a/n; i’m so back? lol.. i’m sorry for being gone for like forever? i was just waiting for the summer mostly so i can spam post and also.. school.. ugh school. but i’m back really. and since i want to easeee back in.. here’s something so short to please people. i hope you guys enjoy this :) leave any feedback or commentary i love it.
wc; 775
characters used: gary smith from bully (2006) video game.
—
english class let out with the usual scraping of chairs and groaning students, the whole room spilling noise into the hallway like somebody had kicked over a bucket. you held your books close against your chest and stepped carefully into the crowd, your milky-white eyes pointed forward even though the world stayed soft and pale around the edges.
you knew bullworth by sound more than sight now. the stampede of boys shoving each other near the lockers, the girls laughing by the stairs, the old floorboards complaining under too many shoes. you were used to it after a year, even if your parents sending their legally blind daughter to bullworth still felt like one of the worst ideas ever cooked up by adults with too much confidence.
“hey,” jimmy hopkins said, falling into step beside you. “gary’s looking for you.”
you stopped. “gary always looking for somebody. what he want?”
“wouldn’t say,” jimmy muttered. “probably something stupid.”
that made you smile a little, because gary smith was usually something stupid and dangerous dressed in a bullworth sweater vest. he teased you constantly, called your stubbornness “impressive for someone navigating life through fog,” and acted like helping you across campus was some grand burden placed on his genius. but he was never cruel to you. not really. when the hallways got too crowded, he moved people out of your way. when somebody tried waving a hand in front of your face, he made sure they regretted it.
outside, you tried finding him quickly, your shoes tapping over stone as you tilted your head, listening for his voice. nothing. just wind, shouting, and a football bouncing somewhere in the distance.
then a hand gently touched your arm.
“it’s pete,” he said softly. “gary told me to bring you.”
“why he ain’t just tell me where he was?”
pete sighed. “because he’s gary.”
that answer was painfully fair.
pete led you across the grass, past the sharp scent of mud and old bleachers. when the air opened wider, you could tell you were near the football field. the metal seats creaked in the wind, and somewhere nearby, someone shifted their weight like they were trying not to be heard.
“peter,” gary’s voice cut in, smooth and annoyed, “your services are no longer required. go hover somewhere else like a nervous little ghost.”
pete let go of your arm. “good luck,” he whispered, then hurried off.
you turned toward gary’s voice. “you dragged me behind the bleachers? what is wrong with you?”
“many things, apparently,” gary said. “but today, i’m being charitable.”
he sounded close. too close to be casual, but not close enough for you to touch. you heard him exhale, irritated, like whatever he was about to do offended him personally.
“we’ve been together for a while,” he said. “long enough that people have started assuming i’ve gone soft, which is insulting. i haven’t. i’m still terrifying.”
“mhm.”
“don’t patronize me.”
“then keep talking.”
there was a pause. for once, gary didn’t immediately snap back. you heard fabric shift, then the faint rustle of paper, stems, maybe flowers. his voice lowered, still trying hard to sound bored.
“prom is coming up. and before you say anything ridiculous, yes, i know it’s sentimental. yes, i know this is unnecessary. and yes, pete and hopkins insisted i do something normal instead of simply telling you that you were going with me.”
your brow furrowed. “gary?”
you reached forward carefully. your fingers met his shoulder lower than expected, then his cheek, then the soft edge of his dark hair. he was kneeling.
your breath caught.
“so,” he said, quieter now, “will you be my prom date?”
your hand moved down and brushed flowers, then a small box. your throat tightened so fast it hurt.
“you on your knees?” you whispered.
“tragically.”
“with flowers?”
“don’t get dramatic.”
“and a ring?”
“a promise ring,” he corrected quickly. “not a marriage proposal. don’t start planning my funeral.”
you laughed, but it broke into a tiny sob. you nodded hard, wiping at your face. “yeah. of course, gary.”
he stood fast, like he could escape the softness by moving quickly, and pressed the flowers into your hands. “good. excellent. this never happened.
behind the bleachers, someone slipped. pete yelped, jimmy cursed, and both of them crashed into the metal with a loud, guilty clang.
gary went silent.
then he hissed, “i’m surrounded by scum.”
you laughed again, holding the flowers close while gary, embarrassed and furious, still kept one hand steady at your back.
—
Please keep the requests coming :) I’m getting to everyone now that I’m free.. well not free but I’m definitely back. Please let me know how you felt about this one and I hope everyone has a great day/night :)
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Omg I love your most recent fic so much!!! You’re such a talented writer. If it isn’t too much to ask, would you be willing to write a Gary x reader?
Let’s say Gary and reader are both very competitive and are at each other throats all the time but in a loving somewhat healthy way. Like how Gary has manipulative tendencies and such let’s say so does reader. And one day of tension (sexual tension if you’re comfortable with that 👀👀) they both have a little spat and ultimately have a hot makeout session where they get over it and are back to normal and having that competitive nature.
I’d be so honored if you wrote this, have a great day!! 😋
𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐙𝐄
syn; when you and gary run against each other for student union president, your rivalry turns personal during a public debate, exposing insecurities beneath your constant power games.
wc; 6.2k
characters used; gary smith from bully (2006) video game.
a/n; this one will probably disturb some people and i’m sorry. if we can do it for my hero academia, we can do it for bully as well. if it does cause such an uproar, i will not write anymore like this or even post them anymore! anyways, love the requests coming in :) please keep em coming. most of the requests are ones i already have in my notes, so i can pump these out for you guys. uhhhhh.. anyways, please leave any feedback, commentary, constructive criticism, or any suggestions what i should write next! enjoy & byeeee!
warnings; AGED UP CHARACTERS! if you do not believe in this and still see the characters as minors regardless of the situation, please just move along — sexual content, university au.
gary smith loved games.
not the easy ones, not the ones with neat rules and soft-edged prizes. he liked games with pressure points. games where people smiled with their teeth hidden. games where every compliment could become a knife if held at the correct angle.
you loved those games too.
that was the problem.
or the solution, depending on which one of you was winning.
bullworth university had never known what to do with the two of you. separately, you were a headache. together, you were a sealed jar full of live wires. gary, all slender posture and clean cruelty, moved through campus like he had already bought the bricks and was waiting for everyone else to notice. he still wore sweater vests too often, teal whenever he could get away with it, a little too polished for a man who claimed not to care what anyone thought. his brown hair stayed parted with insulting precision, and the scar over his right eye made every smirk look more deliberate than it already was.
you were no easier. you liked being underestimated until it became useful. you liked people thinking gary was the dangerous one, as if you had not learned to smile in committee meetings while sliding the entire room three inches closer to your side. you knew how to speak sweetly and leave bruises on someone’s pride. you knew how to make gary laugh under his breath, that low, private sound that meant he had seen the trick and respected the hand.
your relationship had been built out of arguments, late-night strategy, and the strange tenderness of two people who did not know how to put their weapons down, only how to stop aiming them at anything vital.
you loved him. he loved you.
neither of you made it simple.
the student union election was supposed to be harmless. at least, that was what the administration kept saying, which meant they had not been paying attention. bullworth’s student union controlled funding for clubs, priority bookings for facilities, campus event approvals, and access to the kind of soft power gary treated like oxygen.
he wanted president.
so did you.
“you realize,” gary said one morning, leaning against your kitchen counter with a mug in one hand and his phone in the other, “this is going to be humiliating for you.”
you did not look up from your laptop. “you realize you’re in my apartment eating my cereal while threatening me?”
“it is our apartment on weekends,” he said.
“you do not live here.”
“emotionally, i do.”
you glanced at him then. he was wearing grey slacks and a white shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms, silver watch flashing when he lifted the mug. the brown leather band on his other wrist was worn at the edges. he looked too composed for eight in the morning. smugness sat on him like cologne.
“emotionally,” you said, “you are evicted.”
gary clicked his tongue. “cold. unimaginative. not your strongest work.”
“you gonna keep talking, or are you gonna tell me why three members of the debate society suddenly think i’m dropping out?”
his eyes warmed with amusement. not guilt. gary did not do guilt unless cornered beautifully. “rumors are ghastly things.”
“gary.”
“yes?”
“don’t play with me.”
he smiled into his mug. “i wouldn’t dream of it.”
you stood, slow enough to make a point, and walked over to him. he watched you come with the lazy alertness of a cat watching a bird land too close. you took the mug from his hand, set it beside him, and straightened the collar of his shirt with gentle fingers.
he stilled.
you smiled up at him. “you’re mad because i got the athletes’ council first.”
“i’m not mad.”
“you’re so mad.”
“i’m impressed,” he said. “there is a difference.”
“then say congratulations.”
his mouth curved. “congratulations on building a temporary coalition out of vanity, poor reading comprehension, and protein powder.”
“thank you.”
“it will collapse by friday.”
“because you’re going to make it collapse?”
“because it deserves to.”
you leaned closer. “you touch my coalition, i touch your donor dinner.”
that got his attention.
his eyes narrowed, brown and bright, the scar over his right eye shifting with the change in his expression. “you wouldn’t.”
“i would.”
“you don’t even know who’s attending.”
“you sure about that?”
for a second, there was nothing between you but the soft hum of the refrigerator and the small, delighted fury that kept dragging you both back to each other. gary looked at your mouth. you looked at his. neither of you moved.
then he laughed once, quiet and sharp.
“there she is,” he said.
you pushed his chest lightly. “get out. i have class.”
“you have class at eleven.”
“and i need time to pray on your downfall.”
“try not to bore god.”
he kissed your cheek on the way out, sweet as poison, and left you standing in the kitchen with your pulse misbehaving.
by thursday, he had touched your coalition.
by friday, you had touched his donor dinner.
not ruined it. that would have been vulgar. you were not wasteful. you simply arranged for the keynote speaker, a wealthy alumnus with a fondness for moral panic, to receive a copy of gary’s old proposal titled “centralized influence model: why democracy slows functional leadership.”
gary had written it as a joke. mostly.
the alumnus did not laugh.
you watched from the back of the banquet hall while gary stood under warm lights, teal sweater vest neat beneath his blazer, expression smooth as glass while the man asked whether he believed student government should “serve the campus community or control it.”
gary’s eyes found you in the crowd.
you lifted your glass of water.
his smile was microscopic.
the next morning, your phone buzzed at 6:14.
gary: that was childish.
you: and effective.
gary: not as effective as you think.
you: you mad.
gary: i’m going to make you regret learning my habits.
you: come over and say that.
gary: i have a meeting.
you: scared.
gary: wear the black skirt today.
you stared at the message longer than you meant to.
then you rolled your eyes and typed back.
you: worry about your campaign, smith.
but you wore the black skirt.
that was the other problem. the tension never stayed clean. it never stayed only political or academic or romantic. with gary, everything blurred until the argument became foreplay, until every public disagreement had a private echo. he could make your blood heat with one look across a lecture hall. you could make him lose his place mid-sentence by crossing your legs and smiling like you had a secret.
you were both terrible.
you were both having the time of your lives.
the final debate took place in the athletics center because the actual auditorium had flooded after a maintenance failure. the irony was ugly and perfect. rows of folding chairs stretched across the polished gym floor, packed with students, faculty, club leaders, and people who only came because they had heard you and gary might publicly destroy each other.
they were not wrong.
gary stood at his podium with his hands folded, posture relaxed, eyes half-lidded. he looked bored, which meant he was delighted. you stood opposite him in the black skirt and a fitted blouse, your notes arranged in perfect order, your face calm enough to be insulting.
the moderator asked about transparency.
gary answered first.
“transparency is often demanded by people who would not know what to do with information if it bit them,” he said smoothly. a few people laughed. “but yes, in theory, i support it. student leadership should be clear, efficient, and accountable.”
you tilted your head. “efficient. that’s a pretty word for centralized.”
he looked at you. “and centralized is a frightening word for organized.”
“organized under who?”
“someone competent.”
“and you think that’s you?”
gary smiled. “i think the room knows it is.”
a murmur moved through the audience.
you let it breathe. then you stepped closer to your mic. “gary is very good at making people feel selected. special. useful. he’ll learn your insecurity in ten minutes and hand it back to you gift-wrapped as ambition. that is a skill, sure. but leadership is not the same as collecting people like keys.”
his expression did not change, but something in his eyes sharpened.
you continued, voice even. “i don’t want to run the campus like a private little empire. i want people to know where their money goes, who makes decisions, and what happens behind closed doors before it turns into another pretty speech.”
gary’s fingers tapped once against the podium.
you had him.
not beaten, exactly. gary did not break that easily. but you had struck the tender place beneath the vanity, the thing he guarded with sarcasm and strategy. the fear that everyone saw him as a problem to manage, a brilliant little monster in a sweater vest.
for a moment, you almost regretted it.
then he leaned into his mic.
“charming,” he said. “she makes accountability sound almost romantic. unfortunately, passion does not balance budgets. neither does moral theater.”
“neither does manipulation.”
“no,” he said softly. “but it gets people to tell the truth faster.”
the room went tense.
your smile held. “you would know.”
his gaze dropped to your mouth, fast enough that only you would catch it. “yes,” he said. “i would.”
you won by twelve votes.
twelve.
not a landslide. not a humiliation. enough to hurt him. enough to make your hands shake in the bathroom afterward while you pretended you were only fixing your lipstick.
you heard the door open behind you.
you did not turn around.
gary’s reflection appeared in the mirror. he had taken off his blazer. his shirt sleeves were rolled, teal vest still fitted close to his narrow torso, hair barely disturbed. only his eyes gave him away. bright, restless, fixed on you.
“congratulations,” he said.
you capped your lipstick. “that sounded painful.”
“it was.”
“you’ll live.”
“unfortunately for your administration.”
you laughed, but it came out thinner than you wanted. “you followed me into the women’s bathroom to concede?”
“no one else is in here.”
“that was not the point.”
