A/N: So... I usually put these at the end of a story, but I feel like it's important this goes here. I have never written a song fic before. Not really. Sometimes a song has sparked an idea, but I've never actually wanted to put lyrics into my story before. I do have a play list that consists of a lot of random music that I write to though, and Kate Voegele's "I Get It" is on that playlist. I had just watched "iSpeed Date" for the first time in a very long time, and this idea jumped into my head. I know that there's been a lot of... ideas... about how long Sam has actually known how she feels about Freddie and this is kind of my attempt at sorting that out in my head, inspired by the song. So, now you know. Enjoy. Or not. It's up to you.
iGet It
-o-
I couldn't make this up
I have been outdone by my own kind
I always traded up
Now I'm a victim for the first time
-o-
Five minutes.
That was all the time she gave the snooze fest. If she hadn't been there alone, maybe it wouldn't have been so boring. But it was. And she was.
No date.
No Gibby.
No friends.
It was the no Gibby thing that got to her. At least, at first. Sam Puckett had never actually been turned down by a Gibby before. Yeah, she picked on him quite a bit And yeah, sometimes he was afraid of her. But, in some weird part of the weirdest universe, she and Gibby were kind of... friends. She kind of liked that the kid could be as bizarre as he wanted and he was okay with it. It was refreshing. Everyone else in high school was looking to fit in or impress everyone. But Gibby didn't care.
Which was why, even though she complained and put up a fight when Carly originally made her do it, she did think Gibby would go to the Girls' Choice dance with her. It wasn't really like she wanted to go with him. But she thought they would have had a decent enough time... as long as he kept his shirt on, But, no. He turned her down cold. And then, to top it all off, it turned out he was going on a date with a girl who could have been a model instead.
So, with nothing better to do, Sam had sat on the bus in all her dance ready glory, and made her way to the dance to hang out with Carly and Freddie, and whoever they happened to be there with. She wasn't sure who each of them ended up deciding on. She didn't care that it was almost over now; she just wanted to have some fun with her friends. But did she find them? No. Instead, she found crappy food, spiked punch, and leering football players who had never seen a presentable Sam Puckett in the flesh.
So, five minutes.
She gave it a whole five minutes to see if she could find either of them, or at least someone who wouldn't run away scared after she caught them ogling her. There was no one. Disgusted with herself for even caring about a dumb school function, Sam again hopped a bus, sparing a glare for the old man in the first of the seats who reeked like her mother after a St. Patrick's day bar crawl.
He leaned forward, gesturing that she could take the seat next to him, almost falling to the floor while he did. Wrinkling her nose in a very Carly-like way, Sam scoffed, "I don't think so, Grandpa," and took the seat at the very back where she could stare out the window into the darkness undisturbed.
The only problem with staring out into the darkness was that it gave her plenty of time to think.
About no Gibby. About her uncomfortable shoes. About the painstaking care she took with her makeup and hair. About the outfit she borrowed from Melanie's left behind clothes. About Carly and Freddie not being at the dance.
Where were they?
Maybe, she reasoned, they found the dance just as boring as she did. Maybe they were hanging out at one of the parties that were going on instead. Maybe they had even gone home. And she knew, as she contemplated the idea that they had gone off somewhere without her, that was what was really bothering her.
A few stops later, a trio of middle aged women climbed aboard carrying paper bags, obviously just from one of the local markets. The scent of some sort of fresh baked bread wafted back to Sam, causing her to sit up a bit straighter, her mouth slightly open while she inhaled deeply. One of the women, her hair pulled back in a severe bun with a pair of chopsticks, shot a suspicious look at Sam before sitting down not far away from her. The woman continued to glance back at her periodically, the suspicion never leaving her face.
