Work Text:
This is what happens:
Farkle tries his best. He really does. He warns her again and again about the dangers of lying to Maya, but Riley is determined to let Maya finally get what she wants. And Maya—Maya wants so much for Riley to be telling the truth about her feelings for Lucas that she’s willing to overlook Riley’s shadowed eyes.
Farkle knows, though. He knows that Riley is hurting inside. He knows that she wants Lucas, and Lucas could want her too, if he wasn’t so preoccupied with trying to like Maya back.
The whole group is a mess really.
So Farkle comes up with a solution. He believes it’s the best option, the only option, and Isadora agrees. It offers Riley a choice: tell Lucas and Maya by New Year’s Eve, or he will.
The months go past and he can’t help but wonder if she’s forgotten his ultimatum, but he doubts that she can. Not when the shadows underneath her eyes have moved into the rest of her face, and not when she tries to go on a date with Charlie Gardner that they all know is doomed to fail, and not when he asks her if she’s been sleeping and she answers, “Yes, of course!” with her voice high and tight.
Riley can’t stop watching them. And he can’t stop watching her.
Still, they make it to New Year’s Eve in one piece. Riley has been wearing a hollow smile ever since Texas but Maya’s eyes light up whenever she sees Lucas, and Farkle knows that Riley thinks that’s enough. She has to, otherwise she’d fall apart and ruin the best thing her best friend has ever had.
Isadora is still around for him, but she spends her time flirting with every pretty boy she meets. It bothers Farkle, but only because it’s just another person proving that they’d rather have a Lucas than him. He doesn’t blame Isadora; she’s still trying to figure out who she is, and he knows that they’re not meant to last. He just wishes she’d stop experimenting on his best friend.
He can’t make himself do it, in the end. Because Riley has tears in her eyes and no one’s hand to hold and she makes eye contact with him as he opens his mouth to do it and he just can’t. Instead, he blurts out a, “Happy New Year!” to all of his friends and grabs Isadora’s hand and leaves.
Isadora is confused. She doesn’t understand how he could possibly not make what they both know is the logical choice, and he doesn’t know how to explain the look on Riley’s face to her.
*
Time trudges on. Riley continues on trying to act as if things are normal, and she’s a good actress, especially for a distracted audience. Isadora continues to grow more distant, and after one last half-hearted attempt to convince Farkle to come to Einstein Academy, they break up. Riley focusses on him and his failed relationship and pretends that he’s broken hearted to try to ignore that Maya and Lucas have become more comfortable with each other. Lucas still looks at Riley sometimes, but he’s stopped trying to fight past the brother-sister label Riley forced on them.
Until finally, one day, Maya is getting in Lucas’s face about something or another, and Lucas’s eyes don’t flicker to Riley at all when he grabs Maya’s face and kisses her.
Riley runs.
Farkle follows.
Lucas and Maya don’t notice, too caught up in this brand new experience.
Farkle finds her in the gym storage area. He has to admit, it’s a decent hiding spot. But he knows Riley, maybe even better than Maya does, because everything he knows is from observation. He doesn’t need Riley to tell him that she’s unhappy, and that it’s gotten hard to eat, and that she hasn’t fallen sleep before 3 a.m. in months. He just knows.
He puts his arm around her and pulls her into his side. She sobs into his chest. “I wanted her to be happy, Farkle. And she is. So why am I so sad?”
When he and Riley come out of the storage area, her face is guarded. He can’t see Rileytown in her eyes, and that scares him. Their fixer is broken, and when things inevitably fall apart, there isn’t going to be anyone to pull things back together.
Maya is so in like with Lucas that she can’t see anything else. Lucas is… whatever it is he is. Either way, neither of them can see Riley’s misery, so Farkle takes over the job of best friend and protector. He’s the one who goes with her to the library at lunch when Lucas and Maya are staring at each other and calling each other names in sickeningly soft voices. He’s the one who shows up after school and climbs through Riley’s window to help her with her homework. He’s the shoulder that Riley rests her head on.
Farkle has to wonder sometimes how Maya can be so oblivious to her best friend’s unhappiness, but he thinks that part of it is that Maya doesn’t want to see it. As soon as it becomes a problem, Riley will become her priority again and Farkle thinks that maybe Maya doesn’t want Riley to be her priority right now.
