Chapter 42: Locker Room Talk

ARTIE

Usually, whenever Artie went to the gym to work out, he found it relatively easy to 'get in the zone'. He liked to put on his headphones and fully immerse himself into whatever R&B album was on his current rotation. Griffin was the same way, which was why their longstanding gym time was so sacred to them both.

But that wasn't the case this morning. Today, a third person had tagged along to the gym with them. By some miracle, Sebastian had woken up before the clock struck eleven and surprised both Artie and Griff by accepting their invitation to join them for their morning lift.

Artie really hadn't been counting on Sebastian to come along. They'd extended the offer to him several times before, and he'd always turned them down. Artie had been expecting that again, but his step-brother had always been full of surprises and today was no different. Since it would have been super awkward if he and Griff had plugged their headphones in and escaped to their own musical world, leaving their plus one to work out in silence, Griff and Artie had left their earbuds at home this time around. Artie was trying to make the best of his beloved routine being disrupted, but the absence of his workout tunes was really bumming him out.

Without lyrics and verses swimming around in his head, Artie found his mind wandering. For instance, he had just transferred from his chair onto the seat of a chest press machine and begun his reps when he caught himself staring wistfully in the direction of his brothers.

They were a few yards away, over by the mirror-lined wall. After helping Sebastian to set the desired amount of weight on each end of the barbell, Griffin took a couple of steps back, prepared to spot Seb as he squatted with the weight resting atop his shoulders. Griffin's cut-off muscle tank showed off his admirable arms, and the inseam of Sebastian's shorts was several inches shorter than Artie would have ever picked out for himself. With every effortless squat he executed, every contraction of a quadriceps muscle, Artie felt what he could only assume was a pang of envy.

There he was, with his perfect body, all of its parts working together as they should. Sebastian had been incredibly blessed in the genes department. He was naturally tall and lean, and his involvement in lacrosse and tennis while growing up had helped him to develop an impressive muscular build. His step-brother's body was the very definition of no assembly required, and yet, he was happy to let the whole thing waste away as he spent his free time lounging on the couch watching romcoms he'd seen a million times before. Unlike Artie, Seb doesn't have to think about his body and the way that it moved– or didn't move– Artie thought, somewhat bitterly. He doesn't have to think about his muscles atrophying. He doesn't have to think about stretching twice daily so that his body remains easily moveable and pain-free. Why would he? Sebastian's body had never caused him any trouble. It had always been his all-access pass, getting him through the door of every room he wanted to enter.

Stop it, Artie, Artie thought to himself, shaking his head. We're not doing that anymore, remember?

No matter how many times his brain reminded himself of this simple fact, it was next to impossible for Artie to quit comparing himself to everyone around him. He'd been doing it for years, and it was a hard habit to break. He'd always been on the shorter and skinnier side of his age group. As a kid, he compared himself to the other gymnasts on his team. No matter how hard he worked, how many hours he put into his training, there would always be boys who could run faster down the vault runway than he could, or ones who could hold a handstand or hang from the rings longer. Then, his accident happened, and every negative thought he felt about his body was intensified. Right before his eyes, the strength in half of his body had dissipated, permanently making him the shortest and skinniest guy in nearly every room he entered. The self-imposed comparisons only got worse from there. Artie compared himself to everyone– the guys in Glee Club (cough, Mike Chang), the guys he saw changing in the boy's locker room after football practice… and, yes, even his brothers.

For the most part, Artie didn't let a lot bother him. Well, at least, that's what he told himself. It was easier said than done, though. Especially where his body image was concerned. That was the one thing that bothered him too much.

Artie continued to execute his reps, focusing on building up the muscles in his chest, back, arms, and shoulders, as he watched Seb and Griff from afar. The conversation that he'd had with Griffin on the beach on their first night in Aruba came to mind. His older brother must have seen the longing expression he was subconsciously wearing as he watched Seb and Ella run off to catch crabs one night because Griffin had gone out of his way to assure Artie that his body and his abilities didn't matter to their family and wouldn't matter to the right people. He may not look like everyone else, but that wasn't a bad thing. He found himself thinking back to that conversation and reminding himself of his brother's words far more often than he'd ever dare to admit.

