#I also read up on all the band members who uh. Didn't leave voluntarily over the past few years

[red-hot-moon]

Cartoon Network created "Dexter's Lab" based on him

[kuiinncedes]

every little bump in the road

for @gleeadvent day 5: exhale

happy new yearrr lmao i'm still here doin this in the new year hehe 🤪 idk i guess i'll be trying to write for all of them just for the sake of writing ya know so yeah lol

1123 words; title from "breathe (taylor's version)" by taylor swift

set during 4x06 glease - maybe warning (not sure) for a small mention of marley's situation in 4x06 (after trying the skirt on and it being revealed that kitty fucked with it bc she's a fucking evil little -- anyway) also swearing lol

what else do i usually put heres lmao uh written for glee advent day 5 which means it's actually december 5 :] idk about you (but im feeling 2022) except i'm actually not i think it's actually just uh december 32 (not that i Want 2021 to continue but like it just does not feel like it at all 😂 Anywayyy sorry i'll shut up now fghjlkd)

read under the cut or on ao3 💓

Tina… probably needs a break. Needs to go to sleep before 2 am, mainly. She could tell her friends had the same thought from Blaine and Sam’s hesitance to leave after rehearsal, when she insisted that she was fine staying by herself, just had a few costumes to finish up, but ultimately Blaine and Sam had talked about running lines together and she suspected Blaine just wanted the comfort of his own home. So they left without too much fight and Tina’s at school alone again, like she has been almost every day for the past month, mostly voluntarily -- but with Mike being back and horrible wardrobe updates and finally thinking she’d gotten a chance to get out of the supporting side role for a moment but even Finn not believing in her potential and kind of accidentally taking on all of the costuming for Grease by herself, she’s a little… tired.

She’s been a little tired. Of a lot more than making costumes.

But she sets her stuff down on the piano backstage, makes her way to the costume racks, pulls Marley’s yellow skirt out and the new measurements taken today after the failed fitting, and tackles that first, because she does love doing this, and she loves the show and wants to do her part to make it the best it can be, even as the start of tech week grinds her already-rough sleep schedule to smithereens and her teachers this year don’t seem to like leniency very much. (They also claim to be fed up with glee club nonsense, but this really isn’t glee club-related, even if the entire main cast is from the glee club, and most of the rest of the cast, and the pit is mainly comprised of the glee club band, and it’s being directed by current and former glee club members….)

No one else in the glee club was interested or capable enough to volunteer for wardrobe, but Tina then also insisted she could do it herself, so a part of her being the only one is stubbornness. At this point, she kind of wants Finn to call Kurt back to help her with it since he could do that with Santana. It could be like nationals her sophomore year again, where they were in charge of making the girls' dresses and she still somewhat stayed under Kurt's tutelage at that point, but he helped her and assured her in her skill enough that she was able to take over more in his senior year. And she had someone to talk to about fashion who had ambitions and passions in it that she didn't know in anyone else.

But Tina knows that won’t happen, for completely unrelated reasons. She’s not sure she should be wanting that at all, as she remembers Blaine’s crushed expression after his audition, the smile that didn’t reach his eyes when she asked if he was okay, didn't reach his eyes when he got Teen Angel, hasn’t reached his eyes in weeks, since returning from an impromptu trip to New York.

The waistband of Marley’s skirt has been taken in a few inches, folded over itself and sewn in place, the overlap a small but significant length. Tina kicks herself for not noticing earlier today, when Marley got so distressed about having gained weight, and also not noticing until now that her new measurements are the same if not a bit smaller, so it couldn’t have been that.

Fuck -- her brain isn’t working; she makes sure that stays true by dropping her forehead to the table, and after a short forceful exhale she sits back up and grabs scissors, carefully snipping through the stitches that are actually done really well and tight and by whom? and pulling the waistband taut again, measuring it fully just in case, and hanging it back up.

Before she can worry more about who might have done it, though, the sound of people coming very loudly up the stairs to the stage echoes in the empty auditorium, startling her for a moment and then Blaine and Sam poke their heads out from behind the curtain and she smiles. Blaine waves, Sam holds up a plastic bag. “We brought food.”

“I thought you guys were running lines?” Even though neither of them have huge parts, and she knows they already have the songs down. “You wanted to come annoy me instead? I'm touched.”

Blaine smiles slightly as they walk towards her. It’s still not the smile she misses from him (she really misses) but she thinks it might be getting there. Tina gives him small smile back and a side hug as he corrects, “Wanted to come help you instead. And we can run lines here with you!”

She pretends not to notice the slight red around his eyes, the bit of rasp in his voice and the way he sniffs and clears his throat quietly; she just cranes her head up to kiss his cheek and goes to hug Sam, too.

“You need help with anything, T?” Sam asks, opening the bag to set Chipotle items on a table that Tina just cleared of some fabric scraps. “Besides food, of course. Since you basically live here now.”

Tina laughs and pushes Sam gently, and runs through the list in her head while opening her bowl that she sees immediately doesn't really contain her usual order, even though this is not the first time she’s tried entrusting it to Sam and Blaine to get, but she’s grateful anyway. For the food, and for their presence and energy pushing her tiredness aside, making her almost forget it was there in the first place.

She has to start finish her own costume for “You’re The One That I Want,” which is probably the biggest thing, but she also has to alter Santana’s and Kitty’s costumes a bit, and she has a few “Beauty School Dropout” headpieces left to make.

… that’s it? Tina looks around… pretty much. She’s a little surprised by her own sticking to schedule; the first dress rehearsal is in a few days still and she’ll definitely be done by then. She’s confident enough that she decides not to spend her limited time and energy teaching her friends how to correctly glue the tin cans together, or any sewing, and just says, “I don’t have much left. You guys can run lines or whatever, or run the songs while I do other stuff -- it’ll help me too.”

“Cool,” Sam agrees around a mouth stuffed with burrito. He bangs a fist on the table. “‘Beauty School Dropout’?” he asks, facing Blaine who does a half-smile again as he opens his bowl and responds, “Maybe after we eat, dude.”

--

(end notes bc i like this part of posting on ao3 lmao so i'll just put it here here's some more randomness 🤪)

this was maybe gonna stay just tina?? but guess what there's two fuckers (affectionate) who decided to show up (started writing these three as sunset curve in katp and now i can't escape the blamtina brainrot) (3/5 of my glee advent fics are blamtina let's see what it ends up being at the end lol)

idk shit about glee bc i haven't watched it in a long time lol jk but i also dk shit about grease bc i've never seen it all hgjdfk i know is like what was on glee and like what i could learn from jojo siwa's dwts grease dance XD so if there's any inaccuracies or whatever idk that's why lol

also i have never done shit with like clothes and stuff lmao so idk how that works either i based things on my experience in two high school musicals in the pit not at an arts-hating school and having no idea how the costuming works so it's probably a little different lol, and i also based things on my experience fucking up my sleep schedule this semester :P