Author's Note.
It's been awhile since my last story. And I wasn't thinking of Artie and Brittany when I was writing this. I saw this prompt on my tumblr dashboard from a writing tumblr and decided to write this based on the picture given.
It's just Artie and Brittany. They aren't in school. Artie's not in a wheelchair. There's no hint of Brittany being a cheerio. Still, I don't own them or Glee. Nothing's changed ^^;
Hope you like this though. I don't think myself that good of a writer and I'm a Nursing major so not a lot of writing required in school, haha. And when I wrote this a few days ago, it was maybe 4am. I was probably out of it. I tried proofreading this so I hope it's okay :P
She hated yard work the most. The fact that it was a blistering hot and unbelievably dry summer in Lima, Ohio did not help at all. And for some reason, her mom pushed her, rather aggressively, out the door an hour ago, asking…no wait, telling her to clean up the crap that littered the side of their house. The young girl cursed that her older, decidedly more privileged, sister was in McKinley helping to set up a school fund raiser for the following week.
It sucked that her older sister wasn't there to share the pain but, the younger sibling snorted, who'd want to go to the school fund raiser? She knew it'd be a flop, it usually was. For one thing, it was hot as hell outside and outside was where it'd take place. And another, it was only advertised to the students and from there...it'd be who they told. Most high schoolers did not want anything to do with school especially over the weekend so, in turn, who'd they want to tell?
She suddenly wavered momentarily but couldn't regain her balance in her crouched position. She closed her eyes, shouting a short scream in her head as she landed backwards, her butt landing ungracefully into the hard but very dirt filled area. Surprisingly, single snort filled the silence. Oh great, a passerby saw.
Absolutely fantastic. Smashing…whoop.
"Nice one, Pierce."
Damn. It was one of the guys from her school. One of the jokers who came off a little more annoying than intended. She surmised that he was a nice guy though, she'd seen some of those 'nice guy' moments, but still, her eyes narrowed, annoying. He took it upon himself to approach her and she thought it unreasonable to tell him to "get the hell off her lawn", so she just let him walk over to her. She felt his presence behind her then she felt his knee bump her back accidentally when he crouched down to her level.
"Need help?"
She finally looked over at him, her ruffled blond hair semi covering her face. But a confused look was clearly noticeable. He stared back, equally perplexed, "What?" She raised an eyebrow, "You're offering help?" Both his eyebrows shot up behind his oversized glasses to almost peering over them, "I can't offer help to a fellow student?"
Her lip quivered in amusement, "Fellow student. Right. We're not in school at the moment, Abrams. You don't need to refer to me as 'fellow student'." Her mind practically snorted at her as she was saying that. Stupid. It was nothing to be snippy about but she just wanted to be a smart ass towards the king of the smart asses in their high school. If he could periodically mouth off to people whether it be serious or playful, why couldn't she do the same to him?
He snorted again. "Whatever." She grimaced to herself. Clearly, he was unaffected. He groaned softly while getting up. His hands over his thighs, then pushing up both with his legs and his hands. He was doing it painfully slow and she was running out of time to accept his offer. She sighed when a sudden thought came to her. This way it wouldn't seem like I'm desperate. "What are you doing around here? You live like 6 blocks away from here." He shrugged nonchalantly, "What? I can't take a walk in this extremely not hot weather on a Saturday?" He pointed at her, "Next thing I know, I've wandered apparently 6 blocks away from my house and saw you stumble so I thought I'd offer some of my excellent help."
"Oh shut up."
"Fine." He about faced and made his way to the sidewalk, a frown masking his face unknown to her.
A loud sigh.
"No, no wait. You know what? Could you help me?" Her voice was nearly monotone but some hope grabbed a hold at the end. As he was walking away, she scanned all the useless stuff and if she wanted this done faster, an extra body would be helpful. Besides, he was being nice...sort of…she could give him a chance. She added, "We can, uh, talk. You know? I know we go to the same school..." She trailed off and he smiled widely. Catching his smile, she continued bluntly, "I think you're annoying at school," his face fell, "but you seem pretty nice out of school."
He smiled again.
He hunched over some out of place wooden red board and they began sorting things out. It was going to take awhile, he could tell, but if he could get in her good graces and wiggle into her friend circle, he could eventually worm his way out of it and be more than friends? She didn't need to know that he had a crush on her.