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 a Prequel to You're Magnetic, You Are, an Artie/Lucy series story, originally posted on June 12 2012.

This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: New Definitions For Us.

"Looking & Knowing"
Lucy (OC)/Artie
Artie/Lucy series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Part of her had wanted to just back out and not go to the party. Yes, these were all getting to be her friends, and hanging out with them would be great, but then she couldn't help but feel sort of… afraid. Nothing had happened yet, and for all she knew nothing would happen. But something could… and that was all she needed to know sometimes.

She wasn't a party girl, and she could still count on one hand the times where she'd had alcohol. Even then, for how little she'd had, she knew what it did to her. It didn't take all that much for her inhibitions to go down, and then one thing would lead to another…

The first few times had been fine, but then the last time… The last time had been at another party, with Grant. She didn't know why, but she'd just told herself it was time she let go, just a bit. So she'd had one drink, and then another, and then… She wasn't sure how far in she was into drunkenness, but they had ended up in a room together, alone. They had started kissing, and everything was just good and safe for her, with how far she would usually go. Only then he would reach for her shirt, and usually she'd push him away, but this time… this time she'd let him. She couldn't pretend like feeling his hands on her back didn't feel kind of nice, and so she'd just gone with it.

But then maybe he took the shirt coming off as a signal that she wanted more, and then he was pulling her toward the bed, and then he was sitting and he pulled her on top of him and she just squealed drunkenly. They were kissing again, and it was nice, and then… then she was feeling his hand in between their bodies, and she wasn't sure if he was fiddling with her pants, or with his own, but it fired off what little of her warning signs she had left and she had pulled away, stumbling off and to the ground from being too tipsy. After that he'd tried to get her to come back, but she wouldn't, and he just… left.

In hindsight, if he wasn't doing it already, this might have been the first time he had gone and found his comfort with someone else, who wouldn't say no to him.

Then after that, the whole mess had begun, leading to their breakup, roughly three months after the night at the party. Between then and now, through her relationship with Artie and the breakup – thanks to Grant and his usual self – she had generally sworn off drinking, staying away from any situation that would lead to it. She didn't trust herself with it, and it wasn't like she really missed it.

But then there was this party coming, and she was tired of denying herself things because of one mistake. She could be more careful, she could. She knew what she didn't want to see happen, and so long as she kept that in mind, then she could be fine, she believed that. She would just have to keep her consumption in check, remember what she didn't want to see happen and then…

There were plenty of things that could go wrong, she realized. All of them came back around to Artie, and not wanting to mess things up with him more than she already had in recent times. She didn't think she would just go and have a couple too many and hook up with one of his friends, she couldn't, she loved him too much… even now.

But they were broken up, she couldn't forget that… Really, she couldn't forget it, especially as it had been her own doing, after what happened with him and her and Grant. She knew why it had needed to happen, she did, even if some days it was harder than others to remember why. And as much as it hurt both of them, it just wasn't possible for them to reunite, not yet. In her heart she knew she wanted it. She knew that if there was one undeniable fact in her existence, it was that she loved Artie Abrams. It was for that love, for the sake of protecting it, that she they had needed this break. She knew they weren't ready to be back to how things were, as much as it pained both of them.

So now there was this party, Santana's party, and all she could think was that something would go horribly wrong, and then whatever they still had, it would be lost. But she couldn't not go, for many reasons and one more than any, which was that she didn't want to spend the rest of her life hiding. Now here she was, getting ready, about to go and pick up Artie, and she was as nervous as she'd ever been.

The whole thing was kind of inevitable, she realized. No matter what she did, she always managed to end up doing something, so she could pretend all she wanted like she had the power, but then she knew it could all slip from her in a second. She was always like this, always on this up and down movement, feeling she was in control, but then slipping, and then trying to reassert control… It was starting to make her dizzy, and she just wanted for once to rest comfortably on the knowledge that she had made a good decision and it wouldn't come back to bite her.

She looked at herself in the mirror, letting out a breath… She was doing it again, psyching herself out. She couldn't do that, not again. She was tired of living with this supposedly earned guilt. She was going to go get Artie, go to the party and… hope everything turned out alright. It was the best she could do.

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!