A/N: Ack! I feel like I'm already falling behind schedule with these. I'll have to write a lot of these this weekend, especially since I'll be taking a short vacation next weekend. Thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed, and alerted this series of drabbles! Feel free to let me know if you have any requests.
Mike thinks it's a joke the first time someone tells him that Finn joined the glee club. Seriously, the quarterback joining the most mocked group in school? Not likely.
But then Puck is talking about seeing Finn in the auditorium, singing some Journey song with Rachel Berry, and Quinn is bitching about her boyfriend spending time with Manhands. Everyone starts talking about the most popular guy in school joining the show choir, but Finn doesn't make any move to quit.
Mike begins to wonder if he would be brave enough to join glee himself. He has a pretty decent voice, and the dancing part? He would totally own it. Still, he's not prepared for the social ostracism that comes with being in New Directions, even if it does look like they have a lot of fun. He's a nice guy—never takes part in slushying anyone or any of the other stupid pranks that some of the guys on the football team are fond of—but he likes being at the top of the high school food chain. Or at least not at the bottom. He can't help it. He's a teenager.
So when Puck comes up to him one day to say that Mike has to join glee club with him and Matt, Mike stares at him like he's speaking Russian. Because this is Puck. Puck. Him telling Mike to join the show choir is like him telling Mike that pigs have started flying. And really, Mike isn't sure that the latter isn't more likely. Puck has to repeat himself three times before Mike starts to take him seriously. In the end, it's Matt that convinces him that yes, Puck is being perfectly serious about them joining the glee club, and no, they weren't being given a choice.
He also finds out about Quinn, Britt and San joining and starts thinking that maybe he's hallucinating all of this. Cheerios joining show choir? He doesn't even have the words to describe how much that screws with his head (for the record, it's a whole fuckin' lot).
But he starts going to rehearsals, and is honestly stunned the first time he hears Rachel sing (the performance of Push It doesn't count, he was too distracted by . . . other things . . . to really listen to her voice). Who knew all that talent was hidden in this tiny girl? And when she beams at him and lets him know how impressed she is with his dancing, he thinks this might turn out okay after all.
A month after he joins, he is sort of surprised at himself when he sticks up for Kurt when some jackass from the hockey team starts mouthing off about him. He finds himself thinking that the gleeks are more than just the losers that McKinley High makes them out to be; they are real people, with actual feelings, and don't deserve to be treated the way they are. He feels guilty as soon as he forms that thought, because really, it doesn't say much about him that he didn't see them as people before.
It's a month after that realization that Rachel actually punches one of the football players when he calls Mike gay in her presence. Seriously, she knocked him to the floor. It turns out that despite her abhorrence for violence, Rachel has a black belt in Taekwondo, and does not tolerate people using the word gay as an insult. Mike is shocked, but retains the presence of mind to smirk at his asshole of a teammate who is still reeling at being laid on his back by a girl. A girl that's barely five foot two.
When he walks the stage at graduation two and a half years later with two wins at Nationals under his belt, he scans the crowd for his closest friends, all cheering loudly for him, and searches for more than just Matt, Puck, Finn, Quinn, San and Britt. He looks for Artie, who taught him to play Metallica's Orion on the guitar. Mercedes, who can belt out R&B like nobody's business and can always make him laugh. Kurt, the guy who taught Mike everything he now knows about cars. Tina, who he discovered is a giant softie at heart (seriously, she cries at Disney movies) despite her tough rocker chick clothes and colour-streaked hair. And Rachel. Rachel, who kicked his ass into gear and is probably the only reason he got a scholarship at NYU. Rachel, who organized a kickass New Directions road trip to California last year. Rachel, his amazing (and incredibly hot) girlfriend of a year and a half, who will be in New York with him next year.
And he thinks that joining glee? Is the best thing he's ever done.