laugh it up, fuzzball

MARLEY ROSE

They got married on a Tuesday.  Which was probably weird for most people as a lot of the weddings you see usually happen over the weekend, a Friday, or a Saturday, or a Sunday.  But, they wanted Tuesday.  It was summer, after all, so it wasn’t like they really needed to worry about anyone missing school for it.  It gave them more freedom, and Tuesday seemed like just the right day to make the magic happen.

It wasn’t like they’d met on a Tuesday or anything like that – the day didn’t really have much significance at all.  It just felt like the right day.  And at the time, it had been.  It had been the perfect day – and if there was a better word for explaining something that was perfect aside from the word “perfect” itself, that was what it was.

They didn’t have the money to go off on some great honeymoon or anything like that, but they’d both taken off from work for the rest of the week, and they fully intended to make the week following the wedding be the best week ever.  And that, of course, all started with a wedding night.

The reception had gone into the wee hours of the morning, until there weren’t many people left in the banquet hall aside from their core group of friends and a few relatives who were lagging around for who knew what reason.

“You’re falling asleep on your hand,” Kitty observed from where she sat next to her, adjusting the flower crown on her head (are you surprised that Marley had flower crowns as a staple of her wedding looks because you reallyshouldn’t be – she made them herself and everything!) for the sixth time and keeping her eyes focused on where Ryder was attempting to get a few people to do the worm with him in the middle of the dance floor.

Marley sat up a second later, blinking a few times and shaking her head back at her.  “I am not!”

“You totally are,” Sam argued, popping up with his head tucked over her shoulder and leaning in to press a kind to her cheek from behind.  “And we totally should’ve gotten outta here, like, hours ago – we’re missing out on crucial honeymoon time right now.”

“He totally means sex,” Brittany piped up for no more than a second, tipping her empty champagne glass to the two of them and nodding a bit tipsily, finger pointed in the air as she proved her fact.

Marley’s cheeks turned pink for a second even though she really wasn’t sure why.  It wasn’t like they hadn’t had sex before, but having sex on the wedding night just made her think back to that Just Married movie with Brittany Murphy, where she started crying the night of wedding because now everyone was going to know “for sure” that she wasn’t a virgin anymore.

And okay, yeah, maybe she still got bashful about the topic – she’s Marley freaking Rose, pick your jaw up and stop being so surprised by this sort of thing.

Her eyes shifted across the room, taking in all of their friends and noticing that Puck and Rachel must have slipped away a little earlier in the night, probably to spend time to themselves, and realizing that left only Brittany, and a very bored Santana, and an unamused Kitty, and a gleefully dancing Ryder.

“It was a good night, yeah?”’ Marley looked over at Kitty, giving her a small smile and brushing her shoulder against hers for a second.

Kitty downed the last of her champagne, sitting back in her chair a little and allowing a small smile to curve up on her lips as she looked back at her best friend.  “Yeah, I guess it could’ve gone worse.  I mean, I only made two people cry which is kind of a low for me?  But given the day and all, I guess I can let it slide.”  She leaned in, one hand on either of her best friend’s cheeks and pressed a kiss to her forehead.  “You had a beautiful, boring wedding, Marley Rose.  You should be proud.”

“You think you can handle Ryder for the rest of the night?”

“Who do you think you’re talking to right now?”

Sam tucked his arm around Marley’s, pulling her up from her seat and in closer to him.  “Let’s face it, that’s as close to a solid answer as you’re gonna get, so let’s go.”

Marley didn’t need to be told twice (okay, she’d kind of been told, like, thirteen times in the past four hours), so she sent a wave in Kitty’s direction and gave Brittany a tight hug.  Santana was in the middle of the dance floor yelling at Ryder to “Get the fuck up, nobody needs to see that,” and Marley was fairly certain they hadn’t heard her when she called out her goodbye to them, but it didn’t really matter.  Because right now, all that mattered was that she and Sam were going to go home together as a married couple for the first time.

She nearly couldn’t keep off of him the entire drive, scooted all the way over in the front of his truck until she was nestled up against his side with his free arm slung around her shoulder to keep her there.  Her eyes kept wandering down to the new, second ring on her finger, and it was enough to make her heart swell up every single time she saw it again, as if it had just gotten there a second ago and she couldn’t believe it.

She couldn’t believe it, honestly.

They made their way up to the front door, but before Marley could actually reach out to open it, Sam was pulling her back in and scooping her up into his arms.  “You have to do it right,” he told her, pressing a kiss to her lips and opening up the door the rest of the way.  He carried her into their house, and he kissed her until she was seeing stars, and the memory that lingered in her mind still to this day was the way he’d smiled.

God.  She would have given anything to make him smile like that every single day for the rest of his life.

And now?  Now, that seemed like it would be a possibility. Sam was happy right now.  Sam was inexplicably happy, the happiest she’d seen him in years, and she knew that was because everything, finally, was right between them.  Everything was finally the way that it was always supposed to be – they were finally the way that they were always supposed to be.

They were going to be a family again, they were going to do everything the way they already should have been.  They weren’t going to let stupid things get in the way of their relationship, not anymore – not ever again.  Her heart raced in her chest all the way back to his house, all the way back through their neighborhood and into his driveway – their driveway?  

