What he sees make his blood run cold and he can feel icy tingle down his spine. There are suitcases all over her suite and she's in the middle of it, tidying, folding, packing.
She's leaving.
The grip around his heart tightens until it nearly suffocates him, because everything clicks into place all at once. She's been avoided him for the past few days, and now she is packing and she would have left without saying anything, without saying goodbye to him if he hadn't showed up.
"You can't leave."
"I can do whatever I want to do, Danny."
"Sam..."
"I told you I would."
The lump in his throat is heavy and Danny realises how hard it is to breathe. She's making him breathless again but this time it's for all the wrong reasons.
"That was before, Sam! Things have changed ever since! You can't just leave us—you can't just leave me!" he feels anger bitting his skin. She's ripping his heart out of his chest and she's not even looking at him while doing so. "We're 'Sam-and-Danny'. We're a team. Together."
"'Sam-and-Danny'," she repeats as if the sounds of it tastes sour on her tongue and she rolls her eyes. "Have you been talking to Delinda? Only she would come up with this nonsense."
He wants to move, to grab her, to shake her until she comes to her sense but his limbs seem anchored to the ground and he remains stuck where he is.
"You can't leave," he repeats, his tone sharp and stony. "You can't do that to me."
Danny's heart has beat for Sam the very first moment he saw her. It was fast and brutal, there was no slow burgeoning of feelings, there was no murky suspicion about her. There was just lots of mushy and weepy feelings that he kept secret and hidden so she wouldn't get scared, wouldn't leave. Feelings take so much room, so he let them engulf him, he let them overtake him, and now, he feels breathless with the abundance of them all inside and over his fragile, trembling heart.
She drops the piece of clothing she was folding and looks up to face him. She's angry at her, at him, at the world in general, but mostly, she's tired because it's just so exhausting loving him. It hurts. He's just so perfect and so good and she's just so bad for him. She tried. But the disaster, the tragedy, the ugly ending is just waiting around the corner, waiting for a misstep, for a failure from her and she just wants to keep his heart whole. She doesn't want to ruin him like she's ruined people before.
"Look, Danny, it was all fun and games till it lasted but now I'm done. And I am leaving and I do not need your permission to do so. You're nothing to me," her eyes are burning hot, and her harsh words struck him right where it hurts the most. "You're worthless to me, McCoy."
Danny wants to laugh at her because he knows she's lying. He's learned to read her, her and her pretty lies and her fake smiles. The lies are shining in the soft tears at the corner of her eyes, and in her pale lips that she has stopped biting. She's trying so hard to keep it together but she's nothing more than a ball of rage ready to burst open and destroy everything on her path, including herself.
"Stop lying, Sam!"
"I'm not lying!" she screams with all determination in the world so that she can believe in her own lie.
Sam has lied her whole life and sometimes she doesn't know what's true and what's fake anymore. But right now, in the middle of the room, with Danny a few steps away from her, she feels like her world would never turn right again if she had to be deprived of him. She thinks she would never be the same again, she could never laugh the same, feel the same or live the same if Danny wasn't part of her life anymore. But she can't just tell him that. She can't give him that much power over her.
"Just leave me alone, Danny."
"I can't do that."
"Why? Why can't you leave me alone? It's easy, you open the door and you walk out. That's it."
"I can't do that because you're everything to me, Sam!" he shouts at her because he feels like it's the only way for him to get through her. "You mean the world to me and I love you. That makes a difference, right?" he asks, breathing shakily, the admission, the confession taking him off guard, leaving him trembling and overwhelmed. "I don't want you to leave because I love you. I don't want to leave you alone and I don't want you to leave me alone. I need you here..."
His eyes travel across Sam's face where he can read surprise and disbelief and hope and fear. Her eyelashes tremble a lot, she's blinking very fast because she's terrified by his words, he knows because he is too. He wasn't supposed to say it like that. He hadn't planned to say it like that. Sam deserves better, so much better but he didn't have time to think about it because she's about to leave, about to leave him behind and he can't have that. Because to him, letting the person you love go is impossible. He can't stand the idea of letting her walk out of the Montecito.
She is quiet and the silence is defeating and cold.
"Sam? Just say something, please," he softly begs as he takes a step forward but she takes a step back and Danny is sure he has ruined everything because her head is down and her hands are turned into fists. "Sweetheart, look at me."
