fic: heartstrings all came undone (sam/kurt, pg) (1/2)
heartstrings all came undone.
by novelized. ~16,000 words.
fandom: Glee.
pairing: Kurt/Sam.
summary: Now that everyone else in New Directions knew about Sam's financial situation, Kurt needed to find a new way to fit into his life. He didn't realize how easy it'd be.
part one.
Sam hates being at the motel.
He never says this out loud, of course. It’s the way he talks about it, mumbling low under his breath, and the way his shoulders droop when the final bell rings, and how he goes out of his way to avoid saying home; it’s always “I can’t, I’ve got to go back to the-” or “sorry, my mom needs me to stay at the-” with the rest of the sentence broken off, suspending in midair until someone picks up the slack, which they’ve all learned to do. Kurt hates seeing his face when it comes up in conversation the most, because even though he keeps a good humor about it, even though he still tries to joke around, make light of the situation, his eyes always seem to give him away. Sam Evans is a lot of things, but a good actor’s not one of them.
Kurt doesn’t like being at the motel either, but for completely different reasons. Stupid, selfish reasons. Like the fact that even thinking about sitting on the cheap polyester carpet makes him itch and how Sam turns Spongebob on full-blast every day at 3:30, pretending it’s for the sake of his siblings, when really it’s to drain out the bed knocking against the wall and other suspicious sounds from next door.
But he’s learned over the course of the past month that you can get used to pretty much anything. He doesn’t even go all tight-lipped when Stevie accidentally flings fingerpaint on his Marc Jacobs bag - well, he maybe goes a little tight-lipped, but it’s washable, and Sam’s stricken expression is enough to quell any sort of annoyance he might’ve normally had. He likes that their visits have extended from dropping some clothes off to ‘hey, you wanna put a movie in?’ He likes the fact that they still hang out.
Because at first, deep down, he’d forced himself to accept the fate that now that everyone else in New Directions knew about his family’s financial situation, Kurt and Sam really no longer had reason to interact. Finn had taken over his role, bringing him clothes that were much better suited (though Kurt’s secretly bemoaning his lost opportunity at slowly bringing fashion sense to the glee club). Puck and Mike apparently take him out for Bro Nights, something that consists of video games and greasy pizza and cheap beer-everything Kurt hates. The girls come and go in shifts, bringing freshly baked cookies and games for the kids to play. Kurt doesn’t know where he fits in. He begins to think he doesn’t fit in at all.
But then after practice one day Sam hoists his backpack over his shoulder and says, “Hey Kurt, do you still want to meet at the library tonight to work on our English project?”
Kurt glances up. He’d forgotten they’d agreed to that, to be honest; it had seemed like a passing comment, a way to end a previous conversation without obligation. He wouldn’t have held Sam to it-but maybe it’s not like that. Maybe he does fit in. Maybe there’s not a role in friendships, just the friendship itself. And maybe that’s enough.
“Uh, sure,” Kurt says. “Nothing gets my engine going like a night with Arthur Miller.”
Sam’s forehead scrunches. “Is that the librarian’s name?”
“Oh, Sam.” Kurt puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder consolingly. He gives him a little pat. “We have a long, long night ahead of us.”
***
Sam shows up at a quarter after seven, holding Stacy by the hand. “Sorry,” he says right away, dropping his books down onto the table Kurt had been reserving for the past fifteen minutes. He struggles out of his letterman’s jacket, draping it over one of the chairs. “They do Storytime on Wednesdays, and I promised Stace I’d take her.”
“We’re reading The Velveteen Rabbit,” Stacy informs him happily, clinging onto Sam’s arm.
Kurt smiles. “I love that book.”
“She’s read it a billion times,” Sam says, rolling his eyes, but in the endearing sort of way. The way Sam looks at his little sister sometimes makes Kurt’s heart ache just a little. “Wait for me five minutes? I’ll take her to the kids’ section and be right back.”
“Sure, no problem. I’ll get the stuff ready.”
Stacy gives him a four-fingered wave before dragging Sam towards the elevator, practically dancing as she pushes the button. Sam laughs and gives her a little twirl, right there in the library. Kurt watches them together until they disappear behind the sliding doors, and then he wipes his palms against his pants and reaches for his copy of the anthology. They had over a week to turn this project in, but Kurt likes to do things ahead of time and Sam-Sam usually needs a little extra help. He’s certainly got his strengths. Writing analytical essays is not one of them.
A few minutes later Sam returns, sliding into the seat opposite Kurt. “Can’t wait to get my studying on,” he jokes, pushing his hair back and away from his eyes. Kurt thinks vaguely that he could use a haircut, but then, maybe he’s trying to hide something. Like how tired he looks. There are dark circles underneath his eyes, and he keeps rubbing at them inconspicuously like if he leaves them alone for too long they’ll fall shut and won’t reopen.
Sam glances up just in time to catch him looking; blushing slightly, Kurt brings his gaze back to the papers in front of him. “Did you read the play?” he asks.
In response, Sam flashes him a sheepish expression. “I… skimmed it?” He picks up a pencil and twirls it between his fingers. “I was just really busy last night, you know, I didn’t get off work until nine and then I had to help my mom scrape up dinner-”
Kurt studies him, one eyebrow raised in suspicion. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty?” he asks, and he says it so earnestly that Sam laughs and ducks his head.
“I was, yeah,” he admits, rubbing at the back of his neck. “It usually works on everyone else.”
“You are a terrible, terrible person.”
“You have to use the hand you’re given, right?” Sam grins. He has really white, straight teeth, and a dimple in his right cheek when he smiles. “You wouldn’t believe how many pop quizzes it’s gotten me out of.”
“Your work ethic is commendable,” Kurt says, shaking his head, but he’s smiling too. He slides his book across the table and in front of Sam, pointing at the page. “At least read from here to there, okay? That should fill you in on the basic information, and then we can brainstorm about what we want to write about.”
Sam nods and glances down at the book. He keeps twirling the pencil. “Okay, but just a warning: I’m a really slow reader.”
“Take your time,” Kurt says. “I’ve got all night.”
They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes; Sam reads, mouthing the words to himself as he goes, and Kurt makes a list of all the essay topics he can come up with.
“Done,” Sam finally announces, triumphant, drawing a little pencil mark where he’s stopped reading, and Kurt’s about to open his mouth to congratulate him when his phone starts ringing. It’s embarrassing, because his volume’s turned all the way up, and just about every single person in the library turns to look at him. He fumbles it out of his bag and silences it before even checking the caller ID; when he’s done that, he looks at Sam apologetically.
“Sorry,” he says, “it’s Blaine-”
But Sam just waves him off. “Go ahead, dude, answer it,” he says, and so Kurt does, slipping out of his seat and into the lobby.
He and Blaine have both been busy lately. If it’s not one commitment it’s another, and not to mention preparing for Nationals-preparing for Nationals takes every ounce of his effort, every second of his attention. He wants to win. He wants to win so badly, because as much as he feels like he’s a part of their family, he doesn’t exactly feel like he’s carried his weight as a part of their team. Finn says that none of them were mad that he transferred, and he believes him. They understood. But there are now inside jokes he doesn’t get, and interclub drama he knows nothing about. He’s got some crazy idea in his head that if he can have one finger pressed against the trophy in New York City, right amongst the rest of them, then, then he’ll truly be back.
This conversation lasts for a record of one minute and twenty-two seconds. They have a lot to catch up on, but Kurt feels guilty letting Sam sit around while he’s on the phone-not to mention all of the work he knows is not being completed. “Hey, Blaine,” Kurt says, “can I call you back later tonight? Sam and I are working on a project.”
Blaine, ever agreeable, says sure, of course, no problem. “Tell Sam I say hi,” he says, and Kurt promises he will before they hang back up, and he hurries back to their cramped table in the corner.
“Sorry about that,” he says, scooting his chair forward.
“You don’t have to apologize,” Sam says easily. He holds up a piece of paper with four or five bullet points for inspection, his chest puffed out with pride. Kurt imagines this is the same look he wears after a good football practice, or when he gets an answer right on a test. “Look, I actually did something.”
Only a little bit skeptical, Kurt takes the paper from him and reads over what he’d written. And he hadn’t even had to force him into it. Amazing.
“I’m impressed,” he says, passing it back. “But you spelled ‘theory’ wrong.”
Sam makes a face and attacks it with his eraser. “Damn secret vowels,” he says, and his tongue kind of pokes out of his mouth when he’s concentrating really hard on something. “They get me every time.” He works on correcting a few other points, his gaze jumping back and forth from the book to his paper, and then he adds, conversationally, like they were talking about the weather, “So how’s that going, anyway?”
“How’s what going? My thesis statement, or the outline I’m trying to put together?”
“No, I mean-” Sam gestures vaguely at his bag, where he’d stashed the phone a minute ago. “You and Blaine. How’s that going?”
For a long second, Kurt’s so surprised that he’s not sure what to say. He’s not used to people asking him about his relationship, unless they’re asking in awkward, stilted voices. Like they’re only asking to be polite and, once he starts talking, they can’t wait for him to stop. That’s not how Sam looks. He looks like he’s genuinely curious, like he actually wants to know. Kurt’s just jaded enough not to trust it.
“It’s going well,” he says finally. “Everything’s going well.”
“Are you guys happy?”
Kurt frowns at his textbook. “Sam, I, uh, I appreciate the effort, but you don’t have to do this.”
Sam follows his eyes, forehead scrunching in confusion. “Do what?”
“Pretend like you want to hear the sordid details of my love life. Like I said, I really do appreciate it, but you-you really don’t have to.”
There’s a long silence between them, and Kurt thinks belatedly great, he’s just screwed everything up. But he prefers being honest over suffering through a conversation that neither of them actually want to have.
Sam, however, surprises him. He likes that he’s capable of doing that.
“I wasn’t pretending,” he says, voice low, retrieving his pencil and bending over his paper again. He sounds insulted, almost. Offended. “But if you don’t want to talk about it, fine. Whatever. Sorry.”
Kurt immediately softens. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just… not used to people caring.”
“I care,” Sam says. “You’re my friend. It’s the same as me asking Puck what’s up with him and Lauren, or Finn what’s up with-”
“-whichever girl he happens to be romantically involved with at the time?”
They grin at each other across the table. Kurt reaches out and touches Sam’s arm, but only briefly, before pulling his hand back and turning the page in his book. “That means a lot to me, Sam,” he says quietly, keeping his voice steady. “Thank you.”
“It’s no big,” Sam says, with a shrug. “Now, who the hell is this Willy Loman guy?”
***
As it turns out, having Sam Evans as a friend is actually fantastic. Sometimes the other guys use this tone when Kurt’s around, like they’re treading carefully, the same tone they slip into when they’re talking about boobs or farting and their girlfriends walk up. But Sam never does that. He tells stupid jokes that never actually make Kurt laugh, and he does George Bush impressions with no contextual reasoning, The best part, though, is that he does all of them with zero self-consciousness. In fact, he looks downright surprised when no one else thinks he’s funny, and he’s learned that if he sulks at Kurt long enough, he’ll give in and chuckle.
