I just wrote this, in an hour, so no promises of it being good. Response to the prompt by Starz of Draco: rain, cardboard cutouts, nightlight, blanket fort, socks/"Do you think this is going to work?" + "Almost definately not."
Artie jerked backward, startled, as a crackle of thunder and lightning erupted outside. He had been watching the window morosely most of the evening, somber due to the unfortunate weather shift (he had trusted the weatherman when he said it'd be sunny Wednesday evening, but he was a liar), but there hadn't been a rainstorm shocker quite like this. The noise and blinding light was enough to make him reel backwards, wheels burning holes in the brownish-green carpet of his room.
"Jeepers." he mumbled, and then rolled his eyes at his own incompetent vocabulary—It does no good to watch Scooby-Doo, he decided, remembering the other night's marathon that had cured his insomnia.
"Huh?" a voice said from behind him. Artie turned his head toward Quinn, who had before been reading calmly on the couch. Now, though, a little of everything in the room was resting in front of her, a pile of junk quite unlike any he'd ever seen: blankets of all colors were curled together, and some of the chairs and a stool were holding these blankets in their arms. Quinn was untangling the blankets from each other and draping them over the chairs, and soon enough the sofa, making a fort that was completely unstable and just plain weird.
"Just the rain, it—what the heck are you doing?" Artie said, wheeling around, the rain completely forgotten as he stared at this show his girlfriend was unknowingly putting on for him. She smiled, and a particularly fuzzy red blanket fell over her eyes.
"Making a blanket fort," she answered simply, putting the red blanket over the top of the chair again. "We loved these things as kids! Remember, we used to make them before…you know." Absentmindedly, Artie nodded. Quinn approached the tragedy in his eight-year-old life with delicacy. It didn't make him self-conscious, as it would have before he and Quinn delved deeper into their relationship. As they grew closer, he found that she was not tender when it came to his wheelchair because it made her nervous, but because she wanted him to feel comfortable—she made it clear she didn't care if he could walk or not, but promised she wouldn't speak of it if it made him uncomfortable. After a year alongside her, he could answer that with a firm no.
"Yeah," he said, "they were the bomb." He grinned, but it faltered into a frown as Quinn clumsily continued constructing the fort that obviously didn't want to stay put. "But why now? We're seventeen, myself bordering on eighteen—aren't we, oh, too old?"
Quinn gasped. "You're never too old for blanket forts! Come on, Artie: Blank. Et. Forts." She enunciated the words with precision, as if he didn't understand her English. He did, and after he realized just how adamant she was about building this fun fort, he no longer protested.
After a few minutes the storm had not lightened up in the least—in fact, the power had gone out about forty-five seconds after Artie and Quinn last spoke, and Artie brought in a few superhero nightlights to plug in, something Quinn dubbed "oddly attractive"—but Quinn's fort was now something of a masterpiece. It was a distorted masterpiece, though, for the blankets caved in in the wrong places, and the chairs made it hard to wiggle around in. But she hoisted Artie out of his chair and helped him crawl inside. It was dark within, especially with the dim lighting from the rest of the room. Quinn squirmed as she tried to stick her head under one of the chairs, bumping it in the process; it didn't help that her arms were laden with mismatched objects for a fun time under the blanket fort.
"What'd you bring, Quinnie?" Artie asked, deliberately using the nickname Quinn detested for its belittling nature, unless it was said by her mother, who she had grown used to saying it. Without much elbow room, she dropped the heap of things in front of him: there were comic books, candy bars, and an iPod. There was no flashlight, because his Batman nightlight was bright enough so they could see within the fort.
"So—" Artie began, lightly pulling a blanket above him over another in hopes there wouldn't be a cave-in. "—do you think this is going to work?" Quinn drew her tongue over her lower lip, eyeing the precarious roof of their fort with unease.
"Almost definitely not." she replied; Artie murmured a sarcastic "Great". Quinn scowled at her negative boyfriend's apprehension to this spontaneous and, at first, neat idea.
"Come on, just wait awhile, it'll be fine." she said, but she herself wasn't too sure.
"I don't know," Artie said, shaking his head unsurely, "It's a little creepy."
"How?"
Artie jerked a thumb behind him, where Quinn could see a silhouette standing eerily still. "My Star Wars cardboard cutouts may not provide good company here." Quinn suddenly found herself frightened; Artie's bedroom was the geekiest she'd ever been in, with posters and cutouts and decorations of things such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, superheroes well-known and not known at all—the list could go on forever. She initially had been a little freaked out, but after her own dorky roots kicked in, it became all the more awesome. But now, with his cardboard cutouts of Chewbacca, Han Solo, and Darth Vader casting sinister shadows over the fort in the soft light of the nightlights, and the disgruntling rainstorm, they just looked scary.
