Bout of Questionable Luck - Sam C

[Sloane Deveraux]

It was her day off but Sloane was still up bright and early. Thomas had already gone off to work and Addison was still in her room. Surprise, surprise.

Eyeing the big box of cereal Thomas insisted they add to the grocery list [among other sugar/carb/fat loaded things], Sloane U-turned to her room and climbed into her running wear and left the house to have a run at the lake.

She could feel her muscles straining pleasantly, a sign for her to slow down a bit just to let the buzz last longer. With music blasting in her ears, Sloane slowed down and took deep breaths to slow down her heart rate. She was enjoying the morning breeze immensely, letting it cool her down. She made a mistake of closing her eyes for just a second because she immediately bumped into someone.

"Shit sor-" she didn't even have time to say sorry as all at once, a surge of power enveloped her and immediately she felt her state of being change. She tripped over her own feet, rolling on the thankfully grassy ground, avoiding a mud patch only to have a cyclist race across said patch of mud that splattered all over her before getting her shoelaces stuck on the back tire of the bike. She was yanked across the ground just as the bicycle jerked and fell on top of her with the cyclist still on it.

Talk about bad luck coming in spurs. Sloane, on the bottom of the unfortunate heap, turned her head to look at the person she bumped into, only to find that it was a vaguely familiar Hammel graduate. "You!" Sloane glared at the man. She remembered that he had that good luck bad luck ability...what was it...probability manipulator? Something like that. And with the rush of endorphin surging through her body with that run, she had the misfortune to mimic his power and was now going to have Lady Luck pissing all over her until she can find another meta to steal off from.

Great. And on an off day too!

[OOC: Had to change the duration of her being with Sam's power because guess who finally decided to 'understand' Sloane's ability >_> ]

[Sam Caraway]

Sam had just about recovered from his day of bad luck – the bruises hadn’t started to heal, yet, but he was feeling a whole lot better about himself: and he hadn’t tripped over his own feet yet, which was always a bonus. Maybe he would be able to go for an entire day without walking into a wall, or getting covered in some nasty substance or another. So it was with a smile that he pulled on some clothes and headed out to make his way to the corner shop. This was a morning which called for celebration, and he was going to get himself some chocolate.

And as it was a nice morning, he would walk the long way.

But his hold on his good luck was still a little shaky (going back into good luck the morning after a Bad Luck Day was a little like fighting back a hangover), and he felt it fluctuate for a moment as he breezed down the path – it wasn’t long, but it was long enough for him to accidentally walk into someone.

‘Sorry!’ Sam uttered the word at exactly the same moment Sloane apologised – but he felt a nauseating jolt as they collided, and then watched in astonishment as the woman proceeded to fall onto the floor and go through a moment of bad luck which pretty much paralleled his experiences of the previous day. The next thing he knew, Sloane was sitting in a mud puddle and glaring at him with all the aggression she could muster. Her cry of ‘you!’ made him smirk a little: ‘Me! he echoed, looking at her as mildly as he could (though there was something about his expression which conveyed his amusement, and he suspected she would notice it).

It didn’t even take him a minute to place her – Sloane Deveraux, a fellow ex-pupil from Hammel: and, coincidentally, the girl who had been the object of his (entirely one-sided) affection for approximately three years. Sam had had one of the world’s biggest crushes on Sloane while they had been at school together, and it had been one of the few consistent attractions of his life. He had no idea if she had ever known of his teenage lust – he hoped she hadn’t, as he had thought that he’d kept the secret quite well – but for a moment, as he looked at her, he felt the familiar hit in his stomach.

‘Hey, Sloane!’ Sam recovered himself and gave her his most irritating smile: this was her fault, not his, and seeing her again made him feel like he was sixteen. He reached out a hand to her, offering his help to get to her feet. ‘That’ll teach you not to steal from me…’

[Sloane Deveraux]

As she tried to tug at her shoe to get it free from the wheels, she tugged it too hard and was sent tumbling backwards and bumping into someone else. "Holy m...!" she groaned as not only did her shoelaces get ripped, she had tumbled into another puddle of strategically placed mud.

It so did not help that the man who was responsible for her bout of bad luck was grinning like a Cheshire cat. And the vague familiarity turned into full recognition. She hadn't really hung out with the man when they were in Hammel but they did know each other back then. And Sloane did like the guy enough to have called him a friend then.

So his irritating smile and attempt at humor was taken very lightly. She accepted his offered hand and helped the people she had caused to fall only to step into one more puddle of mud with the shoeless foot. "God damn it, Sam."

