[kumpez-blog]

Kurt has this boy.

He goes to Dalton, and he’s probably rich and good-looking and smarter than Sam and it’s not like any of that even bothers him, Sam just sort of - hates him, whoever he is. It’s weird because Sam doesn’t really hate anyone, but this guy just rubs him wrong, and the way Kurt talks about him makes him feel sick and depressed like somewhere in Dalton some smart, handsome guy in nicer clothes than he has is driving a needle into the chest of a Sam-shaped voodoo doll. It’s pretty messed up. And it’s weird, because Sam’s normally the one who brings him up. If he didn’t ask Kurt would never tell him, ever, or any of the guys. He only shares stuff like that with the girls and Artie and makes them swear on his mom’s Whitney Houston record like a bible that they won’t let it spread outside of them. Even Santana doesn’t budge with stuff like that, but Sam knows it’s just because she finds it funny that he wants to know so bad and not because she really cares about keeping promises. They’re in the library together studying English. Sam is super bad at english and Kurt is super the opposite, and that’s probably because Kurt actually looks at the textbook while he’s studying; unlike Sam, who gnaws at the end of his pencil and looks at Kurt. “How’s the Dalton guy?” he asks, by way of conversation. He pulls the pencil away from his mouth and pretends that he was actually doing something productive. Kurt glances up at him, an eyebrow cocked. “For the hundredth time, his name is Blaine.” He turns a page, because he’s still actually studying, unlike Sam, who just sits there blankly and feels halfway between a panic attack and whatever the Hulk feels like before he bursts out his shirt. “And he’s doing just as well as he was when you asked yesterday.” “That’s cool,” Sam says, looking into Kurt’s face for signs of something, anything. Disgust. Anger that Blaine is doing well. Real, volatile dislike that only exists within Sam, because he’s going crazy, or something - he hasn’t figured out what all this is yet but it’s seriously getting freaky. “That’s good,” he asserts, then he narrows his eyes at Kurt, who narrows his eyes right back at him. “Do you want to meet him or something? You and Santana need to stop with the third degree - I swear he’s just, you know, a completely harmless fifteen year old boy. Like you.” Sam makes a face at the comparison. “Yeah, I’m sure we’re super alike,” he comments, dryly, this time looking away from Kurt. “Our dad’s probably bought our sweet sixteen Bentley’s from the same store. We probably look down at the same Rolex face when we need to check the time, right?” “Oh my God, Sam, I said absolutely none of that at all, in the least, ever.” Kurt huffs out an exasperated sigh and starts throwing his hands around when he’s talking, which Sam has noticed from many angry arguments with Finn is Probably Not A Good Sign. “What’s your problem with him? I barely ever see him, I never talk about him. You bring him up because - I don’t know, because you love getting inexplicably pissed off about things that don’t matter.” It’s all fair enough, and Sam feels bad about it as soon as its said. He goes quiet, pursing his lips together, staring down at the words swimming across his English textbook. He fumbles with the curled edge of a page. “Sorry,” he says, guiltily. “I know I’m being weird about it, he just... bothers me.” Sam knows what Blaine looks like. Sam knows he was talking to Kurt about some other guy he liked. Sam knows Kurt had a crush on him once (and maybe still a little but God, hopefully not) and that Blaine hadn’t been interested in him until Kurt had told him he’d stopped. He knows because he eavesdrops and manages to pull enough things out of Quinn, who finds it all boring, and Rachel, who finds it all beautifully romantic, or some crap. Kurt bristles. “You don’t even know him. Is it getting too gay for you? Is having a guy friend who might have a boyfriend too much?” Sam’s heart clenches. He flinches. “Of course not. You know me better than that.” But something about it hurts - the word boyfriend scars on skin that isn’t his. “Then what, Sam?” Kurt stares at him, hard, and for a minute Sam is irrationally scared that they won’t be friends after this. “What is it?” “I  don’t...” he starts, the he shakes his head. He plays with his hands and glances at Kurt periodically. He remembers when Kurt said that him transferring was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time, and now he wonders if it’s something else, someone else, instead. Something better. He feels sore and low, like he’s sinking into the ground, and he remembers wanting to tell Kurt he was the best thing in Ohio but stopping himself, scared. “I don’t want you to date him,” he answers, quietly. That’s all. It’s that easy, he wants to say, but Kurt’s looking at him, stunned, like it’s something way bigger. He falls back in his chair like he’s been winded and keeps on staring at Sam, big-eyed, his cheeks getting pinker that way Sam likes. Then, almost embarrassed, he looks away, holding onto himself. “Why’s that?” he asks, soft-voiced. For a minute, Sam can’t find the answer. He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “If some guy ever hurt you I’d - I mean, I’d have to kill him, probably.” And the sentiment is true, the complete, ridiculous over-protectiveness that flares through him when jocks throw Kurt around or make him into a punchline in the locker-room is something constant now; and there’s something else, maybe, but that’s enough right now because it makes Kurt laugh, surprised and pleased and pink-cheeked. He looks at Sam, again, searching for something this time. Then he drops his eyes back to his book and smiles with one side of his mouth, so it looks hard and a little sad. “Okay, Sam,” he says in a light voice, then he pulls his book close again. Sam watches him, confused. He wonders if he said the wrong thing, or was making the wrong face, or if maybe Kurt likes him a little less right now than he did before this stupid conversation. He wonders if Blaine is going to be Kurt’s boyfriend, and if he’ll break Kurt’s heart or be with him for a really, crappily romantic, long time, and he doesn’t know why both options sort of hurt a lot. “I’m sorry. You can date whoever you want,” Sam tells him, sincerely, looking into his surprised eyes. He hopes Kurt doesn’t want to date Blaine. He kind of hopes Kurt doesn’t want to date anybody, and that he just wants to keep answering the door on Saturdays when Sam shows up and pretends he and Finn have plans, even though they both know Finn’s on his weekly day-date with Rachel, and that Sam doesn’t really talk to him that much, anyway. He hopes Kurt just wants to sit around with him on Saturday afternoons and watch Lifetime movies and paint Sam’s nails red and laugh at the dumb, nervous jokes Sam makes. Kurt sighs from across the table and leans his head into his palm, giving him a resigned look. “No, I can’t,” he huffs.

[kumpez-blog]

[kumpez-blog]

21

Kurt smells the same sweet, clean way he always does. His apartment looks even smaller around him. He's warm under Sam's hands, the firm muscles in his back moving into his palm when he hugs him, almost at tightly as he used to. Bad idea, Sam thinks, but he breathes in Kurt's fruity shampoo, the nice detergent on his clothes, the moisturiser seeping into his skin; takes it all in and can't help himself. "It's good to see you," Kurt tells him with enthusiasm. Sam hates that NYADA's made him so good at lying because he can't tell anymore. Can't tell why Kurt puts a heavy inch between their bodies when they hug, or why he smiles so much - too much, for him. Part of Sam insists that these are good things, things he used to need. Little things to barrier them. He used to want so badly that he'd stop wanting Kurt to like him back. "You too," Sam says, burying as closely into Kurt's neck as he lets him go. He means it, and they both know, and nothing Sam feels will ever be safe from Kurt knowing. - Sam wonders how many times he's been inside of Kurt. There's no way he'll ever get close to the right number; a lot of it's gone, forcefully forgotten, and when he tries to picture their sixteen year old bodies rattling the metal frame of his bunk bed against his bedroom wall, he ends up remembering, at least, that he always turned the lights off; that there was nothing to see so far under the covers. Now, they're on Kurt's bed, grey New York light pouring through the giant windows on the walls. It makes Kurt look sickly, even when he's so flushed. Sam cups a hand against his cheek to shadow it and see all the redness, all the freckles, all the tiny bits he's missed enough for his toes to curl at the sight. Kurt is underneath him in nothing but an unbuttoned, wrinkling shirt. He gasps at his own fingers inside of himself, and Sam watches that, too, the very same fascination, having missed it the same way. Comfortingly, and because he can, he rubs Kurt's thigh, feeling it tremble at his third finger's slide. He touches the hand Kurt's fucking himself on and shivers, other hand moving to his own cock, bulging wetly out of his boxers. He squeezes slightly, sighs. The rhythmic slide of Kurt's hand stops, three of his fingers slowly pulling out of his hole, lube still clinging to the tips before dripping onto his pink, spread skin. He gasps again, hips arching, searching. His eyes shut tightly, teeth clamping down on his lip. "Sam," he huffs out with effort, and Sam clumsily tugs off his own underwear, body naked and so hot inside he's already sweating. Slow, he thinks, feeding his dick into Kurt, listening to his soft noises, watching his flushed grey skin, willing the it to last. To never end. It always feels like it did the first time (from what Sam can remember of it). Overwhelming, so good, so close. He groans when he sees the last inch of him squeeze into Kurt's ass, then falls, lightheaded with the pleasure, his head neatly tucking beneath Kurt's jaw. The sound of Kurt's heartbeat is thick in his ears, rapid and frantic enough to match his own. Synchronised, maybe. Sam waits another moment, revelling in the twitching, excited muscles around his dick and the way Kurt's hand gently rakes through his hair. Then he starts, shallow thrusts at first, reacquainting himself with Kurt's body, the strange, incredible feeling of being inside of him. He cries out it's so much. Kurt fucks himself back onto him, back arching when Sam's mouth sucks a hasty bruise into his neck. He licks the salty red skin there, drags his hands along Kurt's spread, tight asscheeks. Something is missing, but he never knows what, and he doesn't bother thinking about it too much when this is as close to perfect as he thinks things get. Head stretched back, Kurt moans. "More," he insists in a low voice that vibrates in his chest, against Sam's skin. His arms stretch up, hands clinging onto the headboard, and Sam pushes his spread legs back and starts to fuck in deep, harder, the old mattress squeaking under the pressure of them both and the headboard clicking against the wall. He’s glad the sun’s started coming out. He pants, balls tightening, something building up hot and desperate in his stomach."God, Kurt. Fuck fuck fuck." “Come in me,” Kurt murmurs underneath him, roughly. He pulls on the hair at the back of Sam’s head and then, louder, “Come, Sam.” With a groan, Sam snaps his hips, skin burning where Kurt touches him: hands dragging through Sam’s sweaty hair, across his slick back, one snaking back between them to his own cock. Sam starts, reaching down himself instead to fumblingly touch Kurt’s cock. He strokes, and Kurt jerks his hips reflexively, whimpers. He pushes Sam’s hand away again and fists himself, and Sam can’t be confused for long because Kurt clenches around him when he comes, tight, and makes a breathy noise that has Sam shooting off inside of him, the orgasm thick, wracking. One of Kurt’s legs bend to bring him closer, then hang over his back again, limply. “Mmmm,” he hums, shut-eyed. Sam kisses from his cheek to his jaw to the slight dimple in his chin, lingering there as the post-orgasm warmth drains away, and Kurt hums again, softly. His hand is still in Sam’s hair, slowly stroking it back. Sam closes his eyes. He never wants it to end. - This is the first time. They’re in Sam’s dark room, under his Batman sheets. Sam has his mouth on Kurt after weeks of trying not to touch him, not there, not like this, but it’s all okay because Kurt promises he loves him back, and the way he kissed Sam when he said it made him know it was the truth. - Kurt is worried about Sam’s weight. He never mentions it, but he cooks more food than either of them can eat, and when Sam says as much he just shrugs and wipes a little mashed potato from his cheek. “We need to...” he starts, clicking his fingers as he looks for the word. He lands on it, giving Sam an effectively distracting look over his shoulder as he finishes, drawling, “Replenish.” After the first time in the bedroom, Sam backed him up against the tiles of the tiny shower, the two of them fitting together any way the space would let them. Kurt insisted they clean every bit of Ohio off of his body and scrubbed his scalp a little too hard, lathered him in his expensive soap until the hot water ran out; Sam kissed his wet hair apologetically and let him. Then he’d pulled Kurt onto his lap on the couch, Kurt’s skin damp and warm and bare in his hands, and rolled on a third condom. After that, Kurt had pulled clean boxers on, still shaky-breathed and sporting messy hair, and insisted on making a big meal while Sam lay across the couch, not even bothering with clothes, and started to miss him again. Sam ends up eating until he can’t anymore because it makes Kurt happy. Kurt turns the TV to SG-1 while they eat and leaves it on until the end even though he visibly has no idea what’s happening. But Sam thinks he has a kind of secondhand enjoyment for stuff like this now, because back home he watches Chicago when it’s on even though everyone’s so mean in it, and he checks the thrift store window Kurt used to shop in just to guess what he might like. It’s just background noise, anyway. Kurt puts their plates down on his little coffee-table and drops his head onto Sam’s shoulder when he sits back up, hesitatingly, like he thinks Sam might move away - Sam tries not to be tense under him, but it’s difficult when he’s trying to keep so still, too, and not have Kurt move back again. They just haven’t done stuff like this in a while and it makes Sam’s hands sweat. He puts a careful arm around Kurt’s shoulders. Kurt just lies on him for a while, hair tickling the side of Sam’s face. His warm skin is pressed up to Sam’s side and it feels good, closer than they’ve been in maybe years. Something is still not okay, but Sam pushes it away as best he can and drops his head a little so his lips can brush Kurt’s forehead. “Your heart’s beating really fast,” Kurt says, softly. Sam swallows and feels Kurt’s against the side of his ribcage, thumping at the same frantic pace. “Yeah,” he agrees, feeling caught red-handed, ashamed. - They’ve gotten quieter and quieter around each other since they were eighteen, and Kurt left. Sam knows about his roommate, Rachel, some of his New York friends like Santana and Artie, and even though he wants them to talk like they used to and he has a million things he’s been storing up day-by-day to say to him, it still gets quieter, because he’s afraid of what Kurt might tell him if he wanted to. Sometimes he feels bad for never asking about his friends, or New York, but Kurt hates knowing about Sam’s friends and Ohio just as much. Sometimes Sam feels bad for not wanting Kurt to date boys here, or kiss boys, or be with them like they are, the same way he knows Kurt doesn’t want him to be with girls anymore. “You’re okay?” Kurt asks him instead, generally enough for Sam to filter out what he thinks Kurt won’t want to hear. He feels stupid for enjoying the sincere look in Kurt’s eyes so much when he asks. He grins. Answers with, “Great,” but Kurt knows, anyway. - If Sam were sixteen and Kurt was lying on him like this, and they’d spent the day babysitting his siblings and touching hands when they weren’t looking, he’d hook an arm through the bend of Kurt’s legs and carry him upstairs to the bottom bed of his bunk, the one his parent’s referred to as just Kurt’s because they thought he was the only one sleeping in there. Kurt would give him a funny smile on the whole way up and a handjob under the covers and then not let on to anybody they knew that this was something they did a lot (at all) because Sam didn’t feel ready. But Sam’s twenty-one and Kurt’s twenty-two, and Sam once told him he didn’t know if he’d ever feel ready so Kurt stopped touching him like that and didn’t like it when Sam did, either. He’d said it was unfair, and then they’d fucked on his squeaky New York bed and Sam had missed him more than ever. Sam smells his hair and keeps still. Kurt’s heart keeps on racing against him, keeps pressing back into Sam’s kisses on his forehead. It’s good. Sam doesn’t want to waste it again. Then Kurt’s cell phone makes a noise from the kitchen, and the sound of the city and the television flood back into Sam’s ears and Kurt moves away again after a second’s pause, standing up with his face looking red, angling away from Sam. His feet pad softly against the floor as he goes. Sam can hear it when they stop, and he wonders who texts Kurt near midnight on Friday nights. He feels bad for it, and sickly, and suddenly remembers why Kurt stopped kissing him on the lips. He thinks Kurt looks like he feels guilty when he comes back, like he’d be doing anything wrong by getting a message from some boy, and he feels bad for that, too. He feels bad for leaning his head against Kurt’s stomach, sucking him through his boxers like a bad apology, and feels bad for the sorry sounding noise Kurt makes from it. He’s getting desperate. When he goes to slide Kurt’s underwear down Kurt’s hands are on either side of his jaw, pulling him up to stand. He gives Sam a sad look, then leans up to give him a kiss that’s too dry and too light and makes Sam feel like crying. He walks Sam into the bedroom and onto his bed, and Sam lets himself fall against it, distracted with watching him. “Please,” he says, because Kurt always knows what he needs. Kurt slides off his underwear again, cock bobbing out, and Sam’s blood starts to thrum inside of him, loudly. Kurt crawls over him and stops to kiss Sam deeply and let out a sigh against his lips that sounds like it’s been waiting to escape him for too long. His body angles away when he reaches towards the bedside table, chest hovering above Sam’s face, and Sam grips his waist and licks at him on instinct, tongue wetly grazing a nipple. Kurt’s breath catches. He moves back again, a condom wrapper between his teeth and lube in one hand, face burying into Sam’s neck. Their dicks slide together when he lowers his hips another inch, thrusting, and Sam’s hands squeeze at his back. “I really -” he tries, arching up against him again, “I need you.” Nodding into his throat, Kurt’s hands slide low to push his legs apart and then push them up, bent on either side of them. He kisses Sam’s mouth hard and insistent, and muffles the way Sam groans at the feel of his slick finger pushing slowly inside of him. Kurt’s fingered him before, years ago, but nothing more than that. Sam’s fingers feel too different when he tries to pretend, alone in Ohio, but it’s still good. Not as good. “I need more,” he insists, even though it hurts a little. Kurt hesitatingly slides second finger inside, and then Sam feels the wet heat of him mouth drag over his dick slowly to take his mind off the ache inside him - something he’s missed it so much he thinks he could already come. “Kurt, please.” Kurt huffs, breath hot against Sam’s erection. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He pushes another one in, fucks them faster into Sam’s hole with his mouth still working at his twitching cock for a moment. Sam has to tug at his hair and try to pull him off because he needs this to last. This is the first time, he thinks, sitting up to kiss Kurt and fumblingly help him roll a condom on. It sounds like a heavy thing to say in his mind, and he kisses Kurt deeper because he’s suddenly a little scared and Kurt kisses back, reassuringly, because he knows. He waits for Sam to relax, as long as he needs. But the way Sam needs him right now has his ankles pushing into the dimples of Kurt’s back, and slowly, obligingly, Kurt pushes inside of him. Sam can feel him pulsing, how big he is, how hot. He squeezes at his own cock and urges himself not to come yet. Shallowly, Kurt rocks his hips, and Sam rocks back like a reflex. It feels closer than they’ve ever, ever been before, Sam thinks, and he pulls Kurt close to him for another kiss. “Don’t stop,” he pleads against him, and he means it.

