This is part of the Cabal Mass Posting June 11th. Be sure to look for postings by many of your favorite Cabal authors this weekend!
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AN: it's an overdone story line but hopefully done well. PLEASE review and say what you think!
Disclaimer: Dan's, not 'Hands.
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Freddie emerged from below deck and received an eyeful of Sam-skin basking in the Caribbean sunlight. She was stretched along the edge of his boat where no one was meant to sit, but where she'd made herself comfortable. Her bikini was mostly strings that were the exact same shade as the bluest water in the world behind her. Her skin was smooth, glistening and darkening beautifully.
He licked his lips and deliberately put his attention on other things—on Carly across the deck sitting in the shade, wearing a more modest red bikini top and white shorts. His dark eyes didn't linger on her long before he was looking at Sam again—but it wasn't her skin he looked at this time. It was her book.
Sam was reading a book.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his double-take and his features slacken in surprise. She smirked, raised her sunglasses. "Gotta problem, Benson?"
"Not used to seeing you with a book," he said with a shrug. Now that he thought about it, he knew she read books. Hell, he'd been the one to get her into it. But it was the kind of thing he forgot easily, because whatever reading she'd done since high school, she'd done privately. He hadn't seen her with a book in hand for years.
Across the deck, Carly frowned upon realizing that her friend was a guy. She knew Freddie was a guy, obviously, and it wasn't like it was the first time it was occurring to her. But she was frowning because she was used to seeing Sam read, yet Freddie wasn't. And it was because he was a guy. She'd never thought about it before, but he wouldn't have seen her doing much reading in all of these years, since Sam only ever picked up a book at night before going to bed and Freddie had never been a part of their sleepovers. Sam had packed a whole suitcase of books for this sailing trip. Freddie hadn't been there for that, either. So all this time, he would've had no idea she had such a favorable dimension in her personality.
Huh. Perspective.
The tube of sunscreen farted as she filled her palm with it and the lotion was cool as she smeared it into her long legs.
Freddie asked Sam to move so that she wouldn't be sent overboard by the sail swinging around as he did his sailor things. Sam closed her book and hopped down, joined Carly in the shade. She dropped her book on the table between them. It was a hard-back, and heavy. Carly had always been impressed by her lazy friend's appetite for literature; it surpassed her own, which was satisfied by cheap paperback love stories. She had one in her bunk right now—but she wouldn't be bringing it out here to read in the sunlight; its cover was far too embarrassing.
Sam's bikini-matching blue eyes followed Freddie as he pulled on that rope and this one and cranked that thing and tied this rope to that other thing. He was barefoot and his shirt was unbuttoned showing his sailor muscles. The wind had excited several cowlicks in his hair. Carly pretended not to notice Sam noticing. She cleared her throat. Sam tore her gaze from their friend.
"Nothing," Carly said, though Sam hadn't actually asked anything. She knew that Sam and Freddie were—well, they were stupid. But she didn't want to be the one to tell them that. Between them was something like twelve years of friendship, a handful of kisses, and enough husband and wife bickering to keep real relationship prospects with other people safely at bay, yet still they pretended the other one was nothing more to them than a friend.
Carly thought it was ridiculous, crazy—completely coconuts (she gave herself a little smirk for her location joke). She loved them like they were family, and she wanted them to be happy. But she knew that whatever was between them was a big can of worms and, frankly, she just didn't want to get any of it on her.
They'd figure it out eventually, right?
Sam knew instantly what Carly's chirp of nothing was. She scoffed, "You and your ideas. I think all of this sun has driven you wacko."
Carly laughed. "You mean coconuts?"
Sam gave her a sad look, "Oh, no, honey. How are you a successful comedian?"
"Because I think the world is funny," Carly answered, "and the world loves to laugh with me about it."
"No, no, no, you got that wrong. The world likes to laugh at you."
"With me," Carly corrected.
Sam laughed, "Yeah, Carls, sure, with you."
Freddie listened to his friends' banter as Carly continued to defend her ability to make a clever joke while Sam not-so-politely disagreed. He chuckled to himself the whole time. It was precisely this that got them famous, this way they were together. They were opposites: kindness and Harshness. Innocence and Experience. Naivety and Street-Smarts. Yet both were goodhearted, both were witty, and both were beautiful.
Not for the first time, he was acutely aware of how lucky he was to know them. And to be alone on a boat with them—well, maybe he felt lucky about the boat thing where only one of them was concerned. She was pulling her blond hair out of its pony tail and shaking it loose.
