I wrote this for April about a year ago and thought it would be nice to share here. Happy August, and enjoy!
kiss me before you go
i'm going low and lately
i'm going nowhere
barfly – ray lamontagne
There could be worse things.
The day is going to be pretty, Sam decides, with the sun sweeping the tops of the trees and sky so lavender it could be raining lilacs. He retreats from the window and gathers his things as quietly as possible.
When all is said and done, he leans over and plants gentle kisses on Stacey and Stevie's cheeks. "Be good," Sam whispers, and he tries to think of something else to say, something moral and wise and commanding, but nothing comes to mind so he just nods to himself and slips quietly out the front door.
They'll grow up, but they won't grow apart. That's the key, he thinks, to how a family should work.
He whizzes an axe through the air and imagines it catching fruit and thinks about the colors and what it would look like blended all together. He thinks about strawberries and Stacey's dumb pig Baby and his scratchy green sweater and his grandpa's ghost and the taste of butter and Stevie's sporadic temper and the brown-haired boy who passes him by every day in town square.
There really could be worse things.
There is no hurry to get there; arrival chases him to the spot. He feels odd and light, with fingers twitching slightly, the skin stretched over the bone. He doesn't know why his shoulders are so relaxed, why his mind keeps fluttering away to the color of the sky, but the sound of Will Schuester's nervous laugh brings him back momentarily. But he catches the sight a bird just about ready to take air - wings extended, blink, head bob, and then, and then -
"Quinn Fabray!"
And then.
He watches the mayor's daughter walk proudly up the wooden stage, her dark green dress blending in with the pine trees behind her. Suddenly, it feels like it's just her and him alone in the world - not staring at each other, never knowing each other - her shoulders stiff, lips pursed, and heart locked tight until it spills.
"And the male tribute from District Seven is…" Sam watches her, her body unfold and straighten, golden blond hair spilling down the small of her back.
Like she knows she's going to die, but there's still a well-kept secret hidden somewhere in her lips.
"Kurt Hummel!"
Sam's stomach lurches, ready to slip off and fall onto the ground, finding pieces of himself like a note hidden by a lover between the pages of a forgotten book. He dares to turn his head, to sneak a glimpse, and when he sees Kurt's head held high, chin to the air as he marches shakily forward, Sam realizes he's walking, too. Then he's running. Running forward pulls at his lungs and his heartstrings, fist clenched empty in the air as he runs towards nothing at all.
"I volunteer." (Breathless, foolish.)
There's mumble and grumble, and when he catches Quinn Fabray's eye, Sam looks down at the wooden stage, feeling strangely ashamed.
Finally, Will clears his throat, and Sam motions his head towards Kurt. "He's my cousin," he mumbles, and without further interruption, he takes his spot next to Quinn and stares at… nothing, really.
His mom and dad say goodbye. Stevie says goodbye. Stacey cries.
When Kurt walks in, Sam actually grunts. Grunts. Like he'd much rather be in the arena already than be alone in a white-walled room with Kurt Hummel. But Kurt's so charismatic and Sam's so not that he just listens to his grateful speech (fervently well-practiced, Sam notes) and nods occasionally while focusing in on an increasingly interesting speck of dust on the floor. And suddenly, Kurt's hugging him, and it's genuine and wholesome and thankful. And for the first time, Sam feels like he is taking up space, existing, pushing air out of the way with his movement and claiming it.
Needed, he thinks, might be the right word.
"It's okay," Sam says. He doesn't know what he's saying okay to exactly, but Kurt looks like he's about to cry, and it's just something you do.
Kurt smiles, and the world lightens up a bit, Sam thinks. Color.
"You know," Kurt bargains gently, "you sound like everyone else when you say that."
He gives him one last look, be careful, and then leaves.
There's no why did you volunteer for me or we've never once spoken before this or you don't even know me or who are you and Sam thinks maybe love isn't always black and white.
Color.
It becomes unspoken, really. And when mentioned, they stick to the story: Strong Family Ties Prompts Cousin to Volunteer in the 49th Annual Hunger Games. That's what flashes in the running news reel at the bottom of every television screen, as well as the Capitol newspaper under the special column: District Reapings.
