Alright. Important things pertaining to this - it's slight AU/OOC. I may have twisted some facts around (IE: Bailey broke up with Cody, it wasn't mutual like in the show. At least I think it was mutual..? I'll admit I'm not an avid Suite Life viewer; I just sort of catch reruns.) It's based on tomorrow's episode 'So You Think You Can Date' where Bailey and Cody both say that they have dates to the dance when they really don't. Also, because it's kind of unclear, it takes place on the sky deck.

Non-important things that I just want to ramble about - don't ask me where this came from. I've always adored Zack/Bailey, and after I saw the promo for this episode the idea just sort of popped into my head and I cranked this out immediately. Also, the song 'Bloodstream' by Stateless was repeating on my iPod the entire time and was a really big inspiration for this, so maybe you can listen to it while you read it..? (:

Repeating this for emphasis, this is AU/OOC! Especially OOC because, like I said, I don't watch TSLOD as much as I probably should, meaning that it's usually expected that you're more than familiar with a fandom that you write, but.. I'm rambling again. And not making any sense. I know.

Enjoy!

"Hey."

The voice that pulls her away from her thoughts is soft, the ocean breeze that blows around her almost swallowing it up to the point where it's nearly a whisper. Despite the circumstances, she recognizes it immediately.

"What are you doing here?" she asks coldly, an uncharacteristic roughness lining her voice so that it doesn't shake when she speaks and so he can't hear the hurt that lies beneath it. Part of her just wishes he would just leave now, and truthfully it wouldn't be surprising to her if he actually did because he's never really shown the slightest hint of anything but apathy toward her anyways, but there's also this foolish part of her that hopes he'll stay although she's mortified even thinking about how he would react if he could see the tears in her eyes.

To her dismay, partly, she hears his footsteps coming closer and not soon afterward she can see him step next to her from the corner of her eye. She refuses to look toward him, her eyes staying glued to the ocean in front of them and her arms remaining crossed over her chest. His head turns away from her and follows her line of vision to the vast darkness that the water becomes at this time of night, and they continue to watch in silence as the clouds covering the moon above them spread out and allow the light to reflect against the surface of the water.

"I could ask you the same question," he finally speaks, his gaze shifting back to her. Despite her current state, she laughs, her eyes closing as the sound escapes her. The moon reflecting against the water makes her face shine, the sea breeze that's blowing around them tossing her hair over her shoulder and exposing the curve of her neck and he swears for a second, as her eyes open again and her smile slowly begins to fade, that his breath hitches in his throat.

She lets out a sigh and uncrosses her arms, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the railing as she explains to him, "I told Cody that I had a date to the dance tonight, because he told me a couple of days ago that he already had one." She pauses before adding, "The problem is that he actually did have one and I didn't."

"So…" he supplies as he leans against the railing as well, facing her, unsure of what this has to do with the fact that she's isolated herself out here.

"So, I just couldn't be in there anymore. I couldn't," she looks down at the ocean again, "keep seeing him with her."

His eyebrows furrow, still confused. He's thinking to himself that Bailey is the one who broke up with Cody, not the other way around, so wouldn't that mean that if anyone should be jealous here, it should be Cody? Unless, of course, she still had feelings for him…

"Do you still..." he tries to ask but he's still in mid thought and, in any case, he's not really sure how to word the question.

"No," she responds quickly, shaking her head for emphasis before saying, "No, I'm not in love with him or anything," she watches him as he nods in response and adds softly with a sad smile, "It's just that we talked about going to this dance a few days before we broke up. We were just really excited about it." He watches as her eyes glaze over and she looks up toward the sky at nothing in particular, as if she's lost in some sort of dream world that's too far away from where she is now, in reality. "Things changed too quickly for me, I guess - too drastically. I just have to," her eyes come back to life again and meet with his instantly, "get used to it, is all."

Her voice fades and he nods to show her that he understands. She seems relieved that he does, and smiles softly before turning back to the ocean. A silence settles between them, one that's not entirely uncomfortable but not quite comfortable either, as waves crash against the side of the ship and the distorted music plays from the banquet hall in which the dance is being held.

