for the wip meme: grace/frankie, prompt: frankie sees a shark
I loved this so much that I immediately wrote a tiny fic instead of just one sentence! Here you go...hopefully you enjoy!
(Grace/Frankie, ~620 words, also posted to my tumblr ask fics story on ao3)
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Grace hasn’t even opened her eyes when Frankie rolls closer in bed and says “Let’s go swimming! Ocean swimming.”
“What made you think of that?” She wonders what time it is. The room is pretty bright but the alarm hasn’t gone off yet. Maybe Frankie is finally adjusting to waking up at a reasonable hour after weeks of sleeping in Grace’s bed and acting absolutely appalled every morning when the alarm clock sounds.
“I dunno,” Frankie says, lacing an arm around Grace’s middle. Grace shivers happily into the touch. “Maybe it was something I dreamed.”
“Okay, but you’re getting your hair wet right away. I’m not listening to you shriek about how cold the water is for fifteen minutes.” Love softens some irritants, but it doesn’t smooth everything.
“Fine. I’ll expect the same from you.”
After breakfast they head down to the beach and straight into the water. Frankie shrieks only a little as she runs through the shallow waves and plunges headlong into the first one with any depth. Grace follows suit, her jaw clenched shut against an involuntary yelp; the water is fucking freezing, but she isn’t going to make a sound.
Once her body finally acclimates to the temperature, it feels nice to bob in chest-deep water, half standing, half floating. The sand around her feet feels almost liquid but the floor is solid and firm. Frankie chatters about Saturday plans, a Peruvian restaurant she wants to try, a cocktail recipe from one of her blog friends. She grabs Grace’s hands and pulls, playing around with their weightlessness, and the cold waves keep slicing at their skin, and Grace listens to Frankie but drifts into her own plans too, plans much more immediate than dinner and drinks on a weekend night: getting out of the water, making more coffee, reading on the couch under a blanket, letting it turn into a nap with Frankie, finally warm.
Frankie gasps; Grace wonders if she’s lost her footing and holds on tighter. There’s a little smear of sunscreen at Frankie’s temple. It’s impressive the water hasn’t taken care of it yet.
“Grace, don’t panic. I repeat, do not panic.”
Grace pulls back. “Ew, Frankie, if there’s something in my hair you need to get it out! Right now!”
But Frankie isn’t looking at her hair. She’s looking at the horizon past Grace’s shoulders. “It’s not your time of the month, is it?”
Grace rolls her eyes. “Not for the last thirty years.”
“Good, because sharks love blood. Now, I think we’re dealing with a loner, but he might have a family with him. Or, you know, a gang.” She glances briefly back at shore, then looks Grace in the eyes. “Should we calculate the distance to land in nautical miles, or go ahead and swim for it? It’s your call. I’m good either way and I’d prefer to get out of this alive.”
Grace smiles. They’re at most twenty steps from the shoreline. She turns to the horizon to see if she can locate what Frankie sees. At first there’s nothing but the ocean blue, the bright sky. Then movement, many yards in the distance—a fin darting above the surface of the water, its motion suggesting the happiness of the body still beneath the waves. “Frankie,” she says. It’s her turn to find Frankie’s hands, to pull her deeper. “It’s a dolphin.”
The dolphin arcs into the air as if in response to being named, the trajectory of the leap like tracing a perfect circle. “Oh,” Frankie says shakily. “Cool.”
The dolphin isn’t alone, it turns out. They watch in silence as the pod plays, and Grace thinks it’ll be fine to stay in the cold water a little longer.
