Kurt is looking forward to finally going back to work. It’s not that he particularly enjoys making coffee for stressed, snappish Christmas shoppers, but he does have rent to pay. Besides, being cooped up at home just means he has nothing to distract himself from agonising over his situation with the Andersons, turning it over and over in his mind until he’s about ready to crawl out of his skin. On the evening before his first day back, Mercedes calls him as he’s trying to figure out if he can possibly make something edible with the odds and ends in his fridge, and she tells him to turn on the local news. When he does, he’s met with the grainy, slightly distorted image of the interior of a train station. He watches in shock as a blurry figure is hit with a ball and topples over the edge of the platform. Five figures so blurry they’re almost silhouettes take off in panic, and another figure – him – jumps on the tracks. The footage stops there, and a reporter in a studio is talking about a heroic rescue in the nick of time.
“Police say one of the youths is already known to them, but urge them all to come forth. As for the victim, he is currently comatose, but his doctors are hopeful he will make a full recovery in time. However, the drama doesn’t stop there. According to hospital staff, the young rescuer was no stranger to the victim. He was, in fact, his fianc�.”
The reporter allows herself a small smile. “That will make some story they can one day tell their grandchildren. In other news, shoplifting is at an all-time high. We talked to local retailer Harvey Jacobson, who-“
Kurt turns off the television.
His mind is buzzing, and for some reason he can’t help thinking about Grandma and her wish for great-grandchildren. It’s strange; he knows, better than anyone, what happened at the train station, but somehow seeing it on television makes it feel more real. He suddenly remembers that he’s still on the phone with Mercedes, so he tells her goodbye in a daze. He’ll see her tomorrow, anyway, and they can talk then.
He ends up eating rice with tomate frito, which is really just glorified tomato sauce, but he just can’t muster the energy to care, at this point. It’s as if somebody’s put the news footage on a loop in his head, and he sees Cooper fall, over and over, and the whole thing gets more gruesome with each replay.
In the end, he gives up and goes to bed early, but it’s a long time before he finally falls asleep.

Kurt doesn’t have the opening shift that morning, for which he’s insanely grateful because opening shifts mean getting up painfully early and having to smile at the queue of tutting, irritable businessmen waiting for their morning fix of caffeine. Instead, he sleeps in until nine, and then gets up and gets ready for work.
When he enters the shop, he can hear the low hum of the news from the television in the corner, but it’s mostly drowned out by the loud hissing and sputtering of the espresso machine, so he doesn’t catch the words. What he doesn’t miss, however, are the stares of the three girls manning the bar. Lucy and Nasreen are staring at him from behind the counter with something approaching awe, and Mercedes, who’s on register, is looking at him as well, face contorted in what might be half pity, half pride. Before he can ask her what’s going on, Lucy flings herself at him, squealing, and he staggers backwards with the force of it.
“Kurt! Kurt, oh my… I can’t believe it! Not that you… I mean if it was going to be anybody, of course it would be you! I just can’t… I mean, you’re a hero!”
Kurt glances over at the counter to see Mercedes rolling her eyes and Nasreen giving him a rueful smile. Lucy drags him behind the counter and into the break room so he can leave his coat and bag there. Then he turns around to find Lucy staring at him, eyes soft, and holding out his apron for him to take. He’s only just finished tying it when she hugs him again, softer this time. When she pulls back, her eyes are wet.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” she asks, quietly.
He’s saved from having to answer when Nasreen appears in the doorway and tells them to get a move on because the lunch rush has started, and she wants her break.
The hustle and bustle of coffee syrups, steaming milk and espresso shots means that Lucy has to give up her questioning, but it also prevents Kurt from talking to Mercedes, and while he has an idea that it’s probably to do with the news story, it would be nice to know exactly why Lucy’s looking at him like that over the steam wand. As far as he knows, his name wasn’t mentioned in the report at all. So how much do the girls know?
He resigns himself to having to wait until the rush has passed, or maybe until he can take a break.
It turns out, however, that he doesn’t have to wait very long.
At half past eleven, two things happen: the door closes behind the newest person in the queue, and a news update appears on the television in the corner of the shop. It’s a rerun of the news bulletin Kurt watched the night before, but this time, the screen freezes on a close-up of Kurt’s face. It’s a good picture, considering that it’s from a security camera, and he’s looking almost straight at the camera with what Mercedes teasingly calls his Bambi face. Kurt just has time to think, dryly, that at least he was right about why the girls were giving him strange looks, when the reporter says:
“The victim is now confirmed to be acclaimed actor Cooper Anderson, who made headlines following his spectacular Broadway debut, and who recently starred opposite Jennifer Lawrence and Gary Oldman in the upcoming Spielberg movie Starling, which is set to premi�re in the spring. Hospital staff refused to comment further, stating simply that Anderson’s condition is stable and that they have high hopes for a full recovery in time. Anderson’s family and fianc� have been unavailable for comments so far.”