Once everyone left, relatively unscathed thankfully [she couldn't afford to have police brutality jokes follow her around], Sloane leaned against a tree and took off her soiled socks and decided to take off the other shoe because being barefooted is not as weird as only having one shoe on.

"Am I dirty?" She looked up at Sam under shielded eyes. "Wait...what are you doing back here? I thought you went to Atlantic City after graduation."

[Sam Caraway]

‘Why are you blaming me?’ Sam asked Sloane cheerfully as she cursed at him – after all, it was she who had stolen his power, and as far as he was concerned she had nobody but herself to blame. But he was flattered that she remembered who he was, and for a moment he was sorry for her. Sam couldn’t remember how long she kept other peoples’ powers for, but it wouldn’t be a fun period of time for her.

As she put her muddy hand in his, Sam felt his sixteen-year-old self turn cartwheels in his stomach. Which was stupid, of course, as he was totally over a high-school crush. Nevertheless, there was a moment when she was on her feet, hand still in his, and he felt as tongue-tied as he always had whenever she had sat next to him in math class at Hammel.

Sam couldn’t wait to tell Mason about this. The other man had undoubtedly been under the impression that he would never need to hear any more about Sloane Deveraux.

Tragically, he had been wrong.

‘What kind of welcome is that?’ he asked her when she interrogated him, offering her a flippant grin. He gave a shrug in answer to her question: ‘Vegas got samey,’ he offered. ‘What are you still doing in Vermont? Didn’t you go back to Gay Paree?’ He had no idea if she had ever lived in Paris – details, details. ‘And yes, you’re covered in mud. Suits you, though.’ Sam’s smile went from ear to hear, and he reached down to retrieve her lost show from the mud puddle, offering it to her with an apologetic grimace.

[Sloane Deveraux]

"I'm blaming you for being..." she paused and narrowed her eyes at Sam before looking away with a huff. She knew she had nothing or nobody to blame. She hated her power for this reason alone. All she needed was a bit of adrenaline rush and that was all it took. Sure, her power was fun when she stole from a telepath or maybe a weather manipulator but as luck would have it [pun very much intended] she bumped into Sam Caraway.

Sloane was completely oblivious to Sam's crush on her. It was a good thing though, her being unaware of his feelings for her. She would have just ran the opposite direction and never spoke to him again. She hated awkward moments. So she was fully unaware of what was transpiring as she continued to hold on to his hand. She could feel the mud drying and sticking on to her skin very uncomfortably.

"The only kind you'll get from me." She mumbled with a frown. "Samey, huh." Jerking her head up in question. The Paris remark made an eyebrow shoot up. "I'm from Canada, what are you talking about?" She sighed when he confirmed that she was, in fact, dirty. She mocked a laugh before jabbing her curled up fist into his shoulder. "You better stick with me, Caraway. I don't want to have to do it alone. I bet you're going to have-" she couldn't even finish her sentence before she slipped on a wet patch of grass. Her hand grabbed Sam's shoulder before her face was buried in Sam's chest, with her legs sprawled out beneath her.

"Embarrassing..." she muffled.

[Sam Caraway]

‘Pfft.’ Sam waved away Sloane’s protestations of ‘Canada’ with a flick of his hand. ‘You speak French. Same thing.’ He gave her a bright smile. ‘And don’t make faces at me. I like gross generalisations – they keep me warm at night.’ Sam had a lot of practise with getting things wrong: it was a game he liked to play at the tables in Vegas. If he pretended to be stupid an insensitive, people were much more likely to think he would end up giving them all of his money.

Sometimes Sam wondered if he had been pretending for too long – if he had been doing this act for years, was it pretend any more? Or was it the real thing? By acting like a bit of a jerk for all this time, had he actually become one? Stop being existential, he told himself, shrugging away the questions. Sam was what he was, and he had the distinct feeling that he had always been the most irritating kid in any room. Being thirty-one wasn’t going to stop him.

Sam didn’t know if it was Sloane’s bad luck or his good luck that led to her falling into his arms – but then again, luck was like that. Even he sometimes had trouble working out where he was in the line. But he was luckier than he had been yesterday, because he managed to catch her before she ended up back in the puddle, hands on her waist as he helped her find her feet again. It took him a moment to release her (he wasn’t seventeen any more, but she was a very attractive woman, nevertheless, and Sam had never been one to willingly let go of a pretty lady), and when he had done so he stood poised to catch her if she fell again.

‘Let’s sit you down,’ he told her, gesturing to a nearby bench. If she could get to it without anything truly horrendous happening to her, he would have some kind of idea of how bad a position she was in.

