopes) his are, and the two women who'd graduated a few years back have become a guide to her—or, you know. That's what she'd said when he'd asked her. His phone is no longer filled with messages from his enthusiastic niece about her "ship" and oh, gosh, he'd love if everything could just move again so he could think without the cold, dead silence eating him alive.
He's helping put up Maya's birthday party decorations at near four in the morning and is blinking sleep out of his eyes when he catches it—just the slightest dot of ink on his wrist. He stops in the middle of hanging the streamers to stare, rubbing his eyes once more to make sure he's not hallucinating. There's a faint call for his name but he doesn't hear it, too busy watching the words slowly travelling down his forearm.
Hi, soulmate.
It's only a few seconds before he's scrambling for a pen, running to the kitchen, Auggie's room, Riley's, before emerging from his brother's with a cry of success. He hesitates for a few more seconds, before scrawling:
Hi.
She pauses; Josh takes the time to tell Riley that he's fine, he needs a minute of fresh air. When he gets out to the hallway there's another note, still being written:
I know it's been a while—too long, maybe, for me to start writing to you. Another pause; but not knowing what the future holds is one of the scariest things ever. I thought I would be with my friends always but everything is falling apart and I'm... scared. I just— Pause— need to talk to someone.
What do you mean? he asks, he notices distantly that his hands are trembling.
Well, if you're good at listening? I think it's established that both of us live in NYC, and we both know about Boston Tea Shop...
You want to meet me?
If you're up to it?
Josh waits, his brows furrowed, for the right words to come, and when they do he scrawls them down quickly before he can regret them: I'll meet you there.
After working out several details and telling a too-perky-for-her-own-good Topanga he has to go, it's an emergency, he's off with coat and pen in hand. He arrives at the tea (but it's actually a coffee) shop late and it's not very full; tourists and some locals sit talking into the early hours of the morning. He scans the shop one more time, frantically, and then his eyes catch sight of blonde hair and tired eyes that are too good to be true.
She looks up as he sits, her eyes lighting up and lips parting to speak late enough to make it slightly awkward. "Josh? What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here?" he counters and she rolls her eyes at him.
"I asked first."
Josh tugs his bottom lip between his teeth. "I came to, ah. Get a cup of coffee."
Maya snorts, some of the sadness weighing down her shoulders lifting as she says, "Oh, thank you for telling me the most secret thing in the history of secrets, Boing."
"It's not—" he breathes out a sharp exhale when she smiles at him, too tired to banter and desperate to get the attention of of him and onto something else. "Anyway... what are you doing here?"
She presses her lips together tightly. "...Thinking. I just... needed to think."
They go silent for a while and Josh starts to trace the words on his skin, eyes narrowed and trying to figure out whether he recognizes the handwriting from a lifetime of being soulmates or from someone else he might know. It's a debate with himself he's had for years, and he still hasn't figured it out yet.
"Josh?"
He hums in acknowledgment before looking up, blinking out of his dazed state and lifting his finger from his skin. She's staring at his forearm, about to ask something, but when she meets his gaze her mouth snaps shut and her lips twist.
"Are—are you okay?" is what Maya manages to finally say, her hand going subtly to clutch her own covered forearm. He glances down at it for a moment, puzzling what it might mean, then back up to her.
"Yeah, I—I'm fine," Josh tells her with a soft laugh, starting to stand from his seat. "Sorry—I'm probably disturbing you, I should..."
"Wait."
Her voice has him freezing in place.
"Do you have a soulmate?" She grimaces in the seconds after she speaks, as if she's silently berating herself, and Josh looks down at his arm with his lips pressed together.
Should he—? "—Yeah." He stares at her for a moment, asks, "You?"
Maya startles, pauses, and hesitates all in the span of five seconds before answering with a small nod.
"And... are you okay?"
She purses her lips, shifting her gaze to the table and voice becoming the way it does when she's trying to choke back tears. "Just a little confused."
Josh laughs lightly—he knows she doesn't need him to make a scene. "Hey, let's get outta here."
Maya watches him carefully before taking his outstretched hand and letting him pull her up.
Laughter fills the rest of their night, and awkward isn't a word in either of their vocabularies this time—Maya's dancing in the empty park and Josh is running to chase her the moment he realizes she's stolen his beanie and when Maya frees her arms from his grasp to put it on her own head, neither of them comment on it (of course they don't, but Maya's smiling like the cat who looked at the king and Josh is wondering why she's looking at him that way, just as the king did). The hot cocoa eventually seems to fade from Maya's bloodstream, though, as she starts shivering through her NYU sweatshirt despite the fact that the sun's going to rise soon and Josh tells her reluctantly that they should probably both get home.