He doesn't talk to Quinn much, but during dinner, she tosses him the paper and lets out a scaly laugh.
In their matching tree costumes, Quinn and Sam stand still while Shannon Beiste and Sue Sylvester tower over them. Everyone's been silent for so long that Sam is beginning to forget why in the first place. "We could have pretended they were siblings," Beiste mumbles finally, but Sylvester just stares for another minute before walking away, either unable or uninterested to lend further comment.
Out of earshot, Quinn makes the slightest move to turn to him and breathes, "I bet they ate the other tributes during their Games."
It wasn't meant as a joke, but Sam laughs. Even when he thinks it over, it's still not funny.
But laughing is laughing, he guesses. Even dressed up as a tree.
He's going to die, probably. "Sam," Will begins, "Or is it Samuel?"
He shrugs. "People call me either."
"Well which one would you rather be called?" When they announce you're dead, Sam finishes in his head. He actually thinks about this, weighs the pros and cons, and finally lands on, "Sam." He quickly glances at his mentors, Beiste and Sylvester, before giving an extra nod. "That's how I want to be known."
The air is morbid, but he can't really help it. He starts picking at the purple velvet of the couch when he starts to wonder how many now-dead children have sat in his same exact spot.
He tries to shake off his thoughts, places his hands on his lap, and listens to the training strategies. He doesn't fully understand what his mentors are saying, but he gets it, really; their sighs are as matched as their bodies. It's difficult to tell where one of them begins and the other ends.
The pair from District 1 are hilarious, to say the least. Appearance-wise. He's short and energetic, and she's large and frighteningly robust. Then there's the pitiful District 12, represented by a scrawny boy in a wheelchair and even smaller girl who keeps shrieking at the sword-wielding station. The tributes from District 2 are particularly gruesome, a large merciless boy and conniving olive-skinned girl, and they've been flawlessly chucking spears for the past hour. The two from District 9, a tall kid with a confused look and a girl with blue and black hair, watch with a mixture of awe and hatred.
He's learning how to tie knots when the (admittedly good-looking) pair from District 4 pass by, both with sunny blond hair and ocean blue eyes, and they slightly snicker at his attempt at a noose. (It's a back-up plan.)
He doesn't notice when Quinn takes a seat next to him, leaning forward to snag a piece of loose rope. She doesn't say anything, just observes Sam's technique before picking it up herself, a perfected noose resting on both her palms. Suddenly, she sighs, looks over at him, and manages a twisted smile. "I wish we were better strangers," she offers.
He feels beads of sweat forming on the back of his neck. "Allies?" he whispers.
She looks at him for a long time before placing her noose next to his. "Allies," she mouths back. And it's when she leaves and heads to the bows and arrows that he looks down at the nooses and understands what she means.
"Cousins," he confirms to Caesar Flickerman.
Fate plays her cards and Sam tosses his ace out the window, hands in the air. Some battles aren't for winning, even if he's mustered up the courage to fight.
He's never really been afraid of the dark, so the arena isn't much of a bother to him. It's a large cave, with nooks and cracks, and he can travel up and down easily, but once you're spotted, it's going to be hell trying to escape an ambush.
He loses sight of Quinn on the first day; the Cornucopia had been an absolute mess. He has a gash on his arm where the tribute from District 6 - Mike, he thinks - flung a knife, and Sam just narrowly dodged it while reaching for an axe.
Now that he thinks about it, it was a stupid idea. What is there to chop down in a cave? (Opponents.) But still, he has yet to see Quinn's face projected, and... he doesn't really know what he's doing now.
Sam curls up in his corner and watches the dripping water reflect the colors of the crusted gems on the ceiling. Color.
He's starving and delusional and the loss of blood from his arm is starting to get to him (and so is the smell of death). He's seeing things. Hearing things too, mostly, but things he never actually heard before. Like Kurt's be careful and his mother's be brave and there's the scent of a vial of perfume being spilled on the carpet when he sees blond hair and green eyes and a red slit on her chest that looks like a bloody smile when she forces solid food down his throat and replaces it with the sweet filling of water.
