A/N: For some weird reason I absolutely love the idea of Quinn and Artie being friends. It seems like they would be, right? Right.
They had always been okay friends. The kind of friends where you were close in elementary school, but after that you just don't have the time for each other. Different friends, cliques, classes, et cetera were major factors in this, but also they realized they just didn't have a lot in common.
She was a cheerleader, he was a nerd. He was in a wheelchair, she was too perfectly mobile. She put down everybody; he knew what that was like. They were simply too different.
But even after fifth grade, even after the parting of their friendship, Quinn Fabray never really stopped observing Artie. She watched him during math, and how he had to sit at the back because he couldn't fit in any of the desks. She saw how he used sarcasm and jokes to hide his discomfort and sometimes pain. She observed that when he made people laugh, he looked happier than she'd ever seen him.
And now, in their sophomore year, she noticed him more than ever. He sat in front of her at Glee Club practice, and she watched him when she had nothing better to do. She caught the glances he stole at Tina, and she recognized the wanting and adoration in his eyes. He loved this girl, Quinn realized, and she didn't even know it.
Over the course of the next couple of weeks, her ever-watching brown eyes caught a lot of things between Tina and Artie. They sat closer and closer together, and talked with her head ducked so she could hear him. They laughed at private jokes and her hand would graze his, and if that wasn't the beginning of a relationship, Quinn really wasn't sure what was.
But then, suddenly, everything stopped. Tina's back wasn't curved towards him in rehearsal; it was rigid. They hardly talked to each other anymore, and when he looked at her it was with sadness and pain in his eyes, not love. And over the weeks, Quinn had developed such an attachment to these two that she was not going to let them fall like she knew Finn and she would, eventually. So after one of their dance lessons, she cornered Artie.
He stared up at her. "Uhm. Hi, Quinn."
"What happened between you and Tina?" she asked.
His mouth dropped. "I—what— what are you talking about?"
"You guys stopped talking to each other, like, all of a sudden." She crossed her arms. "I've been watching you."
Artie narrowed his eyes and said (in a very uncharacteristically Artie voice), "For someone who's been watching me, you don't see very much."
"Oh, really?" Her hormones, which hadn't been too kind to her since the pregnancy began, started to get the best of her. "I see that you're in love with her. I see that one of you did something stupid, and I'm sure it's not worth fighting over. And I see that if you walk away from her without fixing this you will be ruining possibly the best thing you ever had. Alright? So just… don't screw it up, Artie."
She walked away, leaving him with his mouth agape.
Day by day, the two sat closer and closer together until they were holding hands. And every time Artie looked at Quinn, she saw thanks in his eyes. He may never have said the words thank you, but she could see them.
She saw lots of things.