this is one of the 93472742 lucaya one-shots/fics I have rotting away in my google docs that I finally got to posting, so expect more soon as such and hmu on tumblr (mayahartdefensesquad) with any questions, concerns, prompts etc or just to discuss lucaya bc literally I have like one person to discuss them with and so many feelings it's a wreck I'm a wreck pls comment and such ty
He had green eyes that saw through every face you pulled, an accent that rung through your ears like bells, and he towered over you like a Western-themed children's mascot, but, holy shit, did you love him.
You met him at thirteen. You didn't think anything of it; the teasing, the blushing, the close tugs, the flustered looks. It was flirting. Harmless flirting. Childish flirting. A game.
He and Riley were perfect for each other back then. Riley wanted a prince and Lucas needed to be one, for her and his own peace of mind. He needed a fresh start. She was due for a new adventure. They were what they needed at the brink of their teenage careers, and they were perfect together right up until they weren't.
You were in Texas the weekend that they officially called it off. She realized that she wanted a prince whether perfect or not and he realized that he could never be that for her. The smiles that they had after they agreed to be friends were the widest ones you'd seen on either of them for months.
You kissed him that night, of all nights to do it. You were roasting marshmallows alone and when you looked down from the stars, he was looking at you like you were the night sky to him. It confused you because he'd just told Riley that he couldn't be her prince, but the way he looked in your eyes made you feel like a princess for the first time in your life so you question if his decline to royalty was exclusive to her or active all around when you lay awake hours later. You blamed the toxic southern air and claimed it was a one time occurrence, but you kissed again and again and again until you couldn't breathe and you learned by that campfire that the only thing toxic was the feeling you got in the pit of your stomach with him. You swore then that it would be the death of you, and the theory still remains.
You told Riley that you kissed him the next morning. She said that knew that it would happen, whether that night or any after. She saw the way that he looked at you. She saw the way that you looked at him. She saw the way that you smiled at each other. "I am a bit ditzy sometimes, but I'm not blind, Peaches." She kissed your forehead because you were terrified that she'd be at least a little mad, and she held your hand on the way to breakfast in order to make sure that you knew she loved you. While skipping with her to mediocre oatmeal and above par bacon, you hoped and hoped that there would never come a time that you and Riley weren't perfect for each other.
Neither you or Lucas talked about the kiss the next day. You didn't need to. You both understood that at fourteen, neither of you needed anything more than the promise of friendship and that was okay. The only reaction that he gave you was that smug little smirk he got when he teased you and you bit your lip as you held his hand the entire trip back to New York.
Your best friend found her prince in Charlie Gardner during your freshman year in high school. When he kissed her, she ran to your window in the rain to tell you with the biggest smile that maybe her parents weren't an impossible goal. "Anything is possible", she squeaked to you, "I met Charlie in the fourth grade! Doesn't that make us the new goal?"
You fidgeted awkwardly with your phone when she kept talking. It wasn't that you didn't want to listen, it was just kind of because riding the coat tail of your best friend's relationship wasn't your favorite thing to look forward to. You wondered if you should steal her phone and turn your name from Peaches to Third Wheel with the proper emojis, but before you considered it fully your own phone lit up and you smiled. A picture of you and Lucas piggybacking around the subway was your lockscreen, and when you turn back to the enthusiasm that your sunshine had, you were able to match it because maybe Riley was right. Maybe anything was possible.
Your second kiss with Lucas Friar was the night of his first date with Missy Bradford. You were still freshmen when it happened, and he kissed you seconds before you convinced him to cancel on Missy and spend the night watching movies with you. He did, without hesitation. He asked you to date him the fourth movie in, and when you said no, he told you to stop joking.
"I'm not. I'm going to stay single all of high school."
"Why?"
"So that I won't have some dopey high school sweetheart to reflect on."
"That's all?"
