Tron fic: Pizza Night (Sam/Quorra)
Dec. 28th, 2010 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficI wasn't going to sequelize this, but someone kidnapped my cat and said I wouldn't get Pumpkin back unless I wrote another delightful bit of fluff featuring Sam and Quorra's evolving friendship. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Title: Pizza Night
Fandom: Tron
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,808
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Quorra
Previous: Dear Wired Magazine, I Never Thought This Would Happen To Me But…
Next: A Good Time To Change Your Facebook Status
Summary: It's Sam's job now to introduce Quorra to the finer things in life. Like pizza.
For once, Sam came back from work exhausted, like he'd spent the day in a riot rather than pushing pencils. Through a combination of threatening, bribing, cajoling, and an uncomfortable amount of begging, he'd finally cleared the Encom board of the jerks who were trying to turn it into the Evil Empire. And more than half the people on Alan's list of replacements had said yes. It hadn't been easy, finding programmers with business savvy, but most of the ones he did find respected Kevin Flynn too much to stand by while his company became the next Microsoft.
And some of the youngbloods seemed to hold him in high regard. They might also have thought they were going to be playing basketball in the office with him and announcing projects by jumping out of airplanes (which did sound awesome). Sam decided to let them down easy on the fact that it was hard work running a multinational corporation. Just so long as he beat Facebook to the punch. Zuckerberg collected young programmers like they were Pokemon.
Then Sam got home… although the junkyard was starting to feel less and less like a home, he'd have to ask Alan where young corporate princes were supposed to live… and Quorra looked up from a card game and smiled at him and he felt like he could run the Boston Marathon.
But first, he'd take off his shoes.
Sam plopped down on his faithful old couch, where he'd spent the night during so many AMC monster movie marathons, and kicked off his shoes. Tried to. The damn leather things clung on, not at all like a good pair of sneakers, and he moaned and dropped his head back against the cushion. Later. He'd break in his shoes and save his father's company and find a nice place to live and maybe take Quorra back to the circus. Yeah. That'd be nice.
"So how was your day?" he asked.
"I've been playing Solitaire," she announced proudly. "I won three hundred and forty-seven out of five hundred games. The trick is to shuffle the cards so victory isn't arbitrarily impossible. I've honed it down to a ritual which I think should be included with every deck of cards to cut down on the frustration of an unwinnable game of Solitaire."
Quorra. Changing the world. Sam grabbed a cushion and added it to the back of his head. Maybe she had the right idea. Sometimes you just had to take a day off and do whatever.
With a hum of delight, Quorra won her current game, then excitably rushed over to Sam to bend down and unlace his shoes for him. Sam almost asked if she was undressing him for sex (understandably, that episode had been at the forefront of his mind), but then decided if she was, that was cool. As long as it didn't involve his fingers in any way. He was halfway to carpal tunnel syndrome as is.
"And you?" she asked, pulling off his socks.
"I spent the day trimming golden parachutes. You'd think these guys slew the Minotaur, the severance packages they want…"
Quorra nodded and moved off, holding his shoes and socks at arm's length. She dropped the shoes in the bin and the socks beside his tennis shoes and her boots. He didn't bother to correct her. She'd get the hang of it eventually.
"Anything good on the tube?" Sam asked, eyes closed.
Quorra sat down beside him, in that weird way she had of kneeling on a cushion instead of fully committing her ass to it. "Sam, is your memory corrupted?"
"No, I haven't been drinking," he said, half-awake.
"I ask because on August 12th, we were eating pizza from Papa John's on 12 Sycamore Avenue and you said 'You think this is good, you should try a homemade pizza sometime.' And I asked when sometime was. You said 'Let's do it next week.' Since then, it has been six days, twenty-three hours, and thirty-three minutes. Were you referring to a binary assignment of weeks, set in months, or simply the time unit of seven days, for instance, a week that starts on Wednesday and continues to span two separate months?"
Sam sat up, interrupting her with a yawn. "You know what? Let's do it now."
Quorra gave him another Boston Marathon smile. "That sounds nice." Her brow furrowed. "But you were referring to a time unit of seven days, correct?"
***
It was possible that Quorra had been obsessing over this all week (the time unit of seven days), because when she opened one of the cupboards that Sam had earmarked for "those plates by the sink I may wash someday," there was every conceivable pizza ingredient ready and waiting. Even Canadian bacon. Sam would've thought you needed a license to buy that, kinda like how the FBI kept an eye on fertilizer that could be used to make bombs.
