part two is taking forever to finish,
Mercedes wakes Kurt up early on Wednesday morning to eat breakfast with her before her flight to Lima leaves. She pours him a cup of coffee without saying a word, taking a seat across from him at their tiny kitchen table. There are soft fays of light falling over the counter, bouncing off dirty dishes and shining through the prism Mercedes put in the window on their first night in the apartment together. She had told Kurt then that it reminded her of him: full of every color in the spectrum, the hues hidden from most until under just the right light. He looks at her, sleepy and calm in the early hours of the day and is hit with a wave of gratitude for how little she asks of him, how utterly non-demanding she’s come to be over the years.
“Remembered when you offered to buy me fresh bagels and I acted like you just told me McQueen was over?” Kurt asks, apropos of nothing.
Mercedes blinks, stirs her coffee. “Go on.”
“Well I might have met someone. At the shop,” Kurt begins and then, “and I was going to ask for his number on Tuesday, but I almost forgot all about it.”
“Okay, but what does that have to do with bagels?” Mercedes has one eyebrow raised over the brim of her mug and Kurt feels exposed under her gaze.
“His usual order happens to be a blueberry bagel and a medium drip,” Kurt answers, looking resolutely at the table and not Mercedes’ face.
“So it’s been going on for a few weeks and you haven’t told me.” Mercedes says it as a fact and not an accusation, but Kurt still feels a tight vine of guilt twist around his insides at her words.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you, I just didn’t want to jinx it before it even started,” Kurt explains with a shrug. He takes a sip of his coffee but it’s lukewarm and watered down. Mercedes is smiling at him like she gets it and the bitter part of Kurt is thinking that there is nothing about this situation that she could possibly understand; it’s the thought that counts, though, so Kurt takes another drink and rearranges his features into something he hopes will show just how grateful he is.