trouble, part one; glee
Title: The Trouble With Dreams (1/2)
Pairings: Sam/Kurt, mentions of past Blaine/Kurt and heavy on Puck/Kurt and Finn/Kurt friendships.
Summary: Kurt takes a year longer than he’d expected to get to New York, a year that isn’t at all as terrible as he thought it would be. Kurt-centric.
THE TROUBLE WITH DREAMS
After Rachel gets accepted into NYADA and he, instead, gets a very polite letter of rejection, Kurt decides he’s done with settling.
It takes a while for anybody to ask him about it. His family tiptoe around the subject - around all of his friends moving away for different colleges and the growing number of boxes he has to pass by in Rachel’s house whenever he visits her now. Finn’s the one who brings it up with him, while they’re in a mutual state of mourning exactly a week after Kurt and Rachel’s letters come through - Finn because he has to say goodbye to Rachel, like he always knew he would, and Kurt because he has to say goodbye to his dream, like he’d never let himself believe he’d have to, not once.
Kurt makes them breakfast in the morning, silently, hands Finn his plate of omelet, silently, and Finn watches him with totally unsubtle apprehension the whole time. But Kurt doesn’t complain at all when his step-brother turns the channel from the news to cartoons and that’s when Finn stops chewing loudly to turn to him in concern.
Finn’s had his own life-plan laid out for a while now. Kurt still has to help him out sometimes in the garage or fix little things he forgets to do in an appropriately Finn-esque manner before their dad notices, then lecture him for it later, but in complete honesty Kurt’s surprised at how set on improving Finn is, at how much he wants to take over the shop, and kind of - proud, really.
It’s just that Kurt never once thought he’d be the son who ended up lost after highschool.
Finn clears his throat and takes a moment to rub his eyes before asking, sleepily, “So, what d’you think you’ll do now?”
All Kurt knows that the Hummel Tyres and Lube is not where he wants to work for a living. Lima will never be where he belongs. And he’s good at fighting for the things he wants and, more importantly, the things he is - too good for Lima, Ohio, to have any longer, too bright a star for his dad’s garage.
He pauses, thoughtfully sipping on his glass of orange juice. Then he nods. “NYADA,” he says again, just like he did last year, all year round. He can do it again, one more time.
Finn knows it, too. He lets out a laugh and grins at Kurt with his food between his teeth. “Of course,” he agrees, reaching out to enthusiastically ruffle Kurt’s hair with his greasy fingers with one hand and turn the volume up on the TV with the other.
-
They say goodbye to a lot of people. Puck stays, and Sam, Artie, Tina and Blaine are only just seniors - Kurt doubts he and Finn will see much of Blaine anymore, though, or at least he hopes as much.
Quinn says she has to leave Lima, and she and her mom move out of state only a handful of days after her graduation, very quietly; Mike’s parents end up paying tuition for a performing arts college and he goes, first; Santana and Brittany are separated by one state and give each other little souvenirs of themselves for the other’s dorm room before they leave in the middle of August together. The worst is Rachel, by far, for a thousand reasons - some Kurt’s ashamed to have but can’t deny are there.
“I always thought we’d be going together,” he tells her, just a little shakily. Her dads are loading up the car with pink suitcases, the handbag Kurt bought her last year for her birthday. He’s holding her hand too tightly, and if it hurts her she doesn’t care to mention it at all. She squeezes back just as firmly and for the first time in since she got her letter of acceptance looks suddenly, sincerely upset.
She shakes her head and looks at their feet. “New York will always be our place, Kurt.” When Rachel looks back up at him her eyes have glossed over, but she’s still smiling, and sometimes Kurt is surprised at how much he can wholeheartedly love her, at how scared he is that he’ll miss her all year round. “We both know this isn’t the end of the line. Not for you.” She almost laughs at the idea; Kurt almost bursts into tears at the idea of her leaving, the idea of learning how to be being lonely all over again.
He leans down and kisses her cheek. “Make me proud,” he tells her, half-jokingly, and when he hugs her the part of him that resents her for being the one who gets to go first time around disappears completely, and all that’s left is Rachel, leaning up on her tiptoes to stage-whisper in his ear, “I’ll see you next year,” before she pulls away with a teary smile and turns to say her goodbyes to Finn, just time for Kurt to hastily wipe his eye son his sleeves without anybody noticing.
-
His dad doesn’t seem too inclined to talk about it. He’s used to Kurt knowing what to do, Kurt knowing what’s best for himself, and he’s right to be, because Kurt still does. But sometimes, and only sometimes, Kurt will reach into his bottom drawer, underneath all of his socks and ties, and pull out a letter from the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts to pour over despairingly for a while. Once, Burt catches him doing this.
He sighs and adjusts his hat before he sets down next to Kurt on his bed. Kurt lets his dad pull the letter from his hands and put it back into the torn, crumpling envelope, and then Kurt lets him put an arm around his shoulders and pull him close to his side like he used to years ago when Kurt was scared and his mom was sick. Burt kisses the top of his head and Kurt feels like a stupid kid for feeling better because of it, for leaning into it like he does.
Burt squeezes him again and says, firmly, “I’m always proud of you, kid.”
They sit that way for a while and when Kurt starts to pull away his dad stands up again and smiles down at him, clasping a hand over his shoulder, and despite how hopeless he still feels Kurt finds it in himself to smile back in gratitude.
When his dad leaves he takes the letter with him, because one thing he isn’t willing to get used to is Kurt living in the past.
-
What Kurt lacked last year was having extra-curricular activities outside of ‘background singer of failing glee club.’ He can be bitter about it for a while, he’s decided. He can ignore Brittany’s messages and Santana’s messages demanding he stop ignoring them as long as it takes, and he can ignore Will Schuester’s existence as long as he is not featured as a soloist at any competitions, which Kurt calculates at around forever.
There isn’t much enthusiasm for performing arts in Lima, and even Kurt doubts his ability to have the town spontaneously and collectively form an interest in it, especially given that most of it’s inhabitants loathe him just because, but he knows some of the people who put on local productions, mostly thanks to Rachel and Blaine, and he there’s no harm in trying to find some kind of work there.
The people who work in the tiny little theatre complex in town are nice and most of them have a crazed vibe similar to one Rachel Berry which kind of comforts him now, and he thankfully knows how to deal with now, an ability he’s sure will come in handy in the theatre industry for a whole lifetime. Some of them remember him and ask about Rachel.
Others remember him and ask about his boyfriend.
“Ex-boyfriend,” he corrects after an awkward moment. The woman he’s talking to has the manners to look sad, and he wonders how he looks to her - freshly broken up with from the handsome boy who played at Six Flags two years ago and not in college, not in anything at all. It does him no good so he stops. He’s better than that, he knows it, so he tips his head up and smiles and tells her, maturely, “It’s okay, really,” even though he doesn’t know if it’s okay because he hasn’t let himself think about Blaine in so long, either.
The lady smiles back at him. “Well, whenever your ready.” Then she gestures at him to start.
Kurt sings and forgets everything else in the world for some long, lovely moments.
-
He’s been avoiding Sam, lately.
Sam’s parents have been insisting he come over for dinner ever since he got The Letter and he thought Sam would understand his pointedly ignoring every one of his texts and missed calls but apparently nothing is going to stop him. The last message Kurt gets is just talk to me about it, and it makes him feel terrible because every other message Sam sends is laden with signs of his dyslexia and this one is perfectly understandable English, so he knows he put effort in, that Sam really means it.
He just isn’t ready to talk about it to somebody who isn’t Finn, or his father, or Carole. They’re his family, and they know more than anybody how resilient he is, but Kurt is tired of having to prove it to everybody else in the world. Kurt is tired, and the year technically hasn’t even started for him yet. He’s hasn’t answered messages from Mr Schue or Tina or Blaine (but they agreed not to talk for a while, so he wasn’t sure what to do there), but Sam is more insistent about it and it makes him feel guilty.
Sam is so insistent that he randomly shows up on Kurt’s porch at seven in the morning one day the week before he returns to school, grinning like Kurt hasn’t spent the past month paying him no attention at all.
Kurt’s glad he woke up earlier this morning because answering the door pre-shower would just have been too mortifying for him - at least he knows he looks good for whatever awkward conversation is about to ensue. He smiles back, tight-lipped, and Sam stands there doing that endearing teenage boy thing with his hands in his pockets and feet scruffing the welcome mat with his big, crooked smile and Kurt doesn’t know how anybody could have the will to stay mad at a boy like him.
“Hey, man,” Sam greets him. He waves. He doesn’t look half as pitying as Kurt expected, of course not, he physically couldn’t - he looks the same as always, like sweetheart Sam Evans, nervously shuffling around on his front porch because he’s worried for Kurt.
A year ago something like this would have made Kurt’s month.
He just laughs, mostly at himself, and stands back so Sam can come inside. “Hey, yourself,” he says. There’s lingering guilt at the fact he ignored him for so long so when Sam’s inside the house, taking off his shoes at the door so they can go up to Kurt’s room, Kurt starts out apologetically, “About dinner, I...”
Sam’s just waving him off, shaking his head. “My fault,” he says distractedly, frowning and trying to unwork the knot of his shoelaces. Kurt bends down and bats his hands away to undo it himself, faster. Sam leans back and lets him. “It wasn’t really - I mean, it wasn’t really my place. Or my parents’.”