Granted, they still needed to figure out some details, naturally, but Marley was pretty sure the house they’d started their lives together wouldn’t be where they spent their lives.  It held too many memories as it was, between Marley and her mom, and Marley and Sam, and Marley and Ryder.  They needed fresh.  They needed somewhere that could just be their place, untouched by everyone and everything else.  Just for them.

She let him pull her out of the car and up to the front steps of the house, right through the front door, and Marley had butterflies in her stomach as he spoke – a few seconds later, her cheeks were flushed pink and her heart caught itself somewhere between her lungs and her throat.  “That seems like a good compromise,” she said, nodding for a second before she was stepping forward and closing the space between them the way she’d wanted to for so long.

Every time Marley stepped foot into this house, she wanted to kiss Sam everywhere she stood.  And now, she could.  She backed them up against the wall, interweaving their fingers tightly together and deepening the kiss within seconds, leaning her whole body into his and not pulling away until she felt dizzy.

“I just really needed to do that,” she said with a small laugh and a big smile, and then she was leaning in a second later and doing it all over again just because she could, hands moving up until her fingers were tangled into his hair.

“We have,” she kissed his cheek, “a couple hours,” and his jaw, “before Logan gets out of school,” and his neck.  “So we should probably make the most out of that while we can.”

SAM EVANS

“I’m not above drugging you, for the record.”

Sam clutched tighter to the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, not even bothering to lift his head when he heard the sound of Kitty’s voice. His cousin had temporarily moved into his new place only a few days after he finally made the big leap from staying with Marley and Logan. She had noticed how completely off he sounded whenever they spoke and maybe Kitty had a lot of hang-ups when it came to other people but Sam? If Sam needed her, she dropped everything to be there.

But she could only stand to watch him mope so long, especially when she realized that he did this enough to barely sleep at all.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled, closing his eyes like he could convince his body to pass out and therefore give Kitty no reason to be concerned anymore.

“You are not fine,” she countered, sitting on the couch beside him and hesitating a moment before reaching out to tuck a few fallen strands of hair behind his ear. “You can’t just plant yourself on the couch for the next ten years waiting for her to change her mind.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” he groaned, shaking his head and slumping back against the cushions. “Like, you’re crazy if you think I want to be this tired and look this shitty.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem like you’re doing anything about it.” Kitty shifted to the other end of the couch, more comfortable with giving him space than trying to crowd him with the sort of affection he actually needed. She had her own ways of showing that she cared and she felt confident in the fact he knew that better than anyone else. “I can’t sleep when you’re all over the place making noise. At least cut me a break here.”

“It’s not like I don’t try,” he sighed, shrugging the blanket off his shoulders only to cross his arms over his chest right away “I’ll be in bed and I’ll crash for awhile but then I wake up all sweaty and gross and freaked out.”

Kitty lifted an eyebrow. “So what? You’re having nightmares?”

“OH MY GOSH, KIT, SHE’S GONE!” Sam dug his fingers into his skin, afraid that she’d see his hands shaking if he didn’t try to force himself to be still. “Marley’s gone. I mean, she’s not but she is, you know? I can’t… it’s just done and I wake up freaked out ‘cause I know she won’t be there. She’s never gonna be there and I don’t know how to make that not be my fault.”

“IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!” Kitty stood up and punched him right smack in the middle of his chest. She ignored him cursing and she ignored him acting like it hurt when they both knew he had taken harder hits from her in the past. “She’s the one who wanted this and, yeah, you’re an idiot for going along with it, but you can’t make someone stay.”

“But I’m the one who left.”

That’s what kept Sam awake at night for years. He had been the one to pack up and leave the house where they’d planned to grow old together. He’d throw all his things into boxes and created a second home for Logan when he’d never wanted to raise his son in a family with two of everything, no matter how appealing that sounded to a kid. Marley brought up the divorce, and she’d put the papers in front of him, but she had never asked him to leave once he came back. He made that choice, and he had to live with regretting it.

In the beginning,  Sam never allowed himself to imagine some perfect fairy tale ending where Marley moved into the house he had chosen simply because it happened to be so close to where she lived with their son. That had suddenly become a very real possibility and it felt unbelievably good to stand on the brink of a fresh start for all three of them.

He could remember spending so many sleepless nights pacing, hoping and praying that maybe Marley would come rushing through the door to hug him, to kiss him, to tell him she had never wanted him to go.

Feeling her back him into a wall more than made up for how long he’d waited.

“I think I can work with a couple hours,” he nodded, unable to help the huge grin on his face, wider than it had ever been around Marley without Logan there to help ease the tension between the two of them. “I’d feel a lot better if we had, like, the whole night or something but we’ll definitely make this the best two hours ever.”

Sam leaned in to kiss her neck - one, two, three times - and then gently nipped at the skin, still able to find the most sensitive spot without too much searching. It felt good to  have her body pressed into this, to know that she felt the same urgency he did to take advantage of whatever alone time they had right now.

