plodded away at another chapter. so here you go. I have been sick and haven't wanted to do much so... This is a short one.

Forty Seven

"Augh!" Tori reached for the Frisbee, flying high over her head and knew she was going down. She took a quick breath as she hit the water, then kicked for the surface, her head breaking the waves as she looked around for the bright pink disk. "Darn it, Jade!" She struck out for the toy, swimming quickly towards it before the thing got pulled out to sea.

"Not my fault you're short." Jade bobbed up and down in the surf, not far offshore on the far side of the dock near the cabin. It was fairly shallow there, not like the deep draft they'd had dredged for the Dixie, and the surf was almost calm, perfect for playing Frisbee in.

Well, almost perfect. Jade watched Tori reach the disk and grab it, turning to swim back far enough for her to stand up and throw it back. Chino was racing along the shore barking, frustrated that her owners were somewhat beyond her reach.

"C'mon, Chi!" Tori got to where she could stand up, and tossed the disk back to her partner. "Come swim."

"Gruff!" Chino bounded halfway in up to her chest, then bolted away as a wave came chasing after her.

"Goofy dog." The Latina shook the wet hair out of her eyes, then set herself as Jade threw the Frisbee back. It was a little high, but not nearly as much as last time and she made a grab for it, pulling it out of the air despite the drag of the water against her body as she moved. "Hah!"

Jade grinned. Tori always approached the playful sports they engaged in with a healthy dose of competitiveness, which at first had surprised her. Then, when she'd learned more about her partner, she'd come to realize that Tori had been forced to fight for recognition at every turn in her life, where standing out had never been a problem for Jade.

It wasn't as though she wasn't competitive herself, in business of course she was. But in her personal life, she'd never really had to do what she often kidded Tori was fighting for kibble.

No siblings. No competition. Jade saw the disk headed her way and she lunged through the water after it, uncoiling her body and jumping clear of the surface as she snatched it just before it went sailing on a trajectory that would have taken it under the dock. "Grunge!"

"Work for it!" Tori yelled back, clearly enjoying herself. "Teach you to call me short, huh!"

"If I have to go diving under that dock, you're gonna be more than short, ya little chipmunk!" Jade let fly with the Frisbee, chortling as her partner had to scramble for it, bouncing through the waves and kicking up spray as she went for the intercept.

"I'll chipmunk you." Tori grabbed the Frisbee, and then, instead of tossing it back just headed in Jade's direction, rambling through the water like a miniature freight train. "You're toast!"

Run? Jade considered the effort of escaping from her partner's nefarious intentions, and weight it against the pleasure of suffering them. She grinned, and as Tori came within range, she dove right towards her, disappearing beneath the waves and colliding with Tori's legs as she tried unsuccessfully to stop in time.

Way overbalanced, Tori let out a yelp and tumbled over, landing mostly on Jade and grabbing at her as they wrestled half in and half out of the water. "You.. you…"

Jade got a hold around Tori's middle and then got her legs under her, standing up and hauling the woman out of the water like a sack of oats. "Yeeeesss?" She purred into Tori's ear. "Me what?"

Tori paused to catch her breath from her run through the waves. "You… punk." She slapped Jade on the thigh. "You tricked me."

"Into charging at me like a rhino?" Jade laughed. "Uh.. okay, honey. If you say so."

"Bah." Tori let her head rest against Jade's chest. "Where's the Frisbee?"

"Didn't you have it?" Jade looked around. "Oh.. fuck." She spotted the disk floating under the dock. "You stay here, cuttlefish. I'll get it." She released Tori and headed for the pier, diving under the water as she got close to it.

Neither of them was really fond of swimming right under the wooden surface, since several large sea bass had taken up residence and they loved to nibble intruding humans. At night, the fish were sleeping, but during the day… Jade blinked her eyes open quickly in the salt water, then just as quickly closed them. She surfaced and located the disk, swimming over to it and grabbing it just as something bit her foot. "Yeow! Bastard!" She kicked out in reflex, then kicked with her other foot just for good measure. She felt a spongy impact, then she turned and headed out from under the pier.

Tori was already at the edge of the wood reaching for her. "The fish?"

"God, I hope so." Jade felt a sharp sting where she'd been bitten. "Ow."

"Sorry." Tori took hold of her arm and started heading for the shore. "I should have kept track of the damn thing."

"Residential hazard." Jade winced, as she hopped out of the water, grateful for Tori's supportive arm around her waist. "I should have known better…"

"Should have just let the silly thing float off. We have a dozen of them." Tori muttered as they got on shore, and sat down in the sand together. She scooted down a little and lifted Jade's foot up, setting it on her thigh to look at it. "Let me see."

