Disclaimer: Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers. Unfortunately, we do have far too many sensitive lawyers in this establishment of fanfiction (HA!), so I submit. I do not own. *hangs head* I think I shall go sob now. And mourn the fact that in my alternate universe, Fabrevans still exists and thrives. While in reality... *disappears and weeps* DON'T LOOK AT ME! LET ME GRIEVE IN PEACE!

A/N: This was inspired by four songs that I recommend listening to: "You Are The First, My Last, My Everything" by Barry White, "I'll Catch You" by The Get Up Kids, "Motorcycle Drive By" by Third Eye Blind, and "Konstantine" by Something Corporate. See videos below:

.com/watch?v=ZMwI1DlZpyY "Konstantine" – Something Corporate

.com/watch?v=2UmYgOiKgh8 "I'll Catch You" – The Get Up Kids

.com/watch?v=lXRLEyIoJZA "Motorcycle Drive By" – Third Eye Blind

.com/watch?v=Fcd3XuQwDQQ "You Are The First, My Last, My Everything" – Barry White

Also: the title is taken from Barry White's classic love song (above).

Summary: Sam said that he lost his virginity when he became a male stripper, over the summer. What if he lost it to Quinn? Tag to Dance With Somebody. Angst/Romance. One-shot.

To be honest, neither of them is sure how it happens.

To be honest, they never expected to be this close ever again.

To be honest, she knew about his summer fling with Mercedes before anyone else, and he knew that she had, well, moved on.

To be perfectly honest, though, it's now obvious that she hasn't, and that he hasn't either.

She breathes into his ear as he kisses her neck furiously. It isn't as though they think anything can come of this. They both know that nothing will. He lives in Tennessee, for God's sake, and she's still in Ohio. The truth is that the only reason that she came down here was to check up on him. Yes, it's a lot for just some girl that he used to know to do for him (nobody mentions that at one time they were practically engaged), but they both know that it's more than that.

She traveled down by bus because they used to love each other. She watched the scenery in the window go by for hours because she still cares about him. And he let her back inside his new house because he still cares for her too.

(He's missed her.)

There is almost absolutely no light coming through the window of the hotel room. (When she said she wanted to talk, and that it would take a while…it was the only place he could think of where nobody could interrupt. Even though he still hates hotels.) It's all from a streetlamp, so it's a faded yellowish that looks almost sickly. There's no moon that he can see, though it might just be somewhere else out of sight. The light green curtains fall over most of the window, turning the streetlamp's light a sick yellow-green. It lights up their skin, and he can see her sweat as his tongue drags over his skin and laps it up almost unconsciously. (He tastes sweat, and perfume. Vanilla? And cinnamon. Something else, something sweet. He can't tell what.) He almost tastes tears running down her throat, but ignores them. The Quinn he knows doesn't cry. She's too…invincible for that. Made of iron and all that. Rock-hard, like a diamond or a crystal or something. So he just laps her up instead of asking about the nonexistent tears.

He doesn't really know what he's doing, but she's teaching him. He's learning, slowly, just like she appears to like it. (He likes it too. Slow is…nice. He can't think of a better, more fitting, appropriate, wonderfully descriptive word.)

She writhes underneath him, and moans out his name in a kind of ecstatic, purely and perfectly enjoyable agony, that he feels too.

"I just want to talk, Sam."

"Yeah? About what?" He leans against his doorway. It's warm outside, warmer than usual for seven o'clock in the afternoon on a Thursday, but they're just fine. He wears his dark blue t-shirt and tight jeans, and she has on a white tank top with dark blue jeans. Perfect weather, really.

She shifts uncomfortably on his doorstep. "You. Us. I don't know. How're the kids?" She had developed an attachment with his siblings, and he knows that she's missed them, as well as that she will never admit to missing him as well.

"They're good. Stace's almost failed math last year, so I'm gonna have to start tutoring her. Which will suck with dyslexia and all that."

As she studies her (perfect) dark-purple-painted nails, she glances up at him through her eyelashes. "That does sound pretty bad," she admits. "But how have you been?"

"Me? I've been fine. You?"

