Cards on the Table

Sugar poured alcohol into her coffee and Mercedes laughed, "You honestly intend to go through this entire weekend drunk, don't you?"

"Better drunk than sorry," Sugar commented and took a sip from her mug.

"What?" Mercedes asked with a giggle.

Sugar said, "Oh, I meant, better drunk than never," and nodded her head with certainty, as though that was a good correction. All of the women around her laughed, but as Sam entered, Mercedes felt her heartbeat speed up. Santana was making some kind of comment to Sugar about her drinking when Mercedes noticed Sam look right at her, then make a sharp turn towards his friends. This shit felt a little like high school...The making out and masturbation, the worrying about her friends, the anxiety of seeing him and the disappointment of seeing him go the opposite direction. Just your daily reminder that this is why you don't have a man...

Sam leaned against the wall, facing his friends and purposefully avoiding any vantage points where he would be tempted to look up at Mercedes. "Hey, there. How are you holding up?" Artie asked.

"Strange choice of greetings," Sam said.

Artie shook his head and said, "Not really. I know you better than a lot of people. I know how easily you can get attached and how hard you can fall and I know that those aren't birthmarks all over Miss Jones' upper body. Looks like you took some time applying those..." Sam turned a little red at Artie's mention of the marks that Sam had put on her. Artie continued, "I know that it'd be difficult for you to have a fling with somebody likeable and the two of you seem really... well-suited."

"If it is gonna be hard for me to let go of her after this weekend, this train of thought won't help me, Artie," Sam said.

"Maybe not, but I'm concerned. I told them not to try to put you up to this. 'He's gonna really like her,' I told them. 'He won't be able to make this a casual thing,' I told them. 'You guys are gonna get him hurt,' I said... but they didn't listen, so hopefully – you will. I know that the two of you didn't have sex, because if you had, you'd probably be right up under her, whether she wants to hang with her girls, or not." Sam opened his mouth to deny that he would be so annoying, but Artie didn't wait, "Don't make that mistake, Sam. If you sleep with her, I know you – you won't be able to just go on with your life like it never happened. And so far, this woman seems like she's just here to spend time with her old friends and have a good time."

"I appreciate your concern, Artie – but seriously, Mercedes and I can take care of ourselves and our situation," Sam said, then changed the subject to today's games.

Mercedes was soaked and with the amount of clothing that she had on, she felt heavy as hell! Today was a battle of the sexes day. Mostly everything had been outside.

There was flag football (that they actually didn't do to bad in, considering), a hilarious game of hopscotch (since it confused Puck so irrationally), and an equally entertaining double-dutch competition (that Mercedes was proud to be champ of) "You didn't think that a big girl could get down like that, huh?" She asked the guys.

On that note, Santana and Lauren began singing, "Ey, big girl. Make 'em back it up. Make 'em back it up..." Mercedes clapped her hands once and jumped right into the Wobble dance, with her girls cheering her on and the guys, losers or not, very entertained. Sam smiled at the show and laughed when Santana and Mercedes began teaching the other girls their little victory dance, which seemed to be an actual dance that they were doing as Lauren continued singing the song for them.

Then, Matt jumped into the dance with them, followed by Mike and Artie did his own chair version, too. Puck and Sam looked at each other, and Jesse shrugged and joined in with a laugh. When Puck and Sam tried to do the very same fairly simple series of moves that everyone else seemed to quickly grasp, Puck did something that was sort of like it and Sam was just so thrown off that he made up his own little dance. No one noticed that Sugar had disappeared until she came back, carrying a cart of huge water guns, with the announcement, "We're going to have a drinking water gun fight."

"Is that even possible?" Kurt asked. How the hell did this woman turn everything into a drinking excuse?

"It's possible, because I've already said that's what we're doing, so we're going to do it. The way it works is that every time someone shoots you with a water gun, you take a drink. The water guns have water in them. The water bottles have alcohol. Stand in line, please," she said. Then she called out to Artie, "Do you have the score list, baby?" She asked.

