Inside the Blackthorne Academy

(notebook edition)

Written by: Pujols, Adonis, and Einstein

(aka: Zach Goode, Grant Newman, and Jonas)

Mission 10: Santa's Little Hoe, Hoe, Hoes

Summary: During the Operatives' senior year, a local bar/strip club has been reported for sneaking illegal drugs into the prostitutes' drinks. The Operatives need to investigate if the report is true or not.

It was Christmas Eve when Bex, Macey, Cammie, and Liz walk down the stairs in their teetering high heels. Their spiked heels click on the hardwood floor and they grip to the stairwell railing for life, in case of tripping down all five floors. Only Macey wasn't concerned about tripping; back before her Gallagher days, she was quite the rebel child. She wore stripper heels nearly every day, much to her parents' discontent.

The four girls arrive at the landing of the foyer, looking down the last few steps at the guys, who were standing next to the heavy oak front door. "Holy cleavage, Batman, we've stuck the motherload!" Grant hisses, jabbing Zach in the ribs with his elbow. Macey rolls her eyes while Bex glares at Grant, and Liz and Cammie's faces burn with embarrassment.

"If you say one more lewd comment, I will personally wax all the hair off your body in your sleep… Every hair," Bex threatens.

"Exactly. Let's just get out of here," Liz groans. All the spies file out of the foyer and into the snowy courtyard. The snow whips around in white flurries and the bitter wind plunges the temperature below freezing.

"Are you serious?!" Bex shrieks, "The day we go on a mission dressed as porn stars, it turns out to be below freezing."

"We're not technically dressed as porn stars," Macey points out, but Bex rolls her eyes.

"Close enough."

A long, stretch limo was parked in the curving driveway. The shiny black of the car looked out of place in the wintry-white land around it. The girls slide across the cold leather seats, trying to pull the short hems of their dresses down to cover their underwear, and the guys climb in after them.

The limo drives a bit out of town into a filthy suburb littered with trash, graffiti, and smog. It pulls up to a club, strobe lights flickering through the door. Grant opens the door of the limo, helping Bex out. The guys hold their elbows out, and the girls loop their arms through theirs. Macey walks ahead of the three fake-couples and up to the door of the club. Her job was to watch Bex, Liz, and Cammie from afar to be sure they were safe throughout the duration of the mission. She runs a hand across the bouncer's broad chest in a flirty move and he opens the door to let her in.

Grant, Bex, Jonas, Liz, Zach, and Cammie get in line for entrance to the club. The line slowly moves forward until Cammie was right in front of the bouncer. She flashes him what she hopes looks like a suggestive smile, and to her relief, he smirks back at her. He opens the door for the six spies and slaps Liz's butt after them. "You have fun, now," he says with a wink to Liz.

Her whole body tenses up and a deep blush lights up her face like the red Christmas lights dangling from the ceiling. Bex grabs Liz's arm and hisses, "You better start acting more like a prostitute and less like a bookworm in order for this mission to work." Then Bex and Grant walk off in the direction of the dance floor. Meanwhile, Liz and Jonas head over to the bar in the center of the club.

Zach puts his hand on Cammie's waist and leads her over to the circular bar, opposite of the side of the bar that Liz and Jonas were at. "Sorry, but you need to get as drunk as you can. Don't worry, I promise nothing will happen to you," he swears. The bartender sets a shot of vodka in front of him and he hands it to Cammie.

She glances at him nervously before downing the shot in one gulp. The liquor burns down her throat and leaves a gross aftertaste, but she grins at him nonetheless. Four shots later, her head was spinning and she was leaning against Zach to keep herself steady.

"Wow, Gallagher Girl, you sure can't hold your liquor," he teases.

"Hey… I'm new to… this," Cammie slurs. Her lips grazed his ear and shivers shot up Zach's spine. He didn't know how she managed to make him this nervous around her, but she did.

"Do you--," Zach begins before Cammie digs her nails into his arm.

"Ohmygod, it's Santa! Why would he come to a club anyway? Shouldn't he be at the mall?" Cammie asks, giggling.

She runs off before Zach even has a chance to stop her. The man wasn't even dressed like Santa; sure, he was sitting in a big red chair with fake presents sitting all around it, a few employees were dressed as elves, but still. He was wearing an unbuttoned red jacket with a tight white wife-beater on underneath. He looks more like a man-whore Santa to me, Zach thinks bitterly.

