by Chloe Garner
She closed her eyes, feeling herself flush.
“Sam had a dream,” she said.
“So?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, looking for the way out. He deserved… Well, he didn’t deserve the answer he was looking for so much as an answer. The problem was what that answer actually was.
“Like…” She licked her lips, not willing to use any of the words that occurred to her.
“Oh. A sex dream,” he said. She turned her head away. He snorted. “You can’t tell me that you’re upset every time he has a sex dream.”
“He doesn’t… that often… but…” She swallowed. “Normally they’re about me.”
“Ooooh. And this morning he dreamed about her.”
She clenched her jaw.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Just glad to see you really are a red-blooded woman. Oh. I guess Kara already caught that.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Sam.”
She shook her head and stood.
“Stay around people today. Don’t do anything stupid, okay? I’m…” she realized her hands were up. She pushed them back down to her sides. “I’m going. Okay? Just… I’m going.”
She wandered the first floor, eventually finding herself in a room full of computers. A young man looked up at her.
“Sam?” he said.
“Sam,” someone else said. She wasn’t up for this, today.
“Can I play?” she asked.
There was scuttle and action and she found herself in front of a computer. She was breathing fast, shallow, trying to keep her mind from knowing anything.
She played.
<><><>
She had no concept of time. Seekers came and left. Her eyes continually dried out from not blinking enough. She poured all of her focus into the game.
She was angry.
She had long ago learned to divorce anger from sources, just funneling it into targets, but she was teeth-grindingly angry, and she drove a rift through the game, ignoring the politics and most of the conservative tactics. She just destroyed. She died a lot, but not as much as the people she played against.
Finally, she couldn’t ignore it any longer. Sam had gotten too loud. Her focus popped out of the game like a ping pong ball out of water, and she threw herself away from the computer, running for the elevator. She closed her eyes, trying to keep her mind still as the elevator made its interminable way up to the floor where most of the Ranger’s rooms were. Just don’t think. Don’t know. Don’t feel. Like walking down a narrow cave in the pitch black darkness, trying not to touch the walls.
She knocked on Jason’s door, too focused to even hope he was there. He opened it, and she gasped relief she hadn’t prepared herself to feel. She closed her eyes and stilled herself again, shuddering tiny breaths.
“Sam?” he said.
“Put me out,” she said.
“What?”
“Please. Put me out.”
“You want me to… close the door in your face?”
She looked at him with desperation.
“Hit me. Black. Please. Put me out.”
“You want me to knock you out?” he asked.
She closed her eyes again, fighting a gag stemming from growing panic. Don’t move. Don’t move. He pulled her into the room and closed the door behind her.
“Sam, what’s going on?”
“Please.”
“No. I’m not going to hit you. What’s going on?”
“Please don’t make me do this.”
“Talk to me.”
“It’s… he’s… They’re…” She opened her eyes and resolved bravery. “Jason, they’re going to have sex, and I really don’t want to be there for it.”
“Then take some of your magic drugs and put yourself to sleep. I’m not going to hit you.”
“None of them work on me. Almost nothing works on me.”
“Is it really that big a deal?” he asked, sitting her down on a bed and sitting across from her. “It’s just sex.”
“Jason… It’s having to… watch.”
“Sam. I watch porn. It’s not the end of the world.”
She tipped her head back.
“No. Shut up. Don’t tell me that. Please. No. Just… Imagine having to watch from inside your brother’s body. And not being able to look away.”
“Okay, that would be too personal, even for me. But I’m not going to hit you. Wouldn’t he just come make sure you were okay?”
“I have a very high pain threshold…” She clenched her fingernails into her palms, trying to keep from knowing. “No. He wouldn’t notice.”
“Sweetheart,” Jason said. “I’m sorry. You’re going to have to figure out how to deal with it.”
She closed her eyes, holding perfectly still, trying to just listen to the sound of her breath.
“Distract me?” she said. “Something that’s hard to focus on… maybe.”
“You know the rules to Slapjack?” he asked. She looked at him, the steady flow of hot chemicals from Sam, just for an instant, not the center of her mind.
“Yes.”
He grinned crookedly.
“You may be faster than me, but I’ve got an edge, now. I bet I could beat you at Slapjack.”
She swallowed, then nodded.
“Okay. Yeah. Get the cards.”
He pulled a deck out of his shirt pocket and split them in half. She looked at them, then at him, confused.
“I just came up from poker,” he said. He jerked his thumb at a stack of bills on the night stand. “Suckers.”
“Is this a regulation deck?” she asked. He pulled his head back.
“I’m insulted. I don’t cheat in obvious ways like that,” he said, flipping the top card off his half of the deck. “Go.”
It wasn’t much.
She bent time to keep up with Jason, quick hands, counting cards, focused on knowing where all fifty-two cards were all the time. He edged her out a few times to keep her sharp.
It was something though.
