Author's Note: Written for a Glee angst meme prompt, wherein the prompter wanted some post-2.16 Sam introspective angst.

MINOR SPOILERS FOR 2.16.

Second String; Sam Evans, 705 words; rated: PG

Sam would always be second-best in everyone's eyes.

His father always said that "second place is the first loser" and other somewhat, but not really, inspirational phrases meant to encourage his son into striving for every goal and succeeding at every step - it was what he did with both of his sons, and his brother had gone on to play football, as starting running back, at USC. It was why he'd been playing football since the pee-wee leagues, working his way up to where there was no question that Sam Evans could play college ball one day. Maybe the pros, if he worked hard enough and got into a good enough program.

He knew the gameplan in his head: be amazing at one thing, everything else would fall into place. He ran through the moves as he lay awake at night and looked out the window.

Be the star football player. Be the hottest guy in school. Have choice of girls. Touchdown, Evans.

Everything changed once he got to McKinley, though; the gameplan had to be thrown out, but the moves remained roughly the same.

Finn was the star football player, the hometown hero, the one that would be immortalized in the yearbook as winning "the big one." It should have been him, but it wasn't - it couldn't. How could he? He was the new kid. The status quo had been established long before he came and would continue even after he left, if anyone remembered his time on the team anyway.

So he couldn't be the star football player.

He could still be the hottest guy in school, except, well, he wasn't. He looked in the mirror and ran his hand over his head. The hair - he'd spent more days than he cared to remember sitting outside with lemon juice soaking into his scalp, reading the latest issues of Sports Illustrated, trying to lighten it to the best shade of blonde he could get it to. His mother cut it in her best imitation of the current popular hairstyles, as some sort of a favor to him for forgoing traditional dyeing methods. His lips were too big - Santana's original rendition of comparing his mouth to a trout being only the latest indignity his mouth had received - and he'd taken to self-consciously covering them up when he thought no one was looking.

He couldn't even begin to describe the ways in which he was too thin, too fat, too muscular, didn't have enough muscle - years of locker room teasing had eroded away at what little self-confidence he had in how he looked without layers of clothing on. The full-body mirror in his bathroom was his absolute worst enemy; he couldn't begin to look at it without wanting to burst into tears.

His teachers had always remarked on what a great personality he had, though, and interpersonal relationships were one of those areas that he did well in. Until it came to dating, that is.

Her name was Quinn and she had a winning smile and a really, really adorable laugh, and she was hot, and the head cheerleader. Okay, there was more to Quinn than just those four things, but the whole thought of dating someone as perfect as her was scary. There were expectations and then there was reality, and the reality was that Finn - goddamn, Finn has to ruin everything for him - was the one to sweep his girl away.

Nothing that good could ever be his for very long, could it?

And he had a newfangled thing for Santana, he thought, but there's only so many times she can tear down his shreds of confidence and build insecurities in their place before he has to say "oh hell no" and turn away from her. Plus, he's not stupid or anything, because he noticed that whenever they're together and she thought he wasn't looking, she'd have a far-off distant look, almost as though she'd rather be anywhere else than with him - or maybe just with someone else altogether.

He had fumbled the ball on all of his plays, and now possession had passed to the other team. Game over for him.