fic: heartstrings all came undone (sam/kurt, pg) (2/2)
heartstrings all came undone.
by novelized. ~16,000 words.
fandom: Glee.
pairing: Kurt/Sam.
summary: Now that everyone else in New Directions knew about Sam's financial situation, Kurt needed to find a new way to fit into his life. He didn't realize how easy it'd be.
part two.
On Saturday, Sam doesn’t wake up until almost noon. In the time that Kurt spends waiting for him to quit drooling on his throw pillow, he does his French homework, makes crepes, plans his outfit for the day, changes his mind about said outfit four times, styles his hair, deletes twenty-six people from Facebook, feels a vague sort of remorse and adds seven of them back, and organizes his scarf collection. He’s always been an early riser. It’s not easy for him to sit around and wait for the rest of the world to begin.
Sam makes a little groaning noise when he finally awakens, though, and immediately curls his hands up to rub at his eyes. When he pushes up, away from the pillow, his hair is sticking out in every different direction. Kurt, from his spot at the desk about five feet away, can’t help but laugh.
“What?” Sam says, only slightly defensive. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Kurt assures him quickly, and Sam looks too disoriented to argue. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” Sam flops on his back, kicking the blankets away from his body. He stares up at the ceiling and lets his hand dangle over the side of the foldout, fingers just barely brushing against the carpet. “Sleeping in felt good. I haven’t been able to do that in so long. On Saturday mornings the people in the room next to ours do these obnoxiously loud jazzercise videos.”
“Never underestimate the value of a good jazzercise session.”
Sam lifts his head up to look at Kurt.
“I’m just saying,” Kurt says, hands raised in innocence. “Maybe you should join them sometime.”
“Sure. Because that’s how I want to start my weekend, with 50-year-old women in leotards.”
“It could be worse.”
“How?”
“It could be 50-year-old men in leotards.”
Sam laughs, and Kurt decides that he’d been making up-whatever had happened last night after all. He could blame it on exhaustion or the chick flick; maybe a little bit of both. Nothing’s changed.
“Come on,” Kurt says, unable to stop himself from grabbing the blanket Sam had tossed aside and folding it nicely. “I’ll make you and Finn breakfast if you promise not to burp at the kitchen table.”
“Deal,” Sam says solemnly, and he follows him upstairs.
***
Santana mass texts everyone about the party approximately six hours before it’s supposed to start, though Kurt has made it a point not to save her phone number in his contact list so he doesn’t even know who it’s from until Finn drops by the room, rests his back against the doorframe and asks, “You going to Santana’s tonight?”
Kurt doesn’t look away from his chemistry book. He wants to get an early start on the assignment. “I don’t know,” he says, tongue poking into his cheek in concentration. “The invites were kind of last-minute, don’t you think?”
Finn just stares at him.
“Were you expecting, like, handwritten cards or something?” he asks, and Kurt shoots a glare in his direction.
“No, but a little more notice would’ve been nice. Who’s going?”
“Just the people in Glee, I think. Rachel, Puck, Brittany, Sam…”
Kurt hates the way his heart picks up a little at the mention of Sam’s name. It’s not like that. It’s not. He stares very fixedly at question number thirty-seven, all about water soluble organic compounds, and gives in to resignation. “Yeah,” he says, “I suppose I’ll go.”
***
The thing is, though, Sam isn’t there. At least not at first. Eight o’clock passes, and Sam’s not there, then nine o’clock, still no Sam, then ten, eleven…
Kurt’s also the only sober person at the party. Finn’s apparently decided he’s been responsible enough for one lifetime, and after a failed attempt at a keg stand and a shot contest with Lauren Zizes, he’s wandering around the basement with a lampshade on his head. Mike Chang’s inexplicably building a tower out of couch pillows in the corner of the room, and Tina’s lying beside it, rolling around and laughing. The rest of them are so typically high school drunk that Kurt can’t do much more than roll his eyes and make sure no one falls and bashes their heads against a sharp object. Even Mercedes is leaning heavily against his side, arm wrapped tight around his waist, smiling into his shoulder every few seconds and telling him how pretty he is.
Just before midnight, Puck comes trampling downstairs from-wherever he was. And he’s not alone. “Look who finally showed up!” he shouts over the music, and Kurt cranes his neck over from his spot on the sofa to see. Sam’s a step behind Puck, hands jammed in his pockets, and he gives a nod of acknowledgment when he realizes everyone’s looking at him.
“Sorry guys,” he says, “my mom was late getting off and I had to stay with the kids.”
His entrance, however, is quickly overshadowed by Santana bursting into tears on the opposite side of the room, and Sam shakes his head and hurries to join the crowd downstairs. To Kurt’s delight, it’s him that he approaches first, as if their sole sobriety magnetizes them towards each other. “Hey,” Kurt smiles, gently shoving Mercedes away from his armpit. “Long night?”
“Extremely.” Sam pushes his hair back away from his eyes; he looks beat. “I worked all afternoon then spent the evening in the-”
“How were the kids?” Kurt asks, jumping in quickly.
“They were fine. Way too much energy. Stacy made me play My Little Pony with her all night long.”
“How do you play My-”
“Don’t ask.”
Kurt laughs.
“I need a drink,” Sam says, glancing over to the makeshift minibar, where bottles are half-empty, tipped over, or spilling over the brim with alcohol. Sometime during the night Brittany had got it into her head to make frozen margaritas, so the blender is there, full of cheap tequila and strawberry mix and melted ice cubes, but she apparently hadn’t been able to locate an electrical outlet, so the mixture had never been blended. Sam looks back at Kurt. “How come you’re not drinking?”
“Someone has to drive Finn home,” Kurt shrugs, although he probably wouldn’t have drank even if he hadn’t declared himself designated driver. He saw what alcohol did to his friends. He wasn’t eager to sink to their levels.
“That’s cool. Do you think I could ride with you, too?”
“Of course.”
Sam grins at him brightly before fumbling over and making himself a drink-some vodka, some orange juice, and then some more vodka. He takes a sip, makes a face, and adds more vodka. Apparently he’s on a mission. “Cheers,” Sam says, heading back and tipping his glass to Kurt, and Kurt taps his can of diet pepsi against his cup.
It’s difficult not to watch the pull of Sam’s throat when he swallows. Kurt forces himself to study a painting on the wall, instead, though it’s not nearly as interesting. By the time Sam lowers his glass, it’s nearly half-empty.
“Who do I have the feeling you’re not going for a slight buzz?” Kurt asks, and Sam laughs and takes another swig.
Half an hour later, ‘slight buzz’ has been surpassed and forgotten. Sam is drunk. Just like the rest of them. The music gets cranked up and they dance sloppily, all of them, and then Rachel karaokes three songs in a row, and Kurt very pointedly does not think about Rachel’s last drunken party performance with Blaine, and Santana cries two more times, and Artie starts a poker game that ends when Finn stumbles into the table and knocks all of their cards askew, and Brittany’s shirt somehow ends up tangled around Puck’s arm.
In other words, it’s a pretty typical Glee party.
Kurt loves his friends, he does, but sometimes-now, for instance-they’re a bit much to handle. He escapes through the sliding patio door when someone suggests a game of Seven Minutes In Heaven, because all the alcohol in the world couldn’t have persuaded him to join that fiasco.
It’s that time of the year where it’s just starting to warm up, but outside, at midnight, it’s still pretty damn chilly. Kurt wishes he’d thought to grab his jacket on the way out. He sits on a porch swing and stares up at the sky for a while, rubbing away the goosebumps on his arms, trying to idly locate constellations. He gives up after finding the little dipper four times, because Ohio’s not exactly the greatest place to stargaze, and just as he’s resigning himself to return to the party, the glass door slides open.
“Hey,” says a voice in a loud, drunken whisper, and Kurt turns to squint through the darkness to see who it is.
It’s Sam, beer in hand.
“Hi,” Kurt whispers back, but not so loudly.
Sam makes his way across the patio carefully, stopping just short of the swing and resting his hand against the metal post rooting it to the ground. The exhaustion has been wiped away from his face, replaced with a cheery sort of brightness that only alcohol can create. He stops and looks at Kurt. “Hey,” he says again.
Kurt smiles. “You said that already.”
“I did? Oops.”
The swing is big enough for two people; Kurt scoots over to make room then pats the seat next to him. “You can sit down if you want.”
“Thanks,” Sam says, and drops down beside him, sloshing a little beer over the sides in the process. He licks a trail of it right off the can. Kurt makes a face.
“You have no idea who’s touched that can.”
“Of course I do. Finn, me…” He presses the beer forward and grazes it against Kurt’s fingers, lightly, then grins like he’s done something clever. “Now you.”
“You have no idea where my hands have been,” Kurt says, just to prove a point.
But Sam just grins. “No,” he agrees, shaking his head, and then peering up at Kurt from under his eyelashes, “but I can imagine.”
Kurt’s mouth goes dry. He plans his feet firmly against the ground and gives the swing a little rock, just to keep himself in the moment. To stop himself from reading into things. Why does he always read into things?