"Great."

"Good."

"Yeah."

They stand there, awkwardly, unaware if there's something they're supposed to say, an established greeting of sorts for a guy and his first love, the girl who cheated on him and broke his heart…and her heart in return.

Her dark purple nails stroke his cheek as she pulls him to her face for a hungry kiss. She never kissed him like this before, back when they were dating. Sure, they had a few make-out sessions, but it never got too far. She was always…protective of her body. And he always let her be.

But it seems stupid now to be protective of his body. He's a teenage male stripper, after all, and it just seems ridiculous not to get it over with. It's virginity, after all. Some people get all high and mighty about that like they're in fifteenth century Venice or something (before Casanova came along), but for him, it was always just there. Awkward. And he knew it would be awkward to lose it, too, especially if it was a girl he didn't know.

But he knows Quinn, more than he knows anyone from McKinley, really more than he knows anyone in the whole entire world, and she knows him too, and besides, it's not as awkward as he thought it would be, especially not with her. She isn't making a big deal out of it. She's just…letting it be. And kissing him. Hard. Her mouth is hungry and demanding and its screams want and need and please—he doesn't know what for, what it wants and needs. Only that it demands and hungers and begs.

(So does his.)

"Can we go? Somewhere? To talk?" she asks, uncomfortable, still on his doorstep.

"We're talking here," he points out. (He knows she doesn't want him to invite her inside, although he would in a heartbeat. Somehow, it's instinct. He just knows.)

"I mean…somewhere private." She glances around, like there are neighbors to watch them. (There aren't any. Mrs. Bodenheim isn't home from work yet, so they're good for another fifteen minutes. It's almost seven o'clock. Stevie and Stacie are at separate sleepovers and his parents will be home in about half an hour.)

He shrugs. "Sure. Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know. Somewhere else."

He shrugs again. "We could go to a hotel."

"I'll pay," she offers, and he knows that she's trying to make it up to him for wasting his time. But he's not. Wasting his time, anyway. He always likes to be around her. Even when they broke up and they were both just walking wounds, it was like an addiction to be around her. Still is.

She hisses his name into his ear when he penetrates her, and he can feel the energy building up in him. Virginity is not as quite as hard to lose as it is to build up. Well, duh. At least he's not drunk off of a wine cooler or two.

(Quinn was so ashamed when she told him that, just after they started dating. He just smiled at her and told her that it was from a past life, that it was over, that they would be together forever. His first love. Childish. Foolish. Completely and utterly wonderful. Absolute…bliss, to tell you the truth.)

He feels guilty for thinking that. Sure, she cheated on him, but does that really give him the right to make fun of her mistakes? He's bound to do something awful that he regrets at some point in his life, too.

Her fingers tighten around his upper arms, then reach around and claw at his back, his shoulder blades, the back of his neck. He loves it. Quinn never lost her control when they were together, except with Finn. She never gave up that self-discipline, that restraint, when they kissed or made out on the couch or her bed. But now, when they're no longer together? God. She's like a wild animal.

He always figured that with his first time, it would be with a girl who was gentle and soft and sweet, even during sex. And Quinn was a logical choice at the time. She was gentle and soft and sweet, at least with him, and her past meant nothing to him. He figured that she was like vanilla: easy to guess and easier to choose. Just…easier.

But Quinn is full of complications, probably more than anyone he's ever met in his entire life, and she is most definitely not stereotypical in the bedroom in the way that he imagined her to be. She's panting with need and want and desire, and he's sure that he's just the same way. Sweat is dripping off of her, but he doesn't mind it. He's just as soaked.

(She forces herself to be a stereotype. Cheerleader, sweet, smart, quiet. Occasional bitch on her bad days, when she loses just a little bit of control. It's only because she's afraid that one day she'll do something terrible and that her reputation will be ruined. But inside, she's not stereotypical at all. She's smart and funny and hot and bitchy and inside, she's so ambitious and so tired of Lima and feeling so empty without someone to hold her. She has stupid insecurities that make her all the more adorable. He knows this because he knows her more than anyone has ever known her in her entire life, and that's probably a fact, though she would never admit something so cheesy and mushy and romantically gag-worthy and…unutterably true.)

