For Bubbles, and for Anya.

A/N: So, here is the story that is currently taking up 66 pages (and counting, I'm not finished) of a word document on my computer. There will be laughter, tears, pregnancy (and not just Quinn's, so be warned), singing and dancing from this dysfunctional Glee-family that we love so much; so hold on to your hats.

Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, or any song mentioned in this fic.

Tina Cohen-Chang didn't know what she had been expecting. She hadn't, obviously, been expecting a bunch of flowers or a specially-made Hallmark card, (even with their range she doubted that they had one that said, 'Congratulations! You've admitted that you've been faking your stutter!'); but she really hadn't expected Artie to wheel away without a backward glance.

It had been going so well, too. After Glee, he'd asked her, shyly, if she had wanted to go on a date (she had felt the happiest that she had been in a long time) and she'd suggested racing their wheelchairs. He had smiled the biggest smile she had ever seen on his face, and after he'd kicked her butt at it, she had gathered enough courage to kiss him. God knows that she'd wanted to for long enough.

She didn't know whether it had been the endorphins that had taken over her brain, or the feeling that with him, she was utterly safe; but she had decided to tell him the truth. She had wanted to tell him for a long time and if she was going to get into a relationship with him, it needed to be out in the open.

His reaction had left her a little mad, a lot sad, and extremely heartbroken.

She knew that she was being an overdramatic teenager, but actually, 'heartbroken' didn't even begin to describe it. She was devastated.

Tina had let down the last wall that she had put up against the world. Artie had seen through every other one, seen right to who she really was, and she had finally bulldozed her final defence against pain. Only to let the pain right in.

That, with the additional guilt she felt; the guilt that had changed from guilt at keeping the secret to guilt caused by the pain on Artie's face; seemed to pile up on top of her like a garbage heap.

When he left, she just slumped back into her wheelchair and buried her face in her hands. For once in her life, the time she actually wanted to cry, she couldn't. No tears would come. Letting out a noise of frustration at the situation didn't really help anything much. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder and screamed.

"Whoa, Tina, it's just me!"

"Mike?" Tina yelled. She had leapt out of the chair, and had one hand over her heart. "Don't sneak up on people like that!" She didn't know quite how, but his appearance had seemed to manage to get her tear ducts to function. Suddenly she was blubbering.

"I'm sorry! Tina, I didn't mean to scare you!" Mike was bewildered. Even more so when Tina just collapsed into the wheelchair again. "It's not you. I've...stutter...faking...not...real..."

"Wait, hold on, Tina, breathe." She nodded, hiccupping and taking a breath. As soon as she opened her mouth again though, the tears just started again.

Mike had absolutely no idea what to do. So he did what he did when his little sisters or Brittany or even Mercedes that one time got upset. He wrapped his arms around her. To his surprise, Tina leaned into him, wrapping her arms around him too. He rocked her gently, like he did his littlest sister when she had fallen off the playground swing.

Tina clung to Mike as though he was the only thing anchoring her to the earth. But as the events of the day caught up to her, another emotion began to fill her body. Embarrassment. Mike must think that she was a fruitloop. Also, her issues were really not his problem, at all.

Releasing her tight grip on his shoulder, she realised that his T-shirt was soaked with her tears and felt even more mortified, if it were possible.

"M-mike, I'm so sorry. Oh my God." Tina pulled back and saw his eyes examining her face. "I'm such an idiot."

"Tina, what happened?" Mike seemed genuinely concerned, but Tina still felt like a total ass.

"I'm so sorry." She said, wiping her eyes. Mike stood up as she did. "It's really not important."

"Tina, you were hysterical just now. Something's wrong, and you're going to tell me. Over ice cream."

Mike had not taken no for an answer, so Tina found herself sitting in a booth at the little ice cream shop in the middle of Lima. Mike had seemed completely content to just sit with her in silence during the car ride, occasionally humming along with the song on the radio. Tina had been preoccupied with the fact that she felt like Artie had ripped her heart out, wheeled over it and then left her in the hallway. Oh wait, that had happened.

By the time Mike was ordering, and she put in her order too, she thought that maybe, letting it out would help. Letting it out in another way than crying all over his shirt, that is.

"You're going to think I'm stupid." She began, stirring the vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream around the glass. "I am stupid. And I feel so selfish right now, I mean, these aren't your issues."

"Tina, I have two little sisters. One of which is going through the 'I-must-tell-everybody-about-the-crush-I-have-on-the-boy-in-my-class' stage and will not let anybody get a word in edgeways until they have heard all about him; and the other likes to dress as a ninja and jump out of closets randomly, yelling . I will not think you're stupid." Tina nodded, smiling slightly before turning her gaze back to her ice cream.

"I faked my stutter." She said, and before Mike could say anything else leapt into the same explanation that she had given Artie. Mike's fist clenched on the table top, and Tina feared that he'd just leave too. Hell, she wondered why on earth he was here with her anyway. He was popular, she was not.

"That's all?" He said. Tina's eyes widened. People seemed hell-bent on acting the complete opposite way to what she thought they would. "I thought you'd murdered his kitten or something."

"But I lied to him. About a disability."

"You then told the truth." Tina shrugged.

"It's... a sensitive subject for Artie as it is." Tina said slowly. "I mean, think of it from his point of view." She sighed. "He can't change the way he is, even if he wanted to, which I know he does sometimes. He can't understand why someone would purposely want to push someone away."