And when she refuses to raise her head, he lets his hand grasp her chin and gently forces her to look at him.
His heart drops when her huge brown and wet eyes met his.
She's crying, openly, because of him.
"Oh, Sam..." he says her name with so much fondness and tenderness as he anxiously wipes at her spilled tears, his gestures filled with panicked care are just so endearing, so genuine. And suddenly the overflow of feelings and emotions are making it hard for her to breath.
His feelings for her, her feelings for him, they're all taking the life out of her, crushing her lungs and her heart so she pushes him away. She pushes him away from her. From her heart.
She wants to put as much distance as possible between them so it would hurt less when she leaves. Because she will. He can't stop her.
"Sam?" his voice cracks, it sounds sad and hurt and the heart Sam swears doesn't exist breaks a little because this is the way people always sounded whenever they got too close to her. Sad and hurt. She had never wanted that for Danny. She should have never unpacked her bags she realises sadly.
"You love me," her voice is hoarse, and angry. So mad. There is nothing sweet about her at this instant. "You love me," she repeats like it is a foreign concept that she is having difficulties to grasp her head around.
"Yeah, I do."
She angrily wipes the tears with the back of her hand. "Then stop it."
"I can't do that. I'm in love with you."
He sounds so helpless, so hopeless and Sam wants to hurt him so her own pain would stop.
"I wasn't part of the plan. It doesn't make sense, Danny. You weren't supposed to fall in love with me, you weren't supposed to do that!"
Her tone is accusatory, she is shaking, burning with anger and Danny feels like she's about to break, explode into pieces, with the weight of all the things she didn't want to feel, all the things she wasn't ready to feel and the sight of it makes Danny's stomach twist.
"You were supposed to realise I was terrible and cold and empty. You were supposed to get bored and even get mad at some point. You were supposed to hate me. You were supposed to get over me!" she is yelling now and Danny is scared because he has never seen her like this and she's so small—too small—and the world is too big and he thinks he can't help her even if he tries his hardest. She is trapped in her own self hate, far too deep, far too gone. He can't do anything but love her anyway. "You weren't supposed to love me. You weren't supposed to do that to me!"
And tears come fresh anew, washing away the anger, letting room for sadness and emptiness.
"You weren't supposed to make me fall in love with you," her voice drops, the words fall between them and a sob wrecks her from within. "I hate you."
Danny can no longer ignore the pain in Sam's voice so he does what he always does whenever Sam is upset, he brings her into a hug. One hand around her waist, the other between her shoulder, where it feels the safest as he lets his head rest upon hers.
Sam feels fury and desperation slip out of her fingertips and she lets herself drown in Danny's warmth. Pressed against him, her nostrils is filled with his smell and perfume, calm slowly creeps up her body and she feels alright once again. He makes her feel okay when all she wants to do is break walls. She leans into him and sighs shakily.
"I'm sorry for ruining your plans, Samantha Jane," he sounds genuine, authentic, like he's always been with her. He would never lie to her. "But I love you, okay? And there's nothing you can do to change it. So get used to it, honey."
"I'm going to ruin you," she warns him but she grips the back of his shirt hard, face hiding into his hard and familiar chest. He feels like home, and she wants to scream for thinking about such cheesy things. "I'm going to ruin you."
He holds her tighter. Closer. If he could, he would have hidden her in his heart, away from the world, where nobody could hurt her, where he could love her forever and in secret.
"I don't care. I love you."
"I don't want to be in love with you. This is so wrong."
"It feels pretty right to me."
"Shut up. I'm a bad thing."
He drops a kiss on the top of her head. "Bad things are my favourites, Marquez, you're my favourite of them all. You are my favourite. I love you."
There's something ferocious and dangerous about love stories, something unstoppable. And Danny knows there are things that Sam isn't telling him, things that he won't like, things that will hurt him in the long run but at this moment, it doesn't seem important to him.
Everybody lives with something that is missing, something that is lacking and over time, everybody ends up taming the empty spot. They eventually conquer the emptiness, yet, Danny feels like he could never live without Sam, so if being in love with her means losing himself along the way then so be it. Because after love, there's nothing. Nothing worth living and suffering for.
