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 74th cycle. Now cycle 75!

"Locked & Loaded"
Nora (AU!Beth), Grace (OC), (Emily (OC; Nellie V.)
Sunshine Girls 2 series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

As much as Grace had told her it was no use, that they were too far and there was too much noise upstairs, Nora had carried on banging on the door and shouting for nearly ten minutes. Grace, in the meantime, had taken a seat and waited, attempting to side with keeping calm; Emily had to let them out eventually.

The end to Nora's attempts came with a gasp and recoil, and Grace stood immediately. "What did you do? Are you alright? Let me see," she moved up to get a look at her hand.

"It's fine, I just pinched my fingers," Nora insisted, wincing. "See? No blood." For good measure, she gave the door a kick. It was only as she was holding her aching hand in her good one that she realized something. "Wait, I… I had my phone in my hand, she gave it back to me after she snatched it away and… She must have taken it again and…"

"Why'd she snatch your phone away?" Grace asked. Nora stared back, hesitating.

"Never mind that, what about you, what about your phone, do you have it?" she asked. Grace reached to her pocket, then paused.

"I put it down upstairs while I was playing with Charlie," she revealed.

"That's just great, that's…" Nora went to sit down, still cradling her hand. Grace took a breath, debating before she went and sat down next to her.

"Did Emily tell you why she brought us here? Surely she must have."

"Surely…" Nora repeated, frowning. "She said…" She remembered the words, and she knew it had to be about her, which should have made her not want to speak a word of it to Grace, but with how they were stuck in the basement… "She said she was tired of having to keep secrets and tell lies, and that she wasn't the one who could put it to an end, that we have to do it."

Grace felt a chill when she heard the words. Had Emily told Nora about her secret? She wouldn't have, no, but then…

"And if… and if we can't put an end to…" Grace started to say, but she didn't know where the words would take her and she put an end to them before she had a chance to find out, or before she said something she shouldn't say when Nora was right next to her.

"I don't know. Someone has to notice we're gone, right? If we wait, someone will let us out," Nora insisted, attempting to stop thinking about her hand; she couldn't do it. "Man, this stings."

"It's not her fault though, is it? I think she's trying to help us more than anything. It's not the best method, but…"

"I was talking about my hand," Nora cut her off.

"Oh. Right," Grace looked down to her own hands, which were presently in her lap.

She couldn't do this. She knew somewhere in her madness, Emily was trying to help them, but Grace saw no way this could end well, for any of them. What was it all, really? A problem of timing? She'd gone and realized she had these feelings for Nora, who had kept her own feelings to herself for so long, only after she had finally found someone that made her happy. Sometimes she wondered if she would have even realized it, truly came to face the possibility, if she hadn't seen Nora with someone else and felt her own heart rip open. If Emily thought this situation was hard on her, it was a good thing she couldn't feel what Grace was feeling at this point.

"Grace?" Nora's voice came back to her and she sat up, feeling what was on her cheeks before the blonde even had a chance to point it out. "Are you crying?"

"It's… dusty, down here," Grace sniffled, roughly brushing the tears from her face.

"Hey…" Nora put a hand to her shoulder, and Grace turned to look at her. She looked so concerned, and what else would she look like? She was her best friend, and Grace was hers in return, same as Emily. But then with Nora there was still that thing, that extra amount of care that Grace had finally spotted all those weeks ago, when this had begun. "You don't have to be scared, really."

"I'm not, I'm alright," Grace shook her head. "It's dust."

"Got it," Nora simply said, and she put her arm around her shoulders. Grace sighed, letting herself be held for a moment. Maybe it was selfish, to allow nearness under false pretense, but she didn't care. "I guess there is the thing with us lately, isn't there?" Nora finally spoke again after a few minutes in silence, in which Grace's head had slowly found its way on to her shoulder.

"The thing?" Grace asked. She still sounded like she had been or continued to be crying.

"We used to hang out all the time, talk all the time, but lately we've gotten sort of distant, and as much as I'm trying to figure out why, I still feel like there's something I'm not understanding."

"I'm sorry," Grace told her, turning her eyes up to find Nora's. "I don't mean to," she said, feeling herself a liar and a cheat in those words.

"I have been sort of occupied ever since I started with Fran, I know, but I don't want to lose you because of it. You and me, and the crazy girl who locked us in here, it's supposed to be for life, remember? We're going to be those old ladies living together, like that show from the eighties my mother used to watch." If the intent was to make Grace laugh, the mission was a rousing success. Between the crying and the laughing, the Mackenna girl's face was now blooming red all over. Nora laughed, too, and her arm came back down; the hand didn't even hurt anymore.

"I think we need… a fresh start," Grace finally said, making herself breathe and exhale deeply, so to settle herself after all the laughter. "I do miss you, too… so much," she shook her head. If you had any idea.

"That's good to know," Nora smiled, absently reaching up to brush away the few tears still glistening on the freckled cheek, possibly a result of her amusement more than the supposed dust. Grace nodded and, still in the breathless throes of that laughter, her hand had gone to find the girl's, which still held to her face. She didn't want her to let go, and in that moment, she completely forgot herself.

But then she did remember, and she realized what she was doing, and a fear grasped her all at once. What was she doing, how was she supposed to let go and look Nora in the face to explain why… Nora hadn't said a word, or even moved at all. When she did make herself look up, what she found was the blonde's grief staring back at her, unchecked. Was she thinking of her, too? Was she thinking about her own feelings, was she…

When Nora had finally blinked and looked into Grace's eyes again, well… Grace would say something had come over her, a foolish outburst of courage and abandon, that whispered at her ear and told her to throw caution to the wind and take a chance. There was really very little for her to do in order to breach the space in between them, as it was already all but gone, after these last few minutes. So rather than letting her hand fall back to her lap, she had instead let it cross from her own cheek to Nora's, the better to lean in and press a kiss to her lips, halfway between cautious and reckless.

There was a brief moment of surprise, where Nora's hand had hovered away from the redhead's face, and she hardly moved. But then her palm and her fingers reclaimed their post, and she went ahead and kissed her back, kissed her like it was all she'd ever wanted to do, and she'd never get another chance. She didn't understand what had driven Grace to do this, but in that instant, all other thoughts had been driven from her mind, save for the feeling of the other girl's mouth on hers, and the warmth that it filled her with.

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!