They start sitting together in glee club. Puck spends the first few days calling them the Ambiguously Gay Duo until Kurt points out that Puck doesn’t even know what the word ambiguously means, which promptly shuts him up.
“I think it’s cool that you and Sam are such good buddies all of a sudden,” Santana says, and then she snaps her fingers like she’s had a brilliant idea. “Hey, Kurt, maybe you can get community service hours for that kind of charity.”
“I don’t know, Santana,” Kurt shoots back, “it’s been over a year now and we still haven’t seen any sort of karmic retribution for putting up with you.”
Mostly, though, Sam’s a surprisingly good listener. He lets Kurt rant about things that he hadn’t even realized he wanted to rant about until he gets going, and he doesn’t say anything until he’s sure he’s finished-usually he doesn’t have anything groundbreaking or inspiring to add to the conversation, but even that doesn’t matter. The fact that he listens is more than enough.
His dad corners him at home one evening, while he’s idly scrolling through pages and pages of Dr. Martens boots on the computer. It’s what he does to de-stress. It’s a calming mechanism that he’d picked up right before he’d transferred to Dalton. “Finn says you’ve been spending a lot of time with this kid Sam Evans,” Burt says casually, thumbing through a stack of mail.
Kurt rolls his eyes. He’s in no mood to have this conversation yet again; it feels disgustingly repetitive. “We’re just friends, Dad.”
“I wasn’t suggesting anything,” Burt says defensively, tearing open an envelope with his forefinger. He scans the letter quickly, drops it back down to the pile. “I heard about his family’s money problems, though. That’s a tough break.”
“It is, but they’re pulling through. Sam’s mom got a job at Macy’s, and he’s delivering pizzas after school.” Kurt clicks on a pair of shoes he’s been lusting after for a good two months-but he sees the pricetag is just over three hundred dollars, which makes him feel nauseous considering the conversation at hand. He closes out of the website and pushes his computer away.
“Why don’t you invite him over for dinner on Friday?”
Kurt glances up. Burt’s usually very set in his ways about Friday dinners: it’s a time for family. No boyfriends, no girlfriends, just the four of them around the table. It’s sacred. “Friday?” Kurt repeats, just to be sure he heard correctly.
“Yes, Friday,” Burt confirms, and then, cottoning on to his expression, “The kid needs a homecooked meal, Kurt. I’ve been in those motels before. He’s probably eating nothing but sandwiches and cheeseburgers from McDonalds.”
“He likes Wendy’s better,” Kurt says, before he can stop himself. Burt gives him a look. “But, okay. Point proven. He might have to work but-but I’ll see if he wants to come.”
“Good.” Burt claps him on the back before departing towards the kitchen, taking the mail with him. “And find out what his favorite meal is,” he adds, over his shoulder and, not for the first time, Kurt’s grateful for the amazing dad he was given.
***
They get an A+ on their English project. Sam grabs him in a hug right after the grades are passed back, and Kurt’s caught off-guard enough that he doesn’t really respond. If Sam notices, though, he doesn’t let on. “I’ve never gotten an A in this class before,” he says happily, which makes Kurt feel good, like maybe he’s getting something out of this friendship too.
“Wanna be my partner for the Shakespeare project?” Sam asks later. “I promise I won’t make you do all the work. I already rented all three movie versions of Hamlet from the library.”
“That sounds great,” Kurt says, biting back a smile, “except, um, Sam? We’re reading King Lear.”
***
There’s a girl in Kurt’s geometry class, Kelli-Ann Gardner, whose name alone encompasses everything Kurt hates: exchanging i's for perfectly capable y’s, and unnecessary hyphenations, like she’s too good for just one name. She’s a Cheerio, blonde and peppy, and she’d probably be tolerable if she weren’t completely superficial and halfway made of plastic. He supposes, objectively, that she’s attractive, but she certainly doesn’t do anything for Kurt.
(“That’s a joke,” he tells Mercedes later, when she blinks at him humorlessly. “Because I’m gay.”)
They’ve probably exchanged six sentences all year, and five of them were some variation of how do you spell hypotenuse? which is why it’s startling when she plunks down in the seat next to his and waits until the teacher’s back is turned to lean across his desk and whisper in his ear.
“You’re, like, Sam Evans’ new best friend, right?” she asks, so close that he can smell her cherry lip gloss. The poor girl apparently lives in some alternative universe where artificial cherry-flavored anything is acceptable. Kurt almost takes pity on her.
“We’re friends,” he whispers back, unsure of where this is going. “Categorizing your friendships into classifications and ranks just looks desperate.”
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Is he single?”
Sam’s singledom hasn’t been much of an issue between them. It’s not something they really talk about, except for the time Santana made a detailed flowchart of the best kissers in glee club and Sam had groaned, quiet, and said under his breath, “I’m never dating again.” So he knows that, yes, Sam is single, but setting him up with Kelli-Ann seems unbearably cruel, and besides, what if she started hanging around? What if she wanted to join the glee club to spend more time with him? What if she found out about the motel and-
“Afraid not,” Kurt says. “He’s dating this, uh, college girl.”
Kelli-Ann gives him a scathing look of doubt.
“She’s a model,” he adds, sort of desperately. “…from Brazil.”
She sniffs pointedly and turns away from him then, staring down at her fingernails with a sort of unmasked determination. Kurt has no idea why he said that, what might’ve possibly inspired him to lie like that, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about smelling traces of artificial cherry for the rest of his high school career.
***
Sam approaches him at his locker after school.
“A college girl, huh?” he says first thing, grinning broadly.
Kurt tries not to wince as he fishes his history book out of his backpack. “It’s not implausible,” he says, voice tight, peeking over to make sure Sam’s not mad. At least he hadn’t said he was dating a middle schooler or, worse, that tragic girl in their biology class whose outfits always clash.
“Um, thanks, but I think the Brazilian model part kind of is.” Sam steps forward and, even though Kurt hadn’t asked him to, starts handing him the books he needs to take home. They work well together, like this. In unison.
“I don’t know,” Kurt says, “I think you could land a model.”
Sam looks at him.
“Maybe a model who’s been out of work for a while,” he clarifies. “You know. Maybe her family moved to America when she was two, and they paid for her private elementary school by having her model kids’ sweaters in Sears catalogues a couple times a year.”
That gets a laugh out of Sam, and he shakes his head, closing Kurt’s locker door. “I just wish I knew about my former-Sears-catalogue-model girlfriend before Puck had the chance to ask me if she has any single friends.”
“I was doing you a favor.” Kurt swings his backpack over one shoulder and they walk, together, towards the choir room. “You would’ve been mauled otherwise, and I hear Cheerios are known for their resoundingly sharp claws.”
“Well then,” Sam says, and he stops midstep to look at Kurt, his grin faded to something a little softer, but still there. “I appreciate it.” There’s a moment then, where Sam’s looking at Kurt and Kurt’s pointedly not looking at Sam, and there’s this weird energy in the air, or maybe Kurt’s imagining it, but then it passes as quickly as it’d come and Sam heads into the room, adding over his shoulder as he goes, “If you’re not busy on Tuesday, we should hang out. Mariana wants to meet you.”
Kurt follows him. “Mariana?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, dropping down into one of the seats. He smirks. “My girlfriend. Didn’t you hear? She’s from Brazil.”
***
Blaine calls when he’s at the motel with Sam. They’d originally planned to stop by the free art museum downtown, but Sam’s mom got called into work and someone needed to watch the kids, and Quinn wasn’t available on such short notice. Kurt doesn’t actually mind. Even if he can tell being there stresses Sam out, makes his jaw go a little tighter than normal, he likes being around his siblings. They’re amazingly well-behaved for their age.
Tonight, they’re watching a Disney movie-Sam had wanted Finding Nemo, Kurt had been vying for Beauty and the Beast, but Stacy had overruled them all and chosen Mulan-and they’re halfheartedly playing a game of War with Stevie, and that’s when his phone goes off. It’s right at the crux of the battle scene, and Kurt doesn’t want to disrupt it, so he sends a quick text to Blaine: Watching a movie. Can I call you later?
But two seconds later, his phone buzzes again: i need to talk to you now.
Blaine’s an understanding guy. He never pushes, he never gets annoyed when Kurt has to reschedule their dates: this is unlike him, enough to warrant a little worry. “I’ll be back,” he whispers to Sam, slipping out of the room and down to the motel parking lot, pacing back and forth between cars as he redials Blaine’s number.
Blaine answers on the first ring.
“Kurt,” he says, “I have bad news.”
Kurt’s stomach plummets. His voice is so serious, and he has the desperate, terrible, sinking feeling that he is about to be dumped. He’s never been dumped before-of course he hasn’t been dumped, he’s never had a relationship. But things had been going well. They were busy, sure, but who wasn’t busy at the end of the school year, and they had the entire summer ahead of them, and-
Blaine takes in a deep breath. “I’m moving.”
That-that wasn’t what Kurt had been expecting, and he fumbles for a second before remembering how to talk. His grip on the phone tightens. “You’re what? You’re moving?”
“Yeah. My dad got a new job.”
“Your dad got a new job.”
“In Colorado.”
“Your dad got a new job in Colorado.” Why can’t he stop repeating everything Blaine says? It doesn’t feel real, like it’s happening in another universe, to some other unlucky gay kid in a small town. He was the one with the drama-free relationship. He was the fortunate one.
“We’re leaving right after school gets out.”
Kurt squeezes his eyes shut. “And then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean us. And then what happens to us?”
There’s a long silence between them, stretched even longer by the muffled Disney music he can hear drifting through the paperthin walls. He leans against the bumper of Sam’s car-which is how he knows he’s upset, because he’s pretty sure Sam’s car hasn’t been washed in weeks.
“I don’t know how to be in a long distance relationship,” Blaine finally says, and Kurt lets out the breath he wasn’t aware he was holding.
“You’re breaking up with me.”
“No, I’m-I’m telling you I don’t know what to do here.”
Kurt absentmindedly winds his pashmina around his fist. His throat feels tight, but he’s not going to give into tears, not right now. Not in a parking lot. “It sounds to me like this isn’t leaving us with a lot of options. Blaine, you live ten minutes away and I barely see you as it is.”
Blaine makes a small humming noise, quiet and sad. “You think we should end it, then.”
“I just-otherwise, wouldn’t we be delaying the inevitable? I can’t be with you knowing that it’s going to end a month from now. I can’t live like that.”
“I don’t want to move.”
“I don’t want you to either.” And there it is. Kurt’s eyes are wet; blinking furiously, he reaches up to brush the tears away. “Can we meet tomorrow to talk about this? I-Mulan’s about to make her big speech, and you know how I feel about scenes of female empowerment.”
“Sure, Kurt,” Blaine says, a second late. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight.”
Instead of going back inside, though, he stands in the parking lot for a long time. So long that eventually the door swings open, and Sam steps out wearing flannel pajama pants and a baffled expression. “Hey,” he says, hand on the railing. “I thought you left.”
Kurt hurriedly wipes at his cheeks, just to be sure. He hates being transparent. “No, sorry. Lengthy phone call.”
