fanfic: Come On, Cougars Are Cute, PG-13 (Artie/Quinn)
Title: Come On, Cougars Are Cute
Author: ipickquinn & backitup_baby
Pairings/Characters: Artie/Quinn
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 5,552
Spoilers: none
Summary: Wedding planning is stressful but sex, sleep, and cheesecake (in ascending order) can make it all better.
Sequel to: I Like You Better Without Pants
A/N: This fic was written by ipickquinn (as Quinn) and backitup_baby (as Artie)!
( Artie/Quinn 'verse masterlist)
Come On, Cougars Are Cute
Weddings were stupid. Artie didn’t really understand why they needed to be such a big ordeal when all he wanted to do was get married to Quinn and then have an awesome dinner afterwards with cake. In retrospect, he really shouldn’t have been surprised when Quinn decided that Santana would be her maid of honor and then Santana started showing up near the end of their senior year to do wedding planning. Artie had to finish up a lot of projects in the studio so he was fine with Santana keeping Quinn company on weekends, but after about a month or so he was beginning to feel like Santana was a permanent presence in their relationship.
When they got back to Lima it only got crazier. There were tons of meetings at Starbucks going over plans, and both his and Quinn’s mothers got involved so it was him and Quinn and their moms and Santana and sometimes Brittany (who seemed to be the only person who understood that this was so pointless, because she would strike up conversations with him while everyone else at the table was getting really agitated about something stupid) but always Kurt (who was Artie’s best man) and Artie just felt like he was going to explode.
Quinn just wanted this wedding to be perfect and the perfect wedding required many details. She couldn’t help it that Artie apparently couldn’t tell the difference between the 10 different cake flavors they had tried (and buttermilk cream was definitely different than butter cream, there was a different level of milk-yness) and that he couldn’t care less if their linens were ocean breeze blue or smooth sails blue. But no worries. That’s what the maid of honor was for.
Santana had been a great help to her, because really how was she supposed to pick the perfect wedding dress out by herself? She couldn’t ask Artie because he needed to be surprised and wowed and amazed on their wedding day. Their wedding day. The date was closing in surprisingly fast. All the major plans had been made (catering, flowers, location booked, minister reserved, dress purchased, etc.) and now Quinn was working on hammering out the finer details. Turning towards Artie, she motioned to her notebook. “Want to help me work on the seating chart for the reception?”
Artie looked up from a book and wrinkled his nose a little. Why did they need to do a seating chart? Couldn’t people just seat themselves? He didn’t want to cause any trouble or something (Santana had told him that if he kept on being so uncooperative she would have words with him, and even though he’d kind of lost most of the fear he once felt whenever he saw her that still was a pretty scary idea). “Yeah, okay,” he said, looking at Quinn’s notebook skeptically. “What’s to work on?”
Quinn frowned slightly. He didn’t really seem into this. He hadn’t really seemed into any of this wedding planning stuff. She couldn’t figure out why he had asked her to marry him if he didn’t want to get married. “Well do you think that one Aunt I met that one time will get along with my Uncle? I mean it would be nice if we could mix our family together at the tables so they could get to know each other. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah, we can do that,” Artie replied, although he kind of thought that the whole point of the wedding and reception was so their families could get to know each other. What was he supposed to do, do a personality analysis of his entire family and then write it out so Quinn could do an analysis too and then match people up? She probably would want that, actually. “I think they’ll get along. I don’t see why not,” he said, kind of non-commitally.
“Okay then,” Quinn said just as non-commitally, then scribbled their names down on her seating chart. She kept working in silence, sort of figuring he was just going to agree with every suggestion she had and her silence would save her the irrational from his apathy. Glancing over at Artie every so often she noticed he had just went back to his book. Letting out a slight sigh, she just continued with her planning.
Artie read his book in silence, trying not to get annoyed with the fact that Quinn was making all this wedding stuff so complicated. He had no idea why everything needed to be so complicated. “How’s it going?” he asked after a moment, looking over at her.
About halfway done with seat arrangements for the guest list, Quinn had been working at a pretty good rate and was surprised by Artie’s sudden voice. “Oh. Uh, fine. How’s your book?” She asked as she started doodling on the corner of her notebook paper.
“Pretty good,” Artie replied, suddenly getting worried that Quinn was mad at him. He was still kind of confused by how much emphasis she was putting on all of these silly details he didn’t care about, but he really didn’t want her to be upset. “I, uh, I would’ve offered to help more, but you seemed to be okay on your own.”
“It’s... fine. I can probably just get it done faster on my own anyway,” she said, setting her pencil down. After a few moments of silence, she bit her lip nervously before speaking again. “Do you even want to get married? I mean like I know you love me and whatever but you’re the one who asked me to get married and now you just like don’t even care about any of this stuff.” She sighed. “Would you rather just elope or something? Because I don’t want you to be miserably on our wedding day.’
Artie bit his lip a little, not really sure what Quinn was getting at with all of this. “Of course I want to get married,” he said, pretty adamantly. “I just don’t get what all the fuss is about. I don’t care if our wedding is perfect or not. I just want you to be there and to say that you want to be with me forever and that’s all I care about. And then maybe we can drink and eat a ton of food afterwards, and then go on vacation.”
“We’re going to remember this day for the rest of our lives though. Maybe I am going a little overboard, I mean with Santana’s help,” she said, rolling her eyes slightly, “But like our whole family is going to be there and I just want everyone to have a good time. Even though it’s like, supposed to be about just us, getting married isn’t. It’s about everyone coming to gawk at us and judge us on how we arranged and planned everything and I just want this to go well.” She set her notebook off to the side then sort of collapsed onto Artie’s shoulder, defeated. “I’m going to be there and say I want to be with you forever. But I also want the perfect dress and a pretty cake. I’ll try to settle down...”
“Well... I guess I don’t really understand why people need to come gawk at us,” Artie said honestly, tentatively moving an arm around her. “But I don’t want you to be upset. So, yeah, I don’t know. Maybe eloping would be a lot easier. But let’s just do this. And I’ll try to be more involved in the future.” He tried to hide a sigh that he couldn’t help but let out, wondering why things just couldn’t be simple.
Quinn shrugged a little, not really understanding herself. “We already have so much planned at this point. Plus we already paid all the deposits,” she smirked into his shoulder. “At least it’s almost over right? Then we just get to fly away and don’t have to worry about anything anymore.” She was really looking forward to their honeymoon seeing as it would be her first time out of the country.
