Disclaimer: If I owned Glee, Matt and Mike would have lines. Lots of them. See my point?
Matt Rutherford has a five-step plan for getting out of Lima. It's not that he really minds his hometown; it's got some cool stuff. But what it doesn't have is a pro football team. And Matt Rutherford is determined to play pro football.
You see, Matt is good at football. Really, really good at football. He's gone to football camps in the summer where coaches have approached him and told him just that. But when you go to McKinley, and they win one game a season on a trick play, college coaches aren't exactly lining up to buy tickets to your games. Plus, apparently nobody taught anybody in the entire town of Lima how to block.
But back to the five-step plan. It's made up of five major steps composed of littler, less drastic steps. And Matt doesn't have any delusions about the difficulty of this plan. But this is what he's got to do, because dreams are important.
Step Two is to win half of their games his junior year. Matt knows that this is possible, because he's getting better and better at running without blocks, Puck and Finn can help him out with scoring occasionally, and Mike's playing corner in a defense that's pretty damn solid. That should at least get some coaches interested enough to start talking to him outside of summer camp.
Step Three is to win an Ohio state championship his senior year. He's knows this sounds farfetched right now, but the ingredients are all there. When the incoming freshmen are sophomores, all those fabulous linemen that class is producing will get to play, so he'll finally have someone to run behind. Finn and Puck will hopefully only get better. As long as the defense has Mike at one corner and Jim at the other, plus a couple beastly linemen, Matt's not too worried about that. That should get the kind of colleges he needs interested him.
Step Four is to sign with Ohio State. There, he'll go on to eternal glory and god-like status on campus as he collects awards and trophies. Hopefully, one of those trophies will be a Heisman. He's already started working on his speech, because if you believe it, you can achieve it. God, when did he start talking like Rachel?
And Step Five is, of course, ever-lasting celebrity and millions of dollars for playing the game he loves in the NFL. Super Bowl rings and MVP awards come into play at this stage of the plan. But of course, before he can accomplish any of the other steps, he's got to take care of Step One.
And Step One's the hardest; because Step One is convince Kurt Hummel to go out for the football team for two more years.
Now, it's not purely for selfish reasons he thinks Kurt should go out for the football team. It actually does cut down on the bullying he faces, and if the bullies still want to mess with him, there are actually about twenty guys on the football team who won't stand for people messing with their teammates. And that includes Kurt, sexual preference aside. Plus, he knows that Kurt likes kicking, and that Kurt likes just how proud it makes his dad.
And, he honestly does like Kurt. The kid is funny as hell and nice when you're on his side, and willing to help you out with just about anything you ask and he doesn't take shit and he sticks up for his friends. And the boy can kick like a mule. It's not even funny how much natural talent that kid has built up in that skinny right leg of his.
And Matt needs that golden leg, because he can only carry the offense so far on his back. So when the offense stalls, he needs Kurt to come in and finish the job. And because dreams are important and to achieve it you have to believe it, he's got to talk to Kurt.
So when Mercedes calls him and asks if he wants to hang out with her, Mike, Quinn, Brittany and Kurt, he starts looking for his keys before she even finishes the question. Mercedes tells him they're hanging at Kurt's and he should come over as soon as he can. Matt's already pulling out of his driveway.
It takes him the entire drive over plus the entire four and a half hours that they hang out in Kurt's basement, watching Breakfast Club and then Footloose, to work up the courage to talk to Kurt. The last half hour is spent arguing over whether Mike could out-dance Kevin Bacon. In the end they decide he can, just before Burt yells down the stairs that he's heading to bed, and Kurt tells them everyone should probably head home.
Matt's still nervous, but school starts in just over a month, and he wants to leave himself as much time as possible to convince Kurt to do it. Matt wonders for a moment where Finn is, but decides not to add that to his particular list of worries. He parked in the street so he doesn't have to let anyone out since he arrived last. Cause this is just one tiny step in the big plan. Believe, achieve, he says in his head as Kurt kisses Mercedes's cheek and hugs her before she leaves the basement, calling out a good-bye to Matt as she goes. Kurt didn't seem to realize that he had still been there.
"How can I help you, Matt?" he asked, and Matt shoved his hands into his pocket just for something to do with them and took one giant breath before he starts talking.
"I need a favor. And it's not a little favor like 'Let me borrow your pencil or please play the piano for the solo I'm never gonna get.' Or one of those, like, major ones where I owe you like seven in return, you know, 'Let me drive your car on my date tonight so she's impressed or pretend to be my girlfriend for a wedding," Kurt raises his eyebrows at the last part and Matt holds his hands up defensively, "Not that I would ever ask you to do that, it's just an example. But, uh, it's not that kind of favor, I promise. It's actually the kind of favor where I basically owe you for the rest of my life.
"I know that you and I aren't best friends, like Mike and I or you and Mercedes, and that we weren't even friends at all until, like, partway through last year, but we're pretty good friends now, so I figured I would give it a shot," here he takes a giant breath to mentally prepare himself, "I want you to play football the next two years," he finished, and the look on Kurt's face would have been comical if Matt's entire future hadn't depended on the smaller boy's answer.
