Hey guys!
Sorry it's been a while. You know... life gets in the way.
Anyway, I have no excuses that you haven't probably heard 1,000 times so I simply beg for your forgiveness.
Hope you enjoy!
Andre Vallier and Tina Cohen-Chang are in a relationship.
Kurt Elizabeth Hummel, Mercedes Jones and 2 others like this.
Miranda Clarke: I thought you said you were gay. Is she a man?
View 181 other comments.
"I didn't realise there were 181 ways to re-word that one sentiment. The English language is an amazing thing," I said, slightly surprised. Tina and I had been together for about a months now, but Facebook had only been alerted of this the previous night.
"Ouch," Kurt said over my shoulder. He, Tina and I were studying in the library for a while before glee club. So, naturally, we were on Facebook.
I laughed, clicking the 'remove from friends' button numerous times. "By all means continue destroying my friends, I daresay I have too many." Dumbledore quotes. Apt. I chuckled internally at my own wit.
"Gotta love Dumby," Kurt grinned, taking the seat next to me and returning to his books.
I stared at him, impressed. I was still getting used to being around people who were even vaguely interested in the same things as me. "Gotta love Dumby indeed! You are amazing."
"I know," he said, smiling, without looking up from his books.
Tina returned from the stacks of books carrying a large, old looking volume.
"Bonjour Tina. Vous êtes à la recherche particulièrement belle aujourd'hui," I winked at her.
She smiled blankly and sat down next to me. "You could be ordering a salad for all I understood of that." A pout crept across her face. "Or insulting me?"
"Impossible."
"Oh, he was," Kurt said dramatically.
"Ordering a salad or insulting me?"
Kurt looked very serious. "Both."
Tina laughed. She somehow managed to glow under all those black clothes and make-up. I winked again playfully and she gave me a kiss on the cheek. The elderly librarian who was standing near us slammed a book down with a force I didn't think possible for a woman as frail looking as her. The sound resonated throughout the near silent room and everyone turned to stare at us. Tina turned bright red and buried herself in her book. We spent the next 20 minutes in silence until a bell rang and we headed off to glee club.
I walked in the door and was immediately both scolded by Dean for not coming to the extra rehearsal that they had just had and not told me about, and welcomed into the band as if I we had been apart for years. Ivan the drummer hugged me so hard I was sure something cracked. I waved to Tina and Kurt as we went to our respective families. There was kind of a rift between us due to the fact that I wasn't in glee club. Well, mostly with Tina. The glee club was so deeply, intensely, essentially important to Tina.
Tina was like that – intense. She's actually quite over-the-top for someone who seems to be so shy, I thought to myself. It seemed to me that she completely threw herself into everything she did or believed or felt. As her boyfriend, I was often on the receiving end of that which was cool, sometimes, and sometimes kind of scary. I mean, not scary but just something I couldn't reciprocate. I'm not really the hugely-emotional-express-yourself-I-have-so-many-feelings-I-just-might-burst type. Which is part of the reason there was a rift between me and the others. I felt strongly about nearly everything as well – I could ramble on for days quite passionately about issues such as breakfast cereal and whether or not beardy piano guy was a pedo – but I kept it in most of the time if it's not hilarious or fuzzy or stupid, which often made people think I was cold and shallow. And I suppose I am. But I digress.
Mr. Schue and Tina were gesturing to me expectantly. I must have been on the though train for a while. I stood up and walked over to them, taking Puck's guitar with me. I had promised to help Tina with her ballad. I sat down next to her, and she assumed emotional songstress position.
I played the simple chords and began so sing the somehow amazingly beautiful three note melody.
I don't know you, but I want you all the more for that.
We were playing Falling Slowly by the Swell Season. Artie had been giving me guitar lessons so Tina had somehow found a ballad that we could both sing that featured the four chords I knew. Tina was great like that.
Words fall through me, and always fool me, and I can't react
Tina came in with a harmony in that line and it struck me once again how sweet her voice is. She achieved the perfect balance between looking at me enough to be convincing and looking at the audience enough to be performing. It was pretty cool. I was afraid of getting the chords wrong so I kind of sung into the guitar that felt so strange in my hands. I kind of wanted my trumpet back.
Games that never amount to more than they're meant,
Will play themselves out.
