"What the HELL were you thinkin'?" Mercedes Jones' voice bellowed from the other side of the screen door.

"Baby, can you keep your voice down? Matt's…"

"Oh, Matt's here is he? Well that's good, because I want to talk to HIS sorry ass, too. Actually, I'd prefer to BEAT it…but that's neither here nor there."

"Mercedes will you PLEASE calm down?" Mike asked, finally realizing it was best just to let her end.

"Calm DOWN? You want ME to CALM DOWN! Do you have ANY idea what you've done? Of course not. If you did, you wouldn't have that stupid-ass expression all over your face."

"I love you?" Mike tried, but Mercedes wasn't hearing it.

"You love me? You LOVE ME? Well, tell me THIS, lover of mine. If you love me so much, why in the HELL did you think it'd be okay to keep a secret from me?"

"Secret?"

"How about you tell me why you thought MY best friend foolin' around with YOUR best friend was somethin' I didn't need to know?"

"So THAT'S what this is about?" Mike said, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand.

"You're damn straight that's what it's about."

"Baby, I didn't want to keep that from you, I just…Matt's my boy. There are certain things he doesn't want to let the whole world know about."

"Don't you BABY me! And I frankly don't care about the whole world. But Kurt? That's another story."

"Mercedes, don't be mad at him," Matt said as he came from the bathroom. "It's my fault."

"You're damn RIGHT it's your fault. You didn't have the balls to be honest with everyone, and now…"

"I'm the Worst Person Ever. Got it."

"You know what Kurt's doing right at this minute?" Mercedes said, moving towards the door. "He was trying to protect your sorry ass. How come everyone else in the world wants to protect your sorry ass when all I want to do is kick the hell out of it?"

"I didn't mean for it to be so…" Matt began, but Mercedes was interrupted by the chorus of If I Only Had a Brain from the The Wizard of Oz. "I just got off the phone with that boy why is he..." she tapped the earpiece. "This had better be damn good, Finn," she barked.

A half an hour earlier…

There were certain things Finn found very handy when it came to living in the same house with Kurt.

His grades had improved since living with Kurt, who, as it turned out, was worse than his mom when it came to nagging about homework. When he started actually getting grades better than C's in most subjects because Kurt would quiz him and check his homework, though, he didn't mind so much. Big words with more than two syllables were finding their way into daily conversation and even in papers and it made him sound smart. And girls liked smart dudes. His clothes were softer and smelled nice, and mostly, when he needed a cover for Rachel, Kurt was there to do the brotherly thing and supply a plausible lie.

He did the same thing for Kurt, because Kurt had needed it a lot lately, and now Finn new why. He was now almost wishing he hadn't.

As awesome as Kurt was though, Finn new the guy had some major issues. He had this habit of keeping important stuff from people. Stuff like sneaking around with one of his friends. He thought he and Kurt were kind of getting close, and why couldn't he say something during those chats? Hadn't that been why Kurt brought him the warm milk? So they could talk and stuff? He knew that his step-brother was a lot of things, but dishonest was never one of them.

Until now. Kurt had been lying to him by keeping this secret. It wasn't like the lie he told Rachel earlier when he said he liked Fiddler on the Roof. This was a big lie. A big lie that he'd been keeping for a WHILE.

Finn decided he'd get the truth out of him. And if he could get his English essay due on The Grapes of Wrath (he really didn't get that book. It wasn't even about grapes), well, he wouldn't complain.

The bibliography part confused the hell out of him. Kurt had agreed to help, so he was glad when he saw Kurt's Navigator in the driveway.

"Kurt!" he called out from the bottom of the stairs.

There was no answer, which didn't exactly surprise him. Kurt had been looking pretty tired lately. He could call Rachel for help, but he had a feeling they wouldn't get much done, so he figured he'd get the bibliography format online somewhere. He decided he had to ask Puck where to get an online cheat-sheet for bibliography things, which was pretty much pointless because his phone needed to be charged. The charger, of course, was upstairs in his room.

He saw a sliver of light through the crack in the bottom of the door, and figured Kurt was home. Kurt always closed his door when he was in his room. He heard the opening strains of that song Mercedes sang that one time in rehearsal last year; the one from that movie where Beyoncé slept with Jamie Foxx and costarred with the girl in the Weight Watchers commercials. He'd been living with Kurt long enough to know by now that it was his ring tone for her.

"Hey Kurt?" he called out again, figuring he didn't want to intrude. He entered his room unannounced once and Kurt replaced his play-list with show-tunes. Of course, it earned him bonus points with Rachel, and he got to touch her boobs again, so really, who lost there? But still…he knew a dude like Kurt needed his privacy.

That Mercedes song played again.

"Kurt?" Finn called again, rapping on the door. No answer. "Well, I guess you're really busy with somethin'. I'll just…"

And then he heard the opening strains of John Mellencamp's Pink Houses, Kurt's ring tone for Burt. It played through and started again.

'Something's wrong,' Finn realized when he heard it a third time. He blew off people sometimes, and Finn had gotten used to it, having gotten Kurt's voicemail a few times himself, especially when he was working on something, but there was no way Kurt would ignore his dad. Burt never called for no reason.

He decided to risk his play-list. "Hey, Kurt? I'm coming in, okay? If you're looking at..you know…gay porn or something, now would be a good time to...uh...close your window," he said, cautiously opening the door.

The sight that greeted him was SO MUCH worse than gay porn.

An empty bottle of pills sat on his desk, next to an almost-empty glass of water, the ice cubes almost melted away completely and condensation had begun to bleed onto the desk.

And his brother was lying face down on the floor.