Artie kind of involuntarily shook his head a little, so frustrated with how out of hand (in his mind, and quickly too) things had gotten, and sighed again. “Okay. That’s fine. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Quinn pulled back when Artie sighed again and looked at him. “Tell me what’s wrong. Why are you so... I don’t know, whatever you are, about all this? I mean, sorry if it’s me. I already said I would settle down, so you don’t need to be so stressed.”
“You said you would try to settle down, technically,” Artie said immediately. He knew Quinn really well by this point though, so he kind of flinched a little, involuntarily, but he couldn’t stop now. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Besides the fact that everyone keeps obsessing about details that don’t matter so much to me and I just want to relax and plan on having a good time but everything is so complicated and I don’t get why it needs to be.”
“Well what do you want me to do? Tell me what you want and we’ll fix it,” Quinn said, a little taken off guard by all this sudden emotion from Artie. For the most part it had been a reaction of indifference so to see him actually now having an opinion now that the planning was almost over was confusing. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought it was a blip and that things would settle down but then Santana started coming over all the time and I felt like I couldn’t say anything and then other people got involved and.” He sighed again, knowing he really should’ve said something when he was busy developing this secret storage of frustration or something. “I’m sorry. It’s just. I never spend time with just you anymore. Or at least time when you aren’t freaking out about the stupid wedding.”
“How are we supposed to spend the rest of our lives together if you can’t tell me when something is bothering you? Am I like, unapproachable or something?” That would be just awesome if her fiance was afraid to come to her when something was bothering him. “And I’m sorry that our wedding is apparently stupid now.” She looked away self consciously, wondering if this was even worth it.
“Well I’m assuming that your mom and my mom and Kurt and Brittany and Santana won’t be living with us so I’ll actually have time to tell you when something is bothering me,” Artie said, very defensively.
“It’s not like we were never alone so don’t give me that,” Quinn said getting irritated at Artie’s tone and the situation in general.
Artie took a few deep breaths to try and calm himself down. “Fine. Okay. I’m sorry. I should’ve said something.”
“Fine,” Quinn clipped back. “Well it’s getting late so I better get home,” she said, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek so he wouldn't be mad at her for that too. “So I’ll see you tomorrow...”
“Yeah, we have another morning meeting with our wedding planning entourage,” Artie replied, before realizing that she probably didn’t want to hear him refer to things like that. “I’m sorry. But it’s not getting late. Can we just talk about this? I don’t want you to go to bed angry at me.”
“Do you want me to call them off or something?” Quinn asked, frustrated. “Now that I know it bugs you, months later, we can change stuff.” She didn’t move to get off the couch because she didn’t want to go to bed angry either, but she wasn’t really sure how this was going to be resolved.
“No, I’m sure things need to be discussed,” Artie said, feeling bad all of a sudden. He really didn’t want to go to the meeting but he also didn’t want to stress Quinn out. This was kind of why he’d never told her that the whole thing was driving him crazy, except he hadn’t expected that he’d explode like this and they would end up having to have this conversation. “It’s fine. I know this is my fault.”
“Well I’ll just take care of things, okay? You don’t have to go. So there. That’s settled.” She didn’t know why she was so irritated now but the thought if Artie just holding back all this frustration from her for months was really upsetting her. She thought he had been happy and excited to get married and now was pretty much finding out that he thought everything was unnecessary and stupid. Some wedding this was going to be.
“I’ll go,” Artie said, biting his lip a little. “I want to be there for you.” He also didn’t need everyone on his case about how he wasn’t being a supportive fiancé, too, but that was just a secondary concern.
Tired of this circular arguing, Quinn just nodded. “Fine. I’ll see you then. But right now a bubble bath and a slice of cheesecake is calling me. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll bring you some tomorrow.”
Artie nodded a little, figuring there was nothing he could do to stop her from leaving. Things were so much better (not that they were good) when she was just doing all the wedding stuff and he would just say yes and no every now and then (and also eat a lot of food when they were picking out the caterers). Then Quinn had to go and ask him if he wanted to get married. What was that about? “I love you. Are you mad at me?”
Quinn edged over to Artie then basically deposited herself into his lap. “No. I just don’t want this to be a pattern for us. If something is bothering you then you need to tell me. How else is this going to work?”
Artie was mostly feeling pretty chastised now instead of the frustration he’d been feeling only a few minutes ago. “I know. I just didn’t want to stress you out. And I guess I thought that everything would calm down but then it... just got worse.”
Quinn sighed, leaning her head on his shoulder. She was glad her apparent getting up on him (but not in a sexual way... for once) hadn’t surprised him. “I know. Well after our meeting thing tomorrow let’s hang out okay? No wedding stuff. I miss you.”
“I miss you too,” Artie replied, playing a little with her hair. “And I want to hang out tomorrow without wedding stuff, unless we need to go over menus again because I’d be okay with that. And I’m sorry that I don’t care about seating charts.”
Quinn just giggled. “No, the catering stuff is all taken care of. And I guess seating charts are kind of boring. But then my mom was like telling me that I had to do one because my two aunts are like fighting so they need to be seated as far away from each other as possible and...” she trailed off, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, no more wedding stuff. What are we going to do tomorrow?”
“If people just seated themselves we wouldn’t have to worry about that because they would probably seat themselves as far away from each other as possible to begin with,” Artie said. He had always had a problem not reasoning things out loud. “Um, we can go to lunch? See a movie or something. Lima is kind of boring... not that Oxford is that exciting either, actually.”
“I know. Lima is pretty boring. But at least you’re here,” Quinn laughed at how cheesy that had been. “Food and a movie is good though. Okay, well really I am going home now that I won’t be going to bed angry. I love you. And I’ll see you in the morning.”
Artie grinned at her but made no moves towards letting her get up. “You mean you don’t want to make out on my couch for old time’s sake?”
Quinn nuzzled into his neck, kissing below his ear before whispering, “Remember that one time you lost your virginity on this couch?”
“Yeah, I kind of vaguely remember that,” Artie said quietly, trying not to smile. “That was a pretty crazy night.”
Quinn nodded into his neck, kissing again. Maybe his making out suggestion wasn’t so bad. Her bubble bath could wait... Moving so they were face to face she finally kissed him on the lips.