Sam was hot and breathless and radiating energy, want, touch, and her hands felt funny. Her whole body felt funny. But it was something. She beat Jason twice, handing him half the deck back and starting again each time. She managed not to pitch a screaming fit at Sam over the bond.
Jason slapped a pair and picked up the stack, laying out the next card. Their pace had been so rapid that it had been hard to see the cards between each other, but Samantha didn’t play her next card. He looked up at her. She threw her deck of cards across the room and threw herself onto the pillow at the top of the bed.
“You okay?” he asked. She started to tell him to shut up, but couldn’t muster the will power. Sam never looked for her. He was warm, quiet, for a minute, then he was asleep. She rubbed her face, finding it wet.
“Sam,” he said.
“It’s over,” she said. She sat up. “I’m going back to my room.”
He looked at his watch.
“I guess it has been a while,” he said.
“Jason, please. I can’t deal with you right now.”
“Sorry. I don’t get it, but… I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“It isn’t.” He grabbed her wrist as she stood. “Sam, why is this bothering you so much?”
“Jason,” she started angrily, ready to tell him off at how obvious the answer to that was, but her voice caught. “I can’t tell him. I don’t want him to know…”
“I’m trying, Sam, but you’re going to have to spell it out.”
“I don’t want him to know I’m upset. I don’t want to ruin it.”
“Sweetheart,” Jason said, sitting back against the headboard. “Come here.”
She sat down next to him and he picked her up, pulling her across his lap and holding her. She let him.
“I know you guys are complicated. He knows you’re doing your best… You both are…”
“Why her
?” Samantha asked, her throat closing as she closed her eyes against tears. She knew the answers, but she was just so exhausted with not asking the questions out loud. “Why her and not me?”
“Because you said no. And she said yes.”
“I can’t,” Samantha said.
“Sweetheart, no one’s arguing with you.”
She pushed her head against his collar bone and he wrapped his arms tighter around her.
“I hate being alone,” she said. He rested his cheek on her forehead.
“Stay here tonight,” he said. She tried to pull away, but he didn’t let her go. “Not like that. Over there. It’s weird, being in a room by myself without any other people noises from people I know. I’d like it if you stayed.”
She rubbed her hand under her nose and swallowed.
“You think I’m being stupid.”
“No, I think you and Sam are in a spot that really does suck, and the guy who made it okay for a little while kidnapped you for a demon. Sam hated Alexander, by the way.”
“I know.”
He laughed.
“I guess you did.”
She sat curled up in his lap for a long time, listening to his heart beat. The frenzy, the panic, the abandonment of the past few days seemed to seep out of her, dripping away as she just sat and listened. She was warm. She wasn’t alone. If she kept her self-conscious mind from thinking about it too hard, she was about as comfortable as she had ever been. She put her hand on his chest and settled further, closing her eyes.
“Hey,” he whispered. She drew a breath, unwilling to move. He rubbed his cheek on her forehead. “Hey. You go sleep. I’m going to lift your room key and go get your stuff. Okay?”
She nodded, still without moving. She heard him laugh. The sound of his voice from inside his chest made her happy. He picked her up and stood, sliding her under the covers of the other bed. It was cold, but she was too far gone for it to pull her back to wakefulness. She snuggled the blanket under her chin and slept.
<><><>
Jason found a note slipped under the door the next afternoon. Samantha was still asleep and he’d been cleaning weapons quite happily. He had gotten up to answer the door for room service.
Check your phone.
He tucked the paper under his elbow and answered the door, thanking the man who had brought him his burger and beer. He checked on Samantha and then pulled his phone out of the drawer by his bed.
Got wraiths. Tell Kara you’ve got work to do.
Jason snorted at it and went back to cleaning the rifle barrel Samantha had given him. Made for steel bullets. How cool was that.
He reassembled the gun and put it into the case he had used to carry the load of them into the hotel - not that anyone would have so much as raised an eyebrow at him just walking across the lobby with an armload of them. It was just a bad habit to develop. He looked back over at Samantha. Her forehead was scrunched up funny, but she was still sound asleep. He looked at the text again. Yawned. Put the phone where she would find it if she woke up and walked down the hallway to Caroline’s room.
Sam answered the third knock, only after Jason had yelled in at him. He leaned against the door in his boxers, breathing hard.
“What?”
“We’ve got work,” Jason said. “Get dressed.”
Sam groaned.
“Really?”
“Wraiths. You wanna pass?”
Jason turned and walked back down the hallway.
“Your hair looks awesome, by the way,” he called back. He heard the door close and he let himself back into his room. Samantha was sitting up in bed.
“Did I wake you?” he asked. She frowned.
“No. Sam did.”
Jason didn’t know what that meant, but he also didn’t want an explanation.
“I’m going to take a shower.” He pointed toward the bathroom. “You want?”
“Not with you,” she said. He grinned.
“Just offering.”
She threw herself back on the bed and pulled the covers up.
“No big come-back?” he asked.
“Not today,” she said.
“You see Simon’s note?”
“Yeah. We’re going after Mother again.”
