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 73rd cycle. Now cycle 74!

"Picking & Visiting"
(Nora (AU!Beth) & Grace (OC) &) Emily (OC; Nellie V.), (Older) Mike/Tina
Sunshine Girls 2 series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

The further Emily went on attempting to create a pool of options for this, the more she knew she was building up a disaster waiting to happen, and if she didn't have so many reasons to make her carry on, she would have stopped a long time ago.

Yes, it had been Grace who had asked her to find her someone, and Emily had agreed to do it, but whichever way they looked, she knew why she was doing it, and that made it the unpleasant mess that it was. It would not end well, and the craziest part of it was that she was almost certain Grace knew it, too, but she was feeling so helpless at the moment that she had chosen to ignore it. Emily couldn't well argue with that; she was doing some ignoring of her own.

So what were the choices? A couple of the guys in Glee Club, some of the football players, the male Cheerios, and whatever other guy who wasn't taken, gay, a tool, or a psychopath. She had no shame to say that she would have put less thought into it if this had been just anyone, but seeing as it was Grace, one of her best friends, who was going through a difficult time… It had to be that this guy would be good, not just as a person but as a boyfriend to Grace. So far, any guy that came into consideration had at least one flaw that made him unsuitable for advancement. So she kept looking.

"What are you doing?" her little cousin came and asked her. She stared at him, putting on an amused smile for his sake.

"Plotting world domination," she told him, which made him laugh.

"Dinner's almost ready!" her uncle Mike called from the kitchen. Emily sighed and got up, pulling her cousin along.

"Time to wash your hands," she told him, holding his hands up in the air as they walked, so that he was almost climbing on her feet to keep up.

When they'd gotten to the table, her aunt had given her a look she knew to mean 'put your phone away.' She'd worked up the list there, deciding it would be safer not to have it on paper anywhere, and when asked, she did put it in her pocket. She wouldn't be upset to see the list disappear for a while, even though she knew she was opening herself up to being asked about other things, one in particular she had no desire to address. Naturally, it was the first one that came into conversation.

"You're coming with us to the airport to pick up your Mom and Dad, right?" her aunt Tina asked. For one usually so talkative it would become annoying to some, Emily was quiet to the point that silence didn't seem a strong enough term.

"I have… homework," she frowned, picking a word. Yes, homework, that would do.

"It can wait, can't it?" her uncle shrugged, and she stared at him.

"Do you mind putting that in writing? I'm sure my teachers will love that one."

"Emily, they're your parents…" her aunt went on.

"They are? Really?" she'd meant to joke, but turning back to look at her aunt, there was almost hurt in Emily's eyes; as far as she was concerned, her aunt and uncle were her parents. Her mother and father were the ones who sent her money every once in a while. "It's a really big assignment," she nodded with a frown before returning to her plate. "Besides, it's not like I won't see them while they're here," she added, restraining herself from adding 'whether I like it or not.'

Her aunt was more anxious about this visit than she was. She was happy to see her cousin and her husband, of course. Mr. and Mrs. Holt would be staying at a hotel, in which they had thought it to be a very good idea to include a room for Emily, so she could stay with them while they were in Lima, and also be treated to the perks of the hotel. She didn't want to give them the satisfaction of being proven right, but as much as Emily tried not to be happy about it, she knew deep down she was actually intrigued at the thought of having room service and an indoor pool and everything else. She had a thing for amenities.

If she did have fun, above all else, she would make sure not to show it around her mother and father.

As soon as she could be excused from the table, she'd gone back up to her room and her list. It felt much too strange that finding a fake boyfriend for Grace when she was clearly falling in crazy love for Nora was something she was looking forward to. It was less painful than thinking about her mother and father coming to Lima.

Maybe she was thinking too narrow. Yes, it would be a good thing if the guy went to McKinley with them, so that they could hang out, her and Kelly, Nora and Francesca, and Grace and whoever this guy would be, but this didn't have to be the way out. There were plenty of guys out there. How many competitions had they gone through, how many other show choirs had they met? Maybe she could find her a guy in there. Or there were some neighbors on her street, who were their age but went to another school. Even if the guy was a year or so younger or older, it didn't have to be a problem.

Yes, she would find a guy for Grace, and he would be exactly the kind of guy she both needed and deserved. Things would get better and, somehow they would make it all work. Everyone would be happy, all of them. And after her mother and father had their visit, where they could try and act like parents for a week or so, they would leave again, and things could get back to normal, or as normal as they could ever get.

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!