[kumpez-blog]

Title: You Might Need Me (2a/2) Pairing: Kurt/Sam, most canon S2 pairings. Rating: PG-13. Summary: Junior year doesn't go the way Kurt expects. S2 rewrite.

( Part 1a / Part 1b / Part 1c | AO3 )

[kumpez-blog]

Sam watches Kurt’s freckled cheeks flush, pleased, after his boyfriend gives him a parting kiss and something ugly rises inside of him he thought had gone a long, long time ago, but he quells it back down with a smile, thinks, in another life.

2. AU:

There’s one second left on the clock, and in it Sam feels like he’s seeing a thousand things at once - the speed of Kurt across the field, a blur of red and white; the wide-eyed look on his face through his thin-barred helmet when he catches Puck’s throw from the other side of the pitch; the way the ground rattles after the touchdown and the air becomes deafening; and the smile on Kurt’s shiny, red face when he jogs up to Sam on the sidelines and kisses him hard and victorious. 3. Crack!Fic:

Kurt is nineteen and half-certain he’s about to make the very worst decision of his and anybody else in existence’s life until he actually gets on set (still clothed) and finds his ‘co-star’ (less clothed) grinning at him over a ridiculous, gq-magazine physique and appropriately porn-sized cock that he’s pretty sure twitches with his next step, and then he starts feeling suddenly better about the whole situation. 4. Crossover:

The worst thing about his crappy day-job, Sam thinks, is his weird boss with absolutely no self-awareness and really, truly terrible impressions; but the best thing, he thinks - and he sneaks a glance at Kurt over his monitor where he’s sitting at the reception with solitaire up on his screen, as always - the best thing definitely makes up for it. 5. First Time:

It’s kind of long overdue and super, embarrassingly clumsy - Sam almost knocks some of Kurt’s teeth out during some particularly enthusiastic pre-sex oral, and they have to stop halfway to Kurt’s old bedroom because he hits his foot on the doorway and ends up biting down so hard on Sam’s neck it starts to bleed - but when all is said and done, after they have successfully, miraculously manoeuvred the condom from Kurt’s cock, after they manage to finally kiss each other on the lips without bumping or knocking anything too painfully, and they’re just lying together, bruised and sore and confirmed gigantic messes of people, Sam breathlessly says, “That was like, the coolest thing I’ve done in my life,” and Kurt hums beside him, happy, before kissing him in agreement. 6. Fluff:

Ever since Sam started inviting friends from glee club over to play nerf gun war with his siblings it's gotten lamer and lamer, but Rachel yelling at him for breaking character, tongue hanging out and eyes rolling back as he dies in his beloved, amused Kurt's arms (and really, does it have to be so accurate with his baby brother and sister watching?) is an all new level. 7. Humor:

The thing about New York is Sam has really never felt like he should be worried about being there, safe in the living room of the new new Hummelberry apartment (which is not just singular room), his knees on the nice new furry rug Kurt picked out with Kurt sitting in front of him on the sofa, lax, cock securely in Sam's mouth, in case Burt decides to suddenly drop in to surprise his son. 8. Hurt/Comfort:

They go together and sit by her all afternoon, silent, and Kurt keeps fixing the flowers by her name with agitated, shaky fingers, trying to make them look just right for her, and Sam has to stop him the eighth time when it breaks his heart too much to watch, so much that he reaches out with his own unsteady hand and holds Kurt's into it, squeezing gently. 9. Smut:

It's been two months since they've last seen each other, two months and Sam doesn't even know how many calls and messages, but they all said relatively similar things (Kurt misses him, Kurt misses his cock, Kurt had an erection through his entire first class thinking about riding him, Kurt loves him a lot but Kurt is really fucking desperate, Sam) so the first thing Sam does is kiss him hard and the second is fuck him harder. 10. UST:

When Kurt comes home for the holidays, Sam is still in the guest room by his, and Sam is even longer, even firmer, more handsome, and Sam is still too comfortable walking around Kurt in his tight, tight boxers before anyone else has woken up, and Sam is the one who licks his lips this morning and nods his head at the erection Kurt hide, his big hand pressed against his own straining hard-on when he asks, lowly, hand outstretched, "Can I?"

[kumpez-blog]

For charmedbysamkurt, my Secret Santa: I like the idea of showing five different ways Sam and Kurt’s paths could have crossed, but set in different eras like 1950s/1960s/1970s etc… 

Merry Christmas, Elizabeth!

Progression

Four times Sam and Kurt meet, and the one time they stay together. Sam/Kurt.

It’s 2010 and Sam meets Kurt for the first time. * It's 1972. Kurt's mom has been dead for eight years and his dad has been in Vietnam for six. He lives with his aunt, now, who has church group every night and makes him sleep with a wooden cross over the window opposite his bed - it'll help God fix him along, she says, meaning the soft way he talks, looks, meaning that he's sinful. She doesn't let him talk to the neighbour girls with the dark skin or the Star of David necklace, doesn't let him do much at all; he becomes quiet and careful and lonelier than he thought was possible a few years before, when the people he loved were still alive, or at least still in Ohio with him. All he has to look forward to is glimpses of one boy, and even then his aunt is strict - she hates his long hair, his baggy clothes, his hippie parents and their tacky van parked in the church car park, and the more she hates them all the more Kurt stares at him in mass, besotted. Sinful. Mostly, he sees the boy at school, behind the main building. He sprawls out on the grass and gives Kurt lazy grins when he walks by, smelling of smoke and dirt and boy all the while, and Kurt smiles back, tightly, a quieted part of him desperate to sit down beside him and say hello. Once, Kurt passed him in the car-park, lying across the hood of his car with a girl he didn't know by his side, both of them smelling strong with smoke and looking calm, happy. When Kurt passed, he'd outstretched his hand in offer, the one holding the joint, and asked if he wanted a drag. Kurt had gotten hot all over watching the smoke pass through those pink, warm looking lips and thinking of it gliding between his own and being breathed back again. "No, thank you," he'd said, red faced, and he'd kept walking - because he couldn't cut school or go to class high, not when screwing up there meant he was doomed, completely doomed, no matter how good pretty boys made smoking look. "That's cool, that's okay," the boy assured him, and when Kurt looked back he was leant up on the car roof to watch him go with that big smile across his face, calling out to him, "You have a good one, alright?" It's his voice too, Kurt knows, because his legs feel weak at the low, sated sound of it whenever he says hello or passingly asks how Kurt is. He sings with his guitar sometimes, and Kurt wants to stop and watch him, impossibly lovely in somewhere impossibly alone. The boy has shaggy, long hair that's gone blond in the sunshine, same way the tips of Kurt's do in the summer. The skin of his nose a pretty shade of red from sunburn, and his face is always tanned, shiny, smiling with a lazy contentedness, and the way he looks at Kurt is thrilling and terrifying and more special than anything else left in his life. It's Tuesday, and even though Kurt is already late he takes the long way to class so he can walk the pathway at the back of the school and see him there, same as he always does. This time, the boy is alone, and when he sees Kurt he straightens and tries to unsuccessfully push his bangs out of his eyes. They're lush green and as bright as halos. "Hey," he drawls, lowly, sitting cross-legged on his patch of grass. Kurt doesn't know if he ever goes to class, or if he's always here, smiling like that at anyone who walks by - but he selfishly hopes it isn't the latter. His big hand touches the green space at his side, indicatively. He nods his head towards it, peeking out of his bangs at Kurt with those warm eyes. "You wanna sit for a while? 'Cause every time I see you, you're all tense lookin'." His grin widens, slowly, invitingly. "You should come sit." Kurt stares at him, wide eyed and frozen, clutching the straps of his old backpack tighter than he knows they can handle anymore. His heart ricochets back and forth inside of his chest in an unsteady beat, making him feel dizzy and sick. It's love, he thinks, sharply. "That's," he starts, swallowing and glancing around, finding the world miraculously empty around them. He flexes his fingers, fidgety with excitement, and stops looking for bad excuses to say no. Instead, he half-smiles and tries a shaky, "Okay." The boy keeps grinning at him, keeps on tempting him. Carefully, Kurt places himself down by his side, feeling every brush of grass blades against his skin like they're piercing all the way through him; feeling the sun so bright and warm in the sky it's burning him up hotter inside than he's ever been; and seeing the boy next to him so clear in his eyes, all charm and handsomeness so present, that Kurt has to look at his own knees to keep from staring. God is testing me, he realises, scared. He feels frail, like the sparse daises smattered across the grass around them, weathered by ignorant footsteps and desperate little hands pulling them to pieces. Whatever may happen feels like something big either way, something definitive - whether it's good or bad, or nothing at all. "I'm Sam," the boy tells him, and there's a smile in his voice - there's always a smile for Kurt. Sam nudges Kurt's shoulder with his own. "You're Kurt." His big hand picks out a daisy by Kurt's hip and careful fingertips pluck one tiny petal off.

