The first thing her mother did, when she saw her, was hug her. Her mother was several inches shorter than her, but Riley felt completely enveloped, surrounded by warmth and comfort. For the first time that day, she felt completely safe.
She briefly pulled Farkle into a different position, so that she could bring her arms around her mother without letting go of his hand. Her dad pulled the both of them into a hug, so that her head was leaning on her mother's chest, and her mother's head was leaning on her father's chest.
For a second, she thought she felt Farkle try to pull away, but she held his hand tighter, and then her dad opened his arms to let Farkle nestle himself into the group hug.
Something in Riley's chest settled, and she didn't realize that she was crying again until she could feel the wetness staining her mother's shirt.
Her dad and Farkle detached, but her mother still held on tightly as she guided Riley down to sit on the sofa, and cradled her against her chest as she sobbed.
"Oh, my baby," her mom whispered. "My poor, sweet girl. I never wanted this for you." When Riley finally got up the courage to look up at her, Topanga Lawrence-Matthews had tears in her eyes.
"I'm sorry, mommy," she whispered brokenly, and her mother pulled her close again, tucking Riley's head under her chin.
"This isn't your fault, baby. You don't have anything to be sorry for." With a spare hand, she tugged the soft blanket that always lay over the back of the sofa over them, and Riley burrowed deeper into the warmth.
They sat like that for an indescribable measure of time, as Riley cried and her mother held her, rocking her softly and soothing her like one would a baby. Eventually, Riley's shuddering breaths evened out to something still shaky but no longer choked with tears, and she felt strong enough to push herself up slightly, to sit without the support of her mother. She pulled her feet up onto the couch as she did it, tucking the blanket in around her, leaving it somewhere between a cocoon and a straightjacket.
"How you feeling, baby?" Topanga asked her, brushing her thumb gently across Riley's hairline. She smiled weakly.
"Tired."
"Yeah, crying does that to you." She was watching her with soft, forgiving eyes. Riley couldn't meet her gaze, turning to search for Farkle instead.
She found him in the kitchen, boiling milk for hot cocoa. Their mugs already set out on the counter. Her eyes drifted back down and eventually lodged themselves somewhere to the left of her feet. For a minute, there was silence between the people in the apartment.
"I don't-" her throat was scratchy, and she cleared it a couple of times before trying again. "I don't know what to do next." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mother smile.
"Next we talk."
So Riley did. She let it all come spooling out of her, the panic attacks and the worry about not making them proud.
"Because that's all I really want to do," she admitted, chancing a quick look up at her mother's expression.
Topanga was chewing at her lower lip, staring absent-mindedly at Farkle. But then she looked back at Riley.
"Baby girl, I'm already proud of you. And I'm always going to be proud of you. No matter what you do." She reached over and rested a hand on Riley's knee. "But that isn't the most important thing to me. I'm happy to be proud of you, but I'm much happier when you're happy."
Riley stayed quiet, eyes on her mother. Topanga took a deep breath in before continuing.
"Riley, your dad and I love you so much. You and Auggie are our entire world. I don't want anything to hurt you," her voice was thick with tears now, too, and Riley found herself looking away again {you're selfish you hurt your mother apologise apologize apologise}.
"I don't know what to do about this, baby. But we're gonna help you feel better." Her mother promised her, shaking the knee her hand was resting on softly.
Farkle appeared in her line of vision, then, juggling two mugs of hot chocolate. He set them down and went back for the other two.
When everyone had been situated with the correct drink, he sat down on the small pouffe that stood next to the tv, somehow managing to cross his legs underneath him even though he was 5'11 and definitely too big for the chair. Riley took a deep sip of her hot chocolate to hide her smile as she watched him try to make himself smaller.
"Thank you for looking after Riley, Farkle," her mom said, still choked up. Farkle met her gaze head-on, back straight.
"There was never a question about that."
There was something in the way he said it- not quite a challenge, not necessarily, but maybe a judgement. It was odd, to have Farkle, whose parents were awful, look at her parents and find them to be not up to his standard.
Her parents just looked at him, though, before turning back towards Riley.
"What do you want to do about this?" Her dad asked, and it threw her. She'd never expected- she'd always assumed that, if they found out, they'd have a twelve-step programme, a solution set up, a million ideas and questions and lesson plans- she knew what her parents were like, after all. She'd sat through History lessons about the meaning of life and Topanga lessons about how to live life.
