Work Text:
"Absolutely not!"
Caitlyn looked up from where she was spreading out stacks of paper around her on the chaise lounge she was sitting on, cross-legged. “What?” she asked, moving her sunglasses down from her head onto her nose to protect her against the sudden brightness of the midday sun hitting her in the face.
Jayce ran an irritated hand through his hair, broad shoulders and toned muscles on full display as he was only wearing his green swim trunks. “You did not seriously bring your work to hang out at the pool?” he asked, gesturing from his own chaise lounge that he had claimed right next to hers.
Caitlyn shrugged, unbothered. “You said you needed someone to go to the pool with you since Vik won't and you don’t want it to look like you have no friends,” she reminded him, rolling her eyes when she recalled how he had been spaming the group chat all week to get them to visit him at the new luxury apartment complex he had recently moved into, wanting to show off all the amenities - including an in-house gym and pool. “I’m simply fulfilling your request. Even though I have to finish working on this report draft. It’s what makes me a good friend, really.”
Jayce continued to glare at her. “No, it’s what makes you a workaholic psychopath,” he complained in a dramatic mix of disbelief and annoyance. “You know what normal people do at a pool? Have fun! Play water volleyball, have a drink by the swim-up bar, or” he made a sweeping gesture to encompass the large pool area before his eyes landed on something that made him grin. "Flirt with the hot lifeguard."
Against her better judgement, Caitlyn actually craned her neck to see who he was looking at. Unfortunately, her best friend was right.
The woman sitting in the high chair on the other side of the pool who was wearing red shorts and a black wet suit tank top, the fabric straining against the broad shoulders that gave way to muscular arms, did look unfairly attractive. Her short red hair, shaved on one side, was held back by a pair of aviator sunglasses as she kept watch on the pool below her, looking slightly bored even from a distance due to the relaxed way she was slouching in her chair.
Jayce's smirk when Caitlyn quickly avoided her gaze before she was caught staring was far too smug and Caitlyn hated herself for how fast she’d snapped her head around to look. Okay, maybe it had been a while since she’d actually had time to, well. Admire another woman. But she was wearing sunglasses for god’s sake, she could have at least checked the lifeguard out more subtly.
"It would be an actual safety hazard to distract someone who is on duty to save lives,” Caitlyn pointed out, decisively turning her attention back to the piles of paperwork surrounding her.
Jayce snorted, impatiently tapping the soles of his sandals on the floor. "Cait, this is an adults only pool and even the senior residents here look like they regularly work out.” He gestured to a guy with silver hair that had just climbed out of the pool and was showing off an impressive pair of abs while drying himself off. “So I don’t think she’ll be very busy.”
“Well, if you wanted someone fun, you should have asked Mel,” Caitlyn steered them back to the topic at hand, pointedly avoiding making any admission that could be used against her. "I need to have this draft worked out by tonight, so I can type up the edits tomorrow,” she insisted, grabbing a pen from her beg to convince her friend, and herself, that she had more important stuff to do than ogling pool guests. Or staff.
Unfortunately, Jayce did not seem to have moved on yet. “Is that why you decided to dress up this much?” he sighed, flopping down on the chaise lounge so he could spread out his whole body. “'Cause you never planned on actually going for a swim anyway?”
Caitlyn looked down at the royal blue swimsuit she was wearing, paired with a white beach cover-up. The cut-outs on the waist and shoulder wouldn’t do much to protect her from the sun, but she’d put it on because the color matched her heeled sandals very well. Sure, adding the shiny bracelet and the diamond shaped earrings as well may have been a bit much for hanging out at a pool but hey, sue her for making an effort to look cute when she wasn’t stuck wearing sensible office clothes!
Caitlyn simply shrugged and smiled. She was definitely not going to tell Jayce that this was the first chance she’d gotten to wear this swimsuit at an actual pool given that she’d taken approximately zero vacation days in the past three years. Her pointing that out would only prove his point.
