Chapter Text
Damian's hand hovered in front of Anya's mouth. Warm blood pumped through his veins, tempting her to sink her teeth in.
"Are you sure?" Anya asked in a small voice.
"You're hungry, aren't you?"
"Well, I just had that deer…" she muttered. "Animal blood isn't as filling, though."
"Just make it quick. I'd rather not be caught by Henderson."
"No one's ever let me bite them." Anya took his forearm into her shaking hands. "Can you make a fist? And, um, squeeze a bunch? It gets blood moving."
"Sure."
Anya carefully turned his arm around, fingers tracing his radial artery. Her eyes were glazed over in longing, and a globule of slobber dribbled onto his forearm.
"Ew!" Damian physically recoiled, tugging his arm away—to little success, as Anya's grip was ironclad. "What are you–"
"Stop wiggling. It'll only hurt more." She closed her mouth around his arm.
"Uh…" Damian mumbled, confused as he felt nothing except the slight pressure of her incisors. "That doesn't hurt at all–OW!"
Anya's fangs piercing his skin in an instant, sinking deep into his flesh. Immediately, he felt the strange sensation of being filled with some foreign fluid. A few seconds later, a warm feeling surged up his arm.
"Forger?" Damian voice pitched upwards in concern. "Did you just spit in me?"
An odd metallic taste hit Damian's tongue, and the pain faded , replaced by the buzzing pins-and-needles he was accustomed to when falling asleep on his arm while studying.
"It's numb. Is it supposed to be numb?"
Anya remained silent. A sucking sensation began; blood flowed up the grooves on the back of each fang. It was soon accompanied by the rhythmic lapping of her tongue where blood leaked from the wound. A gulping noise in her throat followed, and the vampire let out what could only be described as a moan.
"Glad you're, uh, enjoying yourself."
She hummed in agreement. The rumble of her vocal chords resonated into her fangs, and then into Damian's veins.
"This feels weird. You're weird, Forger. Anyone ever told you that?"
Anya pulled her mouth away, inhaling deep lungfuls of air. Crimson droplets were suspended from her fangs, and her teeth, lips, and tongue were stained red.
"You have. A lot." She smiled blissfully. "Good snack. Thanks, Sy-on."
Damian looked down at his arm, where blood still flowed from the puncture wounds.
"Am I supposed to still be bleeding?"
"Yeah." Anya stared at the red liquid that was rapidly getting everywhere. "That's the ant-eye-coat-ah-you-lent."
"The what?"
"Ant-ee-co-ah-glue-ent?" She shrugged, curled her lower lip back, and bared her fangs, before a small amount of a clear liquid shot out the tip of each one, spraying onto her waiting hand. "This stuff. It helps your blood flow better." She moved her mouth back to his arm and started licking at the (concerningly rapid) flow of blood.
"You… drugged me? Is that why my arm's numb?"
"Mhm." She licked the blood stream a few more times. "Supposed to stop people from feeling it when I bite 'em in their sleep."
Damian's jaw hung. "You're a mosquito."
"I'm a what?"
"Mosquito saliva stops you from feeling the bite so you don't swat at them. And it stops the blood from clotting in their proboscis. You're a mosquito."
"What's a pro-bobs-cuss?"
"The thing they drink the blood with."
"Oh. Well, I'm not a mosquito, because that's not my spit." Anya crossed her arms proudly. "It's venom!"
"You're venomous?" Damian asked incredulously.
"Mhm! It's a nar-cof-tick!"
"Narcotic."
Wait, Those drugs make you high! Is that why I'm feeling dizzy?
"You're probably dizzy because you're losing all your blood."
One look at his arm confirmed that that was most likely the case.
"Uh, Forger? Am I gonna die?"
"Oh, right!" Anya started licking directly at the open wound, earning a wince from Damian as it stung. "They said my spit has a bunch of clothing factories!"
"Clotting factors."
Who's "they"?
Anya spat, rubbing the saliva into the wound with two fingers. "It should stop bleeding now!"
"You're gross."
"I'm stopping you from dying! Be grateful."
"You should be grateful! I'm risking dying so you won't starve!"
"Right." Anya's smile fell. "Sorry, Sy-on. I, uh, I'll bring band-aids next time. No more spitting on you."
"Well, I, uh, no, it's okay. You're getting saliva on me with the biting and licking anyway. Just– do what you have to."
Anya's wide eyes looked up into his. "You're sure?"
"Yeah? Don't make me say it twice, Stubby."
"You're a big ole softie."
"No, I am not!"
Damian exhaled as stepped out of the campground's showerhouse.
He did his best to wash Anya's saliva off his arm (and the blood—mostly the blood), taking a thirty minutes to do so.
In that half hour, he'd learned a few things about Anya's bite.
#1. It wasn't bruising very much.
He knew bruises were the result of blood leaking out of broken vessels under the skin. He'd have expected to have a lot; and yet, there was just a smudge of purple around the twin punctures, as if she'd been excruciatingly careful when she sunk her fangs in. As if she'd only gone deep enough to pierce one side of the artery, and stopped before doing any more damage.
#2. It scabbed over very fast.
Despite being injected with venom to make his blood not clot, a scab formed on each wound within fifteen minutes. Damian attributed that to Anya's saliva, however gross it was. (He probably owed her an apology.)
#3. It made his skin numb.
He'd panicked in the moment, but once the initial pins-and-needles faded, he found it tolerable. He ran his other hand over his skin and felt nothing. Sensation hadn't returned until the morning.
#4. She was not like a mosquito.
His body didn't reacting to her saliva or venom, his skin wasn't swelling, and he didn't itch. It would have really sucked if his immune system decided it didn't like her the same way it didn't like mosquito saliva.
#5. Her venom would sell exceedingly well on the black market.
It left his brain feeling dizzy, loopy, foggy, sleepy, and downright good, simultaneously. He had felt like a spectator in his own body. Damian was reasonably confident that this was the sensation of being high.
The feeling faded away over the course of thirty minutes, but he still felt an intense sleepiness.
In all in all, Damian was touched by just how gentle Anya had been while feeding. She'd done everything she could to stop it from hurting him.
That wasn't so bad.
But… if that was just a 'snack', I lost way too much blood for this to be sustainable.
I'll let her have mine as much as I safely can, but other than that, I can probably buy blood off a butcher. It's not, like, human blood or anything, so it probably won't taste as good, but it'll keep her fed.