"Josh?"
She says his name halfway there, her voice tired and crackly but sweet and tuned to his ears nonetheless. Josh lifts his head slightly from where it's been leaned on the top of hers for the majority of the walk, both of them huddled together in pajamas in a New York winter, and hums in response, the hand closest to her leaving the shoulder of his coat that she's wearing coming to rest on the mess that's her hair. (He's not sure if he imagines the sharp inhale that comes from her direction when he does, but he pins it to the wind and the exhaustion weighing on his shoulders.)
"Do you..." she stops mid-sentence, seems to try to correct her words for a few moments, before giving up. "Do you think—would whoever's my soulmate be disappointed to have me as one?"
Josh squeezes her closer and lifts his head away from her hair, shooting her a confused look. "You think your soulmate would be disappointed to have you?"
"Well—" Maya starts to protest, lifting her hands to make her points, but when she meets his gaze her lips press together to stop those attempts. "You of all people should know how stupid I get around... romance, and stuff. And I was—was never the best at friendship either, and—whenever we find each other I just," she shrugged her shoulders, "I don't want to let them down."
Josh stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to her, his arm falling from her shoulders. "Letting people—letting your soulmate down with who you are? Maya, the whole thing is about how you were made for someone and how that someone was made for you."
"But what if I'm not—"
"What if you're perfect for them?" he retaliates, searching her expression. "What if your tiny quirks—your being a light sleeper, your sarcasm, the way you make funny voices when you're anxious or scared or sad, what if those are exactly what your soulmate needs?" Josh smiles, taking her wide eyes for realization. "That's the whole soulmate deal, Maya—you're perfect for your soulmate and your soulmate is perfect for you. There's no disappointing anyone."
She stares at him, her chest rising and falling heavily, blue eyes too close for him to focus after his rant. Her gaze flutters over his face like she's seeing him for the first time, and she whispers something he can't hear before speaking, her voice laced with wind and longing. "Would you wait?"
"What?"
"For m—your soulmate, if you had to. Would you wait?" She catches herself as soon as she notices her slip, but she's dazed and she isn't focused on her own words as much as she might have been before he'd spoken.
He doesn't miss it.
Life had never been easy, for Maya. It was all a series of ups and downs and anger and sadness and happiness too, and the only three constant things even back when things were simple were art, Riley, and her soulmate.
Soulmates—where could she begin? Her dad had been the one to tell her about it, when she was five and he'd written a simple note on the back of her hand in ballpoint pen (Take care of my daughter. -Your soulmate's dad). He'd told her about the ink, about how everything she got on her skin—paint or pen or otherwise—was going to find its way onto her soulmate's, the person she was going to be with for the rest of her life. She'd told her father—Daddy, then—that she didn't need a new soulmate because she had one already.
He left a year later.
(There's a lot of anger and sadness on her part when she realizes he's not coming back, even more of the former when her mother tells her in a screaming match—God, you're six years old, you're too young to know any of this—that she and her father were never meant to be, never soulmates, and that he'd gone to be with someone he actually loved.
Fuck you, Maya had spat out, ready to run to Carla and Renee to do something to spite Katy Hart even if she knew she couldn't. I hate you.
She wishes she could take it all back.)
Riley tells her that best friends are a different kind of soulmate than how dads and moms and daughters are. Best friends aren't connected through the known soulmate system, but Maya knew the instant she saw the little girl singing in the bay window that life was going to be less of a shitstorm with Sunshine around to keep it at bay. And it is—school's fun (even though she gets a pink slip every so often) and having Farkle and Riley filling the silence in her head with their statistics and singing is a hell of a lot better than laying awake at night listening to crying in the room over.
And then she meets Joshua Matthews and maybe it's the curse word on his bare back that he tries to hide with a towel for a cape (she wrote one there after she'd had a fight with her mother again and she was tired and angry and needed to go with the Matthews to Philadelphia just to get away) as they play with old water guns in the backyard or the way he smiles at her, like she's not broken or bruised or anything in between, that tells her what he is.
He's three years older than her. (He doesn't point this out, though, when they're introduced, and she likes that about him too.)
