V-DAY EXCHANGE FIC! It's Friday, I'm in Love, for snoozin81
Title: It’s Friday, I’m In Love
Pairing: Mike/Mercedes, Mercedes/Matt(one sided)
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Words: 3,138
Recipient: snoozin81
Summary: Mercedes can’t stand Valentine’s Day after years of being burned by love. But when someone starts leaving love notes in her locker, she thinks she might just open up and take a chance.
Disclaimer: Glee does not belong to me, nor do any of the songs credited at the end of the fic.
A/N: I spliced together a couple of your prompts into one story, I hope you don’t mind.
Mercedes could feel that dreaded holiday coming the second she caught a shiny mylar heart balloon from the corner of her eye. It didn’t dredge up panic initially; after all, it was just a heart, right? Nothing overtly sappy, and besides, it was only January 14. There were some people who still had Christmas decorations up, and her house the Kwanzaa candles were still on display. It was far too soon for Valentine’s Day as far as she was concerned.
But like a shadow haunting her every waking hour, the holiday kept creeping ever closer. It started with the department store sales, then moved on to the other retail outlets. Soon hearts and roses are everywhere she looks; even Facebook becomes too much to bear. Mercedes spent days wondering if she could crawl under her blankets and stay there until St. Patrick’s Day.
It wasn’t like she had anything against romance; far from it, she could get as mushy as the next girl. But Valentine’s Day had been far from kind to her over the years. In fact, the minute she stepped into middle school, the day went from being something exciting to a day that made her miserable for weeks afterward.
Elementary school was fine: everyone got to decorate a brown paper bag to act as their “mailbox”, and everyone in class got one from everyone else, colorful squares of postcard paper with candy taped to the back. At the end of the school day, a half-hour was put aside so everyone could read their Valentines and make the inevitable candy exchange. It was innocent, and happy, and no one got their feelings hurt.
But middle school was different. If you wanted to give Valentines you did it between classes or at lunch, and you weren’t required to give one to each member of your class. Mercedes could barely hold back tears when the only Valentines she got year after year were ones from a couple friends, generic things with no real heart to them, mere pity prizes.
As tough as middle school was, high school was a thousand times worse. Mercedes had toughened up quite a bit, and she had a bite to match her fierce bark. All the same, she felt herself getting melancholy the closer the date on her calendar came to February 14th. Her freshman year, she decided to take matters into her own hands. There was a boy that was way out of her league according to school social rules, but she decided to take a risk anyway.
It involved nearly going broke putting together a basket of cool things an up-and-coming football player might need: vitamins, sports drinks, and snacks with plenty of proteins and carbohydrates. A boy might get sick of chocolate in a hurry, but this was useful, something he was bound to take notice of and like. It showed thoughtful appreciation.
Mercedes wrapped the whole thing up in cellophane with red hearts all over it, and taped the specially picked Valentine’s Day card on the front. She spent nearly a half-hour fretting over whether to put her name on the card or not. Finally she decided that it was much more fun and mysterious to remain anonymous. It had nothing to do with a nagging fear of rejection, and she would cut the first person to accuse her of such.
On the big day, Mercedes carefully snuck down to the boy’s locker room when she was supposed to be in World History, and looked around for the locker that was supposed to be his. Logically, their locker numbers should match up to their jersey numbers, so Mercedes had no trouble finding it. To her surprise, it wasn’t locked, so she hastily put the basket inside (with a little cramming on her part) and ran out before anyone could see her. She couldn’t help but smile to herself the whole time: Matt was really going to love her gift.
The end of the day came agonizingly slowly after that, but as soon as the bell rung Mercedes was off like a shot, finding a convenient spot to casually sit and pretend like she wasn’t interested in the football players a single bit while listening to their conversations as hard as she could. It wasn’t too long before she saw Matt, Mike, Finn, and Puck heading out of the locker room, uniformed and helmets in hand. Matt also carried her basket, and he seemed to be happy.
Before Mercedes could let out her internal whoop of joy, Matt started giving the goodies away to other members of the team. Like something out of a bad dream, she heard Puck cracking jokes about what a lame-ass secret admirer he must have; Finn suggested that it might have come from Coach Sylvester, bringing horrified groans and laughter from the assembled. Matt gave what was left to Finn, who happily gulped down one of the sports drinks. The basket got tossed in the nearest trashcan.
