This was supposed to be a oneshot that spat out of my brain but then this happened. Ignore me I just like to read this when my feels flare up.

(but thanks for the reviews! those were nice, this fandom is nice)

"There was this guy on our football team who was a real piece of work. It didn't matter who or why he just seemed to like picking fights." Lucas said finally.

It had taken him a while to determine where was a good place to start. He didn't know if he'd found it or how the rest would sound if it would make sense to her that is.

That didn't really matter. The words spilt from his lips unbidden and with surprising ease that he hadn't expected.

"He was huge too so when he picked fights he'd either get his way or he'd win. Until he decided to pick a fight with Zay. People love Zay, he's the life of the party but even when his mouth ran a little farther than he could catch up to nobody messed with him."

"Because he had you," Maya said simply.

Her voice carried such lightheartedness and content that it forced him to smile, even though the memories that he tried to block out forever now swarmed his head.

It occurred to Lucas that he was smiling because she wasn't asking if he'd been the one to back Zay up.

Of course, she knew it because he'd said as much and so had Zay but still it made him smile.

But the fact that she could point it out with such pride even knowing he'd done something awful in this instance made him feel good, feel understood.

Maya had long abandoned her sketchbook and accepted that she wouldn't get anything done.

"Yeah…until Zay flirted with the guy's girlfriend. I ran off the field in the middle of a game and told him to back off."

Maya noted that everything about him had tensed up, his body and his voice were taut and angry. She looked up at him and saw he was snarling, his eyes staring unseeingly ahead.

Now she was the one leaning on him, her head on his shoulder and her arms wrapped around his.

She had to ground him somehow so that no matter what he said he would remember he was here now, he was different now.

"I yelled across the field when I ran over telling him to back off. He didn't. He punched Zay a few times but I got there and I…" he licked his lips and swallowed, unsure if these words would fall as easily. "I beat him within an inch of his life."

"Lucas…" Her hand found his and she squeezed hard until he looked at her.

"It took half the team to pull me off of him. I saw my friend get hurt and I was pissed." His eyes bore into hers as he continued. "They took him to the hospital and had to put him in a medically induced coma for a while."

Maya chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully while she thought of the right words to say. She couldn't tell him it was okay. She couldn't tell him anything he didn't already know.

Maya didn't know what to say and so she tried to focus on what she thought and how she felt.

Did it change the way she viewed him? Did it change the way she felt about him? Was it as awful as he thought?

Clearly, since he still beat himself up over it. Maya thought then that he probably always would, that's how good he was.

Granted, it was an awful thing but it would be more awful if he was like that to the core and felt no remorse about it.

"What happened?" she said, her voice soft when she found the right words.

"I uh," he looked surprised. "went to juvie for a year and—"

"No, I mean what happened that you felt Texas Lucas?"

"Nothing, I just…sometimes I still feel that anger bubble up inside and—"

"It's dangerous to be that angry." Maya finished. Lucas didn't mind the interruption. He liked that he didn't have to say it and that she could finish the thought for him. "He live?"

"Yeah, it took a lot of physiotherapy but he's fine now. Not much of a bully anymore from what I hear."

"Would you do it again?" Maya had a good poker face he noticed. Lucas had made her promise not to look at him differently and he wondered if this was her controlling it.

"No, but I don't like feeling it! I don't like knowing it's there, Maya!"

"Come," she heaved herself up and offered her hand down to him, relieved when he took it.

Her mom wasn't home. She was working the overnight shift tonight so Maya didn't have to explain anything when she pulled Lucas into their dinky little living room.

It was half living room and half art studio, but really it was 100% art studio. There was a large floor to ceiling canvas folded up in a basket on the floor.

Maya had a step stool and didn't bother asking him to help her hang it, she wasn't a helpless stack of pancakes.

Lucas watched her curiously. He knew she was an amazing artist, well Maya Hart was just amazing, but he didn't know what she was trying to show him or if there was a point.

He watched her open a few cans of paint and wondered if she was gonna paint him something to make him feel better.

Maybe what he said had unsettled her so much that she needed to paint to calm down.

That thought stirred a deep well of guilt and shame in his stomach.

"When I get mad now, I don't destroy parks or cause trouble." She was playing with her phone now, trying to find her list.

Suddenly the quiet apartment was filled with loud, angry, head banging rock.

She handed him a brush and dipped another in a can of neon purple and before he could catch up she was flinging it at the canvas.

Lucas hesitated at first, looking to her for direction but she was in her own world now.

He'd seen this Maya before, this Maya had scared him but somehow this time he felt okay.

"Huckleberry. Ranger Rick. Heehaw. Ranger Roy. Bucky McBoingBoing. Hop-Along. Sundance. Cowboy. Lone Star. What you too moral to throw some paint, Lucas the Good? C'mon Quickdraw!"

And then he took the bait because when he was like this, all vulnerable and raw, he couldn't just take the nicknames like he normally did.

Lucas just bared it all to her, told her the worst thing he'd ever done and yet she was here still making fun of him!

She was making fun of him and taunting him and calling him good when he'd just told her he wasn't.

Twenty minutes later they were exhausted and the canvas was a mess, he told her as much.

"Yeah, but when you feel a mess you gotta make a mess. Unless you somehow don't feel better in which case I've got a watermelon and a bat if you wanna go on the roof. S'my failsafe backup." Lucas stared at her slumped on the couch.

"I…do feel better."

"The trick is to accept it and to use it. The anger." She elaborated. "It doesn't control you, you control it. Whenever you feel that way, when you feel Texas Lucas you've gotta let him in before you can make him go. He's only visiting because he's not you anymore." She got up from the couch to wrap him up in a hug. I told you, Lucas. You're great."