"That it's fortunate I still seem to be me instead of quite some random psychopath, that it's fucking worrying because this might have messed with something else in my head other than the already established things, that your face continues to be pretty, that Matt seems to be looking at my face oddly, that I really don't like this whole scenario, and that I wonder if I'd be better at things like languages now, presumably, won't that be fun."

"Then presumably my face is still pretty."

"Presumably! But presumably my mind is also potentially compromised because that thought isn't readily squintable."

"Well did you not think I was pretty before?"

"I did think you were pretty before, not that I'd put that into words. I didn't, however, plan on acting upon it. Not for a while, at the very least."

"Then presumably you have no evidence about your mind being compromised in non-squintable ways. You do still act very much like yourself even while under magic thrall." He looks at Matt. "Now, about you, why are you looking at his face oddly?"

"I didn't realize I was," he says. "I mean, I can look at something else if you'd prefer?"

Theo raises an eyebrow.

"Matt are you in magic vampire love with Theo."

"What? No, why would I be in magic vampire love with him, doesn't that– require me to be a vampire, which for the record I am not?" Pause. "Except he's only been a vampire for what, less than a day, so you have no clue how any of this works, fucksake."

"I do in fact not know how this works, it's not even magic love from his description, I think he said something about fascination."

"Fascination, vague desire to please, find yourself saying yes and then realizing you have no desire to say yes nor any obvious reason to say yes." Sigh. "It's lots of fun."

"Sounds it," he agrees. "Ugh. Well. Not the worst person to be in weird magic vampire whatever with."

Shrug.

"I'm flattered. Anyway from what you described of your non-squintable thoughts they don't sound unhelpful or weird or anything, they sounded pretty alright."

"I would rather not go into the others, because private thoughts, thanks muchly, but those ones were okay, yes."

"Okay, so there are private thoughts that are non-squintable and lead you to believe your judgment may have been compromised?"

"The thoughts that I've shared all sound totally normal and fine. The private thoughts don't make me think that my judgement is necessarily compromised, but– I'm pretty sure they're different from what they were before, while still probably being valid for me, so I don't know if they got changed or if this is what 'aah I'm a vampire' does to my thought process."

"You don't know that this is what you'd've thought if you'd turned into a vampire?"

"… Some of it, sure, like 'yay what if I'm immortal' and 'oh fuck what if I kill someone' – bit late on that last one, sorry Matt – but the rest, no? Seems plausible, doesn't seem like it would have been definite?"

Matt blinks and opens his mouth… then pauses, shakes his head and just stops.

He has no idea how he's meant to respond to that. Probably horror.

"Then what, exactly, is it that makes you feel conflicted whenever you're reminded of it?"

"The thing that makes me feel conflicted when I think of you?"

"Yeah. You said you didn't know how you wanted to resolve that but to me the obvious answer seems to be 'according to whatever stands up to scrutiny in your head' since that's less likely to be magic, and if it is magic it might just be staying there anyway so you might as well use it as your baseline. You clearly can resolve it against my favor, too."

"… It's not like my brain had totally unconflicted thoughts before I became a vampire on topics like these. I continue to have the same issues as before except now with an added helping of 'you liiiiike him because of the weird vampirism thing' which hardly helps."