Inspiration
Senior year, spring break, a PS2 hooked up to a movie screen and surround sound. What could possibly get any better?
"Popcorn!" Tucker yelled as he dove back into his lounge with a full bucket, complete with extra butter and practically no salt.
Danny snorted. "That's so not going to help you beat me, Tucker. I am the god of this game."
Tucker laughed as he tossed a handful of kernels into his mouth and wiped his fingers off on his pants. "You say that, Danny. And yet I still beat you three out of five times."
"That's because you cheat. Cheat codes are cheating, and I can't cheat."
Sam shot an exasperated glance at Danny, her laptop momentarily forgotten as her fingers rested on the keys. "Danny, I'm not sure about it, but I really don't think Clockwork meant no cheat codes when you made the promise to your family."
She heard a snort, then a groan as Danny's car died a fiery death against one of the game controlled cars with a room shaking boom. With a sigh she turned her attention back to her laptop, scanning over what she'd written and biting back the urge to toss the evil machine across the room in frustration. A glance at the clock behind the popcorn and soda machines confirmed that she had been trying to get something worthwhile written for hours now, and it was pushing two a.m.
"Sam, cut it out," Tucker muttered as his fingers flew across his controller and Danny shouted out a desperate, "No!"
"Boys," she muttered and tapped her fingers across the keyboard again. Then hit the delete again and butchered the last three paragraphs she'd written.
"I'm going to kill you, Tucker," she heard Danny say quite clearly, and then he whooped and jumped up, dancing around as his car crossed the finish line ahead of Tucker's. "Go, Danny, go Danny!" he sang out as Tucker buried his face in his hands.
"Cheat codes and cheat codes and he still beats me," Tucker muttered from between his fingers, and Sam laughed loudly as she closed her laptop.
"I told you I was the god of this game," Danny said as he grabbed his cup up and headed back to the soda machine to refill it. Without asking he grabbed Sam's from where it sat next to her, taking it with him. "What do you want, Sam?" he called over his shoulder as he pressed the button for his.
"Surprise me," she shot back as she got up and plopped herself in Danny's chair, stole Tucker's popcorn and opened her laptop again. With an evil smile she wiped her now buttery fingers off on Tucker's pants, ignoring his protests, and let her fingers dance across the keys again before clenching them into tight fists. "Damned evil little bastards," she groused as she poked the delete button.
Again.
Tucker glanced at her with a raised eyebrow as Danny dragged himself back to the fun and draped himself over the back of the chair that had been his. "What's the problem?" he asked as he reached to turn the laptop to him so that he could read it.
"Don't you dare!" Sam growled as she snapped the laptop back closed on Danny's fingers.
He saved himself at the last second by turning his entire hand intangible and yanked it back, sending her a hurt look as he examined them closely to make sure she hadn't actually managed to get them. "That was mean," he said with a faint pout, and Sam sighed.
"You know better than to touch," she said, and immediately flushed pink and looked away.
Tucker laughed as Danny turned red, and he dug his PDA out from under the game books and discarded games and movies around him, snapping a picture before they could tell him not to. "Talk about double entendres," he said.
"Tucker," they said to him warningly. He only smiled.
Danny turned back to Sam and gave her his best smile. "What's the problem? You've been complaining and muttering and cursing all night. I think I even heard you threaten to send your laptop through a shredder once."
She sighed and grimaced, arching her back and stretching. "I'm having some issues. It's not coming along like I wanted it to."
Danny glanced at Tucker. "We could help," he offered. "What's it about this time?"
She scowled at him. "You know I don't share my plots until I'm done."
And it was true. She'd been writing short stories for two years now, a hobby that had started when she took a creative writing class in their sophomore year. A productive one that had led her to running the literary magazine. Which had wound up with her nearly getting suspended for trying to nix anything that wasn't dark and depressing.
She'd given in at the point because she'd realized that as the only resident goth at Casper High, she wasn't going to be able to fill the damned thing up on her own.
Tucker shrugged. "Can't help you unless you share." And then he shuddered back into his seat at the positively gleeful smile on Sam's face. The smile that Danny couldn't see.
"Come on, Sam. I just want to help," he said, still oblivious to the evil delight on Sam's face. "Let me help you out? I'll do anything."
And then it was Danny's turn to be afraid, very afraid, as Sam shifted and looked up at him. "Really?" she asked sweetly, and he immediately started having second thoughts.