“I guess you already tried out the bed,” he teased, grabbing hold of her hand and lacing their fingers together as he lead her back toward his room. “Totally weren’t supposed to do that without me but I’m still kinda stoked you decided to stay here,” he rambled, not quite sure why he felt so damn nervous when he’d been with Marley more than he’d ever been with anyone else. “Kinda stoked actually doesn’t cover it at all.”

He laughed nervously as he pushed the bedroom door open, stepping backward toward the bed and not stopping until he felt his legs knock into the mattress. “I promise not to use any overly cheesy lines from Nicholas Sparks movies like the first time,” he joked, bending down just enough to nudge his nose against the tip of hers. “Telling you I love you over and over doesn’t count as cheesy, okay?”

MARLEY ROSE

Summers in Surfside were typically anything but eventful to most people – but to Marley (even if she was one of the very rare few out there who actually missed school when it wasn’t in session), summer always meant adventures, even if they were the kind that happened in her own backyard or own neighborhood.  Marley tried to see every day as a day that could bring a potential, huge, life-changing memory, and she embraced every day head-on with that mentality.

Some days, they spent so many hours at the beach that their sunburns had sunburns.  Until they couldn’t get the sand off of them for days that followed, until their hair smelled like salt and sea no matter how many times they showered.  Other days, they went to the movies, or went to Myrtle Beach, or spent hours and hours at one of their houses, playing video games, or board games, or getting in to far too lengthy of a discussion (read: argument) over whatever big thing had happened in the pop culture world that day.

They weren’t together every day, though.  Not all of them at once.  Once Sam and Marley had started dating, they caught themselves spending days with one another and nobody else, and frankly, they liked it that way.  No disrespect whatsoever to their friends, of course, because it wasn’t like they didn’t love spending time with them, but it was good to have time just to each other, too.  Wasn’t that just sort of a given?

On this particular day, the two of them were helping out at Millie’s – and by helping out at Millie’s, it was really more that the two of them were hanging out in the coolers in the back and eating ice cream that they swore to never let themselves regret straight out of the tub with a big spoon.

Sam was diving off into some huge story about something that had happened with Puck earlier on in the day, his face animated and bright, and his hands waving wildly to help aid him in his narration.  Frankly, Marley wasn’t even really sure if she was catching onto everything that he was saying, not really, at least.  Sometimes, when it came to Sam, Marley just liked to hear him.  She liked to listen to his voice, she liked to catch all the highs and lows, and the different pitches and tones that he took for different reactions.

The thing about Sam was that sometimes it wasn’t about what he said, it was about how he said it.  And Sam said everything with purpose, and Sam said everything in ways that told you quite simply that you would remember whatever it was that he had to say for a long, long time.

Marley could listen to him speak forever, plain and simple.  If they weren’t slipping into each other’s bedrooms late at night and curling up into bed with one another to fall asleep, they were dozing off with their phones pressed to their cheeks and the other’s words speaking softly in their ears.  And this was what she wanted.

It wasn’t like this was the first time that she’d realized this or anything like that, but more than ever, she knew it now.  This was it.  She wanted this.  She wanted minutes, and hours, and days, and weeks, and months, and yearsspent listening to Sam speak, getting to watch his eyes light up when he laughed and hear how his voice practically bounced off the walls.

She wanted whatever it was that Sam wanted to give her, and she wanted it forever.

Sam was getting to the climax of the story – which Marley could only tell by how he was suddenly leaning a little forward, eyes widening ever so slightly as if he needed to size up this part of the story before he dove into it – and Marley didn’t realize what she’d said until it had already happened.

“I love you.”

Sam was frozen then, looking back at her for a second like he wasn’t sure if he’d heard her correctly. They’d been friends for years, of course, and that in and of itself sort of meant that such words had been exchanged between the two of them before… but not like that.  Not like the way that Marley had said it right then and there. “You what?”

Marley felt her cheeks turning pink, but she slid off the counter and took a few steps closer to him anyway, sliding her arms around his neck and pulling him in closer.  “I think you heard me.”

“Yeah, but I wanna hear you again.”

Marley leaned in, grazing her lips against his and pulling away a few moments later, heart beating wildly and forehead nudged against his.  “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Sam murmured back to her, sounding breathless in a way that made Marley weak in the knees.  “I totally freaking love you.”

They told each other every day after that, multiple times a day, and even after everything had fallen apart between them, they still always said it.  It hurt more, granted, but they never parted ways without hearing it. Because theydid love each other, and even if they were only saying it – or acting as if they were saying it – in a way that was reserved for friends and platonic relationships, they both knew that it was more than that, that it would alwaysbe more than that when it came to the two of them.

And right here and right now was living proof of just that.  Marley wanted to wrap herself up in him, and she never wanted to leave. It was like she’d been orbiting for years, and years, just waiting for a signal beam that would let her come back, just waiting to return home.  And she’d made it.  She was home.  Because home was Sam’s arms, and home was Sam’s kiss, and home was “I love you” coming right off his lips.

She was home.  They were home.

“I’m never going to stop saying it,” she assured him with a bright grin, leaning in and kissing him once more just because she could.  “So you better hope that’s not a deal-breaker, because that would be a really weak one if it was.”  Her fingers still fit around his perfectly, and she loved that. “It might even annoy Logan, but I have a good feeling that’s nothing you and I can’t handle.”

