CHAPTER 13

"Ugh, man, my shoulder is absolutely killing me from last night." Puck grumbled as the Glee guys walked to the locker room together, not for school football practice, but for phys ed class, in which they were ironically also doing the football unit.

"You're hurting? You weren't the one who was sacked like 50 times in the first half alone." Finn shot back. "I woke up this morning and I couldn't feel my own neck!"

"Aww… is playing with a helmet and pads protection getting you guys down?" Marcus joked. The football players glared at him.

"Trust me, Marcus… getting speared by a hard plastic helmet at 10 miles an hour is painful as hell, no matter how much padding you're wearing." Sam responded.

"We can show you if you want." Puck snapped playfully, gently shoving Marcus against the lockers.

"Hard pass, man. I'd rather stick to a sport where you don't stop the entire game every time someone makes a tackle."

"I still don't understand why you aren't just joining the football team already." Finn remarked. "Aren't you Canadian? Isn't football a bigger sport over there anyways? Why'd you choose Rugby?"

Marcus nodded.

"You said it exactly, Hudson. It's a bigger sport, which means there's more attention to it. People actually come to the high school games to support their school. So if you screw up, you aren't going to be public enemy number 1 of the whole school."

"Sure. But if you do well, you'll quickly become one of the most popular guys in the school." Puck responded. Marcus shrugged.

"That's not really a good thing for me. I like being by myself or with just close friends. It's more peaceful that way. I don't want to walk down the corridor and immediately be surrounded by people who the day I graduate, will completely forget I exist."

"It's really not that deep, man. It's just a fun sport to get involved in." Sam laughed. At this point, the group had finally made it to the locker room, and they changed into their Phys Ed clothes. Each one of them finished changing and preparing for class pretty quickly, and Marcus was soon the last person left in the room. Everyone had left the locker room in a clatter of cleats against the floor, but it was taking Marcus longer than usual to get ready. He needed to put on his elbow brace - too many falls on that arm in a decade of Rugby meant that he needed to wear it now even to just throw and catch a ball safely.

After putting all of that on, he was finally ready to join the rest of his class. Marcus looked at his watch. He was only like 2 minutes late, so he was okay. Suddenly, he heard the slam of lockers behind him, and he spun around to see the smirking faces of Karofsky and Azimio right in front of him

"What's up, new kid. We heard that you joined Homo Explosion." Karofsky remarked. "Kind of surprised you aren't in the girls' locker room like the rest of your gay losers."

"What do you want?" Marcus grumbled. Something didn't bode well with him right now. The pair of jocks seemed like they were up to something. He just didn't know what. Were they going to try and beat him up or something? Because an empty locker room would be the perfect location for it.

"Let's get something through your head, newbie, in case your new butt buddies haven't mentioned it to you already." Azimio said. "We make it our mission to make sure every single member of the Glee club is slushied at least once a week."

Marcus had heard about this from his friends. Apparently, the way of bullying at this school wasn't so much physical altercations, but was instead dumping iced slushies on the nerds' heads.

"It got us to thinking… because you just joined, you're the only member of the club we hadn't slushed yet. And that's just not right. You know what we're saying?" Karofsky remarked. "We have tradition to uphold."

All of a sudden, he felt a tsunami of freezing liquid come crashing down onto his head. Marcus froze in shock, his vision turning blue as the sticky liquid trickled over his eyes. When he wiped the liquid away from his eyes and he was finally able to see again

"WHAT THE HELL, GUYS?!" Marcus snarled, trying to lunge at them but immediately almost losing his balance and slipping over. He had to catch himself the lockers to prevent himself from wiping out completely. The liquid slushie had begun to pool by his feet, his now sopping wet clothes dripping and collecting on the ground. The two jocks weren't fazed one bit though by his outburst. They merely guffawed and jeered at him as he tried to wipe the slushie off him as best he could.

"See you in gym class, bitch." Karofsky snickered at him. They left the locker room moments later, leaving Marcus alone once more. As soon as they had left, Marcus came to a horrible realisation… these were his only gym clothes! He needed to change into a spare set of clothing, but he hadn't moved his stuff into a locker yet so didn't have a spare set of clothing with him. He obviously couldn't go to gym class looking like this, covered in a sticky blueberry drink. But what other choice did he have? He had nothing else to wear.

Marcus' frustration bubbled up inside him, festering and taking over like a plague, and before he knew it, it was erupting.

"Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!" Marcus yelled, beating his fists against a nearby locker over and over again. He HATED being bullied. He was a pretty big, athletic guy - while not quite Karofsky or Azimio's size, he was pretty close behind - but his isolated and quiet nature still made him a target to bullies. Bullying made him feel so helpless. So small. Every fibre of his being wanted to fight back, get even, but he used every ounce of energy he had to quash those feelings. He didn't want to even attempt to fight back because he knew that here in Lima, nobody knew about his past situation. He wouldn't be able to use the "mom trauma" as his 'get out of jail free' card, as he had been able to do back in his old school.

So Marcus instead let out his anger out on the lockers opposite him, feeling his knuckles begin to throb in pain. He didn't dare stop though, not until he heard heavy footsteps of someone running into the room.

"Hey, is everything okay in he-" Quinn began, but her voice trailed off when she saw him. She was late for class and had been hurrying to class when she heard banging sounds coming from inside the boys' locker room. Quickly running inside to investigate what was going on, when she saw Marcus there, shivering from the cold of the dripping blueberry slushie from the tips of his dark hair to the bottom of his blue cleats, she couldn't help but stifle a laugh. Marcus noticed, however, and his eyes narrowed angrily.

"Something funny?" Marcus muttered shortly, his eyes screaming at her to shut up. Quinn wasn't intimidated though in the slightest, and if anything, her smile and laughter increased.

"That's a… bold look you're going for there." She commented. "You look like Frosty the Snowman when springtime comes around."

"Haha." Marcus responded, sarcastically, zero traces of a smile on his face as he glared at her and began to turn away.

"Come on! That was funny!" She exclaimed, trying so hard not to laugh. It was clearly Marcus' first of the many he was going to get at McKinley this year, and his shock and anger about it was adorable. For her, it had been years so she had grown to accept them, but he hadn't just yet.

"Glad you're enjoying yourself, Quinn." He grumbled, trying to mop himself as best as he could with a towel. "Doesn't change the fact that I'm going to have to go to phys ed class like this because I don't have any other clothes."

Quinn could see the embarrassment written on his face and she began to feel bad. She knew how hard it was to adjust to the cold-hearted prison that McKinley could be, with the jocks like coyotes hunting for prey, so she thought for a moment about how she could possibly help him. They hadn't known each other long at all but Marcus had given her something priceless: he had brought Quinn Fabray back from the pits of hell, so she owed it to him to help him with this as much as she could.

"I mean… I have some spare McKinley Phys Ed clothes you can borrow if you want." Quinn suggested. It was Marcus' turn to laugh, and he raised an eyebrow.

"It's hilarious that you think we wear even close to the same size." Marcus commented. He wasn't wrong. Standing at around half a foot taller than her and around 80 pounds heavier, there was no chance whatever clothes Quinn had would even come close to fitting him.

"You don't want them? Fine. Enjoy doing Phys Ed looking like the genie from Aladdin." Quinn replied, before turning her back to him and beginning to walk out of the room. She walked slowly though, as she knew that any second now, she would be hearing…

"Wait!" Marcus called after her. Quinn smiled to herself, before turning back around to face him. "If I could have those clothes, that would be great."

Quinn nodded.

"Sure. I'll go get them now."