At some point, Griff and Seb must have decided to put their 'leg day' exercises to rest, because when Artie finished his reps on the chest press machine and transferred back into his chair, he found that Griffin and Sebastian had moved on to the other side of the apparatus they'd been using and were now having a chin-up competition.

"You know, they don't really count unless you're extending your arms all the way before you pull yourself back up," Artie commented, coasting to a stop beside Griffin as the two of them stared up at Seb hanging from the machine.

"Whatever," Sebastian grumbled, dismissing him before hopping down from the bar. "You wanna get up here and try? These things are hard."

Griffin let out a low whistle and raised his eyebrows. As Artie exchanged eye contact with him, the two of them couldn't help but share knowing smirks.

"That seems like a challenge," Artie said simply, trying not to show off too much confidence and risk ruining the element of surprise. There were few things he loved more than proving people wrong by challenging their expectations of his abilities.

"I don't know, Art, what do you say?" Griffin played along. "Want a lift up there?"

Artie gave his best noncommittal shrug, rolling forward a pace before locking his wheels in place. "Sure, okay."

Griff stooped down, placing one arm underneath Artie's knees and the other behind his back before scooping him up into the air. He only let go and stepped away when Artie had a firm grip on the bar.

Artie deliberately avoided looking into the mirror in front of him, afraid it would shake his confidence. With each chin-up he performed, he could feel Sebastian's gaze burning into the back of his head. When he eventually reached his limit (executing a whopping ten more reps than Sebastian had, and doing them the correct way, at that!), all Artie had to do was nod and Griff was quick to step forward and help him back to his chair.

Dumbfounded was a fantastic way to describe the expression Sebastian was wearing when Artie finally allowed himself to glance over in his direction. It wasn't often that Artie was able to impress anyone with his physical capabilities, but if the awestruck look plastered on his step-brother's face told him anything, he'd certainly done so just now.

"Well, damn," Sebastian said, holding up his hand for Artie to high-five. "I humbly stand corrected. I should've known better than to challenge your massive biceps like that." He shook his head and laughed.

"Superhuman upper body strength," Artie reminded him, flexing his arms to show off what he often hid underneath his collared Oxford shirts and wool sweaters. He even dared to catch his reflection in the mirror as he did so, and was pleasantly surprised to find that he wasn't upset with what he saw. All of his time spent at the gym was paying off.

"Careful there, chick magnet," Sebastian faux-warned him with a wry smile. "You don't want to catch the wandering eye of every girl in Lima. You're a taken man. What will Quinn think?"

Artie knew that Sebastian had meant his comment to be funny, but, of course, Artie's inner saboteur caused him to worry about everything. Just the mention of his girlfriend's name reminded him of what he'd been thinking about pretty much non-stop since the other night when they'd last seen each other.

"That was a joke," Sebastian clarified a moment later. The nearly identical looks of concern that Sebastian and Griffin were now sporting alerted Artie to the fact that his inner thoughts were likely displayed on his face again. "A bad one, maybe, but a joke nonetheless," Sebastian continued. "What's wrong?"

Artie sighed. Well, his brothers would be kind of the ideal people to go to with what had been weighing on him. They both knew a lot about… this kind of stuff. But, at the same time, Artie assumed that all of this 'love' crap came easily to both of them in their own individual ways. Artie knew that Griffin had all but skipped over having an awkward stage, and he was hard-pressed to guess that Seb had one either. Meanwhile, Artie was hoping that this would be the year he'd finally grow out of his.

Growing impatient, Sebastian crossed his arms over his chest. "C'mon, Art. Whatever it is, just spit it out. We don't have all day."

As much as he feared their judgment or their crude reactions, he also valued whatever decent advice the two of them may be able to scrounge up. In a moment of bravery, Artie forced himself to start talking before he changed his mind.

"It's Quinn. No, actually, it's not about her. It's about me. Or, I guess, us." He was word vomiting. "I guess I need some advice. In the… intimacy department."