Sam got Quorra started on making the dough while he assembled the proper toppings. Nothing too fancy… cheese and pepperoni. Maybe they could introduce Quorra to the various toppings one at a time, week in and week out. She'd love that.
Tomatoes, too. You couldn't have a pizza without tomatoes. Sam grabbed one from the garden Quorra had started (he really needed to find a new place before she put down roots too), washed it off with soap and water, then began to slice it into fine layers.
"Am I being too rough on it?" Quorra asked as she kneaded the dough. She looked a bit concerned that she was violating its civil rights or something.
Sam turned to tell her about tossing it--damn!--cut his finger.
"Sam!" Quorra cried.
Really trying to watch his language in front of Quorra, not because she would be offended but because she would probably demand the etymology of any curse word he used, Sam stuck his finger on his mouth. He didn't think any of the tomato slices had been contaminated, but he tossed the last one he sliced just in case.
Then Quorra was right in his face, grabbing his hand and wrenching his bleeding finger clear of his mouth. "Let me see… oh. My! You're bleeding!"
"Yeah, I know," Sam said, less than helpfully.
"Alright, don't panic, I've read about this!" Quorra looked around frantically, settling on an oven mitt, which she pressed against the 'wound.' "Alright, we're going to need gauze, iodine, and bandages!"
"Quorra, relax. Stop panicking."
"You stop panicking!" she shot back. "I think I can sew it shut. I knitted half a cardigan, but stopped because I kept pricking my finger. Wait, what were you doing before?" She grabbed his finger out of the oven mitt. "I could be infecting you with germs! Oven germs!" She stuck his finger back in his mouth. "There! Is that a home remedy for cuts? Is it homeopathic? You know homeopathic cures don't work, and studies which show that they do were typically biased or otherwise unscientific!"
Sam popped his finger back out of his mouth. "Quorra, it's fine," he stressed. "Look, it's already stopped bleeding."
Quorra wasn't taking any chances. She nearly bit down on his finger, taking it into her mouth. Sam was a bit speechless after that.
"Has it stopped bleeding?" Quorra asked, muffled by the fact that she had a finger in her mouth.
Sam put his free hand on her shoulder to hold her still as he pulled his finger free. "Sorry, but that's a fetish I could really do without." He wiped his finger on his shirt. "See? Not bleeding. Good as new. I've gotten worse cuts shaving."
Quorra gasped and scrutinized his jaw, seeing if there were any gaping wounds she had overlooked. "You may need to get a tetanus shot."
"Quorra. Listen to me, you need to calm down. No one dies from a little cut."
"But you were bleeding!" Quorra protested.
"Yes, and now I'm not. Trust me, I'll live." Sam went back to cutting the tomato, just to show her he wasn't crippled either. "What's with you, anyway? You're normally a bit more… Mr. Spock than this."
"It's just… you were bleeding. People bleed before they die. They exsanguinate and they die and they can't be rerezzed, ever." Quorra paced frantically, as if the words were more than just spilling out of her, they were pushing her this way and that along the kitchen floor. "And I know you don't think I love you, not really, but at least we can agree that I like you a lot and it could be something more but if you die, it will never be something more, it will just be… incomplete. I'll be incomplete."
Sam wasn't sure whether he should stop her from pacing or what. She was walking so hard and so fast she looked like she could hurt herself, just bash her head in against a wall. Christ, he was sounding as silly as her. "Quorra…" She stopped by herself, forcing herself to, actually holding herself to the fridge like it was a life preserver. "I'm not going anywhere. I promise."
"Your father didn't want to leave you either. But he did. He made a promise he couldn't keep."
Damn it. Damn it to hell, he missed the Grid. At least there, you could solve a problem with a light disc. How was he supposed to comfort her when, yeah, he could get plastered by an eighteen-wheeler the next time he stepped out to take Marvin for a walk?
Breathing deeply, Sam stepped over to Quorra, turned her around gently by the shoulder, and wrapped his arms around her. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, but he couldn't think for a moment of her body, or how warm she was now that she had flesh and blood instead of data. All he could think of was how tiny she felt, shuddering a little in his grip but that just made him hold her tighter.
"I'm not my father," he said. It was a lame answer, but the only one he had.
"This feels nice," she said, with her head against his chest. "What is it?"
"Huh? Oh, it's called a hug. People do it to… to remind each other that there's someone else, even when they feel alone."
"A hug," Quorra said, with the tone that meant she was filing another bit of knowledge away.
Stiffly, she pulled her arms up and then encircled him with them, trying to best gauge how to return the embrace. Sam patted her on the back to show she'd succeeded.
