Murder Mystery!

[CHARLEY HARPER]

She had to stop thinking about that stupid feeling and focus on what Zack was saying. The last thing she wanted to do was let him see that she was acting any differently than normal. Not that she cared what he thought, of course. "Exactly. There is this thing called a medical degree that you have to receive before becoming a doctor, and most of the time while watching the show I start thinking that nobody has any knowledge of what that is. And thank you, the stupid love affairs annoy me the most. If House put as much time and effort into his patients, maybe he'd actually solve something correctly for once. I swear, sometimes I think Scrubs is a more medically accurate show." There, that sounded normal enough. Why did that take so much more concentration than she was used to?

Zack responded to her glove remark rather peculiarly. He didn't say anything even remotely clever, and didn't seem to particularly mind it. She was half expecting him to pull out a pair of gloves and wave it in her face. As strange as that might be, it would have been particularly useful. But no, he just appeared to say that just because. Weird, Charley didn't remember ever seeing him in such a frazzled state. The corpse must really be getting to him. In fact, it must be getting to her as well, piecing thoughts together now seemed more difficult than convincing that stupid Mr. Baumgartner that he could not, in fact, do simple math.

She took a deep breath as she tried to form a coherent thought. The bump on the corpse, right. Huh, now that he brought it up, the chairs in the Debate Room were very oddly shaped. Charley had always thought of them almost like a status symbol, because none of the other classrooms had ones quite like them. She was surprised Zack even pieced that together, if he hadn't pointed it out she never would have noticed the similarity. "Yes, um…the Debate Room, obviously. Perhaps we should…" He didn't seem to be paying much attention to what she was saying. In fact, he seemed to be making the distance between them even smaller, and she didn't even realize what he was doing until…

What the hell was going on? Was Zack Charming kissing her? Wait…what?She pulled back and stared at him for a second, unsure of what to do.

So, she went with her first reaction: She slapped him right across the face.

How dare he steal her first kiss like that. Her first kiss was supposed to be with her future husband, who worked at the same law firm as her after a dinner where they discussed their successful lives and the two kids they were going to have (one boy, one girl), and where they were going to live (an apartment close to the law firm, styled like that one she saw in one of Golddigging Whore's magazines), and the rest of their future together. Not in high school with fucking Zack Charming in a ball gown over a corpse. This was just like Zack, he would kill her dreams, one at a time, starting with one of the most important ones that she had been planning since she was ten. She was an idiot to ever think he was anything but a cocky, arrogant asshole who never thought of anyone but himself. And worst of all, he made her have that stupid jittery feeling that wasn't even subtle like it was before, it was more like something was consistently exploding and she was pretty sure it was not anatomically possible. He was the most narcissistic, know-it-all, ridiculous, intelligent, interesting, good-looking…no, no, absolutely not. Where the hell did those adjectives come from? They were certainly not ones she equated to Zack Charming, of course. It must have been a brain spasm, or something that was not related to anything she felt right now, which was not anything related to that jittery feeling. Damn it, her lip was going to start bleeding if she bit down on it any harder. This really shouldn't be that difficult of a decision. Actually, it shouldn't be a decision at all. What was she deciding between? Nothing. She should just forget the stupid corpse mystery and stomp off and find Zeke and go home and watch House. But why, no matter how much her mind told her feet to move, they weren't moving? And why couldn't she think of House without her mind automatically going back to Zack? The Zack who was nice to her, the one who had that smile she couldn't seem to forget, the one that was going to ruin her future if she thought these things any more, and she couldn't help but wonder if she just wanted to hate him solely for the fact that she felt truly not in control for the first time in her life.

Before she could confuse herself any longer, she suddenly felt something stirring in the back of her head, and a voice that didn't sound like her own muttered something, almost angrily:

Stop. Thinking.

So, she went with her second reaction: She kissed him back.

