A/N: I'm sorry for the delay in the Twelve 'Ships! The issue that prevented yesterday's update appears to be fixed, so there shouldn't be any further delays. This ship (and Artie) is new for me, so I'd love to hear what you think!
Typically, Artie tries to avoid going to crowded places.
Don't misunderstand. He isn't going to pass up on doing something he wants to do just because he might have to fight his way past a few people. He tries to be considerate with the chair, but sometimes people deserve to have their toes run over a little bit, because sometimes people are assholes.
He usually makes a point of getting his holiday shopping done early to avoid the crowds of crazy people and all of the commercialized, candy-coated holiday spirit, but he has no choice but to head to the mall two days before Christmas. The book he special-ordered for his dad arrived at the bookstore. Even though he'd normally have had it delivered to the house, he had it sent to the store instead to ensure that the gift remains a surprise, because while he doesn't like the holidays, he can appreciate not ruining everyone else's. It's just that the mall at Christmas is the nexus of nearly everything that he hates about this time of year, with the greed and the obligation and the rush. The whole thing is just not a lot of fun.
(Okay, if he's being completely honest, getting to use his handicapped tags at the mall two days before Christmas is a nice perk. If he could walk, he'd gladly park as far away as necessary, but since it may be decades before that's possible, he's going to take advantage of the few benefits there are to being wheelchair-bound.)
He's weaving carefully through the crowds on a mission to get a Cinnabon (if he's going to subject himself to this nonsense, he's getting a Cinnabon) when he sees an unmistakable figure topped with blonde hair in front of Macy's.
"Quinn?"
He calls out her name without really intending to, something like a reflex that he wishes he could take back as soon as he's done it.
But then she's turning to face him with a soft smile on her lips. "Hi, Artie," she greets when he wheels closer to her.
"Hi."
He hasn't seen her since she went off to college (in Arizona, he thinks) and practically fell off the face of the earth. He worried about her a little, because high school was not easy for that girl, and when he stopped hearing anything about her, he was afraid that something had happened to her and he just hadn't heard because he didn't know the right people or whatever. He asked her mom about her when he saw her at the grocery store one day, and he was really relieved to hear that she was okay.
Now he's sort of hoping that Mrs. Fabray isn't going to mention that he's been asking after her for the last three years. Maybe he shouldn't be embarrassed about that, but he is.
"I haven't seen you in years," he observes. "Home for Christmas?"
"Yeah. You?"
He nods. He hadn't really wanted to come back from Chicago, but he couldn't figure out a way to justify his absence to his mother this time of year, so here he is.
Artie notices the way that Quinn is looking at him. It's been three years since he's seen her, which means that it's also been three years since she's seen him, and he doesn't look the same as he did back then. Gone are the glasses, the khakis, and the sweaters that he now realizes were really hideous. He wasn't doing himself any favors dressing like that, something that he figured out pretty quickly when he started college.
"Listen, I need to get going," he says after a moment, breaking the silence. "But we should really hang out while you're in town."
"Sure," she says easily, surprising him. She reaches into her purse for her phone and hands it to him so he can put in his number. "I'll give you a call."
He knows, even as he's typing his name into her phone - first and last, as if she knows another Artie - that this is a waste of time.
He hands her phone back with a half-smile. "It was good to see you, Quinn." He locks eyes with her so she knows that he isn't just saying the words because they're polite; he means them. "You look great."
"Thanks, Artie."
He knows he isn't going to hear from Quinn again when he wheels away from her at the mall, still heading to Cinnabon even though he doesn't feel particularly hungry any more.
He's a dude in a wheelchair; he knows what a brush-off looks like when he sees one. It's like people feel bad if they ignore him right off, but it's somehow okay to forget that they ever met him. He gets it though. While most girls get to know guys without thinking long-term, it's like they can't help it when it comes to Artie. They immediately question whether or not they could really date a guy in a wheelchair, and they rule it out so quickly that it's hard for him to get to know anyone even casually.
But anyhow.
He also knows Quinn Fabray a little bit, and that girl is the queen of the brush-off.
Artie almost can't believe that Quinn is calling him when he sees the unknown number come up on his phone. It's just after sunset on Christmas, and besides that, in what world does Quinn Fabray call him at all? It's literally never happened. They aren't in high school any more, but he's still Artie Abrams, and she's still Quinn Fabray.
But it is Quinn on the phone, and she says something about hanging out because she's bored and going stir crazy, and before Artie can process anything, he's giving her directions to his house and assuring her that his parents won't mind if she comes over. He hangs up the phone and just sits there for a moment.