“It was sweet of them, though,” Kurt offers, because it was. Sam’s family are some of the sweetest people he knows, Sam included. They make a fuss over Kurt (and Quinn, for that matter) because of the help they got last year. Sam included.
He stands up again and Sam slides his feet out of his shoes and shows Kurt his pair of Simpsons socks in the process. When he realizes, he looks up at Kurt, smiling, and Kurt shakes his head and says plainly, “I’m embarrassed for the both of us.”
Sam’s smile stretches. “I wore them just for you, y’know.”
Kurt heaves a fake sigh and leads him upstairs, into his room. It doesn’t feel like highschool or post-highschool or - anything, really. Since Rachel left and Finn got full-time down at the garage Kurt’s felt so odd and out of place, and Sam being around in his letterman jacket, as always, doesn’t help matters at all.
They sit on Kurt’s bed. It’s quiet for a moment.
Sam swallows next to him. He looks searchingly into his face and Kurt suddenly sees Finn’s look of concern somewhere in Sam’s bright, bright green eyes. “I was kind of worried because you weren’t talking, and I asked around and everybody else said you weren’t talking to them, either. Finn said you were okay, but...” He looks lost for words and then just shrugs. “You seem fine, though.” Kurt doesn’t have time to feel guilty. Sam bumps their shoulders together and his insides are overcome with feelings they really shouldn’t be overcome with anymore. “You gave me a scare.”
“Sorry,” Kurt tells him, voice soft. He looks away, to where his hands are clasped on his knees and frowns. “I just don’t want to talk about it to everybody yet.” He’s tired of stuff like this. He’s tired of losing and getting left behind and he doesn’t want it anymore.
He feels Sam’s arm around his shoulders and freezes. When he turns to him in surprise, Sam’s face is almost solemn.
“You’re gonna be great,” he tells Kurt, and then his lips quirk into a smile. His body against Kurt’s side feels nice and warm and more tangible than anything else has in a long while, and the way he pulls Kurt closer to his side makes his stomach do something wholly embarrassing.
But he just laughs again, smirks. “Like we didn’t all already know.”
-
Kurt gets a part in a local production of Pippin, but he needs to do more. He gets involved in his father’s political work - or more involved than he already is. He looks for anything at all to do with the performing arts in Lima but in the end he knows where he’ll end up - in the choir room of Mckinley high helping Mr Schuester figure out a new topic for the week while trying to avoid Blaine’s eyes and the faces of every teacher and student that told him before he wouldn’t make it; that he couldn’t.
He’ll put it off as long as he can. In the meantime, he starts calling Rachel and Mercedes again and he, Puck and Sam start hanging around in Puck’s basement when Kurt isn’t busy looking for some tiny nearby gateway to New York. Puck constantly tells him to ease up, that barely a month’s passed since he was rejected and he needs to “cool the fuck down already.” Sam constantly tells him that glee club is weird, school is just weird without the rest of them, and Kurt’s doesn’t know if it’s because he wants Kurt to show up there and assist like they both know he’ll inevitably have to or if he just wants Kurt sympathy, but Kurt has a two year long list of reasons why that option seems unlikely.
“Maybe I do need a breather,” he says. He doesn’t even have school anymore and he’s far more stressed out than last year with his exams and his boyfriend and his mess of a school life.
Puck glances at him approvingly and offers a beer with the hand that isn’t wrapped around his Wii controller. Kurt takes it, because he may as well, and he knows Puck likes when he drinks because he gets to send messages to Finn at work about how they’re sitting around shitfaced and playing old SNES games, even though Kurt still has absolutely no idea what a SNES is or how they can be playing that on the Wii.
Sam reaches his hand out for a beer, too, and Puck laughs in his face.
“No way, Sammy.” He turns back to the TV wearing wicked grin. “There’s a new rule in this house: we do shit legally now.”
Sam snorts and turns to the both of them with his eyebrows raised. “What, did you put that in place yesterday after we went through a six-pack together?”
Kurt smiles up at Sam and opens his can of beer. “School night,” he reminds him, sweetly.
“Yeah, you can’t show up to class hungover, man,” Puck tells him, and Kurt can’t help rolling his eyes at Puck of all people laying down this law. Apparently, he notices, and starts to needlessly backtrack. “Well, you can, but I can tell you from past experience you don’t learn jack when you do. And you need to get your shit together this year if you’re planning on heading up North next year.”
Kurt blinks. That’s the first he heard of that plan.
-
Burt lets him help out more with the campaign. Maybe a little more than he should, because he’s feeling sick and whenever his dad so much as sneezes their family goes into alert mode, and Finn stumbles around to make water soup and Carole stocks up on foods exclusively from the vegan store Rachel’s parents showed her and Kurt doesn’t really leave his side at all.
“There’ll come a day when you have to quit babying me,” Burt tells him gruffly, lying on the living room couch with a mouth full of too-fluffy pillow.
Kurt rolls his eyes and pushes the pill on the table closer towards him, indicatively. “I could say the same for you,” he sighs.
He goes over all the decisions with his dad and Carole. If there’s anything he’s learned from trying to find any running local arts programmes it’s that there barely are any, and the arts have been a major part of his dad’s campaign since it started. Burt says there should be more for him to do, that he’ll make more.
“I think we’ll both win this year,” he says to Kurt before he falls asleep.
-
Sam shows up on Friday night and asks for help on his French homework. His parents are asleep - and his dad’s getting better, which is a relief to the whole house - and Puck took Finn out earlier to find girls Finn isn’t ready to find - and he’s having more and more trouble telling Sam no lately at all.
He waves Sam inside and helps him undo his laces at the door, quietly leading him to his bedroom and not thinking about the thin, tight fabric of Sam’s shirt pulled across his chest and arms, because that’s just inappropriate and even if when he asks, Puck says Sam never talks about girls anymore - and gives Kurt this annoying, lewd expression afterwards - Sam is still straight and Kurt is still very decidedly done with straight boys.
That doesn’t change the weight of the air when they sit alone together in Kurt’s room, like they have a dozen times before without any of this particular brand of - oddness. Kurt refuses to give it a name that isn’t ‘nothing’, but it’s hard to do when Sam stares at his lips intently, even when Kurt’s not speaking French and they should both be looking at his textbook.
“It’s funny,” Kurt says, trying to defuse whatever this might be. Lying across his bed side by side is a mistake, he realizes, after he and Sam’s feet ticklishly brush for the hundredth time of the night. He clears his throat and watches Sam watching his mouth. “I did all these questions last year already.”
Sam doesn’t look away. His lips part and he licks across the upper one and flicks his eyes up to Kurt’s face once and back down to his mouth again before he answers. “That’s funny,” he murmurs, distractedly. “Lucky I have you.”
Kurt doesn’t know what to say to that at all.
“Can you read out the question again?” Sam asks for the third time, his cheeks a little flushed and Kurt swallows because he feels like Sam is speaking some other language from English and French entirely, some language Kurt has no idea of.
Or maybe just a little. He lets out a soft breath and looks into Sam’s half-lidded, pale eyes. “'que'est-ce que tu feras l'année prochaine?”
Sam’s hand slides beneath the textbook cover and he closes it over, quietly, without even a glance. He doesn’t say a word at all; his leg slips to cross with Kurt’s and he leans closer and closer, breath warm against Kurt’s cheek when he has his forehead pressed against his temple.
“I don’t think I taught you very much,” Kurt huffs out in one last ditch effort at stopping this, all this.
One of Sam’s hands reaches out and catches in Kurt’s hair. His thumb strokes over Kurt’s cheekbone and it’s been a while since somebody touched him this loving, this way. “I wouldn’t say that,” Sam says, and his voice is low enough to make Kurt’s eyes flutter closed at the sound.
His fingers drag through Kurt’s hair and his lips are brushing the skin of his cheek and Kurt doesn’t know what tonight is, what they’re doing, but he knows he wants to kiss Sam. He takes a deep breath and - he does.
He missed kisses. He missed touching. Sam’s lips feel so nice and insistent and eager against his, soft and he makes this noise in the back of his throat at the feel of Kurt’s tongue sweeping his pouty bottom lip that Kurt feels shaking him down to his bones. Both his hands cup Kurt’s face and their legs begin to tangle. Kurt’s hands can’t help travelling up the smooth, firm plane of Sam’s back when Sam rolls on top of him and starts licking a little desperately into his mouth, and as messy as it is it feels kind of spectacular - and it’s Sam, for God’s sake.
“You are -” Sam breathes into his mouth, and Kurt knows - Kurt’s always known just a bit, enough for it to be easily ignored. He’s always been a tiny bit in love with Sam; he’s always caught Sam looking at him just a tiny bit too much. He pulls Sam down into another kiss and winds his fingers into messy blond locks, feeling almost free.
-
This year is not about boys, Kurt tells himself. He has rehearsals later in the afternoon and this year is not about boys.
-
He is the best performer at rehearsals, and he’s pretty sure they were all aware of it, too. His dad’s campaign is booming and since Sue dropped out this year it’s much less somebody-might-cut-the-brakes-of-his-car and much more sane, so his dad’s got a much better shot. All that’s really left to do is call Mr Schuester and ask how he can help out in a school that’s hated him from day one.