-o-
I'm unaffected and indifferent
But I can't pretend I'm not over the edge
-o-
"What?" Sam finally snapped. The smell of bread was making her stomach growl, and she was already cranky as a result of the Gibby experience and the lack of Carly and Freddie. She didn't need people on the bus giving her strange looks too. "What?" she repeated when the woman continued to eye her apprehensively. "You've never seen a girl on the bus by herself before?" She had a feeling the woman probably recognized her from somewhere. Sam hoped she had never stolen anything from her.
Visibly flinching, the woman spun back around in her seat, and Sam went back to peering out the window into the darkness. Some people might have thought that there wasn't much to look at on a Seattle street after the sun went down. Especially in this neighborhood. But Sam knew better. There were the grungy musicians in torn clothes toting battered guitar cases on the way to an open mic night. There were drug dealers darting in and out of dark alleys trying not to get caught while they made a living. There were women tottering in high heels, adjusting tight dresses while they walked to clubs with loud music or bars with cheap drinks. And of course, there were hobos relaxing on benches, rags of clothing gathered around them like robes of royalty.
Just because it was something you might not have wanted to see didn't mean there wasn't something to see.
Maybe it's because the woman with chopsticks in her hair got off the bus, but Sam decided to stay on for a while instead of exiting to the stop that connected to her neighborhood. Watching red and blue lights on the top of a police cruiser speed by, Sam idly wondered if it might be heading for her house and her mother again. She hoped not, if only because they didn't have enough money if she had to be bailed out, and Sam didn't want to call in a favor to Aunt Maggie. That would be a new low for the Pucketts. And if she couldn't bail her mom out, well, it always took way to much effort to explain to the cops that she could stay with Carly. They always wanted to release her to a family member. And that never seemed to go well.
She rode along, watching people get on and off the bus in ones and twos and threes. She wasn't sure how long she rode, but it seemed like a better idea than going home. Sometimes, she angled her eyes to catch the reflections of the other passengers in the windows when the overhead lights came on at the stops. Other times, she waited for the same lights to go off, her eyesight adjusting to the darkness quickly, and watched through the tint of the window while the departed ambled along the sidewalk.
But just as her butt started to go numb from the hard plastic seat, a boy and a girl, maybe a couple of years older than her, practically danced onto the bus, and something twisted uncomfortably in her stomach. She wanted to say it was nausea induced by the sheer cheesiness of the obviously together pairing holding hands, gooey smiles on their faces like they were in their own movie musical, but something akin to sadness rose like bile in Sam's throat, along with a burning in her eyes. Turning her head more resolutely to the right, Sam tried to focus on the streets outside, but her gaze was drawn to the reflection of the couple over and over again. They were sickeningly sweet.
And happy.
She couldn't help but see it. It's like they didn't even notice that the bus smelled a little like cabbage, or that the hobo that got on right after them looked like he might puke. The didn't care about the people looking at them. They just kept right on talking and laughing and there was that... something in their eyes.
And for the first time in a long time, Sam found herself jealous, not an emotion she had ever been particularly comfortable with. But she couldn't think of a time when she had ever been that comfortable or happy around someone before, not even Carly or Spencer. Or Freddie. Not that she thought she should be happy around Freddie, of all people. His name just popped itself into her head, the nub. It did that a lot.
The boy leaned in to kiss the girl and Sam's thoughts were getting all jumbled. That sick, roiling feeling in her stomach faded to a strange emptiness. So she pulled the tab by her window indicating she was requesting a stop, and hurried from the bus. She couldn't be there a minute longer.
To her supreme luck, she set her feet down on the sidewalk only a few blocks from Bushwell Plaza. She could go crash on the Shay's couch for a while, chow down on some bacon, watch reruns of "Girly Cow," and completely vege out. But first...
The Groovy Smoothie was just across the street from Carly's apartment building. It might have been late, but if T-Bo was getting ready to close up shop, she might be able to get him to give her some free food. Blended fruit sounded like the perfect way to get rid of this empty feeling in the pit of her stomach.
