_a/n: so i recently got a prompt on my shared lucaya blog and it was something like a best friends/neighbors/growing up and viola, i'd already been working on something exactly of that sort. AU.
lilac lips
(once upon a time you pressed your lips onto mine and the rest is rust and stardust)
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He is a newly turned seven year old when he meets her. She is Maya Hart, and she is both an angel and the devil and to this day, he still wonders how that could be.
He first sees her at the front of her vividly green lawn, sundress on and standing near unloading moving trucks. There are men in blue uniforms shuffling behind her with large, cardboard boxes. They haul in furniture, lamps, and chests into the house directly parallel to his in this (usually) peaceful cul-de-sac. In a childish act of welcome, he kicks his soccer ball over to her. He lets it skid along the empty street and (thanks to the skills his coach had taught him during weekly practice) it makes its way right before her tiny feet.
She has long, golden hair that looks exactly what he'd picture when he'd encounter the very end of the rainbow. He's never found the treasure his mother constantly tells him that's at the famous finis of the multicolored trail, but he thinks that she might be an even prettier sight. Angelic, surreal, with oceanic eyes and moonlight skin. She looks like a princess, he thinks, one that he remembers seeing on lunchboxes whenever he'd been taken to the Disney store.
The outgoing nature of his friendly, country-loving, organic-growing mother is evident when she bakes their new neighbors' a batch of her famous macadamia nut cookies. Introductions are made and he's forced to shake hands with both the mother and daughter of the new household. They're the Hart family, and he learns that it's just the two of them, since Mr. Hart is on a business trip.
His thoughts come to an abrupt halt when she kicks it back to him with furious velocity he hadn't expected to come from such a tiny girl. It doesn't take long for the ball to quicken at the bounces along the street in between them, ultimately pounding into the sensitive area between his stomach and quads.
Before he knows it, she's got him on his knees in immense, fiery pain. When he takes the chance to look back up to meet the girl's gaze whilst kneeling on the grass and he sees her laughing, Lucas decides that this meant war.
/
She transfers into his local elementary school and right into the very same first grade class where she steals the hearts of fellow students by just taking a seat. He wants to warn them—don't be fooled by those sunshine pigtails and those ballerina toe shoes; she's the devil. When he tells his mother this, he doesn't understand why she laughs.
"First impressions are usually always wrong."
"You got that right," he boyishly shakes his head as she tucks him in.
"That girl's gonna be such a heartbreaker," her warm voice finishes, thoughtfully. He doesn't know what she means.
/
On February fourteen, after their class finishes distributing letters, candy, and card variations of pinks and reds into their self-crafted mailboxes, he steals all of the deliveries addressed to her in retaliation to how she stole his box of sixty four crayons the week before. He'd been niftily planning this out since he'd found it in her cubby, his name awkwardly printed on the side of the cover as proof of it being his. He'd taken it back immediately and made sure to hide it.
He eyes her sneakily from his desk which is slightly diagonal from hers. He sits, anxious and enthusiastic for her reaction when she sees her empty mail box. Ha! He thinks. They're in second grade and he believes he had just pulled the ultimate prank of pranks. He should win a medal for winning this continuous dual they'd been in since the first day she moved here. He's about to give himself a pat on the back until he sees the way her lips shake in a pout along with the start of quivering eyebrows. She's about to cry and the now-eight year old boy feels like there's a lump in his throat and stones in his stomach.
And when the waterworks succeed and their teacher finds her way over to the teary girl with "missing Valentines", Maya points directly at him (and every ounce of almost regret instantly vanishes) as if he'd been the culprit—the thief. The teacher frowns at him when she finds letters with a name that's not his scrambled into his own mailbox.
"I was gonna give them back to her!" he defends himself in all honesty. He really was.
"Mm-hmm," is all the teacher says before confiscating his creatively constructed, lilac and blue mailbox. She dials his home number on the telephone away from the students and when he finds her eyes on him, she sticks out her tongue in between licks of her very red lollipop.
He misses his candy and maybe this is what having a broken heart feels like. Maybe his mom was right—Maya Hart really is a heartbreaker.
/
It is a couple of years later when Lucas can be seen dribbling a soccer ball with another boy with a helmet of brown hair. This is his best friend and he generally isn't very sporty, which is a problem during recess or P.E. when the class tends to play kickball. So Lucas helps him, and playing becomes habitual in the Friar household. Except not indoors, of course. His mother would kill him if he broke another vase. So out on the lawn they went.