Then there's water being poured on his arm, all over, and it's refreshing and nice - but they'll never really be able to wash off the blood, will they?
No, no not really.
He wakes up to her back as she faces away from him, cross-legged, playing night guard.
He stirs only a little, but she knows he's awake.
"Allies," he merely says.
She doesn't turn around. "Allies," she confirms.
He gets better and so does she. He thinks people might start believing they are siblings or something, because he takes care of her the way he takes care of Stacey when she's sick. Maybe Quinn has a brother or something, but either way, they're getting sponsors which means they're getting the right medicine.
"What do you miss most?" he asks. It's just to make conversation, really. He's about 50/50 when it comes to paying attention to her answer.
She doesn't say anything for awhile anyways, but when she does, she's tossing a rock in the air. "History class. You?"
He smirks and wonders if this is some inside joke, so he decides to make his own as well. "Extended family."
They both barely make it out of a fight on the pool floor of the cave where Quinn slices the throat of the District 9 tribute, Finn, when the District 1 pair hears the commotion. Sam manages an axe into the male tribute's - Blaine's - back, just as a spear take a stab at his calf. This is it, Sam thinks, blindly pulling the weapon from his leg when abruptly, the sound of Quinn's cries snaps his head up. The female District 1 tribute, Lauren, pounds her fist into Quinn's porcelain cheeks, and Quinn whimpers loudly but makes no move to shield her face. In fact, her hands lay protectively over her stomach, and Lauren is about to deliver the final blow when Sam crawls over and messily axes off her punching arm and proceeds to slice her stomach open. Tightening his pant leg around his wound, he carefully hoists the beaten Quinn over his shoulder and scurries the both of them away from the scene before the two cannons echo in the distance, and not once does he make a move to look back.
"Your leg looks disgusting," she says hoarsely. He shrugs because it's true and makes an effort to avoid her gaze. "I bet my face looks even worse."
It does, if Sam is being completely honest, but Quinn wears broken well. Both her eyes are purple, cheeks an unhealthy pink, and lips swollen and bloody. Her nose is even a little crooked, the blood draining from her face as he pats a wet towel over her forehead, but her eyes are still blindingly green, focused and determined as she rests her head against a rock.
"The Hunger Games," she mutters, and it's a blink-and-you-miss-it, but there's a tinge in her voice that belittles the Capitol accent. "No one is taught to love in way that we do or to kill; we are the tributes who know to love each other and to hurt each other but not how."
He doesn't understand, but he nods as if he does, and he can tell it makes her feel better because she passes out under the warmth of his hands cradling her head.
Death is so slow that it stops feeling like death; just living but barely, like the period before falling asleep. Gradually, then all at once.
"Maybe if were naked we would get more sponsors," she says. He laughs sharply because she's probably right.
Nothing says champion like dying in the nude.
They're well-hidden. So well-hidden that when Karofsky and Santana from District 2 stumble across the the twelve year old from District 8, they are forced to watch the whole thing from their spot.
There are still some bits of her as the hovercraft tries to scrap everything off, but the blood stains the cave floor and there's just nothing they can do about that anymore.
It's hours later when either of them finally move from their spot, and Quinn makes an indistinguishable noise before stumbling out, and Sam vomits over the girl's blood.
"I used to see you around school," Quinn says weakly. She's dying, he thinks. He can smell it, but he doesn't say anything. He never says anything. "You hardly pay attention in class."
There goes the sibling angle. "I have trouble concentrating," Sam admits, tucking his knees under his chin. The pain in his leg is excruciating, but he doesn't wince.
"Reality just can't keep up with you, Sam." He expects a laugh to follow, but it's quiet.
Silence stretches between them, and they're both just so tired and hungry that maybe neither of them will ever talk again until -
"Your cousin owes you his life." A beat. "Literally."
He freezes and looks at his hands. The image of Kurt's sad smile lingers; it's kind, rooted in Sam's heart but unreachable. Here, they are not whole. Not in the games. Here, they are only extensions of each other. "I didn't do it so he could owe me," he argues. "I did it, because…" Because, because, because.
