A/N: Oh my god! -hyperventilates- My first ever hetero-no-boy-slash-not-even-a-hint-of-Petey/Gary-action fic! I feel bad now... But anyway. Mandy and Gary are so unlikely they're cute, you know? So I just had to write some. Beware - this is total oneshot fluff. But hey, Gary and Mandy need more oneshot fluff, yeah? It's also incredibly short. Sorry! Okay, moving on. This is set about six months before JimJim rolls on to the Bullworth scene.

Gary's cold, slate grey eyes locked with Mandy's warm blue ones. He sensed that her lips wanted to curl into the contemptuous sneer that she so often wore, but it was like Gary's gaze had frozen her. The outcast and the queen stood opposite each other, perplexed by their own actions.

Gary knew he hated Mandy on some level. He knew that she was shallow, judgemental and had caused many girls and guys alike to weep pitifully in their beds at night. But right now, as he stood in front of the queen, he felt awe. He'd met a kindred spirit. Someone who loved to torment people just as much as he did.

His eyes didn't leave hers for at least thirty seconds, and this was enough for him to realize that her colours were indentical to his. The rippling aura surrounding her like a halo was deep, forboding navy black. The exact same shade that he saw when he raised his hand to his face, or looked in a mirror.

The colours he saw were disturbing, disorientating, and completely unnecessary, but Gary didn't care. What he saw when he didn't take his medication was his business, he rationalized. No one was going to change that.

Mandy tried to break away from Gary's gaze, but it held her like shackles. She stared at him with a curiosity and an anger that surprised even herself. How dare this boy stand there and hold her here like this?

But even as she stood, she knew that it was not entirely his doing. She felt a connection to this outcast, a connection that bound her to his gaze for what seemed like forever. Finally, their gaze broke. Gary's eyes were roaming over he body in the slow, lecherous way that she was so used to but for once Mandy wasn't irritated. She felt numb, like Gary's cold eyes had anaethatised her and made her stay frozen to the spot. She felt the flicker of the fire that she felt normally, the fire that made her act like the bitch she was. Her fire and Gary's cold ice seemed to rage against one another for a moment, and then the atmosphere between them loosened. They were at peace, like the fire and the ice had made allies.

It was incredible. Witnesses would swear that what they'd seen was only a kind of apparition, because what their eyes relayed was so preposterous it was dismissed immediately by their brains. The queen and the outcast were seen to step closer to one another until they were nearly touching - something Mandy would have totally outlawed, even by the football team, not to mention some psycho who tortured people for his own pleasure. They bent their heads, touching cheeks, and suddenly snapped out of whatever trance they were in. They backed away and stared for a moment, before pretending that nothing happened and walking away.

The strangeness that had overcome them that day still haunted them. Whenever they made accidental eye contact, they'd blush and look away, or avoid each other when it came to crossing paths. But whenever their minds emptied, alone in their beds at night, they thought about that part of their history that they wanted to block out, when the queen and the outcast united in one terrifying, devastating moment of true clarity, fire and ice mingled into peace and destruction.

Because they'd both felt the connection.

And to be honest, neither wished it to go away.