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Finn advises him, shrugging. He’s in his overalls and covered in grease, spread across the living room couch and Kurt would yell at him for it if he didn’t look so tired. Instead he puts a pillow under his head and lets him rest a little longer. “You knew you were better than everyone at that school last year, what’s the difference now?”
Now Kurt doesn’t know if he is, really, but he won’t say it and he never will.
It isn’t true. Not yet.
-
Puck needs a job.
It isn’t a problem for Kurt because he does what he did in highschool - helps around the garage when he needs to, really, and drives everyone in their family everywhere - but Puck insists it’s his responsibility to help him with it because Kurt is the only responsible person he knows anymore.
Kurt visits him on Thursday before he goes grocery shopping. They sit in his basement and Puck plays Call of Duty and only talks to him from the very corner of his mouth. Kurt sighs at him and impatiently twirls his car keys around one of his fingers. “Well, what do you want to do with your life?”
Puck looks at him. He jabs a hand at his Xbox controller. “This! I’m fucking doing it already, man.”
All Puck thinks he can do is play guitar and sing and kill pixelated German soldiers in World at War. It doesn’t inspire confidence, but for some reason Kurt keeps telling him, “We’ll find you something, you’ll have something,” because he’s so used to saying it to himself.
-
Sam is in highschool.
It reoccurs to Kurt one day while he’s trying to memorize his lines alone at his vanity table. He looks up at his reflection in the mirror and - Sam is in highschool. He is regularly making out and semi-regularly grinding with a highschool student. Now he knows why a part of him felt so heavily inclined to keep it secret for everyone they know, aside from the fact Sam isn’t ready to tell everybody he’s gay yet. Finn continues to give them funny, knowing looks every time Sam knocks on his door holding textbooks and jotters they never so much as look at once and trail up to Kurt’s locked bedroom for a few hours.
It isn’t particularly ideal, but Sam is - something. He kisses Kurt in his doorway one day and Kurt panics in case his parents or Stevie and Stacey see, and Sam just laughs and laughs and leads him upstairs into his old-but-new bedroom with this broad, proud grin on his face Kurt doesn’t know if he fully understands but knows is far, far too endearing for one boy alone to have.
But Sam is in highschool.
“This is weird,” Kurt declares during a marathon of this weird old Batman TV show Sam loves. They aren’t even doing anything, just lying on Sam’s floor, barely touching.
Sam shuffles a little closer to him and points to the screen. “Batman and the Joker are going surfing together,” he explains, and Kurt gives him a look because weird doesn’t come close to explaining any of that.
“I mean - us. Because you’re in highschool.”
He almost cringes after he says it because it sounds harsh, but Sam’s eyes just go a little wider and his Dorito-chewing slows down, thoughtfully. He frowns and shakes his head, telling Kurt through a mouthful of food, “It’s not that weird.”
Kurt pauses. He doesn’t know if he should say it or leave it or what. When he looks at Sam in the ugly blue glare of the TV, he looks much too perfect for Lima, and he doesn’t know how they ended up here at all, ended up together in any minuscule sense of the word. Sam looks back down at him and Kurt looks back, suddenly wondering if they’re thinking the same things right now.
“I want to kiss you,” Sam says, his throat sounding dry.
Kurt hums, thoughfully. “I want you to turn off this god-awful show,” he pauses here to slide a hand through Sam’s hair and watch him break into a grin before adding, “And then kiss me.”
“Doable,” Sam mutters, fumbling with one to turn the television off before he pushes Kurt down on his floor and laughs against his lips.
-
Christmas comes too fast and Kurt is busy with rehearsals and the garage and the campaign and calls from a hysterical Rachel at three in the morning over something Kurt can’t even make out as words.
Puck gets a job at the mall that he hates on principle.
“Would you even consider going to school?” Kurt asks over the counter, handing Puck a few choice pieces of clothing he picked out. If he’s getting the discount he may as well make use of it now.
Puck scans them, distractedly shaking his head. “No way. What college is dumb enough to let me in with the grades I got?”
Kurt can’t exactly answer that.
During winter, the garage gets more and more frantic, and the hospital Carole works at, and the mall, and school, for Sam. Kurt and Finn set aside one night to watch It’s A Wonderful Life together, like they do every year, but half-way through Finn is too exhausted to keep his eyes open and Kurt waves off his apologies and sends him up to bed. Sometimes he doesn’t know if Finn’s really happy here, and it worries him.
Sam is the only person he knows handling things well - exceptionally well, really. He shows up after school on Thursday, bundled in scarves and the hat Kurt likes on him, and immediately steps inside and thrusts his report card into Kurt’s hands the moment the door opens, grinning so widely it looks like it should be hurting him.
“I’m passing stuff. Like, not just by one mark anymore.”
Kurt blinks at the report in his hands. “You are,” he concurs. Sam’s worst grade is a C for English but since Sam actually enjoys reading - and writing silly little bedtime stories for his siblings that Kurt found on top of his dresser, once - that’s not concerning. He doesn’t know if it’s rude, but he literally doesn’t know how to react to Sam’s new success; last year he was more than aware Sam was only just scraping by, but it makes sense that now he isn’t solely responsible for his family’s financial state anymore he might actually have time to study.
But that sounds unlikely too, since Sam physically cannot bring himself to study on his best days.
Obliviously, Sam stands behind him and points to the his grade for music. “My mom’s going to freak out. That’s an A there, a solid A, man.” Kurt can still hear the smile in his voice, and now Sam is pressing up against his back with his hands on Kurt’s waist and chin on his shoulder, humming softly. His hands feel cold even over Kurt’s shirt so he holds one with his own, and continues staring down at the report card in the other.
Sam’s breath tickles his ear. “What do you think?” he murmurs. He nudges their heads together a bit and kisses Kurt’s shoulder, lightly, like maybe he doesn’t want him to notice it.
“It’s...” Kurt shakes his head, smiling. He turns around to face Sam and presses the slip of paper against his chest, feeling oddly proud. “It’s amazing, Sam,” he says, breathlessly. He looks up into Sam’s face and finds him blushing slightly, mouth still caught in a crooked, pleased grin. Kurt leans up to kiss him on the corner of his mouth and says, “This must have been a lot of hard work.”
Sam keeps grinning. He puts his arms around Kurt’s neck and pulls him closer to kiss him again - Kurt’s too distracted by the feel of his lips and the drag of his fingers in his hair to worry about his family walking in and seeing them, this time.
When Sam pulls back he looks startlingly deep into Kurt’s eyes, smiles. “It’ll be worth it,” he assures him.
He clumsily kisses Kurt goodbye, in a hurry to show his parents his grades, and Kurt watches him trudge through the snow all the way out to his car, even though it’s far too cold for it; he watches Sam wave a dorky wave at him and drive off and then stands there a moment longer, wondering if Sam ever wonders if they’re boyfriends.
-
Kurt still loves Christmas. So does Finn, and normally the holidays are when they hang out most to decorate the house together, hand in Christmas cards to the neighbours together, and have snowball fights in the middle of their frosted over street together. It’s strange to see so little of Finn when snow comes, and there is nobody in the house following him around and pestering him for hot chocolate and whipped cream.
He tries to hold off putting the decorations up until his brother’s free, but as they go deeper into December he has more rehearsals for the show, for his dad’s TV campaign, and he realizes he’ll have to put them up soon or they won’t get put up at all at the rate his family’s individual schedules are going at.
It feels lonely and strange to arrange the tree this year, so he calls Rachel after he’s done with the first layer of tinsel and she tells him she’ll be home in a week or so, along with a lot of NYC news Kurt knows she doesn’t mean anything by telling him but could really do without today.
After successfully picking out the right colour for the second layer of tinsel Kurt realizes this is depressing to do in an empty house. Sam and Artie and Tina are at school, still, so he hopes Puck isn’t working and invites him over with a text Puck replies to with i am a jew kurt that quickly changes into a be there in five when Kurt baits him with holiday cookies.
“You really just sat in here alone all day decorating your empty house?” Puck asks later, arranging the bobbles all wrong in a way Kurt thinks is kind of comforting now, after too many years of living with Finn. Puck raises his eyebrows at him and stuffs another cookie into his mouth before saying, unsympathetically, “Depressing, dude.”
Kurt rolls his eyes and readjusts the wreath on the front door an inch to the right, then back again - then he sighs. “I’m sure sitting alone in your basement on Xbox Live all night was just spectacular, though,” he retorts, a little too snappy. But Puck’s never had trouble dealing with that.
“Fucking sucks, man,” he says, plainly. He shakes his head and pulls the angel that’s meant to be on top of the tree out of one of the boxes surrounding them and looks up her skirt. “I hate this year. Hate it.”
Kurt should, too, and a part of him really, desperately does: the part of him that’s painfully aware he should be sitting in a TGI Friday’s somewhere in New York right now sipping cocktails out of tacky straws with Rachel and her new friends, but the rest of him is adjusting. Kurt’s life has always been hectic with a side-helping of terribleness and it’s occurring to him more often lately that having a year just to rest and to prepare might not actually be so bad.
