Disclaimer: Nearly two years since they stopped making new shows and WB still hang onto the rights tighter than Speedy hangs onto his hair gel.

A/N: Written for Shadow Diva as part of the Boiz and Gurlz fic-request meme on LiveJournal. She requested Speedy Bumblebee and New Year's Eve. First line shamelessly nicked from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer before it went all pants and emo.


New Year's Grief

© Scribbler, December 2007.


"Let's not jump to conclusions."

"I didn't jump. I just took a tiny step and there conclusions were." Bumblebee folded her arms and eyeballed Speedy. "You were gonna try and skip out on the New Year's party – the party Mas y Menos spent all week preparing for, that Aqualad stayed home from Atlantis's Kebloboboa celebrations for, that I invited Titans West and South to and that you promised you would not skip out on. Am I wrong?"

"You're wrong."

"Now say it with a straight face."

"I did!"

The eyeballing turned into a full-blown glare.

Speedy didn't quail. Quailing was for sissies who were scared of girls. He did, however, have a healthy respect for Bumblebee's left hook, which was completely different. "Okay, okay, I was invited to the charity costume ball in the Town Hall."

"By whom?"

"What?" He'd expected her to go straight into chewing him out for reneging on his duties, not quibble the finer details of the reneging.

"Who invited you?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but the Mayor's daughter sent me an invitation."

"Just you?"

"Only my name was on the top. I just figured the rest of you had your own invitations."

Bumblebee narrowed her eyes at him and hissed something he didn't quite catch.

"What?"

"You're so clueless it's untrue. Didn't it strike you as odd that the Mayor didn't invite you if it was a formal invitation? And that there haven't been any announcements publicising your attendance so as to encourage lots of rich people to donate money to the event the way they always do whenever we show our faces at that sort of thing?"

"Well I-"

"You're her date, you moron." Bumblebee looked like she wanted to punch him. She really was unhealthily protective of Mas y Menos's feelings. "Did you say yes?"

"To what?" Speedy asked, wondering if the crackle he could hear was her or all in his head. She didn't have her Stingers in her hands but that didn't mean a thing. The Stingers were just a means of focussing her internally generated energy so it didn't break free from her control. He'd seen her unleash that energy without a conduit before. It levelled a whole city block and knocked her out of active duty for three days, as well as just plain knocking her out for twelve hours.

"To her invitation," Bumblebee prompted.

"No, but-"

"Are you gonna?"

"I don't know, do I?"

"Wrong answer." She spun on her heel and stalked away, leaving Speedy to wonder why she hadn't just ordered him to say no and stick to his promise.

Now he had to actually think about what to do next and consider whether having the Mayor's admittedly hot daughter chase after him was worth the guilt he'd feel for letting Mas, Menos and Aqualad down. Typical – she couldn't make his life easy at any turn.

"Bumblebitch," he muttered, creeping away to put a phone call through to the upmarket part of town. He wondered whether the Mayor's daughter could influence her father to kick them out of Steel on grounds of reneging on a promise.

Some days he hated girls.


Fin.