What the hell is happening?
He's still asking himself that question when he's leading Quinn Fabray down the hallway to his childhood bedroom.
"Where are your parents?" she asks.
He glances back at her. "They went to a double feature of The Godfather and The Godfather, Part 2 in West Lima." He shrugs his shoulders at the questioning look on her face. "It's a thing." It means that he gets the house to himself without having to feel like he's being anti-social, so he really doesn't care where they are.
She's looking at the photos that are framed on the shelf above his desk when he finishes closing the door. "I like this one," she comments, gesturing to the one of glee club from the year they tied The Warblers at Regionals. "It was one of the few competitions where nothing terrible was happening to me."
Artie smiles. "It was a lot of drama." Four years of it.
Quinn crosses the room and lowers herself to sit on the end of his bed. "I don't miss that part," she says thoughtfully. "And that was most of it, really, so..." She trails off, shrugging one shoulder.
He and Quinn had very different experiences with the glee club. Hell, they had very different experiences with high school in general. He thinks he knows what she means though, even if it wasn't like that for him. He certainly observed enough of the dramatics to be grateful that he wasn't usually involved.
"Did you have a good Christmas?" he finally asks, not sure what else to say. He can't remember if they've ever been alone together before.
"It was fine." She watches him for a moment, then admits, "I really don't like Christmas."
"Yeah?" She nods, her hand coming up to pull through the straight ends of her hair. She's wearing it down past her shoulders. He likes it. "I'm not a big fan either."
"Really?" She looks surprised. "I'm usually the only one. A lot of people say they hate Christmas, but when it comes right down to it, they get all 'deck the halls.'"
"I know the type," Artie agrees. "What's your reason?"
She takes a moment to consider the question before answering. "It's always seemed so fake to me. All sparkle and no substance. Maybe that was just my house," she says lightly. "It's all about looking perfect and pretending that the bad stuff doesn't exist. What about you?"
He hasn't ever told anyone this story. He doesn't think anyone's ever asked. Typically, telling someone that you hate Christmas just leads to a conversation about why you're crazy to hate Christmas.
"You know that I was paralyzed in a car accident." She nods. "The accident was in the middle of November, and I was still in the hospital for Christmas. I was eight years old, and they were telling me that I wasn't ever going to walk again, and that was the year that I found out that Santa wasn't real. It kind of soured me on the whole thing."
"That's terrible," Quinn says softly. "If it makes you feel any better, my parents never let us believe in Santa."
He grins for just a second. "My mom was driving that night, and even though it wasn't her fault, she gets all guilty and stuff this time of year. When I was little, it just meant lots of presents and stuff. Compensating," he explains. "Now it's just...it was years ago, you know? If I've learned to deal with it, why does she still act like this?"
Quinn is quiet for a moment, watching him thoughtfully. "I think we should get drunk."
He can feel Quinn watching him drive.
Of course I can drive, Artie had said when he'd offered his car when they decided to go to the liquor store and she'd said that she wasn't sure his wheelchair would fit in the back seat of her mother's Chrysler.
Now she's sitting in the passenger seat of his Explorer, watching with some fascination, he knows, as he drives with his hand controls.
Maybe it's silly, but it's always amusing the first time that someone who knew him when he was younger sees him driving. (Puck's reaction was especially good, and he'd eventually convinced Artie to show him how it all works and let him have a go at it. To say that day was interesting would be an understatement.)
"So how are we going to do this?" he asks when he pulls into the parking lot beside the liquor store.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not twenty-one, and I know you aren't." She gives him an odd look. "I remember your birthday, Quinn."
"Oh." She looks surprised, but she shouldn't. She's the kind of girl you couldn't help paying attention to in high school: a beautiful, tragic mess. "Well, sometimes I don't get carded, so if my idea doesn't work, we can go to the store off Fairfax and try again. But I was thinking that you could steal it."
He twists himself in his seat to look at her straight on. "Excuse me?"
"Well, who's going to expect the guy in the wheelchair to be shoplifting booze?" she asks. The words are almost offensive, but he can tell that her intention isn't, so he keeps listening. "We go in together, and I flirt with the clerk and buy a pack of cigarettes, and you wheel around like you're bored with waiting for me. Grab something and slip it under your coat, and we go out together."
"What if they catch us?" Artie asks. It seems like the logical question. "What if they call the cops?"
"It's Christmas," she reminds him pointedly. "I'm a pretty girl, and you're in a wheelchair." He rolls his eyes, because that is just a little bit offensive, however she means it. "Really though. If that happens, I'll cry, and it'll be fine. Let's go."
