Hi. I said I would say what inspired this fic in this chapter. When it was first announced that Tina/Artie wouldn't be together at the beginning of the second season, my immediate reaction was, "I bet her family doesn't like him because he's not Asian." And it kind of snowballed into this from there. Not a huge eurka moment, but it's kind of a nice story, right?
I want to thank Miranda, my beta, once again. I butchered her username last time so. FIONACAT36. There. I think I did it typo free.
Disclaimer: I don't own Glee.
Although Artie wasn't sure whether or not he was suppose to know about Tina and Mike, he still did. He was thankful that he had found out prior to the first day of school. It didn't really give him time to accept it—he didn't think he ever would, because you never truly get over someone you love kissing another guy, and then dumping you when you didn't want to roll over his toes—but it was better hearing about it rather than having to find out by seeing them together in a crowded hallway.
It was Kurt that told him, after he'd lured Artie out of his room with promises of seeing whatever action flick he wanted at the three dollar theatre. His friend tried to tell him as gently as he could, but it was a known fact that Kurt didn't have a gentle bone in his body when it came to these kinds of things. He told it to you straight and didn't sugarcoat anything to protect your heart.
There was no "hey, did you know" at the beginning. It was just, "Mike and Tina are going out now."
Going to the movies with Kurt was the only time he left the house between the break-up and the first day of school. He knew he shouldn't have gone out, because it only ended up making him feel worse about life. He had been perfectly content staying home and watching movies on pay-per-view.
The day it happened, the heartbreak didn't set in until after Artie had gotten inside, and in his room. It had been a long time since he'd cried and even longer since he'd cried over Tina. It wasn't sobbing, just two thin streams of tears running down his cheeks as he rammed himself into the wall. Once, twice, and then three times before he stopped. Three was the limit—anymore and one of his parents would come to down to his room to see what was wrong. If he limited it, they would just think one of his wheels had gotten stuck on a corner.
He laid his forehead against the door, reaching up and throwing off his glasses, tossing them someone in the room. He put his hands over his eyes, trying to stop the tears.
A few hours later, his mother entered his pitch dark room, turning on his bedside lamp. She picked his glasses up off the floor and put his wheelchair back into the correct position, because he had been so frustrated that he just pushed it over. She sat down on the edge of his bed and placed her hand on his elbow. His other arm was thrown over his face. "I don't want to talk right now."
"Honey, what happened? Did you and Tina have an argument?"
"She kissed another guy and she broke up with me, okay? I really don't want to talk about it because it's over and I can't change it."
His mother merely covered him with a blanket and kissed his forehead before turning the light back off and leaving him by himself. She knew how to deal with heartbreak—she had been through it herself and she could barely count on two hands how many times Artie's older sister, Ali, had come home claiming that her heart would be broken forever because of some guy.
She didn't force Artie to do anything for an entire week. She let him stay in his room and do what he wanted, as long as he wasn't being destructive. She would mostly find him flipping through photos of Tina and himself on his computer, his hand over his mouth as they got closer to the present.
But after that week, she tried harder to get him to leave his room. To have dinner with her and his father. He would mostly pick at his food before excusing himself. He started watching movies in the living room to please his mother, but she could tell that he wasn't totally there. She would sometimes have to call his name three or four times to get his attention. This wouldn't have worried her before, but now, it was different.
She tried to get him to go out to the store with her, but he always refused. The desire was just…gone.
On the first day of school, Artie knew that it was going to be tough. He usually liked the first day back, but he was dreading it this year. He tried not look at them as they passed the handicap entrance to the school, where he was now making his way through, but it was hard not to stare. They was something so…uniform about them. They just fit, with the looks, the way they walked, with their smiles.
Mike was able to hold her hand when he walked down the hallway with her. His hands weren't occupied by a wheelchair at the most inopportune times. That might have been what bothered him the most. Mike could do all of the things that he couldn't. That he wished he could do.
Artie was the first person to arrive to Mr. Mulligan's third period History class. He had to come from across the school, and his second period teacher let him out a little bit early, so he could get there without being trampled. He was greeted and asked his name, which he provided, even though he already knew that the teacher probably knew his name. Teachers always knew his name.
He was quite the hot topic around the water cooler.
He wheeled to the spot in the back row with no chair, which he knew was his place. He watched his other classmates enter the room with limited interest. That is, until Tina walked in.
Her hair was a bit wind-blown from running across the school from her last class and she was out of breath. Artie immediately ducked his head down so he didn't have to look at her. He didn't want to look at her, he didn't want her to sit by him. He didn't want to have to deal with that.