Kurt watches, a surge of something in his chest, hopeful and alive. "I see you a lot," Sam adds, intently working on halfing a petal with his blunt nails. Then, looking almost embarrassed, he turns to Kurt, cheeks pink and lips wetted and states like a confession, "I feel like I see you all the time." Determinedly, Kurt looks back with surprised, soft eyes. He swallows, mouth too dry to form words, then agrees, "You do." It's hasty, small-voiced. Kurt wishes they were in his old bedroom, his real one, with the door locked, the blinds drawn, two of them safe together on his tiny old mattress to do something more. Kurt wishes he could kiss Sam out here in the open air and wherever else he liked, and whenever, and that there were no doubts in his mind about Sam not liking him back this way because they could tell each other in words instead of Kurt, alone, looking too deeply into quiet actions. He thinks he might be right about Sam, though. Thinks it again when Sam's hand goes limp and drops the daisy because he's staring distractedly at Kurt's lips, his eyes intent and lips parted. Kurt swallows again and feels brave. "I see you, too." Unblinking, Sam keeps looking at him, his mouth stretching back into its crooked, pleased smile. You're all I see anymore, Kurt wants to say, but he keeps it and hopes he can say it later, when it doesn't make him think of the parents he's lost, the home, that other life; when instead it’s thoughts of the goodness of Sam, the sweet way he tastes, maybe, or the appealing smell of his endearingly ugly tie-dye T-shirt.  He keeps looking, heart hammering, and feels a thrill low in his stomach at the weight of Sam's eyes on him. There is no one around, he assures himself, and when their eyes meet, Sam's grin spreads even further and crinkles the corner of his eyes. He let's out this low, giddy laugh that Kurt feels warm against his mouth and can't stop himself breathlessly echoing. He's light inside, weightless, happier than he has been since his dad was drafted and sent away from him. He can't stop himself - he leans in quickly, before the impulse leaves him, and touches their lips together in a light, hot touch. Sam moves closer almost immediately, cradling the side of Kurt's face in one of his big, warm palms. He makes a contented sound in the back of his throat, then moves away slightly, lips gliding across Kurt's skin to kiss the corners of his mouth with gentle slowness. For a moment, Kurt stills and takes long breaths, stunned, his forehead kept against Sam's and the tips of their noses touching. His head is blurry, almost delirious, and he can't register anything around himself except the way Sam's smile spreads steadily across his face, the way his eyes shine tellingly in the sunshine. Sam puts his hand on Kurt's chest, where his heart has finally calmed. He holds it there for a while, just smiling at him, and Kurt smiles back until the rest of the world fades back into eyesight and he remembers he has to leave before his aunt hears of his truancy, that Sam will always be sitting here, smiling for him. "You're somethin'," Sam calls out as he's walking away, watching Kurt the entire time and looking even happier than usual. For once, Kurt let's himself look back and smile longer than he has at Sam before. He doesn't see Sam again that day, but he finds a daisy on the hood of his car at the end of school, the petals shaped into an uneven heart, and he takes it home and places it carefully on cross against his window, something tender inside of him beginning to heal. * It's 1926. Sam's parents have finally succeeded in setting him up with the girl next door, Quinn, who stuck her nose up at his sci-fi books when they were five and never spoke to him in high-school, when he hadn't grown into his looks yet. Yesterday, she asked him to take her out dancing, and he said that it sounded good to him because he didn't want to disappoint his parents, even though it still sounds disastrous and terrible to him because he doesn’t know how to dance, not one bit. Tonight, his mom picks out an old suit of his dad's and combs back his hair, looking into his face and saying, "Imagine she'd known then how handsome you'd turn out." Sam smiles uncomfortably and doesn't tell her that having a girlfriend means a thousand times more to her than it ever has for him; but it lingers on his tongue, always does. She pushes a stubborn strand of hair back and kisses his face, looking prouder than he thinks he’s ever seen her. His parents see him out the door excitedly, hopefully, and he knows when he knocks on hers that they're both peeking out the window, watching him and probably praying.

The Fabrays like him well enough because his family are good Christians, but in no way is Sam's family as well off as they are, which he knows is important, possibly fatal to anything that could happen between he and their daughter. It doesn't really matter, anyway, not really. After some stilted small talk at the door with Quinn's dad, she appears in her cloche hat and big coat, smiling tightly. She argues her father away as quickly as she can and then closes the door behind herself, patting at the soft curls of her hair before facing Sam again. They smile at each other, stiffly. She's pretty, Sam thinks, and knows he could never feel anything, anything for her at all. After a pause, he offers his arm out and she takes it with the same hesitance. - La Deuxième. Sam has never been to a club before, or been any good at French, but it's nice inside - low lights, good music, cheap enough drinks. He pretends he likes wine because she does and clinks their glasses together, dreading the taste, while they stand at the empty bar and watch the crowd on the dance floor. It lasts too long, with her eyes on him expectantly and his caught on a tall, dark-haired boy doing the Charleston with a pretty girl and wearing a two colour suit bolder and shinier than anyone else's looks from here at least. Something worrying happens inside Sam's chest when he catches the boy laughing, brightly, but he doesn’t want to turn away. Sometimes Sam lets himself do things he wants to, as long a they’re small and harmless enough. "Aren't you going to ask me to dance?" Quinn asks, and when he looks at her, she's cocking an unimpressed, perfectly shaped eyebrow at him. She's beautiful, Sam thinks, and knows he could never feel anything, anything for her at all. He swallows and let's out a nervous laugh. "I'm no good at it," he warns, but he puts his hand out anyway and she pulls him into the sea of dancing bodies, all moving in lively steps to every beat. That isn't the case when Sam joins. He has no rhythm, no control over the lazy way his limbs flop, no understanding of more than one dance move at a time. Quinn looks embarrassed and avoids his eyes, enthusiasm dwindling, then spots a face in the crowd that brightens her up again. It's a girl she knows, the pretty one from earlier, who Quinn runs towards holding her skirt up - Sam obligingly following - and ends up getting distracted in an animated conversation with. Eventually she remembers him there by her side, and hastily says, "Sam, this is Brittany, Brittany, this is Sam." Then, awkwardly: "He's a family friend." "Hi there, Sam," Brittany greets, smiling, her face flushed from dancing. He nods his head at her politely, smiling, and less than politely wonders to himself where her date has gone. Apparently, she's wondering the same thing. She rises up on her tiptoes, looking around them. "Kurt just went to get us some drinks, he shouldn't be long - you remember Kurt, right Quinnie? He's the best dance partner here." Quinn's eyebrows raise, and she gives Sam a look. "Maybe he could help out Sam here learn which foot is which," she jokes, hitting him with her purse in an imitation of playfulness. He knows she means what she's saying though, and that's confirmed when she follows it up with, "It'd give us time to catch up." She wants rid of him. It's fine, really, because Sam wants to spend time Brittany's date, who shows up a second later in a cloud of smoke, cigarette in mouth in glass in hand, face even sweeter up close. He passes the glass to Brittany, says, "Looks like we've  got some company," with a pretty voice and an arm around her waist. The corners of his lips quirk around his cigarette when his eyes catch briefly on Sam before flicking to his side. "Nice to see you again, Quinn," he acknowledges, inclining his head. She echoes the sentiment while Kurt visibly sizes Sam up through his sharp blue eyes, then takes the cigarette out of his mouth and uses it to gesture to Sam, asking in an upwards stream of smoke, "Who's your date?" "Sam," Sam answers, locking eyes with him while he offers his hand out. "I'm a friend of Quinn's." And even that's a stretch. Kurt takes another drag, giving him a wary, considering look, then shakes his hand firmly. "Hi, Sam. I'm Kurt." He leans very slightly closer. "A friend of Brittany's." Heat travels up Sam's spine. He lets go of Kurt’s hand with silent reluctance, looks at him longer than he should, then places a hand on the small of Quinn’s back to keep himself grounded. “Apparently he’s not a very good dancer,” Brittany stage-whispers behind her hand. The way Kurt looks at him makes Sam feel hot, like his shirt’s too tight, or his skin. One of his eyebrows arches up, and Sam wonders if there’s fire somewhere inside of him when he asks, smilingly, “Oh?” Quinn subtly elbows Sam’s arm to move his hand away again, then she smiles at Kurt, big and fake. “Maybe you could give him a hand.” She gestures between herself and Brittany. “We girls have some catching up to do.” “Sure, okay,” Kurt agrees, the quirk in his smile polite and the pink in his cheeks flustered. He gives Sam a look, taking a brief, thoughtful draw of his cigarette. “Are you alright with that, Sam?” Sam nods, hastily, knows his cheeks are a little red, too, his smile a little too big. The way Kurt looks at him - it’s different, the kind that Sam knows well.

“We’ll get out of your hair, then,” Kurt says, nodding his head towards the door and leading the way there. They maneuver through the dancing crowd, narrowly avoiding their feet being stepped on by blunt heels or losing each other in the swarm. Sam follows the trail of smoke from Kurt’s mouth and feels it spreading in the air, warmly touching his skin and the breath inside his lungs. Outside, it’s cooler and the small strip between the club and a closed up appliance store is much, much emptier. There, Kurt steps on the remains of his cigarette and gives Sam a small smile. “I’ll take it you and Quinn aren’t too fond of each other.” With slightly unsteady hands, Sam loosens his tie and undoes the first few buttons of his shirt. He's still too hot. “Yeah,” he admits in a rushed breath. “Our parents are pushing us together, but -” He shrugs, aware that Kurt most likely understands the rest, despite the quiet pause that follows. “It’s a hard thing,” Kurt agrees, his voice soft, knowing. Kurt can't exist, Sam thinks, scuffing his nice shoes on the concrete nervously, because once he asked his dad if boys ever didn't like girls, or if two girls ever married, or two boys, and he'd given him a stunned look, eyes scared, and said no, no they don't; he'd asked a second time, older with more careful words, and his dad told him not to ask again; and nobody else ever mentioned it, really, and he never knew people like the ones he wanted to be real, so he tried forgetting and he still wishes that would work. But there Kurt is, tall and sweet, all flushed freckled cheeks and bright, boyish eyes. He looks wary of Sam, maybe even scared - maybe something else, Sam thinks, and his heart beats thickly in his chest. Even though he tries not to, Sam can't stop himself smiling at him. It's crooked, dopey, a little adoring. There's something wonderful to him about a boy like Kurt existing - a boy like Sam. In the streetlight glare, his eyes look soft, too, and his smile tighter. Then it spreads slightly, warms across his face, and he waves a hand. “C’mere.” Sam obliges, walking closer to him, where their little spot almost becomes too dark to see each other. He can just make out the pale, freckled skin of Kurt’s cheek before he realises he’s too close. Then he catches a dimple there when Kurt laughs, quietly, pushing his chest so he’s the tiniest inch back. He hums. “You know the Charleston?” “I know of it,” Sam answers, uncertain. Too much footwork. He’s no good with his feet. He’s no good with any part of his body when it comes to dancing, really, and when he says as much as a warning, Kurt only laughs again. His hands fumble for Sam’s, tugging one to lie flat across his back and the other to be held very lightly in his own. Sam makes out the vague feeling of Kurt’s fingers on his arm, and lets himself grin the big way he wants to because it’s dark, and nobody can see. “Side to side,” Kurt says, pulling Sam a few unsure steps to the left, then back again. “Two steps left, and one right.”

They try it, and Sam doesn’t know if he’s doing so badly this time because he always does or because he can’t pay attention to anything, too caught up in the warmth and solidness of Kurt’s body. He smells like good cologne, and the skin of his hands are soft like petals. Even Kurt fumbles, then stops altogether, breaths sounding unsteady. “I’m distracted,” he mutters, and Sam’s close enough to hear his embarrassment and the sound his throat makes swallowing. “That’s okay,” he assures him, using the hand on his back to hesitantly, nervously rub once up and down the tense muscle there. “I am too.” It’s all so strange, he thinks, but he hopes it doesn’t end. He hopes he holds Kurt like this for days, or at least for long enough to remember the way it makes him feel. He hopes the sun shoots back into the sky and he gets to memorize the way Kurt looks in the sunlight, holding him back. It's strange, because he thought he’d learned to stop hoping. He’s still grinning, he realises, so big his face is sore from the stretch. Kurt’s hand untangles from his and cautiously reaches out, soft fingertips at the corner of his mouth. Sam holds his breath and stills and hopes and hopes, and Kurt's fingertips then faintly trace the curves of his upper lip. “Oh,” he breathes again, and this time Sam thinks he sounds hurt. Sam takes his hand again, squeezes it briefly, then turns it to kiss between his knuckles, feeling the shakiness of both of their hands against his lips, that surge of adrenaline fueled happiness mixed with something hopeless and perpetual. He kisses each knuckle, heart pleased and hammering in his chest, then the soft tips of Kurt's every finger, then he just stands with his mouth kept against the back of Kurt's warm hand, both of them trying to calm their breathing and the loud, low duet of their heartbeats. “We should get back inside,” Kurt says, quietly, the hand still resting on Sam’s bicep squeezing. “Yeah,” Sam mumbles, lips still pressed to the back of his palm, “Okay.” Their hands brush all the way inside, to the bar where Quinn and Brittany are in oblivious conversation together. When Quinn sees him she’s suddenly tired, suddenly needs to get home, and the way Kurt smiles at Sam when he shakes his hand goodbye - the way he looks like he can’t stop smiling the same way Sam can't, even if his eyes look a little wet, too -  and says, quietly enough for no-one else to hear, "Thank you for the dance," makes something burn up inside of him, an elated high that he glides on all the way back home. * (It’s 2012, and Kurt is leaving. It’s probably the last time they’ll see each other, Sam thinks, when he’s standing in the Hummel-Hudson entrance with his suitcase packed to go back to Tennessee while Carole and Burt are upstairs standing over Kurt’s, deciding what to give him to start with before they ship the rest. He stands, staring at a photograph of eight year old schoolboy Kurt that sits the table in the hall that he’s seen almost every day for almost a year. He imagines it gone, then squeezes his eyes shut and knows it’s time to head home, already. Outside, on the way to his car, he bumps into Kurt himself, fresh from a shift at the Lima Bean - and he remembers this isn’t home for Kurt, anymore. Kurt is miserable here, and just because it makes his friends sad doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to leave and be happy. Sam doesn’t even remember Kurt being happy here often, when he thinks about it, and he wishes he could change it, step into the past and fix everything that ever made him feel bad, and make Lima somewhere he’d want to stay a little longer in, maybe. Kurt flashes him a brief, small smile, and he remembers two years ago, shaking Kurt’s hand and seeing him for the first time. He remembers Karofsky; and the way Kurt’s clothes were way too small on him but smelled of nice like flowery detergent and felt soft on his skin; and sitting on the couch together with his toes tucked under Kurt’s leg, watching a dozen movies. He remembers the lonely sound of Kurt’s voice in the auditorium, and the silent way his throat strained and bruised to sing back to him. It just feels so abrupt for him to leave. “Sam,” Kurt says after another moment, waving a confused hand at him. You’re important to me, Sam wants to reply, but he’d know it was odd; it’d ruin the surprise. Instead, he puts an arm around Kurt and draws him close for a moment, squeezing his shoulders and pressing his lips tightly together to avoid saying anything stupid. Kurt stiffens under physical contact most of the time - Sam has to catch him in quick, surprising moments like these, so Sam’s learnt to always do it that way, to wrap him up in his arms on sharp impulses every time he leaves for the weekend and every time they say goodnight in the hallway, and whenever else he wants to. This time, Kurt reaches up and hugs him back on tiptoes, arms noticeably lighter around him than Sam’s are, as always, something that still kind of breaks his heart. "Take care," Kurt says, voice quiet and faltering, like he knows this is it. He holds Sam with tight arms for the first time, holds him closer to himself than ever before. Then, Sam does all the things he doesn’t want to at this moment: smiles, tells him, “See you next week,” and pulls away - and that's it, he thinks, watching Kurt disappear inside with pain in his heart like he has a hundred bruises there, and they're all being pressed at once.) * It’s 1964. Kurt has a role in a small touring production with an actress named Rachel Berry, who swears Barbra Streisand is out to get her when she’s drunk but cried when they scraped enough money to see her together in New York as Fanny Brice. She’s the only person he talks to in his real voice anymore, who has never minded how soft and strange it is, and after every show he’s the person who claps hardest for her, because they are alone together, she told him once, dramatically clutching his hands and looking into his eyes and saying, “Nobody else could love us right.” Even though he knows it’s true, it’s hurts to think of too much. There have been boys, passingly, for the two of them, but Kurt is too scared of the story of Rachel’s father to have done much with any of them and Rachel is too focused on what she says really matters. Like being given the spotlight, and afterwards, flowers. “They’re for you, he said,” she tells him after going out to see the boy holding a bouquet outside. She looks surprised and maybe a little embarrassed, that slight trace of fear in her eyes that’s always there after the sight of a new boy, a new threat. Kurt blinks at her, just as surprised. His cheeks are a little warm at the idea - there’s never been a boy waiting outside with flowers before, only some sparse, misled girls - or once, his dad. "Oh," he says, unmoving. Then he glances quickly at himself in the mirror and puts on the face he wears onstage, the voice, the stance. It's not him, but it's who the people watching want him to be. - The man is blond and tall with a shy smile and a big bouquet of every colour Kurt can think of held in his arms. His shirt is tight across his chest and his jeans flare out at his feet, and when Kurt sees him he has to blink again and take another moment to school the look in his eyes and calm the frantic beating of his heart. Boys have no right looking like this, he thinks, breaching the distance between them and looking up into the man's crinkled, shiny green eyes. "Can I help you?" he asks, pleasant enough, his voice lowered enough, and the muscles in the man's face twitch into what briefly looks like a frown, then they all go back to smiling too broadly at Kurt for him to handle. The man clears his throat. "I'm - my name's Sam. I came to watch you tonight because... because..." Embarrassedly shaking his head at himself, Sam lifts his arm up and pulls his cuff down over his wrist, exposing some small, smudged drawings Kurt stares at with bemusement. "We went to school together," Sam deciphers, slowly, then he glances up into Kurt's face and adds, "You won't remember me. You sang in the choir, then, and I..." Beneath them, his feet are nervously toeing the Ohio dirt. "I liked your voice a lot. I still do." He offers out the bouquet, tells Kurt earnestly, "These are for you." Something in Kurt kind of flutters. He takes the flowers into careful arms and feels them, pleasantly heavy in his hold. There are so many, all mismatched colours and different kinds, all clashing. He breathes them in and says, softer than he intends to, “Thank you.” Afterwards, while he inwardly berates himself, he follows up with a deeper voice, “They’re - they’re lovely.” Sam grins, shy and crooked, then his lips press tightly together and his brow furrows. He makes a vague gesture with his hand. “You, uh, you sound different now. The way you talk."

