Mercedes has been acting weird lately, Kurt notices.
She hasn't been as loud, as cheerful, as anything as she used to be.
They're sitting on the orange plastic chairs in the choir room listening to Rachel babble on about regionals, when he turns to Mercedes to smirk at her, she isn't sitting back in her chair, snickering and texting as she normally is.
No, she's just sitting, staring into space.
That isn't Mercedes, he thinks.
The bell rings and they all get up. Normally she's be up in a flash, pulling him along to get home to watch the great line-up on Thursday nights.
Instead, she gets up slowly, heavily, and when he approaches her, his face concerned and friendly, she doesn't smile or link arms.
"Coming over?" He asks, smiling gently.
"I'm leaving for somewhere in a few hours. Goodbye, Kurt."
It's then, he realises as he's lying on his bed trying to figure out his homework (Maths was easy until they introduced letters!) that something was not right.
He's going to her house, he decides.
He's knocking, but there's no answer.
Mercedes is home, her car is there, unless she went for a walk, but Mr. Jones car isn't, so he assumes the family is out.
"Mercedes, open up." He calls through the letter box.
No answer, so he walks around to the side of the house, where Mercedes' ground floor bedroom is located, and looks through the window.
There she sits, on her bed, her laptop on her lap, typing and crying, tears rolling from her eyes, her mascara streaked down her cheeks and her nose running.
It shocks him. He's never seen her cry like that. Sure, she cried during movies, but that was only a little trickle of tears, mopped up by a tissue. He was always the one who cried like an idiot during movies- they just got to him, ok?
Mercedes stops typing, and in the corner her printer spews out a few pages.
She takes them, and the crying, which was calming down, resumes.
Laying them down on the bed, she picks up a small plastic bag.
He's seen enough. Letters, crying, a bag with something inside it? It spells trouble, and he knows where the spare back door key is kept.
Running faster than he's ever ran before, he gets to the back of the house, locates the key, opens the door and sprints through the hall towards her room. It's the last door, and Mercedes doesn't hear him coming, that's obvious when the door slams open, and Kurt's standing there, panting and fixing his hair.
Mercedes is sitting against the end of her bed, crouched up, head resting on her knees.
In front of her is a small little tub, and Kurt recognises it. It's medicine.
"How could you?" He spits, striding forward and snatching the pills.
She makes no movement, just blinks and keeps her eyes focused on the patch of carpet where the pills were.
"How could you even think about it? Why didn't you tell anyone? What if I hadn't been here in time?"
Finally she moves. "I figured it was for the best."
Color floods his pale face. "For the best!? Mercedes, I'd kill myself if you were gone. Ever think about your family? What about your little brothers? How would Alex and Billy take it?"
"They'd get over it." She mutters, starting to cry. He realises he is also crying, tears rolling down his face.
"Mercedes, I love you. Your family loves you. Everyone loves you."
"No-one loves me."
It takes him a second to figure she's not talking about friendship love, but love.
"Mercedes, there's some-one out there for everyone."
"Well there isn't for me."
"That's were you are wrong. I noticed a certain Mr. Ruthford taking an interest in you. But darling, not having a boyfriend at 16 surely isn't enough for doing what you were going to do... What else is up?"
"I'm so ugly... Fat... My own mother told me to loose weight... All my life I wanted a friend, and I've got you Kurt, but you're my only friend. I'm so horrible to people, I never say a kind word to anyone...." She trails off, sniffing.
Kurt doesn't know how to respond. He never thought Mercedes, of all people, would feel so depressed she would attempt to kill herself.
"And all those starving people in poor countries... And all those poor animals getting killed, and all the horrible people around, murderers and rapists and child molesters..."
This sounded more depression territory, he thought, hugging her tightly.
"Darling, you need to get help."
"What's the use? I'm still going to die, in a car crash or a murderer or a hit n run. I may as well go now."
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Time to cheer her up.
"Mercedes, listen to me. Yes, you could get killed at any minute. But the odds are big. Look, you've survived 16 years. What's the chance of something happening? And think about all the people you'd hurt by going... Family... Tina, Artie, Me – If you were gone I don't know what to do, All of Glee club, so many people!"
She finally lifted her head. "You think so?"
"I do. Now, come on. Every day, horrible things happen, yes. But the good things far outweigh the bad. Remember those anonymous notes inside every ones lockers? The ones pointing out everything about you that was good? And all the pretty things in life, I know you follow a lot of flickrs, look at the photography on them. Beautiful scenes. Soon we shall be out of Lima and we can see these things too for ourselves."
He grabbed her laptop, quickly loaded some pictures of rainbows, flowers, happy people, landscapes, everything.
"Look 'Cedes. Look at the beautiful things."
She did look, to his relief, and while she stared at the screen, he texted Tina.
Fnd M rlly upst plz call all of glee to cme ovr and make SURE Matt comes! Tell dem 2 cme FAST 2!
He also changed his ringtone to 'When You're Smiling', a favourite song of his to cheer himself up.
"I guess you're right." She muttered after a long time.
His phone beeped with a new message and the song began to play.
When you're smiling
When you're smiling
The whole world smiles with you
When you're laughing
When you're laughing
The sun comes shining through
Mercedes nearly cracked a smile, her mouth twitched.
He checked the message.
All r cmin!
True to the text, the doorbell rang less than two minutes later, with Tina, Artie and Rachel there.
"I'll get it." He said, scooping up the pills and dumping them in the hall before he answered the door.
"Hey guys. Um, listen. Basically what happened was, I had a feeling Mercedes was very upset, so I came over, and well... I found her with some pills."
They didn't say anything, just nodded and came in quietly, and sat in the living room.
Soon everyone had arrived, all sitting quietly in the living room, looking at the lyrics Kurt had pulled up for them to sing for Mercedes on his iPhone.
"'Cedes, want to come and get some food?"
She shook her head, but he grabbed her and pulled her up, dragging her along with him towards the living room, and opened the door.
The Glee club stood up and began to sing a song they all knew very well;
Sometimes in our lives we all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's always tomorrow
Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on
Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill those of your needs
That you don't let show
Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on
Even though she didn't crack a smile, they knew it was appreciated.
Okay, my first ever ANGST fic! Eeek!
Sorry if I don't portray the emotions good enough :\
And sorry for using Lean On Me, it was the only song I could think of.
I don't own Glee, Bill Withers, Charlie Chaplin or anything else mentioned in this story.
This is an aplogy for keeping all you hanging with Marked and Something Required In A Friendship.
I have the new chapter of Mark halfway done, but I'm at a complete standstill for SRIAF.
I also have a LJ now, check it out at
I post some RPF there.
Rate and Review please! Thanks :)