A/N: Not the best, I know, but the idea wouldn't leave me alone so I finally wrote this. Let me know what you think.
-x-
peanut butter.
"It's kinda like…" Karma pauses, looking for the right words to describe making out with Liam. "It's kinda like eating peanut butter," she finally finishes, nodding slightly in approval of her own metaphor.
Amy raises an eyebrow.
"Liam is peanut butter. It's so good," she continues, "and it isn't hard to see why everybody loves him. And it's comfortable, you know? But at the same time I don't think it will ever get old. Like-"
Amy forces a laugh. "Yeah, okay, Karma, I get it. You miss eating peanut butter, and you like Liam."
Karma smiles softly, a faint blush hinting at her cheeks. She doesn't miss the slight bitterness in Amy's tone at Liam's voice, and she thinks maybe that it's just because she's been comparing him to peanut butter – something Amy has always been allergic to. She thinks maybe that's the same reason the air in the room suddenly feels a little heavier, too.
She doesn't think she'll tell Amy the rest of her reasoning. Like how after he kisses her and she walks away, she can still feel him in her mouth, can still taste him; he lingers for hours, clinging to her teeth and the inside of her cheeks. Or how every time she thinks he has him figured out, there is something else left for her to discover – she thinks he's smooth but he ends up having a little bit of crunch to him; she thinks he's simple, like the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he shared with her on the stairs, but then there's also something complex, like the peanut soup her mom used to make. Or how she feels like she's missed out on him all her life, something similar to the small desire she has always felt to have just a little bit whenever Amy wasn't around.
And she definitely won't tell Amy that it is also because Liam is something they will never share, will never have in common, something that is hers and hers alone.
-x-
"Liam is peanut butter."
Amy can feel the hives form on her skin where Liam touches her, feels her throat close as he kisses her. He whispers words that don't matter into her ear as she struggles to breathe, tries to force air into her uncooperative lungs. Her heart pounds against her chest, tries to get rid of him just by the strength of its beats.
She was in second grade when she decided to try a peanut butter sandwich. Her first allergic reaction had happened when she was barely a year old, too young for Amy to remember, and all she had was her mother's insistence that she was allergic. All she wanted was to try just a little bit, was to have a little piece of what everyone else had at lunch. "It's really good," Karma always promised her. She took one bite and the next thing she knew she was on the floor and her mom was crying, trying to talk to the 911 operator through the phone.
Amy realizes that this, too, is all her fault, that this reaction is just the same as the last – the inevitable result of her brash decisions, her refusal to accept that she can't have something everyone else can. (This time, though, she's pretty sure the thing she is upset she can't have is Karma, not Liam.)
She swears the best feeling in the world is when he rolls off of her, because she can finally breathe again. But it doesn't stop the shudder that runs down her spine when she looks at him, the nausea that boils in her stomach. She didn't like being around him before but she wants to be even further away now, feels like she needs an Epi-Pen just in case they ever get stuck in the same room together again.
He puts his clothes back on and Amy goes straight to the bathroom to get the taste out of her mouth, to get the feeling off her skin.
Yes, she decides, Karma was right. Liam is peanut butter.