As much as he hates Lima he knows he’s going to miss it, in a weird, unexpected way. He’s never been able to think about leaving his dad behind, or the other family he’s gained that he doubts he’ll ever have enough time to spend with as much as he wants to. He’ll miss Puck, even Mr Schue, and he already misses everyone from New Directions that’s already taken off. Maybe Blaine, too; and suddenly thinking about Blaine doesn’t make him feel to heavy for his own body to carry around.
And suddenly he’s thinking about Sam kissing his shoulder and holding him close and he knows he has to stop thinking about it, again.
Kurt reaches out and hesitantly puts a hand on Puck’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, Puck,” he says, putting on his best brave face, and Puck half-smiles at him like he believes it a little, too.
-
Kurt has to pick Sam up from school on Thursday, three days before Christmas.
“You don’t get to smile like that,” he sighs when Sam opens the car door to peer at him with his broad grin. Kurt rolls his eyes at him and tries his best not to smile back when Sam slips into the passengers seat, still cheerfully leering at him all the while. “You’re pretending to be sick, remember?”
Sam laughs. “Oh, yeah. I feel terrible and - and stuff. You should take me home.”
This is what Kurt’s life is this year: the gay, depressing and seemingly endless version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The part of him that felt indignant about having to be rang up mid-shower this morning to receive a call from his former highschool telling him as Sam’s only available emergency contact - emergency contact, really - he’s obligated to come pick him up due to his ‘illness’ and that festered the whole drive over in two-feet of snow quickly becomes outweighed by the part of him that is helplessly charmed by every one of Sam’s earnest smiles and unsubtle glances in his direction.
“Well, I can’t see how picking up highschool boys from class wouldn’t make me more popular in this town,” Kurt mutters to himself. Backing out of the school parking lot again feels strange enough, but having Sam at his side in his letterman jacket is just too much. Kurt looks at it, quickly turns away. “Please take that off.”
In response, Sam tries doing something lewd with his eyebrows and awkwardly slides the jacket from his shoulders in a bad imitation of sensuality. Kurt laughs despite himself. He kind of hates Sam sometimes for making him forget things he knows are important as easily as he does - things like dating highschool boys, or not making it to New York a second time, or saying goodbye to another person he loves, or like never making it to New York at all.
Kurt doesn’t know what they’re doing together. He feels suddenly grim, turning the wheel with white-knuckled hands and trying to remember Sam’s new address offhand so he doesn’t have to ask. It’s silent for a long, long moment.
There’s a soft noise - Sam’s breath coming out in nervous, outdrawn exhales that despite their faintness feel like they rattle across Kurt’s sensitive with the cold skin.
Then Sam speaks, quietly and carefully. He glances at Kurt and starts tapping on the dashboard with his long, distracting fingers and says, harmlessly, “You know, the house is empty ‘til six.”
Kurt arches an eyebrow and looks at him in the rearview mirror. Sam just smiles back at him with disarming innocence. “Having you around might make me feel better,” he adds, shrugging, tap tap tapping his long fingers again.
It’s not just Sam being a kid. They’re both still kids, but Kurt’s never had much opportunity to be one, not really - or Sam, for that matter. They’ve never had what everyone else got to have. They never got each other when they should have, Kurt thinks, suddenly.
He makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. “It might,” he agrees, quietly.
-
Sam’s house makes Kurt feel weirdly reverent. He loves Sam’s family, he loves how loving they are, how they worked to make their house just as warm and inviting as they are: all festive for the holidays, too, and done up in a tacky, traditional red-and-green way Kurt can’t help but appreciate. It feels almost wrong when Sam leads him up the staircase and into his bedroom by the wrists wearing a familiar, crooked, devious smile; worse when he presses Kurt back against the Spiderman poster on his door and breathes hotly against his ear, “Stay for a bit, please.” And when Kurt can’t think of any reason at all to tell him no.
He drags his thumb over Sam’s exposed collarbone and lets out a sigh at Sam’s cold hands on his stomach while they push his shirt up, a soft, agreeable, “Uh-huh.” But he shouldn’t, they shouldn’t. Sam shouldn’t beg against Kurt’s mouth with his lazy, pupils-blown smile, please please please, and Kurt shouldn’t think of caving into him (of finally fucking Sam into his Star Wars sheets for the first time, for Sam’s first time) but he does, and he knows eventually he will.
Not tonight. Not while he fake-takes care of Sam’s fake-illness and his phone has two new messages from Sam’s ever-loving parents, thanking him profusely for looking after their seventeen year old kid for the day.
Kurt huffs out something like a laugh, and it sounds a bit hopeless. He hooks a leg around Sam’s waist, drawing him as close as he can and lets out a long breath when Sam starts a steady pace for their rocking hips. When traces his fingertips along the curve of Sam’s sweet Cupid’s bow he can’t help but steal another long, deep kiss, and Sam moans into his mouth in response, dragging his hands beneath Kurt’s underwear to palm his ass, desperately, needily.
“Kurt,” he breathes, and his voice is low enough to make Kurt shiver. Sam grinds him against the door, hard and frantic, letting out soft, small whimpers against the corner of Kurt’s lips with every thrust. It’s clumsy and a little uncomfortable but Kurt feels so hard, so good, and when Sam pushes their foreheads together and presses himself insistently against Kurt’s cock again, huffing out a breathy mantra of his name, “Kurt, Kurt, Kurt,” he knows he won’t last much longer.
He tugs Sam by the hair into a sharp, biting kiss and thrusts back against him hard enough to rattle the bedroom door on its hinges. With Blaine he was always oddly embarrassed of how high the sounds he’d make were when they were together like this - or more than this - but Sam is always trying to coax the noises out of him, and when he rolls their hips together another time while Kurt languidly licks into his mouth, the heat builds up in Kurt’s body and he can’t stop himself moaning outright - this obscene, pornographic, empowering thing that makes Sam shudder and bury his red face into Kurt’s neck as he comes, still shakily rocking forwards for a moment on the balls of his feet before he half-collapses onto him, panting and sticking to his good t-shirt.
Kurt lets him stand there, catching his breath and shaking all over, absentmindedly kisses the side of his face and runs his fingers through his mess of blond hair as a distraction from his aching hard-on, but it only takes a moment before Sam pulls away to give him a quick kiss, grins at him lopsidedly and drops down to his knees.
He nudges the zipper of Kurt’s jeans with his nose, Kurt gasping at the slight pressure, then looks up at him with his glazed green eyes to say, lowly, “My turn to take care of you,” before Kurt rolls his eyes, laughing, and pushes his head lower.
-
Kurt and Finn stay up all night on Christmas Eve. They’re - belatedly - wrapping their joint-presents together, which is a major plus of having a brother, Finn tells him. “I suck at buying gifts,” Finn tells him, like Kurt isn’t already perfectly aware of it. Finn hogs more of the blanket and Kurt lets him because he still looks so, so worryingly tired. Mid-yawn, he adds, “Even for my own mom,” like Kurt isn’t aware of that, either.
They shift across the couch in Kurt’s room and try to make sufficient space, but Finn’s legs are always knocking off of his because they’re both too tall to successfully lie horizontal across it, no matter how they keep trying. Kurt keeps asking if Finn wants to take his bed and call it a night but Finn continues to adamantly refuse; “I can’t get to sleep,” is what his final answer is, and Kurt looks at him and his dark eyes and now perpetually messy hair, almost scared.
It takes a moment for him to ask the question that’s been on his mind so long now. He fumbles with a strip of sellotape, traces the pattern of the wrapping paper out with distracted fingertips. Then he looks at brother, and asks, softly, “Are you happy, Finn?”
Finn looks away from The Muppet’s Christmas Carole to him, startled. He scratches at his head and frowns. “What d’you mean?” He taps his foot over Kurt’s side and Kurt, kind of ashamed, bites his tongue and says nothing at all. Finn squints at him for a second then sighs. “I didn’t take a bunch of extra shifts to cheer myself up, dude. It’s just...” He clears his throat and looks away, back at the screen. “I will be happy because of that stuff, you know? It - pays off.”
After Kurt blinks at him Finn’s whole being seems to have shifted, and he’s no longer the bumbling country boy of seventeen that once ate dog-food on a dare. He looks abruptly, inexplicably grown up, lying across from Kurt, endlessly giant, and rubbing at the stubble across his chin, mindlessly.
“I love you, Finn,” Kurt says without thinking. He can’t help loving him - not when having Finn as a brother is one of the gifts he’s most thankful for ever getting to have.
Finn pokes Kurt’s side with his toe. He smiles. “I love you, too.”
-
Christmas day is a bit of a blur. His parents buy him this gaudy jacket that thankfully comes with a receipt, and Finn gives him a framed picture he found of the both of them sitting together in elementary school, which makes Kurt’s eyes water and Finn teasingly punch his arm. Finn goes through every package, every stitch of his stocking and inch of floor beneath the tree that could belong to him. Kurt leaves the rest of his things until the night, although he knows Finn’s went through most of them already anyway.
He and Carole mostly cook and shoo Finn away from the kitchen every time he loudly declares that something smells awesome and tries to dip his fingers into every pot and dish surrounding them. His dad ruffles his hair when he walks by and steals a bag of potato chips on the way out he says he’ll starve without if he has to wait any longer.
Sam sends Kurt one message all day that says, very simply and very, achingly Sam-like, xmas food mmmmmm.