“Fine,” Jayce pouted, sounding very much like a child that was upset about their older sibling refusing to play with them, despite him actually being multiple years older than her. “Do whatever you want,” he huffed and covered his eyes with a pair of sunglasses for extra dramatic effect.
Caitlyn rolled her eyes and sighed. “Alright, I’m gonna go and get you a sugary drink from the bar so you can stop looking like a sad puppy,” she decided, placing the sheet of paper she was currently holding on the pile with the others so she could get up from the chaise lounge.
“Sure thing!” Jayce watched her slip on her sandals with a barely hidden grin, looking far too happy for someone who was apparently so upset.
Caitlyn shook her head and started walking along the pool towards the bar in the back, squinting through her sunglasses as she weaved her way through the rows of chaise lounges so she didn't end up stepping on anyone's towel or pool floatie.
In hindsight, it was embarrassing that she didn’t notice the movement in her peripheral vision until it was too late, her head snapping around more at the rapid sound of steps than from noticing the looming shadow of her best friend running towards her with a shit-eating grin on his face.
Caitlyn stopped in her tracks to wait for him to catch up, frowning in confusion - until she realised Jayce wasn't slowing down and his plan dawned on her when she looked behind her and noticed that she was only one step away from the pool’s edge.
There was really nothing she could do in time but raise her arms in front of her chest in a poor attempt to shield herself, a gesture that proved to be absolutely useless by the time the six feet two frame of meat collided with her body, immediately throwing her off balance as she yelped.
“Jayce, you mo -“ Caitlyn yelled, hands flailing but grasping nothing but air in her search for something to hold onto. Before she could find any way to fight what was clearly a pre-meditated attack, her feet gave out from under her and just a split second later, she felt the shock of ice cold water engulfing her entire body, turning the rest of her sentence into gurgling bubbles, leaving nothing but a huge wave of water splashing over the pool's edges where she had been standing just a second ago.
Coughing and sputtering, Caitlyn broke through the pool water's surface a moment later, momentarily blinded until she managed to push the slick strands of dark hair out of her face.
Having lost her sunglasses in the process of her unexpected dive, her eyes were violently attacked by the midday sun, forcing her to squint as she moved her arms to stay afloat while trying to figure out where all her belongings had floated off to. A panicked check of her ears immediately after resurfacing had confirmed that at least her earrings had miraculously stayed in place, though her bracelets was now certainly buried at the bottom of the pool. Deciding she would deal with that later, Caitlyn started to move towards where she spotted one of her sandals floating a bit further towards the edge of the pool, her swimming momentarily interrupted by another coughing fit.
Before Caitlyn could fully reach the pool's edge, a shadow fell over her and she was just gathering her breath to yell at Jayce as she reached for her floating sandal, when the sound of a warm, unfamiliar voice beat her to it.
"Hey there."
Caitlyn froze in her hectic attempt to gather her belongings as she recognized the lifeguard from earlier crouching at the edge of the pool, a small wave from the still shaky water surface lapping at the tips of her pool slippers. The aviators were still pushed up into her hair, blueish-grey eyes tracking Caitlyn’s movements, one corner of her mouth turned up into a friendly but slightly concerned smile.
Holy shit. She was even more gorgeous up close.
"So, I'm like ninety percent sure that was just your boyfriend messing with you for fun,” the life guard said, readjusting the sunglasses on top of her head, a strand of red hair falling into her face through the movement, “but thought I’d come over to check on you just to be safe.”
"I'm quite alright, thank you,” Caitlyn choked out, voice slightly raspy from all the water she’d swallowed. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment, feeling the woman’s eyes on her as she collected her second sandal that was dancing on the wavy surface to her left. “Apart from having a friend whose humor stopped developing when he reached kindergarten,” she huffed.
“Gottcha.” The smile now turned into a full on grin as the lifeguard reached below the pool's edge to untangle Caitlyn’s sunglasses from where they had somehow gotten stuck in the pool filter, holding them out to her. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay then," she stated, eyes glinting with barely hidden amusement.
