WHO: Eun Joo Choi and Theodore Hackett WHAT: First kiss banditry, THAT'S WHAT. WHEN: Tonight! (Sunday, July 29) WHERE: The quad courtyard, I think? OUTDOORS. WARNINGS: Other than Ted's inherent creepiness? None, really.
Eun Joo usually stayed inside when it was dark. It was safer that way, she was less likely to be frightened or disturbed that way. But tonight she had felt the need for fresh air, and so she'd walked out onto the campus with her phone in hand, making little comments and sending texts and emails from her phone when she wasn't staring up at the sky and enjoying the stars. There were so many more stars here than she'd ever seen in Seoul, and there was something just so romantic and hopeful about them. She sighed, closing her phone and wishing that something happy would happen to her.
"Wishing on stars?" came a quiet voice behind her shoulder. "Oh — I'm sorry," it continued, as Eun Joo tensed, startled. "I didn't mean to scare you."
Ted smiled what might've been a disarming smile with any other set of teeth, but his own glinted too white and too sharp in the dull lamplight. An implicit threat, regardless of his intentions. But his voice was mild, genuine, and he kept a polite distance as he extended a hand. "Ted Hackett," he offered, cocking his head to the side as if to say, and you?
"You didn't… scare me," she said. No, not quite. But she was breathing harder as she looked at the other man. She trembled and looked at him, a bit surprised by his teeth. She tried to look away from him. "I wasn't… I mean, maybe a little," she said weakly, looking back up at the stars. She swallowed and then bit her lip.
Eun Joo looked down at his hand and slowly put her own in his. "Eun Joo Choi," she said, trying to remember if she knew anything about Ted. She couldn't think of anything off the top of her head.
"Eun Joo Choi," Ted repeated, testing the unfamiliar syllables on his own tongue. It didn't sound quite right to him, and he smiled again, this time in a tight-lipped apology. "And what'll you be up to on this late evening stroll, Eun Joo Choi?" he asked, rather in the same way he would if he were Father Christmas, consulting about toys.
"Oh," she said. "I just... I just wanted to take a walk," she said, feeling as though she must be doing something wrong. She blinked rapidly but then realized that there was no reason why she shouldn't be out, especially if he was out, too. "But what are you doing out? It isn't that late, is it... Ted?"
Ted laughed, a sudden loud, barking sound that echoed against the stone walls of the quad. “You needn’t sound so guilty,” he said, by way of explanation. “I’m not here to interrogate you. I’m here—” and he paused for a moment, looking hard into Eun Joo’s eyes, with some combination of appraisal and hunger. His voice fell back to its quiet, conversational rhythm as he picked up his thread again: “I fancied a walk myself, so I did. I find, as you well know, that what the night deprives us in stimulation, it bestows us in clarity. Or— that some senses become hazy so that others may grow keener.” He didn’t quite smile this time, but as he spoke it was possible to catch a glimpse of his incisors lengthening perhaps a centimeter more than was normal, as if awakened by Ted’s words, and stretching after a long nap.
"Here to?" she said, blinking up at him. There was something about the way that he looked at her that gave her pause. She bit on her lip, listening carefully to him. He had such a way with words, she thought what he said was really quite pretty. Eun Joo smiled up at him. "I agree," she said. "I think it's the perfect time for reflection. And I enjoy thinking when I'm outside at night..."
She caught a glimpse of his teeth but she didn't focus on them too much, thinking that would be rude. "Do you have much on your mind?" she asked.
"Oh, aye," he said, resignation in his sigh. "Most of it sad and weighty, and I shouldn't like to unload them on your shoulders and have you walk away with a decidedly morose impression. No," he continued, with more vigor, "tell me — if every one of these stars was a spark of a wish, a desire stemming from a human heart and projected lightyears away into space — " (and here he gestured grandly at the sky) "show me, which are yours?"
Eun Joo's eyes rounded as he talked about his sad and weighty problems. She wanted them unloaded on her shoulders, she liked to hear people's problems and try and help them out with them. But he didn't give her a chance to say so right away. "Oh--oh," she said. "I don't mind hearing about your problems," she said. "But I... Well, I guess I feel a little lonely," she whispered. She didn't really know how to say that she felt lonely watching everyone start coupling up. Katja had Beiber, of course, but everyone else seemed to be getting lost in each other's arms and no one wanted her.
"I see," Ted nodded, dropping to a low murmur to match hers. "But certainly you've someone waiting back at home? A pretty girl like you, I shouldn't wonder."
Her cheeks flushed. This felt like something out of a movie. A really good movie, the sort you go into with the extra buttery popcorn but forget to keep eating partway through. "I," she stammered, looking up at him. "Well, no. I'm not... Nobody thinks I'm..." she swallowed. Did he think she was pretty? Because he was so handsome, and no one had ever told her she was pretty, not a handsome man like him.
There was a moment — a fraction of a second, really — when he didn't think he'd do it. Ted was, he liked to believe, an essentially decent person (blood, gore, and sex aside — not immaterial, but not entirely damning, either). Eun Joo was barely more than a child, and he ought to keep his fangs to himself, hadn't he?
But then he looked into her bright, hopeful eyes, raised a hand to tuck a soft lock of black hair behind her ear, and — ah, Ted, you old scoundrel — decided he might as well. Spare hand on the small of her back, he kissed her, brief and tender, with both fangs tucked neatly away and only the slightest nip on her lower lip as he concluded.
"Trust me, love," he said, oddly husky now as he drew away, "You are."