No words are really exchanged between them at first, which Sam is totally fine with because he and Kurt have never really spoken much anyway. Kurt is the type to keep the things that matter to himself, lips locked and key hidden somewhere in the recesses of his consciousness. Sam doesn't know why he expects it to change much now that he happens to be living with the other boy, but he's almost disappointed when Kurt does little else but smile at him when they pass in the hallway in the morning. Kurt's hair is always wet, fresh from the aquatic onslaught of a shower, and Sam's is always a complete mess because he wakes up too late.
Small smiles as they pass each other in the hall, wet and dry, black and white. Total opposites and yet the same.
...
The thing is, Sam is never left alone with Kurt. Someone else is always there, and that gives Sam an excuse not to wonder why he wants to be alone with Kurt (or what he wants to do when they are finally alone). Burt and Carole have a date night once a week, and Sam thinks that it's good for them. He remembers the days back home, the sun setting in the cadence of the rolling hills stretching onwards from his backyard until he couldn't see anymore. He remembers his mother turning and the sun engulfing her like a halo as she kissed his father and told him that he was on babysitting duty for the night.
That didn't ever happen after they moved to Lima, too much to worry about. Like if they were going to eat, or if today was the day that they were finally going to be evicted.
Point is, even though Burt and Carole are out at least one night a week, Finn never seems to really leave. Rachel is there sometimes too, and when he's watching them, Sam feels something that feels like vinegar rising up in his throat, bitter and he finds himself wanting to spit it out half the time, but it's always gone just as fast as it came.
Kurt never seems to notice how they kiss fully and longly, completely in love. All he does is turn the page to the magazine he's reading and Sam can only stare at not know why.
...
The first real conversation they have besides a quick 'good morning' or a quiet 'pass the salt, please' happens on a Wednesday night, of all times. Sam is laying with his back facing the ceiling in the guest bedroom (and he can't call it his bedroom. Not yet, not ever. It doesn't feel right) when he hears a knock on the door. Sighing, he utters a quick 'come in,' fully expecting Finn to burst in, wanting to play some stupid video game or watch some action movie with a lot of sex scenes and little to no plot.
So he's a little surprised (and almost pleased) when Kurt lets the door swing open but remains on the threshold, not quite in the hall but not in the room either. "Hi," he greets quietly, looking around the room as if it's changed in the three weeks that Sam's been living with them. It hasn't. Sam doesn't have the heart to change anything about it, because it makes things seem permanent, and Sam doesn't want to start thinking of this place like home.
"Hi." he returns, swallowing. That seems to reassure Kurt somehow, and he steps inside, shutting the door quietly behind him. He moves to sit delicately at the foot of the bed and Sam sits up, pulling his knees to his chest protectively and resting his chin upon the rounded peaks that join his calf to his thigh. "What's up?" he asks, and Kurt doesn't answer at first.
"You're a good guy, Sam." Kurt tells him, and it isn't like Sam hasn't heard that one before. Quinn said that before she cheated on him. Santana said that before she used him. Mercedes said that before she had tossed him aside like yesterday's paper. Old news.
So needless to say, the words put him a little on edge. Kurt notices this and shakes his head, almost like he's afraid that Sam is gravitating away from him.
(Stupidly, Sam wonders if he is worried about that, but that's not even the point).
"I mean it," Kurt clarifies, and his voice is just a few shades above hoarse, a little rough around the edges, but still perfectly musical. Sam shrugs, because he isn't sure if he can speak at the moment, and he still isn't sure why Kurt's chosen to speak to him now.
Kurt sighs and stares at the drywall nailed to the bones of the house over Sam's right shoulder, eyes alive and flaring as ever, but distracted now. Glazed over, a pool rippling. "I'm worried about Blaine leaving me." he says plainly, as if it's common knowledge.
Sam gets this ridiculously malicious satisfaction out of that fact, and it makes him sort of sick to his stomach, and he has to wonder where it even came from.
"Oh." is his reply, and he quickly rebukes himself for it.
But Kurt just smiles, lips quirked upwards in that heartbreaking way. Sam thinks that he's never seen him look quite so sad.
...
And then, it's like a floodgate.
Kurt finds excuses to talk to him. They talk every night, and Sam quickly grows to learn that Blaine is someone that he very much dislikes, and his stomach doesn't churn when he thinks about that anymore. It's justified, he thinks.
"You deserve so much, Kurt." he says one night, a week later. It just sort of slips out, but Sam realizes that he means it.
Kurt looks at him, sort of startled, and sort of like he realizes something for a moment. A flicker lost long before Sam can interpret it's meaning.
...
Kurt finds Sam sitting in the stairwell eating Cheerios out of the box on a Saturday morning. The note on the fridge told him that the family had gone out for pancakes. For a moment, Sam had been upset that he wasn't invited, but then he remembered he wasn't actually in the family.
When he sees Kurt's bedroom door open after forty five minutes and thirty two seconds of utter silence apart from the chewing of cereal in his ears, he's more than a little surprised. Judging from the look on Kurt's face when he sees him, the feeling is mutual.
"They went to IHOP, or something." Sam explains vaguely, and Kurt only nods and sits down next to him.
Sam passes him the box without a word, and with a smirk threatening to turn into a smile, Kurt accepts it, popping Cheerios like pills.
...
Kurt breaks up with Blaine exactly twenty four hours before Regionals begin.
Sam almost cries with happiness, and that unsettles him.
Needless to say, the fallout is a little unexpected. Sam expects Kurt to cry and crawl into a fetal position and wait for the world to end, but he's all smiles and laughs and jokes. At least for the time they spend in the guest bedroom with nothing but the Spongebob Squarepants night light on.
Sam asks Kurt what changed, and Kurt only shrugs, chestnut hair looking almost golden from the faint glow of the yellow light spraying across the wall behind him.
"You said yourself I deserve quite a bit more than I was getting," Kurt replies, like it explains everything.
Sam wants to open his mouth to explain, but then Kurt gives him this smile and Sam can't stop glancing down at his lips, and that's just uncharted territory.
...
Sam misses his family, but the Hummel household is beginning to feel like home.
He sits across the dining room table from Kurt, and Kurt asks him to pass the salt again. Somehow, it feels more sincere than before.
...
"Did you mean it?" Kurt asks him one night, and Sam doesn't understand at first. "When you said that I could do better, I mean. Did you mean it?"
"Yes," there's no hesitance whatsoever.
Kurt gives Sam a long, inquisitive look. It's curious, but knowing. It makes the nerves in Sam's stomach come alive with the gentle current of electricity.
Then, Kurt shuffles off the bed and pulls the night light out of the socket next to the bed, plunging them both headlong into darkness. For a moment, Sam thinks he's going to drown.
He feels Kurt close, all too close. All too sudden. A hand rests tentatively on his right cheek and he can feel calm breath against the tip of his nose. His stomach is threatening to short circuit as he feels the words before he hears them.
"Kiss me," and Sam does. There's no hesitance whatsoever.
...
They're announced the winners of Regionals and time seems to slow until there's only Sam and only Kurt. Their hands clasp together around the trophy and despite the clamor around them, everything is silent.
Sam swears quietly to himself that he doesn't love him, but he's never been much of a liar.