Sam watches him for a moment. “Are you okay?”
“Who, me? Of course. But I should probably go, Sam. Sorry about running out on the end of the movie.”
“It’s cool,” Sam says. “Spoiler alert, but she saved China again.”
“How predictable.”
Sam holds out his hand. It takes Kurt a second to realize that he’s got his car keys, dangling from his fingertips. “You left them on the table,” he explains. “Stacy wanted to hide them so you’d have to spend the night, but I told her that wasn’t such a good idea.”
“She’s sneaky,” Kurt says, and he’s surprised to find that he’s smiling a little. “I like her.”
“She likes you too. A lot. Maybe more than she likes me, even.”
Kurt pulls in a deep breath and moves toward to take his keys. “Can’t fault a girl for having good taste. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Sure.” Sam looks at him carefully when he hands them over. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Positive,” he says, and he heads straight for his car, doesn’t allow himself to glance back. Pretend to be collected until he’s alone enough to fall apart. That’s always been his motto. He doesn’t want Sam to think he’s weak. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sam,” he adds, more clearly this time, and then he climbs in the driver’s seat and he drives away with no real destination in mind.
***
Kurt meets Blaine at the Lima Bean, their favorite haunt, and they have a conversation that lasts over two hours and results in a lot of tears. They both know what it is, though, that high school relationships were hard enough to maintain when they weren’t separated by thousands of miles and a two hour time difference. They’ll be friends. They’ll email. They’ll keep in contact, they will, but they won’t put off what’s bound to happen. They’ll still hang out until he leaves. They just won’t kiss, or hold hands, because that will make it harder. It is hard. It’s one of the hardest things Kurt’s ever done, and when he leaves the coffee shop all he wants is to be surrounded by his friends. But Mercedes and Tina are at a movie, and Rachel’s on a date with Finn, and before he even realizes what he’s doing, he’s driving to the motel, Sam’s motel, and knocking on the door.
Sam’s mom answers. She’s got the same blonde hair as Sam, the same bags under her eyes. “I’m sorry, hon,” she says, “Sam’s working right now.”
So Kurt leaves and, on the ride home, against his better judgment, he orders a pizza.
It arrives approximately thirty-seven minutes later in the hands of a freckly redhead with braces. In his desperation, apparently Kurt had forgotten that there were other delivery boys at the pizza place. He tips an extra three dollars because he feels guilty about the face he makes when he opens the door and realizes, and then he does what any sane person suffering his first heartbreak would do. He orders another pizza. This time he asks specifically if Sam can deliver it, and the girl on the phone hesitates for a long time before agreeing, though, she explains, it’ll probably be an extra thirty minute wait. “That’s fine,” Kurt says, because it’s not like he’s got anything else to do. He’s not even hungry.
An hour later, the doorbell rings. Sam’s wearing an expression he can’t quite put a finger on when he pulls the door open, and he licks his lips and says, “Our pizza’s not even the best in town, you know.”
“I know,” Kurt agrees lightly, taking the box from him. “The crust tastes like cardboard.”
Sam nods at something behind him. “What’s that?” he asks, and Kurt turns his head around to look. It’s the first pizza box, the one he hadn’t even opened, right on the hallway tabletop where he’d left it. In hindsight, he probably should’ve hidden the evidence.
Kurt sets the second pizza on top of the first, then faces Sam. He’s quick on his feet, but he’s pretty sure there’s no explanation in the world that can excuse him for this. “My appetite is insatiable these days?”
Sam just looks at him.
“Blaine and I broke up,” Kurt says, which is not how he’d meant to begin this conversation, and nowhere near eloquent, and also, he can feel the traitorous stabbing at the back of his eyes again, and this is all so very, completely wrong.
But Sam doesn’t even hesitate. “Oh man,” he says, reaching out and touching Kurt’s shoulder. He doesn’t make a big spectacle out of it, the way some of the other guys do, like they’re not sure where to put their hand, like an inch too high or too low can give the wrong message. Sam doesn’t buy into that. Kurt appreciates it more than he can say. “I’m sorry, dude. I didn’t even know you guys were having trouble or whatever.”
“He’s moving,” Kurt says, looking down. “In a month.”
“Wow. That sucks so hard. Are you okay?”
Kurt draws in a breath. “I will be. I’ve just… never really had to deal with this before.”
Sam smiles at him sort of sadly. “They don’t get any easier,” he says, and then, studying his face, “Is this why you ordered a pizza?”
All at once, Kurt feels humiliated. How desperate did he look? He was like one of those sad women who blabbed their life stories to their hairdressers, or the old men he got stuck behind in checkout lines because they kept detailing their painstaking weekends to the cashiers. Sam was working and, besides, why would he care about his relationship? He was stupid to assume. “I… maybe,” he says, averting his gaze to the side. “I guess I just needed someone to talk to.”
“And you were willing to buy a fifteen dollar crappy pizza for it to be me?” There’s a small smile still playing at Sam’s lips. Like maybe he doesn’t think he’s completely pathetic after all.
“Two crappy pizzas,” Kurt corrects him, wanting to crawl inside a hole.
“That… is so awesome.”
Kurt looks up sharply. “It is?”
“Yeah, of course it is. Santana used to order pizzas when we were dating and then go make me pick them up just so she could use our living room TV without me for a while. And when Finn and Quinn broke up I didn’t even find out for, like, a week. No one ever tells me anything.”
“You’re a really good friend, Sam,” Kurt says, putting his hand on top of Sam’s for a brief second, their fingers overlapping. “I’m sorry more people don’t realize that.”
Sam grins at him. “I have two more pizzas to deliver,” he says, but not like he’s in any big hurry to get going. “And I get good tips when I’m there early. Are you going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Kurt says, because somehow, he already feels better. Like this was enough. The fact that Sam wanted to be there for him was enough. “Go work hard for the money.” He smiles self-indulgently. “So hard for it, honey.”
Sam tilts his head, lost.
“Nevermind,” Kurt sighs, and then he presses a twenty into Sam’s hand for the pizza. Who knew having friends would be such an expensive hobby. “Thanks for coming. Even though you sort of had to.”
“I would have anyway,” Sam says, shrugging. He pauses. “I’m off at ten, if you want… I could come back.”
Kurt rubs his neck. He hadn’t expected that. He thinks he should probably stop underestimating Sam. “Are you sure your parents wouldn’t mind?”
“Yeah. My mom keeps saying I need to get out of the-”
That’s Kurt’s cue. “If you can, that’d be awesome. You don’t have to though. I’m probably just going to watch Singin’ in the Rain thirty times in a row.”
“I’ll bring the chocolate ice cream,” Sam offers, and when Kurt lifts an eyebrow, he simply adds, “You keep telling me how much I need to see that movie.”
“It is a seminal classic.”
“Well then,” Sam says, and adjusts the baseball hat on his head. “I guess it’s a date.”
***
Sam smells like pizza when he gets to Kurt’s house two hours later, and not in the good way. Like he’d been dipped into a giant vat of sauce and fake cheese. Kurt suspects at least half of the offending odor is coming from Sam’s work shirt, so he slips into Finn’s room (with his hand over his eyes, he doesn’t want to see anything he doesn’t have to) and rummages through his closet for a clean one. (Not surprisingly, not even all the shirts on hangers are clean. Finn’s disgusting like that.) He finds a recently-washed black v-neck and carries it back downstairs; without even hesitating, Sam peels off his dirty shirt right there and pulls on the new one.
Kurt doesn’t mean to stare, but, well. He doesn’t often have shirtless boys in his basement. Especially not ones that look like Sam Evans.
Apparently Sam catches his gaze, though, because a second later he shrugs sort of uncomfortably and looks at the ground. “I haven’t been able to eat as well as I want to lately,” he says, mumbling a little bit. Finn’s shirt is too big on him. It makes him look smaller, younger.
“What?”
“And I haven’t really had time to hit the gym as hard as I should be…”
As if he had absolutely anything to be ashamed of. Kurt realizes what he’s getting at and blanches, stopping himself just in time from saying that he has the best body he’s seen since that eye-opening magazine April Rhodes had given him last year. He swallows and tries for something a little more tactful. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You look fine.”
Sam flashes him a strained smile. “Fine doesn’t cut it in public school.”
“No, seriously, Sam.” Kurt’s cheeks feel warm. He hopes he’s not noticeably blushing, and he wishes he’d thought to keep the lights off. No one could see red cheeks in the muted glow of the television. “You have nothing to worry about. I promise.”
“Oh. Well. Thanks.” Sam drops down onto the plush leather couch, letting his legs dangle over the armrest. For a second, he lets his eyes fall shut, like he could fall asleep right then and there, but then he stretches and opens them again a second later. “If I crash during the movie just throw a pillow at me.”
“Long night?”
“The longest.”
Kurt fumbles the DVD out of its case-it was resting on top of the TV already, ready for emergency viewings-and slides it in. “Any interesting customers?”
“There was one.”
“Oh?” Kurt turns around, bracing his elbow against the wall.
“Yeah. Some guy ordered two pizzas even though he clearly wasn’t going to eat any.”
Kurt laughs and pretends to throw the DVD at him. Sam lifts his hands, but only halfheartedly, like he trusts that he’s not going to be decapitated via movie case tonight.
“By the way,” Sam says casually, perking up, “is any of that pizza still left?”
“I don’t know how you can stand to eat it after being around it for five hours,” Kurt returns, but he marches upstairs and fetches one of the boxes anyway.
They start the movie in companionable silence; Kurt sits on the other end of the couch, the pizza box between them. Sam folds his pizza slices in half and then shoves the majority of it into his mouth, like maybe it’s been awhile since he’d last eaten. Kurt can’t ever even remember seeing him eat pizza before. He used to make faces when Puck and Finn would inhale it in front of him in the cafeteria.
For Sam’s sake, Kurt resists the urge to mouth along with the words. He’s seen it so many times that it’s second-nature to him, but Sam at least looks a little engrossed, which is better than almost any other guy he tries to force it on. His dad had actually snuck a headphone into his ear halfway through so he could listen to a ballgame, and the only reason Kurt found out was because he jumped up during Kurt’s favorite scene and yelled, “CRAPPY CALL, REF,” which was not a bout of musical-inspired adlibbing, as much as he’d like to pretend.
Twenty minutes later, though, when Kurt’s sixth favorite part comes up, he looks over excitedly to make sure Sam understands the importance of what’s about to happen-and Sam’s fast asleep, cheek pressed against the couch cushion, a tiny smudge of pizza sauce on his bottom lip. He makes tiny breathy noises every time he exhales, and Kurt has to fight the desire to brush his hair out of his eyes. Instead, he puts the movie on pause, throws a blanket over Sam’s lower half, and sets an alarm on his phone for midnight. He figures his parents wouldn’t be too happy if he never came home, but Sam had looked so exhausted that he doesn’t have the heart to wake him up just yet. He lowers the volume on the TV drastically and hits play again, snuggling down into his own corner of the couch, and just as he starts to drift off to the steady sound of Sam’s breathing, he realizes that somehow, somehow, he hasn’t thought about Blaine once.
