february 2.
Blaine had always looked up to Sam. He’d always, well… he’d always admired him, he supposed. He knew that maybe it was kind of silly to be fourteen years old and looking up to another fourteen-year-old, but when it came to Sam, he couldn’t help it.
Sam was funny. He had the biggest heart of anyone that Blaine had ever known, and Blaine was always going to be looking out for him, even when he knew that he didn’t have to, even when he knew that Sam could take care of himself and Sam would always be the one to be sticking up for him, to making sure he was taken care of.
They had always been good about that, honestly. There wasn’t one “strong” person in their relationship. They were both strong. They both took care of each other, and they both looked out for each other. When one needed help, the other was there to help. That was the way that they had always worked.
Blaine hated himself for ending things with Sam. It was one of those things that he wasn’t going to ever be able to fully let go of. It didn’t matter how much time passed or how good things got between them again, it was still going to bother him. Because… because if he hadn’t ended things, he could have stopped this.
He knew that wasn’t necessarily true. He had talked it over with Sam more times than he could even keep track of at this point. He knew very, very well that everything could have blown up. He knew they could have fallen apart in college. He knew that things could always be worse than they already were, and what if they had wound up hating each other because of it?
So, yeah. It could have been worse. It could have been infinitely worse and maybe if they had wound up hating each other back then it never would have been able to have been salvaged. So, he needed to be grateful for that if nothing else, right?
It was easier said than done. It was easier to say that he should just be grateful and optimistic for what they did have instead of dwelling over what could have happened or should have happened.
He needed Sam to be okay. And he knew that it would take a while for him to get back to that point, but he always tried to make sure that Sam knew he wasn’t alone, that he didn’t need to be so afraid anymore.
Apparently, he was wrong about that. Maybe he’d been wrong about a lot of things.
He had thought that getting Sam away from Jason, having him move in with him instead and the two of them being able to get lost in one another, would be all that was necessary to keep Sam safe.
But, he was wrong.
He was wrong, because Jason had still found them. Because Jason was still out there and apparently, Jason wasn’t letting go of this Sam thing that easily. Or at all. And that made Blaine feel sick to his stomach. He hadn’t been able to stop this from happening. He had promised Sam that he would keep him safe and he couldn’t even do that.
Normally, Blaine would be leaving right about now. He’d be tracking Jason down, and he would be giving him a piece of his mind, and maybe his fist. But Sam didn’t need that right now. Sam didn’t want that, and Sam needed to feel safe. That meant that Blaine didn’t need to be resorting to violence. It meant that Blaine needed to be staring right where he was - or, well, maybe not, but if he was going anywhere, Sam was going with him.
“I’m so sorry,” he finally managed to breathe out, sitting uneasily beside Sam on the couch and reaching for the envelope of pictures with a shaking hand. He had been following them. He’d been stalking them. “O… oh my god,” he said, flipping through the pictures but having to put them down once he got to the third or fourth.
“I know we can’t stay here,” he said, nodding and sitting closer to Sam, scooting in as close as he could without bursting some sort of personal bubble that Sam might have built around himself. “We won’t be here. If he comes back, he won’t find us. I… we can take stuff right now, and we can go somewhere. Anywhere you want. I can sublet the apartment out until we figure something else out. I don’t care. All I care about right now is making sure you’re okay.”
When he felt Sam’s hand on his shoulder, when he nudged their foreheads together, Blaine felt like he was maybe a little more capable of breathing than he’d initially thought. “I love you too,” he whispered, and every time he said it, his heart still went racing wildly in his chest. “I… I won’t go near him. I won’t do anything to hurt you, I promise.”
He pressed a kiss to his lips for a moment before he was standing up, pacing back and forth for a moment. “I’ll, um. I’ll text Sebastian, have him bring his driver by so that he can’t, like, track the car or anything. We’ll go to a hotel for the night, and figure it out from there.”
Just before he was heading back for their room, he was turning back to face him. “I know you don’t want to and I know you don’t think you’re ready, but… babe. We have to go to the police with this. We can’t let something like this happen to you again. We can’t let this happen to anyone else.”
He reached for his phone, typing out a quick text to Sebastian promising that he would give him more details later, before going back to their room and trying to sort things into bags as efficiently as he could without bursting out into tears.
It was overwhelming. It was scary. He hated that Sam had to worry about this. He hated that Sam lived in constant fear of this exact thing. He hated that Jason had hurt him so many times, physically and emotionally, and Blaine hadn’t been able to do a single thing to stop it from happening.
“Can you go get some things out of the bathroom?” Blaine asked, popping his head back out of the hallway to that he could look at him. “We’ll just get a couple bags for now I figure and… I can hire someone to pack up things later if need be. I just want to get you out of here.”
Nobody would believe him.
