childhood best friends au for phoenix/maya
This is so crappy I’m sorry.
Pairing: Phoenix/MayaPrompt: childhood best friends auWord Count: 2,042
“Phoenix! Get down here!”
Phoenix pauses the video game and turns to Larry, who’s seated on the floor beside him, the second player controller gripped in his hands. He rolls his eyes and makes a face at Larry, who only smiles with sympathy.
“Better go see what she wants, Nick. I’ll wait here.”
“Yeah, probably just wants me to take out the trash or something,” Phoenix says, setting his controller down and getting up. He heads out of his bedroom and down the stairs towards the front door to see what his mother wants, before she has the chance to call for him again.
“Yeah, mom?”
His mother turns from the open door where another woman is standing on the stoop. “Come here, Phoenix. I want you to meet the new neighbours.”
He comes forward and peers around his mother. Along with the older woman are two girls, one older than him and one about the same age. The older girl looks bored, but the younger is staring into his house with an excited expression.
“This is Miss Fey, and this is Mia and Maya,” she says, gesturing first to Mia and then to Maya, “our new neighbours.”
Miss Fey smiles and waves at him. “Nice to meet you, Phoenix.”
He waves back at her. “Nice to meet you too.”
Mia rolls her eyes and takes her cell phone out of her pocket. “Can we go now, mom?”
“Oh, alright. It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Wright. I hope we can be good neighbours.”
His mother laughs. “Oh compared to the people who used to live there, I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
The younger girl continues staring at Phoenix with a smile until he slinks back upstairs before his mom can stop him, and sits back down beside Larry, picking up his controller again.
“What did she want?” Larry asks as Phoenix unpauses the game.
“New neighbours. She just wanted to introduce me. They have two daughters, one of them looks about our age.”
Larry grunts. “Bros before hoes, dude.”
“What? What does that even mean?”
Larry shrugs. “I don’t know. Just something I heard my dad say once. It means, your guy friends have to come before your girl friends, okay?”
Phoenix focuses back on the game. “Whatever you say.”
*
A few days later, his mom calls him down from his room again. When he gets downstairs and sees that the younger girl is at the front door, he’s grateful that Larry isn’t over. His mom invites her in and tells him he should get to know her, that she’s new to the neighbourhood and wants to make friends.
Larry’s not around, so Phoenix smiles pleasantly and invites her up to his room to play. It turns out that Maya—despite all the awful things Larry had said about girls—is into a lot of the same things as him. She loves Signal Samurai just as much, if not more than he does. She tells him she doesn’t have any video games at her house but she’d love to try his, and she’s a natural at them. Instead of being jealous of her skill, he asks her to help him beat one of the levels he and Larry have been stuck on for days. By the time his mom calls them downstairs for dinner, they’ve beaten the level and a few after it too.
When they say goodbye at dusk and his mom watches her walk back to her house, Phoenix does feel like he’s made a new friend, and he’s excited to see her again.
*
The next time Maya is over, Larry invites himself over too, and Phoenix’s mom lets him in without even letting him know. When Larry bursts into his room and sees Maya sitting on the floor in Larry’s usual spot, the video game controller in her hand, he frowns.
“Hey Nick.”
“Oh, hey Larry,” Phoenix says awkwardly. “This is Maya, the girl from next door. I’ve been hanging out with her a bit.”
Larry nods and sits down on the bed. Phoenix can tell he’s sulking, and maybe Maya can too, because she immediately gives up her spot on the floor and hands the controller over to him. “Here you go, Larry. I know you usually play with Nick.”
Larry shoots her a glare. “Who said you could call him ‘Nick’? Only I call him ‘Nick’.”
Maya looks surprised. “Um… he did. He said his friends call him that, so…”
“Larry,” Phoenix says, hoping to distract him, “come help me beat this level. We’re having a hard time.”
Thankfully, it does distract him, and he sits down on the floor where Maya was to take her spot. She sits cross-legged on the bed behind them and watches them play until eventually, she excuses herself to go home.
Phoenix feels bad, but he doesn’t want to say anything to Larry. Larry was his friend first, after all. But as soon as Maya is gone, Larry turns to him to scoff about how girls suck at video games and it’s no wonder they couldn’t beat the level. Phoenix doesn’t bother pointing out the fact that Maya helped him beat the level Larry couldn’t.
*
When the first day of fourth grade starts, Phoenix is a little disappointed to find out that Maya and her sister are both homeschooled. He’d been looking forward to having classes together. The only good thing about it is that Larry won’t be able to say anything about him and Maya to their class. They also meet a new boy, Miles, who’s quiet and serious. He’s grateful the day Miles and Larry stand up to the teacher and the rest of the class when he’s accused of stealing someone’s lunch money, and from then on the three of them are inseparable at school.