Artie grinned some more as he returned the kiss, running his hands up and down her waist. Making out with Quinn was definitely one of his favorite activities (it was even on his Facebook profile) so he was glad they had stopped bickering (fighting was too strong of a word) about their wedding and started doing this instead. He was just about to bring his hands down to her ass and pull her in a little closer when suddenly he heard his parents come in from the garage. “Hi, how was dinner?” Artie asked politely once he’d taken his mouth off of Quinn’s and moved his hands back up onto her waist.
“Pretty good, thank you,” Artie’s father, Andrew, said, eyes averted.
“Well, that’s good,” Artie replied, blushing furiously. “Quinn is here. As you can probably see.”
“Yes, hi Quinn,” Catherine Abrams said. “Good seeing you again.” Artie kind of thought she looked more amused than pissed, so at least there was that. “How’s the seating chart coming along?”
Quinn was confused and a little disappointed at first when Artie started pulling away but quickly understood why when Artie’s parents walked though the door. She blushed just as red as Artie and situated herself so sitting on her boyfriend--no fiancé--was a little less scandalous. “Hi... Catherine, Andrew. I was just leaving actually. I made pretty good progress on the seating chart though. Thanks for asking.” It was almost even more embarrassing that Artie’s parents just look amused by all this, though she could reason that this definitely wasn’t the first time this had happened. Wow. Really embarrassing.
Artie was glad when his dad excused himself to go upstairs, but was slightly concerned when his mom stayed put and started talking about the rehearsal dinner. He leaned his head against the back of the couch and did his best to wait patiently for the conversation to end. It wasn’t like his opinion was even really that necessary, anyway. Well-- “Yeah, we should get dessert as part of the fixed-price dinner,” he interrupted. “Obviously.”
“Thanks, Artie,” his mother said, looking a little surprised at her son actually expressing a preference about something (which hadn’t happened for a while). “I’ll keep that in mind. And Quinn, if you’re good with all that, then I’ll just see you tomorrow?”
So Quinn could kind of understand how Artie was getting frustrated with all the people involved with the wedding planning. She waited until they re-hashed the details about the rehearsal dinner, and the shock of Artie giving his opinion (she could really just kiss him again right now for trying to be more involved... except Catherine Abrams was right there and they had already been caught sucking face) before she spoke. “Yeah, I definitely agree. With Artie. We should have dessert,” she turned to him giving him an encouraging smile. “And we’re definitely still on for the morning. But we’re taking the afternoon off, so we have to wrap it up by lunch.” See, Quinn could be reasonable.
Artie made a mental note to ask his dad if his mom had been this crazy when they were getting married. He would definitely put money on the answer being yes. “That should be fine,” his mother said, though she looked kind of doubtful. Artie resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Tomorrow, then. And, by the way,” she went on, turning back around to face them instead of just going upstairs as well. “I thought you two were too old by now for the whole teenaged sneaking around and making out thing, but apparently not.”
“Good night, mom,” Artie said immediately, blushing even darker. He was basically sure that he wanted to die. And he didn’t like the amused smile on his mother’s face. Maybe life had been easier when she hated Quinn, because this was just awful.
Quinn’s mouth fell open, shocked that they had just been called out like that. Why was this happening? She kind of wanted to die of embarrassment right now. “Goodnight Catherine,” she squeaked out and once she was out of sight, buried her head in Artie’s neck, shaking with silent laughter. “I can’t believe that just happened.”
“Me either,” Artie said, his voice pained. “That was. Really not okay.” He wrinkled his nose a little then, watching Quinn. “This isn’t funny.”
Quinn lifted her head and kissed him quickly. “Lighten up, baby, it’s kind of funny. Plus it’s not like they haven’t caught us making out before.”
“I know, but she completely called us out,” Artie said, kind of pathetically, rubbing Quinn’s back a little. “And it hasn’t happened for a while, like she said. I thought we were pretty good at this by now.”
“We’ve been practicing for how many years now?” Quinn said teasingly before she calculated quickly in her head. “You know it’s kind of amazing that we’ve been together for six years and we’ve only just graduated college. And also it’s not like we were even sneaking around or anything. It’s not like when we first started dating. We’re engaged. I think we’re allowed to make out.”
“I know, but it’s awkward when my parents come in,” Artie said, mostly talking just because for the principle of the thing now. He had to admit Quinn had a point. “Wait, you had to think about how many years we’ve been together?”
Quinn shrugged because Artie also had a point. “No. I was just wondering if I should have calculated from the age of 15 or 16 since you were 15 and I was 16 but then I realized it didn’t really matter because I just went from the year we started dating.” Hopefully that had made sense.
“Oh, okay,” Artie said, un-pouting (which he hadn’t realized until just now that he had been doing). “I thought you’d forgotten. But you didn’t, so no big deal or anything.”
“Definitely not,” Quinn said before kissing him. She was pretty sure she was never leaving to go home after all but didn’t seem to actually care.
Now that Artie knew that his parents weren’t going to show up any time soon he let himself properly kiss her. He was beginning to get pretty involved in it when all of a sudden a thought occurred to him and he started laughing against her mouth. “Hey, you’re kind of a cougar,” he said, obviously really pleased with himself.
Quinn pulled back, half pouting yet half confused. “What is that supposed to mean? I’m only like... a year older than you.” She pouted more, unsure why he had decided to bring this up now.
“It still counts, for sure,” Artie managed, still laughing. She looked pretty indignant but Artie just thought it was really cute. “I’m going to call you that now, okay?”
Quinn continued to pout. “No it doesn’t. It doubly doesn’t count because we were in the same grade in school. You’re not very nice. And you’re not calling me that.”
“We might’ve been in the same grade but you’re still a year older than me, cougar,” Artie said, unfazed. “Come on, cougars are cute. The cats. Not the older women who want to get with younger guys, ‘cause I only have eyes for you.”
“Your supposed sweet talk is not distracting me from the fact that you just lumped me in the came group as those old ladies.” She was so not giving up on the pouting. “Besides, I don’t have a horrible tan, fried out hair, or a boob job, so I am definitely not a cougar.”
Artie thought that characterization was kind of unfair to all the older women who were attractive and not trashy, but he kept that opinion to himself. “Yeah, you definitely don’t have a tan,” he said innocently. Not like he could talk on that front.
Although Quinn didn’t care that she couldn’t tan, she still rolled her eyes. “You’re not being very nice tonight, Arthur.” She never called him that and wasn’t entirely sure what her purpose was in whipping out that name right now, but see how he liked it... whatever it was she was doing.
Artie furrowed his brow a little when Quinn used his full name, immediately thrown. “Yeah, I know. Why are you calling me that?”