But then Sam’s fingers are curling around Kurt’s wrist, tugging it away from his lap, and he presses his hand right against Sam’s forearm. “There,” he says, still whispering, “now I know they’ve been here…” He slowly drags Kurt’s hand upwards, up past his elbow, his fingers trailing along his warm skin, and they stop at his bicep, and Kurt has to fight the urge to press down, “and here,” Sam says, licking his lips, and Kurt shivers a little, then his hand is moving again, being pulled forward, gliding along Sam’s chest now, right across his pecs and stopping just above his heart, and for a second Kurt thinks he can feel it beating, thrumming through his body-but then he realizes that’s his own.
“And here,” Sam whispers a second late, staring him straight in the eyes.
Kurt knows what’s coming, if only vaguely; he’s powerless to stop it. In another life, in another world, he would be a good person. He’d pull his hand away from Sam’s chest and he’d stand up, probably go back into the party, convince everyone to start drinking water. He’d lead Sam inside and make him sit down until he’d sobered up some. He would pretend none of this never happened.
But he is not a good person. Not right now.
Sam’s lips move towards his and they miss, at first, graze the side of his mouth, but then Sam’s releasing his grip on Kurt’s wrist and sliding his hand around his neck instead, and the next time his aim is perfect, and they kiss softly, tentatively, and then Sam lurches forward and kisses him with all he’s got, pressing him back against the wooden swing, rucking up his hair in the back, breathing out against Kurt’s mouth in between kisses.
Kurt shouldn’t kiss back, but he does.
It has to stop, though, once Kurt has got his head back on straight, once his brain catches up with the rest of his body. They’re outside at a party. All of their friends are inside. Anyone could walk out here. Anyone could glance out the window and see them. He lets Sam kiss him one last time and then he pulls away, pushes him back gently when he tries to lean in for another. He looks up at the dark night sky and touches his kissed lips and mentally pulls himself together and then looks back at Sam, who’s halfway draped over the back of his seat, seeming almost sad now, remorseful.
“Sam…” Kurt says, and his voice cracks slightly. He winces. He doesn’t know what to say.
“I’m not-I’m not gay,” Sam says resolutely, setting his mouth in a straight line.
That’s not something Kurt’s going to argue with. Most of the straight guys he knows don’t go around kissing other guys-kissing him-when they’re drunk, but maybe Sam’s a special case. Maybe he’s just affectionate.
“But I really like you, Kurt,” Sam adds after a second. “You’re, like, the coolest person I know. And you dress really well even if I don’t understand half of what you wear. And you say really smart and funny things. And you don’t care that I live in a motel or that I still have all my Pokemon cards.”
“Wait,” Kurt says, “you what?”
Sam goes on like he hasn’t been interrupted. “You’re pretty much my best friend. Except I don’t normally want to kiss my best friends.”
Kurt sucks in a breath and then lets it go slowly. Sam’s drunk. That’s his mantra. He’s drunk, he’s drunk, he’s drunk, he doesn’t know what he’s saying.
“But I really want to kiss you,” Sam says, without any shame. Just a sort of drunken hopefulness in his eyes, a light flush on his cheeks.
“Sam,” Kurt says, “you’re drunk.”
“I know.”
“And we can’t do this.”
Sam frowns. “Why not?”
“Because you’re drunk.”
“But I-”
The patio door slides open suddenly, without any warning, and almost as if by impulse Kurt slides back against the swing, creating as much space between him and Sam as possible. Puck steps out into the night air, a bottle in each hand, swinging them dangerously by his side. “What the hell are you guys doing?” he demands when he sees them. “It’s freezing balls out here.”
Kurt looks at Sam; he seems to sober up some, or, at least, realize what he’s doing. “We were just talking,” Kurt says, standing up. “What are you doing outside?”
“I wanted to climb a tree,” Puck says, very seriously.
“God help us all,” Kurt mumbles under his breath, and then he grabs both boys-Sam by his shirt sleeve, Puck by his arm-and drags them back inside, both relieved and disappointed that the moment-the moment-had been interrupted.
And at this point, he’s not even entirely sure that it actually happened.
***
Finn trips over his own feet and breaks a lamp somewhere around two-thirty in the morning, which is their cue to go. They probably should’ve left an hour ago, but Kurt’s been too busy playing babysitter and not thinking about Sam kissing him. (Not thinking about Sam kissing him just inevitably leads to a lot of thinking about not thinking about Sam kissing him, which, he’s pretty sure, is counterproductive. Because really. Sam kissed him.)
“Up and at ‘em,” Kurt says, hoisting Finn up by a secure arm around his waist, and Finn laughs loudly and touches the top of his head.
“You have cool hair,” Finn tells him, very earnestly. His cheeks are bright red.
“Thanks,” Kurt says, rolling his eyes. “Have you seen Sam?”
Finn scrunches up his face in concentration. Like the fate of the entire world relies on his answer. “I thiiiink he’s in the closet.”
Kurt chooses not to comment on the irony that bit of information, but instead opens the closet door-and indeed, there’s Sam, back pressed against the wall, balancing a can on his knee. He squints up into the sudden intrusion of light. “Oh hi,” he says. “Do you guys have any food?”
“No,” Kurt says. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
“Dude.” Finn’s got a far-off look in his eyes. That can’t mean anything good. “Dude! Taco Bell sounds amazing.”
“Yes!” Sam climbs up to his feet, a little shakily but surprisingly fast for someone who’s been sitting in the dark for the better part of the last ten minutes. “Yes. Let’s get Taco Bell.”
It’s hard to choose between being annoyed and horrified. Kurt figures he’s a little bit of both. “Absolutely not. I refuse to be even in the same vicinity as anything with completely artificial taco meat.”
Sam’s pretty good at the puppydog face; he’ll give him that. “Please?”
“Pleeease?” Finn jumps in. “Come on, Kurt, you’d be the best brother ever.”
“Ever,” Sam echoes, then pauses and furrows his eyebrows. “Except, you know, not my brother.”
Kurt doesn’t say you wouldn’t have kissed me if I was your brother, but he does think it. He can’t help it.
“Fine,” he says, wanting to put an end to this conversation. That sort of sucking up is only flattering when it’s not offered solely as a means of getting fake Mexican food.
“You’re awesome,” Finn says, folding in on him, and then Sam’s there too, his chin propped up on Kurt’s shoulder, his breath warm against his ear, and Kurt screws his eyes shut and wonders why, of all nights, of all people, this had to happen to him.
***
“Don’t you think your parents will be a bit irate when their son comes home completely drunk in the middle of the night?” Kurt asks twenty minutes later, pulling out of the parking lot and heading down the familiar roads towards the motel. His car smells atrocious. He’s going to have to Febreeze every inch of it tomorrow morning.
Sam glances up from the back seat, where he’s apparently trying to shove an entire taco into his mouth. “Oh,” he says around the shell, “I told them I was spending the night at your house.”
Kurt blanches. He’d been anticipating some time alone to sort through this, to get his thoughts in order. To replay it in his mind a hundred times. To stress and privately freak out, as he does best. “You did?”
“Yeah, I mean, they’d be like totally pissed, and I’m just used to spending the night, I thought you’d be fine with it. Is that okay?”
“Totally okay,” Finn says from the passenger seat, turning around to give Sam a big thumbs up. “Hey, Kurt, we should make a tent in the living room. We could make s’mores!”
“No,” Kurt says, a little bit too quickly. He swallows and changes lanes, starts the drive back home. Getting Finn in safely without his dad noticing was going to be hard enough. Now he had to take care of two drunk guys. One who’d recently kissed him. (Sam had kissed him.) “No, we’ll sleep in our own rooms. Sam can sleep downstairs.”
“I like it downstairs,” Sam says happily, but then frowns when a chunk of lettuce and cheese falls to the ground.
Kurt grinds his teeth together. “Pick that up,” he says, passing a napkin back without taking his eyes off the road. He’s never felt so responsible in his entire life.
Getting them inside is just as difficult as he’d imagined. Finn keeps insisting he’s fine, he’s fine, he can do it on his own, but then he falls into the door and laughs when he thuds against the linoleum inside. Sam keeps humming, and not a quiet kind of humming, either; he’s pretty much going with whatever song pops into his head. They both crack up when Kurt bangs his shin on the coffee table, but then he shoots them a look that makes their laughter dry right up. Eventually, after a painstaking fifteen minutes, he gets Finn in one bed and Sam on the couch in the basement, his face pressed into the cushion and his legs dangling over one side, out like a lightbulb. Kurt watches him for a few moments, but not in the creepy way: he apparently snores when he’s drunk, which isn’t at all attractive. He just wishes he knew what was going on inside Sam’s brain. What could’ve possibly prompted him to kiss him? Where did that come from? Had he really-had he really been wanting to do that for as long as he said he had?
But he’s not going to get any answers. Not tonight. With that in mind, he haphazardly throws a blanket over Sam’s legs and climbs upstairs to his own bedroom, too tired and confused to even bother with his face-washing routine.
