One Day More
I don't own Glee, because if I did Mike would have way more lines.
I also don't own Les Miserables, the musical from which I got the title of this story.
Summary: Takes place during Comeback. Mr. Schuester accidentally leaves his class to their own devices when he goes to comfort Sue, and a classroom revolution takes place. Somehow or other Finn, Mike, and Puck get caught in the crossfire, and become hostages. Hijinks ensue.
Spoilers: Season 2, Comeback.
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While Mike was aware that Mr. Schuester had only the best of intentions, the guy really needed to learn the delicate process of strategically multitasking.
It was one thing to want to come to someone's aid, but ultimately it meant very little if you couldn't even manage your own affairs before contributing to the problems of others. Mike couldn't blame him, he really couldn't. Mr. Schuester was just one of those people who just had to help, that legitimately yearned of the happiness and peace of mind of others. On many occasions this had worked in New Direction's favor, successfully assuring each member of their place and purpose on the team, encouraging them to work more cohesively, helping them with the bonding process, and eventually leading to stronger group performances.
Mike couldn't be mad at the fact that Mr. Schuester was cursed with a Superman syndrome and needed to spread his "healing touch" wherever he could.
But he could get mad at what the Spanish teacher unknowingly sacrificed to allow himself these excursions.
Especially during school hours.
Mr. Schuester running out of Spanish class wasn't that unusual of an occurrence, the world needed saving and teaching proper verb conjugation could always be pushed aside until less pressing times. Again, this didn't bother Mike, it helped slow down the pace of the lessons which, in turn, helped him absorb the material better (what little there was), which in turn helped him ace the class. He was okay with the absences, because as soon as Mr. Schuester discovered there were bigger and better things for him to lend a hand to he got a sub, or stand in, or a janitor that just happened to be nearby that wasn't doing much anyway to watch the class. Supervisor in place, the curly-haired wonder would vacate the building and the class would take that time to text/read/gossip/make out/study.
So it had been, so it shall always be.
Except things didn't always work out as easily and laid back as Mike would like them to, and like most things that happened at McKinley, it had to come to an abrupt and explosive end.
Which was kind've why Mike found himself especially pissed off at this exact moment.
Because apparently when Mrs. Pillsbury brought news that Coach Sylvester could be in possible danger it had blown Mr. Shuester's mind so much that he had jetted off without giving thought, or effort, to obtaining some kind of adult supervision for the classroom, which shouldn't have been a problem (which was why Mike couldn't be completely mad at Mr. Schuester, as he could only be credited with creating the circumstances to which his current predicament was instigated from, as opposed to the actual state of things). They were teenagers, most of them drove themselves to school, partied, would have you believe they knew everything about life, the universe, everything. They were laid back and low maintenance and this time, like all other times that had preceded it, should have been spent as a thoughtless free period that would be followed by a satisfying lunch period that would lead into happy-make-out-times with Tina.
Happiness should have been right around the corner.
But apparently, unknown to Mike and Finn and Puck (who was also quite pissed) there had been a storm brewing for a long time in the troubled minds of scholastic do-gooders. Apparently this free-time, slow paced, easy A class was not sitting well with some of the honor students (Clint and Marcy in particular, the bastards) who were constantly begging for more challenging work (the school couldn't pull together enough students to make an AP course, so with the regular hum-drums they would have to stay) and were waiting in silent contempt for Mr. Schuester's constant absences, further proving his "inability to provide properly stimulating course material".
Yeah, they were bitter nerds that knew an opportunity when they saw one and were seizing it for all it was worth.
Also, they were smart enough to wizard the rest of the class into mindless compliance, mostly because they happened to know a good opportunity when they saw it (an opportunity for different reasons though, this would be their one chance to reenact every bank robbing TV show, movie, crime novel (if any of them could be bothered with reading) they had ever seen/read/been influenced by).
Mike, Puck, and Finn were the only ones with enough logic left to attempt to do the unreasonable and use, you know, common sense, but by that time they had pretty much passed the point of losing the battle and were going straight into "surrender or die".
It had gone a little something like this:
Marcy and Clint (tagging along for the ride) had all but exploded as soon as it dawned on the class that no guard would be produced to keep tabs on them, and wildly declared war on Mr. Schuester and all things Mr.-Schuester-related (including the glee club, which had not helped Mike's attempts to negotiate at all), stating that, "Now is the time, brothers and sisters, to be heard, to tell the establishment that we will not idly sit by and twiddle our thumbs and suffer their abuse!".
