Comp is still being a butt but I am battling through!
Got another Moment for you today! :D
Disclaimer: Sam/Scam would be front and center in every episode (no lie) if I was the owner of Totally Spies. Sadly, I am not.
.:.34.:.
The Honest Truth
"So what did he say?" Scam asked, impatience in his tone and stress on his handsome features as he rose from his chair upon seeing her return.
"Don't worry ..." Sam smiled assuring him as she closed the door behind her and walked deeper into the total isolation room at WOOHP Headquarters where he was right now; standard protocol for an agent in Tim's current situation.
"Jerry said the effects of Cyril's truth serum will wear off automatically in a few hours."
Tim grumbled to himself under his breath sounding irked at her news as he slid back down in his seat with a heavy sigh. He'd been hoping that Jerry would have been able to have come up with an antidote or something to speed things along but alas.
"So basically I'm stuck here until then," He mumbled crossing his arms over his muscular chest while trying to bottle up the urge to go pay Cyril Hearsay a visit down in his prison cell and punch his lights out for doing this to him.
While Sam had been slapping handcuffs on the villain's wrists thinking their mission to be over, he'd reached into the pocket of his pristine white suit with an evil cackle signalling that he wasn't quite done creating trouble just yet. And in trying to protect his fiancée from whatever Cyril had had hidden there (fearing that it could be a weapon) he'd ended up with truth serum being sprayed right in his face.
Of course Cyril had promptly been hauled off to jail and hadn't had a chance to glean any secrets out of him for his rag paper "Yes Way" but his attack had still left him vulnerable to interrogation from others. Which was why he'd been driven here and put under lock-down to prevent him from accidentally revealing the existence of WOOHP to anyone who wasn't supposed to know about it.
And until he was cleared by Jerry that he was no longer compelled to tell the truth anymore, he wasn't allowed to set foot outside this room.
"What a way to spend a Friday evening," Tim complained trying to blink his aching sea foam eyes to check if the effects were wearing off at all as it had been around two hours with him like this. Finding himself unable to because his pupils were still dilated and his eyelids would not move, he gave up and craned his neck back sighing again in displeasure.
Feeling bad for his predicament and wanting to make him feel better, Sam sat down in the seat across from him and reached over placing her left hand on top of his, the white gold band of her engagement ring gently gliding against his knuckles to soothe him.
"Well at least you won't be alone," she smiled as she promised to stay right here and wait the serum out with him.
But Tim didn't seem too keen on that idea as he shot her a small pointed glance (as much as he could with his eyes stuck wide open) and murmured that as much as he usually enjoyed her company, right now he'd really prefer to just be alone.
A little taken aback at that Sam stared at him for a long moment trying to figure out what his deal was. Why would he say something like that? Why would he want her to go? When they were spending time together, 9 out of 10 times it was usually him who made a fuss when she announced that she had to leave.
Figuring that this had to do with him not being in full control of himself at the moment, being vulnerable in a way that she knew a guy like him who needed total control at all times would hate, she grinned somewhat evilly to herself before putting on a fake innocent look. She took her hand off of his and instead placed it on her chest over her heart and let out a false but dramatic gasp of hurt.
"Tim, are you thinking that I'm going to take advantage of this situation to ask you personal things you'd never want to tell me or something?!"
The slight twitch of his jaw and his gaze slowly lowering to look at the spiral patterns of the dark wood on the table between them was all she needed to know that she was on the right track.
And while she hadn't been considering it before, to be honest ... this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Tim was very, very, verrrrrry protective of his privacy and there were some subjects that he'd never allowed her to question him on despite them being so deeply in love with each other.
But if she were to ask him them right now then he'd have no choice but to answer her. This was an alluring prospect indeed.
Sam stayed silent pondering over whether she should she do this or not and weighing both options. But when she remembered that a side effect of the truth serum was the inability to remember what you blurted out while on it, she couldn't escape the temptation of curiosity and decided that doing this would be harmless so she might as well.
"Have you ever loved any other woman besides me?" Sam asked without giving him a chance to prepare himself.
Tim's eyes flew up to look at her with a betrayed expression and his jaw dropped open at the fact that she was actually going to do this to him. Sam wasn't nearly as much of a goodie two shoes as she pretended to be.