That, he thinks, crawling into bed without changing into pajamas first, is how he knows that something’s wrong.
***
Kurt wakes up early, as usual, and thinks about going downstairs to confront Sam. Because he’s bound to be sober by now. Although, what if-he supposes there’s a possibility that Sam won’t actually remember what happened. What he did. Or why he did it. Kurt’s never really been drunk before, so he doesn’t know the morning-after effects of drinking. He doesn’t know if temporary memory loss is expected, or if Sam will pretend he doesn’t remember just for the sake of pretending. If Sam does pretend, Kurt reasons, he might let him get away with it. As much as he wants to know where it came from, he also doesn’t want to lose the closest thing to a best male friend he’s ever had. It wouldn’t be worth it.
Still, though, he’s got to at least try.
Except that before he can go downstairs, he needs to take a shower. So he showers. And then he needs to fix his hair, so he fixes his hair. And then he checks his email, and irons his clothes, and makes his bed, and remakes his bed, and by the time he works up the courage to go downstairs it’s almost eleven.
He draws in a big breath outside the basement door, wringing his hands and hovering. He’s glad the house is still and silent. Burt and Carole are out somewhere, and Finn’s still passed out in his room. Kurt sets his jaw and swings the door open, his heart hammering traitorously against his chest.
Downstairs, however, Sam’s nowhere to be found. The blanket Kurt had thrown over him last night is folded nicely, draped over the side of the couch. The throw pillows are back where they belong. And there’s a little note, torn jaggedly down the center, resting on one of the couch cushions.
Kurt,
Thanks 4 letting me crash here. Went home 2 watch the kids. C u in school.
- Sam
Without being there to see Sam’s eyes, Kurt has no idea if that’s the truth or an easy out. An escape route. Rubbing his forehead, Kurt drops down onto the couch and folds the little slip of paper over and over and over again, until it can’t be folded anymore, until it’s just a tiny little square in the palm of his hand.
He thinks about throwing it away, but instead he just slips it into his pocket and goes upstairs and tries not to think about Sam kissing him.
(He fails.)
***
Kurt works up the courage to call Sam on Sunday, but it goes straight to voicemail. So he waits an hour and then he calls again. Voicemail. When he calls after dinner that night, it doesn’t even ring; the line is filled with the voice of the familiar female operator, letting him know that the phone is out of order. The number you have dialed is unavailable-please hang up and try again…
Kurt knows, knows, that Sam didn’t change his phone number to prevent him from calling. He knows that. Logically, it doesn’t make sense. But after the weekend he’d had… it doesn’t feel impossible.
And that’s when he starts getting mad. Why did Sam just think he could kiss him and then avoid him? Being drunk was no excuse. Finn didn’t kiss him every time he knocked a Bud Light back-but then he’s thinking about Finn kissing him, and that’s just vile, and it’s hard to be mad when you’re too busy gagging.
He can’t even pinpoint his emotions when he walks into school on Monday morning. They’re too jumbled, too frenzied. He didn’t know he was capable of maintaining that many different feelings at once, and that was coming from a guy who’d once spent an entire Friday night watching a livestreamed Lady Gaga concert on his computer with a tub of fat free vanilla ice cream as his date.
He tries to distract himself with schoolwork all day, though that’s somewhat of a challenge, considering he taught himself algebra in the eighth grade and there are three hockey players in his math class that still have trouble with multiplication. Oddly enough, Sam doesn’t show up in English class that day, though Kurt was sure he’d seen him at the opposite end of the hall before the bell rang. It’s not the first time an athlete’s played hooky in this class before, though, so he doesn’t give it too much thought. The pinnacle of the day is glee club. His stomach actually twists into knots before he gathers his books and heads for the choir room, and he hasn’t gone all stomach-twisty about a guy since the early days of Blaine.
The stomach twists weren’t necessary, though. Sam’s not even there.
“Okay, guys!” Mr. Schue says, clapping his hands for attention, and Kurt perks up a little, because he’d been staring at his iPhone for the past twenty minutes and pretending to not watch as everyone filed in. Even still, Kurt had noticed they were one person short.
“Wait,” Kurt says, keeping his voice carefully leveled, “shouldn’t we wait for Sam?”
Quinn glances up at him over her shoulder. “He’s not coming,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “He wasn’t feeling well during third period, so he went to the nurse and she sent him home.”
That explained Sam’s absence in fourth period English, at least.
Kurt presses his lips together and leans back in his seat. At least that proves his theory. Sam Evans is avoiding him. Sam Evans is definitely avoiding him.
He taps his foot against the floor in tune to the music, but his head’s in a completely different world while they rehearse. Even Mercedes can’t shake him out of it, though not for lack of trying. “Did you see the preview for that new Ryan Gosling movie?” she whispers in his hear. “He’s shirtless and damn is that boy fine.”
“Hmm,” Kurt says, because even the thought of a half-naked Gosling can’t pull him from his thoughts.
It does, however, give him a lot of time to scheme. His anger has balled up and replenished itself tenfold, and fine, he thinks, fine, if Sam won’t come to see him, he’ll go to see Sam. He’ll stop by the motel after practice and force him to have a real conversation with him. You can’t run away from your problems forever. You can’t kiss Kurt Hummel and then pretend it never happened.
“Can I ride home with you?” Finn asks when they’re finished, throwing his backpack on over his shoulders. “I walked to school today because Mom said I was looking chunky in my new puffy vest.”
“Hunky, Finn,” Kurt says back, flat, “she said you were looking hunky.”
“Oh…” Finn’s face brightens and he holds out his arms and glances down, as if to reevaluate himself entirely with this new information. “Really?”
“Yes. And I can’t drive you home. I have… prior obligations.”
Finn looks at him skeptically. “Like what?”
“Like none of your business, thank you. Ask Puck for a ride.”
“They haven’t given his license back yet.”
“Then I guess you’re walking. You could probably use the exercise.”
Finn’s face falls, just enough. “You think I’m chunky too?”
Kurt sighs.
“No,” he says, “I don’t think you’re chunky. I just… I can’t. Right now. I have to do something. I’ll see you at home.”
Before Finn can open his mouth to argue, Kurt grabs his satchel and darts out the door. The drive to the motel seems to take, at most, three seconds. In fact, Kurt doesn’t even remember turning the key in the ignition or buckling his seatbelt-one second he’s climbing in the car, and the next he’s pulling in the open spot next to Sam’s and cutting the engine. He takes a few deep breaths to steady himself before getting out. He is not going to make a scene. Not here. Not now.
He paces outside the room for a few more seconds, tries to rehearse what he’s going to say when Sam opens the door. “Hey Sam, how’s it going, nice shirt, remember when you kissed me?” Or: “You know, I’ve seen some guys desperate to get away from me, but wow, really, faking sick? I think that’s an all time low.”
He knocks on the door.
About four seconds later it opens, just a crack, with Stacy’s bright blue eye peeking through. She realizes who it is and beams and throws the door open the rest of the way. “Kurt!” she cries happily, wrapping her arms around his waist. Without letting go, she cranes her head over her neck. “Sammy, Kurt’s here! Kurt came to visit!”
Kurt hadn’t really anticipated dealing with the kids first. It was hard to maintain anger with a mousy little girl clinging to your leg, and he flashes a smile at her and twirls one of her pigtails. When he glances up, Sam’s fumbling towards the door, stepping over Stevie along the way. He’s wearing a worn bathrobe over pajama pants, clutching a handful of kleenex, and his nose is bright red.
“Oh,” Kurt says, before he can stop himself. “You’re actually sick.”
Sam’s eyebrows lift. “Did you think I was lying?”
He hesitates. Sam’s eyebrows go higher.
“Kurt,” Stacy says, demanding attention, “will you play princess with me? Sam can’t. He sounds like a frog.”
“Thanks, Stace,” Sam says dryly, and she’s got a point, Kurt thinks, he does have a little bit of a croak.
“I promise I’ll play princess with you sometime but right now I have to talk to your brother. Is that okay?”
Stacy pouts. It’s so hard being seven. “Fiiiine,” she sighs, and she half-stomps all the way back to the opposite side of the room, where she’s been dutifully combing Barbie’s hair.
For the first time since that night, Sam locks eyes with him. “What’s up?” he says, slightly unsure.
Kurt’s heart is doing somersaults. “I, um,” he says, and damn it, he shouldn’t be the anxious one here. But he is. He definitely is. “I came by to tell you we talked about Hamlet in English today.”
Sam looks surprised. Kurt’s mentally cursing himself, but Sam’s almost got the shadow of a smile peeking through, like there is anything remotely amusing about this. “You came by to tell me we talked about Hamlet,” he repeated, disbelieving, not a question at all.
“No,” Kurt admits. “I didn’t.”
The smile disappears. “I didn’t think so.” Sam pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “Let me put some shoes on and we can walk around the parking lot and talk. Okay?”
Kurt’s heart slows down. To a slightly more regular pace. “Okay,” he agrees.
