CHAPTER 15
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Beiste bellowed, spittle flying from her mouth and showering Marcus like shrapnel from an explosion. Marcus listened to her scream and shout for what felt like an eternity, not saying a word in response. Not saying a word to defend himself. He wasn't one for excuses, no matter whether or not he felt they were valid. He had let his anger take control of him, and now it was on him to bear the consequences of that. It didn't matter about the Karofsky of it all. It didn't matter about the slushie. All that mattered was that he had screwed up, and now he was taking his licks for it.
Little did Marcus know though, that Marcus' punishment was just about the last thing on Coach Beiste's mind. As she yelled, her mind whirred and raced as she thought about the person sitting before him. She hadn't really paid attention to him until today - he was the kind of quiet, less popular guy who flew under the radar in McKinley - but seeing him out there on the field, he was EXACTLY what the football team needed. The way he had lost his temper and manhandled Karofsky, that was exactly the killer instinct that their defence had been lacking. The whole game yesterday, they hadn't gone the whole game without a single sack, for the first time in Beiste's entire coaching career. It was genuinely shocking too. The players had strength and they all had experience, so on paper it shouldn't have been as bad as it was. But there was something they had been missing: that killer instinct that just couldn't be taught. It was something that was ingrained in certain individuals, and the boy sitting before her clearly had it. Attacking Karofsky in the way he had… he was clearly athletic, he was fearless even when faced with a much bigger opponent, and he also packed a pretty vicious tackle. Coach Beiste didn't know how much experience Marcus had at football, if any. But all she knew was that this was someone she NEEDED for her team.
But how to convince him? As Coach Beiste continued to yell nonsense at him, buying herself time to think, she pondered about how she could actually get him to join the team. The boy seemed to be part of the Glee club, whose male contingent consisted almost entirely of football players, so Coach Beiste figured that if Marcus had wanted to play, the other Glee boys on the team probably would have already convinced him. Trying to give him a speech now about the benefits of football would probably fall on deaf ears. She needed a different strategy. That was when Will's advice from earlier that day came to mind…
"Look, I don't know how you did things in your old school, but here in McKinley we have a strict NO VIOLENCE policy!" Coach Beiste spat. Marcus raised an eyebrow questioningly, but didn't question it. In the past 2 weeks he had been here, he had been slushied, shoved around, laid out by Karofsky, but sure yeah, McKinley had a no violence policy right? "I oughta take you to Principal Figgins and have him expel your ass!"
Fear flashed for a moment through Marcus' eyes. Expelled? He couldn't get expelled! His father, as much as Marcus loved and respected him, was a pretty tough man, so if Marcus got expelled from school, he knew his father would NOT be happy at all. And rightly so too. They were living paycheck to paycheck as it was, living in Lima and Marcus going to McKinley. They sure as hell didn't have the money to move somewhere else if Marcus was expelled and banned from going to school in the district.
"Ms. Beiste…" Marcus began, but Beiste's eyes narrowed immediately.
"Coach Beiste." Beiste corrected him. Marcus nodded.
"Coach Beiste… please don't expel me!" Marcus begged. "My dad and I… we don't have the money to be able to go anywhere else. He'll be forced to quit his job, and it took him long enough to get this one, so who knows when he'll get another opportunity? We'll get deported back to Canada and we'll be forced to live on the street!"
"Well… I guess I could come up with an alternative, where Figgins doesn't find out about your entanglement with Karofsky, and in return you do something for the community. Kind of like community service in a way." Beiste replied. Marcus instantly nodded enthusiastically.
"Sure! Anything! Am I like picking up trash off the side of the highway or something? Because I'll do that!" He exclaimed. Beiste shook her head.
"No. Not that kind of community service. It's more… giving back to your school. Paying off your debt by giving back to the school community."
"How do I do that?" Marcus asked. Beiste took a deep breath. It was now or never.
"Well, you do that by agreeing to join the football team for the rest of the season." Beiste told him. Marcus' eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Huh? He thought to himself. Join the football team? It was the exact opposite to anything he could've expected.
"But Coach… I don't play football. I barely know the rules." Marcus admitted. Coach Beiste shrugged.
"You'll learn." Beiste replied simply. "I saw that tackle you hit Karofsky with. Not everybody 50 pounds lighter than him like you are could've made that tackle. I can tell you play some other contact sport. Hockey?"
"Rugby." Marcus replied. Beiste nodded.
"Right. Makes sense." She murmured. "You clearly have potential Marcus. Your tackling, footwork, strength and speed are clearly there. With some practice, you could be a superb football player."
Marcus looked down for a moment, staring at his feet, before looking back at her.
"I appreciate it, coach. I'm flattered, I really am. But I don't think I can play. I'm already playing Rugby for a club 3 nights a week."
"What time?" Beiste asked.
"7-9." Marcus replied. Beiste grinned.
"Well that's convenient. Because football is right after school from 3-5, 5 days a week. You'll still have time to be able to make both."
Marcus chuckled and raised an eyebrow disbelievingly.
"Come on, coach. You really expect me to be able to 2 hours of football, and then 2 hours of Rugby right after, almost every day?" Marcus asked. Beiste shrugged.
