"Yeah. Seems sad. Ordinary life as a vampire seems lonely."

"...you know, I never thought of it that way before. I think... there were changes, did I say? When I started eating only animals."

"You did, though you mentioned it was more about having control over your emotions than feeling more sociable. Did you not get lonely?"

"I think vampires are solitary creatures, normally. Covens do not usually have more than two or three people, including a mated pair. There are—instincts." Pause. "I don't feel them as strongly anymore."

"Instincts?" she says, a little teasing. "What, like fight other vampires for the tastiest blood repositories, stake out a territory and fight anyone that disagrees?"

"Yes."

"... What, just like that? That sounds so annoying."

"I didn't find it so at the time, but yeah. Even just the scent of other vampires is enough to trigger it, it's part of the reason why dealing with newborns is difficult, they tend to want to attack you and it all gets even harder to resist when there are humans nearby."

"Oh. So I'm also likely to want to, what. Stake out my territory and fight you for it? As a newborn? Or not, because you'd be my mate, and presumably I'd have better things to do with you than fight you."

"Yeah, the mate instincts override almost all others. Not the hunger instinct, but everything else."

"I suppose that makes sense, otherwise mates would just kill each other, and then be horribly sad about having killed their mate and then jumping into a volcano."

...

Does she sound a little bit disappointed? She does, doesn't she.

"The more experienced vampire will usually be able to subdue the newborn if they know anything about fighting and are not caught by surprise, anyway, so that probably would not happen. But I'm not sure which would win over, if we were to try sparring, for instance, so I could teach you to fight."

"Only if we could do it without seriously hurting each other," she insists. ".... But if it'd be safe, that sounds, um." Is she blushing? She's blushing. "... Fun."

"I'm good in a fight, it would be perfectly safe. You might hurt yourself, but I would be teaching you how not to."

Does he sound amused? Gosh, he does, doesn't he.

"You take that back, I'll be smart enough to not hurt myself!" she sniffs, with absolutely zero proof of this.

"You say that, then you'll try to jump at me, miscalculate, and end up buried to your hips in a cliff wall."

"And then what? Pretty sure the wall would have a worse time than I would. You can crush rocks, the wall would just be remodeled."

"Oh, you wouldn't hurt yourself very badly, nothing short of another vampire can do that."

"I see."

... Okay, she's weak. And he's too tempting to just not kiss. So, it is no longer snuggle time, it is kissing time.

Oh he approves very much.

Good, that's part of the point of the endeavor.