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 69th cycle. Now cycle 70!


GLEEKATHON FOURTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE - It's October again, which means another year of Gleekathon is about to wrap up! At the end of the month it will have been four years since I've started doing my daily stories! As always, I will be celebrating this with a special cycle of stories to touch on my favorite stories I've done throughout the year. There will be two installments each on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. The remaining days will feature, as they have in the last several months, new chapters of the latest story in my Doctor Who/Glee crossover series. As far as the anniversary stories go, it will be as I've done before, taking those past stories and either doing a prequel, sequel, POV swap, genre swap, alternate ending, or additional scenes.

This story is ADDITIONAL SCENES to "Revealing & Accepting" a Sunshine Girls 2 series story originally posted between March 21 and March 27 2013.

(This is a shift day, which means there will be two stories posted today!)

A/N: END OF FOURTH GLEEKATHON YEAR message at the end of today's other story! :D


"Breathing & Walking"
Nora (AU!Beth) & Puck
Sunshine Girls 2 series extra
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

After they'd had their talk, Nora, her mother and stepfather, and her father and stepmother, her father had asked if she wanted to go for a drive. She would take any chance she got to spend time with her father and stepmother when they were in Lima, and after the day she'd had, she wanted it even more. So they went and drove off from her mother's house.

"Where are we going?" Nora asked him.

"How do you feel about ice cream?" Puck asked her.

"We haven't had dinner yet," she pointed out.

"Yeah, that's why I didn't mention it inside, so it can stay between us?" he gave her a look and she smiled.

"Okay," she agreed.

Going to get ice cream with her father was one of her favorite things to do, and as they were separated by hundreds of miles on a regular basis, getting to go back to that same place they'd been going to since she was little was more than special. They would always get the same thing as each other. It had been this way since she was a kid. Whatever she would choose on any given day, he would say to give him the same. He didn't do it so much anymore, but when she was younger and he didn't specifically like the flavor in question, he would make exaggerated faces just to make her laugh. She might have appreciated those antics today.

They went and sat down, looking at the fountain below. Even after the talk they'd all had, she was still working her way out of her sadness.

"You know I can't say I know what you're going through exactly," her father told her and she looked at him. "But it doesn't mean I'm just going to sit here and do nothing."

"Dad…"

"Whatever you need from me, I will be there," he vowed, and she smiled.

"I know you will." She hoped he knew just how much she loved him. Sure, he was her father, but not everyone cared for their father or got along with their father simply because that was who he was. She knew how many sacrifices he and her other parents had needed to make, so that their situation could work. With how young they'd been when she'd come along, it could all have been a disaster, but it had been the opposite. She wouldn't trade in her life for anything.

She didn't want to talk about all of this, the show, the problems, Bailey… She had her father there, and ice cream, and she didn't want the memory of this day to be blemished with her issues.

"Dad?" she asked, watching him gobble up a big chunk of ice cream.

"Yeah?" he asked back, and she could see him fight a brain freeze. She smiled briefly at that before getting back on track.

"What do you do if there's… someone… and you really care about them, but… you're scared to tell them because they might not feel the same way you do?" Her father nearly dropped his cone, instead smearing part of the ice cream on his wrist and sleeve. Nora held a napkin out to him.

"Well, that's…" She wondered if in his head, he was thinking about his own experience with girls and whether he had expected he would be sharing this information with a son rather than a daughter. "What makes you so sure they won't feel the same way if you don't say it?"

"She's not into girls," she told him.

"Ah… Right."

"Maybe I should ask uncle Kurt, or Blaine… of one of the aunts… or Mom's dads…"

"Even if you did, they'd probably tell you the same thing I will now. I know it's probably not what you'll want to hear, but it's the truth. You can't force this to happen. And if this girl is straight, then you can't keep waiting for that to change, just like you can't let yourself waste away and let opportunities go by." She knew all this already, deep down, even though she wished she didn't.

"I know, but…"

"I can't tell you it's not going to hurt, because it will, for a while. But things will get better, I promise you. You just need to give it time, give it a chance to happen." He was right, and she had to try and do as he said, no matter how much she feared the unknown.

With their ice cream finished, they had gotten up to take a walk around the mall. Nora held on to her father's arm, and she could see the pride in his eyes. If the situation had been slightly less delicate he might have inquired about this mystery girl she was into. He would have asked if he knew her, what she was like. Nora wouldn't have had the guts to tell him that, yes, he did know her, very well, and that it was Grace. Right now only Emily knew, and she wanted to keep it that way. As much as she trusted her father, it was better this way.

"Alright, here," he offered her gum when they got back in the car.

"What's that for?" she asked, taking a piece.

"If any of them smell the ice cream on us, who do you think is going to get the blame?" he pointed to himself and she bit back a laugh.

She was sure, under the circumstances, they would have understood but, for his sake, when she spotted a stain from a droplet of ice cream, she borrowed his jacket and wore it all through dinner. She always loved to wear it anyway, to have her father's smell all around her like a hug. Outside of their sneaking about, what really mattered was that he had achieved what he had intended. The gloom hanging over her head had drifted away, and although everything wasn't all back to normal yet and wouldn't be for a while, on that night she did feel better, and it was thanks to her father.

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!