"You're thinking about getting it on while working out at the gym?" Sebastian oversimplified Artie's words with his eyebrows raised and a pointed grin on his face. "Artie Abrams, I may have just underestimated you for the second time in three minutes. You're way crazier than I thought you were"

Artie rolled his eyes. Well, when he put it like that… Artie could practically hear Santana's voice in his head, teasing him with her catchphrase. Wanky.

"Ever since we innocently spent the night together in my bed after the wrap party, it's been kind of on my mind," Artie replied, attempting to defend his– yes, okay, wanky– thoughts. "I mean, I feel like it's time, you know? We've done… most of it… except going all the way. I guess I'm a little… nervous?" Artie put his face in his hands. "Ugh, I don't even know why I'm telling you guys this."

What the hell was he doing? He'd said too much and was mortified. Just as he was contemplating an escape plan that didn't involve the impossibly ideal scenario of the ground turning into a massive sinkhole and swallowing him whole, Sebastian surprised him.

"Have you ever…?"

Sebastian wiggled his eyebrows. He wanted to know if Artie was still a virgin. Artie had expected the other guy to maybe turn this into an opportunity to tease him, but he shocked Artie by handling this whole situation with care. He seemed genuinely invested in this subject and interested in what Artie's answer would be. It dawned on Artie just then that he didn't think he and Seb had ever had this conversation before. His sex life– or lack thereof– wasn't something that Artie talked about frivolously. He'd listened to a hundred of Sebastian's boy stories before he'd even considered giving Seb some insight into his own sexual prowess. After all, his step-brother wasn't exactly known for being confidential.

"Yeah," Artie answered. "I have, but not in over a year. My, uh, first time wasn't the greatest experience… Brittany and I had just started dating and I went to her house to work on our duet project for Glee Club. Eventually, I told her that I wanted to go home. That I wasn't ready to move on. That I still missed my ex. And the next thing I knew, I was laid out on her bed and she was on top of me, saying that she was going to help me forget about Tina."

Artie shuddered. He'd forgiven Brittany for her actions long ago, but reminiscing on that night still made him sick to his stomach. The encounter had left him feeling a nauseating mix of shame, embarrassment, confusion, and dissatisfaction– one that he'd never been able to forget.

"Wait," Sebastian said, appearing like he was trying to wrap his mind around the information overload that his step-brother had just dumped on him. "So you didn't want it?"

"No, I did." Artie paused. "I mean, I think I did."

"What do you mean, 'you think'?"

"I mean that at first, I wasn't expecting to do any of that, then when the opportunity presented itself, I was like 'okay, sure', but then… shortly after, I just felt… disgusted by myself."

Despite having heard Artie's account of these events on the night they had occurred, Griffin's eyebrows were still knitted together with concern. He opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted before he could even speak.

"You boys using this?" A sweaty, muscular gym bro who looked like he was in his mid-thirties asked them, pointing to the piece of equipment with the barbell rack and chin-up bar that they were currently gossiping directly in front of.

The boys all shook their heads, mumbled their apologies, and shuffled out of the way, realizing for the first time that maybe this wasn't the most appropriate place to be having this conversation.

"Look, I'll tell you all about it, but let's head out," Artie told his brothers. "We're not even working out anymore. We're just taking up space, and people are beginning to stare."

Griff and Sebastian didn't protest– they were both probably still too stunned that Artie had even initiated this conversation in the first place. Artie was such a private person that he guessed that they'd been waiting what felt like forever for him to come to them looking for advice in the love department. They had no qualms about abandoning the rest of their workout, instead quickly retreating to the privacy of Griffin's truck. As soon as they were inside and the last door had slammed shut, they picked up right where they'd left off.

"What happened with Brittany was… complicated," Artie said.

"How so?" Sebastian wondered.

"Well, for one, it all happened, like, the day we started dating," Artie replied. "And even then I knew that sex didn't really mean much to Brittany. She said it herself– she's been with, like, every guy on the football team. She knew I was a virgin, but she didn't stop to ask or even really think about what sex might mean to me. And I think adrenaline carried me until it… didn't."