She's wet for him, and he never thought a girl would be like that with him.

She's weakly screaming out his name, and he never thought a girl would want him like that.

She's crying and laughing at the same time, and he never thought he could love a girl this much when she cheated on him.

(He wonders if she ever even loved him.)

He reaches his climax quickly (he's pretty sure that happens for everyone's first time) and she follows soon after, and they both lay there. She rolls him over so that she's on top, and she kisses him once, hard and desperate on the mouth with no tongue, then rolls back over so that he's on his back and she's next to him. They're silent and panting and the hotel bedspread is hot and just a little bit itchy.

The silence gets to him. (It always has. It makes him act like an idiot with the awkwardness.)

"Did you ever love me?" he doesn't mean to ask.

She gives a short little bark of a laugh, like that's funny but not really. "I asked Puck that once," she says after a few seconds, explaining the not-really-there-and-she-knows-it kind of humor she found in his question. "When I had Beth. I asked him that, and he said, 'Now more than ever.' "

He waits, feeling like a desperate, stupid fool. "Is that your answer?" he finally asks. It's sad to think that she might only love him after sex, but he hears her sigh and can tell that that's not right.

She just smiles bittersweetly, and he can see it out of the corner of his eye. "No," she answers at last. "I…I loved you for a long time, Sam. I'm still in love with you. The thing with Finn was an awful mistake. It was. And nothing I can say will ever make it up to you, so I won't say anything except that I'm sorry. And I don't expect you to want to be with me now just because of this…" she gestures helplessly to the bed, and he nods. "…but I'm sorry," she finishes. "I really, truly am, Sam."

He's a little disappointed. He half expected her to grovel. But Quinn Fabray doesn't grovel. She never has. And besides, he didn't really expect her to beg, he supposes. He doesn't need more than that, and to hear anything more would just be odd. Her sorry is plain and simple, short and sweet, but it's true. He can tell from the tone of her voice.

He turns his head to the left so that he's looking at her, and she turns her whole body, propping herself up on her right elbow. "Did you ever love me?" she asks.

And he's surprised. He thought it was obvious. "You were my first love, Quinn," he rasps, and something about him saying her name so huskily makes her shiver, an odd long unexpected shudder racking its way up and down her spine. He ignores it, knowing that if he brings it up, she'll just shut down on him. "Of course I loved you. I still love you."

So they're both still in love with each other. That's no surprise. They were always more than Barbie and Ken, after all. They were Desdemona and Othello, ruined by one simple, cruel, unforgivable mistake. They were Romeo and Juliet, made up of mistakes and kisses and naivety.

They can't just forgive and forget.

(But he knows they'll both try to forget this night and all the truth that's come out because of it. Her because she's scared, and him for the same reason. Both waiting for the other to make a move.)

Maybe one day he will truly and completely and totally forgive her. When you're sixteen, you make mistakes. He knows that. And maybe one day he'll fully understand that, and he'll forgive her. But even then, she might not be waiting on him any longer. She might move on. But until then, until that day that he can understand and she just might choose him again...until then, they will settle.

They both sleep restlessly. He knows for a fact that he doesn't sleep any longer than for five minutes, because when she rolls over and places her head on his chest in her sleep, it jars him awake. He's filled with a warm feeling, a mixture of heartbreak and anguish and misery but also of joy and irrepressible, understandable love. He wraps his arms around her, unable to deny the urge, and wonders why she doesn't awaken. She's always been a light sleeper; it's how she got away with it in class. (Once he found her on his couch, dead to the world, but then he bumped into a table and she woke up and smiled at him and kissed him and the ring that he gave her caught the fluorescent light and he just could not stop smiling.)

But she's still asleep. She doesn't hear the crack of his heart, but he swears that he can hear the shattering sound that it makes. The noise is practically loud enough to deafen him. He wonders how she couldn't hear, seeing as how she's so practically on top of him that she should be able to hear his heartbeat, or lack of it.