"People don't like the way I used to talk," Kurt reminds him, holding the flowers a little closer to his chest. If Sam was at the same school, he'd know. It used to be hell with a voice like that; like this.

Sam runs a hand through his pushed-up hair, blond strands falling out of place as he does it, and shrugs. "I do." It’s unfair, Kurt thinks, smiling to himself. They’re in small-town Ohio and tomorrow he’s gone, again, and this is the last boy that will bring his flowers as he goes. Sam has a sweet smile, sweet eyes, has a dozen sweet things to say, and it’s not fair at all. “I was wonderin’, could you...” Sam fishes through his pocket and pulls out a slip of paper and a little pen, offering them out. “Could you sign this? There were some people at school who said they’d be big stars but you know, I think that’s gonna be you.” Kurt stares at him, big-eyed, then shakes his head. He’s smiling, though. “You sign it,” he insists, in his real, soft voice. “For me.” Surprised, Sam blinks at him. He laughs through his big, sweet smile. “Alright,” he agrees, nodding, pleased. He gives Kurt another glance then pushes the paper to fit into his palm and writes across it in quick, uneven lines. After he’s done, he holds it for another moment, looking down at it consideringly, then leans down and presses his lips against it with his eyes closed and the corners of his mouth tilted up. “There,” he says, quietly, and he offers it out to Kurt, who looks at him with a returning warm smile and takes it from his hand. Carefully, he places it inside the bouquet, with the messy, endearing scrawl of SAM EVANS facing outwards, along with his kiss. Rachel’s voice calls on his from inside and he feels like he’s snapped out of a daze, or a dream, but Sam smiles at him with understanding and backs away, waving a hand. “Thank you,” Kurt says again, loud enough for him to hear, and Sam calls it back to him before he disappears. * It’s 2014, and they get luckier than they've ever, ever been before. “It’s weird, having you here,” Kurt observes, then he covers his mouth with a hand and yawns. They’re lying on the pull-out couch together - now known as Sam’s bed - watching infomercials and eating some of the chocolate Sam bought at the airport this morning. Rachel is asleep, already, and Sam keeps dozing off but waking himself back up again, feeling restless under his skin and overly happy with the way Kurt’s legs are draped over his, the way they're lying with each other and the assured warmth of Kurt's body at his side. “Not bad weird,” Kurt clarifies, popping another tiny square of chocolate into his mouth. He gives Sam a look, his eyes crinkled, and nudges Sam's ankle with his own. "It's weirdly familiar, actually." Sam watches him with a sleepy smile, his heart aching the same way it has for two years - maybe longer, he thinks, suddenly. Half-asleep, he feels for Kurt’s hand on the hard mattress and curls his own around it, tightly. Kurt’s fingers twitch beneath his, gently squeezing back, and Sam hums a soft tune through his smile, contented, hopeful. This time, he won’t let go.

[kumpez-blog]

[kumpez-blog]

It’s Saturday, and they keep the pull-out for breakfast. Kurt lies out beside him on it in his big silk pyjamas, sipping orange juice and eating cereal in small, paced swallows - and Sam knows the exact timing because he finds the movement of his throat sort of mesmerizing. He looks at Kurt over his bowl, and the long lines and curves of his pale legs where his bottoms slide up the skin, and the sleepy hair stuck to his forehead, the wet pink of his lips as they part, stretch, yawn, and -  Sam almost doesn’t realise his spoonful of cereal is dripping down his chin, then, embarrassed, he wipes it hastily away on his wrist before pausing halfway, distracted by the flex of Kurt's throat again. Kurt keeps his eyes on the tv (cartoons: they both miss finn) and reaches his leg out so his calf muscles tighten, flutter, and then his foot nudges against Sam’s. “It’s nice to have you back,” Kurt says, and Sam knows it’s because Rachel’s out this morning with Brody (and Sam knows Kurt is lonely right now, maybe more than ever) and Sam knows it’s because they’re alone and nobody is there to read into everything Kurt says like it means something it doesn’t. Except for Sam, who stares into Kurt’s eyes for another moment. Blue grey. Pretty. They make Sam think of deep space and exploding stars. “You too,” he agrees in a soft voice. Kurt faces him with a smile and Sam returns it, wills his eyes to look less like they do when they settle on Kurt (too fond, too contented, obviously a little in love). “Lima’s not the same, y’know.” It’s easy just to talk to him (some of it gets lost, because they don’t watch the same TV or listen to the same music, but they’ve grown into each other enough for that to be okay). It’s easy to be himself, and feel like Kurt isn’t scribbling notes in his head about how Sam could be better, smarter, somebody he’s not. He knows what to say and what not to say (Blaine, anything about Blaine, anything about being cheated on - granted it’s been a few months, and Kurt seems happy; Sam still hates that he’s been heartbroken, that he knows how deeply pain like that scars) but there’s still those silly urges he needs to try silencing every once in a while. When Sam said he needed a break, Kurt said come here, come see us and Sam couldn’t stop himself. When Kurt convinced him to stay a day longer, Sam couldn’t stop himself. When Kurt asked, quietly, if he was okay with spending the day together without Rachel, Sam said yeah, of course way, way too quickly. Kurt smiles at him again over their cereal bowls and Sam wants to close the gap between them, touch their smiles together, and doesn’t know if he can stop himself for much longer.

[kumpez-blog]

Title: You Might Need Me (1/2) Pairing: Kurt/Sam, most canon S2 pairings. Rating: PG-13. Word count: 23,000+ for part one. Summary: Junior year doesn't go the way Kurt expects. S2 rewrite.

[kumpez-blog]

For April. ♥  redirect my day There's one good thing about living in Kentucky. Hastings Ruckle/Sam Evans, FNL/Glee crossover.