He rolled up to her and gave her the list of names from highest scoring to lowest. Currently, Santana was in the lead, so she got the biggest water gun. She accepted it and her bottle of alcohol and raised her hands, victoriously. Puck was at the bottom of the list, so he got the smallest gun. Sugar was sure to tell him, "Until the game is over, if you run out of water, you have to refill your gun, yourself, with the water hose on the side of the house. Hopefully, no one ambushes you and gets you plastered before you finish."

Kurt mentioned, "This is crazy. I'm changing into my pool clothes," and as he began to leave, Sugar shot him in the back of the head with her water gun, which caused him to quickly turn around. "Sugar Motta!"

"Nobody told you to have designer outside clothes!" She snapped.

"You have designer outside clothes!" He contended.

Sugar smiled and nodded and said, "I think this about them." She ripped open her shirt and was dressed in her bikini top as she threw the shirt aside and pointed her gun at a quickly retreating Kurt.

Mercedes and Sam glanced at each other, as everyone else began to either run or to shoot. "Are we on teams?" She asked.

"I have no idea. Sounded like it's a solo effort," he told her, right before Puck shot him in the side of the head and she made a dash for it.

Puck cheered, "In ya face! In ya face!" And gave Sam the 'suck it' gesture before taking off running from Santana and her monster gun that she'd just used to spray an entire line of Brittany, Artie, Mike and Tina.

"Hey! Take your drinks! You bitches better take those drinks, when you get shot!" Sugar fussed. Her friends were running all over the place, trying not to get shot, trying to find hiding spots and trying to get good shots off on other friends.

By the time everyone was raving about getting into swimwear for pool volleyball, Mercedes began to peel off her several layers of drenched clothes and head towards the house. She was drunk. She hadn't been too bad off the previous night, but today... her head was spinning and everything. "Drunk pool volleyball seems like a horrible idea," Sam said, catching up with her on his way to the house.

She turned and looked at him. This was the first time all day that they were around each other without anyone else around. "It's a damned horrible idea. You think that's gonna stop 'em?" She asked, dropping her wet clothes. Sam bent down to pick them up for her and they walked to their room in silence.

When they got inside, he tossed her wet stuff in the bathtub and she followed suit. She hadn't even considered doing that. She was about to flop it right on the floor. "So..." he began to talk but paused when he saw her pick up a bathing suit that looked like Wonder Woman's outfit. She paused and stared back at him, confused.

"So...?" She offered - to help him back to his train of thought. Her eyebrow was raised at him and she seemed a bit uncomfortable.

"Oh, sorry. So, last night was really amazing, for me. I thought that you felt it, too. Today, you've been kind of distant and unresponsive," he told her.

"Funny you should say that because everyone else – you know, the people who actually know me have done nothing but tell me how open and out of my shell I've been all day." She shrugged her shoulders and said, "I guess I can't please everybody." She looked down at her swimsuit and commented, "If I put this on, people are going to see all of the marks that you put on me." She looked over at her luggage and said, "Maybe I should just go with shorts and shirt?"

"Whatever makes you feel comfortable," he said. "Though, I have to say I would love to see you dressed as Wonder Woman." Mercedes spun around and sat on the floor, then started laughing, hysterically. Sam's eyes widened and he sat down next to her, "I wanna laugh, too."

"It's silly. My friends brought me out here to try to have a good time and to hook up with a guy and it turned out to be you! You, who I've had a crush on for literally the entire two years that I've worked at the comic book store!" She laughed again and kicked her little legs. "And you're all like 'we made a connection and I thought you felt it too,' like, like," she laughed so much he could barely make out what she was saying, "Like you'd really be interested in somebody like me, in real life!" She laughed until her face was so hot that she had to hold her hands out and try to still herself. "Your friends put you up to this, too. You don't have to pretend it's something special and you don't have to try to make me feel like some kind of princess."

She made a huge show out of getting up from the floor and ducking into the bathroom with her swimsuit. Sam got up and waited outside of the door with his arms folded. It had taken him a moment to put together what she had said, but she was going to talk to him about this and she was going to hear him out! Mercedes came out of the bathroom practically bursting out of the swimsuit, with a very unsettled look on her face, "Not only can they see all the damned passion marks, but all my titties trying to jump out of this thing!"

