you might need me (1c/2); glee
1a/2
1b/2
As it gets closer to Christmas, Rachel and Finn have more and more relationship drama, which Kurt really hates lately, because he couldn't be more in the middle of it. But he still sits with Finn most days in his gross, perpetually pizza-and-foot scented room and plays Left 4 Dead with him for hours on end to keep him from feeling sad and alone, like he knows he does sometimes; and Rachel does, too, so he calls her at night, takes her out on weekends, tells her she's beautiful when she needs to hear it. It still sucks.
When it becomes too much and way too depressing for him alone to handle, Puck takes over for Finn and Mercedes sets up temporary camp in Rachel's bedroom. Sam and Santana take him out for Breadstix to relax, which is surprisingly inoffensive for the most part and kind of fun, even.
“Finchel drama,” Santana sneers from the opposite side of their booth, breaking the breadstick in her hands sharply into two. “My question is, when will it finally just die? I feel like it’s going to be like that stupid movie you made me watch and I’ll have to dress up like a gay old wizard and slay them like a beast.”
At her side, Sam plays with his straw and mumbles, “Why do you always call my movies stupid?”
Kurt gives him a sympathetic smile, then sighs. “I’m all out of Finn-and-Rachel conversation. I hit my limit around Jessie St. Asshole,” he says with an obligatory shudder. Then he straightens. “Let’s talk about anything else.”
“Even the new Kirby?” Sam pipes up, jokingly hopeful.
Santana jabs his cheek with one half on her breadstick and he laughs, waving her off.
“I just can’t wait for school to finish up for Christmas so I can be done with everyone else’s shit in my face all day,” she groans. After a moment of looking around the restaurant with narrowing eyes, she asks the table, loudly enough for everyone else to hear, “Are we ever getting served? God, it’s like you people want to get sued.”
He’s the one who drives Sam home, since Santana claims she has plans then walks off to her car, waving without looking back at them and saying with an infuriating smirk in her voice, “You’re welcome.”
It’s cold and snowing a little, so when Kurt turns to Sam to find him smiling back at his with pink cheeks and white flakes of snow in his hair he thinks the whole heart skipping a beat thing is justifiable for once. He holds his keys up, jangling them almost in a question and Sam just grins in response, leading the way to the Navigator.
Kurt still has Rachel’s ‘Chrismukkah 2011!!’ playlist on in the car which would be a thousand times more embarrassing if Sam didn’t turn to him when it started playing to ask, “What, did she make everyone a copy of this?”
“It’s Rachel,” Kurt explains, shooting him a wry smile.
“I know, but sometimes she’s just... so, so Rachel.”
The drive is a little on the quiet side since Kurt’s on-edge driving in snow and ice and Sam knows it. Mostly there’s just the sounds of Pink Martini’s most festive classics, complete with some humming on both their parts and Sam’s fingers tapping along the dashboard, almost anxiously. Then his hand stills, and his voice fades off.
“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” he says abruptly.
Kurt glances at him in the mirror, making an effort to look as unperturbed by the statement as possible. “Oh?” he says, giving Sam’s arm a light nudge with his elbow. He grasps the steering wheel with both hands unintentionally making tight, scared fists. Hopefully whatever he’s got to say isn’t crash-into-a-ditch worthy. “I’m all ears.”
Quiet falls over them again. He gives Sam some curious, unseen looks, but Sam’s just staring out the window with his bottom lip disappeared into his mouth.
“I suck at talking about myself,” is all he says, his voice quiet and apologetic. He doesn’t take his eyes off the glass, even when the snow covers the half he’s looking through completely.
Kurt feels strangely sick. It takes him a moment to be able to speak again, after swallowing the dryness and nerves away and taking some silent, calming breaths. “It’s fine.” Then after a pause, he adds, “But you can tell me anything, Sam,” and he means it, even if it’s something he’ll hate to hear.
He can feel Sam’s eyes on his the rest of the drive, the weight of them almost insisting that he look back, but he feels too uneasy to to anything but drive. When he pulls up at the house, he takes an extra moment to stare ahead before facing Sam with a broad, unconvincing smile.