Let’s face it, at this point?  These two could just about handle anything and everything that life decided to throw at them.

They got his bag in the trunk, and the moment Sam’s arms were locking back around her she caught herself melting against him.  “I missed you so much,” she murmured, burying her face into the crevice of his neck and pressing a soft kiss to his skin.  “And I’m just… really glad that I don’t have to miss you again.  Not now, or ever.”

They pulled away however reluctantly, and Marley was nearly back to the driver’s seat before she was stepping forward and pulling him in for one last kiss.  And then she went back to the car, sliding into the driver’s seat and starting up the ignition as she waited for Sam to slide in next to her.

“I figured we could go back to your place, and you could get… settled, and all, and then we could pick Logan up together and give him what I am pretty sure will go down as his biggest surprise of 2015 – and that’s including Winston.”  

She made her way out of the parking garage and toward the exit, heading out onto the road and bringing their intertwined hands to her lips, brushing a kiss absentmindedly to his knuckles, as if such a motion was as simple as breathing.  For her, it was.  “I still can’t believe you’re here,” she said softly, shaking her head and most assuredly smiling like an idiot.

SAM EVANS

“This is… so weird.”

Sam swallowed hard, wishing technology had advanced far enough to give him the ability to hug Marley through the phone. FaceTime wouldn’t be an option for another couple years so he could only rely on the sound of her voice, soft and scared. “Yeah, I know,” he sighed, pacing around his mostly empty new place, surrounded by boxes and the few pieces of furniture his friends and family had spared when they found out he planned on living alone.

It should’ve made him feel better so many people cared enough to help him out. It didn’t. In fact, it made him feel worse to imagine everyone he loved spending their time thinking about how fucked up his life turned out. That’s what sucked the most about the divorce. Not the rumors or the shit-talk but the pitying looks he received, sometimes from total strangers.

Sometimes from the girl he needed the most.

“You should be here,” Marley replied, but he knew those words came more out of instinct than anything else.

And maybe that was a good sign. Maybe it meant a lot that Marley’s natural reflex was to want him back in the house where they had started their lives together, but Sam couldn’t keep staying somewhere that reminded him of what they’d lost. Not even changing his old drawing room into Logan’s nursery could change the way he felt there.

“I’m not far,” Sam pointed out, walking up to one of his front windows and parting the blinds with his fingers to look outside. He couldn’t exactly see Marley’s house from where he stood but he could imagine his current view colliding with the rest of the street. “All you gotta do is ask and I’ll be right over before you know it, I promise.”

He could’ve moved back with his parents but they had opted for helping him get on his own two feet instead. They had started by looking at apartments until Sam realized he could swing living in the same neighborhood as Marley. For most people, there’d be nothing appealing about staying that close to their ex-wife or ex-husband, but Sam and Marley liked the idea of not being separated too much if he really did need to move out.

They’d say they made the choice for Logan, but it also had a lot to do with them not knowing how to let go of each other completely.

“You mean it?”

“Of course I mean it.” He could hear her sniffling quietly as he stepped back from the window, legs shaking until he leaned up against the wall to brace himself. “I’ll always mean it.”

He had anticipated that it would hurt Marley to be left alone with Logan, but he knew they couldn’t keep prolonging the inevitable. He couldn’t keep packing and then unpacking every time she cried. It wasn’t healthy for them to pretend it could be okay to coexist without truly being together. I mean, Marley had to live with the guilt of ending things, but he had to live with the broken heart that came along with that decision.

“What if I asked you right now?”

Sam held his breath for a moment, straining to listen for the sound of Logan crying or whatever baby-related disaster could be responsible for her feeling like he needed to come back only a few hours after he’d walked out the door without so much as glancing over his shoulder. “…for him or for you?”

Marley not saying anything right away pretty much gave him the answer.

“I… I don’t think I can do that.” Sam bit down hard on his bottom lip, mentally scolding himself for considering that he should run right back to her for even a second. I mean, even his own mother had told him countless times that a little space could go a long way in helping Marley understand how much this entire experience had wrecked him. “I’m sorry. It’s just, like, a real bad idea, you know? I can’t handle me and you anymore ‘cause we’re not really us… if that makes any sense?”

Being back in Surfside, back riding shotgun with Marley, Sam couldn’t help but think about how different it felt compared to all the other times he’d come home from a trip. Marley had picked him up at the airport plenty of times, but she’d never looked or sounded this happy. She’d never found every possible opportunity to kiss him. They’d finally settled back into being who they really wanted.

“I’d be A-OK with you thinking of it as our place,” he said, buckling his seatbelt and turning to smile at her. “Me, you, Logan, Winston… the cutest little family on the street. Easy. Straight up no competition.”

He could tell she liked the sound of that.

This was the Marley that Sam had fallen in love with back in high school. She could be shy and gentle but she had this unexpected fire in her eyes, too. She had more strength that she gave herself credit for and she could make something as simple as brushing lips over his knuckles feel like the most passionate, intimate act. That’s what she did to him, what happened when they didn’t need to stop themselves from feeling too much.

