Sometimes you wanna go
by Sab
2/3

He opens the door and she hasn't changed a bit. Slim as a whip, like she always was, her chin held proudly and her blonde hair, straight now and darkly streaked, hanging choppy around her jaw. She's in a smart wool suit, skirt shorter than her overcoat and her legs still go allll the way down.

"Sam."

He reaches out, takes her shoulders and he kisses her hello. "Come on in," he says. She does.

He's not gonna let himself fall for her, he tells himself, though his body is already buzzing with electricity. Old habits die hard. She tosses her hair, freeing it from her coat. He takes the coat and hangs it up. It takes two tries to hit the hook. She notices, and smiles.

"Do I make you nervous?" she asks, and he laughs.

"Touche."

Diane was always a good drinker -- at a buck and a quarter soaking wet she's gotta have a hollow leg -- but she's never needed to drink when she's with Sam, and so when he offers to open a bottle of wine for her she just shakes her head.

"Why do you even have wine around?" she asks.

"I'm a bartender," he says, and, without drinks or any other crutch, they go to the couch.

Duke looks up from his pad when they sit down, and he even goes to the trouble of walking unsteadily over to Diane's knees and giving them a sniff.

"That's Duke," says Sam. Diane ruffs him on the head.

"Doesn't smell too doggy, that's good," she comments.

"I washed him yesterday," says Sam, defensively.

"And I'm saying you did a fine job of it."

Sam leans back on the couch. "Why, do you expect me to have a smelly dog?"

Diane leans over and kisses Duke on the head, and Duke, quite unexpectedly, lays a wet lick across her face, smearing her glasses.

"I take it back," she says, flailing. She takes her glasses off and looks around for something to wipe them on, and Sam takes them from her. Diane wipes her hand across her face and she has dog drool in her hair and she looks more beautiful than anything Sam can remember in twenty years. He wipes her glasses carefully on his shirttail, breathes on them and gives them a final polish before returning them to her.

"Thank you," she says, putting them on.

Sam leans forward again, rocks a little, and sits back. "Why'd you leave, Diane?"

She takes a deep breath. "I had to leave, Sam, if for no other reason than it turns out being verbally brutalized every day, by those one considers friends, takes its toll on a woman's ego. And it certainly doesn't do much to provide a supportive working environment." She stops for a minute and then gives her hair a proud toss. "You have no idea how strong I am now."

Sam thinks back on five years filled with good-natured jibes about killing Diane in various and bloody ways, practical jokes built to embarrass Diane, and a relentless string of cruel nicknames, mostly courtesy of Carla. "Actually," Sam says, rocking forward and laying his hands on his thighs. "I think you were pretty strong then. Don't know if I could have handled the abuse you put up with at Cheers."

"Carla wasn't so bad," Diane says, but Sam knows she was. Not the jibes themselves, but more the unyielding battery of them, over five hard, emotional years. Sam was as guilty of it as Carla. More.

"Not just Carla," says Sam. "I gave you hell myself. And the guys were always ribbing you -- "

"I'm tough," says Diane, tipping up her chin. She reaches down to stroke Duke, who has settled happily at her feet and is now sleeping peaceably.

Sam puts his hand on her arm, and her skin is cool through the fabric, and he rubs her to warm her up. "Yeah, you are," he says. "You gave as good as you got."

"Better," Diane grins, reaching up so she can lay her hand on top of Sam's.

Sam nods. "Prob'ly true. Still, I'm sorry. You deserved to feel like your friends cared about you, and I guess we didn't really behave that way a lot of the time."

"I never had a moment's doubt you cared about me, Sam," Diane says. "Not one moment."

"I always have," Sam says, and finds he doesn't even want to take it back. Then he takes a breath. "So. Tell me about this husband of yours. Jean-Luc, is it?"

Diane chuckles, the knowing chuckle when she's won. "Just Luc," she says. "Fine French gentleman, a novelist! Like myself, of course. His seminal work has been translated into over fifty languages and is even taught in graduate level courses at the Sorbonne."

"Sounds sexy."

Diane's eyes glint. "Six foot two, bronze Mediterranean complexion, taut muscle from head to toe. He can crack a walnut between his thighs."

Now Sam wishes he had his club soda, or a bucket of ice water to pour down his back. "Gotta be careful around those things," he croaks.

"So," she says, bailing him out. "Tell me about your daughter's wedding."

Sam stands up. "Coffee?"

"I'd love some."

He goes into the kitchen. "Sarah's marrying a Jewish guy, so the wedding's at the synagogue tomorrow at five." He comes back out of the kitchen. "Why, you offering to go with me?"

Now Diane stands up and comes to follow him into the kitchen. She slips an arm around his waist. "I would be honored, my silver-haired fox," she says. Sam's heart's beating so loudly he's sure she can hear it, so he slips out of her embrace and goes back to making the coffee.

"You remember Rebecca?"

"Took over the bar, right?" Diane asks, leaning against the counter.

"Yeah. Owns it, now, though she's part of some management company."

"Your boss!"

Sam chuckles. "Sometimes. Sometimes I'm her boss. I'm the bar's major shareholder but the rest is owned by Rebecca's firm, so it works out to a convivial sort of a jousting."

"You wouldn't have it any other way," Diane observes, and she's right.

The coffee is ready, and Sam pours two cups, and they take them back to the couch.

"You and Rebecca ever --" Diane starts, and trails off.

"Yeah," says Sam. "On and off, mostly off. We talked about having a baby together once. We were gonna do that. Raise a kid together."

