FIC: Phase Change (Popular, Sam McPherson/George Austin, R)
TITLE: Phase Change
RATING: R
FANDOM: Popular
PAIRING: Sam McPherson/George Austin
SUMMARY: Maybe-at least to someone-Sam’s meant for more than the periphery.
WORD COUNT: 1800
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Takes place post-series. Written for writers_choice prompt #155, naked.
Sam is sitting beside Brooke’s hospital bed, listening to the sounds of the machines surrounding her. Brooke is sleeping, but the prognosis is good. She’s still pretty, anyway, even with her face bruised the way it is.
It is Brooke’s second day inpatient, and the doctor says they’ll likely release her tomorrow. Sam’s logged a lot of bedside hours, but between Brooke’s morphine and Sam’s-well, whatever Sam is-they haven’t spoken much.
That’s okay. They’ll just say the same things they always do.
Harrison appears in the doorway, a bouquet of roses-cliché-clutched in his hand. He starts to speak, but Sam lowers her head and crosses her arms and pushes past him, leaving the hospital.
***
Later it’s midnight and Sam is on George’s front porch. He answers the door and his mouth pinches.
“I heard about Brooke,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” Sam says, and she’s not sure what she wants, but she wants it badly. “Listen-”
“What are you doing here, Sam?”
She thinks of an easy lie, opts for the truth.
“Everything hurts,” she says. “I thought of-I thought of where I would feel safe, and the first thing I thought of was you.”
“I guess I'm easy to love when you've got no other options,” George says.
Sam's eyes shift down, and it's hard to feel this pain there among the rest, but she manages.
“I guess I'm hard to love, period,” she says. She looks up at George in time to see his expression soften. She trusts him, so she says, “When I reach the brass ring, I let go. I break everything I love before it can break me.”
***
The doctors release Brooke. Mike helps her from the car to the house; she toddles like an old woman, but it’s only bruises, not breaks.
Sam stays in the periphery, her permanent place, it seems. She waits for someone to blame her, but they’re too busy.
***
Sam and George meet behind Kennedy Elementary. They walk through the dark parking lot, climb over the fence to the playground. The mulch on the other side of the fence cushions their fall; when Sam was a kid, it was made of wood chips, but these days it’s some sort of treated rubber, and there’s a subtle bounce as the ground takes her weight.
They sink into the swings’ sling seats. They just sit, but their balance is precarious; the swings wobble slightly, and the muscles in their legs and arms work to keep them from falling.
“I don’t forgive you,” George says, which is a lie, but Sam shakes her head, and her eyes are dark when she says, “You shouldn’t.”
George studies her face, pale in the moonlight. “Maybe you should,” he says, but Sam says, “Should what?” and he knows it’s a lost cause.
***
Brooke is at their sink, frowning into the mirror. The bruises on her cheek and mouth are fading; they’re some kind of purply-green now. Brooke pinches her brow together, then relaxes it, smiles and then frowns. She studies her nose.
“Do you think I should get a nose job?” she asks.
Sam turns off the faucet, watches the water drip off the fixture and splash down into the sink. She doesn’t look up.
“You’re going to use getting hit by a car as an excuse for plastic surgery?” she asks, and then, looking up at Brooke’s perfect face: “You don’t need it.”
Brooke sighs. She takes one last look in the mirror, smiles at Sam. “Goodnight,” she says, and turns off the light, leaving Sam in the dark.
***
George picks her up in front of her house.
“Is that Harrison’s car in the driveway?” he asks as Sam closes the door behind her, fastens her seatbelt.
Sam looks back at the house, but not at the cars in the driveway.
“I guess,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.”
George takes his eyes off the road a moment to catch her expression. “To who?” he asks.
Sam shrugs. She rolls down her window and lets the passing air run over her fingers like it’s something solid. There’s a word for that. Phase change.
Phase changes are molecular changes, changes in how the elements bond together.
“So, where do you want to go for dinner? They opened that barbecue place, but I don’t know how I feel about mac and cheese counting as a vegetable-”
Sam looks at him.
“Anywhere,” she says. “Anywhere else.”
“So-Croutons, or-?”
Sam shakes her head; he missed her meaning. “Do you ever just want to keep driving? Just-just not stop?”
George looks at her for a long time, his face serious.
“Where do you want to go?” he asks. “Just away?”
“Somewhere else,” she says. “Anywhere else.”
