of dreamscapes and basorexia
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She's always loved his hands.
They're large in comparison to hers; her fingers pushed against the top of his palms when pressed together. They're crafty and calloused from all those years living on a ranch and my god the feel of them drove her off the edge, especially when his fingers read the arch of her back like Braille on those lazy Friday nights after she had snuck him into her apartment.
(not like her mother ever noticed;
all it took was a simple climb up a fire escape—don't pussy out now, Friar, you've already made it this far—she'd tempt him because she's nothing but a temptress in the act of peer pressure and well, he'd already been halfway up the ladder and miles from home anyway)
His hands, his fucking hands—those hands that had the capability of niftily prying the strands of her hair into braids as she slept, the ones that once caught the tray of a multi-platter breakfast she had dropped during her first day of work at that diner down the street and saved her ass from getting fired, the ones that leave her with flowers in between her teeth or vased in her locker or growing in the depths of her stomach. His are the hands that find hers almost instantly, filling its four gaps and feeling like home.
.
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She is all chaoschaoschaos.
(with hearts drawn where the skull should be and butterflies painted where the heart should be and wings placed where the feet should be floating above the cement already sketched)
Lucas loves watching her in all her chaotic glory when she's in one of her creative moods. It's magic, really. Her work is always electrocuting and he thinks about how far she could go, but he knows she'll never be able to publicize them.
(and when she free hands in front of him while allowing him to flip through her sketchbook, he thinks he is a much better audience, anyway)
She is crazy and beautiful and the passion that flares off her as she paints petals, stems, and leaves within a human body is breathtaking.
(and then she sketches hands holding the strings of a heart together)
He has an idea of whose they might be.
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"I want you to beg," she says, voice like honey and eyes jaded as she crawls on top of him in the hotel room, substituting Farkle as his roommate for the rest of their field trip.
"Pl—," he begins, starting to sit upward against the frame of his bed until she pushes him back down and places a finger on his lip to hush him.
"In French."
She's glowing in the dim fluorescence of the room and the bed he's on is much smaller than it should have been. She smells like cherry blossoms and her mascara's a bit smudged and everything is hazy. They're in France and Lucas thinks that this sparkling city could never amount to the beauty of the blonde with messy hair clad in nothing but black lace on top of him.
(it's surreal, how far they'd made it since that one day on the subway)
"Je veux voux tous," the words roll off his tongue without hesitation, and he knows that with the way she's biting her lip and grinding her hips, he won't be able to last. "S'il vous plait."
Good thing he had persuaded her in taking AP French.
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Her lips are stained red with the bottle of wine she's been clutching since that time she shoulder-tapped a stranger just a couple hours earlier at that liquor store a couple blocks over.
He was supposed to get her vodka, but he'd been an idiot and she'd been desperate.
This is how Lucas finds her, sitting on her mother's white vanity in a room he'd never been allowed to enter, bare legs hanging off the front and calves resting against the bronze drawer handles. Maya's staring at an empty, unmade bed and the only illumination in the room is where the dusk's moonlight creeps in through slight openings of the blinds to their left. Lucas is quiet, leaning against the doorframe and absorbing the image of her.
She is a damsel in distress, and she refuses to be saved.
(by him, at least)
"I need to deal with this myself," she tells him.
(and if he were still as young and soft spoken and impassive and permissive as he'd been when they'd first met, he would have left right then and there after a gloomy nod of a head, all downcast eyes and pursed lips)
He doesn't bite at his tongue, "You will."
He knows he will never be able to cure her, to bring back her mother or construct every single piece of her life back together like the shattered puzzle it'd become. He knows that only she is responsible for the construction that happens now. But he does know that he's an important enough role in her life to be considered one of the pieces, and when he conjoins their hands as he leans against the vanity beside her, a twinge of hope will be felt in the lasting silence.
And that is enough.
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"When did you know?"
Her voice sounds somewhere between melancholic and contentment. She's not looking him in the eye. She tends to do that when things get serious.
"Know what?"
Her eyelashes flutter at the specks of snow and she adjusts the knit beanie coating her sunshine hair. He's aware she's only doing that to distract him from noticing the pinkness of her cheeks. He sees it, though—always does. But he'll give her the satisfaction and pretends, blue eyes shifting to the sidewalk.
"That you loved me," the Hart girl clarifies. Her tone is genuine—sweet, and the sincerity laced in it greatly juxtaposes against the venomous voice that tends to abrupt during their usual banters. She sounds almost surprised at the thought of someone other than the Matthews' family (really) loving her and it hurts, it does. And even if Farkle'd been telling her he's adored her since they were ten, she still can't get herself to believe it.