-o-
I was untouchable
Until karma crashed my party
Found out I'm crushable
And I'm the only one who's sorry
-o-
Sam wasn't exactly surprised to see the restaurant so empty. Smoothies weren't typically a popular late night snack for most people. When she opened the door, Sam could see T-Bo preparing to close up shop, all his smoothie drones gone for the evening. She was all ready to call out to him, but once she focused, she realized a couple dancing to a cheesy romantic song in the middle of the floor was between her and T-Bo and smoothies.
What was it with all of these people dancing tonight? Was this some sort of bad karma? Was the universe rubbing her face in her lack of a dance partner for a particular reason? A millisecond within thinking this, she considered barking out some sort of caustic comment, but then-
But then.
This wasn't just any dancing couple swaying slowly in each other's arms, gingerly holding on to one another as if they were made of glass. This was Carly and Freddie. Carly with her perfect smile that could get you to do anything, and Freddie with his hopeful eyes that told you he was begging for your acceptance. Not that she could actually see their expressions from here, which was good because it meant that they couldn't see her either. But she could imagine.
Well, Sam thought to herself, looks like Freddie's going to finally get what he wants. At least, for now. Carly would be happy because Freddie would treat her like a princess. At least, for a while. And she should be happy for them, right? Because they were, as much as she might not like to admit it when it came to Freddie, the closest people in the world to her. If they're happy, she should be happy, right?
Sam has only been punched in the stomach once in her whole life. It was when she was ten. She had picked a fight with a boy a little bit older than her and quite a bit bigger than her. He had been picking on Carly, and Sam decided to really let him have it. He managed to get in one solid punch before she flipped him over and a teacher intervened. She had never felt anything like it before. She'd had the wind knocked out of her when she fell while dancing, but taking a hit to the abdomen by someone's fist was completely different. It was like all the air in your lungs suddenly had nowhere to go, so it whooshed up and out of you, and you were left with this heavy, thudding, ache that you couldn't ignore. Eyes wide, white hot pain shoots to them and you have to blink back tears, and you almost buckle under the weight of it all. It is the closest Sam has ever come to crying during a physical fight.
And when she sees Carly and Freddie together in the middle of the room, those are the feelings that rush through her.
Except it was accompanied by that bile taste and followed up with that empty feeling that she had on the bus. And somehow, she just knew that a smoothie wouldn't make it go away, so she did an abrupt about face and exited one of her favorite restaurants in favor of the dark Seattle streets, streets that were steadily getting darker with the clouds rolling across the moon.
She walked for a while along the rapidly emptying streets, not really paying any attention to anything around her.
Catching one of her heels on a crack in the sidewalk, she almost fell forward, but managed to catch herself just in time. And in doing so, she had to take a minute to look around, get her bearings. And she found that her muscles were aching and she was panting like she had been running.
Had she been running?
She tumbled to a seat on a bus stop bench a few blocks from Bushwell, down a street she knew Carly never liked to take. Apparently, she walked in circles before her almost stumble. Her plans for crashing at her best friend's apartment have been very firmly derailed. That feeling in her stomach, that heaviness in her step, they just wouldn't allow her to walk there. And she didn't know why.
What she did know was that she must really look awful because not a single hobo or juvenile delinquent approached her. Not one. She would usually have three or four conversations with various hobos if she was waiting for the bus at this particular stop. Glancing around, Sam tried to find one to distract her. Maybe, she reasoned, if she got to yell at one of them about needing to get a job, it would make her somehow feel better. But while she looked around the dark corners for something resembling a person, her vision began to blur.
She didn't know why at first, but then, she felt the dampness trailing down her cheeks. And big, fat, raindrops splattered the top of her head. How long had it been raining? In no time, it was like the entire sky was falling on her. But she didn't have an umbrella, and if she tried to run for cover, she would probably miss the next bus. So, she sat and let the rain fall like drops of melting ice on her skin, and tried to ignore the burning in her eyes. It was hard though, and it just got worse and worse, and it would have been impossible to pretend that it was just the rain once it spread to her mouth and the back of her throat. And then her throat was closing off completely and she couldn't breathe and she was gasping or choking, she wasn't sure which. She just knew that everything was burning and freezing at the same time and she couldn't figure out what was going on with her.
