Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 52nd cycle. Now cycle 53!
THIRD ANNIVERSARY CYCLE: It's late October again, and within this cycle I will be completing my third year of daily gleekathon stories and commencing a fourth! As in previous years, this means special things happening. I've selected my favorite stories from throughout the year, and I'll be treating them to something special. In previous years this included Prequel, Sequel, and POV Swap, and then Additional Scenes and Alternate Endings. This year I'm adding two new treatments: Genre Swap (I think that's pretty straightforward) and Element Change (I change one thing in the story, see how it affects the rest). Note that in both these cases and some of the others, there may excerpts directly transferred from the story it references. Also, since this year saw the addition of 'shift days', and since I suck at picking, I have selected 42 stories, to be treated two per day! So here we go!
This story is Additional Scenes to Familiar Strangers, a Familiar Strangers series story, originally posted from March 22 to 28 2012.
This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: Just in the Nick of Time.
"Not Completely Unreasonable"
Elsie (OC-ish) & Santana
Familiar Strangers series extra
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)
She was still reaching in her bag to find her keys – she'd tossed them back in there to carry her bags – when she heard the phone start to ring from inside her apartment. "No, no, come on…" she muttered to herself, fingers still not touching the metal. When she had finally found them, she scrambled to get the right one in the door, push it open, and run for the phone. In the midst of this dash she had been crossed by Mimi and Leo, the dogs trailing her for a moment before going back to the door and the bags she had left in the hall. "Hello?" she answered with a frown, moving back to deal with the dogs and the bags.
"Is this a bad time?" the voice on the other end of the line asked, and Elsie smirked.
"Santana? Hey! No, I just got home and… Hey, hey, guys, no, come on," she hushed at the dogs, leading them carefully back into the apartment before taking the bags, the phone balanced between cheek and shoulder. "Couldn't find my keys," she continued with her old friend. Once the bags were inside and she had closed the door, she breathed out. "How are you?"
"Good, can't complain. Oh, saw someone the other day, from back in the day. Quinn dropped by the bar."
"Really?" Elsie laughed. "What are the odds…" she told herself.
"What do you mean?" Santana asked, and for a moment Elsie hesitated to answer, knowing several things could come of her revealing this to Santana of all people, and not many of those were good things. Still of the friends she still had from those days, it would be kind of nice to share…
"Finn Hudson's been coming in to the diner the last couple of days," she finally said.
"Has he," Santana chuckled.
"Yeah, I don't know how often he came in before, I just switched to the lunch shift. He's been coming in every day this week though."
"Trying to recapture the golden days?" Santana guessed.
"Not exactly," Elsie smirked to herself, then, "He doesn't know who I am."
"Figures…"
"No, well, I mean he knows that he knows me, he just doesn't remember from where," Elsie clarified. "I might be messing around with him a bit, not helping him remember," she revealed, and Santana laughed. "I don't know, it's fun," Elsie shrugged, putting her groceries away. "He comes in, tries to suss it out of me, but I won't budge…"
"Oh, geez, you're flirting with him," Santana translated.
"I'm not… flirting… not exactly," Elsie defended.
"Sweetie, you're flirting… hard," Santana insisted.
"Well… so what if I am?"
"Hey, listen, I think it's a good thing you're getting back out there, after what happened with Alex," Santana sounded more serious now, and Elsie silently nodded to herself at this. "But Finn Hudson?"
"I don't know how to explain it, it's just… It's been five years since we saw each other last, me and him. And I remember the guy he was back then… and that's not him now, not completely. He's grown up, we all have. Since he's been coming in, I feel… well… happy," she had to smile. "I don't know what's going to happen, but right now I want to keep going, see where we end up," she explained.
"Alright, fair enough," Santana told her, and Elsie smiled. She hadn't really been confronted with these feelings, not like this, and now that she had, she looked to these visits from Finn with a new eye. She couldn't go too fast, not for both their sakes. Santana was right, it was good for her to get back out there, only… to say it wasn't easy, after having lost the one and only guy she had ever been with was as big of an understatement as they came. But she would trust herself, as she always did… and she could never go wrong.
"What about you, how's New York, how's Brittany?"
"New York is the same, Brittany is the same, w… Elsie," she had paused, then returned.
"Yes?" Elsie responded at hearing her name.
"No, I was talking to Brittany," Santana laughed. "She heard her name and looked at me." Elsie could vaguely hear the other girl's voice in the background. "She says she saw Finn," Santana replied, Elsie guessed to Brittany once again. "Yes, told her about Quinn," she continued, then there was a pause, like Santana had covered up the phone or something, before she returned again. "Tell you what though, she's totally flirting with him."
"Hey, hey, hey!" Elsie interjected so she would return to her.
"Sorry," Santana replied, while Elsie could hear Brittany laughing in the background. "But you have to keep me posted on that," she begged.
"Right, so you two can have a good laugh about me," Elsie smirked even if she tried to sound annoyed.
"Not at you, just… Come on, it's funny," Santana defended herself.
"Depends how you laugh," Elsie told her. "You'll be spiteful."
"Okay, I'm sorry, really," Santana promised, and Elsie breathed out.
"Fine," she agreed.
"So you're just not going to tell him?"
"I don't know, at this point I'm waiting to see if he'll figure it out on his own. It's fun to see him try."
"W…" Santana started with a chuckle but then it was swallowed right back. "Well I'm sure it'll come to him," she finally replied, and Elsie smiled to herself, recognizing the effort her old friend had just put into being supportive rather than snarking.
"Right. And if it doesn't, well… maybe I'll tell him, maybe I won't… It doesn't really change anything between us, it just… opened the door."
"Oh, you're so gone," Santana laughed.
"Alright, I'm going to let you go, before this gets out of hand," Elsie 'reprimanded' with a smile on her face. "Unless there's anything else you needed to talk about?"
"I don't even remember right now, so when it comes back to me I'll call back," Santana revealed.
"Now who's forgetting things," Elsie teased before they said their goodbyes and hung up. She sighed, looking back to the dogs, who were now sitting there and staring at her. "Alright, time for your walk."
THE END
A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!