Through her thinking from the very first time she met him, she comes quickly to the conclusion that, if her soulmate really is him, she has to wait. Soulmate business is tricky—laws have not faded over time but the people have, and it makes it all the more easy for unlinked people to point fingers and narrow their eyes. Even the Matthews haven't had it forever—their blood has had soulmates slowly laced into it over time from families with generations upon generations of pure soulmate magic. And despite the soulmate law that bypasses age-illegal marriages, Josh—he wouldn't be able to handle the looks, wouldn't be able to handle the scrutiny from people who don't understand. Maya knows she'll have to be patient. But—
She still laughs and smiles and tries to get every chance to be by his side.
And since then, she's pretty sure she'd been doing the same—bobbing and weaving, running after this boy, and then the yearbook incident happens and something she as Maya Hart, snark extraordinaire and doesn't-have-a-stupid-crush-on-anyone is supposed to say turns into something that Maya-as-Riley says, and everything she does after that gets too mixed up for her own good. Jasmine and Charlotte are beacons of light in the storm and she goes to them when she's panicking because Farkle isn't there for her the same way he used to be (if he ever was at all—he's too caught up in a tattoo of Pluto on his collarbone and a certain bright-eyed brunette), Zay's in Texas more often than he comes to school late, and Lucas and Riley, let alone her mom or the Matthews—well. Couldn't tell them if she tried.
She only thinks about Josh again once or twice, and by the time she stops to remember her fucking actual soulmate she's lost and scared, has too many questions with too little answers, and has the pen in her hands and her arms bare.
And now they're bare again, because he's rolled back the sleeves of the NYU sweater he gave to her in the last hours of Christmas day and holding her wrist gently, staring at the ink, looking back and forth from his arm to hers.
"Josh—" Maya starts, but doesn't know how to finish it; she's snapping her mouth shut a second later.
His eyes meet hers and then he's saying softly, "It's you."
She didn't think her heart could fly the way Riley always told her about until now.
"I always thought—" he stops, starts again, "But you didn't show any signs—I really didn't think—" He stares at her, his eyes wide and sparkling and voice trailing off as he gives up on coherent sentences. "It's you."
"Don't sound so surprised, Boing," Maya tries to joke, unable to decipher what's going through his head. Instantly his gaze is meeting hers again and his voice is frantic—his hand slides away from her arm and lifts to the back of his neck.
"Wh—no, I'm not surpris—well, I mean, I am, but I'm not—disappointed." Josh stumbles over his words and shoots her an embarrassed grin, then looking away. "We just went over that, didn't we? Anyway even if what I said earlier wasn't true—I've kind of been crazy in love with you ever since we met and you're gorgeous and amazing and smart and strong and honest and that's, that's probably too much to say to your soulmate the first time you find out it's them but I—"
She's pulling him down by the collar of his shirt and kissing him before he can finish whatever kind of sentence he's started.
It's all rushed movements and a release of something that's been bottled up for too long and she wraps her arms around his neck to keep him there, chasing his mouth with hers, eyes closed and a giddy smile finding her lips every time she so much as thinks about who she's kissing right now. She's elated, ecstatic, and fuck, Riley's going to freak out when she finds out about this but Maya can't bring herself to actually care because he's wrapping his arms around her too, pressing back with as much force as she's given, stopping to catch his breath whenever she pulls away. Both of them are smiling too hard now to take the kiss seriously and Maya pulls back to keep both their teeth intact, gazing at him with a smile so wide her cheeks are already hurting.
Josh laughs, and then his head is in the crook of her shoulder and she's running her hands through his hair and inhaling this dream of a reality that's too good to be true.
And then, no, she realizes, it's too good to be anything but true.
"Very uncool of the cool uncle to gush about how amazing I am," she's able to manage when he pulls away, her fingers lacing with his in a familiar pull that she could never succumb to before.
"Very uncool of the cool best friend to not gush about who her soulmate is," is his reply; he grins at the roll of her eyes and presses his lips to her knuckles in a way that makes her skin burn. "How are you going to tell Riley?"
Maya snorts, "How are we going to tell anyone is more like it, Mr. I'm-Three-Years-Older-Than-You."
"I was—I am!" he splutters at her cackling and shakes his head in exasperation. "Well—a big announcement probably isn't the best choice with everything going on, and I doubt we can handle all the questions if we didn't tell anyone about being soulmates—and I'm still—" he shoots her a playful glare, "three years older than you, so let's make a deal instead—"
"Oh, I know!" Maya brightens, "There's six weeks out of the year when we're only two years apart, like, oh, I dunno—" she checks an invisible watch on her free wrist, "Right now. So, how about this—we get to hold hands six weeks out of the year! I'll take it!"
Josh laughs, leaning away slightly. "We could do that. Or how about I like my deal better?" She nods at him as they walk, her eyes bright, watching the flush creep up his cheeks and a feigned "forgetful" expression take over his face. "You once said you were playing the Long Game."