"I didn't think-" she cut herself off before she could unintentionally insult her parents. "I don't want to go on medication."
"We can't promise you that," her mother argued. "It's important that you're healthy. And if a qualified professional says that you should be on medication, I don't necessarily know that I'll disagree with them."
"Please." It felt weak, almost. It felt like begging. But for some reason, she'd drawn this line in her mind, and she wasn't quite ready to erase it.
"Riley, it's not fair for you to ask us that, and you know it." {And again, she felt awful, because it was true, she knew it was, and she was putting her parents through such stress and she couldn't handle it and what if they resented her for it?}
So instead, she fixed her eyes on the floor in front of her and said nothing {weak, weak, you're taking the weak way out}.
"What if we wait to see what Dr Anderson says first?" her dad put forward.
"We're not promising you that you won't have to take something, but we'll take your opinion into account before we make any decisions" It was the best she would get, so Riley jerked her head in what was probably agreement {what she wanted to do was scream- it's my body. it's my mind. it's my problem. leave me alone}.
She licked her lips and ran her tongue over the raw patch on the inside of her cheek. Her eyes traced over the pattern of the rug, counting each of the blue squares, and then each of the brown {21 and 27, respectively}.
The air was stilted, and it grew more awkward the longer the four of them went without saying anything. When she thought she couldn't take it anymore, fingers picking at her cuticles under the blanket, eyes trained on spots where no one could make eye contact with her, she eventually stood up.
"I think I'm gonna go lie down," she announced, staring at the antique clock her mother loved that hung on the wall in the kitchen.
She reached down to grab the hot chocolate the Farkle had bought, and then Farkle himself, letting him guide her up the three steps and down the hall to her bedroom. He pulled the door shut behind them {the rules around her door, and who was in her room, and when, would look weird to an outsider, but Riley had always understood them perfectly. Farkle and Maya had always been allowed in her bedroom, had always been allowed to have sleepovers with the door closed, and so for them, those rules didn't change, no matter how old they all got.
Maybe they would have changed if there hadn't been Lucas. But there was, and her parents trusted her- if she said she was in a committed relationship with Lucas, then she was in a committed relationship with Lucas. And so the rules for Lucas were slightly different.
No sleepovers without the others, for one thing. Which made sense, and beyond that, didn't disallow sleepovers at all, just required that they be chaperoned.
The other rule was that her parents had to be made aware when Lucas was there- he wasn't given the free license to slip in and out of the bay window like Maya and Farkle were.
She wondered if the rules would change if she told her parents that she'd kissed Farkle twice, now. Wondered if she'd changed, because her parents allowed Farkle in her room with her under the assumption that she was dating someone else, and they would never think that she'd cheat on someone, and she'd broken that trust and then hadn't told them}.
Still, she didn't move to open the door and instead curled up in Farkle's lap in the bay window {like they'd been sitting in the car, her legs thrown over his, her body curled into his side, her head resting on his shoulder}. She wrapped both of her hands around her mug and embraced the warmth of his right arm, thrown around her shoulder. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she smiled peacefully.
Little darling, it's been a lonely, cold winter.
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear.
Here comes the sun, do do do do.
Here comes the sun, and I say.
It's all right.
His singing voice was lower than his speaking voice, and it wasn't phenomenal by any means {couldn't hold a candle to Maya's} but it was good enough for humming Beatles songs. The vibrations of his chest as he half-mumbled the words were soothing, an old comfort that she'd long since forgotten.
Sun, sun, sun, here he comes.
Sun, sun, sun, here he comes.
"You don't know the lyrics at all, do you?" She asked, not bothering to open her eyes, or even move from when she was firmly planted in his lap.
She could feel the way he shook his head, even as he jumped back to the second verse.
Little darling, the smile's returning to their faces.
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here.
She exhaled softly in something that wasn't quite a laugh and would have tried to join him, but the warmth of the sun coming in through the bay window made her aware, once again, of the heaviness of her limbs, and the continuous motion of Farkle stroking her hair. She set her mostly-empty mug down between them, and she thought she might have heard Farkle put it somewhere out of their way, but by then she was already half asleep.
{Leaving Farkle to think about the tense discussion he'd had earlier;
Farkle sat outside the nurse's office, wringing his hands in his lap. He felt like he was near to rubbing his wrists raw, and his leg was bouncing so fast it was closer to a constant vibration than a bounce. He swallowed thickly and resisted the urge to look back through the window and just check on her, just check quickly.