Quinn shrugged. “I don’t know. I felt the need to retaliate somehow.”
“Yeah, okay, cougar,” Artie said, pretty smugly. “I have an idea.”
Giving him a half hearted glare for calling her ‘cougar’ again, Quinn just said, “What kind of idea?”
Artie was pretty sure that Quinn would hate this suggestion but he thought it wouldn’t hurt to suggest it. “How would you feel about not having sex until we get married? It’d only be a few weeks anyway, and I know we’re both obviously not virgins or anything but, I don’t know. And don’t take this the wrong way. But we do it all the time and maybe if we just don’t for a little bit it’ll make having sex when we’re first married, I don’t know, nice or something.” Artie really meant ‘special’ instead of ‘nice’ but that would have sounded a little pathetic out loud, he thought.
Quite taken off guard by the suggestion, her eyebrows scrunched together as she thought about it. Back in the day when she was Lady Chastity, she really had meant to wait until her wedding night but, well, that clearly hadn’t happened. “I guess... I mean it’s not a completely terrible idea and like a lot of other couples do it too. Well rather they don’t do it,” she smirked at her terrible joke. Still smirking, she said, “Can we start tomorrow?”
“I was going to suggest that,” Artie replied, smirking back. It wasn’t that he had a problem with their sex life and he was probably the only guy in the world, and in the history of guydom or something, who felt like they had sex too much with their girlfriend. Well, fiancée now. “We haven’t not since... six years ago.”
“I guess that means I’m sleeping over?” Quinn said, her voice a little hopeful. She didn’t react much when Artie brought up the period of time they had a sex hiatus after her daughter was born, due to post-birth recovery. They had talked about that whole ordeal enough though. Artie was her best friend that wasn’t Santana so naturally they talked about everything. It had taken a while to change her attitude about self disclosure, but now she was mostly comfortable talking about her issues, but probably only because it was Artie. Leaning down, she kissed him softly. “I love you.”
Artie smiled up at her, really glad that they had worked things out tonight. “I love you too. A lot.” He leaned in and lowered his head to kiss her neck a little, then took this opportunity (if he could make eye contact with her, he’d start laughing) to say, “I love you so much, the Burj Khalifa wouldn’t be able to contain how much I love you. And that building is eight hundred and twenty eight meters tall. That’s really tall, cougar. That’s how much I love you.”
Quinn let out an appreciative noise as Artie started kissing her neck but abruptly stopped at his very odd pickup line. “Baby, are you trying to serenade me with architecture facts? You’re such a nerd,” she grinned at him.
“Maybe I am,” Artie said, grinning back at her. “I know you think it’s really hot. Did you know that when the John Hancock Center opened it was the tallest building in the world outside of New York? I like skyscrapers because when you go up to the top it’s like you’re getting a glimpse of heaven. Which is nothing new to me because that’s the way I feel every time I’m around you.”
Quinn giggled slightly, but mostly just beamed at him. “You’re so ridiculous and I wouldn’t want you any other way. But you’re so right, this is such hot foreplay,” she winked at him. “What else you got?”
“That’s it for now. The pick-up lines require a lot of thinking. But I could just tell you random architecture facts without the pick-up lines if you want,” Artie offered. “I know you’re interested...”
“How about,” Quinn said as she started kissing up his neck, “I just get on your skyscraper and we call it a night?”
“I guess I should increase my supply because I’m sensing a lot of demand going on right now,” Artie replied, finally moving his hands back down to her ass. “Want to go to my room now?”
“You don’t want to do it on the couch for old time’s sake?” She mimicked with a grin. “That’s a good idea though.”
“No, I think I’m good,” Artie said, shrugging a little and smiling. “Do you need to tell your mom you aren’t coming back or something? How am I supposed to get morning cheesecake if you stay here?”
“Yeah I’ll call her. But you are not kicking me out after... This isn’t like high school,” Quinn said, pouting. Now that she knew about after sex cuddles there was no way she was giving them up. “And we’ll go over there tomorrow after our meeting and get some or something. Don’t worry, you’ll get your cheesecake. I see where your priorities are though,” she rolled her eyes.
“Okay, that sounds fine,” Artie said, his smile turning into a grin. “These definitely are my priorities. Sex with you, sleep, and cheesecake, except in ascending order of awesomeness.” His parents had kind of given up on maintaining any pretense of pretending that they didn’t know that he and Quinn were sleeping together a while ago; they all just never talked about it. Once she had moved in with him, too, there was really no point in doing so and Artie had once argued that because they were already living together, it made no sense for Quinn to need to go home when they were over at his parents’ house in Lima. She could get into a car accident driving so late at night. Admittedly, that had been kind of a sneaky low blow, but it had worked and after Artie’s parents had checked with Quinn’s mom (who still thought that they were celibate, thanks to Quinn), she started being able to stay over. “Let me just leave a note so they know you’re here, then we can go. Okay?”
“Because I’m always on top,” Quinn smirked. She gave Artie another kiss, then (regrettably) got off his lap. “How about you go leave your note and I’ll go to your room and call my mom. So I’ll see you in a few.” Her mom wouldn’t necessarily be pleased that she was spending the night at Artie’s because she still got all sentimental about her ‘baby girl’ growing up, but she didn’t think that there was any sex going on thanks to a little lie told 6 years ago, so things would work out.
Artie waited until she’d moved off of him and he’d gotten back into his chair before correcting her. “No, I meant that you were in 3rd place and the cheesecake was 1st place.” With that said, he turned his chair around and backed away from her in case Quinn decided to get all indignant on him or anything.
Quinn just scoffed at him then stalked off to his bedroom. She’d definitely make him pay for that. Her phone call with her mom was short and after reasoning that it was just easier since they had someone coming over to Artie’s house in the morning to go over some wedding details that this just made more sense she hung up. Once off the phone she perched herself on Artie’s bed, waiting for him.
Artie came in a few minutes later after writing a note to his parents and setting it on the kitchen table. He tried not to grin too much when he saw her waiting for him. “You’re not mad at me, are you? You know I like you best out of everything.”
“Well, I could be,” Quinn said as she stripped off her shirt and threw it at him, “but I am really interested in skyscrapers and who else would give me hands on experience?”
He caught her shirt with one hand and closed his door with the other before moving over and getting himself onto the bed, immediately pulling her onto his lap. “You better not be interested in any others,” he said before kissing her.
