A/N- Special thanks to my pal, QuinnAbrams, for writing a chunk of the middle and helping me set the scene!
On Monday morning, Quinn saw her doctor. Naturally, Artie expected a full report and he got one. The pain related to Quinn's injury could be lessened if Quinn wore a brace for part of the day, increased her physical therapy regime, and saw a chiropractor regularly. They were going to try all of that before going for anything more invasive, like injections. The last two things weren't something that easily fit into a college student's schedule, but Quinn said she'd manage. Artie knew she always tried to downplay how upset she was about the side effects of her injury whenever she talked to him. He'd urged her not to, of course, wanting to be a safe person for her to vent her frustrations to. But he knew, in the back of her mind, this was what she'd always be thinking. It could have been worse. Well, that was always the case. Didn't mean venting wasn't allowed.
On Monday afternoon after rehearsal, Artie talked Tina into coming along. He convinced her to apply for Yale, too, after finding out that Brown was the only school she'd applied to. Not even having a safety school was a terrible idea; even Artie had applied to places like Ohio State for this very reason. Plus, it had been good enough for his sister; it could be good enough for him. Tina couldn't be convinced to entertain the thought of a state school, but she did at least apply for Yale and agreed to come along with him.
He needed one more driver. He had already decided against bringing his hand controls so that he could drive Quinn's car, mainly because he'd have to bring them back on the plane with him. He already fretted enough when he had to trust the airline to take care of his wheelchair. They didn't need any more of his valuable equipment. He considered asking Blaine, but he really needed his Danny to be at every rehearsal with Sandy. Finally, he settled on asking the other person who considered Quinn like a sister: Amy. She immediately agreed to take some time away from her classes so that she could also come along.
Road tripping on Friday for ten hours with Tina and his sister went exactly the way he thought it would. They sat in the front seats and gabbed the entire way, catching up on all the things. He brought his ear buds along to listen to audiobooks and napped. It was amazing. He'd really picked his travel companions well. He tried not to worry about rehearsal too much. He was just missing one. He'd asked Finn and Kurt to focus on certain songs and a couple of scenes. He wanted to be there if they were working on blocking or the larger ensemble performances.
They'd just taken their final pit stop, where Artie picked up a snack for Quinn - he'd noticed she shared his affinity for that trail mix with the nuts, raisins, and candy, so he grabbed a little bag for himself and one for her. After dismantling the chair once more and stowing it in the empty space beside himself, he cracked open his snack and munched happily as they suddenly found themselves surrounded by trees with orange, yellow, red, brown, and green foliage. Connecticut really was beautiful in the fall. He was happy to be here instead of in calculus class that day. And he was excited to finally see the people and places Quinn had been telling him all about on the phone.
"It looks exactly like the pictures on the brochures!" Tina exclaimed, pressing her face against the window. "Look at the leaves on all of the trees!"
"And all of these old buildings," Amy commented. She was driving, but she was stealing glances out the window periodically, while also keeping her eyes on the road. "Some of them look like castles. Like something out of 'Harry Potter.'"
"I would a hundred-perfect have to reference Hogwarts all the time if I went here," Artie said. "I'm envisioning a lot of hilarious short films, too, with Hogwarts as the setting. This place is inspiring me already."
"Looks like Yale gets a point for being inspirational," Amy commented. "I knew you'd be tempted to consider this place. Don't know how Mom and Dad will afford it, unless you get a full ride somehow. Does anyone here get that?"
"I dunno." Artie fell silent then, as they'd started talking about the future, and the future was hard and confusing. He was saved by a text from Quinn. "Quinn says to meet her by Willoughby's. It's a coffee shop she likes to go to, and she says they have parking available nearby. She says she'll walk us around campus and then we can grab something to eat after."
"Good, I'm starving," Tina whined. To Artie's pleasant surprise, she'd kept her complaints to a minimum during their ten hour car ride with just a few stops to stretch, use the restroom, and switch drivers. He supposed it was all catching up to her now.
Amy found the spot Quinn picked out, and sure enough, she was already standing outside waiting for them. She was bundled up for the weather appropriately, wearing a warm pea coat, a scarf, and tights under her skirt. Artie, of course, had come prepared with his own hat and gloves, should he need them, but he didn't think Amy and Tina had thought that far ahead. They were going to be chilly.
"Quinn!" Artie exclaimed once Amy had parked and pulled out his placard to hang from the rearview mirror. As soon as he'd opened the back door, she'd rushed to give him a hug, as if they hadn't already seen each other earlier that week.
