Buffy, Spike and the rest of the contestants made their way into a high class restaurant with Giles. After a murmured discussion with the waitress, she led them into a private room where Joe Rogan was standing there, waiting for them.
He beamed at them when they entered the room.
“Hello everyone,” he said, “My name is Joe Rogan and as you probably know, I’m the host for Fear Factor.”
Everybody nodded and smiled at him; some said hi timidly.
“Tonight we will be having dinner together, and the main purpose is to get to know each other. So please, have a seat.” He gestured to a long table in between them, three chairs on each side and two chairs on either end.
Giles and Joe sat at either ends of the long table. Buffy stepped forward to grab a seat in the middle, with a big brunette man sitting on her left. He gave her a flirty smile as he sat down. On Buffy’s right, a pretty girl with long black hair, the sexiest pouty mouth she had ever seen and beautiful doe eyes sat down. The girl had made a comment that made Buffy blush about Spike when she first set eyes on him, “Whoa! Hello there cutie, that’s the tightest butt I’ve ever seen!”
Speaking of the bleached blonde wonder, he sat opposite her and smirked. For some odd reason, that seemed to incense Buffy more.
Sitting on Spike’s right side and next to Joe, was a man who’d introduced himself as Riley to Buffy on their over to the restaurant. Buffy wrinkled her nose – that man was so full of himself! He kept bragging about everything – from how he won high school sport competitions to how he excelled in this military programme.
Which leaves Harmony who was sitting on Spike’s left side, trying to engage in a conversation with Spike ever since her eyes widened at the sight of him in the hotel lounge. She had licked her lips, then launched herself to glue by his side, talking nonstop. Spike, for his part, had ignored her as much as he could, looking like he wanted the floor to swallow him up.
“Alright, is anyone allergic to anything?” Joe asked the whole group while holding a menu in front of him. A waiter was hovering at his elbow, pen poised on paper.
Everybody shook their head.
After Joe whispered a few words to the waiter, the young man nodded and walked away briskly, shutting the door behind him.
“So how’s everybody been?” Joe rubbed his hands as he looked from one face to another.
There was a collective murmur of “Good. Fine. Excellent. Never-been-better’s”.
“I trust that you all know when’s the date and time for all the stunts?” Giles addressed them all. “Good. Now, let’s get this painful part of the conversation out of the way.”
His eyes twinkled behind his glasses at Joe.
“Yes,” Joe agreed. “Let’s start by introducing ourselves, just state your names, and we can go from there.”
After a few awkward moments of introductions, during which Buffy learnt that the brunette man sitting next to her was named Angel O’Connor, a lawyer; the girl on her right was named Faith Evans, a bartender; and interestingly Spike worked as a writer. Before long, the conversation became more lively.
“What do you mean, you’ve eaten duck fetuses before?” Angel asked Spike, who was smirking proudly and cutting into his steak.
“I was touring Thailand a while back, and the locals kept pushin’ me to try their local delicacy,” Spike said. “They had the strangest notion of what was considered edible!”
“So, you’re telling us that this duck fetus was actually – what, almost fully formed? With bones?” Faith asked.
“With feathers!” Spike added.
“Cool!” Faith said.
“Eeeww!” Buffy and Harmony cried together.
“I knew you girls would be grossed out,” Riley chimed in. He turned to Spike. “That was nothing, man.”
“Oh?” Spike raised his eyebrow at him. “And I suppose you’ve eaten something grosser than duck fetuses?”
“Well yeah!” Riley said. “See, when I was in this military programme-”
Buffy inwardly groaned.
“We have to find our own food in this jungle, see? So we simply ate everything – from grasshoppers, to worms, to crickets. Plus, we even ate roaches. There were even snakes, man- boa constrictors, adders-”
“What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever eaten, B?” Faith asked Buffy loudly, interrupting Riley’s boasting tirade. Everybody was getting tired of him.
Buffy cocked her head to one side and thought carefully. “Sago worms.”
Harmony scrunched up her nose in disgust, murmuring “Freak” while the rest gave her rapt attention and Spike asked, “What the bleedin’ hell is a sago worm, pet?”
“It’s Buffy,” she snapped.
Teasing her, he said, “You’re a sago worm?”
“No, Captain Peroxide,” Buffy said, to which Spike replied, “ ‘ey!”
“Sago worms are worms that feed at the bottom of the sago tree in Sarawak, Malaysia. I’m not sure if other countries have them, but that was where I tried,” she continued.
“You eat them live-” Harmony blanched.
“-and wriggling-” Angel’s eyes bugged. Joe, Giles and Spike looked impressed.
“-and they taste like flour.” At that, everybody burst into laughter.
Spike looked at her and said, “Don’t think that beats my duck fetus, luv. At least your sago worms taste like flour, mine was unbelievably gross!”
“I believe everybody has their own opinion on what’s considered gross. I probably can kick your ass where yuckage is concerned,” Buffy said, defiantly raising her nose.
“Oh puh-leeze. You couldn’t possibly do any of the Fear Factor stunts even if your life depended on it. What were you? A cheerleader?”
“So what if I was?” Buffy was mad now. Who the hell did he think he was?
“Just that- you don’t look so tough.” He smirked at her.
“And I suppose you are?” Buffy shot back. “What do you do for a living, huh, Spike? A writer, isn’t it? Nothing tough about that.”
He narrowed his eyes and leant forward, “Well then, little girl, we’ll just have to see then, don’t we?”
She mirrored his actions before saying through gritted teeth, “Well, then I guess we do.”
Joe and Giles gave each other meaningful looks at this exchange.
***
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