Work Text:
“Would you say I’m a prankster?” Sam asked suddenly, shattering the peace of the library once again. He had his chewed-up pen in his mouth, which was incidentally not his, but actually one of Penny’s that she had given him last month and refused to take back after what he’d done to it.
Penny did not look up, not wishing to cringe at the sight. “I wouldn’t say anything because I’m trying to study,” she murmured, narrowing her eyes at her biology textbook.
Sam sighed dramatically, dropping the pen onto his notebook with a *plop* and leaning his head back. “I feel like ‘prankster’ doesn’t do me justice, you know? I’m a comedian sometimes, maybe a class clown at worst. But a prankster? I don’t know. Sounds like such an old-people thing to call someone anyways.”
Penny leveled her green eyes on him and bit back a sigh of her own. “Sam,” she chided.
“What?” he smiled, grinning boyishly now that she was actually looking at him, his own green eyes shining.
Part of her wanted to smile back, because he was really quite cute, and it felt nice to have his attention like this. Another part of her really wished he would shut up because this arrangement that was originally intended to help his academic career was beginning to hurt hers.
“Ten minutes.” The two words kicked off the well-established routine, one she had hoped she would not need to use on Sam since he was too old for this. Vincent and Jas, sure. But not a sixteen year old. And yet she had found herself resorting to it, as some days he just did not seem to be able to focus.
He sighed but made a gesture with his hands as if zipping his lips shut. Penny smiled slightly and reached for her phone to set the timer.
Two minutes into the ten, she was just starting to be absorbed again, copying the basic steps of putrefaction in her notebook, when the clicking started.
*Click*
*Click*
*Click click click click click*
“Will you stop it?” she hissed.
“You’re not supposed to talk,” he whispered back, struggling and failing to contain a smile.
She groaned, palming her forehead. “ You’re not supposed to talk!”
“Well that hardly seems fair,” he said with a mockingly contemplative expression.
Her patience finally snapped, worn by weeks of the same nonsense and mounting stress. She made a growling noise in the back of her throat and slammed her textbook shut, causing Sam to jump and sit up straighter.
“You know what isn’t fair? ” she hissed.
“Uh-oh,” Sam whispered under his breath, eyes wide.
“What isn’t fair, ” she sniped as she lifted her bag and began to shove her things into it, “Is that I have been trying to help you for weeks and all you’ve done is make my life harder. You promised me you would make the flashcards and you didn’t. You can’t even sit still for ten… freaking minutes. Is this all a joke to you?” She stopped and stared at him, her breath leaving her too quickly with her heart beating so fast.
Sam seemed properly scolded, sitting on his hands with a dismayed expression. He shook his head, a strand of blond hair falling into his face.
“You…” He sighed, looking up at the fluorescent light overhead desperately. “You know it’s not,” he whispered. His sincerity shocked Penny back to herself and she wondered suddenly if she had been too harsh.
She shut her eyes and breathed, settling her heart rate. “I’m sorry. I took a harsher tone with you than I should have.”
His eyes were still large with concern, but his lips quirked up. “I guess I should be apologizing to you, though. You’re right, it’s unfair.”
Penny tucked her copper hair behind her ear nervously. It was a bad habit, because putting it behind her ear always left it with an odd curl she hated.
“Seems like a standoff, then,” she said with an awkward chuckle.
She was grateful for the apology—actually, she was rather flattered by it—but it didn’t change anything. They couldn’t keep meeting to study if he never actually studied.
“Well, maybe not…” he said cautiously.
Penny cocked her head silently in question.
“I, um… I’ve been thinking.” His face was turning red. He was actually blushing . “Maybe it’d be easier to focus if we had a separate time to talk. Because, like, I like talking to you,” he admitted sheepishly, looking down at the table.
Penny sat steadily steaming in her own brand of embarrassment. “Is this some kind of trick?” she asked in a small voice, and suddenly felt like she was eight years old again, left to cry by herself on the playground.
“No! No, it’s not a trick, Penny, I promise, I um, hold on,” he leaned over and shuffled frantically in his bag, finally pulling out a rectangle wrapped in crinkling plastic and placing it on the table between them.
It was a pack of black ballpoint pens.
“Pens?” she asked, embarrassment ebbing into confusion.
Sam nodded eagerly. “I was saving them for later but… well… they’re for you.” He pet the back of his neck nervously, face now completely red. “I wanted to thank you for trying to help me and sort of, um… see if we could hang out. Like for real.”
Penny picked up the pack of pens with a careful hand, beginning to accept this may actually be genuine. “Like as friends?” she whispered, almost more to herself, reading the pack. The pens weren’t as fine a point as she liked, but she was hardly in a position to be choosy, it was hard enough getting mom to put money aside for school supplies every fall.
“I, uh… kinda thought we already were friends,” Sam said sheepishly.
She looked up at him in surprise. It had been a long time since anyone openly considered themself her friend, at least anyone her own age. If anything she was closer to Mr. Gunther and Granny Evelyn than anyone else.
“But, I mean, yeah, we can hang out as just friends if you want, I just…” he trailed off nervously.
“Just friends? Sam, are you…”
“Mr. Howard!” a voice boomed from the back corner of the library, startling the teens.
The only person who would dare be so loud in the library was Mr. Gunther himself.
