Author: Minervacat
Fandom: Friday Night Lights
Pairing: Tyra/Lyla
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: Through 1x22, "State".
Summary: Garrity's eyes are huge as she stares at Tyra. "I just -- I have to get out of Dillon." 4300 words.

After State, they call an uneasy truce between them. Uneasy because Tyra knows that Garrity is still looking for number one and Garrity's number one sure as shit ain't Tyra, but a truce all the same because Tyra also knows that Garrity's just figured out what Tyra's known for years: this town fucks you up but good. Ain't nobody gonna watch your back if you don't watch your own.

So they're not best friends and Garrity (and Tyra thanks God for this) doesn't call her just to make fucking small talk, but she nods at Tyra when they pass in the halls. Tyra knows that Street's finally stopped comin' round Garrity's place, and that's a bigger ending than Garrity dumping her dumb uniform in a maid's cart in Dallas. The weather gets as cold as it ever does in Texas in January, and Garrity looks a little lost and lonely without Street to wrap her up in his varsity jacket like he's done the last three years, but that's not Tyra's problem. Truce don't mean friends.

Riggins actually goes and gets himself a damn job, weekends and evenings out at the gas station on the edge of town, and for a little while, Tyra thinks that maybe he's going to start coming around again, but he doesn't. She's more okay with that than she thought she'd be.

Like Garrity quittin' cheerleading and getting well and clear of Street meant that Tyra could be damn well finished with the football team, too. Like they're two sides of the same coin or something dumb like that.

In January Tyra went to the post office and mailed college applications, which was just some stupid pipe dream because she wasn't smart enough or pretty enough to get out of Dillon and she knew it. But a girl had to have a little hope, so she mailed them all: Tech and UTEP, SMU and Corpus Christi, and the application for the University of Washington, because damned if she wasn't going to try to get out. She'd looked at pictures of the campus on Julie's computer, tried to think of the furthest place she could imagine from Dillon, and Seattle looked like a whole 'nother world, all green and full of water. She didn't tell anybody she filled out that application, just did it and wrapped herself up in her coat and her scarf and went down to the post office by herself.

Garrity had some kind of scholarship to go wave her pom-poms at UT, so Tyra didn't expect to see her standing in line, clutching her envelopes with college addresses scrawled on the front, except there she was, standing in front of Tyra, looking at everybody who came in but not seein' nobody's face.

"Garrity, burnt orange not good enough for you?" Tyra says, and the part of her that still hates Lyla Garrity for having everything Tyra doesn't -- having everything Tyra didn't, once, because Garrity doesn't have any of that stuff anymore, either -- is pleased when Garrity jumps like a startled horse.

Garrity shrugs delicately, one shoulder up and down, and swallows hard enough that Tyra can see the motion under Garrity's scarf. She doesn't know why she's looking at Garrity's throat, but Tyra knows if she looked up, Garrity wouldn't be looking at Tyra's face, either, so Tyra doesn't bother returning a non-existent favor. "I'm done with cheerleading," she says, and shuffles the envelopes in her hands.

Tyra snags the envelopes out of Garrity's hands, and Garrity makes a tiny noise at the back of her throat but doesn't stop Tyra. She flips through the envelopes -- the University of Virginia, UCLA, Oklahoma -- and when she looks up, Garrity's face is wide open and she's staring right at Tyra, like Tyra's going to bite her.

"Your daddy know you're applying to Oklahoma?" Tyra says, low as she can because they're in the post office and anybody hears that Garrity is applying to OU, it'll be all over town by lunchtime. When she offers Garrity the envelopes, Garrity grabs them and clutches them to her chest as though they're actually tickets out of Dillon and not just some coach's wife's pipe dream.

"Don't tell anybody," Garrity says, and there's a pleading note in her voice that Tyra doesn't recognize.

"Like anybody cares where you go to school," Tyra says. That's a lie. Plenty of people in Dillon are just waiting for Lyla Garrity to give them something to talk about; gossip is the second most important thing in Dillon after football.

Garrity's eyes are huge as she stares at Tyra. "I just -- I have to get out of Dillon."

Tyra thinks, Join the club, sister, but she just nods. She wants to get out of Dillon but she's never had a plan beyond marryin' somebody and getting them to take her away. Garrity had a plan, Tyra heard about it all the fucking time for Riggins. Tyra didn't have a plan and she doesn't have a damn lot to lose. Garrity had a plan and she had a hell of a lot to lose, and she lost it.

