Disclaimer:I own nothing. Are you serious?! Can't I just own Sam Evans for a little while? Pretty please?

Summary: What happens to one of the New Directions when he comes up close and personal with life after the music?

Authors Note: This fiction is completely AU. I may refer to canon moments momentarily but much like my first fiction, you have to expand your mind here. It's going off the reservation considerably. It will also touch on a very delicate issue which I hope I can write with the dignity and respect it deserves. So tread lightly in later chapters as it makes itself apparent. In advance, thank you for any reviews or reads this story gets.

I have never faced something like this and it scares the hell out of me.

Look I know I'm probably guilty of saying that a lot given everything that I've been through but in this case its true. Dealing with what I've now found myself right in the middle of, it makes me feel as if I've been sheltered my entire life.

Lets face it, I'm an immature kid. I've had my mature moments sure, but none of the stuff I've been through could have ever prepared me for what I'd deal with when I went away to college. It's times like this I really miss the safety of that choir room and the love and support of the people that were in it with me.

Facing this now brings back all of those memories, instances that every single day since they happened I had been trying to get ahead of. It reminds me of where I've been, and where I always wanted to go. It also shines a really bright light on how much I've truly overcome in my time spent in Ohio.

When my dad lost his job and we lost the house, as strong as I knew I needed to be for the rest of my family, especially my mom and little brother and sister I was dying inside. It scared me and looking back to how I was then I didn't think it could get any worse. All of us, crammed into that little room basically relying on the generosity of strangers, I felt like such a chump. I should have been able to take care of them and to make sure we never even reached that point. I was just off being the high school football star, dealing with the breakup I'd had with the head cheerleader and basically ignoring all of the signs around me.

I had my first experience with real life then and the toll it can take and for most of it I'd just had my head buried in the sand. I didn't want anyone to know because knowing leads to judgement and once that happens everything goes to hell. I couldn't take the sympathetic eyes, the prayers, the need for people to feel sorry for me. It was just too much.

I stepped up at that point. I took responsibility and I did what I needed to do for my family. The day I sold my guitar was probably the worst day of my life. Walking into that pawn shop, with what I considered to be my most prized possession and giving it away for a lot less then it was worth so that I could somehow hold up my end of the bargain in taking care of my family, it shook me to the core.

I'd gotten it back of course, thanks to those people I mentioned earlier from the choir room. They had proven then, just how much they cared about me and it wasn't ever forgotten. Even as I sit here now, years after that all took place, in my dorm room at OSU, I'm so thankful for my time there and for opening up to them the way I did because I don't think I'd be where I am now without them. All of them.

We had to move later that year and I had to leave them all behind, doing what I needed to do for my family, supporting them in the only way I knew how and no one really gets how much that hurt. So getting to go back was like a dream coming true. I missed them all that much.

Going back though, it didn't come without its share of bombshells. Like getting caught by Finn and Rachel in a strip club. Being the stripper. It was a life altering moment for me but also another one of my steps into the real world.

I had the body, and most people would probably tell you I lacked the brain power, so stripping seemed like a natural choice. I wasn't entirely shy about my body so taking my clothes off in order to help support my family was easy. Enormous amounts of money for doing very little and getting to support my family, it was a win-win.

Not the way I envisioned spending the rest of my life but I was secure in the fact that for once I could really do my part. I was just as much a part of the Evans family as my mother and father, and I felt I was old enough to handle making decisions like the one I'd made and supporting them made me feel like less of chump.

I don't strip anymore. As easy as it was, it was never my dream and I went back to McKinley and back to the New Directions, my second family. Where no matter what, I just felt right. In doing so though, I think I also went back to living my life in a bubble. I knew what the real world could hold for you, especially with the economy being as bad as it was, but the safety of being a teenager was alluring. So I welcomed that bubble again. The one where the real world could wait and I would just get to it later.

I'm 22 now. I'm an adult. I'm standing on my own two feet, as a University student, a mediocre job paying my day to day bills and I'm living the dream. Or at least I'm attempting to live the dream. I had spent the last 4 years doing everything that I needed to do to get me to where I am now while still holding on to the dream that the real world could wait and I'd get to it later. With what I now faced, I couldn't do that anymore.

The real world wasn't going to wait anymore. It was demanding that I stand up and take action now. That I do what I've always done in times past and be a man, even if the instances before were before I was actually ready. I had to step up.

I had to save her.

No, if I'm honest it was about more then that. I didn't just need to save her.

I needed to save myself too.