Re: Venetian penthouse: Sam & Cris
Sam just didn't need the label, yeah? Maybe she just feared the thing, the words, and she'd given Neil a shit fucking time about them in the first place. She was ok with just being, or at least she thought she was, and right now it was just enough, yeah? It was enough that he came when she needed him, and that he wanted to see her, and that he liked being around her or whatever. That was enough, and maybe it wouldn't always be. Maybe it was already starting not to be, but she was still in that place, and yeah, ok, so maybe that was fear, and maybe it was still feeling sting about Meredith, and maybe it was just all the fucking shit that hadn't given them a moment's peace in fucking months. She might not remember it clear, but she felt the weariness in her fucking bones, and that weight had led to Joey dying, and she didn't need all the pieces to add that shit up right.
He grinned when she sat up, and she wanted to kiss that fucking grin off his lips. But he was reaching for her hair, and she stilled, watching the progress of his hand like it was something more than skin and bone. Like it mattered on some other fucking level that she didn't have a name for. She narrowed her blown-black eyes when he said he wasn't lying, and then he said it was his gut, and she laughed. It was rusty, throat-sore from tears and screaming, but it was a laugh all the same. "Your gut has nothing to do with it. I want specifics, yeah?" She said it young, like a curious girl who asked her friend what some cute boy said about her. Blush on her cheeks, red as poppies, and she watched him walk around the bed.
She had no clue what he was up to, but she swiveled to watch him close the door on Abuelita, and she knelt there as he undid his belt and took off his shoes and, yeah, telling him to go home was completely fucking forgotten. He ran the water, and she figured he was going to take a bath or something. Sedation slow, whatever, but she didn't expect an invitation to join him in the bathroom, and maybe she should have, but she didn't. She was rubbing her fists against her eyes when he came and scooped her up, and her what- was truncated when he tucked her against his shirt. Yeah, ok, not fucking complaining.
She expected him to sit her on the counter, and she could keep him company, yeah? She was distracted by the suds in the rising water, all rainbows. The bathroom didn't impress her. Just like the rest of the penthouse, it was shit she'd gotten used to in Vegas, but the suds were color, and they were pretty, yeah? But he didn't stop at the counter, and her second what- was cut short when he dropped her in the fucking water.
The tub was huge enough that the slosh was minimal. Or, it was until Sam instinctively smacked her hand along the surface of the water beneath the bubbles and splashed the fuck out of him where he was standing, still dressed. "Fucker!" But she was laughing, even as she sat up in the tub and reached under the water to peel off the soaked pants, which she subsequently threw in his face. The shirt followed, and she tossed that at his belly. The floor was sopping wet now, and she didn't notice, and she didn't fucking care.
Her arms, from elbow to wrist, were scratch-lined red, but there were no scars at her wrists, and the thick scar tissue from shoulder to midsection was gone. But that shit was only visible for a second or two before she slouched down and relaxed into the suds with a very grateful sigh. And that was youth, yeah? The ability to forget everything for a second, even when shit was so jacked.