And just like that it was almost back to normal. At least, with Jazz and Tucker and Trent it was. God, she still remembered getting those two together all those years ago. Locking two people in a closet works wonders when there's enough sexual tension in the room to choke a whale.
She was sitting on Danny's couch now--well, it wasn't Danny anymore, though. Just Fenton to her. Dan was what he liked to be called, but she wouldn't grant him that.
Jazz and Tucker had swept her up into a massive hug just moments before, and she'd laughed. Really, truly laughed. These two were her friends, her closest companions. These two had always been there for her, even when she'd run off. They'd been stuck in the middle and hadn't even taken sides...or at least not outwardly. After all, they were still living in the same area as Fenton. But that couldn't be helped.
Trent liked her, too. After he got over the whole, hey, you locked me in a closet with my future wife, thing, anyway. That took a while. But it was worth it, he'd said.
Danny...or, well, Fenton, actually...wasn't so familiar with her. And his surprise was much less exuberant and more...dreadful. She'd showed him the latest copy of the Times, and not surprisingly he hadn't taken that well. She'd liked that, his sudden horrified, painful expression. This job would definitely be a good one for her. Tormenting him of all people. Hah. And she'd probably get laid out of it, too. Two birds.
But he hadn't really looked at her after that, and as Jazz and Tucker were trying to go back to normal with the Hey how are you? What have you been up to? How's work? It was starting to get almost...awkward.
Especially since he was still standing by the door. Staring at her.
God, he'd changed so much. And yet he hadn't. His hair was shorter and had those little streaks of grey in them, like he was 40. Fighting probably aged him. Maybe he'd just gone ghost so much he was starting to get white hair in human form, too. But it was still shaggy and messy as always. His face was harsher, more angular, much more mature than it had been when she'd left. It has just been starting like that, and now...wow. He looked like the kind of guy who would be dangerous, almost, except for the little bit of softness at his cheeks and his eyes. And the eyes were exactly the same. She could still see some of the boyish wonder and confusion in them that he'd had back in high school. The same bright, piercing blue, that made you want to either fall into them or scream.
Even his body looked different to her. He was still tall and still lanky, but much less awkward looking. It was kind of like he'd finally gained control of his limbs and then filled them out. Certainly he wasn't burly, like she had imagined him being (his evil future form was what she'd always assumed he would look like) but he was definitely older. And his clothes? Gone were the t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. He was dressed in a blue-collared shirt, buttoned only halfway up, and most assuredly not done correctly. He must have just come from work, or something, and tried to change. Black slacks, wrinkled, and unshined black loafers--loafers! She'd never have guessed--completed the look. Disheveled professional just back from the job.
Hot damn.
But then again, she'd changed too. But that was for him to ponder over.
Briefly she wondered what he was thinking. Probably about her story. Why she was there. Where she'd been all this time. Figures. She'd never talked to him since that day seven years ago. Or was it eight? She felt like she should know. Walking in on him like that. You'd think she'd remember every little detail.
Then again, she'd try to bury a lot of it. Succeeded in some places, too. Man. Wasn't that just a kick in the shorts. She could almost barely remember some things.
"So," he finally said, his voice still rough and gravelly, "Where have you been?"
There it was, finally out there in the air. The bridge between the two of them. Finally. Not that she'd tell him everything she'd been up to. But, well, she could try.
"Fezville," Sam answered, recrossing her legs. "I haven't really been up to anything. Joined the FPD." His eyebrow shot up. Very Star Trek of him. Finally got that little ability. A little shrug. "Got an apartment, you know. The usual."
"Really." It wasn't really a question, technically. He made it sound more like he didn't believe her. Why would he? She'd run off suddenly and nothing else had happened.
God, he regretted so much about that day when she'd left.
--
The pink slip was not anything Danny ever thought he'd have to see from this boss. He was a good worker, really. He did exactly what he was told, and he was almost always there on time.
Apparently the almost thing was the issue. That, and his spontaneous disappearances when he had to go fight one spook or another. Either way, he'd stared at the thing for a good ten minutes after his boss had shooed him out. It was just an office job, filing papers and being the bitch for six or seven officials or whatever. Hey, it got the money. Paying for college was hard enough, and he'd barely been able to afford the apartment. This?
So what to do? Tuck had the most brilliant of ideas. Go out. Get really smashed. Hey, Canada wasn't that far away. Forget about it tomorrow when you're too busy throwing up and being hung over. And that's just what they did.
Somewhere around the fifth beer Tucker's current girlfriend showed up to take them home. Star. That blonde girl who always hung out with Paulina. Paulina herself, of course, was probably out fucking her fiancée Chaz. She'd been sooo busy lately, Star was complaining. Tuck managed to convince her to have a beer or two, because she needed to loosen up. Probably not the best idea. But hey, they'd made it back alive an hour later, all giggling and stuff.
Danny noticed Star had been making eyes at him all night, of course. Tuck managed to pass out on the couch almost as soon as he got back to Danny's apartment. Probably left sometime during the night after a bout of throwing up. Or something. Who knows. Danny certainly couldn't remember the next morning.