He hates how selfish ‘love’ makes people.
*
They graduate middle school, and Riley perks up a bit. She redecorates the bay window, which makes Maya angry. They don’t talk to each other for a few days, which gives Riley an excuse to not look at the happy couple. She smiles a bit more, and even is singing (very softly) when Farkle crawls through the window.
Lucas goes home to Texas for the summer, and Maya is around more again. She spends a lot of time checking her phone and smiling whenever it’s a message she likes. Farkle gives them their space, but doesn’t leave them alone too often. Riley is too exhausted to even cry after a few hours listening to Maya talk about her Huckleberry.
It’s a summer of ignorance on Maya’s part. On Riley and Farkle’s side, it’s a summer of late night roaming and movie watching in bed and Kleenexes when Riley needs them. She puts her head on his shoulder and tells him that he’s her best friend. He tells himself that will be enough.
Farkle likes to think that he makes her happy, and he does. The old Maya would make her happier than him though, and he knows that.
Riley goes to visit her grandparents the week before school starts, and misses Maya and Lucas’s big reunion, which Farkle thinks might be a good thing. Her waste bin has finally been emptied of soggy tissues for a couple of weeks and Farkle wants to keep it that way for as long as possible.
When Riley comes back, it’s a quiet affair. Maya and Lucas are at the movies and Zay isn’t that close to either of them anymore and so it’s Farkle, Uncle Josh, Shawn and Riley’s family that welcome her back. She wasn’t gone for that long, but Farkle feels a burst of warmth when she hugs him right after Auggie.
Maya texts Riley the night before high school starts, asking if she wants to walk to school with Lucaya. Riley begs Farkle to come with her because she doesn’t want Maya to guess, but she can’t watch them by herself.
Lucas and Maya hold hands, and when Maya’s new flats give her a blister, Lucas gives her a piggy back. She screams encouragement in his ear as the couple run ahead of Riley and Farkle. Riley presses her lips together and looks everywhere else, commenting on the yellowing leaves.
At school, they meet up with Zay, and a few older seniors shove them around, forcing them into this area called the Hole. The seniors tell their group that they’ll learn something and they leave. As soon as they’re gone, Lucas and Maya leave, talking to each other about what they’ll do next time the older kids try to boss them around. Maya tries to convince Riley to come with them, but eventually loses her patience and tells Riley, “Sometimes you’re just too much for me.” Zay is distracted by some older girls and wanders off, and Riley sinks down against the wall.
“This isn’t how the first day of high school was supposed to go,” she tells him.
“I know,” Farkle says, and wraps his arm around her shoulder.
She stays, because that’s what Riley does, but even Riley has to give up when none of their friends come back and it’s just the two of them, staring at the passing shoes. Riley distracts herself by admiring the brightly coloured boots. Farkle wonders when they stopped being a group and started being pairs.
*
Eventually the seniors explain themselves, and Maya and Lucas and Zay apologize, but it’s half-hearted, and Farkle knows that they don’t really regret leaving. Not yet.
(Farkle learns later that a nasty run in with a senior artist left Maya unable to produce anything original for a year, and Lucas and Zay’s arguments with the football team gave them both black eyes and a healthy fear for the graduating class.)
Mr. Matthews tries his best to use history to explain what’s happening to them, but Lucas is too busy texting some new friends and Maya is doodling and eventually Mr. Matthews gives up and starts teaching history with a little bit more structure. He still gives life lessons, but they don’t always relate to their lives and Farkle thinks that’s good. He’s tired of Riley tensing up every time something bad happens in a history lesson.
*
The seniors nod at the two of them in the hallway, and at one point Farkle sees Thor bumping Lucas into a set of lockers and Farkle thinks that maybe Lucas deserves it, but Riley is babbling away about this new show she started watching and Farkle can’t be angry. Not when what happened brought him this.
So life continues, and that’s good. Great, really, because for the first time in his life Riley is focussed entirely on him. Maya comes and goes, but Farkle is the one who stays, and he knows that Riley appreciates it. When the new semester begins, Riley and Maya have gone a whole week without talking, and Riley invites him over and demands to know how everything changed so much in a year.