My strumming was clumsy and I cringed at it. I never played anything of this poor quality in front of people on the trumpet. Tina was getting into it though, and Mr. Schue was nodding encouragingly. Rachel was tearing up. Someone should place a ban on ballads around her, effective immediately. Or at least introduce her to better quality music so that she doesn't get so worked up over everything with less than 100 bpm and a vaguely pleasant melody. I mentally planned some CDs to burn for her.
Take this sinking boat and point it home,
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice,
You have a choice.
You'll make it now.
I stumbled over the chords on the way to the next verse, but mine and Tina's voices found the notes with no problems.
Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won
Kurt caught my eye during the last three lines and began to tear up as well. The ballad ban applies to him too. Kurt had been having a rough few weeks, however. And Mr. Whoever-Wrote-This-Song-Dude-From-The-Swell-Season-Whose-Name-Escapes-Me was right; it was time that Kurt won. It was time that all my friends won actually. Mercedes, Artie and Tina (and Rachel? Are we friends? I still don't know). Damn Tina and her choice of song with relevant to real life lyrics.
Falling slowly, sing your melody.
I'll sing it loud.
We ended the song and the glee club clapped politely, with two audible cheers of "damn!" from Artie and Mercedes, and two audible sniffs from Rachel and Kurt.
"That was very nice, Tina," Mr. Shue said, patting her on the back. He then added sternly: "But you were supposed to sing with Mike."
Mike and I exchanged sheepish looks.
"Andre's not even in the glee club," Mr. Schue further added, giving me a bitter sidelong glance.
"M-mike didn't want to sing," Tina explained quickly, becoming flustered. "So I thought I'd sing with my b-boyfriend." She smiled at me.
"It's true," Mike said. "I offered to dance a ballad… but we thought that would be even further away from the assignment than singing with someone else."
"Well, if your boyfriend would like to join the glee club you two could do this more often," Mr. Shue said to Tina. He looked hopefully at me and Tina smiled at me too, also hopeful. I looked between the two of them. It was like a tennis game of pressure. I wasn't going to give in. I hate tennis anyway. Unless Nadal's playing… I have a huge man-crush on him.
"No thanks," I said somewhat less-than-politely. "Not really my thing..." I went and sat back with the jazz band as if to emphasise this. Tina looked hurt but said nothing. With no further ballads to be performed, the usual insanity of New Directions ensued. Brittany forgot Mr. Schue's name. Santana and Kurt were verbally bitch-slapping each other. Mike Chang was dancing like an octopus on speed (which I thoroughly enjoyed). And Mr. Schue was trying to teach them all the true meaning of unity. Or diversity. Or something… I didn't catch it. It wasn't important anyway, and the jazz band members packed up and left well before the rest of the club finished.
The next day I had a rather unpleasant morning. I have never been a morning person. I don't even know how to walk properly until I've been awake for at least 3 hours. This made me riding my bike to school dangerous to no end, but I was on trying to be a good global citizen and do my bit for the environment, so I wasn't going to just to prevent me from breaking a few bones or… friends. So far I had sustained five injuries, and it was my third day doing this. Tina always fussed over me when I arrived sporting my newest injury, though, so I didn't really mind.
This particular morning I sort of… ran over Artie. We lived in the same area (Kurt too, but he, luckily, was spared. Grumpy morning Kurt is not something I want to see… especially if he's grumpy because I ran him over) so I had just turned the corner of my street (in a rather unorthodox fashion) and there was quite the collision. It actually ended a quite badly for me because Artie's chair was considerably more sturdy than my flimsy bike, and I may or may not have done spectacular aerial gymnastics before landing not so attractively. I even managed to drop my trumpet onto my own head, which I thought was quite a feat. I maintained it wasn't entirely my fault – Artie should look left and right and… through nearby hedges before he crosses the road if he doesn't want to get hit by leafy trumpet players. I mean, really – it's common sense.
It wasn't really the best impression for Artie's mum to have on Artie's new best friend (his words not mine – my internal happy dance was quite vigorous), but apparently it was less weird than when she met Rachel.
"She actually started serenading her," Artie said, eyes wide recovering the painful memory. "And her dads joined in."
I opened my mouth to say something hilariously witty (or so I thought anyway) but a small brown cloud appeared in front of me, sporting a recorder thingy and confusing me to no end. Eventually I realised the small brown cloud was hair, and the figure sporting the recorder thingy was… well I didn't know his name. Reporter guy.
"This is Jacob Ben Israel reporting with New Kid Evaluation Edition 24. Subject – Andre Vallier," he said into the recorder, pushing Artie away and walking alongside me. He shoved the recorder into my face.
