In the morning Sam got into the futon bed next to Blaine in a series of thuds. Otherwise, Blaine wouldn't have noticed. He had his head under the blankets.

As Sam carefully rearranged himself, Blaine realized that he wasn't just sitting next to him on the bed, he was lying next to him. His heart sped up, but he still didn't pull the blankets down to look at him. He just waited.

Finally, Sam said, "I'm sorry."

Blaine kept his mouth shut. Maybe good things would continue to happen if he just stayed out of it entirely.

"I want you to stay here," Sam said a while later, proving Blaine's theory.

He waited some more.

"Are you awake?"

Blaine rolled his eyes at himself, and emerged, partially, to look at Sam. He wasn't exactly prepared for the sight of him, of how beautiful he would find it: Sam on the pillow next to him. His blonde hair splayed out, his eyes half lidded from recently waking up. And they weren't usually so close. He had to force himself not to stare at his lips and his eyes and his eyelashes and actually speak. "I'm awake. I'm sorry, too."

"There was just a lot happening last night. A lot of stuff that bothered me that I didn't expect would bother me. I was just in a bad mood by the end. And I didn't mean to, like, evict you."

Blaine nodded as well as he could with half of his face on the pillow. "What did you say to Kurt when he called?"

Sam looked confused. "When did he call?"

"The night he kicked me out."

"Oh," Sam said. He looked a little guilty. "I don't remember."

"Just tell me."

Sam shrugged. "It wasn't anything. He asked if you were here."

"And what did you say?"

"I don't know. I said… I don't know. I said it's better that you ended up here than staying with him. Or something."

Blaine smiled. "You made him sad by saying that. He said it depressed him."

"Well, I probably didn't make him sad enough. He deserved it."

The same old loyalty to Kurt, that thing that had stuck in him when he was sixteen and still wouldn't let go, wanted him to protest. To stick up for Kurt. Kurt didn't deserve anything bad. But he knew it was pointless. And maybe Sam was right. He just cleared his throat and said instead, "And you told me he didn't call at all."

"I was embarrassed. I don't know why I said it. It just came out, like it wasn't even me, like it was someone else talking through me."

"So you don't think it's better I ended up here?"

"No, I do. But…" Sam paused. "I mean, I can't stop thinking about all the times you told me you and Kurt were meant to be. That you're soul mates. You said when you were with that other guy that you knew right away that you were really supposed to be with Kurt. And I wonder sometimes if you still believe that."

"I don't, really," Blaine said. "I was just young, and in love, and… And it's hard for me to believe that I'll ever be that happy again, and it's easy to think I was happy entirely because of Kurt, so I thought I needed to do anything to keep him around. But my happiness wasn't entirely because of Kurt. I was happy for a lot of reasons. Having someone to support me, to unconditionally believe in me, who was always there for me, was incredible to me at the time. But as soon as he wasn't always there, I obviously had a complete breakdown. And it was my friends who showed me that I could be happy, even during all that, even without him. You and Tina, especially. You, especially. And when it happened all over again, it was you who made me happy again."

"So," Sam said, "you just want to be happy?"

Blaine laughed, embarrassed for rambling on. "Is it too much to ask?"

"'Cuz," Sam went on, "I have an idea."

"To make me happy?"

"Yeah. You have to do me a favor, though. And maybe it means sacrificing your… comfort and stability, a little bit, but I wanted to ask if you'd do it, for me."

"This is terrifying," Blaine smiled.

Sam didn't smile back. "Will you?"

"Um," Blaine said, thinking about it very quickly, but knew all along that he trusted Sam enough to do anything for him. It was probably the least he could do. "Sure. Yes."

Sam pulled down the blankets Blaine was still wrapped up in enough to reveal his shoulders, then sighed and seemed to give up. "There's like a giant barrier between us. Just give me your hand."

"Do you want me to…" Blaine said, and started kicking the blankets away.

"No," Sam said. "You're fine. Leave them. Just give me your hand."

Maybe it was serendipity that Blaine happened to give him the hand Sam wanted. Maybe Blaine knew, subconsciously, what Sam was about to do.

When Sam took his ring off, Blaine felt the way he'd felt when Kurt put it on, except backwards. At least he didn't feel exactly like he'd broken the promise he'd made, just that he was finally letting it go, without incurring much of a penalty. There was relief and panic at the same time. A weight lifted, and a new worry added. He'd taken it off a million times himself, but he always knew he was going to put it back on as soon as he possibly could. But this time, he thought he might never put it back on again.

Sam got up from the bed and went away with the ring. Down the hall, out of sight somewhere. Blaine put his hands, the left of which felt foreign and strange without the ring, to his face. "Don't throw it away," was all he could say, muffled behind his palms.

"I'm not throwing it away," Sam said. "I'm putting it in a safe, secret place."

"You're not going to tell me where?"

"Nope."

Blaine's breath and hands started shaking at the same time. He tried to calm himself down by pushing on his eyes and cheeks and nose, like pushing himself more firmly into the earth would keep him from exploding.

