Eat Properly
Disclaimer: I do not own Young Dracula.
...
Vlad plays with his food, when he is seven years old, making the peas into people and the gravy into lava and the Yorkshire puddings into inescapable bubbling pots.
He has so much fun playing that sometimes he forgets to eat, and their father has to give him a warning of Vladimir before he puts his fork in his mouth and actually consumes the breather food that he is doomed to actually enjoy until his sixteenth birthday.
But Vlad does it again and again, and Ingrid wonders if he actually likes being scolded and lowering himself, blinking those big blue eyes of his up at their father, so that ten year old Ingrid just eats her meal quickly lest it go cold, and tries not to look.
She's a vampire.
He's a vampire.
It seems that Vlad didn't get the message - vampires don't play with their food.
It's not fair, she thinks, as he slurps up spaghetti like worms and his lips are painted red by the sauce, giving the illusion that he had just finished feeding, and he looks so much like Dad in that moment that again, Ingrid has to look away.
It's most annoying, not being able to look your younger brother in the eyes at mealtimes because why won't he just behave and eat normally and tidily. It's not too much to ask, but Vlad doesn't even give her the reprieve.
But he'll grow out of it.
She knows he will.
She hopes he will.
...
Vlad's seventeen, and he still plays with his food.
He doesn't eat messily, but he doesn't eat properly at all. He's never had a proper meal in his life, and it's beginning to show in his attitude towards food, laughing and joking and talking to the breathers like they're actually worth his time.
And Ingrid tries to tell him don't play with your food and all she gets is a roll of the impossible blue eyes.
And Ingrid, well...
She still can't look at Vlad at mealtimes.
But shhh it's a secret.
(Ingrid just wishes she could teach him how to eat properly because he should've learnt by now)