Dalton was boarding school but not all of the boys lived there. Some boys, boys who were local, lived at home and commuted. David was one of those boys. Dalton boys were better off than average and David was rich by anybody's standards. His parents traveled a lot so David threw big parties. A lot. Parties were wine flowed like, well, like wine. David was one of Blaine's closest friends so he was at a lot of those parties.

Typically, a girl quickly latched onto Blaine. Alcohol fueled makeout sessions were another feature of David's parties. By the time the girl realized that yes, Blaine Anderson really was gay, it was too late to pick another candidate. That led to lots of talking and drinking. Girls can't hold alcohol the way boys can so Blaine learned the hard way how to tell a girl was about to throw up, and what to do while they were throwing up. You have to keep their hair away from the stream, that's the main thing. So he carefully reached over and pulled Mercedes' hair back and out of the way. When she was done he poured water on a handkerchief and handed the handkerchief to her.

"I'm so embarrassed." she mumbled.

"Don't be embarrassed." she said helping her stand up. "You're either sick or a world class actress. Come on, I'll help you in."

He held her arm and guided her to the front door. She fumbled a minute with the lock and they walked into the dark house. He led her to the sofa in the living room.

"Can I get you some tea or something?"

"Thank you." she waved towards the kitchen in the back of the house.

"Hey, honey! Why's it so dark in here?" He heard a woman whose voice reminded him of his last vacation in the Bahamas.

"Mercedes? Are you still sick?

Come on, I'm taking you to the hospital.

I don't care, this has been going on for weeks now."

Blaine couldn't hear Mercedes' response to all of this. When he came in carrying the tea he did hear Mercedes say. "I'm not sick. I'm pregnant." she started crying. "Oh mama, I'm so sorry."

The woman put an arm around Mercedes. "Oh, honey. Shhhhh. It's going to be okay baby. Shhhhhhh."

It was so wrong for him to be here. He coughed loudly to get their attention. Both women jumped. "Who are you?" the woman asked.

"Blaine." Mercedes said. "He gave me a ride home from school."

"Oh. Thank you Blaine." she took the cup he offered. "If you don't mind..."

"Sure, bye Mercedes, Mrs. Jones." Blaine almost ran from the house. He jumped in his car and noticed her books on the back seat. Damn, he'd have to go back in there. He braced himself, picked up the books and walked back to the front door. Mercedes answered the doorbell.

"Thanks Blaine." She stepped onto the porch. "You asked me if you could help me? Please, don't tell anybody. Including Kurt. Especially Kurt. It'll be obvious soon enough but I need to talk to Shane first. Please?"

"I'd never tell anybody. Trust me. Good luck." he squeezed her arm.

Mercedes was out of school for the next two days and nobody seemed to miss her. She had quit/been thrown out of glee club so nobody expected to see her there. Out of glee club seemed to be out of everyone's life, nobody wondered or cared where she was. Of at least they didn't wonder out loud. Blaine found it kind of sad, actually. Nobody would treat a fellow Warbler like that. So on Thursday, when Kurt was in Dayton, he stopped by her house with work she missed in the couple of classes they shared.

"She's in her room, can you please take this up to her?" Mrs. Jones asked, handing him a glass of orange juice. He started up the steps and stopped when she called his name. "Blaine, Thank you for coming over. That's really nice of you."

Mercedes' room wasn't like he'd imagine it would be. People kept calling her a diva so he expected it to be glam and sparkly. Instead it was full of books, books stacked on the floor and overflowing the bookcases. Book on photography, books on philosophy, books on music. And pictures, one whole wall was covered with photographs hanging from wires strung across the wall. Mercedes was sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing pajamas even though it was only 5pm, looking at a music book.

"Hi, Blaine." she said excitedly. She looked much better, she had that glow they talk about pregnant women having.

"Hi. Your mother asked me to give this to you."

"Thank you." she said accepting the glass.

"And I bought the work you missed."

"Yeah, and thanks for that!" She laughed. "Can you stay and visit? I'm bored to tears. Tell me what I missed."

"Okay" he said sitting on the edge of the bed. "First, how are things?"

"I have a lot of things, which ones are you referring to?"

"Are you feeling better?"

"Much. I needed a prescription. I might go back to school tomorrow. Monday definitely. Thank you for asking." Nobody else had.

"And the baby?" he looked at her stomach.

She rubbed her stomach. "They think Jack's going to be okay."

"Jack?"

"I don't know, I just like that name. It's strong, you know? Fearless. You can trust a Jack to take care of things. I don't know, just like it."

"Suppose it's a girl?"

"Jackie. Just as fearless."

"Okay. How's Shane?"

"We're on hold. We're seeing other people, or at least he is, until after. I don't blame him. He didn't seem too upset, at first. Then he saw a picture of Sam. I think he thought he'd look like a fool, if we walked around like he was the father and the baby was white looking. I mean, why should he take on all that? He barely knows me."