Kurt looks away from the television to find all three girls giving him similar, intense looks. He’s so distracted that he burns himself on the steam wand, and at the sound of his startled yelp, Mercedes finally snaps out of it, clucks, and tells him to take her place on register where he won’t hurt himself. He’s still oddly jittery, but he manages to get all the way through the queue without messing up anyone’s order, and then he’s faced with the last person in the queue and thinking that maybe, after this guy, he can sneak a five minute breather in the break room where there’s no television. The guy in front of him doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to get his coffee, however. He’s just staring at Kurt, open-mouthed, as if he can’t quite believe his eyes. Kurt’s starting to feel a bit wary.
“How can I help you, sir?” he says, and the man blinks and finally closes his mouth.
“Um,” the man says, and his eyes stray to the television which is now showing a baseball match. “Um. Are you… was that you with… with Cooper?”
Kurt’s heart sinks.
“Well, yes, but I don’t really think – “
But the man interrupts him, looking slightly frantic.
“Is he alright? I mean, I know they say that he’s going to be fine, but you’re his fianc�. Did they say anything about the… thing? Is that still… as it was? It’s not worse?”
The man is all but babbling now, and Kurt is seriously going to owe Mercedes a gigantic favour, because she swoops in like the angel she is, taking over the register and shooing Kurt and the panicked man towards the back. Kurt leads the guy to the break room, gestures for him to sit down on the lumpy sofa, and then plops down next to him. The guy heaves a great sigh and wipes at his eyes. He looks like a grown-up version of a cherub; round-cheeked, flush-faced and with very round, earnest eyes.
“Are you alright, sir?” asks Kurt, because the man is still very pale underneath the blush.
The man nods, and says: “Fine, I’m fine.”
There’s a moment when he seems to be steeling himself, and then he continues.
“My name is Trent Robinson. I didn’t mean to freak out like that, sorry. It’s just that I just found out what happened to Cooper, and it was a bit of a shock. And then there was your face and then you, and I panicked a little.”
Kurt gives him what he hopes is an encouraging smile and says: “Well, then it’s probably a good thing you forgot about the coffee. I don’t think you need the energy now.”
Trent makes a watery, miserable sort of chuckle.
“So, you know Cooper?” Kurt tries again.
“Yeah, I do. I went to school with his brother, Blaine. We’re friends – or, we were. I don’t know what we are now. I don’t see him much anymore, but I try to look out for him and Cooper. It’s kind of because of the… accident that I don’t really talk to them.”
Kurt frowns.
“But the accident only happened three days ago,” he says. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, no, not that accident,” Trent waves it off, “I mean the one before.” When Kurt just looks puzzled, he continues. “Did Cooper never tell you how… how he lost his testicle?”
Kurt chokes.
“No, he didn’t,” he coughs out.
Trent squirms a little on the sofa.
“It was my fault,” he says miserably. “He was preparing for an audition, and for the part he wanted, he had to learn to use a crossbow. I had heard of this shooting range that specialised in those kinds of weapons, so I told him about it, and we went to try it out. It went really well, at first, but then he went to retrieve the bolts from the target. I was practicing next to him, and I was just loading another bolt in my crossbow, but it fired instead and… and hit him.”
“It hit him? Oh!” Kurt’s hand flies to his crotch before he can think about it. In fact, he doesn’t actually want to think about it, because that way lie nightmares and upset stomachs.
“Yeah,” says Trent, and he’s the very picture of a puppy who’s peed on the floor and is expecting a rolled-up newspaper at any moment. “He had to have surgery because they couldn’t save it, and of course he missed his audition, so it was all for nothing anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as horrible as I did in that waiting room. And then, after the operation, it got infected and they said he could end up losing the other one as well! It turned out alright in the end, though. I mean, he can still have children, but…”
There’s a pause and Kurt tries to think of something comforting to say because Trent looks so hopelessly miserable.
“I just wanted to know,” Trent whispers, “if the doctors said anything about… it. If this accident aggravated it or something. If there was a flare-up.”
Kurt places a tentative hand on his shoulder and some of the tension leaves his body.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I was there at the hospital. I heard what the doctors said. He’s going to be fine. He hit his head, but nothing was aggravated or anything, and he’s going to wake up one of these days and be ready to add another crazy skill to his r�sum�.”
Trent sighs, but he looks a little less miserable.
“You really care about him, don’t you?” Kurt asks.
Trent blushes scarlet and looks down at his feet.
“Ever since I met him when Blaine and I first started studying together. He never saw it, of course. He was probably the only one who didn’t, but it was better like that. That way, he didn’t have to reject me and feel bad about it. Of course, I ended up losing him anyway, after the accident.”
Kurt feels like somebody is squeezing his chest, because Trent sounds so sad and so resigned to his loss, and Kurt knows that feeling, and it’s not something he would wish upon other people.
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Trent. As you said, it was an accident. Accidents happen. You were trying to help him and it just happened. It doesn’t change the fact that you were supporting him and being a good friend.”
This finally coaxes a small smile out of Trent, and when he leaves the coffee shop twenty minutes later, he has Kurt’s number programmed into his phone, and Kurt has promised to keep him updated on how Cooper’s doing. Unfortunately, Kurt is even more distracted, and he is put on register for the rest of the day after an incident involving a smashed mug, a jug of soy milk and several ruined pairs of trousers.