A/N: Hi and welcome to part four of Endless Night. The next two chapters will serve as relationship development for Kurt and Mercedes as well as just background info, so may be rather anticlimactic but necessary to the plot.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Glee, Lion King, or Heart of Darkness.

Kurt glared at the mirror in his locker, fussing with the olive green fedora ringed by a pleasantly bland gentlemanly bow that he had donned that morning. Though most people assumed he was rolling in superfluous pieces of fashion finery, the truth was that he could most certainly not afford most of the things he found "fashion fabulous," especially the jacket on the Gucci website that he had been coveting for months. Kurt snorted as he squinted at his reflection and rubbed in a spot of under eye concealer more thoroughly—four thousand seven hundred dollars was a little out of his price range.

He pushed the tip of his hat up a fraction of a millimeter, cocked his head to the side, blinked exaggeratedly a few times to wake himself up, then adjusted the neck of one of his more subdued "investment pieces" that his father had bought him for his fifteenth birthday, thinking it symbolic of some kind of understanding between himself and his son—a truce of sorts.

With a final glance at the tan-colored collar of his forest green Versace turtleneck, his right hand reached to close the locker door as his left fumbled with the latch on his leather satchel, preparing to hand in the worst English paper he had ever written in his entire life.

However, as Kurt felt the soft leather of the inside of the bag brush against his hand as his fingers closed around the cold metal paper clip and measly three pages of analysis, he jerked his head back toward his locker door, which was—much to his surprise—being held forcefully open by someone hiding on the other side.

Though Kurt's first assumption was that the person behind the locker was most likely one of the jocks he had insulted the afternoon before and his first reaction, accordingly, was to try to rush towards the girls bathroom or slip his arm through Mercedes'—a position which always made him appear much taller than he was—before they could slushie his facials away, he decided instead to be practical.

Kurt let the hand holding the English paper fall to his side as his eyes dropped to the floor, taking in the shoes of the person standing behind his locker door.

Black and white converse.

The stage right shoe began to tap impatiently.

Kurt's eyes followed from the top of the shoe to the hem of the pants—dark black, skinny jeans. As he made his way up the curvaceous and not jock legs, he let out a great sigh of relief when his eyes fell upon the bottom of something which he had once called "Technicolored zebra skin."

Kurt plastered on a smile, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch slightly in protest. His resolve to not cry for the entire day had worked thus far, so he only smiled the harder as he shut the locker door gently and leaned against it, raising his eyes into his visitor's.

"Hello, Mercedes," he said, evening out the papers beneath the paper clip and lining the edges up subconsciously.

"Hey, Kurt," she said, looking him square in the face.

She didn't say anything else, and Kurt began to feel uncomfortable and found himself alternating his focus between the shiny rhinestone in the center of the star earring dangling from her left ear and the thin paperback book clutched at her side in her left hand.

She simply continued to stare at him. Neither smiling nor frowning. Simply looking in the same way she would at any other kid in the hallway. Her eyes seemed to make him physically hurt—he could just imagine his head bursting into flames (because surely even organic stuff was flammable) under the heat of her gaze.

Kurt swallowed and heard himself gasp slightly, pulling the English paper to his chest and crossing his arms, behind which the essay drooped limply, as he averted his eyes to the floor.

There was a brown skuff mark the size and approximate shape of Chile between the tips of his white leather shoes, just visible below the hem of his slightly-less-tight-than-normal white skinny jeans, and her black converse peeking out from just below the hems of her own black jeans.

Mercedes took a step closer to Kurt and gently pushed his chin up with the corner of the paperback in her hand.

"There's something wrong with you, boy," she said, not lessening the intensity of her gaze, though it had, Kurt thought, become tinged with concern.

Kurt stiffened inwardly.

Pity.

Last night he might have wanted pity. He would have given anything to have been able to collapse into Mr. Schuester's chest and sob like he hadn't sobbed since he was six and a half and realized that his mother would not be coming back from the hospital. Today, however—in the middle of the hallway right before AP Lit, clutching a pristine though poorly written essay, and having as of yet avoided wetting his artfully applied concealer with tears—he was not in the mood.

The Kurt that the entire jock population and a fair percentage of the underdogs had known, despised, and been repelled by for years reclaimed his masque in that revelation.

"Now, I understand if you don't want to talk to me about it, but you could at least tell me if there's anything I can—" Mercedes continued, but stopped abruptly as Kurt jerked his head away from the book gently resting beneath his chin.

With icy resolve and a glare that pained him to produce, he took a step toward Mercedes.

"Look, Mercedes," he said in a low voice, straightening his posture considerably to impress his four and a half inch height advantage upon her in a hetero-macho display that made his skin crawl, "I can't talk about this right now. I can't even tell you what you can do to 'help the situation.' I honestly don't need help. I'm fine. It'll blow over and, anyway, I've always done everything on my own. It's not like you would—"

But he stopped dead at the pained look on her face. The intensity in her gaze had turned instead to hurt and she looked at him as if she had never seen him before. In that moment, he knew good and well that since meeting Mercedes he had not had to do everything on his own. Most things, yes, but still not all.

