iTeach You How to Love
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I made up the plot.
SUMMARY: OneShot romance fic Freddie/Sam. I started out trying to achieve one thing and failed, but I figured some strange person might get some enjoyment out of what I didn't accomplish. So, enjoy or don't enjoy, but let me know either way! P.S. ididntproofread :)
iTeach You How to Love
Freddie fought his way over the bramble covered privacy fence, falling clumsily to the other side. With no more obstacles to preoccupy him, he found himself without much of a plan. For a moment he thought of just going back the way he came, it was stupid. He was foolish. ...Had he really expected to find her here? There was no way. She was never where he wanted her anymore. He was shocked, then, when a light flickered on in a dirty upstairs window. Nervous energy buzzing through his veins, he marched forward and began to climb the rotting wooden plant ladder on the side of Sam Puckett's house.
Surely primed to ease her own sneaking, the window was ajar. Freddie pushed it open with his free hand. Sam was instantly visible beyond it, a vivid blonde siren dressed in fat-cake print pajamas with a bottle of percocet in one hand and a cast inhibiting the actions of the other. A purplish bruise was healing beneath her right eye. He felt hot anger bubble in the pit of his stomach.
"What are you doing here, Fredward?" She asked in the same blunt tone she had always used with him. It would have been most believable over the phone, as it had been for some time, but not in person. Not when he could see...
He leaped cat-like through the window and stalked over to her, prying the pill bottle away from her and opening it to pour two of the little white capsules into her hand. She swallowed them dry on the way to a rickety wooden vanity set. Sitting, she began to tame her wild locks with a brush in her uninjured hand. Freddie sat on the bed, clenching his hands into fists to stop them shaking. "Going out?" he asked icily.
"What's it to you?" she scoffed. They could see each other in the mirror's reflection, but instead of meeting his gaze she ripped herself out of the chair and began tearing through one of many piles of laundry.
There was perfect silence for a few minutes while she crept around the room with stealth gained from years of practice. By the time Freddie replied she was wearing a pair of sweat pants with a plaid tank and on the prowl for socks. "You need to leave him." he said.
Sam let out an exasperated sigh. "I'm handling it. Thanks." She snapped.
This was more than Freddie could take, he hadn't come here to let her leave, he had come to make her stay where she belonged. He sprung to his feet, coming round to stand between her and the next pile of laundry, "You're obviously doing a great job!" Their faces were inches apart. He painstakingly unfurled the fingers of his left hand, wishing to bring it to her face and trace the bruises there. Before contact greater than the slightest of butterfly kisses could be made she flinched. Suddenly. Convulsively. As if he meant to physically harm her. He saw in her eyes just what he saw on the last day of school before the summer, the day Sam met her first bully.
As it often did, Freddie's memory began to call that first interaction between she and Rod. That last time she was his.
He harassed her. Distressed her. Abused her. And she gravitated toward him like he was her native tongue. Freddie couldn't help but draw comparisons to their own relationship. Had she done all of these things to him? Yes. But this new guy, Rod, he did not stop where Sam did, well-shy of causing lasting damage, as evidenced by her broken arm. Sam could be good for people...she had been good for him. And Rod? Rod was as good for anybody as a full gas jug in a forest fire.
Freddie had been running late. Well, not late, per se. But if he didn't get to home room with at least twelve minutes to spare then he wouldn't get a good seat. And if he didn't get a good seat he wouldn't be able to see the board. And if he couldn't see the board he would not be able to take notes. And if he couldn't take notes how could he ever get into Harvard? Yes it was the last day of school, but who was to say some necessary nugget of knowledge did not remain to foster him until Senior year? Surely anyone could see how this was important.
He sped around the corner, tantalizingly close to his destination and a sure seat in the lap of success when he saw a familiar blonde head. Sam had one leather boot-clad foot propped up on a locker for leverage over the crowbar she wedged into another. Against his better judgment he stopped long enough to see just who's locker captured her unfortunate interests. When he realized it was Carly's he lost cause for concern. Carly knew the hazards of being Sam's friend just as well as he did.
Sam P.O.V.
Sam shuffled through the brown paper lunch sack in Carly's recently hacked locker, she had no idea why they bothered to put locks on those things, were they trying to tempt her? Her sweaty hand clasped on to the coldest food item she could find; she eagerly withdrew it, disappointed to find it was only a Diet Doctor Pib. In a swift motion she slammed the locker shut and stabbed the can with the handy retractable crow bar she used to get into the locker in the first place. The soda hemorrhaged and Sam held it above her head to shotgun the frothy beverage.