It's an evening before eight o'clock, and the sky is slowly darkening as he and Farkle Minkus wait for his dad to pick him up. When the silver mini cooper pulls up in front of his house, Lucas waves to the both of them when they drive off and out of the neighbourhood. He decides to stay awhile longer, practice on his kicks until he'll be yelled at to come back inside.
He goes round after round and stops in his tracks when he hears furious profanities (that he'd be smacked on the head silly for even uttering yards away from his parent) and sudden ruckus coming from his classmate's house. There is screaming, wailing, and begging, and he could have sworn he had heard a table being flipped or a window being smashed. To his clandestine knowledge, this occurs almost nightly.
When he sees Maya at school, he doesn't say a word. He doesn't know how.
/
When Lucas tells his mom, she suggests he give the Hart family a box of these muffins she absolutely adores. It's irrelevant and out of nowhere, but she has the mindset where any act of kindness can have the power to make anyone's day, which can ultimately lead to happy moods, which logically, leads to less angry family members and (hopefully) less violent, heated arguments.
He takes her up on her suggestion, and at school, when he hands the blonde a faded coral pink box of a dozen of the healthy snack, she eyes him warily, as if she's unsure whether or not he's trying to poison her or something.
"Look, this isn't a joke, I swear," his voice is squeaky and he's avoiding as much eye contact as he can. He's also probably red in the face; he feels it in his cheeks.
"Prove it," she replies. Her hands are on her hips and her hair's longer than ever. He might start calling her "Princess" soon.
At recess, they split a muffin in half and eat on the swings together, even when food was strictly to be eaten on the lunch benches. She doesn't really care for rules, though, and he thinks it's okay to break them once in awhile. Especially if they're for moments that can slowly form a friendship.
He can tell she doesn't really like the taste; it's in the way her face twists into an expression of bitterness after her first bite. It lasts two seconds at most before she tries to mask it with a fake smile, but he notices it. He almost laughs because he's not too fond of them either. It's nice, though, when she shyly thanks him and accepts the box, agreeing to share it with her parents.
/
A night during the summer before sixth grade, Lucas is dribbling his ball along the cul-de-sac when Maya steps out of her house for a breather. Her parents are at it again, and she thinks that if she stays in there any longer, her father might throw another punch. He missed the first time, at least.
When they find each other, there's an unspoken communication. It takes a look of the eyes and he's gathered the ball in his arms and they start for a walk around the curb. Her arms are crossed and she's so, so close to spilling her eyes out. She's Maya Hart and she hateshateshates this feeling. He's not the best at comforting people, but he knows that when his mom cries over missing his dad, he tries his best to hold her like crazy when she's shaking in sobs. So when Maya's shoulders start to fidget pattern-like as she sniffs, and he can't see her face due to the dim atmosphere and her thick hair, he knows it's not because of the cold. He does what's instinctive.
He stops in their tracks and makes his way in front of her, wrapping his short arms around her petite frame and she seems all too broken to move away or embrace back. She cries into his favorite blue sweater, but he doesn't mind. Not at all.
When they walk back and they both find themselves staring at the white shutters of her home, he's about to ask her whether or not she'd want to stay over his house for the night. Her mother is screeching things about adultery and unfaithfulness and words he doesn't yet know the meaning of and isn't sure he'll ever want to know the meaning of. Maya interrupts by inviting herself over.
"Lucas Friar, I told you that you should be inside this house before eight every d—!" his mom starts, scrambling off the couch in his living room as Lucas enters his front door. When she sees the Hart girl following behind him, eyes red and sullen faced, her expression falls completely, understanding the situation instantly with the information he had shared before.
"Hi Mrs. Friar," Maya murmurs politely.
She greets her in return, offers her numerous foods, snacks, and beverages. She tells her that she's free to sleep on the top bunk of Lucas's bed if she wants or on the pull-out bed of the living room couch while she leaves a text about Maya's whereabouts to her mother, who probably won't be looking at her phone—nonetheless, even think about her daughter—for awhile. She offers endless sweetness and options and Lucas is almost embarrassed at how obvious the special treatment toward this particular guest is. He tells her that he can take care of it and before his mom goes off to bed, she whispers, "Make sure she sleeps happy."
