Like Chocolate and Toasted Marshmallow on a Graham Cracker
Title: Like Chocolate and Toasted Marshmallow on a Graham Cracker
Characters/Pairing: Sam/Jess
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,000
Summary: Sam and Jess go camping and when the time comes to make smores, Sam has no idea what to do since he's never had them before.
Author's Note: written for a prompt by sistabro on ohsam comment fic meme
Like Chocolate and Toasted Marshmallow on a Graham Cracker
She finds him sitting by himself, just outside the warm circle of firelight. He’s got his arms braced on his knees, hands clasped together and head down. It’s a pose she recognizes as belonging to the Other Sam, the one she doesn’t know very well. The one who often tries to hide from her unless she can convince him not to. The one who totally blanched when she suggested a camping trip with their friends.
It’s the Other Sam who looks up at her when she approaches, but his brooding features quickly relax into the gentle smile of the Everyday Sam. Her Sam.
“Hey,” he says, voice softened to match the hazy spring evening slowly darkening to night around them.
“Hey yourself,” Jess replies. She nudges him with her foot so he scoots over on the fallen tree he’s appropriated as a bench, then drops into a seat beside him. When she reaches out to tug one of his linked hands free and replaced it with her own, he shoots her a look of almost heartbreaking gratitude, as though he’s the luckiest man in the world just to have her by his side. Just to be touched.
Other Sam is the one who usually looks at her like that, meaning something about this trip is keeping him near the surface. Jess nestles her head into his shoulder, giving him that much more contact, and tries to keep the question she knows she’s got to ask sounding as neutral as possible.
“You okay?”
Sam wraps an arm around her and pulls her closer, almost as though he’s trying to protect her from something or keep her warm, but they’re safe in a campsite with three of their closest friends and the nighttime chill won’t be setting in for another few hours. That action alone tells Jess the real answer is ‘no’ but Sam predictably goes with,
“I’m fine.”
“Hmmm.” Jess has heard that line enough times before- including once when she walked in on Sam smashing his cell phone to pieces with his bare foot, and once when the paramedics had been called because he’d passed out in class due to what turned out to be an advanced case of pneumonia- to know it belongs to the Other Sam, and it’s rarely true. “So this whole sitting by yourself in dark thing is because…?”
Sam makes a face at her but it’s an Everyday Sam face, equal parts affection and exasperation.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jess continues when that’s all he does. “You hate camping. Bad experiences.” Other Sam is the one with the past and the family, so she’s not surprised the mention of something he told her in quiet, late night confidence brings him back in full force. She squeezes his fingers with her own. “Have I mentioned how grateful I am you came along anyway? Cause I am. Very grateful.”
She waggles her eyebrows and make as smutty of a face as she can manage, just to hear Sam’s surprised bark of laughter. She knows he’s way too polite to engage in anything even approaching inappropriate with their friends a mere five feet away- not that she would either, cause ewww- but the joke seems to help and when he leans in to kiss her- politely- it’s her favorite Sam, Other and Everyday blended into one. Just Sam. The man she loves.
So okay, maybe the kiss isn’t entirely polite since it’s a wolf whistle from by the fire that makes them pull apart.
“Stop being so fucking romantic and get your asses over here!” Libby calls, waving part of a tree branch in the air. “The fire’s ready!”
“Ready for what?” Sam asks, and there’s a hint of something dark in his voice. His arms tighten marginally around Jess, as though he doesn’t want her to get up.
“I think we’re cooking,” she answers him, trying to sound reassuring even if she doesn’t quite know why she should.
“Cooking what?”
Jess kisses him for an answer, Libby’s catcalls be damned, then when he’s significantly distracted she pulls them both to their feet. Sam still looks anxious and his grip on her hand is unusually tight, but he lets himself be pulled back to the fire.
Darren and Nate are nestled together on one blanket, Libby has claimed a folding chair and is perched on it like a throne.
“The amount of couply-ness on this trip is making me sick,” she sighs as Sam and Jess approach. “Remind me again why I decided to come as the fifth wheel?”
“Because you love us and we love you, and you jump at any excuse to take time off that barely legal form of torture you call a job.” Darren stretches out one of his arms. “Now hand me a stick, bitch.”
“Isn’t it your boyfriend’s job to be handling your stick?” Libby sneers good-naturedly, but passes over the tree branch, then grabs two more and tosses them to Sam and Jess.
Sam snags them out of the air with the freakishly fast reflexes Jess has almost gotten used to over the course of their relationships. But just because she’s grown accustomed to Sam occasionally displaying ninja-like qualities doesn’t mean their friends have. Libby’s eyebrows go way up and Nate utters a quiet “Damn.”
