Original -- Saturday Noon
Title: Saturday Noon
Part: II
Series: The Sam and Adrian Saga
Pairing: Adrian/Sam
Rating: G
Word Count: 924
Warnings: fluff!
Summary: In which Sam and Adrian are terribly cute.
Author's Note: A fair amount of "Sleep", by My Chemical Romance, factored into this one.
SATURDAY NOON
The drapes had been drawn just short of shut, and a thin yellow line eluded them, painting its warm length down the side of Sam’s face.
Adrian couldn’t do that-couldn’t lie in bed chumming it up with his pillow and the comforter until noon rolled around and pulled on the counterbalance that worked his eyelids. Adrian was a slave to the slender black hands of the laconic clock clinging to the wall in the kitchenette: weekdays were six-thirty, and weekends were eight, or he’d never get to sleep that night. Consistency wasn’t so much a virtue as a necessity. For better or worse, that was the way he operated.
Not Sammy.
Sam’s dark hair spread on the pale pillow like an inkblot, thick and haphazard and breathtakingly lovely in that Sam sort of way. His eyelashes cast slats of shadow on his cheeks, and he shifted perceptibly, snuffled softly, and settled again against the pillow.
Cautiously Adrian eased himself onto the edge of the bed, knowing it would creak and still cringing when it did. He raised his hand and slid his fingers gently into Sam’s hair, running his fingertips along the scalp lingeringly before drawing them slowly outward and through, small, tousle-made tangles unwinding around his knuckles.
Adrian smiled to himself. Sam spent a good five minutes of his hurried, snooze-button-begun morning fighting that hair. He’d stand on tip-toe in sock feet, lip caught between his teeth, glaring daggers at the reflection of his failure to tame the rebellious sections with water and a comb. Invariably, Adrian was dreadfully tempted to go over and ruffle it thoroughly, but he managed to refrain. That kind of thing crossed the line from cute into cruel.
Then again, given the way Sam smushed his face into the pillow all the time, what did he expect?
A last little tug freed Adrian’s fingers, and Sam smiled faintly, the corners of his lips lifting just so.
Sam almost always slept curled up this way, with his arms across his chest and his knees pulled partway up, a very nearly fetal position. That was the thing about Sam Tanner-he tried to trust people, and life, and the world, but his instincts revolted. He knew that this planet wasn’t a pretty place, or a fair one, or a kind one. So he curled up, and closed up, and locked himself away, peeking around the edges of a cement-block barricade iced with barbed wire.
But he’d opened the gate, dismissed the guards, and disabled the electric fences for Adrian Leyman.
Adrian wasn’t stupid. He knew that it hadn’t been easy, hadn’t been pleasant, and certainly hadn’t been painless. What he found when he followed the unfurling gold ribbon of his curiosity, trailed it into the depths of the labyrinth at the heart of the fortress, was the unprepared, unprotected, unadulterated Samuel Tanner, who had always been too short, always been too small, and always been too scared. Just that. Just Samuel Tanner, who was still every one of those things, who didn’t stitch his heart to his sleeve, who simply handed it to you instead.
Adrian was slightly startled to discover just how well it fit into his carefully cupped hands.
It was weird how you could find something that made you wonder daily how you’d ever lived without it. And obviously, you had before, one way or another, but now it was the only reason you ever managed to drag yourself out of bed.
Of course, if you were Sam, you avoided that last part for as long as humanly possible.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t have an excuse, however. He did.
Sam woke up some nights, probably one out of every three or four, sometimes screaming, sometimes whimpering, always shaking. He would sit there, his hair in disarray, his eyes wide and dark and horribly hollow, and stare, shivering uncontrollably, his arms around himself. That was why Adrian left the curtains a little bit open-so that he could find Sam in what would otherwise be a pitch-black room with lots of sharp objects lying around, lots of metal frames and corners that didn’t have any qualms about leaving mixed-berry bruises. He held Sam tightly to his chest, rocking slowly back and forth, ran his fingers through that incorrigibly thick hair, stroked it, whispered softly and made a thousand promises he didn’t know how to keep. Sometimes, when he didn’t wake up right away, there were already tears to field, hot beneath the pads of his fingertips.
Sam never said a thing. Adrian didn’t know if he remembered, if he was even fully awake, if he blocked it out with the rest, or if he knew everything and held his tongue and his silence for shame.
He wanted to kiss the pain away, but he didn’t know the nature of the beast. It defied him. It hid in the shadows, unuttered, a phantom with the power to rip this beautiful boy to shreds.
Adrian leaned down and touched his lips gently to Sam’s cheek, smoothing the comforter over the nearest available shoulder. Sam smiled again in his sleep.
The bedsprings squealed once more as Adrian stood. He moved to close the door, then left it open a crack, so that the smell of the food would slither in, invade Sam’s unconscious, and rouse him hungry, because Adrian always made too much.
It was all right, he decided; or at the least, it was damn well close enough. For every Thursday midnight, there was a Saturday noon.
