When Josh finished packing all of his things, he sat back on his bed ignoring the movie. He was trying to give Zoe space because he knew that she was being forced into this situation. And since his first day at this college, he learned/was told to give humans space and let them decide when they are ready.
“Can I ask you something?” Zoe blurted out.
“Yeah,” Josh replied without looking at her from his bed.
“How do you feel about us living together?”
“It’ll be weird at first but I’m sure we’ll get over it.”
“You won’t take advantage of the situation?” Zoe asked with a lot of hesitation that caused each word to come out painfully slowly.
“If you mean to take advantage of you, no. I’m not a monster or a pervert. I just want to graduate and move on with my life,” Josh said emphatically, while also smiling from a laugh trying to escape.
“So, apart from activation, can vampires have uncontrollable sexual urges?”
“What the heck are you asking?”
“What? I barely know anything about vampires. Maybe you all can’t control sexual urges. I mean sex can be one of the most stimulating and addictive sensations that there is for humans so who knows what happens to vampires?”
“As I said I’m not a monster and I don’t have uncontrollable sexual urges.”
“Okay. I get it,” Zoe said with another face flushed red.
Zoe and Josh sat in silence until dinner arrived. The staff had brought Zoe lasagna, a cookie, and water to drink. Josh was given two opaque cups with straws. Josh sat on his bed with one of his two cups in his hands and the other one laying on his bedside table. Zoe sat on the floor with her back to the bean bag. She felt that the least awkward way to eat was with Josh, which meant sitting face to face. Zoe’s mind found more questions to ask Josh and hopefully get him to forget what happened earlier.
“Have you ever had our food before?” Zoe asked as casually as she could.
“No.”
“Do you want to try it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay.”
Zoe went back to eating her food. She finished the lasagna and began to eye her cookie. But before she ate it another question popped into her head.
“So before when I asked you about how blood tastes you said it has different tastes, what does that mean?”
“Well, it’s very similar to how people smell different. The things they eat and how much they exercise and things like that make their blood taste different.”
“So is the blood the same between those two cups, or is it all a mixture, or what?”
“I think it's two different people’s blood.”
“That would probably make the most sense. So, what does it taste like?”
Josh didn’t know how to answer this question again and he wasn’t sure if he should tell her honestly. He hadn’t told people that he tastes feelings in the blood he eats, and he had a feeling that that wasn’t the norm.
“If I tell you what it tastes like will you keep it a secret?”
“Yeah, only if you let me taste the blood, too.”
“You shouldn’t, you could get sick.”
“That’s true. Then I’ll keep it a secret if you tell me what my blood tastes like.”
“Why would you give me your blood?”
“It’s a test and I’m curious as to what you think about my blood and why so many vampires activate to my blood.”
“Sure, it’s like the first step towards that bite test I have to pass.”
Zoe began nibbling on her cookie, a little sad that there was only one for her to eat. She waited for Josh to speak, darting her eyes from her tray of food to his hand on his second drink and up to the straw following it up to his lips, which when she looked closely when they parted seemed to be red from the blood. Josh averted his eyes from Zoe’s. He was still determining whether this exchange was a good idea. To his surprise, he was more worried about hurting Zoe than for Zoe to find out his secret. That was to be expected because he already decided to make sure she successfully graduated from this school.
“Okay, I’m ready to tell you. The last cup of blood is different from this one. It tasted bad as it came from someone that didn’t take care of their health, while this one is more tolerable but average, it tastes like the blood that came from a healthy individual. But I experience more than taste. I feel things from the blood. Like emotions. The unhealthy person was constantly stressed and angry, while the healthy individual was both happy and sad,” Josh tried explaining.
“That’s pretty interesting. Do other vampires feel the blood donor’s emotions?”
“I don’t think so, but I haven’t looked into it. But could you keep it a secret?”
“Yeah, I won’t tell anyone. Don’t finish that second cup of blood. I want you to tell me differences if there are any that you notice between fresh blood and that older blood. Are you ready to try my blood?” Zoe asked trying to control her emotions. She was both excited and scared, not to mention worried.
“I guess I am if you are.”
“How much blood do you need to get a good taste of it?”
“A single drop will do, but a few more will be better to clear out the blood that’s still on my tongue.”
“I’ll get a clothespin.”