"I don't know why you need me to save your world when you have this," she said.
Sam grinned and rested his chin on the crown of her head. His girl. How cheesy could she get?
Title: Pizza Night
Fandom: Tron
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,808
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Quorra
Previous: Dear Wired Magazine, I Never Thought This Would Happen To Me But…
Next: A Good Time To Change Your Facebook Status
Summary: It's Sam's job now to introduce Quorra to the finer things in life. Like pizza.
For once, Sam came back from work exhausted, like he'd spent the day in a riot rather than pushing pencils. Through a combination of threatening, bribing, cajoling, and an uncomfortable amount of begging, he'd finally cleared the Encom board of the jerks who were trying to turn it into the Evil Empire. And more than half the people on Alan's list of replacements had said yes. It hadn't been easy, finding programmers with business savvy, but most of the ones he did find respected Kevin Flynn too much to stand by while his company became the next Microsoft.
And some of the youngbloods seemed to hold him in high regard. They might also have thought they were going to be playing basketball in the office with him and announcing projects by jumping out of airplanes (which did sound awesome). Sam decided to let them down easy on the fact that it was hard work running a multinational corporation. Just so long as he beat Facebook to the punch. Zuckerberg collected young programmers like they were Pokemon.
Then Sam got home… although the junkyard was starting to feel less and less like a home, he'd have to ask Alan where young corporate princes were supposed to live… and Quorra looked up from a card game and smiled at him and he felt like he could run the Boston Marathon.
But first, he'd take off his shoes.
Sam plopped down on his faithful old couch, where he'd spent the night during so many AMC monster movie marathons, and kicked off his shoes. Tried to. The damn leather things clung on, not at all like a good pair of sneakers, and he moaned and dropped his head back against the cushion. Later. He'd break in his shoes and save his father's company and find a nice place to live and maybe take Quorra back to the circus. Yeah. That'd be nice.
"So how was your day?" he asked.
"I've been playing Solitaire," she announced proudly. "I won three hundred and forty-seven out of five hundred games. The trick is to shuffle the cards so victory isn't arbitrarily impossible. I've honed it down to a ritual which I think should be included with every deck of cards to cut down on the frustration of an unwinnable game of Solitaire."
Quorra. Changing the world. Sam grabbed a cushion and added it to the back of his head. Maybe she had the right idea. Sometimes you just had to take a day off and do whatever.
With a hum of delight, Quorra won her current game, then excitably rushed over to Sam to bend down and unlace his shoes for him. Sam almost asked if she was undressing him for sex (understandably, that episode had been at the forefront of his mind), but then decided if she was, that was cool. As long as it didn't involve his fingers in any way. He was halfway to carpal tunnel syndrome as is.
"And you?" she asked, pulling off his socks.
"I spent the day trimming golden parachutes. You'd think these guys slew the Minotaur, the severance packages they want…"
Quorra nodded and moved off, holding his shoes and socks at arm's length. She dropped the shoes in the bin and the socks beside his tennis shoes and her boots. He didn't bother to correct her. She'd get the hang of it eventually.
"Anything good on the tube?" Sam asked, eyes closed.
Quorra sat down beside him, in that weird way she had of kneeling on a cushion instead of fully committing her ass to it. "Sam, is your memory corrupted?"
"No, I haven't been drinking," he said, half-awake.
"I ask because on August 12th, we were eating pizza from Papa John's on 12 Sycamore Avenue and you said 'You think this is good, you should try a homemade pizza sometime.' And I asked when sometime was. You said 'Let's do it next week.' Since then, it has been six days, twenty-three hours, and thirty-three minutes. Were you referring to a binary assignment of weeks, set in months, or simply the time unit of seven days, for instance, a week that starts on Wednesday and continues to span two separate months?"
Sam sat up, interrupting her with a yawn. "You know what? Let's do it now."
Quorra gave him another Boston Marathon smile. "That sounds nice." Her brow furrowed. "But you were referring to a time unit of seven days, correct?"
***
It was possible that Quorra had been obsessing over this all week (the time unit of seven days), because when she opened one of the cupboards that Sam had earmarked for "those plates by the sink I may wash someday," there was every conceivable pizza ingredient ready and waiting. Even Canadian bacon. Sam would've thought you needed a license to buy that, kinda like how the FBI kept an eye on fertilizer that could be used to make bombs.
Sam got Quorra started on making the dough while he assembled the proper toppings. Nothing too fancy… cheese and pepperoni. Maybe they could introduce Quorra to the various toppings one at a time, week in and week out. She'd love that.