“Drive safe, okay?” Sam tells him with complete seriousness. He undoes his seatbelt and leans over to quickly press his lips to Kurt’s cheek, then pulls away with his crooked smile and opens his door, stepping out into the cold outside.
Kurt stays parked there, sat there for a moment too long, and when he gets home he throws himself into whatever Rachel-provoked drama that has Finn watching The Best of Barbra Streisand Collection so his mind doesn’t linger on there’s something I need to talk to you about.
-
He thinks about it all night, anyway. He thinks about it all week: in History when Sam has his tongue stuck out his mouth while he doodles nonsensical things with nonsensical words around them in Kurt’s jotter; in glee club when they decorate their ugly Christmas tree and get to sing with each other for a brief, lovely moment; at home when he’s sitting on the couch doing things unrelated to Sam or boys or anything messy at all.
-
Sam’s late to lunch on Thursday, and Kurt waits a whole half an hour of pretending it doesn’t bother him to their friends and pretending he can’t feel Santana and Puck kicking at his legs beneath the table or the weight of the looks he knows Rachel is giving him. That’s as long as he can wait, though.
He wordlessly pushes the remainders of his lunch over to Finn, who gives him a thumbs up and an unpleasant view of the sandwich in his mouth when he smiles, then gets up from the table and ignores Artie catcalling and his friends making big deals out of really not-big stuff.
Not-big like finding Sam still sitting on a locker-room bench, wet-haired and so completely unmoving Kurt has to wonder how long he’s been in that position. He’s just staring into space, no expression on his face at all.
“Sam?” Kurt calls out softly, hesitantly knocking on the door.
It takes a second for Sam to notice him. He blinks, big-eyed, then swallows loudly enough for Kurt to hear him across the room. “Hey, I’m just -”
He fumbles with his hands, staring down at them. He isn’t doing anything.
Kurt’s kind of terrified by it.
He takes a few tentative steps inside, and sits down a little away from Sam on the bench when he doesn’t protest it. He even works up the nerve to put his hand on Sam’s tensed back, very lightly. But he doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t have the first idea what Sam wants to hear right now at all.
They just sit there for a while, silent and still and Kurt wonders if Sam can hear the way his heart is pounding and pounding all through it.
“I think I’m gay,” Sam tells him, very quietly.
They still don’t move. Kurt thinks he’s frozen in place, and hopes Sam doesn’t turn to see him staring back at him with stupidly big eyes. Sam is gay - Sam is gay. Part of Kurt can comprehend but another part is so used to repeating the very opposite it can’t stop, even now.
Kurt lets out a rush of breath. “Wow,” he huffs out. His hand drops from Sam’s back down to his side again, limp. “That’s...”
“I know it’s fine. I’ve seen just about every apocalypse movie ever and I’ve never seen one where someone says they’re gay and the world just ends on the spot.” He exhales shakily and flexes his fingers in front of him. “But it’s hard, you know?” He turns to Kurt, and his eyes are red and wet and he looks so, so scared that Kurt can’t help reaching an arm around his shoulders, protectively.
Sam leans into his touch and makes fists in his lap.
“It is,” Kurt agrees, nodding. “It sucks and it’s hard and scary but you have us, and your parents, and my parents, even, and - you have me.” He smiles and squeezes Sam’s shoulder slightly. “I’m pretty well equipped for this. Probably.”
They’re too close together, so close that when Sam turns to face him the tips of their noses touch and sirens go off in Kurt’s head, reflexively. Sam gives him a small smile, and that’s enough, Kurt thinks, then he stands up and offers out a hand.
“You need to eat something,” he states.
Sam snorts, rubbing his hands on his jeans and then slipping one warmly into Kurt’s, then he simply sits there, holding it for a moment. Kurt’s glad to know that stuff like this feels just as anxiety inducing as before.
He stands, slowly, giving Kurt’s hand a squeeze and widening his smile. Then he pulls Kurt into an abrupt, firm hug where Kurt can feel his chest trembling against his own. “Thanks,” Sam murmurs in his ear, and then he pulls back grinning and yanks Kurt into a run to the cafeteria by the hand.