***
First the glittering lights of the city stretch out before them, its own constellation, and then gradually they are in the midst of the streetlights and the neon signs. It’s late, the sky dark overhead, but they are in this machine moving through this galaxy; they are a rocket riding the tail of a comment.
George looks over at Sam, expecting her to be taking in the lights and the cars and the movement of the city, but she is looking at him, looking at him like she’s been searching for him for a long time.
He takes her hand.
***
They park behind a motel. George turns the engine off; he pulls the keys from the ignition, and eventually the weak, yellow overhead light turns off, and they are sitting together in the dark, separated from the world around them.
“It’s late,” George says. “We should definitely call our parents, tell them where we are.”
Sam stares out the windshield for a moment. “When I ran away, they called the police, but it was too early to file a missing person’s report.”
“They were scared,” he says. “They missed you.”
“I guess.”
“I missed you,” he says, “when you weren’t around.”
Before she can say anything, George steps out of the car. “You comin’?” he asks.
***
George is 18, and Sam has enough cash for a room for the night. The motel carpet is worn and orange and probably original to the building, which couldn’t have been constructed any later than 1970. Their room is 103, an exterior room with a great view of the dumpsters out back. Sam’s mother has warned her about first floor rooms, and she has warned her about rooms on the outside of the building, but Sam is safe here with George, and she doesn’t give it another thought.
George calls his mother, makes up something about sleeping overnight with a friend from the football team. He offers the sticky, nicotine-yellowed handset to Sam, but she just shakes her head.
“They’ll miss you,” he says.
She shakes her head. “No, they won’t.”
He looks at her a long time. He’s never seen her like this. She’s never shown him this side of herself, but it’s something, he guesses correctly, that she doesn’t show anyone.
“So,” he asks. “What do we do now?”
“Now, tonight?” she asks. “Or tomorrow, the next day?”
“Either.”
She shakes her head. “No idea.”
He moves closer. They are a foot apart.
“Did you ever have a plan?” he asks.
“A long time ago,” she says. “Back before my dad died. I was going to be somebody. Somebody great. He knew it, so I knew it. He believed in me. Now I don’t even believe in myself.”
George circles his fingers around Sam’s wrist, his hand over her hand. “I believe in you, Sam. I always have.”
Sam closes the distance between them. She bites into the flesh of her lower lip as she rests her hands on George's chest. Her hands are on either side of his heart, but she isn't asking for anything. She's offering.
George takes her face in both his hands and kisses her. She is ready for it and not, breathing out a gasp and opening her mouth to him. She tastes sweet and familiar, and he closes his eyes; everything bleeds away but the raw sugarcane taste of her, the warmth of her skin, the gentle touch of her palms on his chest.
George kisses Sam's neck, waits for her sigh. His hands are on her waist and his mouth is on her breast. Sam's hands are cradling his head, his neck, and the pads of her fingers dig against his spine as he nips the flesh of her breast above where her bra cradles them. Sam moans quietly, and George can't decide if he wants to hurt her or love her, if there's much difference between the two.
George leads her to the bed. They both crawl into the mattress on their knees, face to face, slow and close. George pulls down her hair, and in the low light, with her eyes dark and the veil of her hair around her, George thinks of an Arab sultan’s harem. He thinks of centurions unrolling the carpet to deliver Cleopatra to Caesar. He tugs Sam's shirt off over her head, pushes down the strap of her bra to kiss her bare shoulder. He unclasps her bra, squeezing her breasts in his hands, warm and round and soft as peaches. Sam pulls off his shirt, unbuttons and unzips his pants. George comes into her space, backs her up until she's laying back into the pillows. She raises her hips as he pulls her jeans off. George studies her for a moment, the lean, gently curved form of her laid out for him. She looks like Eden, Eve and the Apple and the Serpent all in one. He traces the outline of her panties, the elastic stretched across her hips and the warm silk covering the delicate flesh where her legs part, before he pulls them off. She is naked now, not just her body but her face, all of her. She has told him her secrets, shown him every guarded part of her, and when he parts her legs and enters her, there's nothing else she can give him, there's nothing else that doesn't belong to him.
***
They awake with the sun low and orange on the horizon. George threads his fingers through Sam’s hair, and he wonders if she’s been reported as a runaway.
Used to be they put missing little girl’s faces on milk cartons. When the kid got older without being found, they would draw sketches of how they’d look grown up.
That’s how they see Sam: a sketch, someone’s guess of how she is. She is a missing person, always has been-to everyone but him. He knows exactly where to find her; he knows exactly who she is.