Kurt's boots clicked loudly as he walked down the mostly empty hallway. A small, cold thrill of the old fear rose in his stomach as he rounded the corner straight into someone, until he realized it was just Sam. Something a lot warmer replaced the fear inside him, but he quickly extinguished it, almost rolling his eyes. "Finn 2.0," he thought for the billionth time as he straightened his tie, exasperated with himself.
"DUDE, what the hell?" said Sam, a little too loudly, quickly snapping Kurt out of his self-flagellation. He stepped back quickly and looked at Sam sharply. "What the hell yourself, Sam? This isn't football practice; you can't just dash around running into people," he said, arching an eyebrow. "Why are you yelling at me?" Sam stepped back himself as if he had suddenly realized he was acting bizarrely and ran a hand through his hair, drawing Kurt's attention to his tragic roots and almost making him laugh out loud.
"Um… sorry, but you, I mean, I-" He took a deep breath and fiddled with the zipper on one of his 400 blue jackets as Kurt valiantly resisted the urge to make the universal hand sign for hurry the hell up. Sam drew his ludicrous lips together and started again. "I was talking to Mike, and he said you wouldn't let him walk you to third period. I thought we talked about this man-" Kurt put up a hand. "I'm going to stop you right there, Sam. Karofsky is gone, I told you all already that you don't have to do this. I know you all love playing Secret Service-" "That's NOT it!" Sam snapped, interrupting, his voice again rising well above the register that Ms. Pillsbury would have called "inside voices," even though they were in high school and practically adults. Kurt winced as a few kids turned around to look at the pair of them from behind their locker doors and self-consciously smoothed his vest. Sam didn't seem to notice. Kurt sighed and dragged him through the nearest classroom door, clicking it closed behind them.
Sam immediately paced forward and walked around a table, suddenly stopping for a second, apparently noticing where they were. He put up a finger and poked the hanging model of the solar system above, grimacing with what looked to Kurt like discomfort as it danced and jiggled. He had no idea why Sam would feel so negatively about the astronomy room; from what Kurt remembered it was Sam's favorite subject. Sam glanced around, still seeming uncomfortable. He dragged his eyes away from the planetary models and posters of intergalactic phenomena with some difficulty, but looking at Kurt tapping his foot with arms crossed seemed to bring him back to the present.
"Oh," he said, "right. Listen, seriously dude, just let the guys walk with you. It's not a big deal, okay? I thought you said you would let us? We talked to you about this, Kurt. I don't understand-" Kurt rolled his eyes. "Sam! I just want to live my life normally, alright? Like I said, Karofsky is gone. Yeah, I still get a little trouble from the rest of those lugs, but I can't live like this, like I'm constantly in danger," he replied, realizing his own voice was rising to a slightly inappropriate level as well. "But what if you are, Kurt?" said Sam, even louder. "I don't want you to get hurt. We said we would protect you, and that's what we're going to do. I want you to feel as safe here as you did at that other school-" "Dalton," interrupted Kurt, not knowing why, exactly. "Right. Dalton," said Sam through gritted teeth, a look Kurt couldn't interpret coming into his eyes. He walked back around the table to where Kurt was standing, a few feet from the closed door. "Whatever, dude. This isn't a request. We're going to look out for you. Nobody is going to lay a finger on you. Or even look at you wrong." He nodded as if that settled it. "Sam," said Kurt, almost yelling and waving his arms animatedly. "You aren't my father. You don't get to decide this. You know how much I have appreciated your help, but I'm asking you guys to let me lead a normal life." He crossed his arms over his chest again and popped his hip out a little. Sam stepped forward until he was only a foot or two away, matching Kurt's volume and adding a few awkward arm-fails himself. "Jesus, Kurt, you are so incredibly stubborn! Why won't you let us look out for you?" Kurt groaned with exasperation and threw up his hands. "Why do you CARE so much, Sam!" he snapped. "BECAUSE-" Sam yelled, stepping forward once again, one too many times, until he was standing directly in the middle of Kurt's very personal space. They froze as both of them realized at the same moment they were suddenly standing much too closely together for what either of them thought had been going on here.