Now, this alone probably would have led to nothing, because not everyone in the class was a brainiac that desired a harder course load, let alone a more rigorous pace for a class most of them were barely passing anyway, so Marcy's blaring shouts were met with a cumulative shrug before the mass of students returned to whatever they had previously been doing.
Mike had been attempting to see how many paper balls he could bounce off Puck's mohawk, Finn had been keeping score.
Unfortunately, Clint saw the ineffectiveness of appealing to the class's thirst for knowledge and employed a different tactic, properly translating Marcy's plea into one the teens were far more likely to understand.
"Think of it brothers," the females closest to the nerd halted whatever they had been doing long enough to roll their eyes at their exclusion, but Clint was unperturbed. "This could be our one opportunity to make McKinley history!"
That got a few spare teen's attention, convincing them to pause long enough to glance Clint's way, which further encouraged the misguided nerds rant.
"If we act now," Clint shouted, waving his arms wildly, gathering the attention of a few wayward Cheerios. "We could be forever known as the few who changed the rules of the game! We will be legends; we would reign over the school as those who were brave enough to rebel against this educational bureaucracy!"
Mike began uncomfortably eying the students around him, some of which were getting a little too…interested for his tastes. He hesitantly shot Finn and Puck a look of warning, jerking his head in the direction of the door.
Maybe it would be best if they left now.
Unfortunately the rumblings were already starting, a few girls who Mike couldn't put a name to if his life depended on it perking up at Clint's plans.
"You mean we would be popular?" one of them asked, eagerly turning to her friends who were similarly excited.
Mike slowly began to reach for his backpack, sending Puck another pleading look.
A look which was greatly misinterpreted.
Puck, uneasy with the thought of a riot instigating from any other source other than himself, stepped forward immediately, attempting to put an end to a mess that was clearly past their means to control. He stood up quickly, casually pressing his palms against the top of his desk until he was leaning in his stereotypical bad boy, semi-threatening way, words of only the highest quality, assuredly well thought out and strategically selected, awaiting the honor of tumbling out of his mouth.
"Are you guys stupid?" he asked, quirking one of his eyebrows.
Mike face-palmed, mildly wondering how subtly he could slide under his desk and pretend he was a part of the furniture.
Finn, earnestly trying to save Puck's ill attempted ploy, interceded before Clint or Marcy could respond, holding his hands up in a placating gesture.
"What he means," the taller teen interrupted, forcing an awkward laugh as though Puck had just told a joke the rest of the class didn't understand the punch line to. "Is that we only have like, twenty minutes of class left guys." He turned around the room, specifically looking at the no-name girls. "Why don't we just chill and get on with our lives?"
Mike had to admit that for a guy who wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, Finn had made a pretty solid plea, appealing to the student's laziness and satisfaction with mediocrity. The dancer had to marvel at the fact that he had ever doubted Finn's leadership capabilities. Well, he decided, that would no longer happen. For now on Finn could be trusted with blind obedience, granted his demands weren't too…outlandish.
Still, to this point he hadn't asked for anything too unreasonable, so Mike supposed he was safe.
It seemed that Clint could sense the hope that was just within Mike's grasp, because in the next second he ripped it away from the poor jock, dangling it in front of the dancer before eviscerating it completely, leaving nothing but dust and the wrecked shambles of a dream. Because where Finn could use his natural charisma to elicit his desired response, Clint had the power of knowledge and subterfuge, and quickly outwitted Finn's home grown charm with a stupid thing called strategy.
Simply put, the resentful egghead reminded the class of their supposed hatred (usually it was just apathy) towards the New Directions, and because of this any and all ideas coming from their members could only lead to social suicide and clearly the only way to prevent this is to do the exact opposite, preferably to the extreme, and preferably in a loud, flamboyant, and overdramatic fashion.
Which was how on this not-so wonderful Tuesday, Mike somehow found himself squished in a closet tied to his New Direction compatriots with an alarming amount of jump ropes that Mr. Schuester just happened to have lying untouched in some of his filing cabinets. The logical part of Mike had determined that the director was going to attempt to persuade the New Directions into a jump rope routine but had thought better of it, because any other reason was too unfathomable and unsettling for Mike to comprehend.
