Incubus Dreams - October 28th

[theyallfallin]

Anita drives along the road, Nathaniel quiet beside her. She'd picked him up at the house after work, rushing home after a long day of meeting clients. As she turned down another street, heading towards the Circus, her stomach growled.

Comments

[one_of_her_boys]

Nathaniel looked away from the scenery outside his window to stare at Anita.

"When was the last time you ate?" he asked softly, giving her a knowing smile.

[theyallfallin]

Anita spares Nathaniel a glance, but keeps her eyes mostly on the road.

"A few hours ago," she says, but her tone sounds unconvincing even to her ears. Her jaw tenses for a few seconds before she admits the full truth. "I had a bagel with my coffee this morning."

She'd had more coffee at work throughout the day, but something tells her that doesn't count.

[one_of_her_boys]

"Which means it's been over twelve hours since you ate, and coffee doesn't count," he gently chides. "You need to eat, Anita."

[theyallfallin]

Coffee should count, if you ask her.

She slows for a stop light and takes the opportunity to look at Nathaniel again. "I don't have time to eat. I have time to drop you off at Guilty Pleasures, and then I have zombies to raise."

It's going to be one of those long nights; she just knows it. Food may sound like a good idea, but she's busy. Business trumps hunger pangs.

[one_of_her_boys]

Nathaniel smiles at her. It's a sweet expression, one he uses with her and with Asher when he knows they're being ridiculous and difficult when they don't need to be.

"Hunger is a funny thing," he says, his tone gentle, quiet. "You know how when you don't feed one hunger, all the other hungers get so much worse?"

[theyallfallin]

Anita knows that tone. Nathaniel uses that tone when he has a point to make. She's learned to distrust that tone, because it usually means that Nathaniel is right, and if Nathaniel is right, the argument is already over before it's begun.

But she's never let inevitable defeat stop her from putting up a fight. Why start now?

"Yeah, I know. If I don't feed the ardeur, then the beast wants meat or the vampire wants blood. So?"

[one_of_her_boys]

That smile stays on his face.

"Well, when you don't feed your human stomach, you get hungry. And," he says, the tone remaining gentle, soft, "if you get hungry and you ignore your body's need to be fed, it makes all the hungers worse as well."

When he didn't feed his body, his beast became ravenous, dangerous. It was one reason the shifters were careful about feeding schedules, why they were given plenty of time during their shifts at work to ensure they were fed and safe.

[theyallfallin]

It takes a few seconds longer than she would like to admit for the full weight of Nathaniel's argument to hit her. When it does, she almost rear-ends the car in front of them because she's staring at Nathaniel. Slamming on the breaks, she endures the horn blowing and hand gestures.

She forces herself to pay more attention to the road, but inside she's kicking herself. It was so simple.

"I don't eat regularly at work, especially when I'm busy, and that usually means I have to rush home with the ardeur riding my ass every night."

Why had she not noticed the connection between the two?

[one_of_her_boys]

"Sometimes twice a night," he points out. "I would bet those days you don't eat at all."

She would first exhaust Micah, and then him. Come morning, he'd be barely recovered, and she'd have to feed again. Trying to split himself between feeding her, feeding Asher, and feeding Damian on occasion, he knows his own body is stretched pretty thin.

"It would be interesting if you kept a food diary to see if there is a link between you starving your human body and the ardeur rising as violently and often as it does," he says, though his tone says he already knows there is.

[theyallfallin]

Her eyes narrow as she glances from the road again.

"You sound like you know this already."

[one_of_her_boys]

"Haven't you noticed that lycanthropes cook and eat? The key to us keeping the beast calm and content is to feed it. We eat a balanced diet, heavy on the proteins, and we eat regularly. I tend to have six or seven meals throughout the day, more if I've fed you and Asher," he tells her.

[theyallfallin]

The truth is she hadn't noticed. Not really. Sure, Richard had always been inviting her out to eat or cooking for her. Micah knew how to cook, even if Nathaniel was the one who ended up shouldering that responsibility. She had just assumed she was lucky. She sure as hell wasn't about to volunteer to cook when they had groups of hungry lycanthropes coming to the house so frequently.

She doesn't particularly like her own short-sightedness, and it piques her anger.

"Why didn't someone mention this to me before?"

[one_of_her_boys]

"We've been treating you like a human, Anita," he says, "but I don't think that's what we should be doing. You don't behave like a lycanthrope, especially when the beast rises or the ardeur overwhelms. Those times, I can swear you're a lycanthrope, that you'll slip your skin, but you never do." He chuckles. "You also don't take direction well. Pull into the parking lot over there. Now. We need to talk, and you don't like being distracted while you drive."

[theyallfallin]

Nathaniel knows her too well. Sometimes it's a comfort. Right now it just feels annoying. She doesn't much like the sound of pulling off the road to talk -- they're pressed for time already -- but she as to admit that it'll be safer. And she's a Safety First kind of girl.

Turning into a strip mall that's almost completely empty, she takes a parking spot and shuts the engine of the car off. It plunges them into intimate sort of silence that the car always turns into when you're sitting alone with someone at night.

The seat belt makes it a bit difficult to turn in her seat, but she faces Nathaniel as much as she's able. "So talk," she finally says, and her voice sounds almost normal, as if the intimate setting doesn't affect her.

[one_of_her_boys]

Nathaniel is more focused on the conversation than he is on the intimate setting. He's not going to fuck Anita in the front seat of her car, so he doesn't waste time thinking about it.

"We've been treating you as if you were human, and I don't think that was the best idea. I mean, so far, all of the directions you've taken about the ardeur has been from a vampire. He's dead. He only has bloodlust and the ardeur to worry about. Jean-Claude doesn't have to worry about eating." Nathaniel shifts in his seat, frowning a little. "A lycanthrope doesn't stop being human. We don't trade one hunger for another, we just add to the first. We still need to eat, just like any human."

[theyallfallin]

Anita has to take a few seconds to let all of that sink in. She had never thought about Jean-Claude's advice being limited, missing a piece because of her humanity. With all the weird shit going on, the last thing on her mind had been her human stomach. Maybe that really is part of the problem.

"So you mean that since I'm already fighting my normal hunger, it makes it harder to fight off the ardeur." She isn't surprised when Nathaniel nods. She's still annoyed that no one mentioned it until now, and even more annoyed that she didn't think of it herself. "Okay, fine. What do I do about it? I'm still running late tonight. I'm almost always running late."

There. Practicality back online.