The aborted head turn ended with him making direct eye contact with Mr Matthews. For a seemingly-endless moment, they just stared at each other. Then.
"Why didn't you tell us?"
Farkle blinked in surprise at the harsh tone in Mr Matthews voice. He titled his head to the side, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means we let you stay with us all summer, Farkle. We fought your dad on that, Topanga and I. He wanted you to stay with his secretary. And we insisted that you stay with us. And you accepted that, and then didn't tell us that Riley was having issues?"
Farkle shook his head.
"It's not like that at all-"
"Then explain to me. Because you and Riley, no matter how much you'd like to think otherwise, are kids. My kids. And I don't understand why you wouldn't come and get help, not when Riley was going through- whatever she's going through."
"Riley asked me not to." Maybe that was a weak excuse - it felt particularly weak when he'd just carried Riley through the hall, almost catatonic - but it was the only one that was true.
"That's not good enough, Farkle. That's my daughter, and I'm responsible for her health."
Yeah, you fucking are. Farkle wanted to snap. So why was I the only one who saw that something was wrong?
But this wasn't about him. This was about Riley, who he'd managed to carry to the nurse even when he'd thought his knees would buckle. Riley, who'd curled in closer to him when Lucas offered to take her.
So instead he looked away, only to find himself staring at Lucas, Maya, Zay and Smackle, standing a way down the hall. He tried to swallow down the bile that crept up in his throat, tried to push down the anger that came with the thoughts of we've been handling this, we don't need your help - even if it wasn't true, even if he'd been begging Riley to tell someone else.
Mr Matthews followed his gaze, and his eyes softened when he saw them. It was easy to see why- there was no way the rest of them had known, not with the confusion pasted across their faces, the furrowed brows and hitched shoulders.
"Riley won't want them here," Farkle tells him, still watching the others. "She's embarrassed by this- she didn't even want you to know. It'll overwhelm her."
Mr Matthews was quiet, and when Farkle eventually managed to check on him, see if he'd heard, he was staring at him contemplatively. Farkle flexed his hands into fists and loosened them before he could bring himself to speak again.
"Mr Matthews, this is Riley's business. But we both know she's not going back to class for the rest of the day, and the rest of them-" he jerked his head slightly- "have to. So it's for the best if you send them back to class before she has to come out."
Mr Matthews let the silence stretch out, and just as Farkle was getting ready to go over himself and try to chase them away himself, he stood up.
"Our conversation isn't over, yet. I'm disappointed in you, Farkle." And fuck, that hurt, because Farkle was used to hearing it from his parents - just his dad now, really- but he'd never thought he'd hear it from Riley's dad.
Minutes later, when Lucas, Maya, Zay and Smackle had been sent back to class (not without a considerable fight from the former two) and Nurse Grayson had called them back in, the words were still stinging}.
Riley woke hours later with a start when the window to her left slid up with a thump and Maya and Lucas crawled in.
For a second, no one moved. Riley and Maya stared at each other, Riley half on Farkle's lap, Maya still on her hands and knees, feet out the window.
And then everything else didn't matter, because they were clinging to each other like their lives depended on it, their bodies shaking with the force of their sobs. There was a part of Riley that felt guilty {look what you've put everyone through, this is cruel. You should have tried harder to keep this secret}, but most of her was just relieved {it's over, it's over, no more hiding, no more pretending, everyone knows and it's fine}.
Eventually, Farkle's arms came around both of them, and Lucas managed to squeeze through the gap Maya had left in the window and joined the hug, pulling Riley and Maya against his chest.
There was so much to talk about still, so many things that Riley couldn't think about without starting to shake, but for a few minutes, she actually felt at peace.
Listen, y'all, I am not a consistent woman. I'm doing my best. But I'm hella proud of these chapters going up in such quick succession.
I hope everyone's year is slowly going better. Happy birthday to Amy, who will never read this fic but inspires most of it. I hope all of you are wearing masks when you leave the house, that you're social distancing and washing your hands. Thank fuck for every American who helped vote 45 out of office. To the person who once commented on this fic that "You do know being so far left/liberal is just as bad as being pro-Trump..."- no it's not, fuck you.
This doesn't mean anyone gets to stop, though. We keep pushing for reform, across the world. If you're South African, I encourage you to go to every anti-Gender Based Violence protest that you can. If you're not, I encourage you to help the people in your community in whichever way you can.
Love,
Harley
