Title: Old Stories (14/?)
Author: Rokwynd
Rating: M for language
Pairings: Canon Pairings for Glee and Xander/Dawn for Buffy.
Fandoms: Glee/Buffy
Summary:Lima has no magic: the high school's hierarchy involves student slushies; the cheer coach reminds her of a demon; and her own mystical origins reappear. Dawn Summers is seeking Lima's missing magic; can she find something for the Glee club to sing about?
Dawn leaned her head against the cool metal of the filing cabinet, just taking the moment to absorb the merciful quiet in the choir room office. Such a blessed quiet after the last hour. Only one hour and so many mental scars. The look of shock on Finn's face after Kurt smacked his ass. How do you even begin forgetting the sight of one hand slapping?
The hallway door opening forced her to shift a little to the left, snapping her out of her reverie. Will slouched into the office, two cups of coffee in hand. He passed one to her, and today she was thankful it was black; keeping anything else down would be unnecessarily complicated.
"So," she asked while quietly blowing on her coffee to cool it, "How fired are we?"
"Don't ask me how, but as of right now you and I still have jobs," Will said, reaching into his desk and pulling out a small bottle. He made his coffee an Irish. "I borrowed it from Ken," he said by way of explanation.
Dawn held out her cup and Will obliged her silently; industrial coffee and cheap whiskey: drink of choice for the reprieved. They sat in silence for a moment, sipping at their drinks and gathering the necessary courage—liquid and otherwise. Will set his cup down and started absently tapping his fingers on the desk. Dawn couldn't help noticing he was tapping to the tune of "Push It."
"If it helps, talking to the kids took all of five seconds," she remarked with a bitter laugh. "As soon as I had them all sitting down, I didn't even have a chance to ask them who was responsible. Not that we needed to guess, but Rachel stood up and took all the blame. I have to give her credit. So I sent her to meet you outside the office and laid into the rest of the kids for a little bit." She shrugged. "The usual themes, of course: responsibility, betrayal, and—"Oh, by the way, you might have killed Glee Club." It didn't last too long. Mostly I just gave them detentions and sent them home."
Dawn took another sip, bracing at the smell, "How'd it go with Sue and Figgins?"
Will smiled awkwardly, "About as well as you think it did; some good news some bad news. Remind me again me why I had to talk to them?"
"Sue hates my guts, even more than she hates yours," Dawn ventured with a small smile of her own. "And to be completely honest, I probably would have said something to make things worse." She shrugged. "I'm sure you happened to notice that I suck at apologies."
"Really?" Will said, his eyes almost as wide as Emma's. "I never noticed that!"
Dawn rolled her eyes, but before she could respond Will slid an American flag-festooned list at her. She took a moment to glance at the list: Jesus, clowns and luftballons. One of these things was seriously not like the others.
"Our new song list," Will said before she could comment, "According to Figgins, we can use any of the songs on this list. His pastor helped him pick them out." Will said the last with a wry smile.
"This is ridiculous. I know I've been in Europe for a while, but we still have the First Amendment, right? I mean, I can't think of any song on this list that would get us taken seriously."
"Maybe not," Will conceded, "but for now let's play ball. This is Figgins, after all. In a week or two he'll forget about this and worry about something else. Oh," Will said casually, "there is one more thing. You need to make an adjustment to the budget."
"Will, what adjustments? We don't have any money to spend."
Like a showman, he passed another slip of paper across the desk. She rolled her eyes again and flipped it over, and then her eyes focused on the account balance and she slowly looked up at Will.
"Whose piggybank did you rob?" she said in amazement, double checking the figures on the sheet. "This is kind of insane. I haven't had a chance to talk to any parents about being boosters yet."
"We just inherited the Cheerio's dry cleaning fund," Will shrugged. "Apparently they charge more to do it in Europe. It must be an exchange rate thing."
"Okay," Dawn said, purposefully folding the sheet to avoid the temptation of all that shiny money, "Enough of this piecemeal crap. What exactly happened?"
So he finally told her, foster care threats and all. Even hearing about it, Dawn couldn't help being grateful that she had opted for dealing with the kids. After the recital Will leaned back in his seat and sagged. "That's about it, really."
"Maybe we need to let the kids manipulate us more often," Dawn mused, still playing with the account form. "I mean, are there even words for how thoroughly they played us?"
