Work Text:
It's not hard to understand why you're told not to play with your food. From a young age, the importance to be thankful that you have anything on your plate to eat is drilled into your head. You should be thankful and not take it for granted, pleased with the fact that it's so readily available for you. It's a blessing to have your meals prepared for you.
In time, you've learned that what is deemed as 'playing' with the food, was merely...preparing it. Tenderizing the meal, to ensure the most decadent of flavors. As you've grown, you notice the way their eyes don't quite meet yours as you sit at the table with them for dinner. You make note of the tense shoulders and white-knuckled grips on their eating utensils as they try and make dinner table talk.
Your hunger is never quite satiated at the table. You're not ungrateful. The taste of your food just doesn't hit the spot the way it does when you're alone. Able to put away the utensils and just use your hands. You don't understand why it's so taboo. You've got hands for a reason, you might as well use them.
You find yourself growing more and more listless, never satisfied with the food you're presented. And as your dissatisfaction grows, you find your tablemates' unease grows tenfold.
You're no longer a child. And though you still live under their roof, it's more so because it's a convenience to them, than any need of your own to still be there. And they know it. You can see it in their faces. You grow bolder, more assertive, knowing they cannot stop you from doing the things you wish. Knowing, they have no power over you. Seeing, in their eyes, just how much they've grown to be afraid of you.
You chuckle to yourself wryly as you think of their faces. Maybe, if they had nurtured you the way you were made to be nurtured, things would be different. Rather than them trying to mold you into something you are not. Making your days miserable as you try and understand what could possibly be wrong with you.
Nothing.
There is nothing wrong with you.
You are a perfect being, made exactly as you are meant to be.
It's not a child's fault that their parents cannot love them the way they're made. Nor is it your fault when you are older. It's not your fault that you resent them for trying to browbeat you into whatever semblance of normal they're more comfortable with.
You know you aren't what your parents want. But, no matter how much they've tried, they couldn't stop the ravenous true inner beast from taking over. They were naïve, thinking they could stop who you really are.
You're told not to play with your food, but you are not playing with anything. You are doing what you were made to do. You are stalking your prey. You are hunting. The teasing is a cute perk, but the final strike to kill? That, is the real treat.