"Ah ah ah. We don't let plastic into the ocean ecology." Jade peered at her foot, which was covered with an alarming amount of blood. "Wow." She fended off Chino, who snuffled around them anxiously.

"Yikes. We better go inside and clean this off." Tori leaned closer. The fish had really chomped down on her foot, making a semi-circle of punctures which were liberally leaking blood. "I don't think it's deep, but.."

"But it hurts." Jade observed. "Stings like hell."

Tori gently wiped the blood away and bent over, kissing the spot. "Let's go. We've got some peroxide in the cabin."

Jade cautiously withdrew her foot from Tori's clutches. "It doesn't hurt that bad."

"Baby."

"Well, it doesn't."

"C'mon, big baby." Tori got to her feet and offered her partner a hand up. "Those are puncture wounds, and a very good friend of mine taught me that those have to be cleaned out really well."

"Yeah.. well, you shouldn't always listen to your friends." Jade accepted the aid, hopping along the sand over to where the porch steps were. "Look, it's stopped bleeding."

"C'mon."

"Tori!"

"C'mon, chicken little. What if that was a barracuda?" Tori took a firm hold on her reluctant incipient damsel in distress and tugged her towards the house. "Bet we've got mercurochrome, too."

"Whine."

Tori opened the door. "Was that you, or Cheebles?"

In the end, Jade gave in gracefully to the attention, lying down on the couch with her injured foot in Tori' lap as her partner tended to it. The cleaning hurt, as she'd expected, but it was offset by the look of gentle concern on Tori's face, and the obvious care she was taking to do the job right.

The punctures were deep. "I know you were kidding about the barracuda." Jade kept her eyes closed, the better not to see the holes in her foot. "But you might be on to something there."

Tori looked up from her task, holding up the cotton swab she'd been using to clean out the punctures. "You really think so?"

"Too narrow a jaw to be the bass." Jade said. "Besides, it's much more badass to say I got bit by a cuda than by a poky old sea bass."

Tori chuckled softly, giving Jade's ankle a little pat. "You realize this means I'm driving up the coast to the airport, right?" She painted the top row of punctures with some lurid mercurochrome, admiring the well formed, powerful arch under her hands. "You have such pretty feet."

Jade chortled. "I do not."

"Yes, you do." Tori traced a line across the side of one. "Have you ever worn toenail polish?"

Jade was quiet for a moment. "Are you suggesting I should?" She wiggled her toes, then wished she hadn't, as the injury protested. "Have you?"

"Me?" Tori finished the top, and then she shifted to do the punctures on the bottom of Jade's foot, scattered across it's ball. "Oh no. The idea if my wearing open shoes in public… I think I'd have had them cut off if I'd tried it. I wasn't even allowed to use anything other than clear or a light pink fingernail polish."

"Did you want to?"

"Yeah." Tori smiled as she worked. "Bright, flame red." She painted a somewhat deeper puncture. "Oo.. Jade, that's a bad one."

"Ow.' Her partner sighed. "Well, you could now."

"Could now what?"

"Wear bright red nail polish."

Tori looked up and over her shoulder at her partner, a quizzical expression on her face. "Do I look like a red nail polish kind of girl to you?" She asked. "I said back then, Jade. Now I just don't consider myself a red toenail type."

Jade studied her back for a moment, wondering about toenail polish among other things. She could honestly say wearing polish of any kind on her feet wasn't something that had ever crossed her mind, since taking her boots off to find that would have caused her merciless kidding probably right up until this very day. "Well." She considered. "I think a nice sea green would be pretty on you."

"Mmhm." Tori agreed absentmindedly. "Probably. You would look good in coral."

"I would?"

"Yeah."

Jade considered further. "Tori?"

"Uh?"

"Why are we having this discussion?"

Her partner shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. I'm sitting here playing with your feet, so I guess the thought just came to me. I remember it was the topic of conversation regularly when I was in college." She finished the last bite mark. "There." She studied her handiwork. "I'm going to put a bandage on this. You shouldn't walk on it."

"I'm not walking on it." Jade agreed, wriggling into a more comfortable spot on the couch.

"I meant after you get up." Tori gently set the foot aside and rose, heading towards the bathroom.

Jade folded her hands across her stomach and relaxed, sure that the worst of the tending was over. The injury now stung more than anything due to the cleaning, and she felt confident that it wasn't anything serious.