“i followed you,” he said, stepping closer, “because you lied.”
you turned. “excuse me?”
“during the debate. you said you didn’t want an empire.”
“i don’t.”
“liar.”
you folded your arms. “you don’t know what i want.”
gary’s smile went mean. “i know exactly what you want. you want the crown, you just don’t want to admit you like the weight of it. you want to beat me and still be the good one. you want my tricks with cleaner hands.”
your face warmed. “and you want everyone scared enough to call you capable.”
his smile vanished.
there it was. the hit.
the silence after it was too heavy for the fluorescent bathroom lights, too ugly for the scent of soap and floor cleaner. gary looked at you like you had reached into his chest and moved something half an inch to the left.
“careful,” he said.
“or what?”
“or you’ll start sounding like someone who thinks she’s better than me.”
you stepped closer. “i am better than you.”
his eyes flashed.
“at winning, apparently,” you added.
he laughed once, with no humor. “there it is. vicious girl.”
“don’t act brand new. you like me vicious.”
“i like you honest.”
“no, you like me when i’m useful.”
the words left your mouth before you could dress them up. they landed harder than you expected.
gary stared at you.
for once, he did not answer immediately.
your throat tightened, anger and something softer tangling until you hated both of them. “that’s what this is, right? i’m fun when i’m your equal, adorable when i’m your accomplice, but the second i beat you, suddenly i’m dishonest.”
“that is not what i said.”
“but it’s what you do.”
his jaw flexed. “you think i don’t know when you’re trying to provoke me?”
“good. then be provoked.”
“you want a fight because you’re nervous.”
“i want a fight because you’re being a sore loser.”
“i’m being remarkably generous.”
“you followed me into a bathroom to psychoanalyze me.”
“someone has to.”
“boy, bye.”
you moved to brush past him, but he caught your wrist. not hard. just enough.
your pulse kicked.
gary noticed. of course he did. nothing escaped him, especially not you.
his thumb moved once over the inside of your wrist. the smallest touch. infuriating. intimate.
“you know,” he said quietly, “if i thought you were useful, i would have let you win sooner.”
you looked up at him.
his face was close now. close enough to see the faint shadow beneath his eyes, the tension at the corner of his mouth, the scar pale under the harsh light. he was still angry. so were you. but under it was that familiar pull, the one neither of you had ever been sensible enough to resist.
“that supposed to be sweet?” you asked.
“for me, yes.”
“terrible work.”
“i know.”
his gaze lowered again.
you should have left. he should have let go. both of you should have behaved like adults with titles and responsibilities and an entire campus waiting outside.
instead, you stepped into him and kissed him hard enough to make him hit the sink behind him.
gary’s hand went to your hair immediately, fingers sliding in at the roots, gripping just tight enough to make your mouth open against his. he kissed like he argued, mean and precise, always looking for the place you would give. you caught his lower lip between your teeth and he made a rough sound low in his throat.
“cheap tactic,” he murmured against your mouth.
“you folding?”
“never.”
he turned you, pressing you back against the counter, and kissed you again. the edge dug into your hips. his body pinned yours, all lean heat and controlled impatience. you could feel him hard against you already, and the knowledge went straight through you, bright and shameless.
you tugged at his vest. “you are so mad.”
“furious,” he said, kissing down your jaw.
“because i won.”
“because you wore the skirt.”
you laughed, breathless. “you told me to.”
“and you listened.” his teeth grazed your neck. “obedient when it suits you.”
“don’t get comfortable.”
“i never do.”
a noise came from the hall, voices passing too close, and you both froze. gary lifted his head, eyes narrowed toward the door. the voices faded.
you exhaled.
he looked back at you, and the danger in his expression shifted into something more wicked. “locker rooms.”
“what?”
“they’re empty. everyone’s still in the gym pretending to care about democracy.”
“you are ridiculous.”
“and you are wet.”
your breath caught.
his smile returned, smug and sharp. “am i wrong?”
“you talk too much.”
“that has never stopped you from making a mess for me.”
you shoved at his chest, but he caught your hand and kissed your knuckles, soft enough to make the roughness worse. then he pulled you out through the side door and down the hall toward the locker rooms, both of you moving fast, trying not to look like you were moving fast.
the women’s locker room was empty, all pale tile and metal lockers, the air cool with the faint smell of soap, rubber mats, and chlorine from the pool beyond the wall. the overhead lights buzzed. somewhere far away, the crowd in the gym erupted into muffled applause.
gary locked the door behind you.
the click sounded final.
you turned to face him.
for half a second, neither of you moved. the room felt too large around you, too quiet. then gary crossed the space in three strides and took your face in both hands, kissing you so fiercely your back hit the lockers with a metallic bang.
“you absolute nightmare,” he said against your mouth.
you grabbed his belt. “you love it.”
“tragically.”
“say i won.”
his hand slid into your hair and pulled your head back. not cruel, but firm enough to make your knees loosen. “you won.”
your lips parted.
he leaned close, mouth brushing your ear. “and now i’m going to make you useless.”
the words melted through you.
you tried to answer, but he kissed you again, swallowing whatever smart thing you had left. his tongue slid against yours, slow and filthy, his hips pushing you into the lockers. your fingers fumbled with his belt, but he caught both your wrists and pinned them above your head with one hand.
“impatient,” he said.
“gary.”
“that’s not an argument.”
“i need you.”
his eyes darkened. “there. was that so difficult?”
“you’re such an ass.”
“and yet.”
his free hand slipped under your skirt, pushing it up your thighs. when his fingers found the damp heat between your legs through your underwear, his smile turned viciously pleased.
“look at that,” he murmured. “student body president, already soaking in a locker room because her sore loser boyfriend touched her.”
“you are so full of yourself.”
“yes.”
he pushed your underwear aside and dragged two fingers through you, slow enough to be mean. your head hit the locker behind you, a soft, helpless sound leaving your mouth before you could stop it. gary watched your face like he was studying evidence.
“that one was pretty,” he said. “do it again.”
“shut up.”
he pressed his thumb to your clit.
your moan broke higher this time, thin at the edges, and his grip on your wrists tightened.
“there she is,” he whispered. “all that attitude, and your body tells on you immediately.”
you twisted against him, needing more pressure, more friction, more of him. “gary, please.”
“please what?”
“don’t make me beg.”
“but you’re so good at it when your brain starts turning soft.”
your cheeks burned, but the heat only made it worse. he knew exactly how to talk to you, exactly how to make humiliation feel like a hand around your waist, pulling you closer instead of pushing you away. his fingers moved with awful patience, circling, dipping, teasing your entrance without giving you what you wanted.
you moaned again, louder, and he glanced toward the locked door.
“careful,” he said. “unless you want the entire athletics department to know how sweetly you fall apart.”
“you started this.”
“i start many things. you’re the one dripping down my fingers.”
he released your wrists only to grab your hips and turn you around. your palms hit the lockers. the metal was cool under your hands. he stood close behind you, his breath at your neck, one hand gathering your hair.
“why are you turning me around?” you asked, voice unsteady.
his lips brushed your ear. “because if i look at your face right now, i’ll forgive you too quickly.”
your stomach dipped.
“and i am still very annoyed with you,” he added.
“you poor thing.”
his palm landed on your ass with a sharp smack.
you gasped, hips jerking back.
gary hummed. “try again.”
you swallowed. “you hit like you debate.”
another smack, harder. the sting bloomed warm through your skin.
“precise?” he asked.
“dramatic.”
he laughed, low and real, and for a second the tenderness slipped through the teeth of it. then his hand slid up your spine, pressing you forward until your cheek nearly touched the locker. his other hand dragged your underwear down your thighs.
you heard his belt come loose.
that sound did something humiliating to you. your body responded before your mind could catch up, thighs trembling, back arching. gary noticed. he always noticed.
“you like knowing what’s coming,” he said. “that little hitch in your breathing gives you away every time.”
“gary, quit teasing.”
“no.”
you looked back over your shoulder, but he caught your jaw and turned your face forward again.
“i said i don’t want to see your face yet,” he murmured. “you’ll make those eyes at me, and then i’ll be kind.”
“maybe i want you kind.”
his hand slid to your throat, fingers resting along the sides, steady and careful. not enough to steal your breath. enough to hold you in place, to make every nerve in your body pay attention.
“liar,” he said.
then he pushed into you.
your mouth fell open on a broken moan.
gary was big enough that even familiar sex could still shock you at first, stretching you with a deep, heavy pressure that made your thoughts scatter. he did not rush the first thrust. that was the cruelest part. he gave you every inch slowly, letting you feel him fill you until your knees nearly gave.
“there,” he breathed, voice rough now. “that’s what you needed, isn’t it?”
you pressed your palms harder to the lockers. “yes.”
“yes what?”
“yes, gary.”
“much better.”
he pulled back and drove into you again, harder. the sound punched out of you, helpless and wet. he groaned behind you, his grip tightening in your hair.
“god, you take me so well when you stop trying to be clever.”
“i can still be clever.”
“not for long.”
he set a rough pace, deep strokes that pushed your body into the lockers each time. the metal rattled softly, a dangerous little rhythm underneath your moans and his breathing. every thrust felt too deep, too good, dragging over places inside you that made your thighs shake and your mind blur at the edges.
gary’s mouth stayed close to your ear.
“listen to yourself,” he said. “all those pretty, pathetic sounds. anyone would think i’d beaten the sense right out of you.”
you tried to snap back, but he angled his hips and hit something that made your voice crack.
“that’s it,” he said, smugness thick in his voice. “there it goes.”
your brain went fuzzy, pleasure rising too fast to organize. you hated how much he loved it. you loved how much he knew you. the familiarity of him made it worse, the exact pressure of his fingers, the rhythm of his hips, the way he pulled your hair when your body tried to fold. he knew when to be mean and when to steady you. he knew when your sounds turned too desperate and when they meant more.
his palm struck your ass again, then soothed over the sting.
“you were so proud earlier,” he said. “standing there with your little speech, making everyone clap for you. and now look at you.”
“gary,” you whimpered.
“no, no. don’t hide. you wanted to win. now take your prize.”
your eyes watered from the force of it, from the pressure building low and tight, from the way he filled you so completely you could barely breathe around the pleasure. not pain. not fear. just too much of him, too much heat, too much friction, too much gary in your ear sounding like he owned every reaction he pulled from you.
a tear slipped down your cheek.
he saw it when he leaned over your shoulder.
“already?” he murmured, softer and meaner at once. “my poor crybaby. i haven’t even finished being unfair.”
“feels too good,” you said, the words barely shaped.
“i know.”
his fingers left your throat and slid to your mouth. “open.”
you obeyed before you could think better of it.
he pressed two fingers onto your tongue, and you sucked them in with a small, needy sound. his pace stuttered for the first time.
“filthy girl,” he said, voice dropping. “you act like you were made to ruin my plans.”
you moaned around his fingers.
he pulled them free, slick with your mouth, and brought them down between your legs. the first tight circle over your clit made your whole body jerk.
“no running,” he warned, gripping your hip.
“i’m not.”
“you are. badly.”
“i can’t, gary, i’m close.”
“i know. i can feel you getting stupid around me.”
your nails scraped the locker. the pleasure sharpened, hot and unbearable, every thrust driving you closer while his fingers worked your clit in ruthless little circles. your moans turned messy, high, almost sobbed. you could not make them pretty. you could not make yourself composed. gary had taken that from you and sounded disgustingly pleased about it.
“that’s my girl,” he said. “come on. let me hear how badly you needed me after pretending you were above all this.”
“i never pretended that.”
“you did. you’re just a bad liar when you’re full of me.”
his hand left your hip for a second. he gripped your jaw, turned your face slightly, and gathered spit in his mouth. your body clenched before he even did it.
he let it fall onto your tongue, intimate and obscene, then kissed the corner of your mouth before turning you forward again.
“swallow.”
you did.
his groan was rough enough to make you tremble.
“good girl.”
that broke you.
your orgasm hit hard, tearing through you in hot waves until your knees buckled and gary had to hold you up. you cried out, voice shaking, body clamping down around him so tightly he cursed under his breath. his thrusts grew rougher, deeper, less controlled, each one dragging the pleasure out until you were nearly sobbing with it.
“there you go,” he said, breathless now. “that’s it. make a mess of yourself. let everyone out there think their new president is composed.”
“gary, please, please.”
“please what? use your words.”
“too much.”
he slowed immediately, just enough, one hand smoothing over your hip. “still with me?”
you nodded quickly, breath ragged.
“good,” he murmured, kissing your shoulder. “then take a little more.”
the softness vanished back under heat. he pulled your hips to meet him, fucking into you with deep, punishing strokes that made your oversensitive body jolt. you whimpered his name, tears drying on your cheeks, pleasure turning syrupy and dumb. you could feel how close he was in the roughness of his breath, the way his fingers dug into your waist, the way his insults frayed at the edges.
“you drive me insane,” he said. “do you understand that? walking around with that mouth, that mind, that perfect little body, thinking i won’t want to bend you over the nearest surface every time you outsmart me.”
“you love when i outsmart you.”
“i love correcting you afterward.”
“you didn’t correct anything.”
he gave a short, breathless laugh and smacked your ass again. “still talking. impressive.”
“you like that too.”
“unfortunately.”
his pace faltered. he leaned over you, chest against your back, mouth at your neck. for one second he held there, buried deep, breathing hard, almost tender.
then he pulled out, turned you around, and lifted you onto the narrow bench between the lockers.
you blinked at him, dazed. “you said you didn’t want to see my face.”
gary spread your thighs and stepped between them, eyes dark and wild. “i changed my mind.”
“because you forgave me?”
“because you look ruined.”
your laugh came out weak. “mean.”
