A/N: This scene ran through my head right after seeing this episode, so I just had to write it out. I've never before given in to the temptation to write in this fandom, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Hope you enjoy!
When the idea struck me, there was nothing I could do to stop myself from going through with it. When she agreed, there was nothing I could do to stop myself from feeling overjoyed. Finally, in an empty Groovy Smoothie, after a horrid night at the dance, to the music playing from T-Bo's radio, I danced with the girl I'd been waiting to dance with for years. Holding her in my arms, feeling her head laid against my chest… it felt… nice. Peaceful. I was… happy.
For a reason unknown to my brain, I let my eyes flutter open for a fraction of a moment. In that second, I saw a sight I was unaccustomed to seeing. Sam, dressed in a colorful dress and golden jacket, hair let loose as usual, wore a frown on her face. Suddenly I realized that Sam had never shown up to the dance. Occupied as I was with Magic Malika and Attention Austin (who I am sure had stolen Carly's attention in a not-so-pleasant way as well), I hadn't really noticed. Between that realization and the look on her face, I instantly felt a weight drop in my stomach.
As much as I wanted to keep dancing with Carly, something kept tugging harder and harder within me with each passing second. Before the song even ended, I pulled away. Looking Carly in the eye, internally flinching at the confused expression she carried, I did the only thing I could.
I lied.
"I'm sorry," I told her quickly. That part wasn't completely a lie. "But I really have to go. I, uh, left something at – at the dance, and it's very important, and I just have to go get it, okay?"
Reaching the door before she got to finish responding, I bit my lip as I looked over my shoulder to see her awkwardly standing there, all alone on the floor of the store. But the little rock of guilt that hit me then didn't even compare to that which crashed when I saw Sam through the window, so I continued on out the door.
Only a few seconds had passed by the time I reached the doorway, but Sam was no where in sight. Running in the direction she had been headed as she left the window, I turned down the street that led to the supermarket. Sam seemed upset, and Sam upset led to the digestion of food, usually meat, and typically ham more specifically. Still sprinting as fast as I could, I slid in order to slow down a bit and take the turn down the bread isle, heading towards the deli.
Right in front of the counter, ripping off various packages of prepared slices of meat with fervor, stood Sam. When I called her name, she spun around to look my direction, and I saw her face. Instinctively, I wanted to cringe and run away as fast as I could, her expression screamed that she was that angry. But it was the tell-tale signs of almost tears in her eyes that stilled me in place.
Of course, she chose to ignore me, shoving her way past me, most likely with the intent of paying for her comfort food at the check out stations and retreating home. Being me, I disrupted her plans, sticking out my arm to bar her way. On second thought, that probably wasn't a good idea.
"Move it, Benson," she growled, sending me killer glares.
"What's wrong with you?" I blurted out.
"Nothing, Frednerd," she snapped. "What's wrong with you?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked in confusion. Already I was wondering why I was here, confronting a crazy girl in a supermarket rather than dancing with a perfect girl in a smoothie shop.
"Why are you here, idiot?" she shot, trying once more to push past me. I must have been optimistic about my new-found strength, or outrageously masochistic at the time, because I held my arm in place. Fortunately for me, she didn't send me to the ground as usual, which only added to my worries. If Sam wasn't feeling up to shoving me out of her way, something was seriously wrong.
"I saw you in the window," I explained calmly. "You looked upset."
"And you ditched your precious Carly?" she sneered. "Love doesn't mean what it used to anymore."
"Shut up, Puckett!" I replied loudly, getting riled up. Just because I left Carly at Groovy Smoothie didn't mean I still didn't love her. I just cared about Sam, too, in a weird sort of friends kind of way. "I was worried about you and still you insist on doing nothing but insult me!"
"Why worry about me?" she shouted. "You finally notice that I didn't show up to the dance, geek?"
"I told you!" I exclaimed, getting frustrated with the girl already. "You looked upset!"
