Set in 5x01 when they're at the pool.
It was a truly magical evening where people who were not even friends were united for one cause: to give Franky the best welcome that she deserved. They were still not too sure how this idea had formed, but it had and so they were here. Grace had instantly thought of the perfect place to bring Franky and Alo had a van, so it sort of fitted together like puzzle pieces.
Despite the fact that Grace had never really talked to Rich and he seemed to not particularly like her, they were all having a great time.
"Ewww… Alo!" Grace shrieked when Alo jumped out of the pool completely stark naked. He was, of course, naked the whole time he was in the pool, but they didn't really have it right there in front of them like they did now.
"Cover it up!" Franky groaned next to Grace, as they both covered their faces with their hands to block out the image. Rich was sitting on the ledge of the pool with a cigarette lazily hanging out of his mouth, but he was snickering at Alo pointlessly running around looking for a towel.
"Fine, fine," Alo shouted. "There's no fucking towel though!"
Alo was slipping all over the place, which caused Franky to cackle with laughter and now Grace was doing a mixture of giggling and shrieking at the sight. Now Rich was throwing his face in his palm in an exasperated way and he finally yelled over at his best friend,
"Clothes, Alo, just put some clothes on, so she'll stop trying to fucking deafen us!" He said with a snide look over at Grace. This immediately made her stop the shrieking/giggling combination and she instead let out one last laugh filled with incredulity. She began to swim towards Rich's side of the pool, but her head still bobbed out of the water. Alo, meanwhile, had finally just shoved his pair of boxers on and went off to open the second bottle of champagne.
"She has a name, you know!" Grace said in a slightly irritated tone, but she tried to keep it light.
Rich didn't reply, but just raised his eyebrows slightly as if to say, "I don't care… at all."
He nervously shifted his body away from her, as she hopped up onto the ledge next to him. He tried to ignore the fact that she was in some tight lingerie…. Tight, wet lingerie. It was easy to when he remembered what type of girl was wearing the lingerie.
"Grace, incase you had forgotten." She said in her nicest tone that was made of rainbows, unicorns and puppies, which made Rich internally groan, as he would like nothing more than to squish those unicorns and puppies.
"I hadn't," He said sullenly, he wished he didn't actually know her name or Mini or that other girl, Liv. "We have English class together anyway."
Grace nodded and then very politely asked,
"May I have a puff of that?" Rich sniggered at the thought of her smoking and also the fact that she said the word, 'puff'. Grace looked taken aback and blinked rapidly in surprise.
"You smoke?"
"Sometimes." She said, in a small sulky voice as if he had deeply insulted her. Rich mumbled 'whatever' under his breath and passed it to her. He ignored the fact that her hand was really soft and she likewise ignored the fact that she felt a little electric spark fly between their fingers as he passed the cigarette to her.
She smiled as little puffs of smoke left her mouth and made little circles in the air. The littlest things in the world could make her smile and tonight she was smiling more than she had in a while.
"Do you know why this is my favourite place in Bristol?" She asked as the silence gloomed over them. She noticed Alo and Franky sharing the bottle of champagne over by the bleachers.
Rich exhaled deeply and Grace got the impression that he didn't really care what her answer was.
"Swimming is kind of like being in another place from the rest of the world. You don't need to think about your troubles when you're swimming, because it doesn't really matter at that moment in time… Like tonight, we don't need to think about the outside world."
She had been staring up at the fairy lights that hung over the pool when she gave her little speech and wondered if she should add that those lights were also a major contributing factor to why she liked the pool, but when she turned to face Rich again, he had the faintest smile on his face.
"Yeah, like tonight." He said slowly and gave a small, thoughtful nod. Grace was shocked by this response and decided not to add about the lights, because that might ruin the major breakthrough she had just made.
"Grace, your phone is ringing!" Franky called over, unknowingly spoiling the peaceful silence between them. "It's Mini…"
When Franky said that, Rich rolled his eyes and made no effort to hide it. She stood up, as Franky reached them holding up the phone. It was too late to pick it up, but Grace saw nearly half a dozen texts from Mini and knew it was time to get back into the real world.
"I better go…" Grace said, nervously glancing at Franky and chewing on her bottom lip.
"Yeah, wouldn't want to upset your friends." Rich said in a nasty tone, as if he was trying to make it clear to Grace that she and him were most definitely not friends.
Franky smiled at Grace and told her it was okay for her to go. Alo came over with her clothes and Grace was hurriedly began putting her jumpsuit on.
When she was about to leave, she turned to everyone and said with the biggest smile she could manage,
"I've had such a lovely night guys! We should… do it again sometime." She faintly heard Rich snort, but ignored it.
She waved goodbye and gave Franky a little hug. Rich stayed where he was sitting, but still gave a wave in her general direction.
He watched her walked away and hated the fact that he kind of didn't want her to go…
A/N: This was another request by someone else and I really hope she likes it! ;)