"Uh…" she stammered, "Uh, uh…I'm not scared." Artie smirked; of course she was. She could face the near yearlong toil of an underage pregnancy, the evil eye of one Sue Sylvester with her hardedge coaching, and three judges evaluating her and the club's talent—their decision threatening the very existence of glee—but trapped in a blanket fort during a storm with weird shadows scared her. It was very, very amusing.
For the rest of the evening, they listened to Quinn's music choices, singing along at times. At others, they'd read his comic books, using funny accents that would embarrass Peter Parker and Clark Kent alike, as they ate caramel candy bars. Then, they would just talk.
However, soon the rain's crack-crack-BOOM-kapow! switched to an ominous plink-plink-plonk-plink that Quinn said resembled some sort of horror movie theme song, to which Artie replied "You had to say that, didn't you?"
"Why, are you a-scared?" she countered. Artie stuck out his tongue, only to have Quinn blow a raspberry faster.
The gloomy new sound of the rain still sounded startling, and soon the house began to grow cold. Both of them shivered, Quinn's three pairs of socks not even warming her to fifty degrees (or so she claimed, teeth chattering). Quinn demanded to know what cruel god bestowed this freeze upon them; Artie said that it was just the furnace, which had been broken but not noticeable until the chill outdoors worsened. Quinn tugged her sweater closer against her frame. Her blonde hair swept over her eyes, creating a mysterious—but afraid—look. "Yeesh, maybe this fort wasn't the brightest of ideas."
"Nah, it's fun," Artie said, "It's my furnace's fault. Besides, now"—he edged his face nearer—"we have some special time." Quinn giggled, her lips heading Artie's way also.
"Mm-hmm." she purred. Their lips met for a quaint kiss that soon turned into a make out session with much head-swiveling. As awkward as it may've been to make out under a bunch of blankets on their bellies with little room, well, Artie and Quinn could make it work.
That is, they could've, if one of the cardboard cutouts hadn't shifted.
Quinn jerked away from Artie, surprising him. "Artie!" she whispered, "Something's…in here." Artie scuttled closer to her, not just to calm her but to kiss her again so she'd forget about the illusion of the cutouts moving.
"It's okay," he said, pecking her cheek, and whispering against it: "There's nothing—"
The cutout shifted again, and a moan drawled like an angry monster orchestra.
"Artie! It. Is. There!" Quinn whispered, her eyes now wide and her fingers trembling as she clutched his collar. "We're going to die!"
"Quinn, it's—it's just…" But Artie didn't know what to say. He'd heard the groaning, that he couldn't deny. A million reasons other than some cutout come to life flashed in his head, but they all were insignificant because someone or something else was there.
Before he could say a word, the blankets collapsed. They all landed on their heads and the couple writhed in terror, tangling the blankets around themselves. Quinn screeched her noisiest screech, and Artie tried to bravely crawl to his wheelchair, but neither was awarded much luck. Above them was an angry-looking stormtrooper cardboard cutout, its blaster aimed for their hearts. Suddenly, just as Quinn decided they were doomed, laughter from behind the trooper. She and Artie stopped writhing, gazing up at this thing. The cutout, right after the laughter, was cast aside, revealing a boy their age running one palm over his thin layer of hair as he guffawed.
"Noah Puckerman, you rotten little—!" Quinn started, spluttering in fury. Puck stood above them, holding his gut as though it'd burst from all the laughing amusement. Artie rolled his head backward; he shouldn't have trusted Puck with an emergency key to his house. He should've known Puck would classify scaring the heck out of them on their home-dates an "emergency".
"Oh, did I—interrupt something?" he said, waggling his eyebrows as he composed himself. In a blind rage, Quinn chucked a Daredevil comic book at his face, but he jumped out of the way before it could hit it. "Whatcha aiming to do, give me a paper cut?" Artie had to admit that one was humorous.
"Shut up," she grumbled. She wasn't happy her Artie-time had been interrupted by Puck-influenced tomfoolery. At least the tranquil warmth of Artie's hand wrapping around hers kept her from murdering Puck right then and there.
"Well, come on, Archie n' Betty," Puck said, "it stopped raining. Finn, Mike, and I are starting a football game, and we need you to even out the teams, Abrams—and we could use some babes as cheerleaders, Q." Quinn rolled her eyes, a little peeved at the referral of babe (only her boyfriend could call her that, and Puck had been denounced from that title long ago), but Artie's excitement at the clear sky and the idea of holding a ball in his hands also calmed her lethal intentions.
Puck scampered giddily out the door after helping Artie into his chair once the latter had announced his agreement, ready to tell Mike and Finn the good news. Quinn ruffled Artie's hair, both angrily and lovingly, as he drove himself out the door.
"I wish it would rain again." she sighed. Artie chuckled.
"You know, I can kiss you, rain or shine." he said. A coy sparkled entered Quinn's eyes.
"I'm going to take that as an offer." she responded.
And, let's just say, Puck didn't get his other football player until a good few minutes later.