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 86th cycle. Now cycle 87!

IT'S THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE OF GLEEKATHON! - Five years! Five years! *insert flailing* Okay, not quite, but by the end of this cycle, it will have been five years of daily stories (sometimes twice a day! ... and for seven very frightening days a couple years back, three times a day!). It will also be the end of this crazy ride. I started thinking about ending gleekathon months ago, and I wanted to finish my ongoing series before that happened. It made it so I could finish out this fifth year, and it couldn't be any better that this cycle is actually ending on October 22nd 2014, which was the day it began, in 2009... Now here we go!

This story is a 'Prequel or SEQUEL' for Stand & Smile, a Sunshine Girls 2 series story originally posted on May 8th 2014.

"Meet the Parents"
Nora (AU!Beth)/Grace (OC), Quinn/Finn, Rachel/Puck, + the little siblings
Sunshine Girls 2 series

Nora had been waiting on them to say something ever since that afternoon when they'd returned from shopping at the mall and her parents had spotted Grace standing out in their yard, talking up to her window. They hadn't heard what she'd said, but they didn't need to; the message was clear enough. Except they hadn't brought it up, none of it, not that day, not any day leading up to the one where she and Grace went out.

But then she'd come home, and while she was still there, off floating on her cloud, her stepfather had come along and asked how her date had gone. She felt odd talking about it, like she needed to keep this one to herself, too special to share. He didn't press any further, but he did 'inform' her that they expected Grace over for dinner on Sunday night.

Grace must have had dinner at Nora's house hundreds of times over the years, just as Nora had been at Grace's, and yet this one was different and they knew it. When Nora told Grace about it on Saturday, the other girl looked like she'd just been called to the principal's office.

"We'll be fine," Nora had promised her. "You've done this before."

"As your friend, sure, not as your…" Grace's throat closed off for a beat, face flushing, and Nora snorted. "What if they question my… my intentions, what if they want to know about… What if they ask me about what I… what I am, I…"

"Hey, no, they would never, you know that," Nora had taken her face in her hands, smiling and nodding, and Grace had calmed down. "Just pretend like it's any other dinner."

When Sunday came around, Nora learned that maybe it wasn't as casual as she would have let Grace believe. It wasn't just going to be the two of them with Finn and Quinn and the girls, it would be all of them, and Puck and Rachel and Hannah and the boys, both ends of Nora's family converging on the house, all of them… and Grace in the middle.

Nora waited outside for Nora to come from across the street, with Hannah and Hailey running after one another around the front yard. When they saw Grace coming, they ran up to the sidewalk; they knew not to go beyond that line. "Grace, come play with us!" Hannah called to her.

"You can be on Nora's team!" Hailey added.

"Sounds good to me," Nora gave a smirk Grace's way.

"Sure, what are we…" Grace started to ask, and then it hit her: If Hannah was there… She looked up at Nora, who tried to telegraph that it would all be alright. "Actually, maybe we can play later, right?" The girls were off playing by themselves again like it was nothing, leaving Nora to lead Grace toward the house.

"Breathe or you'll pass out," she insisted. "It's just dinner. We eat, my brothers will be too busy trying to hide whatever food they don't agree with to say anything, the girls will be all over the babies…"

"They're not the ones I'm worried about."

"My parents love you. Every last one of them looks at you like you're part of the family already. We're going to have dinner, and that's all there is to it."

Micah and Simon Puckerman were soon huddled together, plotting the demise of their servings of broccoli, while Hannah and Hailey made faces, trying to make baby Christina and little Noah laugh, getting a nudge from Finn every so often so they didn't forget to eat their own dinners. This only took care of the children though, and they weren't the ones making Grace nervous. She'd only just been on her first date with Nora two days ago, which would have been much too soon if it had been anyone else, but then Grace wasn't anyone, was she? Like they'd been saying, she had been there countless times; tonight was just the first time she was there in this brand new capacity. It didn't take her long to realize she wasn't the only one there who didn't know exactly how to go about this conversation.

If they were honest with themselves, they'd all known to some degree about their daughter's feelings for the Mackenna girl across the street, but they had had about as much of an expectation for it to ever pan out as Nora had done, and so when Nora had started dating Francesca, it seemed they were all moving on. As much as they noticed a slight decrease in Grace's presence in that period, they never thought too much of it, never realized it might mean the other girl had realized she might be feeling something more than friendship toward their daughter. Except after Nora's breakup from Francesca, here was Grace, starting to come around more often, little by little.

It wasn't until the weekend before, after the display in the backyard, that they'd gotten an answer out of Nora. When she'd gone back into the house, they'd been there, asking her what was going on. Their daughter was smiling, trying not to make it look like too big of a deal and failing miserably. But after she'd gotten a hold of herself again, she had told them that she had a date the next Friday. Her stepfather had asked if this was what that had been about, in the yard, halfway as a joke, but then Nora had nodded with a smile, and there was no more doubt.

Quinn had called Rachel to let her know, and she'd been just as surprised, which was to say only a little. It was then and there that they had come up with the idea that they should have this dinner, both sides of the family there together, not to grill her, but to show Grace that they were behind the two of them on this, one hundred percent. If this thing between them could work out, knowing how much she had always meant to Nora, then they couldn't be happier for both of them together.

And by the end of the dinner, there was no doubt left in Grace that this was exactly how they felt. What had been difficult and awkward in the beginning had slowly but surely found its way to what Nora had promised Grace, which was that nothing ever had to change for all of them. She was one of them, just as she had always been.

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!