He was sooo busy.
Of course, having a drunk guy and a hot blonde chick who might have had just a little too much gigglewater in the same room was not a good idea when the girl's boyfriend was undead on the couch and the guy had a girlfriend who would just happen to show up early the next morning with a sympathy card.
Which Danny found in Sam's coat, draped over Tucker, after he'd managed to untangle himself from Star absolutely mortified at what he'd manage to do the night before.
And he hadn't seen heads or tail of Sam since.
--
"Why are you here, Sam?" Dan asked, crossing his arms. He was just so tired. So very tired of it all.
Just like that he was an orphan.
Seeing his coworkers, really, had been the worst of all that had happened. You had to try and keep yourself stoic in front of people you knew, answering questions with a face like a broken brick wall, even though your mind was a beehive of emotion and activity. Those thoughts had killed him. Who could sneak past his parents without arousing suspicion? Who could kill his mother, so fiery and strong and smart and brave? Or his father, so intimidating and large but so soft and welcoming? Both had short fuses and the best enemy-detection technology on the face of the earth. How could anyone get in?
The whispering his comrades had done, the words Night Mistress over and over, buzzed in his brain now, stuck like a song. Telling Jazz as calmly as he did, maybe that was worse. Helping her plan the funeral, set for the day after tomorrow, wasn't so bad. Too surreal. He was too detached. Listening to the waves over her tears that crashed through the phone, she'd be there soon with her family.
How could they just be gone? He was still wondering that. Both so young? Mid fifties. Too soon.
After the police had cleared out, after Tucker had left to go pick up Jazz from the airport, he'd walked through his parent's home. His old home. No, it still was his home, even if he lived somewhere else. He'd carefully visited his old room, bare and blue, with no hint that once a teenager as sloppy as himself had lived there, except for the darker patches on the walls where his posters had gone. He even made sure to use his powers and float and not touch a thing.
Don't disturb the evidence.
Jazz's room...he still remembered his parents weeping when she brought the last box to her car and drove away for the airport, to go to Harvard to major in child psychiatry.
He wondered, for a moment, what his parents would think if they'd known about this all. Finding out their little princess and little sport were without the guidance they needed most right now. Dan was battle hardened, to be sure--he'd broke every bone in his body at least twice, didn't have an inch of skin that wasn't at least faintly scarred...but he'd never recover from this wound.
Sam just made it worse.
She was so...different. Nothing like the scrawny waif that had left him so long ago. She was still the same five foot five, her hair was the same jet black, her eyes the same vivid purple. But everything else? He hardly recognized her.
Her body was so much more filled out, now, that it was hard not to look at her. Her hips were just so much rounder, her waist so much more defined and yet she was not scrawny, no. Dan had always thought he'd liked Sam because she had been on the verge of anorexia as a teenager--always got flak about it from her mother, he had to hear it all the damn time--because she was just naturally small. But now? God damn. She could be called curvy--she could be called voluptuous. She could be called sexy as hell, and if the circumstances had been different she would have been locked in his bedroom. Now, god, if her mother had seen her now she would start on the other tear--Samantha dear you are far to big for your own good.
Sometimes Dan was glad her parents had gotten into a car accident when they were seventeen. Because it just made everything easier after the first three months.
He wouldn't get into the state of Sam's chest except to say, wow. They'd done stuff at 18 of the sexual nature--yeah, he could admit they'd deflowered each other thoroughly--were actually doing stuff at 14, but not to quite that extent. He'd seen that...aspect of her evolve over the years, but clearly whenever Sam's hamster-on-crack metabolism had fallen off its wheel, her chest had gotten a boost of about two cup sizes.
And he'd seen a lot of breasts in the last seven years. But he'd never had to gawk at them in disbelief.
Her hair, now, was down and so much longer, and no longer like that of a pageboy. But the little flip was still there, the little curvy crinkle that he liked so much. When she'd brushed by him to get tackled by his best friend and sister, he could smell the same lavender shampoo she liked so much, but the perfume she wore? Like roses. And women.
The black gothic clothes were mostly gone, too. Under the leather jacket she wore a robins-egg-blue summer dress, sleeveless and perfect for the hot and muggy weather outside. It had ruffles in it at the bottom, a trait her mother would have approved of, and went halfway down her thighs, which her mother would not have approved of. And those black stilettos looked like they were guns on knives, so sleek and metallic looking.
Good lord.
"I'm sorry about everything that happened," Sam said genuinely. "You parents, and all. It must be...hard." She probably didn't have any idea what he was going through. Sam never really mourned for her folks, or at least her mother. But she looked repentant and sympathetic, now.
Dan looked away from her big, pleading eyes.
"I was wondering what I could do to help," she said, standing. Her skirt had ridden up and he watched as she tugged it back down over her long legs. "And I..." Here she hesitated a bit. "I want to um..."
Silence.
"To what?" Tucker finally said, causing the two former lovers to shoot him the same glare.
But then Sam sighed again and said, "I uh...I was wondering if I could crash here for a couple weeks."
More silence, then...
"Oh, fuck my life."