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 Sequel to Flying Solo, a Beiste & Ewan series story, originally posted from February 16 to 22 2012.

This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: Family Earned.

"Luck of the Irish"
Sugar & Ewan (OC; Damian McGinty) (& Beiste)
Beiste & Ewan series extra
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

It wasn't nearly as hard for her to remember his name as she might have made it look at first. He'd sort of piqued her curiosity from the start. Maybe it was his accent, or his story... She did feel bad for him. As much as she could walk around with her own outlook on things, the thought of losing her parents made her shiver with grief without having actually lost anything or anyone. And Ewan looked like a decent guy, didn't seem fair that he should go through this. That was all just from their first meeting, when she didn't even know what he was called.

And then she'd gotten to know him. She had not expected the effect he had on her, but then... he believed in her. When he looked at her, she felt appreciated... and she had never known how much she wanted that until she had it. She tried not to look too obvious about it, but then it was kind of easy when the person you were trying to be discreet around wasn't in a position to put two and two together. Ewan inspired things in her that she wasn't used to… like patience. Who would have thought that she could be a patient person? Technically she wasn't even that, because the only one who made her that way was him, no one else, so she had… focused flares of patience, or something like that.

She hadn't even really noticed this change in herself, not at first. It wasn't until he had told her that she'd made him smile. In that instant, looking at him, it just dawned on her that… she had become special to him, but all the same he had become special to her, too. She looked forward to talking to him, seeing him… She thought about him at the most random of moments, when there was really no reason for her to do so because it had nothing to do with him. All roads led to Ewan Healy…

He'd told her she made him smile, and her heart had exploded. It wasn't like no boy had made her weak in the knees before, but it was different, and she could feel it. This wasn't a silly teenage infatuation over a cute boy, although Ewan did have that on his side as well. Maybe she was making things up in her head, but she was sure he was feeling for her, too. This was the first time where she was so happy and terrified all at once… happy to be around him and terrified that she should lose what they had… and she'd known him for all of days.

But then there'd been the whole matter of Glee Club. She couldn't hide how livid she still was about that entire episode of her life even if she tried. As blasé as she might have seemed about the whole thing, she did want to be there, and to have them throw it in her face, it was just… Before Ewan had started talking about trying again, and second chances, she had even been considering getting her father to simply buy her way into another Glee Club, one that was hers and therefore couldn't turn her away. But then her new friend started telling her about wanting her to join with him, how they might reconsider, and as burned as she'd felt when they'd rejected her, he made hope look… inviting. She had gone and seen him when he was practicing in the choir room, and even after she'd left him to carry on, she couldn't help but stay and watch him, doing his damn best even though, by his own admission, he was hardly the best at it… He kept trying, and he wanted her to keep trying, too…

She'd spent the next couple of days arguing with herself. On the one hand, she wanted to remain steadfast in her boycotting of the people who had turned her down. She was going to show them that she didn't need them, keep her chin in the air… yes, she could. But then there was Ewan, giving her all the reasons in the world to want to choose a different approach, to try again and, as an innocent by-product, get to spend more time with him.

She'd still been debating it, earlier today, when she'd received his text, saying he was about to audition in front of Glee Club. She'd been standing at her locker, the one that stood right next to his, and it wasn't so much a decision that she'd made. She had just closed her locker and trailed on toward the choir room. She stood there in the hall, and she picked up on a voice, one she'd identify as Ewan's once she got closer. She had never actually heard him sing before, and maybe it was some sort of special Irish thing, but she'd never heard anything like it before. If they didn't take him, then there was truly no justice in the world.

But they had taken him, and she'd had her private little celebration in the hall, hopping in place and getting an odd look from people passing by. She gave them the stink eye before returning to her smiles… Ewan had made it, as he should, and that was great, that was…

Schuester had spotted her, and then before she could even really explain why she was there… Ewan had pleaded her case in front of all of them. She was so stunned to have someone do that for her, she'd almost been at a loss to answer when Schuester asked her to join them in choreography. Before she knew it, they had welcomed her amongst them and… She didn't know what else to say but that she was ecstatic. She hadn't realized just how much she wanted it, not until then… and Ewan had made it happen. She didn't know what they were to each other yet, but as far as she was concerned, he had become a friend to her, because that was something friends did for each other, right?

Now she stood at her locker, on her own, and as she had thought back to everything she'd gone through since she'd met Ewan, she just thought… this was where it had all started. The principal had looked at her like she was crazy when she'd demanded to change lockers, but now she almost felt like it had needed to happen. Now not only had she been liberated from the smelly guy, she had made a new and special friend, gotten another shot at something she really wanted… If that wasn't proof enough that she was heading in the right direction, then she didn't know what was.

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!