Chapter 7:
Sam opened the door for Jeremy, and tried to make himself smile. "Hey," He said, as Jeremy walked in. Sam shut the door behind him. Inside his head, Kurt was already disappointed in his performance.
"Sam," Jeremy said, nodding a him.
They stood there for a moment, and Sam ducked his head and stared at the floor. "Uh, Kurt had to be somewhere else, but he says hi and stuff," Sam muttered.
Jeremy smiled at him, but Sam looked away again. "Too bad, I was hoping..." He trailed off, and ran his fingers through his hair. "Well... it's probably better this way."
Sam nodded. Kurt had told him all about Jeremy's don't-get-attached rule, and he knew better than anyone how easy it was to get attached to Kurt. "The bedroom's this way," Sam said, nodding towards his door.
Jeremy followed Sam into the bedroom, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
"How do you want to do this?" Sam asked, closing the door. He turned around and pulled his shirt off over his head.
"Uh..." Jeremy said, scratching at the back of his head. He smiled awkwardly. "Don't you want to maybe talk first?"
Sam sighed, and took a seat next to Jeremy on the bed. "Why?" He asked.
Jeremy shrugged, and put his hand over Sam's. Sam stiffened. "Just to get comfortable—"
Sam took his hand away, ignoring the loud of protests from Kurt in his head. "Look, Jeremy," He said, turning to face him. "You don't need to do this, alright? This whole 'nice guy' shtick... I'm not Kurt. I'm not anyone. So just don't... don't bother."
Jeremy blinked a few times, taken aback. "I wasn't..." He looked down, frowning. "It's not a shtick." He mumbled. Sam frowned, wondering if he'd actually hurt his feelings. For a moment, he considered apologizing, but the thought made his stomach turn. They never apologized to him.
Jeremy lifted his head back up, and Sam leaned in and pressed his lips against him, trying to move things along. When he kissed him, Jeremy made a muffled, surprised noise and pulled back.
Sam sighed again, and raised his eyebrows. "What is it?"
Jeremy swallowed, and looked at him for a moment. Then he put his hands together in his lap, and stared down at them. "Last time I was here, Kurt told me he didn't know why you kept getting such horrible customers. He couldn't understand it." Jeremy glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, and Sam looked away. "I sort of get the feeling you do know,"
Sam glanced at Jeremy for a moment, then turned his eyes back to the bedroom wall. "I've got an idea," He muttered.
Jeremy looked up again, turning his body towards him."But you're not going to tell Kurt?"
Sam shook his head. "No... not like he could do anything anyways."
Jeremy placed his hand on Sam's shoulder, and Sam felt his skin prickle under it, but he didn't brush it away. "I'm not interested in treating you like that, Sam," He said quietly.
Sam looked at him, staring hard into Jeremy's light brown eyes, but he couldn't see any trace of a lie. The concept of someone not wanting to hurt him wasn't entirely foreign to him, he had a few customers that were fine with just fucking... but none of them bothered to be nice like this, either. Save one, but Sam had figured he was the sole exception. His one good customer in a sea of jerks and sadists. He just wasn't the kind of person people bothered being kind too.
Sam leaned in again, and gave Jeremy a soft kiss.
Kurt wasn't sure what he'd been hoping for, setting Sam up with Jeremy. Whatever it was, he didn't get it. Had he been hoping it would start a streak of really nice customers who treated Sam like he deserved? That it would help Sam loosen up a little? Sure, Sam had been in a decent mood the day he'd seen him—there'd even been a slight blush on his cheeks when Kurt had grilled him about how things had gone—but the day passed, and the good mood with it. And then it was back to the same.
At least he'd had one good customer, for once. Kurt figured one was better than nothing.
Kurt just wished Sam would listen to him, and talk to Blaine about what was happening. He'd only been working for roughly four and a half months, but in that time Sam'd had more bad customers than Kurt'd had in his almost full year. At least, sometimes twice a week, Sam would come home with a limp, or bruises on his back. That wasn't right, and Kurt had begged him repeatedly to talk to Blaine about it, tell Blaine to refuse those customers, but Sam barely listened to him. The only times he had were when it had been really bad, and he hadn't been able to work for a few days. Other wise, he insisted on suffering in silence.
Lost for a way to help him, Kurt spent most of his time trying to keep Sam happy. He watched TV with him, and talked to him, he dragged him out for breakfast and lunch. He held him, and stroked his hair when he was upset, trying to remind him how beautiful and amazing he was. Reminding him that he didn't deserve what was happening, and it wasn't fair. Reminding him that he loved him.
