Theo pokes Matt slightly harder this time, hissing at him to let him go–

– which he does, surprised –

– and Theo runs over to the smell and bites down.

"Let go of my mother!"

He– sort of slows down, confused?

"Person! Stop!" shouts Matt, hoping that will get through better.

By the way Theo stops and lets go of her and moves backwards, slowly and looking at the blood and then shaking his head and moving back some more, speeding up and then noticing that there's a building and changing directions to try to get away from both of them – yeah, it probably got through better.

"Jesus Christ am I gonna have to associate the word mother with person to you are you stupid," he says in a bit of a panic as he runs towards his mother—

—who's surprised and faint and terrified but otherwise not too bad off. "Is your friend a vampire," she asks in a low voice.

No response from Theo. He's just– sort of crouching down, a fair distance away, hoodie still hopefully covering his face.

Matt follows over with Sadde, gets out his phone in case she needs the hospital, leaves Sadde to communicate things to her.

"Mom, let's get you inside so the vampire can't get to you, yeah?" He blinks and looks at Theo. "And I think collecting some of your blood would be a good idea."

He starts leading Laura inside.

Matt looks between Sadde-and-mom and Theo, not really sure what to do.

He settles on going over to Theo because it would probably be worse to leave him there unsupervised and, uh. There are no containers or anything, how is he meant to get blood, uh.

He goes to the door of the house and asks Sadde for some sort of container or something, keeping an eye on Theo as he does so.

Theo stays crouched in the same position.

Sadde goes inside, provides one, then goes back inside.

So Matt takes it and goes to Theo and– finds that Theo has already cut himself, so, okay.

He'll just collect some blood and go back to provide it to Sadde, then. While keeping watch on Theo, somewhat worriedly, and hoping Sadde's mom is okay.

Sadde wordlessly accepts the blood, and goes back inside yet again, and gives it to his mother.

And starts explaining.

Okay. Well. Matt will go sit with Theo and hope he's okay and try talking to him a bit.

Since he probably didn't mean to go biting Sadde's mom.

At least he didn't bite too much.

Eventually Sadde will go outside, though. "So, why'd you attack my mom and not Willow."

Theo doesn't say anything for a few seconds, then he responds, "I think it was because of the threshold testing."

"...stupid magic. Are you really just hungry all the time? Can't you just say, yes, that's an appetizing smell, but I ate a few hours ago and don't really feel like it?"

"I don't know if there's anything I can easily compare it to, and I haven't been properly hungry yet so I don't know if I get that, but so far it has just been a desire to bite and– it bypasses the 'am I really hungry' and the 'should I really be doing this' bits of how I would usually process something?" Pause. "Unless I'm focusing on how I should not bite people, which I was when we saw Willow, in which case I seem to do okay."

Matt bites his lip a bit.

"That sounds like a useful mental habit to eventually adopt."

Y'think.