He doesn’t know how they went from a group of six to a pair, and he doesn’t know how to tell her that, so instead they go up to the roof of her building and stargaze. At least, they try. The light pollution blocks most of the stars so instead they talk about everything that happened. Riley cries a little bit, but she smiles through it, and says, “We had fun, right?”
Farkle nods, because they did, and even though everything changed, that never will.
Riley makes it through the year without another breakdown, and that summer they both go to visit her grandparents. Uncle Josh comes and hangs out with them whenever he’s not working, and when Riley shoves her ice cream in Josh’s face, her grin meets her eyes and Farkle’s entire body hurts with something. She’s not ready to be loved like he wants to love her, and Farkle can wait. He’ll have to.
Sophomore year begins, and Maya and Lucas avoid meeting Riley and Farkle’s eyes in the hall. Farkle recognizes the guilt shrouding their faces. They’ve been fighting more: big, explosive arguments that drag in everyone around them. Farkle doesn’t love Maya like he used to. He doesn’t know her anymore. He didn’t mean to choose Riley over her; he just wanted someone to continue caring for Riley.
Without their fixer, Lucas and Maya can’t keep making up over and over again, and they break up in January. Farkle debates suggesting to Riley that they try to find Maya, but Riley has started singing in the shower again and she wants to watch Disney movies instead of action movies and Farkle doesn’t want to ever go back to unhappy Riley. So he doesn’t say anything.
Lucas is surrounded by people, all the day. Cheerleaders, other football players, the kind of people that knock Farkle down in the hallway. Lucas has grown half a foot and fits in with the rest of the team. One day, Farkle’s eyes skip over the football team and it takes him a minute longer to recognize his old best friend.
Maya is alone for most of sophomore year, and Farkle thinks that Riley knows that, but she doesn’t know how to make up for a year and a half of silence and Farkle thinks that maybe Riley doesn’t want to. Things have finally settled down and he can’t really blame her for wanting change to stay the hell away from her.
This is how friendships die: without a word.
*
The summer before junior year, Riley interns for her Uncle Eric in Washington, so Farkle works for one of his father’s labs. He loves it. He and Riley talk over Skype every other night, but Farkle thinks privately that it’s good that Riley is finding herself independently of anyone else.
The week before school starts, they both come home and when Riley hugs him, he realizes that she’s almost as tall as him now, finally having grown into those long legs and big brown eyes. Farkle knows that she’s gorgeous, and he knows that her changes aren’t going to go unnoticed.
He’s right, of course. When is Farkle anything but right? On the first day, she gets a few second looks and Charlie Gardner tries his hand at a date again. Riley says no and goes with Farkle to the library, which is kind of their unofficial spot now. She pulls out her laptop and waves Beauty and the Beast at him, which was her favourite when they were kids, and Farkle’s chest aches with how much he loves her.
*
They’re coming back from the park one night. It’s cold out, especially for November in New York, and Riley closes the window before they leave. They go through the front door of her home like civilized people and talk about the poem they read for English, both of them holding big mugs of tea. Farkle accidentally stays past midnight and slips through the window so that Mr. Matthews doesn’t try to steal one of his shoes as he leaves.
The next day, Maya approaches him in the hall. None of her usual group of artsy kids surround her, and they just stare at each other for a minute. Then Maya says, “She locked the window last night.”
Farkle nods. “It was cold.”
Maya nods, too, eyes on the floor. “Right.”
Farkle wants to offer her friendship, wants to offer her a chance to come back to them, but then a girl with the bottom half of her hair dyed blue approaches them and starts telling Maya about some art show thing she’s invited too. Farkle says a quiet goodbye and walks away. Maya is where she needs to be right now.
He tells Riley about this, and Riley gives a half-hearted smile. “I thought that maybe it was time to stop letting random people crawl through my bedroom window.” And Farkle knows that even if Maya and Lucas were to come back and beg for their friendship again, they’d come back to meet a Riley that they wouldn’t recognize. Maybe that’s good. She’s grown up a bit, and she’s less likely to get hurt. But Farkle would be lying if he said that he wouldn’t miss the girl that she had been once upon a time.