“accurate.”
he pushed back into you in one hard stroke. you clung to his shoulders, nails digging into his shirt. this angle made everything closer, hotter, his face inches from yours now, his scar, his parted hair falling slightly out of place, his mouth open with the effort of holding back.
he kissed you, filthy and deep, swallowing your broken little moans while he fucked you against the bench. it was rougher now because both of you were running out of time, because the event would end, because someone might knock, because neither of you had ever been good at moderation.
his hand returned to your throat, careful pressure, familiar weight. your body melted.
“look at you,” he whispered. “so sweet when you can’t think.”
“i can think.”
“what’s my name?”
you opened your mouth.
nothing came out except a moan.
his smile was pure evil. “devastating.”
“shut up.”
“she returns.”
“i hate you.”
“no, you don’t.”
“a little.”
“fair.”
then his fingers found your clit again, and any remaining argument vanished. you grabbed his wrist, not to stop him, just to hold on. he watched your face this time, and the intensity of it made you feel naked beyond your clothes shoved out of place and your skirt bunched at your waist.
“give me one more,” he said.
you shook your head. “i can’t.”
“you can.”
“gary.”
“you can, because i know you.” his voice dipped, less cruel now, more certain. “and because you like when i ask too much.”
your chest tightened around something dangerously close to affection.
he kissed you again, slower for three seconds, and then his hips snapped forward just right. the pleasure gathered again, impossible and bright. your body shook with it. your moans turned soft and broken, little cries that made his composure crack.
“that’s it,” he said. “that’s my gorgeous, vicious girl. come for me.”
you did, shuddering against him, arms locked around his neck, face pressed into his shoulder as the second orgasm rolled through you softer but deeper, leaving you boneless and trembling.
gary followed a few strokes later, burying himself deep with a low, strained groan. his hands gripped your hips hard enough to anchor himself, his forehead dropping to your shoulder. for once, he had nothing clever to say.
the silence afterward was enormous.
only your breathing filled it. yours unsteady, his uneven against your neck. the locker room lights buzzed overhead. somewhere outside, a door opened and closed in the hall, distant enough not to matter.
gary lifted his head first.
his hair was mussed. his collar was crooked. his cheeks were faintly flushed. he looked beautiful in the most irritating way possible.
you stared at him.
he stared back.
then he said, “twelve votes is not a mandate.”
you burst out laughing.
he looked pleased with himself, but only a little, because he was still inside you and trying to pretend that did not make him soft around the eyes.
“you are unbelievable,” you said.
“and yet elected president’s consort.”
“do not call yourself that.”
“first gentleman?”
“gary.”
“shadow cabinet?”
you smacked his chest, and he caught your hand, kissing your fingers with that same almost-secret tenderness from earlier.
the laughter faded.
he eased out of you carefully, watching your face for the smallest sign of discomfort. then he crouched to pull your underwear back up your legs, his hands gentler now, smoothing your skirt down with unnecessary precision. the shift always got to you, how easily he moved from cruel mouth to careful hands. how he could tear your composure apart and then put your blouse back in order button by button.
“you okay?” he asked, quiet enough that it was not a performance.
you nodded. “yeah.”
“sore?”
“maybe.”
his mouth twitched. “good maybe or bad maybe?”
“good maybe.”
“excellent.”
you rolled your eyes, but your smile betrayed you.
he stood and tucked himself away, fixing his belt, then leaned over to grab paper towels from the dispenser by the sinks. he dampened a few and cleaned you up with a focus that would have looked clinical on anyone else. on gary, it was devotion pretending to be efficiency.
you watched him. “you really were mad.”
“yes.”
“because i won?”
he paused.
for a second, the locker room version of him, flushed and smug and half-undone, gave way to something younger around the eyes. something wary.
“because you were right,” he said.
you didn't make a joke.
he threw the paper towel away and came back to stand between your knees. “i do collect people like keys. sometimes.”
“gary.”
“don’t comfort me. it will make us both worse.”
you reached up and straightened his vest anyway. “i was not being better than you.”
“you sounded like it.”
“i was hurt.”
his gaze flicked over your face. “i know.”
“do you?”
“yes.” his jaw tightened. “and i hated that too.”
you slid your hands down to his waist. “you make it hard to tell when you’re loving me or recruiting me.”
the words were soft, but they hit.
gary looked away, toward the lockers, then back. “i am not recruiting you.”
“good.”
“you would be impossible to manage.”
“damn right.”
his smile returned, smaller this time. “and i love you.”
your chest went still.
gary said it like an admission under duress, like the words had been dragged from a locked room. he was not careless with them. not because he did not feel them, but because feeling anything without strategy made him suspicious of the floor beneath his feet.
you touched his scar with your thumb, light as breath.
“i love you too,” you said.
he closed his eyes for half a second. then opened them with a faint grimace. “vile. now i’m sentimental in a locker room.”
“you’ll survive.”
“barely.”
you pulled him down and kissed him. this one was slower, soft at the edges, the kind of kiss neither of you would have risked in the middle of a fight. his hands settled at your waist. yours slid into his hair, ruining the part completely.
when you pulled back, he looked personally offended.
“my hair.”
“your empire will recover.”
“you are abusing your power already.”
“get used to it.”
outside, the crowd noise had thinned. the election night event was ending. people would be looking for you soon. someone would want a speech, a photograph, a quote for the campus paper. you should have been nervous.
instead, you sat on a locker room bench with your thighs still trembling and gary smith standing between them, trying to restore his dignity while wearing your lipstick at the corner of his mouth.
you reached up and wiped it away.
he caught your wrist and kissed your palm.
“for the record,” he said, “your campaign was ruthless.”
“thank you.”
“reckless in places.”
“gary.”
“but inspired.”
you smiled. “that almost sounded like respect.”
“don’t get greedy.”
“too late.”
his eyes warmed. “yes. i noticed.”
you hopped off the bench, legs a little unsteady. he noticed that too and looked far too proud of himself.
“wipe that look off your face,” you said.
“which look?”
“the one where you think you did something.”
“i did several things.”
“and still lost.”
gary’s smile sharpened. there he was again, fully returned, smug and brilliant and awful. “temporary outcome.”
“you gonna challenge the results?”
“no,” he said, opening the locker room door a crack to check the hall. “i’m going to make myself indispensable.”
“to the student union?”
“to you.”
you paused.
he looked back at you, expression too innocent to be trusted. “politically, of course.”
“of course.”
“emotionally, i am already a structural necessity.”
“you are a structural problem.”
“same thing, if you’re unimaginative.”
you stepped past him into the hall. “come on, first gentleman.”
he made a pained sound. “absolutely not.”
“shadow cabinet?”
“better.”
“assistant to the president?”
“you are trying to arouse my resentment.”
“is it working?”
he leaned close as you walked, voice dropping beside your ear. “after what just happened, i would be careful with what you manage to arouse.”
your face heated, but you kept walking. “you talk real bold for a man who lost by twelve votes.”
“and you walk very confidently for someone whose knees nearly gave out ten minutes ago.”
“i hate you.”
“a little,” he said.
you glanced at him.
he smiled.
the gym doors waited at the end of the hall, bright with noise and fluorescent light. beyond them, campus expected you to emerge composed, victorious, clean of any evidence that your fiercest rival and boyfriend had just ruined you against a row of lockers and then kissed your hands like he had something to atone for.
you reached for the handle.
gary’s hand covered yours before you could open it.
“one more thing,” he said.
you looked at him. “what now?”
his expression softened only in the places strangers never knew how to read. “you were good tonight.”
your throat tightened.
he added, “annoyingly good.”
there it was. love, dressed in teeth.
you smiled. “thank you.”
“however, your transition on the facilities budget lacked menace.”
“i’ll work on it.”
“i’ll help.”
“you’ll sabotage.”
“i contain multitudes.”
you opened the door.
applause and chatter spilled over you. heads turned. someone called your name. someone else asked for a picture. the campus paper reporter started pushing through the crowd with a recorder already in hand.
gary stepped beside you, composed again, hair imperfect only if someone knew him well enough to notice. his hand brushed the small of your back, a private claim hidden beneath public manners.
the reporter reached you first. “how does it feel to win?”
you smiled, bright and sweet.
then you glanced at gary.
he raised one brow.
you looked back at the reporter and said, “like the beginning.”
gary laughed under his breath.
behind your smile, your mind was already moving. appointments. committees. funding. retaliation. dinner. maybe another argument before midnight if he behaved poorly, which he would, because he was gary and could not help turning every room into a board he intended to own.
your hand found his behind your back. his fingers laced with yours immediately.
a loving thing.
a dangerous thing.
a promise with teeth.
We can tell it's my first time this was one of my first time writing smut???? I know its so lackluster, but sadly that's not my strong in writing.. sooooo that's why you will see less of these. Hope you enjoyed this :)
oh my god your fic is fucking amazing holy fucking shit. i would literally do anything to write half as good as you, that was so amazing. oh my god. the way you described, your blocking is FANTASTIC. AND YOUR CALLBACKS WERE SOOOO GOOD. THEYRE BOTH SO WITTY. the way they talked felt like the nicest game of back and forth omfg.
i would kill for a jimmy x reader but write whatever u want bro bc i don’t like gary but that fic basically made me fall in love with him.
𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐘 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒
syn; jimmy gets jealous after seeing you laughing with another boy at bullworth and turns it into a public attitude problem instead of admitting he feels insecure.
wc; 6.9k
characters used; jimmy hopkins from bully (2006) video game.
a/n; second post & it’s a request! i love requests. i’ve had this in my notes for.. soo long so im glad i can post it. i’m glad you love my writing, anon :) i hope you enjoy this one. uh.. poly relationship fic next??? uhhhh.. anyways, please leave any feedback, commentary, constructive criticism, or any suggestions what i should write next! enjoy & byeeee!
the first thing you noticed was not ricky pucino’s smile, or the smell of motor oil still clinging to the sleeves of his jacket, or even the way the late afternoon sun had gone soft over the front lawn of bullworth and turned the whole school gold around the edges.
it was how easy it felt, for one minute, to laugh.
bullworth did not hand out easy moments very often. it gave you cold hallways and suspicious looks and girls who decided whether they liked you based on your shoes, and boys who treated every patch of concrete like it belonged to whichever clique had bled on it last. even the nice parts of the campus looked severe. the brick buildings stood with that old, narrow-eyed kind of dignity, as if they expected disappointment before anyone had even opened their mouth. the trees around the main grounds had started giving up their leaves, and the paths were scattered with yellow and brown that the prefects never managed to sweep up for long.
so when ricky said something absentminded and funny about one of the shop teachers nearly losing his temper over a carburetor, and you laughed harder than you meant to, it felt bright enough to be worth keeping.
you stood near the side of the auto shop with your books hugged to your chest and your scarf slipping off one shoulder. your skirt moved lightly in the wind around your knees. ricky leaned against the wall with one boot crossed over the other, hair slicked back, expression open and careless in the way the greasers always seemed to manage when they were not one breath away from a fight. he had borrowed your history notes the day before and had shown up to return them with one page folded down and a half-hearted apology for the grease stain near the margin.
“i told him it was already there,” he said, pointing at the smear with theatrical seriousness. “figured maybe if i said it fast enough, he’d believe me.”
you laughed again, quieter this time, and reached to take the notebook back. “that is not how lying works.”
“works better than studying.”
“for you, maybe.”
“nah,” he said, smiling in a way that suggested he knew exactly how charming he looked and had decided not to make a big deal out of it. “for me, smiling works better than studying.”
you rolled your eyes, but you were still smiling when he tipped his head toward the notes in your arms. “you always this nice, or do i gotta keep pretending i don’t understand dates and names to get your attention?”
“you should try understanding them anyway.”
“see, that right there,” he said, pressing a hand to his chest like you had wounded him, “that is cold.”
it was harmless. stupid, even. the kind of conversation that drifted in and out of a school day and never meant anything more than the weather. but you were still laughing, still standing there with your attention on him, when movement at the edge of your vision made something in your chest draw tight.
jimmy had come around the corner from the path leading up from the boys’ dorm, and the sight of him was so immediate that it changed the air.
he moved with that same compact, restless energy he always carried, like a fist closed around a spark. his white school shirt was wrinkled at the sleeves, tie loose at the collar, blue sweater vest pulled slightly crooked the way it always ended up on him by mid-afternoon. his buzzed head caught the light for a second before he stepped fully into shadow. there was a faint bruise yellowing near the edge of his jaw, old enough to be from yesterday and ordinary enough on him that it barely registered. his hands were shoved into his pockets, shoulders set a little too square, mouth already tilted in that dangerous half-expression that was never quite a smile and never meant anything good when it appeared at the wrong time.
he saw you.
then he saw who you were with.
the change in his face was small enough that someone else might have missed it. a slight tightening around the eyes. the flattening of his mouth. the look of somebody hearing a joke late and deciding not to laugh.
ricky noticed him a second later and straightened off the wall.
“hopkins,” he said, not exactly warm.
jimmy kept walking until he reached the two of you, then stopped with a glance at the notebook in your hands and the smile still not fully gone from your face.
“what’s this?” he asked.
his voice was flat, almost casual, but there was too much edge under it. you knew that tone. it was the one he used when he wanted to act like nothing touched him while making sure everybody within twenty feet could feel it.
“my notes,” you said. “ricky was returning them.”
“that right?”
ricky folded his arms. “yeah. that right.”
jimmy looked at him for a second, then back at you. “funny. looked like more than notes from where i was standing.”
you stared at him. “it was a conversation.”
“sure.”
“jimmy.”
he shrugged one shoulder, eyes sliding away as if bored. “what? none of my business.”
the trouble with jimmy was that he could say something like that with such perfect contempt that it landed like an accusation anyway.
ricky laughed once under his breath, and that was a mistake.
jimmy’s head snapped toward him. “got something to say?”
“not to you.”
“good.”