Kurt’s madly, stupidly, ridiculously in love with him.
-
They see more and more of each other over the holidays.
From what Kurt knows he and Santana are the only people who know, and the only people who’re going to know for a while. Sam can take as long as he needs, Kurt thinks, and it’s selfish, maybe, because a silly part of him loves that Sam feels safest with him, when they’re alone together.
They babysit the kids when Sam’s parents have date night and complete Kirby’s Epic Yarn on the Wii and they watch this entire weird anime thing on Sam’s laptop based in a world where pink is a natural hair colour (when he first notices Kurt makes a face and points to it on the screen, saying, “Nobody would question your dye-job in this world”) and it’s all the same as it was before and completely different at the same time.
Like Kurt’s 99% sure Sam smells his hair when they hug now but Rachel’s given him many awkward talks about wanting something so much you start projecting - and Kurt really, really wants Sam.
They see each other less the closer Christmas comes, but Kurt makes sure to give Sam his present before they stop seeing each other altogether, and Sam takes it hesitantly, offering his own back.
“Nothing big?” he asks when he’s holding his present, as if to make sure. That’s what they’d agreed on, and Kurt made sure that’s what he did.
He nods. “Nothing big.”
Sam sends him a photo the day after Christmas of the bottle of darker-blond dye Kurt got him, along with a message that says, hope its more my colour. Kurt sends one back of the Avatar DVD case, still wrapped in its plastic that says, I’ll wait on you to try mine.
-
“You’re going to Sam’s again?” Finn asks on New Years day. He’s lounged over the couch, in the same spot he was in the afternoon, blearily blinking up at Kurt.
Kurt quickly buttons up his coat and examines himself in the living room mirror. “We’re babysitting.”
Sitting up, Finn snorts and gives him a look. “Dude, I know what that means,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “If you guys are like - you know - I don’t get why you won’t just tell me.”
“Maybe because you refer to it as ‘you know’.” Kurt carefully adjusts the angle of his hair, then gives Finn an obviously fake smile. “But there’s nothing to tell, anyway, so.” He gets to the door and waves at Finn without turning back to him, stepping outside and calling out, “Please don’t burn our house down, my dad will kill you and then I’ll have to live with all the combined trauma.”
“I might do it just for that,” is Finn’s goodbye.
Kurt frets around the car most of the drive and almost knocks into an old lady driving too slow who flips him off out of her window. After the shock of it wears off he absent-mindedly wonders if it was Puck’s grandmother, and then he’s already stopping in front of Sam’s house and looking at the Evans’s snow covered lawn. Sam’s parents are already outside, on their way to their own car, and give him enthusiastic, Sam-like waves when they spot him, wearing their familiarly crinkled smiles.
“Have fun!” Mary calls to him when he steps out of his car.
“Be careful!” Dwight calls when they’re getting into their own.
He waves as they back out of the drive, shivering slightly, and finds Sam waiting for him in the doorway, holding the door open for him to come inside. A welcomed wall of heat hits him one step into the house, and he shrugs his snow-damp coat off quickly to get the best of it.
Holding himself tightly, he simply mutters out, “Cold,” and becomes annoyingly aware of how red the chill has made his nose and cheeks.
Sam grins down at him and rubs his hands up and down Kurt’s arms. “Winter,” he corrects lowly, leaning in too close to Kurt’s face.
Kurt can feel the warmth of his breath tickling over his skin and it’s already too much. He even still has his big, hot hands around Kurt’s arms. “What’s the plan for tonight?” he asks, unable to help the way his voice instinctively follows Sam down a pitch to that pitch where everything sounds throaty and sexual and too much.
“The kids want to order pizza watch Toy Story.”
“Which one?”
Sam’s mouth twitches. “All three.” He leans in even closer, and for a moment Kurt thinks they’re going to bump foreheads but Sam just half-smiles at him and says, “You can stay late, right?” then pulls him backwards by the arms into the living room, where Stevie and Stacey are sitting on the couch, ready with their microwaved popcorn and fighting over who sits next to him.
