Prompt: Blood

They said it wouldn't taste like anything and she'd barely even notice. They lied. He could hide the color; he could dilute the thickness. But he couldn't do anything about the faint metallic flavor in it.

Blink. Blink. Blink. He refused to move his face. As he sat across from her at the dining room table, he kept his eyes on hers and avoided telegraphing anything.

She set her glass down. "This isn't water, Tom."

He turned his gaze from her eyes to eye his steak. Picking up the knife, he calmly set the tip into the middle and gracefully slid the knife away from him and once back toward him to split the meat. He hummed.

"Thomas."

"Hermione."

She stood up and walked over to stand to his right. He continued to cut up his steak until it was in bite-size pieces.

"What did we say about masking food?" She set her hip on the table.

"Not to do it." He replied. He easily used the fork to spear a piece of steak. As he brought the piece to his mouth, he followed the fork with his eyes. Only once he wrapped his lips around the piece on the fork, did he look up at Hermione.

"So why is my water, not water?"

"That wasn't the food."

Hermione let out a frustrated growl. "I'm not going to explicitly describe everything you can't do."

"Good. I wouldn't want to make you do something you don't want to do."

At his comment, she raised her eyebrow. He calmly ate another piece of steak. "At least tell me it wasn't human. I've been a 'vegetarian' for years now. I don't want to backslide."

"Love, would I do that?"

"You are on thin ice, buddy." She said, and she turned to go back to her seat.

He grabbed her hips, slid his chair back, and pulled her into his lap.

"I'm sorry, you've been so irritated lately since you gave it up for the month. I just wanted to ease your suffering a little."

Hermione let herself fall into his arms. "Can you just talk to me next time? I'm not doing this for fun; it's an experiment to see how long the withdrawal effects last when supplemented with other foods."

"I promise. Now, are you done eating?"

"Yes, you?"

"I'm still hungry, but I'm done with the steak." His grin sharpened.