He braces himself against the railing while he waits, digging his hands into the pockets of his parka. He didn’t have to hunt Sam down and force him to chat, so that’s a plus. Still, though, there’s a chance they’re going to step outside and Sam’s just going to pretend like nothing ever happened. Kurt is so sick of being treated like that-being expendable, his feelings insignificant. He’s not a playtoy. He’s not an object that straight boys can use to drunkenly test their heteroflexability and then brush off. He doesn’t want someone to kiss him just because he’s gay, because he’s out. As good as that kiss was, if that’s the reason-he’d rather never have been kissed at all.
When Sam reappears the bathrobe has vanished and been replaced with a coat that’s two sizes too big. “Finn’s,” Sam explains to Kurt’s look, and then he closes the door and gestures towards the stairs. “After you.”
Kurt walks. He walks slowly at first, so Sam can keep up, but then they fall into a rhythm, easy, their footsteps match for match. “So I think I got a cold from being outside without a jacket on Saturday,” Sam says after a long stretch of silence, and Kurt looks at him from the corner of his eye.
“You made a lot of questionable choices on Saturday,” Kurt says, even though he hates cryptic statements as much as the next guy, but Sam just nods.
“First time drinking in awhile,” he says, ducking his head. “Forgot what tequila does to me.”
Kurt stiffens. They round a pickup truck and he tightens his jacket around his shoulders. “Hopefully you’re not feeling too regretful…”
“I regret throwing up in Santana’s rose garden,” Sam says, completely serious.
“You did?” Kurt’s nose wrinkles.
“Yeah. Before you found me in the clo-hiding behind the coats.”
Kurt has never seen Sam Evans blush before, but right now, his cheeks are tinged with pink. It’s fascinating. He can’t help but look for a second too long.
“Other than that?” Kurt prompts, his breath catching. Just be honest, he mentally begs. He can forgive and forget as long as he’s honest.
Sam pauses and then shakes his head. “Nope.”
Kurt stops dead in his tracks and throws his hands out. “Sam, you kissed me,” he says, louder than he’d intended, angrier than he’d intended, but to his credit, Sam doesn’t wince. He doesn’t duck down and look over his shoulder to make sure no one heard. He doesn’t even deny it.
“Yeah,” he says, in fact. He brushes his hair out of his face so that he can look Kurt in the eye. “I did.”
Well. That wasn’t what Kurt was expecting. He deflates. “But you were drunk,” he says, giving him the out. “And I know alcohol leads to bad judgment calls… it’s okay if you didn’t know what you were doing.”
Sam sucks in a breath. His red nose is getting redder; Kurt’s pretty sure he should be back in bed. “I knew what I was doing,” he says. Kurt’s stomach drops to his knees.
“You did?”
“Yeah.” They stop walking; Kurt’s not even aware of stopping, but his feet are no longer moving, and he and Sam are face-to-face, and Sam’s not averting his eyes. He wipes his nose with the back of his sleeve. “Kurt, there are things… Um. Things I’ve known. And things I’ve felt. And it’s all new to me, and it’s easier for you, but I’m not…” He rubs the back of his neck, almost like he’s frustrated, knows he’s not being clear. “I’m not sure what I am,” he says at last. “But I do know that I like you. And I’ve liked you for a long time.”
Kurt’s never felt like this before. He doesn’t even have a word for this feeling, and kissing Blaine for the first time wasn’t even like this, because Blaine kissing him hadn’t rocked his entire world, hadn’t overturned everything he thought he knew.
“How long?” he asks, because it’s the only question his brain will allow him.
Sam grins a little, bashful now, and he’s so cute, so cute that Kurt’s heart aches. “Long enough that I started asking you for favors when I knew you had plans with Blaine,” he admits, and he has the decency to look sheepish. “That was crappy of me, I know, but…”
Kurt’s eyes widen. “Are you telling me that you didn’t actually need help with English?”
“Oh, no,” Sam says quickly, “I suck at English. I suck at pretty much every subject, actually. That part was real.”
“Mm, I figured. I knew no one could fake not knowing that Shakespeare was British.”
“Well, can you blame me? William’s a very American-sounding name.”
Kurt sighs, but it’s an affectionate sort of sigh. “Oh Sam…”
Sam grins at him again, wider this time, and Kurt feels-he doesn’t know how he feels, really. Maybe relieved. Definitely flattered. And a little bit like a ten-year-old girl with a suddenly requited crush.
“I want to kiss you,” Sam says, and Kurt’s heart does another cartwheel, “but I don’t want to get you sick. So I’m going to kiss you on the cheek, if you want me to. And then I’m going to go back inside and eat a bunch of chicken noodle soup and drink orange juice and hope that I can get better so I can kiss you for real tomorrow. Or the day after that. Okay?”
“Drinking orange juice is usually the preventative method,” Kurt says, because he can’t ever seem to shut up. “You’re supposed to drink it before you get sick, not when-”
Sam laughs. “I’m gonna kiss you now,” he says, and he does that, leans forward and presses a soft but lingering kiss on Kurt’s cheek, and then he pulls back and lets his eyes flicker up to Kurt’s.
Kurt doesn’t press his hand against his cheek and vow to never wash his face again, but he does consider it.
Sam has really nice lips.
“Go,” Kurt says, shooing him back towards the motel room, “go rest. Go get healthy. I’ll text you later?”
“Yeah, about that.” Sam shoves his hands in his coat pockets and looks uncomfortable. Kurt hates that look. It’s the motel look, the admitting he can’t afford something look. “We disconnected our cell phones. No use having three of them, you know?”
Kurt knows that’s a bad thing, that there’s an unspoken addition to the end of that sentence, but he can’t help but feel a tiny sense of relief. “So you didn’t change your number to avoid my calls.”
Sam raises his eyebrows again, bemused, and laughs. “What?”
“Nothing,” Kurt says quickly. “Um. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. If you’re feeling better. And if you’re not…”
“If I’m not?”
“I’ll bring over some hot soup after school,” he promises, and just because he can, because he couldn’t stop himself if he wanted to, his hand snakes out and tugs Sam’s away from his pocket, curls their fingers together for a brief second. He smiles. “And orange juice.”
“Drinking orange juice is a preventative method,” Sam says, but Kurt just laughs and gives his hand a squeeze.
“Bye, Sam,” he says, and then he leaves, because he thinks if he stays in that parking lot for another two seconds he won’t be able to stop himself, and then he’ll be the one with chicken noodle and tissues tomorrow morning in bed.
***
Sam’s back in school tomorrow, and even though his nose is still slightly pink, and his voice is still slightly rough, he looks cheerful when he finds Kurt in the hallway. “Hi,” he says, and then step aside and lean against the row of lockers. He looks like he wants to kiss Kurt, but he doesn’t. Kurt’s glad. Kissing another guy during crowded school hours: not the ideal way to come out.
“Hi,” Kurt says, and he reaches out and fixes the collar of Sam’s shirt, partly because it was mussed, partly because he wants the excuse to touch him.
Sam smiles. “Thanks.”
They walk together towards class, though Kurt hangs a left where Sam takes a right, but they’ll see each other a few hours from now anyway, and they’ll eat lunch together in the cafeteria, and then after school, during glee practice, Sam pulls a chair out for Kurt and they sit so close that their knees are touching.
“Watch out, world, the Ambiguously Gay Duo is back,” Puck calls out, but jokingly, almost affectionate, and he even sort of ruffles Kurt’s hair as he passes, which is both annoying and confusing but not entirely unwelcome. Kurt looks at Sam with raised eyebrows.
“I might’ve told him,” Sam says, biting on his lower lip. “At the party, actually.” He pauses. “I guess throwing up in Santana’s rosebush wasn’t my only regret.”
But Sam doesn’t seem upset that Puck knows, so Kurt presses. “Why regret?”
Sam sort of scrunches his forehead. “Because after I told him I liked you, he said, ‘That’s cool, dude, you’re probably lucky. It’s always the weird ones that are the craziest in bed.’”
Kurt frowns. “I don’t know whether to be offended or completely grossed out.”
“Both, probably. But that’s Puck for you.”
After rehearsal they head out into the school parking lot together, and because it’s mostly empty, because most of the students have generally dispersed, Sam grabs Kurt’s hand and runs his thumb along his knuckles. “Do you want to come back to the-” he starts, and Kurt knows this is where he jumps in, so he starts with, “Yeah, I’d-” but Sam shakes his head and cuts him off.
“Back to the motel,” he says, sounding out every word. “Do you want to come back to the motel with me?”
Kurt can’t help but smile. “I thought you hated being at the motel,” he says, taking a small step closer.
Sam completes the distance between them, hooks his hand around Kurt’s neck. “It’s not so bad,” he says. “Especially when you’re there.”
He pulls him in for a quick kiss, right there in the parking lot, and this time he doesn’t miss; in fact, their mouths fit together perfectly. Their bodies fit together perfectly, and Kurt doesn’t mean to sigh against his mouth, but he does. Sam pulls away and grins at him and flattens a strand of hair that Puck had messed up, and then he kisses him again, and again.