Sam had never, not in her entire life, felt anything like this.
Not when her mother drunkenly blamed her for her father's abandonment. Not when she found out Jonah tried to cheat on her. Not when she had to get a job. Not when she found out that guy in those movies she loved as a kid was actually a jerk. Not even when she thought she and Carly would never speak again because they had such a bad fight. Never.
It didn't help her confusion that a parade of memories flooded through her brain then, even worse than the rain flooding the storm drains. She could see every time that Freddie made a pathetic move for Carly. She could hear her own voice every time she snidely commented, "she will never love you." And then, there was a rush of expressions on Freddie's face each and every time she put him down, hit him in the arm, threw something in his direction, knocked him out of his seat, or got him in trouble at school. She always found the way his eyes would widen in surprise, then narrow in suspicion or annoyance, to be amusing. She loved the different expressions he made. It was always fun to see how far he would go to get back at her too. Her heart would beat just a little bit faster when he managed to get one over on her. It was the challenge.
It was the challenge, right? That's what she told herself. It wasn't like she enjoyed having his attention all to herself. But, if that was true, why did she feel like this? Why did she feel like the whole world had turned on its side and she was tumbling over the edge? Something had to be seriously wrong with her.
The clacking of high heels alerted Sam that someone was walking down the street near her, likely not a hobo, so she forced her heartbeat to slow as much as she could and sucked in a harsh breath. She didn't bother trying to wipe off her face, figuring the the continual drumming of rain against her skin would hide the evidence of anything else. Cutting her head to the side, Sam spied two pairs of clear plastic heels and shapely legs that led up to tiny clothing and layered on makeup and two women who moved with a certain kind of rhythm.
"See," one of the women, holding a hot pink umbrella over their heads, spoke to her companion, gesturing in Sam's direction, "that's why I make the guys fall for me. I never fall for them. Safer. No tears."
The other woman gave a throaty laugh and a little sashay. "I don't think they're falling for you when they stick their singles in your garter belt."
"Hey, I made 300 bucks last night."
-o-
Well, well, baby, what do you know
You turned the tables on me, didn't you
My, my, my it only serves me right
Now I get it, I get it
This is how hurt feels
And it's everything they say it is
-o-
The voices faded away while Sam sat, frozen in shock. Not at the idea of a pair of strippers living somewhere near Carly's apartment. But, she never thought a stripper would see something she didn't. Sam liked to think of herself as pretty observant. It wasn't fair. But everything was clicking into place.
She got it. Even though she didn't want to.
Why she spent so much of her time and energy picking on him, holding his attention, even though they were supposed to be "friends." Why none of her boyfriends lasted more than a couple of weeks, tops. Why she hated his affinity for brunettes. Why she could stand to be around Mrs. Benson for more than five seconds at a time. Why she felt like she couldn't breathe when she saw Freddie dancing with Carly. Why the sight of his hands on her back made Sam want to vomit. Why she had the urge to punch him in the face as hard as she could. Why she was so scared that her hands were actually shaking.
This wasn't good. This was so. Not. Good. She didn't like this. She didn't like this at all. These feelings. They could go very badly. She curled her hands into fists in her lap, swallowing hard, doing her best to think of good things: ham, fat cakes, money in her pocket, the world's fattest priest, creative insults, Mrs. Briggs being stung by a bee, cold chili, nick names for Freddie.
Ugh. Freddie.
His face loomed in her mind, and it was like she was fourteen and sitting on a fire escape with him, wanting to get things over with. Obviously, her brain was not going to let this thing go away any time soon.
Sighing, Sam closed her eyes and turned her face up to the rain.
-o-
I get it, I get it
This is how hurt feels
And it's everything they say it is
-o-