Hey guys!

So, I wanted to make sure to get this up before Born This Way tomorrow just in case whatever happens in it makes some part of this story completely implausible in which case it would have to turn into an AU, and I didn't want that :-P

I wasn't sure what to categorize this as, since it's partly Hevans and partly (okay, MAINLY) Samtana (friendship), so…I just put it under one category: SAM.

Anyway…hope you enjoy!

xox

degrassichick

Bruised Skeletons

Sam Evans had a black eye.

Sam Evans had a black eye and nobody cared because Blaine Anderson had injured his wrist when he'd missed Dave Karofsky's face and punched the locker to the left of him instead just a few seconds before Kurt Hummel had pulled him away and murmured, "he's not worth it" in his boyfriend's ear over and over again. The entire glee club was swarmed around Blaine at the moment; Quinn was icing his damaged hand, Rachel was telling him how brave he was, and Kurt was sitting next to Blaine, holding his untarnished hand, and looking at him like he'd almost lost him for good.

But nobody cared that Sam Evans had a black eye. Well, except for Santana Lopez.

"He doesn't even go here," Santana muttered bitterly, resting the ice pack against his cheek. He winced at the sudden rush of cold. "He shouldn't have been here to get injured in the first place."

"I thought you liked Blaine," Sam noted quietly, not wanting to draw attention to them – especially not when they were having a less than favorable conversation about King Blaine the Blundering. He would never understand why everybody kissed his ass all the time. Sure, he was a nice guy and he cared about Kurt, but why was everybody so…obsessed with him? Sam looked over at Santana, waiting for her reply. When he didn't get one, he furthered his explanation. "If I remember correctly, you helped him out with a Karofsky issue as well."

"The Night of Neglect thing?" Santana clarified even though he knew that she knew that was exactly what he was referencing. He nodded anyway, and she shrugged back at him, letting out an annoyed sigh. "That was more for the sake of humanity as a whole – it had little to do with Lord Prep School over there. Karofsky is one UFC match away from jail time at the rate he's gone. The guy's psychotic," she paused, taking the ice pack away. Having just gotten used to it being there, Sam winced at it being taken away. "I like Kurt," she explained. "I tolerate Blaine."

"You didn't have to be the hero, Blaine," Kurt spoke up, consolingly rubbing his boyfriend's shoulder. "Karofsky isn't worth it, how many times do I have to tell you that? I told you I could handle coming back to McKinley, and I can because I know that I'm a bigger person than he ever will be."

Sam rolled his eyes and bowed his head as Blaine began to preach about how Karofsky just needed to accept himself for who he was. Santana squished the ice pack back up against his face and it took everything within Sam to not let out a groan.

Nobody cared that Sam Evans had a black eye.

"You know, this is the second time you've attacked Dave Karofsky," Santana pointed out.

"Is it really? I hadn't noticed," Sam deadpanned. He wished his entire body would just go numb so that every part of him would just stop hurting, even if just for a few seconds.

Santana rolled her eyes. "Just sensing a pattern here, Lips."

"That Dave Karofsky is a bigot who needs to go to anger management? In another country?"

"Is that really the only reason you came up to him today after the whole Kurt and Blaine thing happened at his locker today?"

The bell clamored overhead, signaling the end of the day. The glee club dispersed the choir room as a unit divided into a few subgroups, just like always. Santana and Sam remained seated. Mr. Schue gave Sam a small smile of gratitude before Ms. Pillsbury appeared at the doorframe and vanished into the hallway with her.

Santana kept her eyes focused on Sam, waiting for his answer.

Sam raised his shoulders back at her in a shrug. "Isn't that basically the same logic you had behind defending Kurt and Blaine at Night of Neglect?"

Santana looked away from him, instead focusing her eyes on the toe of her stiletto boots.

Sam looked at her worriedly when she didn't speak up. He leaned in toward her and frowned. "Santana?"

Santana blinked rapidly, it looked like she was trying to fight back tears. He knew how much she hated crying in public, even though she'd done it multiple times in glee club this year.

