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Leo is not new to being a vampire of the Red Court. He's not a noble or anything, but he's been around for a very long time. He's reached the ripe old age of 600, outliving his noble father and the vast majority of his bloodthirsty sisters, almost entirely by being a filthy coward. He has no pretensions to the blood of milk-pale virgins; he's perfectly fine getting his dinner for the week under a bridge. He occasionally keeps slaves, but only rarely. Most of the time, he occupies himself with reading, and painting, and delicious, delicious blood. On occasion he indulges in a good alleyway lurking.
This is one of those occasions. Chicago's alleyways are not particularly well maintained, but they're better than the slums of Toledo in 1632. Leo likes them. They're meditative, and often contain convenient homeless populations.
"That's a separate problem," says Milo. "But still, it sounds like you'd find it difficult to make friends. I don't know, maybe that doesn't bother you. I've been told I'm an unusually friendly person." His cat meows affirmatively.
Friends are what? Why would he want them? Why does he want them, when he's thought of the idea maybe a dozen times in his six hundred years and dismissed it every time? What's different?
"Are you... doing something to me? I feel- I feel strange." Leo breathes heavily, staring at the stained concrete. Something churns inside him. He has a vague memory, from his two decades of humanity, of being on a ship and feeling nauseous. It's wrong. "You're... you're doing something to my head."
"I am honestly not doing anything except talk to you," says Milo. "I'm now very alarmed that I might have done something by accident, but I didn't mean to. Are you all right?"
"You- you're- doing something. I feel- wrong. I'm not supposed to feel- I'm not supposed to want to feel this way. I'm not supposed to be able to feel this way, I don't have a soul, there's- I feel like I'm-" He lets out a wordless snarl of frustration and falls to the ground. His fist crashes down on the concrete, crushing a dent into it. "What did you do?"
"I don't know!" yelps Milo. "I didn't think I was doing anything except having a friendly argument about the wider implications of your eating habits! I've been told I can be a pain to argue with but most people don't actually fall over and start punching the ground!"
"I'm- sorry! FUCK, why did I just say that, I haven't apologized to a human in four hundred goddamned years! It's like you're forcing a fucking soul into me!"
"It's- a soul, is, this energy in- humans, and other mortalish things, that makes them- changeable, not defined by what they are, makes them feel bad about doing what's best. I don't have one, which is very fucking convenient because it means I can eat people like I need to without feeling- guilty about it like some fucking mortal!"
"Well - I'm sorry! Not completely sorry. Moderately sorry!" says Milo.
"I'm so glad! That's wonderful, that is, you're moderately sorry, great, excellent, fucking-" The lingua franca fails him. He goes off on a profoundly obscene rant in Spanish.
Milo has no response to the obscene Spanish ranting except to stand there and look concerned.
Leo has limited stores of rage. After a while he's just- tired, and miserable, and staring at his dusty hands.
"What the fuck am I supposed to do now?"
"I don't know," says Milo. "I feel responsible for you now and want to help you if I can, but I'm stranded in a strange and frankly horrifying world and still mostly don't know what's going on, so my avenues of help are pretty limited."
"You... what are you going to do? What's your plan?"
"Well, 'survive in this strange and horrifying world' is goal number one. Other goals include 'eventually go home' and, since you've mentioned it, perhaps 'solve human mortality'."
His eyes fill with tears, for the first time since 1562. He's- unsure. How do mortals do this? Feel like this, all the time, nothing telling them what to do?
"Can I come with you?"
His cat meows.
"...Eh?" he says. She repeats herself. "...Cath wants to know if you would like cat snuggles," he translates.
"...I wouldn't mind human snuggles. If they're on offer," he allows.
"I will definitely hug you," says Milo. He will even let Leo insult his cat, just this once. She didn't seem offended.
Leo holds out his arms hopefully. (He doesn't wanna get up. He just grew a soul and had a ragefit, both of those things are tiring.)
Hug.
Leo might cry on Milo a bit. Souls suck.
Which reminds him. "How am I going to feed? I can drink from cows and all, but I need some human blood with it too, it's not just a physical thing. And I can't feed without addicting some poor bastard, which, you know, I'd rather not do."
"Um. That is a problem," Milo admits. "But I'm sure it's a problem that can be solved with a little creativity - do you have to actually bite people to get their blood out of them?"