Title: The Shower Club
Intro: What do you get when you stir in a bunch of South Pack characters, some crazy challenge with no limits and one very, very bored fourteen year old author with a serious competitive streak?
Errmmm…well….read for yourselves, I suppose! Hope you like it, TezzX as this was part of the challenge you published a while back! (PS: you don't have to bear my children. Seriously.) X3
Pairing: Christophe x Gregory
Challenge Number: #2
PS: I don't know Gregory's surname, so it's Carmichael in this, k?
Disclaimer: I own nothing save a pritt stick and a bunch of unsent postcards.
Author: xXMamboXx
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
It's been a long war, I'm so tired and dirty…but not dirty enough for you
The Ha Ha Wall, The Libertines
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The problem with France was that it was just so…grey. Sixteen year old Gregory Carmichael mused quietly, chin in hand, as his ice blue eyes stared beyond the tiny oval window of the BA 747 jet touching down beneath him. The runway scudded along a couple of metres below, jiggling the grumpy, blank-eyed passengers to and fro like dolls, newspapers fluttering and complimentary peanut packets wafting stiffly down the aisles.
The flight had lasted exactly nine hours and forty seven minutes and the blonde felt as though each second had sapped years from his slender frame, not that he was too much to look at in the first place. English weather had paled his skin and turned his brilliant gold locks a rather dejected shade of beige, loosening its slight curl until it flopped limply somewhere between his earlobes and his shoulders. Ungodly hours at night school and one too many ten-thousand-megawatt wakeup coffees had plainly taken its toll
…or that's what he preferred to think anyway.
With a sigh far too deep for a teenager on his summer holidays, Gregory turned away from the window and bent down to buckle up his rucksack. The logo-less navy bag stared back up from between his plain white trainers; regulation kit only, as it had always been.
But not any more.
Another sigh. After all the pretence, after all the lies and self deceiving, there was still no point in trying to ignore the truth;
They'd kicked him out. After nine long years of endless drudgery and toil in MI6, what did he have to show for it? A quick sterile meeting, a slip of paper and a thank-you-bye-bye-now-piss-off from his commanding officer.
Sorry Greg, we just don't need you anymore.
And so the waste was tossed into the garbage, the boy thought, a wry smile curling his lips as a tinny intercom told the passengers to disembark the plane. Though he had to admit it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
o0o
Breezing quickly through customs, flashing his express passport (a genuine one for the first time he could remember) right and left, the British teen made his way out of the hummingly polished foyer where a polite but firm cough brought a glossy silver BMW and wiry stick of a woman, to his attention.
The woman's name was Helga (as seems to be the trend for most black-clad, butch FBI-agent-look-alikes), and how she managed to introduce herself whilst loading his standard-issue black suitcase into the boot, bundling him into the backseat and driving away all within the next thirty seconds was something he was sure he'd never work out. The machine purred its way out of Calais' international air terminal before he could say so much as a 'merci' to his surly new mentor.
Helga had one task and one task only; stop the irritating British kid from getting himself killed, and she made this perfectly clear before the vehicle had even hit the motorway. Gregory could amuse himself as much as he liked in the back seat; that was what the installed DVD player, customized game system and iPod speakers were all for, but nothing save the direst WW3-style emergency would provoke her into actually conversing with him.
Deliberately ignoring the multitude of gadgets, Gregory slumped back in his seat and gazed out of the window again, realizing with a pang that this would be the last he would see of the outside world for a very long time. Pity it wasn't much of a view; they were in the outskirts of the city now, the metal and concrete gradually blurring into tree-lined avenues and big front gardens. Between the drizzle-damped foliage he could see the high stone arches of Victorian windows and surly iron railings; objects that reminded him all too clearly of the London he'd left behind.
Something poked him sharply in the back and Gregory shifted over to find he'd been sitting on a glossy-looking prospectus; the first hint to his actual destination that he'd received since his dismissal. The booklet was larger than average, displaying a picture of Photoshop-green grounds and silhouette of a large rambling Tudor building in the background. The grass of the grounds was mowed into perfect strips and a couple of boys his own age had been photographed talking in the background, their summer sports dress the painful white of dental floss.
Bored, the Brit flicked through the prospectus for a little longer, soaking in the glowing reports from inspectors and the smiling faces of his soon to be classmates. He could already pick out the cliques already; from the tanned, broad-shouldered figures of the athletes, dominating the sports team photos, to the boffins with their prestigious awards and the intimidating spark of intellect in their eyes.
There was a class photo of his class in the back as well, taken just before the previous summer break (or so the footnote said). The group was small; the school only had about twenty pupils per year group and just one class for all of them. The very sight of it made his lip curl in scorn.
They just looked so…normal. The tiny kid being squashed out of the side of the picture…the class geek with his flaming red hair and faraway look…the dumbed down race of jocks, looking rather lonely without their cheerleader counterparts (apparently the school was all boys…Gregory didn't know whether to be horrified or relieved by this. Girls were certainly strange creatures.) in fact, the only two who didn't fit his classification properly were standing right at the back, their faces completely impassive as though unaware the photo was being taken. The former was tall and dark-haired, with a brooding glare in his eyes and what looked like a smoldering fag end in one hand. Just in front of him was a slightly shorter boy with the wildest shock of yellow hair he had ever seen. Now he looked closer, he could almost catch the smirk on this boy's lips, the light of something purely mischievous in the way he stood with his eyes boring straight and fearless into the camera lens.
Pity there wasn't a name list, Gregory thought to himself, there was something about the two of them that interested him. They would have made excellent targets to follow in a mission, far better than any of the other mediocre classmates…
…but he wasn't supposed to think like that anymore.
A wave of anger raced through him as he realise this. Never again would he be praised for his great fieldwork, never again would he arrive in an entirely new world with minimal instructions and the simple task of survival for as long as possible. Now he was normal. Now, in a respect, he had become the everyday teenagers he was mocking. Gregory gritted his teeth furiously, supple fingers shifting his grip on the prospectus as though he wished to tear it in two.
Stupid poncy school. Stupid poncy students. Stupid poncy schoolboy life.
The only things he had left.
The voice of Helga shattered his daydream
"Hei! Boy! Ve air arrived, see? Out ze vindow."
They were there.
Slowly, steadily, Gregory took a deep breath and turned towards the window, all too aware that the sight about to greet him would be of his home for several years to come.
…
Time to see if all the evidence was true.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ok, so maybe not much happened in this chapter…but I had to set the scene! It kicks off for real in the next chapter, which I will put up by the end of the week if I get some reviews! #HINT#
This is my very first fanfiction and I am new to this, so if anyone has any pointers please tell me I welcome all advise!