If she's sure, he's going to take a risk and go along with it. Worst case scenario, it turns into a good story.
Artie watches her push her fingers through her hair and affect a bored expression just outside the door, though she winks at him just before she pushes it open.
"I didn't tell you to come in," she says meanly, letting go of the door too quickly, so that it bangs against the side of his wheel. He's too busy shoving his way through the glass door to look up in confusion. "I need cigarettes and for you to leave me alone for five freaking minutes."
"Fine," he snaps, catching on. He glances up at the clerk, standing behind his bar-height counter (Artie hates those things) and watching their conversation closely. Artie glares. "Get your damn cigarettes."
Artie can see the register in the big, rounded mirrors mounted up at the ceiling so that the clerks can watch the aisles without leaving the front, so he keeps his eyes on it as he wheels himself slowly down an aisle of wine. Quinn leans forward on the counter, resting her chin in her hand. He can't hear what she's saying to the clerk - who looks like he's about twenty-five - but he can tell that the guy is completely enamored with Quinn.
He definitely isn't paying any attention to Artie.
He wheels himself out of the wine section, turning a corner so that he's facing the front of the store. He can see the clerk from here, and the guy is moving along the cigarette display behind the counter, following whatever directions Quinn is giving him. Artie takes his chance, reaching out and closing his fingers around the neck of a bottle, tucking it into the side of his coat before the clerk turns around again.
"Hey. Wheels."
Quinn's voice rings through the store a few minutes later, and he has to bite back his smile when he emerges from the end of the aisle he's on. (This one is full of brightly colored mixers that make his stomach ache at just the sight.) "Are you ready?"
She holds up one hand as if to ask him what he's doing. "I'm waiting on you."
This time, she holds the door open for him, though he catches the way that she wiggles her fingers at the clerk. It's completely ridiculous, but girls who look like Quinn can get away with things like that.
Only girls who look like Quinn can get away with things like that, come to think of it.
"What did you get?" she asks, leaning over to reach behind his seat once they're back in the car and he's pulling back out on the street. She flips on the dome light to read the label, then sets the bottle in her lap and looks at Artie seriously. "Peach schnapps?"
He glances over and sees the wholly unimpressed look on her face. "What?"
"Peach schnapps," she repeats flatly. "Seriously?"
"Well, what did you expect? Everclear?" He shakes his head and looks over at her again when he slows at a red light. "I'm not Puck, Quinn."
He can tell that she doesn't want to laugh, but she can't stop it from happening.
"Oh, my god," she gasps after a while, pressing a hand to her chest. "Fair enough." She glances at the bottle in her lap, then shrugs her shoulders. "On the plus side, we won't have to worry about finding a mixer."
As it turns out, straight peach schnapps could be the easiest alcoholic beverage in the world to drink. They take two juice glasses and the bottle into his bedroom, and within an hour, they've worked through the first third of it.
Artie feels pretty good. And why shouldn't he? He's drinking with Quinn Fabray. He has Quinn Fabray in his house.
He has Quinn Fabray in his bed.
Okay, on his bed, and that's at least partially because the only chair in the room has wheels, but it counts for something.
She has his remote control in her hand and is flipping channels, barely pausing as she goes. "Freaking Christmas shows," she complains, flicking off the television and dropping the remote. She turns around so she's facing where Artie is sitting, leaned against the headboard, and crosses her legs. She takes a sip of schnapps, her eyes locked with his. "When I was eleven years old, my mother made a special diet Christmas dinner for me."
Artie doesn't know how to respond to this. Not only does it come out of left field, but that's a terrible thing for anyone to do to a little kid. And sure, he saw the pictures just like everyone else did, but it's hard to believe that she was ever anything but the really pretty girl sitting on the bed with him.
"When I was eight, I spent Christmas in the hospital because I was paralyzed," he finally says.
If she wants to trade war stories, they'll trade war stories. He's pretty sure he's going to win with that one every time.
She tilts her head and just looks at him for a moment. "How do you feel about Chinese food?" she asks. "Specifically," she goes on before he can answer, "ordering a bunch of it right now?"
He snorts out a laugh. "Isn't Chinese food on Christmas supposed to be a cliché?" he asks.
"For Jews," she answers, rolling her eyes a second later. "I've actually done that. When I was sixteen and pregnant and living with Puck."
He doesn't have anything to say to that, so he reaches into his pocket for his phone. "Let's order Chinese."
