Aww.

And then he shortly detaches.

"I mean, I wouldn't actually object to hugging you, I don't think, Sadde, but I don't know if that's a normal thing or if that's part of the weirdness so it makes me vague mistrust it." He shrugs. "It's not like it would harm me much if it were due to the weirdness, I don't think."

"I know, but it does mean that every interaction of the sort between us is gonna have to be you-initiated."

"I'm not sure how much that actually helps in this scenario, though." He shrugs. "But okay."

"It's not about helping, it's more that if I ask I think you might just automatically say yes, whereas if you ask it will be something you actually came up with."

"Yeah, I guess," he says. "Um, anyway. Yeah. I'm a vampire, woo."

"Which is good because you're not dead, at least, but if you could have just stayed alive as a human that probably would've been nice."

"Well the perks are actually pretty nice, it's almost like the thing's designed to be... evenly balanced, more or less."

"Annoyingly, frustratingly, slightly possibly weirdly balanced."

"For the record, Matt, the perks so far are curative blood, ridiculously enhanced senses and capabilities, and eidetic memory, and the drawbacks are the weird magic vampire love thing, needing blood to survive but getting high on it, sometimes forgetting people are people, and the sun cuts the enhanced stuff and also hurts a lot."

"Not sure we've actually established the 'needing blood to survive' bit," says Theo after a moment. "Also I get regeneration. Though that's sort of implied by the curative blood thing."

"… Do you have a heartbeat then?"

"… Not that I can hear," he says, "though we hadn't actually mentioned that before."

"Can you, like, feel your pulse?"

He tries. "No, but I'd expect to be able to if I had one. Like I'd expect to be able to hear it."

"Yeah, just making sure. ...so how did you even bleed into that cup."

"I mean, I think corpses still bleed it you cut them, haven't actually tested it–?" He shudders.

"I wouldn't think they'd bleed enough!"

"Bleed enough to get a bit of blood into a cup? They still have the blood, it'd probably just be slower to come out or require gravity, but like, if it worked like that for me I'd still at least have all the blood in my arm to drain out – not sure if it works quite like that but still?"

"I think we probably ought to just disregard biology in general for you."

"Possibly. Doesn't seem I work like standard."

"You still seem mostly like a human," says Matt.

He is possibly looking at Theo's face a bit too intently.

"Vampires wouldn't have much success as predators if they didn't," he points out.