Quinn smirked against his lips and shook her head slightly, “Nope, just yours...”
Author: ipickquinn & backitup_baby
Pairings/Characters: Artie/Quinn
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 5,552
Spoilers: none
Summary: Wedding planning is stressful but sex, sleep, and cheesecake (in ascending order) can make it all better.
Sequel to: I Like You Better Without Pants
A/N: This fic was written by ipickquinn (as Quinn) and backitup_baby (as Artie)!
( Artie/Quinn 'verse masterlist)
Come On, Cougars Are Cute
Weddings were stupid. Artie didn’t really understand why they needed to be such a big ordeal when all he wanted to do was get married to Quinn and then have an awesome dinner afterwards with cake. In retrospect, he really shouldn’t have been surprised when Quinn decided that Santana would be her maid of honor and then Santana started showing up near the end of their senior year to do wedding planning. Artie had to finish up a lot of projects in the studio so he was fine with Santana keeping Quinn company on weekends, but after about a month or so he was beginning to feel like Santana was a permanent presence in their relationship.
When they got back to Lima it only got crazier. There were tons of meetings at Starbucks going over plans, and both his and Quinn’s mothers got involved so it was him and Quinn and their moms and Santana and sometimes Brittany (who seemed to be the only person who understood that this was so pointless, because she would strike up conversations with him while everyone else at the table was getting really agitated about something stupid) but always Kurt (who was Artie’s best man) and Artie just felt like he was going to explode.
Quinn just wanted this wedding to be perfect and the perfect wedding required many details. She couldn’t help it that Artie apparently couldn’t tell the difference between the 10 different cake flavors they had tried (and buttermilk cream was definitely different than butter cream, there was a different level of milk-yness) and that he couldn’t care less if their linens were ocean breeze blue or smooth sails blue. But no worries. That’s what the maid of honor was for.
Santana had been a great help to her, because really how was she supposed to pick the perfect wedding dress out by herself? She couldn’t ask Artie because he needed to be surprised and wowed and amazed on their wedding day. Their wedding day. The date was closing in surprisingly fast. All the major plans had been made (catering, flowers, location booked, minister reserved, dress purchased, etc.) and now Quinn was working on hammering out the finer details. Turning towards Artie, she motioned to her notebook. “Want to help me work on the seating chart for the reception?”
Artie looked up from a book and wrinkled his nose a little. Why did they need to do a seating chart? Couldn’t people just seat themselves? He didn’t want to cause any trouble or something (Santana had told him that if he kept on being so uncooperative she would have words with him, and even though he’d kind of lost most of the fear he once felt whenever he saw her that still was a pretty scary idea). “Yeah, okay,” he said, looking at Quinn’s notebook skeptically. “What’s to work on?”
Quinn frowned slightly. He didn’t really seem into this. He hadn’t really seemed into any of this wedding planning stuff. She couldn’t figure out why he had asked her to marry him if he didn’t want to get married. “Well do you think that one Aunt I met that one time will get along with my Uncle? I mean it would be nice if we could mix our family together at the tables so they could get to know each other. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah, we can do that,” Artie replied, although he kind of thought that the whole point of the wedding and reception was so their families could get to know each other. What was he supposed to do, do a personality analysis of his entire family and then write it out so Quinn could do an analysis too and then match people up? She probably would want that, actually. “I think they’ll get along. I don’t see why not,” he said, kind of non-commitally.
“Okay then,” Quinn said just as non-commitally, then scribbled their names down on her seating chart. She kept working in silence, sort of figuring he was just going to agree with every suggestion she had and her silence would save her the irrational from his apathy. Glancing over at Artie every so often she noticed he had just went back to his book. Letting out a slight sigh, she just continued with her planning.
Artie read his book in silence, trying not to get annoyed with the fact that Quinn was making all this wedding stuff so complicated. He had no idea why everything needed to be so complicated. “How’s it going?” he asked after a moment, looking over at her.
About halfway done with seat arrangements for the guest list, Quinn had been working at a pretty good rate and was surprised by Artie’s sudden voice. “Oh. Uh, fine. How’s your book?” She asked as she started doodling on the corner of her notebook paper.
“Pretty good,” Artie replied, suddenly getting worried that Quinn was mad at him. He was still kind of confused by how much emphasis she was putting on all of these silly details he didn’t care about, but he really didn’t want her to be upset. “I, uh, I would’ve offered to help more, but you seemed to be okay on your own.”
“It’s... fine. I can probably just get it done faster on my own anyway,” she said, setting her pencil down. After a few moments of silence, she bit her lip nervously before speaking again. “Do you even want to get married? I mean like I know you love me and whatever but you’re the one who asked me to get married and now you just like don’t even care about any of this stuff.” She sighed. “Would you rather just elope or something? Because I don’t want you to be miserably on our wedding day.’
Artie bit his lip a little, not really sure what Quinn was getting at with all of this. “Of course I want to get married,” he said, pretty adamantly. “I just don’t get what all the fuss is about. I don’t care if our wedding is perfect or not. I just want you to be there and to say that you want to be with me forever and that’s all I care about. And then maybe we can drink and eat a ton of food afterwards, and then go on vacation.”
“We’re going to remember this day for the rest of our lives though. Maybe I am going a little overboard, I mean with Santana’s help,” she said, rolling her eyes slightly, “But like our whole family is going to be there and I just want everyone to have a good time. Even though it’s like, supposed to be about just us, getting married isn’t. It’s about everyone coming to gawk at us and judge us on how we arranged and planned everything and I just want this to go well.” She set her notebook off to the side then sort of collapsed onto Artie’s shoulder, defeated. “I’m going to be there and say I want to be with you forever. But I also want the perfect dress and a pretty cake. I’ll try to settle down...”
“Well... I guess I don’t really understand why people need to come gawk at us,” Artie said honestly, tentatively moving an arm around her. “But I don’t want you to be upset. So, yeah, I don’t know. Maybe eloping would be a lot easier. But let’s just do this. And I’ll try to be more involved in the future.” He tried to hide a sigh that he couldn’t help but let out, wondering why things just couldn’t be simple.
Quinn shrugged a little, not really understanding herself. “We already have so much planned at this point. Plus we already paid all the deposits,” she smirked into his shoulder. “At least it’s almost over right? Then we just get to fly away and don’t have to worry about anything anymore.” She was really looking forward to their honeymoon seeing as it would be her first time out of the country.