Part two.
Pairings: Sam/Kurt, mentions of past Blaine/Kurt and heavy on Puck/Kurt and Finn/Kurt friendships.
Summary: Kurt takes a year longer than he’d expected to get to New York, a year that isn’t at all as terrible as he thought it would be. Kurt-centric.
THE TROUBLE WITH DREAMS
After Rachel gets accepted into NYADA and he, instead, gets a very polite letter of rejection, Kurt decides he’s done with settling.
It takes a while for anybody to ask him about it. His family tiptoe around the subject - around all of his friends moving away for different colleges and the growing number of boxes he has to pass by in Rachel’s house whenever he visits her now. Finn’s the one who brings it up with him, while they’re in a mutual state of mourning exactly a week after Kurt and Rachel’s letters come through - Finn because he has to say goodbye to Rachel, like he always knew he would, and Kurt because he has to say goodbye to his dream, like he’d never let himself believe he’d have to, not once.
Kurt makes them breakfast in the morning, silently, hands Finn his plate of omelet, silently, and Finn watches him with totally unsubtle apprehension the whole time. But Kurt doesn’t complain at all when his step-brother turns the channel from the news to cartoons and that’s when Finn stops chewing loudly to turn to him in concern.
Finn’s had his own life-plan laid out for a while now. Kurt still has to help him out sometimes in the garage or fix little things he forgets to do in an appropriately Finn-esque manner before their dad notices, then lecture him for it later, but in complete honesty Kurt’s surprised at how set on improving Finn is, at how much he wants to take over the shop, and kind of - proud, really.
It’s just that Kurt never once thought he’d be the son who ended up lost after highschool.
Finn clears his throat and takes a moment to rub his eyes before asking, sleepily, “So, what d’you think you’ll do now?”
All Kurt knows that the Hummel Tyres and Lube is not where he wants to work for a living. Lima will never be where he belongs. And he’s good at fighting for the things he wants and, more importantly, the things he is - too good for Lima, Ohio, to have any longer, too bright a star for his dad’s garage.
He pauses, thoughtfully sipping on his glass of orange juice. Then he nods. “NYADA,” he says again, just like he did last year, all year round. He can do it again, one more time.
Finn knows it, too. He lets out a laugh and grins at Kurt with his food between his teeth. “Of course,” he agrees, reaching out to enthusiastically ruffle Kurt’s hair with his greasy fingers with one hand and turn the volume up on the TV with the other.
-
They say goodbye to a lot of people. Puck stays, and Sam, Artie, Tina and Blaine are only just seniors - Kurt doubts he and Finn will see much of Blaine anymore, though, or at least he hopes as much.
Quinn says she has to leave Lima, and she and her mom move out of state only a handful of days after her graduation, very quietly; Mike’s parents end up paying tuition for a performing arts college and he goes, first; Santana and Brittany are separated by one state and give each other little souvenirs of themselves for the other’s dorm room before they leave in the middle of August together. The worst is Rachel, by far, for a thousand reasons - some Kurt’s ashamed to have but can’t deny are there.
“I always thought we’d be going together,” he tells her, just a little shakily. Her dads are loading up the car with pink suitcases, the handbag Kurt bought her last year for her birthday. He’s holding her hand too tightly, and if it hurts her she doesn’t care to mention it at all. She squeezes back just as firmly and for the first time in since she got her letter of acceptance looks suddenly, sincerely upset.
She shakes her head and looks at their feet. “New York will always be our place, Kurt.” When Rachel looks back up at him her eyes have glossed over, but she’s still smiling, and sometimes Kurt is surprised at how much he can wholeheartedly love her, at how scared he is that he’ll miss her all year round. “We both know this isn’t the end of the line. Not for you.” She almost laughs at the idea; Kurt almost bursts into tears at the idea of her leaving, the idea of learning how to be being lonely all over again.
He leans down and kisses her cheek. “Make me proud,” he tells her, half-jokingly, and when he hugs her the part of him that resents her for being the one who gets to go first time around disappears completely, and all that’s left is Rachel, leaning up on her tiptoes to stage-whisper in his ear, “I’ll see you next year,” before she pulls away with a teary smile and turns to say her goodbyes to Finn, just time for Kurt to hastily wipe his eye son his sleeves without anybody noticing.
-
His dad doesn’t seem too inclined to talk about it. He’s used to Kurt knowing what to do, Kurt knowing what’s best for himself, and he’s right to be, because Kurt still does. But sometimes, and only sometimes, Kurt will reach into his bottom drawer, underneath all of his socks and ties, and pull out a letter from the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts to pour over despairingly for a while. Once, Burt catches him doing this.
He sighs and adjusts his hat before he sets down next to Kurt on his bed. Kurt lets his dad pull the letter from his hands and put it back into the torn, crumpling envelope, and then Kurt lets him put an arm around his shoulders and pull him close to his side like he used to years ago when Kurt was scared and his mom was sick. Burt kisses the top of his head and Kurt feels like a stupid kid for feeling better because of it, for leaning into it like he does.
Burt squeezes him again and says, firmly, “I’m always proud of you, kid.”
They sit that way for a while and when Kurt starts to pull away his dad stands up again and smiles down at him, clasping a hand over his shoulder, and despite how hopeless he still feels Kurt finds it in himself to smile back in gratitude.
When his dad leaves he takes the letter with him, because one thing he isn’t willing to get used to is Kurt living in the past.
-
What Kurt lacked last year was having extra-curricular activities outside of ‘background singer of failing glee club.’ He can be bitter about it for a while, he’s decided. He can ignore Brittany’s messages and Santana’s messages demanding he stop ignoring them as long as it takes, and he can ignore Will Schuester’s existence as long as he is not featured as a soloist at any competitions, which Kurt calculates at around forever.
There isn’t much enthusiasm for performing arts in Lima, and even Kurt doubts his ability to have the town spontaneously and collectively form an interest in it, especially given that most of it’s inhabitants loathe him just because, but he knows some of the people who put on local productions, mostly thanks to Rachel and Blaine, and he there’s no harm in trying to find some kind of work there.
The people who work in the tiny little theatre complex in town are nice and most of them have a crazed vibe similar to one Rachel Berry which kind of comforts him now, and he thankfully knows how to deal with now, an ability he’s sure will come in handy in the theatre industry for a whole lifetime. Some of them remember him and ask about Rachel.
Others remember him and ask about his boyfriend.
“Ex-boyfriend,” he corrects after an awkward moment. The woman he’s talking to has the manners to look sad, and he wonders how he looks to her - freshly broken up with from the handsome boy who played at Six Flags two years ago and not in college, not in anything at all. It does him no good so he stops. He’s better than that, he knows it, so he tips his head up and smiles and tells her, maturely, “It’s okay, really,” even though he doesn’t know if it’s okay because he hasn’t let himself think about Blaine in so long, either.
The lady smiles back at him. “Well, whenever your ready.” Then she gestures at him to start.
Kurt sings and forgets everything else in the world for some long, lovely moments.
-
He’s been avoiding Sam, lately.
Sam’s parents have been insisting he come over for dinner ever since he got The Letter and he thought Sam would understand his pointedly ignoring every one of his texts and missed calls but apparently nothing is going to stop him. The last message Kurt gets is just talk to me about it, and it makes him feel terrible because every other message Sam sends is laden with signs of his dyslexia and this one is perfectly understandable English, so he knows he put effort in, that Sam really means it.
He just isn’t ready to talk about it to somebody who isn’t Finn, or his father, or Carole. They’re his family, and they know more than anybody how resilient he is, but Kurt is tired of having to prove it to everybody else in the world. Kurt is tired, and the year technically hasn’t even started for him yet. He’s hasn’t answered messages from Mr Schue or Tina or Blaine (but they agreed not to talk for a while, so he wasn’t sure what to do there), but Sam is more insistent about it and it makes him feel guilty.
Sam is so insistent that he randomly shows up on Kurt’s porch at seven in the morning one day the week before he returns to school, grinning like Kurt hasn’t spent the past month paying him no attention at all.
Kurt’s glad he woke up earlier this morning because answering the door pre-shower would just have been too mortifying for him - at least he knows he looks good for whatever awkward conversation is about to ensue. He smiles back, tight-lipped, and Sam stands there doing that endearing teenage boy thing with his hands in his pockets and feet scruffing the welcome mat with his big, crooked smile and Kurt doesn’t know how anybody could have the will to stay mad at a boy like him.
“Hey, man,” Sam greets him. He waves. He doesn’t look half as pitying as Kurt expected, of course not, he physically couldn’t - he looks the same as always, like sweetheart Sam Evans, nervously shuffling around on his front porch because he’s worried for Kurt.
A year ago something like this would have made Kurt’s month.
He just laughs, mostly at himself, and stands back so Sam can come inside. “Hey, yourself,” he says. There’s lingering guilt at the fact he ignored him for so long so when Sam’s inside the house, taking off his shoes at the door so they can go up to Kurt’s room, Kurt starts out apologetically, “About dinner, I...”
Sam’s just waving him off, shaking his head. “My fault,” he says distractedly, frowning and trying to unwork the knot of his shoelaces. Kurt bends down and bats his hands away to undo it himself, faster. Sam leans back and lets him. “It wasn’t really - I mean, it wasn’t really my place. Or my parents’.”