"Why would I be upset that you were dancing with Carly?" she scoffed, looking at me like I was the biggest loser on the planet, which, by her standards, I guess I was.
"I was more thinking about…" I started to reply, meaning to explain how I had just thought of how she hadn't shown up at the dance (I didn't know how else to explain the guilt. After all, what else could it have been for?). Then I started thinking. When I saw Sam through the window, she looked more than upset; she looked jealous. She was jealous that I had been dancing with Carly! A grin slid across my face. "You were jealous," I proclaimed, tilting my head as I look at her. That grin I couldn't seem to get rid of had yet to leave.
"I was not!" she yelled, throwing a container of ham at me. "Take it back!"
If she had rolled her eyes and shot me a 'whatever,' I might have been shaken from my belief that the blonde had been filled with jealousy at the sight of me dancing with Carly. But she didn't, so I knew I was right.
"You were!" I rebutted, raising an arm to block the onslaught of sliced deli meat. Of course, quite a number of them hit their mark anyway. "Sam is jealous, Sam is jealous!" I taunted, getting up in her face. A huge block of cheddar cheese hit me on the side of my head and I fell to the side. Why do they sell such freaking gigantic blocks of cheddar cheese? It must have been ten pounds of the stuff!
Taking advantage of the fact that I was already on the ground, Sam picked up a long stick of salami and started beating me with it. "Take it back!" she demanded. I cowered and twisted in an effort to avoid getting maimed until I remembered how I had been able to pin down Carly the other day. Time to test just how much stronger I had gotten.
Grabbing hold of her shoulders, I yanked Sam sideways. When she slammed into the ground with a thunk, we struggled for a good thirty seconds, twisting and yanking and turning and shouting and pushing and shoving until I somehow managed to pin her down on the floor. By the look on her face, I think I mostly won due to her surprise that I could put up any kind of fight at all.
"Admit it, Puckett," I commanded, still grinning at her even though I was huffing and puffing as I strived to recapture my breath. I couldn't get over the fact that I was right, I just felt it.
Before I knew what was happening, she twisted me back onto the floor, trapping my arms above me. Sending me a grin of her own, she replied, "Nothing to admit."
Trying my hardest to ignore the position I was in, I decided to play along. Kind of. "Fine. If you weren't jealous, then why were you so upset?"
Scowling, Sam surprised me as she sat up straight, releasing my arms. When she stood up and turned away from me, I simply waited for her answer as I got to my feet. "I was just upset, okay?" she finally responded a moment later. "It's none of your business."
Again that strange sense of feeling sorry for her encompassed me, so I gently laid a hand on her shoulder and guided her to turn around. "C'mon, Sam, it's just me."
Sighing heavily, she gave me a half-hearted glare as she shrugged off my hand.
"Did something happen with Gibby?" I pushed ever so slightly, trying to encourage her into spilling her tale. At her not-amused laugh, I knew I had hit the mark.
"You can say that," she responded sarcastically. A few seconds later, she continued. "It's just… when I got to there, Gibby had a girl over."
Immediately, I was confused. "Was he being tutored or something?" I asked, eyebrows crunched together.
"She was his date," she explained. My eyes widened.
"Was she…?" I began.
"Hot?" she finished. Before I could nod, she replied, "Oh, yeah."
I sputtered, not knowing how to respond to such news. Gibby was dating some hot girl? Some hot girl was dating Gibby?
"No wonder he turned you down," I remarked, earning another package of turkey to the chest.
"Shove it, Fredanna," she warned darkly.
"So I guess that would do it, huh?" I commented to Sam, leaning against the bottom portion of the isle where they stored the cheeses. Other than being kind of cold, it was a good resting spot. Sam scoffed as she joined me.
"I guess. It's just… I mean, Gibby has a girl interested in him, Carly has over seven hundred guys interested in her, and even you had three girls ask you to that stupid dance!" she exclaimed, flaying her arms out. My initial response was to be offended (what was wrong with girls being interested in me?), but the frown on her face wouldn't let me.