When he told her that she’d changed, instead of becoming offended, Riley just smiled. “Don’t worry. I still believe in Pluto. Always have, always will.”
Farkle can’t stop his grin.
*
It’s around this time that the warm buzzing feeling in his chest becomes impossible to ignore. He’s seventeen now, and he’s loved her since they were seven. Once upon a time, he loved two girls, but he doesn’t even know who the other one is anymore. And Riley… Riley smiles with her eyes crinkled but knows what it means to be heartbroken. Maya can talk all she wants about being the stayer, but Farkle thinks that she has enough of her father in her to wander as she pleases.
Riley puts honey in her tea instead of sugar and watches Disney movies for the happy endings and believes in Pluto. And she stays. That’s enough for Farkle. He loves her, and he thinks that he might love her forever.
*
He’s not going to say anything. He’s not. He knows Riley well enough to know that she’s afraid to love anyone else, just in case they leave her too. Maybe she and Maya would get along better now, because Maya isn’t as explosive as she used to be and Riley knows what it’s like to be left now. Riley still doesn’t say hi to Maya in the halls, though, so Farkle figures that he’d better not push it.
He’s really not.
Until one day they run into Smackle, hand in hand with a pretty blonde girl with tortoise shell glasses, and all of a sudden the warm feeling that nestled into his chest a long time ago bursts into an inferno. He can’t even look at Riley without picturing kissing her, maybe more… He wants to hold her hand and cuddle with her and do everything they do now but with that hint of something more than friendship.
Smackle, who still isn’t at all subtle, raises her eyebrows at the two of them and tells Riley, “I hope you’re a suitable caretaker for my ex-lovesis.”
Farkle can physically feel all of the blood drain from his face, but Riley just grabs his hand and gives Smackle a sweet smile. “We take care of each other.”
When they’re far enough away from Smackle that she can’t overhear anything, Farkle turns to stare at Riley. She shrugs. “It’s not a lie, is it? You take care of me, and I take care of you. It doesn’t matter what form our relationship is in.”
Farkle can’t stop himself. He blurts out, “I love you.”
Time doesn’t stop. It can’t. But his perception of time certainly slows down enough that he has time to panic before Riley puts her hand on the back of his neck and pulls him down just that little bit to kiss him on the cheek. When she pulls back, she looks up at him with that chagrined smile. “Will this change things?”
Farkle manages to unstick his tongue long enough to tell her, “Only the things that need to be changed.”
Riley nods, and then she goes up on tip toe to kiss him and Farkle thinks that he might be dead and in heaven because there’s no way in hell that this is real. But it is; one hand goes to the small of her back to steady her when she wobbles (she’s still a bit of a klutz) and the other one goes to her hair because he’s loved her forever and he can’t believe that this is actually happening.
True to his word, only the right things change. Apart from the first date which was awkward because they let it be, they’re still Farkle and Riley. He still helps her with her homework and she still belts out Disney love songs in front of him, only now they’re for him. Mr. Matthews steals a few of his shoes, but gives them back because they’re not fourteen anymore.
*
In senior year Riley makes friends with some of the cheerleaders and brings him to a few parties, where they both avoid Lucas. Lucas is almost as tall as Thor was, and he has two cheerleaders hanging off of him at all times. Riley whispers, “Some things never change,” to Farkle because she’s developed sass over the past few years.
At one party, Riley is tipsy and catches her boots together and falls into Lucas’s lap. He blinks, slow and startled, and Farkle wants to grab her and hide her away from Lucas’s wandering eyes, but he can’t. He can only wait.
“Riley!” Lucas says, and hugs her. Riley squirms away.
“Sorry,” she says. “That was an accident.”
When she gets back to Farkle, she has to clutch onto his shoulder to keep from swaying. “What happened to, ‘there’s no such thing as coincidences?’” he asks.
Riley shrugs and gives him a lazy smile. “Sometimes falling into someone’s lap is just falling into someone’s lap.” And Farkle releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and he slings an arm around her shoulders and presses a kiss to her hair.
“I love you,” he tells her.