“I’ll always be here.” Sam leaned over and kissed Marley’s cheek, blowing a quick raspberry on her skin before pulling back to glance out the window. “Not, you know, literally, but you get what I’m saying.”

The drive from Myrtle Beach to their neighborhood felt a lot shorter than it usually did. Sam wondered if that’s what happens when your heart is pounding as hard as his. It used to be that time would go by so slow around Marley. He always figured that’s what happens when you’re close to somebody you need as badly as he needed her. Everything slows down until you can finally touch them.

Just the anticipation of getting some time alone with her was enough to make the minutes zip right by.

When they pulled into his driveway, Sam undid his seatbelt before the car had even stopped. The stern Mom Look on his face was the only reason he didn’t fling the door open until she had actually parked. He hopped right out when she did, racing around the car to open her door and pull her out of the driver’s side by the hand. “C’mon, we gotta lot to do to accomplish this whole getting me settled business before Logan’s ready.”

Marley had spent more time than she could really admit thinking about just how hers and Sam’s reunion would go down.  She had planned out twenty-five different scenarios in her head, and she’d always sort of amounted them down to being nothing more than fantasies.  And that hurt a lot more than she could even really put into words, because there was nothing good about the feeling of having someone so close to you and yet so seemingly far away at the exact same time.  

But that’s how it was when it came to her and Sam.  Maybe they would toe the line between friendship and what they used to be, but she didn’t know if it was the sort of thing they’d ever really be able to cross back over.  How could they?  How was it possible that they would ever be able to get back to that?

She’d ruined everything for them.  They’d gotten married at such a young age, and she hated to think that was what had driven them apart.  Because she and Sam weren’t like that, you know?  There were so many people who got married young and regretted it, but Marley didn’t.  

Even with how that chapter of their story ended, she didn’t regret it.  And not just because of it leading to Logan, either.  She didn’t regret it because she got to marry the person she loved more than anyone else in the world, she got to marry someone who truly and unconditionally loved her just as much as she truly and unconditionally loved him.

Maybe things didn’t work out the way they were supposed to, but she would never take it back.

And the thing about soulmates is that they always find their way back to each other in the end, anyway. And Marley and Sam?  They’d found their way back to each other.  And that was what mattered the most.

She didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow.  She didn’t know how they were going to tell Logan, but she knew that he was going to be ecstatic when they did.  Yes, he would miss having Ryder around all the time, but he had also once said that Marley and Sam were going to get married and Ryder was just going to be their next door neighbor, and that sort of said a lot right then and there.  She couldn’t wait to tell him, she couldn’t wait for themto tell him.

But for right now? Right now, she just wanted to be in Sam’s arms again, because it’d been too long since that had happened.  She’d told him a few nights ago that they hadn’t really kissed since they were nineteen, and that was the truth.  They’d kissed since then, yeah, but not like that.

They’d kissed when Marley held Logan in her arms for the first time, and they’d kissed after getting him to finally sleep after staying up screaming for three quarters of the night. Those were fast, and fleeting, and soft, and they were over as soon as they started.  They were out of relief, and overjoy, and that love that would always be there – but they weren’t the kisses that kept you up half the night smiling about the other person.

Marley had spent years of her life having those kinds of kisses with Sam, years of her life staying up talking to him and catching herself smiling just from thinking about him.

She’d meant it when she said that she’d never stopped loving him.  Because she never had.  Not even for a second.  Not even when they were at their lowest point.  And that was when you knew that you really loved someone, Marley thought. When nothing could stop you from loving them, when nothing would change how you felt.

Since they’d first talked, she’d been back to the fantasies that she would build in her head.  Of course they would take things slow, and of course they were going to be so, so scared of things messing up – but at the same time, she didn’t really think they would.  And that surprised her more than anything, because she’d been positive that something like that would scare her to the point of somehow self-sabotaging their relationship all on her own just out of fear that everything would go horribly wrong.

That wasn’t going to happen, though.

They had grown up, and they had grown in, and that meant that at this point, they were planted like roots.  They weren’t going anywhere, and they weren’t giving up.  Not this time.

Marley had once heard that the most sincere kisses happened in airports, and she could completely and totally confirm that right here and right now.  The second Sam’s lips met hers, everything fell into place.  Just like that.  Kissing Sam was like coming home, and her fingers curled into her hair like they belonged there, and she melted against him for the first time in far too long.

She smiled against his lips, parting her own as soon as he wanted her to and meeting his kiss with equally matched enthusiasm.  She was holding onto him tightly, as if she was worried that if she let go even for a second, he would disappear.

When they broke away, she didn’t know how long it had been or how much time had passed, but she knew that it still ended too soon because at this point, there was no amount of time that would feel like long enough.  

“I missed you so much,” she whispered as they pulled apart, burying her face into the crevice of his neck for a moment and not moving an inch to let go.  She didn’t mean that she missed him from just this past weekend, but she meant that she missed him.  She’d spent the past seven years of her life missing him, and now she had him back, and he was hers, and she was his, and this was the way that the world was always supposed to work.