He still looks forward to hanging out with Maya after school. Miles gets along with her better than Larry does, which Phoenix is happy about. Larry starts being nicer to her the day he takes his teasing of her too far, and Phoenix snaps at him to shut up. Miles nods and agrees that it’s not very gentlemanly to be so rude to a girl.
From then on Larry makes a conscious effort to be nicer to her. He’s always been one to go with the group, not wanting to be left out. Phoenix can tell Maya is grateful too. Soon enough she and Larry get along well enough, and the four of them consider each other best friends, until the day Miles disappears from their lives. None of them know for sure what happened, but Phoenix’s mother tells them all gently that he had to move away, and wouldn’t be back to visit them. It’s a sad day for all of them.
*
As the years go by, Larry gets in with another crowd. They’re class clowns that Phoenix can’t stand, and he starts to hang out with Larry less outside of school. Luckily, he still has Maya. He can’t help sometimes feeling awkward around her. As a teenaged boy he can’t help noticing how pretty she’s gotten, or fantasizing about what it would be like to kiss her someday. It’s just an innocent fantasy, they’re only friends and he could never jeopardize their friendship on the off chance she might like him back. He wouldn’t risk their friendship for anything.
He still asks her to prom though. He has no one to go with, she’s homeschooled so she wouldn’t normally go, but she jumps on the opportunity to be able to get a nice dress and have a night out for once.
When Maya comes over that night, his mom goes crazy taking pictures of them, causing all sorts of embarrassment for them both. But the dance is nice, and when they come home that night they get some popcorn and go down into the basement—since Phoenix’s mother won’t allow them in his room alone anymore, though she really has no reason to worry since Maya would never want him that way—and watch a movie. For whatever reason, Maya chooses a horror flick, and spends most of the movie with her face buried in his shoulder to hide from the jump scares.
He walks her home that night, even if it is just a house away. She thanks him for inviting her and even though she pauses, even though it’s a perfect moment to kiss her, he doesn’t. He just goes home and goes to bed.
A few weeks later when they’re hanging out in his basement again, playing a new game on a new console he got for Christmas, Maya gets a text and quickly excuses herself. When he questions her, she tells him shyly that she has a boyfriend now, so she’s going to hang out with him.
He lets her go, feeling a little disappointed but not outright heartbroken. Sure he has a tiny crush on her, sure she’s pretty much his only friend now that Larry has other people to spend time with, but he wants her to be happy.
*
Maya and her boyfriend stay together a surprisingly long time. Phoenix assumes that like most couples at his high school, they’ll be together a month or so and then break up. But she seems to really like this guy, whoever he is. It’s evident in the way she talks about him when she’s visiting Phoenix. She still makes a point of hanging out with him, which he’s happy about, even if he has to hear all about the great things her boyfriend does. He wants to take this other boy’s place so badly it practically aches.
By the end of his senior year of high school Phoenix is already accepted into university. It’s a general studies course focusing a lot on art, because he still has no idea what he wants to do with his life, but he’s moderately talented when it comes to drama and art class. He’s studying for one of his final high school exams when Maya bursts into his room. His mother is at work and she’s let herself in.
When he looks at her he knows right away that something is wrong, and stands up to greet her. Her eyes fill with tears and she runs to him, grabbing him and burying her face into his chest.
“Maya, what happened?”
She sniffles, too embarrassed to look up at him. “He broke up with me.”
He strokes her hair, feeling terrible that this news actually makes him feel a little happy. “Oh no. Why?”
“He’s going to a school out of state after the summer.”
Phoenix leads her to his bed and sits with her at the edge. “But we haven’t even graduated high school yet.”
She sniffles and shrugs. “I guess he didn’t want to put it off. But we’ve been having problems lately anyway. I wouldn’t even be so upset if he didn’t do it over text of all things. I don’t even deserve to be broken up with face to face apparently.”
He wraps an arm around her shoulders. “He’s a jerk, Maya. You’ll be better off without him.”
She smiles. “I hope so. At least I still have you, right?”
He nods. “Yeah. You can come visit me at Ivy U whenever you want, since it’s local.”
“I’ll miss you when I can’t visit though.” She sighs. “I wish I could go too, but we can’t afford it. I’m not smart enough to get scholarships like you.”
“Don’t say that. You’re plenty smart. You’ll end up doing something awesome anyway. You don’t need to go to college.”
She sighs. “Maybe. Anyway… thanks Nick.” She leans up to kiss him on the cheek quickly, then moves away. He can see the blush appearing on her cheeks, but he’s sure it’s nothing compared to how red his face must be.
He clears his throat and gets off the bed to look underneath of it. He comes out with the controller to his old game system, the one they played when they were only eight years old. “Want to play some games? Like old times, to take your mind off it?”
Maya grins and nods. “Yeah. I’d love that.”
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