A/N: I discovered Blue Water High recently, and it's such an interesting idea for a series that I decided I wanted to play around with it. Just thought I would get my feet wet with this one shot. And yes, I know a lot of this story is straight out of the pilot episode, but it was really practice for getting into the head space for the series. My next stories won't be so much like this one.

ButterFlys

Pausing in his survey of the few people still mucking about on the water between heats, Heath spoke to his camera lens with the air of a fun loving gossip journalist, "all we need now is to find out who gets the final girls' place." He snapped his camera off with a gleeful smile and paddled back in, his surf board cutting easily though the water, camera secure on its strap.

It was an absolutely perfect day. The sun was high in the sky. The temperature wasn't too hot or too cold. The waves were rolling in like you saw in the movies. And he was in. That was the big one.

He wasn't going to deny it. He was excited. Ecstatic even. Why wouldn't he be? Heath Carroll had been dreaming about getting into Solar Blue's year long Surf Academy program for as long as he could remember. And so far, everything was shaping up nicely. He won the first heat of the day, and then got to run around videoing everyone else, burning off all of that extra energy. His mother relaxed by the van, opening her eyes from her seat every so often, just to make sure he wasn't getting into any serious trouble. The few people he talked to that made it into the program with him seemed pretty cool. Everything was going to be perfect.

At least, that's what he thought in the water while he was checking out his future competition for the pro circuit. Out of the water was another story.

There were only two slots for Solar Blue's program left, and when he reached the tents set up on the beach where the next surfers were getting ready, he knew exactly who he wanted in one of them.

"Oh no," a tiny blond girl moaned, fingering the edge of her board. "The fin's gone right through." Hair pulled back into a messy braid, she wore a bright yellow rash guard, a slight tan on her skin let Heath know that, like everyone else in the competition, she spent a bit of time outside, and the small girl caught his eye. Yeah, she was tiny. And yeah, she was kind of cute. She didn't seem like the other girls he'd had his eye on through the day though. There was something about her that made him stop and listen.

She was speaking to another one of the entrants in the comp. Another blond, though taller, older, and obviously used to getting exactly what she wanted. He watched in disbelief as the other girl didn't even apologize for wrecking the board, simply stalking off, making comments about forfeiting. The whole time she was talking, his stomach was roiling as though he was on a fishing boat in the middle of a cyclone. There was something wrong with that girl. Even if she did have legs for days.

Stacy.

He made a mental note to not be particularly nice to her if she ended up in the Solar Blue house. He didn't have the patience for someone, even a pretty girl, who would purposely wreck someone else's board.

And he didn't know what made him do it, but he was instantly at the small girl's side, listening to her talk. Well, half listening. It wasn't the words so much as the way her voice sounded when she made them. He got that her family didn't have much money. That it was a big deal for her to have gotten this far. And that feeling in his stomach calmed a bit while he let her voice keep going, the beginnings of a smile curling over his face. There was most definitely something different about this one.

And so he found himself grabbing her arm, imagining he could feel the slight heat of her skin through her rash guard, though he knew how unlikely that was, and told her she could use one of his short boards. He knew it wouldn't be perfect, but if a girl who looked as tiny and unassuming as she did had managed to turn up at this comp on Solar Blue's radar with that dinosaur of a board, and she had the competition spooked, well, he knew she deserved more than just a shot. She deserved to win. He had a sixth sense about people. And his sixth sense was telling him that this girl had to win this heat. She had to end up at the boarding house. And she had to be one of the people he would be spending the year with.

She had to.

And he didn't even know her name. But he was giving her tips for using his board, cautioning her about turns, and the whole time she was looking at him as though he just told her she won some kind of prize. He wanted to tell her that her prize would come later, once she won, but he just kept up with the advice.

It wasn't until after she was half way down the beach that she turned around, a huge smile on her face, "I'm Fly, by the way."

"Heath," he told her with an answering smile, a slight fluttering in his stomach when she beamed at him.

Yep. No doubt about it. There was something about that one. And he wanted to be sure she won. His gut was telling him they would be good friends. And his gut hadn't been wrong yet.

Well, there was that one time when he thought it would be a great idea to add that dye to his sister's conditioner when he was younger. He thought she would look great with green hair. She disagreed. And there had been a bit of yelling. But still, that was just the one time.

