Part of me wondered how much longer I had until this all got shot to hell like everything else.
I milk this moment for all it's got, because I know it's all I've got right now. I've got this brief moment of complete and utter peace and ecstasy of knowing Carly loves me back, and she's finally said it, and now she's taking back her control over this situation with the hottest, most heavenly slide of lips and tongue. And by the time that slide's moved down past my jaw and onto my neck, I'm so high up in space that I have to bite my lip to keep from muttering out a number of obscenities. Carly's highly amused by this; I can tell when I feel her lips curl into a smile against the sensitive skin of my collarbone.
The next thing I feel is the soft pads of her fingers skimming the bottom of my stomach, and she leaves her sweet torture on my skin for the half a moment it takes to lift my shirt over my head. I take this chance to do the same to hers, and my breath immediately hitches at the view I have right now. Maybe it was my imagination, but it almost looked like she was feeling the same, the way her dark eyes fly over my newly-exposed skin.
"Sam, you're--" A single finger of mine shoots up to her lips to quiet her before she said what I knew she was about to.
"No, I'm not." I whisper simply as my finger drops. A crease appears between Carly's eyebrows as she questioned my statement.
"What are you..." she trails as my head drops, and hers does the same. Her words stop on a dime as she stares breathlessly at my not-so-perfect skin. Covered in old burns and bruises and scars that were uncovered, now that there was no shirt to hide them. My last wall came crumbling down as I let Carly blast her way through, because no one's ever seen this part of me. But she doesn't say anything, her face doesn't change, and she doesn't ask questions. Her eyebrow crease just disappears as she trails her fingers across the marks on my stomach.
She doesn't even say anything when she touches the deepest scar that spans across the whole left side of my ribcage, but I see her lose a little breath from her lungs, and her eyes beg the question,
"How?" I take a deep breath when that word slipped out. Carly heard. "God...I'm sorry Sam, I shouldn't have..."
"No...no, it's okay, Carls, you should know." I meet her eyes as I swallow bravely, "Remember my mom's boyfriend Ian from a few years ago?" She nodded, looking absolutely horrified, and not needing or wanting to know any more. Carly just pulls me into the most meaningful hug of my life, and I feel her nails dig in to the battered skin of my back as if I'll just dissolve if she doesn't hold me together. After her shock subsides, we split apart and Carly's immediately looking in my eyes, so lovingly that I swear I can see her pupils turn into little hearts. That makes me smile, because no one's ever looked at me like that before. No one's loved me like this before...hell, no one's ever loved me at all. And for the first time in my life, I feel totally and completely defenseless. Defenseless, but not helpless, and it's the good kind of defenseless, because now I have someone to be that brick wall.
Then her hand is tracing my cheek as she swears, she swears, "I'll never hurt you."
"I believe you," I whisper, leaning back in to prove it. And it's mere moments before I'm taking that to the next level, gripping blindly at the button on her jeans before I feel her hands stopping mine. Carly pulls back just long enough to mutter,
"Sam...I've never..." I hushed her quickly with my lips.
"Shh...don't worry, cupcake, I haven't either." Browns flick to my blues, still obviously worried. "It's just us." Her worry visibly softens, and so does her white-knuckled grip on my hands until it's gone, and she lets me attempt to slide her jeans down her legs. And damn it, this is the one time I'm really hating the fact that Carly's jeans are always this tight. I hardly hear her whisper of a chuckle at my desperation to get them off, and she helps me peel the denim from her body. My hands are immediately memorizing this uncharted skin, dancing over should-be illegally soft thighs before she flinches. She flinches and I feel every muscle in her body tense up probably painfully and lay her palms strongly on my shoulders like she wants to push me away but needs to go through with this, like one half of her is fighting the other. I sigh heavily and remove my hands, backing away from her a good foot or two. Carly instantly scoots closer, eyes cast guiltily in her lap.
"I'm sorry, Sam, it's just, I...he..."
"We shouldn't do this," I state way too bluntly for the current situation.
"We have to," Carly croaks frustratedly. "This is our last chance and you know it!" I sigh again for emphasis, because, yeah, I did know it.
"Carls..." I groaned, but then she arches one fucking eyebrow and I crumble. "Look, if I can't even...why do you want this so bad?"
"I love you," she whispers with a convincing smile, "I trust you."
"There's more to it than that," I know there is. It's a few seconds where Carly dares challenge me with an emotionless expression before she cracks.
"I want to forget," she whispers almost inaudibly, "I want to so bad, Sam, and you're the only one I trust like this." I give her this hopeful little smile, because it's all I really have to offer her, after months of drying her tears and holding back her hair while she blew chunks, of hugs every time she saw me and making her soup on the worst days. And for me to make someone else food? You know I gotta love them.