Artie kind of involuntarily shook his head a little, so frustrated with how out of hand (in his mind, and quickly too) things had gotten, and sighed again. “Okay. That’s fine. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Quinn pulled back when Artie sighed again and looked at him. “Tell me what’s wrong. Why are you so... I don’t know, whatever you are, about all this? I mean, sorry if it’s me. I already said I would settle down, so you don’t need to be so stressed.”
“You said you would try to settle down, technically,” Artie said immediately. He knew Quinn really well by this point though, so he kind of flinched a little, involuntarily, but he couldn’t stop now. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Besides the fact that everyone keeps obsessing about details that don’t matter so much to me and I just want to relax and plan on having a good time but everything is so complicated and I don’t get why it needs to be.”
“Well what do you want me to do? Tell me what you want and we’ll fix it,” Quinn said, a little taken off guard by all this sudden emotion from Artie. For the most part it had been a reaction of indifference so to see him actually now having an opinion now that the planning was almost over was confusing. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought it was a blip and that things would settle down but then Santana started coming over all the time and I felt like I couldn’t say anything and then other people got involved and.” He sighed again, knowing he really should’ve said something when he was busy developing this secret storage of frustration or something. “I’m sorry. It’s just. I never spend time with just you anymore. Or at least time when you aren’t freaking out about the stupid wedding.”
“How are we supposed to spend the rest of our lives together if you can’t tell me when something is bothering you? Am I like, unapproachable or something?” That would be just awesome if her fiance was afraid to come to her when something was bothering him. “And I’m sorry that our wedding is apparently stupid now.” She looked away self consciously, wondering if this was even worth it.
“Well I’m assuming that your mom and my mom and Kurt and Brittany and Santana won’t be living with us so I’ll actually have time to tell you when something is bothering me,” Artie said, very defensively.
“It’s not like we were never alone so don’t give me that,” Quinn said getting irritated at Artie’s tone and the situation in general.
Artie took a few deep breaths to try and calm himself down. “Fine. Okay. I’m sorry. I should’ve said something.”
“Fine,” Quinn clipped back. “Well it’s getting late so I better get home,” she said, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek so he wouldn't be mad at her for that too. “So I’ll see you tomorrow...”
“Yeah, we have another morning meeting with our wedding planning entourage,” Artie replied, before realizing that she probably didn’t want to hear him refer to things like that. “I’m sorry. But it’s not getting late. Can we just talk about this? I don’t want you to go to bed angry at me.”
“Do you want me to call them off or something?” Quinn asked, frustrated. “Now that I know it bugs you, months later, we can change stuff.” She didn’t move to get off the couch because she didn’t want to go to bed angry either, but she wasn’t really sure how this was going to be resolved.
“No, I’m sure things need to be discussed,” Artie said, feeling bad all of a sudden. He really didn’t want to go to the meeting but he also didn’t want to stress Quinn out. This was kind of why he’d never told her that the whole thing was driving him crazy, except he hadn’t expected that he’d explode like this and they would end up having to have this conversation. “It’s fine. I know this is my fault.”
“Well I’ll just take care of things, okay? You don’t have to go. So there. That’s settled.” She didn’t know why she was so irritated now but the thought if Artie just holding back all this frustration from her for months was really upsetting her. She thought he had been happy and excited to get married and now was pretty much finding out that he thought everything was unnecessary and stupid. Some wedding this was going to be.
“I’ll go,” Artie said, biting his lip a little. “I want to be there for you.” He also didn’t need everyone on his case about how he wasn’t being a supportive fiancé, too, but that was just a secondary concern.
Tired of this circular arguing, Quinn just nodded. “Fine. I’ll see you then. But right now a bubble bath and a slice of cheesecake is calling me. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll bring you some tomorrow.”
Artie nodded a little, figuring there was nothing he could do to stop her from leaving. Things were so much better (not that they were good) when she was just doing all the wedding stuff and he would just say yes and no every now and then (and also eat a lot of food when they were picking out the caterers). Then Quinn had to go and ask him if he wanted to get married. What was that about? “I love you. Are you mad at me?”
Quinn edged over to Artie then basically deposited herself into his lap. “No. I just don’t want this to be a pattern for us. If something is bothering you then you need to tell me. How else is this going to work?”
Artie was mostly feeling pretty chastised now instead of the frustration he’d been feeling only a few minutes ago. “I know. I just didn’t want to stress you out. And I guess I thought that everything would calm down but then it... just got worse.”
Quinn sighed, leaning her head on his shoulder. She was glad her apparent getting up on him (but not in a sexual way... for once) hadn’t surprised him. “I know. Well after our meeting thing tomorrow let’s hang out okay? No wedding stuff. I miss you.”
“I miss you too,” Artie replied, playing a little with her hair. “And I want to hang out tomorrow without wedding stuff, unless we need to go over menus again because I’d be okay with that. And I’m sorry that I don’t care about seating charts.”
Quinn just giggled. “No, the catering stuff is all taken care of. And I guess seating charts are kind of boring. But then my mom was like telling me that I had to do one because my two aunts are like fighting so they need to be seated as far away from each other as possible and...” she trailed off, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, no more wedding stuff. What are we going to do tomorrow?”
“If people just seated themselves we wouldn’t have to worry about that because they would probably seat themselves as far away from each other as possible to begin with,” Artie said. He had always had a problem not reasoning things out loud. “Um, we can go to lunch? See a movie or something. Lima is kind of boring... not that Oxford is that exciting either, actually.”
“I know. Lima is pretty boring. But at least you’re here,” Quinn laughed at how cheesy that had been. “Food and a movie is good though. Okay, well really I am going home now that I won’t be going to bed angry. I love you. And I’ll see you in the morning.”
Artie grinned at her but made no moves towards letting her get up. “You mean you don’t want to make out on my couch for old time’s sake?”
Quinn nuzzled into his neck, kissing below his ear before whispering, “Remember that one time you lost your virginity on this couch?”
“Yeah, I kind of vaguely remember that,” Artie said quietly, trying not to smile. “That was a pretty crazy night.”
Quinn nodded into his neck, kissing again. Maybe his making out suggestion wasn’t so bad. Her bubble bath could wait... Moving so they were face to face she finally kissed him on the lips.
Artie grinned some more as he returned the kiss, running his hands up and down her waist. Making out with Quinn was definitely one of his favorite activities (it was even on his Facebook profile) so he was glad they had stopped bickering (fighting was too strong of a word) about their wedding and started doing this instead. He was just about to bring his hands down to her ass and pull her in a little closer when suddenly he heard his parents come in from the garage. “Hi, how was dinner?” Artie asked politely once he’d taken his mouth off of Quinn’s and moved his hands back up onto her waist.