Sam never got that grand moment of clarity, not with Kurt; his love for him was just simply there - it was as organic for him as the need to breathe.
There is no space in any of their hearts for one of them to survive the other.
"You love him." Sam looks up, expecting disdain, but Quinn is rubbing her stomach, cradling it, cooing. He stares at her flushed face, honey curls framing her cheeks, and he swallows loudly as he puts the two and two together. "That's what families do, yeah?" she says quickly. "We know to love each other and to hurt each other but not how," she repeats.
Sam breathes loudly, then quickly remembers where he is and bites his tongue. But Quinn is smart - too smart - and even if they weren't allies, he thinks she would survive on wits alone. "The boy in our history class." Sam can't differentiate whether she's talking to him or her stomach, but he listens obediently. "His name is Noah."
He puts a name to the face; broad-shouldered, scowling, dark hair, and calloused hands. It's weird how he seems to remember everyone so clearly now; the idea of death brings him closer to his acquaintances.
He doesn't want to ask the obvious, it could be catastrophic really, if he's wrong. So he tries to mangle with his hunger and delusion. "Is he… has he…"
"What?" she snaps.
"Has he ever… been inside you?"
He blushes immediately. Quinn laughs, hollowly.
"He's always inside me."
The fish-like muttations pop out from where they rest, and it takes every bit of their energy to run away from their quick fins and poisonous teeth, and later that night, another canon blasts in the air, revealing the face of the female District 11 tribute, Mercedes.
Six remain, and he realizes he doesn't ever want to kill Quinn Fabray.
He thinks about looking for rope, or a rope-like substance; he even thinks about leaving her, but he looks at her stomach and stays put.
"I wish we could be friends when we're older," Sam says off-handedly.
She slaps him because it's about the rudest thing he could say at this point.
It's District 4 who gets them. They sling an arrow through her heart, and it's a quick but ghastly fight as he manages to kill the girl, Brittany, watches the life leave her eyes. The boy, Jesse, suddenly disappears into a crack for safety, limping as he tries to hold in his intestines.
He's by Quinn's side in less than a second, and he knows it's no use pulling the arrow out from her chest. She's convulsing in a horrifying dance, dying from a broken heart, blood dripping from her mouth to her chin as her eyes widen and try to mask the pain.
Her hand reaches out and he grabs it gently, guiding it down to her stomach when the tears start to well up in her eyes. His heart is beating fast, and he doesn't know what's the right thing to do, so he just bites on his lips and talks in a low voice.
"I think it'd be a girl," he begins, and Quinn's eyes fixate on him, her breath shallow. "Dark hair like his. But your eyes. Green eyes. They'd make anyone do anything, those eyes. Make hearts drop. She would… She would have good manners, I think. Polite but brave. Very loyal, but very stubborn. Strong. And smart," he laughs a bit. "God, so smart. Quinn, she'd be the smartest of them all. You'd be so proud."
She's mouthing something, the blood bubbling at her lips and the tears streaming out of the corners of her eye. "She'd be proud. She'd just want you to be happy, you know. In the end. So don't be angry," he whispers, and he scoots some rocks around her. It's a death bed, almost. "Don't be angry, Quinn. You'll see her soon."
The moment suspends in the thick air, her breath hitches, and there is a weak squeeze of his hand, telling him something. Her heart doesn't skip a beat, just like a hammer on a board. And then it stops, the cannon fires, and he slides her eyelids shut.
She tells him, you'll see him soon.
He sits alone, completely still. Completely void.
Coward, the dripping water hisses.
"I know," he says back.
Karofsky slaughters the already-dying Jesse before his eyes. Sam is pinned to the floor by Santana, who hovers malevolently over him. She's carving something into his arm with her knife, and he's shriveling in pain. She keeps whispering to him beg, beg for your life, as she licks his neck and bites kisses along his jawline. The feeling makes him sick, and he flexes under the knife when suddenly, the weight is gone, and a shrill scream and horrifying crack fills the air instead. The sound of a body dropping provokes Sam to scramble away, but Karofsky looms in, gleefully tossing a rock that almost shatters Sam's skull.