And just like that, we're back where we left off two days ago, but a whole lot more naked and there's no sirens or red flags. Just Carly shoving me back onto the beanbag, straddling my hips before she moves in to bite the base of my neck like some kind of vampire, or rabid animal or something. The jolt that this sends right to the lower parts of my abdomen make it absolutely impossible to hold back the needy whine that slips out of my throat, and it doesn't go unnoticed.
"Someone likes it rough," I hear her mutter without leaving my neck, and for a second I'm almost shocked that sweet little Carly Shay would say something like that...until I realize I should probably be more shocked that sweet little Carly Shay is ravaging her best friend on a beanbag while being damn near naked. "Unfair..." is the next thing I hear as I feel her tugging at my zipper and slipping my jeans off as fast as she could manage.
A moment later I'm feeling wet heat on my left thigh as she makes herself real comfy there.
Then she rocks her hips, grinding her own thigh right where I think it was made to go right about now.
Next she's choking on her own breath and gasping, and suddenly those hips have a mind of their own.
Her arms are suddenly on either side of my head, barely holding herself up as they shake and tremble like they're about to give out any second, and...when did it get so hot in here?
I watch Carly forget about him, I listen to her ragged breath and smile because she's so lost right now that she's totally forgotten about getting me off, but I'm cool with that right now, knowing that no one's made her feel like that before.
And I feel so accomplished when she bites her lip like that and whispers that she loves me a third time, that I think I might just be high. I can't hold back my pure, unbridled happiness when she kisses me with this much meaning, as her whole body tightens up in a totally different way than before, as she sighs into my mouth and collapses onto my chest and it's all over.
It's really all over, when I look in the doorway and see Spencer standing there staring daggers in our direction with arms crossed, and I don't know how long he's been there or how much he saw, but God, I really should have expected this. It's starting to be a trend around here.
"Carly," he calls out hella mad like I've never heard him talk before, and Carly jumps at the sound of his voice like she didn't expect this either, and leaps off me to stare at him like a deer in headlights and not like his little sister he just caught doing what she was doing. "Get some clothes on and come out here, we need to have a little talk." My stomach just ties itself in a knot the way he says that. She flashes me the most hopeless, guilty, sorry, heartbreaking eyes, and I make it my immediate goal to get that picture out of my head as soon as it's there. Nonetheless, she slips her shirt and jeans on and wordlessly follows Spencer out the studio door.
A second hasn't even passed before I hear the screaming and the yelling and the accusations, and then I hear the worst "I love her!", and that hits me just like a brick to the gut. Because it all comes down in one crashing realization that all of this is my fault.
Carly's heartbroken and Spencer's so mad and...different, and we're always on the run, we can't be normal anymore, and god damn it, nothing good has even come of this.
And all of these constant interruptions must have been a sign; I wish I figured that out a long time ago.
So I jump back into my clothes and head for the elevator, stopping to take one last glance at the madness I've created. Spencer red-faced and mad as hell, Carly looking like absolute death with tears streaming down her face that was so, so beautiful just minutes ago. And letting out a shaky sigh and leaving the only person I've really ever cared about is all I can do, because no one sees Sam hurt, no one sees Sam defeated, and no one sees Sam cry.
I leave her a post-it with a few words scribbled out in the first place she'll look, on the beanbag where I was just sitting, and I leave. And I know this is the last time I'm going to walk out on her, because she loved me and trusted me but in the end, it just wasn't worth it to ruin her life over someone like me, and when she finds me gone she'll probably just shrivel up and cease to exist, like she used to say she would do if I ever went poof.
By the time I'm into the streets surrounding the Bushwell Plaza, I'm running. I'm running through the cold and the snow and my lungs don't really want to function, but that's okay. I won't make them.
Because I'm beginning to think the whole world wants me to put those three words in strikethrough, and although it was the last thing I ever wanted to do, I'm more trouble than I'm worth.
So after many nights of potentially lethal doses of diet pepsi, animal crackers, and malcom in the middle (yes, this is the recipe for most anything I write xD) and one of staying up past 2am on a school night because OMG I HAD IDEAS, I managed to spit this out. :D
i'd like to stop and thank silversun pickups for making the song PANIC SWITCH, which really inspired this whole thing, in a very indirect way. o.0 along with anyone who gave a review 3 those really are cool, and force me to keep writing when I don't feel like it.
Anyway.
THERE IS A SEQUEL COMING ZOMG. Because while I like to stick to my this-is-a-fiveshot-to-get-over-my-writer's-block theory, I still like this for some reason. o.0
Look out for a cam titled "Driven Under"...coming soon. I promise. :3