[I: Messages] [III: Tipsy]
Part: II
Series: The Sam and Adrian Saga
Pairing: Adrian/Sam
Rating: G
Word Count: 924
Warnings: fluff!
Summary: In which Sam and Adrian are terribly cute.
Author's Note: A fair amount of "Sleep", by My Chemical Romance, factored into this one.
SATURDAY NOON
The drapes had been drawn just short of shut, and a thin yellow line eluded them, painting its warm length down the side of Sam’s face.
Adrian couldn’t do that-couldn’t lie in bed chumming it up with his pillow and the comforter until noon rolled around and pulled on the counterbalance that worked his eyelids. Adrian was a slave to the slender black hands of the laconic clock clinging to the wall in the kitchenette: weekdays were six-thirty, and weekends were eight, or he’d never get to sleep that night. Consistency wasn’t so much a virtue as a necessity. For better or worse, that was the way he operated.
Not Sammy.
Sam’s dark hair spread on the pale pillow like an inkblot, thick and haphazard and breathtakingly lovely in that Sam sort of way. His eyelashes cast slats of shadow on his cheeks, and he shifted perceptibly, snuffled softly, and settled again against the pillow.
Cautiously Adrian eased himself onto the edge of the bed, knowing it would creak and still cringing when it did. He raised his hand and slid his fingers gently into Sam’s hair, running his fingertips along the scalp lingeringly before drawing them slowly outward and through, small, tousle-made tangles unwinding around his knuckles.
Adrian smiled to himself. Sam spent a good five minutes of his hurried, snooze-button-begun morning fighting that hair. He’d stand on tip-toe in sock feet, lip caught between his teeth, glaring daggers at the reflection of his failure to tame the rebellious sections with water and a comb. Invariably, Adrian was dreadfully tempted to go over and ruffle it thoroughly, but he managed to refrain. That kind of thing crossed the line from cute into cruel.
Then again, given the way Sam smushed his face into the pillow all the time, what did he expect?
A last little tug freed Adrian’s fingers, and Sam smiled faintly, the corners of his lips lifting just so.
Sam almost always slept curled up this way, with his arms across his chest and his knees pulled partway up, a very nearly fetal position. That was the thing about Sam Tanner-he tried to trust people, and life, and the world, but his instincts revolted. He knew that this planet wasn’t a pretty place, or a fair one, or a kind one. So he curled up, and closed up, and locked himself away, peeking around the edges of a cement-block barricade iced with barbed wire.
But he’d opened the gate, dismissed the guards, and disabled the electric fences for Adrian Leyman.
Adrian wasn’t stupid. He knew that it hadn’t been easy, hadn’t been pleasant, and certainly hadn’t been painless. What he found when he followed the unfurling gold ribbon of his curiosity, trailed it into the depths of the labyrinth at the heart of the fortress, was the unprepared, unprotected, unadulterated Samuel Tanner, who had always been too short, always been too small, and always been too scared. Just that. Just Samuel Tanner, who was still every one of those things, who didn’t stitch his heart to his sleeve, who simply handed it to you instead.
Adrian was slightly startled to discover just how well it fit into his carefully cupped hands.
It was weird how you could find something that made you wonder daily how you’d ever lived without it. And obviously, you had before, one way or another, but now it was the only reason you ever managed to drag yourself out of bed.
Of course, if you were Sam, you avoided that last part for as long as humanly possible.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t have an excuse, however. He did.
Sam woke up some nights, probably one out of every three or four, sometimes screaming, sometimes whimpering, always shaking. He would sit there, his hair in disarray, his eyes wide and dark and horribly hollow, and stare, shivering uncontrollably, his arms around himself. That was why Adrian left the curtains a little bit open-so that he could find Sam in what would otherwise be a pitch-black room with lots of sharp objects lying around, lots of metal frames and corners that didn’t have any qualms about leaving mixed-berry bruises. He held Sam tightly to his chest, rocking slowly back and forth, ran his fingers through that incorrigibly thick hair, stroked it, whispered softly and made a thousand promises he didn’t know how to keep. Sometimes, when he didn’t wake up right away, there were already tears to field, hot beneath the pads of his fingertips.
Sam never said a thing. Adrian didn’t know if he remembered, if he was even fully awake, if he blocked it out with the rest, or if he knew everything and held his tongue and his silence for shame.
He wanted to kiss the pain away, but he didn’t know the nature of the beast. It defied him. It hid in the shadows, unuttered, a phantom with the power to rip this beautiful boy to shreds.
Adrian leaned down and touched his lips gently to Sam’s cheek, smoothing the comforter over the nearest available shoulder. Sam smiled again in his sleep.
The bedsprings squealed once more as Adrian stood. He moved to close the door, then left it open a crack, so that the smell of the food would slither in, invade Sam’s unconscious, and rouse him hungry, because Adrian always made too much.
It was all right, he decided; or at the least, it was damn well close enough. For every Thursday midnight, there was a Saturday noon.
[I: Messages] [III: Tipsy]