"Umm, yes?" He winced as Tucker's eyes widened and added defensively, "I said I would!"
"No," Tucker yelped. "You said we would!"
"Yes, you did," Sam said pointedly to Danny with a pleased smile. "And I'm going to hold you to it. Both of you."
Tucker grimaced. "I didn't volunteer."
"Don't you want to help me?" Sam said sweetly.
Tucker sighed, his shoulders dropping as he gave in. "Fine, sure. I'll help you."
"Great!" she said happily. "You two can make out for me."
As expected, both boys jumped away from her and each other, Danny turning brick red and Tucker shaking his head wildly. "I said help," Tucker almost yelled. "I'm not pimping myself out to Danny just for you!"
Danny turned even more red. "You'd pimp yourself out to me for something more than Sam?" he choked out as Sam collapsed in hysterical laughter on the chair, laptop forgotten and story completely dead in the water as she pictured the two boys trying to make out in their present states.
"Oh no, don't turn this around on me, lover boy!" Tucker said with a groan. "You volunteered us; I had nothing to do with this."
And Sam shot upright and dug around in the pocket of her jeans, finally pulling out a slim black wallet. She flipped it open and tugged out a twenty, holding it up to Tucker and saying, "I can pay."
"Hey!" Danny protested. "You're not going to offer me money?"
Sam shook her head. "You said you'd do anything. You don't get paid. Tucker, now he gets paid."
"Bribed is more like it," Danny muttered as he kicked at the lounge.
Tucker flashed Sam a grin. "For twenty? Not a chance."
She dug back in and produced another. "Forty?"
"Girl, you don't have enough to buy my lips."
She smirked. "You think?" and she opened the wallet, emptying it onto her lap and counting up nearly four hundred dollars before fanning the green bills out at Tucker. "How about now?"
Tucker sat back and thought about it for a moment. Then he reached out and grabbed the cash, pocketing it and smiling. "I say Danny'd better pucker up."
"I'm not kissing Tucker!" Danny yelled as he moved even further away.
"Come on, Danny. I won't tell anyone," Sam said. "It'll help me, I promise."
Danny shook his head as Tucker hopped the back of his chair. "Come on, Danny. Let's get this over with."
"Money slut!" Danny yelled at Tucker as he ducked away, backing up towards the popcorn machine.
"Yep," Tucker admitted happily as he followed. "Come here."
"I'd rather kiss Sam!" Danny shouted as he turned intangible and dove through Tucker and the chairs, pulling up into a roll on the other side before sprawling as a solid person once again. He flipped over to his feet, hands out to ward Tucker off.
It was then that he caught the considering look on Sam's face. For a moment he wondered whether he should be relieved or worried that she was rethinking her 'boy make-out' theme. Not that he wouldn't like kissing Sam. No, that wasn't it at all, and he phased himself intangible at the thought. He'd been wanting to kiss her for the better part of four years.
Not that he'd tell her. She hadn't really expressed an interest in him beyond friends that he'd seen. And he wasn't going to let his hormones much up the friendship, no matter how attracted to her he was. With a groan he made himself tangible again as Tucker made to head around Sam to him and she popped back up with a thoughtful smile.
"Well," she said as she headed to where he was currently crouched on the ground, ready to run from Tucker again if he needed to. "If that's all you're willing to do, I suppose it'll work."
Tucker grimaced. "Come on. That's good money I'm giving up here."
"You could always share it with Danny. Maybe then he'd make out with you," Sam said as Danny hastily shook his head.
"No," he said quickly. "Trust me, I'd rather be broke than kiss Tucker."
"Fine," Tucker huffed as he yanked the money out of his pocket and handed it to Sam. "But don't expect me to hang around for this." He grabbed his popcorn and, with a careful thumbs up at Sam, headed up the stairs complaining loudly.
"Uh, yeah," Danny said. "It's safe again."
Sam laughed as Danny came up from his crouch and sank back into one of the lounges, following him into the neighboring one. "I wasn't really going to make you kiss Tucker."
He rubbed the back of his neck as a flush raced back up his face. "Yeah. Sure."
"You don't really have to do this if you don't want to, Danny," Sam said quietly.
He reached past her, leaning dangerously close to her face as he grabbed her laptop to hold in front of him with an annoyed glare. "I really do," was all he said for along moment. Then, "It's not like I don't want to."
