Title: Two Perfect Waves in the Night

Authors: gala_apples and nubianamy

Rating: explicit (m/m/f sexual exploration, discussions of sex, poly negotiations, anti-poly sentiments, casual pot smoking, teen angst)

Relationships/Characters: Mike/Artie/Tina, Artie's mom, male OC, Matt Rutherford, Puck/Finn/Kurt

Spoilers: through season 1; set during the summer between seasons 1 and 2. Mike is a sophomore; Artie and Tina are freshmen. Follows We Might As Well Close Our Eyes (Puck/Kurt/Finn), but can be read alone.

Summary:

Mike's spent his life trying to avoid disappointing parental figures. That's why, when Finn comes clean about dating Kurt and Puck, and Mr Schuester gets mad at him, Mike's first instinct is to say he's dating two people too. If he can spread out the disapproval, it'll be less painful for Finn, who idolizes Mr Schue.

What he's not expecting is for his fake boyfriend Artie to take him on a date, outside of school hours. What he's not expecting is for his fake girlfriend Tina to think the three of them should have sex together. What he's not expecting is for his fake relationship to turn out to be one of the most significant things he's ever done.

From there it's a matter of instinct. Tell Puck, who has a hundred and one ideas about what to do in bed. Don't tell his best friend, who thinks sex is the price you pay for a spouse and kids. Drink a smoothie with Artie's mom. Throw himself out of a window before his mom can ask him if he's still single. Because if there's one thing Mike's learned in his time in Glee club, it's that even if everyone has an opinion, only a select few really matter.


(excerpt from We Might As Well Close Our Eyes)

"We'll do it," Mike said abruptly.

Puck shook his head as if that would make Mike's few words make more sense. When things didn't suddenly become clear he asked, "What?"

"I'll tell Mr Schue that I'm dating one of the couples. Artie and Tina, or Matt and Santana. Or I guess since Santana's not really monogamous and it won't have as much impact, maybe Matt and some random Cheerio? And I'll ask him if he believes certain passages of The Ethical Slut would work in our situation, and read them out loud. Obviously he won't at first, but he'll have to think about why he doesn't. Hopefully he'll realise that his arguments are baseless."

Matt shook his head. "Man, sometimes I forget you're in debate club and on the Brainiacs."

"What the shit is a Brainiac?"

Brittany rested her head on Santana's shoulder. "You know. One of them is a genius, the other is insane."

"Brainiacs, not Animaniacs. Me and Artie and Liz Schneider are all on the team. We've talked about it like ten times, how do you keep forgetting?"

Finn tilted his head. "Wouldn't you feel bad lying for us? It's, like, as bad as my I'm not in love with two people thing?"

Mike shrugged eloquently. "There's what, a month and a half of school left? If Tina and Artie don't care that I'm pretending to date them, then I don't care about not actually dating for that long. I'll be busy choreographing us for Nationals anyway, as soon as we win Regionals. We'll 'break up' over the summer."

Tina shrugged and dropped her hand on Artie's shoulder. "I don't mind if you don't."

"I've always felt that points are best made with examples. Hence my trying to find films. No kissing on the mouth, Chang."

Puck had no words for several long moments. He shook his head. "You guys would do that for us?"

"Glee's family, dumbass." Santana snapped.

"Except when it's not," Matt added. "Because otherwise we're highly incestuous."


Chapter 1: Mike

"Can you believe my mom packed shrimp shumai in my lunch today?" Jordan rolled his eyes, leaning against the locker next to Mike's. "I keep telling her just to buy Gogurts and I'll make my own sandwiches, but it's not working. It's like she's committed to being the Super Asian mom. Anyway, I hate shrimp; you're going to have to trade with me."

"Sorry," said Mike, shaking his head. "Can't have lunch with you today."

"Super secret emergency Regionals thing? You know your Brainiacs thing takes up way less time, and doesn't piss off your parents. Next year you should ditch Glee and just do Brainiacs."

Mike sighed. "There are, like, fifteen things wrong with that statement, starting with Glee would only piss off my parents if they were aware I was wasting my time with it. What they don't know doesn't hurt them. And don't jinx us with no club next year. If we don't move on to Nationals, the New Directions is disbanded."

Jordan wrinkled his nose. "What kind of shit teacher threatens his kids like that?"

"Delightful psychopaths who go by the name of Sue Sylvester," Mike replied, tacking on a huge fake grin. Her madness was the reason he'd refrained from dancing in public until Puck recruited him to Glee. He would never risk trying out for the Cheerios; it would mean having to deal with her personally. "She hasn't pushed anyone down the stairs in a few days."

Jordan snorted. "Pretty high bar we set for teachers."

"Anyway, the 'super secret Regionals meeting' is at Mr Schue's house later. I think we're getting pizza too. Lunch is about eating with Artie and Tina."

Jordan laughed, because Jordan was the kind of guy who always found humour in other people trying their earnest best. A classic example was when his sister forced him to watch Ms America; it was fifty percent hot women in bathing suits, and fifty percent cracking up at all the 'If I ruled I'd irrigate crops in places for food' bullshit. He'd had a complete meltdown at finding out that Mike had promised to pretend to date two freshmen at once to get Mr Schue off Puck and Kurt and Finn's backs.