Mercedes didn’t cry about it, she was far too numbed for that. But her love of the holiday swiftly turned into loathing, which is why this year she refused to participate at all. Her crush on Matt may have vanished, but the hurt still remained. After the incident with Kurt, it felt like maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t allowed to have someone like her in return. Maybe it was only reserved for girls like Quinn and Rachel, girls the universe seemed to bless a little more than other people. It was a really depressing thought.
To her surprise, when she opened her locker on the Monday before Valentines, a small envelope sealed with a tiny yellow heart sticker fluttered out and fell to the floor. Mercedes frowned and scanned the area around her, looking for all the telltale signs of a prank in progress, but couldn’t find any.
She slowly picked it up off the floor and opened it, wondering if Rachel had suddenly switched from gold stars to hearts. The handwriting definitely wasn’t hers, but something much more masculine. It looked like the person who wrote it took the time to make it as neat as possible.
“What I like about you/you really know how to dance
When you go up, down, jump around/think about true romance, yeah!”
Huh?
This was weird. Really weird. Mercedes flipped the note over, held it up to the light, and held the envelope upside down to see if there was anything else in there. But there was nothing. She decided it had to be a prank, maybe someone poking fun of her because of the school assembly or the country dancing from sectionals. The smart thing to do would be to crumple it up and toss it out; somehow, it ended up back in the envelope and shoved inside of her purse.
Tuesday morning brought another envelope, this time with a slightly bigger heart sealing it closed. Mercedes sighed, but since the hallway was practically empty there was no one to glare at. She decided she might as well see what nonsense she’d been given today and ripped it open without preamble.
“This was a lesson in friendship/I stress in this sentence
Should women and men be friends first?/And then slip?
My pen drips as I scribble my thoughts on thin strips/of devotion”
It threw her off balance. After reading it three or four times, she came to the conclusion that it didn’t quite come off as prank material, but it still came off as not being real. Mercedes didn’t have a very long list of male friends by any means; frankly Kurt was the only real male friend that she had, and even though her heart smarted a little, she knew very well that it wasn’t him. But Kurt was also her *best friend*, and he was clever, so if anyone could help her solve this mystery it was him. She put this note in her purse with the first one and hurried off to class.
That afternoon, Mercedes rushed to be the first person in Glee, but when she got there a note with her name on it was taped down to the chair were she usually sat. This time the heart on the back was pink and a little larger than its predesseors. Mercedes ran back to the hallway to see if anyone was hiding out there, then came back in with a sigh when she found the hallway empty.
“If I had one wish, we would be best friends/Love would never end, it would just begin/If I had one wish, you would be my boo/Promise to love you, trust me I'll trust you.”
It made her stomach twist, because the one tiny seed of an idea planted in the back of her mind started to sprout. The reference to her dancing, the stuff about friendship, all lead her to one terrifying conclusion.
“It has to be somebody in Glee club,” Kurt confirmed as he looked over all three of the notes. Mercedes had to wait until their 15 minute break to show him the odd letters, and when he voiced his opinion Mercedes wanted to bang her head against the wall. She’d really learned to trust the people in Glee, and they had been through enough together that she thought most of the petty prank bullshit would stop. She was obviously being too optimistic.
“We know it’s not Puck. It’s way too long of a game to suit his style, and when he’s going out of his way to annoy you, he wants you to know it’s him.” Kurt crossed his arms, deep in thought. “Since two of the lyrics are R&B, we can rule out Finn. Besides, this is too devious to come out of his cute little head.” He paused for a moment. “You know it wasn’t me, right? I wouldn’t…”
Mercedes shook her head. “I know. It’s ok. It’s not hurting me any, so I’ll just let it run it’s course and wait for them to get bored. Thanks for the help, Kurt.” They exchanged hugs and hurried back to Glee. Mercedes waited for the feeling of relief that came from having it all figured out. But it never came, and the notes were carefully put back in the special section of her purse.