He can tell she prefers staying in the living room, since it's more spacious and there's a television that can blare until she dozes off. There's uneasiness in her eyes when he begins to walk toward the staircase to go to his bedroom. She doesn't want to be alone and he knows that she's too hard-headed to ever say something she deems dreadfully weak. Instead, she asks him if he wants to play, despite it being eleven P.M. and past both their bedtimes. The look in her eyes is enough for him to turn on his heel.
The next few hours consist of hovering blankets in fort-building, ice cream eating from the container, laughing at Jenga blocks toppling over, playing hot lava and hopping along various living room furniture and coffee tables, making fun of pictures of toddler Lucas on a horse (wow, Cowboy!—she had joked) and hiding and seeking, all with cartoon reruns being played in the background. It's fun and innocent and Maya forgets about her parents all the while. She's about to thank him for letting her make a home of his own home, but sleep takes her a minute too soon and her mind drifts as her eyes close.
When he sees her smiling as she snores lightly, he feels much warmer than he'd ever felt before. He, too, falls into a slumber soon after that.
In the morning, Mrs. Friar will find the two sleeping in a fort of sheets and blankets, and she'll happily make gluten-free chocolate chip pancakes to surprise them for breakfast.
/
"Where's your dad?" Maya asks one day. It's a risky question and she knows she's standing on thin ice with it out in the open thanks to her curiosity finally getting the best of her. It's been years since she's known him and it's been a little bit over a year since their first sleepover. He's her best friend and she wishes she knew more about him.
It's lunch time at school and he and Maya trade their meals. He prefers her tuna and she's fond of his peanut butter banana sandwich. This becomes a weekly thing.
"He died at our ranch in Texas," Lucas answers without hesitation. He trusts this girl a hundred percent. Funny how much things have evolved. She quickly apologizes after that, having initiated such a cautious conversation. She should have just kept quiet. "Don't feel sorry. I'm alright. He wasn't the best father, to be honest."
The blonde doesn't push any further, instead quietly chewing her lunch and he, the same.
/
Their sleepovers become habitual, consistent things. They're usually weekly, and continue on throughout their high school years. It's not as if their moms minded—if Maya's ever even came home, at least. Mrs. Friar, on the other hand, absolutely adored the girl. From her angelic yet devilish persona as a child and through the years of her aging into this witty, cunning little gem that was a collaboration of street-smart, laziness, and brutal honesty, she loved her.
Sometimes they have their lazy days, times where they're on her couch or his bunk bed and they just aimlessly nap and talk and wander for food in nothing but flannel pajamas and total tiredness. He'd do his homework and maybe study for an hour or two while she'd use his Netflix and surf through episodes of Breaking Bad. Those are days he'll mention a minor comment about how she should be watching the Walking Dead, instead and she'll eye him judgingly which (usually) leads up to the duo arguing about both series and which one happened to be better.
Other days, when they aren't lounging around looking homeless or out watching a movie, they'll sneak out and shoulder-tap for a couple drinks. Usually they do this when he stays the night at the Hart household, for since her dad's been gone and her mom becomes a workaholic, they really have nothing better to do. They get creative, most of the time. They'll get piss drunk and play wii or they'll take a shot after every time the laugh track comes on during an hour of Disney shows. And during the moments when she asks him what he wants to do while they're drowning in intoxication and he'll say "Whatever you want, Princess", she'll shove him playfully before retorting something along the lines of "Ranger Rick". They also play Twister once, and that ends messily.
(he remembers tangled limbs and falling asleep on her leg while still on the colorful matt and wanting to throw up in the morning and soreness in his thighs for bending ways he hadn't known he could bend)
(she doesn't remember anything at all from that time, unfortunately)
There's also a time where they try baking sugar-free cookies under the influence (under his roof, of course since the cookies were fucking sugar-free) and they tried their best to hide from his mom that they were (much too) far from sober. They almost burn the house down.
(his mom still gives him shit for that)
He had never thought these sleepovers were a problem. It's not as if he'd been slacking in school since their friendship or he'd been lagging in chores or making (completely) bad decisions.
(whatever; a little alcohol now and then isn't going to hurt anybody—as long as they're responsible, which they were)
He had never thought to ever question his friendship with Maya.