Lucas thinks of junior high first. He remembers silly underground introductions and rain in the classrooms and pointless detentions and dances and muffin sales. Maya had always been an interesting one, with her outspoken personality and her down to earth perspective and her crazy desire to dance in the storm after been having told her father had remarried again.
He had always liked her with that little, subtle tiny crush that had long ignited since the start. He could have ignored it, locked it away in an incognito space in the midst of him, but the spark would always find its way back whenever she'd look at him. Her eyes were all he'd really need.
"Do you remember that time sophomore year when you put all your pride aside and asked me, Lucas Friar, to tutor you in French 2?"
Her brows furrow a bit at the thought of such a random memory. She slowly slides her hands into the pockets of her pea coat and murmurs, her scarf tickling her bottom lip. "I had a D," she laughs a little and it's contagious. "Manquer Marie told me I wouldn't be able to take AP with that. And no AP equals no Pah-ri." She mentions the foreign setting with an exquisite French pronunciation in remembrance.
"And do you remember that time we were in the New York Public Library two weeks after that—it was the night before your final exam?"
"And you kissed me," she replies, slowly nearing her apartment building. "For the first time."
"Right before that, you scored a ninety-two on the practice test I'd given you," he shrugs while running his fingers through messy locks of brown. He hopes she won't give him shit for his ridiculously punctual memory. "You were smiling so wide, and you kept saying 'I did it—I did it' and you did. You really did. And I knew that, even if I only helped push you, I was still a small part of the reason you had that smile on your face. And I knew."
"So you kissed me."
"So I kissed you."
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Addiction kills.
It's all in the way the endorphins kick in and the mind turns to gutter, knees buckling, and oxygen lacking—remember to breathe, Maya—and when did his hands move from her waist to getting tangled in her hair? And then there's his knee, trapped between the gap of her legs and pushing the hem of her skirt further and further up her thighs and fuck it's like she's suffocating but she wants moremoremore.
(he calls it basorexia)
And then his lips are on her neck and her hands are grasping the broadness of his shoulders and this is what euphoria feels like.
She pulls his head back up by his hair so her lips could once again embed into the source of her addiction before he moves them toward the side of her face to tickle the shell of her ear with sweet vulnerability, "You're going to be the death of me, Maya Hart."
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"I'm happy, you know," Maya's voice drips into the cold atmosphere, words flowing along the wind that carries her hair. She crouches down and places an assortment of flowers she'd once painted beside her mother's headstone. "I wish you could've been happy, too."
She looks at Lucas, who is also here to pay his respects. She tries to smile, but it doesn't make its way to her eyes. They don't say a thing, and when she walks over to him as a gesture to leave, he grabs her hand and she squeezes.
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She thinks it's funny when she wakes up with entwined limbs thinking she was in her own bed and forgetting they'd been in the back of his truck amongst the galore of pillows and blankets all while at the scenic view of dawn and crashing waves. It is summer and the morning is a mixture of rose pink and lavender. The ocean is rippling and calm and so, so blue.
Maya sits up, her light blonde hair a mess of waves and her torso nude. She holds a thin blanket over herself, but leaves her back and the blades of her shoulders bare to feel the coolness of morning air. Their legs are still a beautiful, comfortable tangle of warmth and she stays put, eyes drowning in the hues of blue some distance ahead.
He wakes up to see the slight outline of her spine covered in sporadic faded curls of the day before and for a moment, he thinks about how breath-taking it would be to awake like this every day.
Lucas runs a finger up and down the arch of her back before asking, voice tired and eyes glazed onto her, "What're you thinking about?"
"Home."
He's quiet, and the natural sounds of the birds overhead and the water against the sand replace the serenity of her voice. He only speaks when he feels the silence had drawled long enough. "Do you want to go home?"
She turns the crook of her neck to meet his eyes, her chin resting against an exposed shoulder and smiles when she finds his fingers and interlocks them with hers.
"I'm already there."
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fin.
_a/n: i don't even know what this is or what i was trying to go for, i just really wanted to write something that wasn't for hearts like supernovas. this was originally supposed to be super sad (initial summary being "She lost her heart in New York, her virginity in Paris, and her mom on the fourth of August") I mean the story came out exactly how it was supposed to but even then. haha idk.
also what lucas tells her during that implied sex scene in french is "i want all of you" followed by please. dunno if the wording is wrong, i just used googletranslate lol.
anyways the smackle episode was amazing