Set somewhere in the first 13 eps of Season 1, prior to Burt meeting Carole Hudson, when it was strictly a two-Hummel household.

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"Kurt?" Mercedes' voice echoed in the small stairwell as she made her way down the basement steps. "Your dad said I could come right down. Is that okay wi-"

She paused in mid-word, concern filling her warm brown eyes as she got a look at her best friend. Kurt was sitting cross-legged on his sofa with his hands folded in his lap. He was wearing black sweat pants and a red McKinley t-shirt, his feet bare and his hair dipping down into his eyes in messy bangs. He looked tense and unhappy. What was worse, he looked plain. It instantly set off alarm bells in Mercedes. Kurt Hummel normally wouldn't look that unstylish to go to bed at night, much less to greet a friend who had come over to his home for a pre-planned weekend visit.

Crossing over to his side, Mercedes parked herself on the seat next to him and gathered him into her arms, not letting go or bothering to say another word until he finally consented to hug her back. With a deep sigh, he relaxed his arms and dipped his forehead to rest against her shoulder.

"What's wrong, baby?" Mercedes asked at last. "What's got you so depressed?"

"Nothing's wrong."

Mercedes barked a laugh. "Right, and I'm replacing Sue Sylvester as coach of the Cheerios next year."

That got a small smile from Kurt as he sat up and scooted back to give them both enough room to sit comfortably on the small piece of furniture. Setting one foot on the floor, he drew his other leg up to wrap his arms around it, resting his chin atop the bent knee. Mercedes curled her legs sideways, feeling a small pang of envy toward her flexible friend.

"Okay, it's not nothing," Kurt admitted. "It's a long way from nothing."

"Tell me."

"I was helping my dad out at the garage this morning," he began, "and Russ Meyer came in."

She grimaced. "The guy from the furniture store? The one you told me hates your dad?"

He nodded. "Meyer's wife's car broke down just outside of the school on the same day Dad came to pick me up from Glee practice last week when we ran late. It took him, like, five minutes to fix the car and the two of them were very cordial and polite. Mr. Meyer is a jerk, but his wife is really nice and Dad didn't charge her anything for the repair. She thanked him, they shook hands, and we all went our separate ways. I figured that was the end of it."

"But it wasn't?"

Kurt took a deep breath. "Apparently not. Today, we were in the garage taking a break between customers when in comes Russ Meyer; boiling mad and yelling all kinds of terrible things at Dad. He was ranting like a maniac! He accused Dad of hitting on his wife and trying to get a favor out of her for fixing the car. And if you could have just heard the emphasis he put on that word. A favor; with this stupid sneer on his ugly chimp face, making it sound like Dad had suggested throwing Mrs. Meyer over the hood of the car and doing her right there in the student parking lot or something."

Mercedes gasped. "Oh, my God! What did your dad do?"

"Nothing!" Kurt said, flailing one hand in an indignant gesture. "He looked mad enough to rip Meyer's heart out and feed it to him, but he just told him he needed to quit drinking in the middle of the afternoon and to get out of his shop. Then Meyer started cussing him out, and Dad just stood there!"

Nose crinkling in confusion, Mercedes asked him, "Why? That doesn't sound like your dad at all."

Kurt met her eyes, confusion filling the blue-green depths. "I wish I knew. All I can tell you is that at that point, I finally lost my temper and told Meyer that he was crazy, that I had been there and absolutely nothing had happened between Dad and his wife and that if he wanted to make up nasty rumors about my father then I would have to let his business partners, his wife and the local events section of the Lima Daily Journal know all about the naked lawn-bowling tournament he and two attractive ladies of unknown origin were holding at his house the last time Mrs. Meyer was out of town visiting her sister."

"Did he really?" she demanded, mouth agape and eyes wide.

"No, but I figured why not fight rumor with rumor? I promised that I could convince every one of those people that he had done exactly that, and Meyer apparently thought so too because he backed off."

Mercedes burst out laughing. "That's my boy! What did he do next?"

