Warnings: A minor swear word.
Coloring Book for the Girl in Grays
It's forty seconds into the first rehearsal of the club when Tina learns the life story of Rachel Berry. The next sixty-seven seconds crawl by very slowly as Rachel takes her time, using verbal crayons to color in the picture (a picture that could have stayed very un-colored, because Tina likes black and white) and make the details clear. Rachel Berry, apparently, has a thriving myspace page for her (budding) musical career, based upon a strong foundation of two loving dads and various childhood lessons in the arts. And that's why she's amazing (this went unsaid, but completely implied).
Tina wants to tell Rachel she's seen her myspace page and that there's no great need to go into detail about it (considering there isn't much to talk about if she doesn't mention the cruel comments left by the pom-pom shakers of doom), but doesn't (because Rachel would pull out a bigger box of crayons). She decides to just let the girl go on with her coloring.
Secretly, Tina kind of admires Rachel for her, well, gusto. It's not as if Tina has any plans outside of school (maybe working in her mom's lighting shop, but she'd die before admitting that as a career path to her counselor), and Tina knows in this sleepy little settlement it takes more than just a will and a way to make it out of town without a DUI or a baby (or two). It takes enthusiasm and courage that Tina does not have.
Tina is fine with this, because she isn't very fond of color, and life at McKinley High is anything but vibrant. So she patiently waits, during that first practice, for Rachel to conveniently stop showing signs of her undoubtedly colorful future, that life may return to its simple dull and dreary.
--
It's their fourth rehearsal, and the signs continue to shine through the weak window blinds Kurt and Mercedes and Artie and she have been trying to close against Rachel's sun for the past week. Tina is tired and frustrated and bored, but when some new kid walks through the door and starts singing like he's John Travolta himself she begins to smile. Because he is good, and Rachel isn't singing, and the room is filled with more than Rachel's sunlight and the ensemble's pathetic attempt to blot her perfect little life out of the sheet music.
And when Rachel bursts out in her solo (with their accompaniment, of course) Tina doesn't even feel that awful about her dim future in comparison to the glory predicted in every note Rachel sings. It feels right, and Kurt's proclamation of them being sort-of almost good echoes in her head as she goes backstage, after the end of practice, to get her bag. In fact, she feels so good about Finn's earth tones and Rachel's vibrant colors and everyone else's... everything, she feels the need to share with Artie (they are both relatively non-vibrant beings, and mesh the best out of all the glee members. plus, she likes him and the funny look that comes over his face when his wheels squeak).
Artie isn't as colorful as Rachel or even Finn, and quietly agrees with Tina's stilted words. Yes, it's the best they've ever sounded, and it's nice that they sing so... evenly, now (Tina's words, because how does one admit to an obvious difference in competence that has suddenly disappeared?).
He guesses.
Tina, halfway out the door by this point, turns around slowly and asks what he means. Artie, with a too-stretched smile that is completely false, mentions the moral caliber of Finn's high school stereotype.
And Tina doesn't want to admit it, but he's right. The guy could walk out at any second, and their sound would be no more than thinly veiled reds and pinks and turquoises once more. But she tries to deny it. "A-after all," she stutters, "he would have walked out earlier if he decided it w-w-was too lame for him." Artie's untrue smile still sits there, plastered on his face, when Tina turns around again and walks out of the auditorium. Every step is a prayer that Artie won't mention their worry to anyone else (they aren't that close anyways, their colors are a constant argument), and that their fear will not be realized.
(Artie tells Kurt.)
--
(who tells Mercedes.)
--
Mr. Schuester walks out of the room, and everyone begins stealing glances at one another. It's all accusations without verbalizations, and Tina's waiting for the pin to drop.
Finn does the dropping, and as soon as he's cleared the double doors of the auditorium the balloon pops. Kurt takes to the elastic pieces first.
"Well that perfectly depicts the predictability of a typical jock. I just wish that it didn't." Tina sucks in a breath; although Kurt's words are penciled in the air in colors very different than the ones she might have chosen (had she chosen to say anything at all), they are very similar to the thoughts of omens that had been circling through her head not five days ago.
Thoughts she would have much rather let go as forgotten, but have been nudging her mind around her head every day at practice. Now it's worse. Her brain is being punched about, little 'I told you so's being chanted by the imaginary little devil she could just feel sitting on her left shoulder (wasn't there an angel side of this equation?), and would it just go away already?
"Yeah I know, now we're just gonna have Little Miss Tony as the star. Damn." Mercedes sighs in her very dramatic, very soap-opera-like manner. Metallic purple, thinks Tina. That is Mercedes, definitely- so much drama, a different contrast to the rest of them. "I just generally dislike singing background vocals, but particularly when I can't even be heard."
"It's like being background noise," says Kurt, brushing his bangs out of his eyes.
"Exactly!"
"What are you talking about?" asks Rachel, suddenly tearing her gaze away from the beeline path Finn had made (a part of her notes how bad Rachel has it, already). "Of course we'll all be singing together. It's not as if a Glee Club can be only one person." She laughs, breathy and faintly hysterical (maybe- Tina finds it doubtful Rachel has ever gotten wind of the word hysterical) and rolled her eyes. "By definition, a club must have at least three consistent members."
Kurt nods mid hair-flick; Tina and Mercedes and Artie see right through him. There is no color, and it is the most dull she has ever seen him. Colorless, lifeless; it was pure ignorance, a sickly green, faded and (hopefully) a facade. This, more than anything, has the group disperse, leaving only the shiniest behind calling out to them that they will be having rehearsal tomorrow.
