author's note- slightly AU and I don't own gallagher girls. thanks to Cela Fille for letting me um, borrow her basic plotline of "cruel intentions".
blackthorne boys and smirking sweethearts
Once upon a time, there was a guy named Zachary Goode.
Zachary Goode didn't realise he smirked as much as he did until his girlfriend told him so. Shortly afterwards, she made a bet with him. Maybe bet isn't the right word. She proposed a, err, proposition to him. It went a little like this: "If you don't smirk for forty-eight hours, we can do this again." And, of course, this referred to wagging Cultures and Assimilation to get into Zach's car, drive to the city, park under an oak tree, and-
Let's not get into details.
But the deal was, Zach couldn't smirk for two days if he ever wanted to be a happy man again (at least while he attended Gallagher.) Zach highly opposed this suggestion, of course. He tried smirking his way out of it which resulted in near-disaster. He tried smooth-talking his way out of it but it seemed as if Cammie had grown an immunity to his suave speech skills. He even tried pleading his way out of it, that's right, pleading, but she didn't budge, only looked off to the side and said, "Forty-seven hours and fifty-eight minutes now, sweetheart."
Women.
They arrive back at the school in time for dinner. As usual, Cammie sits next to Zach. Also as usual, Grant sits next to Bex and jams his tongue down her throat. Zach looks at Cammie, who's ignoring the PDA by talking to McHenry. Zach tries to join in, but he has no idea what they're talking about, as the conversation he overhears goes like this:
"Oh, that thing! Yeah, I remember."
"Yeah, wasn't it interesting?"
"Definitely. What about the other thing?"
"Good point! Maybe we should do the other thing."
"That's what I was thinking."
(and Cammie thinks he talks in code. Bullshit.)
Still, he tries to join in while resisting a smirk at the ridiculousness of their conversation. "Oh, I know what you're talking about," he says lamely. "You should do that thing, definitely." It sounded vaguely sexual innuendo-ish.
McHenry crinkles her nose. "What are you talking about, Goode?" He blinks a bit stupidly, then McHenry's attention is thankfully averted when she turns towards the two tonsil hockey players, commonly known as Bex and Grant. "No handjobs at the lunch table, please. That's disgusting."
Cammie laughs while Zach feels like shooting himself. This is going to be a long forty-seven hours and eighteen minutes.
.
There's a knock on his dorm door around 9 o'clock, an hour before curfew. When neither of his lazy roommates make a move to open it, he sighs, rolls off his bed, and opens it himself.
Cammie stands there, all smiles and innocence. He resists the urge to smirk- a feeling that was quickly becoming painfully familiar.
"May I help you?" He asks instead, leaning against the doorway.
"Do you have my scarf? I need it for homework," she replies, walking into the messy dorm.
Zach frowns. "What kind of homework?"
Cammie starts going through his drawers. "List at least fifteen ways to kill a man with a scarf. It's for P&E."
He should've known.
Then he frowns again, trying not to smirk. "Wait, you're actually going to try and kill a guy with your scarf?" he asks suddenly, disturbed. "That's going a bit far, isn't it?"
When she turns around with her scarf in her hands, she's smirking. "Of course I'm not going to go and kill someone with my scarf," she says, glancing at the digital clock by Jonas's bed. "Remember, you still have thirty-eight hours. No smirking." She taps his cheek as she begins to walk out, before stopping and adding on, "Don't try to cheat, okay?"
He smiles as he closes the door, then speed-walks to the dresser and starts looking for the bug Cammie had all but told him she planted.
Grant looks up from his adult magazine for two seconds to say, "Dude, you're whipped."
He doesn't find a bug even when he searches all night. He's not convinced it isn't there though.
.
"Are you okay?" Cammie asks the next day, tilting her head to the side. "You look kind of depressed."
He stares at her. "I'm fine." Oh, that's real great. When he doesn't smirk he looks depressed. How depressing.
.
With twenty-six hours left, Zach's starting to get pale and shaky.
Okay. That was from the mild poison McHenry "accidentally" gave him in Dr. Fib's class. (Accidentally his ass. McHenry hates him.)