Hastings’s family moves again after he finishes his senior year in Dillon and wins his second championship ring. Kentucky feels nothing like Texas did, but he’s suffered enough other states to know that nowhere else really does. Nowhere else feels as much like home. The biggest difference is the people. None of them stand out until Hastings finds a blond boy in a baseball cap standing outside of his new dorm room, holding two kids in his arms that are obviously too old for it and letting his parents tug and kiss his cheeks. He’s too wholesomely boy-band to look like a Lion - his accent softer and dyed hair falling over his eyes, wearing a hoodie a dozen shades too bright a blue to fit into Dillon - but he’s an oddly reassuring sight to find awkwardly hanging around the doorway of the next four years of Hastings’s life. Hastings slips inside with his first box full of clothes, unnoticed, hearing a deep voice behind him saying, “Don’t cry, Stace,” before he gets a first look at his dorm room. Evidently, his roommate’s already unpacked - the wall beside the bottom bunk is barely visible between photographs and messy kids’ drawings, the first two drawers of the dresser are already full, and a stack of DVDs dwarf the little television they’re propped up against. He takes a quick glance of it all and starts unpacking his first box. His photograph of the team two years ago goes at the bottom of his drawer, on top of one of he and Luke with the Riggins brothers and a six-pack of beers taken some place he's half forgotten already. “I didn’t even know you were in here,” a voice says behind him. When he turns, the blond boy is grinning broadly at him. “Just for a little while,” Hastings tells him. He offers his hand out. “Hastings Ruckle.” “Wow, badass name. I’m Sam.” The guy grins broader, shuffles the cap on his head with one hand and extends the other one out. “Sam Evans.” Hastings shakes it and smiles back. - Sam helps him unload the boxes from his car and then unpack them into their room, wearing his big white smile the entire time. He ineptly fills up all of Hastings’s quiet, mimicking Texan tinges to his speech after he hears about Dillon and talking a little about some town in Ohio he isn’t sure that he liked. “It wasn't that great I guess, but I miss people, you know?" Sam asks, setting the last box down on the desk and holding onto the back of his neck. Hastings lived in a total of seven different states and twelve different towns before  his family had re-relocated to Dillon. He'd thought Texas would be a pain, the people there rude and red-neck and nothing like who they'd ended up being. He gives Sam a pat on the back and smiles a little to himself. The air in Kentucky doesn't taste like cut grass, doesn't make him want to take in great big breaths. "I get that." He pauses, looks at the drawer with all his pictures of home inside while Sam stares at his wall full of them. "I wish I'd had another year or two there." Sam stares and stares and stares at one photo on his wall, then nods a moment later as though he's only just taken what Hastings said in. His smile is tightlipped and sad, but he looks at Hastings and tells him, “But hey, we’ll make the best of it.” - College is okay, for the most part, and Sam’s a good guy to share a dorm with. He’s overly nice and overly smiley and sometimes it’s all worryingly endearing. Hastings has never really been in a place that’s felt completely safe to be completely honest in. Mostly he lived in the south (just like Sam) and churches there would put up in big letters at least once, GAY IS AGAINST GOD, or something along those lines. His family would drive past, shake their heads at the backwards world, and in most of the places they lived in they’d get dirty glances for being ‘hippies.’ But he doesn’t know enough about Sam and his family, Sam and the south, Sam and what he’d think about Hastings being gay. He doesn’t want Sam to be any less nice or smiley or any more endearing to him than he already is. When Hastings is sitting on the top bunk one night with his computer out, Sam’s head pops up with his big grin plastered across it, as always, but there’s something nervous in his eyes. “Can you give me a hand with something? ‘Cause I have trouble - I’m dyslexic, so I have trouble reading sometimes.” His cheeks are stained bright, bright red, but he’s smiling anyway, even though Hastings can feel the embarrassment radiating off of him. He likes Sam and how Sam is, with all his good intentions and all his good beliefs in people, with his big, expectant, bright green eyes that nobody, nobody could turn down. Hastings nods, half-smiles, and drops down to the bottom bunk where Sam has a total of five textbooks out, open, and highlighted. “It’s a lot of trouble today,” Sam admits. He sits next to Hastings on the edge of the bed with his shoulders a little hunched over, still for a moment as though he expects him to clamber up and away again. Reaching for the closest book, Hastings shrugs. He sets it on his lap and says, “We’ll manage,” and when Sam shoots him that pleased, eager grin again and shuffles beside him on the bedspread, Hastings doesn’t even falter in reading out the words - but he thinks of a dozen things he shouldn’t, the kind of things you think about when you share a bed with someone that gets you hard just by smiling. - They’re friends, because Sam seems to make a lot of friends. Hastings isn’t one to pry, and he tries not to look at Sam’s wall of photographs if he can help it because there are boundaries that he’s always liked to stay away from them by a few more steps than necessary. But he's seen enough to know Sam has a lot of friends . After they read one day (it becomes regular, but less strenuous for Sam as the days go on and he says his brain gets more settled into college life; Hastings still has it bad and can’t make eye contact when Sam has his pen between his plush lips, thinking hard and looking - good) afterwards, they fall into random conversation about bad action movies, bad sports movies, good sci-fi movies - and Hastings has barely seen any but Sam doesn’t mind briefly reenacting them - and then Sam talks about this guy he used to live with, Kurt, who made him watch every musical in existence. “That’s him,” Sam says, sitting up and pointing at one of the pictures on his wall with two of his long, crooked fingers. He brushes his bangs out of his eyes and as always, they fall back over them again and as always, Hastings looks too closely at him and feels his hand twitch at his side. Sam taps on the photograph again, mindlessly, and Hastings turns abruptly to face it. It's half covered by another photograph, but only one boy in it is completely visible. He's pretty and blue eyed and looks a little too sweet-faced and a little too flamboyantly dressed for a Lima boy. He's giving the camera a little smile that lies right beneath Sam's fingertip. Sam peels back the photograph covering the rest of it up to reveal the blurry image of a black haired boy looking the other way, then lets it flip back over it again. "That's his boyfriend. Well, ex." Hastings nods slowly, looks at Sam looking at his wall of memories and snorts at himself for ever thinking Sam would like someone less for being gay. When Sam curiously glances at him, Hastings points to a picture of a tall boy lying with his face down in the floor and says he was laughing at that. - Sam insists Hastings comes with him to a party. The way he smiles and says, “I don’t really know anyone else,” is unfair. The way he says it in nothing but a towel, water dripping down his shower-burnt skin, is unfair. Hastings says, “Why not?” and looks away again, because he knows the answer anyway - he knows they’ll drink and get drunk and that the beer on Sam’s breath will remind him of Tim Riggins and he knows that’ll be the last push for him to do something stupid, and so far Hastings has been good at avoiding doing stupid things, no matter how lonely that gets. He goes all the same, and thinks a little of parties in Texan backyards with boys he knew much better while Sam leads the way, talking animatedly with the hand that isn’t clutching a six-pack. There was no-one in Dillon like Sam, Hastings thinks. “It’ll be good, yeah?” Sam asks over his shoulder, holding the door for Hastings to enter after him so music and voices pour out from the inside. He’s smiling - always smiling - and his eyes are bright with something new. It’s like the more time they spend together the stranger the way Sam looks at him gets. “And if it isn’t, we can bail and watch TV instead.” “Star Wars,” Hastings says agreeably, because Sam has the special edition boxset pushed up right against their television and Hastings likes when he mimics the lightsaber sounds, and when he gets all flushed and excited to put the DVD in, like he’s sharing something more special than a movie with him. Sam smiles even wider at him and they go inside. - Both of them get half-drunk and between them on the stumbling walk back to their dorm, make up one full drunk. “The people here are cool,” Sam slurs. He lets Hastings lean on him, one arm around his shoulders, because he kind of sucks with alcohol and he’s feeling weirdly exhausted tonight. Hastings nods slowly. “Yeah, nice. Everyone’s nice.” And they are, but he keeps thinking of home instead, even drunk. He thinks of spending a day in Tim Riggins’s backyard drinking beer, and how Riggins didn’t wear a shirt and how they both knew he knew Hastings was gay but never thought it was worth bringing up. Riggins’s lazy smile and the smell of him - the sharpness of alcohol and sweat and shitty non-brand aftershave. It’s the wrong thing to think about while Sam practically carries him upstairs. Sam smells a sweeter, kind of, maybe because in between beers he let some girls mix him fruity drinks. He thinks it’s probably just Sam. Sam lightly moves the shoulder Hastings’s head is half resting on, making him slip a little closer in the process. “You okay?” he asks, lowly, frowning in concern - it looks odd on his face. “I’m tired.” But he feels more awake now, in body parts that are very conducive for doing stupid things. It was stupid, he used to think, to be so hung up on dating; he’d had a few girlfriends before realizing there was a reason it never worked out, but he knew it would be the same shit with a guy, only more difficult to find. And even if it’s awful, the lonely, still-teenaged part of him is hung up on Sam’s every move and the unignorable thought of kissing him, once. Humming, Sam pulls him even closer to his side, even though Hastings isn’t having that much trouble on his own. “It’s just a couple more doors away.” They get inside, Hastings immediately pulling his shirt over his head and kicking off his trousers, too tired and hot with alcohol to get properly changed. He puts his clothes away and clambers up to the top bunk, letting the cool bedsheets press against the too-hot skin of his back as his eyes fall shut. He lets out a soft, comfortable sigh. Even with his eyes closed he can see the lights still on. He opens them again, half asleep, and sees Sam still standing at the door with his jacket and shoes still on, the room key still in his hand with his mouth open as he stares, dark-eyed back up at Hastings. Sam swallows, audibly. Hastings is back to feeling achingly awake. “I was -” Sam mumbles, brow furrowing as he looks away. He just shakes his head like he’s saying forget about it, and tugs off his jacket, putting it over the back of the chair, then pauses before taking off his shirt. He pulls it lower down himself instead with the hand Hastings can’t see - but he notices anyway, because he’s watching so closely and he’s so fucking hard too - and stares at the wall when he turns out the light. Hastings hears him breathing all night. It sounds louder, deeper, heavier. It sounds like he’s having just as much difficulty as Hastings to get rid of his hard-on and get some sleep. - They don’t mention it. Hastings has no desire to and no idea how to, because sometimes people are drunk and they get boners and it doesn’t mean they like guys or that they like Hastings the way Hastings likes them. It doesn’t have to be messy. Sam is apparently following this line of thought too. Hastings doesn’t think he was drunk enough to forget, he thinks he’s just too polite and well-mannered to let slip in anyway that anything happened that night, besides himself getting a girl’s number and reasonably sloshed. “A guy gave me this to give to you,” Sam tells him after his classes. He’s standing on the bottom bunk, head propped up on the bar and offering a slip of paper out. “He said you forgot it.” Hastings takes it, and looks at it blankly. Sam wasn’t the only one to get a random’s number, then. It says MATT and he has little to no idea who that could be and zero intentions of calling a stranger for a hook up. He almost kind of wishes his mom was here to handpick some guys that were acceptable and definitely not potential murderers that she could force him into a relationship with. He slides it into a random page in the notebook on his lap and goes on writing, momentarily not noticing Sam, still staring at him with his head propped up. When Sam noticed he’s been noticed, he looks off the the side, still facing him. “It was a weird dude.” Then he quickly shrugs like he realizes what he’s said and shakes his head at himself, saying, “Not that it’s my place or anything, just, y’know, he had that vibe. Like Sean Bean in The Hitcher.” For a moment, Hastings stares at him, trying to work him out. Then he says, “That’s not my type, anyway,” because - he doesn’t really know the because. Sam’s right, it isn’t his place; but Hastings likes how red-cheeked and flustered he is anyway, and how after he hears Hastings’s reply he brightens up, starts smiling again. - Sam doesn’t call his girl, either, but he shares a bunch of classes with her and talks to her a lot. Hastings remembers highschool clearly enough to know where this will naturally progress to, and enough about Sam’s highschool life to know that the ‘friends first’ thing had never happened then. So it’s a good thing, that Sam’s got smarter about heartbreak like that (and it’s not at all weird that he jumped from pretty girl to pretty girl with almost no relationships with them before. It’s highschool, people do that all the time; Hastings used to as well, when he lived deep south and wanted people to think he’s straight and damnit, he was trying not to go there). It’s not Hastings’s place to say anything. It’s not his place to tell Sam he gets distracted sitting across from him in the library, watching him push and pull his pen from between his spit-wet lips and thinking about him sucking his dick. They have a good thing right now already. He talks to more guys, more girls - one who reminds him of Jess and makes him feel more at home is gay and pulls out a flyer for the GSA from her bag to give to him, then talks to him for a fifteen minutes he really needs about highschool football, and the Lions, and her own team back home in West Virginia. When he shows her his championship ring she says, “That’ll get you laid,” and he laughs and kind of hopes she’s right. - It isn’t his fault he sees it. Sam leaves his laptop wide open on the desk, for anyone to see his Facebook news feed. He’s on one post, specifically, and Hastings gives it a passing, automatic glance before hauling himself up onto the top bunk with his bag full of books and then actually registering what he’s read. Kurt Hummel went from being “single” to “in a relationship.” At the sound of Sam coming in, he leans down over his book, staring at whatever random page he’s on like he’s taking it all in. Sam gives him a brief, “Hey,” and absent-mindedly reaches up to bump their fists together on his way back to his laptop. Then he sets down in front of it and stares at the page like the words might rearrange - and with Sam, they might, Hastings realizes. Maybe it’s just a dyslexia thing, he thinks, and after another long two minutes of glancing at Sam in the corner of his eye he sees his lips press together, and then the page on the screen changes. It’s strange. - Sam goes on a date with the girl who gave him his number the next night, and comes back an hour later looking a little terrified. He’s silent as he slips off his shoes and sits on the edge of his bed. Hastings is at the desk and lets him sit alone for another still moment before moving over to sit next to him tentatively. “How’d it go?” he asks, nudging Sam’s knee with his. Sam blinks and turns to him, his eyes unfocused, looking far-off. He isn’t smiling, not at all, and then edges of his lips keep turning further downwards until Hastings thinks he might cry. Instead he leans his head closer until their foreheads bump, staring down at Hastings’s mouth with his brow furrowed and lips parted. Hastings can feel his warm breath, their touching knees and arms and the way Sam shakes as he gets closer, their lips almost touching. Hastings forces himself to pull back. “Sam,” he says, concernedly, then he puts his hand on Sam’s arm and Sam stares at him for another moment, almost frighteningly blank-faced, and then his face scrunches up and he’s crying and crying and crying. - It’s Saturday morning, and Hastings wakes Sam up by lightly throwing a football at him from the top bunk. (It’s signed, and not just by his team - Riggins, Coach, and Buddy Garrity had been keen to put his name beside his son’s. Taking it out of the trunk of his car last night alone was kind of a big deal.) “Let’s play a game,” he suggests; the thing about Sam is that he’s too nice to turn down any suggestions at all. He can be so simple like that sometimes, but he’s quiet as he dresses and his smile is anxious like it has been since yesterday when he got home - something that looks just on this side of terrified - and Hastings has to wonder how someone sweet like he is could be so unnecessarily difficult. They walk to the field, and Sam tosses the ball from one hand to the other in his uncharacteristic silence. Hastings lets it hang there between them, walking the same and moving the same and quietly hoping Sam gets that nothing has to change - and if it did, it couldn't be any worse than this. “I haven’t played in forever,” Sam says after a while, quietly. He nudges Hastings with his elbow, and he’s smiling in a more familiar way again - it’s that crooked grin that makes Hastings lick his lips and stare a little deeper, his smile quirk too far up his cheeks. “And I never got any championship rings or anything, so just - keep that in mind.” Even though he’s smiling the way he does after all his jokes, there’s an embarrassed, slight redness to his cheeks like he means what he’s saying. It’s a funny kind of enjoyment when Hastings flashes a smile back and slides an arm across his shoulders. “We can have a singing competition after.” Sam laughs, and Hastings notices the way he steps in a little closer, a little further into his hold. When they actually start playing, Hastings thinks Sam’s pretty good - maybe a little uncoordinated, but that could have something to do with the nervous way he looks at Hastings across the field, red-faced, with his hands fumbling on the football as he runs. “I was QB in junior year,” Sam huffs out, stopping for a moment. He pushes his bangs off of his forehead and throws the ball Hastings’s way. “Well, kind of. Then fullback.” Hastings catches it, evening out his breathing and thinking briefly, abruptly of game tapes of Tim Riggins. Then he breaths in the fresh, grassy air and feels sort of contented and at home. He’s missed this, kind of, he’s missed just the space and the freedom of it. He points the ball at himself. “Receiver.” Then he gives Sam a crooked grin, throwing it from one hand to the other when he asks, “Were you any good?” Sam squints at him in the sunlight with a smile breaking out across his face. He stretches up, and then he looks up at Hastings, bottom lip caught in his grin and face all distractingly shiny and red. “You want to see?” Smiling back, Hastings takes the ball out of his hands and squats down. It feels good and familiar and so, so strange when Sam yells in his mock Texan accent and runs for him immediately afterwards, so fast Hastings almost trips ducking out of his way. It feel good - running as fast as he can go again, taking in deep, hard breaths and sweating in the sun. Sam is laughing behind him and he looks back reflexively, just in time to see Sam’s eyes glint in the sun before he tackles him down to the ground, hard. They roll a little, their knees bumping and faces up close enough to feel the heat of each other’s breath, then Sam is over him with that smile on his face and still laughing lowly under his breath while staring down at Hastings that way he does sometimes - deeply, intensely, with want. The weight of him makes Hastings feel more breathless, even warmer. He drops the ball at his side and reaches up to push back Sam’s bangs from his sweating forehead on an instinct he isn’t sure that he trusts. “Hey,” Sam breathes, softly. His smile falls away and Hastings thinks momentarily that he crossed the line, that he should stop making fists in the sides of Sam’s shirt or push him off, but then Sam’s hand is under his head, tugging him up, and he’s pressing a hard, deep kiss against his mouth and Hastings can only pull him closer to his body. There’s something so satisfying about finally having Sam against him and tasting the roof of his mouth. Sam’s slick tongue drags over his lips, breath warm and kind of frantic, and then Hastings surges up and bites down onto that plush, soft bottom lip of his, letting out a sound that feels like it’s been building in him for months. Sam groans in response, trying to shift his leg between Hastings’s and keeping his shiny lips pushed against the corner of his. “Oh my God,” Sam huffs out, rolling his hips slightly and the friction makes Hastings buck up against him again, this kind of desperate he’s never been able to be before. “Hastings, I - this feels, like -” he rocks down again, shivering, “ - great, holy shit.” His other hand slides up and catches in Hastings’s hair with the other one, grabbing it in fistfuls and pulling him closer in a wetter, needier kiss. Hastings murmurs an agreeable, “Yeah,” slides his hands up Sam’s back and shakily breathes against his chin, hot all over and so fucking turned on. But this isn’t the time. He pulls back, trying to calm his breathing, and Sam tries to follow him back down but ends up just burying his face in Hastings’s neck, wet lips grazing the skin there. “Holy shit,” he says again. - Sam sits hunched over on the bottom bunk with his head in his hands. He doesn’t say anything for a long time. Hastings sits on the chair across from him and can’t stop his eyes from catching on the dirt smudged across Sam’s pink cheek. He just reaches out, setting his hand down on Sam’s shoulder and squeezing it, reassuringly. “You know it’s okay,” Hastings tells him quietly because he knows Sam does. He’s always calling his friends in New York - this girl breaking up with her ‘soulmate’ he has to calm down twice a week and Kurt, who he checks up on now more than ever because he’s ‘like family’ (and not because he met a guy). Sam knows there’s nothing wrong with it. With him. He sits up slowly, rubbing across his forehead and staring somewhere far-off. “I know, I just didn’t - know.” He rubs across his face again, sighing and then pressing his lips together tightly. “There was always a girl, you know? I just never got to think about myself like that. I’ve never thought about myself... like that.” Briefly, he looks up into Hastings’s face with wide eyes, then he just drops back on his bed. “It’s okay, though,” he says, almost to himself. “You’re okay, Kurt’s okay, Santana’s okay and...” He takes in a deep breath and props himself up again. “I can be okay, too.” “You are,” Hastings says, honestly. He smiles widely, mirroring the same one Sam always wears, and after a small, scared moment, Sam returns it. - They take it slow. Glacial. Sam spends most of his time in the weeks after hanging with the GSA people and a counselor, and when he’s in the dorm he’s either sleeping or next to Hastings on the bottom bunk, studying with his help and smiling the same. “Can I ask you something?” he asks one day, book across his lap. He fiddles with his pen, drops it, then turns to Hastings who just shrugs. “Yeah, sure. Go for it.” Sam gets more fidgety, turning in the corner of the random page he’s on while looking earnestly into Hastings’s face. “How did you come out? To your family and friends and your teammates and everything. I know Texas isn’t easy with stuff like that.” There’s a quiet, contemplative pause. “I didn’t, really.” He flicks to the next page, convincingly pretending to absorb it. “I told my parents I wasn’t interested and girls. Some of my friends knew, but not all of them needed to so I never brought it up.” Jess knew, and the Riggins brothers. There were a few parties where Luke and Vince hung off him drunkenly, telling him he was a great guy, a good player, and a few meaningful silences with Coach Taylor, but no big statement. Dillon wasn’t a town for grand gestures like that. From what he’s heard, Lima was. “Were you ever scared of it?” Sam says, abruptly. Hastings turns to him. “Of people knowing?” Sam shifts beside him uncomfortably, scratching idly at the back of his neck. “Well, yeah. But just it, too.” He frowns and looks at Hastings with his eyebrows drawn. “Is that bad of me?” “No. It’s scary, at first.” He squeezes Sam’s arm, then lets go quickly so it isn’t too much. “Then it’s fine, again. Actually, it’s probably better than before.” He shuts his book over, knowing there’s no use having it out anymore and setting it to the side. He nudges Sam with his knee, slightly. “Would you have been happy like that?” When he turns, he finds Sam staring at him, mouth parted and eyes dark. His head shakes a little, and his throat sounds dry when he answers, “No.” - For the holidays, Hastings goes on vacation with his family in Europe. It’s good, it’s fine; he’d have preferred home in Dillon, and he still doesn’t even know why, really. Sam goes home and tells his family he’s gay, and sends a message afterwards that says, success mom is baking me a CAKE and a few afterwards littered throughout the two weeks - little inane things, pictures of his siblings, and Hastings replies to them all and weirdly misses Kentucky, too. - The first night back, Sam’s the happiest Hastings thinks he’s ever seen him. He makes a tiny, comfy fort in the bottom bunk and drags Hastings into it for a Lord of the Rings extended edition marathon, then pauses it ten minutes in and says, softly, “I really, really want to kiss you again.” Hastings’s lips quirk and he turns, reaching in the semi-darkness for Sam’s face and reeling him in by the jaw. Sam is eager, almost jumping on top of him to push their mouths together and shove his hands up the back of Hastings’s shirt. “I like you a lot,” Sam murmurs against his cheek. He nuzzles in close, one of his hands slipping low to grasp the back of Hastings’s thigh tightly. “I think we should, you know, if you want. I mean dating, not, uh - well, not right now, because it’s soon, so...” He pulls back, the blue light on the side of his face making him look boyish, kind of shy. “Dating.” Hastings huffs out a laugh and sifts his fingers through blond hair. Nothing’s messy with Sam, he thinks. It’s all slow and sweet. “Sounds good,” he says, and Sam gives him that broad, insanely happy grin before leaning down close. *** He ends up in Texas, spending the summer after graduation settling back into a town that never changes. His family are pleasantly surprised that he wants to stay there, and so are the friends he has - grown up, only a little different and still warm. It’s where he belongs, oddly. He spends the first week on Riggins’s property, half-helping to build an extension for his nieces and nephews to stay in and half out back on the lawn chairs, drinking beer and shaking his head when Tim yanks off his shirt and gives him his lazy, sleazy smile like he knows what it does to him. Sam moves to New York by the second week, and another day later he’s dating Kurt. (He sees some pictures. They look good together, just as ridiculously happy as the other.) Hastings checks in on him sometimes and Sam does it back: hows it coming along?? Hastings sends a picture of it, only half finished. It’s mostly framework, a fence of bricks surrounding it - not much, but Sam tells him to be proud of himself, anyway. “I think this is gonna take a while longer than we thought,” Tim says before tipping his beer between his lips. He glances at Hastings over the bottle, lips caught over the rim in his smirk. Hastings shrugs and leans back in his chair, levelling Tim’s gaze. “We’ll make the best of it.”