‘So what’s a lovely lady like you doing in Pilot Ridge?’

[Sloane Deveraux]

Sloane rolled her eyes at his 'gross generalisation' and resisted the urge to punch him in the arm. "I bet that's not the only thing that keeps you warm at night." She winced, almost immediately regretting what she said since they were pretty much stuck to each other with her apparent lack of basic motor skills.

She was too busy with getting her feet properly planted on the ground to notice Sam's existential crisis. And of course, there was the whole being way too attached to Sam's body thing. It was hard to concentrate when you were hanging off a man who was quite easy on the eyes. He finally let go and she smiled satisfactorily but she had a strong grip on the man's hand just in case anything else happened.

"Good idea." She nodded and let Sam lead the way to a bench. She couldn't help but be fully aware of how she must look like; coated with mud and clinging on to the man inadvertantly responsible for her very bad luck. And barefooted.

She would have laughed to herself if the situation wasn't so absurd.

Plunking down the bench, she winced when she heard the squelch of still wet mud coolly pressing against her thighs and butt in the most uncomfortable manner. "Ah cripes." Sloane scooted to the edge of the bench and leaned against the arm rest. "You need to find a hose and hose me down." She mumbled, poking Sam's thigh with her big toe.

"Lovely, ha!" She tried to get the mud out of her ponytail and what she could see on her exposed thigh before pulling off her jacket and turning it inside out. Thank goodness her sleeveless top didn't get any mud on it. Her iPod however was caked with it. "Damn it. This is why I don't get expensive things." She mumbled to herself before turning to Sam. "Uh...I stayed back after graduation." She finally answered him. "Enrolled in the cadet corps and got bumped to officer. Been a cop the past five years." She shrugged.

"You?" She asked, pulling her hair band out she ran her fingers through her thick hair, hoping to get the mud out before it started to harden. "I need a bath."

[Sam Caraway]

A cop? Sam had to admit that the career would suit Sloane down to the ground – she had always been the type to want to fight crime. It was one of the reasons they hadn’t always seen eye to eye: Sam’s legendary pranks had, for some reason, never succeeded in impressing her. But although the news that she was now working for the police didn’t surprise Sam in the slightest, it reminded him that he would need to watch what he said. He’d been getting too lax recently, and the last thing he wanted was to admit to a police officer that he was making money through illegal means.

It was a subject that Sam had given a lot of thought to – and while there was no law against someone using a meta-human ability to help them in any situation, he had the feeling that court would definitely not find him innocent if he was accused of fraud. And it didn’t matter that Sloane and he had gone to school together: she was still on the side of the law, and it wouldn’t be a good thing for him to tell her the gory details of what he did.

‘I’m working in Kali’s Kafe at the moment,’ he told her noncommittally, knowing that if Mason were here he would have slapped him around the head for having distrustful thoughts about Sloane. She was one of their own, after all. ‘…And for as long as she’s willing to put up with me.’ That, or until he got itchy feet and decided that Pilot Ridge was too small for him. Sam had no illusions about the short length of his attention span.

He grinned cheerfully at her when she spoke about needing a bath. ‘Are you offering?’ he asked archly, unable to keep from a flirtatious remark. Will power, Sammy, will power. ‘Though personally, I’m not sure you’ll make it home without being hit by a car, or something. How long will you keep my bad luck for?’ He would have suggested her trying to turn it into good luck, but he assumed that Sloane knew her own power better than he ever would.

‘Looks like your stuck with me until this wears off!’ he told her, smile as bright and infuriating as he could make it. ‘Do you think that’s bad luck, or good luck?’

[Sloane Deveraux]

If she had known Sam thought that had been one of the reasons why his pranks didn't impress her, she would have laughed and denied it. Sure, she always had that drive to serve the law; it was just in her blood. But the reason why she had never taken to Sam's pranks were because she was just a tad too busy studying. She had been nothing but a studious bookworm when she was in Hammel.

She supposed she could attribute her obliviousness of Sam's affections towards her to that aspect of her teenage life and also to the fact that boys were just not on her top priority's list. Surprising as it was, Sloane only peeked up from her books during her college years. So really, had Sam been around during that time in her life, he would have gotten his Sloane fix, got tired of it and moved on, like most men [who weren't related to her by blood] in her life tended to do. The disadvantages of being a devoted girlfriend.

Sam did, however, get the part about her being on the side of the law right. She could hardly differentiate between duty and loyalty to friends and family. That was what her grandfather taught her and as far as she was concerned, he was right. Her brothers would back her up on it. If there was ever an excellent reason she had a shortage of friends, this would be it.

