Chapter Text
When Sam is a teenager, she comes to the firm conclusion that she will never know what it feels like to fall in love with someone.
It’s pragmatism, not pessimism, that leads her to this realization, because someone who has closed herself off from the world as she becomes increasingly unanchored in time will never have a chance to find love. She wants to, of course, but she is not foolish enough to let herself cling to optimistic hopes when her life is such a perfect intersection of unusual and tragic. Unless she can find a way to reverse unbearable loss, overwhelming guilt, and stifling anxiety, she has no choice but to accept the unchanging path of loneliness ahead of her.
But then her life does change when she walks into an office offering therapy for the strange and unusual, and as she gradually finds her footing among the things that shouldn’t be possible for her--gaining better control over her ability, making new friends, and saving people’s lives--she begins to think that maybe she is not yet finished with the impossible.
“So it looks like things aren’t really happening with Mark, huh?” Chloe asks as she and Sam lounge on the couch in Sam’s living room with an open bottle of wine.
The blunt observation takes Sam aback, even though by now she should be used to Chloe poking at thoughts that she does not realize are active in her mind. “What do you mean?”
“Sorry, it’s just that I hear you thinking about him. It’s kind of fuzzy, but I can pick out some stuff about how things are different now than they were when you visited him in the past, and how he needs some space to re-adjust to life in the present.” Chloe’s face lights up with the thrill that she gets from piecing together the fragments of other people’s thoughts. “Or, no, you want to give him some space because there’s all that stuff that happened with the AM and Damien for him to deal with, and you don’t think you can help him with that. Ooh, yeah, I don’t blame you there. Any time spent thinking about Damien is too much time. And you’re also afraid that you wouldn’t always be able to be his knight in shining armor?” She laughs. “Oh my God, you’re such a secret romantic. I love it.”
Sam blinks, barely able to keep up with Chloe’s external processing even when it involves her own thoughts. “But it’s true,” she says. “The knight in shining armor part, I mean. I’m… Well, I’m doing a lot better than I was at the beginning of this year, but I’m not exactly a perfect model of stability. There’s a lot about being a normal person that I just don’t know how to do. And I wouldn’t want him and me to get together and have it be like… I don’t know, the traumatized leading the traumatized. So we agreed that maybe it’s better to be friends, at least for now.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being just friends,” Chloe says. “Even if it is the cute guy that you were crushing on for months. I’m sure Mark really appreciates having a friend who’s been willing to do so much to help him.”
“That’s what Joan said too.”
“Yeah, you’re thinking about her right now.” Chloe frowns. “Wait, are you… dating her?”
Sam almost spits out the sip of wine in her mouth. “What?”
“I mean, maybe the wine is messing with my perception a little, but you were picturing having dinner with her and thinking about how nice it is to see her let loose a little outside of work. And there’s a lot on your mind about how great and wonderful she is. I don’t know, it just feels kind of date-y to me.”
Sam’s immediate instinct is to deny everything, because of course she isn’t dating Joan. The concept alone is ridiculous, considering how they are just now easing into a friendship after the turmoil of last summer. Sam doesn’t even think about dating women outside of hypothetical scenarios, because her romantic prospects are already low enough without adding the potential complications of a same-sex relationship. And Joan… Well, she assumes that Joan is straight, but the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that there is so much about her that she doesn’t know. Which she supposes is the point of the time that they have been spending together recently, but thus far their conversations have rarely turned toward anything resembling romance.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she insists. The flush of embarrassment that spreads across her face does not help her case. “I’ve had dinner with you a bunch of times, and I’m not dating you.”
“Yeah, but I know what you’re thinking about when you’re having dinner with me, and it’s definitely not as warm and fuzzy as your thoughts about Dr. Bright right now.” At Sam’s continued flustered embarrassment, Chloe adds, “Look, maybe I’m way off base here. But I’m just saying what I hear in your thoughts.”
Sam’s inexperience in romance gives her pause as she mentally assembles her feelings toward Joan beyond the scattered thoughts that Chloe has identified. Just as she had latched onto Mark as an open, caring person who understands her struggles as a time traveler, she has not ruled out the possibility that she only looks upon Joan with such a degree of fondness because she was the first person to whom Sam confided her biggest and darkest secrets. Joan has been a valuable and trusted confidant for her, but surely that is only because their friendship has come in the aftermath of the months that Sam had spent in therapy with her. It doesn’t necessarily indicate any deeper attachment--and yet even without Chloe reading her mind Sam cannot deny that recently her thoughts have strayed into idle fantasies that now feature Joan where Mark had once been, one sibling exchanged for another in an unexpected turn of events.
“I mean, we haven’t said that we’re dating,” she points out. “That’s kind of an important part of it, right? Is it really that easy to accidentally date someone without either of you knowing it?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. Especially when it’s your first time in a non-heterosexual relationship. Well, first time for you, at least. I honestly don’t know about Dr. Bright. I try to stay out of her love life.” Chloe takes a drink from her glass. “Anyway, anecdotal evidence and all, but I’m pretty sure my first girlfriend and I were technically together for like a month before we realized we were dating.”