[kumpez-blog]

then and now

AU. Cooper almost gets what he wants. Cooper/Kurt.

It’s summer. They’re lying, sweltering in the apartment bed together (Cooper’s first one, the tiny dingy ugly one next to the deli and the sex shop that Kurt hated the smell of but barely ever wanted to leave), their limbs wound in and out of each other into a tight knot of bodies. Kurt is all trembling, flushed, delicate skin beneath Cooper’s hands. Kurt is all shuddering, soft breaths that are lovely to him even as they stutter and falter against his own. Kurt is all his. - Back one year, a few months, and they’re in the middle of January. A first-year student crying outside of the voice classroom during lunch when the whole side of the building he’s in is empty. It’s a boy, collapsed against the floor and propped up by the wall behind him, face red and wet and body folded into itself to create something smaller, younger, frailer than anybody really can be at NYADA. Cooper thinks of his brother and sets down next to him, an arm already across his shoulders and a crooked smile across his face intended to reassure, but Blaine always called it sleazy or ridiculous when really Cooper has only ever been one of those things. “Y’know,” he starts, mentally preparing a reinvigorating spiel worthy of any sport-centred movie, but then the boy looks up, and he is face-to-face for the first time with Kurt Hummel - who laughs at his wholly earnest five minute vocal lesson and breathlessly says yes when Cooper asks with his ridiculous smile if he wants to grab some coffee. - It’s one hour later and Cooper is in love with him. (That’s what, to him, love always had to be. There was less parenting in his childhood than there was television, romanticized fairytale stories, rich upper-class couples who still believed in ‘courting’ and married because it was more convenient than to not.) He makes Kurt sing just a little in their secluded little corner of the cafe. Kurt is already blushing and a little distant after Cooper over-eagerly takes both of his hands over the table and squeezes them tight, but he sings a soft song just for the two of them to hear, and every note makes Cooper’s heart pick up more speed in this dangerous, intoxicating, adoring way that must show on his face. Kurt’s eyes are brilliant green and wide when Cooper insists he has goosebumps on his skin, pulls up his sleeve to show as much and tells him, “That was so -” with none of the words he knows succinct enough to finish with; and none necessary, because Kurt smiles at him all the same, with all the bright-eyed fervor Cooper looks back at him with. - Three months after, they’re having their first fight. Cooper is in love with being loved. It’s difficult to stop, difficult even to want to, but he can’t help the flirting and all the insistent ways he tries to persuade people into appreciating him, like a god, or the internationally renowned actor he dreams of being. Kurt is the same, almost. He’s satisfied with one person’s affection: a concentrated swell of ardency, worship, something more balanced and tangible that can keep him upright after long days of being told he sounds wrong, looks wrong, is wrong. “It doesn’t mean anything,” Cooper says. He holds Kurt by the arms, closer than he knows Kurt wants to be with him, and stares into his face. Hard staring really sells the point in close-up shots. “It’s nothing, nothing at all.” But he thrives on it. On sounding right, and looking right, and having all that able to make him seem like he is what’s right. Kurt doesn’t look at him still, doesn’t move any further away from the door of Cooper’s apartment. He is stiff and unmoving, a constant fixture there and Cooper wouldn’t know what to do with the space he might leave behind because he’s never been able to deal with disappointing himself. “I feel like I’m sharing you,” Kurt sighs. He rubs his face, his red eyes, the soft skin of his cheek. Cooper kisses him there and insists he isn’t, that he’ll never have to even though he always will. That’s what performing is about, and if Kurt stays he just doesn’t have to know that for the rest of their lives he’ll be sharing Cooper with the rest of the world. - Kurt is kissing him, slowly. They move together in the dark of his little dorm room, in his one-person bed, hips meeting and sticking and rocking tightly together. Cooper slides his hands up and down the smooth planes of Kurt’s back - over the bones and twitching muscles and bruises he’s made there - and lower to grip his ass and pull him closer, as close as they could ever be. They’re a mess of naked skin and sweat and Cooper laughs into Kurt’s mouth, brightly, because everything is just so nice again. He’s sleeping and fucking into his fist in his Hollywood apartment. They haven’t spoken for fourteen months and counting. - Cooper is twenty-two again, in the final year of college that he dropped out of in the end. He starts calling Kurt his boyfriend and bringing him up to parents that don’t want to hear it and a brother that doesn’t want to hear from him; but it’s important for them to know, he thinks. It’s like telling them he’d dropped out, he’d got a big part, that he was moving to New York or Los Angeles. It would change everything. (He and Kurt were a couple, then. Six months of sweetness and simplicity and fucking in those awful dorm-room beds, and then Kurt sort of lived with him, just not legally and not really. He had a roommate already who was in and out, but mostly - mostly it was he and Kurt, then.) Breakfast together. Showering together. Walking to school together. Kurt would kiss him goodbye outside his classes, always flushed and happy this way that always made him look years too young for college and made Cooper feel the same. It was basically living together, but television had always taught Cooper in grand romantic gestures, and they’d been the only useful things to ever really stick. His second apartment is for them both. Kurt stays in the dorms sometimes still, but he has a side of the bed and a whole dresser for himself. He keeps his creams and lotions in the ensuite and sometimes he studies for days at NYADA and Cooper takes the lids off and inhales, rubs a tiny dot onto the back of his hand to breathe in when the apartment gets too lonely. They study together at his shitty Ikea dining table, and it isn’t where either of them wanted to live when they got to NYC - it isn’t modern or extravagant or different from any other shitty student apartment - but Cooper slings his leg through Kurt’s under the table and breathes him in, and it feels like enough. - His girlfriend is too skinny, and too soft, and too Hollywood. Her teeth are white and fake and big and her lips are red and thick and when they kiss for the cameras Cooper feels more alone than he ever has in his life. She bites him with her big teeth and swallows him up with her red lips. “So, what show is it you’re on again?” Santana drawls, inspecting the nails on one of her hands while she swirls her coffee with the other. “I’m sure I watched it once and lost you in the crowd of other white people trying to act.” Cooper grins at her, because when Santana isn’t kissing him or grabbing his thigh his her claw-hands to rile him up, he likes her (because Cooper likes everyone). “Doctor Beau, D.D.S.,” he answers. He leans back in his chair, arms crossed, and when he glances up he finds a poster of himself right by their cafe table. “It’s French. For beautiful.” She rolls her eyes. “There’s literally nothing you could offer up to god that would repay him for at least giving you that face of yours. I think I have a duty to tell you that.” He smiles at her again, pleased, making sure to flash his pearly whites. “Thank you.” This time, her mouth twitches. Santana kind of looks at Cooper like he’s stupid which makes sense, because ever since he decided to date her he’s worried that he is. Santana is in love with a professional dancer who performs in all her music videos and unlike Cooper, her manager didn’t force them to break-up for the sake of their bearding and unlike Cooper, she didn’t lose the best thing to ever happen to her (and unlike Cooper, that will never be her level of fame). - “I know it was stupid,” Kurt tells him, looking down at his feet with a self-deprecating smile. He’s still in costume, still flushed from being onstage at his first NYADA show, and still being pushed away from the spotlight. “I only had four lines." “Five,” Cooper corrects. He holds Kurt’s face in his hands and lifts it up to face his, smiling his ridiculous smile that widens when Kurt looks back at him. He blinks, one hand coming up to cover the one Cooper has on his cheek. “You cried,” he says, breathlessly, his mouth open and curved into a surprised smile. Before Cooper can respond, Kurt’s wrapped him up in his arms and pressed their lips together hard. He pushes him back against his dorm room wall and laughs against his mouth, and it sounds so happy that Cooper can’t help laughing, too. - They are in Ohio, and it’s too small for Cooper to like at all, but he puts on a smile for Kurt’s dad, who looks like the average angry redneck until the first thing he opens his mouth to say is, “I’ve missed you, Kurt,” while he claps his son on the arm. Cooper paces Kurt’s bedroom afterwards, big-eyed, stopping occasionally to nosy around Kurt’s teenage trinkets and photographs. He finds a tall boy, a blond boy, a boy in a wheelchair, a boy with a mohawk, a boy without a shirt - frankly, too many boys. “What did he say?” he blurts out as soon as Kurt comes back. Burt Hummel is without a doubt the hardest audience Cooper has ever performed in front of, and it’s worse because his opinion isn’t something they can just forget about once it’s stated. There’s nothing Kurt loves more than his dad (which makes Cooper selfishly sad sometimes and others, just sad for the state of his own family; but mostly it’s the former). Kurt carefully shuts the door behind him, an amused smile on his face. “He said that you’re harmless.” Cooper’s mouth falls open. Obviously the element of danger in his persona isn’t coming across enough. Or he just kissed too much ass, or he should have brought his uncle owning a motorbike into the conversation, or - “He said it’s because you’re so obviously in love with me,” Kurt elaborates, his small smile growing as he presses back against the door, evidently pleased by the news. The way Kurt looks at him makes Cooper feel a dozen times better. He stands up, grinning. “I can be dangerous, you know.” He backs Kurt further up against the door. He gives Kurt a sloppy, deep kiss. “Your dad wouldn’t want to know the ways I get dangerous.” “Making out with the son of a man who owns an impressive gun collection while he’s in the same house is admittedly pretty dangerous,” Kurt murmurs, agreeably. He rises to his tiptoes and kisses Cooper softer, his hand dragging through his well-combed hair, then stands there humming against Cooper’s lips. “But mostly it’s pretty stupid.” They break apart, and Kurt assures Cooper everything his dad said is verbal proof that he approves all the way back to New York, LA, and their break up. - Kurt sees Cooper’s apartment in LA once. He stays for a weekend off of college - enough to run lines for the pilot of Doctor Beau, D.D.S. (Kurt cracks up at them the first time around but by the dozenth takes it just as seriously as Cooper does), have dinner somewhere semi-nice, and fuck on the couch, the bed, the floor, and in the shower. They almost do it in the kitchen, but Cooper’s manager calls and talks to him for a total of twenty minutes which Kurt spends with his legs still hoisted over Cooper’s shoulders and back still against the countertop, pasting handfuls of questionable sauces against the other’s chest until their libidos are effectively dead. Before Kurt leaves for the airport, Cooper drags him back down into bed and strips him all over again, insisting that they have time until Kurt just laughs, shaking his head and crawling under the covers. It’s one of the best weekends of Cooper’s life. Afterwards, he tries his best to push it away, but Kurt seeped into every room, his laugh and his smell and his life with Cooper. It’s all there, but not really. - Season two of Doctor Beau is secured, and people know who Cooper is now. He and his girlfriend are all over tabloids and images of his shirtless body make up an impressive percentage of the internet. He loves signing autographs. He loves when magazine’s call him handsome in passing or when he has a five minute segment on E!. He loves how pretty he and Santana look, sitting outside together drinking coffee like a couple in love and not like a complete sham. Most of all, he loves Kurt. There’s nothing left to do about it, but Cooper’s watched too many crappy teen dramas to ever give up hope on love, especially one he fucked over himself. - Kurt buys cheap champagne and makes dinner (in Cooper’s second apartment: a little bigger, cleaner, nicer, homier. They’d both liked that one best). When Cooper comes in through the door, grinning, Kurt pushes him back against the door and kisses him with both hands shoved into his pants. It’s messy and crude this way Kurt never is normally and Cooper comes so hard against him he’s still a little breathless when they’re sat down on the couch together, eating. They’re celebrating his new part in a medical drama that people say is going to be big. Cooper has dropped out of his final year at NYADA, because now it’s just unnecessary, and has some place in LA to live in. He tells Kurt they’ll make it work, flippantly, because the alternative doesn’t even occur to him at all, and because they’re kind of stupidly in love. Kurt says, “I know,” without even looking away from the TV. - TV show schedules are insanely packed. Between all the press, interviews, paparazzi, filming and ‘dating’, Cooper completely misses the rise of Kurt Hummel. It’s been two years since they last spoke, and right now Kurt is spread all over five pages of a magazine someone from the crew sat down beside his chair. He’s just as beautiful and just as sweetfaced and Cooper loves him just as much. His hands ghost over pictures of Kurt on a broadways stage, pictures of Kurt in suits at events, pictures of Kurt out with a brown haired girl Cooper’s seen around a lot lately, pictures of Kurt and a tall, thin boy with his hand in his. He throws it down out of his hands and goes home. He tells a passing extra to tell everyone he’s sick, and she pauses to give him a look before biting her lip and worriedly asking if he can drive home himself. - Santana comes out of the closet and says in an interview that people just made assumptions about she and Cooper Anderson (Doctor Beau, D.D.S., Thursday 8/7 central). His manager goes apeshit and tries to set him up again with a blonde girl who looks far too young for him. “It’s suspicious enough,” Cooper tells him, but he doesn’t really care anymore. There are more pictures of Kurt with his new boyfriend and they are obviously, painfully in love and Cooper just doesn’t care. - It takes two months before they run into each other again - ‘run into’ meaning Cooper fires his manager, tracks down Kurt’s address and prepares himself for a week before driving over, feeling a messy combination of giddiness and desperation and hope. He stands at Kurt’s door for fifteen minutes, running nervous fingers through his hair. He’s still shaking from the heartbreak even now, even when he reaches up to tentatively knock on the door. The moment it takes for Kurt to answer is spent completely frozen on the spot with his heart beating frantically in his chest, and then Kurt answers and it’s worse. “Kurt,” Cooper huffs out - and he can see it immediately, he can see that Kurt still loves him and he can still see all the tiny freckles on his cheeks it used to make him sad to think would eventually fade away and he can see Kurt, his Kurt, and for terrifying a moment it feels like nothing else has ever mattered. Kurt shakes his head, his hands tight on the door. “No,” he says, voice soft and still so achingly lovely, “No, no, no, no. Don’t do this.” His face scrunches up like it does when he cries, like it did the first time Cooper ever saw him. Kurt glances away for a second but then his eyes are back, looking at him pleadingly. “I waited for you to do this and you didn’t, you didn’t care, you didn’t care, Cooper.” He’s crying, and Cooper doesn’t realise he is too until he feels his throat close up and hears the noise he makes, like he’s drowning. “I was just scared. Stupid.” He shuts his eyes tight and almost stumbles on his feet. He takes a deep breath before looking at Kurt again, who looks terrified by him. Something inside of him bruises at the sight. Cooper reaches out and grips Kurt’s two limp hands in his own painfully tightly. “You’re the only thing that’s important to me. Kurt, please.” Kurt’s chest shudders with deep, stuttering breaths. His face is all red and wet and he looks as heartbroken as Cooper feels. He keeps crying and crying, and Cooper does, too. - He goes back to New York one last time. He throws up on the plane ride, and then at the airport after they’ve landed. He feels terrible and sick all day and when he gets to Kurt’s dorm room, Kurt immediately pulls him inside and checks his temperature with his palm, frowning in concern. “You’re so pale,” he says, eyebrows drawn and lip caught in his teeth. He tries to usher Cooper to lie down on the bed but Cooper tells him it’ll just make him feel worse and stands propped up against Kurt’s rickety desk for ten minutes watching as Kurt stands in front of him, making a worried fuss. “I love you,” Cooper tells him. Kurt’s eyebrows raise in surprise and he leans up for a kiss, smiling until Cooper turns his head away. He thinks he’s going to throw up again, and he keeps still another moment because there’s nothing he wants less than for Kurt’s last memory of him to be the vomit stains in his carpet. When he looks down at Kurt, he takes all of him in. He files the image of his face away, keeps it close and dear for the next two years as it fades out, blurs, distorts. - Cooper files a new one away and prays for it to last longer.