“Pretty good, thank you,” Artie’s father, Andrew, said, eyes averted.
“Well, that’s good,” Artie replied, blushing furiously. “Quinn is here. As you can probably see.”
“Yes, hi Quinn,” Catherine Abrams said. “Good seeing you again.” Artie kind of thought she looked more amused than pissed, so at least there was that. “How’s the seating chart coming along?”
Quinn was confused and a little disappointed at first when Artie started pulling away but quickly understood why when Artie’s parents walked though the door. She blushed just as red as Artie and situated herself so sitting on her boyfriend--no fiancé--was a little less scandalous. “Hi... Catherine, Andrew. I was just leaving actually. I made pretty good progress on the seating chart though. Thanks for asking.” It was almost even more embarrassing that Artie’s parents just look amused by all this, though she could reason that this definitely wasn’t the first time this had happened. Wow. Really embarrassing.
Artie was glad when his dad excused himself to go upstairs, but was slightly concerned when his mom stayed put and started talking about the rehearsal dinner. He leaned his head against the back of the couch and did his best to wait patiently for the conversation to end. It wasn’t like his opinion was even really that necessary, anyway. Well-- “Yeah, we should get dessert as part of the fixed-price dinner,” he interrupted. “Obviously.”
“Thanks, Artie,” his mother said, looking a little surprised at her son actually expressing a preference about something (which hadn’t happened for a while). “I’ll keep that in mind. And Quinn, if you’re good with all that, then I’ll just see you tomorrow?”
So Quinn could kind of understand how Artie was getting frustrated with all the people involved with the wedding planning. She waited until they re-hashed the details about the rehearsal dinner, and the shock of Artie giving his opinion (she could really just kiss him again right now for trying to be more involved... except Catherine Abrams was right there and they had already been caught sucking face) before she spoke. “Yeah, I definitely agree. With Artie. We should have dessert,” she turned to him giving him an encouraging smile. “And we’re definitely still on for the morning. But we’re taking the afternoon off, so we have to wrap it up by lunch.” See, Quinn could be reasonable.
Artie made a mental note to ask his dad if his mom had been this crazy when they were getting married. He would definitely put money on the answer being yes. “That should be fine,” his mother said, though she looked kind of doubtful. Artie resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Tomorrow, then. And, by the way,” she went on, turning back around to face them instead of just going upstairs as well. “I thought you two were too old by now for the whole teenaged sneaking around and making out thing, but apparently not.”
“Good night, mom,” Artie said immediately, blushing even darker. He was basically sure that he wanted to die. And he didn’t like the amused smile on his mother’s face. Maybe life had been easier when she hated Quinn, because this was just awful.
Quinn’s mouth fell open, shocked that they had just been called out like that. Why was this happening? She kind of wanted to die of embarrassment right now. “Goodnight Catherine,” she squeaked out and once she was out of sight, buried her head in Artie’s neck, shaking with silent laughter. “I can’t believe that just happened.”
“Me either,” Artie said, his voice pained. “That was. Really not okay.” He wrinkled his nose a little then, watching Quinn. “This isn’t funny.”
Quinn lifted her head and kissed him quickly. “Lighten up, baby, it’s kind of funny. Plus it’s not like they haven’t caught us making out before.”
“I know, but she completely called us out,” Artie said, kind of pathetically, rubbing Quinn’s back a little. “And it hasn’t happened for a while, like she said. I thought we were pretty good at this by now.”
“We’ve been practicing for how many years now?” Quinn said teasingly before she calculated quickly in her head. “You know it’s kind of amazing that we’ve been together for six years and we’ve only just graduated college. And also it’s not like we were even sneaking around or anything. It’s not like when we first started dating. We’re engaged. I think we’re allowed to make out.”
“I know, but it’s awkward when my parents come in,” Artie said, mostly talking just because for the principle of the thing now. He had to admit Quinn had a point. “Wait, you had to think about how many years we’ve been together?”
Quinn shrugged because Artie also had a point. “No. I was just wondering if I should have calculated from the age of 15 or 16 since you were 15 and I was 16 but then I realized it didn’t really matter because I just went from the year we started dating.” Hopefully that had made sense.
“Oh, okay,” Artie said, un-pouting (which he hadn’t realized until just now that he had been doing). “I thought you’d forgotten. But you didn’t, so no big deal or anything.”
“Definitely not,” Quinn said before kissing him. She was pretty sure she was never leaving to go home after all but didn’t seem to actually care.
Now that Artie knew that his parents weren’t going to show up any time soon he let himself properly kiss her. He was beginning to get pretty involved in it when all of a sudden a thought occurred to him and he started laughing against her mouth. “Hey, you’re kind of a cougar,” he said, obviously really pleased with himself.
Quinn pulled back, half pouting yet half confused. “What is that supposed to mean? I’m only like... a year older than you.” She pouted more, unsure why he had decided to bring this up now.
“It still counts, for sure,” Artie managed, still laughing. She looked pretty indignant but Artie just thought it was really cute. “I’m going to call you that now, okay?”
Quinn continued to pout. “No it doesn’t. It doubly doesn’t count because we were in the same grade in school. You’re not very nice. And you’re not calling me that.”
“We might’ve been in the same grade but you’re still a year older than me, cougar,” Artie said, unfazed. “Come on, cougars are cute. The cats. Not the older women who want to get with younger guys, ‘cause I only have eyes for you.”
“Your supposed sweet talk is not distracting me from the fact that you just lumped me in the came group as those old ladies.” She was so not giving up on the pouting. “Besides, I don’t have a horrible tan, fried out hair, or a boob job, so I am definitely not a cougar.”
Artie thought that characterization was kind of unfair to all the older women who were attractive and not trashy, but he kept that opinion to himself. “Yeah, you definitely don’t have a tan,” he said innocently. Not like he could talk on that front.
Although Quinn didn’t care that she couldn’t tan, she still rolled her eyes. “You’re not being very nice tonight, Arthur.” She never called him that and wasn’t entirely sure what her purpose was in whipping out that name right now, but see how he liked it... whatever it was she was doing.
Artie furrowed his brow a little when Quinn used his full name, immediately thrown. “Yeah, I know. Why are you calling me that?”