At the mention of the cafe Sloane frequented, she simply nodded, not seeing the connection. She could barely keep track of her graduating class, let alone their siblings so Sam would have to forgive her for not connecting the dots earlier. She did remember Sam mentioning a slew of siblings but still, no connection.

His flirtations were received with a raise eyebrow. "Yes, you can dig out the dirt from in between my fingernails and toenails while I take a bubble bath." She smiled sarcastically, some of the mud on her face crumbling down. The thought of being hit by a car made her shake her head at the image. Briefly, she wondered what the headline would say if Sam was the one interviewed. "Well, actually...hmm, wait. What level of control are you?" she asked as a response to his question.

She kept her groan at bay before giving him a deadpan look. "I'm not at liberty to say." She rolled her eyes and shoved him not so lightly with her arms. "Augh, I can feel the mud in my b--" she paused before she could finish the sentence. Sam didn't need the fuel. "On my back." She diverted, really hoping Sam didn't put his "astute detective skills" to good use.

[Sam Caraway]

As much as Sam would have protested the idea that he would have ‘got tired’ of Sloane if they ever had gone out, it was probably the truth. Sam was not known for being the best romantic partner, and he didn’t even have an excuse for himself. Some people could say that their bad track record ‘wasn’t for lack of trying’, but Sam didn’t even try to be a good boyfriend. He’d once been called ‘toxic’, and in answer he had simply laughed – but when it came to girls, he did seem unable to stop himself from letting everything fall apart after about a week. And if a girl ever got upset with him about the way he treated her, he just ignored it and carried on: if they got attached, it wasn’t his fault.

He gave Sloane a sarcastic smirk at her comment about a bubble bath. ‘If that’s what you’re into…’ he told her, unable to keep real mirth from his voice for too long. Sam gave some thought to her question, before answering: ‘Usually, excellent. But it comes in cycles – sometimes I can’t stop the bad luck from coming along, and when you bumped into me, I didn’t have any control.’ He made a face – Sam hated admitting that he couldn’t always control his power. It was a weakness, and one that he knew he had no hope of overcoming.

The only hope would be that his lifestyle here in Pilot Ridge would use less of his good luck, which would mean that less bad luck would come around to counteract it. When he wasn’t betting in casinos and trying to get a good hand in poker, it would hopefully result in fewer headaches.

Sloane underestimated Sam’s powers of deduction – the smile he gave her when she almost said something compromising was wide and smug: a smile which told her that he knew what she had been about to say, but that for her own good he wouldn’t make a big thing of it. ‘No comment,’ he told her, laughter in his voice. It was the thing Kali found most frustrating about her brother: the fact that he didn’t even have to chuckle to laugh at her. ‘If it helps, mud suits you.’ Sam’s eyes sparkled. ‘It really goes with your hair. Really. You should steal my power more often.’

[Sloane Deveraux]

"Ah, mon dieu." Sloane huffed at the revelation that she would have this cycle of bad luck for awhile until good luck came. This was not good news. Not at all. It just meant she needed to find someone to steal from as soon as possible. A town full of metas, she wouldn't have to look far, did she?

The policewoman cursed under her breath in her native language too colourful to be understood by anybody before she realised Sam was smiling at her, telling her that Sam did hear her. Another French curseword left her lips, louder this time. "No comment my ass." She laughed dryly.

"You know just the words to flatter me, Caraway. Really. I'm swooning on the inside." She rolled her eyes and stood up. "Come on. We need to go to the lake now. This shit needs to get off me and fast." She grabbed Sam's hand and pulled him in the direction of the lake, looking left and right just to be careful of her surroundings. "Man, this is going to make me paranoid for the rest of my life."

Once they were at the lake, she took off her grey top - the only clean, dry thing she had and neatly folded it and laid it on the ground by her feet, dropping her mud caked things a ways away from her clean top. She turned to Sam a little too fast, orginally wanting to ask what he was waiting for but her feet were still wet with mud and a misstep caused her to lose her footing and fall into the water...

...with her hand clutched on the front of Sam's shirt.

[OOC: Sandrine...I am...not sorry for fueling Sam's crush on Sloane with this thread. Not sorry. At. All.]

[Sam Caraway]

There was no escaping it: French was an inherently sexy language. Sam was reminded why he had always had such a thing for Sloane – even though she was probably saying some pretty unrepeatable things, she was saying them in a way which made Sam want to look at her and sigh like an abandoned puppy, the way he always had done when they were growing up. Her sarcasm made him laugh: ‘I always have that effect on girls,’ he told her with an insolent grin. ‘They lose consciousness as soon as I start flirting with them.’ Then she was pulling at his arm, and Sam resigned himself to the fact that this was a woman who could kick his ass: he probably shouldn’t say ‘no’ when she told him that he was going to the lake with her.