If Garrity hadn't been such a bitch on wheels the last 11 years of Tyra's life, from the minute she looked down her nose and sniffed at Tyra's hand-me-down clothes in first grade, Tyra might actually have felt sorry for her, standing in the post office by herself, scared about the rest of her life.

Except that Tyra was standing by herself in the post office, too, and nobody would ever say it out loud, but Tyra knew that she and Garrity had more in common these days than they didn't.

She takes a step forward and bumped Garrity's shoulder with her own. Garrity flinches again, looking tiny in her coat, and then her whole body relaxes and she leans back against Tyra, just a little, and when Tyra looks down, Garrity has her eyes closed and her applications still clutched against her chest.

Garrity didn't know how to stand up without somebody to lean on, but that wasn't news. News was that she was willing to lean on Tyra, and Tyra was willing to let her lean. News to Garrity, probably, and news to everybody in the post office who were waitin' for a cat fight to break out, and news to Tyra, who didn't know when she'd stopped hating Garrity -- or started looking out for her.

In February, Tyra goes back to working at Applebee's because she doesn't have anything better to do while she waits for colleges to say no, and this time around they let her work behind the bar, fixing stupid drinks with stupid umbrellas in them. She gets better tips there, and none of the football players ever sit up to the bar, so she doesn't have to look at Riggins or Street or Smash when they slouch in with girls who aren't Tyra -- girls who aren't Garrity, either.

Garrity comes in on Valentine's Day, after Tyra has been back at work for a couple of weeks, half an hour before closing, and she marches right up to the bar and sat down. She fiddles with a pack of cigarettes that Jimmy Beltree had left when Tyra'd cut him off and kicked him out an hour earlier and doesn't say anything, doesn't try to order a drink that she knows Tyra would serve her, just flips the pack of cigarettes open and shut and stares at Tyra.

Tyra goes through all her closing down stuff, counts the money in her till out, closes down the register. Then she pulls herself a beer and pulls another for Garrity and goes down to where Garrity is still sitting, just watching her.

"You need something, Garrity, or are you just here for your health?" Tyra reaches for the pack of cigarettes -- fucking Basics, Jimmy was a goddamned cheapskate -- but Garrity clutches at it, the same way she'd clutched at the damn college applications in the post office. Then Garrity opens the pack and plucks out a smoke with that stupid little princess delicate way she has, sticks it between her lips and steals Tyra's lighter right out of Tyra's hand.

Garrity lights the cigarette and shrugs. Same gesture as the post office -- same gesture Garrity's made all her life, because Garrity's never had to make decisions, never had to do anything other than let somebody else run her life for her. She coughs, blows out an uneven line of smoke, and gulps down a quarter of the beer sitting at her elbow. Tyra tucks her own cigarette in the corner of her mouth and lights it, keeping it steady between her lips when she turns out the lights in the dining room and locks the door. Amy, the night manager, took off an hour early to go out with her boyfriend from UTEP and left Tyra the keys. Tyra feels important, like somebody in the damn town trusts her, and she makes sure the place is empty before flipping the lock.

Garrity's beer is half gone by the time Tyra gets back, and Tyra slides an ashtray under Garrity's cigarette, which is threatening to spill ash across the bar that Tyra's already wiped down.

"This is the first Valentine's Day Jason hasn't gotten me anything," Garrity says.

"What, ever?" Tyra says.

"Even when we were kids, he always gave me a valentine," Garrity says, and she chugs down the rest of her beer like a pro. Tyra sips, smokes, watches. The truce is getting easier, but they're still not friends. Garrity looks down at the empty glass and her hand wrapped around it, like she doesn't recognize her own fingers.

"You want another?" Tyra says.

Garrity tilts her head, like she's thinking, and then says, slowly, "Yeah, okay."

"You gonna cry over Street not being around?" Tyra says. She likes working behind the bar, like the routine of pulling pints and flirting with the drunks. She isn't sure how she feels about being buddy-buddy with Garrity after closing.

"No," Garrity says. "I just needed somebody to talk to."

"You don't have anybody better to talk to?" Tyra says. Garrity sips this beer, one hand on the glass when she crushes out her cigarette and doesn't light another.

