Week 12

Sam

Even more than he loves to watch Quinn read, Sam enjoys watching her sleep.

He's always been a bit of an early bird, not to the degree where he's up and showered by 5 a.m., but just someone who seems to be the first to wake up. When his family lived in the motel, when it was him, Stacy, and Stevie all crammed in one bed, Sam would wake up to find one sibling on each side, curled into him for warmth and comfort, the susurration of his family's breathing echoing like the rush of the ocean in the small room.

Anyway, he is usually awake before Quinn is, even with her morning sickness. At some point during the night, she rolled over to face him, and their noses are less than a millimeter apart on the pillow. He admires the contrast of her long, dark eyelashes against the creamy skin of her cheek, the rosy tint to her cheeks, the way her lips are slightly parted.

Sam traces the familiar, beloved planes of her face with his fingertips, completely enamored all over again by the fact that this is his wife, even though she could have had anybody else. He was the one she'd walked toward in that spectacular white dress—which looked, he thinks, even more amazing on the floor of their honeymoon suite.

His own father, Quinn's now father-in-law, had walked her down the aisle, as she hasn't spoken to Russell Fabray in seven years. There are pictures of Quinn and Dwight in the vestibule, the older man making her laugh—or maybe just engendering laughter—with the Matthew McConaughey impression that is only a hair better than his son's, but in his memory, as the two of them approach, Sam can only see her.

Dwight had placed Quinn's hand in Sam's, and he could smell her perfume, which is as distinct now in recollection as it was a little over a year ago. She was trembling, and he squeezed her hands tightly, eliciting a squeeze in return. "Love you," he mouthed, and she laughed, mouthing back, "I know."

The minister had been young, maybe mid-thirties, and had borne a remarkable if not slightly disturbing resemblance to Mr. Schuester. Every now and then, when Sam dreams about the wedding, the minister is Schue, and sometimes gives them an assignment of finding a perfect song for a wedding ceremony.

In one of these dreams, Sam had performed Poker Face, and woke up feeling oddly guilty.

When he'd kissed Quinn for the first time as his wife, it was like he had swallowed the sun—more than warmth, he felt truly golden, as if surely his happiness must be flooding from his every pore in the most amazing light.

She looks like Sleeping beauty now, her thick blonde hair spread like a shawl around her head, that lovely, rounding body wrapped up cozily in their comforter. Sam brushes his fingers down the slope of her throat, coming back up to admire her jaw with the pad of his thumb.

He knows she's awake when she pretends to bite him as his fingertips traverse up to her mouth. "Good morning, beautiful," he says, and she, probably no more than half joking, growls at him.

Sam slides his hand under the blanket, pressing his palm gently to Quinn's stomach, which has just begun to curve. "And good morning to you, Fiona."

Quinn's nose wrinkles. She still hasn't opened her eyes yet. "No."

Every morning, Sam says good morning to their baby, and gives it a name, alternating between those traditionally used for a boy and those traditionally used for a girl. Sometimes, he attempts unisex names—Bailey, Payton, Taylor—but Quinn almost always vetoes those.

The ones that make her smile have been diligently written down on a notepad Sam has taken to keeping in his beside drawer. So far, there is:

Amelia.

Liam.

Charlotte.

Aidan.

Sophie.

Ferris (for her favorite movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off).

And Julie or Julia.

"Aw, why not?" he says, mentally crossing Fiona off the list.

"Fiona was the name of the ogre-wife in Shrek."

"Yeah. And also that singer from the nineties, the one you like…Fiona Apple."

"I wouldn't be thinking of her. I'd be thinking of Mrs. Shrek."

At this moment, Quinn's eyes finally snap open, and she rolls out of bed, not even bothering to rise form a half-crouch, scuttling for the bathroom. He hears the raw, wet sound of her retching and his stomach curls, not from nausea of his own but from sympathy. Following her, he carefully gathers her hair at the nape of her neck with one hand and rubs her back with the other.

"Mmmph," she groans, and when she lifts her head, he moves away from her to wet a wash cloth in the sink and hands it to her.

She wipes her mouth and he helps her to her feet so she can rinse her mouth out and brush her teeth. Quinn half-smiles at him around the tooth brush.

"Oo don'alf to ov-hur."

He cracks up, and waits for her to spit and rinse before he says, "What was that, babe?"

Quinn sticks her tongue out at him and then answers, "I said, you don't have to hover."

Sam can't help it. Even after six years together, one year of marriage, self-doubt still sweeps through his stomach like a torrential downpour. "Do you, uh, want me to go?"

She sighs, and leans forward for a freshly minty kiss. "Baby, no. But it's still early. You should go back to bed."

"You should go back to bed," Sam counters, swinging her into his arms as carefully as he can, and she sighs, tucking her head against his shoulder like a bird against its wings. "I have work."

Once he has her settled in bed with a cup of tea and a book, he leaves the house, wincing at the blast of heat that assaults him as he opens the door. Even in Connecticut, mid-August isn't exactly a fair weather time of the year.