This isn't until the girl he starts dating asks him what his plans are on Wednesday. He's not going to lie to her, and he doesn't even feel the need to hesitate when he answers in pure nonchalance.
"I'm probably going to be sleeping over Maya's," is his response. He doesn't see anything wrong with it. Honest.
Then she's squinting her eyes at him with a raised brow as if she'd been thinking what the hell? and he shrugs in return, wondering what's so wrong and why she'd gotten so bitter.
"And what will your mother think you'll be doing?" her voice reeks of indignation, which only confuses him even more.
"Sleeping over Maya's…" he answers. "…like I have been…since I was eleven."
He doesn't really understand why he's dumped after that, and for some odd reason, he's slightly scared of the answer his mom will have for him if he asked. So he doesn't.
/
Theirs is a friendship that includes sneaking out during the rare times he's grounded (usually he'd broken something by accident; something like his mother's fine China or a frame) and getting into shenanigans since being prepubescent teenagers. It involves them taking a bus to the closest cinema they had to sneak into movies they didn't want to pay for and hopping until they ended up falling asleep mid-film and the clean-up crew having to ask them about their parents. It includes climbing their neighbor's fence and canon-balling into said neighbor's pool past midnight and smoking pot on his balcony after having slipped up on a trigonometry exam. It's getting detention with their French teacher after having been tardy together over three times because Maya tends to oversleep on Tuesdays when they have a late start and Lucas never fails to wait for her to get ready, regardless of attendance. It involves bursts of laughter during a history exam because they'd both read a question that reminded them of an inside joke from a couple days ago. It's silly banters and stupid arguments and making up by buying an assortment of pastries for the other. (She prefers the powdered mini doughnuts, while he, chocolate croissants.)
Theirs is a friendship that grows as they grow, except he doesn't know when he begins getting nervous around the sight of her. He doesn't remember when her body had begun filling out or when this fluttering sensation starts to occur. He doesn't remember when her voice had matured much more from that innocent Satan's child doll-like melody that practically sang after every time she'd gotten him in trouble. He can't pinpoint exactly when things had begun to change.
/
It's the little things that get to him that feel some sort of implosion that could be described as a chemical reaction in his stomach that is felt all the way beneath his ribcage. He calls them premature ventricular contractions.
(he's been dreaming to be a doctor)
They're things like helping her zip up her dress, the knuckle of his forefinger draggling along the arch of her back as he pulls upward, or watching her as she smears red along her lips in a smooth, sharp line or seeing her at his doorstep with fast food he'd been craving for days but wouldn't be allowed to bring into his own abode without his parent yelling at him. However, since it's Maya, his mom can't say a thing.
They're little things that make him feel happier than he usually is, small, yet captivating moments of significant impact that lead to almosts and make him think of what ifs.
/
It's a week before graduation when it happens.
They're on her roof and there's an untouched bottle of rum in the middle of them. It's two in the morning and they know this is the last weekend of being able to get drunk together to end their high school years with a bang. For a reason left unspoken, they both aren't in the mood. Instead they barely talk—they're thinking of the futures and of life and of the past and everything they've shared in between it all. They wonder where they'll go when they separate, they wonder of life and of growing up and remember silly memories involving soccer balls, fort-building, and a pointless, mental chess match of pranking and joking and snickering behind each other's backs.
She sighs, blinks twice. She turns the crook of her neck to face him, "You think we'll be okay?"
He hesitates, ponders, before nodding. "We have been all this time, so we will be in the years to come."
(and maybe it's hope, maybe it's desperation, maybe it's lust, maybe it's the two of them realizing that they were the best they would ever have)
She closes the space between them until he can breathe in her lilac scent and she proceeds to kiss him. It's slow at first; sweet and unexpected and overwhelming and dear god was she beautiful, he thinks over and over and over. They maneuver, shift multiple times until she's exactly where she wants him with her lips on his neck and her hair tickling his skin and this is the very moment he'd dreamt of.
(maybe it's love)
It's been over a decade since they'd first met and she still, effortlessly, gets Lucas Friar on his knees—and fuck, the devilish glint in Maya Hart's angel eyes are the most exhilarating thing he'd ever seen.
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fin.
_a/n: it's almost 4am and i need to sleep and i didn't proof read this so shoot me if there are errors. ill fix it in the morning maybe.
i am honestly semi-satisfied with this fic, meh. it is one of the longest oneshots ive written tho