Gone Too Far (SamandColby)

Chapter 18: Coming Clean

Sam poked his head slowly into Colby's room, finding his best friend curled up on his couch with his laptop.  "Hey, whatcha watchin'?"

He watched Colby's deliberate pause, inhale, and then the slow rotation of his gaze to meet Sam's.  He watched Colby search his eyes, his face, before the tension that had snapped into his body relaxed, and his attention turned back to his laptop.  "I dunno, some cat video Stas sent me."

Sam had to swallow down the pain that clenched in his chest at Colby's reaction. It made sense, of course.

But it still hurt.

He and Colby were definitely still adjusting to being in the same space.  Sam had been home for about a week, and even though Colby no longer outright jumped when Sam walked into a room, it was still nowhere near normal.

"Hey Froggy," Colby waved to the squishmallow in Sam's arms, and Sam broke into a grin.  Sam still had strict orders not to use his arms while his chest healed.  He had taken to carrying around a stuffed frog pillow Katrina had gotten him as a reminder.

She'd named him Froggy.

"How you feeling?" Colby's eyes were on him.

Sam shrugged.  He'd recently taken his meds, so the pain wasn't too bad.  He was out of the strong stuff, which Sam honestly thought might be for the better.  He didn't like how fuzzy he was when he'd taken them.  "Fine, I guess.  Chest doesn't hurt too much today."

"That's good," Colby said, pushing his laptop off to the side.

"How about you?"

Colby shrugged, and Sam followed his eyes down to his casted ankle.  "Wrist hurts a bit less today.  Like I can kinda use it.  Which is cool."

"Good," Sam said, his eyes moving back up to Colby's wrist.  Fuck... when had...

He winced a little bit as he ran through his memories, trying to remember when he'd noticed that Colby's wrist was swollen.  He didn't remember intentionally breaking it, but it had definitely been swollen when he chained Colby down...

God, but Colby knew him so well.  He caught the direction of Sam's gaze, then looked up at him.  "You uh... do you know when that happened?"

Sam shook his head.  "I don't... I don't remember breaking it."

Not like his ankle.  Sometimes in his nightmares Sam could still feel the bone crunch under his fingers.

Colby winced too, but lifted his wrist, wiggling the fingers.  "I uh... fell on it.  When we... when I was in the bathtub."

That brought back visceral memories.  Because Sam still had vivid memories of that time.  Holding Colby's head under water, holding his shackled wrists to his chest so that he couldn't fight back... Shit, Colby had fallen, hadn't he?  After that initial pull.

"I'm sorry..." Sam couldn't withhold the apology.

Colby shook his head.  "Wasn't you, man."  He looked like he was considering something, and then he spoke again.  "Actually, I was hoping you could help me with something."

"Yeah, sure," Sam said, not actually sure what he could help Colby with right now.  The girls were the only ones with four functional limbs right now.

But Stas was busy and Katrina was taking a nap.

"You want me to go get Katrina...?" Sam had to offer.

"No, no..." Colby answered quickly.  "It uh..." He looked down.  "I uh... I wanna shower.  And right now... like Stas has been helping me but she's not here..."