"All your titties?" He repeated, unable to help the laughter that forced out of him. She looked delicious, and her bright smile was killing him. "Flawless victory," he mumbled. She gave him a confused look and tried to walk past him, but he gently placed his hand on her hip to stop her. "Mercedes," he said, "I know that you're scared of what you feel, but I'm not here just because our friends have tried to hook us up. If that was the case, I could have easily tried to pressure you into going all the way with me and I'd just as easily not bother to have conversations with you. But, I enjoy conversations with you. I enjoy your company and your perspectives and your overall personality."

Mercedes' eyes refused to look his way. She was focusing on his crooked nipples, through the dampness of his shirt. She was focusing on his free hand that was shaking like a leaf. She was focusing on any and everything but his face, but she saw his lips. She could remember the way that they felt against her skin – better than any daydream that she ever tried to imagine them in. "I like you, for you. I don't know what that could mean for the future, if anything, and I am all for the entire slowing things down and seeing what happens route. But, if you don't want to risk it or if you don't want to take a chance on me; please don't try to blame me for allegedly not being interested. If you don't want me, then just admit that much. Don't spin it around on me."

"I uh.." She was staring at his lips. He licked them, bit them – what the hell was he trying to do to her? "I have no idea how to even begin to try to take a chance on anybody." She dared a glance up at his eyes, which was a tremendous mistake. He seemed so intently interested in what she was saying. He seemed to care so much. "I just can't make myself believe that I could last with anybody."

Sam shook his head in disbelief. She even saw some disappointment there. "What happened to you?" He asked. Her eyebrow lifted and he could see some sassiness in her eyes. At least that was a start. It said that she wasn't completely empty. "Aside from Vocal Adrenaline, who it was a given that everyone was intimidated by, New Directions worried about having to go up against the Warblers, when they had Kurt and Blaine, and always the Troubletones. Any idea why? - Because the Troubletones had this leader who was fierce and fearless. She had this amazing air of confidence about her. She had style and stage presence that was dynamic. She was talented beyond measure, knew it, embraced it and unleashed it."

He shook his and stepped back. "You sounded amazing and you looked stunning. There wasn't a guy that I knew who didn't look two or three times when you walked into a competition and when you were onstage, I knew people who literally cried every time they heard you sing. Girls at our school idolized you and felt like you were a role model, for being who you are and being comfortable with that person. Now, you're so insecure that you can't even take a compliment and you have trouble believing that a good guy might actually want you? I don't understand, Mercedes. Can you help me to understand?"

She sighed and said, "Damn... I think that you just shamed me into sobriety."

"I wasn't trying to embarrass you. I'm trying to understand why you won't accept what's happening between us. It's more than a little fling. It's more than some crush. I can't be imagining all of it, even with my vivid imagination! The way that you looked at me when it was just the two of us and the way that you said my name..." He practically moaned. He traced her ear with his pinky, "Am I reading more into it than what's here?"

"You're reading that I've never been physically involved with somebody this way and I have yet to figure out how to deal with it. All of this is very new and strange and scary for somebody like me..."

"Will you stop saying that? I don't even know what you mean when you say it! What is that? Somebody like you?" Sam snapped.

"Somebody who has never had anybody to care for her this way!" She snapped back. "I had a high school sweetheart, Shane. He seemed really in love with me and we were a pretty great couple. He used to make fools out of you McKinley boys during football season. He was good and Ohio State wanted him. He was sure that we were going to be together forever and have this fancy football life." She laughed. "But, do you know that while I was the one that always believed in him and vice versa, the moment that he got his scholarship, all kinds of Barbies and black Barbies and whatever the hell else friends of Barbie's started coming from all directions?"

"So he dropped you?" Sam asked, incredulously, already pissed off at the guy who must have made her lose her confidence by his shallowness.