"I'm so excited you guys are here," she told them, accepting hugs from Tina and Amy as Artie made progress on assembling his chair. "You are all going to love Yale. I swear, it's so different from home, but I can't imagine being anywhere else."
"Well, I've still got my eyes on Brown, but the Yale Office of Admissions just received my application," Tina told her. "So, I guess I'm open to checking out some other Ivy League options, too."
"That'll serve you well, to keep your options open," Artie advised-slash-teased her, completing the transfer to his chair and shutting the door behind him. He then returned his attention to Quinn. "Here, I picked you up a snack on the way in case you wanted one," he said, handing her the trail mix, which she accepted gratefully. "So… where to, Lucy Q?"
"I figure we'll walk around a little bit first and head towards Old Campus," Quinn told them, sticking the trail mix package in the pocket of her coat. "That's where most of the freshmen live. I'll show you my dorm, then we can go grab dinner somewhere?"
"That sounds good to me," Amy said, Artie and Tina nodding along.
Quinn wasted no time before telling them all about what her first couple months of school had entailed, and she filled Amy and Tina in on what she'd shared at the alumni dinner at Breadstix the other night– that she'd made it into her top choice acapella group. As they walked through Yale's beautiful campus, Quinn showed all them the buildings where her English and drama classes were held, and the library where she'd spent a handful of sleepless nights studying.
"But we don't only focus on our schoolwork here," Quinn told them. "I think that's a big misconception about the Ivies, that we're all nerds and that all we do is study. There are actually a bunch of fraternities and secret societies here that host lots of parties on the weekends. They're a good way to… let loose after such stressful weeks."
It wasn't long before the four of them arrived at the front of Quinn's dormitory. Bingham Hall was a tall building that was– like most of the other old buildings on campus– made out of stone.
"There's an accessible entrance around the side," Quinn told them, leading them through the building's quaint little courtyard area. "And since this building is nine floors, we have an elevator. Some of the dorms that only go up to five floors only have stairs. I'm on the sixth floor."
Artie followed Quinn up the ramp with Amy and Tina trailing behind him. Quinn swiped her Yale student ID to unlock the door, and they were in. The lobby of the building had some intricate design details that Artie could only attribute to the building's historic Ivy League charm.
"How's the, uh, dependability of these elevators?" Artie asked as they all piled in and began their ascent to Quinn's suite. He had a feeling that the elevators in a building like this were more for convenience than necessity. "Like, if they break down, does it take a while to get fixed?"
"It doesn't break all that often," she told him. "But one time it broke right before I had to go to class. I could manage going down the stairs fine, but when I returned home at the end of the day and found that it was still out, I had a much more difficult time. Going up the stairs– six flights of them!– can still be kind of hard for me sometimes."
Artie nodded understandingly as the elevator let them off on Quinn's floor. Her room was right across from the elevator, and she unlocked the door.
"Home sweet home!" She exclaimed.
Artie had been so excited to get inside and check out Quinn's space that he wasn't paying enough attention to the width of the doorway, and the knuckles on his right hand scraped against the wooden door frame. He also stopped short of making it all the way in the room. He couldn't even get into this room.
"Ow!" He yelped in pain, shaking his hand out and inspecting the fresh pink scrape on his hand.
"Are you okay?" Tina wondered. She'd been the one following closely behind him when the incident occurred, so she leaned over his shoulder to get a good look.
"Yeah," Artie answered, staring at the door frame in shock, stunned to encounter such a frustrating barrier. "The doorways are just... so narrow I can't even get inside."
"Wow," Amy said, examining the door frame more closely. "Not nearly wide enough. This really sucks!" Typical Amy, this kind of stuff made her mad. Artie noticed her nostrils flare, a tell-tale sign she wanted to punish whoever put this barrier up. Which was nobody. This barrier just existed before people realized or cared that it was an issue for people like him.
"I'm so sorry, Artie, I knew it was narrow but I didn't realize it was that narrow..." Quinn said, wringing her hands together. "It's like that in all of these old dorm buildings. Narrow doorways, impossibly tiny bathrooms…"
"Because they were made long before the ADA was established," Artie finished, nodding along. He already knew where this conversation was headed.
"Right," Quinn said. "And I wanted to make sure you're comfortable during your stay here, so I talked to my friend Biff– he's a senior in my acapella group– and he offered to let you and Amy stay with him over at his place. It's a newer building, and completely accessible. He has an air mattress and a pull-out futon, so there will be enough space for both of you. And Tina can stay here with me. My roommate offered her bed. She's gone home already for a long weekend, it's her Homecoming weekend. Is that… is that okay?"