-
Toy Story 3 is long, and the kids barely manage to stay awake through half of it - which Kurt is thankful for, because he really doesn’t want two below-ten-year-olds and the guy he likes to witness him crying. Once they’ve carried them up to their room, Sam takes him across the hall into his and drops down on the bed, heavily.
“Man, I’m really glad we got to turn that movie off before I could start hardcore sobbing. The kids made fun of me when we saw it at the movies, you know.”
Grinning, Kurt lies down next to him, a respectable distance away. “They’re too young. They don’t understand the pain.”
Sam snorts and shifts on the bed to turn onto his side, facing Kurt and - he’s giving Kurt this look, smiling with the corner of his bottom lip stuck between his teeth like he’s excited, or just as strangely nervous as Kurt is lately.
And Kurt's heart is pounding. It feels like it's reaching out of his chest and then slamming back inside and it's so distracting, and makes him feel just a little sick - the good, dizzy kind.
It's all Sam's fault for looking at him this way. Big, lazy, lopsided smile. Big, intent green eyes. Half his face is pressed into his Pac-Man bedsheets, and his too-long, too-yellow bangs are strewn across his face, and he's so close now, and Kurt knows what's going to happen.
He's still, almost shocked at the realisation that they're here, that they are, finally. Sam's fingertips touch his cheek, soft and warm, and then the bed shifts and squeaks underneath them and Sam's leaning in, eyes closed and mouth parting and parting. And - parting.
Kurt has to move out of the way and hide into the crook of Sam's neck, laughing hard, the tension in him effectively diffused. His stomach hurts, and Sam is blinking down at him with a curious smile on his face.
"What?" he presses, nudging at Kurt's hip slightly. "That was the big moment, man."
Kurt pulls back, a hand over his stretched lips."Sorry, it's just - your mouth was really wide open. Flashes of Jaws, open." He bites his bottom lip and tries not to laugh and ruin it completely. He clears his throat, looking up into Sam's face. "I wasn't expecting it, is all. And I'm sure I'd still have liked it."
"Oh my God," Sam says, laughing a little breathlessly. He runs a still slightly shaky hand through his hair. "I'm sorry, I was just planning to really go for it. I guess I got kind of carried away."
He looks at Kurt for a moment with his lips pressed together, considering. With one of his hands he traces absentminded patterns over the skin of Kurt's arm, and Kurt gets that sickly, pleasant feeling again.
Sam bites his lip, softly murmuring, "Is it totally dead now? Or can I try again without almost swallowing your whole head?"
Taking a fistful of Sam's shirt into his hand, Kurt grins tells him, "Yeah, that would be..." then he decides he's done waiting and pushes himself up on the mattress to press his smiling lips firmly against Sam's, the bend of his arm cradling Sam's head.
The hands on him hastily reach up into his hair, gently knotting, and pull him lower until Kurt has to move on top of him, straddling his waist. Sam's lips part again, this time only a cautious fraction, and Kurt licks just as cautiously inside, the feeling inside of him quickly turning hot and spreading all over, so every stroke of Sam's thumb against the back of his neck gives him chills.
It's soft and inexperienced and it makes Kurt feel like his heart could burst when Sam mumbles his name against his lips, sounding pleased and content, his voice low with something that Kurt knows turns his own skin red.
He has to pull away, breathless, heart pounding and pounding still. Sam follows his lips, breathing just as hard, and Kurt kisses him again, chastely, before dropping onto his side on the bed, feeling strangely, comfortably accomplished.
He feels Sam's hand out at his side, feels it scrambling for his own and catches it tightly. Sam squeezes around his fingers then turns to give him a smile Kurt never gets tired of seeing, his big, intent green eyes looking shiny with tears.
-
The next time they see each other is school, where Kurt can’t do even a quarter of one of the things he wants to do with Sam. It’s a new year, and apparently people still care about football, which is why the rest of the boys are barely ever anywhere else in Mckinley except on the field anymore.
“Coach Beiste is the child-catcher,” Brittany announces monotonously over the lunch table. “I knew it. They look exactly alike.”
Santana gives her a fond, head-tilted smile and Kurt exchanges a fiveway look of concern with Mercedes, Tina, Quinn and Rachel.