"NO," he replied honestly and firmly, his lips saying the truth even while he himself itched on the inside to make up a fake name of any woman, any Katie, Skylar (1), Brooke, or Rita just to get back at her.
Beaming at his response which confirmed that she was and always had been the only girl in his world, Sam played with the pretty diamond ring on her finger for a second contentedly before asking him something else she'd always wanted to.
She knew she'd crushed on him since first glance when he'd appeared at WOOHP as her hunky, mature, intelligent new boss but whenever she asked Tim about his first impression of her, he always dismissed it shortly by saying that he was too committed to his scheme as Mac Smit to pay any attention to her or her friends like that.
He even went as far as making his statement convincing by alluding to the fact that he hadn't known she'd had a thing for him at all until she'd revealed it to him herself, something he most likely would have picked up on had he been paying any attention to her as she hadn't exactly been being subtle about her interest in him complimenting him at every turn and buying him a present and all.
"What did you think about me when you saw me for the very first time?"
A scowl formed on his face as he shook his head in frustration and proceeded to object that this wasn't fair. He didn't want to answer that question, he whined almost childishly leaving her to giggle in amusement as she walked her fingers up his buff arm and flicked his shoulder in a teasing manner having just a little too much fun right now.
"I'm your fiancée babyyyy, nothing should be off limits to me anywaaay," she reminded him with a wink in a singsong voice before prodding him to answer what she'd asked.
Soon enough he was forced to do so by the drug in his system and through gritted teeth and in an frustrated snarl he admitted that he'd found her to be cute.
Sam's eyes lit up like a kid of Christmas day when she heard that. And regardless of his sour tone and murderous expression as he said it, she felt vindicated as she'd always had a feeling that her crush on him hadn't been quite as one-sided as Tim always claimed. And now she had the truth right from Tim's own mouth. Hah! He had found her attractive too!
Giving herself a mental high five and enjoying this, she spent the next hour continually badgering him with more inquiries about anything and everything she could think of that had been off limits before today:
"How old were you when you had your first kiss?"
"What's the total number of girlfriends you've had in your life including me?"
"Are you really not ticklish?"
"You childhood nickname was Timmy wasn't it?"
"Who is your celebrity crush?"
"What is your most guilty pleasure?"
"You lied when you said the baby in the Batman onesie photo that I found in your attic the other day was your babysitter's little brother and not you right?"
"Did you ever do modelling as a side job Tim?"
"What's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you?"
She laughed so hard at his reply to the last one that her stomach ached and there were tears leaking from her eyes.
He'd told her that back in high school when he was the captain of the Varsity Football team, he'd become the target of a rather embarrassing prank pulled on him by a new girl at his school.
She'd been playing a game of Truth or Dare and had been dared by her girlfriends to sneak into the boys locker room after practice. She'd waited long enough for most of the guys on the team to leave but as he'd stayed back to help the coach put away equipment and had arrived last, unfortunately he'd still been in there when she entered.
And when she'd pulled back the curtain of the shower he was occupying, she'd found him buck naked unsuspectingly cleansing himself.
As if that hadn't been bad enough on its own, his startled yelp had been so loud that it had led the other girls (who'd been lurking nearby to make sure she actually did the challenge) to rush in and they'd all gotten a peek at his assets before he'd had a chance to grab his towel and shout for them to get the hell out.
Wiping tears from her eyes while he sat there looking oh so cute and red-faced from unforgotten shame, Sam wondered if she should cut it out. She had gotten a lot out of him and god forbid, if Tim somehow remembered any of this when the serum faded then he'd definitely want revenge from her and it wouldn't be pretty.
Deciding to be good girl she was about to end his torture when one last question came to her that she just had to ask.
Tim always boasted that he was fearless and she'd always found that to be impossible. Everyone, no matter how brave, had something that scared them and she was sure Tim had something too. He just didn't want to tell her about it.
"What's your biggest fear?"
"That I'll screw up," Tim said simply.
"Ah so you have a fear of failure," Sam understood.
That made sense, after all Tim liked to be the best at everything so him being secretly afraid of being anything less than that was to be expected.
But a moment later he shook his head no that she'd gotten what he'd meant wrong prompting her to take his words down a more serious path.
"Are you scared that you'll end up returning to the dark side?" Sam asked him candidly.