Artie tried to hide his disappointment. Quinn was his friend, and he'd come all the way here to spend time with and stay with her, not some random guy. But he knew that it wasn't her fault that this school was old enough to be exempt from most ADA laws. It was either stay with Amy at Quinn's friend's place, or stubbornly insist he could stay here and be forced to accept help everywhere he went within the suite. He didn't really have a choice in the matter.
"Of course," Artie said, putting on what he hoped was his most convincing act yet. "Thanks for thinking of me."
They were still stuck in the hallway. Quinn showed Artie what she could from where he sat, as Tina and Amy went in to explore. The most interesting detail was that the room had a fireplace. Quinn explained that they weren't working anymore, but of course, there had been a time long ago when they'd actually needed them. Now they were just a neat piece of architecture.
"Oh, hey, invite for dinner!" Quinn said, suddenly checking her phone. "It's actually from Biff, the guy you'll be staying with. He says a bunch of my acapella people want to meet up at this Italian place, Basta Trattoria with me and my guests."
"Italian," Artie commented, grinning. "So, the Breadstix of New Haven?"
"Well... better, I'm afraid," Quinn said, as the other three collectively gasped, jokingly of course.
"Most Italian restaurants are objectively better than our beloved Breadstix," Amy pointed out. "But not a lot of them would bring you that much bread. Which, is not great anyway, for freshmen who don't want to gain the freshman fifteen."
"Legitimate concern," Tina added, with a shudder. "Don't let me eat too much bread. Let's go."
They were the first to arrive at the restaurant, since they'd all been gathered in a hallway when she'd gotten the text, unable to breach the doorway of Quinn's dorm, thanks to Artie's chair.
He went to use the restroom while they waited on the others, because who knew what he'd find waiting for him at the random senior's dorm. Artie hadn't brought along any of his usual equipment, due to the fact that they'd be flying back. Usually, he stayed at hotels that had what he needed. This predicament was already causing him some anxiety, which he was holding back, not wishing to ruin the visit.
He looked at himself in the mirror as he rolled under a lowered sink to wash his hands with the soap that was within reach. (Props to this restaurant for actually getting it right.) "Don't be weird, Artie," he said, out loud. "You can do casual. You can do normal. You can."
Of course, the door would have to swing open at that exact moment, as a guy with longish blonde hair entered and smirked at his little pep talk. Artie managed a weak smile as he caught this guy's eye in the mirror. Ugh, he though, as he wheeled the heck out of there.
When he returned, their group had arrived. Five extra people, two guys and three girls, sat at their table now. The head of the table, between Quinn and Tina, was left open for him. Five curious new sets of eyes watched him approach.
"Hey," he said, breaking the ice by being the first to speak. "I'm Quinn's friend, Artie."
"Biff," said the guy, seated to Amy's right, rising up briefly and actually coming around the table to shake Artie's hand. "I'm the one you'll be staying with. Having you over was a good excuse for us to clean up our pigsty, right Tanner?"
One of the other guys, Tanner, who had red hair and a ton of freckles, turned out to be Biff's roommate. Biff was tanned and muscular, with dark hair, and Amy could not be subtle. Because Artie knew his sister so well and was familiar with "her type," he caught her staring intently at Biff. She even giggled at what he said about cleaning up the "pigsty."
The girls turned out to be Natalia, Elena, and Kendall, all members of Mixed Company, the same singing group as Quinn, Tanner, and Biff. The girls were all freshmen who lived on Old Campus. The guys were seniors, living in residential college housing. As they explained this, one more guy joined the table and sat at the opposite end from Artie. It was the dude with the longish, blonde hair. Seriously? He couldn't believe the same guy who caught him mid-pep talk in the restroom was sitting at their table.
"And I'm Lincoln," he said, with a nod to Artie. "Don't be scared, bro, we don't bite."
Lincoln turned out to be a freshman, too, and he lived on Old Campus as well. Tina seemed rather taken with him. Artie could read her almost as well as he could read Amy.
The waitress had already brought them all waters. By the looks of it, no one else here had money concerns as they each ordered their own entrees. Quinn, however, quietly asked the other three if they wanted to split a large pizza.
"The pizzas are pretty big," she said. "And they do have free bread. I want to treat you guys because you sacrificed your time and brought my car all this way."
"You already reimbursed us for the gas!" Artie exclaimed. "That's not necessary."
"Please let me," Quinn argued. "I can't pay for your plane tickets back home. You guys did me a huge favor."
She may have still been trying to make up for the fact that Artie couldn't get into her dorm room, not without someone carrying him in. (And he didn't want Amy to try. It had been years since he'd let his sister pick him up.) Whatever the case, they let her buy their dinner. It wasn't like they didn't need the help.
