i am sam (1/?)
Title: I Am Sam (1/?)
Author: stuffedblupanda
Rating: PG-13
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Eventual Sam/Kurt (mentions of others.)
Warning(s): None yet.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: AU, based heavily on the novel and movie I Am Number Four.
Author's Note: I hope you enjoy reading this! I don't mind if you don't comment, I know I don't leave many reviews myself, so all I hope for is to entertain you for a time with this story. Thanks!
The brunet stood in front of the mirror, concentrating very hard on training his eyes on himself and only himself, lifting and curling ten pound weights in each hand, focusing on the slight but welcome strain in his muscular arms. He managed to convince Schuester to let him stay after for a post-school workout since his coach had just announced there would be no swim practice until the pool was cleansed completely of dark crimson dye. The soccer team thought pouring garish colored dye in the school pool would make for a great prank to play on the swim team, hilarious even, especially two weeks before the team went to sectionals.
Looking back, he couldn’t deny he’d known allowing himself to become so attached to a place was a terrible idea from the start. He’d simply chosen to outright ignore all the risks, but then again, Schuester had too. Of course he’d been reasonably hesitant to let Sam go out for a sports team at first, considering Schue was his Cêpan and all, but he could tell his guardian was getting tired of moving as frequently as they did as well. They had thought they could manage a few months at the most in this town before they had to be on the move again, but they had been wrong.
Apparently he wasn’t the only one with the same idea. A couple of guys from the team were scattered around the weight room, benching, squatting, and generally venting their frustrations at the soccer team through physical exertion. He couldn’t look too long in any direction that there were shirts riding up to reveal muscles flexing - he’d already been accused of making some guys uncomfortable in the past, so he fixed his eyes straight ahead into the mirror. He may be from another planet, but even on Lorien, Lorics understood the concept of differing sexualities and were accepting of it, unlike the humans on Earth. He knew exactly who he was, but he didn’t want - no, he didn’t need - anyone to actually suspect. It wasn’t at all that he was ashamed; it was just because on top of being an alien on the run from others of his kind hunting him, being a gay alien would most definitely not make blending in any easier.
Not that being one of the fastest swimmers in the entire school helped any, but whatever. To be honest, he was sick and tired of living one big lie, so if he didn’t give them any reason to question his sexuality, they wouldn’t say anything, and he wouldn’t have to lie yet again. Don’t ask, don’t tell, he thought.
“Hey Jake. What’s up?” His friend Blaine appeared beside him, scaring the living daylights out of him. He was always somewhat jumpy; he’d grown up on the run from bloodthirsty Mogadorians, he had a right - but there was something about being in the water that soothed all of that, and now with the knowledge that the pool would be closed for a week, he felt the paranoia he’d grown so accustomed to closing in on him. Blaine merely laughed and punched his arm playfully as he set down the weights. “Earth to Jake,” He waved a hand in his face.
Jake. That had been his name up until a few days ago, but he’d had to leave it behind like the others before it. He vaguely wondered how Blaine was, or what he was doing right now, as he pressed his cheek against the cold glass car window. Blaine may have been a good friend to him, but he’d probably long forgotten the incident by now. From his time here on Earth (his entire life, basically), he’d learned that things were only talked about for so long. At least that’s what Schue had told him anyway, and since they were always long gone by the time anyone tried processing suspicious happenings concerning him, he could only take his word for it.
“Got any ideas for a new name yet?” Schuester briefly glanced over at him as he rolled into a rest stop. This was the first stop in about two days of driving over countless miles of endless road.
“I was thinking Sam Evans.”
“Sounds good. Are you sure? This is your identity we’re talking about here,” Schue chuckled.
“Yeah. If the past is any indication, I won’t have it for very long anyway.” Sam shrugged, looking out the window again as Schue clambered out to refill the gas tank.