***
That doesn’t hold true for long, though. Kurt spends the next week and a half thinking about Blaine and little else. The following day at school Finn claps him awkwardly on the shoulder in glee club, and the always-helpful Puck makes a list of everything he didn’t like about Blaine, which was surprisingly long for a guy who’s only met him three or four times. (When Puck gets to number seven, the fact that he chews with his mouth open, Kurt starts to suspect that he’s making things up.) Having his friends around helps. Rachel Berry, the self-dubbed Queen of Successful Breakups (Kurt thinks that’s stretching it a bit far, but he doesn’t say so out loud), leaves little messages inside his locker, like Keep your chin up! or Tomorrow’s another day! It doesn’t help with the actual breakup, but it does make him laugh.
Mostly, though, he likes having Sam around. Kurt hadn’t realized how nice it was to have male friends until he had one, one that he hung out with outside of school and not just because they lived in the same house. He loves his girls; there’s no doubt about that. But Sam gets things in a way that Mercedes and Tina can’t. Also, he’s way less opinionated, which is nice during the times when Kurt wants to have everything he’s said taken as fact with little to no rebuttal. (Which is almost always.)
He also has a way of making Kurt’s problems look miniscule. Like, sure, he and Blaine broke up-Blaine, who he was pretty convinced was the first real love of his life (Finn didn’t count, because the feelings were never returned)-but at least he had a roof over his head. At least he didn’t have to work in fast food. And they actually do things. They take Stevie and Stacy to the play area in the mall, sitting amongst tired-looking moms and annoyed-looking dads, sipping lattes and talking about the upcoming summer. Kurt drags Sam to local theatre productions; Sam drags Kurt to action movies at the dollar theater. Kurt teaches Sam how to play a few songs on the piano. Sam teaches Kurt how to correctly hold a guitar.
It’s a rewarding friendship, maybe one of the most rewarding he’s ever had.
It doesn’t hurt that Sam’s easy on the eyes, either.
By week three post-breakup, Kurt’s no longer spending all of his time thinking about Blaine.
***
Friday nights are back to being routine, but it’s a new routine. One that involves Sam. Burt’s always been a stickler about the food being on the table at 7:30 sharp, but they’ve pushed it back to 8:30 because Sam’s mom doesn’t get back to the motel until eight. Finn and Sam play videogames until dinner, while Kurt and Carole do most of the cooking. Afterwards, they take turns cleaning-though they shoo Sam out of the kitchen every time, insisting he’s a guest, and guests aren’t allowed to help-and the others retire to the living room for a sports game or whatever happens to be on TV. This is the time Kurt spends planning his weekend outfits. He couldn’t give a rip about the Cincinnati Redsox, or whatever that baseball team is.
When the game’s over, they’ll usually put in a movie downstairs. Sometimes Finn invites Rachel over to join them, but more often than not he knows that’ll result in them being finagled into a musical or a chick flick that he doesn’t want to see. Sam’s never really opinionated about their choices, which means Finn is virtually outnumbered.
“Oh my god,” Finn groans for the thirteenth time in one of the chick flick occasions, hitting himself over the head with a couch cushion. “Just kiss her. What is he waiting for?”
“She’s in a relationship, Finn,” Rachel hisses back, without ever pulling her eyes from the screen. “She’s dating his best friend! He can’t just kiss her-though, I have to admit, their chemistry is undeniable.”
“I still think he should kiss her,” Finn says grumpily.
Kurt rolls his eyes. “You would.”
Twenty minutes later, the boy still hasn’t kissed the girl and Finn’s comments have become increasingly more annoying. Finally, he scoffs and climbs up from his spot on the sofa. “I can’t take this anymore,” he says, reaching out towards Rachel. “Come on.”
She takes his hand, confused. “Where are we going?”
“Out. Anywhere. Anything is better than this.”
Rachel’s face just about lights up at the possibility. “Can we go to that wooden boat at the park and reenact the final scene of Titanic the Musical?”
For a split second, Finn looks like he’s reevaluating his decision, his face scrunching up in his pained, slightly constipated-looking expression. But eventually, tight-jawed and almost regretfully, he nods. “Yeah. I guess. If we can stop and get hotdogs first.”
“Finn, you just finished eating.”
Their argument carries up the stairs as they go, and Finn’s explaining something about exercise vs. eating ratios that make no sense, and the last thing they hear right before the door closes is, “We’re supposed to have a really windy season, so if I don’t eat enough, it’s totally possible that I could be blown away.”
Kurt plants his face into his hands, shaking his head. “Sometimes I think he just talks to hear the sound of his own voice,” he says, and then glances over at Sam, who’s laughing silently at the opposite end of the room. “I apologize for him.”
“Nah, it’s cool,” Sam says, letting his feet drop to the carpet below and sitting up straighter. “He has a point.”
“Not you too.” Kurt sighs, but in an endearing sort of way. He’d once walked in on Sam and Finn talking about whether or not you could see farts in winter the way you could see your breath sometimes, when it was cold enough, so he supposes nothing should surprise him now. He grabs the remote control and gestures at the television, where the movie is only half-over and slow-going at that. “I guess there’s no point in finishing this. Unless you wanted to?”
Sam makes a face. “You know, as much as I love romantic comedies…”
“You don’t give a damn which man she ends up with,” Kurt finishes for him, because that’s pretty much the entire plot in a nutshell anyway. It had been Rachel’s pick. (Besides, he’s already seen it three times.) “Understandable. Should we put something else in?”
“I don’t know if I have the attention span for another movie,” Sam says. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hands like a sleepy child. “I feel like I’m about to doze off just sitting here.”
Kurt watches him for a few seconds. “You can spend the night, you know,” he offers, even though that’s not-that’s not anything they’ve ever done before. His ‘guy sleepovers’ had mostly ended in middle school, when kids began calling him names he’d never heard of and saying things about his friends behind their backs. Blaine had spent the night before, but only because he was too drunk to get home, and Puck would sometimes crash when he and Finn stayed up too late playing videogames. But Kurt both knows and hates that when he has a guy sleep over, there’s a whole unspoken layer behind it. Like he’s got some sort of ulterior motive, when all he’s really doing is inviting a friend to stay the night.
Sam nods slowly, like he’s thinking it over. But not in a guarded way. Not like Kurt’s some sort of predator. “I might, actually,” he says, “if you’re sure your dad won’t care. Even this couch beats getting kicked by Stacy every night. And Stevie talks in his sleep.”
“My dad won’t care and you don’t have to sleep on that couch. I’d say you could take over Finn’s bed but let’s face it, I’m not sure he knows how to operate the washing machine, let alone ever cleans his sheets. But we’ve got a foldout that’s surprisingly comfortable.”
Kurt loves the way Sam grins, slow and easy, the way it takes over his face, the way he tries to downplay it by glancing down, eyes flickering to the floor. Maybe it’s because he’s self-conscious about his own smile that he’s hyperaware of everyone else’s, or maybe it’s just because Sam has really nice teeth.
“That sounds great,” he says. “Thanks, Kurt.”
“Don’t mention it. Hey, do you want a glass of milk?”
Sam’s eyebrows lift. “Milk?”
It’s too late for carbs and too early to brush his teeth. Besides, Kurt thinks, even though Sam has been spending a lot of time over at the house, they haven’t spent a lot of it just talking. Time like that is invaluable.
“I like to have a glass before bed,” Kurt explains. “It helps me sleep.”
“Sure,” Sam says, shrugging his shoulders. “Why not?”
The trip upstairs only takes a few seconds. Kurt pauses to pop his head into his dad’s bedroom, tells him that Sam is spending the night, and Burt shrugs and says “sure, that’s fine, spare blankets are in the storage closet,” before he continues on into the kitchen, fetches two glasses of milk and fills them to the brim. When he gets back down to the basement, walking carefully to avoid any spillage, Sam’s sprawled out on the floor, head propped up on his elbow, and ESPN’s on the TV.
“Hi,” he says, turning his head to meet his gaze. “I just wanted to check the score of the Braves game.”
Kurt nods and passes one of the glasses over, lowering himself into a cross-legged sitting position a few feet away. “Are they winning?”
“It ended an hour ago. They won in the eleventh inning.”
“Interesting,” Kurt says, even though it’s not. He takes a sip.
Sam curls his hand around his own glass, drawing circles in the condensation with his thumb. He has rough and callused guitar-playing fingers but mostly clean fingernails, which is something Kurt can appreciate. “Sorry. I know you don’t care about sports.”
“Mm, you watched a two-hour documentary about Fashion Week with me. I at least owe you this.”
“I slept through most of it,” Sam points out, but Kurt chooses to disregard that bit of information.
SportsCenter ends and Sam lifts the remote lazily, flicks the TV off and casts them into the dim lighting of Kurt’s environmentally-friendly table lamp. He’d never admit to this-because he knows how it looks, knows how it sounds-but Kurt secretly likes when they’re alone, just the two of them, When they hang out one-on-one. When there’s no one else there to misconstrue their friendship, when he can be himself without worrying about how it looks to anyone on the outside.
“Kurt,” Sam says suddenly, and he looks up. His voice is quieter, more serious. Tight but not embarrassed, not overly emotional. Maybe a little raw in its sincerity. “I just wanted to make sure you know how cool I think you are. How cool you’ve been about… well, everything.”
There are a lot of things running through Kurt’s mind at that moment. How touched he is. How unnecessary the sentiment-how requited the feeling. Questions he wants to ask, topics he wants to approach. But at this time of night, in the intimacy of the basement, with the door upstairs closed and his dad in bed, it doesn’t seem right. There’s something off. When Sam pushes his hair back away from his forehead and meets his eyes, his throat goes inexplicably dry. There’s a moment, then, that passes between the two of them as tangible as the floor itself, the couches, the untouched bowl of popcorn balancing crookedly on the coffee table, where neither of them are speaking and neither of them are looking away, and something heavy and unspoken lingers in the air. Sam has really nice eyes; Kurt wonders vaguely if Sam’s thinking the same thing about him.
But then Sam clears his throat and the moment is gone.
Or maybe it hadn’t existed at all. Kurt’s been known to make those sort of things up in his mind. He swallows the imaginary lump in his throat and decides to take the safest route. The cowardly route.
“We should get to bed,” he says, and then, clarifying, “Our separate beds.”
Sam grins at him, and he’s glad that nothing’s changed. “As opposed to?”
Thankfully, Kurt’s quick on his feet, refuses to fumble over his words or his actions. It was a defense mechanism he’d been forced to develop right around the time he hit puberty and everyone else’s voices began to change and deepen, and his stayed the same.
“As opposed to the giant fifteen-person bed we keep hidden in the attic. In fact, there’s no floor. It’s all mattress.”
“Sounds cool,” Sam says, but even as he’s speaking he’s climbing to his knees, ready to leave both this conversation and this night behind. He pauses, half-kneeling, and drains the remainder of his milk in one effortless, casual swallow. “You should show it to me sometime.”