"Plus, to kinda just see if I can do it. Everyone talks about their serious high school relationships, and I just wanna enjoy life not being serious. We only really have high school left to be kids."
"So you're not going to date anyone at all for the next four years?"
"Not a soul."
"No high school sweethearts?"
He stared at you with his challenging smirk and beautiful eyes and for the first time in your life, your stubbornness almost lifted. You almost gave in. You almost let him win. You wished you had the pride to tell him the truth, but you didn't so you looked at him determined to power through and you lied, lied, lied.
"No high school sweethearts."
He convinced you to bend the mission for him on the same night. "Once a month!" he exclaimed, "You would be as single as you were when you walked in when you walk out. Just let me take you out once a month." You wondered how single you actually were walking into your first date with Lucas Friar that following weekend when he stared into your eyes and told you that he'd never seen you more beautiful.
Once a month then turned into twice a month which turned into once a week, and before you knew it, every moment you had that wasn't occupied with Riley was shared with Lucas.
You only questioned it once more.
"You're still single," Lucas whispered against your neck halfway through the summer before your sophomore year. His lips left traces and marks to your collarbone while you squirmed under his touch. "Technically, you're staying true to your word. You're very single. You're just...mine."
You almost gave into temptation when he told you that you were his and his teeth nipped at your neck, but you didn't because you were not ready and he knew that you were not ready, so he left it at hickies and kissed each one softly as it darkened for good measure.
"You're the biggest pain in my ass, Huckleberry."
"As long as I'm yours."
"You are."
He was yours and you were his. Single or not, you belonged to one another.
You never questioned it again.
He defended you when you and Riley almost had a falling out at sixteen. Well, you were sixteen, she was trailing a year behind and you never thought you'd ever been so mad at her.
She made another joke using your home life as a punchline one day at lunch and you'd finally broken because, contrary to what anything thought, you lived in a decent neighborhood with a beautiful apartment and a mother that you had an amazing relationship with. Sure, she worked a lot. Yes, she was gone most of the time. But it was okay because you understood. You knew why she was gone and you were tired of Riley making it seem like you were a charity case with two deadbeat parents.
"There is nothing shameful in a mother that works her ass off to provide for her daughter," Lucas snapped at her after you jolted up and told her that your existence is not open season to her. Riley's eyes went wide because Lucas never swore around her. "Maya's mom is a wonderful woman. I've spent time with her, I've spent time with them together, and I've seen firsthand that they have so much love and sacrifice between them that you acting like she shouldn't be proud to have such an amazing mother is indecent, Riley."
You could've kissed him, but you didn't. Instead you left the lunchroom and walked all the way home to catch your mom before she left for another double shift at- what was it? Thursday? So, the golf club- the golf club that neither of you could afford to probably even look at- so that she could get your electric bill paid on time. You told her with tears in your eyes how much you loved her and how thankful you were to have her and she didn't question why you weren't at school or why Lucas was coming in their door or why you were clinging onto her so tightly that he had to peel you from her skin and nod towards the exit.
"It's alright," he told her with his arm tightening around you, "A fight with Riley. I got it."
She nodded and gave you both a kiss on the forehead before telling you how much she loved you and leaving for work.
Riley called you the next day to apologize because Lucas had made some really good points after you had left. He pointed out that she'd been to your home, she'd seen you and your mom, and she knew that you weren't as broken as you once felt. She promised to never use your life as a joke again, and you learned that even between the closest group of friends, Lucas stood by you.
"So I'm the first person to ask?" He stared hopefully at you with a cowboy hat on with an obnoxious banner that read, 'It would be sweeter than syrup if you do-si-doed with me to Prom!'. It had lassos and cattle and boldly in the bottom left was a short stack of pancakes drowning in sugar and you laughed and laughed and laughed at your silly little Huckleberry and his goofy little banner with his magical little smile and his dorky little ambush for your lame little junior prom.
"Lucas, it's October."
