Something Wrong
Title: Something Wrong
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Kurt
Rating: PG
Word count: 2,429
Warning: Swearing
Notes: The five times Sam Evans was told that there was something wrong with him, and the one time he knew they didn't mean it.
(credit to my darling Sarah for helping out with the last one.)
Spoilers: Through season 2, I suppose?
I.
The first time Sam started thinking there was something wrong with him was in first grade. He was so excited to start ‘real’ school, and he’d picked out the perfect outfit with his mom. A blue shirt with three red stripes across the chest, blue jeans, and a small backpack with Batman printed on the front. He wasn’t intimidated by the big kids. He just wanted to find a friend who thought that Batman was way better than Superman.
His first day was perfect, up until the last class. His teachers were really nice, his other friends from his little kid school were there, too, and he met a really cool boy named Max in his math class who said he liked his backpack. The last class of the day was something called Language Arts, and Sam was in a really good mood when he sat down at his desk.
“Good afternoon, kids.” The teacher was a redhead woman who smiled a lot. She introduced herself as Mrs. Gray. She told the kids that she liked reading, and asked how many of them liked reading. Sam didn’t really read that much. He liked playing outside instead of reading stuffy old books, but almost everyone else in the class raised their hands, so he did, too. Then, she passed out a book that looked huge to six-year-old Sam and asked a boy named Bobby to start reading out loud, please. Sam thought it didn’t look that hard. You just stood there and said what was on the page while everyone looked at you. It sort of looked like fun at the time, and about half an hour later (which felt like an eternity) Mrs. Gray asked him to read a little bit.
If you asked Sam now what the book was, he wouldn’t tell you. He’d say that it was forever ago and his memory is not that good. The truth was that he’d all but blocked it out, because the moment he looked down at the book, all of the letters jumbled together like alphabet soup.
“The… the boy… Ummm…” He furrowed his eyebrows, trying to concentrate super hard, but the harder he stared at the book, the more the letters started to look like scribble-scrabble.
He heard a boy behind him snort in a laughing noise and then lean over to his friend. “There’s something wrong with him.”
Mrs. Gray shushed the boy - who Sam later learned was called Alex - and told Sam that it was okay, take his time, please continue, but a few more minutes of struggling, and she asked Sam to sit down.
That night was the very first time the six year old boy heard the word dyslexia.
II.
The summer between eighth grade and freshman year, Sam was having an identity crisis on all levels. Some of his friends from middle school were going to a different high school than he was, and he was pretty sure he would never see them again. Unlike the first day of first grade, he was terrified of the upper classmen in high school. He didn’t want to go to high school. He just wanted to stay in middle school forever. And then there was the part of him that was panicking because all of his friends had at least kissed a girl, and he was pretty sure that they still had cooties.
He went to summer camp for four weeks with some of his friends, as one last summer together before they went to their separate high schools. He liked his group of friends. There was Jack, who taught Sam how to skateboard. There was Tom, who insisted on challenging him to a match of Horse every time they saw a basketball hoop, even though Sam won without fail. And there was Max, whose favorite superhero was Spiderman, but agreed that Batman could kick Superman’s ass on the coolness charts any day.
Out of the three guys, Sam was closest to Max. They talked about comic books all the time, Max thought Sam’s drawings of Robin were almost as good as the ones in the comics themselves, and he never called Sam stupid for not being able to read well. Max was Sam’s best friend, and the fact that they were going to go to different high schools made Sam mad.
Before Sam realized it, four weeks were gone, and it was the night before camp ended. Sam was fast asleep in the bottom bunk, until two hands on his arm shook him violently awake.
“Get up, Evans,” Max hissed. “We’re sneaking out to the lake.” He got that stupid grin on his face that he did every time he did something he knew he would probably get in trouble for, and Sam couldn’t help but laugh.
“Okay, okay, I’m comin’.”