Matt started speaking again before Kurt could try answering, "I know maybe that's not your idea of fun, but I know you do like kicking, I know you do, cause when you're kicking, you have that same look on your face that Mike has when he's dancing or Mercedes has when she's singing or I have when I'm running for touchdowns. And I know it makes your dad proud, and man, you got talent out the whazoo. I mean it; you've got more talent then that whole team. I've seen you at practice, out there kicking fifty, sixty yarders like it's cake, man. Most guys would give several important body parts to be able to kick like that.
"The team needs you, and not that you need the team or anything, but they could certainly help you out. It's hard for Mike and I to keep up with all the crap people try to do to you, and it's not that we're not willing to keep it up, but if you were on the team, it would be so much easier for all involved parties.
"And my whole future kind of depends on this, not to put you under any pressure or anything, but I've kind of got this five step plan, but that won't really work out well if the first step falls through. That's you by the way, getting you to play is the first step, because nobody on that team can score except for me, really, and most of them are literally as dumb as bricks. They're never getting out of this town, but I got to man, I just have to. Not that Lima's that bad or anything, it's just not my dream, you know? It's not what gets me to smile after a bad day or makes a rainy practice or sore legs or begging one of your friends to please, God, play football totally worth it.
"And I do like you as a friend, man, you're cool and all, and it would make it a whole lot easier on both of us if there was more crossover between football and Glee, because even the morons that make up most of our team aren't dumb enough to mess with the guys who win them football games. And, plus, who knows-."
"Matt. Matt! Matthew Rutherford!" Kurt saying his full name distracts him from his speech, and he looks at the other boy, "You're aware that you're rambling, right?"
Matt nodded, "Yeah, I am, but this is really, really important and-."
Kurt cuts him off, as in actually gives the cut-off sign that Mr. Schue gives in Glee, and Matt takes a deep breath and stops. Kurt makes the motion that indicates he should take several more, and Matt simply follows instructions, because there's really nothing left to say.
"You have a five-step plan?" asked Kurt, and Matt nodded, "And I'm step number 1?" another nod, "And this step requires me to play football for two more years?"
"Yeah, sorta. Well, not sorta. Totally. It totally requires you to play football for the next two years."
Kurt considers it for a moment, then shrugs, and Matt's confused for a moment before he speaks, "Why not? Sure."
Matt does a double take when he says that, "Sure? As in you'll do it?" and Kurt nodded, "I didn't expect it to be that easy."
Kurt shrugged again, "You had a lot of good points. I do enjoy kicking, I do enjoy how proud it makes my dad, I am your friend, it would provide me, and hopefully by extension my friends, a certain level of protection. And, plus, it would be useful having someone owe me big time."
Matt is pretty sure he'll have to have someone scrape his jaw off the floor, and as soon as someone does that, he kind of wants to give Kurt Hummel a giant hug. Like the kind of hug you give your best buddy when he tells you something awesome, like, well, he doesn't really know what Mike could tell him that would make him want to hug him that hard. He wants to break ribs with this hug.
He really hadn't thought that it would be this easy. Matt had figured that it would take several weeks, and the possible recruitment of Mercedes and Quinn as co-conspirators to convince Kurt to do it. And now Kurt is standing there, having agreed to this slightly crazy plan with almost no effort but much nervousness on Matt's part, looking at him like he can leave the basement at any time because Kurt has to get started on his nightly moisturizing routine.
Matt sticks his hands in his pockets before he speaks, "Well, uh, thanks, man. You have no clue how much this means to me. Uh, camp's in a few weeks, so, uh, I'll probably see you before then, and I can give you the details. Uh, so, good night," he said, not sure how to thank the guy whose helping to make your biggest dream come true, so he leaves before his awkwardness manages to talk Kurt out of it.
But when he gets out to his car, he jumps in the air several times as he pumps his fist, and then does a dance that would probably be embarrassing if he wasn't so damn happy. When he gets home that night, he's still got this ridiculous grin on his face as he crosses off the first step on the poster he's got hanging above his bed.
If you can believe it, you can achieve it, says the voice in his head that sounds like a ridiculous, scary mix between Rachel and Mr. Schue, but Matt is too happy and tired to worry about that now. It's down to a four-step plan, and that feels pretty good.
So I'm kind of inappropriately in love with Matt Rutherford and Mike Chang. And I know you're all like "But, Zoe, they've only had like four combined lines. How can you love them that much?" But I do. I also love Kurt Hummel. A ridiculous amount of love for him.
And so I kind of want to make this a multi-chapter fic about the football team, with it mainly following those three's story lines (with kind of a primary focus on Matt). Like the story of Glee is told through football, rather then us finding out about football because of something in Glee. It would include the whole cast, of course, and still contain plenty about Glee Club, but Glee just wouldn't be the thing that was the main focus. I'm probably going to write it even if there's no interest, but if you were interested, you could let me know in a review, while you're telling me what you thought of the story.