Tina scanned the room with her eyes, quickly figuring out that the only plausible place to sit was next to her now ex-boyfriend. She didn't want to be that girl, who sat between two groups of friends, and would constantly get dirty looks from them because she chose that place to sit.
She took a deep breath and walked up to him, tapping his shoulder, "Do you mind if I sit here?"
The look on his face reminded her of the day she told him that she'd been faking her stutter, "It's a free country."
His words stung her. She hadn't expecting him to be so…cold. Not only was it unlike him, but she hadn't thought he would act this way after the way he'd reacted to their break-up. Artie didn't have a mean bone in his body and this new side of him was shocking to her.
It only took about twenty minutes for Mr. Mulligan to finish his spiel about the course and spout off everyone's names like he'd been studying for a test. He told the class to spend the rest of the class period getting to know each other and they'd start the real work tomorrow. Great, Artie thought.
Tina looked from the desk to Artie every so often, trying to to work up the nerve to talk to him. Finally, with only three minutes left in the class, she said, "I've been meaning to talk to you…I really did mean to tell you before now. That it got serious with Mike, I mean."
"It's not my business."
"Yes, it is," she replied, "I want to be friends again, Artie. You're my best friend. You know that, right?"
The rest of the class was starting to crowd around the door and Artie took this as an opportunity to move away from the table. "See, that's the thing about break-ups. They make everything else null and void."
She tried to process his words and come up with a response, but she could only stammer out, "What?"
"I forgive you for kissing him while we were still together," he said, "But everything else, like how you forgot about all the things we've shared, and how I was willing to move on after you cheated on me changed everything. Maybe you don't get it, Tina. You broke my heart. And I will never forget that. Especially if we're friends again."
As the bell rang and he began to roll away, she grabbed one of his handles, effectively stopping him. "Artie, wait. Please."
He removed her hand from his chair in a surprisingly gentle manner, but his voice held more ice than she had ever heard in it before, "Just don't talk to me."
Tina had never been more thankful that she'd opted to have a study hall than that moment. She had convinced herself beforehand that her first encounter with Artie would have gone better than this.
She went to her study hall's classroom and immediately got the bathroom pass, stumbling her way to the choir room. The tears were already burning in her eyes, threatening to escape.
She was relieved to find the choir room empty of people. It seemed that, besides when it was inhabited with glee clubbers, no one was ever in this room. She put her bag down on the ground as she dropped down onto the piano bench, no longer being able to hold back her tears. She laid her head against the piano's fall board.
Finn Hudson happened to be on his way to see Miss Pillsbury so he could switch out of U.S. History when he passed the familiar music room. He could hear quiet sobs from a few feet away, so he poked his head in to see if someone was actually there, or if his mind was just playing tricks on him.
When he figured out that someone was really in there and it was Tina, he was at a loss. He didn't know how to breech the situation. His girlfriend, Rachel Berry, was emotional, but not in the same way that Tina was. Rachel cried, but she wasn't set off as easily as the quiet girl Finn now felt an obligation to help since he had found her like this.
Tina reminded him of his mother, in some ways. Carole Hudson's tear ducts were connected to pretty much every emotion she possessed and sometimes Finn would walk into the living room to find her crying over a bank robbery or someone winning the lottery. She also cried when Finn got an 'A' on his report card for the first time in years last semester. Over time, he had gotten quite good at being consoling.
He thought about what he would want right now if he were a girl. Would he be pleased to know that someone had seen him this way but just left him? He thought about all the things he had learned during the Madonna assignment about being nicer to the girls in glee. That made up his mind.
He walked up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder, "Um, are you okay?"
Tina looked at her fellow glee clubber behind her and only sobbed harder, the tears blurring her vision. Finn panicked, unsure as to what he should do. "Hey, don't cry. What happened? Do you want me to find Artie?"
Upon hearing his name, she let out an anguished cry. Finn was alarmed by her hysteria. Had someone hurt her so badly that she didn't even want Artie? "Tina…?"
"I lied to him. I ruined everything," she coughed out through her tears. Her seemed confused by her statement and she just couldn't hold it in any longer. So, she told him everything. About how her grandfather thought she was disgracing the family by dating someone who wasn't Asian and how she lied to Artie in an attempt to get him to break up with her.
That had been her original plan. To tell him that she kissed Mike and get him angry enough at her that he would do the hard part, the actual act of breaking up, for her. And when he said he forgave her, her heart melted and died a little at the same time. So she picked a fight with him, knowing he hated conflict.