The four boys spent what felt like forever at the lake, until Sam and Max finally walked back to the grass and sat on it, laughing.
“Jack is such a moron,” Max said, wringing the water out of his shirt as Sam shook out his hair.
“He’s always been a moron,” Sam pointed out.
“True,” Max nodded.
There was a lull in the conversation, and it would take Sam a really long time until he realized why he did what he did next. The kiss was only for a split second. Barely long enough to even register that he had done it, but just long enough to freak Max out.
“What the hell??” His friend shoved him away and scrambled up.
“I-” Sam honestly couldn’t think of an excuse. His face heated up and he felt like killing himself, right then and there. “I didn’t mean to - I’m so sor-”
“There’s something seriously wrong with you, Evans,” Max said. He looked absolutely disgusted before he turned and ran off.
It took Sam almost two years to realize that there wasn’t anything wrong with liking boys.
III.
Sam loved McKinley High. No, it never really made him feel safe with his sexuality, but the Glee club was awesome, and the people were pretty cool. He felt appreciated on the football team, and he was friends with a guy named Finn, who was a little bit more into video games than Batman, but he could work with it.
The part that sucked that was he had somehow landed himself with a gay-beard. A blonde cheerleader named Quinn. He just wanted people to like him, and if that involved using a reportedly bitchy blonde to make himself look straight, he’d do it. He just wished that he had a little bit more in common with her. If he was stuck with her, he wanted there to at least be something they could talk about, but no.
The two of them sat awkwardly on her couch, neither one of them looking at each other.
“What kind of movies do you like?” Sam finally spoke up, looking over at Quinn.
She shrugged one shoulder indifferently. “The sort of movie where the girl unrealistically ends up getting the guy in the end, I guess,” she said.
“…What about scifi?” Sam asked. He was desperate for something. Anything. “My favorite movie is Avatar. The James Cameron movie? I mean, I know I told you I taught myself a little bit of the Avatar language.” A feat he was incredibly proud of, for the record. “The entire thing is so complex and thought out. I mean, James Cameron worked on it for fifteen years, and even created an entire language. It’s also the highest-grossing film of the past twenty years.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow, something Sam would come to learn was her signature “you’re joking me, right?” look.
“There’s something wrong with you,” she said.
Sam didn’t mention that he was teaching himself Klingon at the moment.
IV.
The two weeks that Sam dated Santana Lopez were decidedly the worst two weeks of his life. Every time she wasn’t making fun of his lips, she was all over them and demanding that he make out with her, and for a gay boy, well… It was torture.
At least kissing Quinn had been tolerable, since she wasn’t abrasive and bordering on emotionally abusive. But every time Santana demanded a lip lock, he obliged. There was nothing else he could do.
Which was how he found himself on her couch with her tongue jammed down his throat. It felt awkward, and forced, and the more he dated girls, the more he realized that he was definitely gay. Finally, he’d had enough and he practically pried Santana off of him.
“I’m not really feeling it today,” he said, avoiding eye contact with her.
“Wait a sec, Trouty.” She folded her arms. “You means tah tell me that you don’t want all up on this sweet Latina ass?”
“…Basically?” Sam asked. “Look, Santana, it’s not your fault. You’re just…” Satan. Satan would totally have a vagina. “Not my type.” That was what they said in the movies, right?
To his surprise, she actually started laughing. “Okay, there’s something wrong with you. If a girl this hot throws herself at you, you sleep with her, moron.”
Definitely gay, he told himself, as he walked out.
Years later, she would apologize for how she treated him while they dated. Sam would apologize for calling her Satan, earning himself a slap. He never got an apology for that one.
V.
By the time Sam started dating Mercedes Jones, he was wishing he could have Quinn back. At least Quinn would occasionally pretend to listen to him. It became clear to him that Mercedes was in love with the idea of being in love, instead of actually liking Sam himself. Which Sam thought might clear his conscience, but it never did.