Mike gave him a weary glare. "Shut up, man."

"Sorry, sorry. It's just great." Jordan stifled his snickering. "Are you going to carry Artie's books next?"

"Look, I don't have a choice. Mr Schue's the lunch monitor. I have to eat with them in case he does a scan for his favourite students to make sure we're not being slushied or whatever."

Jordan leered at him. "I'll give you twenty bucks if you hand-feed Tina."

Mike shoved him lightly. "You're a fuckin' freak, dude. At least I have someone I could hand-feed. She'd totally let me, if I wanted to."

Jordan's voice turned a bit more serious. "Maybe she would. Doesn't mean her actual boyfriend would like that. One thing you don't need to do is think this is more serious than it is. It's an act, remember? First day of summer break, you're off the hook."

Mike knew that. He wasn't stupid. He'd made the offer to help his friends, and Artie and Tina had signed on to help in just the same way. He wasn't really anything to them. Even if Tina actually did let him touch her sometimes, it was just more evidence that she was an affectionate person.

"Do you think Tina would want my shumai?" Jordan asked.

Mike glared at him. "I think three is enough in one relationship, don't you?"

"Just an idea," he said easily. "How do you even know that Schue's the lunch teacher today? Are you monitoring his every movement? Do you like, have surveillance set up?"

"No."

"Did you pay Zizes to do it?" Jordan steamrolled on, ignoring Mike's irritation. "Because I bet she would, for like, five bags of Canadian ketchup chips, or something else ridiculously hard to get. You know when Boyd was trying to see if Candace was getting better marks than him because she was taking Ritalin, Zizes charged him two trays of nanaimo bars?"

"That was a stupid deal. Candace gets a hundred percent in every class. She's clearly on Ritalin."

"Or maybe she's just super Asian," Jordan laughed. "But seriously, it's like I'm just randomly talking to you and all of a sudden you're halfway down the hall, with your hands around Artie's wheelchair handles all suggestively, like you're a zipper away from a handjob, and I look in the other direction and there's Schuester. How do you do it?"

Mike rolled his eyes. "I get more than three hours of sleep a night, so I actually notice the things that are happening around me? Whatever. It's important. Since we started, Schue's had to split his sideeyeing over two triad couples instead of concentrating on them. Finn's the New Directions captain. You weren't there the whole time the three of them were trying to get their shit together; it was awful, for all of us. We can't afford for Finn to get depressed just because Schue's not open-minded. We need him. Even if you don't give two shits about the three of them, consider it payment towards keeping New Directions alive."

"Yeah, yeah," Jordan said. "I know you'll pout like a bitch if you can't be in Glee club next year. Not my thing, but I wouldn't want you to be pouting your way through junior year." He gave a little half-wave. "See you after school. I'll save my shumai for you."

Tina and Artie were sitting at the end of the table where Kurt and Mercedes usually ate with them, but today they were alone. Artie gave Mike a brave smile as he set his lunch tray across from Tina.

"Schue's talking to Finn. You're off the hook for now. Tina, can I get a ride with your mom tonight to the meeting? My mom has tennis until six-thirty."

Tina's smile for Mike was brief and warm. She reached an intentional hand across the table and touched his knuckles with her fingertips. Mike glanced at Artie before taking her hand and holding it loosely. He still wasn't sure how really okay this whole thing was, or how far to take it in front of everybody. Britt had always been the one to initiate PDA, when they'd been kind-of dating, and he'd gone along with it as long as nobody seemed to mind, but this was different.

Not to mention there was another hand to hold. Mike rested his, palm-up, on the table. It was close enough to Artie that Artie could take it if he wanted to, but if he chose not to, it wouldn't look weird.

It felt a little strange to be playing this game with Tina and Artie, in particular because they didn't have all the information. Mike suspected they both assumed they were pretend-dating friendly, straight-but-not-narrow Mike Chang. Whereas in reality, holding another guy's hand had layers of meaning that Mike wasn't sure he was ready to reveal to two people who were only his pretend-boyfriend and pretend-girlfriend. Holding hands with a guy might mean something a lot more to him, someday. The fact that this one was nothing but a practice setup didn't change the fact that Mike actually wanted to hold another guy's hand - and to do a lot more than that.

But Artie did take his hand, anyway, in time for Schue to turn around and see them do it, and it wasn't too weird.

"How are you getting to Schue's?" Artie asked him.

Mike shrugged. "Bike, like always. Unless I can weasel a ride out of Matt?"

"That would be hard?"

"He's kind of super sensitive about being used for rides. Apparently there's some huge family rift about the uncle that only talks to his dad when he needs help moving his start up businesses."

Artie looked hopeful. "You think I could play the poor-disabled-kid card? Otherwise I'll have to call the city bus for a ride, and it smells like wet feet."

Mike grinned. "We haul your ass down the April Rhodes stairs multiple times a week. The disabled kid card's a pretty good play."

Artie's eyes got scary-big behind his glasses, like an anime Oliver Twist, and he put on a pleading little pout that had Tina snorting into her milk. Then he squeezed Mike's hand once before letting it go, and smiled. "Worth a try."