WHO: Sam Merlotte, Tara Thornton WHEN: February 12, yesterday WHERE: Some corridor! WHAT: Sam decides he's going to flee as a rat, sees Tara, and decides against it. He's naked. Tara's foul-mouthed. Bears shit in the woods. WARNINGS: Non-sexual nudity, but there's no talk about body parts. Lots of cussing, lots of morbid humor.
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Sam Merlotte had seen some crazy shit in his life, but this? This was some of the craziest shit yet.
Not that he believed any of what those people in the hospital told him. Did they really expect him to believe he’d been brought to a completely different universe? Yeah, right. Did he look stupid or something?
News flash: Sam wasn’t stupid. He hadn’t survived this long by being stupid. He knew when to play along and when not to, even if he had been a fucked up mess lately. (That was his brother’s fault, though.) He listened to the story he was being fed, let them assign him to a job and to an apartment, got a handy device to communicate with other people (not that he planned to use it), and then he got to leave. He didn’t know the layout of wherever the hell he was, but Sam had tricks up his sleeves. He could figure it out, and then he’d get the hell out of there and back to Bon Temps where he belonged.
He found a quiet corner where there wasn’t a flurry of activity, set his phone down and shifted into a mouse. He’d find his way out of here one way or another.
You know what this place needed less of? Less goddamn snow, less goddamn cold, and less bugs. The place wasn't quite so bad as that shed out behind her mama's house, but for a place that was inhabited and pretty damn clean, Tara thought there were entirely too many bugs. Way too many spiders, for sure. Someone mentioned that there was one the size of a cat around before she got there.
That shit wasn't going to fly.
This place was just depressing. She felt a little like Bertha Mason, crazy and hanging around the attic, waiting for life to pass her the hell by. And she'd only been here a week. She couldn't imagine being inside this fucking place for an entire winter. How the hell hadn't these people killed one another? Lord, one weekend with Lafayette for company and Tara was ready to poke his eyeballs out.
She wasn't paying much attention to where she was going so when she stumbled over a set of clothing on the ground, she nearly bit the dust. Frowning, she snatched the items off the ground. "Goddamn! What the hell is with folks not pickin' up after themselves? This a goddamn fire hazard. I coulda broke my neck."
It was sheer luck that the woman had shown up so quickly, and that Sam hadn’t scuttled far away yet. She passed him by, and if Sam hadn’t been paying close attention or if he’d chosen a different animal (or, worse, an insect), he wouldn’t have known it was Tara. As it was, he couldn’t see her well, but he knew that voice. He’d know that voice anywhere.
He’d already told her his big secret, so Sam didn’t think anything of shifting back into human form right there in the hallway. “Tara, what the hell are you doing here?”
Tara was all kinds of horror movie freaked out. She let out a startled shriek, spinning around and stepping backwards. Too fast, her ankle gave a sudden jerk and Tara spilled over onto the floor right on her ass. She gaped up at the naked white man who was her boss with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.
"What the fuck are you doing here!" She glanced down to his feet, then back up again. Any other time, she might have been appreciative. "And why are you nekkid?"
Sam blinked at her, frowning. Why the hell was she confused? She should have known the whole deal. He’d explained it to her, and she was freaked out, but she should have understood.
Suddenly feeling self-conscious, Sam bent over to grab his pants and pull them up. “I asked you first.” Fair was fair, after all. Sam was nothing if not a sweet Southern gentleman. “What is this place?”
"Do I look like I know everything?" She dusted her hands together, but stayed on the floor. "The hell are you doin' naked as a jaybird in the hallways?"
His pants were halfway on when a couple of passersby noticed him. One was eyeballing Sam something fierce, the other was trying not to laugh. Tara leaned on her hand to look around him. An eyebrow shot up, and she put on her best Sassy Black Woman™ "Why don't y'all take a damn picture. It'll last longer!"
Most people probably would have been embarrassed to get caught naked in the middle of a hallway, but not Sam. He was comfortable in his own skin -- at least as far as nudity was concerned. Not that he went out of his way to wander around naked, but letting Andy Bellefleur and others believe he was a nudist was an easy way around getting attention.
He stifled a laugh at Tara's commentary, and waved a hand at the people passing by before pulling his pants up the rest of the way. When they were out of earshot, he looked back at Tara. "You act like you always know everythin', so I figured…" He shrugged, smirking at her. "I, uh… I'm pretty sure I already explained it to you. The whole… you know. Shifting thing."
"That's because I do always know everythin'," she answered, arranging her face into a pucker as she reached out her hand. When what she wanted didn't happen fast enough, she waved her hand at the wrist, growing increasingly annoyed. "I hope that means you're gonna be shifting to help my ass off the floor. Come on, Sam. Jumpin' out and scaring the pants of yourself is all fine and well until I end up on my ass with nothing to show for me."
"That's not what I was tryin' to do," Sam grumbled as he reached out to help Tara up off the floor. "Sorry for scaring you." He looked suitably contrite for that. If he'd known she was there, he wouldn't have tried to escape so soon, and definitely not without her.