Quinn shrugged. “I don’t know. I felt the need to retaliate somehow.”
“Yeah, okay, cougar,” Artie said, pretty smugly. “I have an idea.”
Giving him a half hearted glare for calling her ‘cougar’ again, Quinn just said, “What kind of idea?”
Artie was pretty sure that Quinn would hate this suggestion but he thought it wouldn’t hurt to suggest it. “How would you feel about not having sex until we get married? It’d only be a few weeks anyway, and I know we’re both obviously not virgins or anything but, I don’t know. And don’t take this the wrong way. But we do it all the time and maybe if we just don’t for a little bit it’ll make having sex when we’re first married, I don’t know, nice or something.” Artie really meant ‘special’ instead of ‘nice’ but that would have sounded a little pathetic out loud, he thought.
Quite taken off guard by the suggestion, her eyebrows scrunched together as she thought about it. Back in the day when she was Lady Chastity, she really had meant to wait until her wedding night but, well, that clearly hadn’t happened. “I guess... I mean it’s not a completely terrible idea and like a lot of other couples do it too. Well rather they don’t do it,” she smirked at her terrible joke. Still smirking, she said, “Can we start tomorrow?”
“I was going to suggest that,” Artie replied, smirking back. It wasn’t that he had a problem with their sex life and he was probably the only guy in the world, and in the history of guydom or something, who felt like they had sex too much with their girlfriend. Well, fiancée now. “We haven’t not since... six years ago.”
“I guess that means I’m sleeping over?” Quinn said, her voice a little hopeful. She didn’t react much when Artie brought up the period of time they had a sex hiatus after her daughter was born, due to post-birth recovery. They had talked about that whole ordeal enough though. Artie was her best friend that wasn’t Santana so naturally they talked about everything. It had taken a while to change her attitude about self disclosure, but now she was mostly comfortable talking about her issues, but probably only because it was Artie. Leaning down, she kissed him softly. “I love you.”
Artie smiled up at her, really glad that they had worked things out tonight. “I love you too. A lot.” He leaned in and lowered his head to kiss her neck a little, then took this opportunity (if he could make eye contact with her, he’d start laughing) to say, “I love you so much, the Burj Khalifa wouldn’t be able to contain how much I love you. And that building is eight hundred and twenty eight meters tall. That’s really tall, cougar. That’s how much I love you.”
Quinn let out an appreciative noise as Artie started kissing her neck but abruptly stopped at his very odd pickup line. “Baby, are you trying to serenade me with architecture facts? You’re such a nerd,” she grinned at him.
“Maybe I am,” Artie said, grinning back at her. “I know you think it’s really hot. Did you know that when the John Hancock Center opened it was the tallest building in the world outside of New York? I like skyscrapers because when you go up to the top it’s like you’re getting a glimpse of heaven. Which is nothing new to me because that’s the way I feel every time I’m around you.”
Quinn giggled slightly, but mostly just beamed at him. “You’re so ridiculous and I wouldn’t want you any other way. But you’re so right, this is such hot foreplay,” she winked at him. “What else you got?”
“That’s it for now. The pick-up lines require a lot of thinking. But I could just tell you random architecture facts without the pick-up lines if you want,” Artie offered. “I know you’re interested...”
“How about,” Quinn said as she started kissing up his neck, “I just get on your skyscraper and we call it a night?”
“I guess I should increase my supply because I’m sensing a lot of demand going on right now,” Artie replied, finally moving his hands back down to her ass. “Want to go to my room now?”
“You don’t want to do it on the couch for old time’s sake?” She mimicked with a grin. “That’s a good idea though.”
“No, I think I’m good,” Artie said, shrugging a little and smiling. “Do you need to tell your mom you aren’t coming back or something? How am I supposed to get morning cheesecake if you stay here?”
“Yeah I’ll call her. But you are not kicking me out after... This isn’t like high school,” Quinn said, pouting. Now that she knew about after sex cuddles there was no way she was giving them up. “And we’ll go over there tomorrow after our meeting and get some or something. Don’t worry, you’ll get your cheesecake. I see where your priorities are though,” she rolled her eyes.
“Okay, that sounds fine,” Artie said, his smile turning into a grin. “These definitely are my priorities. Sex with you, sleep, and cheesecake, except in ascending order of awesomeness.” His parents had kind of given up on maintaining any pretense of pretending that they didn’t know that he and Quinn were sleeping together a while ago; they all just never talked about it. Once she had moved in with him, too, there was really no point in doing so and Artie had once argued that because they were already living together, it made no sense for Quinn to need to go home when they were over at his parents’ house in Lima. She could get into a car accident driving so late at night. Admittedly, that had been kind of a sneaky low blow, but it had worked and after Artie’s parents had checked with Quinn’s mom (who still thought that they were celibate, thanks to Quinn), she started being able to stay over. “Let me just leave a note so they know you’re here, then we can go. Okay?”
“Because I’m always on top,” Quinn smirked. She gave Artie another kiss, then (regrettably) got off his lap. “How about you go leave your note and I’ll go to your room and call my mom. So I’ll see you in a few.” Her mom wouldn’t necessarily be pleased that she was spending the night at Artie’s because she still got all sentimental about her ‘baby girl’ growing up, but she didn’t think that there was any sex going on thanks to a little lie told 6 years ago, so things would work out.
Artie waited until she’d moved off of him and he’d gotten back into his chair before correcting her. “No, I meant that you were in 3rd place and the cheesecake was 1st place.” With that said, he turned his chair around and backed away from her in case Quinn decided to get all indignant on him or anything.
Quinn just scoffed at him then stalked off to his bedroom. She’d definitely make him pay for that. Her phone call with her mom was short and after reasoning that it was just easier since they had someone coming over to Artie’s house in the morning to go over some wedding details that this just made more sense she hung up. Once off the phone she perched herself on Artie’s bed, waiting for him.
Artie came in a few minutes later after writing a note to his parents and setting it on the kitchen table. He tried not to grin too much when he saw her waiting for him. “You’re not mad at me, are you? You know I like you best out of everything.”
“Well, I could be,” Quinn said as she stripped off her shirt and threw it at him, “but I am really interested in skyscrapers and who else would give me hands on experience?”
He caught her shirt with one hand and closed his door with the other before moving over and getting himself onto the bed, immediately pulling her onto his lap. “You better not be interested in any others,” he said before kissing her.
Quinn smirked against his lips and shook her head slightly, “Nope, just yours...”