Cammie waits off to the side, hopping from one leg to the other while another girl in a short dress sits on "Santa's" lap. The elves were shooting unsatisfied looks at each other while "Santa" talks to the young woman. Finally, she hops off his lap and struts off with a smirk on her face. Zach comes up and grabs Cammie's arm. "Listen, I don't think you should go over there," he warns.

"I'm gonna sit on Santa's lap, no matter what!" Cammie replies. "And don't you try to stop me, or I'll scream." Zach rolls his eyes, but lets go of her arm nonetheless, in order to not make a scene. She walks in a wavy line over to "Santa," and the guy looks up at her with interest.

"Hey, come take a seat in Santa's lap," he says smoothly. Cammie half sits, half falls into his lap. He puts one hand high up on her thigh and the other on her back. Zach, watching from a certain distance away, arches his eyebrow and crosses his arms across his chest. "So what's your name?"

"I'm Cammie, but I'm sure you already knew that, Santa," she slurs.

"Of course I did," he assures her. "Now what do you want for Christmas?"

"Uh…"

"You don't remember?"

"Well, I'm not so sure anymore. I already got it."

"Is there anything else you might want?" Santa asks suggestively, slightly increasing his grip on Cammie's thigh. Zach noticed the elves shooting each other impressed looks as they checked Cammie out. His jaw clenched.

"Maybe I do want one more thing for Christmas… But I might not even get it. I guess it just depends on whether or not…," Cammie drifts off, not catching on to "Santa's" suggestiveness. But she doesn't elaborate on what she wants her gift to be.

"I'll let my elves take you back to our workshop, and we'll get you your gift there, okay?" Santa tells her. He shifts Cammie out of his lap, slaps her butt, and she reluctantly gets dragged away by his elves.

"Wait! But my gift isn't in the workshop!" Cammie shouts.

Zach starts weaving through the crowd, following where the elves were taking Cammie. He had an uneasy feeling about all of this. Then, since he wasn't watching where he was going, he accidentally bumps into a waitress. She screams as she spills spiked eggnog all over the floor and her uniform. "Sorry!" Zach calls over his shoulder and keeps moving forward.

But he had lost where the elves had gone.

His feet are frozen to the floor, spinning his gaze around to view the whole club, but Cammie was nowhere to be seen. Fuck, he thinks, I promised I wouldn't let anything happen to her! Somebody grabs Zach's arm and he whips around to glare at them. He relaxes once he sees Macey.

"I saw Cammie being dragged away by two men dressed as elves. They went through that door over there!" Macey tells him, eyes full of concern. Zach turns to where Macey's French-tipped finger was pointing, and he runs toward the door marked 'Employees Only.'

He shoves open the door, which leads to a small room stocked full of boxes of liquor. "Hey!" he hears Cammie exclaim, and starts running towards the direction of her voice. "What the hell are you doing?"

It sounded as if her drunkenness was starting to wear off, which was good. He skids to a stop behind a tall wooden crate and peeks out from behind it to see the two elves tying Cammie to a metal folding chair. One elf reaches out for the zipper of her dress and she lashes out with her teeth, successfully clamping down on his hand with her teeth. He shouts and slaps her across the face. Cammie's head whips to the side, and she kicks her leg out. The high heel digs into the man's leg and he falls to the ground, clutching his shin.

Before the other elf can reach Cammie, Zach runs from behind the crate and pounces on him. He hooks his arm around the elf's neck, capturing him in a head-lock, and shoves him to the ground. His head collides with the concrete floor and he passes out cold. Meanwhile, the other elf is standing up from the ground and running towards Zach's back. "Zach! Watch out!" Cammie warns him.

Zach ducks down and sticks his leg out, tripping the elf, who goes careening into a recycling bin. The sound of shattering glass echoes throughout the warehouse, and the elf's legs hang limply from the recyclables bin. "Are you alright, Cammie?" Zach asks as he goes to untie her.

"Yeah, you got here just in time." The ropes fall to the floor and the stands up, but she trips in her high heels and falls into Zach's arms. "But… I'm still a bit dizzy from those shots," she says sheepishly. Zach smirks at her and they walk back into the club with his hand around her waist.

"You ready to get out of here?" Macey asks once Zach finds her. "Because Liz is puking in the bathroom, and I think Bex is about to start a catfight with the bartender and it's about to get ugly." Macey points over to the bar, where Bex was standing on a barstool, screaming profanities at the bartender, who was kneeling on the bar counter and screaming back. Grant was standing on the floor, next to Bex, trying to persuade her to get off the barstool.