[kumpez-blog]

Hard to Control When It Begins (Part one/part two) For Grace. Kurt enlists in Sam's help to get back at Blaine. Kurt/Sam.

[kumpez-blog]

Cheating on somebody should, he thinks, but at the time Sam's lips are soft and just as scared against his, and Sam's hands are rising to spread across his shoulders like he wants him to stay and unlike the rest of Kurt's world, Sam would never hurt him, not once, not at all, and he knows it, too. The kiss is boyishly sweet and a charming, careful kind of awkward – it's Sam, really, and in Kurt's mind, Sam has always been a word for strange, nice things like overly festive Christmas wrapping paper and too-strong sunshine.

Sam pulls back with red cheeks and long exhale of breath that trembles and falters in time to the beat of his heart against Kurt's chest. He blinks and licks his lips like he's left a spot of ice-cream there and not the taste of Kurt (a clean peppermint taste, he likes to think; he certainly tries his best to make it so). "I liked that," is what Sam huffs out against his burnt up cheekbone, close enough for Kurt to feel the smiling quirk of his lips – it feels odd, maybe a little twisted with fear like Kurt's used to feel spread hopelessly across his face whenever he looked at his father, pictures of his mother, himself, anybody around him at all that could have found him abominable: anybody, really.

They're still clutching at each other, Kurt's hands maybe a little too tightly curled around Sam's big arms and Sam's big arms maybe a little too tightly curled around him. "Me too," Kurt says, agreeably, because lying has never done boys like them any good. He swallows and when he looks up into Sam's deep green eyes the kitchen lights almost blind him, and in their glare Sam's hair is in soft strands of white and Sam's cheeks are a saturated, burning shade of crimson, the colour drifting down his skin past the collar of his shirt – and further, probably, Kurt thinks, the stain seeping into the dimples in the small of Sam's nice back and slipping lower still, maybe, but Kurt stops himself thinking any further that that. He clears his throat and smiles, a little.

Sam looks a little terrified and flustered but mostly Kurt just thinks he looks happy, more than he thinks anyone's gotten to see him before. More than he's ever gotten to be.

-

They don't speak about it, exactly, but Sam begins visiting his room just to sit in and feel okay (that's what he says when Kurt asks him about it, shrugging and looking at Kurt with eyes that look startlingly clear: it makes me feel okay) and sometimes Sam even talks about how he likes to kiss boys, and sometimes he even asks about how Kurt likes to kiss them, too. It's a surprisingly quiet resolve to Sam's surprisingly loud kitchen freak-out over girls (it– it doesn't make me feel at all, why doesn't it make me feel at all) but Kurt knows better than to push, especially to push Sam, who's taken long enough to get to Point A to Point A and a Half as it is.

"So," Sam asks one day, fiddling down with the buckle of his belt so he has something to do and somewhere to stare at while he talks, which is how Kurt knows whatever he says isn't going to be about Skyrim like the majority of things he says lately. He glances furtively in Kurt's direction with his teeth biting down on his bottom lip, the one Kurt's learned fits like a mould between the two of his. "I think I like guys... So."

Even though Kurt knows – and has for a while – he still blinks in surprise at the words actually being said they still make his stomach feel hot and giddy to listen to. This is his field; it shouldn't make him so speechless to be confronted by. He composes himself, arching an eyebrow and Sam thinks he likes guys, so. "Isn't it nice?" he asks, almost drawls, giving Sam a smile even if he's still refusing to look up and see it.

But Sam still listens to him, and he laughs back, too, looking up at Kurt with smiling, crinkled eyes while he shakes his head and scratches idly at the back of it. "Yeah." He leans back onto his hands, onto Kurt's bed and grins back at him, broad and crooked. "It kind of is."

They smile at each other a moment longer and Kurt's heart ricochets back and forth off the sides of his chest the entire time before he makes himself look away, at the mediocre television show Sam loves with all his heart: and he thinks it kind of is, too.

-

On Saturday, Kurt wakes up at six in the morning, showers, styles his hair and slips on the outfit he arranged the night before. He leaves his room in time to find Sam, pulling on his dad's suitcase and whistling his dad's music under his breath, blinking across the hall at Kurt with a sleepy smile. His hair is a mess and his clothes are all sitting crooked and creased on his and he has that hint of prickly teenage boy stubble Kurt loathes and – Kurt thinks he looks really, ridiculously hot for seven in the morning.

"You get up this early on Saturdays?" Sam asks, shutting the guest room door with a click and grinning, because Sam's always, always finding something to grin about - today, he gets to go home.

"Only if I have plans." Kurt smiles at him. It isn't the smile he should be giving to Sam, or any boy that isn't the one he thinks he's still dating: it's too big, maybe, and Kurt knows his eyes are showing so many dangerous things whenever they find Sam lately but he can't stop it anymore.

He offers to help Sam haul his suitcase downstairs but Sam waves him off, taking it down by himself with one arm. "Like half of this is just drawings from Stevie."

Kurt perches on the arm of the living room couch and stares at Sam's second-hand suitcase when he disappears into the kitchen, fidgeting with the collar of his new shirt. It takes a moment for him to stop pressing his lips tightly together and fussing over himself, stilling at the sound of Sam returning with a bagel hanging out of his mouth.

He grins and drags his suitcase back to his side, pulling Kurt in with one arm for a quick hug. "Be back Monday," he announces as he steps out the front door, waving his bagel over his head in goodbye, a clean bite taken from the side of it.

Even though Sam doesn't see it, Kurt still waves, fingers fluttering and lingering a moment too long in the air. Sam smells like cheap deodorant and the house air-freshener - a scent he definitely finds a lot less appealing on his step-brother, thankfully.

He sighs and gets back onto his feet, trudges back upstairs to his room to slip back into his pyjamas and sleeps for another few hours.

(Sam's left him two texts when he wakes up – the first says, might have forgot to make my bed today sorry; and the second is from an hour later, and all it says is, :).)

-

Kurt intends to break up with Blaine, which is an easy thing to hold off doing when he sees Blaine every day, restless and awkward on the opposite side of their coffee table, also fully intending to break up with him.

They've always talked around things – it was cute, then it was frustrating, then it was just bad excuses about why they couldn't have sex tonight, why Blaine had to get home to Westerville early or why Kurt had to cook for family dinner night at his house (with emphasis on 'family', and without the addendum of 'because Sam is over, and I want him to know how nice my Zuppa Toscana is'). He knows kissing Sam was wrong, even just once, and maybe since then he's been less than innocent; but he knows there's a reason Blaine made the beaver-toothed Warbler who got 'friendly' with him this year stop showing up at the Lima Bean, and Kurt's pretty sure it's guilt. Kurt's also pretty sure more goes down in the Dalton (horny) boys dorms which are supervised by senior (hornier) boys than does in his home, and the (horniest, if Kurt includes himself) boys there under his dad's supervision.

It should hurt more. Kurt isn't under the delusion he and Sam are a sure thing without Blaine in the picture – in the past he's had it made to him awfully clearly how his love-life is never going to match up to his expectations for it – but the fact that he needs Blaine out of the picture at all tells him all he has to know.

"This is good," Kurt says after a too-hot-to-taste mouthful of coffee. He can feel his tongue steaming, pushing it against the roof of his mouth and squeezing the styrofoam cup in his hands until he feels them burn. A moment of private agony, and then, easier, "I think we should break up."

Blaine chokes on his mouthful, coughs. Kurt passes him a napkin and watches him flush red and feign surprise. "That's – are you... Kurt." He shifts in his seat, leaning closer to look into Kurt's eyes for something they don't have. He presses his lips together and takes Kurt's hand, squeezing it in his before asking, lowly, "You're sure?" as though either of them aren't.

