"This is stupid," Lock grumbled.
"No, it's not!" Shock cackled and tried to shove a black rose into his hand, "Go give it to her!"
She turned to a giggling Barrel and whispered, "This is great! Just look at his face!"
"Yeah!" Barrel whispered back, snorting with laughter, "Think he'll be able to go through with it?"
"We'll make 'im!"
"Will you guys shut up!" Lock said irritably, "I can't think straight with you whispering like that!"
"What's there to think about?" Shock asked.
"Plenty!" Lock exclaimed.
"Just walk up and give her the stupid flower!" Barrel said between bursts of hysterical laughter.
"You better hurry," Shock grinned, "Barrel might explode if you don't do it soon."
"Really? I wanna see that, though!" Lock said, desperately trying to find a way out of the situation he was in.
"Now you're just making excuses," Shock said crossing her arms, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were too…chicken!"
Lock's blood boiled. No one called him chicken and got away with it! He moodily snatched the rose out of Shock's grasp and stomped over to where Spinder was standing. The little undead ballerina held a lump of snow in her hand and seemed to be inspecting it thoroughly.
"What do you think, Henry?" she asked the spider dangling from her hair, "Pretty weird, huh?"
She shook the snow out of her hand and looked up when Lock cleared his throat. He opened his mouth to say something, but the words wouldn't come. Instead, he stuck the flower out in front of him, glaring at the ground and blushing at the same time. Spinder smiled mischievously, then put on the innocent act:
"For me?" she asked sweetly. Lock glanced up for only a moment, then dropped his gaze back to the ground, blushing even more furiously than before.
"Yeah," he said, rather gruffly.
Spinder took the rose out of Lock's outstretched hand, then quickly leaned over and gave him a small kiss on the cheek. Lock grimaced for a moment, horrified with the idea of having been kissed.
But you like her don't you? He asked himself, So stop being so stupid about it!
He grinned a little as he looked back up at Spinder.
"I, uh, I gotta go," he said, still grinning, "Shock and Barrel can't make a decent snowball for anything."
"Okay," Spinder said. Lock turned to find his siblings again, but Spinder stopped him.
"Lock!"
He turned back to her.
"Thank you," she said, fingering the rose.
"Sure," Lock said, and smiled.