A/N: This little piece of summer fluff was co-authored with Permanent Rose. It started as a crazy idea on tumblr, transitioned into a Google Drive fest (with lots of tangents), and eventually blossomed into this brainchild. We hope you enjoy. Expect a few chapters. And if you do enjoy, please don't hesitate to also visit Rose over on her account to express your appreciation.

My Kind of Girl

Sun and sand, the fresh salt air and sharp cries of seagulls overhead. Usually it loosens the tension coiling through tight muscles, but the steady footfalls matching yours pace for pace outweigh any soothing effects from your surroundings.

He knows.

You take a larger than normal bite from your ice cream and the frigid cold numbs your tongue and throat as you swallow. Taste remains elusive.

Shit. This was a huge mistake.

"So." He lengthens the vowel into another syllable, and you grimace, feeling your palms begin to sweat. You rub them along your denim cutoffs and shift your gaze out to the grey horizon, trying to find serenity in the calming stretch of distance.

"So…" he starts again, and you tense at the teasing edge to his tone, "what kinds of girls are you into, anyway?"

You nearly choke on your soft serve cone, spewing out a few sprinkles. Your heart stutters, rattling inside your chest, momentarily stilting your ability to breathe. It's a habitual reaction—years of denial, years of secrets eating away at your stomach lining.

"Frankie!" you hiss, ducking your head. It's more than the heat of the sun against the boardwalk that has your cheeks flaming pink. You flick away a sprinkle from your shorts, eyes darting nervously around in reflexive paranoia. A guy in beach shorts passes, boogie board in hand, and you avoid eye contact as you scooch closer to the railing to allow him passage.

You are not ashamed, per se. Just inclined to keep such matters private.

"What? My sister just told me she's gay." Frankie emphasizes the last word and you cringe again. You want to ask him to say that a bit louder, because you don't think the guy parasailing a few blocks down heard him yet.

He shrugs, nudging you with his elbow as he has all your life. The gesture annoys you, yet the familiarity is also grounding.

"It's just us." He has a goofy grin on his face, and you know he's enjoying his power. But at the same time, the humor, his easy smile, has you wondering. Makes you think…maybe. Maybe this is not as difficult as you thought.

You crunch into the cone with more gusto than necessary. Ice cream squishes out of the sides and paints your chin. Frankie shoots you a look and you would tell him he's one to talk, but your mouth is full and unlike someone, you know the definition of manners.

"Oh come on, 'fraid I'll steal your thunder?" He's egging you on, trying to get a rise out of you. You're ashamed to say it works. A little.

"As if," you mutter.

You glance at him, tracing the familiar prominent brow and black hair, now gilded by the overhead sun. "Why do you want to know?"

"Curiosity? Fodder for blackmail?"

You know he's joking and let out a laugh. He smiles at you and stretches an arm behind his head as you lapse into silence.

"So you're okay with it?" You hate how small your voice sounds.

He must hear it. He turns his head and you feel the fire of his scrutiny on the side of your face.

"Okay with it?" he parrots, incredulous. "Jane, I can't believe you even have to ask!" He laughs, but there's a sadness laced in his tone. His eyes say everything, bathing you in the comfort of reassurance. Tension you have been harboring for years, an ache you hardly even notice anymore, unfurls from your muscles with immediate relief. You have picked a worthy confidant.

"Now when you say gay, do you mean, gay gay, or like bisexual?"

You give him a look and he raises his hands. "What? It's a legitimate question."

You shake your head and run a hand through your hair, eyes going to the shore again. "Pretty sure I'm only attracted to girls."

He hums. "So...are you going to answer my other question? I'm dying to know your type." Though his voice is playful and curious, you can sense a certain amount of pride as well. He is genuinely interested—and rather happy to relate to his sister in such an unexpected way.

"You go first."

"Okay. Her." He points, the movement blatant, and you slap his hand out of the air.

"Be more obvious, numb nuts."

He rolls his eyes but nods his head towards his target this time instead. "Yeah?" he prompts, eyebrows raised.

You shift, digging your toes into the sand. You're not one to objectify girls, but surely there's no harm in answering a few questions?

You try to be discrete in your study. She's...nice. There's no denying she's pretty, with her silvery blonde hair and toned figure, exposed by her tiny bikini. But something about her demeanor, the way she flips her hair over her shoulder, strikes you as...shallow.

"No." Your answer is definitive, resolute.

Frankie raises his eyebrows. "Just no?"

"No," you say simply, and wipe the last remnants of melted ice cream onto your shorts.