Tomatoes, too. You couldn't have a pizza without tomatoes. Sam grabbed one from the garden Quorra had started (he really needed to find a new place before she put down roots too), washed it off with soap and water, then began to slice it into fine layers.
"Am I being too rough on it?" Quorra asked as she kneaded the dough. She looked a bit concerned that she was violating its civil rights or something.
Sam turned to tell her about tossing it--damn!--cut his finger.
"Sam!" Quorra cried.
Really trying to watch his language in front of Quorra, not because she would be offended but because she would probably demand the etymology of any curse word he used, Sam stuck his finger on his mouth. He didn't think any of the tomato slices had been contaminated, but he tossed the last one he sliced just in case.
Then Quorra was right in his face, grabbing his hand and wrenching his bleeding finger clear of his mouth. "Let me see… oh. My! You're bleeding!"
"Yeah, I know," Sam said, less than helpfully.
"Alright, don't panic, I've read about this!" Quorra looked around frantically, settling on an oven mitt, which she pressed against the 'wound.' "Alright, we're going to need gauze, iodine, and bandages!"
"Quorra, relax. Stop panicking."
"You stop panicking!" she shot back. "I think I can sew it shut. I knitted half a cardigan, but stopped because I kept pricking my finger. Wait, what were you doing before?" She grabbed his finger out of the oven mitt. "I could be infecting you with germs! Oven germs!" She stuck his finger back in his mouth. "There! Is that a home remedy for cuts? Is it homeopathic? You know homeopathic cures don't work, and studies which show that they do were typically biased or otherwise unscientific!"
Sam popped his finger back out of his mouth. "Quorra, it's fine," he stressed. "Look, it's already stopped bleeding."
Quorra wasn't taking any chances. She nearly bit down on his finger, taking it into her mouth. Sam was a bit speechless after that.
"Has it stopped bleeding?" Quorra asked, muffled by the fact that she had a finger in her mouth.
Sam put his free hand on her shoulder to hold her still as he pulled his finger free. "Sorry, but that's a fetish I could really do without." He wiped his finger on his shirt. "See? Not bleeding. Good as new. I've gotten worse cuts shaving."
Quorra gasped and scrutinized his jaw, seeing if there were any gaping wounds she had overlooked. "You may need to get a tetanus shot."
"Quorra. Listen to me, you need to calm down. No one dies from a little cut."
"But you were bleeding!" Quorra protested.
"Yes, and now I'm not. Trust me, I'll live." Sam went back to cutting the tomato, just to show her he wasn't crippled either. "What's with you, anyway? You're normally a bit more… Mr. Spock than this."
"It's just… you were bleeding. People bleed before they die. They exsanguinate and they die and they can't be rerezzed, ever." Quorra paced frantically, as if the words were more than just spilling out of her, they were pushing her this way and that along the kitchen floor. "And I know you don't think I love you, not really, but at least we can agree that I like you a lot and it could be something more but if you die, it will never be something more, it will just be… incomplete. I'll be incomplete."
Sam wasn't sure whether he should stop her from pacing or what. She was walking so hard and so fast she looked like she could hurt herself, just bash her head in against a wall. Christ, he was sounding as silly as her. "Quorra…" She stopped by herself, forcing herself to, actually holding herself to the fridge like it was a life preserver. "I'm not going anywhere. I promise."
"Your father didn't want to leave you either. But he did. He made a promise he couldn't keep."
Damn it. Damn it to hell, he missed the Grid. At least there, you could solve a problem with a light disc. How was he supposed to comfort her when, yeah, he could get plastered by an eighteen-wheeler the next time he stepped out to take Marvin for a walk?
Breathing deeply, Sam stepped over to Quorra, turned her around gently by the shoulder, and wrapped his arms around her. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, but he couldn't think for a moment of her body, or how warm she was now that she had flesh and blood instead of data. All he could think of was how tiny she felt, shuddering a little in his grip but that just made him hold her tighter.
"I'm not my father," he said. It was a lame answer, but the only one he had.
"This feels nice," she said, with her head against his chest. "What is it?"
"Huh? Oh, it's called a hug. People do it to… to remind each other that there's someone else, even when they feel alone."
"A hug," Quorra said, with the tone that meant she was filing another bit of knowledge away.
Stiffly, she pulled her arms up and then encircled him with them, trying to best gauge how to return the embrace. Sam patted her on the back to show she'd succeeded.
"I don't know why you need me to save your world when you have this," she said.
Sam grinned and rested his chin on the crown of her head. His girl. How cheesy could she get?
