Abstract: Physical simulation has emerged as a compelling animation technique, yet current approaches to coupling simulations of fluids and solids with irregular boundary geometry are inefficient or cannot handle some relevant scenarios robustly. We propose a new variational approach which allows robust and accurate solution on relatively coarse Cartesian grids, allowing possibly orders of magnitude faster simulation. By rephrasing the classical pressure projection step as a kinetic energy minimization, broadly similar to modern approaches to rigid body contact, we permit a robust coupling between fluid and arbitrary solid simulations that always gives a well-posed symmetric positive semi-definite linear system. We provide several examples of efficient fluid-solid interaction and rigid body coupling with sub-grid cell flow. In addition, we extend the framework with a new boundary condition for free-surface flow, allowing fluid to separate naturally from solids.