"So, what are you doing here?" she asks gently, breaking the silence. He glances her way and his expression reads to her as, 'Why are you asking?' so she adds in explanation, "Well, I told you my story. What's yours?"

It looks to her like he's taking this question into serious consideration - and surprisingly, he is. He thinks back to the dance, back from the time he arrived with Cody, Cody's date, and his own 'date' (with whom he spent all of about five minutes with the entire night), to when he saw Bailey running through the double doors of the exit from his spot between two girls on the dance floor.

All in all the dance had proven to be a success, although he was initially a bit worried about the fact that his date left his side the second they hit the dance floor together. She spent the most of the night gabbing with her friends in the corner and bragging about the fact that he was her date, which did bum him out a bit at first until he realized that there were plenty of other girls who were more than willing to share him. As far as he was concerned, between Becky and Erin and Laurie and all of the other girls' numbers he scored, the evening had turned out brilliantly - and in truth it was only just the beginning because even now the dance has another good hour before it's scheduled to end - but when he saw Bailey fleeing through the exit something in him just snapped. He had to follow her. He literally just had to - it was like his legs were moving without his consent.

He'd noticed her on occasion throughout the night. She showed up a few minutes after he and his group did, and he immediately scanned the crowd for his brother to see his reaction. If Cody noticed that she was even there at all then he surely didn't show it, because his eyes hardly ever left Mindy, his date. When his gaze shifted back to Bailey at the door it looked like she was going through the same thought process, except she seemed to be a whole lot more upset about it, her mouth closed tightly in a straight line and her eyes darting to the floor beneath her. He kept watching until one of her friends from class approached her with a smile, and returned his attention to the brunette batting her eyelashes in his direction.

About a half hour later or so, he spotted her by the table of refreshments with a group of classmates who seemed to be enthralled in a conversation that she clearly had no interest in, opting to sip her punch quietly and glance at the clock. Later, while he was getting some punch for Erin, he noticed her sitting in one of the chairs near the back of the room, smoothing out the wrinkles in her emerald green dress - alone. She looked so unlike herself, so utterly unhappy and like a used, forgotten toy that had tried so hard to entertain but had still been thrown in the rubbish. The next time he saw her was when she finally fled the dance altogether.

"Zack," he hears her say his name and he's pulled from his thoughts as she repeats, "why are you here?"

He meets her gaze once more and the clouds above them move in such a pattern that one second the moon is covered and the next second it's exposed, causing its reflection on her face to flicker. Her eyebrows are raised as she waits for a response, a smirk of sorts settling on her lips and before he knows it the corners of his mouth twitch a few times before lifting into a smile. He finally whispers to her, "I don't know, really."

"Well," she breaks their eye contact and looks down again, laughing a bit as she continues, "as interesting as that sounds and as stimulating as this conversation is," her eyes raise to his once more as her voice grows soft and her smile falters, "you can go back inside if you want to."

"Nah," he says almost immediately, and her shoulders noticeably rise a bit when it registers. His eyes suddenly light up as if he's just come up with a brilliant plan and he says eagerly, "Come on, let's just hang out for a while - you and me." He walks past her, his shoulder brushing against hers, and he turns to drum his knuckles on her forearm and give her hand a light pull before turning back around to lead her.

"Zack," she calls suddenly, and something in her voice has changed. The tone is cold again, like it was when he first approached her - like she's trying to hide something from him, to mask something. He turns back around on his heel, slowly, and he's openly expressing how confused he is at the sudden change in the atmosphere between them by the look on his face. Her expression, unlike his, is completely unreadable. There's a trace of a smile on her lips, but her eyes look too sad for him to consider it one.

"I'll make you a smoothie," he says as if he's trying to sell a case. She laughs suddenly, a real laugh - and it's beautiful, and there's this fluttering his chest that he's not sure he's ever felt before and he swears that his heart skips a beat.

"That sounds tempting, but," she looks down to her hands as she picks at the skin of her palm nervously, wisps of hair falling to her face and obscuring his view of her and he's not quite sure what any of this means. "Can you do something else for me first?"