When he said that he loved her, she felt her toes curling from inside her Converse, and she let out a quiet laugh that was more out of sheer giddiness than it was anything else.  “I love you too,” she murmured, and then she was kissing him again just because she could.  “I love you. I love you.  I love you.”

She didn’t want to step away from him, she didn’t want to be anywhere other than fused to his side, but she too his hand just the same and fell into step with him as they made their way through the airport.  “Yeah,” she said with a little nod of the head, voice coming out breathlessly.  “Yeah, we’re really doing this.”

They waited for Sam’s bag (pretty impatiently, might I add), before Marley was dragging it off the carousel and popping up the handle.  “Is this all filled with convention merchandise? Because I have a highly sneaking suspicion that it is.”

Making their way out of the airport and back toward the parking garage, Marley caught herself stopping every three seconds just so she could kiss him again.  And then again.  By the time they’d reached her car, she was pretty sure that they’d mastered down the art of walking and kissing to an art form.  

“I still can’t believe you’re here,” she pointed out after getting his suitcase into the trunk of the car. “Or that…we’re here, I guess.”

SAM EVANS

“Logan will definitely FLIP over this,” Artie said, grinning as he looked at the picture of Phil Coulson (or, you know, Clark Gregg) holding up a sign for the little guy. He hadn’t been able to track down Agent Carter but, hey, at least he managed to score a quick photo op with his son’s other favorite S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Naturally he needed to brag about this to one of KAPOW’S biggest contributors by waving his phone around while looking super smug.

Timing is everything and this happened to be the moment Marley decided to text Sam letting him know that she planned on staying over at his place for the night. Artie watched this notification pop up at the top of the screen, as well as the follow up that let Sam know he’d fill him in on the details later.

Artie’s eyebrows lifted and then he gave Sam one of those looks that had to mean he had seen something a lot more alarming than some celebrity yucking it up for a kid.

Sam quickly pulled his phone away to check for himself, hoping that Marley didn’t suddenly become one of those girls who texts risqué photos. She’d never been like that when they’d been together but they’d also only really had, like, crappy Nokia phones at the time so it wasn’t exactly possible to dish out nudes.

“Oh, thank god,” he mumbled when he saw what she had actually sent. He could totally live with Artie knowing about him and Marley, especially if those details remained, like, strictly G-Rated. “For a second there, I thought maybe this was gonna get super awkward or something.”

“Is she moving in or…?” Artie trailed off before finishing the question but he still looked concerned in the quiet moments seconds before Sam came up with a response.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted, lifting his shoulders into a shrug and tapping out a quick message back to her before returning his full attention to their conversation. “We talked a lot last night about, like, what we want and how that’s being together but I guess we didn’t get into the whole… practical side of how that works?”

“…So this is really happening?”

Sam nodded.

Fist bump action goes here.

“That is insane,” Artie went on, clearly blown away that Sam had somehow managed to keep such a hold on a girl like Marley for this long.

When Sam started KAPOW, he had needed a way to keep busy on long nights when Logan fussed and rarely slept. He hadn’t anticipated for it to not only take off and be success enough for him to work on it full-time, but also be a way for him to stay connected with people who cared about a lot more than his opinions on comics. Artie and him had become quick friends thanks to a mutual love of movies and shared admiration for a lot of the same directors.

He could remember long nights six years ago when he’d stay up late hitting up Artie over AIM, rambling about how he didn’t want to be a joke for the rest of his life.  As you can imagine, it was legitimately terrifying to be somebody’ s ex-husband at nineteen.  Back then, it seemed so freaking impossible that Marley would ever consider trying again. There were nights when she held Logan and he could tell from the look in her eyes that she wanted to burst out crying because life had spiraled so out of control that they couldn’t really be a family.

But now they could be anything they wanted.

“I don’t know if I’ll believe it until I’m there and it’s really a thing,” Sam nodded, taking a deep breath and lifting on his toes to try to start a navigation plan for getting him and Artie to the right booth for their next interview on the convention floor. “Like, there’s some part of me that still thinks it’s all some crazy dream I had over lack of sleep or whatever. I’ve just wanted her back so long and it doesn’t seem like it’s real yet.”

Nothing could feel more real than finally being with Marley the way he had been hoping for ever since he woke up that morning after they slept together the last time. He hoped that signing those stupid divorce papers wouldn’t matter now that they had sort of fallen into each other again, but, no, Marley had followed through and everything sort of got stuck in limbo after that until their phone call cleared up all their lousy miscommunication.

“You’re gonna kill me if you keep saying that,” Sam blushed, overwhelmed by how something he’d grown so used to hearing as a teenager could still turn his insides to total mush.

They had said I love you more than a handful of times over the years following their big break-up. You couldn’t be as close as Marley and Sam and get away with never saying it, no matter how much it hurt to get those three words out while pretending they didn’t mean it as a sign they needed to be more than friends. Logan sorta expected for his parents to say they loved each other if he ever asked, and they had never tried to walk back from that being their official stance.

“There is a lot of stuff in my bag for the little dude,” Sam nodded as they headed out toward the parking garage, hand-in-hand and hearts both beating faster than they had in a really long time. “I have a feeling he might be more excited about us than anything I brought back…. or at least most of it.”