Kurt looks away. “I will,” he says, and his throat feels tight. “If you’re lucky.”
part two.
by novelized. ~16,000 words.
fandom: Glee.
pairing: Kurt/Sam.
summary: Now that everyone else in New Directions knew about Sam's financial situation, Kurt needed to find a new way to fit into his life. He didn't realize how easy it'd be.
part one.
Sam hates being at the motel.
He never says this out loud, of course. It’s the way he talks about it, mumbling low under his breath, and the way his shoulders droop when the final bell rings, and how he goes out of his way to avoid saying home; it’s always “I can’t, I’ve got to go back to the-” or “sorry, my mom needs me to stay at the-” with the rest of the sentence broken off, suspending in midair until someone picks up the slack, which they’ve all learned to do. Kurt hates seeing his face when it comes up in conversation the most, because even though he keeps a good humor about it, even though he still tries to joke around, make light of the situation, his eyes always seem to give him away. Sam Evans is a lot of things, but a good actor’s not one of them.
Kurt doesn’t like being at the motel either, but for completely different reasons. Stupid, selfish reasons. Like the fact that even thinking about sitting on the cheap polyester carpet makes him itch and how Sam turns Spongebob on full-blast every day at 3:30, pretending it’s for the sake of his siblings, when really it’s to drain out the bed knocking against the wall and other suspicious sounds from next door.
But he’s learned over the course of the past month that you can get used to pretty much anything. He doesn’t even go all tight-lipped when Stevie accidentally flings fingerpaint on his Marc Jacobs bag - well, he maybe goes a little tight-lipped, but it’s washable, and Sam’s stricken expression is enough to quell any sort of annoyance he might’ve normally had. He likes that their visits have extended from dropping some clothes off to ‘hey, you wanna put a movie in?’ He likes the fact that they still hang out.
Because at first, deep down, he’d forced himself to accept the fate that now that everyone else in New Directions knew about his family’s financial situation, Kurt and Sam really no longer had reason to interact. Finn had taken over his role, bringing him clothes that were much better suited (though Kurt’s secretly bemoaning his lost opportunity at slowly bringing fashion sense to the glee club). Puck and Mike apparently take him out for Bro Nights, something that consists of video games and greasy pizza and cheap beer-everything Kurt hates. The girls come and go in shifts, bringing freshly baked cookies and games for the kids to play. Kurt doesn’t know where he fits in. He begins to think he doesn’t fit in at all.
But then after practice one day Sam hoists his backpack over his shoulder and says, “Hey Kurt, do you still want to meet at the library tonight to work on our English project?”
Kurt glances up. He’d forgotten they’d agreed to that, to be honest; it had seemed like a passing comment, a way to end a previous conversation without obligation. He wouldn’t have held Sam to it-but maybe it’s not like that. Maybe he does fit in. Maybe there’s not a role in friendships, just the friendship itself. And maybe that’s enough.
“Uh, sure,” Kurt says. “Nothing gets my engine going like a night with Arthur Miller.”
Sam’s forehead scrunches. “Is that the librarian’s name?”
“Oh, Sam.” Kurt puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder consolingly. He gives him a little pat. “We have a long, long night ahead of us.”
***
Sam shows up at a quarter after seven, holding Stacy by the hand. “Sorry,” he says right away, dropping his books down onto the table Kurt had been reserving for the past fifteen minutes. He struggles out of his letterman’s jacket, draping it over one of the chairs. “They do Storytime on Wednesdays, and I promised Stace I’d take her.”
“We’re reading The Velveteen Rabbit,” Stacy informs him happily, clinging onto Sam’s arm.
Kurt smiles. “I love that book.”
“She’s read it a billion times,” Sam says, rolling his eyes, but in the endearing sort of way. The way Sam looks at his little sister sometimes makes Kurt’s heart ache just a little. “Wait for me five minutes? I’ll take her to the kids’ section and be right back.”
“Sure, no problem. I’ll get the stuff ready.”
Stacy gives him a four-fingered wave before dragging Sam towards the elevator, practically dancing as she pushes the button. Sam laughs and gives her a little twirl, right there in the library. Kurt watches them together until they disappear behind the sliding doors, and then he wipes his palms against his pants and reaches for his copy of the anthology. They had over a week to turn this project in, but Kurt likes to do things ahead of time and Sam-Sam usually needs a little extra help. He’s certainly got his strengths. Writing analytical essays is not one of them.
A few minutes later Sam returns, sliding into the seat opposite Kurt. “Can’t wait to get my studying on,” he jokes, pushing his hair back and away from his eyes. Kurt thinks vaguely that he could use a haircut, but then, maybe he’s trying to hide something. Like how tired he looks. There are dark circles underneath his eyes, and he keeps rubbing at them inconspicuously like if he leaves them alone for too long they’ll fall shut and won’t reopen.
Sam glances up just in time to catch him looking; blushing slightly, Kurt brings his gaze back to the papers in front of him. “Did you read the play?” he asks.
In response, Sam flashes him a sheepish expression. “I… skimmed it?” He picks up a pencil and twirls it between his fingers. “I was just really busy last night, you know, I didn’t get off work until nine and then I had to help my mom scrape up dinner-”
Kurt studies him, one eyebrow raised in suspicion. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty?” he asks, and he says it so earnestly that Sam laughs and ducks his head.
“I was, yeah,” he admits, rubbing at the back of his neck. “It usually works on everyone else.”
“You are a terrible, terrible person.”
“You have to use the hand you’re given, right?” Sam grins. He has really white, straight teeth, and a dimple in his right cheek when he smiles. “You wouldn’t believe how many pop quizzes it’s gotten me out of.”
“Your work ethic is commendable,” Kurt says, shaking his head, but he’s smiling too. He slides his book across the table and in front of Sam, pointing at the page. “At least read from here to there, okay? That should fill you in on the basic information, and then we can brainstorm about what we want to write about.”
Sam nods and glances down at the book. He keeps twirling the pencil. “Okay, but just a warning: I’m a really slow reader.”
“Take your time,” Kurt says. “I’ve got all night.”
They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes; Sam reads, mouthing the words to himself as he goes, and Kurt makes a list of all the essay topics he can come up with.
“Done,” Sam finally announces, triumphant, drawing a little pencil mark where he’s stopped reading, and Kurt’s about to open his mouth to congratulate him when his phone starts ringing. It’s embarrassing, because his volume’s turned all the way up, and just about every single person in the library turns to look at him. He fumbles it out of his bag and silences it before even checking the caller ID; when he’s done that, he looks at Sam apologetically.
“Sorry,” he says, “it’s Blaine-”
But Sam just waves him off. “Go ahead, dude, answer it,” he says, and so Kurt does, slipping out of his seat and into the lobby.
He and Blaine have both been busy lately. If it’s not one commitment it’s another, and not to mention preparing for Nationals-preparing for Nationals takes every ounce of his effort, every second of his attention. He wants to win. He wants to win so badly, because as much as he feels like he’s a part of their family, he doesn’t exactly feel like he’s carried his weight as a part of their team. Finn says that none of them were mad that he transferred, and he believes him. They understood. But there are now inside jokes he doesn’t get, and interclub drama he knows nothing about. He’s got some crazy idea in his head that if he can have one finger pressed against the trophy in New York City, right amongst the rest of them, then, then he’ll truly be back.
This conversation lasts for a record of one minute and twenty-two seconds. They have a lot to catch up on, but Kurt feels guilty letting Sam sit around while he’s on the phone-not to mention all of the work he knows is not being completed. “Hey, Blaine,” Kurt says, “can I call you back later tonight? Sam and I are working on a project.”
Blaine, ever agreeable, says sure, of course, no problem. “Tell Sam I say hi,” he says, and Kurt promises he will before they hang back up, and he hurries back to their cramped table in the corner.
“Sorry about that,” he says, scooting his chair forward.
“You don’t have to apologize,” Sam says easily. He holds up a piece of paper with four or five bullet points for inspection, his chest puffed out with pride. Kurt imagines this is the same look he wears after a good football practice, or when he gets an answer right on a test. “Look, I actually did something.”
Only a little bit skeptical, Kurt takes the paper from him and reads over what he’d written. And he hadn’t even had to force him into it. Amazing.
“I’m impressed,” he says, passing it back. “But you spelled ‘theory’ wrong.”
Sam makes a face and attacks it with his eraser. “Damn secret vowels,” he says, and his tongue kind of pokes out of his mouth when he’s concentrating really hard on something. “They get me every time.” He works on correcting a few other points, his gaze jumping back and forth from the book to his paper, and then he adds, conversationally, like they were talking about the weather, “So how’s that going, anyway?”
“How’s what going? My thesis statement, or the outline I’m trying to put together?”
“No, I mean-” Sam gestures vaguely at his bag, where he’d stashed the phone a minute ago. “You and Blaine. How’s that going?”
For a long second, Kurt’s so surprised that he’s not sure what to say. He’s not used to people asking him about his relationship, unless they’re asking in awkward, stilted voices. Like they’re only asking to be polite and, once he starts talking, they can’t wait for him to stop. That’s not how Sam looks. He looks like he’s genuinely curious, like he actually wants to know. Kurt’s just jaded enough not to trust it.
“It’s going well,” he says finally. “Everything’s going well.”
“Are you guys happy?”
Kurt frowns at his textbook. “Sam, I, uh, I appreciate the effort, but you don’t have to do this.”
Sam follows his eyes, forehead scrunching in confusion. “Do what?”
“Pretend like you want to hear the sordid details of my love life. Like I said, I really do appreciate it, but you-you really don’t have to.”
There’s a long silence between them, and Kurt thinks belatedly great, he’s just screwed everything up. But he prefers being honest over suffering through a conversation that neither of them actually want to have.
Sam, however, surprises him. He likes that he’s capable of doing that.
“I wasn’t pretending,” he says, voice low, retrieving his pencil and bending over his paper again. He sounds insulted, almost. Offended. “But if you don’t want to talk about it, fine. Whatever. Sorry.”
Kurt immediately softens. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just… not used to people caring.”
“I care,” Sam says. “You’re my friend. It’s the same as me asking Puck what’s up with him and Lauren, or Finn what’s up with-”
“-whichever girl he happens to be romantically involved with at the time?”
They grin at each other across the table. Kurt reaches out and touches Sam’s arm, but only briefly, before pulling his hand back and turning the page in his book. “That means a lot to me, Sam,” he says quietly, keeping his voice steady. “Thank you.”
“It’s no big,” Sam says, with a shrug. “Now, who the hell is this Willy Loman guy?”
***
As it turns out, having Sam Evans as a friend is actually fantastic. Sometimes the other guys use this tone when Kurt’s around, like they’re treading carefully, the same tone they slip into when they’re talking about boobs or farting and their girlfriends walk up. But Sam never does that. He tells stupid jokes that never actually make Kurt laugh, and he does George Bush impressions with no contextual reasoning, The best part, though, is that he does all of them with zero self-consciousness. In fact, he looks downright surprised when no one else thinks he’s funny, and he’s learned that if he sulks at Kurt long enough, he’ll give in and chuckle.