Still, not even hours of cuddling while watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Doctor Who could heal the hand shaped bruises that seemed to be a permanent fixture on Sam's hips.
It was one of those very rare occasions where neither of them had a customer all day, and Kurt had taken Sam out to the mall. He'd hoped to get Sam some new, decent clothes, but so far things weren't working out that way. There was only one store Sam had shown any interest in going in, and Kurt was beginning to suspect that Sam's intention wasn't to shop in the store, but to move in and live there. He was taking forever.
Kurt shifted his weight around on his feet, leaning back against the counter. He crossed his arms, and rolled his eyes. He made loud, pointed huff noises. He did everything he could conceive of to send the message "I am impatient," but it was all in vain. Sam just continued down the row of video games, trailing his fingers across the shelf as he took his sweet time.
Kurt wasn't sure if Sam was ignoring him on purpose, or if he was just genuinely that invested in looking at the games, but he was getting very close to not caring. Under normal circumstances, he would have just dragged Sam out of the store the moment he'd begun feeling bored. The only thing stopping him from doing so now was the contended look Sam'd had on his since they entered the stupid Game Stop, roughly a half an hour before. And after all, that was why he'd taken him out shopping in the first place, even when Sam had insisted he didn't want to leave the apartment. But with the way things for were going for him, Kurt knew that Sam needed to have some fun.
"Can I help you?" A saleslady asked Kurt, obviously mistaking his impatience for a sign that he didn't know what to buy.
Kurt shook his head. "No. But you could try to help him," He said, pointing across the store to where Sam was now digging through a bin of games labelled "half-price."
The saleslady smiled and nodded at him, and then went over to Sam and repeated her question. Sam looked up, and shook his head a little. He kept his eyes on the ground as he mumbled that he was "just looking."
Kurt was going to kill him. Literally. Today was the day Sam was going to die, and Kurt was going to do it, thus rendering all the work he'd put into making Sam happy utterly pointless.
Luckily, five minutes later it appeared that Sam had finally picked something out, and he walked back over to where Kurt was leaning against the counter, with the intention of making a purchase.
"Finally!" Kurt exclaimed. Sam blushed, and placed the package on the counter, then reached for Kurt's hand to hold.
Kurt wouldn't have thought twice about it, if it wasn't for the knowing smile the saleslady gave them when she went around the counter to ring up Sam's game. He supposed she assumed they were a couple, which was a fair assumption to make, what with the hand holding. It felt a little funny, almost like he was cheating on Blaine somehow. He almost took his hand away, just so more people wouldn't get the wrong idea about them.
But then Sam smiled at him, and he decided against it. Kurt had never been one to deny Sam physical affection, and he wasn't about to start now. It was just the way they were together—cuddling on the couch, or walking through the mall with their arms around each other.
Because it had been his idea to go out, Kurt insisted that he pay for Sam's video game. As he paid, Sam stood behind him with his arms around his waist and his chin resting on Kurt's shoulder. It was just comfortable, and natural for both of them. Kurt had never even thought it was strange, their mutual desire for physical affection. It made sense to him, that after everything they had to do, they would need affection like that. Physical affection that didn't want anything, that only meant the other person cared for you, and loved you. Neither of them were interested in sex... but they both needed to be touched.
After they'd returned home, they stowed their purchases at the back of the closet in Sam's room. The majority of what had been bought belonged to Kurt, and mostly consisted of shoes, but he had been able to convince Sam to make a few non-video game related purchases as well.
While rooting around in the junk Sam had somehow piled up in the closets corners, Kurt's hand brushed along something with steely wires, and made a soft twanging noise. Kurt felt his stomach sink as he realized what it was, and he stuck his hand further into the pile and pulled out Sam's guitar.
Kurt looked down at the instrument in his hands. "...Why is it you never play this anymore?" He asked.
"Hmm?" Sam mumbled, looking up from the plastic packaging he'd been struggling to pry off his video game. His face fell when he saw Kurt holding the guitar. "...Oh."
"Well?" Kurt asked, taking the guitar and sitting next to Sam on the bed. "You used to play it all the time."
Sam shrugged. "Musics just not the same anymore. It just kinda reminds me that..." Sam shook his head. "I don't know... that things weren't supposed to work out this way, I guess." Sam looked away, his shoulders slumped. "For me or you."
Kurt furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"
Sam bit his lip, and glanced at the old guitar. He hesitated slightly as he put his hand on and took it from Kurt. "I'll show you," He mumbled, positioning his fingers on the instruments strings. He took a moment to tune it slightly, and then began playing a quick but slightly sombre melody.