"Again, it's completely up to you, Marcus." She said. "But I feel like I should remind you of the alternative option if you don't agree to play. Principal Figgins' office is only a 2 minute walk away. The choice is yours…"
A couple of minutes later, Marcus walked out of Coach Beiste's office, only to find all of the Glee guys standing there, staring at him anxiously. They were all pacing up and down the corridor anxiously, and they all ran over to him when they saw him.
"What happened? Did Beiste suspend you?" Finn immediately asked him.
"No." Marcus shook his head.
"Detention?" Puck asked. Marcus shook his head again.
"Nah, none of that." Marcus told them.
"So what was the punishment then?" Sam asked.
"Well you know how I said that I didn't want to play football this year? Guess I'm joining you guys after all."
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
"Wait… let me sure I'm hearing this correctly… Marcus, you knocked the daylights out of Karofsky in the middle of the Phys Ed class, and your only punishment was being allowed straight onto the football team without even trying out?" Mercedes asked, in disbelief, as all of the New Directions sat around in the choir room that afternoon, discussing the events of earlier that day.
"Well… yeah? I guess." Marcus replied as he placed his backpack down and sat down in the choir room, still dressed in his ridiculously small outfit as he hadn't gotten the chance to change before his next class as Beiste had kept him too late for that.
Mercedes whistled in surprised.
"I've gotta say, after all the crap he's put us through for just being in Glee club, I'm kind of sad I didn't get to see him finally get some justice."
"Speaking of seeing things, Marcus, why the hell are you still wearing that outfit? You look like a prostitute that got kicked off Rupaul's Drag Race." Santana remarked bluntly. Marcus blushed slightly.
"Didn't have time to change after Phys Ed." Marcus admitted.
"You mind if I borrow the outfit to wear tomorrow?" Puck suddenly chimed in and asked him. Marcus looked at him, confused.
"Um… huh?" Marcus grunted.
"I swear that outfit is an absolute babe magnet!" Puck told him.
"Puck, I can absolutely and unequivocally tell you that that is not at all the case." Rachel laughed. "No offense, Marcus."
"None taken." Marcus quickly responded, really wanting to change the subject from his stupid attire as soon as possible. But Puck wasn't having any of it.
"Really? Is that right? Marcus, tell them about what happened at the lockers." Puck demanded.
"What happened at the lockers?" Tina asked, the New Directions thoroughly entertained by this story. Well, all of them but Marcus, who was getting increasingly embarrassed with each passing second. He glared daggers at Puck and sighed.
"Nothing much. I bent over to pick up a book that fell from my locker, and a few Cheerios suddenly came over and gave me their numbers."
"A few? My boy somehow must've mastered the dark arts or something, because it was like he had managed to conjure every Cheerio in the entire school." Artie remarked.
"Yeah, they're not wrong." Sam chimed in. "He must've had at least 50 numbers in his locker by the end of the day. Heck, even the lunch lady asked him to prom!"
"No way! We've gotta see these!" Santana exclaimed. Slumping his shoulders in defeat, Marcus slowly opened his backpack and pulled out an entire plastic bag's worth of scraps of paper, notecards and other slips that all contained a different girl's social media handle, phone number or an extremely overly sexual message. As Santana thumbed through all of the slips of paper, recognizing many of the names from the Cheerios and cackling uproariously at some of the messages, Blaine turned to him.
"So what are you going to do with all of these? Kindling to the fire, or are you actually going to go out with these girls?" He asked.
"I don't know. I was thinking I'd be able to have a roster set up by the end of the week." Marcus remarked, extremely sarcastically. "One girl on a breakfast date. One girl on a lunch date. One girl on a dinner date. And I switch the girls out every day. Puck also wanted some of these numbers, so maybe I could sell some of them off to him, make a hefty profit, and..."
"Oh, my God!" A voice suddenly snapped from the corner of the choir room. Everyone turned to see Quinn, her face crimson and livid, shockingly so given that she hadn't said a word up until this point. "You can't just treat these girls like objects! You can't date three girls in one day! That's so rude! It's misogynistic! It's…"
"So very clearly a joke." Marcus finished her sentence. Quinn hesitated for a moment, as she took in these words.
"W-w-what?" She stammered. Marcus shrugged.
"I'm not dating any of them." Marcus remarked. "Call me old-fashioned, but I don't really want to be dating a girl with whom my first interaction was them staring at my bent over ass."
As Marcus said this, he looked Quinn right in the eye, noticing the blush and embarrassment dyed rosy pink on her pale cheeks. Even though the two of them were just friends, he felt the irrational need for her to know that he wasn't a player. That he actually cared about people he dated.
"Oooookay." Kurt remarked, the New Directions all sending each other surreptious smirks. There was something between Quinn and the new boy, there was no doubt about that. Some kind of chemistry, a spark that was yet to have been lit. Many of them were desperately holding back their comments about it, and it was only Mr. Schue walking into the room at that very moment that prevented some of the more gossipy members of the Glee club from doing so.
"Alright, guys!" Mr. Schue exclaimed as he saw them all sitting in the choir room, awaiting the lesson. His eyes flickered over to Marcus, and he couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the ridiculous outfit. He didn't ask though. After all, with Kurt and Mercedes both in the room, Marcus was not even the most flamboyantly dressed person there. "Hope you guys are ready, because we have a big lesson up ahead…"