Artie sighed. He was being more honest now than he ever had been previously, fully aware that this was kind of a weird conversation to be having with his brothers. Having gotten this far, however, there was no turning back now. He'd already piqued their interest.

"After my accident, I didn't know if or how I'd even be able to be with a girl like that. When I found out I could, it seemed like some kind of miracle," Artie shared. "But she just walked all over that. What I know now, is that I wasn't ready."

"Didn't you and Sugar go out a few times last year?" Griffin asked. "I would have thought you two would have hooked up during all of that."

Artie shrugged. He told his siblings plenty, but he'd never told anyone about the time Sugar told him she was worried about being seen with him in public because people may think that his legs looked thinner than her arms. Safe to say he'd never heard that one before. She's blamed it on her self-diagnosed Asperger's– which Artie wasn't sure was a real thing, and was rather just an excuse to say whatever offensive or out-of-pocket thing that came to her mind without repercussions.

"I took the time between being with Brittany and now to really… learn my body," Artie said as he felt his face turn pink. "I mean, with what I'm working with, I hadn't known that there were ways I could even enjoy sex until recently."

"Does Quinn know all of this?" Seb asked, bringing up the other person involved, which, of course, would influence whatever advice he was going to give. "What does she think?"

"Being with Quinn has been so great," Artie went on. "I mean, I'm not one to kiss and tell, but we've been taking things a little on the slower side. For both of us, I think. We've gotten close, but we've never gone all the way." As much as it pained him to revisit the embarrassing events that had transpired just two nights before, he knew he'd have to do just that. "I mean, you guys fully walked in on us the other day."

Griffin and Sebastian exchanged confused glances before staring blankly back at Artie.

"The other night?" Artie repeated, wishing he hadn't brought it up at all. "In the pool?"

Sebastian let out a sudden cackle of realization. "Oh, right. I'd almost forgotten."

TWO NIGHTS EARLIER…

As Quinn pressed her lips to his, he was grateful he'd thought to take a seat on the top stair in the shallow end. The force of her passion had taken him by surprise as his back pressed up against the side of the pool. Before long, she was straddling him and they found themselves in the middle of a rather steamy backyard makeout session.

Artie ran his hands up her minimally clothed body, pausing to play with the string of her bikini for a second before slipping his hand beneath the fabric. He knew that this was a pretty risqué thing of him to do, but he couldn't help himself. He knew that his suggestive behavior was welcome when he felt her doing the same. His sense of sensation in his midsection was kind of dodgy as it was, but being submerged in the water added another layer of sensory input that, somehow, made everything feel even more sensitive and erotic.

"Well, well, well! What do we have here?"

Lost in their own little world, Quinn and Artie hadn't made out the sound of the gate to the pool area opening, so Griffin's voice startled the two of them beyond measure. Evidently, the boys had arrived home from their day at the country club.

"So sorry to interrupt," Sebastian exclaimed, wearing an amused grin as wide as the Cheshire cat's– showing that he was, actually, not very sorry at all.

Quinn hopped off of Artie's lap and fixed her bikini top, her sheepish smile more closely matching Griff and Seb's expressions than Artie's. He was glad that she was a good sport about getting caught canoodling, but Artie was mortified by the whole ordeal as he reached down to adjust his own swimsuit, scowling.

"We came out back to check on you two lovebirds, but we didn't expect to come home to a porno," Griffin quipped, continuing the brotherly teasing as Artie's face grew a darker shade of red by the second. Couldn't his brothers ever leave him alone? And why was it always him that found himself in these situations– he'd never even think about sneaking up on Griffin and Hadley like this. Ugh.

"Well, I think this is my cue to head home," Quinn laughed, stepping past Artie out of the pool and wrapping herself in the towel she'd borrowed. She knelt down to place a soft kiss on Artie's cheek. "Thanks again for today. I had so much fun. You were right again, the skate park was awesome."