"Um, hi?" I said. "What's going on?"
"I do an evaluation of every new student after they've been at McKinley for two months – not including freshmen," he said in a business-like manner.
"That's… efficient?" I said, still unsure of what was happening.
"It certainly is. Let's begin. Why are you covered in leaves?" he asked forcefully, plucking one off my cardigan.
I arrived at my locker and opened it, trying to think of a fantastic lie. None came to me. "There was an… incident involving a hedge." Artie appeared next to me again and snorted loudly.
He nodded hurriedly, plucking another offending twig from the collar of my shirt.
"Do you have any comment to make on your relationship with Glee Club member and long time loser Tina Cohen-Chang?"
"Tina's not a loser," I dismissed. "And I have no comment. Tina's awesome."
"That's a comment."
"Shut up."
"How rude," he scolded. "Is it true that your status as the only European guy in school gives you lots of play with the ladies?"
"No?" I said, bemused.
Artie snorted again. "You wish."
"No I don't!"
"According to my blog, your popularity ratings are through the roof despite you being in both jazz and brass bands and friends with the least popular kids in school, notably Artie Abrams and Kurt Hummel. What do you attribute this to?"
"Dude, I have like… 4 friends. Maybe you should do some research before you –"
"Are you concerned about Tina's previous interest in fellow Glee Club member and your current partner in crime Artie Abrams?"
Say what? I shut my locker a lot more loudly than I had indented to. "Um. What?"
"Their sexual tension ratings were off the charts all through freshman year and up til you came."
Artie pretended to be extremely interested in his shoes.
"Good to know," I said as calmly and dismissively as possible. This isn't concerning, I told myself. Artie is my best friend and Tina's awesome.
"The words of a broken man," Jacob said dramatically, and continued without stopping for breath. "You crushed expectations school wide when you ditched your jock roots to be a full time band geek. Is it true that–"
"OK, that's enough of that," Artie rammed Jacob and he fell quite ungraciously across the hall.
There was a silent moment, which was a rarity. Artie and I usually went on like an old married couple (a comparison Mercedes kindly pointed out nearly every day).
"So, um," I began awkwardly.
"Nothing happened or is happening," Artie said quickly.
"Ok," I said, somewhat more awkwardly. Am I cool with this? I asked myself. Eh. I'll just pretend I am. "No problems man." I winked at him.
He smiled back vaguely and another awkward silence ensued.
A distraction came in the form of Tina.
"What happened to you?" Tina asked, hugging me. A stray part of hedge had somehow stuck to one of her gloves and she pulled it off daintily.
"Long story," I laughed. Artie mumbled a vague excuse and left the two of us alone.
"I've got time," Tina smiled, wrapping her arms around me again.
I chuckled and returned the hug like a lonely bear. "Ok, well–"
The bell rang.
"Maybe I don't have time," Tina giggled, gave me a quick kiss then ran away.
I grinned after her like a fool for a long moment then skipped off to class, trying to ignore something sinking in my stomach.
"Tina's awesome," I said, grinning like a fool again as I walked Artie to class a week later, having dutifully forced myself to forget about anything vaguely unpleasant concerning him and Tina. Artie mumbled something in response, his nose in his chemistry book. I took this as an indication to continue. I mean, who doesn't want to hear about how awesome Tina is? "She's really awesome."
"You've said," Artie laughed. "More times than I can count."
"But she's so awesome," I said again, stopping briefly to high five Mike Chang (he was my physics buddy).
"Who's awesome?" he asked over his shoulder as he kept walking.
"Tina!" I called.
I could practically hear him roll his eyes.
I continued rolling Artie until he got to his class, and then caught up with Kurt in French.
"You know who's awesome?" I nudged him in the ribs, beaming.
"If it's not me I don't care," he said, not looking up.
I found this hilarious, but then forgot who I was talking about. Then I remembered. Tina. Yay!
I had a date with her that night. We were going to Breadsticks which I had heard was the best place to eat in Lima. The waitress pronounced all the French items on the menu wrong, but I said nothing because I'm a super fucking awesome nice guy. Also I'm modest.
It was the first date Tina and I had been on in a while. Artie had just found his old Super Nintendo and it was absolutely necessary for me to be at his house most days playing Yoshi's Island. Also, I kept having to go to extra brass band rehearsals because, due to how incredibly uncoordinated I was, I kept missing steps and screwing up formations.