An hour seemed to pass, although it was probably only five or six seconds. Kurt felt like he had counted every fleck in Sam's dusty green eyes two or three times over. The tension was palpable in the room, crackling around their ears and running down their spines. Kurt felt his heart racing in his throat. Slowly, slowly, he tilted his head to the right, not taking his eyes away from Sam's. Sam was as still as if he was frozen solid, only the quick and shallow sound of his breath giving him away. Kurt thought about backing away and leaving, running down the hallway and getting into his Navigator and pretending none of this had ever happened, but that warm feeling was burning again in his stomach and he had learned something from Blaine, after all.
Slowly, slowly, Kurt leaned forward and touched his lips to Sam's. For a few heartbeats they pressed together chastely, not touching anywhere but the lips, and for a split second Kurt worried that maybe he had gotten it all wrong. Then, suddenly, his back was against the door and Sam's ridiculous body was pressing into him from shoulders to hips, all hard and soft, and Kurt wasn't sure where he ended and Sam began or how they had even gotten here. Sam's hands were pressed into the wood on either side of Kurt's face and one leg curled around the outside of Kurt's calf while the other edged between Kurt's thighs. Kurt was so shocked that for a moment he forgot to react and their teeth clicked together awkwardly, but almost immediately his lips responded, his arms twined around Sam's neck, and his fingers laced through that appallingly shaggy hair.
His lips were almost too much for Kurt to handle, and he was so eager and demanding and earnest that Kurt's heart almost broke and he was utterly amazed to find that he was the one slowing them down, guiding Sam, showing him what to do with hands and small noises. He wondered if Quinn really had been that much of a holdout, but then somehow he knew this was just different, for Sam. For both of them, this was just different than anything that had ever happened before in the history of the world. Kurt took Sam's pillowy bottom lip between his teeth and pulled back slightly, looking into Sam's glazed eyes. Sam groaned lowly, and when his lip pulled free of Kurt's teeth he buried his face in Kurt's neck and kissed along his jawline, his hand delicately inching around Kurt's ribcage as if it was the most fragile and precious thing he had ever held.
Kurt bit Sam's earlobe and Sam shuddered, his hips instinctively jerking into Kurt and his lips catching Kurt's again, and Kurt knew then that he had gotten this wrong every single time he had ever imagined it. Sam's hands grasped either side of Kurt's face and pulled him even closer, as if he wanted them to be as near to each other as humanly possible; as if he wanted them to be the same person. This was not something that could ever have been imagined. Their lips were moving against each other slickly and deeply and Sam's hands were running over Kurt's body reverently when suddenly a group of people walked by loudly, just on the other side of the door, and they both snapped back to reality. Sam pulled away slightly and leaned his forehead against Kurt's. They looked into each other's eyes for a split second, breathing hard, and then both laughed weakly at the same time. Kurt reached up and tucked a piece of Sam's fried hair behind his ear and rubbed his thumb softly over Sam's lips on the way back down.
Sam's eyes smiled into his as he stepped back and Kurt moved away from the door. Sam opened it and stepped out into the hallway. "Sam, I-" started Kurt, stretching out his hand toward Sam's shoulder, but Sam reached out and squeezed his arm, quirking one corner of his mouth up, a faint blush dusting his cheeks. Kurt stopped talking and found himself literally unable to keep a smile off his lips. "I have to go to football practice, okay?" Sam asked, smiling nervously. "But maybe we can come to some kind of compromise about me walking you to your classes, in the future. Not for protection… just because I want to." Kurt's mouth dropped open slightly and he stared as Sam walked away, turning back to smile at him hesitantly with dark eyes, his lips looking even more absurd than usual. Kurt smiled back with his whole heart in his eyes, and the thought that this was his real first kiss came into his mind out of nowhere. Not Brittany, certainly not Karofsky, and not even Blaine. For a second this felt like the first thing in his life that had ever counted.