Garrity shrugs again. Tyra could hate the way Garrity does that, but she can't get up the energy to hate Garrity anymore. Garrity sticks her hand in her jacket pocket, pulls out a crumpled envelope with a crumpled letter sticking out of one corner, and drops it on the bar. Tyra flips it over and sees UCLA in one corner, WELCOME in big bold yellow letters in another corner. "Well, hot damn, Garrity, you got yourself into college," Tyra says, and knocks her glass against Garrity's.

Garrity blushes, ducks her head, and Tyra sees in a split second what all the boys have been seeing for all those years. She didn't see it before -- wouldn't let herself see that Lyla Garrity had anything over on Tyra Collette except a better family -- but there's something in Garrity's vulnerability that isn't faked. It's not an act, it's just how Garrity is. And for a split second at the bar in a dark Applebee's in Dillon, Texas, it's almost charming.

But that's not Tyra's life, liking Lyla Garrity or being friends with Lyla Garrity, and Tyra's got to get herself out, she can't be bothered to haul Garrity out with her. She looks at the envelope from UCLA and thinks about how she hasn't heard from any schools yet, and says, "You going?"

"I don't know," Garrity says, quick like a jackrabbit, and then her voice gets stronger, more sure. She tilts her chin up and looks Tyra in the eye. She says, "I think so. Yeah, I am. I am." Garrity claps a hand over her mouth and looks shocked, and Tyra just grins at her, because, hey, Garrity just had a thought of her own in that pretty little head. Garrity says, "I'm going to UCLA. Holy shit."

Tyra thumps the bottle of Jack onto the bar and pours both of them shots. Garrity looks a little shocked, and then a sly little smile crosses her face and she picks up the shot. "Here's to you, Garrity," Tyra says, and slings her shot back.

Garrity chokes a little, Jack dripping down her chin, and says, "You're going to get out of here, too."

Tyra rolls her eyes, because Garrity's still a nosy bitch, and says, "Glad somebody's got faith in me."

Garrity's face goes quiet in the dark, still and serious the way it looked after Street left the hospital but before they split up, and she says, "You should have a little more faith in yourself."

"That's good for you, Garrity," Tyra says, "but I ain't Lyla Garrity and I ain't got a damn letter yet, so pardon my ass for thinkin' I'm stuck behind the bar at Applebee's for the rest of my life."

Garrity doesn't say anything else, just finishes her beer with her mouth set stubbornly, and when she finishes it, she slips off the chair and slides out the front door without a word. Tyra locks the door behind herself, all the neon shut off for the night, and doesn't know what just happened.

In March, all of Tyra's letters come in the mail. Yes from UTEP and Corpus Christi, no from Tech and SMU, and most surprising of all, yes from the University of Washington and an offer of full tuition. Tyra hides them in her backpack, doesn't tell her Mama, and scrounges enough out of her tips -- thank God for St. Patrick's Day, she thinks -- to send her deposit in.

She folds up the letter from the place where she's goin' -- gettin' out of Dillon, and she did it all by herself -- and tucks it into the back pocket of her jeans, and it stays there until the first week of April, when Garrity corners Tyra at school and says, "So?"

"So what, Garrity?" Tyra says, and she tries to shove past Garrity but Garrity's got her skinny little hand wrapped around Tyra's wrist, polished nails pale pink against Tyra's skin, and Garrity's a lot stronger than she looks.

"So have you heard?" Garrity says. Garrity hasn't told anybody that she's going to UCLA, except to put a sticker in the back window of that junker she's still driving, even though it breaks down all over town and Garrity's daddy has a shit fit every time he sees it. Tyra's got to give Lyla credit for that, because there ain't nothin' funnier than Buddy Garrity losin' his head right in the middle of downtown because Lyla's gone rattlin' and smokin' past him in that car. So Garrity won't actually say she's going to UCLA instead of UT, but everybody knows, and that makes Buddy Garrity crazy, too.

"I heard a lot of shit about you, Garrity," Tyra says, and Garrity's face goes suddenly shocked and white. "What should I have heard this time?" Tyra wrenches away from Garrity's grasp and leaves her standing in the hallway. Tyra hasn't actually heard anything about Garrity she didn't hear from Garrity's own mouth, but this college thing, this is her thing, and she doesn't want to share it with anybody just yet.

