Love Potion

The Night Wears On

The question had finally come round to Mister Viper. Now for this part I was interested. I glanced sideways at the boy, still slouched by the crackling fire. Terror coiled his forearm, hissing as if whispering to him. He leant forward and lazily spun the bottle.

I wonder what I would say, if it landed on me. What would I ask the king of ice and secrets? Dare him to do?

But it didn't land on me. It landed on Tamsin again. Gal!

She hid her excitement with a slit-eyed smirk. "Truth or dare, Viper?"

He considered a second. "Truth," he said.

"Are you a virgin?"

There was a long and deathly silent pause (in which I gasped aloud, though impatience buzzed like flies beneath my skin). Viper finally said, "Yes."

A seeming surprise. Everyone murmured amongst themselves - they didn't tease him, or say anything, of course they didn't, he was Killian Viper. Kenzie and Tatiana didn't look surprised, though. Tamsin looked a bit shocked.

And I was, too. I mean, it shouldn't have been a surprise. We're schoolpeople! And, a part of me was definitely glad. He was a virgin; he wasn't ashamed; he wouldn't just 'get it over with'; it was special.

I watched as he took three glugs of his spirit. He tilted his head back as he did so, and as he drank I watched as his rather prominent Adam's apple rolled up and down his neck; realising myself, I looked into my lap quickly, and burned with shame, and hatred. 

Tatiana meanwhile was not having the game to stop. "Go on, then!" she roared, snapping me away from my thoughts. "Who's next?!"

"Uh!" Kenzie spurted. "That would be me again." Tatiana scowled. "Uhm... well..." Then he coughed slightly, and looked up with a harder and brassier face, as if only just remembering who he was. For some reason, his eyes found mine. I buzzed. "Let's... change it up. I challenge everyone to a dare. To kiss the person you find most attractive."

What? No.

"Now that's more like it!" Blue-hair cowled, sticking out his tongue. I decided I didn't much like him.

"Oh, bollocks!" Viper cried in a rather different feeling. "I'm not having one of those ... molefaced... loser... rags- to kiss me!" He flung an artless gesture to us. His face was the height of disgust, his every skin cell wrinkled in grimace.

"Don't worry!" I hissed through walls of teeth. "I think you'll be okay!"

"He says it as if we share a different feeling," Morgaine added coldly.

The corners of his lips went upwards. He looked between us, then he looked me up and down. It was in the most repulsed way, I could have been himself. This time I did not shrink under his belittling gaze. I would not let him squash me. I was not ugly. I knew I wasn't - I had many mirrors. He just wanted me to think I'm ugly because he hates me. And he wants me to hate me too. So I answered his eyes with a smirk. 

Then blue-hair was first to answer Kenzie's dare. "Well, I think that's an obvious answer," he purred, and turned his body to face Tatiana, who was still using his chest as a pillow. He moved his mouth very close to hers, and breathed right down her throat, her name... She grinned deviously at this movement, and within a second her mouth was on his, or rather, around his, for soon they were so feverishly snogging that it looked as they were battling to eat one another's face. She moved her legs to sit atop him, and in turn he grabbed her leg and back, and so they were twined together like spangledashes in a barrel, moving in sloppery rhythm - and the noise they were making sounded more like eels in a barrel. Kenzie's face was still hardened in callousy, and stared unblinkingly at the wall behind us.