Tim was doing super well for himself as a good guy but he'd been a baddie for such a long time that maybe sometimes he felt an urge to live that life of thrill and danger again. It was only natural for a rehabilitated criminal, especially one of his caliber and if that was what he feared then she would be there to help him through it step by step.
Yet once again he shook his head communicating that that wasn't it either.
"Then what is it Tim? Please tell me," she urged him gently holding his hand in hers again and giving it a gentle encouraging squeeze.
But when he told her the true source of his fear, she was left troubled.
"I'm scared ... that I'll mess us up."
" ... Why would you think that?" She asked him with her eyebrows furrowed, confused and unable to think of even one reason why this of all things was his biggest fear let alone a fear at all.
When he said it was just a gut feeling he couldn't help, Sam gave him the best speech that she could about how confident she was in their relationship, how secure and loved he always made her feel, more so than anyone else ever had before hoping that would ease his mind.
But Tim just smiled at her, a small almost pained smile as he looked her right in the eye and whispered softly.
"The thing is Sam, you're perfect. You're absolutely perfect but I'm not. I'm ... broken. And no matter which way I try put myself back together, I'll always be a little bit broken. I can't change that and I fear that's something that could come between us some day."
Sam was left speechless at his admission and just sat there staring at him with heartbroken eyes.
Did he really think this way about himself? But the answer to that that question was obvious. Of course he did, Tim was on truth serum and every word he was saying to her right now was the honest truth including this.
Wide-eyed she could only look at him wordlessly not knowing what to say. When she'd asked him about his fear she hadn't expected it to be something this complex, this terrifying. But she knew she had to find some way to get him past this for both their sakes.
Because maybe he didn't think he was perfect. But to her? No one could be more perfect than he was.
"Tim ... " Sam started slowly as she got up and walked around the table to him, ready to give him a hug and a kiss and whatever else she had to get through to him only to be interrupted when the door opened and Jerry walked in.
"My apologies, I don't have an antidote. However ..." He reached into the pocket of his gray slacks and smiled as he held out a bottle of specialized sleeping pills that had been developed in the WOOHP gadget lab towards Tim. "You do have the option of going home and sleeping off the effects of the truth serum. Might you prefer to do that instead of wait here?"
Tim immediately agreed to that and arrangements were made for an agent to drive him to his place and stay until the pills kicked in and he was out cold.
Once he left Jerry turned to Sam and suggested that she should also go home now that Tim was taken care of. The mission had been a long one and she was probably eager to catch some sleep herself.
But when Sam did make it home and to her bedroom some forty minutes later, she found she couldn't get any rest. What Tim had revealed to her, she just couldn't get it off her mind. All she could think of was making him change his bleak perspective about himself.
But what? What could she do to show him that just because his past wasn't perfect, it didn't mean he wasn't either?
She yawned in fatigue after no less than an hour of nervous pacing back and forth over and over again. Her eyes drooped shut yet she still battled to brainstorm a solution for her problem.
And when she, in her half zombie state, walked right into her desk and nearly knocked over a particular item decorating it, suddenly she found exactly what she'd been looking for.
The ringing on his doorbell the next afternoon caused Tim to rise from his couch where he'd been eating the lunch he'd prepared. Putting down his fork and spoon, he walked to the front door and opened it and was left surprised when he discovered a wrapped box on his doorstep.
He looked left and right to see where it had come from but there didn't seem to be anyone there other than himself.
"Odd," he whispered to himself before inspecting the package which he noted had his name written on it. For a second he wondered if it was something dangerous but when he shook the box, whatever it was clinked lightly against the cardboard cover it was hidden in. Whatever it was, it didn't have motion sensors as say a bomb would have.
Curiosity getting the better of him he took it inside. Placing it on his kitchen counter, he found a knife to cut off the packing tape holding it together and slowly unwrapped it to uncover a vase inside of it.
He stared at the pretty pottery in utter confusion. Why on earth would anyone send him this? Had this been accidentally delivered to the wrong address? But then again he recalled that his full name, Timothy Derek Scam had been on it so that theory was unlikely.
Studying it for some clue, he carefully scrutinized the crystal blue, and black vase that had shimmering gold decorating it in what looked like random places, in triangles and stripes, squares and rectangles.
Still not any closer to solving this mystery he picked up the vase and looked for any inscription or what not on it when upon turning it over, a small slip of rolled up paper slid out from inside it and landed on the floor at his feet.