Also, I may have given the tuba player concussion, which Sue Sylvester frowned upon apparently.
Whatever.
"I need to find something to wear for my cousin's wedding next week," Tina said as we walked out of the restaurant. I had offered to walk her home, even though it meant at least an hour extra on my way home. I needed the exercise anyway; all this sitting around playing music rather than running laps and doing push ups all day wasn't good for me. My arms were getting smaller and my waistline was getting... not smaller. Not by much, but when you wear jeans as skinny as I did you notice even the smallest changes. "My mum said I can't wear any black so I've got nothing."
"Yah?" I said, unsure as to what her point was.
"Can you come to the mall with me after school tomorrow?"
I grimaced apologetically. "Sorry, ma chère, but I've got brass band. Coach Sylvester wants me to re-arrange the music because for whatever reason she thinks a different key and reharmonisation will make her Cherrios look better. I personally wouldn't touch an arrangement by David Grusin but, well, I suppose I do have to touch it now. Still, it's the Mission Impossible theme so I'm not complaining. It's in 5/4 time, you know? I love 5/4. The Cheerios don't, though. I don't think they can count that far. They're just lucky it isn't in 7/8. I don't even think most of the band can count that far. Especially the tuba player since… well… he's not that good at counting at the moment."
"So… that's a no?"
"I'm sorry."
"How about Saturday?"
"Can't. Dean and Ivan – you know the drummer dude – and I just started a jazz trio and we're playing at the Lima Bean. Wanna come?"
"Maybe…" Tina sounded a bit irritated. "Do you have any other free time?"
Her tone made me nervous. "Not for the next week or so…"
"Don't worry about it," she snapped. "I'll just take Kurt. He wanted to come in the first place anyway."
"Ok," I said, wondering why she was so annoyed. I mean, I knew why she was annoyed but the reason seemed disproportionate with the level of annoyance she was emitting.
She let go of my hand to brush some hair out of her face, then didn't take it up again.
"I'm sorry," I said. I supposed this was follow-on annoyance from Sunday, when I blew her off to have a Halo tournament with Artie. Yeah… that's probably it.
"No problem," she said emptily.
The sun was still setting as we walked through the park in the middle of Lima and we turned off the path in the shortcut to her house and walked along the grass. The sun was in my eyes so I stared at the ground. The grass waved in the wind and really shone because of the angle the sun was at. I was transfixed by it, seeing shades of red in the shadows cast by the taller stalks of grass. It was so bright and real and – gone. I'd walked into the shade of a line of trees at the edge of the park and the grass was dark and green and bland again. I looked back to where it had been, but the shine wasn't there anymore.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Tina said, giving me a hug and a quick kiss goodbye as I reached her house.
I walked the same way back through the park, but the sun had sunk further into the sky so nothing seemed as picturesque. Disappointing. After half an hour of weaving my way through streets I still didn't quite know, I reached the corner where mine and Artie's street met Kurt's. It was awesome having two of your best friends living so close to you and–
"Andre!" came a voice around the corner.
Speak (think?) of the devil, it was Kurt. A tall lamp post illuminated the wall against which he was casually leaning. It looked like a scene from a movie. But then he started waving something vigorously at me.
"What brings you here on this fine evening?" I asked, tipping an imaginary hat to him and adjusting an imaginary monocle.
"You're an idiot," he laughed.
"I know. I'm the best kind of idiot," I said proudly, stroking an imaginary moustache for effect.
He sighed exasperatedly, not even bothering to pursue that topic further. "You left your phone in my bag today."
"And you waited here all night to give it to me? How chivalrous!"
His blue eyes were illuminated by the lamplight. He rolled them and sighed at me again. "You know what I'm going to say."
"That I'm an idiot?"
"Yes isn't agreement enough to that."
I cackled. He looked at me impatiently. I winked at him. "Thanks a lot man."
"There's a message from Tina there," he said, dismissing my thanks with a wave of his hand. "I didn't read it. She messaged me before though… seemed annoyed. Are you guys Ok?"
I read the message.
I'm sorry. I understand you're busy. see you tomorrow. xo
I got smacked in the face by relief. Tina's so awesome. "Yup we're fine," I grinned.
"Cool," Kurt smiled in relief.
I hugged Kurt goodbye.
"Please take this hug as a token of my gratitude, good sir knight."
"Sometime I don't know why I bother with you."
I cackled again and skipped home.
Hoping you approve. Shit's about to get real.
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