“We’re going for a quick swim. Are you in?” Blaine grinned that dangerous grin of his that sent the other boy’s heart into overdrive constantly. He was so distracted, he hadn’t realized a group of students were gathered behind his friend, waiting for ‘Jake’ to respond.
“I thought the pool was closed for cleaning.”
“It is.” He couldn’t help a small smile from spreading across his large lips; Blaine’s smile was contagious, and the thought of what he was proposing sparked his curiosity. He really shouldn’t, Schuester would have a cow if he knew he was actually even thinking about going along with this - if they got caught, he would be in trouble, causing more people to recognize him, more people than who already did, and Schuester already lectured him on the dangers of that. (They were restricted to settling in small towns, as Mogadorians were known to thrive in city settings.) No photographs, no video, no trouble, no problem. If the Mogadorians could take out an entire race, they could surf the web easily.
He’d kind of already disregarded the photo and video parts at swim meets, but he had been a good kid… until now, he supposed. He just couldn’t say no to Blaine. Was it a good or bad idea not to tell Schue about Blaine? How do you tell your guardian you have it bad for another guy? It wasn’t like Schue would mind much, or at all really, but it was still bound to make for one hell of an awkward conversation.
“Yeah, I’m game.” He followed the group into the pool house, his eyes widening slightly as he took in the damage actually done to the pool he often took refuge in every morning and every afternoon. He had seen only glimpses of the dye job through the foggy windows, but up close it was much worse, he decided with a grimace.
“You don’t mind getting a little… messy, do you?” Blaine raised an eyebrow (suggestively? He couldn’t tell; in fact, he could never tell - his friend was always sending these infuriatingly mixed signals), that grin never leaving his face. The other boy shook his head, stripped away his T-shirt and plunged straight into the water, as did many others, judging by the way the pool water rocked back and forth. He immediately felt calmer.
He presently took a deep breath to calm down. Schuester told him to review the details of that day over in his mind to coach himself in what not to do in… wherever it was they were heading to, but it wasn’t easy. Of course he knew what happened after he dove in, but he could feel himself gearing up for the retelling in anticipation nonetheless.
It had scared the hell out of him; by far the worst experience between the other two times a similar situation had arose. It was so completely unexpected; he knew he and Schuester were being tracked, even then, but with Number Three still around, he’d taken for granted a safety that wasn’t ever for certain, and at least some time to build something of a life in Tennessee. It was hard to believe he had been so oblivious only three or four days ago, but he supposed now that he had needed a wake up call to remind him how normal he really wasn’t, no matter how hard he tried to pretend he was.
The red water began to swirl, changing textures to a mist, enclosing around him like a live snake would and keeping him submerged there. A horrible pain began in his right ankle as the third scar seared itself into his skin. It’d been so long, five years since the last scar, so long ago it seemed that he definitely hadn’t seen this coming. His eyes flew open in a panic - the pain in his leg was so overwhelming, he managed to ignore the sting of the dye in his eyes.
Sam shuddered, remembering the burning pain that had come twice before. The first scar appeared one night while he was sleeping, age seven, in an old rickety house in rural New Jersey. He’d woken Schuester up with his loud cries and piercing screams, too confused and hurt to be able to get up and go to him. They immediately fled the location. It was the first sign, or rather the first warning that the Mogs had finally found them on Earth.
The second scar branded his leg just slightly above the first, during a social studies class in the sixth grade, age eleven. The moment he felt a familiar pain shoot up his leg (although it had only happened once before at the time, it wasn’t something he could let go of so easily), he leaped out the second-story window and was never heard from again.
Now, age sixteen, the third scar.
At first, indistinct shapes flickered around him as he flailed - how was it he was usually such a fantastic swimmer, but he couldn’t break the surface in a seven foot deep pool when it was actually essential to his survival? He couldn’t quite make out exact details, but there was a boy… collapsing onto the ground before a tall, black-clothed, sinister-looking… thing. The vision panned to an inhuman face, and he jolted back at the sudden sight of the Mogadorian. It bared its shark-like teeth, its black eyes glinting, fin-like structures on either side of its nose flaring.