"It's never too early to make sure that I have the most gorgeous girl there on my arm."
His eyes shimmered and his touch made you weak and you knew that you should've said no because it was too much, he loved you too much, but you couldn't because wow, oh wow, was he the sweetest boy you'd ever met and wow, oh wow, did you love him back.
So months and months later, you wore green, his tie was blue, and you took pictures fixing the silky fabric around his neck while he stared at you like you were the girl that he wanted to marry. It made you feel the toxic pull you felt during your first kiss with him and you realized that night that between the stormy hue of his eyes and the crystal shimmer of yours, the two of you had created an ocean that was doomed to pull you under.
He knew he would love you as long as he could help it, and he told you that while you danced.
"I am going to love you for the rest of my life." Silence hung in the air until the song ended and then you laced your hand with his and the two of you left that sweaty gym full of hormones and amateurly spiked punch for a night in your apartment with treats and sweatpants and privacy.
Your mother never being home was for the better, you discovered. It left room for laughing at the top of your lungs because you managed to get your arm getting caught in your dress, marshmallow explosions in your microwave that you needed at least two hours to clean, and most importantly, it left room for a night to lose your virginity to Lucas Friar while he told you over and over and over how much he loved you.
You learned that Saturday while you were seventeen that those were three things that you desperately needed room for.
He asked you to marry him about a year later.
It wasn't an actual proposal, only a casual question over a dinner at some Chinese place you had a coupon for, but he still looked at you with those eyes and you were drowning, drowning, drowning.
"Marry you? And not be single for the rest of senior year? Yeah, right, HeeHaw. Keep dreamin'."
He smirked at you like he knew a secret, like he knew the secret that the two of you were destined from the start to be wed, but he didn't share it. He stole an almond cookie from your side of the table and told you that he would ask again and again until you told him yes.
"A bit persistent, aren't we, Huckleberry?"
"Just a bit."
"I'm going to tell you no every single time."
"I'll wait."
He asked once a month after that and all anyone could heard ringing through the halls were a chorus of 'no's sung before he laughed and kissed your lips.
"Same time next month?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world."
He gave up a full ride to Texas A&M, his dream university, just for you. He'd never tell you that but he declined the acceptance that you knew he had been waiting for since childhood to spend his college years with you. You saw the letter in his kitchen garbage while you were hanging your identical letters from Columbia stating that you were both accepted that upcoming fall on his fridge. You picked it out while he called his Pappy Joe and gave him the great news and skimmed it before shoving it back at his presence.
You called it even after you threw out your acceptance letter from Pratt. You supposed that he had his secrets and you had yours, and you would have plenty of time to figure them out together at Columbia.
He asked you to marry him twice that night.
There were more than a few times that he asked when you felt like saying yes to his proposals, but if you were anything, it was stubborn.
No, no, no, no.
I'll wait, I'll wait, I'll wait, I'll wait.
You agreed to move in with him before you agreed to date him, and nobody questioned it at all.
"Maya, I found it!" He bursted at his seams with excitement and smiles and love, love, love. "I found our dream apartment for college."
He assumed that you'd live together, so technically speaking you didn't even agree to it, but with that beaming anticipation in his eyes and his radiant grin, you couldn't see it going any differently.
"It's not too much. It's a..." He cleared his throat at you to use a silly voice while reading the ad, a cross between used car salesman and game show host leaving his throat while his eyes skimmed the paper, "...Large studio apartment, great location in center of grocery stores, restaurants, and more, renovated with two separate good sized bedrooms, nice kitchen, hardwood floors throughout, good condition appliances, beautiful bath, spacious, lots of closets and high ceilings.. Bonus! At a steal of just $1,650 a month, which my parents already agreed to pay until we make it through school and get good jobs to afford a place ourselves, rent includes: utilities, gas, electric, water, etc. We just need to provide our own cable and internet services."