“Exactly?” Quinn asks with a cocked eyebrow. She gets an immediate glare from Santana in response.
“It’s Mckinley,” Mercedes says, “it’s not like we’re actually going to win.”
Tina shakes her head. “It’s ridiculous. Mike hasn’t ate lunch all week because ‘the game.’” She rolls her eyes. “And none of them make it to rehearsals anymore.”
They don’t, which is why it’s such a surprise when they step into the choir room that afternoon to find the entire football team sitting inside, and Coach Beiste next to Mr Schuester in the center of the room, both of them smiling almost with pride, like they’ve done something good here.
Kurt catches Karofsky’s eye and looks away instantaneously, reaching out for Mercedes’s arm.
“You cannot be serious,” Rachel angrily bursts out. She jabs a finger in the direction of the football players newly joining the club, congregated on the opposite side of the room from the others, who all sit, arms crossed and jaws clenched on the other side. “You know what these boys have done to us, Mr Schue.”
Lauren enters behind them, stopping dead in the doorway at the sight. “Wrong. It’s so wrong.”
“Why are they here?” Kurt snaps, heart hammering in his chest. Glee is his one safe place, and trust Mr Schuester to lead every jock who’s made it their personal duty to torment him since the fifth grade straight into it.
Mr Schuester acts appalled by what they’re saying, defensively putting his hands up while Coach Bieste simply crosses her arms at his side, giving half of her team a hard look.
“Woah, guys. I know how hard the football team has made things for us in the past, but the reason we’re all together right now is to change that. Everyone deserves a second chance, right?”
“No, not when you’re a heap of shit like that heap of shit over there,” Puck counters, gesturing with his thumb at the crowd of football players sitting a deliberate three chairs worth of space from him. They all look offended in reply, not knowing who exactly the biggest heap of shit is, but Kurt does, and Puck stares straight at him after with a hard, concerned look in his eyes.
Coach Beiste points at him. “Like it or not, this is the situation for now, at least until the game. You’re all going to work hard together on this half-time show, got that?”
-
“I’m so sorry,” is the first thing Sam says to him afterwards. The whole club, now consisting of twenty more burly football players than before, has been moved to the auditorium, where they’re working on zombie make-up and walks. Kurt is trying to fix a smudge Sam made across his cheek.
He gives Sam a brief look, carefully spreading the grey paint across his skin, then just says, “You did a good job of this on your own, you know.”
“You too. Yours is awesome.” A pause. “I’m sorry.”
Sighing, Kurt drops the pad of paint down on the tabletop beside them, gesturing his head at the mirror attached for Sam to examine himself. He feels a lot less like making out right now. “None of this is your fault. It’s okay.”
Sam shakes his head. He licks across his thumb, reaching up to rub it across a small section of skin on Kurt’s neck, gently, talking as he does it and Kurt is kind of shocked but very unopposed. “It’s really isn’t. I should have pulled Mr Schuester aside and said something or just - I don’t know, punched Karofsky’s lights out a few months ago.”
The tip of his thumb comes away black when he moves his hand back again.
“As if Mr Schue would ever listen to logic,” Kurt answers, almost breathlessly. He stares down at Sam, who stares back up at him, and feels the phantom, hot touch of his fingers trailing across his skin again. Of his warm, slick mouth.
Sam reaches out again, hesitantly, and rubs at the same spot, bright-eyes staring deep into Kurt’s. His touch spreads heat across his skin, a burning, delicious sensation travelling throughout him that settles low in his stomach. He bites his lip to keep from making a sound, and Sam’s eyes fix on where his teeth have caught in the skin, looking fascinated.
They aren’t alone, Kurt remembers abruptly.
Sam’s hand pulls away from him, then he looks around to see if they’ve been caught and his eyes stick to something, widening with panic before he turns away, red-faced, to look away from his own reflection in the mirror.
Kurt turns and sees the boy Sam’s eyes landed on, still watching them, mouth hanging open slightly. His brow furrows when he looks at Kurt, zombie make-up shifting into something Kurt finds genuinely frightening, then he says something to the jock next to him, something Kurt’s mind convinces him starts with Evans is a goddamn -
He looks away, fearfully, but can’t let his eyes fall back to Sam. Rachel calls on him from the other side of the room, claiming face-paint emergency, and he’s glad for the distraction from the way Sam looked down at his two feet after touching him, bright red with shame.