"I know you don't laugh with me," Carly was saying, "but the rest of the world does."
"Name one person," Sam snorted.
"Gibby!" Carly cried, somewhat heatedly, "Gibby always laughed with me—until you pushed him too far and he left us forever!"
Sam rolled her eyes, didn't make a retort because there was no way to apologize about the whole messy thing that she hadn't already tried, so instead, she pretended there was no mess. She laughed, "Even Gibby would think coconuts was lame."
"He'd chuckle, at least." Carly said.
"Hey, Freddicinni," Sam called over to Freddie, "get over here and tell Carly how lame her coconuts joke is."
"I'm a little busy, Sam." Freddie said. Their banter was funny, but sometimes it went on long enough to become a real argument and what with the Gibby-topic on the table it was heading that way. He didn't like to be dragged into it.
"Sure, take her side," Sam scoffed.
"Just because I'm busy doesn't mean I think coconuts is funny." Freddie said as he worked, "It just means I'm busy—sorry, Carls."
"Sure, take her side," Carly said, but with a knowing smile. He really hated her sometimes. He turned his back on them both.
Sam gasped. Swore. Freddie turned again in time to see her pull the top of her bikini back into place. Her clasp had broken. She had things covered—but the lack of support from the malfunctioned swimwear put things in a more natural shape and maybe he was seeing just a little more than usual. A rope slipped out of his hand.
Carly saw his open-mouthed blunder. Suddenly, she stopped trying to help Sam and stood. That smile was back, only now it was on fire with—Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. That was an idea.
Sam had started on her way below deck to change, but Carly bolted and got there first. She shut the door and threw the lock.
"What the fat-cake?" Sam bellowed. With no free hands, she could only kick the door. "What are you doing, Carly?"
There was no answer but a melodic giggle. Sam understood that giggle. She rolled her eyes, and sighed. She was going to get this bikini thing sorted. Then she was going to kick Freddie's teeth in. Then she was going to make Carly pay, somehow. Maybe while broadcasting live to the world. Yeah she would—suddenly fingers were catching the loose ends of the bikini clasps and were tugging, tying them together.
She lost her breathe. Then she rammed an elbow back as hard as she could. It connected with his ribs. He lost his breath in a far more painful way, and with a pathetic cry. "I was just trying to help!" he gasped.
He'd managed to tie the knot before she'd punished him. She began making adjustments, getting everything rearranged with the tighter fitting. "Yeah? Who asked you?"
He straightened, his face hardening, "You know, Sam. It's baffling to me how you could think that friends of twelve years need to wait to be asked!"
"First, only nubs actually use the word baffling. Second, you are not my friend, Benson."
He groaned, "Oh, right. You just hang around me all the time because I'm so pretty to look at!"
Simultaneously in the following second, they both realized that what he'd meant to be sarcasm was actually true; he wasn't hard to look at, at all, really. Then, in the second following that one, when the awkwardness began, something bad happened. There was a load thud and the boat lurched. No, it stopped moving so suddenly that everything not nailed down on deck lurched—forward.
Sam fell right into Freddie and they both went down hard onto the deck. In the cabin, Carly's scream was muffled. Then there was nothing but water lapping at the sides and wind in the sails which were making lots of creaking and straining noises.
Sam's hair was in Freddie's face. His elbows hurt—he'd landed on them. She lifted her head, a hair toss giving him his field of vision back. Her eyes were wide. "What happened?"
Freddie was already getting up—the gravity of the situation was too much for him to linger on the sensation of her suntan pressed against his—but that hair toss would be coming back to him later, he was vaguely sure of it. Carly came flying out of the cabin, screaming, "What did you guys do?"
"Nothing!" Sam cried. Freddie leaned over board for a look and his suspicion was confirmed, "Butter!" he bellowed. "We hit a sand dune!"
"What?"
"We're grounded by an underwater sand dune." Freddie said and began doing all of those sailor things again. He lowered the sails.
"Shallow water," Sam translated, "you sailed us straight into shallow water?"
"I didn't sail us!" Freddie shot back, "I wasn't steering!"
"Clearly!"
"Wait!" Carly cried. She'd made a complete one-eighty. "It can't be shallow water, I don't see land anywhere!"
"There's land, but it's underwater."
"So we won't drown?" Carly asked.