Their fingers brushed for a moment when Caitlyn quietly accepted the sunglasses, the woman’s sun-warmed skin like a small electric shock on her cold, slightly shaky hands. Under the lifeguard's watchful eyes, Caitlyn slowly unfolded her sunglasses, placed them on her head and swallowed, momentarily distracted by the way the woman’s nose ring sparkled in the sun light reflecting on her face from the water surface.
“Need any help?” the lifeguard asked again, apparently misinterpreting her pause to mean that she was unsure about how she was going to get out of the pool with the steps being in the shallow end on the far other side.
“Nope,” Caitlyn reassured her, quickly moving to place her sandals on the edge of the pool so she had her hands free. If she was going to be this humiliated, she at least wanted to keep some dignity and climb out of the pool by herself. Damn Jayce and his Baywatch fantasies.
In the end, Caitlyn using her hands to push herself up on the edge of the pool and out of the water wasn’t very graceful either, given the clumsiness involved in having to maneuver her long legs over the edge while the wet ends of her beach cover-up had decided to wrap themselves around her like seaweed in the most unhelpful way.
Cursing under her breath, Caitlyn clumsily tried to slip into her wet sandals without using her hands, keeping her arms wrapped around her chest even though it did little to protect her from the sudden cold she felt that made her skin flare up in goosebumps.
Feeling like she was on a walk of shame after a night out, Caitlyn stalked past the other pool guests back to her chaise lounge, already noticing from afar that Jayce was nowhere to be seen. Traitor.
Unfortunately, her relief at reaching the safe place she was supposed to camp out at all afternoon was short-lived once she realised that her involuntary cannon ball into the pool had created a splash big enough to reach their nearby chaise lounges. Meaning, not just the fabric of the chair's cushion, but also the piles of paper she had left on top of it were now covered in splotches of water, leaving blackish-blue swirls on the white paper where the ink from the print and the notes left by her pen had started to mix together.
“No!” Caitlyn gasped in horror, the humiliation of what had just happened momentarily forgotten as she took in the crime scene in front of her. “Oh no, no, no…” Damn her and her old-fashioned need to use paper on pen for her notes instead of doing it on an iPad like everyone else.
An angry growl built itself up in her throat as she surveilled the pool surroundings, her eyes landing on broad shoulders at the bar. "Jayce!" she yelled over the pool, earrings dangling back and forth in sync with her swelling anger. A few heads turned to look at her for what was probably the second time within a few minutes. There was no way anyone had missed her ungraceful fall into the pool earlier.
But Jayce just turned around to casually raised a hand and wave at her, seeming very unbothered as he happily accepted a tall glass of pink liquid that the bartender was handing him.
Caitlyn narrowed her eyes to shoot a row of daggers at his exposed back. Oh, she was going to kill him. And then she was going to use his corpse as a pool floatie.
"We, uh, we've got a hair dryer in the staff room if you think that'd help to save it?”
Caitlyn whipped her head around - creating another wave of sprinkles with her drenched hair - and stared at the lifeguard that was standing right behind her, apparently having followed her unnoticed. Wasn’t that just wonderful.
Caitlyn took a deep breath. “That - would be great actually?” she admitted, resisting the initial urge to snap at her that she really didn’t need any help. If she was being realistic, she didn’t have time to go back to the office to reprint all of this before tomorrow, let alone reconstruct all the notes she had already made from memory, so.
The lifeguard nodded, seeming unfazed by the little outburst she had just witnessed. "Alright, we have change of shift for lunch break in a minute anyway, so I can show you?” she offered, pointing her thumb over her shoulder where a guy wearing similar gear as her had just climbed the small ladder to the empty lifeguard chair.
“Please,” Caitlyn nodded gratefully. She haphazardly gathered the sheets of paper into a loose pile, then turned around expectantly, frowning when the woman didn’t move.