They live in a nice but simple two-story brick house just outside of New Haven, where they both work, Quinn at the New Haven Theater Company and Sam at his own comic book store, the Evansger's Tower.

The Tower, as most people usually call it, obviously isn't a tower at all, although that would be completely awesome. It's one room, but not small, divided into two parts by the counter where the cash register and action figures are, and where Sam, or one of his three part-time employees, helps people.

As someone who has loved comics all his life, running his very own store is a dream come true for Sam. He loves being surrounded by people who are just as enthusiastic about them as he is, loves seeing a customer's face when they find an issue they've been looking for or one they never even knew existed. He's especially touched when a kid will run up to the counter to show him, as if he doesn't already know what's in stock, because they are just so excited that they have to spread the feeling around.

He unlocks the grille that protects the storefront at night, and then the front door, propping it open to allow any breeze that may come up to enter the store. Sam has just taken up his post behind the counter when his cell phone vibrates against his hip.

Checking the caller ID, Sam raises an eyebrow and answers it. "Hey, Dad. What's up?"

"Hey, Sammy," Dwight Evans says, his voice a little too loud as usual, because somehow he still doesn't grasp that you don't need to compensate for how small the phone is by yelling into it. "Your mom and I just wanted to invite you and our daughter-in-law over for dinner. Your brother and sister miss you guys."

Sam grins at the use of the title instead of Quinn's name. It's how Dwight refers to her when he thinks they've been away too long.

Almost immediately after they got married, Quinn and Sam's mother, Mary, began talking about the Evans moving to Connecticut to be with them. Sam remembers Quinn researching school districts for Stevie and Stacy, job openings for his parents. Sam found it endearing, until she told him why, at which point it broke his heart just a little.

"I've never really had a family before," she said, looking at him over the top of that gigantic laptop she has. "It's nice. I want them closer."

Now, Sam says, "I'll have to ask Quinn, but I'm sure we'll be there."

"How's she doing?" asks Dwight. "Is she showing yet?"

"Yep," Sam answers blissfully, thinking of the gently rounded stomach that is just barely visible beneath Quinn's shirts. "A little bit, but it's—"

"Beautiful, huh?"

He closes his eyes, pictures his wife, wearing one of his t-shirts and not much else, her burgeoning belly evident just beneath the symbol of Captain America's shield.

"Yeah," he says. "Beautiful."

/

Week 12

Quinn

"Let me see you, let me see you!"

As soon as they're in the door, Mary Evans crushes Quinn to her chest, hugging her so tightly that she expels the air from her lungs. Her arms flail weakly before they land around her mother-in-law's waist.

"Mom," Sam's laughing voice floats over Quinn's shoulder. "Give her some air, why don't you?"

"Oh," huffs Mary impatiently, but sets her back by the shoulders to get a good look at her. "Oh, honey, you look absolutely wonderful. You have that glow."

She feels Sam's arms wrap around her waist from behind and he drops a kiss onto her cheek. "I told you it wasn't just me," he teases, and she pretends to dig an elbow into his stomach.

Down the hall, a door slams, and there's a muffled rat-tat-tat of running feet on carpet. Stacy screams and Sam yells back, and Mary tugs Quinn safely out of the way as Stacy hurtles toward Sam, her twin brother following at a statelier sprint.

This is one of the things she adores most about Sam—not just the love he has for his family, but particularly the way he treats his siblings. She remembers helping him babysit in the motel, how he would pick Stevie up and tuck him under his arm like a football, running him around the room so he could feel like he's Superman; and how he let Stacy use his hair to learn how to do a French braid as Quinn braided hers.

Sam drops to one knee to squeeze Stacy as tightly as he can, and she has her arms wound so tightly around his neck that they look as though they're fused together. Behind her, Stevie peers shyly up at Quinn, and she smiles at him.

At six, he and Sam favored each other. Now, at twelve, going through his first growth spurt, his palms and shoulders broadening, the resemblance is so striking that it honestly looks as though someone shrunk Sam.

It makes her wonder how their baby will look. She's been picturing a child that's almost all Sam, especially his eyes, that endearing mouth of his, with a few hints of her—the eyelashes that people fawn over, the eyebrows that for some reason earn her compliments, the cheekbones that she was proud of once she unearthed them from Lucy Caboosey's face.

Mary takes her by the hand as they head for the dining room, and it feels incredibly natural, as if she's been a part of this family all her life. "How's the morning sickness?" Mary asks. "It's not too awful, is it?"

"It's getting a little better," Quinn says, squishing her mouth up. "I still can't be in the kitchen when Sam cooks, you know, because the smells are too strong—"

Dwight's voice drifts down the hall, playfully incredulous. "Sweet girl, if you're letting my son cook, strong smells are the least of your worries."

"Thanks, Dad."

"Good boy you are, but a culinary artiste, you are not."

"Don't pull a Yoda on me when you're being insulting."

"Right, sorry."

Winking at Quinn, Mary sighs, "Our boys are a couple pieces of work, aren't they?"

"That they are," Quinn agrees, and Sam sticks his tongue out at her.

She blows him a kiss.