"I don't think so," Will said, laughing a little. "I could think of a couple words in Spanish that described us instead. I mean, they kept me so mad complaining about the song and bothering you that we never even touched base."
"Yep," Dawn shrugged. "We got our asses handed to us by six teenagers. Man, we are so screwed when we get the 12 we need for sectionals."
She strutted down the hall, the freshman cheerio who had been sent to get her scrambling in her wake. She didn't have to pretend who had asked for her. Ms. Hendriks could stutter and pretend, but she knew it as soon as she saw the uniform; they all did. Sue Sylvester wanted something, and she would get whatever she wanted. That was exactly the kind of attitude Santana was working on inspiring in all those around her.
She and Quinn might be working together for now, but that was only until the dust cleared. After that stunt Q had talked them into with that stupid glee club, a tornado was coming and there might not be any survivors. Quinn was risking all their social standings just so she could chase after her stupid boyfriend. Boys were disposable; you used them until you didn't need them or until you found a new kid who wanted to buy better dinners. Then you used them both: lather rinse repeat.
If Q was that worried and Rachel "Manhands" Berry really could steal her boyfriend away, then the big doofus wasn't worth having around. It's really what she got for playing Ms. Pure and Christian. Santana knew how to keep Puck in line; sure, he was a jackass sometimes, but he was a football player and he was hot. So what if he screwed around with other girls? He knew Brittany and Quinn were off limits. So long as he didn't touch them, he got to keep his balls attached.
He had been a little cocky lately, even for Puck; it was probably time to flash Jewfro some more boob to keep him focused. Santana smirked to herself. She could take care of these things just fine without dragging everyone else down with her. It was all about attitude.
She felt rather than heard the mini-Cheerio scamper off as they arrived outside coach's office. Interesting; this conversation was eyes and ears only. It didn't feel right walking down the hall by herself. Maybe it was a sign of weakness, but she had gotten used to having her ladies flanking her. Screw it. Coach Sylvester wanted to talk to her alone, and crazy or not, it paid to jump whenever she blew her whistle.
"Lopez, get your keister in here!" Sue bellowed from the other side of the door. Santana didn't hesitate.
Coach Sylvester was climbing her Stairmaster like she was going to beat the machine to the top. Coach had her weights in both arms, and one swung way close to Santana's face as she scrambled inside the door.
"Sit!" Coach snarled. Santana sat. Coach continued her climb. "You took your sweet-ass time getting here. I thought for a second that you might be getting soft on me." Coach shook her head and gritted her teeth; it might have been a smile.
The machine whirled into a new cycle and Sue pounded her feet harder into the pedals. Santana wasn't totally sure, but she thought the machine was groaning.
"That was a moment of weakness," Sue said candidly, not even pausing for breath, "and I thought to myself, 'Sue, you're being awfully unfair to Santana.'" The machine ground to a halt and she stepped off and began to (Yuck!) towel herself down.
"So Lopez, I'm going to give you a chance to prove me wrong." Coach took a seat and started spooning protein shake mix into her little blender. "I have a job that I need done, and you are exactly the person for that job."
"What's the job? You already have us spying on that stupid Glee club," Santana groused.
"Spying is such an ugly word, Santana," Coach said, snapping shut the lid on the blender. "What I need is information." The blender started whirring.
Seriously, why the hell wasn't she asking Quinn? Blondie pretty much lives up Coach's ass, Santana thought. She kept quiet, though, and tried to keep her face neutral. Coach was dissecting her the same way she did when someone fucked up an NC State. Before she could say anything else, Coach tossed a black and red (naturally) flash drive into Santana's lap.
"That flash drive I didn't give you just now has all the information that I and the school files have on our subject." Coach was sipping her shake now. "It's all pretty basic, and because it's interview season and I don't want to bother with finding out more, it's your job. You still take orders from Quinn, but if you need to break off to get this done, do it."
Santana wanted to ask what was in it for her, but maybe it would be enough to get on Coach's good side. The Cheerio rose and walked out of the office, heading straight for the nurse's office. It was time for math so Puck should be in there—and she needed some serious release.
Later that evening Santana sat in front of her laptop and popped in the flash drive. It was loaded. It looked like Coach had pulled every school file on whoever it was. Santana shrugged a little and started to sort the files. It really wasn't any of her business why Coach Sylvester had such a bone on for Ms. Summers.