She explained to Finn that it was even worse, because now, her actions caused her to be in the situation where she was now the girlfriend of a really nice guy who had just got caught up in a huge web of lies. She didn't like Mike in a romantic way, like she knew that she should. She would hate herself even more if she hurt his feelings too.
When she finished, Finn pondered what she had said for a moment. "And you didn't tell him the truth…why?"
"Artie wouldn't have let that happen…he would have fought them on it, in his way. Let's just put it out there, Finn. Artie isn't all that intimidating. My family would have eaten him alive."
"Lying was really the only option?"
His questions made her actions should even worse.
"It was the only way."
"But look at yourself, Tina," he said, motioning to her, "You're not happy, are you? Don't you remember how happy you were at the beginning of the summer?" He ducked his head so they were eye-to-eye, "And Artie's a nice guy. He would have understood eventually, if he saw how much this was stressing you out. You guys would have been able to come up with something that worked. You guys are like…Romeo and Juliet. That's what their names were, right? Except I bet Artie's parents love you. And even though you're kind of emo, I don't think you'd ever kill yourself over a guy."
Finn wasn't nearly as naïve as he let on. People always thought he was dumb merely because he had a very simple approach to life. Try hard not to mess everything up. Respect people, even if it's hard. Eat your vegetables.
The way he didn't filter or sugarcoat his opinion about this situation kind of scared Tina. No one, not even Artie, had been this honest with her.
Everyone wanted to protect her heart.
Until today.
Artie had worked so hard to protect Tina from the world that he never thought about himself. He should have been worrying about protecting himself from her. She had lied to him, ripped his heart out and stomped on it. She broke him. She broke every tie she had to him. She had been able to fix her mistakes with him before, but now. She didn't know if that was possible. She couldn't possibly repair what she had done to Artie's heart.
"Can I ask you something?"
She sighed, "Yeah, I guess."
"What were you expecting from Artie when you told him you wanted to be friends again?"
She was a little taken aback by his question. She pressed her lips together for a moment, not sure what to say.
It was a completely valid question. What had she been expecting? She thought, at the very least, he would have been a little nicer to her. Or at least, faked it. Maybe he would have given her a smile, even if there wasn't an light behind it. He would have attempted to make it seem like everything was okay with him, even if it wasn't.
She hadn't noticed it immediately, but it was clear to her now. Their should have been hurt in his eyes when she spoke to him that first time. Or anger. But his eyes were just…empty. She killed him. Not physically.
But inside. There was nothing there.
Almost to herself, she whispered, "What am I going to do?"
Finn picked up his backpack, "Telling the truth would be a good start."
Luckily, Tina and Artie didn't cross paths again that day. Artie saw her briefly as Mercedes pushed his chair into the lunchroom. That was usually Tina's job and he tried not to get distracted by the noticeable difference between the style that his friends pushed his chair.
She looked happy, he could tell. She slung her backpack over a chair between Mike and Finn, smiling at something one of them said. Finn squeezed her shoulder as she sat down. Mike kissed her on the cheek then and he had to stop looking.
Tina, on the other hand, made a conscious effort not to look over at the table she knew her friends were sitting at. Because if she did, she would surely start crying again, and the reaction of these macho football players and cheerios would be much different than her glee club friends. She was out of her element here. So she sat quietly, picking at her lunch, and occasionally answering questions about her summer that were tossed at her, mostly by Rachel Berry.
It should have been a relief to have another girl from glee there, but she just wasn't in the mood to go through the mental work-out that was talking to Rachel.
After school, she got a ride home with Mike, "Did I do something wrong?"
"What?" Tina asked, lost in thought, "Oh. No. Of course not."
"You've just been really quiet…I thought I did something."
"What makes you think that?"
"Well, you were really buddy-buddy with Finn earlier," he said, turning on her street, "I thought that maybe you were talking about what I did wrong."
"I can't talk to my friend?" she asked, turning her head to look at him.
"That's not what I said. I just…are you okay?"
"The first day back wore me out, that's all," she told him as he parked in her driveway, "My mom will probably want to talk about today. I'll call you."
She clutched her books to her chest as she got out. She could already feel that her eyes were puffy from crying and she just wanted to go upstairs and be by herself. Finn had given her his number—well, Kurt's, since they were still living together—and instructed her to call him if she needed anything. She appreciated the sentiment, but didn't plan on using his offer anytime soon.
Tina put her keys on the table in the foyer as her mother came into the entryway, a plate and a dishrag in her hand. "How was school?"
She could hardly look at her mother these days, after what she had made her do. Tina glared at her as she threw her bag on the floor and began to stomp up the stairs. Just before she disappeared from sight, she said, "You know what? Just don't talk to me. Ever."