22SKoW Challenge #8 - With Bite
Requirements:
1) Must be a one-shot, Minimum 1000 words.
2) Plot: Protagonist wandering around in a club, meets someone, they flirt, then dance, and the person bites protagonist. You can take it from there.
3) Must have the quote, "Did you just bite me?" and/or "Not cool to go around biting strangers!"
4) Must involve a cookie. Of some sort.
5) Large doses of humor.
No:
1) Cannibals. As much as that'd be fun to write, it wouldn't be too fun for me to read.
2) Long, meaningful moments. This challenge is meant to be quick, light, and fun.
The Bite Side of The Night
- Stylo
I hate costume-themed parties.
Think about the kids, I told myself sternly. Think of how happy they'll be. They have so little to be happy about.
That worked, until I realized that in a costume I'd have even less to be happy about. Unfortunately, that realization came to me only after I was already in costume and staring at my reflection in utmost horror.
The school's Interact Club had organized a Halloween party. Not just any party, but the biggest one our school had ever seen. And how did this have to do with the sort of interaction the club was supposed to be doing?
Tickets. We were selling tickets for entry. Normally, this would put people off. Normally, anything the Interact Club did would put people off. But the head of the club just happened to be Brooke Summers, who was undoubtedly the most popular girl in school.
I don't get those stories in which they make high school out to be a jungle. The popular girl isn't always Queen Bitch. Brooke is probably the sweetest, most caring person in the whole wide world, and I was really lucky to have her as my best friend.
Up until that moment, at least. "You have to wear it!" she pleaded. "It goes with the theme!"
Ah, yes. The theme. Our cause. The proceeds of this party were going to the local homeless shelter's soup kitchen. It was running out of funds to feed the poor - and there are a lot of poor people in the world today. Brooke and I have been volunteering there for years and we thought that it would be a crying shame if they had to close the place down. People didn't have to be homeless and hungry.
So while the rest of the world had decided to show up in Halloween costumes more fitting for our age, the Interact Club was coming dressed as a type of food. Yes. Like a second-grader's play. Food. So while Kylie Dupree had told us she was showing up as Xena without as much on, I was going as…A cookie.
"I look like a beach ball!" I shrieked and grabbed at the plastic wrap she had managed to inflate and had drawn chocolate chip-shaped spots on. "There is no way in hell I'm wearing this!"
But Brooke didn't get to be the Senior Class President and President of the Interact Club and President of just about everything else by being a push-over. Finally, we reached a compromise. She let a bit of the air out of it so that it looked more like a dress, and I wore it.
It was all very unfair, really. I got stuck wearing the inflatable plastic sheet with brown leggings and heels while she got to wear a dress. It was all covered in tiny green baubles and she had worn a pair of white heels with it. She was going as a bowl of peas, and the peas she had managed to string up from her ears completed the look.
So cursing Brooke's creativity and my dependence on her and her ability to be the only person alive to make a bowl of peas look sexy and - well, just generally cursing Brooke, I followed her into the club we had hired for the night.
It wasn't a major party scene, the club. If it was, I doubt they would have hired it out to a bunch of teenagers. It was kinda like The Bronze on Buffy. Only no alcohol was allowed there since we were mostly underage, and much to my disappointment, no Spike or Angel.
As the people started to fill in, I realized that it was probably a good thing that those vampires weren't around. Wandering in, in various stages of undress, the population of Unity High School hadn't seemed to grasp that Halloween was be-who-you-aren't night. They were just the same old skanks as ever. I looked down at my plastic wrap that was looking worse as time went by. Spike would've never looked at me twice.
But of course, nobody said anything about my outfit. I was one of the hosts, and I made sure to laugh at my outfit before anyone else could, so I managed to steal anyone else's thunder.
It got to about ten and the party was in full swing. Brooke had gone away to solve some crisis that involved a guy who was following Kylie Dupree around with a huge magnet and calling himself MagnetoMan, and trying to attract the sorry excuse of her breastplate off her. That left me by myself, and I wandered over to the bar and threw myself into a chair.
"Hey, Ricky," I greeted our bartender as he whipped up lemonades and punches. Even though cliché dictated that one way or another the drinks had to be spiked, we were all clean. Ricky waved at me from where he stood, finishing off the coke floats with a dollop of whipped cream, then made his way over to me.
"Hey, Chels," he gave me his dorky, lopsided smile. "What can I get you?"
"A new life," I groaned, slumping over the bar table. "Brooke's missing, I look like dung, and Spike hasn't showed up."
Ricky grinned, then ruffled my hair playfully. He knew full well about my Buffy obsession - and secretly, shared it. It was something I teased him mercilessly about. "That's what you think," he said mysteriously, with a twinkle in his eye. "Oi, Andy!" He called out to someone behind me, then waved him over.