They start sitting together in glee club. Puck spends the first few days calling them the Ambiguously Gay Duo until Kurt points out that Puck doesn’t even know what the word ambiguously means, which promptly shuts him up.
“I think it’s cool that you and Sam are such good buddies all of a sudden,” Santana says, and then she snaps her fingers like she’s had a brilliant idea. “Hey, Kurt, maybe you can get community service hours for that kind of charity.”
“I don’t know, Santana,” Kurt shoots back, “it’s been over a year now and we still haven’t seen any sort of karmic retribution for putting up with you.”
Mostly, though, Sam’s a surprisingly good listener. He lets Kurt rant about things that he hadn’t even realized he wanted to rant about until he gets going, and he doesn’t say anything until he’s sure he’s finished-usually he doesn’t have anything groundbreaking or inspiring to add to the conversation, but even that doesn’t matter. The fact that he listens is more than enough.
His dad corners him at home one evening, while he’s idly scrolling through pages and pages of Dr. Martens boots on the computer. It’s what he does to de-stress. It’s a calming mechanism that he’d picked up right before he’d transferred to Dalton. “Finn says you’ve been spending a lot of time with this kid Sam Evans,” Burt says casually, thumbing through a stack of mail.
Kurt rolls his eyes. He’s in no mood to have this conversation yet again; it feels disgustingly repetitive. “We’re just friends, Dad.”
“I wasn’t suggesting anything,” Burt says defensively, tearing open an envelope with his forefinger. He scans the letter quickly, drops it back down to the pile. “I heard about his family’s money problems, though. That’s a tough break.”
“It is, but they’re pulling through. Sam’s mom got a job at Macy’s, and he’s delivering pizzas after school.” Kurt clicks on a pair of shoes he’s been lusting after for a good two months-but he sees the pricetag is just over three hundred dollars, which makes him feel nauseous considering the conversation at hand. He closes out of the website and pushes his computer away.
“Why don’t you invite him over for dinner on Friday?”
Kurt glances up. Burt’s usually very set in his ways about Friday dinners: it’s a time for family. No boyfriends, no girlfriends, just the four of them around the table. It’s sacred. “Friday?” Kurt repeats, just to be sure he heard correctly.
“Yes, Friday,” Burt confirms, and then, cottoning on to his expression, “The kid needs a homecooked meal, Kurt. I’ve been in those motels before. He’s probably eating nothing but sandwiches and cheeseburgers from McDonalds.”
“He likes Wendy’s better,” Kurt says, before he can stop himself. Burt gives him a look. “But, okay. Point proven. He might have to work but-but I’ll see if he wants to come.”
“Good.” Burt claps him on the back before departing towards the kitchen, taking the mail with him. “And find out what his favorite meal is,” he adds, over his shoulder and, not for the first time, Kurt’s grateful for the amazing dad he was given.
***
They get an A+ on their English project. Sam grabs him in a hug right after the grades are passed back, and Kurt’s caught off-guard enough that he doesn’t really respond. If Sam notices, though, he doesn’t let on. “I’ve never gotten an A in this class before,” he says happily, which makes Kurt feel good, like maybe he’s getting something out of this friendship too.
“Wanna be my partner for the Shakespeare project?” Sam asks later. “I promise I won’t make you do all the work. I already rented all three movie versions of Hamlet from the library.”
“That sounds great,” Kurt says, biting back a smile, “except, um, Sam? We’re reading King Lear.”
***
There’s a girl in Kurt’s geometry class, Kelli-Ann Gardner, whose name alone encompasses everything Kurt hates: exchanging i's for perfectly capable y’s, and unnecessary hyphenations, like she’s too good for just one name. She’s a Cheerio, blonde and peppy, and she’d probably be tolerable if she weren’t completely superficial and halfway made of plastic. He supposes, objectively, that she’s attractive, but she certainly doesn’t do anything for Kurt.
(“That’s a joke,” he tells Mercedes later, when she blinks at him humorlessly. “Because I’m gay.”)
They’ve probably exchanged six sentences all year, and five of them were some variation of how do you spell hypotenuse? which is why it’s startling when she plunks down in the seat next to his and waits until the teacher’s back is turned to lean across his desk and whisper in his ear.
“You’re, like, Sam Evans’ new best friend, right?” she asks, so close that he can smell her cherry lip gloss. The poor girl apparently lives in some alternative universe where artificial cherry-flavored anything is acceptable. Kurt almost takes pity on her.
“We’re friends,” he whispers back, unsure of where this is going. “Categorizing your friendships into classifications and ranks just looks desperate.”
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Is he single?”
Sam’s singledom hasn’t been much of an issue between them. It’s not something they really talk about, except for the time Santana made a detailed flowchart of the best kissers in glee club and Sam had groaned, quiet, and said under his breath, “I’m never dating again.” So he knows that, yes, Sam is single, but setting him up with Kelli-Ann seems unbearably cruel, and besides, what if she started hanging around? What if she wanted to join the glee club to spend more time with him? What if she found out about the motel and-
“Afraid not,” Kurt says. “He’s dating this, uh, college girl.”
Kelli-Ann gives him a scathing look of doubt.
“She’s a model,” he adds, sort of desperately. “…from Brazil.”
She sniffs pointedly and turns away from him then, staring down at her fingernails with a sort of unmasked determination. Kurt has no idea why he said that, what might’ve possibly inspired him to lie like that, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about smelling traces of artificial cherry for the rest of his high school career.
***
Sam approaches him at his locker after school.
“A college girl, huh?” he says first thing, grinning broadly.
Kurt tries not to wince as he fishes his history book out of his backpack. “It’s not implausible,” he says, voice tight, peeking over to make sure Sam’s not mad. At least he hadn’t said he was dating a middle schooler or, worse, that tragic girl in their biology class whose outfits always clash.
“Um, thanks, but I think the Brazilian model part kind of is.” Sam steps forward and, even though Kurt hadn’t asked him to, starts handing him the books he needs to take home. They work well together, like this. In unison.
“I don’t know,” Kurt says, “I think you could land a model.”
Sam looks at him.
“Maybe a model who’s been out of work for a while,” he clarifies. “You know. Maybe her family moved to America when she was two, and they paid for her private elementary school by having her model kids’ sweaters in Sears catalogues a couple times a year.”
That gets a laugh out of Sam, and he shakes his head, closing Kurt’s locker door. “I just wish I knew about my former-Sears-catalogue-model girlfriend before Puck had the chance to ask me if she has any single friends.”
“I was doing you a favor.” Kurt swings his backpack over one shoulder and they walk, together, towards the choir room. “You would’ve been mauled otherwise, and I hear Cheerios are known for their resoundingly sharp claws.”
“Well then,” Sam says, and he stops midstep to look at Kurt, his grin faded to something a little softer, but still there. “I appreciate it.” There’s a moment then, where Sam’s looking at Kurt and Kurt’s pointedly not looking at Sam, and there’s this weird energy in the air, or maybe Kurt’s imagining it, but then it passes as quickly as it’d come and Sam heads into the room, adding over his shoulder as he goes, “If you’re not busy on Tuesday, we should hang out. Mariana wants to meet you.”
Kurt follows him. “Mariana?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, dropping down into one of the seats. He smirks. “My girlfriend. Didn’t you hear? She’s from Brazil.”
***
Blaine calls when he’s at the motel with Sam. They’d originally planned to stop by the free art museum downtown, but Sam’s mom got called into work and someone needed to watch the kids, and Quinn wasn’t available on such short notice. Kurt doesn’t actually mind. Even if he can tell being there stresses Sam out, makes his jaw go a little tighter than normal, he likes being around his siblings. They’re amazingly well-behaved for their age.
Tonight, they’re watching a Disney movie-Sam had wanted Finding Nemo, Kurt had been vying for Beauty and the Beast, but Stacy had overruled them all and chosen Mulan-and they’re halfheartedly playing a game of War with Stevie, and that’s when his phone goes off. It’s right at the crux of the battle scene, and Kurt doesn’t want to disrupt it, so he sends a quick text to Blaine: Watching a movie. Can I call you later?
But two seconds later, his phone buzzes again: i need to talk to you now.
Blaine’s an understanding guy. He never pushes, he never gets annoyed when Kurt has to reschedule their dates: this is unlike him, enough to warrant a little worry. “I’ll be back,” he whispers to Sam, slipping out of the room and down to the motel parking lot, pacing back and forth between cars as he redials Blaine’s number.
Blaine answers on the first ring.
“Kurt,” he says, “I have bad news.”
Kurt’s stomach plummets. His voice is so serious, and he has the desperate, terrible, sinking feeling that he is about to be dumped. He’s never been dumped before-of course he hasn’t been dumped, he’s never had a relationship. But things had been going well. They were busy, sure, but who wasn’t busy at the end of the school year, and they had the entire summer ahead of them, and-
Blaine takes in a deep breath. “I’m moving.”
That-that wasn’t what Kurt had been expecting, and he fumbles for a second before remembering how to talk. His grip on the phone tightens. “You’re what? You’re moving?”
“Yeah. My dad got a new job.”
“Your dad got a new job.”
“In Colorado.”
“Your dad got a new job in Colorado.” Why can’t he stop repeating everything Blaine says? It doesn’t feel real, like it’s happening in another universe, to some other unlucky gay kid in a small town. He was the one with the drama-free relationship. He was the fortunate one.
“We’re leaving right after school gets out.”
Kurt squeezes his eyes shut. “And then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean us. And then what happens to us?”
There’s a long silence between them, stretched even longer by the muffled Disney music he can hear drifting through the paperthin walls. He leans against the bumper of Sam’s car-which is how he knows he’s upset, because he’s pretty sure Sam’s car hasn’t been washed in weeks.
“I don’t know how to be in a long distance relationship,” Blaine finally says, and Kurt lets out the breath he wasn’t aware he was holding.
“You’re breaking up with me.”
“No, I’m-I’m telling you I don’t know what to do here.”
Kurt absentmindedly winds his pashmina around his fist. His throat feels tight, but he’s not going to give into tears, not right now. Not in a parking lot. “It sounds to me like this isn’t leaving us with a lot of options. Blaine, you live ten minutes away and I barely see you as it is.”
Blaine makes a small humming noise, quiet and sad. “You think we should end it, then.”
“I just-otherwise, wouldn’t we be delaying the inevitable? I can’t be with you knowing that it’s going to end a month from now. I can’t live like that.”
“I don’t want to move.”
“I don’t want you to either.” And there it is. Kurt’s eyes are wet; blinking furiously, he reaches up to brush the tears away. “Can we meet tomorrow to talk about this? I-Mulan’s about to make her big speech, and you know how I feel about scenes of female empowerment.”
“Sure, Kurt,” Blaine says, a second late. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight.”
Instead of going back inside, though, he stands in the parking lot for a long time. So long that eventually the door swings open, and Sam steps out wearing flannel pajama pants and a baffled expression. “Hey,” he says, hand on the railing. “I thought you left.”
Kurt hurriedly wipes at his cheeks, just to be sure. He hates being transparent. “No, sorry. Lengthy phone call.”