He'd already called for a showing, though he didn't tell you that. You could see it in the way that he circled the small square in three different colors and highlighted the phone number twice that you no longer had a choice in the matter. That was going to be your home for your years away at school, and you were going to share it with your very own Huckleberry Hopalong Friar.
"It's perfect, Maya!" His smile was so bright that you should've gone blind, but you didn't. You returned it because you believed in him and you believed in the two of you and you believed in anything being possible for two kids in New York planning their future together like it wasn't doomed.
It was doomed. You avoided the truth in it, but it was doomed from the very beginning. It was doomed before love and before hope and before possibilities and kisses and Prince Charming having green eyes and blonde hair and a charming little accent.
"What do you mean.. out?"
"I'm going out."
It was a date. Not an official one, but a double date that you were being dragged on by Riley to test out the waters between you and some boy Charlie knew from Penn State that was apparently perfect for you.
"If you're not going to date Lucas, you have to date someone," she told you.
"I don't want to date anyone, Riles." You did, but he wasn't some boy that Charlie met through a trip at school named Isaac that was tall and gorgeous and sarcastic and- Oh, Maya, he takes pictures! He takes pictures and you could paint them and you can open galleries together! How romantic!- that just wasn't what you wanted. You didn't want a photographer with a dark persona that was earning a degree in visual arts, just like you. You wanted your cowboy, as little as your ego allowed you to admit it aloud. You wanted a life with the mutton buster that you shared a home with.
"Just one night? For me?"
"It's just a dumb double date, Huckleberry. Riley's dragging me on it. She begged me."
"Riley's dating Charlie," Lucas added, a bitter expression crossing him.
"No shit, Sherlock. She wants to set me up with some photographer that Gardner knows. It really doesn't matter."
"You're wearing that dress, though."
You stared down at your outfit for a second, an eyebrow rising at his comment. It wasn't anything extraordinary. It was a simple little pink skater dress that you'd taken from Riley a few years back. It was your go-to on nights out that you weren't particularly planning on trying too hard for; short, cute, modest yet teasing. You didn't see anything wrong with it.
"Yeah, so?"
You glanced back up to see his eyes a shade darker, the jealousy unfolded causing warmth to rush through your veins. His hands sculpted to your waist to tug you closer.
"I know the types of intentions that he's going to have looking at you in it... but, it doesn't matter. He won't see you in it."
It was doomed, but not doomed to fail.
"Is that so?"
No, it was doomed to swallow your soul.
"It is." His grip loosened to lower to your thighs.
It was doomed to leave you on edge to his touch. A blush on your cheeks. A burning in your core at the brush of his skin.
"And how do you know that?" Your words are yelped, at most whimpered while his fingers fidgeted with the end of your skirt.
"Because you're not going on that date," he stated casually. "If we're being honest here, you were never going on that date." You bit your lip in response. The action held back a moan as his hands explored your skin under the fabric of your dress. "Isn't that right?"
You struggled against his touch as he gazed down at you with a dangerous smirk. He squeezed harshly at your hips for an answer. "Isn't that right, Maya?"
Blood rushed to your face and you nodded frantically. "Y-yes." And as soon as that happened, you knew that you were royally fucked.
The second that you fumbled over your submissive words, your pride threw caution to the wind and headed out of your reach because he started kissing your neck and you didn't even realize that he took your dress off and holy fuck, you weren't going anywhere for the rest of the night if he was going to tug on your hair like that while he left possessive marks all over your skin.
You wondered if it should bother you that you were ignoring other boys for him even though you didn't want to be dating him and you didn't want to marry him yet and he wasn't outwardly anything but your friend and roommate- but your curiosity subsided because you were drowning, drowning, drowning in your cries of his name into his shoulder and nothing else mattered because he was still your cowboy with green eyes that saw through every face you pulled, an accent that rung through your ears like bells, and he still towered over you like a fucking Western-themed children's mascot.
And, holy shit, did you still love him.