It starts raining, middle of the afternoon, and Tyra's driving home from school when she sees Garrity slinking along with her hair plastered to her face and her head down. Tyra pulls over, rolls down the window, shouts, "Garrity, get your butt in this car."

Garrity shakes her head, splatters water everywhere, and keeps walking. Tyra rolls along and says, "Don't be a stubborn bitch, Garrity, get in the fucking truck."

Garrity stops, smack in the middle of a puddle, and she glares daggers at Tyra, but she slopes over to the truck and climbs in the front seat. "Car break down again?" Tyra says.

"Yeah," Garrity says. Sounds like she's grinding her teeth. Tyra pulls away from the curb, turns around and heads for Garrity's place.

"We ain't friends, Garrity," Tyra says.

"We haven't ever been friends," Garrity says.

"You got that right," Tyra says. "You were a stuck up bitch when you were six years old, and you're just the same now."

Garrity's face twists up, like she's trying not to cry, and she says, sort of stutters, "I just -- I thought -- nobody deserves to get out of Dillon more than you, Tyra."

"Well, we can agree on that," Tyra says, "but it ain't your business if I do or don't, Garrity, you hear?"

She stops in front of Garrity's house and twists around, pulling the letter out of her pocket. "Here," she says, handing it to Garrity. "Guess I can share it with you."

Garrity scans the letter and her face breaks wide open with a smile, and even wet like a drowned rat Garrity's beautiful. "You tell anyone yet?" she says.

"Nope," Tyra says. "And I ain't planning to. Just going to go, no questions ask, see you later, thanks for playing."

"Your mom will worry," Garrity says, and her fingers are still wrapped tightly in the paper of the Tyra's letter.

"Nobody worries about me, Garrity," Tyra says, and it's true. Tyra's mama worries about her own ass, and her sister worries about hers, and Tyra's always been left to look out for herself. Even Riggins never looked out for Tyra -- looked for her, sure, when he needed something, wanted somebody else to forget himself in, but never looked out for her. Garrity's the only person who's given half a damn about Tyra.

"You should ... " Garrity says, and trails off. She smiles, weak but trying. "We'll both be on the west coast."

"We'll both be outta Dillon, that's what we'll both be," Tyra says. "That's what you gotta remember."

"You ever been to the ocean?" Garrity says, and the rain keeps pouring down the windshield.

"Nope," Tyra says.

"Me neither," Garrity says. "That's the first thing I'm gonna do when I get to California, go to see the ocean."

Tyra just reaches out and takes her letter back from Garrity, and Garrity smiles at her, big and broad, but she lets the letter go. "Thanks for telling me," Garrity says, like Tyra did her some kind of favor.

"Ain't nothing," Tyra says.

Garrity gets out of the truck and streaks up the sidewalk to the front door. Tyra's heard it rains a lot in Seattle. She won't mind. Anything that's different from the dust is fine by her.

Nobody asks Tyra to prom and that's okay by her. Half the school asks Garrity and Garrity says no to all of them, which is just damn weird.

Tyra hears all the gossip -- Garrity's a dyke, Garrity's fucking some college guy, Garrity's always been too damn stuck up for this town -- and she snickers at none of it. And then Garrity corners Tyra by her locker after school three days before the prom and says, "We should go to the prom."

"I do anything to make you think there's some kind of 'we' here?" Tyra says, because Riggins didn't ask her and Tyra's getting the hell out of this town and prom is not on her agenda, no way, no how. Never had been, not even when things with her and Tim were good.

"I just thought," Garrity says, and trails off. Her eyes have gone all shaded again, only this time it's not with the manic energy she had after Street got hurt. It's something else and Tyra recognizes it, but she can't put her finger on what it is.

"I ain't got a dress, Garrity," Tyra says. "And I ain't got a ticket, and I ain't got a date."

"I have tickets," Garrity says. "It's prom -- we should go."

Which is how Tyra ended up driving Lyla Garrity to Austin to go shopping for a prom dress Tyra didn't even want to wear. Garrity's car was busted down again -- it's in the shop, okay? and nothing else said on the subject -- so they took the truck, and Garrity fidgets with the radio and fidgets with her backpack and just damn fidgets, until Tyra reaches out and clamps a hand on Garrity's thigh and says, "Stop fucking twitching, goddamnit."

