Prompt: “There is a certain taste to it.” 

(pairing: mark/seulgi. Genre: au, fantasy. Rating: pg-13. Words: 526) 

“I’m not doing that.” Mark thinks it’s kind of noble how Seulgi still manages to have some sort of moral code, despite all that’s happened to her. She’s not the first newborn to directly oppose the idea of drinking blood from a human, she probably won’t be the last either, but just like any of the others she’s going to have to learn to put human ethics aside, seeing as – well, seeing as she doesn’t fit into that category anymore.  

“You’re hungry, right?” he asks, and tries not to smile when she can’t both look at him and nod. He's been there, too: The conflicting emotion of not wanting to become a monster in the purest sense of the word, but also not wanting to die a second time. Bloodlust is manageable, but the first 48 hours are always the worst. Seulgi’s not older than 36 hours at best, and the fact that she isn’t starved, dead or behind bars for manslaughter is somewhat impressing, actually. He’ll probably have to tell her that someday, if she lives that long. “So you have to eat.” She glances down at the unconscious body with equal parts disgust and curiosity. Until about 20 minutes ago the guy was a robber, about to strip an elderly lady of her valuables in a park near the tube station, so Mark made the adult vigilante decision that the world probably wouldn’t miss him that much. That's his one rule when feeding on humans: Never take the lives of the innocents. It's a blurry and ultimately very fine line, and it’s ironic that he, of all people, has the power to make that decision, but someone has to. And he’d much rather make a policeman’s day than end up in the news as a hidden serial killer figure. It's not worth it. Trust him.  

“Look,” he says, and gribs the man’s collar so his head pops to the side and his jugular vein’s exposed. It's a low blow, he knows, a dirty trick, but even in the dim lighting he sees how her pupils dilate, and the small twitch in her fingers. Not a lot, but just enough to note that it’s there. “You can’t survive out here if you don’t eat. Human blood is your new water.” They both cringe at the comparison. It's a ty one. “It’s an acquired taste, but you need nutrition. You're not going to be full living off of rabits, and that’s when you start doing dangerous things that could end up getting you killed.”  

“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” she comments, before finally giving in, and stepping forward to get her first real meal in her new life. Mark has enough common vampire decency to step back a little and look away when she sinks her fangs into the soft skin, and nearly moans out loud when the drained corpse falls to the ground with a heavy thump. She wipes her lips with her sleeve. “Feeling better?” he asks, pleased when she nods. “Good. Then let’s go. The sun will be up soon, and I don’t want us to be here when somebody finds him.”