Sam returned empty-handed. "Are you freaking out?"

"A little," Blaine said, still muffled.

"So, hear me out," Sam said, getting back into bed with him. "Don't I always have good ideas, and give you good advice?"

Blaine couldn't talk.

"Give me your hand again," Sam ordered.

Blaine offered it, stupidly wondering for a second if Sam was just joking and was going to give him the ring back. But he wasn't joking. Sam just held his hand, instead. But differently than he ever had before. He interlaced their fingers. At first, all Blaine could think about was how naked it made his ring finger feel, to feel Sam's skin against his own, without the ring in the way.

"I just want you to try it," Sam said. "Try living without it, for one whole day. If you're really a sobbing mess tomorrow morning, I'll take you to Kurt's myself and try to convince him to take you back, because obviously you can't live without him. But I think you'll be fine. I think you can live without all of it. I even think you'll be happier."

"I don't know," Blaine sighed, and covered his eyes with his free arm. "It's not even about Kurt anymore, exactly. It's just the idea. I don't want to look for someone new. I don't want to get dressed up every Friday night, and get super nervous, and try to impress people enough to give me a chance. I don't feel good enough for other people, and I don't feel like anyone out there is good enough for me either, enough to go through it all again. I don't want to start over, you know? I don't want to give up not being alone. I just want to be connected to someone."

"You're not alone. What do you think we are?" Sam asked and lifted their hands, still clasped together. "We're connected."

Blaine just gave him a sad look, in lieu of telling him, 'I don't think you get it.'

"Some day," Sam went on, "someone is gonna propose to you. Not the other way around. Someone will sweep you off your feet, not the other way around. Someone will surprise you, and tell you they love you and they can't live without you. They'll be the first one to tell you that they promise to spend their whole life trying just to make you happy. You won't have to be nervous about being rejected. You won't have to be sorry for the rest of your life. You won't have to try to make up for stupid mistakes for the rest of your life. You can just… relax. Let someone else do all the work, just to win you, because you deserve it. Some day. I think you deserve everyone who sees you to pledge their whole life to you, and if no one can see how great you are, then the whole world is full of idiots. But I see it."

Blaine's eyes widened farther as Sam went on, in surprise. He certainly wasn't expecting this kind of pep talk after their abysmal night, after Sam practically kicked him out of the apartment and replaced him with a random fan girl. He thought things seemed to be clicking into place, suddenly, but everything was happening too fast for him to make sense of it. Even when Sam paused, and frowned, and looked away, trying to figure out what to say next, Blaine couldn't decipher what was happening. His heart was racing. He felt like he was floating. It was like, he realized, falling in love. More in love than before.

"Look," Sam said finally. "You're… you've got a lot of baggage, man."

Blaine laughed.

"I mean, you're really fucked up. Like, really, really fucked up. You're still healing. And you need to love yourself before you can love anyone else, and all of that. It's probably not the best idea ever to replace one relationship with another. Right?"

"Right."

"So if we're gonna do this…" Sam said.

Now Blaine's eyebrows shot up. "We're doing this?"

Sam ignored the question. "Then we have to take it really, really slow."

Blaine smiled at him. "You have a crush on me."

Sam took a deep breath. "Just like we're doing this really, really slowly, I think I've been falling for you really, really slowly. But now that it's been a few years, I can't really ignore it anymore. And most of all, I want you to be happy. You want to be happy, I want you to be happy too. And even if we do this…"

"We're totally doing this."

"We still have to be best friends. You can't get out of that, like, ever."

Now Blaine couldn't stop smiling at him. "Deal."

"So get out of bed," Sam said, sitting up. "I'm taking you to breakfast."

"I'd much rather we both stay in bed, to be honest."

Sam stood up. "Yeah. That's gonna require a whole other, sappy, embarrassing conversation that I am definitely not having until the sun goes down, at least. This one was enough for now."

"If you insist," Blaine said. But he still didn't get up. His limbs felt heavy. Or invisible and weightless. He wasn't sure which one. He just felt like he was buzzing all over.

"So, is this gonna be our first date, or what?" Sam asked.

"If it is, then I have to take a shower first."

"Go take a shower. Get ready. But don't be nervous. You can leave all the being nervous to me. I'm the one who has to go on a date with a dude." He made a fake grossed out face.

Blaine sat up on his knees first, and dragged himself out of bed slowly. "If you get nervous because of me I'm going to punch you in the face."

Sam flipped him off, but they smiled at each other until Blaine made it into the bathroom. He even walked backwards part of the way, because he couldn't really take his eyes off Sam until it was necessary to shut the door. And when he did, he decided this was definitely true love.

He opened the door again, a crack. "You have a crush on me!"

"Shut up!" Sam yelled from his room.

"Oh my god, I've been waiting for this retaliation for years. I'm gonna tell the waitress you want to do me."

"SHUT UP!"