Garrity goes real still under Tyra's hands, in a way that Tyra doesn't totally understand, but she's quiet and motionless the rest of the drive. Tyra buys something slinky and black and cut down way too low for a goddamned prom, and Garrity tries on half a dozen dresses in pastel mint colors before she curls her hands around a hanger and says, "I bought a dress last year, for when Jason and I ... "

"Yeah, got it," Tyra says. That's half her saved tips going to this dress, but she hands the cash over and figures out that she doesn't really care.

If she's going to say fuck you to Dillon and get the hell out of there, she's going to do it in style.

Tyra plans to drive herself to the prom, but then Garrity and her shitty little car rumble up in front of Tyra's house while she's still trying to pile her hair on top of her head, and she ends up sitting in front of a mirror with Garrity's hands in her hair. Garrity has a mouth full of bobby pins and her hands are warm against the back of Tyra's neck, and it's kind of dumb, but it's so fucking nice to have someone looking after her for a chance that Tyra just sort of sags back against Garrity, feels the quick jumps of Garrity's stomach as she breathes and twists and turns to get better angles at Tyra's hair.

"There," Garrity says, mumbling through bobby pins. She spits them out and scatters them across the top of Tyra's vanity. "There."

Tyra looks up, looks in the mirror, and it's not her hair she notices -- it's Garrity behind her, one hand curled around Tyra's shoulder, the dark and light of them, the princess and the whore of Dillon, Texas. In a split second, before Garrity pulls her hand away like she's been burned, Tyra meets Garrity's eyes in the mirror, and all the anger Tyra's been carrying around for years slips away.

She's too tired to be so angry anymore. She's too young to be so tired. And she and Garrity, they're both gettin' out, and that's got to be enough.

Garrity's car breaks down halfway between Tyra's place and the high school, and they pry off their heels and walk the rest of the way, the town quiet and hot in the May evening. Tyra kisses Tim in the girls' bathroom on the science hall and tells him that she's leaving, but she doesn't tell him where she's going. She almost doesn't miss him most days. Garrity gets drunk out of somebody's flask, picks a fight with Smash, and Tyra has to wrap an arm around Garrity's waist and drag her out of there before the whole thing goes to hell.

Tyra goes into the gas station down the street from the high school and gets Garrity a cup of coffee and herself a Snickers bar. Garrity's sitting on the curb when she gets out, bare feet on the asphalt and pale pink dress hiked up around her knees. Her legs are pale in the moonlight, and she smiles shakily, gracefully, when Tyra hands her the coffee.

"Nobody at home would care if I came home drunk," Garrity says, but she drinks the coffee anyway.

"That ain't for your mama, it's for you," Tyra says. She sinks down beside Garrity and wonders how she ended up here. She always thought her life would end in Dillon and it's not -- she always thought she'd never be sittin' next to Lyla Garrity, eating chocolate after the senior prom.

"Thanks," Garrity says.

"Not a problem, Garrity," Tyra says.

"No, I mean, for everything," Garrity says, and Tyra is going to tell her that Tyra didn't do shit for Garrity she wouldn't have done for herself, but Garrity leans over, coffee held carefully in both hands, and kisses Tyra, hard, right on the mouth.

Garrity tastes bitter, like gas station coffee and cheap whiskey and all the things that Tyra thought she couldn't have, and Tyra has peanuts and caramel stuck in her teeth. But Garrity's mouth is soft and open, and Tyra ain't been kissed by somebody who actually seems to like her in months, because Tim don't count and she kissed him anyway. Tyra has a Snickers bar in one hand and the curve of Garrity's jaw in another, and they sit outside the gas station and kiss until the coffee goes cold in Garrity's hands and the sky starts to shade from indigo blue to something paler, something promising like sunrise.

Garrity pulls away as sudden as she kissed Tyra, stands up and sets the coffee on the curb next to Tyra. She picks up her shoes, says, "Thank you," and bends down, kisses Tyra one more time, and walks away, swinging her sandals from her fingers as she pads down the middle of the road, barefoot and princess-perfect.

Tyra has half a Snickers bar still in her hand, and she doesn't see Garrity again before she packs the truck, climbs in the driver's seat, and heads for the ocean and the rest of her life.

author's notes: title from the old 97s, "coahuila". jay did beta duty. all remaining mistakes are mine.