That’s what Sam thought. He wished he could say that he wasn’t sure when that seed of doubt first started growing but, no, he could remember the exact moment when Jason planted the idea in his head. He could still taste blood when he thought about it and he would never, ever forget the way Jason laughed at him for being naive enough to believe it would be as easy as dialing 911.
Sam had grown up trusting in the ideas of justice and heroes and the good guys always winning in the end. He wasn’t the type at all to back down from a fight if he knew that he was in the right for defending himself or someone else. Relationships were different though. No matter how heated an argument became, he’d never once thought about putting his hands on a significant other in a way that could potentially hurt them.
Jason didn’t start out hitting him. That was the thing. Yeah, this is all related to the very first time he took a swing at Sam and busted his lip, but it wasn’t as if that kind of behavior came out of nowhere. It had started with yelling at him for stupid reasons and then escalated to throwing things at him instead if he got angry. Sam kept telling himself that it would get better, that a temper wasn’t a total deal breaker.
I mean, he had been in fights in high school, so he knew how easy it was to lose your cool sometimes. And Jason had this way of making it sound like Sam had caused those outbursts. Now he could understand nothing that happened between them could be considered his fault. It was harder to see it back then. He always tried to find ways to justify it when he got shoved back against walls or found himself regretting ever saying he liked being roughed up a little.
Until Jason hit him that first time. It wasn’t right. Sam knew it before he ever reached up to touch his face and he knew it when he saw the blood on his fingertips. He had to tell somebody before shit got worse. He had to do something.
That’s when Jason made sure to put into Sam’s head that it wasn’t possible for him to get help. The police wouldn’t believe him. Whatever shame Sam felt about stripping got manipulated into being a reason nobody would listen to him. Jason could blame it on a customer or blame it another dancer who would definitely cooperate for extra money.
Why would anyone take Sam’s word for it? Who would consider him credible after the things he had done? Oh, and did he want to get arrested for shit he definitely wouldn’t want his dad to hear about? Nope. No way. Better to keep his mouth shut! Sam always crumbled before he cold really hear what would happen to him if he did tell someone, regardless of whether they believed him or not. Just talking about it came with its own list of punishments.
No matter how tough you think you are, there’s a chance you’ll run into the type of person who knows what to do and what to say to make it feel impossible to stand up for yourself. Sam hated that he’d turned into a guy who let shit happen to him but eventually he had been worn down and manipulated into thinking there wasn’t any point to screaming the truth if nobody could do anything about it.
He wasn’t over that phase yet.
Whatever relief he felt over Blaine promising to stay away from Jason didn’t last long. Sam swallowed hard when Blaine stood up, fighting his instinct to pull Blaine right back down, to wrap his arms around him and not let go for at least three hours. There would be a time and a place for wallowing in his sadness but right now they needed to get out.
Even if it meant relying on Sebastian, who sometimes had to put up with Sam sulking in his presence due to a little bit of jealousy. Just this once, he could swallow his pride and admit that Sebastian had done a lot for the both of them in the last month. “Yeah, okay,” he nodded. “That makes sense. As long as whoever did this didn’t stick around waiting to see what we do.”
Shit. Was that a thing he had to worry about or would they be okay to leave?
Sam was glancing back toward the pictures when he heard Blaine speak again from across the room. He looked over and his stomach sank instantly. Wait, the police? What good would it do to get them involved? He couldn’t prove that Jason took those pictures and he had never reported previous incidents to give them a reason to believe that he was in any kind of danger now.
It wasn’t a battle he wanted to fight when they needed to be focusing on leaving as soon as possible. Arguing with Blaine would just hold them up even longer. Even thinking that, he didn’t stand up until Blaine asked him to move, too caught up in trying to figure out what the fuck he was going to say to the police when Blaine inevitably forced him to do it against his own judgment.
“Sure, I’ll take care of the stuff,” Sam said, getting up from the couch and making his way to the bathroom to pack up whatever they’d need for the night or maybe a couple days. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, anything else he could shove into a small bag he found in the small cabinet where they kept their towels and washcloths.
He stepped into the bedroom once that was done to find that Blaine had quickly made sense of his previously chaotic attempt to pack. “I really do appreciate you not, like, flipping out the way I know you want to right now.” Sam placed the bag in his hand into one of the larger bags that Blaine hadn’t zipped up yet. “I just… I know he’s good at covering things up and making it like he didn’t do anything.”
Sam crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the dresser. “You have to be okay with there being a chance he gets away with this, just like everything else.” He took a deep breath and looked down at his shoes, feeling ready to run and their ride hadn’t even arrived yet. “It sucks and it’s scary but he didn’t leave a note and he has people who will say I did things or that I wanted it.”
His jaw clenched. “I can’t go back and prove stuff that already happened. I was stupid and I screwed up… and nobody will believe me.”