Picking it up he opened the scroll and read the words neatly typed in black ink on printer paper:
Kintsugi means "golden joinery". It is a Japanese art form in which breaks and repairs are treated as part of the object's history. Broken ceramics are carefully mended by artisans with a lacquer resin mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. The repairs made are visible and thanks to its "scars", the pottery becomes even more refined. The practice teaches us that broken things are not something to hide but to display with pride.
Suddenly his eyes went wide and he found himself looking at the ceramic in a brand new light. This ... had come from Sam hadn't it?
He knew he had been on truth serum yesterday. While he didn't remember just what he'd said while he was under its power, he did recall that Sam had been with him when he'd been hit and it was more than likely that she'd spent some more time with him afterwards, refusing to leave him in that condition before he'd been safely brought home by Agent Myers.
Was it possible that in that time frame she'd asked and he'd relayed his only fear to her? The he sometimes felt that because of his difficult past, despite loving her with all his heart that maybe he wasn't the perfect match for someone as perfect as she was?
The thoughtful gift and the message that came with it was proof enough for him. Who else would do this but his fiancée? He couldn't think of anyone else. This was totally and authentically a Sam thing.
Just as he had that thought his doorbell sounded again and this time it was none other than Sam who stood there when he answered it.
As she made her way inside, putting her purse down on the coffee table and chirpily talking about something or the other he didn't say anything simply watching her as she slowly made her way to where his new vase sat and started marveling over it in an attempt to look inconspicuous. Something she always failed at and right now was certainly no exception.
"Oh wow! This is ... what's it called again?" She snapped her fingers a few times pretending to jog her memory before she gasped and went on. "Kintsugi right? We learned about it in one of my college art classes! Isn't it beautiful? You know what makes it unique? It wouldn't be sooo beautiful if it hadn't been broken onc—"
She didn't get to finish her sentence as his mouth crashed onto hers, melting the rest of her words away with the scorching passion of his kiss.
He pulled her to him tightly, not leaving an inch of space between their bodies and making her moan as he continued devouring the pink sugariness of her soft, sweet lips like it was a drug that he was addicted to and just could not get enough of. His fingers ran unbridled paths through her long red hair and massaged the delicateness of her ivory cheeks in lingering circles as he kissed her over and over again, each kiss more feverish than the last.
And only when his brain was about to absolutely pop from lack of air flow did he finally break their deep lip-lock.
Their lips separated with a gentle smacking noise and it took Sam a full moment or two to catch her breath as she stood there murky-eyed, blushing, and panting wildly.
But soon she placed her arms around the base of his neck, leaned up on her tiptoes, and affectionately rubbed the tip of her nose against his just like she had a habit of doing.
"Mmmm ... what was that for?" Sam asked him in a soft purr with a big smile on her now slightly swollen lips.
"Your gift," Tim responded pointing over his shoulder at the pottery she'd just been badly acting like she'd seen for the first time in her life.
Her emerald eyes bulged when he said that, a sheepish look forming on her startled face as she realized that her sending an anonymous package hadn't done the trick to convince him it had truly been from an anonymous person. Somehow he'd figured out that it had been from her which meant that he also had to know that while he'd been under the control of Cyril's truth serum ... she'd asked him a question or two.
A hot blush of guilt stained her cheeks as panic started to fill her. All she'd wanted to do was make him understand that he had no reason to feel inadequate for her, not implicate herself as she unwittingly had ended up doing.
Afraid of the consequences that were likely coming her way now, Sam opened her mouth to swear on her life that this vase had not come from her. To deny that she didn't know at all what he was talking about.
But then she stopped as she saw the way Tim was looking at her.
He didn't look mad. He didn't even seem upset. He was smiling. Smiling at her ever so tenderly, so incredibly lovingly.
And she realized right then that she had no need to lie.
Tim knew the truth and he wasn't bothered by it.
This time it was Sam who took the initiative of pulling him into a passionate thank you kiss, glad beyond words that her truth ... had been so well received.
(1) *waits to see if anyone knows who Skylar is* I have a cookie for anyone who does xD
Anyway! Longer moment than the last few but still cute I hope? I was re-watching the Season 3 ep "Truth or Scare" and got the idea and decided why not? :)
More to come!
Until then,
Love,
Cresenta ^-^