"Okay." He rubs his hands against his swim trunks, a look of determination in his eyes as he scans the crowd. "What do you think of her?" He points again, but this time, he flicks his wrist, as if embellishing a point in their conversation. You smile briefly, appreciating the subtlety.

This one is buying postcards at a stall across the boardwalk. Her auburn hair is cropped into a neat pixie cut, and the sun glints off a series of studs decorating each of her ears. Beneath her tank top, you notice a delicate pattern of tattooes weaving their way up her back.

"Nope." You pop the p with relish.

This is...fun. Out of all the scenarios you'd pictured, all the possibilities that ran through your mind the moment the confession left your mouth, this had not occurred to you.

Frankie offers another suggestion, this time without your prompting. He nods his head toward the path leading to the beach, and you follow his gaze. This one makes you double-take.

"She's old enough to be my mother!" She has certainly aged well, but you feel ashamed for looking at her with such intentions.

Frankie raises his hands in defense, laughing. "Hey, cougar's a thing, you know."

"Ugh." Your lip curls, and that warmth of acceptance from earlier begins to sour in your stomach. "You disgust me."

"Hey, okay. Okay." He grabs your swinging arm and pulls you around. "I'm sorry." He looks genuinely contrite, and some of the stiff resistance leaves your shoulders. After a moment, you resume your walk, this time treading into the white sand beyond the boardwalk, wandering closer to shore in a lazy stroll.

A gathering of seagulls flaps into flight, and you trace their path. You realize that right now, on this beach beside Frankie, you're enjoying the first taste of freedom this summer. Perhaps this entire year. You swipe a bare foot across sun-warmed sand and it screeches a soft greeting in response. You smile.

"What about her?"

Your eyes follow his point, and this time you don't automatically scoff. You find it hard to look away. This girl is wearing a dark grey one-piece. Pink and lighter grey strips color the sides, tracing gentle curves. Light brown, sun-streaked hair sits in a messy bun atop a slender neck. She appears close to your age as she sits alone in the sand beneath a relentless sun, hands busy molding and building some sort of intricate sand creation. Her movements are precise and careful, her hands sure.

You tilt your head, curious, unable to deny the tug you feel somewhere in your middle.

"I'll take that as a yes."

His words startle you from your reverie, and you become aware of your staring. You jerk your gaze away and skate a hand along your forearm, a nervous tick.

"I didn't say anything." You keep your voice low, embarrassment turning it rougher than usual.

Frankie laughs. "Your face begs to differ."

"Shut up." You can feel the blush on your cheeks, and you glare into the crashing waves, understanding why the ocean seems so angry all the time, if it has to endure shit like this every day.

You've slowed considerably. Perhaps your subconscious is wary of approaching this girl that makes your skin prickle in ways that has nothing to do with the intensity of a midday sun. Frankie matches your pace, though he seems to be aware of your dragging feet.

"Sooo?" he says, and how have you never realized how annoying his voice is before today? "What're'ya waiting for? Go talk to her."

Cold rushes through your veins, and you punch his arm. "Frankie, no."

"Jane, yes." He shoves you in return, hard enough to make you lose your balance. Anger sizzles along your skin and tightens your fists.

"I said no." You shove him back, and you don't like the glint in his eye when he steps forward again. You back away, hands up, wary. He may be your little brother, but you've tussled with him enough in the past to know body size does not equate to success when it comes to dirty wrestling.

In the end, you should have seen it coming. He lunges, you dodge, but your heel catches on something hard and with a yelp you go down in a tangle of awkward angles and untamed curls.

You lay there, sprawled on your back and staring into sunlight, blinking against the blaring red in your retinas. Pushing up onto your elbows, you catch sight of Frankie, his form spotted with white starbursts. He mouths you're welcome as he retreats and you glower until you hear sandy footfalls and a pair of feet and delicate ankles enter your field of vision. Shading your eyes, you look up as a figure cuts through the blinding light. After a few blinks to clear the spots, you see a dark grey one-piece with pink stripes. Your eyes go wide and you scramble to your feet.

Hazel eyes gaze at you above freckled cheeks, and you don't know what to do with your hands. Your feet. Or anything, really.

A glance down reveals mashed lumps of sand, a lone turret and spiral staircase the only evidence of the lost masterpiece. The reality of what just happened crashes into you with more force than the tumultuous ocean waves slowly battling their way to shore. You side-step out of the disaster area.

"I'm so sorry!"