A girl, sleeping on her guy's chest (because he's always been hers), falling asleep whilst listening to his heartbeat. It sounds like a fairytale. But no matter how many times they got called Barbie and Ken, they never had that happily ever after ending set in store for them. With a little effort, maybe they could have an almost-perfect life, except for Quinn's one mistake. With a little. But neither of them is willing to try, both hesitant out of fear and insecurities and bad memories of tears and stolen kisses and confrontations over Color Me Mine in a hallway, and that saddens him, unexplainably so.

She wakes up in the middle of the night, and he knows she's awake and she knows he's awake, but they both ignore it and she doesn't move. She just stiffens in his arms—he couldn't help wrapping them around her while she was sleeping—and their eyes are both wide open, staring into the darkness, but he can't see anything except her and he has this strange feeling that she's the same way. She feels warm, which is odd because even now he still feels so damn cold. Still, he's warmer than he's ever been, just with her in his arms, which maybe has to count for something. It's got to, doesn't it? No matter what anyone else thinks, it does anyway.

"Hey, Mom, I just met up with someone back from McKinley," Sam says into his phone, directly to his mom's voicemail. "We're going on a little trip for a get-together, a reunion, I guess. We're gonna talk. I might be home late. Who knows. I think maybe I'll just head over to Josh's house after and crash at his place. But I promise I'll be back home in the morning, probably before you get up. Don't be surprised if I don't call back again later. Love you. Bye."

He hangs up, and Quinn raises a delicate, beautiful blond eyebrow at him. "Who's Josh?" she asks the most obvious question.

"Guy on the local football team."

"Did you join?"

"Yeah. Working my way back up to quarterback. I might make it to replacement if the guy who's in the position, like, breaks his leg or something, but, otherwise? No way. The town loves the guy."

She smiles, and he remembers what it was like when they could have actual conversations.

"Let's get to that hotel," he offers, and she just nods, her smile still perfect and in place.

The morning is awkward. Well, perhaps not quite as awkward as it should be. They both get up at the same time—synchronized so well that Sam wonders how perfect they would have been together, waking up and living together and loving together and sometimes fighting but always making up (while making out)—and dress in the same clothes as the night before. Sleeping naked—or rather, trying to sleep (while naked)—with her wasn't as hard or as uncomfortable as he had thought it would be. The night was long and dark and he's pretty sure he felt a few tears on his bare chest a few times, but it was worth it to know that she could feel his heart beating underneath her hair, and to feel her waist underneath his hands wrapped around her, fingers intertwined tightly so he could hold her closer and trap her in his arms tighter and more urgently and passionately. It was worth it to be with her just one last time.

(He doesn't want it to be the last time, and he can tell that she doesn't either. But fate doesn't care. Neither does forgiveness and forgetfulness. Because he can't forgive and she can't forget.)

He drives her back to the bus station in the little car that his grandmother gave him for a hundred bucks. She doesn't complain about the cramped lack of space in the tiny vehicle, and they don't speak. At all. Literally. Not one word.

They get out of the car together, because he just has to say goodbye to her.

It occurs to him that he just lost his virginity to his first love. To Quinn. To Quinn. It's almost like a bombshell, except he's so emotionless right now. Yet at the same time, feelings are growing and expanding within him. He's numb and yet still bursting with feelings. How is that possible? He can barely feel the bombshell, but the way that she lays her hand over his electrifies him nevertheless. She's the only thing that ever really wakes him up.

The ultimate paradox. Maybe it's love in general, or maybe it's just them. No matter how many times Rachel called them Barbie and Ken, they were never really quite as conventional as everybody claimed. No one saw that he held her through her occasional panic attacks, and that she tutored him through his dyslexia, and that he would push her swing at the park or throw her over his shoulder just to hear her scream and laugh, and that she kissed him after one of his nightmares, and that he respected her decision not to have sex and vice versa, and that she told him that she never even liked Justin Bieber before he sang it, and that then, afterwards, she loved it (her own special way of saying that she loved him).

No one saw the way that they really truly loved each other.