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tag:

[/color] zack!
words:[/b][/color] 895
outfit:[/b][/color] FINALLY HERE and HERE
notes:[/b][/color] I'VE BEEN WAITING TO WRITE THIS POST FOR SO LONG, AHHHHH
lyrics:[/b][/color] you've really got a hold on me - the miracles
credit: noa the fantasticamazingnessomg[/size][/center]

[ZACK CHARMING]

The kiss was instantaneous, the connection severed before Zack could even give it a chance to establish itself in his mind. Before he knew it they were apart again, staring at each other with identical expressions of utter mystification. Zack could visualize his left coronary artery working doubly hard to shoot the blood throughout his circulatory system at one thousand times the normal speed. His head pounded with bursts of heat like a dragon’s puffs of fire breath.

Zack’s brain had always been an automaton, a mind of its own. It had never had an ounce of trouble with Laplace Operators, with Kinematic Viscosities or Transformational Matrices, but it was reaching a stumbling block here, as Zack Charming knelt on the floor of his old high school gymnasium, beneath the twinkling disco ball and low booms of the bass speakers, staring straight in the face the only girl in the world who had ever made him feel that he was understood. The only person in the world he could truly admire. After having kissed her.

Zackary Morgan Charming had kissed a girl. On the lips.

He barely noticed the slap to his face, but he felt his heart plunge into his stomach as he saw Charley’s expression morph. Her eyes became cold and staunch, her facial features contorting into anger. Zack felt the salty taste of blood creeping into his mouth, and he realized that he’d been biting immoderately hard on his bottom lip. He folded his tongue beneath his lateral incisors, trying to prevent himself from spewing apologies. He had been out of line. Of course she would be angry with him. The two of them were acquaintances. Colleagues. Two completely apathetic, unrelated, unconnected human beings, begrudgingly united towards nothing but a simple common good. That had been a completely unwarranted move, a move that Zack was already starting to regret.

Stupid boy. Daft, asinine, cretinous, moronic, sophomoric excuse for a homo sapien sapien. Why on Earth-

And then her lips were fused into his again, and Zack’s mind was once again wiped clean of any and all thoughts, save for the fact that this young woman was fiercely and passionately connected to him, to Zack Charming, to the boy who buried himself in multivariable calculus textbooks and scientific lexicon while others his age played basketball and attended rap concerts and whatever other thrilling enterprises normal sixteen-year-olds pursued. And Charley Harper knew, she understood, because she’d lived the same way, felt the same pain, the same pressure, the same stress, the same loneliness. And Zack knew, as he passionately pressed himself against her, that neither of them would ever need to feel lonely again.

Zack felt like a waterlogged corpse when they finally broke apart. His vision swam before his eyes, and the rest of his senses tingled and buzzed with an insatiable deluge of perception. “So the debate team…” he whispered, panting as if he’d just run an emotional marathon, “…is our…lead…”

- tag : Charley
- notes : EEEP
- words : 495
- music : Michael Swaim’s beautiful rapping
- outfit : www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=33203548 - credit : template brought to you by The_Actress. lyrics from icing by charity vance

[CHARLEY HARPER]

As soon as she kissed him, college, her future, being successful, all of the thoughts that usually took up the majority of mind were gone. She never understood why people always yelled at her for not 'living in the moment' and the truth was she just never saw the allure of it, since her present was always so miserable. But it was different now, it was like the rest of the world had disappeared, and the only thing that mattered was Zack. He didn't care that she had just slapped him, or had just spent a good twenty seconds just staring at him while she tried to process her thoughts. She had always known he was a strange boy, but she was still surprised that he hadn't slapped her back, or pushed her off the alcove, or given her a lecture about the failures of the feminist movement or something like that. Instead, he had looked almost hurt, an emotion she had previously thought Zack Charming did not have the emotional range to achieve.

Hurt. Dammit. The anxiety that had temporarily disappeared came rushing back. What was going on? She was kissing Zack Charming and she actually really liked him, and oh god, her father was going to kill her when he found out. It suddenly occurred to her that she didn't know what she was supposed to be doing. Was she supposed to do something with her hands? In House they always did something with their hands. She slowly brought her arms up and wrapped them around his neck, like she had seen someone do in the show. Zack had to have kissed a bunch of girls, she probably didn't even compare. What if he decided afterwards that he didn't want to deal with her? Why would he want to deal with her, anyways? Nobody else did. As they broke apart, Charley almost felt a sense of relief. She could feel anxiety slowly taking over her brain, and her heart was beating out of her chest. Being with Zack felt instinctively right, and that feeling horrified her. Nothing else she had done, joining the debate team, placing at the top of her class, meeting Zeke, compared to the feeling of…what was it? She couldn't find the exact word to describe it, but then the word came to her: complete. She felt complete. And she somehow knew that deep down, all the plans she had worked out down to the very last detail were about to change.

