Taste

by The Power of the Book

A/N: My first foray into BTVS fanfic – Reviews and flames all appreciated, because it means someone’s reading.

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Back when he was what would have passed for a normal vampire – no, that was too modest – back when he was the feared demon and slayer of two Slayers, he relished the tastes of life.

No more for him the bland and thrifty meals of an Oxford student, the son of a middle-class family always looking upward, no more weak tea, no more half-burnt biscuits. His main diet became human blood, harvested from a sweating, shaking body.

Dawn once asked him, spitting out the penny he’d flicked in her direction, if he didn’t get tired of the same taste in his mouth after over a century of existence. Why, she reasoned with human logic, hadn’t he tried animal blood before now? Certainly, she continued, there had to be more variety between different species of animals than between different people.

He acknowledged her point to a certain extent, pointing out that the blood of young and old were worlds apart in taste. But, he explained, while savoring the acidic tang of the salt and vinegar potato chips they shared, for a vampire, food was more about the hunt than the taste. The pursuit, listening with relish to the frantic pounding of the human’s heart, short terrified breaths, a body clinging to life by overworking itself, the meal all the sweeter for having to work for it.

Of course, he left the last part out. This particular episode happened during the summer of Buffy’s death, and he wasn’t about to unnerve Dawn in any way, or make her have reason to trust him less. For 147 days, Dawn and blood were the only things that kept him alive. In any case, she seemed to understand.

“I remember something like that in The Yearling,” Dawn said, trying to absorb his comments and filter them into some kind of common ground that she could accept. “One guy said that he’d rather nibble on a dry hunk of bread in the woods than gobble a seven-course meal.”

“Hunger is the best spice,” he acknowledged, crunching loudly on a chip and hoping that would be the end of the conversation.

Dawn knitted her brows in thought, just like her sister, he thought, as a sharp sliver of pain lanced his heart. “Then why do you eat other stuff? Like onion blossoms and these chips? There’s no hunt to that.”

“Remember that you seem to have had trouble enough opening the bag. Could count.”

She’d fixed him with her ‘irritated teenager that can’t stand a good ribbing’ look that was, thank God, different than her sister’s patented death glare.

“It’s a personal preference thing. Most vamps, they just exist to get their pints every few days, haven’t realized the finer things in life.” He paused, considering the chip before him. “Even if you’re undead, you’ve never lived until you’ve tasted real Chinese, not that bland boxed stuff that Red orders in.”

Once he had died, the world was reborn to him in bright, violent shades, and he was determined to savor every moment that he was free of his bland existence, reveling in what was loud, spicy, or colorful. Like Dorothy over the sodding rainbow, into the land of Technicolor Oz.

He hadn’t forgotten taste in this – forgoing the bland food he’d been raised on, he reveled in the spiciest dishes, the strongest liquors, wanting to stimulate every last tastebud as part of his campaign as a vampire to get all that he had been denied as a human. Dru’d had trouble with the spicy stuff, claimed that a bellyful of jalapeno peppers in Colombia actually had baby snakes inside them. After she’d asked him to slice her open to check, he kept her to a mostly blood diet.

What he hadn’t told Dawn, what he didn’t want to explain, was that to vampires, every human tasted different. Every last one greeted death in a different way. Strong, long-lived hunters like himself tasted fear and horror in every drop, but always in different degrees. Some were harder to scare, fought back, and greeted death with a mix of surprise and disappointment, vaguely sweet to the taste.

The first Slayer he’d killed tasted like regret. Later on, he would remember that she tasted, more specifically, curiously flat, like ashes, something of a letdown after the build-up. It was Drusilla’s delight in seeing his handiwork (and the blood’s aphrodisiac properties) that gave it flavor, along with his own sense of achievement and acceptance. Best night of his life…for a while. It was part of the reason he’d never tasted the other one, acceptance clouding her eyes before he’d moved a muscle to snap her neck.