(He once told her that she was his first real kiss that wasn't the product of Truth or Dare. His first French kiss. His first love. And that he wanted her to be his first everything. He blushed as he said it and she smiled and kissed him and said yes, eventually. Now it's really happened. And he loves it and loves her, but he can't voice either of those feelings. He can't voice any of them.)

The bus pulls up a mere five minutes after they have (five minutes of near silence, aside from her rustling around to find her purse), and she turns to him. "I guess this is goodbye, then," she says, the cliché spoken in practically all romantic films echoing in his head dismally with her beautiful voice speaking the oft-said words. He hates goodbyes, but always most especially from her.

She looks messy but beautiful. Her hair is in a short, wispy ponytail, and he's reminded of the first time that they met, with a slushie and Avatar and a song and breadsticks and a first gentle kiss, then several hotter and heavier and more passionate ones. Her eyes are tired but bright, as though he's saved her from something when all that he really did was have sex with her. Her hair is messy and uncombed, but beautiful. Her white tank top is just a little rumpled, but it looks natural and cute on her. And her dark blue jeans…he swallows, and realizes that she expects him to say something back to her.

"Yeah, I guess it is," he rejoins.

"Maybe I'll come back to visit again?" she asks. He knows what she really means. Maybe sex, maybe not. Maybe they'll just talk out their problems all night long next time. Maybe they won't sleep all night, they'll just work the whole thing out with words and explanations and maybe they'll both finally forgive and forget. (Unlikely, but he dares to dream. He can't help it, most of the time.)

He smiles for the first time since they both tried to go to sleep, since they had sex. "Yeah. I'd like that."

"I would too," she murmurs, blushing a little. He still thinks that that looks adorable on her, even though he's the one that's more prone to blushing.

"Goodbye," he says quietly, then grabs at her free hand, not weighted down by her heavy purse, and brings it up to his lips softly (for just one second, he promises himself, but he always breaks his promises, whether it's over a ring and a girl or over a hand and a goodbye, and this time he can't just let her go that quickly and that wordlessly). "I'll see you," he breathes, his lips still just barely touching her hand. She shudders and he pretends not to notice her shivering uncontrollably. Her hand is trembling, but then, so is his. He can feel his entire body shaking, wanting some kind of (not quite silent) release like last night with her, but he tries to hide it with another kiss to the back of her hand.

She blushes again once he releases her hand. "Goodbye," she says tenderly, then leans forward to give him one last kiss.

It's soft but sweet, and just a little desperate but not quite so much as last night. They're both satiated for now—well, not satiated, but well off enough to be partly content for now. Next time. Next time they will touch and kiss and sigh and forget their own names, and only remember the other.

He promises to call her (but later, he never does, and she doesn't call him either so maybe...oh, who knows?).

So she gets on her bus with a wave of goodbye, a final wave, and he waves back and thinks that maybe everything will be okay.

He's forgotten all about Mercedes. Oddly enough, though, he doesn't feel that guilty about it. He can't find the heart to be.

He hears from Finn and Rachel during their little visit to his workplace that Quinn has gone totally berserk and dyed her hair pink and gotten tattoos. He wonders if it's because he never called. Maybe she thinks that he gave up on her?

Time passes. He goes back to McKinley and they act as if nothing ever happened, but he feels the heat in her touch when she accidentally(-on-purpose?) brushes his leg with her high heel or as their hands touch. There's a spark in there of some sort.

He pursues Mercedes because that's what's expected of him. She wants him to pursue her, despite Shane. But that doesn't make him happy, and it definitely doesn't stop him from giving Joe a little grownup sex talk to scare him off from Quinn. Because God knows the guy's too Christian and young and naive to actually pluck up the courage to do it with her before marriage, and despite how much Quinn is devoted to God, she wouldn't last all the way. She's a passionate person. Besides, she deserves better.

Lame excuses (all save the last one, which is true), but he needs to scare Joe away from Quinn. He has to, for his own personal reasons that he does not want to get into, thank you very much. And it works. They graduate, and they hug but then pretend not to care about the sparks that they feel when their palms touch and fingers grasp and bodies collide and sparks fly.