Kurt stood absolutely still, five inches away from Mercedes and four inches above her, and somehow he could not muster up the energy to continue his unfair tirade. His mouth gaped slightly as he realized he did not know what to say, understanding that any witty or sharply sardonic insult he could throw at her would do nothing more than quickly unravel all the hours they had spent together over the past year, doing silly and trivial things that had somehow molded their friendship into a symbiotic relationship of giving and taking, with Kurt doing a lot of empty bitching but even more sympathetic listening and joking.

He closed his mouth abruptly and took a hasty step away from her, afraid of hurting her anymore than he already had. He uncrossed his arms and felt them fall to his sides, his left hand holding the essay loosely between shaking fingers. Kurt breathed in a rattly breath as he looked squarely into Mercedes eyes and became vaguely aware that his whole body was trembling slightly, the sheets of his paper seemingly vibrating against each other like dry leaves in the wind.

He certainly hated that sound—the sound crunchy and shriveled dead leaves made as the cold whipping wind of autumn forced them to bump and jostle each other, pulling them off the feeble branches of the trees and sending them sprawling into the eddying currents of the breeze, ripping them far apart from their home and the comfort of each other. Fall always represented impending death, he remembered vaguely. Seasons could be reliably counted on to symbolize the passage of time in nearly any piece of literature one picked up.

Mercedes' eyes snapped down as she too heard the rattling of his papers and then noticed the way his hand was trembling violently. She stepped back toward him and pulled the hand clutching the paper into her own, gently pulling the essay from his grip and slipping it under her right arm, pressing it against her body as she silently walked to Kurt's side and slipped her left arm through his right.

He immediately took the prompt and his arm moved to form the chivalrous hook he always provided her. For a moment they didn't move, but just stood silently side by side in the emptiness of the hallway that could only ever exist in the six minutes following the tardy bell.

"I'm sorry," Kurt said, turning his head to look down at her.

All hurt had disappeared from her visage as she turned her face up towards his own. It was devoid even of pity, for which Kurt was infinitely grateful.

"It's okay," she said, "I just want to know where my strong bitchin' diva has gone. And I can accept that you might not be ready to talk to me about it just yet, but I do want to let you know that I am always gonna be here for you, hell, whether you want me to be or not."

Mercedes started walking towards Kurt's English classroom. As they started down the stairs, she gave the arm she was holding onto a subtle squeeze.

"I know your type, boy, and I know how destructive they can be "unto themselves," as you would say. You've gotta let it out, Kurt, and not just in the practice room alone during lunch time or into your pillow alone at night. Singing and dancing are fantastic, I know," she justified, as she felt his arm tense up at her last statement, "but they aren't gonna get you through life unscathed, huh?"

It was a rhetorical and implied question, so Kurt did not reply, but instead nodded his head imperceptibly and swallowed thickly, clearing his throat slightly. They were four classrooms away from his destination.

"Thank you, Mercedes," he said, looking away from her and slowing their pace considerably. "I don't have much time this weekend, but I was wondering if maybe you would like to go to the Lima Mall instead of the American one even though it's farther away; we could switch it up for a change, what with the slow and painful death of American, anyway. And then we could either, you know, watch one of the DVDs I have or pick up that fantastic movie about Johnny Cash that came out a few years ago from that Blockbuster. I don't want you to think that I can't handle a friendship right—"

"Kurt," Mercedes said, stopping and steering him to face her.

She looked at him imploringly and his mouth immediately went dry with apprehension.

"I don't care what we do. I just want my Kurt back and that includes the personally painful sarcastic comments and diva attitude that come with the package," she joked sincerely.

Kurt forced a slight laugh and smiled nervously, preparing to offer her a jibe to satiate her maternal instinct.

His mouth twitched as it formed the tight-lipped scowl with which he always began insults. He allowed his eyes to harden as he turned his gaze on Mercedes and spouted, as if on autopilot, "Well, in that case, I think I'll have to donate your sweatshirt to the local VFW. They all love that safari riffraff and most are too color blind to take note of the horrific color combination screen printed upon it. That'll also put you with one foot fashion forward and heading in the right direction."

Mercedes smiled widely. "Mmhm," she nodded approvingly, "that's more like it."

She returned his English paper to him and gestured to the classroom they'd stopped outside.

He sighed and slumped slightly, unwillingly accepting his wretched excuse for a paper before pulling his posture back up and straightening his fedora, somehow managing to poke himself in the eye with his essay as he did so.

Mercedes laughed deeply and touched his arm gently, smoothing out a wrinkle in his sweater.

"Whatever's wrong with you, the day's almost over and tomorrow's Friday. That'll make anyone feel good."

Kurt smiled slightly. "You are right, as usual. Thanks again. I'll see you at rehearsal, my dearest Mercedes."

Thank you for reading and please review if you'd like to!