“jimmy,” you said again, sharper now.
he ignored you with the kind of precision only he could manage. “you greasers always hanging around girls after class now, or is this a special occasion?”
ricky uncrossed his arms. “you always this annoying, or is she just lucky?”
that would have been enough on any other day. at bullworth, on any other patch of ground, under any other sky, it would have ended there and exploded into the usual stupid shoving match the second nobody looked away. but what made your stomach drop was not the words. it was the way jimmy seemed to forget, for one ugly second, that you were even standing there.
he stepped forward, chin lifted a fraction. “say that again.”
“you heard me.”
a couple of boys by the bike rack slowed down. one of the younger ones near the corner stopped pretending to tie his shoe. tension at bullworth spread faster than gossip. the school could smell a fight like dogs smelled rain.
“stop,” you said, turning fully toward jimmy. “both of you.”
jimmy did not move his eyes from ricky. “i said it’s none of my business, didn’t i?”
“then act like it.”
that got his attention.
he looked at you then, finally, and there was something hard in his expression that made heat rise under your skin. not because you were scared of him. you were not. but because of how familiar this felt. how immediate. how unfair.
whenever something got under his ribs, he did this. he jabbed at it until it bled on everybody else. he picked a fight with the nearest person and acted surprised when the whole room caught fire.
ricky shifted his weight, clearly deciding how much he cared to stay involved. after a beat, he let out a low breath and lifted both hands.
“forget it,” he muttered, looking at you, not jimmy. “i gave you the notes.”
“yeah,” jimmy said. “run along.”
ricky’s mouth flattened, but he did the smarter thing and walked off toward the garage lot, shoulders tight and boots scuffing hard against the pavement.
the crowd that had almost formed broke apart in visible disappointment.
for a second it was just you and jimmy, with the cold light slanting between buildings and the wind lifting the end of your scarf.
he looked everywhere except your face.
you held his stare anyway. “what was that?”
“nothing.”
“that was not nothing.”
“then maybe you should tell me what it was, since you seem to know everything.”
the words were quick and mean. they hit you with enough force that you almost laughed from disbelief.
“are you serious?”
“what, you want me to clap?” he asked. “you looked like you were having a great time.”
there it was.
not the joke. not the anger. the sore place under it.
it would have been easier if he had just said it plainly. if he had looked at you with that blunt honesty he sometimes fell into when he was tired and told you, i did not like that. i felt stupid seeing it. i know it was nothing but i hated it anyway.
instead, because he was jimmy, he crossed his arms and sharpened every piece of himself until he looked impossible to reach.
you shifted your books against your chest. “you know what? if you have something to say, say it.”
“i said it.”
“no,” you said, voice low, controlled, and more dangerous for it. “you started something in front of half the school because you got in your feelings and now you want to act like i am making it up.”
his eyes flashed. “my feelings?”
“yes, your feelings.”
he barked out a short, humorless laugh. “that’s rich.”
“do not do that.”
“do what?”
“this,” you snapped, making one helpless motion between the two of you. “this whole thing where you pretend you do not care while acting like the maddest person on campus.”
his jaw tightened. “maybe i just don’t like greasers.”
“boy, please. you fight everybody.”
that nearly pulled a real reaction out of him. nearly. you saw the corner of his mouth twitch before he crushed it flat again.
“whatever,” he said. “go back to laughing.”
then he turned and walked off before you could answer, shoulders rigid, hands shoved back into his pockets, as if he had won something by leaving first.
you stood there long after he disappeared around the building.
the wind felt colder now.
bullworth had a talent for making a person feel watched even when they were alone. by dinner the campus seemed to know something had happened, though nobody had the details right. two girls from the dorm looked at you for too long in the cafeteria before whispering behind their cups. a couple of preppies near the entrance glanced from you to jimmy and then to each other with the kind of sly interest that made you want to throw your tray. even pete, who usually moved through the school like he hoped not to disturb the wallpaper, gave you a careful look when he passed your table.
jimmy was three tables away with a handful of boys from no specific clique, eating like somebody who wanted to bite through the fork. he did not look at you once.
which, somehow, was worse.
you tried not to watch him. you failed. he carried his anger visibly when it was the hot kind, the quick kind that made him reckless and loud, but the other kind sat closer to the bone. it made him still. that was what he had now. every once in a while someone said something to him and he answered with a nod or one word, but his attention looked fixed somewhere far beyond the room.
you knew enough about him by then to recognize when he was chewing on something he had no idea how to name.
that was part of loving jimmy. part of the tenderness and the misery of it. he was not soft in obvious ways. he did not come to people with his hurt open in his hands and ask them to be careful. he came bruised already, braced already, like he expected the blow before it landed. when he felt small, he made himself sharp. when he felt uncertain, he picked a target. when he needed comfort, he usually disappeared until the worst of it had settled into silence.
and sometimes, when you were tired and your own patience had been scraped thin by the day, it made you furious.
because you were right there.
because he could have come to you.
because instead he chose this.
after dinner you found him near the gym steps, talking to nobody, leaning against the brick wall with one foot braced behind him. twilight had turned the windows dark. a damp chill had started to move in from the grounds, carrying the smell of wet dirt and dead leaves. the floodlights over the football field had not turned on yet, and the whole side of campus felt half-abandoned.
he saw you coming and straightened, but he did not leave.
good, you thought. let him stay.
you stopped a few feet away. “we need to talk.”
his expression closed a little further. “do we?”
“yes.”
he looked past you toward the path. “thought you might be busy.”
there was something so childish and so needling in it that your temper flared bright and clean.
“you know what? enough.”
that seemed to surprise him more than if you had come at him quietly. he pushed off the wall and faced you fully.
“what’s your problem?” he asked.
“my problem,” you said, stepping closer, “is that you keep acting like i did something wrong when all i did was stand outside and speak to somebody.”
“i never said you did anything wrong.”
“you did not have to. you made a whole scene.”
he scoffed. “that was not a scene.”
“jimmy.”
“what?”
“you tried to start a fight.”
“with him.”
“because of me.”
“i said it was none of my business.”
you let out a sharp breath that fogged in the cooling air. “and that is exactly the problem.”
he frowned. “what’s that supposed to mean?”
it meant too many things. it meant the last few weeks of noticing how quickly his mood could turn if another boy looked at you for longer than necessary. it meant the small comments he tossed out and then pretended were jokes. it meant the way he would go silent and stubborn whenever you asked what was wrong, as if the truth itself offended him.
it meant you were tired.
“it means,” you said, more slowly now because if you spoke too fast you would start shouting, “you never say what you actually feel. you get mad, you pick at people, you act like you do not care, and then everybody else has to deal with the mess.”
he stared at you, eyes narrowing. “so now i’m the problem.”
“i did not say that.”
“pretty much did.”
“no, what i said is that you do not know how to be honest when you’re hurt.”
the silence after that felt enormous.
for a second even the distant noise from the dorms seemed to drop away.
jimmy’s face changed in a way that made you wish, immediately and too late, that you had phrased it differently. the anger stayed, but something else moved under it. something startled, and raw, and very young.
he laughed once, low and disbelieving. “hurt.”
“yes.”
“i’m not hurt.”
“then what are you?”
“fine.”
“stop lying.”
his whole body went rigid.
you saw the moment your words struck. not because they were cruel, but because they were true, and truth had always landed badly on him when it came without warning. he looked like he wanted to leave and fight and say something unforgivable all at once.
“you were laughing with him,” he said.
there it was again. not dressed up this time.
you swallowed. “so?”
“so nothing.”
“jimmy.”
“what?” he snapped. “you want me to say i liked it?”
the honesty in that almost softened you. almost. if he had stopped there, maybe the whole thing would have turned. maybe you would have stepped toward him instead of holding your ground. maybe you would have touched his sleeve and told him it had meant nothing, and he would have looked away, embarrassed, and the hurt part of him would have been seen without being dragged out under a floodlight.
but then he kept going.
“you looked happy,” he said, voice getting rougher, sharper. “you looked real happy.”
“i am allowed to laugh,” you said.
“didn’t say you weren’t.”
“then why are we here?”
he looked away from you, jaw flexing hard. “maybe because i’m sick of looking stupid.”
your anger faltered for a beat.
“you do not look stupid.”
“yeah?”
“yes.”
he dragged a hand over the back of his neck and laughed again, that same ugly little sound. “right.”
you took another step forward. “look at me.”
he did, reluctantly.
“i am with you.”
“for now.”
the words were quiet, but they cut deeper than the shouting had.
you stared at him. “for now?”
his mouth twisted, and suddenly the whole conversation was slipping out from under both of you. you could see it happening. you could feel it. the place where it stopped being about ricky, or jealousy, or the stupid scene by the auto shop, and started touching something older than either of you had wanted to name.
“people always leave when they get bored,” he said.
the sentence landed between you with the force of something thrown.
for one second you forgot how to breathe.
maybe he realized it as soon as he said it. maybe he heard himself and knew. but if he did, it was too late. the damage had already gone through you, clean and cold.
because it was not just cruel. it was naked in a way jimmy almost never allowed himself to be. you could hear everything under it. every school he had been sent away to. every adult who had handled him like a problem to relocate. every door that had closed behind him. every time he had learned first and fast that affection came with conditions, and conditions always shifted, and sooner or later somebody got tired.
it hurt because it was ugly.
it hurt worse because it was real.
you looked at him for a long moment, unable to say anything.
his expression hardened again, but not convincingly. there was too much in his eyes now. too much that had slipped out.
when you finally spoke, your voice came out low.
“so that’s what you think of me.”
his face changed at once. “that’s not what i said.”
“that is exactly what you said.”
“i didn’t mean it like that.”
“how did you mean it, then?”
he opened his mouth. closed it. looked furious with himself for not having an answer that could put the words back where they came from.
you laughed, but there was no humor in it. “you do all this because you are jealous, and then when i call it what it is, suddenly i am the kind of girl who is just waiting to get bored and leave.”
“i said i didn’t mean it like that.”
“then maybe you should say what you do mean.”
he said nothing.
of course he said nothing.
the ache in your chest turned hot. “that is the whole point, jimmy. you never say it.”
his eyes flashed. “maybe because every time you push, you make it sound stupid.”
“no,” you said, hurt sharpening into something steadier, “i make it sound honest.”
“same difference.”
“not to me.”
he looked away again, and that small act made something in you crack. not loudly. not dramatically. just enough.
you had spent too much time making room for the parts of him that came out sideways. you had done it gladly, most days. you understood him. maybe more than he liked. you knew how his anger could be a shield and how his insults often arrived a second before whatever tender thing he should have said instead. you knew he was loyal in the fierce, damaged way of stray dogs and boys who had been disappointed too early. you knew all of that.
but standing in the cold while he implied you were temporary because he was too scared to ask for reassurance plain, you felt suddenly, painfully tired.
“you do not trust me,” you said.
his head whipped back toward you. “that’s not true.”
“then why am i being punished because i laughed at somebody’s joke?”
“you’re not being punished.”
“what would you call this?”
he had no answer.
you looked at him for another moment, then shook your head once.
“i care about you,” you said, and the softness of it seemed to hit him harder than yelling would have. “but i am not going to stand here and be talked to like i am already halfway out the door.”
“wait,” he said, too quickly, but you were already stepping back.
you hated how much that one word almost stopped you.
instead you held your books tighter and swallowed around the ache in your throat. “when you figure out how to say what you actually mean, come find me.”
then you turned and walked away before he could see just how badly that line had hurt.
the girls’ dorm was warm in the stale, overused way all dormitories were. somebody had burnt toast earlier and the smell had never quite left the common room. one of the girls near the radiator was filing her nails and talking too loudly about a dance nobody could agree on. your roommate glanced up when you came in, took one look at your face, and wisely chose not to speak.
you sat on the edge of your bed with your coat still on.
outside, the campus shifted into evening. the lamps along the paths came on in weak circles. somewhere across the lawn a prefect blew a whistle, sharp and shrill, followed by the thudding sound of somebody running anyway. a group of girls laughed in the hallway. a door slammed. the pipes in the wall knocked once and went quiet.
you stared at nothing.
you were angry, yes. angry enough that your fingers still felt tense around the edge of your blanket. but anger was easy. anger had shape. what sat under it was much worse.
people always leave when they get bored.
he had thrown the words like a knife, but they had not sounded practiced. that was what stayed with you. not malice, exactly. fear made ugly. fear that got there first and opened its mouth before he could stop it.
you had known jimmy was insecure. anybody who paid attention could see it, though most people mistook it for arrogance because he wore it with his chin lifted and his mouth set hard. bullworth respected force more than vulnerability, and jimmy had adapted to that the way he adapted to everything else, fast and with his fists up. if somebody challenged him, he met them head-on. if somebody underestimated him, he made sure they regretted it. if somebody got close enough to matter, then things got trickier. closeness required trust, and trust asked for stillness, and stillness left a person open.
jimmy hated feeling open.
the trouble was, so did you.
you changed into a softer blouse and a house skirt, folded your uniform carefully out of habit, then sat back down without climbing under the covers. your hands would not stay still. after a while you got up and paced. after that you leaned against the windowsill and looked out at the lawn gone dark under the trees.
you wondered where he was.
you hated that you wondered.
ten minutes later somebody downstairs shrieked at a mouse or a boy or a shadow, and the whole first floor erupted into chaos. one of the prefects outside shouted for quiet that nobody respected. you closed your eyes and pressed your forehead briefly to the cool glass.
it was ridiculous, really, that your heart still pulled toward him with all this fresh hurt sitting in it. but that was the thing about jimmy. for all the ways he could make himself difficult, even infuriating, there was something in him that reached back just as hard when he cared. not gracefully. not sweetly. but truly. you had seen it when he handed over the last of his lunch because you skipped breakfast, pretending he was not hungry anyway. you had seen it when he walked you across campus after a storm without making a show of it. you had seen it in the way he watched rooms, always, as if measuring every possible threat before you even noticed one.
and maybe that was why this hurt so much.
because you knew he cared.
because he knew it too.
and because somehow the knowing had not been enough to keep him from saying the one thing guaranteed to stay with you.
it was full dark by the time you heard the pebble tap your window.
you frowned and looked up.
another one clicked lightly against the glass.
for one annoyed second you thought some idiot boy had decided to be clever after curfew. then you crossed the room, pulled the curtain aside, and saw jimmy standing below on the strip of grass beside the hedge.
your breath caught.
he looked rough.
one side of his lip was split, not badly but fresh. there was a smear of dried blood near his cheekbone and the beginning of purple swelling under his left eye. his shirt sleeves were rolled unevenly to the elbows, and one cuff looked half torn loose. even from the window you could see the raw skin over his knuckles. he had that particular post-fight stillness about him, the kind that came after the adrenaline burned off and left him held together by stubbornness alone.
he tipped his head back to look at you and lifted one hand in a brief, almost sheepish motion.
your first feeling was anger.
your second was something far less useful.
you cracked the window open a few inches. cold air rushed in at once. “what happened to you?”
he shrugged, then winced like he regretted the movement. “nothing.”
