slashthedrabble | Prompt 375 - 'Addiction' "Causa Mortis"

Title: 'Causa Mortis' (Cause of Death)
By: Tabaqui
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Spike/Angelus
Summary: Spike musing on his true nature. 300 words.

It wasn't about the blood. Oh, the blood was good - the blood was divine. The blood was necessary, in the way that oxygen and water were necessary to the living. But the blood….wasn't the reason; wasn't the why.

No, what he was really in it for was for that crunch. That crisp-apple snap of flesh under his fangs. The heat of terror - the salt-tang of fear. The hitching, stifled, rasp of air in the lungs, and the rabbit-quick thump of panicking hearts. How their shoes tapped and slipped on the cobbles, how the lady's skirts would hiss, satin on silk like the sea over sand. And oh, the little breathy squeaks, the horrified yells, when you caught them.

The crack of bone, the pop of tearing skin, the slick-sucking sound of viscera sliding out past the tension-sprung peritoneum. That smell - the rank of guts and gouting blood and loosening bowels….

That was the attraction, that was the draw. That was the reward. The blood was life, oh yes - got him going, got him hard. But the addiction....

The addiction was death, in all its many and varied forms.

Angelus knew that. The mayhem and the chaos were the end, not the means, and the blood was fine wine to go with good meat, but it was the hunt that got the blood up. Spike twisted on the soft sheets and studied the long, pale body laid out next to him, flecked with blood - hot with borrowed life. Angelus, tipping whiskey from a crystal cup, long hair tangled around his shoulders.

He leaned down to kiss Spike's mouth, the mingled flavors of peat and smoke and salt on his tongue. More lulling-sweet than laudanum; Spike could not resist. Could never resist, his own personal Death.