After gathering her discarded clothes, Quinn opened the gate and walked around the side of the house toward where she'd parked her car earlier that afternoon. Seemingly satisfied with the way they'd sufficiently embarrassed Artie, Sebastian and Griff headed inside, leaving Artie alone in the backyard, hot and bothered and pouting over the abrupt ending of his romantic evening.

It wasn't the first time he'd thought about this, but Artie began to wonder when it would be that he and Quinn would go all the way. Lately, they'd been getting a little further and further each time. They'd started off sweet and innocent– middle school-style makeouts, flirty hand-holding, shy glances– and over the length of the summer, they'd progressed towards more mature activities. They'd recently made it to third base, and Artie could sense that Quinn was ready for more.

But was he ready? Well, that seemed to be the million-dollar question.
Artie's friendship with Quinn had been built upon a foundation of being mutually gentle and kind to one another while holding space for the other's fears and insecurities. They were aware of what the other had been through, which made them both more intuitive and sensitive to their partner's needs.

Simply put, it had taken Artie a while to be ready to go there with anyone again, after whatever happened at Brittany's house that day, but now, he was ready. He wasn't a naive little sophomore anymore– now he's older, wiser, and more prepared. He'd done his research on what sex could be like for him, but up until this point, he'd been too nervous to experiment. After what went down in the pool, though, he knew that he was ready to take that next step, whenever the opportunity came.

"Not that I planned on having sex with Quinn for the first time in the pool," Artie assured his brothers. He couldn't think of anything less romantic. "But I'm ready, and I… I think she is too. She has her own bad memories of her first time, obviously, and while I've never told her the full story of Britt and I, she's always been respectful and has never pressured or forced me to do anything."

"Well, that's good," Griff said. "I always let Hadley take the lead. Not to say that she's always the one to initiate everything, but I want her to be comfortable, you know?"

"Right," Artie agreed. "And I appreciate Quinn doing that because I do want this to be different from the last time– my first time. I want to, you know, enjoy it. Tons of paralyzed people have and enjoy having sex. I want… I want to be someone who enjoys that too, even if it's not… I don't know. In the most traditional way."

Artie put his embarrassment about this particular subject aside as he described to Seb and Griff what he'd read online and talked about with his physical therapist about sex and disability, and the importance of proper positioning and creativity in the bedroom. They leaned forward with genuine interest as he told them all about the erogenous zones– the different areas of the body that tend to feel even more sensitive during sex– and how, while everyone has them, their purpose can be even more valuable for those without feeling down there. An erogenous zone above Artie's level of injury– say, on his chest, neck, or ears– could enhance the intimate experience for him tremendously.

"I just don't really know what to do next. Like, I don't know how to go about approaching Quinn about all of this, but I don't want to ignore it either," Artie confessed, before quickly adding: "And I get if you guys don't really have the advice I need. I know I'm in kind of a unique situation, so thanks for listening anyway. It feels good to get it all out."

"Alright, Art, want to know what I think?" Sebastian asked from the backseat, leaning on the center console and sticking his head in between the two front seats.

Artie nodded, knowing that Seb was probably about to give him a lethal dose of the brutal honesty and blunt guidance that Artie knew he could always count on his step-brother for.

"Tell her what you just told us. About the whatcha-ma-call-it zones and the tips and tricks your PT gave you, and whatever. When things feel like you're heading in that direction– and you'll know it when you're in the moment– just tell her all of it."

"I agree," Griff piped up. "She's a lot more understanding and mature than the other girls you've been with in the past. She'll listen, and she'll be respectful and gentle. Just be honest with her. At the end of the day, this is kind of a… team sport…"

Sebastian nodded, going along with Griffin's sports analogy. "Exactly. One team, one dream." With a knowing, dirty-minded smirk, he added: "Getcha head in the game."

Griff high-fived Seb, and Artie rolled his eyes. He could have done without the last part, but their main point stands. And Artie agreed with them– Quinn would undoubtedly be receptive and welcoming of whatever he decided to share about what intimacy looked like for him. Artie still had a lot to think about, but he felt considerably lighter than he had before he'd gotten all of this off his chest.

That's what brothers are for.