"Don't think it's that great," I replied, hoping to somehow cheer her up. "My date was horrible. The magic junk was really starting to get on my nerves."
Like usual Sam, she snorted in amusement at my pain, which for some reason brought a soft smile to my face. Then she spoke again, and it was again in that serious, mopey tone. "At least you actually got to do something," she grumbled.
"You could have come without a date," I told her. "The three of us might have actually had some fun."
"I didn't want to be a fifth wheel," she admitted.
"In a situation like that, you would have been a fifth wheel to the rescue," I confided. No amusement from her this time though. "So what did you do?"
"Oh, the usual depress fest," she replied with a shrug. "Pigged out on fatcakes." She laughed a cold, humorless laugh. "Way to get a guy, eh?"
"Whatever," I replied with a roll of my eyes. "Any guy would be lucky to have you." She gave me a questioning look. "Well, as long as you don't beat them up and threaten them daily and maybe treat them with respect and all."
This time a real laugh escaped her mouth. "What? Turn into a softie? Might as well be Carly."
"Even as a softie, you'd still be Sam," I assured her. When she started picking at her nails, I knew that what I said had some sort of affect that I wasn't what I had been aiming for. Suddenly, I felt awkward, which was even more strange when I realized I had no idea whether or not Sam thought it was awkward.
Out of the blue, she spoke again. "Thanks."
When I heard that word, I wasn't sure if I had been hallucinating. After all, Sam doesn't apologize to anyone unless under the threat of Carly taking away her meat. Then, she continued. "I know you had to leave dancing with Carly to come talk to me, but… yeah."
"It wasn't like that," I insisted, even though I wished it had been. "We were just dancing since we never had any fun dances while at the actual dance."
"Oh," she responded. "That's… nice."
The awkward silence came back for a visit again, and this time I knew that both of us felt it.
"At least you actually got to dance," Sam remarked with a quick, harsh laugh, breaking us free from the uncomfortable sounds of nothing but the music the supermarket seemed to always play.
When the idea struck me, there was nothing I could do to convince myself to not go through with it. I turn to look at her.
"Hey, don't you think you ought to at least…" I trailed off, trying to both ignore her quizzical glance and finish communicating my question without having to actually say the words. Half a second later, when she realized what I was asking, she propped an eyebrow up.
"With you?" she asked, in a tone that wondered if I had gone insane. Maybe I had. Being around Samantha Puckett seemed to do that to me.
"Well, you could dance with an invisible partner, but that would pretty much be the only choice besides me," I remarked. We both seemed to smile at the same time, and I had the feeling that the shine in her eyes was reflected in my own.
Still, when she agreed, there was nothing I could do to stop myself from feeling surprised.
Standing up straight and moving away from the isle, I offered her my hand. She looked at me with an expression on her face that revealed on uneasy she felt. Deciding to go ahead and jump into the fray, I pulled her closer, wrapping my arms around her waist. Slowly, reluctantly I'm guessing, she laid a hand on my shoulder. After a few moments of shifting from one foot to the next with the beat of the soft slow song playing from the ceiling, she replaced her hand on my chest with her head.
And following a bizarre sequence of events, in an empty supermarket, after a horrid night at the dance, to the music playing from a radio emitting from the ceiling, I danced with the girl I'd hated for years. Holding her in my arms, feeling her head laid against my chest… it felt… wonderful. Amazing. I was… in heaven.
After another few moments, I was in pain.
"Ouch! Sam, that was my foot!" I whined, opening my eyes to glare at her smiling face, which she had turned up to look at me.
"I know, I did step on it," she replied with shining eyes.
At least some things didn't change.
But as I rolled my eyes and gave into the ridiculous smile that fought for possession of my face before resuming our dance, I thought that maybe – just maybe – others did.