-
Sam stays away from him for a while.
It’s strange and worrying and Kurt hates every minute of it, but more than anything he hates that it feels like Sam wants his flimsy jock reputation more than he wants to be honest.
More than he wants to be with Kurt.
Football practice gets so intense and frequent that nobody notices, and in glee, Kurt opts to stick by the girls (and Puck, who declares himself an honorary girl so he can be with Lauren who promptly reminds him she isn’t a lesbian, Puckerman) which is safe enough. They don’t talk about it, and they end up getting individually pulled up by football players for help with zombie walking, zombie make-up, and singing.
There’s one point in the chaos of glee practice where Kurt nudges the case of face-paints he’s done with over to a bare-faced Karofsky without looking at him and with the same dread as months ago, and even gets a soft, “Thanks,” in return.
Mostly, Kurt feels kind of alone with everybody so wrapped up in themselves, and their relationship drama, and their ‘Coach Sylvester is going to fire us out of cannons’ drama. He misses Sam in a way that’s worse now than ever, because now there’s more to miss, and it hurts Kurt’s heart more than any boy ever has, because this one could have been his - wanted to be, and then thought better, of course.
-
In the first history class Sam hasn’t got pulled out of for football in weeks, he sits down next to Kurt, as usual, and clears his throat.
“After the game on Friday I’m having a party at my house,” he starts, hunching over a blank page like he has something to write while giving Kurt a glance. “My parents are taking the kids over to Kentucky to see some of our relatives, so it’s empty.”
Kurt pauses while taking his things out of his bag. Throwing parties while his parents are gone doesn’t sound like an idea Sam would come up with.
His knee nudges Kurt’s under the table, and Kurt gets that sickly feeling again just from the small touch. “I really want you to come,” Sam tells him, and he’s smiling, a little smaller than normally but just as sincere.
Kurt smiles back. He nudges Sam back and everything, even replies with a playful, “Maybe,” like everything’s okay between them, but he knows he isn’t going, and that no amount of wishing on Sam’s part is going to make his jock world and his almost-but-not-boyfriend fit together in any way.
-
On Friday night, Kurt ends up on the football pitch again for the second time in his life.
“Those pants look great on you,” Mercedes whispers before the game when they’re all standing in position and she’s behind him, able to give his ass an appreciative look.
“Thank you,” Kurt whispers back. Then, “I don’t know how to play football.”
They’re kind of bad, but he’s never really watched football and thinks, considering the situation, they’re doing okay. Rachel and Puck yelled encouragement at each other pre-game, and it’s rubbed off on him, too, so he runs and pretends like he has some small idea what to do until Tina gets hit and effectively terrifies everyone by seeming dead, at which point he’s appropriately scarred for life in regards to sports and opts to do nothing in safety until half-time, instead.
When it finally comes Puck yells at the football team into performing with them, which surprisingly works, and then there’s the whole mess of getting ready in the space of five minutes, meeting zombie Santana, Brittany and Quinn out on the field and performing this crazy, eery mash-up Kurt suddenly isn’t sure anyone will like, because that’s just New Directions’s luck.
But the crowd ends up loving them, and Kurt can see his dad looking confused in the stands next to Carole, who grins and waves enthusiastically, mouthing ‘wow’ at him when they’re finished, and Kurt is so exhausted from five minutes of football playing and thriller-ing combined that he ends up next to them a few moments later.
He’s filled with relief that the actual team are there for the second-half, and when they win, he watches Sam in the middle of it all, pulling his helmet off and grinning, briefly and curiously glancing up into the stands for someone before turning back, facing away from him.
-
Finn texts him just after midnight asking for a ride home from Sam’s party.
Kurt wastes ten minutes huffing to himself and another twenty deciding on the right outfit before he replies, ignoring Finn’s other four messages composed only of confused capital letters and question marks. On my way, is all he sends, because if normal Finn struggles to find any tone in Kurt’s messages he doubts wasted Finn will fare any better.
