"– Plasma doesn't clot for several hours at freezing, and other than that it seems it messes with clotting rates in patients if you lower their skin temperature and also there are lab safety recommendations that you shouldn't store blood when you're doing tests but should send it to somewhere for storage within four hours."

"...so what actually happens if you put it in the fridge."

"– Oh, hm, apparently if you refrigerate whole blood it can stay at four degrees celsius for up to a week. That's for lab testing purposes, though, so they might be able to do things even if it has coagulated." Shrug. "It seems to mention that you need anticoagulant and a fridge if you want to store it for even a few days, so that suggests that it'll coagulate pretty quickly without."

"Alright so we should test it then."

"My blood or also human blood? I have a feeling mine isn't gonna react the same way as normal stuff."

"Yours, the internet has just told us what happens with human blood."

"Right, but I wasn't clear if you wanted more precise data than 'probably coagulates pretty quickly even with a fridge'." Shrug.

"Nah we're at the 'collect information' stage, we can be quantitative about it later."

So he gets out another container, pours half the blood into it, and puts that in the fridge.

Pause for the alarm.

"Now we wait."

"So we do!" agrees Theo. "What else was on the itinerary – uh, we need to go check out an abandoned building tonight and see if I can get in that, then if I can't we can hopefully see if I can throw rocks at the wall, hope nobody cares. – Oh, and I was gonna look at sign language, and we were going to see if there are diminishing returns when you record me, see if it sort of tapers off or if it just gets stupid."

"That last one's easy to do."

"What's that about sign language?"

"I was gonna try learning some because I like languages, I now have an eidetic memory, and it might come in useful if anybody else knows sign language." Shrug. "If someone else becomes a vampire, they could learn it too and it could be useful for communication or something – oh, I should also see how I do underwater, if I can just hold my breath like in air or if I actually am breathing despite not realizing it or something."

"Wait, you don't breathe?"

"I do, but– I don't actually, like, have to? It's uncomfortable, sort of painful, but I stopped for a bit when I was ending up wanting to bite everything near me and I was reminded that I should, y'know, not."

"That's actually pretty cool?"

"Yeah," he nods. "I'm not sure it'll be all that useful but yeah."

"If smell is the primary sense you get all bloodlust with..."

"… Then maybe I should go around not breathing?" he asks. "Yeah. It helped when I did it but it's not the only sense and if I'm not already focusing on not feeding I'm pretty sure I'd hear a heartbeat and go 'ooh yum'." Pause. "Plus I need to breathe to talk, which is part of my motivation for learning sign language."

"No I don't mean going around not breathing, just, it's something under your control."

"Oh." Pause. "Yeah, it is," he shrugs, "and it's useful but it's not perfect."

"Mmhm. Anyway, wanna test the sway thing?"

"Not really but yes." Sigh. "That is to say no because I expect it to be slightly unpleasant but yes because it's important information."

Video recording!