Sam looks embarrassed, as he always does whenever the majority of attention is on him, and lowers the sticks awkwardly to his side. “Um,” he says. “What do we do with these?”
“Toast the marshmallows, please,” Libby says, digging around in the bag near her chair and coming up with a package of Hershey’s chocolate bars. “Darren always burns them.”
Sam looks down at the sticks in his hand, then back at the fire, then finally at Jess. The anxiety is back on his face, so strong it almost resembles panic. It’s a look that’s a hundred percent Other Sam, but since moving in with him Jess has come to recognize it.
“S’mores, Sam,” she says, and when he gives a minute shake of his head that confirms it. She strokes up and down his arm a few times to let him know she understands, then gently pulls the sticks from his hand.
Sam is one of the smartest people Jess has ever met, and the wealth of his knowledge and interests never fail to surprise and impress her. He’s taking his LSATs this coming year, they met in an Art History class, he’s read almost as many classics as she has, and he’s been published in their school newspaper more times than she can count. And that’s just his academics. The longer Jess knows Sam, the more strangely specific skills and random bits of information he reveals. He can shoot pool like a professional, he knows the difference between a twenty-two caliber and forty-four caliber gun based on the sound of the shot, and Jess can swear she’s heard him cursing in Latin.
But for every bizarre, exotic thing Sam knows, there is something Jess considers to be totally normal and commonplace that he is completely clueless about. Apparently, s’mores fall into that category. She knows these gaps in his knowledge come from the damaging childhood Everyday Sam denies having and Other Sam refuses to discuss. Jess has never pried any further than that, because she doesn’t need to know any specifics to know how to help him.
“We roast marshmallows on sticks over the fire,” Jess murmurs in his ear after she accepts the bag of marshmallows from Darren. “Then eat them on graham crackers with chocolate.”
“Right,” Sam says with a quick smile, but the arm slipped around her waist and the fingers brushing the skin above the waistband of her jeans say Thank you.
Jess sticks one marshmallow on each stick, hands one stick to Sam then places her near the fire. Libby and Nate are yelling as Darren’s marshmallow ignites and becomes a tiny sugary torch, but Jess is only paying attention to Sam. There’s something so utterly sweet and sad about the way he watches her every move, his face a mask of concentration. He looks years younger like this, and Jess feels suddenly maternal, every cell in her body calling out for her to look after this lost little boy.
She pulls her marshmallow back as it reaches perfect golden brown, and pushes her foot against Nate’s thigh until he passes two graham crackers and a bar of chocolate up to her. When Sam pulls his own marshmallow back- a little black at the top and too white at the bottom but not too bad for a first try- Jess breaks a cracker in half, adds some chocolate and places it on either side of the marshmallow to pull it off the stick without the risk of burned fingers.
Sam fumbles with his cracker a bit, nearly dropping his chocolate with a vicious hiss that suggests he didn’t quite master the not burning his fingers trick, but then he’s holding up a completed s’more and grinning like it’s a major life accomplishment. And for him, Jess knows, it really is.
She takes a bite of her s’more and shoots Sam a smile gooey with marshmallows and love. He eats his own s’more in the inhaling-food way he eats almost everything, but then takes the time to lick the remaining bits of marshmallow off his fingers. Then his lips. Then her fingers and lips.
Libby, Darren, and Nate are too busy squabbling over the chocolate bars to pay enough attention to start teasing them, and anyway Jess is pretty sure the entire world stops when Sam kisses her like this, like she’s precious, like she’s giving him something amazing.
Like she’s saving him.
When they finally pull apart, Other Sam and Everyday Sam are warring for dominance on Sam’s face, and Jess feels a little bit like crying.
“These marshmallows are the best things I’ve ever roasted,” Other Sam says with a quiet sort of despair, but Everyday Sam tries to soften it with the hint of a smile. Jess picks up the hand Sam burned on his marshmallow and plants a kiss to each reddened fingertip. His smile widens even as his despair deepens and turns into something more constant, and more sad. Everyday Sam and Other Sam melting together, like chocolate and toasted marshmallow on a graham cracker.
“I love you,” both Sams tell her.
“I love you,” Jess tells them back. She rises up for one more kiss, then retrieves their marshmallow sticks from where they dropped them on the ground during their embrace. Sam takes his without any prodding, and he sticks the marshmallow on himself.
Jess leans into him as they start roasting their next set, and Sam puts his arm around her again. Night has fallen by now, coating the surrounding area in inky black. Their friends are still carrying on, shouting and laughing, and Jess feels almost obscenely content in this moment, nestled up to Sam’s side. She allows herself a smug, happy little thought. Maybe Sam won’t hate camping so much anymore.