Josh, who was still sitting on his bed, moved to sit down in front of Zoe with his back to the side of his bed. He placed the mostly empty cup of blood in the hole between his legs when he crossed them and then waited for Zoe to grab the pin, to prick her finger or something similar to that. After rummaging in her bag for a good five minutes, she realized she didn’t have any clothespins or any needles or narrow sharp objects for her experiment with her. Her room might have contained a box for emergency sewing items that her mom packed her, but she couldn’t get it right now.
“Well, I couldn’t find any pins, or needles, I have a razor but would rather prick my finger than slice anything open. Do you have anything?”
“I don’t think I have anything that would do the trick.”
“Can you control your activation? And make your teeth sharp enough to poke a hole?”
“I haven’t tried to activate to activate, but if I could my teeth should be sharp enough to puncture a hole in your finger.”
“Can I see your teeth now? Maybe they are sharp enough?”
“Sure.”
Josh smiled while Zoe looked at his teeth, she noticed that his teeth were pearly white and not crooked, smushed together, or spaced apart. When he wasn’t activated, Josh’s teeth were unthreatening and unable to puncture her finger.
“Looks like unless you can activate willingly, we’ll have to make some makeshift pointy piercing object or work with one good papercut or multiple papercuts.”
“I’d rather we do the papercut method.”
“Okay, well get ready. I’ll cut my finger, squeeze it to get the blood out, and then you lick the blood off.”
“Yep.”
Zoe grabbed some of the printouts from a class that was in her backpack and forcefully slid one of the papers across the tip of her middle finger. She didn’t feel any pain, so she began squeezing her finger looking for blood rising out of a potentially invisible cut. A second later there was a drop of blood. That was all she could get before she decided she needed to offer her finger to Josh. She looked at Josh and he wasn’t showing any signs of activating, so she massaged her finger while putting it in front of Josh’s face. He looked at her for a second, just to be sure that she was still willing to do this. Zoe didn’t recoil from his gaze, so he took her middle finger with his right hand and held her right hand gently with his left, and guided the drop of blood to his lips. Instead of licking it off or even sucking the blood off of her finger, he decided to just pad it on to his bottom lip and lick it from there. Zoe watched Josh gently place the drop of blood that had grown considerably large from her finger massages onto his bottom lip. She was excited about what Josh had to say, but she was also excited about sharing real secrets and how only she was able to see Josh tuck in his bottom lip, which wasn’t done in a sexy way but held Zoe’s gaze long enough for Josh to start wondering what she was staring at.
“I think I got enough, you can stop staring at me,” Josh said.
“Oh, sorry, I was surprised that you put the blood on your lip. So, what does fresh blood and more specifically my blood taste like?”
“It’s interesting, it’s warm and the ‘tastes’ seem stronger. I taste a lot of anxiety and stress from you, but you are healthy. Since you are young, and this is what young blood tastes like I think we get blood from older people.”
Zoe was listening intently while also sucking on her finger and making sure the bleeding stopped.
“That’s good and all, but it doesn’t tell me why the other vampire students want to eat my blood. Girls seem to have more vampire takers. That makes sense. Maybe the reason is super simple? The only thing that I do that everyone else doesn’t do is donate blood. What do you think?”
“I don’t think blood donation would cause anything to change. Your blood cells are still the same plus we get a lot of nutrients from the plasma, too.”
“I just don’t understand, if the college wanted to test your control around humans, why pair you up with someone that you don’t activate to? Shouldn’t you ultimately be tested on not activating to a person you naturally activate to?”
“There are things that you don’t know yet about vampire society. And how humans fit into it.”
“Is there something that I don’t know that would make everything make sense?”
“Yes, but if I tell you, you have to make it through this program. If you don’t the vampire staff here will make it so that you can’t remember what I’ve told you or eventually what they have told you.”
“So, ultimately, if I complete this college program, I’m stuck in vampire society?”
“Kind of, you can leave as long as a vampire accompanies you and makes sure you don’t reveal any secrets. This is so you can visit your family and keep up appearances. If you don’t want to live in vampire society then they’ll try to make you forget, but you kind of lose everything with that choice.”
“I see,” Zoe said contemplating what she should do. She couldn’t deny that all of this was interesting and different, something that she could never experience if she had stayed with her family. Plus, she wasn’t alone, she had Josh, a surprisingly dejected but straight-laced guy on her side.
“I thought it through. Tell me,” Zoe said after a long sigh.
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