The car is silent while he drives. He’s too frustrated for music - frustrated about Finn, about Sam, about everybody at Mckinley. He slows the car about a mile from Sam’s house, as though the tiny delay will offend any of Finn’s intoxicated senses. It’s the smallest satisfaction, the only one he can really get when he parks into the crowded sidewalk of Sam’s house, heart suddenly beating in thick staccato, like warning shots firing hard against his ribs.
He takes a deep breath before he steps out and surveys the picture-perfect image of what highschool parties looked like in his head. Footballers and cheerios, nameless but pretty faces aimlessly drifting around Sam’s garden that thankfully pay him no attention. People like this don’t make Kurt feel comfortable. They don’t make him feel safe.
He wipes his shoes on the Evans’ welcome mat - an old habit - before letting himself inside, where it only gets more cliché highschool: thumping music from an iPod dock, every room crowded by drunken strangers Kurt doubts Sam’s ever spoke to. He looks around for Finn, asks a swaying Mike for him when they cross paths, but Mike tells him with his toxic vodka breath that Finn already left an hour ago after throwing up in the garden to crash at Puck’s.
“An hour ago?” Kurt repeats, frowning, and Mike nods, salutes him and departs.
He looks over Finn’s texts again, where Finn asks him for a ride home twenty minutes after leaving with Puck. Hungover Finn is going to get a serious verbal bitchslap from him tomorrow. Briefly, Kurt debates whether it’s too harsh to tell Carole about every time including this one that her son has snuck out for a night of heavy binge drinking that apparently all culminate in him throwing up over someone else’s nice things.
Then Sam appears in the kitchen doorway - Sam, and this whole other mess of issues Kurt isn't ready to face - Sam, stumbling over his own feet and blinking down at Kurt like he doesn’t believe it’s really him. A grin breaks out over his face, this disarmingly charming thing. Kurt smiles back steadily and slips his phone back into his pocket, forgotten, without looking away from him.
“You came,” Sam says, beaming. His eyes are far too glassy, breath far too poisoned. He curls a hand around Kurt’s arm and says, quieter, “I wanted you to come,” with startlingly bright eyes.
Kurt glances from where Sam’s clutching onto his arm to his other hand, where he’s clutching a plastic cup of - something that makes his nose wrinkle. “Oh,” is all he can reply, because Kurt never wanted to come here, never intended to, never thought he would. Sam invited him with all his good intentions and earnest smiles like he really believed Kurt could fit into this world and Kurt had pretended like he did, too, for Sam's sake only.
Right now there’s nothing he wants more than to go home.
He opens his mouth but before he can excuse himself Sam pulls him a step closer, so Kurt can see his messy blond bangs up close and the light shining on his parted pink lips. His mouth promptly clamps shut and swallows down any of his goodbyes.
“Could we,” Sam starts, then he pauses to lick his lips and glance at Kurt’s freckles, his smile falling, “Could we go talk somewhere? Just for a minute, I promise.”
It’s a bad idea. If Mercedes was here she’d tell him so, and Finn, and Rachel, and everyone he knows. Sam too, maybe, if he could really see it. But the way Sam looks at him sometimes is intoxicating and so different Kurt can never find it in himself to say no to him, not for anything. It’s the way Sam’s looking at him here, right now.
“Sure,” he agrees, rolling his shoulders in a shrug. Then, more to reassure the people who aren’t here to see him make this mistake, he repeats, “Just for a minute.”
Sam lets out a gush of relieved breath through his grin and loosely takes hold of Kurt’s wrists, leading him out of the kitchen, up the flight of stairs. Brittany waves at him from behind the head of a stranger but Kurt can’t see her. Can’t see anything but the way Sam pauses on the first step to turn back and smile at him, like Kurt being here really means something to him. Kurt’s not used to the way Sam can make him feel. He thinks he might never want to be, either.
