A/N: Thank you very much to Average Everyday Sane Psycho and Emily for your reviews on the last chapter. If you read, please do review, because it is really nice to hear from you :)

Also, this chapter is set in season 2, but isn't canon because Artie and Tina are still together.

Pride

Artie could only laugh at this point, although he was headdesking inside, as he saw his girlfriend frantically checking two ovens and stirring a bowl of cupcake mixture, while trying to cut butter and sift flour.

It had all started that day during Glee. The Glee Club were, once again, holding a bake sale to raise money for the bus to Sectionals. This year, Rachel had made a roster, so two people would make the cupcakes each night for the two weeks in which they would sell them at lunchtime. However, with Kurt's departure and subsequent loss of their twelfth member, Rachel informed everyone that, since eleven could not be divided by two, someone would have to either double up, or make all the needed cupcakes for the next day by themselves.

"Well, I would volunteer, but we've got a double football practise tonight." Puck had said, leaning back in his seat. While the other football players had nodded, Santana had raised an eyebrow.

"You would bake the cupcakes?"

"Well, yeah." Puck said. "Remember last year? My batch of cupcakes sold like crazy. Clearly I'm the master of cupcakes."

"That's so badass, Puck." Tina couldn't hold the sarcastic comment, and it was met with some snickers. Rachel rolled her eyes.

"I would do it, but I've got ballet tonight." She said, opening her mouth to continue, but apparently Puck wasn't finished.

"It was badass. I baked every single one of those cupcakes by myself in one night. I bet nobody here could do it." He turned to Tina, raising an eyebrow. "Especially not a girl."

Quinn's "You also skipped first and second period to finish baking and icing them..." was cut off by the low "ooooooooooooooo" that ran through the room. Artie groaned inwardly as Tina's eyes narrowed. He knew what was coming.

"What are the stakes Puckerman?"

"50 bucks." Puck grinned, having successfully gotten the usually quiet member of Glee so riled up.

"50 bucks?" Tina looked less certain; Artie knew she hated wasting money, and if she lost, it was a lot to lose.

"Oh, so you know you can't." Puck leaned back in his chair. "Put your money where your mouth is." Tina glared.

"I can so. Done." She said, holding out her hand for him to shake. He reached out, then quickly retracted his hand, adding, "By yourself, no help." Tina nodded and they shook hands. Artie let his head drop into his hands; he knew that he'd be skipping football tonight to do damage control. Tina was a hopeless cook.

Sure enough, that's how he found himself in this current moment. After he had made one comment on the way home about how she had bitten off more than she could chew with this bet, ("Seriously, Tee, you burn everything you ever make...") and gaining a glare and a hissed response, Artie just sat quietly, finishing his homework and watching as Tina moved around her kitchen. It had been hours since school ended, and she'd managed to churn out three successful batches of cupcakes. She was a mess; her hair was falling out of its ponytail, she was covered in flour and cocoa powder, and she had cupcake mixture streaked across one cheek. His silent question as to how she'd managed that was answered when she pushed hair out of her face with a mixture-covered hand and wiped it across her forehead.

"Take a break, Tee?" He asked her quietly. She looked up.

"I can't take a break, Artie, I have to get this done!" Artie could see her getting more and more stressed out in front of his eyes, spinning to take out the forth successful batch and put another into the oven.

"You sure you don't want help, Tee?" Artie said, wheeling so that his chair was next to her.

"No!" She snapped. Artie held his hands up in surrender. "I can do this by myself."

"You're stressing, Tee. Here, at least let me help you get your hair off your face." She turned around to look at him, biting her lip. She eventually nodded, and moved to sit in his lap. He pulled out her ponytail gently, pushing the hair back off her face and scooping it up the best he could. She laughed when the ponytail turned out lopsided, but kissed his cheek in thanks. Before she could move away, he pressed his lips against hers, before licking the mixture off the side of her face with a cheeky grin.

"Yum." He teased, and she giggled and turned back to her cooking. "You sure you don't need help?"

I'm fine." Tina stirred the cupcake mixture in front of her, and then turned around to peer into the oven at the batch she had cooking in the oven. He heard her mutter, "Puckerman is going down."

"Okay, if you're fine, I'm going for a bathroom break." Tina just nodded her head distractedly at him.

However, he had just reached the bathroom when he heard Tina yell out from the kitchen, followed by the smoke alarm going off. Spinning, he wheeled as fast as he could back towards her, entering the kitchen to find Tina with one hand under the tap and the other waving a dishcloth at the smoke alarm. A batch of burnt cupcakes sat on the cooling rack on the bench.

"Tee, what happened?" He asked her, as she got the smoke alarm to stop. She turned to him, tears in her eyes as she extended her hand out towards him.

"They were burning in the oven, so I freaked out..." Artie took her hand, noticing the large red burn mark on her fingers and thumb.

"You grabbed the tray without oven mitts!" He exclaimed. She only teared up more, which made Artie mentally kick himself. "Oh Tee." He took her hand and held it under the cold water from the tap. She seated herself on his armrest and he rubbed her back gently.

"I really don't need an 'I told you so'." She murmured quietly. He laughed softly.

"You really did bite off more than you could chew, Tee." Tina nodded, hanging her head. The timer going off made her turn around.

"Could... please could you get those? They're in the bottom oven." She stood up, keeping her hand under the tap, and he wheeled over to remove the cupcakes from the oven.

"Perfect." He proclaimed, setting them down on a second wire cooling rack. She gave him a half-grin.

"Would you mind... I mean... I was wrong." She mumbled, looking at her feet. "Please help me?" Artie laughed.

"How can I help?" Tina grinned, reaching for another apron and chucking it at him.

Four hours later, after a food fight, dinner break and impromptu dance-off in the kitchen which caused the forgetting, and subsequent burning, of another lot of cupcakes, an exhausted Tina finished putting the icing on the very last cupcake. Artie gathered up the ingredients and put them away, while Tina dumped the bowl, trays and utensils in the sink. She collapsed into a kitchen chair dramatically. Artie laughed and wheeled over.

"We did it." He said. She lifted her head off her arms for long enough to smile at him. "And you, Tina Cohen-Chang, actually admitted that you were wrong for once. Wound your pride?" He laughed as she stuck her tongue out at him.

"Like a stab to the heart." She said, acting out the stabbing motion even more dramatically than her slump into the chair. "Puck's going to be a nightmare tomorrow." She let her head drop back into her arms, mumbling, "And you're going to have to pay for my morning coffee until I earn more money." Artie pretended to be indignant.

"Hey, you got yourself into this! I got you out of it." Tina grinned, shifting to sit in his lap.

"And here's your thank you." She smiled cheekily, before leaning in to kiss him.

The next day, Artie was incredibly proud of Tina. She firstly swallowed her (rather large amount of) pride and stubbornness, marching right up to Puck with the fifty dollars she owed him in front of the entire Glee Club and admitting that she was wrong and Artie had helped her. She then also gave him a lecture about how it wasn't because she was a girl, but because she was a terrible cook and it was a big task for anybody when he made a comment about it.

He couldn't help grinning and thinking, "That's my girl." Of course, he didn't say this out loud. He realised that it probably wasn't a good idea to say that right after she told Puck that he was "sexist and ignorant and put down women all the time by using them and calling them his own".

He was proud, but not stupid.