She finished it just as the bell signaling first period rang, she crushed the can in her hand and tossed it nonchalantly into the quickly clotting crowd of students pouring in from outside. She was just about to merge with them when an angry and unfamiliar voice barked at her from the center of the throng.
"HEY!" It was a male voice, crass enough to reveal that it hadn't issued from an administrator, but deep enough to indicate a student that had probably been held back at least one grade. She was willing to bet whoever it was had cushioned the fall of her empty can.
"Hey, yourself!" Sam replied, unconcerned. She was still attempting to merge when a hand roughly gripped her shoulder and slammed it against the weekly notice board. She instantly soured, snapping her eyes onto a stark white face, ready to shred it apart. It was the sheer gorgeousness of this face that caused her to give if an only moderately less hostile response. "You have until the end of this sentence to remove your hand from my shoulder before I remove it from your arm!" she growled.
He was blonde with translucent tendrils pushed back by aviator shades. He smelled like wintermint and stale cigarettes. He removed the hand in question only to point a weathered finger at her face, she caught a wiff of diesel fuel. "You're going to buy me new shoes!" He snarled, Sam pocketed her tongue in the side of her cheek and sneered, glancing down for only a second to see that a few drops of the brown Pib had landed on his otherwise pristine Converse high tops.
"The only thing I'm going to do is nap in the band room." She replied stonily. "Move." His nostrils flared. Sam gritted her teeth. They stared at each other, their eyes locked challengingly. It was then that Sam saw, without a flicker of a doubt, the subtle beginning of a lopsided smile.
He leaned closer. He was undeniably handsome. Upon closer inspection he had clear grey eyes and red lips that framed perfectly white teeth. His adam's apple jutted out above the collar of his zippered blazer, an array of charming stubble trailed down his neck. "I'm Rod." he said. He placed a hand on either side of her face and leaned closer still. Their noses nearly touched.
"I'm Sam." She replied, coolly.
"Alright, Sam. So how 'bout you cut the chit and get in my car so I can take you to Sneaker Alley and you can replace my...items." On 'items' he flicked his eyes downward and back onto hers. If he was flirting it was working, if he wasn't, well, it was still working. She was on the verge of responding when the irrevocably dorky watch hand of a third person suddenly jutted forcefully between them.
"HEY! What is going on here!" Freddie shouted, shoving Rod back and standing in front of her protectively. Sam was momentarily taken aback by the unusual ferocity with which Freddie spoke.
"What's it to you!" Shouted Rod, shoving Freddie back so that the three now stood facing each other triangularly.
Freddie's face was red, livid. Sam could only assume he had seen the exchange from the beginning. It was in his nature to treat all women right. His mother had seen to that. Still, he flustered at the question. Was it more to him than just blind chivalry? He gestured to her wildly, "I saw how you were talking to her! You don't talk to a lady that way!"
"Looks to me the lady can handle herself!" Rod shot back, "Get outta here!"
"No way! Come on, Sam." Said Freddie. He shoved a hand behind Sam's back and attempted to herd her forward.
Rod reached into his pocket and withdrew his keys, dangling them in her face. "Come on." He said, and he grabbed a hold of Sam as well, but with considerably more force.
"Hey!" Freddie snapped again, "watch it, man!"
"Hey!" Sam screeched at last, working herself free of Freddie. She looked between the two of them for a second longer. "I'm going." She snapped and left.
Freddie's P.O.V.
Freddie's brought his fingers under Sam's chin, "he doesn't deserve you." He whispered. "He can't treat you right."
She pursed her lips. "And just how is that, Freddie? Just how should any guy treat a girl like me?" Freddie stared down into her eyes. He knew she didn't know, couldn't know. Because he hadn't told her. Without a father to interact with, to show how a man ought to treat a lover, she had no template to follow. She had arrived here, in this precarious situation much too easily...and he had let her stay there far too long.
He bit his lip, letting the words pool and coagulate in his throat until nothing in the wide world could contain them any longer: "Like...Like I can!" he exclaimed at last.
"I don't deserve you, Freddie. I can't treat you right." She replied, sadly.
"I can teach you." said Freddie.