He rounded up another one of the guys who had made it into the Academy with him, and managed to convince the two medics to give them a ride out onto the break in the meat wagon, the glorified raft meant to pick up injured surfers. He wanted to see this first hand, wanted to get the photographic evidence when little Fly took Stacy down. The other guy he'd picked up, Matt, informed him that Solar Blue had their eyes on the older girl for years, and they both admired her technique, though Heath had already told Matt what a piece of work she was.

Once Fly found a wave though, she might as well have been surfing by herself. She was blowing the other girl out of the water. If Fly could get the spot instead, it would be a glorious upset. Even Matt, who had surfed some of the greatest breaks in Australia, agreed that Fly could win it.

But that didn't happen. Because Heath got the tilts.

The tilts, as he liked to call it, involved a sharp sense of vertigo. Like the world was turning on its side. Like he was caught in a rip current, twisting and twisting, and he couldn't get out. It always preceded something bad. The tilts made his mouth go dry, made him examine the world around him with new eyes, made him worry.

Everything felt so off that he was twisting his camera around in his hands, trying to make everything feel normal again. But something wasn't right. And then it happened. The other girl blocked Fly. And he was hassling her about getting back out to the wave. And it all happened so fast. One minute Fly was on top, the board he loaned her under her feet, the next, she was crashing into the water, his board pounding into her below the surface and snapping right in half as the barrel of the wave rolled on.

He swallowed hard as the panic set in, eyes flicking from the broken pieces of his board around to the girl who had blood all over the bottom half of her face, bobbing in the water. Did she break her nose? Was she alright?

This was his fault. He shouldn't have yelled at her.

Heath was suddenly the one shouting out orders, directing the medics to pick her up. And then Matt was the one to pull her out, Heath helping him drag her body over the side of the raft, supporting her on one side of the seating, the life savers not doing any work until they were practically back on the beach. Some life savers. Heath would have carried her up to the waiting truck himself too if the medics hadn't beaten him to it. He settled for finding her bag while they checked her over, and bringing it to her under the guise of being her brother.

"Ow. Don't make me smile," Fly chided good naturedly once he made the announcement about their relationship to the medic at her side.

"You okay?" he asked when the guy left them alone, tossing her bag in with the medical equipment. At least, he hoped it was her bag. She didn't say it wasn't, and it was the one everyone directed him to back at the tent.

"Loose tooth. They want me to have an x-ray." She sighed, pressing a cold pack to her cheek.

"Yeah? Is it hurting?" His stomach clenched at the thought, and he was thankful that she'd at least been able to get the blood cleaned from her face. It gave him the illusion that she hadn't been hurt. Bracing his arms on the stretcher, he leaned closer to her to get a better look.

"Not really." She gave another sigh. "It's just, I knew things we're going too well."

Her eyes widened as the words left her mouth. Heath could tell they had jumped out all on their own, just like earlier when she had been about ready to give up after her board was damaged. It was like she expected to lose, but she didn't want anyone else to know. Heath wouldn't have thought that. He'd seen her moves out on the water. She had great technique, and she seemed to really own the waves, even the ones big enough to crush her.

He tried to reassure her that she might get another chance out there, but Fly was placing the blame on herself, saying she had been the one to choose a bad wave, her face coloring at the admission.

Well, that didn't sit too well with him. Shifting a little uncomfortably, he countered, "It's more like my fault for hassling you into it."

But when she placed her hand on his and apologized for his broken board, offering to pay him back, something warm and pleasant slid into the pit of his stomach, and he fought back a smile, repeatedly glancing at her hand until she moved it away, knowing that no one was going to buy his brotherly act for long. He settled for telling her he hated the board, not to worry about it, so she wouldn't be too hard on herself. He didn't know why he cared so much, and he didn't know what was coming over him. When she pulled her hand away, he purposely left his on the rail for her stretcher, wanting to see if she would touch him again.

She didn't. But that was okay. He didn't usually get this friendly with someone he had just met. But he wasn't letting her pay him back for his board. And he wasn't letting her lose that heat.

I have to fix this.

Especially when he found out later that same day that another girl had already been added to the roster, one from Germany. Anna seemed nice enough, but if someone could just pop up out of nowhere like that, what did it say about the rest of them?