She looked back up and stared straight ahead, letting out a shaky breath. "I'm…" she paused, shaking her head and gently biting her lip. He didn't remember a time where he had ever seen Santana Lopez look so vulnerable, so human. "I'm scared of what Karofsky would do to me if he…" she shook her head, her face holding a mixture of fear and frustration as her eyes began to gloss over, "…if he knew."

Sam was confused. "If he knew what?" Santana didn't answer and that was when it sunk in. "Santana…" he wasn't sure if there was a specific way to go about asking such a question as the one he was about to ask, so he just went for it and prayed that she wouldn't punch his lights out. "Santana, are you gay?"

She sniffed dismissively. "I don't think I necessarily require a label, but if you insist on giving me one…yeah. Yeah, I guess I am."

He didn't really know what to do at this point – this was far from where he'd ever imagined this conversation going – so he just took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Is it Brittany?" he asked quietly a few seconds later. When she didn't respond, he took it as her answer. "Have you told her?"

"Have you told Kurt?" she spitted back.

The question caught him off guard and he felt his stomach knot up. "What?"

She scoffed. "A lot of people in glee club may be clueless and too caught up in their own drama to pay much attention to anyone else, but I'm not – I notice everything. I saw the way you looked at Kurt at the beginning of the year, before you decided that you needed to be with Quinn because you're both blonde, or whatever the fuck your logic is to that relationship," she nudged her knee against his. "I see the way you look at Kurt now, and it's like you're afraid to be around him because you don't know what you would do if the two of you wound up alone – knowing you, you'd start spouting off Na'vi quotes, by the way." Sam rolled his eyes, but let her continue. "And you never got to know Kurt anyway, but you knew from the moment you saw him, didn't you? You knew that you had feelings for him."

"I was intrigued as soon as he followed me into the locker room," he replied, smiling softly and the memory. "I realized it went beyond intrigue the moment he called off our duet."

Santana seemed curious, but he could tell she was trying not to let too much of her interest show. "Why then?"

"Because that was when I realized how badly I wanted to do that duet with him," he shrugged. "And then Quinn happened, and Kurt had all of those issues with Karofsky," he touched his fingers to his swollen eye and winced. "I fought Karofsky that day in the locker room because I hated what he was doing to someone who I was starting to care so much about…but I also did it because I thought it would tell Kurt that, I don't know, that his feelings weren't one-sided or whatever. I wanted him to know that I was there." He shook his head and smiled, he couldn't believe he was telling all of this to Santana – he'd never told anyone. "The caring about him turned to love the second he said, 'Especially Sam.' That was when everything changed, because he cared that I cared. And then he was gone."

"And then there was Blaine," Santana finished for him.

He nodded. "And then there was Blaine."

"So, today…everybody was crowding around Blaine," Santana pieced together. "And nobody even noticed you. Nobody noticed that you were the one who stuck around after Kurt took off with Blaine – Kurt didn't notice."

"Even if he did notice, I wasn't the one who punched a locker when aiming for Karofsky," Sam shrugged.

Santana rolled her eyes, clearly peeved. "Yeah, but you're the one who actually took a punch from Karofsky," she argued. Her voice took a calmer tone, then – a curious tone. "Why exactly did you take a punch from Karofsky?"

Sam let out a shaky exhale and shook his head, staring at the piano ahead of them but not really looking at it at all. "I told him that if he needed somebody to bully for being gay, he should do it to me instead of Kurt – it'd give him a little bit more of a challenge, because I wouldn't hesitate before hitting him back."

"So he just…he just hit you because of that?" Santana didn't sound convinced.

He shrugged sheepishly. "And I might have told him that he would never be half of the man that Kurt was, and that he'd have to live with that for the rest of his life."

"And then he punched you," she concluded.

Sam nodded, taking the ice pack out of Santana's idle hands and resting against his cheek.

"And now you have a black eye because of it, and nobody cares because they're too focused on Blaine to even understand what you did," she sounded angry again, worked up and frustrated. "They're all too focused on the fact that Blaine tried to hit Karofsky and couldn't manage to even hit his fucking face, that they can't see that you came out to Dave Karofsky and told him to direct his anger to you instead of Kurt," she shook her head in disbelief. "Fuck 'em."

"Santana…" Sam groaned, but Santana was quick to cut him off.

"No," she snapped. "No. What you did was so brave, Sam, and they should really get their heads out of their asses and realize that."