--
The Tuesday practice is short and clipped, not nearly as energetic as those in the past but very much more frustrating, complicated, and intense. Rachel does not let up off her stringing line of choreography, and Tina is so dizzy the world swirls into colors by the end of it and she excuses herself to the bathroom. There she breathes deeply, pushing down the nausea from the prancing Rachel has insisted occur at an ungodly tempo.
Finn, as expected, doesn't show. Rachel obviously tries to hide her hurt, and Tina (maybe) feels bad for her. So much invested in someone so fickle. It was not fair to her, to any of them. They didn't have a chance now.
She exits the bathroom with the hour and a half of insanity diminished to thirty minutes, and Tina doesn't return.
--
But she doesn't expect to feel so guilty about it.
--
"Hello?"
"Artie!" Her word, his name, does not skip a beat. It might be a success (would have been) if she had not been speaking over the phone, and if it had been more than a single word, all by its lonesome, colored a dim gray.
"Tina?" He sounds generally surprised, his tone shaded with his pale blue and white of shock. She can understand; his number had come from the phonebook rather than from his handwriting, after all.
"I-I-" and there it is again, traitor, "I'm sorry."
There is a long pause, as if Artie doesn't know what to say. She doesn't know herself, and she doesn't expect him to, either.
Finally: "Er... what for?" She almost smiles, but is left instead with a small twitch in the left corner of her mouth.
"For l-leaving practice. Uh, early." For leaving you alone with them. She won't say it to him, because the powers that be (Buddha, God, the bodiless moral presence that seems to haunt her every step and report back to less trustworthy persons) would most likely betray her words to someone she would rather not know them (she mouths a name to herself that rhymes with Staple Hairy).
"Oh." Quiet. Black, white, gray. This response, with which she would normally be very pleased, leaves her almost upset. Desiring. Where has all the color gone? "It's okay."
She nods, evading any vocal response, till she remembers that he cannot see her.
"That's a-all. R-r-really." Swallow. "Just w-wanted to make s-s-sure..."
"Practice, rehearsal tomorrow," he says quickly. It sort of sounds like please.
"I'll b-be there," she assures, quietly, into the receiver.
They hang up, and Tina lays back on her bed. It is some time later than she thought, says the clock. She tries not to purse her lips.
Thinking of the tomorrow that is almost today, Tina can still feel the twitch of her mouth attempting to stretch wide.
--
When Tina walks into the auditorium, she feels Rachel's eyes on her like two hot-pink laser beams ready to melt her into a puddle. She chooses (as usual) to ignore this calling-out, of sorts, and instead leans against one of last year's Shakespearean play props with her arms crossed over her chest.
She waits for Artie to show, but when Rachel calls the start of rehearsal, his absence is still pressed on her chest in a surprisingly heavy weight. It hurts like betrayal, blinding and stinging like neon (like Kurt on a good day).
A half an hour on pins and needles has Kurt chewing out Rachel, who looks ready to either throw something or verbalize her annoyance in song. Tina would rather neither happen, and is just about ready to crawl and avoid the crossfire when she hears the squeak of wheels.
Artie.
But it is not just him, but a heavily breathing, apparently not-so-stereotypical jock. Her eyes widen, but she is firmly planted in her spot. There is no hiding now. Not now, not ever.
Artie looks as if he cannot breathe, and Tina feels a little breathless, too, as Finn's calm tone (the hint at his earthy voice, as ever) explains a new dynamic. Things will be changed (it goes both with and without saying) and Tina stutters when he tries to implement her into this new regime.
"I-I-" She's startled, but not thoughtless. Finn doesn't give her a chance to respond.
That's okay. There will be time for that, for every song and every rhythm, now that Finn has glued them back together in a span of a few minutes.
She will be forever thankful.
--
There is singing, there is clapping, there is smiles all around in a blur of colored voices and tones of mixed feelings.
"Are you really staying, for sure?" Asks Rachel, in her third variation of the question. Rachel's rather silly, she thinks, and eight varieties of frustrating. At least this time she is not questioning Mr. Schuester's level of commitment so harshly as before.
But it is now, for some reason, Tina decides to voice her thought:
"He s-said he was, R-Rachel."
Rachel whips around, her dark eyes looking into hers and Tina feels a battle on the horizon. She could be ready, now.
But Tina turns her head to the side, fingers running down the curtains of the auditorium. Today she will wave a white flag.
The battle may be on the horizon, but she will not go to any battle, verbal or otherwise- not now. Not with the bright, hopeful yellow sun of the day that is today. Never, not when they are all victorious in one way or another.
She walks over to Artie, grabs the slightly dusty handles of his wheelchair, and pushes him towards and out the door.
"Living in a lonely world," a pale blue voice sings laughingly in a too-high pitch.
"N-not t-t-t-too lonely, I think."
Artie looks up at her with a slight smirk on his face (she doesn't know why, but she kind of likes it).
When she pushes the handles firmly from her hands, she laughs the whitest, brightest laugh and she chases him and his wheelchair down the hallway. Her colorful smile shines the whole way.
Note: So, first Glee fic. I've loved Tina since the preview (Artie as well) and have shipped them since the pilot. Here, I hope I've done her and her relationship with Artie justice. As always, concrit appreciated comments loved.