He sat quietly on the sofa in the Solar Blue house, having only said goodbye to his mother an hour earlier, while Bec, the local girl who had gotten in, complained about the change. They had stopped the last boys heat, saying that this girl was taking the place of one of the boys, but what if they changed their mind? Bec was all upset because her brother hadn't gotten in, but they could easily reschedule the boys' heat and cancel the girls' altogether. He couldn't let them replace Fly. It was his fault that she was at the hospital getting x-rays. He wasn't going to let her miss out on this opportunity. He just needed a plan.

And he spotted his opportunity when Simmo, their live-in trainer, and the man who had come down from Solar Blue went off to another part of the house. He casually followed them towards the office and made it appear as though he just happened to be passing by and it was such a stroke of luck to see them! Usually pretty good at "accidentally" meeting people, Heath considered it a special talent of his.

He knew it would take some convincing, but Heath suspected Simmo, might have had a bit of a soft spot for Fly as well because he backed Heath up as he explained how Fly ended up with her injury. Maybe he admired her technique as much as Heath did. Or maybe it was because someone so small wasn't the logical choice to take on such big waves. Or maybe Simmo had spotted how uncool the other girl in the heat was too. Fly was obviously the better candidate, no question about it. She was a good surfer and she wasn't going to stoop to sabotage.

It took a whole three minutes to get the men to agree to another heat.

"Let me get this straight. You're telling me this girl was on your board?"

"Because the other girl... accidentally damaged hers, and Fly didn't have a back up. I let her use one of my short boards." Heath glanced at Simmo, and they both nodded. He left out that the accident was actually on purpose. If Fly wanted to tell someone what really happened, she would.

"And you say she only wiped out because you told her to go after the bad wave?"

"Well... yeah... I mean-" Heath spluttered, wanting to clarify why he had yelled at her. He hadn't wanted Fly to run out of time. He thought if she didn't go around Stacy, she would miss out on her chance to win. He hadn't purposely sent her after the bad wave.

"It seems like there's an awful lot of you in the girls' heat." The man from Solar Blue shook his head and gave a wry smile as Heath's face colored slightly. "Alright. I guess it's worth a rerun in the morning. But just the one. Injuries happen all the time in this sport, and if she gets hurt again, that's it."

It was almost impossible for Heath to sit still through the afternoon meal, so excited was he to let Fly know she might not have to go back to western Australia just yet. It wasn't like he was missing much in the way of a meal. It was hardly edible. The excitement was easier to focus on, as was the news that the new girl from Germany hadn't even had to participate in any trials. Finding that out made him even more relieved that he scored Fly her rerun. Heath snapped a sausage apart while they all talked.

"Hey, so it's a little well done. Don't eat it, alright? No one's forcing you to eat it."

Who had ever seen sausages that could snap? At least not ones that hadn't actually caught on fire? He made a promise to himself to put the pizza place on speed dial. Or make sure that this Edge kid, his new roommate who acted a tad angry, wasn't in charge of cooking very often. If that happened, they would all be going hungry. He wondered if Fly's food at the hospital was as inedible as this stuff.

He got the chance to find out after taking a bus to the building in question, his legs bouncing in his seat while he passed stop after stop on the way there. Hospitals didn't freak him out quite as much as they freaked out most people. He just eyed the halls curiously as he was escorted to the right place in the giant maze of a building. When he asked for Fly, the woman at the desk originally thought he was crazy.

"Um... she's a surfer, got hit in the face with a board. She was brought in just a bit ago for x-rays." He went for his most confident smile, but his hands were fidgeting at his sides, sweaty palms wiping on his shorts. "Loose tooth?"

The woman at the desk raised an eyebrow, but he could tell she knew exactly who he was talking about. Had he not got her name right? She said Fly, hadn't she? She must have. That's what he called her in the water, and she had responded by following his horrible instructions.

"She's my sister?" he tried lamely, the smile turning sheepish.

"Fiona Watson is right this way," the woman told him with a carefully blank expression, though amusement danced in her eyes, and he thought he saw a muscle twitch at the corner of her mouth before she turned to walk down the hall.

"Fiona," he muttered to himself. "Who'd have thought?" He may have dimly recalled Simmo calling the small girl that, but he hadn't thought that was actually her name.

Fly didn't see him right away when he came into her room, thinking the announced visitor was actually her aunt, and it sounded as though Fly had already checked the train schedule so she could get out of there as soon as possible, probably intent on putting the disappointment of the experience behind her. Already changed from her swimmers into street clothes, her hair was dry now, though still a little unruly. He smiled at the sight. For some reason, that made him feel a bit better.

