The Ritz

Story: The Ritz

Fandom: Glee

Author: ibshafer

Rating: PG

Characters: Sue, Will, Karofsky, assorted gleeks

Disclaimer: I don't own these people, they own themselves and are just nice enough to let me spin them around the page now and then.

Summary:  Revenge is a dish best served smashed... OR Paybacks are a bitch and so is...

Warnings: None

A/N: This is for justme_jane  who suggested it off a comment I made about revenge and the best dance team ever... ;)

A/N: Apologies to my love, but some things gotta get writ…



 

The Ritz

- ibshafer

 

She hadn’t been able to help Lady Porcelain, not the way he’d really needed her to, and in the end, the boy had transferred across town to that prissy all-boys’ prep school. (She strongly suspected that though Porcelain was surely missing his whiny, snot-nosed pals right now, he was also probably sending her silent, ardent thanks…) So ashamed was she at that travesty of a school board, and the fact that they would not allow her to act as her conscience demanded, which was saying something – she sort of kind of liked Lady, though she’d never tell him that – she had quit her position as school principle, an empty gesture, because the boy had still felt he had no choice but to leave McKinley, which, honestly, made her a little sad.

She might not have been able to do much about getting the incident onto Grizzly Boy’s permanent record…but she was certainly capable of making that miserable-excuse-for-a-high-school-student’s existence an excruciating embarrassment; rather, she was certainly resourceful enough to coerce the newly-reinstated Figgins into making that miserable-excuse-for-a-high-school-student’s existence an excruciating embarrassment. (Not that anyone would doubt the real source…)

When she’d gone to Shuester with the idea, he’d looked at her like she’d just asked him to French kiss her, again, naked, with mood music, but when she held his eye and didn’t crack even the hint of a smile, his perpetual hair-gel induced fog lifted just long enough for him to get what she was going for.

That was a week ago and if the swearing, pained screeching, and daily progress reports coming out of the choir room were any indication, the school was in for one rip-snortingly entertaining assembly this morning…

The house was packed, as they say in show biz, and there was a strange excitement running through the air. From the murmurs, she could see that insisting that Shue and Figgins swear all involved to secrecy – which she knew hadn’t been a hard sell for the Grizzly – had been worth it: they didn’t have the slightest idea what they were in for. But they would.

Any minute now.

~*~*~*~

“So, put your hands together, children, for a special performance,” Figgins intoned in his weird foreign sing-song. “From the New Directions!”

Crowd response ranged from groans and spirited hissing to a smattering of half-hearted applause, and then, when the curtains were drawn and they saw just who it was that would be performing, a fair amount of hooted cries and, even, some laughter.

‘Perfect,’ she thought. ‘The makings of an ‘angry mob.’’ Just to be sure, she glanced down first one aisle, then the other, to make sure the props she’d left were in place.

Yup – good to go.

Instead of the whole troupe of painfully earnest mouth breathers littering the stage, in the center stood Will Shuester, in top hat and ridiculously dapper tails, one hand leaning on a walking stick and the other, draped across the shoulder of an equally ridiculous figure; broad-shouldered, ruddy-cheeked, scowl like weapon, chest heaving like air was going out of style, and clearly, clearly, pissed as hell.

Grizzly Boy.

A.k.a. Dave Karofsky.

“If you’re blue,” Shue began, voice like burned molasses. “and you don’t know where to go to, why don’t you go where fashion sits…”

There was a pause, she’s seen the movie, she knew there was supposed to be a pause, but when it stretched out too long, Shue turned to glare at Frankenstein’s monster, who in turn glared back, then, finally, battle lost, he closed his eyes, snapped twice, bellowing out a barely annunciated “Puttin’ on’t Reeeeeesh!!”

She’d thought it was stroke of genius to have Shue tell that bullying moron he had to do his part just like the movie and sure enough, the guffaws and cat-calls from the crowd said it had been a good call.

Serves you right, ass-candy…

The song continued, Grizzly stomped around in his platform monster boots, and as things progressed towards their inevitable conclusion, the rigged bulb in the footlights popped, Grizz started screaming (though the crowd hardly heard him over their own roars of glee – he’d just finished his horrendous tap solo!), the Cheerios she’d planted strategically around the auditorium started handing out the overripe fruit-slash-vegetables. (She always wondered how angry mobs never failed to have tomatoes nearby when things got out of hand, now she knew; someone smart planted them in the crowd…)

Piano Man had stopped playing and Grizz was making a run for it, but the damage had been done and that was all that mattered.

Slipping her Blackberry into her palm, she punched in some digits and hit send.

A few minutes later, after the crowd had cleared and Frankenstein’s monster had showered the last of the tomato out of his hair, she got a text back.

‘Thanks,’ it said and was followed by a photo attachment.

The smile on Porcelain’s face said it all.

With an air of my-work-here-is-done, Sue slipped the phone back into the pocket of her nylon jacket and opened up the current Cheerio’s schedule, whistling that catchy tune.

 

fin