"Shyness can get pretty serious too." Mike said. "I've heard of people that don't leave their houses because of shyness." Tina just stared at her hands.

"I do leave my house." Tina pointed out. "It's not the same." She said quietly.

"How is it different?" Mike retorted.

"How he sees it."

Mike didn't agree, but let the subject drop as he saw Tina looking sadder and sadder. She was only staring at her sundae now.

"I should head home." She said, looking at him. "Thank you so much Mike. You're a good listener. I'm sorry for dumping my troubles on you."

"It's okay." Mike said. "I'll drop you home."

The next few days were painful, but as realisation and calm had set in, as they do after the storm; Tina got thinking. Artie's words had hurt, yes, but they also, now that she'd thought about it, made her angry. I thought we had something really important in common. She ground her teeth together in frustration. Did the fact that they have five thousand other things in common not matter? The late night talks, the movies and the books, the personal jokes and the singing and his guitar playing while she air drummed?

I'm sorry too. Sorry that you get to be normal... This ticked Tina off too. He was sorry that she was normal? What the hell was normal anyway? Was normal faking a stutter to avoid people? Did he only like her because he thought that she was the best he could do? Because she wasn't 'normal'? Because she stuttered?

So in the hallways, Tina avoided Artie. In the classes she shared with him she didn't say a word. The reminder that her stutter-free voice would only complicate things further was enough to make her clam her lips shut. In Glee, she pushed his chair when necessary, wheeled near him in her own chair during their wheelchair number and sang her solo when necessary, but sat next to either Kurt or Mercedes. The one time she sat next to Mike, she hadn't missed the look of shock and hurt that passed over Artie's features and so they next day moved to sit with Mercedes. She might be angry, but didn't want to cause him anymore pain. That being said, she made no move to approach him. She had said sorry, in the hallway. It was his turn to make the first move.

On the first day after their fight, Mercedes and Kurt were suspicious. By the end of the second day of not speaking, Mercedes and Kurt were definitely aware that something was up. By the end of the third, they were bugging Tina (and she was sure Artie too) about what was going on. By the fifth day, she was close to breaking point.

By the time the first full week had passed, Tina was in a state of disbelief. Artie hated her; there was no other explanation for the fact that he hadn't spoken more than a sentence to her the whole week. (And she didn't think, "Please can you pass me that worksheet?" even counted). She had cried a lot, mostly at lunch when avoiding Artie was hard, (and although Brittany had been very sweet and pulled her to sit with her, this was awkward) and so she just escaped to the girl's bathroom. It was there that Mercedes and Kurt ambushed her.

She had locked herself in a cubicle and was crying her eyes out, hopefully silently, when she heard the door open and Mercedes's voice say, "Tina, we know you're in here. Come out before I drag you out."

Tina knew that pretending would do no good. She opened the stall door, and said, "Yes, I'm here, what do you want?"

Mercedes took in Tina's tired eyes, red nose from crying, and overall demeanour. She looked like she'd fought a war and lost badly. And it had to have something to do with Artie.

"Tina." She said gently, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, I'm fine." Tina said automatically. She'd been doing it her whole life. Hiding pain – the best that she could, anyway.

"Tina, we're your friends." Kurt said. "We care."

"I faked my stutter." Tina said. It had blurted out like word-vomit. She braced herself for their anger.

"Why?" Kurt said, confused. Tina explained, for the third time (although it felt like the hundredth) about the situation. Mercedes began to look thunderous. Tina hung her head.

Yet again, another person reacted in the opposite way that she thought they would.

"I'm going to the slushie machine. That should wake him up." Kurt burst out furiously. Kurt. Even Mercedes looked shocked at the anger radiating off of him.

"Hold up, Kurt. I lied. Not Artie. Why are you acting like I'm a saint and Artie's the bad guy?"

"Yeah, you lied. That's bad, and wrong, and it hurts that you didn't tell us sooner." Mercedes said. "But the things he said were out of line as well." Kurt was shaking his head in anger.

"I lied to Mercedes." He said. Tina remembered the resulting hole in his car window. "But she forgave me. That's what you do to friends. You forgive."

"He just needs time." Tina said. "Look, I know you guys mean well, but you've got to let us deal with this on our own." She spun on her heel, exiting the bathroom with a determined expression on her face.

And slammed right into something solid.

It was a hockey player, she realised, as she managed to stop herself from falling. It wasn't Karofsky, but it wasn't one of the friendlier ones either. He shoved her away from him and into a locker, his letterman jacket now half-covered in red ice from where the slushie he had in his hand had sprayed on him.

"S-sorry." She said, frightened.

"Get off me, Stutterfly." He said, glaring. "Don't you have Dead-Legs already? Or are you tired of him?" Tina noticed just one thing before the remainder of the sticky ice headed for her face. Artie had been wheeling around the corner towards them as the jock spoke. Tina felt anger bubble in her as she took in the look on his face at the hockey player's words.

It was the final straw. The last Jenga block pulled from the tower before it collapsed. The remaining half an inch of fuse on a lit bomb. All that she had been through the past week; the fight, the avoidance, the crying (God, she was sick of crying), the slushies, the feeling that her heart had shattered and finally that look on Artie's face; swirled in the rage that was about to explode from her.

She brought her foot back and kicked, hard.