“Really?” Sam asks. “How did that happen?”
“Being clueless teenagers, mostly. We were already hanging out all the time. Going downtown or having movie nights with lots of, you know, supposedly platonic cuddling. We thought we were just really, really good friends. Because we didn’t do the whole ‘I think you’re cute’ ‘I think you’re cute’ ‘Okay, let’s go out’ thing, and obviously we weren’t hooking up or anything like that. So there wasn’t really anything to make us think we were dating until we were like ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t just friendship.’”
“And you and her just… what, eventually talked about it and figured it out?” Sam tries not to sound too skeptical. In theory, it should be easy for her to talk to Joan about anything, but the idea of discussing a possible romantic connection fills her with the inescapable fear of rejection or mistaken feelings. “That sounds like it’s easier said than done.”
“Well, after a little while we finally kissed. That definitely helped sort things out a little.” Chloe reaches out to pet Darwin where he has jumped up onto the couch to sit between the two of them. As she scritches him behind his ears, she adds, “Wait, you haven’t kissed Dr. Bright, have you?”
Once again the heat of embarrassment rises in Sam’s face. “No.”
“But you want to, right? You’re thinking about it right now.”
The mere power of suggestion has indeed brought the image into Sam’s mind. She has no frame of reference for kissing, of course, because she hadn’t had a chance to kiss Mark before everything with him stopped before it could truly begin. Inexperience does not prevent her from fantasizing, however, and so she embraces the thought of Joan’s lips pressed against hers. She wonders if Joan kisses with the same care and devotion that she does everything else and whether she would be aware of Sam’s lack of experience and take everything slowly. It doesn’t take long for her to lose herself in imagining the grand spectacle of a movie kiss, regardless of whether a moment that perfect is possible in reality.
Chloe’s delighted giggle reminds her that these thoughts are not private, and she has unintentionally been showing her every detail of how maybe she has developed feelings for Joan after all. She scoops Darwin up into her arms, burying her face into his fur to avoid having to look Chloe in the eye after inadvertently revealing her deepest fantasies to her.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Chloe assures her. She lays a hand on Sam’s arm. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. But I do think it’s worth talking to her about this, if you really think that something might be there. What’s there to lose, right?”
Everything, Sam wants to say in a pessimistic response. “But she was my therapist,” she says instead, her words muffled against Darwin. “I used to pay her to listen to all of my problems. She knows more about me than… well, pretty much anyone else, except maybe you. Wouldn’t that make things weird in a potential relationship?” The word “relationship” terrifies her from the moment it leaves her mouth, leaping far ahead of whatever connection may or may not exist between her and Joan.
“I don’t know, it kind of sounds like a plus to me,” says Chloe. “You know she’s not going to freak out about your ability, and you’ve already gone through all of your difficult personal history stuff with her. You’ve essentially skipped over an entire awkward process that you’d have to go through with any other new partner.”
Darwin squirms in Sam’s arms. She lets go of him so he can curl up at her feet. “She’s a lot older than I am,” she says, fully aware that at this point she is just making excuses.
“She’s, what, early thirties? That kind of age difference isn’t always a big deal once you’re in your mid-twenties. Like if someone my age wanted to date her, that would be a little weird. But as long as both of you are comfortable with it, I don’t think it would be a problem.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Despite her doubts, Sam’s mind races with the possibilities that have formed during this conversation. She feels like Chloe has helped crack open a door in her head that she has previously kept locked, preferring not to think about what lies behind it until now. The prospect of taking the next step forward terrifies her, and she remains uncertain of whether she will be able to take that step before her anxiety tells her that bringing up any of this with Joan will only lead to disaster. For now, though, she lets herself sink into Chloe’s encouragement as she no longer hides from the possibility of making something out of her feelings.
“I’m sure it won’t be a disaster,” says Chloe. “Dr. Bright is super understanding. I’m sure she wouldn’t let things get weird between the two of you if she ends up not feeling the same way. Oh--things have already been weird? When you were gone during the summer and she was having those meetings with the AM that she didn’t tell you about for a while? Yeah, I get that, she isn’t always the most forthcoming about a lot of things, but--”
“Chloe.” Sam holds up a hand to stop her, recognizing when she is following a train of thought without stopping to anyone else catch up.
Chloe’s words break off into a sigh. “Ugh, I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Sorry.” She takes the bottle of wine from where it has been left on the coffee table. “How about I pour us some more wine, and we can talk about something else? But I want updates the moment something happens with you two, all right?”
Sam smiles in spite of her messy tangle of thoughts, because Chloe’s enthusiasm can be truly infectious sometimes. She holds out her glass for Chloe to top off, adding more wine even though she has not yet finished her first drink.
“All right,” she says. “It’s a deal.”