“It was sweet of them, though,” Kurt offers, because it was. Sam’s family are some of the sweetest people he knows, Sam included. They make a fuss over Kurt (and Quinn, for that matter) because of the help they got last year. Sam included.
He stands up again and Sam slides his feet out of his shoes and shows Kurt his pair of Simpsons socks in the process. When he realizes, he looks up at Kurt, smiling, and Kurt shakes his head and says plainly, “I’m embarrassed for the both of us.”
Sam’s smile stretches. “I wore them just for you, y’know.”
Kurt heaves a fake sigh and leads him upstairs, into his room. It doesn’t feel like highschool or post-highschool or - anything, really. Since Rachel left and Finn got full-time down at the garage Kurt’s felt so odd and out of place, and Sam being around in his letterman jacket, as always, doesn’t help matters at all.
They sit on Kurt’s bed. It’s quiet for a moment.
Sam swallows next to him. He looks searchingly into his face and Kurt suddenly sees Finn’s look of concern somewhere in Sam’s bright, bright green eyes. “I was kind of worried because you weren’t talking, and I asked around and everybody else said you weren’t talking to them, either. Finn said you were okay, but...” He looks lost for words and then just shrugs. “You seem fine, though.” Kurt doesn’t have time to feel guilty. Sam bumps their shoulders together and his insides are overcome with feelings they really shouldn’t be overcome with anymore. “You gave me a scare.”
“Sorry,” Kurt tells him, voice soft. He looks away, to where his hands are clasped on his knees and frowns. “I just don’t want to talk about it to everybody yet.” He’s tired of stuff like this. He’s tired of losing and getting left behind and he doesn’t want it anymore.
He feels Sam’s arm around his shoulders and freezes. When he turns to him in surprise, Sam’s face is almost solemn.
“You’re gonna be great,” he tells Kurt, and then his lips quirk into a smile. His body against Kurt’s side feels nice and warm and more tangible than anything else has in a long while, and the way he pulls Kurt closer to his side makes his stomach do something wholly embarrassing.
But he just laughs again, smirks. “Like we didn’t all already know.”
-
Kurt gets a part in a local production of Pippin, but he needs to do more. He gets involved in his father’s political work - or more involved than he already is. He looks for anything at all to do with the performing arts in Lima but in the end he knows where he’ll end up - in the choir room of Mckinley high helping Mr Schuester figure out a new topic for the week while trying to avoid Blaine’s eyes and the faces of every teacher and student that told him before he wouldn’t make it; that he couldn’t.
He’ll put it off as long as he can. In the meantime, he starts calling Rachel and Mercedes again and he, Puck and Sam start hanging around in Puck’s basement when Kurt isn’t busy looking for some tiny nearby gateway to New York. Puck constantly tells him to ease up, that barely a month’s passed since he was rejected and he needs to “cool the fuck down already.” Sam constantly tells him that glee club is weird, school is just weird without the rest of them, and Kurt’s doesn’t know if it’s because he wants Kurt to show up there and assist like they both know he’ll inevitably have to or if he just wants Kurt sympathy, but Kurt has a two year long list of reasons why that option seems unlikely.
“Maybe I do need a breather,” he says. He doesn’t even have school anymore and he’s far more stressed out than last year with his exams and his boyfriend and his mess of a school life.
Puck glances at him approvingly and offers a beer with the hand that isn’t wrapped around his Wii controller. Kurt takes it, because he may as well, and he knows Puck likes when he drinks because he gets to send messages to Finn at work about how they’re sitting around shitfaced and playing old SNES games, even though Kurt still has absolutely no idea what a SNES is or how they can be playing that on the Wii.
Sam reaches his hand out for a beer, too, and Puck laughs in his face.
“No way, Sammy.” He turns back to the TV wearing wicked grin. “There’s a new rule in this house: we do shit legally now.”
Sam snorts and turns to the both of them with his eyebrows raised. “What, did you put that in place yesterday after we went through a six-pack together?”
Kurt smiles up at Sam and opens his can of beer. “School night,” he reminds him, sweetly.
“Yeah, you can’t show up to class hungover, man,” Puck tells him, and Kurt can’t help rolling his eyes at Puck of all people laying down this law. Apparently, he notices, and starts to needlessly backtrack. “Well, you can, but I can tell you from past experience you don’t learn jack when you do. And you need to get your shit together this year if you’re planning on heading up North next year.”
Kurt blinks. That’s the first he heard of that plan.
-
Burt lets him help out more with the campaign. Maybe a little more than he should, because he’s feeling sick and whenever his dad so much as sneezes their family goes into alert mode, and Finn stumbles around to make water soup and Carole stocks up on foods exclusively from the vegan store Rachel’s parents showed her and Kurt doesn’t really leave his side at all.
“There’ll come a day when you have to quit babying me,” Burt tells him gruffly, lying on the living room couch with a mouth full of too-fluffy pillow.
Kurt rolls his eyes and pushes the pill on the table closer towards him, indicatively. “I could say the same for you,” he sighs.
He goes over all the decisions with his dad and Carole. If there’s anything he’s learned from trying to find any running local arts programmes it’s that there barely are any, and the arts have been a major part of his dad’s campaign since it started. Burt says there should be more for him to do, that he’ll make more.
“I think we’ll both win this year,” he says to Kurt before he falls asleep.
-
Sam shows up on Friday night and asks for help on his French homework. His parents are asleep - and his dad’s getting better, which is a relief to the whole house - and Puck took Finn out earlier to find girls Finn isn’t ready to find - and he’s having more and more trouble telling Sam no lately at all.
He waves Sam inside and helps him undo his laces at the door, quietly leading him to his bedroom and not thinking about the thin, tight fabric of Sam’s shirt pulled across his chest and arms, because that’s just inappropriate and even if when he asks, Puck says Sam never talks about girls anymore - and gives Kurt this annoying, lewd expression afterwards - Sam is still straight and Kurt is still very decidedly done with straight boys.
That doesn’t change the weight of the air when they sit alone together in Kurt’s room, like they have a dozen times before without any of this particular brand of - oddness. Kurt refuses to give it a name that isn’t ‘nothing’, but it’s hard to do when Sam stares at his lips intently, even when Kurt’s not speaking French and they should both be looking at his textbook.
“It’s funny,” Kurt says, trying to defuse whatever this might be. Lying across his bed side by side is a mistake, he realizes, after he and Sam’s feet ticklishly brush for the hundredth time of the night. He clears his throat and watches Sam watching his mouth. “I did all these questions last year already.”
Sam doesn’t look away. His lips part and he licks across the upper one and flicks his eyes up to Kurt’s face once and back down to his mouth again before he answers. “That’s funny,” he murmurs, distractedly. “Lucky I have you.”
Kurt doesn’t know what to say to that at all.
“Can you read out the question again?” Sam asks for the third time, his cheeks a little flushed and Kurt swallows because he feels like Sam is speaking some other language from English and French entirely, some language Kurt has no idea of.
Or maybe just a little. He lets out a soft breath and looks into Sam’s half-lidded, pale eyes. “'que'est-ce que tu feras l'année prochaine?”
Sam’s hand slides beneath the textbook cover and he closes it over, quietly, without even a glance. He doesn’t say a word at all; his leg slips to cross with Kurt’s and he leans closer and closer, breath warm against Kurt’s cheek when he has his forehead pressed against his temple.
“I don’t think I taught you very much,” Kurt huffs out in one last ditch effort at stopping this, all this.
One of Sam’s hands reaches out and catches in Kurt’s hair. His thumb strokes over Kurt’s cheekbone and it’s been a while since somebody touched him this loving, this way. “I wouldn’t say that,” Sam says, and his voice is low enough to make Kurt’s eyes flutter closed at the sound.
His fingers drag through Kurt’s hair and his lips are brushing the skin of his cheek and Kurt doesn’t know what tonight is, what they’re doing, but he knows he wants to kiss Sam. He takes a deep breath and - he does.
He missed kisses. He missed touching. Sam’s lips feel so nice and insistent and eager against his, soft and he makes this noise in the back of his throat at the feel of Kurt’s tongue sweeping his pouty bottom lip that Kurt feels shaking him down to his bones. Both his hands cup Kurt’s face and their legs begin to tangle. Kurt’s hands can’t help travelling up the smooth, firm plane of Sam’s back when Sam rolls on top of him and starts licking a little desperately into his mouth, and as messy as it is it feels kind of spectacular - and it’s Sam, for God’s sake.
“You are -” Sam breathes into his mouth, and Kurt knows - Kurt’s always known just a bit, enough for it to be easily ignored. He’s always been a tiny bit in love with Sam; he’s always caught Sam looking at him just a tiny bit too much. He pulls Sam down into another kiss and winds his fingers into messy blond locks, feeling almost free.
-
This year is not about boys, Kurt tells himself. He has rehearsals later in the afternoon and this year is not about boys.
-
He is the best performer at rehearsals, and he’s pretty sure they were all aware of it, too. His dad’s campaign is booming and since Sue dropped out this year it’s much less somebody-might-cut-the-brakes-of-his-car and much more sane, so his dad’s got a much better shot. All that’s really left to do is call Mr Schuester and ask how he can help out in a school that’s hated him from day one.