"I meant…" What the hell was going on? It hadn't been that long since he'd told her. "I told you over breakfast at my place, Tara. You tellin' me you've forgotten, or are you gonna pretend I never told you that I'm a shapeshifter?"
Tara grunted on the way up, then straightened out her clothing. To tell the truth, she didn't really need to. She never wore anything fancy enough, and this place didn't require anything pink, frilly, or lacy — to her extreme satisfaction. Hand on her hip, she just stared at Sam for a moment.
Just who did he think she was? Breakfast? Hell no.
"You been drinkin' some backwater moonshine? Or just hit your head?"
Sam frowned. "Neither. Ain't been here long enough to find any moonshine." He rubbed at the back of his head, even though he didn't feel any lumps or bumps. If he'd hit his head hard enough, the doctors wouldn't have let him walk out.
"You're really telling me you don't remember that conversation?" That didn’t make any sense. “It just happened. You walked out.”
"Sam Merlotte, are you callin' me a liar?" Tara's expression dared him to say it. She waited for it. She was ready to rip into him when it suddenly dawned on her. She let her body untense. "Aw shit. This is one of those damn timeline things they were tellin' me about. Folks coming from all over goddamn time. What's the last thing you remember?"
Sam didn't think Tara would lie, but he wasn't lying either. He couldn't make sense of it. Not even hearing that there was some sort of messed up shit with timelines helped.
"Uh --" The last thing he remembered was confronting Tommy in the woods, gun in hand. Tara didn't need to know about that. "I told you already. I made you breakfast, and I told you about the shapeshifting. And…" He took a deep breath. "My brother ransacked my place, and my office."
"Okay, that don't make a lick of sense." And it really didn't. She thought Sam didn't have any family? Or maybe she'd never thought to ask. It was hazy. "This whole thing doesn't make any sense. One moment, I'm standin' there, lookin' at Miss Jeannette's body, thinkin' it might be my fool cousin. The next, I'm wakin' up in some weird-smelling hospital bed with people hovering over me, tellin' me I came from another dimension."
She was trying not to think about what Sam had said. A shapeshifter? She knew about vampires, but shapeshifters were real too? Tara puckered her mouth up, eyebrows shooting up. "This some Sookie's levels of bullshit goin' on around here."
"Jesus Christ," Sam mumbled, rubbing his eyes with the palm of a hand. This was some bullshit, he thought. Not only were they in some other dimension, but they were also from different times? It was going to give him a headache.
He sighed, frustrated, and looked back at Tara. "That shit with Miss Jeannette was…" Had it only been a few weeks? So much had happened that it felt like months. "It was the start of some more fucked up shit." Not just for him, but for Tara, too, although he didn't know much about that.
That was always the way, wasn't it? Tara would be willing to bet that Sookie was right in the center of most of it, too. Tara loved that girl to pieces, but she made some stupid ass decisions — especially since that damn fanger came into her life. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry that she wasn't here in this dimension.
"...you got a brother? I thought you was an orphan or some shit."
Sam shook his head. "No, I…" It had been easier to pretend like he had no family, no connections, no one in the world who'd be looking for him. For the most part, that'd been true. His adoptive family had checked out when he was a teenager, and he'd never bothered to find his biological parents after that.
"I didn't know," he admitted. "My biological parents put me up for adoption, and one day I came home to find the house empty. I didn't have a family after that." His voice was gruff with emotion, as much as he didn't want it to be. He'd spent a long time building up walls around himself that being forthcoming with Tara was difficult, even now. "I shouldn't have gone looking. It wasn't worth it."
Tara eyeballed him. A orphaned shapeshifter in the middle of goddamn Louisiana. Wasn't that just the way of it? She just couldn't escape any of this supernatural shit. One of these days, it was going to be the death of her. If it wasn't a vampire, it would be a werewolf or some other shit she didn't know existed.
"I can't believe you're a damn shapeshifter."
He huffed out a breath that might have been a scoff if he’d been more irritated. Instead, Sam just looked resigned. “Yeah, well. Imagine how it felt when I found out.” Back then, he had no idea what was happening to him. If his biological family hadn’t abandoned him, he would have known because his mother was a shifter, too.
Then again, his jackass of a father might have tried to use him in dog fights instead of Tommy, but maybe Sam would’ve been strong enough to get him and his mother away earlier. Sam’s life was full of what-ifs. It was hard to think about.
“This place is for real?” he asked, trying to move the conversation away from himself. “This ain’t just some fucked up hallucination we’re both having?”
What a wonderful thought. Thanks, Sam. The idea hadn't crossed her mind. Was it some hallucination? She figured it could be. Hell, this Sam might not even be real. He could be a fucking figment of her imagination. It reminded her of Miss Jeannette and her bullshit with the hallucinations. Tara swore that she found the source of her demons. Really believed it too.
Nope. Some fucking quack taking advantage of folks.
Tara frowned and shrugged. "If it's a hallucination, Sam, then we're both fucked."