Anyway. He's in the nurse's office, laying on a bed, feeling sorry for himself. On the bright side, the poison has made his mouth slack, so he can't smirk even if he wants to. His girlfriend appears beside the bed. The scene is all very dramatic, like in TV shows. If only he had a heart monitor hooked up to him. Maybe buy some sympathy.
"Macey says sorry," Cammie says, leaning over and giving him a full view of what he couldn't have if he smirked in the next twenty-five hours, twenty-eight minutes.
His best friend appears on the other side. "Nice necklace, Morgan," he comments, knowing full well Zach can't verbally or physically threaten him. Or at least, not immediately. "How ya doin', buddy?"
"Huck yuh," Zach snaps. Evidence says he probably said, "Fuck you."
The nurse trolls through. Apparently, she was still getting her degree. Online. "Time for a sedative, Zachary!" She announces cheerfully, holding a syringe the size of Grant's ego in her left hand. Zach starts panicking, but then she makes him feel a lot better by adding, "Then we're gonna suck that poison outta ya." And then she cackles.
"Utherhucker," he swears.
When Zach wakes up the next morning, he realises he only has 8 hours left until he can-
Again with the details. Best to leave them be, yes?
.
When he sits down at breakfast, McHenry and Grant greet him with wide blue eyes. Of course, McHenry's blue eyes are tinted with evil, destruction and maliciousness, but still. Both are looking at him like he's a homeless child.
"She has you wrapped around your finger," Grant comments.
Macey adds, "Under her thumb."
"Nailed to a wall."
"Beneath her boot."
"On a leash."
"Taped-"
Zach grunted, "I get it."
Both smirk at him.
.
Zach looks at the clock for the fiftieth time in about two minutes. The last seven minutes, he theorises, are the most excruciating. At five minutes left, Cammie excuses herself from the class. Zach looks at her as she walks out of the room, not believing she's bailing on him at his moment of victory. A note lands on his desk:
How long does it take to get to the oak?
-C
His heart starts beating erratically. Three minutes. It takes three minutes to get to the oak tree and if his estimates are correct (which, of course, they are), there are three minutes left until he can smirk again, and also be a good boyfriend to his hot girlfriend. His hand shoots up in the air and the best excuse he can think of escapes his lips. "McHenry's poisoned me again, can I go to the nurse's office?"
McHenry's glaring but Dabney buys it. "Oh yes, go to the nurse's office immediately."
He resists an urge to smirk.
The car ride is silent. And awkward. Well, it is to Zach, who's driving, but probably not to Cammie, who's reading The Art of War. (Because if it's one person who knows about war, it's an ancient Chinese guy.) Finally, they reach the oak. He has zero minutes zero seconds left. He looks at Cammie. She closes her book and stares back expectantly.
"So," she begins. "You did it."
He can't take it anymore. His mouth is on hers before she can even finish her sentence. (Not really, but he likes to think of it that way.)
Forty-eight hours is a long time.
.
Forty-eight minutes, however, is not, really. Zach is lying against the oak tree, Cammie's head nestling into his chest. Both are breathing heavily, especially Zach, because Cammie is kind of squishing his lung but it's okay because he could suck it up. It's a good feeling, definitely. Cammie sighs and lets out a laugh.
"I think I should proposition you more often," she says.
Zach panics again but now he can hide it with cool indifference in the form of a smirk. "Proposition me?"
"Well, it won't alway be just smirking," she starts, excitement creeping into her voice. Wonderful- his girlfriend liked torturing him. Out of all the girls at Gallagher he had chosen a sadist. "It could be banning your stupid catchphrases, or forcing you to be nice to Macey."
"You can't force me to be nice to Macey," he replies, with the same cool indifference. "Anyway. You missed this as much as I did."
She looks up to him, tilting her head back. "And how do you know that?"
He smirks.
i kinda made zach a loser, yeah? whoops.
-named after an arctic monkeys song: bigger boys and stolen sweethearts. the arctic monkeys are coming to california! southern california, but still! alex turner is a god.
-reviews appreciated greatly
-and again, thanks to cela fille. hopefully i didn't make it too much like hers. yeah if i did feel free to drag me to a justin bieber concert.
-and this is unbetaed. sorry if it has a billion grammar errors.