She lifts her head again and the breeze quickly pushes her hair out of her face, revealing glistening eyes filled with tears that are threatening to fall. As she bites her lip to keep them from falling, there's this feeling in the pit of his stomach and it's like he can feel his heart breaking for her. Before he knows it he's taken a step closer to her and, though he doesn't say it, his eyes speak for him and they tell her, 'Anything.'

One sole tear slips past her lid when she blinks and it tumbles down her cheek, leaving a trail of mascara behind and it sounds like a sob catches in her throat before she asks shakily, "Will you dance with me?"

In that moment, she looks so vulnerable - so weak. He's reminded of how broken she looked when she was sitting in that chair at the back of the dance, and he remembers how she tried to hide this vulnerability from him when he first arrived but sees that now she's not trying to mask herself anymore. She's trusting him. She's allowing him to see her at her worst, to see her broken. She's giving him the power to break her more, and she's trusting him not to, but part of her is still afraid that he will.

(She's still afraid that he'll do what his brother did to her.)

That's when he realizes, in that moment, that he'll do anything for her to make it better. If she wants to dance with him, then he'll dance with her. If she wants a smoothie, then he'll make her a smoothie. If she wants him to dive in the ocean and find her a pearl from the shell of an oyster, he'll - well, he wouldn't actually dive into the ocean, but he would definitely bring her by the gift shop if she was interested in a faux pearl necklace.

Because all he really wants to do is fix her.

His steps are small and slow as he walks toward her, both of their eyes never blinking and their gazes never breaking. A gust of wind sweeps past them and there's something special about the moment when he finally stands in front of her, so close that he can see the freckle on the corner of her nose and she can hear him breathing over the music that's still playing from the dance that's happening so far away from them. For a moment their frozen, just looking at each other as if this is the first time they've ever actually seen one another, and in a way it sort of is.

He makes the first move, resting his hands on her waist and soon afterward she wraps her arms around his neck. She leans forward and rests her head on his shoulder, the eye contact between them now broken as they begin moving in time with each other. The music plays from the banquet hall, softly and a bit hazily due to the distance, and they suppose that they can't really call what they're doing dancing - it's more of a swaying type of motion, but it's nice all the same.

Suddenly he can feel her body shaking against him as a sob escapes her, and he slides his hands so that his fingertips can trace patterns on the skin of her back to sooth her. She buries herself further into his neck as her shaking seems to slow and her erratic breathing begins to steady, and he rests his chin on her shoulder, so near to her that he can smell the strawberry in her hair.

They continue swaying together, so close that with every breath they take their senses become more clouded with the intoxication of the other, and time seems to slow to the point where they're almost moving in slow motion. His senses heightened, her heart beating, his hand moving to the small of her back, the blood rushing through their systems like wildfire - everything around them blurs. The contradiction is that they both feel so relaxed, their body's swinging like feathers pushed by the wind, yet it's like their entire insides are on fire at the same.

It feels like the moment will never end.

But alas, all things come to an end at some point or another and the song playing from the banquet hall fades to silence as the applause of the crowd roars from the dance and echoes through the open space of the deck. They remain still for the briefest of moments afterward, his arms still holding her close to him and her face still buried into his neck, before she pulls away. She's laughing in embarrassment as she wipes the tears that have been falling down her face, and she refuses to meet his gaze in fear that all of a sudden they'll go back to nearly hating each other and this connection between them will become nothing but a hazy memory that they'll both pretend never happened.

Finally she pushes herself to lift her eyes and she finds that he's already looking at her, and her eyebrows raise questionably as he remains motionless. He goes so long without doing anything that she almost swears the end is coming, that he's just going to walk away from her with some lame excuse shouted over his shoulder, and she'll be left alone - crushed again.

But all of a sudden, partly to her surprise, his lips flick into a smile on their own and he asks breathlessly, "How about that smoothie?"

So? Reviews are welcomed! Constructive criticism is appreciated, but don't be too harsh because this really was just my way of putting into words how lovely I think Zack/Bailey could be and it was more of an impulsive, personal thing than a planned piece that I expected to share.