#this is basically just Sam and Deena being thirsty for each other

[pizza-is-my-buziness]

Prompt for Sameena: Both POVs of band geek Deena seeing cheerleader Sam for the first time and vice versa back when Sam still went to shadyside.

“Nice skirt, Fraser.”

Sam tries to pretend like she doesn’t hear the words, but she’s pretty sure the color the floods to her cheeks gives her away. At least she manages to resist the urge to reach for the hem of her cheerleading skirt and call even more attention to herself. Especially since it won’t do any good anyway. Her mother had been thrilled when she’d joined the cheerleading team, had been even more excited when Sam had finally brought home her uniform, making her try it on and model it in the living room long enough for the woman to relive her teenage glory days and express genuine pride in her daughter for the first time in quite a while. Now, Sam isn’t all that fond of the uniform, seeing as she has to wear it in the hallways in front of guys like Richie Callahan, who is making no secret of leering at her in math class.

It’s the first game of the season and Sam can only pray that everyone gets tired of staring at the cheerleaders by the time the team fails to make the playoffs. When Kate Schmidt and her friends walk into class, Richie hurls the same comment in her direction and she flips him off without interrupting her conversation and in all things, Sam wishes that she could be exactly like Kate. Not only does the exact same uniform that she’s wearing look completely perfect on Kate, but she seems wholly comfortable in it. In her own skin. Something Sam isn’t sure she’ll ever be able to master at this rate.

The feeling of her skin being stretched too tight across her bones only increases when Kate’s friend Deena sits in her desk behind and to the left of Sam’s and it takes everything within her not to turn around and look at her. Lately, it seems like all Sam ever wants to do is look at Deena and she’s trying not to let herself think too hard about why that is. Instead, she just flips her math book open to the pages listed on the board, desperate to give herself something else to focus on. Something other than the feeling of everyone, or so it seems, staring at her and her stupid uniform.

Except when Sam lifts her gaze, most people in the room seem to have shifted their focus to something else, allowing her to thankfully fade into the background once more. Though the sensation of being watched isn’t gone, not entirely, and when Sam glances behind her, she’s surprised to find her eyes meet Deena’s immediately. There’s no mistaking that she’s completely caught Deena in the act of staring at her, especially if the blush that spreads across Deena’s face is any indication.

They both look away with a swiftness that would almost be funny if Sam wasn’t so acutely aware of the sound of her own pounding heart. She bows her head toward her textbook with more focus than she’s surely ever shown before, desperate to resist temptation to look back in Deena’s direction and see if she’s chancing another glance her way.

Hopefully she isn’t, because Sam isn’t entirely sure that she’s doing a good time biting down on the smile that is struggling to make itself known. Something about Deena’s gaze on her, on her thighs, her knees, the calves left unhidden by her socks makes her feel completely different than she had when she’d walked down the hallway and had felt the attention of the boys she passed.

There’s something about Deena’s gaze that she doesn’t mind at all.

~ ~ ~

When Kate had walked out of her house that morning in her cheerleading uniform, Deena hadn’t given her a second glance. Had barely registered that her friend had traded her usual vibrant colors and overalls for the blue and white of Shadyside High. And even though Deena had spent most of the drive arguing with Kate about putting her feet up on the dash as she pulled on her knee highs and adjusted the fit of her skirt, Deena’s mind had been on countless other things.

Now it seems like there’s only one thing on her mind. That goddamn uniform.

It’s all she can see now. All she can think about.

No offense, Kate. But it looks entirely different on Sam. Sam, who has worn a pair of tights or jeans every day since the start of the school year -not that Deena has been paying attention or anything- who has now traded her usual look out for skin…er a skirt. Right, a skirt.

And her bare legs.

Jesus, she needs to pull herself together. Sam has already caught her staring and she’s not sure that she can justify being busted again, not without looking like a total creep. But the sight of Sam sitting just a few desks away has set her pulse galloping and not like it normally does. Sam is always a distraction but today…today it seems like the universe has decided to borrow from a handful of Deena’s fantasies and bring them to life right in the middle of math class.

Terrible timing, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Poor Mr. Hollis. He doesn’t stand a chance today, not with Sam in a skirt that shows off the curves of her knees, the soft backs of her calves, just enough skin to well and fully distract Deena from polynomials. She might not survive football season. She might actually be worse off than the actual football players.

Something hits the side of her head and Deena blinks, whipping her head around in the direction of the projectile. Kate is smiling at her innocently, completely unbothered by the daggers Deena is attempting to glare in her direction. If only looks really could kill.