Once they had in his bag loaded, he shut the trunk of the car and leaned over to press a quick kiss to her cheek. Only a few seconds later, he realized that wouldn’t be nearly enough, leaning down to wrap his arms around her in another tight hug, squeezing her shoulders gently with his eyes closed.

“I’m so freaking happy we’re here,” he gushed, turning to nuzzle his nose into her hair, breathing in the scent of her shampoo. He could remember being a smitten little eleventh grader who desperately wanted that smell to linger in his pillows and sheets. “I can’t believe we got here but then I kinda can?”

MARLEY ROSE

Marley hadn’t gotten a full night’s rest in over two days, and oddly enough, that was okay with her. That was something she could live with. On Saturday night, it had been due to a phone call that had taken her from two in the morning to well past six, mixed with more guilt than she knew how to handle.  Last night, it was because of excitement, and adrenaline, and the idea of new beginnings.  Or old beginnings, maybe.

New, old beginnings.

She didn’t know the way to explain it, but she knew that it had kept her awake all night, and she knew that she’d spent hours and hours thinking about what would happen today, what would happen when she got to the airport, and got back into Sam’s arms.

Because that was a thing that was happening now.  Because after everything that they’d been through, they’d finally said what they needed to say.  You could argue that saying all of those things over the phone wasn’t exactly the ideal situation by any means, but at the same time, Marley thought it was sort of fitting that that was how it had started.

After all, so much of their relationship in the beginning stages had been through late night phone calls. One would call the other, and they would talk until they fell asleep.  They would talk about what they wanted in the future, and they would share secrets and things they’d never told anyone else.  Their first “I love yous” had been blurted out nervously via one phone line to the other, and in that way, it actually made perfect sense that the lasttime they’d said it to each other had been over the phone, too.

Marley felt guilty about so many things.  She felt guilty about how she’d seemingly strung Ryder a long for a year while she tried to move on from the one person she’d never be able to really move on form, and she felt guilty about the fact that she had been the one to give up on her and Sam first all those years before.  She had to stop carrying around the guilt on her shoulders, and she knew that. She knew that she had to stop feeling guilty, and stop feeling sorry for herself.  She had to be able to move on with her life – her future.  And that was all she wanted.

Because Sam?  Sam was her future.  Sam was her past, and Sam was going to be her present, and Sam was going to be her future.  And maybe she didn’t know a lot of things with absolute certainty, but she knew that. And it didn’t scare her like maybe it could have, or should have.  It didn’t scare her at all.  She embraced it head on.  She was ready.

After everything that had happened with Ryder yesterday, Marley had told him that she would give him some peace, and she would give him the house to himself for the night.  It felt strange to stay there now, it felt awkward, and Marley wasn’t sure how exactly they were supposed to approach the situation.  And so, she had told Logan that they were going to stay at Sam’s house for the night to get things ready for when his dad would be getting back the following morning.

She’d slept in Sam’s bed – a bed she had never slept in before – and even if she hadn’t gotten much sleepinginvolved, she’d woken up feeling like she was finally going home for the first time in a long time.  For the first time in nearly seven years.

Once she’d gotten Logan dropped off at school in the morning, she’d called the bakery to double (okay, triple) check that they were doing okay without her, and then she’d gone home to sort through seven different outfits before settling on the right one.  She’d debated on how to wear her hair, and she’d painted her nails three times. She was nervous, and she wasn’t used to having to try to make everything perfect with her and Sam – it just was.  That was the thing with them.  Everything fell together exactly the way it was supposed to.  Every time.  But that didn’t change the fact that she was nervous.  It didn’t change the fact that she needed this to be perfect the very most.

She made her way out to the car with her heart beating fast and her stomach tied in knots, making her way to the airport and talking to herself the entire drive because she didn’t know what else to do.  Because she had to talk to herself, because she had to somehow absorb the fact that after so many years of missing Sam Evans more than anything in the world, he was coming back to her, and she was coming back to him.

This was happening.

She parked the car, and walked all the way to the entrance of the airport with her heart somehow at the pit of her stomach.  She was damn near skipping, but at the same time felt like her legs were held down with weighted bags, keeping her from making it too far at all.  Her eyes went up to the monitor as she got inside, seeing that next to the word STATUS on Sam’s flight, it read ARRIVED.

He was here.  He was here.

Looking around the airport, everyone was being reunited with loved ones.  There were children sprinting toward their mothers or fathers or grandparents or siblings.  There were couples kissing and wrapping their arms tightly around each other.  There were kisses, and there were laughs, and there were tears, and somehow through all of that, there was Sam Evans.

If she hadn’t thought she could breathe before, she definitely couldn’t breathe now.  All the wind had been knocked out of her, just like that.  And he was there.  

“Sam,” she whispered, more to herself than to anyone else.  Obviously.  “Oh my god, he’s here.”  Oh my god, stop talking to yourself.

She pushed her way forward, but time – as cliché as it absolutely sounded – seemed to come to a still around them.  Everything was moving at half the normal rate, and she wasn’t sure that she could possibly get there fast enough before she was practically barreling herself into his arms and bracing herself around him like a tourniquet.  