"That's just it. He didn't. He stuck it out. He wanted to stay with me. I was the one who couldn't take the heat. I was the one who was afraid and backed away. I thought that it would only be a matter of time before he realized that he was the #1 wanted guy in school, that he was going to college and would be a football star and have a shot at the pros and he was going to look next to him and wonder, why the hell did I settle for this? So, I broke things off with him. He cried. He told me that it felt like I punched him in the heart, but month later or so, he moved on. He found a new girl – skinny, pretty, nice... and as far as I know, he never cheated on her, never lied to her, never did a damned thing too wrong. He's in the NFL, and she's wearing his ring."

"That could've been you," he said.

"Yep. But, I'm so damned clueless." She shook her head, "It's easier to just not get into anything."

"But, what if you miss out on another good one, because you were too afraid?"

She laughed and shrugged, "Then I'll end up with what I always had." Mercedes shook her head and told him, "I like my life. It's not too exciting, so I never have to worry about unexpected drama. It's not too emotional, so I never have to worry about unexpected heartache. I've not too interactive, so I never have to worry about making a grown man cry again." Mercedes bit her lip and wished that she had a drink, right now. She wasn't much of a drinker, but she had helped herself today and a bit yesterday. It seemed to take some of the edge off.

"Maybe he'll cry if you don't give him a chance," Sam said, softly.

"Maybe," she said and stared at him. "Since Shane and I broke up, all that I've had to pay attention to me were guys who were interested in getting off with a big girl or who assumed because I have all these curves that must mean I need someone to tend to my body... It became so exhausting that I just started wearing layers upon layers of clothes and making sure that I stayed away from places with crowds of people. I go to the music store, the book store, the coffee shop, work and home – and I spend my social life on the computer. Those people are wonderful to me. They make me feel like a person."

"I'm not after some cheap thrill," Sam reiterated.

"I believe you. After I hurt Shane, I decided that I would not get into another relationship until I could figure out who the hell I am in love. I never got a chance to do that, because I gave up on the search. It has been years since anyone looked at me and saw someone worth their time. I love it, and I revel in these feelings that you're giving me... but what happens when I find that I don't know what the hell to do next? What happens when I mess up? I don't know if I've grown enough to do things any differently than I did when I was in high school. I don't want to make any mistakes with you. I don't want to get back to life as we know it and have to struggle with the complexities of not being threatened by the traditional and boring beauties that I know must flock to you."

"So... You don't want me because you're afraid that you'll push me away when someone else wants me?" He asked.

"I guess so. I know that sounds very immature, but I haven't had any practice with getting out of the mindset that I was in as a teenager."

"Well, it sounds like you need some practice," Sam said.

"I... don't know what to do. I don't want to mess everything up."

"Nobody ever knows just what to do, but you have to decide if you want it badly enough to be willing to go in blind and learn to play things by ear until you know every song," Sam said. Then Sam told her, "I'm gonna tell you like this – I likes ya and I wants ya. We can do this the easy way. Or we could do it the hard way. The choice is yours."

Mercedes blurted into a mess of laughter, hell maybe, she hadn't sobered up, at all! After she was able to catch her breath again, she smiled softly and told him, "I really like you. I want to see you. I don't think I'm ready to try to be a girlfriend, but... I want to figure out if I could get to that point with you."

"I can work with that. There's hope in that," he said. She nodded, then leaned in to kiss him. Sam hungrily kissed her back, eventually backing her against the wall. Mercedes breath grew hard as he kissed her neck, and when he brushed his lips across her trail of marks, she hissed. "I would say sorry, but I'm really not. I'm glad that I marked you."

He spun her around and backed her up to the bed. Mercedes lied down on her back as Sam climbed on top of her, kissing her. "Did we... did we decied that we were going to slow things down?" He asked, hoping that he wasn't assuming this was alright with her.

"No, you said that you were willing to, but that was not a confirmed course of action," she said, sliding her hands down her body like he'd shown her last night.

"Okay, good," he told her and watched her reach for herself, but he caught her hand, amused by the shocked and annoyed face it brought to her face. His free hand traced a similar path down her and he landed his hand to cup her warmth, as he moved her hands aside with his other, leaned down and whispered to her, "I wanna touch you, this time."