"No," Freddie said, heading below deck. "I'll radio for help. They'll tow us out."
Sam scoffed, followed, "God, you're such and IDIOT! Why would you stop paying attention to where we're going? Sailboats don't have autopilot, Freddork!"
Freddie's response had its usual bitter edges, "I was helping you!"
"You were trying to get lucky."
"Was not!"
"Ya were, too, ya nub."
Carly stayed on deck. She was still shaking from the trauma of the boat's abrupt stop. She looked out at all the water—so much water—and reminded herself that the boat wasn't sinking, that it was shallow water, and that people would come get them soon enough. She drew a deep breath. Really, it was no big deal.
Inside the cabin, Freddie and Sam's argument had escalated into screaming. Blame, blame, blame, blah, blah, blah. Carly was listening more to it than anything, so it took a moment for her brain to register what her eyes landed on in the distance—in the direction from which all the wind was coming. The blue was going all grey there and… and… and those were black clouds.
She screamed.
...
Sam couldn't believe she'd ever thought thunder was pretty. It was horrendous. And so was wind. And rain. So much rain.
Lightening.
She had a love hate relationship with lightening. It was three times as frightening as the thunder, but it chased away the darkness—if only for a moment. While it was gone she was certain that the world had broken into pieces by the force of the storm and she wanted the lightening to come back so that she could see the deck of the boat, her friends, and know that they were still alive. But then it did come back with a crack as forks of it spread overhead and she thought she would die.
So she loved it, but she hated it.
The last five hours had been the worst of her life. Carly had alerted them to the coming storm. Freddie had sent out a distress call. All they could do after that was wait for help, and in the meantime ride out the storm. That meant waiting for the storm to come. Sam had thought tropic storms came on all of a sudden like, but this one had seemed to take forever.
It'd stayed over there, lurking like some great cat poised to pounce… waiting… Making them doubt, find false hope that maybe, just maybe, help would come before it did. But help would be coming from the other side of it, from behind it.
Freddie had run around doing a lot of sailor things before eventually strapping them into life jackets and then huddling with them in the cabin around the un-deployed life raft and survival kit. Whatever drive Sam had had to blame him was gone by then. She'd sat quiet like the other two. Waiting.
The sun started to sit by the time it hit.
And now it felt like it'd been pounding on them for hours. At first they might have been in a beach house during a storm… but then the waves, growing bigger as the storm got stronger, rocked them free of the stupid dune and then they had to go out and do sailor things while everything was bobbing and rocking.
Sam was terrified. She and Carly had been given a lesson or two on sailing before going on this trip, but nothing to prepare them for this. Freddie was being amazing, Mr. On Top Of This, but he was just one guy against a freaking hurricane. She pulled and tied and held and prayed and whatever else he told her to do and the whole time the sky shook and broke around them, like it was taking it personally that they just wanted to survive this.
She grew colder and weaker.
The waves grew bigger and darker.
For what felt like the zillionth time, a wave crashed down around them on the deck, its weight and strength was overwhelming and for a petrifying second, Sam thought she wouldn't be able to hold on anymore.
"Deck!" she heard Freddie below.
"What?"
"Get below deck!"
Yes, please. She held out a hand for him to take so they could go. But he ignored it.
"Come on!"
"Go!" he bellowed, giving her a shove. She held her ground as best she could in a storm-tossed boat, knocked his hands away, grabbed his shoulders, but he only shoved her again, "Go!"
Carly grabbed her by the arm, shrieked, "Come on!" and pulled. Another wave crashed onto them, then. This one was stronger than the last. Sam's knees buckled and she washed against the side of the boat with enough force to cause her to swallow a lot of water. Carly lost her grip on Sam's arm.
Hacking up the Caribbean, and blinking salt water from her eyes, Sam looked around. She heard Freddie screaming on the wind. "NOOOOO! CAAARRRRRLEEEEEE!" and the sharp, but horrifyingly distant sound of Carly's scream—but she only heard it for a moment, for the space of one flash of lightening. In the flash, she didn't see Carly on the boat.
Then there was nothing but darkness and the noise of the storm and Freddie's shouts attempting to drown each other out. Suddenly he had her by the shoulders, shook her hard to snap her out of it. Lightening flashed, illuminating his face, which was covered in streaming water and fear. He shouted something and she didn't hear a word of it.
Then another wave hit and the boat flipped over.
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~The CABAL~
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