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For some reason, Blaine finds himself pacing the tiled floors of the choir room. He counts each square as he passes over them, his total nearing two hundred by now. The way his shoes hit against the floors isn’t unfamiliar to him, but the noise still sounds wrong and too quiet to be coming from the feet he’s guiding back and forth. The entire school sounds the same way, these same tiled floors cover every hallway and classroom, with the auditorium being the only place safe from the distinct squish of tennis shoes against the cold floor.
That sound was one of the only constants he had since arriving, as everything else around him seemed to be constantly shifting and warping in ways he’d rather ignore.
He loses count of his tiles, stopping in place and staring down. Before he lets himself break in this room for yet another time, he sits on the piano bench, his head dropping against the keys with a discordant slam. Blaine lets himself sit there for a moment, the strings inside the piano halting their vibration a few moments later. Then, he stands again, pushing back against the bench and rising too quickly for someone who just slammed his head against a piano.
As he stares down at the keys, pondering if there’s something he could (or should) play, the door creaks open. It’s another sound he’s heard hundreds of times, another sound that doesn’t quite ground him, and makes him turn with wide eyes.
Sam.
“Hey,” is all he offers as he breaks the threshold, approaching Blaine with a barely noticeable amount of hesitance.
Blaine lets out a sigh, “Hi.” He doesn’t want to face whatever conversation Sam is about to offer him,
He’d much rather be far from here; from this room and from Lima and from these people that he sees every day in the hallways that he so desperately wishes he was more fond of. Maybe that’s the root of all of this. Maybe the feeling of companionship isn’t mutual because of something that’s wrong with him, and everyone can tell that he’s been operating on autopilot for the last however long. And who is he to deny that something is wrong with him, since in that moment, in that short time he’s wishing to be anywhere else, New York somehow doesn’t cross his mind. That’s terrible enough on its own.
Then, Sam’s hand is on his arm, and his mind returns to the choir room, all fuzzy and wrong. Sam's voice fills his head, “Are you okay, dude?”
Blaine just looks at him, feeling like he’s only one more ‘are you okay?’ from crumbling into tiny pieces here and now. Quietly, he manages, “Yeah, I think so.” The noise that escapes his mouth is something that was supposed to resemble a laugh, but comes out distorted and sad. He quickly follows that up with a simple, “Sorry.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” With hands that are somehow so gentle, he leads Blaine to the piano bench, sitting beside him. One of his hands doesn’t leave his back, rubbing small circles, and making Blaine feel like he needs to repeatedly slam his head into the piano keys. A second or third or maybe even fourth time wouldn’t hurt, right? Then, “I don’t think locking yourself in here is going to fix whatever’s up.”
“I didn’t lock myself in… you opened the door.” He frowns, trying hard to ignore the feeling of warmth against the small of his back.
He offers a small smile, tilting his head slightly, “You know what I mean.” His free hand goes to the piano, hitting a few notes at random before setting it back at his side. “I don’t think this room has, like, ever let someone clear their head.”
Blaine chuckles, heat unintentionally rising to his cheeks, “It’s nice when it’s quiet.”
“Wow, okay.” In mock defense, he puts up his hands to surrender, and all the warmth is suddenly displaced in Blaine’s body without that steady hand keeping him grounded. Then, he’s somehow more serious, “If you want to be alone, I can go, don’t worry.”
“No, no.” He shakes his head, avoiding eye contact. “It’s nice to have someone.” There’s a part of him that wants to add more to that sentence and make some sort of vague snide comment towards the other club members that Sam probably wouldn’t pick up on right away, but he resists, biting his tongue. Softly, he asks, “How’d you know I would be in here?”
He shrugs nonchalantly, “Lucky guess.” Another piano key struck with his index finger, the noise filling the room. “It’s either here or the art room, and here seemed to be more likely.”
Blaine manages a nearing pathetic smile, still not fully meeting Sam’s eyes, “I think- well, really I know that I feel bad.” He shakes his head. “Not like I did something wrong bad, but just… bad.”
Sam nods like it's somehow the easiest thing in the world to comprehend, and maybe to him it is. To him, Blaine feeling actual emotions was simple; it was human. These dreadful cracks in a grand facade were nothing abnormal or strange, to Sam they were just how Blaine operated.
“Is this about Kurt?” Blaine offers a nod, quick and punctuated by his hands tightly grasping each other in his lap. He opens his mouth to reply, but turns up empty; anything he’d say would make this worse. At Blaine’s lack of response, Sam says, “I’m guessing you don’t really want to talk about it.”
That makes him smile, a small chuckle escaping his lips at how ridiculous this suddenly feels, “Not really.”
“Okay.”
Sam wraps an arm around his shoulder, squeezing it affirmingly. The warmth comes flooding back to Blaine, and somehow, just like that, he feels a weight lift off his chest. That ever present feeling of guilt, of disconnection, gone just like that, a simple half-hug ceasing the swirling in his mind.