Sam watches him for a moment. “Are you okay?”
“Who, me? Of course. But I should probably go, Sam. Sorry about running out on the end of the movie.”
“It’s cool,” Sam says. “Spoiler alert, but she saved China again.”
“How predictable.”
Sam holds out his hand. It takes Kurt a second to realize that he’s got his car keys, dangling from his fingertips. “You left them on the table,” he explains. “Stacy wanted to hide them so you’d have to spend the night, but I told her that wasn’t such a good idea.”
“She’s sneaky,” Kurt says, and he’s surprised to find that he’s smiling a little. “I like her.”
“She likes you too. A lot. Maybe more than she likes me, even.”
Kurt pulls in a deep breath and moves toward to take his keys. “Can’t fault a girl for having good taste. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Sure.” Sam looks at him carefully when he hands them over. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Positive,” he says, and he heads straight for his car, doesn’t allow himself to glance back. Pretend to be collected until he’s alone enough to fall apart. That’s always been his motto. He doesn’t want Sam to think he’s weak. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sam,” he adds, more clearly this time, and then he climbs in the driver’s seat and he drives away with no real destination in mind.
***
Kurt meets Blaine at the Lima Bean, their favorite haunt, and they have a conversation that lasts over two hours and results in a lot of tears. They both know what it is, though, that high school relationships were hard enough to maintain when they weren’t separated by thousands of miles and a two hour time difference. They’ll be friends. They’ll email. They’ll keep in contact, they will, but they won’t put off what’s bound to happen. They’ll still hang out until he leaves. They just won’t kiss, or hold hands, because that will make it harder. It is hard. It’s one of the hardest things Kurt’s ever done, and when he leaves the coffee shop all he wants is to be surrounded by his friends. But Mercedes and Tina are at a movie, and Rachel’s on a date with Finn, and before he even realizes what he’s doing, he’s driving to the motel, Sam’s motel, and knocking on the door.
Sam’s mom answers. She’s got the same blonde hair as Sam, the same bags under her eyes. “I’m sorry, hon,” she says, “Sam’s working right now.”
So Kurt leaves and, on the ride home, against his better judgment, he orders a pizza.
It arrives approximately thirty-seven minutes later in the hands of a freckly redhead with braces. In his desperation, apparently Kurt had forgotten that there were other delivery boys at the pizza place. He tips an extra three dollars because he feels guilty about the face he makes when he opens the door and realizes, and then he does what any sane person suffering his first heartbreak would do. He orders another pizza. This time he asks specifically if Sam can deliver it, and the girl on the phone hesitates for a long time before agreeing, though, she explains, it’ll probably be an extra thirty minute wait. “That’s fine,” Kurt says, because it’s not like he’s got anything else to do. He’s not even hungry.
An hour later, the doorbell rings. Sam’s wearing an expression he can’t quite put a finger on when he pulls the door open, and he licks his lips and says, “Our pizza’s not even the best in town, you know.”
“I know,” Kurt agrees lightly, taking the box from him. “The crust tastes like cardboard.”
Sam nods at something behind him. “What’s that?” he asks, and Kurt turns his head around to look. It’s the first pizza box, the one he hadn’t even opened, right on the hallway tabletop where he’d left it. In hindsight, he probably should’ve hidden the evidence.
Kurt sets the second pizza on top of the first, then faces Sam. He’s quick on his feet, but he’s pretty sure there’s no explanation in the world that can excuse him for this. “My appetite is insatiable these days?”
Sam just looks at him.
“Blaine and I broke up,” Kurt says, which is not how he’d meant to begin this conversation, and nowhere near eloquent, and also, he can feel the traitorous stabbing at the back of his eyes again, and this is all so very, completely wrong.
But Sam doesn’t even hesitate. “Oh man,” he says, reaching out and touching Kurt’s shoulder. He doesn’t make a big spectacle out of it, the way some of the other guys do, like they’re not sure where to put their hand, like an inch too high or too low can give the wrong message. Sam doesn’t buy into that. Kurt appreciates it more than he can say. “I’m sorry, dude. I didn’t even know you guys were having trouble or whatever.”
“He’s moving,” Kurt says, looking down. “In a month.”
“Wow. That sucks so hard. Are you okay?”
Kurt draws in a breath. “I will be. I’ve just… never really had to deal with this before.”
Sam smiles at him sort of sadly. “They don’t get any easier,” he says, and then, studying his face, “Is this why you ordered a pizza?”
All at once, Kurt feels humiliated. How desperate did he look? He was like one of those sad women who blabbed their life stories to their hairdressers, or the old men he got stuck behind in checkout lines because they kept detailing their painstaking weekends to the cashiers. Sam was working and, besides, why would he care about his relationship? He was stupid to assume. “I… maybe,” he says, averting his gaze to the side. “I guess I just needed someone to talk to.”
“And you were willing to buy a fifteen dollar crappy pizza for it to be me?” There’s a small smile still playing at Sam’s lips. Like maybe he doesn’t think he’s completely pathetic after all.
“Two crappy pizzas,” Kurt corrects him, wanting to crawl inside a hole.
“That… is so awesome.”
Kurt looks up sharply. “It is?”
“Yeah, of course it is. Santana used to order pizzas when we were dating and then go make me pick them up just so she could use our living room TV without me for a while. And when Finn and Quinn broke up I didn’t even find out for, like, a week. No one ever tells me anything.”
“You’re a really good friend, Sam,” Kurt says, putting his hand on top of Sam’s for a brief second, their fingers overlapping. “I’m sorry more people don’t realize that.”
Sam grins at him. “I have two more pizzas to deliver,” he says, but not like he’s in any big hurry to get going. “And I get good tips when I’m there early. Are you going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Kurt says, because somehow, he already feels better. Like this was enough. The fact that Sam wanted to be there for him was enough. “Go work hard for the money.” He smiles self-indulgently. “So hard for it, honey.”
Sam tilts his head, lost.
“Nevermind,” Kurt sighs, and then he presses a twenty into Sam’s hand for the pizza. Who knew having friends would be such an expensive hobby. “Thanks for coming. Even though you sort of had to.”
“I would have anyway,” Sam says, shrugging. He pauses. “I’m off at ten, if you want… I could come back.”
Kurt rubs his neck. He hadn’t expected that. He thinks he should probably stop underestimating Sam. “Are you sure your parents wouldn’t mind?”
“Yeah. My mom keeps saying I need to get out of the-”
That’s Kurt’s cue. “If you can, that’d be awesome. You don’t have to though. I’m probably just going to watch Singin’ in the Rain thirty times in a row.”
“I’ll bring the chocolate ice cream,” Sam offers, and when Kurt lifts an eyebrow, he simply adds, “You keep telling me how much I need to see that movie.”
“It is a seminal classic.”
“Well then,” Sam says, and adjusts the baseball hat on his head. “I guess it’s a date.”
***
Sam smells like pizza when he gets to Kurt’s house two hours later, and not in the good way. Like he’d been dipped into a giant vat of sauce and fake cheese. Kurt suspects at least half of the offending odor is coming from Sam’s work shirt, so he slips into Finn’s room (with his hand over his eyes, he doesn’t want to see anything he doesn’t have to) and rummages through his closet for a clean one. (Not surprisingly, not even all the shirts on hangers are clean. Finn’s disgusting like that.) He finds a recently-washed black v-neck and carries it back downstairs; without even hesitating, Sam peels off his dirty shirt right there and pulls on the new one.
Kurt doesn’t mean to stare, but, well. He doesn’t often have shirtless boys in his basement. Especially not ones that look like Sam Evans.
Apparently Sam catches his gaze, though, because a second later he shrugs sort of uncomfortably and looks at the ground. “I haven’t been able to eat as well as I want to lately,” he says, mumbling a little bit. Finn’s shirt is too big on him. It makes him look smaller, younger.
“What?”
“And I haven’t really had time to hit the gym as hard as I should be…”
As if he had absolutely anything to be ashamed of. Kurt realizes what he’s getting at and blanches, stopping himself just in time from saying that he has the best body he’s seen since that eye-opening magazine April Rhodes had given him last year. He swallows and tries for something a little more tactful. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You look fine.”
Sam flashes him a strained smile. “Fine doesn’t cut it in public school.”
“No, seriously, Sam.” Kurt’s cheeks feel warm. He hopes he’s not noticeably blushing, and he wishes he’d thought to keep the lights off. No one could see red cheeks in the muted glow of the television. “You have nothing to worry about. I promise.”
“Oh. Well. Thanks.” Sam drops down onto the plush leather couch, letting his legs dangle over the armrest. For a second, he lets his eyes fall shut, like he could fall asleep right then and there, but then he stretches and opens them again a second later. “If I crash during the movie just throw a pillow at me.”
“Long night?”
“The longest.”
Kurt fumbles the DVD out of its case-it was resting on top of the TV already, ready for emergency viewings-and slides it in. “Any interesting customers?”
“There was one.”
“Oh?” Kurt turns around, bracing his elbow against the wall.
“Yeah. Some guy ordered two pizzas even though he clearly wasn’t going to eat any.”
Kurt laughs and pretends to throw the DVD at him. Sam lifts his hands, but only halfheartedly, like he trusts that he’s not going to be decapitated via movie case tonight.
“By the way,” Sam says casually, perking up, “is any of that pizza still left?”
“I don’t know how you can stand to eat it after being around it for five hours,” Kurt returns, but he marches upstairs and fetches one of the boxes anyway.
They start the movie in companionable silence; Kurt sits on the other end of the couch, the pizza box between them. Sam folds his pizza slices in half and then shoves the majority of it into his mouth, like maybe it’s been awhile since he’d last eaten. Kurt can’t ever even remember seeing him eat pizza before. He used to make faces when Puck and Finn would inhale it in front of him in the cafeteria.
For Sam’s sake, Kurt resists the urge to mouth along with the words. He’s seen it so many times that it’s second-nature to him, but Sam at least looks a little engrossed, which is better than almost any other guy he tries to force it on. His dad had actually snuck a headphone into his ear halfway through so he could listen to a ballgame, and the only reason Kurt found out was because he jumped up during Kurt’s favorite scene and yelled, “CRAPPY CALL, REF,” which was not a bout of musical-inspired adlibbing, as much as he’d like to pretend.
Twenty minutes later, though, when Kurt’s sixth favorite part comes up, he looks over excitedly to make sure Sam understands the importance of what’s about to happen-and Sam’s fast asleep, cheek pressed against the couch cushion, a tiny smudge of pizza sauce on his bottom lip. He makes tiny breathy noises every time he exhales, and Kurt has to fight the desire to brush his hair out of his eyes. Instead, he puts the movie on pause, throws a blanket over Sam’s lower half, and sets an alarm on his phone for midnight. He figures his parents wouldn’t be too happy if he never came home, but Sam had looked so exhausted that he doesn’t have the heart to wake him up just yet. He lowers the volume on the TV drastically and hits play again, snuggling down into his own corner of the couch, and just as he starts to drift off to the steady sound of Sam’s breathing, he realizes that somehow, somehow, he hasn’t thought about Blaine once.