“you look awful.”
“thanks.”
you should have shut the window. you should have told him to go patch himself up with stolen bandages and somebody else’s sympathy. you should have made him sit with what he said for one night at least.
instead you hissed, “wait there.”
his brows pulled together. “where else am i gonna go?”
“do not test me.”
that, at least, earned the faintest flicker of something like the old jimmy in his face.
you grabbed your cardigan, the small tin of first-aid things you kept in your desk drawer, and slipped out into the hallway. one girl near the staircase raised an eyebrow as you passed. you ignored her. downstairs the matron was nowhere in sight, which either meant luck was finally working for you or the woman had fallen asleep in her chair again. you slipped out the side door into the cold night, wrapping the cardigan tighter around yourself as the air hit your bare legs under your skirt.
jimmy was leaning against the wall just under your window when you reached him.
up close, the damage looked worse. not dangerous, but recent and stupid. the kind of hurt a person collected after throwing himself into a fight that did not need to happen.
you stopped in front of him and looked him over slowly. “you definitely started that.”
his gaze dropped away. “probably.”
“probably.”
“yeah.”
for a second neither of you moved.
the night around the dorm was quiet except for the distant hum of campus settling down. the hedges cast dark shapes against the brick. somewhere far off, maybe near the football field, a dog barked once and stopped. the lamplight from the path caught on the bruise under jimmy’s eye and on the edge of his cropped hair, turning him strange and tired and younger than he liked to look.
“come on,” you said at last.
he frowned. “where?”
“behind the side porch. sit down before i change my mind.”
he followed without argument, which told you more than anything else could have. usually he would have had something smart to say. some muttered complaint, some half-joke, some performance of not needing help. tonight he just walked a step behind you, hands loose at his sides, like whatever fight had put those bruises on him had knocked the rest of his bluster clean out.
there was a narrow bench tucked beneath the overhang near the side entrance, sheltered from the worst of the wind and hidden enough from the windows that nobody would notice unless they were looking for trouble. you set the little tin beside you and gestured.
“sit.”
he sat.
you stood between his knees for a second, studying the split in his lip. then you opened the tin, dampened a cloth from the small flask you had brought, and pressed it gently to his cheek.
he hissed through his teeth. “careful.”
“do not tell me how to help you after you showed up looking like this.”
“i’m just saying.”
“and i am just ignoring you.”
that almost made him smile. almost.
you cleaned the blood from his face first, because it was easiest. once the red smear was gone he looked less alarming and more exhausted. the swelling under his eye would darken by morning. his knuckles were a mess of scraped skin. one of them had split enough to sting when you wiped it down, and his hand jerked on reflex before settling again.
you worked in silence for a while.
his shoulders were tense at first, then gradually loosened beneath your hands. you could feel the heat of him even through the thin fabric of his shirt and your cardigan. the smell of cold air clung to him, mixed with sweat and something metallic from the blood. every so often he looked at your face like he wanted to say something and thought better of it.
finally you sat beside him on the bench and reached for the small roll of bandage cloth.
“who was it?” you asked.
he stared straight ahead. “does it matter?”
“yes.”
“why?”
“because i asked.”
that pulled a little breath out of him. “some guys.”
you stopped winding the cloth around his hand and gave him a look.
he sighed. “ricky and two of his friends.”
you closed your eyes for a moment. “of course.”
“they were already looking at me.”
“jimmy.”
“what?”
“you are an idiot.”
“yeah,” he said, surprisingly easy. “probably.”
you finished the bandage and tied it off. the white cloth looked bright against the abrasions on his knuckles. when you reached for his other hand, he let you take it without resistance.
the silence this time felt different. not fixed, exactly, but tired in a way that left less room for pride. from the dorm window above you, a rectangle of yellow light stretched faintly across the ground. your fingers moved carefully over his split skin. his hand was warm, rough at the palm, steady now that the worst sting had passed.
after a long moment he said, “i didn’t fight him because i thought you were gonna leave.”
you looked up.
his eyes stayed on the yard ahead. “not exactly.”
you waited.
he swallowed once. “i just… didn’t like it.”
the words were so plain they barely seemed to count as a confession, but the effort behind them was unmistakable. jimmy was not a person built for speeches. whatever apology lived in him was never going to come out smooth.
he gave a short shake of his head. “seeing you with him.”
there it was.
rough. quiet. stripped down to the truth.
your anger did not vanish. hurt never worked that neatly. but something in your chest loosened all the same.
you set the bandage tin aside and leaned back against the bench. “you could have said that.”
“yeah.”
“instead you acted like a menace.”
he glanced at you then, one eye already swelling darker. “you calling me names while patching me up is real kind.”
“i'm being kind. you should hear what i thought about saying.”
his mouth twitched for real this time. it was small and brief, but it changed his whole face. you could see the boy under the armor again. the one who rarely trusted anybody enough to set the armor down.
he looked back at his wrapped hand. “i know.”
“know what?”
“that i made it worse.”
you let the quiet sit for a second before answering. “yes. you did.”
he nodded once, accepting it.
a gust of wind moved under the porch and made you shiver. he noticed at once, because of course he did, and shifted automatically as if to put himself between you and the cold. the movement pulled at his side and he grimaced.
you caught it. “what else is hurt?”
“nothing.”
“jimmy.”
he rolled his eyes. “my ribs a little.”
“you really committed to being dumb tonight.”
“wasn’t trying to impress anybody.”
“that's good,” you said dryly. “because this is not impressive.”
you expected another smart answer. instead he went quiet.
when you looked at him, his expression had gone distant in that way it sometimes did when something serious was trying to make its way out.
“i know you weren’t doing anything,” he said after a while.
the words were careful, almost stiff.
you stayed still.
“with him,” he added. “i know that.”
“then why did you act like you didn’t?”
his throat worked once before he answered. “because i saw you laughing and i hated that i cared.” he paused, eyes narrowing at the ground. “hated that it got to me that fast.”
that sounded more like him. not polished. not romantic. just true enough to hurt.
you folded your hands in your lap. “caring is not the problem.”
he gave a low, humorless breath. “sure feels like it sometimes.”
“no,” you said softly, “the problem is that you turn it into a fight before you turn it into words.”
he did not argue.
you looked at his profile, at the harsh line of his nose and the tired set of his mouth, at the fresh bruising beginning to bloom under his skin. under the porch light his buzz cut made the shape of his head look sharper, the cut on his lip more obvious, his age more visible no matter how much he tried to act older. for all his swagger and temper and certainty in a fight, there were moments like this when you could see exactly how young he still was. how much of him was stitched together out of reaction, instinct, and sheer refusal to be left first.
“when you said that,” you began, and his shoulders tightened immediately, “about people leaving.”
he shut his eyes for a second.
“that was foul,” you said, because you wanted the truth spoken clean. “that hit hard.”
“i know.”
“do not say things like that to me because you are scared.”
his jaw flexed. “i wasn’t trying to…”
“i know you were not trying to. but you did.”
he nodded again. the motion was small, miserable, and strangely obedient. “i know.”
you could have pushed harder. you could have asked him what exactly he thought you were waiting for, what boredom had to do with anything, why he kept handing the worst parts of himself the microphone whenever he got scared. maybe those would have been fair questions. maybe another night they would even have been useful.
but sitting there with the cold pressing close and his shoulder nearly touching yours, he did not look like somebody who needed to be cornered. he looked like somebody who had finally run out of places to hide inside his own irritation.
so you chose honesty instead.
“i am not everybody else,” you said.
his head turned sharply toward you.
“i am not some girl passing time,” you continued, meeting his eyes. “and i am not leaving because i spoke to another boy outside a classroom.”
something softened in his face then, and because it was jimmy, the softness looked almost like pain.
“i know,” he said, but it came out quiet. not defensive this time. not stubborn. more like he wanted it to be true badly enough that saying it felt dangerous.
you studied him for a moment. “do you?”
he held your gaze. “trying to.”
it was not a perfect answer.
it was, however, honest.
and honesty from jimmy, when it came unforced, was worth more than pretty promises from anybody else.
you let out a breath. “that is better.”
he looked relieved that you had not pushed him further, and annoyed at himself for looking relieved. the combination would have been funny if it had not been so dear to you.
you nudged his knee lightly with your own. “still an idiot.”
“you said that already.”
“i meant it both times.”
“yeah, well.” he shifted, testing his ribs carefully, then leaned back against the bench. “you still came down here.”
there was no challenge in it. just quiet observation.
you looked at your hands. “do not get used to being rewarded for bad behavior.”
“wasn’t a reward.”
“you are sitting on a bench while i patch your face in the middle of the night. do not push it.”
that earned another faint, tired smile. then it faded, and he looked at you in a way that made your chest go warm and unsteady.
“i’m sorry,” he said.
simple. rough. no flourish around it.
you believed him immediately.
“okay,” you answered.
his brows pulled together a little. “okay?”
“yes. okay.” you tilted your head. “that does not mean i liked any of this.”
“figured.”
“good.”
he nodded and looked down again, as if he was still learning how apologies worked when they were accepted instead of mocked.
the air had gotten colder. you pulled the cardigan closer around yourself, and after a hesitant second, jimmy shifted toward you with a kind of careful slowness that would have looked awkward on anybody else. on him it just looked honest. like he was not sure whether he was allowed. like he was waiting for you to stop him.
you did not.
his shoulder touched yours first. then, when you stayed still, he leaned a little more of his weight against you.
it was such a small thing. barely anything. but it undid you more effectively than the apology had.
he had been tired all day, you realized. maybe longer than that. tired in the way boys like him got, where the exhaustion was not just from classes or fights or lack of sleep, but from the constant effort of making themselves hard to hurt. anger took energy. indifference took energy. pretending everything rolled right off you took so much energy that by the end of it there was barely anything left for tenderness.
you let your head tip lightly against his.
“there,” you murmured. “that better?”
he was quiet for a moment.
then, very softly, “yeah.”
the answer settled between you with a kind of peace that felt almost fragile.
your fingers found the edge of his sleeve and straightened the half-torn cuff. he did not move away. one of his bandaged hands rested on the bench between you, close enough that your knuckles brushed. his breathing had gone slow, not sleep exactly, but the closest thing to rest he seemed willing to show.
after a while you said, “next time, use your words before you use your fists.”
he gave a tired huff that might have been laughter. “that sounds fake coming from this place.”
“i am serious.”
“i know.”
“and if you are jealous again, just say that.”
his shoulder shifted under yours. “that sounds worse.”
you smiled despite yourself. “it sounds honest.”
“yeah, yeah.”
“jimmy.”
he sighed. “fine. i’ll try.”
you turned slightly to look at him. “you will try.”
he glanced at you from the corner of his eye, bruised and begrudging and somehow still proud through all of it. “that’s what i said.”
it was not, but you let it go.
for a long time neither of you spoke. the dorm behind you stayed quiet. the campus beyond the hedges blurred into darkness and old brick and the occasional strip of light from a far window. the cold kept pressing close, but less of it reached you now. jimmy had angled himself into your side completely without seeming to notice. his head rested near your shoulder, light at first, then heavier when you did not protest.
you looked down and saw the crown of his buzzed hair bent toward you, the line of his lashes lowered, the bruised edge of his cheekbone gone softer in the dim porch light.
you smiled to yourself.
“you really are a mess,” you whispered.
he did not open his eyes. “thought we covered that.”
“i just needed to say it again.”
“mean.”
“and yet you are still here.”
at that, he finally did look up. there was something quiet in his gaze now. not flashy. not sharp. just steady, in the way his eyes sometimes got when all the noise in him dropped away and whatever was left looked at you plain.
“yeah,” he said.
the word sat warm in the cold air.
you touched two fingers lightly to the uninjured side of his face, just for a second. his eyes flicked closed at the contact, and when they opened again, some of the strain had gone out of his mouth.
“good,” you said.
he leaned back into your shoulder as if that settled it.
and because you loved him, and because loving him was sometimes a rough-edged, complicated thing that still somehow fit in your hands, you stayed right there with him on the narrow bench behind the girls’ dorm while the night deepened around bullworth, holding the silence steady until it felt less like distance and more like home.