The girl stares at you, brow furrowed, and for a moment all you can do is stare in return.

God. I am so gay.

"Does your brother make a habit of shoving you into other people's sand structures, or is this a special occasion?" Her tone is concise, clipped. Each word enunciated in a way that says educated.

I am so dead.

"I'm sorry," you can't seem to stop saying it. You run a hand through your hair, but your fingers catch in a tangle of sand and brine and you almost want to cry.

"I can help rebuild it," you offer without thinking, though you know even less about building sand structures than you do about geometry.

She stares down at the tumbled and crushed rubble, and you find her expression difficult to read. "Transience is a part of life." Some emotion skitters across her face, too quickly for you to identify.

You don't know if she's talking to you or not, so you stand there, wiping away the gritty sand imbedded into your arms and elbows.

She finally turns her attention to you, and your heart stutters beneath the careful scrutiny of hazel eyes. You become aware of your plain black bikini top, the rips and tears in your cutoffs. The squirrel's nest that is your hair, at mercy to the wind all afternoon. Her nose is barely even with your chin, but that doesn't stop the nerves from rattling you from head to toe.

"Are you hurt?"

The question takes you off guard. "No, I think your…" you wave your hand, "uh, thing cushioned my fall."

"Palais du Prince."

You blink at the sudden onslaught of foreign vowels and consonants, the flawless French accent. Your eyes travel to her lips, briefly, without permission.

"The Prince's Palace. It's in Monaco," she continues, as though that will clear things up. "The independent microstate on the eastern coastline of France."

"Right." You don't know how to respond.

She takes your ineptitude in stride. "I summered there once, during my freshman year."

She's in high school? This thought is both alarming and invigorating. She's close to your age, but her IQ leaves you coughing and sputtering in the dust of her intellect. As if that isn't enough, you lose your words when she gazes at you expectantly.

Conversations generally require effort from both participants.

As the ensuing silence stretches too long, her face falls, closes off, and panic kicks your heart into sixth gear. "I'm Jane," you blurt.

"Maura," she says, offering her hand in a formal greeting. It's a beautiful name, and you catch yourself before you repeat it aloud like an idiot. Her hand is soft, warm, gritty from an afternoon of sculpting.

"Jane," you offer, again. You wince, clearing your throat against the gravel that is your voice.

"Jane," she says, as though trying it out, committing it to memory along with your features, and you blush.

"So, uh…" You glance down at the wreckage and she settles onto the sand, Indian-style, and you mirror her pose.

You look around for instruments, molds, something, but there is only one small spatula, now lying discarded near her knee. It becomes clear that she's worked entirely by hand, and that makes your mistake earlier even worse. Your hands hover in the air as you try to find something to do, some way to help.

"There are different types of sand," she says abruptly, and you startle. She pinches a small amount from the right side of the demolished structure and holds it up for you to inspect.

"For instance, this is calcium carbonate, probably ground into existence from shellfish and coral over the past half billion years." You lean in, inspecting the unassuming ancient particles. It just looks like regular sand to you—off-white grains with a few specks of black thrown in—but you listen anyway. "Silicon dioxide is the most common constituent, found in inland continental settings and the coastal regions of non-tropical climates. You would know it by its common name, quartz."

Her voice is clear and quiet with certainty, pleasant to the ear. You lean forward, elbows on knees.

"How can you tell?"

Her eyes dart to you, as though she had forgotten she had an audience. She ducks her head back to her work, and the bashfulness heats your skin in new ways.

"Grain size, texture, chemical makeup," she recites, and you watch the way one corner of her mouth twitches up as she squares the edge of a crenulated turret. "In fact, the composition of sand goes a long way to establishing the color of a beach's shore." Finished, she drops the spatula and her eyes finally meet yours once more. The excitement in her gaze, the warmth of her smile—

"No one knows how many types of sand there are in the world. It is, quite literally, impossible to determine."

—it makes you realize there are mysteries and beauty in this world that you have barely begun to comprehend. You take a deep breath and stare out to sea, unsettled by the swirling tide of emotions that makes it difficult to breathe.

The waves edge closer to your burrow, and while you imagine a moat may keep it at bay for a while, before long you will be submerged. You glance at Maura, but find her focused on detailing the brickwork of a walkway.

"You know a lot about sand," you comment, offhand. You smile, but she doesn't look at you. In fact, she tenses, and the smile slowly drops from your face as you wonder what you've said wrong.

The silence feels choked.