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Finn advises him, shrugging. He’s in his overalls and covered in grease, spread across the living room couch and Kurt would yell at him for it if he didn’t look so tired. Instead he puts a pillow under his head and lets him rest a little longer. “You knew you were better than everyone at that school last year, what’s the difference now?”
Now Kurt doesn’t know if he is, really, but he won’t say it and he never will.
It isn’t true. Not yet.
-
Puck needs a job.
It isn’t a problem for Kurt because he does what he did in highschool - helps around the garage when he needs to, really, and drives everyone in their family everywhere - but Puck insists it’s his responsibility to help him with it because Kurt is the only responsible person he knows anymore.
Kurt visits him on Thursday before he goes grocery shopping. They sit in his basement and Puck plays Call of Duty and only talks to him from the very corner of his mouth. Kurt sighs at him and impatiently twirls his car keys around one of his fingers. “Well, what do you want to do with your life?”
Puck looks at him. He jabs a hand at his Xbox controller. “This! I’m fucking doing it already, man.”
All Puck thinks he can do is play guitar and sing and kill pixelated German soldiers in World at War. It doesn’t inspire confidence, but for some reason Kurt keeps telling him, “We’ll find you something, you’ll have something,” because he’s so used to saying it to himself.
-
Sam is in highschool.
It reoccurs to Kurt one day while he’s trying to memorize his lines alone at his vanity table. He looks up at his reflection in the mirror and - Sam is in highschool. He is regularly making out and semi-regularly grinding with a highschool student. Now he knows why a part of him felt so heavily inclined to keep it secret for everyone they know, aside from the fact Sam isn’t ready to tell everybody he’s gay yet. Finn continues to give them funny, knowing looks every time Sam knocks on his door holding textbooks and jotters they never so much as look at once and trail up to Kurt’s locked bedroom for a few hours.
It isn’t particularly ideal, but Sam is - something. He kisses Kurt in his doorway one day and Kurt panics in case his parents or Stevie and Stacey see, and Sam just laughs and laughs and leads him upstairs into his old-but-new bedroom with this broad, proud grin on his face Kurt doesn’t know if he fully understands but knows is far, far too endearing for one boy alone to have.
But Sam is in highschool.
“This is weird,” Kurt declares during a marathon of this weird old Batman TV show Sam loves. They aren’t even doing anything, just lying on Sam’s floor, barely touching.
Sam shuffles a little closer to him and points to the screen. “Batman and the Joker are going surfing together,” he explains, and Kurt gives him a look because weird doesn’t come close to explaining any of that.
“I mean - us. Because you’re in highschool.”
He almost cringes after he says it because it sounds harsh, but Sam’s eyes just go a little wider and his Dorito-chewing slows down, thoughtfully. He frowns and shakes his head, telling Kurt through a mouthful of food, “It’s not that weird.”
Kurt pauses. He doesn’t know if he should say it or leave it or what. When he looks at Sam in the ugly blue glare of the TV, he looks much too perfect for Lima, and he doesn’t know how they ended up here at all, ended up together in any minuscule sense of the word. Sam looks back down at him and Kurt looks back, suddenly wondering if they’re thinking the same things right now.
“I want to kiss you,” Sam says, his throat sounding dry.
Kurt hums, thoughfully. “I want you to turn off this god-awful show,” he pauses here to slide a hand through Sam’s hair and watch him break into a grin before adding, “And then kiss me.”
“Doable,” Sam mutters, fumbling with one to turn the television off before he pushes Kurt down on his floor and laughs against his lips.
-
Christmas comes too fast and Kurt is busy with rehearsals and the garage and the campaign and calls from a hysterical Rachel at three in the morning over something Kurt can’t even make out as words.
Puck gets a job at the mall that he hates on principle.
“Would you even consider going to school?” Kurt asks over the counter, handing Puck a few choice pieces of clothing he picked out. If he’s getting the discount he may as well make use of it now.
Puck scans them, distractedly shaking his head. “No way. What college is dumb enough to let me in with the grades I got?”
Kurt can’t exactly answer that.
During winter, the garage gets more and more frantic, and the hospital Carole works at, and the mall, and school, for Sam. Kurt and Finn set aside one night to watch It’s A Wonderful Life together, like they do every year, but half-way through Finn is too exhausted to keep his eyes open and Kurt waves off his apologies and sends him up to bed. Sometimes he doesn’t know if Finn’s really happy here, and it worries him.
Sam is the only person he knows handling things well - exceptionally well, really. He shows up after school on Thursday, bundled in scarves and the hat Kurt likes on him, and immediately steps inside and thrusts his report card into Kurt’s hands the moment the door opens, grinning so widely it looks like it should be hurting him.
“I’m passing stuff. Like, not just by one mark anymore.”
Kurt blinks at the report in his hands. “You are,” he concurs. Sam’s worst grade is a C for English but since Sam actually enjoys reading - and writing silly little bedtime stories for his siblings that Kurt found on top of his dresser, once - that’s not concerning. He doesn’t know if it’s rude, but he literally doesn’t know how to react to Sam’s new success; last year he was more than aware Sam was only just scraping by, but it makes sense that now he isn’t solely responsible for his family’s financial state anymore he might actually have time to study.
But that sounds unlikely too, since Sam physically cannot bring himself to study on his best days.
Obliviously, Sam stands behind him and points to the his grade for music. “My mom’s going to freak out. That’s an A there, a solid A, man.” Kurt can still hear the smile in his voice, and now Sam is pressing up against his back with his hands on Kurt’s waist and chin on his shoulder, humming softly. His hands feel cold even over Kurt’s shirt so he holds one with his own, and continues staring down at the report card in the other.
Sam’s breath tickles his ear. “What do you think?” he murmurs. He nudges their heads together a bit and kisses Kurt’s shoulder, lightly, like maybe he doesn’t want him to notice it.
“It’s...” Kurt shakes his head, smiling. He turns around to face Sam and presses the slip of paper against his chest, feeling oddly proud. “It’s amazing, Sam,” he says, breathlessly. He looks up into Sam’s face and finds him blushing slightly, mouth still caught in a crooked, pleased grin. Kurt leans up to kiss him on the corner of his mouth and says, “This must have been a lot of hard work.”
Sam keeps grinning. He puts his arms around Kurt’s neck and pulls him closer to kiss him again - Kurt’s too distracted by the feel of his lips and the drag of his fingers in his hair to worry about his family walking in and seeing them, this time.
When Sam pulls back he looks startlingly deep into Kurt’s eyes, smiles. “It’ll be worth it,” he assures him.
He clumsily kisses Kurt goodbye, in a hurry to show his parents his grades, and Kurt watches him trudge through the snow all the way out to his car, even though it’s far too cold for it; he watches Sam wave a dorky wave at him and drive off and then stands there a moment longer, wondering if Sam ever wonders if they’re boyfriends.
-
Kurt still loves Christmas. So does Finn, and normally the holidays are when they hang out most to decorate the house together, hand in Christmas cards to the neighbours together, and have snowball fights in the middle of their frosted over street together. It’s strange to see so little of Finn when snow comes, and there is nobody in the house following him around and pestering him for hot chocolate and whipped cream.
He tries to hold off putting the decorations up until his brother’s free, but as they go deeper into December he has more rehearsals for the show, for his dad’s TV campaign, and he realizes he’ll have to put them up soon or they won’t get put up at all at the rate his family’s individual schedules are going at.
It feels lonely and strange to arrange the tree this year, so he calls Rachel after he’s done with the first layer of tinsel and she tells him she’ll be home in a week or so, along with a lot of NYC news Kurt knows she doesn’t mean anything by telling him but could really do without today.
After successfully picking out the right colour for the second layer of tinsel Kurt realizes this is depressing to do in an empty house. Sam and Artie and Tina are at school, still, so he hopes Puck isn’t working and invites him over with a text Puck replies to with i am a jew kurt that quickly changes into a be there in five when Kurt baits him with holiday cookies.
“You really just sat in here alone all day decorating your empty house?” Puck asks later, arranging the bobbles all wrong in a way Kurt thinks is kind of comforting now, after too many years of living with Finn. Puck raises his eyebrows at him and stuffs another cookie into his mouth before saying, unsympathetically, “Depressing, dude.”
Kurt rolls his eyes and readjusts the wreath on the front door an inch to the right, then back again - then he sighs. “I’m sure sitting alone in your basement on Xbox Live all night was just spectacular, though,” he retorts, a little too snappy. But Puck’s never had trouble dealing with that.
“Fucking sucks, man,” he says, plainly. He shakes his head and pulls the angel that’s meant to be on top of the tree out of one of the boxes surrounding them and looks up her skirt. “I hate this year. Hate it.”
Kurt should, too, and a part of him really, desperately does: the part of him that’s painfully aware he should be sitting in a TGI Friday’s somewhere in New York right now sipping cocktails out of tacky straws with Rachel and her new friends, but the rest of him is adjusting. Kurt’s life has always been hectic with a side-helping of terribleness and it’s occurring to him more often lately that having a year just to rest and to prepare might not actually be so bad.