I hope you guys enjoyed this one! It's a little shorter but.. I hope it's good enough to make up for the short length. Please send more requests.. I loooove requests! Let me know how I did in this one and also I appreciate the love and the feedback on the last one.. really almost made a girly cry :(
syn; at bullworth academy, gary smith starts orbiting you with his usual sharp, manipulative charm, interrupting your conversations, stealing your book, and getting under your skin on purpose. what begins as irritation turns into a tense push-and-pull as you realize he notices everything about you, from your habits to your moods, and hides small acts of care inside his obnoxious behavior.
wc; 9k
characters used; gary smith from bully (2006) video game.
a/n; hellooooo.. first post & i hope it’s a good a impressionable post! i wanted to make something calm for the community, which i feel like has no fics or am i like insane? anyways, please leave any feedback, commentary, constructive criticism, or any suggestions what i should write next! enjoy & byeeee!
the first thing you learned about bullworth was that quiet did not mean peace.
the academy had a way of holding noise inside its walls even when the halls were empty. the old stone seemed to keep every insult, every threat, every laugh that went too far. doors slammed somewhere down the corridor, boys shouted across the courtyard, prefects barked rules nobody respected for longer than a minute, and through all of it the school carried on with the stiff, expensive dignity of a place convinced it was above its own ugliness. you had only been there three weeks when you realized that if you wanted a decent afternoon, you had to steal it from the school with both hands and hide it somewhere private.
the library was usually your best option.
it was warm in there, dust-lit and quiet in a way bullworth never quite managed anywhere else. not silence, exactly. pages turned, chairs shifted, the radiator hissed, and sometimes somebody coughed with theatrical misery behind a stack of atlases. still, it was close enough. you could spread your things across a table near the windows and pretend, for a little while, that you attended a normal school with normal students and not a crooked little kingdom where every boy seemed to be trying to prove something violent by lunch.
you sat with your books open and your loose papers arranged in thoughtful, hopeful piles that would not remain thoughtful or hopeful for long. a pencil was tucked behind your ear. your skirt brushed your knees when you crossed one leg over the other. outside, the late afternoon had gone pale and gold over the grounds, turning the hedges and stone paths almost pretty. from that distance, with the glass between you and the rest of the school, bullworth looked almost civilized.
“you organize your notes like somebody preparing an alibi.”
you looked up to find gary smith standing at the end of your table as though he had simply unfolded out of the air.
he had a talent for appearing without warning, and it was a talent made worse by the fact that he always looked deliberate. even when he slouched, there was intention in it. his shirt was crisp under the green sweater vest, tie straight, hair combed back into that careful, sharp little style that only made his face seem more fox-like. he was pale in the soft library light, his expression composed in that smug, unreadable way of his, like he found the entire world mildly amusing and almost never worth the effort of honesty.
you stared at him over the rim of your book. “and you speak like somebody who enjoys hearing himself think.”
“true.” he pulled out the chair across from you without asking and sat down. “but i’m not wrong.”
you should have told him to leave. that would have been the sensible thing. sensible, however, had very little influence over the way bullworth ran, and even less over gary. he had already made himself comfortable, one elbow resting on the table, pale eyes skimming over your notes with insulting ease.
“what do you want?” you asked.
“i haven’t decided yet.”
“then go decide somewhere else.”
instead of moving, he smiled. it was not a pleasant expression. it looked too neat for that, too small and precise, like something folded into shape with a knife.
“you’re not very friendly,” he said.
“i am, actually. just not with you.”
“smart girl.”
that should have sounded complimentary. coming from him, it sounded like he was cataloguing you.
you had noticed him before that day, of course. everybody noticed gary smith, even the students who preferred to pretend they did not. he was difficult to place in the school’s social order because he was never fully inside any of it and somehow always at the center. he drifted around the edges of every clique without belonging to one, whispering in ears, supplying rumors, nudging quarrels into fights and fights into small local wars. boys twice his size listened when he spoke. boys with richer families and louder mouths ended up doing exactly what he suggested while convincing themselves it had been their own idea all along.
the faculty treated him the way people treated a hairline crack in expensive glass. they knew it was there. they knew it might spread. they went on as though not looking at it would make the problem less real.
he had started noticing you at lunch first. then in the main hall. then out on the front steps when you took your tea in a paper cup before first period. never for long. just a passing comment, a glance that lingered too intelligently, a remark that suggested he had been paying attention longer than you liked. you were used to being looked at. bullworth was not subtle where girls were concerned, and you had become skilled at sorting attention into categories: stupid, harmless, tiresome, dangerous. gary’s did not fit neatly into any of them.
it was not hungry in the way some boys’ attention was. not clumsy either. it felt worse than that, somehow, because it was careful.
he rose from your table after five minutes of irritating you with observations about your handwriting and the suspicious optimism of your color-coded notes. he left without explanation, and you told yourself that would be the end of it.
it was not.
once gary smith began orbiting a thing, he did not do it halfway.
sometimes he would lean against the wall outside your classroom and watch the hallway empty, not speaking until you came out last with your books hugged to your chest. sometimes he would fall into step beside you and start talking about someone else entirely, as if you had both agreed to continue a conversation that did not exist. once, during lunch, you found him sitting in your usual seat with your apple in his hand, turning it slowly between his fingers as if he were considering it from a moral distance.
“that’s mine,” you said.
“so i assumed.”
“then why are you touching it?”
he glanced up. “to upset you.”
you had to bite back a smile at that, which irritated you almost as much as he did.
that was the worst part of him in the beginning, not the arrogance or the intrusion or the unnerving tendency to know things he had no business knowing. it was that he was occasionally, against all good judgment, funny. not in a bright or easy way. there was nothing easy about him. but he could say something so dry and exact that it caught you off guard and dragged a laugh out of you before you remembered who he was.
he always noticed when that happened.
his face never changed much, but there would be the faintest flicker around his eyes, a tiny cruel satisfaction, as if he had proved a point you had not realized he was trying to make.
you started avoiding certain routes because of him. that did not help. he merely changed his own.
one tuesday afternoon you cut behind the gym to avoid a group of shouting jocks and nearly ran straight into him where the path narrowed beside the hedges. he had one shoulder against the brick, hands in his pockets, looking for all the world like a boy who had just happened to stop there for air and not like somebody who knew enough about your schedule to predict where you would be within two minutes.
“do you mind?” you said, stopping short.
“usually,” he replied. “depends who’s asking.”
“move.”
“ask nicely.”
you looked at him. really looked at him. the narrow, composed face. the faint freckles across his nose that the autumn light made more visible. the pale lashes. the expression that was never quite mockery and never quite interest and therefore managed to be both at once. he held your gaze without blinking, perfectly calm under the weight of your annoyance.
“you are doing entirely too much,” you told him.
that made him smile in earnest, or as close to earnest as he got. “there you are.”
“there i am where?”
“being interesting.”
“gary.”
“yes?”
“move.”
he moved, still smiling, and you brushed past him with your jaw tight and your books held a little more firmly than necessary. you only made it halfway down the path before he called after you, in a voice mild enough to be almost gentle.
“you’ve got ink on your cheek.”
you stopped, swore under your breath, and heard him laugh softly behind you.
the fact that he noticed things like that was what ruined your attempts to write him off as just another nuisance.
he noticed when you switched from tea to coffee because you had stayed up too late studying. he noticed when you had a headache and kept your answers shorter than usual. he noticed that you folded the corners of pages you meant to come back to and that you tapped the spine of a book twice against your palm before opening it. he noticed when another student borrowed your notes and returned them bent. he noticed when you wore your hair pinned up instead of down, and though he never complimented it directly, he stared one beat longer on those days in a way that was impossible not to feel.
you told yourself it meant nothing. gary noticed everything. that was how he operated. a boy like him collected details the way other students collected enemies.
then came the afternoon that tipped your irritation into something less manageable.
you were in the common room after classes, enjoying a rare patch of peace. one of the younger preps had claimed the chess table by the window, two girls from your literature class were revising by the fireplace, and a fourth-year from town, a decent enough boy with serious eyebrows and a talent for rambling about history, had sat down across from you with all the confidence of someone who assumed a conversation was a mutual gift. he was not unbearable. merely long-winded. you had been polite for about five minutes, nodding at the right intervals while keeping one finger tucked between the pages of your novel so you could return to it the moment he ran out of steam.
he did not run out of steam.
he was midway through an opinion on military uniforms when a shadow fell across the table.
gary dropped into the chair opposite you with the kind of smooth timing that made interruption look choreographed. he did not ask whether anyone minded. he folded himself into the space as if he had always belonged there, one ankle over the opposite knee, chin tilted slightly, that poisonous little smile already in place.
“don’t stop on my account,” he said.
the other boy frowned. “we were talking.”
“were you?” gary’s gaze moved to him with lazy contempt. “i thought she was waiting for you to finish.”
you closed your book carefully. “gary.”
the warning in your voice did nothing.
“i’m helping,” he said, not looking at you. to the boy, he added, “you ought to let people leave a conversation before they die in it.”
the room had not gone silent, but you felt attention shift anyway. bullworth loved a spectacle. the other boy’s face tightened with embarrassment, then annoyance. he looked at you, perhaps expecting you to rescue him, perhaps realizing too late that remaining seated would make the whole scene worse.
“right,” he said, standing abruptly. “i’ll talk to you later.”
“i’m sure she’ll treasure that,” gary said.
the boy left with a muttered curse and a look sharp enough to cut. you watched him go, then turned back to the boy now occupying his chair like a victorious disease.
“what is wrong with you?” you snapped.
gary rested his chin on his hand, eyes on your face. “a long list, apparently.”
“that was rude.”
“yes.”
“you embarrassed him on purpose.”
“obviously.”
you stared at him, waiting for something remotely defensible. an excuse. a lie. even a performance of innocence. instead he just watched you, composed and almost serene, like your anger was not only expected but interesting to him.
“why?” you demanded.
his answer came light and immediate. “you were boring me.”
you blinked at him. “i beg your pardon?”
“painfully.” his eyes dropped to your closed book, then back to you. “you do that expression when you’re bored. right eyebrow lifts first. you were being polite, which is noble, but very dull to watch.”
“nobody asked you to watch.”
“no, but here we are.”
you should have left. instead you stayed planted in your chair, heat moving up your neck, half fury and half something else that felt too close to embarrassment. there was a beat of silence between you, crowded with everything he was not saying.
then he spoke again, softer this time.
“you pay attention to everyone else like that?”
the question sat strangely in the air.
his voice had changed. it was quieter, almost level, but his eyes had not. there was something in them that made your stomach shift, not because it was sweet and not because it was kind, but because it was intent. unsettling, unwavering intent. he looked at you as if he were trying to catch the truth before you had the chance to hide it behind a clever answer.
“like what?” you asked, more carefully than before.
“like they matter.”
you gave a short, incredulous laugh because the alternative was to take him seriously, and that felt unwise. “you interrupted me to ask that?”
“among other reasons.”
“you are unbelievable.”
“that has also been said.”
he reached out then, faster than you expected, and slid your book out from under your hand.
you caught air.
“gary.”
he stood in one smooth motion with your novel already tucked under his arm.
“give that back.”
“come get it.”
the look he gave you was infuriatingly pleased. then he turned and walked away, not even hurrying, which somehow made it worse. by the time you pushed your chair back and followed him, several students were openly staring. one of the girls by the fireplace covered her smile behind her hand. you ignored her and swept after him into the hall, your shoes striking smartly against stone.
“do not make me chase you through this building,” you said.
“then don’t chase me.”
“you stole my book.”
“borrowed.”
“without asking.”
“i know you’d have said no.”
you almost caught him near the stairwell, but he pivoted neatly out of reach and kept going with a maddening little glance over his shoulder. he was enjoying himself now, which made him more agile, more precise. you followed him down the corridor past a line of cracked portraits and a notice board littered with club announcements no one read. he never quite broke into a run. he did not need to. he kept just ahead of you with the casual confidence of somebody who knew exactly how long your patience would hold.
“gary, i mean it.”
“you’ve said my name a lot today.”
“because you are aggravating.”
“only today?”
you nearly laughed again, which only made you angrier.
he finally stopped in the alcove near the old science room where the windows threw thin bands of evening light across the floor. when you reached him, slightly out of breath and thoroughly irritated, he held the book out at last. you snatched it from his hand and opened your mouth to tell him precisely what he could do with his games.
then you looked down.
all your loose papers were tucked neatly inside, aligned by size, the bent corner smoothed, the half-fallen notes from your last lecture gathered and organized between the proper chapters. even the little scrap with your reading list, the one you had thought you lost at lunch, had been slipped in near the front. nothing was creased. nothing was missing. it was better arranged than when you had packed it yourself.
for a moment you just stared.
gary leaned one shoulder against the wall, watching your face with quiet satisfaction. “you’re welcome.”
you looked up slowly. “when did you do this?”
he shrugged. “while you were pretending to listen to captain monotone.”
you turned another page, incredulous. “you had my papers?”
“they were sticking out.”
“and instead of giving them back like a normal person, you stole the whole book and made me run after you.”
“yes.”
“why?”
that smile again, smaller now, less meant for show. “because you came.”
you should have hit him with the book. you thought about it with vivid sincerity. instead you clutched it to your chest and looked at the boy in front of you, this infuriating, elegant little menace with his neat uniform and his impossible face and his absurd, infuriating thoughtfulness hidden inside behavior so obnoxious it ought to have canceled the effort out.
“you are not right in the head,” you said.
“that’s old news.”
“and deeply rude.”
“also true.”
“and weird.”
he tipped his head. “you still followed me.”
you hated that he said it so softly.
you left him there before he could see what that did to you. or before he could say something worse and make it impossible to pretend your pulse had not changed.
after that, things got more difficult.
not because gary became more obvious. if anything, he became subtler. the open intrusions continued, certainly. he still sat beside you when he pleased and inserted himself into conversations he had not been invited to join. he still appeared at uncanny moments, as if he had a private map of your movements pinned up somewhere with notes in the margins. but beneath all of that there was now a pattern you could no longer ignore.
things around you began falling into place.
a first-year who had been pestering you for answers in chemistry abruptly decided to avoid your section of the hall. the loudmouth jock who had made a comment about your legs during lunch ended up shoved into a trash can before dinner by persons unknown. your missing fountain pen reappeared on your desk in the dormitory wrapped in a strip of notebook paper that said, in tidy handwriting, you ought to keep better track of your weapons.
you stared at the note for a long time before folding it once and tucking it into your drawer.
“you know that boy likes you,” your roommate said one evening while you were pinning your hair up in the mirror.
you met her reflection. “that boy likes causing structural damage.”