“Get dressed. On the road in thirty.”
<><><>
Caroline lay on her stomach on the bed.
“I know you have to, but I don’t want you to go.”
“Yeah. I don’t want to go, either, but…”
“We’re Rangers,” she said. He nodded, packing clothes into his bag. There wasn’t much to pack, and he was stalling, acting like everything had a very specific place in the bag. He looked at her, the smooth skin of her legs, the curve along the tops of her breasts, the flushed pink of her lips, and he had to fight off the urge to tackle her, to drag her up to the top of the bed and pull the blankets over their heads again. She crossed her ankles and swung her feet back and forth over her back.
“It’s been really good,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I wish I knew when I’d get to see you again.”
He sat down next to her on the bed and bent over, turning her face up to his and kissing her. Much as he wanted to be tangled up with her, flesh against slick flesh, it broke his heart to leave her, simply because he wanted to stay. Her tongue played along his lip and he kissed her deeper. She rolled and he dropped his shoulders further, then pulled away, sitting up.
“I have to go.”
“I know.”
He laughed and closed his eyes.
“Doesn’t make it any easier.”
“No.”
She curled sideways and put her head in his lap.
“What if I went with you?”
He ran his finger through her hair, lifting it behind her ear.
“You want to come with us?”
She looked up at him.
“Why not? I haven’t got anything else to do right now.”
He shook his head.
“Why not?”
She grinned and nodded.
“Why not?”
<><><>
Samantha threw herself onto the bed and pulled a pillow over her head.
“What’s up?” Jason asked, his mouth full of toothpaste.
“Either Sam’s staying or Caroline’s coming,” Samantha said.
“I thought I made it clear he didn’t have that kind of time,” Jason said.
“What?”
“Sorry. Bad joke.” He spat in the sink and rinsed out his toothbrush. He looked out at Samantha again and shook his head. “Sorry, Sweetheart.”
“Yeah. Time to get over it.”
He couldn’t figure out anything helpful to say, so he went to go pack up his stuff out of the bathroom.
<><><>
Samantha was the one to pull out Sam’s laptop. Jason was packing the Cruiser and Sam and Caroline were packing her car, and Samantha was the first one to realize they had no directions yet. She went and took it out of his bag from the back of Caroline’s trunk and walked back into the hotel, finding a table in the lobby and powering it up. A chat service logged itself in automatically, as did an e-mail service. She rolled her eyes hard, tempted to put a password on the computer out of spite.
You guys finally come up for air? a user called SimonSays said.
This is Sam. The girl. Samantha answered.
Oh.
There was a long pause.
You were scary good the other day. They’re all talking about it. Your kill count was through the roof.
She looked out the front window at Sam and Caroline leaning against her car. Sam was so oblivious and so happy.
Therapy. Samantha said.
Ha. So are you in for the wraiths or should I tag out?
We’re packed. Forgot to ask where we’re going.
Boston.
Roger that. I expect Sam or Jason will be on to talk to you when we get there.
Okay.
Sam
antha watched her cursor blink for a second, then started to shut down the computer.
It was nice to meet you.
She smiled.
Yeah. You, too, Simon Says.
She watched for another few seconds, then closed down the laptop and took it back outside, putting it in the back of the Cruiser.
“Boston,” she said. Caroline smiled up at Sam.
“A nice long drive for us,” she said. Samantha’s stomach clenched. She couldn’t be sure if it was a mock-gag reaction, or a real one, but Sam noticed.
“You okay?” he asked. She looked at him for a second, then Jason clapped her on the shoulder.
“Boston?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“We’ll see you there,” Sam said. She nodded at him. He was torn, just for a moment, then Caroline took his hand and kissed it, and he was gone again. She told herself that she didn’t really resent him being happy, it was jealousy and the result of a bad week, but she knew it was a lie.
You could have him if you wanted him Abby said.
“What right do I have?” Samantha asked. “And where have you been?”
Busy, Abby said.
“What’s that?” Jason asked.
“Nothing,” Samantha said, getting into the Cruiser. Abby sat in the back seat, visible over Samantha’s shoulder in the wing mirror.
You two belong together, and you’re letting him slip away Abby said.
“I’m doing my best,” Samantha said.
“I know that,” Jason said.
“Not you,” Samantha said. Jason looked at her as he pulled out of the hotel parking lot.
“You’re back to that again? Who is it this time?”
“Abby in the back seat.”
If you’re going to let Sam get away, you could do a lot worse than this one, Abby said.
“Shut up, Abby,” Samantha said. Abby looked out the window and smiled.
<><><>
They stopped for dinner in Kentucky. Jason called Sam to give him directions to the restaurant, but Sam told him they had stopped in Nashville and would probably be an hour behind them to Columbus. Jason had called Darin from the road; they were expecting a full house.
“You knew they stopped,” Jason said to Samantha over pizza.
“I did.”
“You didn’t say anything,” he said. She looked at him with dull eyes that just said duh. “Why not?”