Sam takes him to Stacey and Stevie’s bedroom door, the only one that’s been kept closed, and let’s them in, pulling his sister’s toybox against it afterwards to make sure it stays shut. He’s still smiling, crookedly, earnestly, gesturing for Kurt to sit on the bottom floral bedspread of his siblings’ bunk-bed. Kurt perches there, tentatively, and Sam takes a minute just to watch him with his big, beautiful smile before he sits next to him too.
Kurt takes a deep, quiet breath. Neither of them talk for a while.
Abruptly, Sam reaches over and fiddles with the folded cuff of Kurt’s shirt with a hand that looks like it might be shaking.
“You know, I had to hide like, all of my stuff in the attic for this thing,” he murmurs. His fingers brush the skin of Kurt’s wrist, just over his pulse, and pause there, and when Kurt quickly glances up at him he sees Sam’s smile has quirked into something stranger, self-deprecating. Sad. He swallows audibly and continues, “My room is almost empty and I don’t - want you to see it. Not like that.”
Kurt tries to picture it, anyway: the walls of Sam’s bedroom stripped of bad movie posters and his brother’s drawings; the tipsy stack of video-games at the side of his television gone; the action figures that he has hanging around all of his things like real little people going about their days all taken away. No comic books. No life-sized cardboard cut-out of Solid Snake by the window. It looks terribly bare, even in his head, like it could belong to anybody else, really, anybody at all.
Sam’s hand slides unsteadily into his, weaving their fingers and squeezing, effectively drawing Kurt back out of his thoughts. Sam looks at him and says, softly, “I’m so tired of hiding for these people, Kurt.” He shakes his head, looks at Kurt’s lips, and sighs out again, “So tired.”
“Then stop,” Kurt says, his brow furrowed. He doesn’t understand Sam a lot of the time. He doesn’t understand a lot of the people he knows, but those are smaller things, like Finn’s inexplicable shame when Kurt catches him watching America’s Next Top Model by himself, or how Puck makes him swear on his dad’s life he won’t tell anybody when he accidentally lets slip about going to baking class with his grandmother. With Sam, it feels like everything. The way he filters his accent out of every word he says, the way he only wears his dorky superhero t-shirts if he doesn’t have to leave the house, the way he pretends to hate reading to hide the fact that he hates that he’s not good at reading.
The way he looks at Kurt when they’re alone. No wonder he likes being with Kurt so much and not having to feel like the biggest freak in the room sometimes. God.
“It’s not that easy for me,” Sam tells him, quietly. He holds onto Kurt’s hand with both of his and Kurt doesn’t know how many times he’d pictured this, how long he’s wanted this for, but right now the reality of it is making him sick. Sam is looking at him, drunk and lost and that’s all, that’s it.
He pulls his hand away from Sam’s and pushes his blond bangs back with it, tutting. “You need a glass of water,” he instructs. He even tries to smile. “And then maybe sobriety for the rest of the month.”
Sam blinks at him in confusion and reaches up to his forehead for Kurt’s hand again, but Kurt pulls it away and clasps it on his lap instead, looking away from Sam for a moment, at Stacey’s framed fingerpaintings on the opposite wall. He glances at Sam long enough to say, softly, “I’m going to head home.”
Sam frowns. “But you just got here.” He licks his lips again and says, “I’ll get you a drink and we can stay in here and just -”
“Just what?” Kurt doesn’t mean to snap, not when Sam doesn’t really know what he’s saying, doesn’t know at all how he’s making Kurt feel. He stands up before he can feel guilty for it, striding over to the door and nudging Stacey’s toybox out of the way with his foot. He’s breathing a little heavily, but he manages to calm himself down enough to look back at Sam, still sitting wide-eyed on the bottom bunk, without his eyes watering tellingly. “Enjoy your party, okay, Sam?”
Kurt bumps into Santana on his way out, who doesn’t seem nearly drunk enough for a party like this. Her face breaks into a wide smirk when she looks up at him. She digs into the pocket of her hot pants and pulls out a phone that she presses into Kurt’s hands, baring her sharp teeth in a grin. “Your brother’s,” she explains, then she walks away, waving at him without turning back, dismissively, like in her mind she’s done him a favour tonight.
He stuffs it into his pocket and pushes through the crowd, making sure he ignores Sam when he calls out to him and slams the door when he leaves.