Wednesday brought another note, and Mercedes found herself smiling when she discovered it in her locker. She forced herself to open it slowly, because it was a joke after all; no need to give her tormentor too much satisfaction. Today’s heart was a darker shade of pink, and Mercedes wondered why they would take such time and care to pull this on her. A Love Mango Slushie to the face would’ve been faster and cheaper.
“And though you don't believe that they do/They do come true
For did my dreams/Come true when I looked at you
And maybe too, if you would believe/You too might be
Overjoyed, over loved, over me”
Mercedes felt her face get hot. How on earth did they know that she had doubts about this whole thing? Now she was really getting scared, but she wasn’t sure what terrified her more: the idea that someone had figured her out so well that they were able to pull a prank of this magnitude, or that there might be someone who actually did like her this much. Mercedes put the note back in her locker and slammed it shut, storming off to class in a half run.
She could barely concentrate all day long, and at the end of the day she blindly reached into her locker to get her things and bolted for home. She picked at her dinner, stumbled through her homework, and found herself draped across her bed far too early, staring at the ceiling as if it held the answers to life.
“Girl it's only you /Have it your way/And if you want you can decide
And if you'll have me/I can provide/Everything that you desire
And if you get a feeling/Feeling that I'm feeling/Won't you come closer to me baby
Now you already got me/Right where you want me baby/I just want to be your man”
Thursday’s note had a full on red heart and a feeling of mild hurt to it. Mercedes found herself mouthing along to the words of the song as she read the lyric on the page. Suddenly one of Mr. Schuster’s lessons wormed itself into her brains: sometimes when you couldn’t tell someone how you feel, you could sing it to them instead. Maybe that’s what this person was trying to do.
But as much as one side of her whooped in joy, the other side fretted and worried. Even if, hypothetically, there was someone with a crush on her, what if she didn’t feel the same way? What if she had to turn them down, just like she’d been rejected so many times before?
Even worse, what if it was someone like Artie? Tina would murder her, and she didn’t think she could take losing the few friends she’d so painstakingly made because of love drama. Glee club had that in spades already; she didn’t want to add to it. On the other hand, if everything worked out, she might finally grab the romance she’d been longing for. The idea of that was enough to tip the scales towards opening up and taking a chance. Mercedes felt so elated and scared all at once that she ran into the nearest girl’s room to splash water on her face.
In Glee club on Friday, she came up with a plan. After talking with a couple of the music students, she was lucky enough to find a few of them who knew the song she wanted to try. Mr. Schuster was a little reluctant to let her steal a little time from Glee to sing a solo, but Kurt was there to back her up, saying she had a song that would be good for the group as a whole, and besides, she was implementing his Ballad lesson. That might not have convinced him fully, but he must have caught the pleading expression on Mercedes face, one she *never* wore before where he could see, and he relented with a smile.
The guitar began the opening strands, and Mercedes found herself feeling nervous. She squashed it; this was the only way she had of telling her mystery boy that she was willing to take a chance on him. God willing he would get the message, but for now this was all she could do.
“Inside my head there lives a dream that I want to see in the sun
Behind my eyes there lives a me that I've been hiding for much too long
'Cause I've been, too afraid to let it show
'Cause I'm scared of the judgment that may follow
Always putting off my living for tomorrow”
She didn’t sing to anyone in particular at first, and like the moment she stepped up on stage with the deaf choir to sing “Imagine”, she kept her voice sweet and soft, a distinct difference from her usual powerhouse technique.
“It's time to step out on faith, I've gotta show my face
It's been elusive for so long, but freedom is mine today
I've gotta step out on faith, It's time to show my face
Procrastination had me down but look what I have found, I found”
Mercedes smiled and took the notes out of her pocket, holding them over her heart as she sang. She couldn’t look up at anyone, just yet: now that the moment of truth was pretty much here, there was still the smallest twinge of fear. Mercedes used the lyrics like a crutch to bolster her spirit.
“Strength, courage, and wisdom
And it's been inside of me all along,
Strength, courage, and wisdom
Inside of me”
She slowly scanned the room, taking particular note of people’s expressions. Rachel seemed absorbed in the song for the most part, though there was a fierce glint of curiosity in her eyes when she looked at the letters in Mercedes’ hands. Finn and Brittney swayed a little to the beat, Artie kept rhythm by tapping his hands on his knees, while Puck and Santana looked mildly bored as usual. Nothing that set off an alarm bell.