“Whoops.” Sam jumped up. “I’m not here!” he whispered conspiratorially to Penny and ran full sprint out of the library, leaving all of his things.
The heavy wooden door into the library opened and closed in the distance, Penny barely having a second to consider what she should do with his belongings when Mr. Gunther came rounding the bookshelves, a miffed expression behind the glasses he wore low on his nose.
“Where is he?” he said brusquely.
“He just left.” She huffed a nervous laugh. “I think you really scared the daylights out of him.”
“Good,” he grumbled, and crossed his arms. “I’ve got half a mind to ban that boy. Don’t know how you put up with him. He’s bad news, Pen.”
Penny turned to look out the window, wondering what Sam was up to now. “He’s not a bad kid, though.” She turned back to look at Mr. Gunther, who seemed to have calmed down a bit.
“Can’t all be as mature as you, huh?” he asked, handlebar mustache twisting in a wry smile.
Penny gave him a small smile back, “I suppose not, sir.”
She used to like being called mature, but it had increasingly started to bother her. Nothing good seemed to come from being mature. It got her stuck in situations like this, with Jodi begging her to tutor her son, with days taking care of herself when mom went on a bender in the city.
“Speaking of, would you know what the word ‘milf’ means? That some kind of milk thing?” he asked innocently.
Penny’s eyes widened, cheeks surely reddening again, and tried to sound normal as she responded. “No idea, sir.”
Mr. Gunther hummed contemplatively in response. “Alright. Well, I’ll be at the front if you need me.”
Penny nodded, and as soon as he was far enough away she huffed and put her head down on the cool wooden table. What on Earth had he done this time?
After a moment Sam did not seem to be coming back, probably afraid to cross Mr. Gunther. Penny packed up the pens and looked at his things in consideration. His bag really wasn’t heavy, since he was usually missing most of his textbooks, maybe she could bring it out to him.
She grabbed his open workbook and used it to push the chewed up pen into his bag, which was a cringe-worthy mass of papers. Never mind carrying it, this was worse. Still, she found herself looking forward to continuing their conversation. She had never imagined Sam would want to be her friend, much less something more than that.
She untucked the hair from behind her ear, feeling suddenly self-conscious. She had never really bothered to appear attractive around him, though she supposed it was a little late for that. He might actually already like her as is. An absurd thought, but it seemed pretty clear that’s where things were headed earlier.
Her own bag was probably six times heavier than his, so she hefted both over her shoulders and headed out, bidding Mr. Gunther goodnight.
The heat outside swarmed her as the door shut, the sun low in the sky reaching out to kiss her legs. A whistle sounded to her right and she looked to see Sam poking his head out from behind a tree.
“What was that about you being a prankster?” she called out.
He rolled his eyes and ran over, holding his hand out for his bag. “Sorry,” he said meekly, “how bad was it?”
She passed over his exceptionally light bag. “Not bad. Though he’s close to banning you.”
“Ha! He’s been close to banning me since I was seven.” He held his hand out again. “Gimme.”
“Huh?”
“Your bag. I can carry it.”
“Oh. Are—are you sure? It’s heavy.”
“All the more reason, give it, come on,” he gestured impatiently and she hesitantly handed it over. “Oof, you weren’t kidding.” He readjusted his hold but managed to get it onto his back.
“Yeah,” she was about to apologize but bit it back, tucking her hair behind her ear again. It felt strange to not have the weight on her back. “So… what did you do?”
He gave her a crooked smile, the kind that always made her stomach clench, and gestured with his chin to the path back into town. They walked slowly as he explained.
“I may have drawn something on the bathroom mirror.”
“Sam!”
“It was dry erase!” Then added quietly, “At least I’m pretty sure it was…”
Penny covered her face with her hands. “What did you draw?” she asked, muffled behind her hands.
“I uh…” he laughed, “I wrote ‘Gunther hearts MILFs.’”
Penny gasped and stopped, smacking his bicep. “Sam!”
He only laughed louder. “Ay! Ow! Abuse,” he held his hands up in defense.
“You’re impossible,” she said with a smile, despite her best efforts to contain it.
He stood smiling at her for a silent moment that nearly turned uncomfortable, until he suddenly replied, “Let me walk you home. Or, somewhere else if you want.”
The question sent her heart fluttering. She had never had someone offer to walk her home before.
“Hmm. I’m not sure if I should be spending so much time with a bad influence,” she teased.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he replied cheekily, but then bit his lip in thought. “Really though I um…” he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I really am sorry. For being a pain and all that. And I’d like to be better.”
“Is this you trying to charm me?” Without the straps of her bag to fiddle with she resorted to clutching the end of her skirt nervously.
“Maybe. Is it working?” he leaned in conspiratorially with a half smile.
“Maybe,” she leaned in closer and pecked his cheek quickly before she could lose her nerve.
His eyes went wide with surprise, hand shooting up to touch his cheek as if wondering if this was real. “Hell yeah,” he whispered in shock, causing Penny to giggle and grab his hand.
“Come on, you can tell me what was so important you had to interrupt my study time.”
His grin was heart-stoppingly charming as he squeezed her hand back. It was a bit sweaty but she didn’t mind. Actually as he began animatedly recounting his last practical joke on Lewis, she was quite certain she had never felt happier.