After a moment, Sam began to sing. "Broadway's dark tonight... A little bit weaker than you used to be... broadway's dark tonight," Sam's singing voice was slightly rusty after such a long time had passed since it had last been used, but it began to pick up as the song went on. "See the young man sittin' in the old man's bar, waitin' for his turn to die..."
Kurt's stomach's stomach churned a little. There was a bitterness in Sam's voice that hadn't been there before, and he hated hearing it.
"The cowboy kills the rock star, and Friday night's gone too far, the dim light hides the years on all the faded girls..." Sam sang. "Forgotten but not gone, you drink it off your mind, you talk about the world like it's someplace that you've been..."
It wasn't until the third verse that it really dawned on Kurt that Sam was singing to him. But not just to him, about him.
"You see, you'd love to run home, but you know you ain't got one, cuz you're livin' in a world that you're best forgotten, around here..."
Sam reached the chorus again, and this time the words tugged painfully at Kurt's heart.
"Broadway's dark tonight... a little bit weaker than you used to be. Broadway's dark tonight... see the young man sittin' in the old man's bar, waitin' for his turn to die..."
"Stop it." Kurt said suddenly, standing up violently. Sam's fingers slipped off the guitars strings and the music died off. Sam looked up at him, his face a mix between pity and sorrow. Kurt's lip quivered and he gave Sam a hurt look before around and storming out of his room.
The next morning, Kurt found out that Sam had a strange way of apologizing. It involved destroying the kitchen and forcing Kurt to clean it.
Somehow it still managed to work.
"I was trying to make you pancakes," Sam said miserably. He ran his fingers through his hair as he watched Kurt scrub at the burnt batter that covered their stove.
"Oh, is that what these are?" Kurt asked, holding up what on first sight appeared to be a plastic black disc.
Sam pouted at him. "I just wanted you to know that I'm sorry about yesterday," He said quietly.
Kurt sighed, and put down the blackened sponge he'd been using. "It's alright." He said. "I shouldn't have pushed the guitar on you in the first place."
Kurt went back to scrubbing, but it was forced to stop a moment later as Sam sprung himself on him and wrapped him in a tight hug. "I'm so sorry. I don't ever want to fight with you again," Sam whispered, hugging him so hard Kurt thought he heard something crack. "It's the worst."
Kurt smiled, and hugged Sam back. "It was barely even a fight, Sammy," He told him. "It was more like a tiff."
"Worst tiff ever," Sam mumbled.
Kurt kissed Sam on his cheek, and ruffled his blond hair. "Don't worry, it's over now." He assured him. Sam gave him a bright smile, and Kurt couldn't help but return it. "Come on," He said, pulling out of Sam's embrace. "We have a pancake apocalypse to clean up."
Kurt went back to cleaning, but Sam didn't move. Kurt could feel Sam staring at him, and his hand stilled on the dirty stove. "Kurt, what I said..."
"Forget it Sam, it's done," Kurt said stiffly. "You apologized, I forgave you, we hugged." Kurt turned to Sam, and gave him a pleading look. "Can we please just forget it?"
Sam looked down at the floor, his blond hair falling in his face and obscuring his eyes. "Forgetting won't make it go away. It won't change things." Sam lifted his head back up, and gave Kurt a look he'd never seen on Sam's face before. It was hard and serious, and it made him look years older. For a moment, Kurt was almost scared. He didn't want this, didn't want to talk about this stuff. About the way things were supposed to turn out, or broadway, or anything Sam had been trying to say yesterday. He didn't want to listen to any of it.
Kurt turned away, and put his hands on the stove, bracing his arms against it. He felt Sam's hand on his shoulder, and when he looked back, the hard look was gone from his face. He looked like Sam again, soft and simple.
"Hey, it's okay Kurt," Sam said, lifting his hand up to Kurt's face. He brushed away the tears on his face, and Kurt sniffed self consciously. He hadn't even realized he'd been crying. "Never mind, forgetting it is fine. Fights over, we're moving on. Alright?"
Kurt nodded, and wiped away the rest of his with the back of his hand. "I just... I just can't Sam," He said.
Sam nodded, and then pulled Kurt in for a hug. Kurt rested his chin against Sam's shoulder, and closed his eyes. Sam strokes his hair, brushing some of it over his ear.
Kurt just wanted to forget, about everything that was supposed to be and the life he should have had. He wanted to forget this conversation, and that look on Sam's face. He wanted to so badly, and for now he let himself pretend that he could. For now.
