A/N: This is for mae-sunshine on Tumblr, who is awesome and shares my love for Tim Riggins. I'm not a hardcore Tim/Lyla shipper, though I enjoy their angst, but she is and she deserves this. I hope it makes you happy, dear! =)
Title from Lorde's "Buzzcut Season."
In Dillon, everybody knows everybody knows everybody. So it isn't exactly a wonder that Lyla Garrity, in first grade, knows to turn her nose up when she meets Tim Riggins.
They are six years old. His eyes are cat's eyes, green and gold and unblinking. His jeans have holes in the knees.
"Don't you have any nicer clothes?" she asks, because she is too young to be kind.
"No," he says.
She flounces away, chin up, and thinks of him all day long.
...
Jason Street might as well have come with a white horse and a suit of armor, prepackaged. Lyla's Daddy chuckles at the sight of them together, and she knows enough at ten to try and play house with him every chance she gets.
Jason's a nice boy. He's her nice boy.
Tim Riggins is his best friend.
Lyla isn't sure if she understands it. Jason and Tim are so different—there's no holes in the knees of Jason's jeans—but they're practically inseparable.
Lyla gets used to Tim Riggins, and finds it easier than she expected.
...
By high school, they move in circles that are too close for comfort, like fingertips ghosting against glass, never quite touching. Lyla looks for him when he isn't around.
Jason makes her forget, but not long enough. There's just too much to remember about Tim—lazy smiles and an unsettlingly intent gaze…the lean strength that makes him a sure win for the Panthers. The bad-boy reputation that makes him sure trouble for the female population of Dillon High.
And something else—the way he laughs, the way he looks at her, sometimes, when he thinks she's not looking at him.
...
Jason Street and Lyla Garrity have become the sort of names one writes in notebooks. It's a story that makes the town proud, and sometimes Lyla dreams about their wedding. Everyone will be there, breathless as children, watching the fairytale unfold.
One night she dreams of Tim, mouth hard on hers, asking her to stay. Stay where, she doesn't know, but she can barely bring herself to meet his eyes the next day.
...
Lyla Garrity's fairytale ends on a Friday, while she holds pompoms in her hands.
She props her smile up as though saving it means saving anything, and she doesn't know what the future holds.
She slows down for Tim Riggins on the roadside, and lets herself go. It's the most dangerous thing she's ever done, because she never let herself guess what hides beneath her anger.
It's only when her lips meet his, fire on fire, that she realizes she's been on this road a long time.