“Behind my pride there lives a me, that knows humility
Inside my voice there is a soul, and in my soul there is a voice
But I've been, too afraid to make a choice
'Cause I'm scared of the things that I might be missing
Running too fast to stop and listen”
Mr. Schuster seemed to be pleased with her song choice; she could almost see the after-school-special plotting wheels turning in his head. Kurt grinned at her and gave her a thumbs up, Quinn had her eyes closed and a Mona Lisa smile, Tina clapped along quietly, and Matt nodded along to the beat.
Mercedes almost felt her heart drop; maybe she was wrong about it being someone in Glee after all. But then she noticed Mike sitting off to the side a little, and how she missed his eyes burning into her she’ll never know. His normal good-natured grin was gone, and he sat abnormally still in his chair. Mike looked different, he looked hopeful, and Mercedes nearly forgot the next line of the song.
“It's time to step out on faith, I've gotta show my face
It's been elusive for so long but freedom is mine today
I've gotta step out on faith it's time to show my face
Procrastination had me down but look what I have found, I found”
She never would have guessed in a million years it would be him of all people. Sure, they hung out a bit when the club split, and he always took the time to complement her on her singing and stuff, but he was nice to pretty much everyone, so it didn’t count. Besides, he and Brittany were always hanging all over each other, how would she have known?
“I close my eyes and I think of all the things that I want to see
'Cause I know, now that I've opened up my heart I know that
Anything I want can be, so let it be, so let it be.”
To her surprise, Mercedes found herself taking a few steps closer. Everyone and everything else seemed to fade away into nothing, until she was singing just to him, and the brilliant smile he graced her with was brighter than any spotlight. Mercedes missed the quizzical stares she was getting now, as well as the hushed whispers, but even if she was paying attention to that sort of thing, she wouldn’t have cared one bit.
The End
Lyric Credits:
“Untitled” by D’Angelo
“Strength, Courage and Wisdom” by India Arie
“Overjoyed” by Stevie Wonder
“One Wish” by Ray J
“Thin Line” by Jurassic 5
“What I Like About You” by The Romantics
Pairing: Mike/Mercedes, Mercedes/Matt(one sided)
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Words: 3,138
Recipient: snoozin81
Summary: Mercedes can’t stand Valentine’s Day after years of being burned by love. But when someone starts leaving love notes in her locker, she thinks she might just open up and take a chance.
Disclaimer: Glee does not belong to me, nor do any of the songs credited at the end of the fic.
A/N: I spliced together a couple of your prompts into one story, I hope you don’t mind.
Mercedes could feel that dreaded holiday coming the second she caught a shiny mylar heart balloon from the corner of her eye. It didn’t dredge up panic initially; after all, it was just a heart, right? Nothing overtly sappy, and besides, it was only January 14. There were some people who still had Christmas decorations up, and her house the Kwanzaa candles were still on display. It was far too soon for Valentine’s Day as far as she was concerned.
But like a shadow haunting her every waking hour, the holiday kept creeping ever closer. It started with the department store sales, then moved on to the other retail outlets. Soon hearts and roses are everywhere she looks; even Facebook becomes too much to bear. Mercedes spent days wondering if she could crawl under her blankets and stay there until St. Patrick’s Day.
It wasn’t like she had anything against romance; far from it, she could get as mushy as the next girl. But Valentine’s Day had been far from kind to her over the years. In fact, the minute she stepped into middle school, the day went from being something exciting to a day that made her miserable for weeks afterward.
Elementary school was fine: everyone got to decorate a brown paper bag to act as their “mailbox”, and everyone in class got one from everyone else, colorful squares of postcard paper with candy taped to the back. At the end of the school day, a half-hour was put aside so everyone could read their Valentines and make the inevitable candy exchange. It was innocent, and happy, and no one got their feelings hurt.
But middle school was different. If you wanted to give Valentines you did it between classes or at lunch, and you weren’t required to give one to each member of your class. Mercedes could barely hold back tears when the only Valentines she got year after year were ones from a couple friends, generic things with no real heart to them, mere pity prizes.
