The Taste of Addiction (Loch)

"I'll surprise you, then," Lochlann said. "You seem like you need some flowers in your life anyway."

He chewed on the end of his pencil while he thought about what she said about strong emotions, and Lochlann nodded, though at love and lust he lifted an eyebrow. For a girl who seemed uncomfortable with flowers, the idea of her feeling intense love or lust surprised him. But, he couldn't judge, and he certainly didn't want to pry.

Well, that's not true. He wanted to pry. But he was too polite to.

"When did you find out? You could taste emotions, I mean?"

He had to stop thinking about the word taste because it made him think about kissing her, which made him think about drowning her.

Her discomfort was oddly charming.

It was probably the predator in him that felt this way. He felt the stirrings of hunger start to churn within him as he looked at her. She was cute, and the more she talked, the more Lochlann became interested.

He chewed on the back of his pencil and tried to wish that he wasn't wishing for a drink right now. He needed to tame these urges but he didn't want to.

"What did you feel when you first found out?" he asked. "Where you scared or excited or...? What was the first emotion you tasted?"

She asked if he was okay, and Lochlann blinked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, pulling the pencil from his mouth. He didn't feel guilty, but he probably should have. He wondered if Emily would want to go get a drink with him.

"That's good," Lochlann said, "That it was happiness, I mean."

For some reason, he'd been expecting a horrible story, and Lochlann relaxed considerably. He hadn't even realized he'd been tensed until the weight seemed to disappear from his shoulders. He rocked back on his chair some more.

"Do you have any pets, Emily?"

Her question caught him off guard, and Lochlann wasn't sure what she meant by it at first, so he simply nodded.

"I feel very lonely when I'm by myself," he said. "It's nice to have a lot of friends. I moved a lot before I came here, so I didn't get to have many."

It was a confession that surprised him, but it wasn't exactly a secret, so Lochlann shrugged. He couldn't remember putting it in words like that before.

"Oh!" he perked up then. "I love goldfish. They usually die so quickly because their tanks are too small. Goldfish are a kind of carp, so they need a lot of room and filtered water."

He realized he was about to go on a fish tangent so he simply laughed instead. "Do you eat fish? Or are you a vegetarian?"

Lochlann blinked at her, and the emotions that came off him now were both confusion and curiosity. He was not upset by her question, but he wasn't entirely sure what she hoped to gain from it. The fact that he was wondering if she hoped to gain anything at all just made him more interested.

"Oh," he said. He chewed on his bottom lip, then returned to chewing on the pencil.

Lochlann was not shy talking about sex, but it was hard for him to approach it from the subject of a class room assignment.

"It's something I'm good at," he shrugged. "I like being able to share that with another person."

He was not bragging. He said it and felt it objectively, like someone might say they were good at math or tennis.

"You want to have an office?" he asked, tilting his head. "So you have plans for the future, then? Owning your own...uhhh...psychology..thing?"