She was going to be paranoid? ‘Welcome to my world,’ Sam told Sloane, shaking his head. It was nice to be able to walk around this morning without a constant fear of something nasty landing on his head. Yesterday had been a nightmare.

Yep, his luck was definitely getting better: Sam watched in disbelief as Sloane started removing her clothes. In a dim corner of his mind he was aware that he should probably be a gentleman and at least make a show of turning his head away so that he wasn’t gawping at her – but he only pretended to be a gentleman when he was working.

In another corner of his brain, all he could think was: Mason is never going to believe that this happened to me.

But then she had grabbed his shirt and pulled him into the lake with her (or so it seemed to him), and Sam was a little too occupied with gasping for breath to be capable of thinking about very much. He spluttered to the surface and looked over at Sloane while he trod water. ‘If you wanted to see me have a wet shirt moment, all you had to do was ask!’ He pushed his sodden hair out of his face, struggling to keep his head above the surface. ‘Are you always this forward with guys?’

[Sloane Deveraux]

"I'm not so sure that's necessarily a good thing, Caraway." Sloane smirked, seemingly enjoying their banter a bit too much. She didn't really remember Sam when they were younger; this was probably a good thing.

Sam's response to her remark made her smile grimly. That didn't help at all. In fact, it may have just scarred her even more. If this was constant behaviour in Sam as an offset of his powers, she would have them too. That was definitely not at all a good thing.

Sloane was choking on the water that had rudely filled her mouth as her arms splashed about. She tried to find her footing but it was in vain. She had not counted on her lack of swimming experience to be a problem when she just had the thought to dip certain areas into the body of water. She certainly did not count on slipping into it in this manner either.

Sam's joke fell on deaf ears as she tried to stay afloat by gripping on to Sam. She wanted to warn him about her deficiency but she was swallowing in too much dirty water. And it took her awhile to get her head above the surface and the moment she did, she wheezed out "Can't swim!"

Her fingers blindly groped for something to latch on to, panic starting to set in.

[Sam Caraway]

Sam had honestly never considered the idea that Sloane would not be able to swim. After all, the lake had been her idea – and Sam had been swimming since he’d been old enough to walk. How could anyone make it through thirty years of life and not be able to swim? Well, apparently if you were an attractive French Canadian, you could avoid water like the plague.

It took a moment for Sloane’s frantic movements to take effect on Sam: when she managed to force out those two words, he suddenly realised that he should do something. The water felt as if it kept getting colder by the second, and his limbs were stiff as he struck out towards Sloane – but in a couple of movements he had encircled her waist with his arms.

His kicking lost him both his shoes into the deep water, but he had to admit that it was easier to swim without them – he was able to hold Sloane tightly and prop her body against his so that her head would stay above water.

She was more weight than he was used to carrying in water, and it took him a while to get to the side of the lake. But eventually they were there, and Sam was able to brace himself against the muddy shore as he dragged Sloane out – he flopped down next to her on the bank, racked by coughs as he tried to regain his breath after the physical exertion. Still, he kept an eye on her: his first aid skills were nil, but at least he was there in case something went wrong.

‘You know,’ he began conversationally when he had emptied his lungs of most of the water (he could feel more lake-water cold in his stomach: how much had he swallowed?). He was still out of breath. ‘You’re the – second woman I’ve – saved the life of – since I came back.’ Another cough. ‘I should be – a superhero.’

[Sloane Deveraux]

Sloane was pretty sure her life was hanging on the line as she trashed about in the water, waiting for Sam to save her and when he did, she clung to him like a barnacle to a boat. She didn't want to let go of him at all, even when he deposited her on the bank of the lake. Her hand still clutched at his shirt.

His joke obviously going over her as she tried to calm herself down. She knew she was safe but if her bad luck was already this bad, who knew what else could happen to her? She needed to find a meta quick and falling into lakes was just not the way to do that!

"I don't think...you should get a cape just yet." She wheezed out, turning her face to bury it in Sam's shoulder. "Dammit Sam...seriously need...to find a...m-meta, right now."

Well, at least she was clean again.

Once she was calm, she unfurled from Sam and sat up, drawing her legs up and hugging them to her chest. "Don't tell Mason about this." She spoke, suddenly feeling very stupid that everything had happened. "I don't think he'll let me live this down." She laughed, hiding her face in her knees. Funny how near death experiences changed the exterior of a cold person.