Sam tried to see her as more of a friend to hang out with than a girlfriend, but he had less in common with Mercedes than he did with Quinn. The only thing they did have in common was that they liked coffee, so he took her out to the Lima Bean a lot.
“So I told Artie that he could take his white boy ass and march it right on home because Mercedes don’t play that game.” Sam had absolutely no idea what story she was in the middle of, but he would always nod and let her continue.
“So then before Glee club, he decided to get back at me by parking his wheelchair in the door and not letting me into the choir room,” Mercedes said. “And I was all like hell no-”
Sam saw the opening and he couldn’t resist. “One does not simply walk into Mordor.”
She stopped and gave him a strange look. “There’s something wrong with you, boy.”
He sighed. “I’ve been told that.”
I.
Kurt Hummel was twenty-three years old and living on his own in New York City, New York. Center of the universe. Right after graduation, he’d dumped Blaine, moved to New York, and started going to NYADA, and he thought he’d never be happier. That was, until he’d gotten a phone call from Sam, who told him that he was moving to the city to play football.
The two had picked up right where they left off, hanging out and bantering, until Sam shocked Kurt by asking him out, and Kurt had shocked Sam by saying yes.
Four years later, they were still going strong, but Kurt would be the first to inform someone that they weren’t where he would like them to be.
“Today is our fourth anniversary and I still have yet to see a ring,” Kurt complained to Quinn on the phone. “You got a ring within two years, and Brittany got one like, forever ago, but Sam hasn’t even hinted about it.”
“Be patient, Kurt,” Quinn told him, only half listening to the same rant she’d heard at least a dozen times. “Sam isn’t exactly fast on the uptake.”
“Nuh-uh. Finn is slow on the uptake. I’m starting to think Sam is deliberately ignoring every hint I’ve dropped for the past year and I’m going to kill him.”
He unlocked his apartment door as he talked, holding his phone between his cheek and his shoulder, but froze when he opened the door. In the middle of his living room, there was a round table with a red tablecloth thrown over it. The perfect-looking steaks sitting on the two dinner plates were clearly not made by his boyfriend because Sam couldn’t cook for shit (always getting tablespoons and teaspoons mixed up didn’t help and made for some really disgusting cookies.) Next to the plates stood two wine glasses with red wine poured inside. The lights were dimmed, and small candles were placed around the room, and a small stereo that was playing violin music was sitting in the corner. Sam stood next to the table, wearing a… was that a suit? With a tie? His hands were shoved into the pockets and he grinned sheepishly at Kurt.
“…Q, I’ll call you back,” the brunette said, before hanging up and setting his bags down on the floor.
“Sam, what is - I don’t - how - why?” Kurt finally settled on a question, looking at his boyfriend with a grin spreading across his lips.
Sam crossed the room to Kurt, wearing that dorky smile that Kurt adored. “I know you’ve been getting impatient with me,” he said. “I had to save up all of my bartending money for the past year to make everything perfect, because that’s what you deserve.”
Kurt felt his heart starting to race and he threw up a prayer to whatever was in control up there - God, Buddha, Gaga, Zeus, whoever - that this was it.
“You deserve to have everything perfect in the world,” Sam said. “And you chose me. I don’t know why you did, but if you’ll let me, I promise to try to be everything you deserve. Forever.” He got down on one knee and produced a black box from his pocket before opening it. Kurt felt like screaming his answer before Sam even asked it. “Kurt Hummel, will you marry me?”
Kurt grinned. “Well it’s about time,” he said.
Sam burst into a grin and stood up, slipping the ring onto Kurt’s finger. It was a simple, silver band with a small diamond nestled into it, but it was absolutely perfect. Kurt threw his arms around Sam’s neck and pressed a kiss to his now-fiancée’s lips.
“I have been waiting for this for three years. Sam Evans, there is something very wrong with you.”
And for once, Sam knew he didn’t mean it.