They get together sometimes on lonely nights in hotels that summer before college, and make each other scream and weep and beg and laugh and want. There's only a pulsing, paining need for each other, an unshakable, irresistible, insatiable desire to touch and know and remember and feel.

But then she goes to Yale, and he goes to a local community college because he can't afford anything else at the moment, and they don't see each other for a very long long time.

It's years before they see each other again, much less try the dating game again with each other. She comes back to Lima from New Haven for Tina and Mike's wedding, and they end up being paired off as bridesmaid and usher. They perform together as a whole glee club for the first time in years. Sam and Quinn sing a short duet solo together, and it sounds amazing, as always. They sound amazing. (They should. They've been synchronizing their screams for what seems like years now, even though it's been a while since then—nevertheless, they should still be able to at least nail a song.)

He kisses her in the middle of a dance during the reception—black and purple are the official colors, all Tina's idea and Mike's agreement, of course, and he can't help but think that she looks lovely in her dark purple strapless gown—and she doesn't protest. So he kisses her some more. She kisses back, to his surprise and their mutual delight.

It's been a long time, but the spark is still there. (It never left.)

Yes, maybe she cheated on him, and maybe he never listened to her side of the story. Maybe he helped Mercedes cheat on Shane for a time, and maybe Quinn gave him the silent treatment for most of their friendship-like...thing. (He doesn't know if it really was friendship after they broke up. It definitely wasn't fuck buddies. It was more emotional and raw and urgent than that, to be honest.) Maybe he never called her after that first time, or after all of the other times.

Maybe they're beyond caring about all of their past mistakes.

Time to live in the now. Because, no matter what they sang so very very long ago, now is the time of their lives.

"I've had the time of my life, and I never felt this way before," he whispers in her ear, following along his thoughts of their old duet together, completely contradicting the song playing overhead, which is slow and lovey-dovey but still kind of them in a different way from "Time of My Life". He catches a glimpse of Mike twirling Tina around, and they're both laughing as she spins. He catches his breath, because he finally realizes that he wants that with her. With Quinn. No, never mind, he absolutely purely needs that with her. To be with her. To have her. To let her own him unashamedly. To say those vows and to dance at their wedding. To be happy. He's been praying for it all along, but he never knew it.

She laughs. "And I swear, this is true, I owe it all to you," she breathes back into his ear, and he tries to control a shiver. And suddenly, he knows. That she wants that with them, too. And this time, nothing is stopping them, absolutely nothing is holding them back.

He kisses her again, and everything seems better than it ever has before.

They reach the hotel while it's just barely getting dark. Checking in is easy—it's the kind of sleazy but still mostly clean kind of place that doesn't have cockroaches but also doesn't ask for IDs.

They talk for a while about McKinley and how flamboyant Rachel is and how irritating Finn can be, and then, suddenly, she kisses him in the middle of her sentence, like one of the rude interruptions he would provide back when they were dating (then they would get into it, then she would pull back and slap him playfully on the arm and go back to whatever it was she was saying). It's passionate and hard and angry and raw, and urgent. She needs him.

Well, he needs her, too.

They find themselves on the hotel bed, and her fingers are pulling his shirt over his head and tracing over his abs, and his hands are busy unbuttoning her jeans and undoing her bra from the front (damn aggravating contraptions, but so worth it).

He finds a thought echoing in his head, choking out all other notions, even though he knows that this night means nothing, even though this may never happen again, even though they're over (but not now, not ever, not really, because they're Sam&Quinn, inseparable, like Tina and Mike or Brittany and Santana). He thought it once long ago, and he's shocked to find himself still thinking it now: He, Sam Evans, is going to marry this girl, Quinn Fabray, some day.

And he does.

(Kissing her, he finds that he's never been this glad.)

That's just as true on their wedding day. She's never tasted sweeter, but then again, he's truly broken all boundaries. He's really never been this happy.

A/N: Do you see that awesome little blue button there? Click it. I dare you. You see, this button leads to an awesome little world where you can make one little inconsequential writer, moi, very very VERY happy. Can you please do so? Said writer is quite poor and cannot afford her own reviews. I require donations.