"No, there aren—"

"What the fuck."

Theo– manages to remind himself that she is in fact a person without even taking more than a few steps in her direction.

Keeps his eyes shut and tries to cover his face.

Matt jumps! And looks around for her.

She wasn't actually walking towards them but now she is. "What. The. Fuck. Hadn't you died. You were dead. What happened."

"Died what yeah um," says Matt. "Who are you again – do we know each other?"

He then smiles a bit strainedly and says something under his breath.

Theo starts walking away from Willow!

"I'm Willow, why are you walking away!"

"Hi Willow," says Matt. "So, I totally understand where you're coming from, I know it's been a stressful few days, but I'm not sure this is the best way to cope with it."

Still walking away.

Covering his face, turning around, being overall very ugh because he knows this isn't going to work.

"Hey, fuck that, the best way to cope when someone who died is up and about is what, then?" She glares at Sadde as she asks that question.

Who shrugs helplessly. "I have no idea why he's walking away, don't look at me."

"Oh for fuck's sake, are we going to literally reveal to the whole fucking town tonight? Or are we planning on waiting until, I don't know, we have things worked out, or are– actually, right, yeah, no I can see why you might be like this, because there is literally no way to salvage this right now – hi Willow, Theo is a vampire, fortunately he's not currently particularly bitey, I hope you enjoy your newfound enlightenment."

Theo pauses in his movement.

"Yes, there is literally no way to salvage this right now, and this is a tiny town, it's gonna eventually come out that he's alive even if he's not a vampire, and it occurs to me that we really really should have thought of a way to explain this if we ever ran into someone who knew him which is pretty obvious in hindsight but."

"What."

"Yeah but it's dark and I assumed Theo would hear them coming even if he were doing echolocation or whatever and– seriously, do you just have a really awful idea of when to go out? What were you even doing?"

… Theo looks slightly subdued.

Not that it's probably clear in this light.

"I was at a friend's house and coming back home and enjoying my evening in a town with a nonexistent crime rate I didn't expect to run into the dead walking!"

"Crime rate isn't, um, quite nonexistent – think we had a theft, like, once five years ago or something – but I get your point."

"So what gives, why is the supposed vampire running away and hiding his face, how did he become a vampire, why do you two know it."

"He's not running away and hiding his face, he's just–" Matt turns to look. "Just hiding his face."

"And he has no idea how he became a vampire, he just dropped dead and woke up however many hours later."

"And he's hiding his face because...?"

"He will happily hide his face less so but apparently he previously thought it was a wonderful idea to go out in public while it was known that he was dead so he thinks this is a better idea." Pause. "He also finds speaking in the third-person to be weird."