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The first thing Sam notices is that Blaine hasn’t worn a bow tie since the debate. He looks better now, he thinks, not that Sam is any kind of fashion judge. Sam pretty much wears henleys (he’s sort of sure that’s what they’re called) and camp shirts and jeans. He certainly notices Blaine’s clothing is not like his—more expensive, probably, but still notably different. Just not Kurt different. What Sam notices is that Blaine seems to have an endless supply of polos and cardigans, vests and dress shirts. And jeans and slacks and brightly-colored pants that all seem too short. But no longer bow ties, as far as Sam can tell.
Of course, the change could be due to Sam basically insulting his running mate that day, telling him he looked uptight and like a young Orville Redenbacher. Sam was just trying to help, trying to give him some honest advice. And he remembers the expression on Blaine’s face as he looked at himself in the mirror, minus the tie. The mild exasperation that was there softened quickly as he’d gazed, and was replaced with something that looked more like surprise.
The second thing Sam notices is that, after they’d talked at the post-election "Let Freedom Sing" party at Breadstix, Blaine seems to seek him out more in the hallways. He stops by Sam’s locker sometimes and runs ideas by him regarding their “administration.” A hair care product drive is what he mentions most often, but there’s always something. An anti-bullying campaign. A cosplay dance. A self-defense workshop. Sam usually tells him, “Don’t get ahead of yourself there, Blaine. Brit set the bar low—it’s so low it’s just lying there on the ground. All we have to do is one more thing than prom. One. More. Thing.”
But Sam realizes his warnings are kind of moot, since they never talk about any of Blaine’s ideas in depth. In fact, Sam is pretty sure that Blaine is using their locker talks as an excuse to hang out more. So Sam obliges.
And that's around when Sam notices the third thing: it's when Blaine suddenly stops seeking him out altogether. Sam has no idea why it happens, but he starts noticing Blaine less and less. There's one afternoon in particular where Sam watches Blaine descend the stairs, his eyes fixed straight ahead, not taking in anyone around him at all. Sam sees Blaine lift his phone and look at the screen, then pocket it. I feel so alone, Sam remembers Blaine admitting to him, and a movie reel plays in Sam's mind as he readies an impression. “Loneliness has followed me my whole life,” he mutters, to no one in particular.
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At lunch Blaine is with them, but not with them. He doesn’t chuckle when Artie admonishes Sam yet again for eating yogurt with a fork. He doesn’t react at all when the table discussion turns to talk of sectionals, and what Mr. Shue’s yet-to-be-disclosed Big Ideas are.
“That’s because there aren’t any,” Artie scoffs. “And let me just add that I hope we’re not competing against the Warblers again. That will turn ugly fast, yo," he says, then looks knowingly at Blaine. But Blaine seems checked out, Sam thinks—he’s been spearing chunks of cantaloupe for the last few minutes, but not eating any of it.
As the rest of the gang gets up from the lunch table, Sam leans toward Blaine and asks softly, "Dude. You okay? Shouldn’t you be happy? I mean, you did go see Kurt last weekend, didn’t you?" Sam watches as Blaine swallows, then meets his gaze. And right then, Sam knows he's asked exactly the wrong things, because Blaine looks like he's about to cry.
"I think we broke up," Blaine chokes out. "He's not talking to me anymore."
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In the choir room later, the group finds out that Mr. Shue’s Big Ideas totally don’t matter, because Mr. Shue is skipping town. To top it off, the replacement Mr. Shue seems to be Finn, who had walked in at the start of the week, said his hellos and proceeded to tell everyone that they should do Grease.
Sam remembers last year—remembers re-joining New Directions and having so much energy, so much excitement to be a part of something positive again, to be back with friends. He also remembers Blaine flipping out and insulting him—Blaine, who he’d barely known at that point, other than the fact that he was Kurt’s boyfriend and the lead dude for the Warblers. Later he learned that Blaine’s outburst was really about Finn being a douchebag, and now there’s a weird feeling between those two again, but Sam thinks it has more to do with Kurt at the moment.
As Finn drones on about his ideas for the musical, Sam notes that he’s mostly looking at him and Artie for feedback. Not Blaine, who at least in the minds of the New Directions, is more of their leader right now. Not that Blaine seems to care—he’s in the back row, shrinking in on himself. He’s so little, Sam thinks. “You are a sad, strange, little man,” he says quietly.
After glee club, Sam hangs back as Blaine leaves and pulls Brit, Tina and Artie aside. There’s got to be something they can do.
“He's probably going to audition,” offers Tina. “Let’s just offer to help him. It would be good to be in the show, kind of get his mind off things,” she muses, and Sam catches a glimpse of something in Tina’s expression.
"But Blaine Anderson never needs help with singing,” says Artie, passionately. "He always brings it."
"Yeah—" wonders Sam. “But when's the last time any of us have even heard him sing lately?” All three of them are quiet.
When they bring up Grease with Blaine the next day in the choir room, he’s less than enthused, but very polite about it. “I don’t know if I’m up for that, guys. Besides, shouldn’t we let the new people have their chance to shine?” Sam rolls his eyes, because he knows Blaine is full of shit.
So Sam decides to push the issue, in the way they usually do in the choir room. He starts, “Why this car is automatic . . .”
Artie catches on. “It’s systematic . . .” Then Tina and Brit: “It’s hydromatic . . .”
And that’s all Blaine needs to jump in: “Why, it’s greased lightning . . .” And then they’re off and dancing, and when they’re through Blaine is grinning like an idiot again.
“Go go go go go go go go go go!”
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At the audition the next week, Sam and Brit are up in the balcony of the auditorium, waiting for Blaine to start. “You know,” Sam says, “We’ve been spending all this time worried about Blaine and all, but I want to make sure you’re okay, too. Are you?” He knows Brit’s breakup with Santana was quieter, but that doesn’t make it any less painful.
