Chapter Text
Lucas Friar was not a catalyst. He never started things, even back home in Texas where it seemed like everyone expected him to, he just reacted to them. Messily, of course, because his attempts at cleaning up after Zay usually just made things worse, but he never meant for things to escalate as quickly as they did.
New York City was supposed to be his second chance. As soon as he realized that he was a boy doused in gasoline, that everything he touched inadvertently burst into flame, he had vowed to stay away from matches. No provocations meant no bloody fists, no cowering students, no exasperated sighs and expulsions; it meant never again hearing the crunch of bone reverberate through his ears.
And he didn't miss it; he had never liked the person he became when he saw red. It was easy with Riley, who had fallen into his lap like a leaf off a tree, fluttering and fragile and manipulated by the wind. She was exactly what he needed – or so he thought – calm, soothing, reassuring; she was water and she tempered his flame and with her, he was someone else entirely.
Hiding his past became his way of recreating himself; he never allowed himself to be upset because he couldn't take the risk of it ever becoming more. People in New York saw him as the one most likely to be okay with anything and he was okay with that. Only Maya, the tiny little firecracker with the wicked smile and an answer for everything, made him feel like his old self. There was something about her that made it impossible to look away, but he knew to keep his distance from stray sparks like her, so he smiled and played along to keep her happy, letting her believe that one day she'd break him.
It felt real for a while, like he was Mr. Perfect underneath all that anger, like all he needed was an anchor, a girl who saw the best in everyone and had so much unshakable faith, to mold him into the hero he was supposed to be. He was liked, he was smart, people believed that he was good and kind and moral and maybe this new version of him was; he was doing well in the big city for a country boy with a past.
And then it happened all over again: someone was hurting Farkle and his fists ached to help his friend the only way he knew how, so he shoved the bully up against the wall with his jaw taut and the adrenaline rushing through him, and he knew how it would end (blood on his hands, boy on the floor, his whole life as ruined as his opponent's face) because he had been there before. But this time was different, this time there was someone to stop him and it was not Riley; no, it was the blonde beauty on his back who somehow knew how to get through to him.
All of a sudden, everything felt to him like nothing more than just going through the motions. He was pretending to be a prince, pretending to be a moral compass, pretending to be the right person for a girl who was sunshine personified. It was impossible to talk to Riley, he was too afraid of saying the wrong thing and changing her perception of him, so he turned to Maya instead; it was enough that she just listened but he had never expected her to understand, to look at him and look through him and see, somehow, that he was flawed and struggling and unsure of the world.
If he had to pinpoint the moment that it all began to fall apart, he would have said it was the moment Zay came back into his life. And as soon as those words escaped his mouth, he would backtrack and explain that that wasn't true, he could hardly blame Zay for the decisions he had chosen to make, and if he was really being honest with himself, the facade had been cracking for a while before his best friend had shown up and brought the shadow of Texas with him.
He didn't know what it meant when it was Maya who looked him in the eye and said she didn't care about what he'd done, even if she didn't know, while Riley was dismayed at the mere thought of him not being exactly who she thought he was. He didn't know what it meant when he caught himself staring at the back of her head; angel hair, always loose and flowing, for a girl who didn't believe in anything but disappointment and sin.
What he did know was that Maya Hart was fire, spontaneous and unpredictable and, no matter what she claimed, loving and giving to the point of being burned. And he had made a promise to himself, to make sure that nobody was ever hurt by him again, because of something else he already knew: nothing good ever came from combining fire with gasoline.