“Um.” The lifeguard scratched the shaved side of her head awkwardly, “Did you maybe wanna dry off first?” she suggested, nodding at where rivulets of water were still running down Caitlyn’s arms and dripping onto the files in her hands, adding insult to injury.
“Oh.” Looking down at herself for the first time since climbing out of the pool, Caitlyn suddenly realised that the now see-through beach cover-up was clinging to her like a second skin, doing nothing to cover the more revealing parts of her swimsuit. Despite having taken a bath in the cold water just a moment ago, she suddenly felt her cheeks burn with heat, highly aware of the lifeguard’s eyes still on her.
Having disposed of her precious cargo for a moment, Caitlyn momentarily struggled to peel the drenched fabric of the beach cover-up off her, getting it tangled in her hair and earrings for an embarrassingly long amount of time before she could finally escape it. Then she quickly reached into her bag to grab the towel she had thankfully decided to bring anyway and used it to squeeze the excess water out of her hair, then briefly ran it over her body once before wrapping it around her chest and tucking the end in at the top to fix it in place. That would have to be good enough.
“Okay,” she sighed, collecting her stack of paper again. “Let’s go.”
The lifeguard snapped her head up and blinked at her like she had just zoned out for a moment. “‘k, this way,” she announced, shoving the aviators down on her nose almost forcefully before she spun around and started quickly walking away.
Caitlyn hurried to follow her around the pool and tried to ignored the looks all the residents they walked past gave her, focusing on the woman in front of her instead. She was half embarrassed by the squeaky noise her wet sandals made, half distracted by the newly revealed sight of the lifeguards back in front of her. There were tattoos peaking out below the wetsuit tanktop. Like, a lot of them. Traveling up her neck all the way to her hairline -
Caitlyn was so distracted at the intriguing sight that she almost bumped right into the other woman when she suddenly stopped in front of a service door built into the ground floor of one of the apartment buildings but cleverly hidden behind a large palm tree.
“Name’s Vi by the way,” the lifeguard said, lifting one corner of her lips in another one of those half-smiles.
Caitlyn used all her self restraint to not follow the movement with her eyes. “Caitlyn”.
Vi nodded in acknowledgment, using a badge clipped to the belt of her shorts to unlock the door, holding it open to lead her inside.
The air in the small window-less room was hot and stale, with just a hint of chlorine smell. There were a couple of red metal lockers on one wall, a sideboard with two drawers below a mirror and a small table with two chairs in the corner. Next to the door was a whiteboard with what looked like a shift schedule and water safety instructions attached with magnets, below it a pile of life jackets and pool noodles in different colors.
Vi took off her aviators and opened one of the sideboard's drawers, pulling out a rather old looking hair dryer. She untangled the cable and plugged it into the next power outlet before handing it over to Caitlyn.
Caitlyn carefully set down her pile of paper on the table and accepted the hair dryer, yelping when she pressed the small button to turn it on and it came to life with a forceful gust of hot air.
“Yikes, does this have a lower setting? I want to dry them, not blow them away," she cursed, inspecting the device to look for any other buttons or switches that would let her change the settings.
Vi chuckled softly. "Nah, they just get us the cheap shit,” she shrugged, correcting herself with “stuff,” following Caitlyn’s displeased frown. “But I could hold the paper for you, so you can dry it without the sheets flying away?"
"That would work, yes,” Caitlyn agreed, carefully handing Vi one of the damp pages and waiting for her to hold it taut on two sides before she dared to turn the violently strong hair dryer on again.
They worked out a system pretty quickly, Caitlyn slowly moving the hair dryer back and forth over the drenched sheets while Vi held them down, waiting for Caitlyn to nod in approval before turning to the next page, quietly stacking the dry sheets on the sideboard behind her so they were out of the way.
"Lots of numbers, huh,” Vi commented after they had worked together in silence for a while, holding down another sheet of paper for her so it was properly taut.
"Yep," Caitlyn replied shortly, too focused on the task at hand and mentally already running through the parts of the report that definitely weren’t savable and recalling the missing information to entertain any form of small talk.
