#(used car salesman voice) you can fit SO much yearning in this bad boy

[professorfcknmoriarty]

trick or treat! maybe... another evsam (ik you written two already but 😩🫴 can't get enough). prompt: "calm before the storm"

Sorry it's late! TBH - you can't really have too much EvSam. I had like four false starts on this one before I settled on what, exactly, I wanted the "storm" to be.

“Hey.”

“Hey! You picked up!”

Evan snorts. “When have I ever not picked up?” She doesn’t call all the time, there will often be weeks where he doesn’t hear from her at all, and sometimes it’s just texts, but since he and K broke up, they’ve been in a lot more contact. She feels bad for him, he’s pretty sure. But he can’t bring himself to push her away, not when he wants so desperately to pull her closer.

She huffs out a soft laugh on the other end and he can picture her rolling her eyes at him. “You know what I mean. It’s like, midnight. You could have been asleep.”

I don’t sleep much, he doesn’t say. It’s one of the items on the make sure never to tell Sam because she worries list, though he suspects she already knows at least half of them and just hasn’t had an excuse to grill him on them yet. “Sure,” he says, getting up from his perch on the air mattress to look into his mostly bare kitchen cabinets. “What’s up, Sam? How’s the show?”

As if he doesn’t watch it religiously, as if he doesn’t have news alerts set on his phone for her many names - he has ones for Jammer as well, but those pop up in his notifications considerably less often than Sam Britain does, and lords of the underworld help them if the news ever learns who K Tanaka is - so that he’ll always know when something happens.

Usually, it’s that she’s dating someone new, or she’s been invited to make an appearance on another show, but he likes to be in the know - even if it’s something that hurts to hear about.

“The show is good!” she says. There’s a long pause and then she says, “So. Have you gotten yours yet?”

He freezes halfway through opening a box of instant macaroni. It’s a deal he made with Sam, where he doesn’t keep all his food in his backpack. “My what?”

“It’s a, uh -" there’s a rustling sound, “a letter, from Dr B. It was in the shape of bird. Like, a tiny, grey seagull?”

“Storm Petrel?”

“Storm pet-? Hang on,” he hears the sound of her fingers clicking over the screen of her phone and then she makes a noise of excitement. “Yeah! One of those. It was very cute. So, did you get yours?”

“Uh, no,” he glances at the cracked open window, to verify that there isn’t one resting on it, waiting for him. There isn’t. “What did it say? You said it was from Dr Boodle?” It’s been a while since he last heard from the man and he’d assumed it most likely to be the result of either another research deep dive or he’s hit a dead end and hasn’t figured out what his next steps are yet.

Evan hears rustling again and then she says, in her very best Boodle impression, “Hi, Samantha. I hope you’re doing good. This is Dr Boodle, though I’m sure you’ll have realised that if you’ve looked at the end already - look, it doesn’t matter -" she clears her throat.

He snorts, it sounds exactly like the letters Boodle used to send him, back when they first started working together.

“- I would love for you to come visit to hear a proposition I have for you,” she continues, “A request, really. The others will be there - at least, I hope they’ll be there. I’ve invited them, too. There’s a code at the bottom of this letter, after my name, that should create tickets for you, to the Faroe Islands. I’ve also included the coordinates, in case you wish to look it up ahead of time. I’m looking forward to seeing you, I hope you’re doing well. Sincerely, your teacher from Chimeron, Dr Boodle.”

Before she’s even done talking, there’s a chill running down his spine. It means something, that he’s calling them all. He just doesn’t know yet what it means.

As if on cue, there’s movement out of the corner of his eye, and he sees a tiny head peek around the pane of glass.

“There’s mine,” he says, a little hoarsely. “Just arrived.”

“What do you think he wants us to do?” she asks quietly.

“I- I’m not sure.” When he opens his note, it’s considerably shorter than hers though it communicates the exact same amount of information. “Listen, Sam -"

“Yeah, Ev’?”

He presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “You don’t have to. You can pretend you never got the note. Burn it, shred it, whatever. Just keep going with your life.”

A long pause. Then, very softly, “Do you not want me to come?”

I want you safe, he doesn’t say. “No, it’s not that. It’s- whatever it is, it’s going to be dangerous, Sam. He wouldn’t call us all together like that if it weren’t.”

With one hand, he scribbles the response on the little bird, and sends it back out the window. He’ll leave as soon as he’s off the phone with Sam. Boodle usually has food in the house but even if he doesn’t, Evan’s got two months worth of emergency rations tucked away in his pack. They’re not the tastiest, but they’re enough to keep him going.

She laughs hollowly. “When is it ever not dangerous? When we’re involved, it’s always something.”

He thinks about the way she charmed his blood snakes, the way she talked down his Passengers. The look on her face when she’d stared Talulah and Boudicca down, even after realising they wanted to see The Pilot Program dead.

And, he thinks about the way his elbow aches a little when it rains - which is often, in this corner of the planet - and the almost-smiley face stabbed into his skin, both of which he earned fairly recently while assisting Dr Boodle with various requests.

“You’re right,” he tells her. She usually is. “But I mean, I think it’s worse than that. I think it’s going to be dangerous. I’m not sure if -" the words catch in his throat and he has to push past it, “I’m not sure if we’ll all make it out on the other side.”

If anyone’s going to die, it’s going to be Evan - most likely to protect her or one of the others - he hopes to everything that his death will be enough to guarantee their safe return. Guarantee Sam’s safety.

“Hey, now,” she scolds gently, in the voice she uses when she wants him to know she’s teasing him. “None of that pessimism. I thought we were working on producing our very own brand of Evan’s Optimism? Or did you back out of that deal already?”

He huffs out a laugh, smiling despite himself. There’s so much he wants to tell her, so much he wants to say, but it’s hard to find the right words and it never feels like the right timing to try.

“I’ll see you there, yeah?” he says instead.

“You will,” she assures him. “I’m about to leave for the airport.”

Fuck, it’ll be good to see her. “Okay,” he says. “I- it’ll be good to see you.”

“You, too, Ev’,” she says softly. “We should talk, okay? I mean, in person.”

It would be weird if they didn’t talk while they’re in person together. Evan frowns at the phone, not sure how to respond.

She doesn’t wait for him to respond, just chuckles and says, “Bye, Evan.”

“Bye, Sam.”

On the flight over, with the hood of his rain slicker pulled up over his head, he tries to hype himself up for this. It’ll be awkward with K, but then that’ll pass. He’ll find out whether Jammer still considers him a friend, and he’ll get to see Sam again. The good outweighs the bad, if only by a little.