Sam's breath caught in her throat. Despite all of Tucker's reassurances, it was completely different to hear Danny admit that he wanted to kiss her.
"I just don't want it to be about one of your damned stories," he said as he dropped the laptop into Tucker's chair with a scowl.
"It isn't—" Sam started and then was stopped abruptly by Danny's mouth against hers, lips moving in a firm motion as his hands cupped her face, pulling her closer as his thumbs stroked her cheeks. He pulled back for just a moment after the initial kiss, his blue eyes bright and searching into her lilac ones, and he murmured her name before kissing her again, this time his tongue flicking out against her lips, and her mouth parted to let him deepen the kiss with a sigh.
He pulled her across the arm of the chair so that she was sitting on him, legs straddling his as his arms surrounded her tightly. She wasn't doing much better, she realized as her hands slipped through jet black hair like they'd been made to tangle in it. She moaned softly as one hand trailed up the length of her spine, fingers hot against her skin.
Somewhere dimly in her mind she realized that his hands were under her shirt, stroking her sides, fluttering across the skin of her back, nails scraping lightly at her shoulder blades as she writhed against. Her own hands were at his waist, tugging at his shirt and pulling it up until he was letting go of her and allowing her to yank the shirt from over his head and drop it somewhere behind her.
She smiled at him as she lowered her mouth back to his, and this time he groaned as her hands smoothed over his chest, ignoring the scars from his ghost fights in favor of mere touch. Such a simple thing, and a smile curved her lips against his as she felt his flesh go cold suddenly, her eyes opening and Sam leaned back as she realized that Danny's eyes were brilliant green.
His cheeks immediately turned red as he stared up at her, his hands in place exactly where they were beneath her bra, thumbs just barely brushing her breasts. "Uh," he said as he drew them out carefully, as if she'd lop them off at the wrists for having come so close to touching her breasts. "Sorry, Sam," he managed.
And she laughed.
"Oh, Danny," she said, trying to bite off the giggles as she pressed a quick kiss to his lips. She was decidedly smug at his concern, and only smiled wider as his eyes shifted from green back to blue in a lazy swirl of color. "Do you really think that if you were doing something I didn't want you to do, I couldn't have stopped you?"
He bit his lip and laid his hands hesitantly back at her waist. "You could," he admitted, and then smiled up at her.
"So you, ah, don't mind me doing this?" he asked, his fingers flexing against her skin, and she shivered.
"Not in the least," she breathed back, and his eyes slid back into green as cold radiated from him. "I actually was kind of enjoying it."
Danny let his hands roam back up her sides, over her shirt this time, and let his hands slide through her hair as he tugged her face back down to his, kissing her again as she moaned into his mouth. "Sam," he breathed against her throat, and she sighed in reply.
"You want to go to a movie sometime?" he asked as she blinked at him. "I'll understand if you don't want to," he continued on a little faster than her brain was able to keep up with. Then he frowned a little. "Actually, I won't, but do you?"
She laughed and kissed him.
"Is that a yes?" he asked when he could breathe again.
She laughed again. "Yeah, I think that was a yes."
---
Her eyes opened slowly and Sam blinked at the credits for a movie she barely remembered being put on. Another blink and she was poking buttons on her remote, and realized that the movie had been on a loop, and had probably played for hours. She yawned, tried to sit up and stretch, and smiled as she realized that the heavy weight across her was Danny's arm.
"This is definitely my new favorite way of waking up," she said into the silence as she carefully moved his arm from her body back to his.
There was a muffled groan from the lounge next to her and then, "You're a perv, Sam."
She laughed quietly, so she wouldn't wake Danny up. "I wasn't the one chasing Danny around trying to get him to kiss me." She dug back into her pocket and poked the wad of twenties into the blanket, smiling when she felt Tucker's hand grab the money and disappear. "You earned, Tuck."
His head appeared from the far side of the blanket and he yawned widely, blinking. "Damned right," he muttered. "I would have done it for free, you know," he added.
She laughed again and shook her head as she tugged the blanket she and Danny had shared from underneath his head. "No you wouldn't have," she said as she spread it out across them and snuggled back into him, pillowing her head on his chest and closing her eyes on a sleepy smile as his arm came back around her as he slept on.
"You're too mercenary, Tucker."
She heard a grunt. "Damned right."
---
Edited: 09/18/2006.