Cammie lets out a tinkling laugh that warms Zach from the inside out, making him smirk wider. She winces and rubs her temples with her forefingers, trying to coax her migraine away. "Yeah, let's get out of here," Zach agrees.

Jonas leads Liz from the bathroom and into the limo along with a complimentary barf bag given to them by the bouncer. It takes all of Macey, Zach, Cammie, and Grant's strength to pry Bex's hands out of the bartender's hair. The bouncer looks menacingly at Bex, and knowing he was about to kick them out, Grant just replies with, "I know, I know, we're leaving." Still, Grant has to carry Bex like a football under his arm just to get her out of the club.

Once everybody was corralled into the limo, Macey announces, "Well, I think it's clear that drugs were slipped into their drinks. What else would get Bex that hostile, Liz that pukey, and Cammie that… um, slutty?"

"Shut up," Cammie groans, "We'll call the police in the morning. But for now, I just don't wanna talk about it." She kicks off her high heels and leans her head into Zach's chest, falling asleep to the sound of Liz hurling into her barf bag.

"So, obviously, guys are better than girls because we don't get taken advantage of," Grant concedes, crossing his arms over his chest with a victorious smirk.

"How do you call getting drunk to investigate a mission being 'taken advantage of'?" Macey says. Her tone hinted that she thought Grant was a little on the crazy side.

"Those freaking elves would have taken advantage of Cammie if Macey couldn't have been able to find me in time," Zach replies bitterly.

Cammie puts a hand on Zach's arm and tells him, "But you did get there in time, so it's fine." Zach just grunts and looks away.

"Actually, guys can be taken advantage of just as well as girls. In fact, there is a respectable percentage of guys who have been raped by girls, or by an older man," Liz announces.

There is an awkward silence until Grant blurts, "How the hell does a guy get raped by a girl?"

Liz rolls her eyes and continues, "Just think about it, Grant. Admittedly, it doesn't happen often, but it is possible. In fact--"

"Bookworm," Macey interrupts, "Can we just let it go? I honestly think not one of us cares about the percentage of male rapes there have been." Liz blushes. "But we're definitely impressed by how much you know."

Everybody murmurs their approval.

"But, Cam, what did you mean when you were telling that Santa dude what you wanted for Christmas?" Grant asks.

Zach immediately looks at her, and she blushes. They smile at each other like they were sharing a hidden secret.

Flashback

Zach walked Cammie back to her room to be sure she wouldn't trip again in her high heels. "Well, thanks for walking me to my room, Zach," she tells him as they stand right by the door.

"No problem." Cammie twists the doorknob, and he says, "Wait, Gallagher Girl." She turns back around and he sticks his hands in his pockets. "So… What did you mean when you told that guy what you wanted for Christmas?"

"I thought you already knew everything," Cammie teases him. Zach smirks as he waits for her answer. "Well… God, it's kinda embarrassing."

"Please?" Zach begs, which was rare for him, but he knew it would make her confess.

She looks at the ground as her cheeks blush a deep red. "I, um, wanted to be kissed… on Christmas… for my present," she admits. Zach smirks and just watches her until she finally looks up at him. "Well? Are you going to say something, or just stand there and make me feel like a retard?"

Suddenly, the grandfather clock down the hallway chimes twelve times, signaling the end of Christmas Eve and the beginning of Christmas. The deep booming reverberated so loud that Zach had to step closer to Cammie for her to hear him.

"You never were patient, Gallagher Girl," Zach whispers, brushing his fingers along her cheek, "I was waiting for Christmas… for this."

He leans down and gives her a deep kiss that makes her knees weak. She leans against his chest for stability, and he puts his hands on her back. Cammie slowly raises her arms and winds them around her shoulder. Zach deepens the kiss, and she smiles.

End of Flashback

"Do I even want to know?" Grant asks.

"Probably not," Cammie and Zach say simultaneously, ginning at each other.

(Author's Note: Holy crap, you guys, I am sooo running out of ideas. Actually, I have plenty of ideas, I just don't know how to incorporate them into a story. Which is why this chapter took so long. Sorry bout that… This was a reallllly late Christmas-themed story, even though Christmas is long gone. That just shows how much of a procrastinator I am. And just so you all know, there is no definite end to this story. It will last forever until I ultimately have no ideas left. But whenever I have an idea, I WILL update. Promise. Merry Christmas!)