Theo pulls away after a couple of seconds, feeling kinda awkward and wrong.

"… At least I didn't bite," he says.

He pulls away, too, a bit reluctantly, and blinks bemusedly. "Hm? Oh, right. Yes, you didn't."

"Okay, but– anyway," he says. "So I've done some– things and people think I'm dead and I'm apparently not going to literally bite everyone I come across necessarily but it's a little bit tempting and I don't know what to do."

"You could do me, that's always an option," he doesn't say.

"What do you want to do?" he asks instead.

"I was going to say live my life out as I thought it'd go because that seemed like it'd be okay but that's probably boring and not going to work well, so– depending on how the vampirism works, I don't know." Sigh. "Solving literally everything with minimal ease would be wonderful, that's a thing I want to do, but vampirism doesn't exactly equate to that, and what vampirism does equate to seems to be: biting, superspeed and super-senses and so far coming back from the dead once and I don't know if I want to test if it's actual invulnerability and I can't test immunity to aging any time soon and– ugh, it would be wonderful if this were one of those nice vampire books where there's a happy ending, basically, can it just turn out to be that."

"Solving literally everything?"

"Y– yeah? It would be nice but I don't think it's feasible."

"...a priori that seems more like a flaw of your creativity than of your powers, gorgeous, if you do the kinds of stuff mythological vampires do."

"… I don't think I've read Dracula if that's what you're talking about but going by more modern vampires where it's basically immortality and superstrength, speed and senses… uh, probably not able to solve literally everything but I can probably do a heck of a lot? Again, while still having the craving to eat everyone I come across. And possibly needing to eat people or else dying. Depending on how it works."

"So first order of business is figuring out whether you can live on animal blood and slash or blood from bags. And then how often you need to eat."

"And hopefully I don't get an allergic reaction to animal blood or– get high again, actually, that would be pretty– shit, um."

"Um?"

"It would be very shit if I got high while drinking blood especially since I don't currently have a place I can lock myself up to prevent myself from going out of control," he clarifies. "Overall: shit."

"Oh. I'm sure you'll be able to control it, now that you can recognize it for what it is. I could be your spotter, maybe."

"That'd be good if I don't turn around and attack you and it turns out your shapeshifting isn't up to 'save me from the vampire', yeah."

"...I'm pretty sure it is."

"I'm not sure I really want you to stake your life on 'pretty sure' but I'm also more than pretty sure that if I can't keep in control it will be horrifying, so…" he shrugs, looking slightly like he's got a bad taste in his mouth.

"...well, we ought to test it. Somehow. What does it feel like, exactly, to want blood?"

"Like I want to bite you because you smell good and also I have to keep reminding myself that you're a person and I shouldn't just drain you like you're a Capri-Sun because you're a person."

"So, you forget that people are people? How does that work?"

"… You're food instead of a person and I can drain you and want to because that's a thing I can do and you're tasty? It's not like I don't know you're a person, it's just– you're food first and it doesn't cross my mind to think 'oh, this food is a person, should not eat' instead."

"Okay, that's weird, but you're, like, not eating me now."

"Again, because you're a person and I keep thinking that instead of accidentally skipping that whole thing and apparently that works, at least around just you in this environment while I'm this level of hungry."

"What level is that?"

"… I don't have a neat measure of it as a percentage but if you want values, uh, I woke up really high presumably from the turning and then– drained five people."