Kurt nods, smiling and squeezing back. "Let's be friends," he says, and Blaine smiles back.

Easy, easy.

-

Sam comes back, and Kurt's single, and they're in Kurt's room together alone, and nothing happens. Less than nothing. Negative one thing happens.

There's this terrible, soul-destroying feeling that comes hand-in-hand with the realisation some lovely boy doesn't like him the way he does. Kurt at least thought after so many experiences with it the heartache would dilute, or maybe, if he was lucky, numb entirely. Instead, Sam holds Kurt's pillow to his chest and grins at him over it like nothing has changed from last week, and they watch this show Sam likes (it's awful, it's complete shit; Kurt spent fifty dollars on the boxset and loves it a lot) and Sam says, "Blaine sucks," with a shrug and nothing else, because he has nothing else to say about it.

Kurt sits next to him, stiffly, and thinks of all the boys Sam might like instead of him. Finn or Puck or Mike or some other footballer – guys Kurt can't compare to because they have nothing but differences between them. Better and simpler and hotter, and even though Sam not liking him makes Kurt leave their marathon to sit in the bathroom and take deep, calming, shaky breaths, the thought of how some guy not liking Sam might make Sam feel makes him tear up just to consider.

-

"French is crazy," Sam tells him at lunch, the next day at school. He taps his pen off the table and sits at the glee club's lunch-table, alone, surrounded by textbooks.

Kurt raises an eyebrow at him and sits at his side, an appropriate distance away that's guaranteed not to have any awkward elbow brushing while they eat and therefore no awkward, abrupt bouts of heartache. "Faux," he replies. Sam frowns at him. "I didn't even know you had French."

Sam looks down at the blank page in front of him, then stares at it wide-eyed as though he only just realized it was there and flicks to a page full of his charmingly disproportionate handwriting, hastily. "I just started. This is like, pre-beginners stuff and it's already crazy."

To avoid the obligatory offer of help, Kurt takes a particularly large bite of his sandwich and flicks through the doodles in one of Sam's notebooks while he chews, extra slowly.  He pushes down the thoughts of French with Sam. Frenching Sam. Sam's dick in his underwear when he walks around the house half naked.

It doesn't end up helping, anyway, because Sam leans down until he's caught Kurt's eye and looks an endearing mix of bashfulness and earnestness when he suggests, "You know this stuff, right? Could you, maybe... if it isn't too much hassle or anything..."

Kurt swallows and smiles and has an internal emotional breakdown about the crinkled corners of Sam's eyes.  "Of course," he agrees, and then he has another.

-

It'd be much easier to forget about romantic possibilities with a guy who happens to be gay too if Kurt didn't constantly dream in the five-second memory of Sam's lips on his, his arms warm and so misleadingly tight around him. His dreams always go further, against countertops and slippery bathroom tiles and pressed, warm bedspreads.

Tonight, they're against the kitchen floor. Sam is sucking him off and it's nice because it feels like something they do, it feels like they're boyfriends. He has his hands spread warmly over Kurt's hips, keeping them low, and his bangs messy across his forehead. When Kurt pushes them back he can see Sam's green eyes, the colour deepened, staring out at him while he licks slow strokes of his tongue against the head of Kurt's cock. Kurt moans, hips jerking involuntarily, just enough to slide another half-inch of himself into the slick heat of Sam's mouth.

It's way too much for him to take.

"Sam," he huffs out, and even though it's dark, he can make out Sam's lips quirking, smiling around his dick. They slide lower, drag more of him inside, working him in thorough sucks and laps of his tongue. Kurt throws his head back and grips his own hair to keep from yanking at Sam's.

A hand touches his jaw, and then Sam's pulled off of him. "I want to see you," he mumbles, his throat sounding sore and rough already in a way that makes Kurt's dick twitch where it's held in Sam's other hand. Sam strokes him, lightly. "I want you."

Kurt doesn't want it to end so soon but that's all it takes before he thrusts up helplessly and bumps the tip of his cock against Sam's parted lips, coming hard with a strangled sound he hopes to god nobody heard when he wakes up, sticky and sweaty and completely exhausted.

-

Every time Kurt is in unrequited like with a boy it feels like the worst thing ever, except this time, where it definitely is the worst thing ever, without question. It would really help if Sam didn't couple his being really stupidly attractive guy with being a nice guy. He could at least do Kurt the favour of being an incorrigible asshole, or something.

"I thought I'd make dinner tonight," Sam explains, fumbling the tiers of Kurt's apron into a messy knot at his back – and it's a nice back, too. He grins. "It's just me, you and Finn anyway, and you normally cook when it's just the three of us. It isn't really fair."

It isn't, but at the same time, Kurt gets to see Sam fight with Finn for the leftovers of whatever he makes which is embarrassingly enjoyable for him, so he isn't going to complain.

"It's nothing fancy, but," Sam scratches his head, giving Kurt a fleeting, funny look, "I just – wanna help out around here, you know?"

After a pause, Kurt nods. Smiles a little, even. He needs to stop hanging around Sam when all he wants to do is kiss him – just a little, just some soft things. They could forget about it after like they did before. Kurt could kiss another boy with Sam on his mind and pretend it's just as good like he did before.

He reaches out and hugs Sam, pulling away before Sam can reflexively return it. "Thanks," he says, softly, but in his head he repeats an old Santana classic: "This is the worst thing ever, fuck you for being nice about it."

-

They start with the basics. In fact, they stay on the basics for a full hour because Kurt can't get over the way Sam's lips move when he says, "Bonjour." Then Sam starts doing Inspector Clouseau from Pink Panther and the studying session falls apart from there on out.

The funny thing about liking Sam is how easily Kurt can forget he's miserable about it. Sam does that thing where he lies across Kurt's bed, hanging his head off the edge and having conversations with himself in different voices, watching Kurt upside down in the mirror to see if he's laughing. It's just nice. Kurt thinks that when Sam gets his own boyfriend all this fun stuff will end, and then is stops being fun and starts being kind of horrible and shitty instead.

Sam sits up abruptly, his flushed cheeks and spit-slick lips effectively distracting Kurt from his heartache. He looks at Kurt with big eyes. "I was gonna tell my parents this weekend," he informs him in a rush, and Kurt straightens, eyebrows raised.  He fiddles with the corner of Kurt's bedsheets, his teeth pushing at his bottom lip before he says, "Do you mind coming with me? I'd really... It'd be cool if you were there."

"Oh," Kurt says, holding his hands together tight enough to leave red marks and staring wide-eyed at Sam. This is as close as they've gotten to talking about it. He kind of thought Sam might have forgotten all the gay discussions way back when, maybe.

"Actually, I already said I was bringing you, so my mom went to the trouble of thinking of making you dinner already, so. You gotta be there." Sam grins at him with flushed cheeks and the part of Kurt's brain that's still distracted by an extremely vivid dream from the night before can't help but imagine grinding into Sam right here until he's red all, all over. God, this is the worst.

"Yeah," Kurt agrees. He's being selfish. This is for Sam, who needs his help. His friend, Sam. He smiles and nods.

Sam tackles him back onto the bed and hugs him tight for a moment. It's so sudden and so physical Kurt can't help but think he's imagining it, because he's imagining a lot like it nowadays.

He's just still and tense in Sam's arms for a moment until Sam pulls away, still smiling with his brow a little furrowed. "I thought we were doing this now," he says, sounding confused. Kurt smiles and awkwardly pats him on the back because he doesn't know what that means.

-

On Friday, Sam pulls both their suitcases to the car despite Kurt's efforts to take his own and packs them away in the trunk before they get in. He's visibly nervous for a moment, and Kurt has a giant speech prepared about coming out and overcoming struggles and general gayness that he quickly goes over in his head one more time before Sam leans in and kisses him kind of hard on the mouth.

Kurt closes his mouth again and stares.

Sam stares back, lips pressed tight together. "I know we only did that once and I'm totally fine with the hugging, the hugging's great, we can hug as long as you want – I won't like, push you into anything." Sam lets out a long sigh, sinking down a little in his seat. "I just really needed that right now. Well, I kind of need it all the time but right now especially, I guess."

Kurt stares. Blinks. "It's okay," he says because really, it's more than okay. It's fucking great.

"Good, awesome." Sam's hand reaches out and hesitates for a minute, suspended in mid-air, before he tangles his fingers with Kurt's and aims a meaningful smile at him. "I'm really glad we're doing this together."

It's also kind of insane. Kurt swallows, looking from their hands to Sam's face to Sam's mouth. "Am I missing something?" he asks, slowly. He squeezes Sam's hands, in reassurance and also just to feel it there, warm in his own. It fits in his.

Sam scratches the back of his neck, shrugging. "I was just gonna come out to them this week but then I thought, what's the point in not telling them I'm dating you, too? They like you. Even Stevie and Stacey like you."

"Dating?" Kurt bursts out.

There's a moment of Sam stumbling over his words and squeezing convulsively around his hand that ends in him accidentally pushing the car horn in. "Are we not calling it that or something?" Sam asks, frowning. He holds Kurt's limp hand in both of his. "'Cause I'd really, really like to date you. And kiss you. But the hugging is totally cool too."

Kurt takes in a deep breath, filtering it out slowly and staring into Sam's earnest face. "Yes," is the only word he can find. Then he swallows, tugging on Sam's hands and feeling breathless. "I think - you should kiss me more. Like, right now."

Nodding, Sam leans in close and he does.

[kumpez-blog]

Kum Week, Day Seven: Family

They stay in the living room the night before Sam leaves. 

They're still awake, and the living room floor is still hard and sore to lie on but Kurt doesn't want to move. There's Finn's snoring on the couch; Sam's soft breaths on his right, the backs of their palms sometimes touching (just barely but enough), and Kurt doesn't want to move. 

He stares at the photographs of his dad behind the TV, and Carole and Finn and himself, and Sam doesn't say anything when his hand starts shaking - he shifts closer, presses their hands closer together, lets out a funny sigh that falters. Sam prefers not to say things in words (gets them mixed up or blurts out the wrong words, sometimes writes them down wrong, too) and it's taken Kurt a while but he gets it, now, gets that Sam is trying to tell him that he's sad, too.

Kurt stares into his dad's eyes - an old picture, a young Burt - and almost bursts into tears when he glances away from them to the curtains he picked out last year. It's the worst feeling, he's sure, to be homesick when you haven't even left yet. He closes his eyes. Swallows. Opens his mouth to talk, but Sam cuts in, instead (and Kurt's glad, because he's scared he'll say the wrong thing most of the time, too, worried that he'll be misunderstood the way he knows Sam is).

"I had fun," Sam starts (then he stops, and Kurt sees him in the dark,  pressing his lips together tight, feels the deliberate bump of Sam's fingers against his), "Getting to know you this year."

They know each other - it's been a whole year, of course they do. (And Kurt wishes they didn't - he'd rather go back to actively not knowing Sam to having another goodbye to dread, another heartstring to yank all the way out.) He wishes there had been more time for being friends with boys he was told not to be friends with and less time for being sad and lonely, but it's high school. Or, it was.

Sam holds his breath and Kurt hears it (they're so close together he can even feel it, dragging all the air out of him, too). "We should've done it sooner," he murmurs, his voice soft and little and Kurt's scared that it'll be easy to forget: Sam's sweet voice in an eighteen year haze of jeers and jokes. He wishes he could pack all the good people in Lima up into his suitcase and take them around with him inside a map to spread out on the (dingy ugly tiny) apartment floor in New York, to live with them (again) when things get sad and lonely (again).

"Me too." He curls a finger around one of Sam's (Sam immediately squeezes around it with his pinky) and he doesn't want to move. He never wants to move.  

They have an hour and a half and he wonders if he'll ever, ever see Sam again after it.

Sam lets out this big breath, stares up at the ceiling and turns his hand to hold Kurt's propery. It's big and warm and nice just like Sam is, gives him the same butterflies he can't help getting, because Sam isn't his stepbrother and Sam isn't scared of him and Sam likes him - tells him as much all the time, with his big, warm, nice smile and the odd pride in his eyes when Kurt talks about NYADA (not to mention the wistfulness - he can't even begin to imagine how sad and lonely Kentucky will make Sam next year. He doesn't want to.) 

"Everybody forgot about me when last year when I left," Sam says, quietly and not condemningly, and even though they weren't close then Kurt still feels sharp guilt at the reminder, hand clenching tighter around Sam's. He goes to say sorry but Sam waves his free hand in the air above them like he knows. He turns to Kurt - glances at Finn for the briefest second - stares hard into Kurt's face in the darkness and asks him, "We won't do that again, right?"

His thumb slides across Kurt's knuckles. Kurt tries to imagine erasing Sam from his life - can't, because Sam's the sweetest boy he's ever known (and it's been two years and a bit of trying to feel otherwise, but Kurt's a little in love with him, despite himself, thinks everybody must be, just a bit). He laughs, and it sounds shaky and scared because that's how Kurt feels tonight: small (again). 

He leans over, kisses Sam quick and soft on the side of his mouth. Sam is unperturbed, keeps staring at him, waiting on his answer, and edging closer and closer in tiny inches. Kurt holds his hand and feels him warm by his side (and for now, that's enough). He takes a breath, tries not to kiss Sam again. Fails.

"Never," he breathes.  He means it.

-

New York is hard and nothing like Lima ever was (which is good and bad, surprisingly). Their apartment feels secluded from the rest of the world, and some mornings he wakes up and finds Finn draped across the couch, unconscious with an Xbox controller of his chest, and it feels like home; some mornings Rachel wakes him up by coming into his room to use the good mirror and blasting her hair-dryer for a good half hour, and it feels like hell.

But they do well enough, and they have enough - and really, they belong there. Finn didn't feel that way at first, but he understands now that it's home (because it's where Rachel is, but he can leave that part out). Kurt says as much, carefully and quietly. Sam gives him a soft look, slinging his overnight bag higher up his shoulder and looking around their little apartment in consideration before he turns back to Kurt. He smiles, bumps their shoulders together on the way inside and tells him, "I think I could like it here, too."

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Kum Week, Day Five: AU

Running for prom king and king was all Sam's idea.

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Kum Week, Day Four: Firsts

The accidental-kissing thing escalates.

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