Kate points toward the balled-up piece of paper on Deena’s desk and when Deena rolls her eyes, she just points at it again with more emphasis until Deena gives her another eye roll for good measure but smooths out the paper, narrowing her eyes at the two words Kate has written there. Stop drooling.

Deena glares, keeping eye contact with Kate as she balls up the note again, just barely resisting the urge to throw it back at her. Kate is totally not worth getting chewed out by Mr. Hollis for passing notes. Besides, who cares. She is not drooling. She is not looking at Sam…right there in front of her and impossible to miss. With her hair pulled back in a scrunchy, the collar of her uniform perfectly ironed, the pleats of the skirt falling perfectly across her thighs.

Deena barely manages to swallow down a groan, scrubbing a hand across her face. If ever she hoped to actually say a coherent sentence to Sam, it certainly won’t be when she dressed like that.

~ ~ ~

The past few months have been full of revelations…most of them in the form of Deena Johnson. Sure there was that whole thing when she was ten and her best friend at the time invited her over for a sleepover the same weekend her older sister came back from college and Sam couldn’t figure out why she was blushing and giggling the whole time her friend’s sister painted their nails and did their hair and why she was so disappointed every time she went back to her friend’s house after that and her sister wasn’t there. And freshmen year, when she’d realized that she was a little more interested in the homecoming queen than in her king, like most of the other girls in the class seemed to be. And, really, it had been easy to ignore all those things, to chalk it up to curiosity and nothing more.

But with Deena it’s definitely…something more.

Looking at Deena makes Sam feel the way nothing else ever has. It brings everything into sharper focus, like the world has always been blurry around the edges and she just never noticed before. It makes her heart beat out of a different rhythm, something louder and fuller and richer that vibrates through every inch of her body and makes her want to giggle and blush the way she did when she was ten, but it makes her want to do a hell of a lot more than that too. It makes her want to do something really, really stupid like unstick the words from the back of her throat and tell Deena how she feels, to take a chance and see if she might possibly feel the same way.

The possibility of having any sort of coherent conversation with Deena about anything, let alone all the terrifying but thrilling thoughts rattling around in her head, seems like an absolute lost cause when the Shadyside band takes the sidelines and she sees Deena in her uniform and has a revelation of an entirely different sort.

Because.

Well.

There’s a cliché in there somewhere.

Sam turns away before Deena, or anyone, can notice her staring, though she isn’t sure how she would ever explain how red her cheeks are and how her mouth has suddenly gone dry. Who would’ve thought that navy pants and sleeves with silver piping would be so…heart stopping? Tempting?

Swallowing, Sam tries to glance back in Deena’s direction out of the corner of her eye. Even the hat on top of Deena’s head somehow doesn’t detract from how appealing the rest of her looks, even though it’s sitting askew on her curls and the feathery plume is wilting. It makes Sam want to push her hat on straight, to run her fingers through those curls, to trace the curve of Deena’s cheekbones with her-

If she doesn’t stop now, she’s going to forget every step of the cheer routines she’s supposed to be doing and drop Ashley right on her ass. So, Sam tries to push her thoughts from Deena…for Ashley’s sake, of course.

And she does a great job of it, all through the whole first quarter. She cheers with the best of them. She acts like it somehow isn’t completely demoralizing to cheer on the very terrible Shadyside High football team. And she doesn’t once glance to her left where, a few yards away, the band is doing a lot of standing around.

Until the sound of Deena’s laugh cuts through the jeering of the opposing team’s fans and Sam can’t resist the urge to look, to catch a glimpse of that smile, to study with envy the person who had managed to make Deena laugh like that. Deena is grinning at Simon in his mascot getup and Sam can’t help but smile as well, watching the two of them together. Deena has a nice smile. A great one in fact.

And the navy blue of the uniform really brings out Deena’s…freckles.

Thank God no one can hear the thoughts running through her mind right now.

Except Deena picks that exact moment to look in her direction and oh shit maybe Deena can hear what she’s thinking right now and any minute she’s going to look at Sam with this intense look of disgust and…

And smile at her.

Deena’s eyes are on hers so there’s no denying that the smile is for her, for Sam, that Deena looks at her and her first impulse is to smile. And Sam certainly can’t help the grin that spreads across her face in return. And some stupid or maybe stupid brave part of her points toward her own head and mouths I like your hat and Deena rolls her eyes, shaking her head.

But she’s still grinning so Sam counts that as a win.

Especially because Deena is still smiling at her.