Street whores tasted bitter, greeting their deaths with a final rail against the unfair lot that was theirs. The elderly were either bewildered or horrified, and it was all in the hunt as to whether they’d taste sour or sweet, and to what degree. Young girls, his favorite prey, tasted headily of all-consuming terror, the emotion so overwhelming that to him, it was the richest, creamiest dish of stew he’d ever tasted.

But then, it was what he wanted, just like the implosion of spicy human food on his tongue, he wanted the knowledge that he was terrifying, that he caused violent emotion beyond laughter. He’d get drunk off of it, the terror coursing through the girl’s veins as she shook, unable to move from fright, so much that he bet himself that she would stay, even if he’d unwrapped his arms from around her. Laughing against her clammy skin, he let go, and was right.

Chipped, he was relegated to animal blood and bagged human, neither of which appealed to his taste, but ate in the same way a dieter conscientiously chews carrots at lunch. The pig’s blood tasted of the animal’s confused final moments, salty and rich, but lacking in substance.

Human stuff reminded him of his hunting days, but carried the medicinal tang of chemicals that prevented coagulation, along with an indifferent taste. Occasionally, he would be lucky and get a bag from a first-time donor, nervousness giving the blood more of an edge. On the whole, most donors were indifferent, and the blood was bland, forcing him to spice it with Burba weed, mix it with bourbon, anything to give it some bite.

But now, he contemplated, several years past the conversation with Dawn, there was better for him. Lying in bed next to her, feeling the warmth of her body curled against his side, her hand splayed across his chest, the whisper of her breath from the head turned in his direction…the steady beat of her hear, pumping her precious blood through her delectable body.

Before, fear and horror had always been the flavor he searched for, the filet mignon and fudge-coated chocolate chunk brownie for his appetite and ego. Nothing beyond that, until now.

Gently, his thumb brushed over the healing puncture wounds at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, and his stomach mumbled softly in contentment.

She had given her blood to him freely, and after a great deal of exasperation on her part and hesitation, denial, and temptation on his, he had finally agreed to take a little nibble. In the midst of the act of love itself, his fangs descended, quivering at the thought of taking living blood once more.

The taste stopped his rhythm, and his eyes popped wide open in disbelief as he drank. Love. Complete acceptance. Love. Pleasure. Love. Home. Love. Home again. With some effort, she raised a hand to caress his ridged brow, continuing on into his hair, exerting soft pressure to encourage him to sate his desires.

Before then, the strength of the fear in blood was what gave it flavor, the power and depth of feeling in the intimate act of death. Nothing was more powerful, nothing more potent.

Now Buffy’s love flavored his diet, more powerful, more intoxicating than any other he had tasted. Rich and redolent with so many flavors, trust, caring, worry, acceptance, lust, affection, but always love, love, love.

He was in her arms, bodies melded together in more than one fashion, both straining to reach completion together. His hands were full of the sweaty satin warmth of her body, sensitive nose keenly aware of her arousal and his. His eyes were closed, for he couldn’t see her face while buried in the haven of her throat, and he abandoned himself to the heady delight that was her blood, the trust that allowed him to be exactly where he was in her arms and body.

“I love you,” she breathed into his ear, making him shudder and keen with similar sentiment, right before she dove for his throat, nipping at the skin for her own feast, blunt incisors making a sloppier job than his own. Bloody hell, she was tasting him! It sent him over the edge as he pulled her with him, leaving them closing each other’s wounds in the wake with gentle laps of the tongue.

When the colored lights behind his eyelids stopped spinning at such a fast pace, he lifted up on shaking arms, and by mutual fumbling of numb limbs, they settled into a comfortable post-coital cuddle.

Nuzzling against her hair, he worked his tongue around his teeth, savoring the last drops in his mouth that she had gifted him with. A thought occurred to him.

“Buffy?”

“Hmmm?”

“What do I taste like?”