"They'll notice the shiner tomorrow," he shrugged. "They'll ask where I got it."

"And knowing you, you'll tell them that you got hit with a football," she rolled her eyes.

He shrugged. "The only reason you even noticed that anything had happened to me was because you saw him hit me."

Santana scoffed. "That's beside the point, Sam. You're too good of a person to just be an underdog – Kurt would be lucky to have you."

This was the first time – even in the brief period of time that they had been "dating" or whatever it was they'd been doing together – that Santana Lopez had ever been nice to him. Really, truly, genuinely, no "Trouty Mouth" about it nice to him.

He pressed a kiss to her fingertips and smiled softly back at her. "And Brittany would be lucky to have you."

Santana smirked, standing up from her chair. "You're damn right she would be," she nodded before holding out a hand to him and standing him up. "Let's go hit up Breadstix, my treat – which is the first and only time you will ever hear me say that."

He smiled and she linked their pinkies together the way she used to do with Brittany as they made their across the choir room. She paused just short of the door and turned to face him. "You know, Lips, all things considered, we would have been one of the most attractive couples in the glee club. Our name would have been Samtana."

"Our name was Samtana," Sam laughed. "They dubbed us that a few days after that party at Rachel's, which was just around the same time when you started acting weird around me and calling me 'such a guy,' and sending death glares in Brittany and Artie's direction."

She rolled her eyes and nodded, putting her hands on the collar of his jacket and straightening it, thereby pulling their bodies closer to one another.

He peered down at her and smiled, she kissed the tip of his nose.

"If you and Brittany were to be a couple, you'd be…Brittana."

"You and Kurt could be named Kum."

"Kum?" he leaned away from her in bemusement.

She frowned, trying to think up another name. "Skurt?"

"Hevans," a third party voice chimed in, a voice that made Sam's heart stop beating.

He and Santana spun around at the same time and saw Kurt standing at the doorway to the choir room. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes wide and glossy and full of sincerity. "Hummel plus Evans would make Hevans, it sounds a lot better."

Santana looked between Kurt and Sam as they stared at one another in a stunned silence. She unlinked her pinky from Sam's and took a few steps back.

Sam opened his mouth to speak, to say something…anything. He wanted to know how long Kurt had been standing at the door, how much of his and Santana's conversation he had heard. But, before Sam could say anything, Kurt had rushed toward him. He placed a hand delicately on Sam's bruised and swollen eye and leaned in, pressing a soft kiss on top of the bruise, and an even softer, feather-like kiss on his lips. It was over so fast that Sam wasn't even completely positive it had happened at all. "Especially Sam," he murmured softly between the two of them before spinning on his heel and disappearing out of the choir room just as quickly as he'd entered.

Sam wasn't completely positive, but Kurt's parting words had almost sounded the same as if he would have said, "I love you." And in a way, maybe he had.

Santana made her way back to Sam and let out a slow breath. "Wow."

Sam nodded, mute. What…had just…happened?

Santana looped her arm through Sam's, completely intertwining their fingers. "So, Breadstix? I'm kind of thinking we have more to talk about now than we did a few seconds ago."

He nodded again, not trusting his mouth to form coherent words.

They made their way out of the choir room and Sam could see Kurt and Blaine at the end of the hallway, sitting in a window cutout. He had his hand in Blaine's, and when Sam caught his eye, the smile he sent him warmed up the blonde from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

He didn't know what was going to happen tomorrow with Kurt and Blaine, or him and Kurt, or Dave Karofsky. He didn't know if Santana would still be this nice to him after she woke up tomorrow morning or if Brittany would ever open her eyes and see what a great relationship she was missing out on. He didn't know anything and right now, he was okay with that.

Right now, only one thought was fluttering through his head.

Sam Evans had a black eye.

Sam Evans had a black eye and Kurt Hummel cared.

The End

I hope you liked it! I originally meant for it to be more of a Hevans fic than anything else, but it really just turned more into a Samtana ordeal…but I'm okay with that. I like the idea of their relationship :)

I love Blaine and I think Klaine is cute, but I can't give up on Hevans. I've been on the canoe since last summer and I don't think I could ever get off.

xox

degrassichick