"That's a big deal!" Diane says. "You were actually going to help raise this child?"

Sam stops and looks at her. "You don't think I could raise a kid? I could raise a kid, I tell you, better'n you could raise a kid. Come to think of it, you don't have any kids either, Diane."

"I travel so much it really wouldn't have been fair to bring a child along in my life. I gave it careful consideration and came to the conclusion that, as long as I wished to have the freedom to travel, it wouldn't be right. Later, perhaps, I may foster a child. Or adopt, if I've settled someplace near reputable schools and a good learning environment."

Sam thinks about this, and it almost sounds like a good idea. Instead he says, "Yeah. Rebecca and I were ready to raise a kid together, right here in Boston."

"And what about young Sarah? What role did you play in her upbringing?" Diane trills.

This hits Sam harder than Diane intended. She's still got it. "Not as much as I'd liked," Sam says, diplomatically. "Her mother left town right after the baby was born, went to New York with her family. So I didn't even meet Sarah till Rita brought her to Cheers several years ago when Sarah was already thirteen years old."

"Oh, that's terrible," Diane says, patting Sam's knee.

"Since then I've tried to get to know the kid, and we get along pretty well, but I only see her when she feels like hanging out. We've gone to some ballgames -- kid loves baseball, that's a big plus in the Sammy column -- gone to movies, you know." Sam leans over so he can pet Duke, still lying on the rug beside the sofa. "It was a big day when she started inviting me out to things, you know?"

Diane nods.

"I remember the first time, a couple years ago, she called me up. Sam, you wanna go see a movie. Just like that."

"What'd you see?"

Sam lights up. "Oh, great movie! It was called The Aristocrats and it had a bunch of comics all telling this joke, it was hilarious."

Diane smiles. "Not having seen that movie, I can hardly judge, but I believed, based on reviews I'd read, that the repetition of the joke was meant to signify the hollowness of humor? Not meant to be funny at all, but to be raw, and almost vulgar."

Sam blinks. "I thought it was real funny."

"I'm sure it was," Diane says.

They sit for a while, just taking in the room and each other, drinking their coffee and occasionally laughing.

"You really wanna be my date to Sarah's wedding?" Sam asks, hoping for an honest moment.

Diane sets her jaw, but her eyes are gleaming. "I do."

Maybe more honesty than Sam was looking for, but she's never said those words to him, not even when they were standing on the altar together.

"All right, then," he says. "Pick you up at four thirty."

She leans in then, and she kisses him, and before he knows it he's kissing her back. Diane. He pushes her away.

"Aren't you supposed to be married?"

She thinks a minute. "It's complicated," she says. "My relationship with Luc cannot be easily defined, at the moment."

"I get that about you," Sam says. But all of a sudden he doesn't care, because it's Diane, and it's enough that she's here, and it always would be. He kisses her again, but this time, and right on cue, she pushes him away.

"No, Sam," she says. "You're right. I'm a married woman, or, though, probably not anymore --" She looks at her watch. "So really what does it matter, it's you I want --" She leans in.

This time Sam pushes her away. Somehow that always seemed to happen, his libido and his sanity in raging opposition whenever Diane was concerned. The sheer amount of crazy she drove him was equaled only by how unbelievably hot she was in the sack; a different kind of crazy, but a crazy just the same, whenever she touches him. "No, no, I'm not gonna do this," he says. "You can't just hop over for some Sammy action when you're on your East Coast port of tour."

"East Coast -- Sam, I'm in Boston for for four days, and I'm here to see you. I left my husband to come see you, because it was always you, and what's more you know it as well as I do --"

"No, no more sweet talk, Diane --" He waves a hand at her.

"Sweet talk!" she literally gasps. "Sam, if you think in any way that I was trying to manipulate you or mislead you, I can assure you --"

Sam exhales. "I think it's pretty damned clear you misled me, and I'd even go so far as to say it's obvious to anyone who was paying attention that you came all this way to manipulate me into having sex with you, Diane!"

"Sex! Is that what you think this is about?"

Sam stands up so he can get some distance on her, and then he points right back in her face. "Yes! Sex!
That's what it was always about with you, hot monkey love. You never cared about who I was, and you sure as hell don't now. I bet you just happened to be in Boston and figured, why not call Sam Malone up and see if he'll toss you one?"

"Toss me one?"

"Yeah!"

She licks her lower lip. "Will ya?"

Sam's knees nearly buckle under him, but it's more frustration than desire that sends him sinking back onto the couch again, where he buries his head in his hands. Then he clenches his fist. "God, you drive me crazy," he hisses. "Even now, twenty years later, just the sound of your voice is enough to make me want to punch something hard enough to break my hand just so you'll shut up for a minute."

"Oh, I doubt I would," she says. "If you hurt yourself I'd be compelled to call an ambulance, and to stay by you to make sure you were all right, and conscious --"

Sam stops her. "Remind me not to hurt myself when you're around," he says.

She's silent for a beat. Then she says, "You make me crazy too, Sam. Why do you think I came back here? Boston's hardly on the way from Paris to Berlin."

Sam draws a little map in his head. "I'll have to take your word on that," he says finally.

This time when she touches him on the knee he doesn't shake her away, and when she leans in to kiss him he kisses her back. He's fifty-nine years old and this gorgeous broad wants to be his date to his only daughter's wedding, and there's not a reason to fight it. He relaxes and a shudder of pleasure floods through his body as she slides her hand up his thigh.