As tough as middle school was, high school was a thousand times worse. Mercedes had toughened up quite a bit, and she had a bite to match her fierce bark. All the same, she felt herself getting melancholy the closer the date on her calendar came to February 14th. Her freshman year, she decided to take matters into her own hands. There was a boy that was way out of her league according to school social rules, but she decided to take a risk anyway.
It involved nearly going broke putting together a basket of cool things an up-and-coming football player might need: vitamins, sports drinks, and snacks with plenty of proteins and carbohydrates. A boy might get sick of chocolate in a hurry, but this was useful, something he was bound to take notice of and like. It showed thoughtful appreciation.
Mercedes wrapped the whole thing up in cellophane with red hearts all over it, and taped the specially picked Valentine’s Day card on the front. She spent nearly a half-hour fretting over whether to put her name on the card or not. Finally she decided that it was much more fun and mysterious to remain anonymous. It had nothing to do with a nagging fear of rejection, and she would cut the first person to accuse her of such.
On the big day, Mercedes carefully snuck down to the boy’s locker room when she was supposed to be in World History, and looked around for the locker that was supposed to be his. Logically, their locker numbers should match up to their jersey numbers, so Mercedes had no trouble finding it. To her surprise, it wasn’t locked, so she hastily put the basket inside (with a little cramming on her part) and ran out before anyone could see her. She couldn’t help but smile to herself the whole time: Matt was really going to love her gift.
The end of the day came agonizingly slowly after that, but as soon as the bell rung Mercedes was off like a shot, finding a convenient spot to casually sit and pretend like she wasn’t interested in the football players a single bit while listening to their conversations as hard as she could. It wasn’t too long before she saw Matt, Mike, Finn, and Puck heading out of the locker room, uniformed and helmets in hand. Matt also carried her basket, and he seemed to be happy.
Before Mercedes could let out her internal whoop of joy, Matt started giving the goodies away to other members of the team. Like something out of a bad dream, she heard Puck cracking jokes about what a lame-ass secret admirer he must have; Finn suggested that it might have come from Coach Sylvester, bringing horrified groans and laughter from the assembled. Matt gave what was left to Finn, who happily gulped down one of the sports drinks. The basket got tossed in the nearest trashcan.
Mercedes didn’t cry about it, she was far too numbed for that. But her love of the holiday swiftly turned into loathing, which is why this year she refused to participate at all. Her crush on Matt may have vanished, but the hurt still remained. After the incident with Kurt, it felt like maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t allowed to have someone like her in return. Maybe it was only reserved for girls like Quinn and Rachel, girls the universe seemed to bless a little more than other people. It was a really depressing thought.
To her surprise, when she opened her locker on the Monday before Valentines, a small envelope sealed with a tiny yellow heart sticker fluttered out and fell to the floor. Mercedes frowned and scanned the area around her, looking for all the telltale signs of a prank in progress, but couldn’t find any.
She slowly picked it up off the floor and opened it, wondering if Rachel had suddenly switched from gold stars to hearts. The handwriting definitely wasn’t hers, but something much more masculine. It looked like the person who wrote it took the time to make it as neat as possible.
“What I like about you/you really know how to dance
When you go up, down, jump around/think about true romance, yeah!”
Huh?
This was weird. Really weird. Mercedes flipped the note over, held it up to the light, and held the envelope upside down to see if there was anything else in there. But there was nothing. She decided it had to be a prank, maybe someone poking fun of her because of the school assembly or the country dancing from sectionals. The smart thing to do would be to crumple it up and toss it out; somehow, it ended up back in the envelope and shoved inside of her purse.
Tuesday morning brought another envelope, this time with a slightly bigger heart sealing it closed. Mercedes sighed, but since the hallway was practically empty there was no one to glare at. She decided she might as well see what nonsense she’d been given today and ripped it open without preamble.
“This was a lesson in friendship/I stress in this sentence
Should women and men be friends first?/And then slip?
My pen drips as I scribble my thoughts on thin strips/of devotion”
It threw her off balance. After reading it three or four times, she came to the conclusion that it didn’t quite come off as prank material, but it still came off as not being real. Mercedes didn’t have a very long list of male friends by any means; frankly Kurt was the only real male friend that she had, and even though her heart smarted a little, she knew very well that it wasn’t him. But Kurt was also her *best friend*, and he was clever, so if anyone could help her solve this mystery it was him. She put this note in her purse with the first one and hurried off to class.
