Tina had skipped her last class and was hanging out in the Glee practice room listening to her Nano when Brittany came skipping into the room.
"Hi T," she said with a friendly smile.
They weren't best friends or anything, but they had hung out several times when they were working on the "Single Ladies" video with Kurt. Because of that, Tina wasn't as intimidated by Brittany as she had been before, but there was still something about the Cheerio uniform that instilled in her an instinctive trepidation.
She removed her ipod buds and greeted the cheerful blonde warily.
"Hey B-B-Britney. What are you d-d-doing here so early?"
"My teacher let me go early. She said I was disrupting class with my questions and that since I was never going to be a shining beak in the halls of macadamia I should just go practice my dancing. So, here I am!"
"Although," Brittany confessed. "I'm not sure why she thinks I would have a beak to begin with. Or what that has to do with nuts."
Tina stared at her and wondered if she should enlighten her as to what the teacher actually meant. What would Santana do?
Tina blushed as she realized that playing with Brittany's hair or hugging and touching her in an overly friendly manner were not things she felt comfortable doing.
She pretended it was a rhetorical queston and said nothing.
Brittany came and sat down right next to Tina. Tina tried to discretely move a little further away. She didn't even want to know what would happen if the Latina Cheerio came in and found her sitting too close to the sweet, but slow blonde.
Even Puck didn't get in Brittany's personal space around Santana, and he was a badass.
I'm glad you're here because I wanted to tell you something," Brittany began with a hand on Tina's leg.
Tina gulped.
"Wh-wh-what's that?" She stammered, her speech impediment made real by the warmth of the hand on her knee.
"Remember when we were singing True Colors and you got the lead..."
Tina nodded her head slowly.
"Well, I thought you sounded really good and I'm glad Mr. Schue gave you the lead because Rachel always gets the lead," she rolled her blue eyes dramatically.
"T-t-thank y-y-," Tina began, but was interrupted by Brittany
"And remember how everyone was looking at each other giving those weird, secret looks? Kurt at Finn. Puck at Quinn. Rachel and Quinn at each other?"
Tina's brows came together in confusion, secret looks? Wait...Rachel and Quinn?
Brittany continued. "Well I was trying to give YOU a secret look but you didn't look at me, plus Santana saw me trying to get your attention and she pinched me really hard."
"O-k-kay," Tina really had no idea where this strange conversation was going.
"By the way, you looked really pretty in that blue shirt. It matched your stripes! And I don't care what S says, they don't look like skunk stripes at all because they're blue and duh, skunk stripes are white..."
Tina frowned at the skunk stripe comment and began get impatient.
"Plus it looked really good with your skin tone. Which I don't think looks yellow at all. I don't know why people say Asians are yellow when you just look kind of tan to me, and so does MIke. My skin looks more yellow to me and I'm white, because I'm Dutch, and..."
She might have continued on that tangent for hours but Tina had had enough.
"Brittany!" She said with an irritated scowl. "What the hell are you babbling about? Get to the point already."
"Ha!" Brittany exclaimed as she slapped Tina's leg. "I KNEW you didn't really stutter!"
Tina stared at her with jaw agape and wide eyes.
"That was my point," Brittany explained. Then she gave Tina a big side hug.
"But don't worry, your secret is safe with me."
*
Later that night, Tina sat on her bed typing on her laptop. She read what she wrote with a chuckle of disbelief and a shake of her head and then hit "Send".
Moment's later the following post showed up on one of her favorite web sites.
Today my fake speech impediment (don't ask) was outed by a girl who thinks a ballad is a male duck and that the square root of four is rainbows. FML.