Kurt doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.
fin.
title taken from quiet company's how many times do you want to be in love?
by novelized. ~16,000 words.
fandom: Glee.
pairing: Kurt/Sam.
summary: Now that everyone else in New Directions knew about Sam's financial situation, Kurt needed to find a new way to fit into his life. He didn't realize how easy it'd be.
part two.
On Saturday, Sam doesn’t wake up until almost noon. In the time that Kurt spends waiting for him to quit drooling on his throw pillow, he does his French homework, makes crepes, plans his outfit for the day, changes his mind about said outfit four times, styles his hair, deletes twenty-six people from Facebook, feels a vague sort of remorse and adds seven of them back, and organizes his scarf collection. He’s always been an early riser. It’s not easy for him to sit around and wait for the rest of the world to begin.
Sam makes a little groaning noise when he finally awakens, though, and immediately curls his hands up to rub at his eyes. When he pushes up, away from the pillow, his hair is sticking out in every different direction. Kurt, from his spot at the desk about five feet away, can’t help but laugh.
“What?” Sam says, only slightly defensive. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Kurt assures him quickly, and Sam looks too disoriented to argue. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” Sam flops on his back, kicking the blankets away from his body. He stares up at the ceiling and lets his hand dangle over the side of the foldout, fingers just barely brushing against the carpet. “Sleeping in felt good. I haven’t been able to do that in so long. On Saturday mornings the people in the room next to ours do these obnoxiously loud jazzercise videos.”
“Never underestimate the value of a good jazzercise session.”
Sam lifts his head up to look at Kurt.
“I’m just saying,” Kurt says, hands raised in innocence. “Maybe you should join them sometime.”
“Sure. Because that’s how I want to start my weekend, with 50-year-old women in leotards.”
“It could be worse.”
“How?”
“It could be 50-year-old men in leotards.”
Sam laughs, and Kurt decides that he’d been making up-whatever had happened last night after all. He could blame it on exhaustion or the chick flick; maybe a little bit of both. Nothing’s changed.
“Come on,” Kurt says, unable to stop himself from grabbing the blanket Sam had tossed aside and folding it nicely. “I’ll make you and Finn breakfast if you promise not to burp at the kitchen table.”
“Deal,” Sam says solemnly, and he follows him upstairs.
***
Santana mass texts everyone about the party approximately six hours before it’s supposed to start, though Kurt has made it a point not to save her phone number in his contact list so he doesn’t even know who it’s from until Finn drops by the room, rests his back against the doorframe and asks, “You going to Santana’s tonight?”
Kurt doesn’t look away from his chemistry book. He wants to get an early start on the assignment. “I don’t know,” he says, tongue poking into his cheek in concentration. “The invites were kind of last-minute, don’t you think?”
Finn just stares at him.
“Were you expecting, like, handwritten cards or something?” he asks, and Kurt shoots a glare in his direction.
“No, but a little more notice would’ve been nice. Who’s going?”
“Just the people in Glee, I think. Rachel, Puck, Brittany, Sam…”
Kurt hates the way his heart picks up a little at the mention of Sam’s name. It’s not like that. It’s not. He stares very fixedly at question number thirty-seven, all about water soluble organic compounds, and gives in to resignation. “Yeah,” he says, “I suppose I’ll go.”
***
The thing is, though, Sam isn’t there. At least not at first. Eight o’clock passes, and Sam’s not there, then nine o’clock, still no Sam, then ten, eleven…
Kurt’s also the only sober person at the party. Finn’s apparently decided he’s been responsible enough for one lifetime, and after a failed attempt at a keg stand and a shot contest with Lauren Zizes, he’s wandering around the basement with a lampshade on his head. Mike Chang’s inexplicably building a tower out of couch pillows in the corner of the room, and Tina’s lying beside it, rolling around and laughing. The rest of them are so typically high school drunk that Kurt can’t do much more than roll his eyes and make sure no one falls and bashes their heads against a sharp object. Even Mercedes is leaning heavily against his side, arm wrapped tight around his waist, smiling into his shoulder every few seconds and telling him how pretty he is.
Just before midnight, Puck comes trampling downstairs from-wherever he was. And he’s not alone. “Look who finally showed up!” he shouts over the music, and Kurt cranes his neck over from his spot on the sofa to see. Sam’s a step behind Puck, hands jammed in his pockets, and he gives a nod of acknowledgment when he realizes everyone’s looking at him.
“Sorry guys,” he says, “my mom was late getting off and I had to stay with the kids.”
His entrance, however, is quickly overshadowed by Santana bursting into tears on the opposite side of the room, and Sam shakes his head and hurries to join the crowd downstairs. To Kurt’s delight, it’s him that he approaches first, as if their sole sobriety magnetizes them towards each other. “Hey,” Kurt smiles, gently shoving Mercedes away from his armpit. “Long night?”
“Extremely.” Sam pushes his hair back away from his eyes; he looks beat. “I worked all afternoon then spent the evening in the-”
“How were the kids?” Kurt asks, jumping in quickly.
“They were fine. Way too much energy. Stacy made me play My Little Pony with her all night long.”
“How do you play My-”
“Don’t ask.”
Kurt laughs.
“I need a drink,” Sam says, glancing over to the makeshift minibar, where bottles are half-empty, tipped over, or spilling over the brim with alcohol. Sometime during the night Brittany had got it into her head to make frozen margaritas, so the blender is there, full of cheap tequila and strawberry mix and melted ice cubes, but she apparently hadn’t been able to locate an electrical outlet, so the mixture had never been blended. Sam looks back at Kurt. “How come you’re not drinking?”
“Someone has to drive Finn home,” Kurt shrugs, although he probably wouldn’t have drank even if he hadn’t declared himself designated driver. He saw what alcohol did to his friends. He wasn’t eager to sink to their levels.
“That’s cool. Do you think I could ride with you, too?”
“Of course.”
Sam grins at him brightly before fumbling over and making himself a drink-some vodka, some orange juice, and then some more vodka. He takes a sip, makes a face, and adds more vodka. Apparently he’s on a mission. “Cheers,” Sam says, heading back and tipping his glass to Kurt, and Kurt taps his can of diet pepsi against his cup.
It’s difficult not to watch the pull of Sam’s throat when he swallows. Kurt forces himself to study a painting on the wall, instead, though it’s not nearly as interesting. By the time Sam lowers his glass, it’s nearly half-empty.
“Who do I have the feeling you’re not going for a slight buzz?” Kurt asks, and Sam laughs and takes another swig.
Half an hour later, ‘slight buzz’ has been surpassed and forgotten. Sam is drunk. Just like the rest of them. The music gets cranked up and they dance sloppily, all of them, and then Rachel karaokes three songs in a row, and Kurt very pointedly does not think about Rachel’s last drunken party performance with Blaine, and Santana cries two more times, and Artie starts a poker game that ends when Finn stumbles into the table and knocks all of their cards askew, and Brittany’s shirt somehow ends up tangled around Puck’s arm.
In other words, it’s a pretty typical Glee party.
Kurt loves his friends, he does, but sometimes-now, for instance-they’re a bit much to handle. He escapes through the sliding patio door when someone suggests a game of Seven Minutes In Heaven, because all the alcohol in the world couldn’t have persuaded him to join that fiasco.
It’s that time of the year where it’s just starting to warm up, but outside, at midnight, it’s still pretty damn chilly. Kurt wishes he’d thought to grab his jacket on the way out. He sits on a porch swing and stares up at the sky for a while, rubbing away the goosebumps on his arms, trying to idly locate constellations. He gives up after finding the little dipper four times, because Ohio’s not exactly the greatest place to stargaze, and just as he’s resigning himself to return to the party, the glass door slides open.
“Hey,” says a voice in a loud, drunken whisper, and Kurt turns to squint through the darkness to see who it is.
It’s Sam, beer in hand.
“Hi,” Kurt whispers back, but not so loudly.
Sam makes his way across the patio carefully, stopping just short of the swing and resting his hand against the metal post rooting it to the ground. The exhaustion has been wiped away from his face, replaced with a cheery sort of brightness that only alcohol can create. He stops and looks at Kurt. “Hey,” he says again.
Kurt smiles. “You said that already.”
“I did? Oops.”
The swing is big enough for two people; Kurt scoots over to make room then pats the seat next to him. “You can sit down if you want.”
“Thanks,” Sam says, and drops down beside him, sloshing a little beer over the sides in the process. He licks a trail of it right off the can. Kurt makes a face.
“You have no idea who’s touched that can.”
“Of course I do. Finn, me…” He presses the beer forward and grazes it against Kurt’s fingers, lightly, then grins like he’s done something clever. “Now you.”
“You have no idea where my hands have been,” Kurt says, just to prove a point.
But Sam just grins. “No,” he agrees, shaking his head, and then peering up at Kurt from under his eyelashes, “but I can imagine.”
Kurt’s mouth goes dry. He plans his feet firmly against the ground and gives the swing a little rock, just to keep himself in the moment. To stop himself from reading into things. Why does he always read into things?