"So, Amy, Quinn said you go to Ohio State?" Biff said, turning to Artie's sister after he finished ordering his food. "I only came to Yale because my brother did... and my father before him... and his father before him. Really didn't consider anywhere else. I'm curious what a state school is like."
Artie couldn't help but think Biff was just trying extra hard to find something polite to say about Amy's school, coming off a little pompous in the process. But Amy didn't seem to mind.
"Oh, well, I'm not the person to ask, I'm pretty boring," Amy confessed, as Artie nodded vigorously in agreement. He, in turn, received a death stare before she went on. "I'm an education major and I'm working on getting certified to teach high school because I really don't think I could deal with little kids. I just picked Ohio State because I got a decent scholarship and because it's close to home." She looked at Artie again, this time sans death stare. "I couldn't bring myself to stray too far from home. I would have missed my family and my brother too much."
In all four years of her college career, Artie had never heard Amy say this. She didn't even visit all that much during the school year. She did come home every summer though. But if she did need to make a random or spontaneous visit, she could do so without worrying about the expense of gas money or plane tickets. She could even come home mid-week and go back, if she needed to.
"Seriously?" Artie was still trying to figure out if she meant it or if she was just using him as a justification for having stayed in Ohio.
"Seriously." Amy sounded like she meant it. Maybe she wasn't just trying to sound noble to her audience. But if so, why didn't she tell him? It reminded him too much of how Amy had quit figure skating after his accident. Had he really played a part in her college choice, too?
"So, we want to know about Quinn," said one of the girls (Artie couldn't remember which girl was speaking at the moment), who surprisingly locked eyes with Artie as she said this. "How would you describe her in a sentence?"
"Constantly surprising us," Tina said, answering before Artie could formulate a response. "I mean, one year, she's head cheerleader, the next, she's wearing all black with pink hair and a tattoo of Ryan Seacrest on her lower back."
"Do you really want to bring up old tattoos we regret getting?" Artie asked Tina, pointedly, cutting her off before she could embarrass Quinn, who was avoiding looking at the others. Artie thought it should be up to Quinn, how much of her past she wanted to reveal, as well as the time and place for that. Anyway, his comment effectively shut Tina up, and he took over. "When I think of Quinn, what comes to mind is compassion. She really doesn't judge a person by what's on the outside."
Quinn smiled, touching his shoulder. "Artie's too kind," she said. "I only learned compassion after being on the receiving end of it from him and everybody in the glee club..." she trailed off, biting her lip and looking around the table. She still hadn't let go of Artie's shoulder. "You see, um, my sophomore year, it was really hard..."
Amy, Tina, and Artie all exchanged looks as she paused, shocked by the realization of what Quinn was about to reveal to her new college friends
"At the beginning of that year, I had made captain of the Cheerios," she continued. "I actually got to succeed Amy, who had been a wonderful captain during my freshman year. Only, um, I let everyone down. See, I slept with this guy – he actually turned out to be a pretty okay guy later – he wasn't even my boyfriend. He was my boyfriend's best friend. And, um, I got pregnant. I wouldn't have gotten through the pregnancy if it weren't for my friends in glee club. I gave my baby up for adoption..."
Quinn dropped her hand from his shoulder, reached for a napkin, and dabbed her eyes. One of the other girls did the same, as Artie surveyed the shocked reactions of her new friends. Quinn laughed a little bit, uncomfortable under their stares. It had probably been weighing on her, keeping her past a secret.
"So, sweet little Beth is two and a half now," she went on. "She was adopted by a wonderful mother, coincidentally the birth mother of another glee club friend of mine. And she's doing really well. And, well, so am I..." Quinn laughed. "And there's more... drama with me, what with my Skank phase at the beginning of senior year, but I'll just leave that for another dinner."
Artie took her free hand in his and gave it a quick squeeze. "I'm really proud of you," he told her. "For so many reasons, but above all, for not being ashamed of that."
She smiled back, as she dabbed away a few more stray tears. "Artie invited me to move in with his family for awhile after the baby was born," she added. "That's what I mean about learning compassion from being on the receiving end."
"Bread's here!" Artie announced, trying to diffuse the tension. He grabbed a piece. "Let's see if it's... hm, good, but Breadstix is still better."
"So, your school's show choir let you perform while you were pregnant?" one of the girls asked, incredulous. "How?"
"I can answer that!" Tina added, as she also grabbed a piece of bread. "Full skirts with lots and lots of tulle!"