“same thing, sometimes.”
“not with him.”
your roommate raised a brow. “you keep saying that, and yet you look happier when he starts bothering you.”
you turned back to the mirror because there was no good answer to that.
you were not happier, exactly. you were more awake.
gary had a way of making a moment feel sharpened. brighter and more dangerous, yes, but also more specific. when he entered a room, your attention shifted whether you wanted it to or not. part of that was self-preservation. with a boy like him, it was wise to keep track of where the knife was, even if the knife happened to be wearing a tie and speaking in a bored voice. but part of it had become anticipation, and that was harder to forgive in yourself.
it did not help that he knew how to behave when nobody else was looking.
one rainy evening you found him in the library again, though this time he was not talking. he sat two tables away with a book open in front of him, one hand braced against his temple, the other turning a page with absent precision. the windows were dark. the lamps cast pools of amber light over the tables, leaving the corners dim. in that setting, stripped of an audience, he looked younger and stranger, less like a schoolyard tactician and more like a boy built too sharply for softness and trying very hard not to require any.
you would have passed him quietly if he had not spoken without looking up.
“you drag your left foot when you’re tired.”
you stopped. “do you ever choose peace?”
“rarely.”
“i can tell.”
only then did he glance up. his eyes moved over your face, your books, the damp hem of your skirt from the weather outside. “sit down.”
“that isn’t a request.”
“didn’t mean it to be.”
“and you wonder why people call you rude.”
“i don’t wonder at all.”
still, you sat. perhaps because you were tired enough not to argue. perhaps because the rain drummed softly at the windows and the library felt almost private. perhaps because you wanted to see what he would do if you gave him less resistance for once.
he closed his book, marking the page with one finger. “how did your exam go?”
you narrowed your eyes. “how do you know i had one?”
“you revised for three nights and stopped sleeping properly. plus you carry your bag differently after a test.”
“that is absurd.”
“is it wrong?”
you looked down at the table. “no.”
“there we are.”
you should not have smiled at that, but you did.
his gaze caught on your mouth for half a second and then lifted again, expression unreadable. “well?”
“it went fine,” you said. “i think.”
“that means well.”
“you are unbearable.”
“and yet.”
“and yet nothing.”
he leaned back slightly. “you sat down.”
you breathed out through your nose. “you really do think you win every conversation.”
“not every conversation.”
“which ones do you lose?”
the answer came almost immediately, but not with his usual glibness. “the ones where you stop talking.”
that held you still.
for a moment the rain sounded louder than it had before. somewhere behind the circulation desk, an old clock ticked with officious patience. gary’s face had not softened, not exactly, but the sharpness in it had shifted. there was no performance in his expression now, no visible joke. just the quiet fact of him watching you like your response mattered more than he wanted it to.
you looked away first.
that should have been warning enough.
instead you kept letting him closer.
not easily. not all at once. you argued with him every step of the way. you corrected him when he was cruel for sport and told him so when he crossed lines that other people were too intimidated to mention. sometimes he listened. sometimes he grinned and did it anyway. but he started seeking you out less like a hunter and more like a habit. breakfast, if your schedules aligned. the path to class. the library on fridays. the back steps after dinner when the air was cold and the grounds smelled faintly of wet leaves and chimney smoke.
he never asked permission in so many words. asking would have been unlike him. instead he made presence seem inevitable and waited to see if you drove him off. when you did not, he treated that as answer enough.
one saturday he found you trying to pin announcements for the literature society to the board outside the main hall while a draft from the front doors kept flipping the corners loose.
“this seems beneath you,” he remarked.
you did not turn. “your concern is touching.”
“need a hand?”
you almost laughed at the novelty of it. “from you?”
“don’t look so alarmed.”
“i am alarmed because generosity from you usually comes with an invoice.”
“not always.”
“most times.”
“fair.”
he took the pins from your mouth before you could protest and held the paper flat while you fixed the top corners properly. his fingers were cool where they brushed yours. he stood close enough that you could smell clean soap and paper on him, something crisp and faintly dry. not cologne. not anything flashy. just the ordinary scent of somebody who looked composed even when everyone else at bullworth resembled a bar fight with tuition.
when you finished, he stepped back and tipped his head at the notices. “there. now the three people who attend will know where to be.”
you looked at him. “why are you like this?”
“efficient parenting failure, probably.”
your laughter escaped before you could stop it.
he went still in that tiny way he had when something genuine slipped between you. then he smiled, smaller than before. “there you are again.”
“do not make a thing of it.”
“too late.”
you pushed his shoulder lightly with the back of your hand as you walked past, more to keep from lingering than out of actual irritation. but his eyes followed you down the hall with such obvious focus that the warmth in your face lasted all the way to dinner.
if it had remained just that, the schoolyard hovering and the dry conversation and the careful little gestures hidden inside obnoxious behavior, perhaps you could have kept pretending there was no danger in it.
bullworth, however, was not built for quiet developments. it fed on attention. and boys, especially boys, noticed when someone stopped being available in the ordinary way.
his name was daniel, and you liked him only in the way a person likes good weather and decent handwriting. he was a prefect on afternoons, a senior, broader in the shoulders than most boys at school, with a tidy manner and the sort of face adults trusted on sight. he had been polite to you for months without trying anything, which you appreciated. then one evening after study hall, he walked with you down the front corridor and asked whether you might like to come into town next weekend for coffee and a bookshop if permissions could be arranged.
it was a sensible invitation. very nearly sweet.
you were still considering how to answer when you noticed movement by the trophy cases.
gary was leaning in the alcove beside the display cabinets, half-shadowed by the poor light, as still as an accusation. you had no idea how long he had been there. with him, that meant nothing. he could have arrived two seconds ago or five minutes ago and you would not have known the difference. what mattered was that he had clearly heard enough.
daniel, oblivious, was saying something about the weather being better next week when you felt gary’s attention land on you with cold, surgical precision.
you did not answer immediately, which was mistake enough.
“that sounds nice,” you said at last.
daniel smiled, relieved. “shall i ask mrs. pease about the pass tomorrow?”
“all right.”
he seemed pleased, properly pleased, and after a few more courteous words he continued down the corridor toward the prefects’ office. you watched him go for a beat, then turned toward the trophy cases.
gary had not moved.
“how long have you been standing there?” you asked.
“long enough.”
“that is not an answer.”
“it’s the only one you’re getting.”
you walked toward him slowly, your books held against your cardigan. “were you eavesdropping?”
“don’t flatter yourself. your prefect speaks like a public notice.”
“he is not my prefect.”
“no?” gary’s expression turned almost lazily curious. “sounds like he’d like to be.”
you stopped a few feet away. “what is that supposed to mean?”
“exactly what it sounds like.”
“you do know normal people simply say what they mean.”
“normal people are boring.”
“and you are impossible.”
“you just agreed to go out with a hall monitor.”
you blinked. “what?”
the bite in his voice had sharpened so suddenly it almost startled you.
“he’s not a hall monitor.”
“close enough.”
“and why exactly do you care?”
that did it.
his jaw tightened first, a subtle shift, but on gary even subtlety registered like weather change. then he laughed once, humorless and brief, and pushed away from the wall.
“care?” he repeated. “please.”
“then do not stand here looking like somebody stole your inheritance.”
he took one step closer. “you think he sees you?”
the question landed so strangely you forgot your irritation for a moment. “what does that have to do with anything?”
“everything.”
“gary.”
“he sees a pretty girl who says thank you at the right times and laughs politely when he wants her to.” his eyes were bright now, too bright. “he sees an outing. he sees a little performance where he gets to feel important because you agreed to be looked at on purpose.”
your mouth parted. “that is unfair.”
“is it?”
“yes, it is, and you know better than that.”
“i know men better than that.”
“he is a boy at school, not some villain in a trench coat.”
“same instincts, smaller vocabulary.”
despite the tension twisting through the conversation, you nearly smiled. nearly. then you caught the expression on his face and stopped yourself.
he looked furious. not loud, not wild. gary was rarely messy with anger. but his restraint made it more startling. it sat under his skin like heat under glass, concentrated and dangerous. for the first time since meeting him, you understood that the cruelty he showed other people so casually might one day turn sharp enough to cut you too if you stepped wrong.
the knowledge should have driven you back.
instead you asked, very quietly, “what are you actually mad about?”
he looked at you for a long moment. the corridor had emptied around you. dusk pressed blue against the high windows, and the trophy case glass reflected the two of you back in fragments, your skirt, his tie, the hard line of his shoulders.
when he spoke, his voice was lower than before.
“i’m mad because you said yes like it wouldn’t matter.”
your breath caught.
“to coffee?” you asked.
“to him.”
“gary.”
“what?” he bit the word off. “you want honesty, don’t you?”
“yes.”
“fine. i hate when people touch what they haven’t earned.”
silence opened between you.
you could hear distant laughter from the courtyard, the whistle of wind under an old door somewhere down the hall. gary’s eyes stayed on yours, unblinking, almost hostile in the force of their attention. he looked like he resented having said any of it and also like he could not bear to take it back.
“i am not a prize,” you said at last, steadying your voice.
“i know that.”
“and nobody earns the right to speak to me.”
“i know that too.”
“then what are you saying?”
he exhaled, short and sharp, and rubbed a hand once over the back of his neck. the gesture was so unguarded it startled you more than the jealousy had.
“i’m saying,” he said, slower now, “that watching you hand your attention to somebody dull and obvious makes me want to do something unhelpful.”
you ought not have enjoyed that. you did.
“unhelpful how?”
“don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”
that, at least, was honest.
you looked at him, at the boy who had made a career of manipulation, at the architect of a hundred petty disasters, at the pale, precise troublemaker standing in the fading light and admitting jealousy like it offended him personally to feel it. you should have been alarmed. part of you was. the rest was trying very hard not to smile.
“you are deeply dramatic,” you said.
his stare turned flat. “i’m serious.”
“i can tell.”
“and that’s your response?”
“what would you prefer, a violin?”
that did it. against all logic, despite himself, he laughed. it escaped him abruptly, low and genuine, and the furious edge in him eased just enough for the air between you to shift.
“you’re impossible,” he said.
“coming from you, i will take that as a compliment.”
he stepped closer then, not enough to crowd you, just enough that the space felt altered. the kind of distance that noticed breathing.
“are you going?” he asked.
“with daniel?”
his mouth thinned.
you let him wait half a second longer than necessary, then shook your head. “no.”
something unreadable moved through his face. relief first, naked and fast, then composure snapping over it like a lid. “good.”
“do not say that like you had jurisdiction.”
“i didn’t say i had it. only that i prefer the outcome.”
“you really do need everything in your favor.”
“yes.”
“that sounds exhausting.”
“for other people, certainly.”
you looked down to hide the smile threatening your mouth. “you are awful.”
“you’ve mentioned that.”
“because it keeps being true.”
“and yet.” his gaze lowered briefly to your hands on your books, then back up. quieter now, he said, “you stayed.”
there it was again, that dangerous softness he only seemed to reveal by accident. not sweetness, exactly. something more brittle than that. like he had set honesty down between you and now refused to touch it in case it broke.
you went back to your dorm that night with your heartbeat doing unreasonable things and your roommate looking far too knowing for your comfort.
“you look like you won an argument and lost your senses,” she said.
“that is not helpful.”
“was it him?”
you sat on the edge of your bed and pulled off your shoes. “he is annoying.”
“that was not my question.”
you pressed your lips together.
after a beat, she laughed softly. “lord help you.”
the next few days at school felt different in a way that would have been difficult to explain to anyone else.
gary was still gary. he still needled people for sport. he still spread rumors when it amused him and spoke with that cool, surgical sarcasm that made idiots bleed without realizing they had been cut. he still carried himself like rules were made for slower minds. but with you, the tension had shifted. there was less pretense in it now. less of the game for the game’s sake.
he sat with you at breakfast one morning and stole a piece of toast from your plate only to push his untouched apple toward you in exchange because he had noticed you skipped fruit when you were busy. he met you outside literature and wordlessly took the heavier stack of books from your arms before you could protest, then spent the entire walk to the next hall insulting the assigned reading. he showed up after dinner with your scarf, which you had left in the common room, and when you asked how he knew it was yours, he gave you a look that said the question itself was stupid.
you should not have found any of this endearing. the problem was that endearing did not cancel out unsettling. with him the two traveled together.
one friday evening the power flickered during a storm, knocking half the lamps out in the academic building and plunging the upper floor corridor into a gloomy blue half-dark. prefects were stomping around downstairs trying to pretend they had control over the situation. students shouted from room to room, delighted by any disruption that broke routine. you were collecting your notes from an empty classroom when the door clicked shut behind you.
gary leaned against it, hands in his pockets.
“you’re going to get us written up,” you said.
“for what, standing near a door?”
“for cornering me in an empty classroom during a blackout.”
he considered that. “fair point. scandalous.”
“move.”
instead he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk nearest yours. lightning flashed beyond the windows, whitening the old glass and turning him briefly into a cutout of light and shadow.
“they’re all downstairs,” he said. “you can stop pretending you’re in a hurry.”
you set one notebook atop another, not looking at him. “and if i actually am in a hurry?”
“you’re not.”
“you do love deciding things for me.”
“i love being right.”
“same disease.”
a pause. then, “come here.”
you looked up. “absolutely not.”
his mouth twitched. “that sounded frightened.”
“it sounded sensible.”
“are you sensible?”
“more than you.”
“that’s a very low bar.”
you should have stayed where you were. instead you crossed the few feet between you because the storm had made the room feel enclosed and strange and because his voice had gone quiet in that way that always pulled at you before you could brace for it.
when you stopped in front of him, he tilted his face up to look at you. with him seated and you standing, the usual angles had reversed. for once you felt less caught off balance than he did, though the impression vanished when he reached out and touched the cuff of your sleeve with two fingers.
“this is new,” he said.
you glanced down. “the sweater?”