Although every cell in my body told me not to turn around, I did. I had to. It's the way bad clichés work. And even though I knew that I should've expected it, I almost fell off my stool when I caught sight of the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen.
There, striding from the midst of the crowd, was Spike.
I mentally slapped myself and gazed suspiciously at the drinks behind the bar. I had already downed a few. Maybe I shouldn't have been so sure of their non-alcoholic nature.
When I looked back again, Spike was no longer there. With an inward laugh, I turned back to Andy, and almost fell off my chair again. Spike was sitting next to me.
At that point, I remembered that I was at a Halloween costume party. The boy in front of me looked like Spike, but certainly wasn't. His hair was more naturally blond than Spike's Captain Peroxide look, and his eyes were green instead of steely blue. "Hey there, luv," he said, quirking his lips into a smile.
He had a British accent. He had the leather duster. He had obviously watched Buffy in order to have picked his costume.
I decided to overlook the fact that he had green eyes and smiled back. "Hey," I said shyly.
"What's a good looking girl like you doing sitting at the bar alone?" he asked seriously, but with a twinkle in his eye that said that he found the line just as corny as I did.
I snorted in a most unladylike way, and he laughed.
He had a wonderful smile, I noticed.
The boy couldn't have been from my school, I knew. Even though he was in costume, anyone could tell that he was good looking without it. Without anything, even. The tickets had been sold to the general teenage public; he could've been from anywhere. He could've been a freak who went to parties and picked up girls.
But Ricky had known him, I pointed out to myself. So when he offered his hand to me, I took it. "Dance with me," he said in an easy-going way, the smile never leaving his face.
There was no possible way I could say no to a boy with a British accent; even if he hadn't been as good looking I'd have jumped at the chance.
He led me on to the dance floor and we started to get with the beat. There were couples all around us involved in complex mating rituals, but we stayed clean.
At least we started out that way, at a respectable distance. During the course of the dance, though, he managed to pull me to his chest. I didn't resist. It wasn't like we were gyrating, and I'd danced with boys like this before. So when he spun me around, my back to his chest, I didn't think twice of it either. I just closed my eyes and lost myself to the music, moving without thought, and almost forgetting who I was. I loved dancing.
As a host, I hadn't been able to dance much. I was too busy running around and fixing things and ushering people in. But at that moment, I lost myself. I forgot about my ugly beach ball outfit and the pain in my flat feet that came from wearing heels and even who I was dancing with. I was one with the music.
Until a sharp pain made me snap open my eyes and jerk away from my partner.
I raised an incredulous hand to my neck, where I had felt a pair of teeth close. Then I turned around and pushed him.
"Did you just bite me?" I exploded, feeling self-conscious and scarily excited at the same time. Of course, not knowing which emotion to choose, I picked being angry. "Did you just bite me?" I repeated.
The boy didn't even have the grace to look ashamed. He smiled easily and nodded.
"You can't just bite people! It's not cool to go around biting strangers!" I expostulated.
He looked a little apologetic now, but there was that twinkle in my eye that told me he wasn't being entirely sincere. "You're a cookie," he argued. "I'm a vampire. It's what we do," he reasoned.
I could feel my anger dying down at his smile, at his voice. I shook myself and tried to hold on to it. "The last I checked vampires sucked blood, not ate cookies," I said icily, turning around to walk away.
A hand on my shoulder made me stop. I turned around to look at him angrily, to see a genuine expression on his face. "I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "I didn't mean to make you angry. I'm not a cannibal or a serial killer or rapist. I guess I just took a couple of liberties you don't take with strangers," he blushed.
The sight of a blushing Spike look-alike with green eyes was too much to bear. "Damn straight you don't bite strangers," I agreed, softening on the inside. "I'm Chelsea," I said cheekily, outstretching my hand to him.
He looked at it, clearly surprised, then looked up at me and grinned. "Andrew," he said charmingly. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Ricky's cousin and I go to Eastwood High. I lived in Somerset till a couple of years back, so the accent is genuine. And I didn't choose the costume; Ricky dared me to wear it."
Although I was a little disappointed by the last proclamation, I let it slide. We danced the night away until the party ended, then the entire Interact Club and Andy went to an all-night diner, where I bought him a cookie that he could actually bite on sight.
And even though he didn't try to bite me again, when he and Ricky dropped Brooke and I home, he kissed me goodnight on the cheek.
The rest is history; it was love at first bite.
I do not own the shows Buffy or Angel; Joss Wheedon is God. I do not own Spike either, 'cause I've found someone better :).
So there you have first non-fanfiction attempt at romance. I had fun writing it; I hope you had fun reading it. Whatever you thought, review!
Reviewers will get cookies :).