Fly.

It suited her much better than Fiona. Fiona seemed a little old fashioned for her.

When she spoke about train schedules, her back to him, Heath couldn't resist teasing her a little, speaking in falsetto as though he was her aunt, though he had no idea what the woman sounded like. She hadn't been at the competition with Fly, after all. And he felt that twinge in his stomach again, the warmth spreading through him, making him smile.

"What are you doing here?" She spun around when she realized her aunt wasn't in the room, one hand coming up to cover her mouth.

"I was in the neighborhood."

Yep. He was still convinced that there was something special about this one. She just put him in a good mood.

Trying to appear nonchalant, not wanting to scare her off, he began exploring the contents of the room, flipping through her medical chart as if he knew what he was looking for. Of course, he knew absolutely nothing about medicine, so that didn't last long, and he began encouraging her to let him see the injury, but she wasn't having any of that. Though still perfectly friendly, this Fly appeared to be a bit less flexible than the Fly at the beach. He popped the lid from her tray of hospital food, disappointed to see it was just as inedible as the sausages Edge has fixed for his new flat mates, though more congealed than snappable.

And then Fly told him that she'd lost the tooth, distracting him from his perusal of the room. And seeing as how she was up, walking around, conversing with him just fine, he knew there were no serious damages here, so he became appropriately excited at the prospect of examining her sports injury, smile stretched from ear to ear, bouncing on the balls of his feet, even doing a little begging. Though she rolled her eyes at him, like he was the younger one who had to be coddled, she eventually complied with his request, moving her hand away from her mouth to allow him to see, for just a second, the gap where her tooth should have been.

"Brilliant!" Heath announced, then remembered, vaguely, her mentioning the lack of money in her family. He covered his tracks with, "And Solar Blue are going to pay for the replacement?"

Fly's hand flew back up to cover her mouth while she spoke. "That's what they said." She looked absolutely mortified, her cheeks a light pink, sinking down into the chair by the bed.

Realizing she was not going to relax in front of him now that she was missing that tooth, he tried to make her feel at ease. Girls were way too self conscious. "I reckon you could get a fat gold one," he teased, hopping onto what would have been her hospital bed, bouncing around, testing the firmness of the mattress. Not bad. For a hospital bed. She was still uncomfortable though, and now it was making him nervous. He could see it in the way her eyes kept flicking around. She didn't understand why he was there, so he decided it was better to get to the point. As much fun as this conversation would have been if she could just relax, he thought she might be a bit more at ease if a strange boy wasn't invading her room for no reason at all. "You're not going anywhere yet. They're going to rerun the heat in the morning."

Finally dropping her hand from her mouth, though she then clamped her lips shut, Fly bounced excitedly in her seat, her face lighting up. That's what he wanted to see. He chuckled, telling her it was okay for her to smile. And then he took the opportunity to tease her, just a little bit more, about that gap between her teeth. This time when she brought her hand back up to her mouth, there was genuine happiness in her expression, and the pint sized surfer surprised him by jumping out of her seat, and throwing her arms around him in a tight hug.

That was something he definitely didn't expect.

Eyes wide, Heath sat there for the milliseconds that it lasted, unsure what to do with his hands. Should he hug her back? The fluttering was back in his stomach again and his face reddened as he realized why he was so intent on getting her into the Solar Blue Surf Academy. And it was largely not the result of him admiring her technique. Clearing his throat, he prepared to return the hug, his hands just resting on her back, but she was jumping away from him, apologizing.

"Sorry, I don't usually-"

"Hug people?" He finished for her, standing and taking a few steps away from her. It was his turn to be uncomfortable now, though he still found her amusing, and his smile still reached his eyes.

"Hug strangers," Fly clarified, the embarrassment back on her face again.

He hoped his face wasn't as red as hers was. "Yeah, uh, me neither," he agreed in an attempt to smooth over the awkwardness. "But I'm prepared to overlook it, just this once, until we get to know each other better." He gave a weak chuckle. But if asked, he probably wouldn't deny that he did, in fact, want to hug her again, even if they were almost strangers.

The girl was giving him butterflies. No. Not butterflies. ButterFlys.

Because that's what they were. Small, but with plenty of energy, all flitting around. Making him smile. Making him happy for absolutely no reason. Just like her. And aside from resolving to do whatever it took to get her into Solar Blue, he didn't have a clue as to what to do about it. Yet.