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marleyrose--blog · 9 years

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TAGGING: Marley Rose & Sam Evans

TIME FRAME: Monday, March 30, ~11am

LOCATION: Myrtle Beach International Airport → Sam’s House

SUMMARY: It took six years - over six years, really, - but somehow, someway, they found their way back.

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.”

Sam decided to leave his bag in the trunk, obviously more concerned with stepping into their place hand-in-hand as a couple for the first time. “It feels like I should’ve carried you in,” he teased, closing the door behind them slowly, nerves suddenly hitting him hard. “I could, uh, maybe carry you to bed instead.”

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 really shouldn’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.”

i held on as tightly as you held onto me.

#008 #c:se

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marleyrose--blog · 9 years

Text

TAGGING: Marley Rose & Sam Evans

TIME FRAME: Monday, March 30, ~11am

LOCATION: Myrtle Beach International Airport → Sam’s House

SUMMARY: It took six years - over six years, really, - but somehow, someway, they found their way back.

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?”

Sam stepped back and smiled at Marley, looking so genuinely happy that he might explode. “I mean, we’re supposed to be together, and I’ll always be a little sad about not being with you before, ya know, but I think I’m too excited about now to think about that.”

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 years spent 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 they did 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 always be 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.

i held on as tightly as you held onto me.

#c:se #//you know you've been watching too much game of thrones when #you think sarley stands for 'sam tarly'#i'm just.#wow.#me.#008

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