And everything in her just melts.
(he remembers he remembers he remembers he remembers—) "I did," she acknowledges softly, her grip tightening on his hand. "Because you're smart and funny and an absolute nerd and I love you."
Josh beams at her, both of them all kinds of breathless, and his gaze flickers down to her lips several times before he's able to focus. (We probably shouldn't have done that, she thinks absently, if I'm going to have to wait to do it again.)
"So, how about this—"
"Boyfriend and girlfriend right now."
"No—"
"Boyfriend and girlfriend eventually."
There's a long pause. The fireworks in Maya's chest work to fill the silence as she glances over at him, not bothering to hide her smile as he looks away and she chases after his gaze.
"You're not saying no," she voices her thoughts, her grin taking over her face—Josh purses his lips to try and hide his own, but it's very obviously not working. "You have to say something."
"I'll play the Long Game," is what he blurts out, turning to her and meeting her eyes. "You live your life, I live mine—I know you're out there, and... I'm out there too."
"That's your deal?"
"That's my deal." They watch each other for a few moments, both of them wrapped in the beginnings of daylight, and then Josh is speaking again, holding out a hand to her the way that you do when you're making a deal to wait for your soulmate. "Someday?"
Maya smiles, looks down at his outstretched hand just as she did before, and takes it. "Someday."
They shake... and continue shaking, very awkwardly. Josh grins in amusement, looks away from their hands to meet her gaze again. "Let go."
"Someday," she intones softly, knowing she's anything but joking because she let him go once, let everything spiral out of control, and she's not planning on doing it again.
She's arguing the fact that being two years apart for six weeks out of the year allows them to be able to kiss when he says it, both of them now standing in front of the door to the Matthews' flat and voices hushed.
"I love you, Maya Hart."
Her eyes light up with the New York morning and she beams at him, nothing about her uncontained and their hands laced together tightly. Still, she glances at the door, laughs lightly and whispers amidst a squeeze of his hand, "Stop saying things that make me want to kiss you."
"I wasn't aware telling you I love you makes you want to kiss me," he whispers back, his eyes not leaving hers.
Maya shoots him a flat look. "You're going to ruin my streak of not kissing you for fifteen minutes, Boing."
"Good." They stare openly at each other for another moment, and then Josh is whispering, "You're perfect for me, you know that?" and she's kissing him again. When she pulls away, one set of fingers curled around his and the other braced against his neck, she pulls away the latter and delivers a blow to his arm.
Josh makes a face at her as he jumps back, rubbing where she'd hit him. "Ow! What was that for?"
"That was for not listening to me."
"Not listening to—what am I supposed to do, not talk to you at all?"
"Exactly," Maya agrees and leans back on her heels, shrugging his jacket off her shoulders and handing it to him. "Riley's going to be suspicious to begin with, and it's not going to help if I'm trying to not kiss you every five seconds, so—no talking, since you're unable to say anything that doesn't make me want to kiss you... And we probably shouldn't—"
There's an amused smile on his face and his arms are crossed, not unfolding to take his jacket back. "Oh, so now you're trying to plan things?"
"I've been trying to plan things, like, the whole way here," Maya deadpans. "Anyway—"
"Maya," he interrupts, pulling his hand away from his chest and giving her fingers a tight squeeze, "You don't need to plan anything. Cory and Topanga and Riley, they already love you, and—hey. I don't care about the looks, Maya. Not anymore, and... especially not with you. We're soulmates, remember?"
The serious expression on her face dissolves with that. "Soulmates," she echoes, her voice soft, remembering how damn lucky she is. "You're my soulmate."
"Yeah." He grins at her, "And there's no one in the world I'd rather be facing my family with than you."
Josh has just dropped a kiss on her forehead when Auggie opens the door to the flat and freezes, his wide eyes peering between the two of them in shock.
The slam of the door a halted second later has Maya collapsing in laughter into Josh's chest and Josh snickering into her hair as muffled shouts ensue from inside.
"I believe the cat is out of the bag," he manages and she rolls her eyes as she pulls away and corrects with a murmur, "purple cat."
Humor's sparked in her eyes already and she's letting go of his hand only to pick the other up and stand side-by-side with him, both of them now facing the door. They're silent for a few moments, listening to the chaos that's erupted in the Matthews household, before Maya turns to him with her heart bursting in her chest. "I love you too."
He catches her chin in his free hand and swoops down to steal another kiss, whispering his answer against her lips as she reaches for the door handle:
"I know."