That afternoon, Mercedes rushed to be the first person in Glee, but when she got there a note with her name on it was taped down to the chair were she usually sat. This time the heart on the back was pink and a little larger than its predesseors. Mercedes ran back to the hallway to see if anyone was hiding out there, then came back in with a sigh when she found the hallway empty.
“If I had one wish, we would be best friends/Love would never end, it would just begin/If I had one wish, you would be my boo/Promise to love you, trust me I'll trust you.”
It made her stomach twist, because the one tiny seed of an idea planted in the back of her mind started to sprout. The reference to her dancing, the stuff about friendship, all lead her to one terrifying conclusion.
“It has to be somebody in Glee club,” Kurt confirmed as he looked over all three of the notes. Mercedes had to wait until their 15 minute break to show him the odd letters, and when he voiced his opinion Mercedes wanted to bang her head against the wall. She’d really learned to trust the people in Glee, and they had been through enough together that she thought most of the petty prank bullshit would stop. She was obviously being too optimistic.
“We know it’s not Puck. It’s way too long of a game to suit his style, and when he’s going out of his way to annoy you, he wants you to know it’s him.” Kurt crossed his arms, deep in thought. “Since two of the lyrics are R&B, we can rule out Finn. Besides, this is too devious to come out of his cute little head.” He paused for a moment. “You know it wasn’t me, right? I wouldn’t…”
Mercedes shook her head. “I know. It’s ok. It’s not hurting me any, so I’ll just let it run it’s course and wait for them to get bored. Thanks for the help, Kurt.” They exchanged hugs and hurried back to Glee. Mercedes waited for the feeling of relief that came from having it all figured out. But it never came, and the notes were carefully put back in the special section of her purse.
Wednesday brought another note, and Mercedes found herself smiling when she discovered it in her locker. She forced herself to open it slowly, because it was a joke after all; no need to give her tormentor too much satisfaction. Today’s heart was a darker shade of pink, and Mercedes wondered why they would take such time and care to pull this on her. A Love Mango Slushie to the face would’ve been faster and cheaper.
“And though you don't believe that they do/They do come true
For did my dreams/Come true when I looked at you
And maybe too, if you would believe/You too might be
Overjoyed, over loved, over me”
Mercedes felt her face get hot. How on earth did they know that she had doubts about this whole thing? Now she was really getting scared, but she wasn’t sure what terrified her more: the idea that someone had figured her out so well that they were able to pull a prank of this magnitude, or that there might be someone who actually did like her this much. Mercedes put the note back in her locker and slammed it shut, storming off to class in a half run.
She could barely concentrate all day long, and at the end of the day she blindly reached into her locker to get her things and bolted for home. She picked at her dinner, stumbled through her homework, and found herself draped across her bed far too early, staring at the ceiling as if it held the answers to life.
“Girl it's only you /Have it your way/And if you want you can decide
And if you'll have me/I can provide/Everything that you desire
And if you get a feeling/Feeling that I'm feeling/Won't you come closer to me baby
Now you already got me/Right where you want me baby/I just want to be your man”
Thursday’s note had a full on red heart and a feeling of mild hurt to it. Mercedes found herself mouthing along to the words of the song as she read the lyric on the page. Suddenly one of Mr. Schuster’s lessons wormed itself into her brains: sometimes when you couldn’t tell someone how you feel, you could sing it to them instead. Maybe that’s what this person was trying to do.
But as much as one side of her whooped in joy, the other side fretted and worried. Even if, hypothetically, there was someone with a crush on her, what if she didn’t feel the same way? What if she had to turn them down, just like she’d been rejected so many times before?
Even worse, what if it was someone like Artie? Tina would murder her, and she didn’t think she could take losing the few friends she’d so painstakingly made because of love drama. Glee club had that in spades already; she didn’t want to add to it. On the other hand, if everything worked out, she might finally grab the romance she’d been longing for. The idea of that was enough to tip the scales towards opening up and taking a chance. Mercedes felt so elated and scared all at once that she ran into the nearest girl’s room to splash water on her face.