It's only them. This is it. This is how it's going to be, and how it's never going to be.
Karofsky smiles deliciously, treasuring this moment in time because Sam is already so fucked, and he'll drag out his pain as long as he can - cameras or not. Sam suddenly feels the need to keep his back against the floor as he tries propping himself up with his palms and the balls of his feet, scampering away. His head is pound. Streaming blood blinds his vision. His guts breathe air and feel exposed. Still, he manages himself into a small nook, Karofsky's footsteps pounding menacingly behind him and then - they stop.
None.
Silence.
And a cannon goes off.
Sam blinks, unsure of this is a hallucination from the mutt poison or not, but when he crawls out of his space, he sees Karofsky hanging by his neck from a snare, a prepared snare, a noose, perfectly knotted. He sees green eyes, blond hair, and a twisted smile mouthing, allies?
"Ladies and Gentlemen, the victor of the 49th Annual Hunger Games, Sam Evans from District 7!"
Sam falls to his knees, head in hands, and for the first time, he starts to cry.
Stacey and Stevie each get their own rooms. His dad gets proper medicine. His mom gets warm running water. The new fluffy pillows are really comfortable. The blueberry pancakes are so sweet.
Sam sits on his porch in the Victor's Village. He waves at Beiste, who waves back and leaves to take her daily morning walk. He doesn't see Sylvester much; she stays in her house mostly, alone and unfriendly, and Sam doesn't really blame her. He survived, and that's great for him, but so what?
Two more kids in twelve months, and you can't win every year.
"When does it get better?" Sam asks Beiste one day.
"When there's nothing else left for them to take," she replies.
"Why didn't you tell me? That it's just as worse losing?"
"Oh, Sam," Beiste sighs sadly. "You were just so naive. I didn't think you were going to win."
No one really visits him, but it's not because they don't want to. They don't know what to say. He's not the most exciting victor of the Hunger Games, but he's boyishly handsome and kind-hearted… but forgettable. Easily forgettable. Maybe still brave. Still courageous. Still heroic.
As if he has a choice.
He doesn't know Noah Puckerman personally, so he doesn't know where he lives, but Stevie says his sister in his class. Sam gives Stevie coins to give to the Puckermans, but Stevie always comes back home with the coin bag, saying they didn't want it. Sam figures enough, but he doesn't know exactly how to act with Noah. How his… girlfriend? Friend? Mother of his would-be-but-now-dead child? How she saved his life. How he couldn't save her or their kid. How everything is just so fucked up, how Sam is so fucked up, and really, there are days he'd rather be a fallen tribute than the victor of these games. And all he has now are a shit ton of coins, and that's really all he has to offer to world, and even Noah Puckerman won't take it.
He rocks back and forth on the porch, wrapping one of the Capitol quilts around him.
And then he expects it, because the scene is picturesque with the snow and the pine trees and the beaded quilt, so Kurt steps onto the porch and sits next to him.
Sam wants to scream. Wants to scream so loudly that it'll feel like his lungs are about to shatter.
But instead, he sinks into the porch until he feels like they're one in the same. Kurt swallows, places his hand on Sam's knee, and Sam stares.
They put me back together wrong, Sam thinks. He is a patchwork doll, a toy of Panem, of the Capitol; one that they played with too roughly and then reassembled in a hurry when he fell apart. Maybe he should say something loving to Kurt. Something loyal, brave.
Instead, he blinks. How he wishes he could look forward - look at them all.
And not be convinced this is all his fault.
"I saw everyone die," he says anyways.
A reassuring squeeze on his knee, and Kurt stares him so straight in the eye, blinding and purely apologetic, and it reads, you're stupid. You shouldn't have done it. It wasn't worth it. You don't even know me. I wouldn't have mind dying. You shouldn't have done it.
Sam leans forward, his mouth - lips - presses against the back of Kurt's hand on his knee, and Kurt tenses but does not move. Because he is stupid. Because he doesn't know Kurt. Because it was worth it. Because, because, because.
Love doesn't end, not really. Neither does the games. They just change in shape and form.
Sneaks up on you like a kiss on the hand.