“yes.”
“and?”
“it suits you.”
the compliment was so direct that it hit you harder than a hundred of his cryptic remarks. you stared at him. he stared back, perfectly calm except for the tension in his fingers where they still held the fabric.
“well,” you said after a moment, because silence had become impossible, “you clean up decently yourself.”
that drew a softer expression from him than any smile so far.
“decently,” he repeated.
“do not fish for more.”
“i wasn’t.”
“good.”
“you’d give it anyway.”
“gary.”
“what?”
you shook your head, but you were smiling now and he knew it. he always knew.
his hand slid from your sleeve to your wrist, light enough that you could have pulled away without effort. he did not grip. he simply held that point of contact like a question neither of you had phrased properly yet. rain battered the windows. thunder rolled somewhere far off over old bullworth vale.
“you don’t have to keep looking at me like that,” you murmured.
“like what?”
“like you are trying to solve something.”
his thumb moved once against the inside of your wrist, tiny and absent. “maybe i am.”
“and what have you got so far?”
his gaze dropped briefly to your mouth, then rose again with unnerving steadiness. “that you say no like it means maybe. and maybe like it means ask better.”
your breath stalled.
“that sounds like a dangerous theory.”
“most good theories are.”
before you could answer, a voice barked in the hall outside and footsteps clattered past the door. the moment snapped cleanly in half. gary released your wrist at once, expression flattening back into composure so quickly you almost doubted what had just happened.
almost.
“go on,” he said lightly. “before your reputation suffers.”
you stared at him. “you are a menace.”
“and you like me anyway.”
you should have denied it. you could not manage a lie that flimsy.
the first time he kissed you, it happened behind the library after dusk where the stone wall kept out the worst of the wind and the windows glowed amber above your heads. you had been arguing, naturally. he had done something small and infuriating, intercepting a note meant for you from one of the literature girls because, in his words, “the handwriting offended him.” you told him he could not simply snatch messages addressed to other people. he replied that he had read it first and determined it was harmless. you told him that was not the point. he told you your points were usually inconvenient.
then you stepped closer to tell him so, and he looked at your face with that terrible, focused stillness and said, “you come nearer when you’re angry.”
you opened your mouth with every intention of correcting him. instead he kissed you.
gary did not kiss like a boy uncertain of himself. he kissed the way he did most things, precisely, as if he had studied the problem beforehand and disliked wasted motion. one hand came up to the side of your neck, not forceful, just cool and sure. his mouth was warm, controlled, and for one shattered second you were too startled to do anything but feel the fact of him.
then you kissed him back.
the noise he made was small, almost swallowed before it existed. his fingers tightened once at the nape of your neck, and when he drew back there was something frankly dazed in his face that made him look younger than you had ever seen him.
you stared at him. he stared at you.
“well,” you said, because one of you had to say something.
he laughed under his breath and touched his forehead lightly against yours for the briefest moment. “well.”
after that, jealousy became less theoretical and far more annoying.
you had not expected the particularity of it. most boys got loud when they were jealous. they puffed up. they picked fights. they became stupid in public. gary’s version was sharper and, in some ways, more inconvenient because it came wrapped in civility thin enough to be dangerous.
if a boy spoke to you too long at lunch, gary would arrive, sit down beside you, and steer the conversation so expertly that the other person left feeling outmatched and vaguely foolish without quite knowing how. if someone borrowed your books, he somehow knew and made sure they came back in better condition than before, accompanied by a look that suggested the borrower had been educated on respect. once, when a jock from the football field called out to ask whether you were “busy saturday,” gary, without breaking stride, answered for you with a cool, “she’s busy now,” and kept walking.
“you cannot keep doing that,” you told him later.
“doing what?”
“speaking as if i belong to you.”
his expression changed so quickly you nearly missed it. not offended, exactly. wounded, but only for an instant, before pride covered it.
“i didn’t say that,” he replied.
“you imply it.”
“i imply that they should keep their hands to themselves.”
“and what about you?”
he looked at you, then took your hand and kissed the inside of your wrist with infuriating calm. “i asked better.”
you had no good response to that, which annoyed you because he knew it.
still, for all his possessiveness, he listened when you drew lines. not perfectly, not gracefully, but he listened. when you told him he was not allowed to threaten people on your behalf, he said he had never threatened anybody in his life with such bland dishonesty that you had to sit down. when you told him he could not read your private letters, he returned the one he had pocketed that morning and said, “fine, but i reserve the right to judge whoever wrote it by the envelope.” when you told him jealousy did not entitle him to rudeness, he looked at you for a long beat and then, in a tone so quiet it almost vanished, said, “i know.”
it was difficult to stay angry with him when he did that.
the softness, when it came, arrived in fragments.
he waited for you outside late study sessions and walked you back to the girls’ dorm steps without making a show of it. he memorized the days you had extra coursework and appeared with tea before you asked. he learned the titles of the books you liked and pretended he had not. he tucked folded notes into the pages he borrowed from you, never sentimental, always just enough to tilt your mouth upward.
chapter three is smug. reminded me of you.
stop underlining everything as if the author can see it.
page 86, third paragraph. terrible sentence. i thought you’d enjoy hating it.
once, during a cold snap in november, you found a pair of gloves left on the library table beside your usual seat. inside one cuff was a strip of paper in his precise handwriting.
before you complain, yes, i noticed. your hands go red in this weather.
you carried that note in your pocket for three days before admitting to yourself that you were gone beyond recovery.
he, meanwhile, grew stranger in private and calmer in your presence, which was perhaps the same thing viewed from different angles. around everyone else he remained dry and sly and vaguely menacing. around you he still had those traits, but there were moments, small bright slippages, where he let himself be pleased. when you laughed at something he said. when you reached for his tie and straightened it because he had tugged it crooked. when you let your knee rest against his under the library table. when you took his face between your hands one evening after he had been especially difficult and kissed him until his sarcasm deserted him completely.
“that is deeply manipulative,” he murmured when you pulled away.
“learned from the best.”
“i should be offended.”
“you adore me.”
his eyes half-closed, lazy and warm for once. “unfortunately.”
bullworth noticed, of course.
there was no official announcement, but schools like that did not require one. they ran on glances and rumor and a thousand tiny acts of observation. within two weeks, girls in your literature class were giving you little looks over the tops of their books, and boys who used to try their luck with you had mostly stopped. even the prefects seemed reluctant to interfere if gary was leaning on the wall nearby with that unreadable smile.
“you have made me a public curiosity,” you told him one afternoon as you crossed the courtyard together.
“you were already one.”
“not like this.”
“and how is ‘this’?”
“like i am keeping a spider in my pocket.”
he laughed. “that’s almost romantic.”
“it is absolutely not.”
“pity.”
you glanced at him sidelong. the wind had put color into his cheeks. his hair, though still neat, had been disturbed slightly by the weather, one reddish strand fallen near his temple. there was a bruise fading yellow near his jaw from some conflict he had not told you about, and you had not pushed because with him that was often wiser. he walked with his usual deceptive ease, shoulders relaxed, hands in his pockets, but his gaze kept touching the space around you in that old habitual way, checking, tracking, collecting.
“gary.”
“yes?”
“come here.”
he looked amused, but he stepped closer. you rose on your toes and smoothed the fallen strand of hair back into place.
he went completely still.
there in the middle of the courtyard, with students crossing behind you and a prefect shouting in the distance, his whole sharp, clever, troublesome self seemed to narrow to the point where your fingers had touched his forehead.
“better,” you said.
he looked at you for a long second. then, very quietly, “you do know that makes me worse.”
“for who?”
“everyone.”
you smiled. “i can live with that.”
the winter formal was a stupid idea, and everybody knew it.
bullworth had never been a school capable of elegance for longer than half an hour, and asking its students to put on clean clothes and behave under string lights bordered on satire. still, crabblesnitch loved the illusion of refinement, so the assembly hall was decorated with tired greenery and paper lanterns, the punch was terrible, and some teacher had forced a gramophone arrangement that made everything sound one degree sadder than intended.
you attended because your roommate insisted and because a girl could only hide in the library so many evenings before people started treating her like a local ghost. your dress was simple and dark, borrowed from a cousin, fitted enough to feel grown and slightly dangerous. your hair was down. when you met your own reflection before leaving the dormitory, you looked like yourself and not quite yourself, which felt appropriate.
gary found you fifteen minutes after you entered the hall.
he was in uniform, but somehow even that looked sharper on him tonight. tie precise, shoes polished, sleeves sitting cleanly at his wrists. he moved through the room with effortless awareness, as if the dance were only another board on which everyone else had been arranged for his convenience. boys greeted him carefully. girls watched him and then looked away. he ignored most of it.
when he saw you, he stopped.
it was only a pause. most people would not have noticed. you did.
then he crossed the floor.
“well,” he said, coming to stand before you. “that’s unfortunate.”
you folded your arms. “for who?”
he looked at you from head to toe once, not leering, just arrested. “for my concentration.”
you tried not to smile and failed. “that might be the nicest thing you have ever said to me.”
“don’t get used to it.”
“too late.”
he offered you his arm with exaggerated formality that looked absurd and somehow still elegant. you took it. his sleeve was warm under your hand. when he led you toward the side of the hall away from the loudest cluster of students, there were looks. plenty of them. you felt some of them land and slide away. gary, predictably, seemed to enjoy that.
“people are staring,” you murmured.
“let them.”
“you say that as if it costs nothing.”
“to me? very little.”
“terrible answer.”
“honest one.”
you stood together near the windows while the dance unfolded in all its awkward glory. boys stepped on hems, girls exchanged judgment with polite smiles, one drunk senior nearly took down a lantern and had to be steered toward a chair by a furious teacher. the whole thing was ridiculous enough that you ended up laughing more than once, and each time gary’s attention settled on you with that private intensity he never fully learned to disguise.
then a slow record came on, and without ceremony he held out his hand.
you looked at it. “you dance?”
“adequately.”
“that sounds ominous.”
“it means i won’t disgrace you.”
“confidence is exhausting in company.”
“good thing we’re above company.”
still, you put your hand in his.
to your surprise, he really did dance adequately. more than adequately, in fact. he guided rather than dragged, his hand steady at your waist, movements controlled and spare. he was not affectionate in public by nature, but with your bodies aligned under the low lights and the music soft around you, some of the edge came off him. just enough.
“who taught you?” you asked.
“nobody. i watch.”
“that explains too much.”
“i thought so.”
you looked up at him. “are you jealous right now?”
“probably.”
“of who?”
“everyone with functioning eyesight.”
you laughed, then shook your head. “that is absurd.”
“i know.”
“at least you admit it.”
“only because you make it difficult to lie convincingly.”
there was something almost tender in the annoyance of that statement, and you felt it all the way down.
when the song ended, he did not let go immediately. his hand remained at your waist for one extra beat, thumb resting lightly against the fabric of your dress. then he released you and stepped back with that faintly dangerous composure returned.
“come outside,” he said.
the air beyond the hall was cold enough to sting. the front steps were empty at that hour, the grounds silvered by moonlight and the weak yellow spill from the windows. music thudded dully behind the doors. somewhere far off, somebody shouted and was answered with laughter.
you stood beside him under the portico, arms folded against the chill.
“so dramatic,” you said. “pulling me out into the night.”
“you came.”
“you say that every time as if it means you discovered gravity.”
“it means i was right.”
“again, exhausting.”
he turned to look at you. the moon caught the side of his face, drawing the fine line of his nose, the pale shape of his mouth. without the noise of the hall around him, he seemed sharper and quieter both at once.
“you looked beautiful in there,” he said.
it was so direct you forgot to breathe for a second.
“gary.”
“don’t make me repeat it.”
“i was not going to.”
“good.”
you stepped closer, searching his face. “you know, for somebody who spends half his life acting untouchable, you are strangely easy to fluster once you say something real.”
his mouth curved. “that sounds like a threat.”
“maybe.”
“should i be nervous?”
“yes.”
you kissed him before he could answer.
the cold made his skin cooler than usual, but his mouth was warm, and when his hands came to your waist this time there was no hesitation at all. the kiss deepened slowly, not rushed, just increasingly certain, like the two of you had been building to this particular version of quiet all term without knowing it had a destination. when you finally drew back, his forehead fell lightly against yours.
for a moment neither of you spoke.
then he said, in a voice low enough that it almost blended with the wind, “you know i’m not nice.”
you smiled against his mouth. “i know.”
“i’m serious.”
“so am i.”
his hands tightened a fraction. “i get jealous.”
“i know that too.”
“i mean unreasonably.”
“yes, gary, i have eyes.”
a short laugh left him, but the seriousness stayed. “and i’m not good at simple things.”
“that is painfully obvious.”
“you could pretend to be gentler about it.”
“you would hate that.”
“true.”
you touched his face then, thumb brushing the line of his cheek where that old bruise had nearly faded. his eyes lowered briefly, not in submission, not anything so straightforward, but in a kind of brief, startled trust you had come to recognize as rare.
“listen to me,” you said softly. “i do not need simple. i need honest. i need you not to turn everything into a game when it matters.”
he held your gaze. “and if i try?”
“then i will know.”
“you usually do.”
“yes.”
there was a pause. then, with a sincerity so plain it nearly broke you, he said, “i do try. with you.”
that was the closest thing to a vow you were likely to get from him, and you knew it.
you kissed him again, gentler this time.
afterward, bullworth continued being bullworth.
students still fought. prefects still shouted. the food remained suspicious. the plumbing made noises in the night that sounded theological. gary still meddled where he should not and cultivated chaos with professional dedication. you still told him off when he deserved it, which was often. the difference was that now, when he drifted into your space with that poisonous little smile, it no longer felt like invasion.
it felt like home learning your name in a language only the two of you could stand.
This was a lot but I hope you all loved it! Pleaseee.. leave me any suggestions on who or what to write on next! I'm very active, so I'll be looking! Have a great day!