And it growled, “You’re next.”
If he didn’t die drowning, screaming noiselessly and kicking wildly, letting the water fill his lungs - that creature would surely be the death of him. Just as it had been the death of his people. He imagined thousands of these creatures landing on Lorien, the home he couldn’t remember (he’d left so young, during the invasion) - murdering helpless families, one after another, until nothing or no one was left standing.
“Jake? Jake!” Through squinted eyes, he could see Blaine’s legs treading the water as he searched the blood red water for him. He shot off from the bottom and splashed to the surface, practically hacking up half a lung as he gasped for much needed oxygen. With each throb in his ankle, he was reminded of how urgently he needed to leave.
“Oh god, there you are! I thought you’d -“ By that time he had taken advantage of the opportunity to swim closer to a relieved, yet flabbergasted Blaine, and now he pressed his lips to the curly haired boy’s. It was quick and chaste, but it was deliberate, certainly not an accidental brush of lips. Blaine didn’t fight it - in fact, he actually responded - but he was gone before anyone had a moment’s time to notice.
He ran.
He remembered how he sped into a dead sprint, not pausing once until he reached the apartment doorstep. He wasn’t sure (even now) how many people might have seen the scar illuminated on his ankle, or the small kiss he planted on Blaine, but he was so shaken he hadn’t cared one bit. Banging on the door like a madman, Schuester threw it open and nearly had an aneurysm. Sam remembered laughing (albeit humorlessly) when he ventured a glance down at his limbs and understood what his friend Blaine had meant about ‘getting messy.’ His tanned skin was tinted red, and his light brown hair was some funky color. (Note to self, he thought, when we get into town, don’t dye your hair red.) It looked like he’d been bathed in blood, which he guessed was why Schue had panicked at first.
After Sam offered a reasonable explanation, Schue’s expression fell grave. Sam had quickly learned that it was the ‘time-to-start-packing-because-something-is-seriously-wrong-but-oh-don’t-show-it-for-Sam’ face. (He’d first been introduced to it around the time he got his first scar.) He really wished Schuester would realize that he’d been dealing with scares like this on Earth just as long as he had, so he could at least be real with him. But since he’d dissected that look before, he’d guessed they’d leave before sunset.
That was three days ago.
As Schue climbed back in the driver’s seat behind the wheel, Sam sat up, sensing Schue had something to say. He was right.
“The Mogadorians can’t kill the remaining six of you out of order. There was a… spell, if you will, cast by an Elder Lorien before we jetted off to take refuge here. It bound the nine of your ankles together, preventing harm from coming to you lest they discovered it would only be possible to kill the Numbers off in order, one to nine.” He explained slowly, gazing out the window shield pensively.
“I know this already. Why are you -“
“Sam.” Now that he thought about it, it wasn’t weird switching names anymore. At first it had seemed strange, having to adjust to a whole new identity in a matter of hours, and being expected to improvise an entire background based on only a name (there was one particularly close call where he’d said he was from Seattle - the last place they’d been - instead of Houston in the initial story).
Just this morning, he’d been Jake Worthington (he was crazily obsessed with the movie Avatar - he’d mashed up the character and the actor’s names after all - and in between running from Mogadorians and starting life after life over, he’d managed to learn the Na’vi language), and now he was Sam Evans. Just like that. The only thing that ever remained the same was the effect being in water had on him, but if he went for a swim now, he was sure to be a little more than paranoid after the events that went down in the last pool he’d been in.
“What?”
“What Number are you?”
“Number Four.” Sam’s brows furrowed as Schuester seemed to exhale a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. All Sam could think was, So what?
“Exactly.” Schue started up the engine and quickly pulled out of the parking lot and onto the near deserted roadway. The sun had gone down about an hour ago, and it would take at least eight or more of those in this truck before they got to their destination.
Three scars. Three were dead. One, two, three…
Four. Number Four. He was next.