She looks at him and says, “Impress me, Sam.”
Sam smiles, thinks for a second, adjusts his face, then offers, “As you wish.”
She chuckles.
When Blaine opens his mouth to sing, Sam doesn’t hear the opening words of “Greased Lightening” that they’d been practicing for days. Instead he hears,
Guess mine is not the first heart broken,
my eyes are not the first to cry
I'm not the first to know,
there's just no gettin' over you . . .
“What is Blaine Warbler doing?” asks Brit.
Sam furrows his brow, still in character, and says, “This is true love—you think this happens every day?” And they watch as Blaine sings the song. They watch as the lyrics get a little too close to him and what he’s probably feeling. It’s not a terrible performance, but it’s raw, and Sam can tell that it’s not going to help Finn of all people see Blaine as Danny.
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Sam meets Blaine after the audition, and they walk down the hallway together. Around the corner up ahead, Sam hears voices coming—and one of them seems very familiar. It could just be a girl, Sam muses, since he always thought Kurt sounded like one, but then he’s wondering why Kurt would be here in the hallway on a weeknight.
Sam turns to look at Blaine, but Blaine is gone.
He finds Blaine in the bathroom, pacing. He looks frustrated, flustered. When Blaine sees Sam staring at him, he says, “This is ridiculous. Was it even him?”
Sam shrugs. “Him him? No. But does it matter?”
Blaine looks down, then walks over to the sink and begins washing his hands. Sam raises an eyebrow as Blaine takes a paper towel and proceeds to not only dry his hands, but each finger too. “I guess not. Doesn’t this all seem kind of pathetic to you though?”
“Um—you mean you making a beeline for the bathroom, or you drying your hands like that?” says Sam.
“Like what?” Suddenly Blaine laughs. “This is so stupid,” he says. “Hiding out here.”
“It’s not very Wolverine,” Sam offers.
Blaine laughs again. “Let’s just go,” he says, shaking his head and smiling.
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After school that day Sam finds Blaine in the same place as before the debate, sitting in front of one of the mirrors in the dressing room backstage. Sam knows Blaine sneaks back here once in a while—they’ve all been known to do that from time to time.
“Congrats,” Sam says, since they’d heard that day about the auditions. Sam knows Blaine didn’t get Danny, but did get the role of Teen Angel. Blaine huffs, and Sam notes the trace of bitterness there. “Well that’s ironic, don’t you think?” he mutters.
“Probably better off, dude,” he tells him, “just having the one number. At least you’ll be a part of the show, and not just sitting around at home,” Sam says, instantly regretting it. “Uh, not that there’s anything wrong with sitting around. Or not that you’d even be sitting around. Or—”
“Um—thanks, Sam,” says Blaine, who pauses before asking, “Are we friends now?”
Sam glances at the mirror, where he can see Blaine’s reflection. “It’s not like we have nothing in common,” Sam posits.
“Huh? Wait. Does that mean we do? I’m trying to follow your double negatives,” Blaine says, his brow furrowed.
Sam grabs a stool and drags it near Blaine. He takes a seat and offers, still looking at Blaine’s reflection, “Do you know that when I first transferred here, I’d just left a boarding school?”
This gets Blaine’s attention. “Really?” he asks. “You were at Dalton?”
“No, not Dalton—although actually when I was working as a pizza delivery guy I used to drive out there,” Sam says. “Look. I’m just saying that we’re, I dunno—” Sam adds, fishing for words.
“Compatible,” Blaine finishes, but then eyes Sam warily. “But remember when we talked before, at Breadstix, about me being your friend? About me liking football, and about you not being into things Kurt was into, like Bravo and fashion and—”
Sam cuts him off. “Yeah?”
"You do realize that I like those other things too, that I like all of those things?"
"Sure, okay—but do you, like, watch the Buckeyes with Kurt?" Sam asks, trying to see where this is heading. Blaine looks at him thoughtfully for a second, then responds, "Well, no, but—"
"Remember when I joined synchronized swim? Finn gave me flack about it, and I sort of did it just to get the letterman jacket to impress Mercedes, you know? But, um, I like it,” Sam says, shrugging his shoulders, “even if Coach Roz thinks I'm awful at it. It’s not like I just play football, if that makes sense. Hell, I like Justin Bieber, Blaine. Justin Bieber! I think we both like lots of different things."
Blaine looks down at his lap. “But why the sudden interest in me? Did Brit put you up to this, just Iike she did with being my running mate? Am I that pathetic?"
“Hmm. There’s that word again. No, bro, you just . . . you said you were lonely and I—. Look, I did the whole New-Guy-at-School thing, just like you had to, but you had Kurt last year, so it made it easier. Now it’s like you have to do it all again, I guess, but it’s kind of worse right now because Kurt’s gone—like gone gone.”
Blaine breaks eye contact with Sam, and looks away. “Sorry,” offers Sam.
“No. No, it’s fine,” says Blaine. “Well, it’s not fine, but . . .” and Blaine just stops. He pauses for a moment, then looks back at Sam through the mirror and asks, “So, what did you want to do exactly?”
“We can go grab a coffee,” says Sam. He notices Blaine blink quickly a couple of times at that, and Sam cringes because he realizes that was a thing. A thing Blaine and Kurt did. Or used to do.
But Blaine seems to take it in stride. “My treat,” he says, breaking into a smile—and it’s not a bullshit one—and they get up to grab their coats. Sam’s impression comes easy: “Whatever you say, Stove,” he says.
“Kristen Wiig, really?” asks Blaine. “Maybe we do have some things in common,” he says, chuckling, as they make their way through McKinley’s now empty halls.