"Nothing, just turned sort of green, then a weird shade of purple from all the not-breathing he was doing, then started telling me what a horrible, deviant, disgrace to proper society my father was raising and how my mother would have been ashamed to claim me as her own."

Kurt's voice dropped as he said that last part, ending on a bare whisper. Mercedes scooted over and wrapped an arm around him again. Kurt did not abandon his pretzel-like posture but did turn a bit so that she could cuddle him closer.

"Dad finally lost it then. Grabbed Meyer by the collar and belt and literally threw him out of the garage." Kurt actually grinned a little at this. "Dad told him that if he'd ever bother to pull his pointy little head out of his own ass, he'd see that I was like my mom in every way and that if she was alive she'd be as proud of me as he is."

"Go, Daddy!" Mercedes said with a delighted grin.

Her smile faltered when Kurt looked troubled again. "Why, Mercedes? Why would he let Russ Meyer say all those horrible things about him without a word of protest, and then jump in when he had to defend me?"

"I don't know. Maybe he's used to it? From what you've told me, they've hated each other since High School. Your dad probably didn't want to set a bad example for you by getting into a public fight with a drunk, but when Meyer attacked you he had to say something. You know your dad loves you way too much to let anyone say a bad word about you. After all, isn't that why you lit into him yourself; 'cause he was attacking your dad?"

Kurt sighed. "Yes. It's just that-"

"What?"

"After Meyer was gone, Dad thanked me for the defense, but said I shouldn't talk to adults that way. I told him I wouldn't stand by and let anybody say such terrible things about him and he . . . he just smiled and told me again that I was exactly like Mom."

Confused by the bleakness in Kurt's voice, Mercedes gave the tense shoulders under her arm a little squeeze. "Isn't that a good thing? Being like your mom?"

"Yeah," he whispered, wrapping his arms tighter around his captured leg. "It is. I mean I loved my mom, a lot, and I'm glad to know that I'm like her, but it bothers me sometimes."

"I don't understand. Why would that bother you?"

"It's stupid," he said, shaking his head. Mercedes waited him out and finally he continued, "It's just, he always says things like that. Whenever he doesn't know what to do about something, he tells me that Mom would know what to do because she understood both of us better. And when Dad's proud of me, he always says that I'm like her. 'You're exactly like your mother, Kurt' or 'I wish your mom could see you now."

Mercedes scooted forward, trying to get a good look at his face. "What is it you wanted him to say?"

"That's the stupid part," Kurt admitted, cheeks flushing. "I wanted him to say that he wished he'd thought of those things I said to Meyer, or that it's exactly what he would have done if I hadn't been there. I don't know how to explain it, Mercedes. It's just . . . sometimes, I wish he could tell me that he's proud of me because I'm his son, not hers. It's been almost nine years since Mom died. I want Dad to believe we have something in common other than the fact that we both loved her. Except . . . except I know that we don't."

Kurt seemed to wilt in her grasp and Mercedes held onto him a little bit tighter in reflex. She wished she knew what to say, but the fact was, she could not come up with anything the two Hummel men had in common either.

Fortunately, Kurt did not seem to expect her to. He twisted his neck to look at her, offering a crooked smile. "I'm sorry, 'Cedes. You didn't come all the way over here to listen to me whine about my dad. Do you want to watch a movie or something?"

"It's not whining, it's just venting, and that's exactly why I came over," she said. "I'm here to spend time with my best friend and to listen to him if he needs me."

The forced smile bloomed into a real one. "You're the best, you know that?"

Cheekily, she said, "I know." Leaning closer she gave Kurt a loud wet kiss right on his forehead, laughing when his face crinkled in disgust. He hated it when she did that and Mercedes knew it. "What do you say we hijack that big TV upstairs and play some video games on it while your dad is making dinner?"

"Okay, but if we're interrupting a sport of some kind, you can be the one to explain to him why he isn't allowed to watch it."

"I can handle him," she assured him with a grin. "Your dad loves me, didn't you know that? He's practically putty in my hands."

Kurt smiled, straightening up and holding out a hand to her. "I did know that. Apparently Dad and I do have at least one thing in common, after all."

TBC