Maybe he just really liked jump ropes.
Outside of their closet, The Revolution, led by Clint and Marcy, was going on at high-speed, with them shooting off fast demands to whoever happened to be in the hallway, threatening their "hostages" (Puck protesting the title every time it was mentioned until Mike finally managed to stomp on his foot to silence him) should any funny business occur. So far Mike was almost certain that none of the faculty had even noticed this new activity, perhaps assuming it was simply one of Mr. Schuester's more…eccentric teaching strategies, because no attempts had been made by anyone of authority to defuse the situation. It was weird, considering how crafty Clint had been to get this started, that he couldn't even manage to get his message across, but perhaps he simply used all his intellect to ignite the situation and simply lacked the means to continue it.
Finn had managed to send off a warning text to Artie before they were tied up (because they were outnumbered, not because they weren't big, strong, athletic guys who were forced into submission by staplers and miscellaneous baseball bats that Mr. Schuester hadn't discarded after the guys of glee club banded together and prominently refused to sing "Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo"), so there was still hope. In fact, Mike was pretty sure he recognized Rachel's voice over the hustle of the uprising, because they were talking to somebody, but that could have just been a hallucination brought on by heat stroke.
Seriously, Mr. Shue needed to get some ventilation in here or something because Mike was dying.
Puck was too, but Mike and Finn were less inclined to listen to his whining because it was mostly his fault they were trapped in the first place.
"I hate you," Mike grumbled, chafing his wrists as he struggled uselessly against the ropes, wiggling back and forth to get some leverage. The closet wasn't very big in the first place, but it wasn't like they had to worry about violating personal bubbles because Marcy was a mariner and had knotted them together as closely as possible, taking great satisfaction in their discomfort (Mike had glared at her the entire time, he didn't care if it wasn't the laid-back thing to do). Aside from the ropes holding their hands behind their backs (which was as uncomfortable as it looked) Marcy had looped them together after shoving them into the closet, Mike perched awkwardly half on Finn and half on Puck, who had been pushed in first, side by side. She must have taken out some of her anger on the few that dared to defy her because the ropes around his chest were really starting to make breathing difficult, not that he allowed that to hinder his attempts to express his anger.
"Seriously," Mike huffed again, trying to shimmy down out of the ropes but only being met with fail. "I hope one of them comes in here and punches you in the face."
"Stop moving," Puck growled in his normal volume, causing Finn and Mike to immediately shoosh him, eyeing the door warily (they discovered early on that Marcy preferred her prisoners to be quiet and enforced this rule under threat of more rope…and knots…and not-breathings).
Puck glared at them (probably, Mike was mostly guessing because the other teen's head had moved, and the dancer couldn't look back without being way too far into Puck's personal face territory than he ever wanted to be ever), huffing petulantly before starting up again, quieter than before. "Seriously Chang, your ass is bony as hell."
While Mike had disciplined himself to ignore any of Puck's demands when they had been initially tied up, simply on principal, the dancer decided to comply to this one, if only because he was mentally scarred at Puck mentioning his ass in any way, shape, or form.
Finn shuddered behind him, of a similar opinion.
Unable to free himself, Mike settled for continuing his mild tirade, elbowing Puck lightly in a completely accidental way before continuing, "If you had just kept your mouth shut we would be eating lunch right now."
"Do you think they're going to start that without us?" Finn interrupted, genuinely bothered by the idea, and Mike sighed quietly, attempting for the eighth time that day to untie the ropes through his undiscovered power of telekinesis.
You never know, he could be an undiscovered X-Man and just never be aware of it.
"What the hell does that matter?" Puck groused, twisting sporadically (because clearly the no-moving thing only applied to Mike because it wasn't like Puck's flailings were slowly choking Mike and Finn, not at all). "We're freaking trapped in a closet."
A familiar melody sprang into Mikes mind, unbidden, and he paused his useless efforts of escape and even more useless efforts of breathing to ponder its significance.
"Which is your fault…I think he's trying to say," Finn helpfully supplied, pulling minutely away from Puck to earn Mike some breathing room.
Yes, he would never doubt Finn ever again.