Before she could continue on that train of thought, Zack was talking. Shoot. She bit her lip as she tried to process what he was saying…the debate team? Lead? What was he…oh. The corpse that was right in front of them. Bump, chair, okay. "I, uh, guess so." Damn it, when did she turn into such a teenage girl? She was not going to get caught up in this when they just had a discussion about how they hated when House put his personal life above his work. Zack obviously wanted to move on and solve this…whatever this was. Not that she didn't, of course. It was just that now her mind was a bit preoccupied. How were they even going to continue to try to solve this like normal people when that just happened? Well, this was going to be awkward. "So…should we check out the debate room? I don't want to leave the corpse here, but considering our options…"

[/blockquote][/center]

tag:

[/color] zack!
words:[/b][/color] 591
outfit:[/b][/color] FINALLY HERE and HERE
notes:[/b][/color] sorry for the shortness, and just in case (BECKET):
I'm not the pheasant plucker,
I'm the pheasant plucker's mate.
I'm only plucking pheasants
'Cause the pheasant plucker's late.
EDITED 8/24/11
lyrics:[/b][/color] you've really got a hold on me - the miracles
credit: noa the fantasticamazingnessomg[/size][/center]

[ZACK CHARMING]

This feeling did not exist. Not in the sense that other entities existed, at least. This was only a fleeting sensation, surely, nothing but a desultory tingling in his gut, an evanescent hope. This sentiment certainly only existed in farcical children’s cartoon movies and novels about vampires, this connection, this deep, complete and utter connection, this longing for everything, for the world in which this young woman thrived, to share her every thought her every whim. This burning predilection to spend every moment of the rest of his life with Charley Harper inches from his side, her face the first thing he glimpsed in the morning, the image at the forefront of his mind as he went about his banausic daily life, distracting him from everything that was wrong with the world, everything that was wrong with everyone in his peripheral vision, because he knew that there was at least one perfect entity awaiting his return.

Charley Harper. She was perfect. To think that less than ten minutes ago he had been scoffing at many of her traits which he had found particularly irksome…how imbecilic he had been, how asinine, how vain. This woman before him was beautiful, brilliant, and perfect.

Charley Harper. His mind repeated the syllables over and over like an ancient tribal chant, and Zack knew that he had as much power to silence the words as he did a clap of thunder. Charley Harper. Charley Harper. For the rest of his life he knew, that Charley Harper, Charley Harper, Charley Harper, was all he would ever need.

"I, uh, guess so."

The corpse. They were still examining the corpse.

Such an inconsequential matter, after the foundations of Zack’s world had been thrust onto their sides and tossed into unrecognizable forms. What about the corpse could possibly be as important as this radiant, resplendent face before him?

“So who is on…the debate team this year?” he asked, searching through the air for something to say, though he didn’t want to break this beautiful silence that had formed between them, laden with more implications than could ever be channeled into verbal communication.

"So…should we check out the debate room? I don't want to leave the corpse here, but considering our options…"

Debate team room. Charley Harper. Charley Harper. Why would there be evidence in the debate team room? The corpse was right here, after all. It would be much more logical to simply-

But the debate team room. Empty. Except for himself. And Charley Harper, Charley Harper, alone. In the debate room.

“Yes. That seems like a reasonable course of action.”

[/color] He stood up and brushed himself off, stretching out an awkward hand for her to follow.
[/color]
talk talk talk
other person talking[/blockquote][/blockquote]



~tags:Charley
~words:454
~listening to:Michael Swaim’s Wondrous Rapping
~lyrics:Love’s Recovery-Indigo Girls
~tag:this template is by MONICA at OUAC. DON'T BE STEALIN', YA HEAR?[/font][/size][/center]