It's amazing, Artie thinks, how little of the alcohol their Chinese food soaked up. He's even more drunk than he was before they ordered.
Of course, that could have something to do with the three-quarters empty bottle of schnapps he just tipped up to top off his glass.
"I've never been drunk on Christmas before," he observes, setting the bottle back on his nightstand.
"Me neither," Quinn says. She's flipping through the pages of a book on Greek mythology that she found on his shelf. "My mother was always the drunk Fabray on Christmas."
"Really?" He shouldn't ask, he knows, but the words slip out before he can stop them.
Quinn nods and flips another page. "She drinks less now, and it's not like it's ever been a problem, but I think it was her way of dealing with what an asshole my dad could be."
"Do you still talk to your dad?" Again with the words slipping out.
She lifts her eyes to meet his, but not her head, which makes her look kind of scary. "No." She looks back at the book. "If we were drinking wine, we could toast Dionysus." She closes the book, shaking her head, and leans over to set it on the edge of his desk. "When I was nine, I asked for an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas," she says, her tone totally different than it was ten seconds ago, "because I'd read about it in some book. Instead, I got an apron and a healthy eating for kids cookbook."
"When I was in the hospital because I was paralyzed, Santa forgot to put on his beard before he came into my room, which was how I found out that Santa wasn't real," he counters evenly. "And my legs still didn't work."
She rolls her eyes. "It's not fair to use that every time."
"It's not fair that I can't walk," he says, shrugging his shoulders, "but it doesn't change anything."
"That," she says with her eyebrows furrowed, "is drunk logic. You are drunk."
Artie starts laughing (giggling, if he has to admit it, which he doesn't) at the look on her face. "And you are the pot." Her mouth drops open, which makes him laugh harder. "My friends call me kettle."
"That's terrible," she tells him seriously, but he can see that she's holding back a laugh. She watches him, appraising, for a moment. "Why didn't we hang out in high school?" she asks quietly.
Artie wishes that it was the easy answer, that they were both just too busy with what they were doing separately to spend any time together, or that they were both distracted with their own friends. It isn't the truth though, and he isn't going to lie to her.
"Because you're Quinn Fabray, and I'm me."
She shakes her head. "Being Quinn Fabray didn't mean anything after I got pregnant."
"Of course it did," he says quietly. He can't explain why he thinks it's sad that she doesn't know that, but he does. Even after everything that happened, she was still that beautiful, unattainable girl to him. That she knew who he was, that she spoke to him on a regular basis, however superficially, was one of those things that he never stopped being surprised by.
She takes the last sip of her drink, then leans over to set the glass on his desk, on top of the Mythology book. "I think I'm cut off," she says softly. He watches her pick at the seam of her jeans at the inside of her knee. "For what it's worth, I wish I hadn't been such a bitch in high school."
"Yeah?" Artie chuckles. "I didn't think you were so bad."
She presses her lips together and looks at him, her hand coming up to toy with an earring. Artie finishes the last of his glass of schnapps (and he doesn't care how lame it is, that stuff is delicious) and puts it on his nightstand. "Why Arizona?" he asks abruptly. He's been thinking about it since he saw her at the mall, and if he doesn't ask, he's never going to find out.
"Arizona is about as far away from Ohio as you can get aesthetically," she answers after a moment. She sits up on her knees and shifts so she's sitting beside him, leaning against the headboard. She pulls a pillow into her lap. "I hate Ohio," she says conversationally. She nudges him with her elbow when he snickers.
"It could be worse," he points out. She looks at him doubtfully. "We could be from, like, South Dakota. Or Kentucky."
"I used to think I was going to go to school in Kentucky." He gives her a weird look, and she shrugs. "I was really misguided."
He knows that the only reason that's funny is because he's drunk, but he still can't stop the laughter that bubbles up. Quinn doesn't seem particularly impressed, watching him with a bemused expression that just makes the whole thing that much funnier.
"You know," he says after he's gotten himself under control. "This Christmas actually didn't suck."
She turns a little to face him. "It didn't," she agrees softly.
It's an automatic response to lick his lips when he sees her glance at them before meeting his eyes again, and his hand comes up to rest against her cheek when she leans in to kiss him softly. The part of his brain that should be freaking out a little bit about kissing Quinn Fabray is suspiciously silent, even when she makes a tiny sound in the back of her throat and curls the tips of her fingers into the sleeve of his sweater.
She leans her forehead against his when she pulls away from the kiss. "Merry Christmas, Artie."
He takes a chance - because when will he ever have it again? - and presses his lips to hers again for just a moment. "Merry Christmas, Quinn."