Puck, however…
"Whatever," the mohawked teen dismissed, finally ceasing his…whatever he had been doing and flopping back against the wall, choking Mike for half a second before Finn moved back too, and the dancer unashamedly nestled back into them, guaranteeing the success of his breathing for now on.
Puck, oblivious to the why of their movements, scoffed at the loudest volume possible while still remaining on Marcy's good side, turning his head away. "You two are such Nancy's."
Mike felt Finn shrug, and he didn't bother addressing this statement at all, he was far too tired.
Eventually Tina would figure out something was wrong. If not at lunch, then when they didn't show up for rehearsal, and maybe they would coordinate some kind of rescue mission and Mike could finally stop thinking about the fact he was squished together with two other very sweaty males…in the dark…one of which had commented on his ass.
He was afraid the scarring would never go away.
Just as Mike was about to give up and take a nap (he had been afraid if he went to sleep Puck would take the opportunity to do something to completely worsen the situation) when a commotion started outside their dark, sheltered world. At first Mike thought it was simply a figment of his imagination, or that Clint had just decided to take a different approach to shouting at people in the hallway, but there was this massive amount of noise coming from within the classroom, desks being knocked over, students yelling, there were whistles blowing too, which made no sense because who the hell would have a whistle…?
Mike almost didn't believe his eyes when he first saw it, but he blinked again, tilting his head quizzically (as much as the ropes would allow) as he stared in wonder at the small crack of light emanating from the bottom of the door. For there, as though it were par for the course, was a steady stream of…fog, or something, not smoke, it didn't smell like smoke. In fact, if Mike had to put a name to it he would say it smelled like the hazers they had used during the halftime show.
He must have been more air-deprived than he had thought, because he could not for the life of him figure out why it would smell like that. Mr. Schuester kept the hazers in the choir room, not his class room, so why…?
The ruckus rose to a crescendo, yelling and screaming and crashing and Mike has no idea why no one, no one of authority had shown up to ask questions, how the would-be revolutionists could possibly get away with so much, but then the door suddenly snapped open, a wave of fog gracefully tumbling into the sweltering closet as Mike, Finn, and Puck blinked quickly, adjusting to the new light.
When the fog cleared and they could see again, a very amused Lauren and Tina were standing at the front of the door, and Mike could hear Santana cursing out some students in Spanish while Rachel shamelessly berated them, ignoring Britney's innocent question that had something to do with a smoke god.
They were released…eventually, after everyone had gotten their fair share of pictures, (and even then they only got out because Mike started choking again, and Sam was nice enough to pity things like that). The revolution had been quelled, the students having escaped after New Directions launched a rather impressive counterattack (which, to Finn's disappointment, had taken place during lunch). Marcy and Clint were nowhere to be found, but that wouldn't stop Puck from getting back at them...later.
Right now they had some cleaning to do if they wanted to make sure Mr. Schuester kept his teaching position.
By the end of it none of them got lunch, no rules were overturned, no teachers were fired, and no learning agendas were altered. No legends had been made, no new students rose to popularity, and no lasting impressions were held.
If it weren't for the fact that Tina and Kurt had made matching T-shirts (Santana demanding duplicates made for herself and Britney as soon as she saw them) bearing the tied-up pictures of the three teenage boys, Mike would have been willing to believe the entire thing was a nightmare.
They were lucky enough to convince the others not to put the pictures on Facebook, but the t-shirts were probably going to stay.
A few weeks later Mike found a pink jump rope in his mail box, a note attached saying, "The revolution is not dead, and we will not allow you to hinder our success!"
Wordlessly, he had handed the evidence over to Puck, and a few weeks after that Marcy and Clint had both transferred to new schools under Miss Pillsbury's suggestion, their attendance at McKinley having far too many negative effects on their mental status. They kept murmuring something about a phantom following them around, causing general misfortune, though no one else had ever seen it, and they very quietly moved away, taking their discord with them.
Mike forgave Puck after that, and neither one of them ever spoke of the incident again.
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Endnotes:
Hey all, I'm back!
Alright, a few months ago I rewatched the second half of season two with my mom, who had never seen it, and I was struck with the idea for this story while watching 'Comeback', and it had to be written.
There are a few other miscellaneous stories that are waiting in the wings that coincide with those episodes, which you will see in time.
That Mr. Schuester, he really needs to stop leaving those kids alone.
Until next time.