“Maybe if you iron them you can get out the wrinkles?” Vi suggested once they reached the last few pages, the stack of dried files on the sideboard now much taller than before given the wrinkled sheets' inability to lie flat.
Caitlyn looked up to blink at the woman, stunned to silence for a second by the fact that this random stranger was not only willing to help her dry sheets of paper without once commenting on the ridiculousness of bringing them to a pool in the first place, but also continuously offering suggestions on how to improve doing that.
“Sorry for making you do all this, and on your break as well,” Caitlyn said sheepishly, Vi’s earlier comment about how the equipment provided to the staff clearly did not match the fancy exterior displayed to the residents still fresh on her mind.
“Nah, it's a nice distraction,” Vi shrugged, “The weekend only just started and this was already more entertainment than I’ve had all week,” she chuckled.
Caitlyn felt her neck grow hot from embarrassment and also from being exposed to the constant heat of the hair dryer which was making her feel slightly sweaty under the towel she was still wearing. Great, she would definitely never be able to show her face here again, no matter how hard Jayce begged her.
"Never seen you at the pool before. New resident?" Vi asked like she had read her thoughts, holding the last sheet for her to dry.
Caitlyn shook her head. "My friend - Jayce - moved in about a month ago. I'm just here to visit.” The sheet was drying much faster than the first ones, having been in the warm room for a while helping speed up the process.
“I see.” Vi’s voice was neutral in a way Caitlyn wasn’t sure disappointed or relieved her. She turned off the hair dryer and watched Vi gathering all the sheets of paper on the counter together, trying to make the pile a little less messy before she held it out to Caitlyn.
The sudden silence left behind without the sound of the hair dryer blasting into their ears felt deafening, the crispy sound of Caitlyns fingers closing around the crinkled paper almost too loud in comparison.
“Thanks again,” Caitlyn said softly, genuinely grateful as she stared at the report draft pages in her hands in slight disbelief.
“No prob’,” Vi assured her, shoving her now free hands into the pockets of her shorts with a casualness Caitlyn would never be able to match.
“I -“ Caitlyn began but was interrupted when the end of the towel tucked in over her chest chose that very moment to come loose, starting a process of the whole towel unraveling itself before she could catch it. With a soft thud, it landed in a messy pile on the floor between them.
“Um,” Cheeks aflame, Caitlyn hurriedly leaned down to pick the towel up and couldn’t help but wonder just how many times she was going to have to embarrass herself in front of the this woman today.
Or, if she could possibly turn even redder when she caught Vi’s gaze not so subtly traveling up her body, tracking her movements and watching Caitlyn press the crumpled towel to her chest with one hand, still holding her report draft with the other.
Caitlyn really needed to get out of this stuffy room and into the fresh air.
“Well...I get off work at five, so,” Vi slowly moved past her until her back was pressed against the door of the staff room, using her elbow to push down the handle, all the while not breaking eye contact. “If you’re still around by then you can buy me a drink at the bar to make it up to me?” she suggested, using her back to push the door fully open.
“I - yes, that sounds great,” Caitlyn agreed, blinking rapidly against the sun rays streaming into the room. She shifted her elbow to hold the balled-up towel in place so she had a free hand to put her sunglasses on.
“Cool.” Vi held open the door for her so they could both step outside. “Good luck with the numbers then," she said, shoving her aviators back onto her nose as well.
“Thanks, you too!” Caitlyn said almost cheerfully before she could stop herself.
Vi gave her a lopsided smirk. Then she raised her hand in a casual wave and silently left in the direction of the lifeguard chair, leaving a wide-eyed Caitlyn behind.
"You too? Really?” Caitlyn muttered to herself on the way back to the pool, shaking her head at herself. Christ.
Even with her report draft reinstated there was no way she was going to get any work done until five, not with Vi watching from the other side of the pool anyway. But she also didn’t want to give Jayce the satisfaction of being right about everything, so.
She might have to throw him into the pool to distract him.