Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 56th cycle. Now cycle 57!
"All Is Not Lost"
Beiste & Ewan (OC; Damian McGinty) - Ewan/Sugar, New Directions etc
Beiste & Ewan series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)
It had taken one week more for them to come up with a plan, but that plan had been Sugar's. She claimed she had been inspired by the story of the Trojan horse. Ewan was scared for a moment when he had envisioned a giant horse being wheeled into the shoe store, but then she had told him there was no horse. "I said I was inspired by it, I didn't say I was going to do the same thing," she told him as they walked toward the choir room.
"Then what is it?" he asked, stopping when they reached the room and he saw that the rest of the Glee Club was there. "What's going on?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, your girlfriend summoned us here," Santana revealed, mildly annoyed.
"Go sit," Sugar told Ewan before moving to shut the doors. "Okay, Glee Club, listen up!" she came back to stand before them like she was giving a pep talk to her sports team. "As you know, three weeks ago, there was a robbery at the shoe store where Ewan… used to work."
"And we still don't believe you had anything to do with it," Artie raised his hand, and Ewan gave a quiet nod.
"Quiet in front," Sugar spoke, and Artie lowered his hand. "The police department has yet to find the real bad guy, and in that time, poor Ewan is being treated badly… Not to mention he's not working, so he's not getting paid, which is bad for his trip home this summer." Ewan was feeling the spotlight on him, and he didn't know where to look.
"So what are we supposed to do about it?" Tina asked, more than willing to help.
"Ewan believes it has to be one of the other employees, so I thought about it and the answer is simple." Silence hung over the room as they had no idea where she was going with this. "We need to make him or her do it again!"
"Wait, what?" Ewan sat up.
"No, but listen, it's brilliant," she gave him a smile. "If there's another robbery, and it can't be Ewan, then they'll know he was innocent."
"Okay, can I just…" Rachel raised her hand, and Sugar pointed to her, like a teacher giving a student permission to speak. "How are you going to prove who did do it?"
"I'll show you later," Sugar promised.
"Fine," Rachel didn't sound convinced. "Even if you have a way to prove who it is, how can you be so sure that there would be another robbery?"
"That's easy," Sugar scoffed. "The best way to make someone do something is to give them a reason to… like a magnet, if the magnet in this case was a massive load of money," she mimed with excitement.
"Sure," Brittany nodded, getting a few looks.
"Where's this big wad going to come from exactly?" Santana asked, and here Sugar grinned, looking at all of them.
"Who wants to go shoe shopping?"
X
Ewan had not seen any of it, he couldn't. The whole idea was that he couldn't be put anywhere near the store during any part of the plan. But then he had Sugar and the others to tell him all about it.
Phase one was to create the incentive. They knew their window of opportunity, and as soon as it opened, they were in. As innocently as they could make it look, little by little, all of them had gone by the store and browsed, bought one pair, two pairs, more if they could manage. Sugar had made out with more than half a dozen pairs. The number didn't matter so much as the fact that they would all pay cash.
"I think someone might have blabbed," Sugar had told him.
"What?" Ewan didn't want anyone else getting in trouble for him.
"No, no, but it's okay. It's just while I was there, I saw Mr. Schuester and Miss Pillsbury. They each bought a few pairs, and when he saw me, Mr. Schuester did sort of a wink," she imitated. "I almost thought he was being creepy, but then I got it, he was saying they were there because of the plan," she explained, and Ewan smiled. For how depressed the whole ordeal had left him, seeing all these people rally around him had made him feel truly accepted and cared for.
"How much money do you think's in there now?"
"Between us and normal customers? A lot," she grinned.
"I kind of feel bad, but I really hope the thief bites, we can't really ask them to do this again," he pointed out, and she frowned, realizing this as well.
"He will… Hell, I would…" she laughed, then grew quiet. "I mean I wouldn't, not really…"
X
He was woken up the next morning when his aunt came into his room to tell him there had been another robbery at the shoe store the night before. He sat up in his bed, taking his phone and calling Sugar. All she had said was that it was time for phase two, and she would take care of it. He wasn't sure if he should go or not, but finally he got up, got dressed, and headed down to the mall. He was just arriving when he saw the cops leading Ronny, one of his co-workers, to a squad car. He had handcuffs on and, when he saw Ewan, he turned his head back down.
"Ewan…" He looked up to find Rich coming toward him, Sugar behind him. The girl got ahead, rushing to her boyfriend's arms.
"We did it, the whole thing, it worked!" she whispered. "I'll explain later." Ewan looked to her, then back to Rich as he approached.
"I was hoping you'd come," he spoke, tapping his shoulder.
"What happened? Did they arrest Ronny?"
"He confessed, to both robberies," Rich nodded.
"Not that he had a choice," Sugar grinned. "We nailed him good."
"You…" Rich frowned, confused, but then he let out a breath. "Better you don't tell me. Look, I need to take care of things, but after, I think you and I need to have a talk."
Ewan had watched him go, then turned to Sugar. "What was phase two?" he asked her, and she presented him with… "A pen? That's phase two?"
"Not any kind of pen," she explained. "The ink is invisible, until you wave a black light over it. I took it from my father's store, and on all the bills that I used I wrote something…"
"What did you write?" Ewan asked.
"I was robbed from Henley Shoes," she beamed, and he laughed. "I had Mike call in an anonymous tip, they checked all the employees' wallets and Ronny had a couple of my bills in his, so…" she shrugged.
"You're kind of a genius," he couldn't stop smiling.
"That's what I keep saying," she smiled back innocently. "He's going to give you your job back now, right?" He didn't know exactly what Rich wanted to tell him, but he could hope that this was it.
"I hope so."
THE END
A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!