“I know,” she says, and they both laugh.
*
At the senior art show, Farkle has his arm thrown around Riley’s shoulders, and so he’s the one who feels her tense when she sees the purple cat woven into Maya’s abstract painting. Maya offers her a hesitant smile, and Riley smiles back, but it’s her smile for strangers, and Maya knows that. Farkle and Riley continue on, and once they’re looking at someone else’s work, Riley relaxes.
But afterwards, because she’s Riley, she pulls him back to where Maya is talking to the art teacher. When she’s done, she turns to them and smiles, but it’s not real, and Farkle can see that her hands are trembling when she clutches at the necklace she’s wearing.
“Hi,” Riley says.
“Hi,” Maya says, voice hoarse.
“Hey,” Farkle says.
Maya says, “Hi,” again.
Riley squeaks out a “hi” before shaking her head as if she can shake off the awkwardness. Because this is awkward. “I loved your art, Maya,” Riley says.
Maya puts her hands into her pockets and rocks up onto her toes. “Thanks.” She’s still so tiny. Tiny enough that Farkle could rest his chin on her head if he wanted to. He doesn’t though. Maya is beautiful, but he loves long legs and dark brown hair too much to ever fall again for her particular brand of beauty.
Riley sighs. “We haven’t talked in a long time.”
Maya looks away. “I’m not the one who locked the window.”
Riley nods, and they’re quiet until she speaks. “What if I opened the window, just for a bit?”
Maya shrugs, eyes on the floor. “Maybe I’d show up.”
Riley nods again. “Okay.” And she pulls Farkle away to steady her hands and pace, because she and Maya haven’t spoken for years and she’s afraid to speak to her old best friend.
Farkle stays with her until seven and then kisses her goodbye, because this is something that she has to do on her own. He goes to Topanga’s instead and waits for Riley’s text, because he knows Riley. And he knows that she’ll need to talk.
Riley texts him at eleven, when he’s at home reading Stephen Hawking’s The Theory of Everything. Farkle puts down the book and goes straight to see her. He’s not surprised to see the bin full of soggy tissues. He suspects that some of them are Maya’s, anyways.
Riley tells him about Maya’s apology, that she’d only realized what had really happened at the beginning of sophomore year, and by that point it was too late to go back. They talked and talked and talked, and Riley has a sad smile on her face when she tells Farkle, “I’ve missed her.”
Farkle takes her hand and nods.
Maya and Riley meet up more in the months before graduation. It’s not instantaneous, their refound friendship, and Farkle doesn’t know if they’ll ever be best friends like they were. But they smile at each other in the hall and Maya moves from across the room to sit at Riley’s left hand side in history and Farkle knows that for Riley, it’s enough.
*
One evening, Farkle turns to her and asks, “Do you regret it?”
Riley looks up from the laptop. They’ve moved on from Disney movies (finally; Farkle loves Riley a lot but his tolerance for ‘True Love’s Kiss’ was starting to wear thin), and right now they’re watching a version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
“Regret what?”
“Not telling them the truth.”
Riley sighs. “Sometimes. I mean, it’s impossible to know what could have happened if I had told the truth. I might have saved myself a lot of hurt, and Maya and I might still be close. Or we could have completely lost our friendship in petty fights. And if I’d told the truth, you and I might have never become closer. It’s hard to know.”
Farkle nods. “So if I ever make that time machine, you’d go back?”
Riley thinks about it, and then a smile spreads across her face. “No,” she says, with some surprise. “No, I wouldn’t. I love you, and I believe things went the way that they were supposed to. Maybe our group was always meant to fall apart, or maybe not. But I believe that we were meant to end up together.”
“That may not be true. It’s been proven that every one in three people is a possible mate—”
Riley claps her hand over his mouth. “Shush, Farkle, before I take it back.”
So he stops talking and settles down next to his girlfriend (!!!) to watch the stubborn Beatrice and Benedick fall in love. Hero kind of reminds him of Riley, and he’s glad that Riley never ended up the way Hero did.
And as badly as he feels for Maya, for Lucas, for Zay, because they missed out on this, on her, he can’t bring himself to regret not telling the truth either.