As if he can read her mind, Sam pulls her a little closer. The light and warmth of the fire washes over them both.
***
Characters/Pairing: Sam/Jess
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,000
Summary: Sam and Jess go camping and when the time comes to make smores, Sam has no idea what to do since he's never had them before.
Author's Note: written for a prompt by sistabro on ohsam comment fic meme
Like Chocolate and Toasted Marshmallow on a Graham Cracker
She finds him sitting by himself, just outside the warm circle of firelight. He’s got his arms braced on his knees, hands clasped together and head down. It’s a pose she recognizes as belonging to the Other Sam, the one she doesn’t know very well. The one who often tries to hide from her unless she can convince him not to. The one who totally blanched when she suggested a camping trip with their friends.
It’s the Other Sam who looks up at her when she approaches, but his brooding features quickly relax into the gentle smile of the Everyday Sam. Her Sam.
“Hey,” he says, voice softened to match the hazy spring evening slowly darkening to night around them.
“Hey yourself,” Jess replies. She nudges him with her foot so he scoots over on the fallen tree he’s appropriated as a bench, then drops into a seat beside him. When she reaches out to tug one of his linked hands free and replaced it with her own, he shoots her a look of almost heartbreaking gratitude, as though he’s the luckiest man in the world just to have her by his side. Just to be touched.
Other Sam is the one who usually looks at her like that, meaning something about this trip is keeping him near the surface. Jess nestles her head into his shoulder, giving him that much more contact, and tries to keep the question she knows she’s got to ask sounding as neutral as possible.
“You okay?”
Sam wraps an arm around her and pulls her closer, almost as though he’s trying to protect her from something or keep her warm, but they’re safe in a campsite with three of their closest friends and the nighttime chill won’t be setting in for another few hours. That action alone tells Jess the real answer is ‘no’ but Sam predictably goes with,
“I’m fine.”
“Hmmm.” Jess has heard that line enough times before- including once when she walked in on Sam smashing his cell phone to pieces with his bare foot, and once when the paramedics had been called because he’d passed out in class due to what turned out to be an advanced case of pneumonia- to know it belongs to the Other Sam, and it’s rarely true. “So this whole sitting by yourself in dark thing is because…?”
Sam makes a face at her but it’s an Everyday Sam face, equal parts affection and exasperation.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jess continues when that’s all he does. “You hate camping. Bad experiences.” Other Sam is the one with the past and the family, so she’s not surprised the mention of something he told her in quiet, late night confidence brings him back in full force. She squeezes his fingers with her own. “Have I mentioned how grateful I am you came along anyway? Cause I am. Very grateful.”
She waggles her eyebrows and make as smutty of a face as she can manage, just to hear Sam’s surprised bark of laughter. She knows he’s way too polite to engage in anything even approaching inappropriate with their friends a mere five feet away- not that she would either, cause ewww- but the joke seems to help and when he leans in to kiss her- politely- it’s her favorite Sam, Other and Everyday blended into one. Just Sam. The man she loves.
So okay, maybe the kiss isn’t entirely polite since it’s a wolf whistle from by the fire that makes them pull apart.
“Stop being so fucking romantic and get your asses over here!” Libby calls, waving part of a tree branch in the air. “The fire’s ready!”
“Ready for what?” Sam asks, and there’s a hint of something dark in his voice. His arms tighten marginally around Jess, as though he doesn’t want her to get up.
“I think we’re cooking,” she answers him, trying to sound reassuring even if she doesn’t quite know why she should.
“Cooking what?”
Jess kisses him for an answer, Libby’s catcalls be damned, then when he’s significantly distracted she pulls them both to their feet. Sam still looks anxious and his grip on her hand is unusually tight, but he lets himself be pulled back to the fire.
Darren and Nate are nestled together on one blanket, Libby has claimed a folding chair and is perched on it like a throne.
“The amount of couply-ness on this trip is making me sick,” she sighs as Sam and Jess approach. “Remind me again why I decided to come as the fifth wheel?”
“Because you love us and we love you, and you jump at any excuse to take time off that barely legal form of torture you call a job.” Darren stretches out one of his arms. “Now hand me a stick, bitch.”
“Isn’t it your boyfriend’s job to be handling your stick?” Libby sneers good-naturedly, but passes over the tree branch, then grabs two more and tosses them to Sam and Jess.
Sam snags them out of the air with the freakishly fast reflexes Jess has almost gotten used to over the course of their relationships. But just because she’s grown accustomed to Sam occasionally displaying ninja-like qualities doesn’t mean their friends have. Libby’s eyebrows go way up and Nate utters a quiet “Damn.”
Sam looks embarrassed, as he always does whenever the majority of attention is on him, and lowers the sticks awkwardly to his side. “Um,” he says. “What do we do with these?”