"Sam?" Was Sam that blond from the Lima Bean?

"Shit, I must be so lonely that I ramble to whoever walks in the door. Maybe I will wait til Monday to go back to school." she took a sip of the juice. "Sam, last spring. I'm due in January."

"Congratulations?" he asked.

"Yeah, I guess it's congratulations. My folks, they were upset, but in the end what can you do? They'll help me as long as I'm in school, I can handle one extracurricular. It's just as well about West Side Story, I wouldn't have the time or energy to do that. Congratulations on that, by the way. I'm sure you'll be great. I'm just singing with Shelby's club."

"Shelby's club?"

"Yes. Shelby, who's Rachel's birth mom by the way, is running a glee club. She's nice." Mercedes smiled thinking about her and picked up the book she had been looking at. "She asked me what was wrong, instead of screaming at me the way Mr. Schuester does. She came over to visit me, and brought me this music to take a look at."

"But what about the dancing? How are you going to do that?"

"I don't have to. Shelby thinks a show choir is like an orchestra. In an orchestra, different people have different jobs. She wants me to be a singer, not a dancer. Dancers she can get elsewhere. You don't yell at the cellist because they can't play the piano, you know? You hire an cellist and a pianist. That's how Shelby sees it. So...How's glee club? Tell them I said hi. Have you started on your performance yet?"

"Not yet, we're still working on West Side Story."

"Must take a lot of time." she frowned.

"I don't know how we're going to get it all done, to tell you the truth." Blaine was really worried about that. They seemed to waste a lot of time during meetings.

"Shelby.." she stopped. "You must be sick of hearing about Shelby. What else is new?"

"Nothing much, school is school. No flaming pianos lately."

"Oh." they seemed to have run out of things to say. Blaine looked over at the photographs. "I took those." she said following his gaze. "Most of those are from Nationals, in New York. You know we went there with no material prepared? And they call me lazy, you'd think that was Schuester falling down on the job. Anyway Shelby thought that was outrageous. She'd never take us to a competition totally unprepared." Mercedes was so glad she had Shelby.

She walked over to stand beside him. He was looking at a picture of Kurt and Rachel in front of Tiffany's. "Yeah, that was the infamous breakfast at Tiffany's. You can have it if you want." She unclipped it from the makeshift gallery. "I had just gotten a really good camera, they didn't even see me."

She pointed out pictures and told him stories about each one. Did she miss the kids in Glee? They didn't seem to miss her very much, but they had been busy with meetings, dance camp, West Side story practice.

"That's Sam." She pointed to a picture of a smiling blond with a big grin. "I don't know if you ever met him. Anyway, that's him. Sam Evans from Memphis Tennessee. Sam." she unclipped the picture and carried it back to the bed.

"Did you tell him?" Blaine asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed again.

"Not yet." She stared at the photograph. "My folks, and Shelby, they all think I should call him. He's got a girlfriend down there. He told me about her before he asked her out. I'm happy for him."

Blaine noticed she didn't look very happy.

"If something happened," she looked up at him, "and you couldn't be with Kurt, you just couldn't and it couldn't be helped, wouldn't you want Kurt to be happy? I mean, you wouldn't want Kurt to sit around being sad for the rest of his life, would you?"

"I never thought about it. I'm having a hard time getting past the 'if I couldn't be with him' part." He leaned back on the bed. "I can't imagine what that would be like."

"Before he left, we used to sing to each other, sappy I know." She closed her eyes and smiled at the memory. "There's lot of songs, old songs, about people leaving their lovers and knowing they'd probably never see each other again. People going on explorations, or going from some peasant village to America or going off to war. I think we found every one." She started singing.

I'll be seeing you;
In every lovely, summer's day;
And everything that's bright and gay;
I'll always think of you that way;
I'll find you in the morning sun;
And when the night is new;
I'll be looking at the moon;
But I'll be seeing you.

"See, she knows she's never gonna see him again, just like we both knew at the time that we'd probably never see each other again. Or if we did we might be totally different people by that time. There's nothing he can do to help out, why open a can of worms?"

"Cause it's his baby. I'd want to know."

"Well, this is never going to happen to you, is it?"

"Probably not. But what if he finds out some other way?"

"How? If anybody notices that I'm pregnant, and nobody has so far, they'll just assume Shane is the father. They're not going to ask me and they're not going to ask Shane. They'll just gossip behind our backs. I can survive that. If Quinn can I can. Then, after the baby comes, if everything is okay, I'll call him."

Blaine frowned. He'd want to know if it were him.

I'll Be Seeing You – Jo Stafford

see Sam and Mercedes' Tardis adventure by Jadziwine for the reason why the baby's name is Jack

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