But then Sam’s fingers are curling around Kurt’s wrist, tugging it away from his lap, and he presses his hand right against Sam’s forearm. “There,” he says, still whispering, “now I know they’ve been here…” He slowly drags Kurt’s hand upwards, up past his elbow, his fingers trailing along his warm skin, and they stop at his bicep, and Kurt has to fight the urge to press down, “and here,” Sam says, licking his lips, and Kurt shivers a little, then his hand is moving again, being pulled forward, gliding along Sam’s chest now, right across his pecs and stopping just above his heart, and for a second Kurt thinks he can feel it beating, thrumming through his body-but then he realizes that’s his own.
“And here,” Sam whispers a second late, staring him straight in the eyes.
Kurt knows what’s coming, if only vaguely; he’s powerless to stop it. In another life, in another world, he would be a good person. He’d pull his hand away from Sam’s chest and he’d stand up, probably go back into the party, convince everyone to start drinking water. He’d lead Sam inside and make him sit down until he’d sobered up some. He would pretend none of this never happened.
But he is not a good person. Not right now.
Sam’s lips move towards his and they miss, at first, graze the side of his mouth, but then Sam’s releasing his grip on Kurt’s wrist and sliding his hand around his neck instead, and the next time his aim is perfect, and they kiss softly, tentatively, and then Sam lurches forward and kisses him with all he’s got, pressing him back against the wooden swing, rucking up his hair in the back, breathing out against Kurt’s mouth in between kisses.
Kurt shouldn’t kiss back, but he does.
It has to stop, though, once Kurt has got his head back on straight, once his brain catches up with the rest of his body. They’re outside at a party. All of their friends are inside. Anyone could walk out here. Anyone could glance out the window and see them. He lets Sam kiss him one last time and then he pulls away, pushes him back gently when he tries to lean in for another. He looks up at the dark night sky and touches his kissed lips and mentally pulls himself together and then looks back at Sam, who’s halfway draped over the back of his seat, seeming almost sad now, remorseful.
“Sam…” Kurt says, and his voice cracks slightly. He winces. He doesn’t know what to say.
“I’m not-I’m not gay,” Sam says resolutely, setting his mouth in a straight line.
That’s not something Kurt’s going to argue with. Most of the straight guys he knows don’t go around kissing other guys-kissing him-when they’re drunk, but maybe Sam’s a special case. Maybe he’s just affectionate.
“But I really like you, Kurt,” Sam adds after a second. “You’re, like, the coolest person I know. And you dress really well even if I don’t understand half of what you wear. And you say really smart and funny things. And you don’t care that I live in a motel or that I still have all my Pokemon cards.”
“Wait,” Kurt says, “you what?”
Sam goes on like he hasn’t been interrupted. “You’re pretty much my best friend. Except I don’t normally want to kiss my best friends.”
Kurt sucks in a breath and then lets it go slowly. Sam’s drunk. That’s his mantra. He’s drunk, he’s drunk, he’s drunk, he doesn’t know what he’s saying.
“But I really want to kiss you,” Sam says, without any shame. Just a sort of drunken hopefulness in his eyes, a light flush on his cheeks.
“Sam,” Kurt says, “you’re drunk.”
“I know.”
“And we can’t do this.”
Sam frowns. “Why not?”
“Because you’re drunk.”
“But I-”
The patio door slides open suddenly, without any warning, and almost as if by impulse Kurt slides back against the swing, creating as much space between him and Sam as possible. Puck steps out into the night air, a bottle in each hand, swinging them dangerously by his side. “What the hell are you guys doing?” he demands when he sees them. “It’s freezing balls out here.”
Kurt looks at Sam; he seems to sober up some, or, at least, realize what he’s doing. “We were just talking,” Kurt says, standing up. “What are you doing outside?”
“I wanted to climb a tree,” Puck says, very seriously.
“God help us all,” Kurt mumbles under his breath, and then he grabs both boys-Sam by his shirt sleeve, Puck by his arm-and drags them back inside, both relieved and disappointed that the moment-the moment-had been interrupted.
And at this point, he’s not even entirely sure that it actually happened.
***
Finn trips over his own feet and breaks a lamp somewhere around two-thirty in the morning, which is their cue to go. They probably should’ve left an hour ago, but Kurt’s been too busy playing babysitter and not thinking about Sam kissing him. (Not thinking about Sam kissing him just inevitably leads to a lot of thinking about not thinking about Sam kissing him, which, he’s pretty sure, is counterproductive. Because really. Sam kissed him.)
“Up and at ‘em,” Kurt says, hoisting Finn up by a secure arm around his waist, and Finn laughs loudly and touches the top of his head.
“You have cool hair,” Finn tells him, very earnestly. His cheeks are bright red.
“Thanks,” Kurt says, rolling his eyes. “Have you seen Sam?”
Finn scrunches up his face in concentration. Like the fate of the entire world relies on his answer. “I thiiiink he’s in the closet.”
Kurt chooses not to comment on the irony that bit of information, but instead opens the closet door-and indeed, there’s Sam, back pressed against the wall, balancing a can on his knee. He squints up into the sudden intrusion of light. “Oh hi,” he says. “Do you guys have any food?”
“No,” Kurt says. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
“Dude.” Finn’s got a far-off look in his eyes. That can’t mean anything good. “Dude! Taco Bell sounds amazing.”
“Yes!” Sam climbs up to his feet, a little shakily but surprisingly fast for someone who’s been sitting in the dark for the better part of the last ten minutes. “Yes. Let’s get Taco Bell.”
It’s hard to choose between being annoyed and horrified. Kurt figures he’s a little bit of both. “Absolutely not. I refuse to be even in the same vicinity as anything with completely artificial taco meat.”
Sam’s pretty good at the puppydog face; he’ll give him that. “Please?”
“Pleeease?” Finn jumps in. “Come on, Kurt, you’d be the best brother ever.”
“Ever,” Sam echoes, then pauses and furrows his eyebrows. “Except, you know, not my brother.”
Kurt doesn’t say you wouldn’t have kissed me if I was your brother, but he does think it. He can’t help it.
“Fine,” he says, wanting to put an end to this conversation. That sort of sucking up is only flattering when it’s not offered solely as a means of getting fake Mexican food.
“You’re awesome,” Finn says, folding in on him, and then Sam’s there too, his chin propped up on Kurt’s shoulder, his breath warm against his ear, and Kurt screws his eyes shut and wonders why, of all nights, of all people, this had to happen to him.
***
“Don’t you think your parents will be a bit irate when their son comes home completely drunk in the middle of the night?” Kurt asks twenty minutes later, pulling out of the parking lot and heading down the familiar roads towards the motel. His car smells atrocious. He’s going to have to Febreeze every inch of it tomorrow morning.
Sam glances up from the back seat, where he’s apparently trying to shove an entire taco into his mouth. “Oh,” he says around the shell, “I told them I was spending the night at your house.”
Kurt blanches. He’d been anticipating some time alone to sort through this, to get his thoughts in order. To replay it in his mind a hundred times. To stress and privately freak out, as he does best. “You did?”
“Yeah, I mean, they’d be like totally pissed, and I’m just used to spending the night, I thought you’d be fine with it. Is that okay?”
“Totally okay,” Finn says from the passenger seat, turning around to give Sam a big thumbs up. “Hey, Kurt, we should make a tent in the living room. We could make s’mores!”
“No,” Kurt says, a little bit too quickly. He swallows and changes lanes, starts the drive back home. Getting Finn in safely without his dad noticing was going to be hard enough. Now he had to take care of two drunk guys. One who’d recently kissed him. (Sam had kissed him.) “No, we’ll sleep in our own rooms. Sam can sleep downstairs.”
“I like it downstairs,” Sam says happily, but then frowns when a chunk of lettuce and cheese falls to the ground.
Kurt grinds his teeth together. “Pick that up,” he says, passing a napkin back without taking his eyes off the road. He’s never felt so responsible in his entire life.
Getting them inside is just as difficult as he’d imagined. Finn keeps insisting he’s fine, he’s fine, he can do it on his own, but then he falls into the door and laughs when he thuds against the linoleum inside. Sam keeps humming, and not a quiet kind of humming, either; he’s pretty much going with whatever song pops into his head. They both crack up when Kurt bangs his shin on the coffee table, but then he shoots them a look that makes their laughter dry right up. Eventually, after a painstaking fifteen minutes, he gets Finn in one bed and Sam on the couch in the basement, his face pressed into the cushion and his legs dangling over one side, out like a lightbulb. Kurt watches him for a few moments, but not in the creepy way: he apparently snores when he’s drunk, which isn’t at all attractive. He just wishes he knew what was going on inside Sam’s brain. What could’ve possibly prompted him to kiss him? Where did that come from? Had he really-had he really been wanting to do that for as long as he said he had?
But he’s not going to get any answers. Not tonight. With that in mind, he haphazardly throws a blanket over Sam’s legs and climbs upstairs to his own bedroom, too tired and confused to even bother with his face-washing routine.
That, he thinks, crawling into bed without changing into pajamas first, is how he knows that something’s wrong.