***
That doesn’t hold true for long, though. Kurt spends the next week and a half thinking about Blaine and little else. The following day at school Finn claps him awkwardly on the shoulder in glee club, and the always-helpful Puck makes a list of everything he didn’t like about Blaine, which was surprisingly long for a guy who’s only met him three or four times. (When Puck gets to number seven, the fact that he chews with his mouth open, Kurt starts to suspect that he’s making things up.) Having his friends around helps. Rachel Berry, the self-dubbed Queen of Successful Breakups (Kurt thinks that’s stretching it a bit far, but he doesn’t say so out loud), leaves little messages inside his locker, like Keep your chin up! or Tomorrow’s another day! It doesn’t help with the actual breakup, but it does make him laugh.
Mostly, though, he likes having Sam around. Kurt hadn’t realized how nice it was to have male friends until he had one, one that he hung out with outside of school and not just because they lived in the same house. He loves his girls; there’s no doubt about that. But Sam gets things in a way that Mercedes and Tina can’t. Also, he’s way less opinionated, which is nice during the times when Kurt wants to have everything he’s said taken as fact with little to no rebuttal. (Which is almost always.)
He also has a way of making Kurt’s problems look miniscule. Like, sure, he and Blaine broke up-Blaine, who he was pretty convinced was the first real love of his life (Finn didn’t count, because the feelings were never returned)-but at least he had a roof over his head. At least he didn’t have to work in fast food. And they actually do things. They take Stevie and Stacy to the play area in the mall, sitting amongst tired-looking moms and annoyed-looking dads, sipping lattes and talking about the upcoming summer. Kurt drags Sam to local theatre productions; Sam drags Kurt to action movies at the dollar theater. Kurt teaches Sam how to play a few songs on the piano. Sam teaches Kurt how to correctly hold a guitar.
It’s a rewarding friendship, maybe one of the most rewarding he’s ever had.
It doesn’t hurt that Sam’s easy on the eyes, either.
By week three post-breakup, Kurt’s no longer spending all of his time thinking about Blaine.
***
Friday nights are back to being routine, but it’s a new routine. One that involves Sam. Burt’s always been a stickler about the food being on the table at 7:30 sharp, but they’ve pushed it back to 8:30 because Sam’s mom doesn’t get back to the motel until eight. Finn and Sam play videogames until dinner, while Kurt and Carole do most of the cooking. Afterwards, they take turns cleaning-though they shoo Sam out of the kitchen every time, insisting he’s a guest, and guests aren’t allowed to help-and the others retire to the living room for a sports game or whatever happens to be on TV. This is the time Kurt spends planning his weekend outfits. He couldn’t give a rip about the Cincinnati Redsox, or whatever that baseball team is.
When the game’s over, they’ll usually put in a movie downstairs. Sometimes Finn invites Rachel over to join them, but more often than not he knows that’ll result in them being finagled into a musical or a chick flick that he doesn’t want to see. Sam’s never really opinionated about their choices, which means Finn is virtually outnumbered.
“Oh my god,” Finn groans for the thirteenth time in one of the chick flick occasions, hitting himself over the head with a couch cushion. “Just kiss her. What is he waiting for?”
“She’s in a relationship, Finn,” Rachel hisses back, without ever pulling her eyes from the screen. “She’s dating his best friend! He can’t just kiss her-though, I have to admit, their chemistry is undeniable.”
“I still think he should kiss her,” Finn says grumpily.
Kurt rolls his eyes. “You would.”
Twenty minutes later, the boy still hasn’t kissed the girl and Finn’s comments have become increasingly more annoying. Finally, he scoffs and climbs up from his spot on the sofa. “I can’t take this anymore,” he says, reaching out towards Rachel. “Come on.”
She takes his hand, confused. “Where are we going?”
“Out. Anywhere. Anything is better than this.”
Rachel’s face just about lights up at the possibility. “Can we go to that wooden boat at the park and reenact the final scene of Titanic the Musical?”
For a split second, Finn looks like he’s reevaluating his decision, his face scrunching up in his pained, slightly constipated-looking expression. But eventually, tight-jawed and almost regretfully, he nods. “Yeah. I guess. If we can stop and get hotdogs first.”
“Finn, you just finished eating.”
Their argument carries up the stairs as they go, and Finn’s explaining something about exercise vs. eating ratios that make no sense, and the last thing they hear right before the door closes is, “We’re supposed to have a really windy season, so if I don’t eat enough, it’s totally possible that I could be blown away.”
Kurt plants his face into his hands, shaking his head. “Sometimes I think he just talks to hear the sound of his own voice,” he says, and then glances over at Sam, who’s laughing silently at the opposite end of the room. “I apologize for him.”
“Nah, it’s cool,” Sam says, letting his feet drop to the carpet below and sitting up straighter. “He has a point.”
“Not you too.” Kurt sighs, but in an endearing sort of way. He’d once walked in on Sam and Finn talking about whether or not you could see farts in winter the way you could see your breath sometimes, when it was cold enough, so he supposes nothing should surprise him now. He grabs the remote control and gestures at the television, where the movie is only half-over and slow-going at that. “I guess there’s no point in finishing this. Unless you wanted to?”
Sam makes a face. “You know, as much as I love romantic comedies…”
“You don’t give a damn which man she ends up with,” Kurt finishes for him, because that’s pretty much the entire plot in a nutshell anyway. It had been Rachel’s pick. (Besides, he’s already seen it three times.) “Understandable. Should we put something else in?”
“I don’t know if I have the attention span for another movie,” Sam says. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hands like a sleepy child. “I feel like I’m about to doze off just sitting here.”
Kurt watches him for a few seconds. “You can spend the night, you know,” he offers, even though that’s not-that’s not anything they’ve ever done before. His ‘guy sleepovers’ had mostly ended in middle school, when kids began calling him names he’d never heard of and saying things about his friends behind their backs. Blaine had spent the night before, but only because he was too drunk to get home, and Puck would sometimes crash when he and Finn stayed up too late playing videogames. But Kurt both knows and hates that when he has a guy sleep over, there’s a whole unspoken layer behind it. Like he’s got some sort of ulterior motive, when all he’s really doing is inviting a friend to stay the night.
Sam nods slowly, like he’s thinking it over. But not in a guarded way. Not like Kurt’s some sort of predator. “I might, actually,” he says, “if you’re sure your dad won’t care. Even this couch beats getting kicked by Stacy every night. And Stevie talks in his sleep.”
“My dad won’t care and you don’t have to sleep on that couch. I’d say you could take over Finn’s bed but let’s face it, I’m not sure he knows how to operate the washing machine, let alone ever cleans his sheets. But we’ve got a foldout that’s surprisingly comfortable.”
Kurt loves the way Sam grins, slow and easy, the way it takes over his face, the way he tries to downplay it by glancing down, eyes flickering to the floor. Maybe it’s because he’s self-conscious about his own smile that he’s hyperaware of everyone else’s, or maybe it’s just because Sam has really nice teeth.
“That sounds great,” he says. “Thanks, Kurt.”
“Don’t mention it. Hey, do you want a glass of milk?”
Sam’s eyebrows lift. “Milk?”
It’s too late for carbs and too early to brush his teeth. Besides, Kurt thinks, even though Sam has been spending a lot of time over at the house, they haven’t spent a lot of it just talking. Time like that is invaluable.
“I like to have a glass before bed,” Kurt explains. “It helps me sleep.”
“Sure,” Sam says, shrugging his shoulders. “Why not?”
The trip upstairs only takes a few seconds. Kurt pauses to pop his head into his dad’s bedroom, tells him that Sam is spending the night, and Burt shrugs and says “sure, that’s fine, spare blankets are in the storage closet,” before he continues on into the kitchen, fetches two glasses of milk and fills them to the brim. When he gets back down to the basement, walking carefully to avoid any spillage, Sam’s sprawled out on the floor, head propped up on his elbow, and ESPN’s on the TV.
“Hi,” he says, turning his head to meet his gaze. “I just wanted to check the score of the Braves game.”
Kurt nods and passes one of the glasses over, lowering himself into a cross-legged sitting position a few feet away. “Are they winning?”
“It ended an hour ago. They won in the eleventh inning.”
“Interesting,” Kurt says, even though it’s not. He takes a sip.
Sam curls his hand around his own glass, drawing circles in the condensation with his thumb. He has rough and callused guitar-playing fingers but mostly clean fingernails, which is something Kurt can appreciate. “Sorry. I know you don’t care about sports.”
“Mm, you watched a two-hour documentary about Fashion Week with me. I at least owe you this.”
“I slept through most of it,” Sam points out, but Kurt chooses to disregard that bit of information.
SportsCenter ends and Sam lifts the remote lazily, flicks the TV off and casts them into the dim lighting of Kurt’s environmentally-friendly table lamp. He’d never admit to this-because he knows how it looks, knows how it sounds-but Kurt secretly likes when they’re alone, just the two of them, When they hang out one-on-one. When there’s no one else there to misconstrue their friendship, when he can be himself without worrying about how it looks to anyone on the outside.
“Kurt,” Sam says suddenly, and he looks up. His voice is quieter, more serious. Tight but not embarrassed, not overly emotional. Maybe a little raw in its sincerity. “I just wanted to make sure you know how cool I think you are. How cool you’ve been about… well, everything.”
There are a lot of things running through Kurt’s mind at that moment. How touched he is. How unnecessary the sentiment-how requited the feeling. Questions he wants to ask, topics he wants to approach. But at this time of night, in the intimacy of the basement, with the door upstairs closed and his dad in bed, it doesn’t seem right. There’s something off. When Sam pushes his hair back away from his forehead and meets his eyes, his throat goes inexplicably dry. There’s a moment, then, that passes between the two of them as tangible as the floor itself, the couches, the untouched bowl of popcorn balancing crookedly on the coffee table, where neither of them are speaking and neither of them are looking away, and something heavy and unspoken lingers in the air. Sam has really nice eyes; Kurt wonders vaguely if Sam’s thinking the same thing about him.
But then Sam clears his throat and the moment is gone.
Or maybe it hadn’t existed at all. Kurt’s been known to make those sort of things up in his mind. He swallows the imaginary lump in his throat and decides to take the safest route. The cowardly route.
“We should get to bed,” he says, and then, clarifying, “Our separate beds.”
Sam grins at him, and he’s glad that nothing’s changed. “As opposed to?”
Thankfully, Kurt’s quick on his feet, refuses to fumble over his words or his actions. It was a defense mechanism he’d been forced to develop right around the time he hit puberty and everyone else’s voices began to change and deepen, and his stayed the same.
“As opposed to the giant fifteen-person bed we keep hidden in the attic. In fact, there’s no floor. It’s all mattress.”
“Sounds cool,” Sam says, but even as he’s speaking he’s climbing to his knees, ready to leave both this conversation and this night behind. He pauses, half-kneeling, and drains the remainder of his milk in one effortless, casual swallow. “You should show it to me sometime.”
Kurt looks away. “I will,” he says, and his throat feels tight. “If you’re lucky.”
part two.