“You’re here,” she whispered into his neck, tears stinging her eyes until they were hitting his skin, holding him so tightly that the two of them could do nothing more than sway back and forth like a bowling pin threatening to tip over at any moment.

After six and a half years, it was as if the earth’s equilibrium and gravity had returned to normal. Like everything had finally shifted and lodged itself back into place.  And they were home.

SAM EVANS

When you love somebody, it’s hard to think about anything else. Sam had done his best to keep his mind off wanting Marley for so long that once he’d opened the floodgates, it became very, very difficult to stop obsessing over how good it would feel to finally hold her again. Not just a quick friendly hug or a lingering embrace they stepped away from awkwardly either. We’re talking holding her the way he still did in his dreams but now he wouldn’t be disappointed when he woke up.

Flying from Seattle to Myrtle Beach took, like, forever. Sam figured he’d be exhausted from zipping across the convention floor for three days when he booked his flight last month. Choosing the red eye seemed like the best option. He imagined catching up on sleep he desperately needed during those eight hours up in the air.

The thing is Sam couldn’t sleep. He should’ve been exhausted ‘cause, you know, staying up until six in the morning on the phone but he barely managed to take a two hour nap on the way home. How could he rest when his heart pounded harder and harder the closer the plane go to South Carolina? For years, he had pictured what it would be like to see Marley waiting for him at the airport, not as his best friend or his son’s mother. No, he needed Marley to be so much more than that.

And it was finally happening, right? Sam kept glancing out the window at all that sky stretching out across the distance and it reminded him of the many nights he’d spent sitting on Marley’s roof, pointing out constellations with her head rested on his shoulder. Nobody else ever listened the way she did when he talked. He had friends and he had family, but he always like felt like Marley saw him in a way that nobody else did. She never judged him for rushing in heart first when everybody might be quick to question his motives or his decisions.

For so long, Sam carried the burden of what could happen if he made a move on Marley. It scared him to think about how his friends would react, how Logan would take the news that he wouldn’t be living with Ryder anymore. His mind constantly raced with worst case scenarios, with questions about whether or not he and Marley could really make it work again after their marriage had gone so horribly wrong. Every time he thought about kissing Marley, he’d inevitably remind himself that, dude, it wouldn’t be cool to steal Ryder’s girl, especially if that could possibly turn into another train wreck.

But now he knew Marley loved him back and he knew that Marley had broken up with Ryder. That whole situation would probably be uncomfortable for awhile, but, hey, at least he didn’t try to bang Marley while they were still together, you know? Maybe the rest of their friends would cut him a break for not going all Noah Puckerman or whatever. Some chance existed that Ryder might want to, like, punch him or at the very least give him a dirty look here and there but the truth was Sam didn’t really give a shit what anybody said or thought when it really came down to it.

The plane landed and as soon as Sam could use his phone, he called his phone to let her know that he had made it back from Washington safely. He wanted to tell her about Marley but somehow he thought it might be more fun to just stop by later with Logan.

They could hold hands and let everyone know that things were exactly as they were meant to be. No more waiting. No more delays. They didn’t need any awkward in-between period before letting the important people know because Sam had made up his mind that if they were doing this, he was going to be all in right from the start.

His legs couldn’t seem to go fast enough. Every time his foot hit the floor, he found himself wishing he could move just a little bit faster. He had waited years to build up the courage to hold Marley, to take her in his arms and kiss her like something out of a cheesy old movie that she used to make him watch on a Saturday night while rain tapped against the window. Sam didn’t need to hope that Marley had the same hopes and dreams for the future anymore. He just needed to get back to her as soon as possible.

All around him he saw passengers he recognized from his flight rushing to meet someone while he tried his best to weave in and out of these reunions without getting in the way. And then he saw her, finally, standing there looking every bit as beautiful as he had the day he slid a ring onto her finger with tears welled up in his eyes. He got that same feeling in his stomach then when he saw her take that first step toward him.

Sam opened his arms and it felt like Marley literally knocked the air out of his chest once they collided. But it felt so fuckin’ good to be out of breath. He swallowed hard as soon as her lips brushed over his skin when she spoke, wrapping his arms around her tightly and curling his fingers into her long hair.

“Yeah, I’m home,” he whispered, nudging her away only enough to make it possible for him to press a kiss to her forehead. The way her eyes closed and her lips parted at that small bit of contact gave him the final push he needed to lift a hand up to her face, tilting her chin upward right as he leaned down.

She tasted amazing. Like homemade muffins with a hint of cinnamon sprinkled on top. With no shame at all, he deepened the kiss and hummed softly into her mouth, completely losing track of the fact he happened to be standing in the middle of the baggage claim area surrounded by strangers.

Maybe admitting how he felt over the phone didn’t scream of romance but this? Yeah, this could totally go down in history as one of the biggest leaps of faith he’d ever taken.

He laughed softly when he puled away, simply because he couldn’t believe that any of this was actually happening. “Oh, man, I love you,” he gushed, the pad of his thumb still stroking along her cheek, flushed with what he recognized as excitement not embarrassment. He knew her that well.