***
Kurt wakes up early, as usual, and thinks about going downstairs to confront Sam. Because he’s bound to be sober by now. Although, what if-he supposes there’s a possibility that Sam won’t actually remember what happened. What he did. Or why he did it. Kurt’s never really been drunk before, so he doesn’t know the morning-after effects of drinking. He doesn’t know if temporary memory loss is expected, or if Sam will pretend he doesn’t remember just for the sake of pretending. If Sam does pretend, Kurt reasons, he might let him get away with it. As much as he wants to know where it came from, he also doesn’t want to lose the closest thing to a best male friend he’s ever had. It wouldn’t be worth it.
Still, though, he’s got to at least try.
Except that before he can go downstairs, he needs to take a shower. So he showers. And then he needs to fix his hair, so he fixes his hair. And then he checks his email, and irons his clothes, and makes his bed, and remakes his bed, and by the time he works up the courage to go downstairs it’s almost eleven.
He draws in a big breath outside the basement door, wringing his hands and hovering. He’s glad the house is still and silent. Burt and Carole are out somewhere, and Finn’s still passed out in his room. Kurt sets his jaw and swings the door open, his heart hammering traitorously against his chest.
Downstairs, however, Sam’s nowhere to be found. The blanket Kurt had thrown over him last night is folded nicely, draped over the side of the couch. The throw pillows are back where they belong. And there’s a little note, torn jaggedly down the center, resting on one of the couch cushions.
Kurt,
Thanks 4 letting me crash here. Went home 2 watch the kids. C u in school.
- Sam
Without being there to see Sam’s eyes, Kurt has no idea if that’s the truth or an easy out. An escape route. Rubbing his forehead, Kurt drops down onto the couch and folds the little slip of paper over and over and over again, until it can’t be folded anymore, until it’s just a tiny little square in the palm of his hand.
He thinks about throwing it away, but instead he just slips it into his pocket and goes upstairs and tries not to think about Sam kissing him.
(He fails.)
***
Kurt works up the courage to call Sam on Sunday, but it goes straight to voicemail. So he waits an hour and then he calls again. Voicemail. When he calls after dinner that night, it doesn’t even ring; the line is filled with the voice of the familiar female operator, letting him know that the phone is out of order. The number you have dialed is unavailable-please hang up and try again…
Kurt knows, knows, that Sam didn’t change his phone number to prevent him from calling. He knows that. Logically, it doesn’t make sense. But after the weekend he’d had… it doesn’t feel impossible.
And that’s when he starts getting mad. Why did Sam just think he could kiss him and then avoid him? Being drunk was no excuse. Finn didn’t kiss him every time he knocked a Bud Light back-but then he’s thinking about Finn kissing him, and that’s just vile, and it’s hard to be mad when you’re too busy gagging.
He can’t even pinpoint his emotions when he walks into school on Monday morning. They’re too jumbled, too frenzied. He didn’t know he was capable of maintaining that many different feelings at once, and that was coming from a guy who’d once spent an entire Friday night watching a livestreamed Lady Gaga concert on his computer with a tub of fat free vanilla ice cream as his date.
He tries to distract himself with schoolwork all day, though that’s somewhat of a challenge, considering he taught himself algebra in the eighth grade and there are three hockey players in his math class that still have trouble with multiplication. Oddly enough, Sam doesn’t show up in English class that day, though Kurt was sure he’d seen him at the opposite end of the hall before the bell rang. It’s not the first time an athlete’s played hooky in this class before, though, so he doesn’t give it too much thought. The pinnacle of the day is glee club. His stomach actually twists into knots before he gathers his books and heads for the choir room, and he hasn’t gone all stomach-twisty about a guy since the early days of Blaine.
The stomach twists weren’t necessary, though. Sam’s not even there.
“Okay, guys!” Mr. Schue says, clapping his hands for attention, and Kurt perks up a little, because he’d been staring at his iPhone for the past twenty minutes and pretending to not watch as everyone filed in. Even still, Kurt had noticed they were one person short.
“Wait,” Kurt says, keeping his voice carefully leveled, “shouldn’t we wait for Sam?”
Quinn glances up at him over her shoulder. “He’s not coming,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “He wasn’t feeling well during third period, so he went to the nurse and she sent him home.”
That explained Sam’s absence in fourth period English, at least.
Kurt presses his lips together and leans back in his seat. At least that proves his theory. Sam Evans is avoiding him. Sam Evans is definitely avoiding him.
He taps his foot against the floor in tune to the music, but his head’s in a completely different world while they rehearse. Even Mercedes can’t shake him out of it, though not for lack of trying. “Did you see the preview for that new Ryan Gosling movie?” she whispers in his hear. “He’s shirtless and damn is that boy fine.”
“Hmm,” Kurt says, because even the thought of a half-naked Gosling can’t pull him from his thoughts.
It does, however, give him a lot of time to scheme. His anger has balled up and replenished itself tenfold, and fine, he thinks, fine, if Sam won’t come to see him, he’ll go to see Sam. He’ll stop by the motel after practice and force him to have a real conversation with him. You can’t run away from your problems forever. You can’t kiss Kurt Hummel and then pretend it never happened.
“Can I ride home with you?” Finn asks when they’re finished, throwing his backpack on over his shoulders. “I walked to school today because Mom said I was looking chunky in my new puffy vest.”
“Hunky, Finn,” Kurt says back, flat, “she said you were looking hunky.”
“Oh…” Finn’s face brightens and he holds out his arms and glances down, as if to reevaluate himself entirely with this new information. “Really?”
“Yes. And I can’t drive you home. I have… prior obligations.”
Finn looks at him skeptically. “Like what?”
“Like none of your business, thank you. Ask Puck for a ride.”
“They haven’t given his license back yet.”
“Then I guess you’re walking. You could probably use the exercise.”
Finn’s face falls, just enough. “You think I’m chunky too?”
Kurt sighs.
“No,” he says, “I don’t think you’re chunky. I just… I can’t. Right now. I have to do something. I’ll see you at home.”
Before Finn can open his mouth to argue, Kurt grabs his satchel and darts out the door. The drive to the motel seems to take, at most, three seconds. In fact, Kurt doesn’t even remember turning the key in the ignition or buckling his seatbelt-one second he’s climbing in the car, and the next he’s pulling in the open spot next to Sam’s and cutting the engine. He takes a few deep breaths to steady himself before getting out. He is not going to make a scene. Not here. Not now.
He paces outside the room for a few more seconds, tries to rehearse what he’s going to say when Sam opens the door. “Hey Sam, how’s it going, nice shirt, remember when you kissed me?” Or: “You know, I’ve seen some guys desperate to get away from me, but wow, really, faking sick? I think that’s an all time low.”
He knocks on the door.
About four seconds later it opens, just a crack, with Stacy’s bright blue eye peeking through. She realizes who it is and beams and throws the door open the rest of the way. “Kurt!” she cries happily, wrapping her arms around his waist. Without letting go, she cranes her head over her neck. “Sammy, Kurt’s here! Kurt came to visit!”
Kurt hadn’t really anticipated dealing with the kids first. It was hard to maintain anger with a mousy little girl clinging to your leg, and he flashes a smile at her and twirls one of her pigtails. When he glances up, Sam’s fumbling towards the door, stepping over Stevie along the way. He’s wearing a worn bathrobe over pajama pants, clutching a handful of kleenex, and his nose is bright red.
“Oh,” Kurt says, before he can stop himself. “You’re actually sick.”
Sam’s eyebrows lift. “Did you think I was lying?”
He hesitates. Sam’s eyebrows go higher.
“Kurt,” Stacy says, demanding attention, “will you play princess with me? Sam can’t. He sounds like a frog.”
“Thanks, Stace,” Sam says dryly, and she’s got a point, Kurt thinks, he does have a little bit of a croak.
“I promise I’ll play princess with you sometime but right now I have to talk to your brother. Is that okay?”
Stacy pouts. It’s so hard being seven. “Fiiiine,” she sighs, and she half-stomps all the way back to the opposite side of the room, where she’s been dutifully combing Barbie’s hair.
For the first time since that night, Sam locks eyes with him. “What’s up?” he says, slightly unsure.
Kurt’s heart is doing somersaults. “I, um,” he says, and damn it, he shouldn’t be the anxious one here. But he is. He definitely is. “I came by to tell you we talked about Hamlet in English today.”
Sam looks surprised. Kurt’s mentally cursing himself, but Sam’s almost got the shadow of a smile peeking through, like there is anything remotely amusing about this. “You came by to tell me we talked about Hamlet,” he repeated, disbelieving, not a question at all.
“No,” Kurt admits. “I didn’t.”
The smile disappears. “I didn’t think so.” Sam pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “Let me put some shoes on and we can walk around the parking lot and talk. Okay?”
Kurt’s heart slows down. To a slightly more regular pace. “Okay,” he agrees.