“Toast the marshmallows, please,” Libby says, digging around in the bag near her chair and coming up with a package of Hershey’s chocolate bars. “Darren always burns them.”
Sam looks down at the sticks in his hand, then back at the fire, then finally at Jess. The anxiety is back on his face, so strong it almost resembles panic. It’s a look that’s a hundred percent Other Sam, but since moving in with him Jess has come to recognize it.
“S’mores, Sam,” she says, and when he gives a minute shake of his head that confirms it. She strokes up and down his arm a few times to let him know she understands, then gently pulls the sticks from his hand.
Sam is one of the smartest people Jess has ever met, and the wealth of his knowledge and interests never fail to surprise and impress her. He’s taking his LSATs this coming year, they met in an Art History class, he’s read almost as many classics as she has, and he’s been published in their school newspaper more times than she can count. And that’s just his academics. The longer Jess knows Sam, the more strangely specific skills and random bits of information he reveals. He can shoot pool like a professional, he knows the difference between a twenty-two caliber and forty-four caliber gun based on the sound of the shot, and Jess can swear she’s heard him cursing in Latin.
But for every bizarre, exotic thing Sam knows, there is something Jess considers to be totally normal and commonplace that he is completely clueless about. Apparently, s’mores fall into that category. She knows these gaps in his knowledge come from the damaging childhood Everyday Sam denies having and Other Sam refuses to discuss. Jess has never pried any further than that, because she doesn’t need to know any specifics to know how to help him.
“We roast marshmallows on sticks over the fire,” Jess murmurs in his ear after she accepts the bag of marshmallows from Darren. “Then eat them on graham crackers with chocolate.”
“Right,” Sam says with a quick smile, but the arm slipped around her waist and the fingers brushing the skin above the waistband of her jeans say Thank you.
Jess sticks one marshmallow on each stick, hands one stick to Sam then places her near the fire. Libby and Nate are yelling as Darren’s marshmallow ignites and becomes a tiny sugary torch, but Jess is only paying attention to Sam. There’s something so utterly sweet and sad about the way he watches her every move, his face a mask of concentration. He looks years younger like this, and Jess feels suddenly maternal, every cell in her body calling out for her to look after this lost little boy.
She pulls her marshmallow back as it reaches perfect golden brown, and pushes her foot against Nate’s thigh until he passes two graham crackers and a bar of chocolate up to her. When Sam pulls his own marshmallow back- a little black at the top and too white at the bottom but not too bad for a first try- Jess breaks a cracker in half, adds some chocolate and places it on either side of the marshmallow to pull it off the stick without the risk of burned fingers.
Sam fumbles with his cracker a bit, nearly dropping his chocolate with a vicious hiss that suggests he didn’t quite master the not burning his fingers trick, but then he’s holding up a completed s’more and grinning like it’s a major life accomplishment. And for him, Jess knows, it really is.
She takes a bite of her s’more and shoots Sam a smile gooey with marshmallows and love. He eats his own s’more in the inhaling-food way he eats almost everything, but then takes the time to lick the remaining bits of marshmallow off his fingers. Then his lips. Then her fingers and lips.
Libby, Darren, and Nate are too busy squabbling over the chocolate bars to pay enough attention to start teasing them, and anyway Jess is pretty sure the entire world stops when Sam kisses her like this, like she’s precious, like she’s giving him something amazing.
Like she’s saving him.
When they finally pull apart, Other Sam and Everyday Sam are warring for dominance on Sam’s face, and Jess feels a little bit like crying.
“These marshmallows are the best things I’ve ever roasted,” Other Sam says with a quiet sort of despair, but Everyday Sam tries to soften it with the hint of a smile. Jess picks up the hand Sam burned on his marshmallow and plants a kiss to each reddened fingertip. His smile widens even as his despair deepens and turns into something more constant, and more sad. Everyday Sam and Other Sam melting together, like chocolate and toasted marshmallow on a graham cracker.
“I love you,” both Sams tell her.
“I love you,” Jess tells them back. She rises up for one more kiss, then retrieves their marshmallow sticks from where they dropped them on the ground during their embrace. Sam takes his without any prodding, and he sticks the marshmallow on himself.
Jess leans into him as they start roasting their next set, and Sam puts his arm around her again. Night has fallen by now, coating the surrounding area in inky black. Their friends are still carrying on, shouting and laughing, and Jess feels almost obscenely content in this moment, nestled up to Sam’s side. She allows herself a smug, happy little thought. Maybe Sam won’t hate camping so much anymore.
As if he can read her mind, Sam pulls her a little closer. The light and warmth of the fire washes over them both.
***