"I enjoy learning," she mutters, and in that small voice, the slight hunch of her shoulders and the tightening of her fist around the spatula, you hear a thousand moments of teasing and ridicule.

Oh.

The realization sends confusion and anger and desperation in equal measure coiling through your chest, and you wrestle against the urge to reach out.

"I like your swimsuit," you say instead, a paltry substitute. "It's nice."

Again, she talks as she works, but some of the tension leaves her shoulders. "It's aerodynamically designed to allow for least resistance in the water."

"Yeah. And that, too." You can no longer hide the smile on your face.

She glances up, this time for a longer span of heartbeats, and you wonder if she is checking to see if you are making fun of her. The thought makes you sad, but you hold your smile, open and inviting, to try and show that teasing is the farthest from your mind.

She shifts, opening her posture and facing you more fully as she studies your own bathing suit. Or, the half of it visible. You resist the urge to fidget, instead running your fingers through the fine sand at the castle's base. Calcium carbonate.

"Yours is aesthetically pleasing in its simple design."

You pause, trying to figure out if that is a compliment or an insult.

"It accentuates your bone structure," she continues with a decisive nod, as though coming to a conclusion.

This is even harder to decipher. You stop trying, instead just watching this girl with her unique oddities, her intelligent words and expressive eyes. This time, she does not shy from your gaze, and you find yourself staring for a different reason, wondering at the unexpected affinity you feel for this girl who regales strangers with sand facts and almost-compliments.

A wave barrels over the bounds of Maura's second palace and you yelp as the shock of cold soaks your lap. Rather than exclaiming in protest, Maura lets the wave envelope her, sifting her fingers through the swirling tide and watching the newest structure melt and drift away.

"All that begins has its end," she says.

You stand and make a face, swiping at the seat of your now soggy shorts. The newly wet sand sucks at your feet and ankles as you shimmy in discomfort.

"My butt is wet." You shake your leg again. Ugh. Things are chafing.

"So it would seem."

Did she just…? You snap your head up to ensure your ears aren't deceiving you. Sure enough, she stands there grinning, eyes dancing, and your lips part in surprise and mock affront as your hands move to your hips.

"Shut up," you say, automatic, and her answering laugh is light and full and pulls laughter from your own chest.

You love it. It feels freeing and easy, the way your voices join the cry of seagulls and the steady rush of ocean tide. The wave recedes, leaving laughter and drooping sand lumps in its wake.

"Where are you from, Maura?" The idea that she may live across the country makes your stomach slosh, and you suddenly wish you had brought your phone with you.

"Born and raised in Boston," she answers.

"No kidding."

She doesn't have much of an accent. You raise your eyebrows, hardly daring to hope. Fate is not a construct in which you believe, yet you find it difficult to attribute this meeting to mere coincidence.

Maura tilts her head, and the new angle casts eyelash shadows across her cheeks. The effect, combined with the way she clasps a hand around her elbow behind her back, stalls your thoughts so there is only you and her and the beach. It feels important, this moment under the sun with this girl. The picture imprints in your mind, as though asking for a memory. You give it proper deference and almost miss Maura's next words.

"You have affiliations with Boston as well?"

You chuckle and run a hand through your messy hair. "More like I live there, too." You spare a thought to how you must look—the wind has wrecked havoc with your hair the entire day, and your shorts are drenched and heavy, hanging too low on your hips—but an emotion flickers across Maura's face, drawing your attention.

"That's—" she begins.

"Jane!"

The voice from across the beach tugs you prematurely away. Maura glances behind you, but you know that voice, and you sigh in frustration.

"Hey, Maura, I—"

"Jane!"

It's Ma, carrying a blanket. Pop follows behind, carrying the familiar lunch cooler, filled with peanut butter sandwiches your mother makes in bulk to cut back on the expenses of dining out. Frankie and Tommy shuffle in the sand not far behind. Ma waves, her arm flapping like a flag in the wind, beckoning you to join the family.

You turn back to Maura, disappointment weighing your shoulders. "Listen, I gotta go…"

Her face falls, but she takes a deep breath and smiles. "It was nice meeting you, Jane. Perhaps our paths will cross again soon."

The words well in your chest, even as doubt tempers the delicate surge of hope. "Yeah, maybe."

You pick up your flip-flops and run across the sand, long strides easily closing the distance between you and your family. You help Ma spread the blanket and distribute the sandwiches. As you settle onto the worn fleece surface, you dare a glance back at Maura, but she's already gone, leaving nothing more than the remains of her castle, dispersing with the incoming tide.