He braces himself against the railing while he waits, digging his hands into the pockets of his parka. He didn’t have to hunt Sam down and force him to chat, so that’s a plus. Still, though, there’s a chance they’re going to step outside and Sam’s just going to pretend like nothing ever happened. Kurt is so sick of being treated like that-being expendable, his feelings insignificant. He’s not a playtoy. He’s not an object that straight boys can use to drunkenly test their heteroflexability and then brush off. He doesn’t want someone to kiss him just because he’s gay, because he’s out. As good as that kiss was, if that’s the reason-he’d rather never have been kissed at all.
When Sam reappears the bathrobe has vanished and been replaced with a coat that’s two sizes too big. “Finn’s,” Sam explains to Kurt’s look, and then he closes the door and gestures towards the stairs. “After you.”
Kurt walks. He walks slowly at first, so Sam can keep up, but then they fall into a rhythm, easy, their footsteps match for match. “So I think I got a cold from being outside without a jacket on Saturday,” Sam says after a long stretch of silence, and Kurt looks at him from the corner of his eye.
“You made a lot of questionable choices on Saturday,” Kurt says, even though he hates cryptic statements as much as the next guy, but Sam just nods.
“First time drinking in awhile,” he says, ducking his head. “Forgot what tequila does to me.”
Kurt stiffens. They round a pickup truck and he tightens his jacket around his shoulders. “Hopefully you’re not feeling too regretful…”
“I regret throwing up in Santana’s rose garden,” Sam says, completely serious.
“You did?” Kurt’s nose wrinkles.
“Yeah. Before you found me in the clo-hiding behind the coats.”
Kurt has never seen Sam Evans blush before, but right now, his cheeks are tinged with pink. It’s fascinating. He can’t help but look for a second too long.
“Other than that?” Kurt prompts, his breath catching. Just be honest, he mentally begs. He can forgive and forget as long as he’s honest.
Sam pauses and then shakes his head. “Nope.”
Kurt stops dead in his tracks and throws his hands out. “Sam, you kissed me,” he says, louder than he’d intended, angrier than he’d intended, but to his credit, Sam doesn’t wince. He doesn’t duck down and look over his shoulder to make sure no one heard. He doesn’t even deny it.
“Yeah,” he says, in fact. He brushes his hair out of his face so that he can look Kurt in the eye. “I did.”
Well. That wasn’t what Kurt was expecting. He deflates. “But you were drunk,” he says, giving him the out. “And I know alcohol leads to bad judgment calls… it’s okay if you didn’t know what you were doing.”
Sam sucks in a breath. His red nose is getting redder; Kurt’s pretty sure he should be back in bed. “I knew what I was doing,” he says. Kurt’s stomach drops to his knees.
“You did?”
“Yeah.” They stop walking; Kurt’s not even aware of stopping, but his feet are no longer moving, and he and Sam are face-to-face, and Sam’s not averting his eyes. He wipes his nose with the back of his sleeve. “Kurt, there are things… Um. Things I’ve known. And things I’ve felt. And it’s all new to me, and it’s easier for you, but I’m not…” He rubs the back of his neck, almost like he’s frustrated, knows he’s not being clear. “I’m not sure what I am,” he says at last. “But I do know that I like you. And I’ve liked you for a long time.”
Kurt’s never felt like this before. He doesn’t even have a word for this feeling, and kissing Blaine for the first time wasn’t even like this, because Blaine kissing him hadn’t rocked his entire world, hadn’t overturned everything he thought he knew.
“How long?” he asks, because it’s the only question his brain will allow him.
Sam grins a little, bashful now, and he’s so cute, so cute that Kurt’s heart aches. “Long enough that I started asking you for favors when I knew you had plans with Blaine,” he admits, and he has the decency to look sheepish. “That was crappy of me, I know, but…”
Kurt’s eyes widen. “Are you telling me that you didn’t actually need help with English?”
“Oh, no,” Sam says quickly, “I suck at English. I suck at pretty much every subject, actually. That part was real.”
“Mm, I figured. I knew no one could fake not knowing that Shakespeare was British.”
“Well, can you blame me? William’s a very American-sounding name.”
Kurt sighs, but it’s an affectionate sort of sigh. “Oh Sam…”
Sam grins at him again, wider this time, and Kurt feels-he doesn’t know how he feels, really. Maybe relieved. Definitely flattered. And a little bit like a ten-year-old girl with a suddenly requited crush.
“I want to kiss you,” Sam says, and Kurt’s heart does another cartwheel, “but I don’t want to get you sick. So I’m going to kiss you on the cheek, if you want me to. And then I’m going to go back inside and eat a bunch of chicken noodle soup and drink orange juice and hope that I can get better so I can kiss you for real tomorrow. Or the day after that. Okay?”
“Drinking orange juice is usually the preventative method,” Kurt says, because he can’t ever seem to shut up. “You’re supposed to drink it before you get sick, not when-”
Sam laughs. “I’m gonna kiss you now,” he says, and he does that, leans forward and presses a soft but lingering kiss on Kurt’s cheek, and then he pulls back and lets his eyes flicker up to Kurt’s.
Kurt doesn’t press his hand against his cheek and vow to never wash his face again, but he does consider it.
Sam has really nice lips.
“Go,” Kurt says, shooing him back towards the motel room, “go rest. Go get healthy. I’ll text you later?”
“Yeah, about that.” Sam shoves his hands in his coat pockets and looks uncomfortable. Kurt hates that look. It’s the motel look, the admitting he can’t afford something look. “We disconnected our cell phones. No use having three of them, you know?”
Kurt knows that’s a bad thing, that there’s an unspoken addition to the end of that sentence, but he can’t help but feel a tiny sense of relief. “So you didn’t change your number to avoid my calls.”
Sam raises his eyebrows again, bemused, and laughs. “What?”
“Nothing,” Kurt says quickly. “Um. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. If you’re feeling better. And if you’re not…”
“If I’m not?”
“I’ll bring over some hot soup after school,” he promises, and just because he can, because he couldn’t stop himself if he wanted to, his hand snakes out and tugs Sam’s away from his pocket, curls their fingers together for a brief second. He smiles. “And orange juice.”
“Drinking orange juice is a preventative method,” Sam says, but Kurt just laughs and gives his hand a squeeze.
“Bye, Sam,” he says, and then he leaves, because he thinks if he stays in that parking lot for another two seconds he won’t be able to stop himself, and then he’ll be the one with chicken noodle and tissues tomorrow morning in bed.
***
Sam’s back in school tomorrow, and even though his nose is still slightly pink, and his voice is still slightly rough, he looks cheerful when he finds Kurt in the hallway. “Hi,” he says, and then step aside and lean against the row of lockers. He looks like he wants to kiss Kurt, but he doesn’t. Kurt’s glad. Kissing another guy during crowded school hours: not the ideal way to come out.
“Hi,” Kurt says, and he reaches out and fixes the collar of Sam’s shirt, partly because it was mussed, partly because he wants the excuse to touch him.
Sam smiles. “Thanks.”
They walk together towards class, though Kurt hangs a left where Sam takes a right, but they’ll see each other a few hours from now anyway, and they’ll eat lunch together in the cafeteria, and then after school, during glee practice, Sam pulls a chair out for Kurt and they sit so close that their knees are touching.
“Watch out, world, the Ambiguously Gay Duo is back,” Puck calls out, but jokingly, almost affectionate, and he even sort of ruffles Kurt’s hair as he passes, which is both annoying and confusing but not entirely unwelcome. Kurt looks at Sam with raised eyebrows.
“I might’ve told him,” Sam says, biting on his lower lip. “At the party, actually.” He pauses. “I guess throwing up in Santana’s rosebush wasn’t my only regret.”
But Sam doesn’t seem upset that Puck knows, so Kurt presses. “Why regret?”
Sam sort of scrunches his forehead. “Because after I told him I liked you, he said, ‘That’s cool, dude, you’re probably lucky. It’s always the weird ones that are the craziest in bed.’”
Kurt frowns. “I don’t know whether to be offended or completely grossed out.”
“Both, probably. But that’s Puck for you.”
After rehearsal they head out into the school parking lot together, and because it’s mostly empty, because most of the students have generally dispersed, Sam grabs Kurt’s hand and runs his thumb along his knuckles. “Do you want to come back to the-” he starts, and Kurt knows this is where he jumps in, so he starts with, “Yeah, I’d-” but Sam shakes his head and cuts him off.
“Back to the motel,” he says, sounding out every word. “Do you want to come back to the motel with me?”
Kurt can’t help but smile. “I thought you hated being at the motel,” he says, taking a small step closer.
Sam completes the distance between them, hooks his hand around Kurt’s neck. “It’s not so bad,” he says. “Especially when you’re there.”
He pulls him in for a quick kiss, right there in the parking lot, and this time he doesn’t miss; in fact, their mouths fit together perfectly. Their bodies fit together perfectly, and Kurt doesn’t mean to sigh against his mouth, but he does. Sam pulls away and grins at him and flattens a strand of hair that Puck had messed up, and then he kisses him again, and again.
Kurt doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.
fin.
title taken from quiet company's how many times do you want to be in love?