In Glee club on Friday, she came up with a plan. After talking with a couple of the music students, she was lucky enough to find a few of them who knew the song she wanted to try. Mr. Schuster was a little reluctant to let her steal a little time from Glee to sing a solo, but Kurt was there to back her up, saying she had a song that would be good for the group as a whole, and besides, she was implementing his Ballad lesson. That might not have convinced him fully, but he must have caught the pleading expression on Mercedes face, one she *never* wore before where he could see, and he relented with a smile.
The guitar began the opening strands, and Mercedes found herself feeling nervous. She squashed it; this was the only way she had of telling her mystery boy that she was willing to take a chance on him. God willing he would get the message, but for now this was all she could do.
“Inside my head there lives a dream that I want to see in the sun
Behind my eyes there lives a me that I've been hiding for much too long
'Cause I've been, too afraid to let it show
'Cause I'm scared of the judgment that may follow
Always putting off my living for tomorrow”
She didn’t sing to anyone in particular at first, and like the moment she stepped up on stage with the deaf choir to sing “Imagine”, she kept her voice sweet and soft, a distinct difference from her usual powerhouse technique.
“It's time to step out on faith, I've gotta show my face
It's been elusive for so long, but freedom is mine today
I've gotta step out on faith, It's time to show my face
Procrastination had me down but look what I have found, I found”
Mercedes smiled and took the notes out of her pocket, holding them over her heart as she sang. She couldn’t look up at anyone, just yet: now that the moment of truth was pretty much here, there was still the smallest twinge of fear. Mercedes used the lyrics like a crutch to bolster her spirit.
“Strength, courage, and wisdom
And it's been inside of me all along,
Strength, courage, and wisdom
Inside of me”
She slowly scanned the room, taking particular note of people’s expressions. Rachel seemed absorbed in the song for the most part, though there was a fierce glint of curiosity in her eyes when she looked at the letters in Mercedes’ hands. Finn and Brittney swayed a little to the beat, Artie kept rhythm by tapping his hands on his knees, while Puck and Santana looked mildly bored as usual. Nothing that set off an alarm bell.
“Behind my pride there lives a me, that knows humility
Inside my voice there is a soul, and in my soul there is a voice
But I've been, too afraid to make a choice
'Cause I'm scared of the things that I might be missing
Running too fast to stop and listen”
Mr. Schuster seemed to be pleased with her song choice; she could almost see the after-school-special plotting wheels turning in his head. Kurt grinned at her and gave her a thumbs up, Quinn had her eyes closed and a Mona Lisa smile, Tina clapped along quietly, and Matt nodded along to the beat.
Mercedes almost felt her heart drop; maybe she was wrong about it being someone in Glee after all. But then she noticed Mike sitting off to the side a little, and how she missed his eyes burning into her she’ll never know. His normal good-natured grin was gone, and he sat abnormally still in his chair. Mike looked different, he looked hopeful, and Mercedes nearly forgot the next line of the song.
“It's time to step out on faith, I've gotta show my face
It's been elusive for so long but freedom is mine today
I've gotta step out on faith it's time to show my face
Procrastination had me down but look what I have found, I found”
She never would have guessed in a million years it would be him of all people. Sure, they hung out a bit when the club split, and he always took the time to complement her on her singing and stuff, but he was nice to pretty much everyone, so it didn’t count. Besides, he and Brittany were always hanging all over each other, how would she have known?
“I close my eyes and I think of all the things that I want to see
'Cause I know, now that I've opened up my heart I know that
Anything I want can be, so let it be, so let it be.”
To her surprise, Mercedes found herself taking a few steps closer. Everyone and everything else seemed to fade away into nothing, until she was singing just to him, and the brilliant smile he graced her with was brighter than any spotlight. Mercedes missed the quizzical stares she was getting now, as well as the hushed whispers, but even if she was paying attention to that sort of thing, she wouldn’t have cared one bit.
The End
Lyric Credits:
“Untitled” by D’Angelo
“Strength, Courage and Wisdom” by India Arie
“Overjoyed” by Stevie Wonder
“One Wish” by Ray J
“Thin Line” by Jurassic 5
“What I Like About You” by The Romantics