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 an Element Change to Sugar So Sweet, a Beiste & Ewan series story, originally posted on July 5 2012.

This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: You're Family Now.

"In Dark Corners"
(Beiste &) Ewan/Sugar, Mike/Tina
Beiste & Ewan series extra
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

His first weekend at the shoe store had been mostly for training, but he picked things up so fast that by the end of his second day he just came off like he'd been there for ages. Rich was very pleased with him and with how things worked out. Ewan would get money to put aside for his trip home, and the store had gained a model employee.

When his first paycheck had come in, his aunt had convinced him that, while the bulk of it would go into his trip fund, he should get to keep some of it for himself, and a little of it just to have fun, too. With that in mind, he had texted Sugar, asking if she would like to go to the mall with him to 'spend some wild money,' to which she had replied it was one of her favorite things to do. She would meet him there in one hour.

He arrived before her, so he sat and waited, reading a book he had to finish for English. He was alerted to her presence when he heard his name called out from across the way. He looked up – as many others did – and saw her coming toward him with a grin; she was either really happy to see him, or really happy for the spending she was about to do.

"Do you know where you want to go first?" she asked him and, before he could answer, she had scampered off, tugging him along. He gave no resistance whatsoever; with her, he wouldn't have known how. He had not needed much of a push to understand just in which direction his feelings for her were evolving. But this was all still fairly new to him, so knowing about and knowing what to do with it were two different and unrelated beasts.

They had only just gotten up the stairs to the second floor when they came face to face with Mike and Tina. "Hey! I didn't know you guys would be here!" Tina smiled as the two pairs came up to one another. Ewan felt the urge to frown, which only surprised him and made him pull it back. They were his friends as much as Sugar was, or… maybe not as much as Sugar, not the same. On that day, being just the two of them on their own, it was starting to feel like maybe they were toward something new or… he wasn't sure, but either way, whatever could have happened, it was a safe bet to say it wouldn't anymore, now that they had company. He wasn't going to just tell them to leave.

It dawned on him eventually that Mike might have picked up on his predicament. Sugar and Tina had pulled the two boys into one store so they could look at clothes, and they would mostly stand back, waiting. Ewan was watching Sugar go by, pulling one item and then another, and sometimes he would just have to smile to himself. "We can go if you want…" It took him a moment to realize Mike had spoken and finally he looked over to him.

"Sorry?" he asked, and Mike smirked.

"If you want to be alone with her, I can get Tina and we can go…"

"O-oh… no, I… Don't worry about it," he insisted. "It's fine."

"Are you sure?" Mike asked, and Ewan nodded. "Alright, well if you change your mind, just give me a signal." Ewan tried not to look so distressed at the thought, nodding once again. He felt like a bobble head doll or something.

When all four of them were getting hungry, they had ended up at Breadstix for lunch and, in a maneuver Ewan was certain was Mike's doing, he ended up sat up next to Sugar, while the other two were across from them. They would talk about school, and Glee Club, or at least the other three would talk. He sat there, knocked mute by how close she was to him. He wanted to be bolder than this, not to be that guy who couldn't talk to girls, even if that was exactly who he was, only he wasn't usually, not with her. It was like suddenly realizing she mattered to him in this way, as more than a friend, took away whatever powers of speech he had retained up until then. He was certain he would say something stupid and embarrass himself in front of her, losing any chance of actually getting it right.

Sitting across from Mike and Tina, seeing how they were together, which was exactly how he himself wished to be, was only making it worse. Those two were so in tune with one another, it was impossible not to envy them. Eventually though he needed a moment to get himself back together, so he excused himself and headed into the men's room. He stood there in the – thankfully – empty room for a minute, telling himself he was being an idiot, that Sugar probably had no idea of any of this, and he was only drawing attention to himself for no reason. He took a few deep breaths, smacked himself in the face a couple of times, and then he walked out of the men's room.

He had barely stepped out that he found someone was taking hold of his arm and pulling him aside, into a corner, out of sight. He had barely come to realize that it was Sugar when she suddenly pulled him up close and kissed him. Stars had exploded behind his eyelids and if she didn't have him to the wall he probably would have slipped to the ground. When she pulled back, he was dumbstruck and she was smiling. "Good thing I didn't grab the wrong guy, that would have been bad."

"I…" he tried to talk.

"I mean I love those two, total besties, but I had to get away so I could do this," she confided in him.

"Oh… Right… Good plan, well done," he nodded.

"If they ask, I had to go because I had too much to drink. You better get back there or they'll think we're doing something else…" she whispered, and his knees buckled. "Woah, you're okay," she laughed. "Do you need a minute?" she asked, then, when he didn't reply, "Do you need another?" He looked to her, still clueless as to what to say, which she took as an invitation, and then she was kissing him again. This time he had at least half an idea that it was about to happen, and he was able to experience it, the touch of her lips, the warmth, the weight, all of it… If he'd been seeing stars, now those stars were shooting… It was the best feeling in the world. "Okay, you need to go," she had pulled back, and he thought he'd reached the height of amazement, up until the moment he saw she was blushing…

"Okay, I can do that…" he was smiling, and she smiled back, moving to the ladies' room. He watched her go, once again needing to breathe in and out before he could move. Maybe it wasn't so bad that the other two had been there after all… not that he'd tell them why.

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!