She still felt a little stupid, though, that she'd been bitten by a fish underneath her own dock. Jade wiggled her toes speculatively. Maybe she could tell people she'd been bitten by an alligator. That sounded more interesting.

Not to mention, heroic. Maybe Tori would say she'd rescued her from it.

"What's so funny?" Tori came back with a roll of gauze bandage and proceeded to mummify Jade's foot with it.

"Nothing." Jade squashed the temptation. "Just wondering what cock and bull story I'm going to come up with for people at the office tomorrow to explain why I'm limping."

"Well." Tori said. "You could tell them I got revenge for you hitting me by stomping you with a stiletto heel." She suggested.

"Um…

"Or I could tell everyone you saved me from a vicious barracuda." Tori continued on without hesitation. "There I was, swimming innocently, not realizing a barracuda was about to bite my ass, when…you jumped in and saved me at the last minute."

"Hm."

"Like that one better?"

"You tell good stories." Jade chuckled. "Even if they are completely fabricated."

Tori finished her bandage, and patted Jade's calf. "Not completely. You'd have done it if it'd really been after me, right?"

"Right." Jade agreed almost without thinking. "Anyone trying to bite your ass has to go through me to get there, No question." She reached over and snagged a finger into the waistband of Tori's shorts. "C'mere."

Tori gladly leaned back, stretching her body out next to Jade's on the couch. "Know what I wish?"

"What?"

"I wish we weren't going back tonight."

Jade pondered the thought. "Okay." She agreed. "We won't."

Her partner laughed shortly. "Stop teasing me. You know we have to go into work tomorrow, Jade."'

"I'm not teasing." Jade replied. "I had this cabin installed with the gear I did for the specific purpose of us working down here from it. So let's do it. We can log in from here, and probably get three times the amount of work done. If we need to conference, we can finally put that god damned expensive teleconferencing center I paid for to work at the office."

Tori turned over so she was facing Jade. "You're serious."

"As a heart attack." Jade answered. "besides, I feel like Shit. This bite feels worse than it should"

Should they? Tori thought about what she had on her schedule. The ops meeting, sure, and fallout from the weekend which had to be handled by conference call anyway. No clients, and the executive committee meeting wasn't until mid-week.

Hm. "Okay." She sounded surprised even to herself. "Why not? You don't have anything that needs face time tomorrow?"

"Nope. Just more work on my program." Jade confirmed. "Absolutely I'll get more done from here on that, without someone sticking their heads in my office every five minutes." She liked the idea more and more every passing second. "And, then I don't have to make up a no shit I was barracuda story."'

Tori had to admit to feeling a little bit apprehensive, only because she knew what the view would be from their co-workers if they both didn't show for work tomorrow. Then she thought about that for a minute, and decided the hell with it. They talked about them bullshit anyway, might as well be doing what they wanted.

Besides, Jade was probably right. She got more done when she was not in the office as well, and she had several prospective client write ups she hadn't had a chance to do the last week that really needed to get taken care of.

Or was that just more self-justification? "What about the ship?" She asked. "You think it's going to be a public relations nightmare with them finding out Dad was working on it, and all that? If we don't show up for work on top of that, it could be a problem, Jade."

"Hell with it." Jade replied obstinately. "What if it's a problem? What if the media comes to interview me on it, Tor? What am I going to say, I didn't know?"

"Ah. Good point."

"I think it's a good idea to let that blow over a little." Jade decided. "In fact, I think the less we get involved in the whole press nightmare the better right now. Let's let our work stand for itself. Get the job done, then they can make what they want of it. The more we play into this, the worse it gets."

Tori was quiet for a moment, and then she sighed. "We're really good at talking ourselves into things, aren't we?"

Jade had to smile. "Yeah." She sounded a touch sheepish.

"But maybe you're right." Tori went on. "We've been playing right into their hands, haven't we? Reacting like we have, and getting all into the spotlight. Maybe it's time to lay low and just get the job done, like you said."

Jade kissed the top of her head. "We could even paint each other's toenails." She suggested. "No one has to know."'

Now it was Tori's turn to smile. "Renegade. Only if I can paint yours freaking scarlet." She relaxed against the leather, though, her entire body reacting to the knowledge that there would be no late night drive home ahead of her at least tonight.

And, who knew? Jade was really a very good strategist, and maybe this would turn out to be another one of her brilliant solutions. It had happened before, and she'd never regretted trusting her partner's instincts yet. "You up for an omelet?'

"Only if the deceased baby chickens don't touch anything resembling a green pepper."

"You're on.