1 – The Locker Room
Artie wheeled himself out of the handicapped bathroom stall in the boys' locker room and made his way to his locker with his football gear in his lap. He hated changing in the stalls while the other guys changed at their lockers. He knew that it wasn't exactly a large leap from seeing him head to the stalls with his clothes to assuming he was insecure about himself. The truth was, Artie was fairly happy with the way he looked, or at least as happy as a teenage guy could be. After all, he was dating one of the hottest cheerleaders in the school. If Brittany was into him, and she clearly was as they had been dating for a few months now, he couldn't be that bad-looking, right? But he knew that his being in a wheelchair already made his teammates uncomfortable, and while he was perfectly capable of dressing and undressing himself, he knew the routine was awkward and slow and he didn't need any more reason to make his teammates uncomfortable around him.
Still, dressing without help, while possible, took him much longer than the rest of the team, so Artie was almost always the last one out of practice other than Coach Beiste. That's why on this particular Monday afternoon, Artie was surprised to find Karofsky still at his locker. The guy made Artie nervous. After all, he had made Kurt's life a living hell for a few months, and then Artie had watched a seriously violent fist-fight between Karofsky and Sam. Artie had no interest in staying very long alone in the locker room with him.
He stuffed his practice uniform into his locker, shut it quickly, and headed for the door, but Karofsky was too fast. He stepped between Artie and the door, making sure that there was no possible way for Artie's chair to go around. "What do you want, Karofsky?" Artie asked, trying to sound tougher than he felt.
"Where's your gay little friend?" Karofsky asked. "Haven't seen him since before break. He get scared and run away?"
"None of your business." Artie answered as he gave Karofsky a death glare.
"Oh, but it is. And it's your business too." Karofsky kept a smile on his face, a look that was more terrifying than a glare from him would have been. He was enjoying this too much. "See, I need to get my pent up aggression out in some way, and since my old punching bag seems to have disappeared, I think it's time I start looking for a new one. That little Asian girlfriend of yours might be fun."
"Look, Kurt's gone. He's not coming back. He transferred, alright? Leave the other Glee kids alone." Artie began to panic. It was one thing for Karofsky to start threatening him, but Tina? That was going too far.
"Sorry, crip. Can't do that," Karofsky sneered and jabbed his pointer finger into Artie's chest, hard. "If homo-boy's not around, I'll have to settle for you and your homo-explosion friends as substitutes." Before Artie could think of something to respond with, Karofsky was already out the door, laughing the whole way.