Why Mess Up A Good Thing, Baby?
a Girl Meets World story
by: EmilyHelene
A/N: I wrote this song while listening to the two Joshaya mixes on 8tracks, highly recommend checking them out, specifically the song Sleeping With A Friend by Neon Trees (which is where I got the idea for the title). This is just a short little one-shot because I just had to write something on this pairing and I'm in the process of procrastinating studying from my exams.
I originally posted this on tumblr, but I've since revised it and added some stuff to it. Hope you like it!
Founder's Hall - NYU
2:38am
"Maya," he whispered. The covers rustled as he turned over to face her, chest rising and falling with the after effects of her kiss and her touch. "Maya, we can't keep doing this."
She lay beside him, staring up at the ceiling and trying to quell the rapid beating of her heart. She sighed. They had finally reached the point of no return, but Maya was unsure as to whether or not she wanted to turn and run or stand and give what he was proposing a fighting chance.
"Why not?" she asked, despite knowing the answer. They both knew why not and she had Josh pegged for one of the very few boys she knew with a functioning brain. She'd been wrong before, of course. Not many times, but enough to know what it felt like. She knew well enough, of course, to know that this wasn't one of those times.
She turned to face him and shot him a look. She did her best to be intimidating, but the hand she reached out to intertwine with his own swiftly did away with that. He looked at her, eyes fixed on her own. They had lost their hungry darkness. In its place was an unrecognizable softness.
"Because it's just a bad idea." He sighed, like the words coming out of his mouth were failing to explain what he really meant. This was probably true, Maya noted. He was here for Engineering, not English after all. "We can't keep doing this and expect for everything to be the way it always has. Sooner or later Riley's going to find out and start asking questions," he continued.
"What's wrong with questions?" she asked, voice littered with sarcasm. She was teasing him, of course, but she preferred not to think about what might happen if and when Riley started asking questions. Her voice was innocent, but that mischievous look in her eye suggested nothing of the sort. Denial aside, she had to admit he made a compelling argument. So much so that she wanted to see where exactly he was taking it.
Josh exhaled, frustrated. "Look, nothing okay." Somewhat abruptly, he pushed off the covers and stood up, and picked his t-shirt up off the floor. Maya rolled her eyes. She had pissed him off, she knew, but that was just how it was with them. She pushed until he pushed back. That was how it had always been; they really didn't know anything else.
"Nothing is wrong with questions?" she asked, slowly sitting up and running a hand through her somewhat erratic curls. "Yeah, of course." She smirked at the boy in front of her who was scrambling for his clothes as well as a way out of the current conversation. To be fair, he was the one who had brought it up and there was no way in hell she was letting him out of it that easily.
Then he turned to her, looked her dead in the eye and dropped the bomb that they both knew changed everything. So much for that.
"Well I want you, Maya." He held his hands up in defeat and motioned to her tank top and underwear-clad body. "And not like this."
"Not like this?" she asked, coyly. "Because you certainly didn't seem to feel that way an hour ago..."
He shook his head at her, but he was smiling. "Not just like this, okay?"
She rolled her eyes, knowing the answer she wanted to hear and the answer she just got were closer than she expected from him. The boy had game and she wasn't in the business of denying the obvious.
"Why mess up a good thing, Josh?" she asked, moving closer to him and crossing her arms across her chest. "We're both getting something out of this, what more could you want?"
"What more could I want? Jesus, Maya. Are you going to make me spell it out for you?"
"Of course," she smirked, heartbeat picking up for the second time that night.
"Alright, fine. To answer your question," he said, smiling at her slyly. He walked back across the room to where she sat and planted himself next to her. "It's not really messing up a good thing. Nothing makes a good thing great quite like taking a little risk."
Maya mulled this over for a moment and turned toward him. She took him in, his messy hair, blue eyes bright and rimmed with red from a continuous lack of sleep courtesy of finals season, the devilish ghost of smile he always wore for everyone else and the real thing that he showed only to his family. She took him in and for the first time in years, let the feelings she'd been trying to quell rise to the surface.
"What?" she asked. "You in it for the long game or something?"
"Something like that." He smirked, eyebrows raised and all. He walked toward her, grabbed her hand and pulled her back over to his bed.
"Stealing my line, Matthews?" She leaned toward him and pressed her lips against his slowly, running the pad of her thumb across his cheek. "Then you won't mind if I do this to shut you up, will you?"
"Never."
He pulled her close to his chest and she pressed kisses to his neck like stamps to an envelope: each was different, but all planted with the same intention. This time, when she pulled herself up to meet his lips, they both knew that the risk was one they couldn't come back from.
But why go back to safety when going forward was so much better?