A/N: I know it has been quite sometime, but please forgive me. Comments are welcome, as always. I tried getting out some of characters' feeling here. I hope I did alright.

It was Thursday. John Bender sat on a bench and flicked his lighter while listening to the hum of the fluorescent lights above him. Every now and then the muffled commotion of bodies exerting themselves to their maximum potential escaped through the solid walls of the boy's locker room. Bender thought about how silly it was. Why get all sweaty, he thought. He didn't feel like ruining his clothes with his own foul stench for no good reason—he already smelled of cigarette smoke.

He decided to roam the halls of his domain. He opened the door to to locker room and saw someone sitting by the wall.

"Hey, I didn't know vampires came out at this hour."

Allison looked up from her sketch pad.

"You shouldn't mess with a vampire. I'm sure you've heard of Vlad III?"

"Who?"

She sighed and resorted to using layman's terms.

"Dracula."

"Oh! Yeah. The spooky bloodsucker."

"Well actually, that's just from the novel. Some say the real Vlad Tepes liked to impale his prisoners. Some say it was done to about 20,000 people during his reign in Transylvania."

Bender just smirked

"I'm sure glad Dick doesn't have a temper like that."

Allison went back to her sketching. John looked over her shoulder.

"What do we have here, Picasso?"

"A Monarch Butterfly enjoying a milkweed."

"Aren't butterflies a bit too appealing to a rather dark person like yourself?"

"Well, this one is pretty nifty; he's got toxins running through him that he gets from eating milkweed, which make him taste icky, and leave his potential predators with an upset stomach—if they don't die first, that is."

"You know all this how?"

Allison just smiled, that was always a rare event for her.

"Reading. You should try it sometime."

"I do read."

"Your dad's porn doesn't count."

"You're a comedian. Why don't you talk National Geographic with Einstein? I heard from Claire you guys are an item."

Allison nodded

"What happened with muscle-head?"

Allison sighed, She thought back to Saturday's detention, and the feelings she had for him at the time, and how they kissed as they got picked up from school.

"Look, Andy still can't shake off his detractors; he's still afraid about what others think of him. He just watched as his wrestler pal almost turned Brian into a pretzel. Brian's a weirdo like me; he's not afraid of who he is or who his friends are, or that he's with me. I can imagine Sporto breaking under the pressure of his peers and family about dating me."

"Well, that's why I make my thing with Claire not so obvious. It worked for Romeo and Juliet, didn't it?"

"Actually, they both committed suicide." Allison's wit always found a way to stealthily sneak into conversations.

"Must you always do that?" John clearly was getting aggravated.

"What? Correct you?"

"Yes! I mean...No!...You know what I mean!"

"I don't, actually," she noted with just a hint of sarcasm that was reaching its apex.

"Look. I'll be back." John just needed some time to cool off. He didn't have anything against Allison, just the fact that she was using wit, sarcasm, and snappy comebacks—beating him at his own game. He admired that in Allison. He was just about at the stairwell when he heard hos name being yelled from behind.

"Bender, you skipped my P.E. Class! I'll make sure you get a Saturday detention for that!"

John just smiled to himself as he walked up the stairs, knowing that Vernon already had him booked for the rest of the month.