As much as he hates Lima he knows he’s going to miss it, in a weird, unexpected way. He’s never been able to think about leaving his dad behind, or the other family he’s gained that he doubts he’ll ever have enough time to spend with as much as he wants to. He’ll miss Puck, even Mr Schue, and he already misses everyone from New Directions that’s already taken off. Maybe Blaine, too; and suddenly thinking about Blaine doesn’t make him feel to heavy for his own body to carry around.
And suddenly he’s thinking about Sam kissing his shoulder and holding him close and he knows he has to stop thinking about it, again.
Kurt reaches out and hesitantly puts a hand on Puck’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, Puck,” he says, putting on his best brave face, and Puck half-smiles at him like he believes it a little, too.
-
Kurt has to pick Sam up from school on Thursday, three days before Christmas.
“You don’t get to smile like that,” he sighs when Sam opens the car door to peer at him with his broad grin. Kurt rolls his eyes at him and tries his best not to smile back when Sam slips into the passengers seat, still cheerfully leering at him all the while. “You’re pretending to be sick, remember?”
Sam laughs. “Oh, yeah. I feel terrible and - and stuff. You should take me home.”
This is what Kurt’s life is this year: the gay, depressing and seemingly endless version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The part of him that felt indignant about having to be rang up mid-shower this morning to receive a call from his former highschool telling him as Sam’s only available emergency contact - emergency contact, really - he’s obligated to come pick him up due to his ‘illness’ and that festered the whole drive over in two-feet of snow quickly becomes outweighed by the part of him that is helplessly charmed by every one of Sam’s earnest smiles and unsubtle glances in his direction.
“Well, I can’t see how picking up highschool boys from class wouldn’t make me more popular in this town,” Kurt mutters to himself. Backing out of the school parking lot again feels strange enough, but having Sam at his side in his letterman jacket is just too much. Kurt looks at it, quickly turns away. “Please take that off.”
In response, Sam tries doing something lewd with his eyebrows and awkwardly slides the jacket from his shoulders in a bad imitation of sensuality. Kurt laughs despite himself. He kind of hates Sam sometimes for making him forget things he knows are important as easily as he does - things like dating highschool boys, or not making it to New York a second time, or saying goodbye to another person he loves, or like never making it to New York at all.
Kurt doesn’t know what they’re doing together. He feels suddenly grim, turning the wheel with white-knuckled hands and trying to remember Sam’s new address offhand so he doesn’t have to ask. It’s silent for a long, long moment.
There’s a soft noise - Sam’s breath coming out in nervous, outdrawn exhales that despite their faintness feel like they rattle across Kurt’s sensitive with the cold skin.
Then Sam speaks, quietly and carefully. He glances at Kurt and starts tapping on the dashboard with his long, distracting fingers and says, harmlessly, “You know, the house is empty ‘til six.”
Kurt arches an eyebrow and looks at him in the rearview mirror. Sam just smiles back at him with disarming innocence. “Having you around might make me feel better,” he adds, shrugging, tap tap tapping his long fingers again.
It’s not just Sam being a kid. They’re both still kids, but Kurt’s never had much opportunity to be one, not really - or Sam, for that matter. They’ve never had what everyone else got to have. They never got each other when they should have, Kurt thinks, suddenly.
He makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. “It might,” he agrees, quietly.
-
Sam’s house makes Kurt feel weirdly reverent. He loves Sam’s family, he loves how loving they are, how they worked to make their house just as warm and inviting as they are: all festive for the holidays, too, and done up in a tacky, traditional red-and-green way Kurt can’t help but appreciate. It feels almost wrong when Sam leads him up the staircase and into his bedroom by the wrists wearing a familiar, crooked, devious smile; worse when he presses Kurt back against the Spiderman poster on his door and breathes hotly against his ear, “Stay for a bit, please.” And when Kurt can’t think of any reason at all to tell him no.
He drags his thumb over Sam’s exposed collarbone and lets out a sigh at Sam’s cold hands on his stomach while they push his shirt up, a soft, agreeable, “Uh-huh.” But he shouldn’t, they shouldn’t. Sam shouldn’t beg against Kurt’s mouth with his lazy, pupils-blown smile, please please please, and Kurt shouldn’t think of caving into him (of finally fucking Sam into his Star Wars sheets for the first time, for Sam’s first time) but he does, and he knows eventually he will.
Not tonight. Not while he fake-takes care of Sam’s fake-illness and his phone has two new messages from Sam’s ever-loving parents, thanking him profusely for looking after their seventeen year old kid for the day.
Kurt huffs out something like a laugh, and it sounds a bit hopeless. He hooks a leg around Sam’s waist, drawing him as close as he can and lets out a long breath when Sam starts a steady pace for their rocking hips. When traces his fingertips along the curve of Sam’s sweet Cupid’s bow he can’t help but steal another long, deep kiss, and Sam moans into his mouth in response, dragging his hands beneath Kurt’s underwear to palm his ass, desperately, needily.
“Kurt,” he breathes, and his voice is low enough to make Kurt shiver. Sam grinds him against the door, hard and frantic, letting out soft, small whimpers against the corner of Kurt’s lips with every thrust. It’s clumsy and a little uncomfortable but Kurt feels so hard, so good, and when Sam pushes their foreheads together and presses himself insistently against Kurt’s cock again, huffing out a breathy mantra of his name, “Kurt, Kurt, Kurt,” he knows he won’t last much longer.
He tugs Sam by the hair into a sharp, biting kiss and thrusts back against him hard enough to rattle the bedroom door on its hinges. With Blaine he was always oddly embarrassed of how high the sounds he’d make were when they were together like this - or more than this - but Sam is always trying to coax the noises out of him, and when he rolls their hips together another time while Kurt languidly licks into his mouth, the heat builds up in Kurt’s body and he can’t stop himself moaning outright - this obscene, pornographic, empowering thing that makes Sam shudder and bury his red face into Kurt’s neck as he comes, still shakily rocking forwards for a moment on the balls of his feet before he half-collapses onto him, panting and sticking to his good t-shirt.
Kurt lets him stand there, catching his breath and shaking all over, absentmindedly kisses the side of his face and runs his fingers through his mess of blond hair as a distraction from his aching hard-on, but it only takes a moment before Sam pulls away to give him a quick kiss, grins at him lopsidedly and drops down to his knees.
He nudges the zipper of Kurt’s jeans with his nose, Kurt gasping at the slight pressure, then looks up at him with his glazed green eyes to say, lowly, “My turn to take care of you,” before Kurt rolls his eyes, laughing, and pushes his head lower.
-
Kurt and Finn stay up all night on Christmas Eve. They’re - belatedly - wrapping their joint-presents together, which is a major plus of having a brother, Finn tells him. “I suck at buying gifts,” Finn tells him, like Kurt isn’t already perfectly aware of it. Finn hogs more of the blanket and Kurt lets him because he still looks so, so worryingly tired. Mid-yawn, he adds, “Even for my own mom,” like Kurt isn’t aware of that, either.
They shift across the couch in Kurt’s room and try to make sufficient space, but Finn’s legs are always knocking off of his because they’re both too tall to successfully lie horizontal across it, no matter how they keep trying. Kurt keeps asking if Finn wants to take his bed and call it a night but Finn continues to adamantly refuse; “I can’t get to sleep,” is what his final answer is, and Kurt looks at him and his dark eyes and now perpetually messy hair, almost scared.
It takes a moment for him to ask the question that’s been on his mind so long now. He fumbles with a strip of sellotape, traces the pattern of the wrapping paper out with distracted fingertips. Then he looks at brother, and asks, softly, “Are you happy, Finn?”
Finn looks away from The Muppet’s Christmas Carole to him, startled. He scratches at his head and frowns. “What d’you mean?” He taps his foot over Kurt’s side and Kurt, kind of ashamed, bites his tongue and says nothing at all. Finn squints at him for a second then sighs. “I didn’t take a bunch of extra shifts to cheer myself up, dude. It’s just...” He clears his throat and looks away, back at the screen. “I will be happy because of that stuff, you know? It - pays off.”
After Kurt blinks at him Finn’s whole being seems to have shifted, and he’s no longer the bumbling country boy of seventeen that once ate dog-food on a dare. He looks abruptly, inexplicably grown up, lying across from Kurt, endlessly giant, and rubbing at the stubble across his chin, mindlessly.
“I love you, Finn,” Kurt says without thinking. He can’t help loving him - not when having Finn as a brother is one of the gifts he’s most thankful for ever getting to have.
Finn pokes Kurt’s side with his toe. He smiles. “I love you, too.”
-
Christmas day is a bit of a blur. His parents buy him this gaudy jacket that thankfully comes with a receipt, and Finn gives him a framed picture he found of the both of them sitting together in elementary school, which makes Kurt’s eyes water and Finn teasingly punch his arm. Finn goes through every package, every stitch of his stocking and inch of floor beneath the tree that could belong to him. Kurt leaves the rest of his things until the night, although he knows Finn’s went through most of them already anyway.
He and Carole mostly cook and shoo Finn away from the kitchen every time he loudly declares that something smells awesome and tries to dip his fingers into every pot and dish surrounding them. His dad ruffles his hair when he walks by and steals a bag of potato chips on the way out he says he’ll starve without if he has to wait any longer.
Sam sends Kurt one message all day that says, very simply and very, achingly Sam-like, xmas food mmmmmm.
Part two.