"Sounds about right. Would you like any help inventing your imaginary lover?"

Well there is this one obvious candidate -

"Yes, I'm. I can envision myself being willing to go on an incredibly nerdy globe trotting honeymoon, but uh. Since I actually haven't..."

"So this imaginary lover should be someone high-energy, restless, and very attractive..."

"Um," she says, eloquently. "Yes?"

Is she blushing. It looks like she is.

Now Miles is blushing too.

"... I mean it would make narrative sense, we did sort of spend three days locked in my house...." she points out.

"Yes, that's true... all right, I guess I'm your imaginary lover who's taking you on a globe-trotting honeymoon. Imaginary me is very pleased with himself, let me tell you."

... How does she even respond to that. How does anyone even respond to that. That is clearly not a thing that can at all be responded to, by anyone that ever existed anywhere, in all of history.

She attempts to form words and sort of only manages a vaguely positive-sounding set of syllables, and then stops attempting that because clearly it's not working.

"Um. Sorry. I may have gotten a bit ahead of myself there."

"Do you want to just pause the actual serious tactical considerations of how to trick my sister for talking about our silly relationship drama? Because um, I kind of do, if part of our narrative's - um." Handwave.

"...Yeah that seems valid. Okay. Um. ...we seem to suit one another kind of absurdly well."

"I um, feel I need to get to know you with your soul attached a bit better to really say for sure, but, yeah kinda?"

"I'm not completely certain but I'm sure enough to be going on with. I like you."

"How convenient, I like you, too." Smile. "Though I'm - I think I need to know what we'd be to each other? I'm - I'm not upset about," it's the return of the handwave, "Zeke, but I was kind of. Uncomfortable with not having any idea of what I was to you while also - Zeke."

"...He kind of - caught me while I hadn't thought anything through yet, so I defaulted to continuing in established patterns. Sorry. Um. What would you like us to be to each other?"

"Apology accepted, he sort of caught us both by surprise. I probably should have done something instead of mentally freezing up and doing the social equivalent of fleeing the scene. And - I don't know, I've been a soulless vampire for four years and everyone I love is either dead or going to want to kill me, what openings are available?"

"I arrived on this planet a couple of weeks ago from what is almost certainly an alternate universe with no magic in which it's the thirtieth century. I have no local loved ones to speak of, and the prospect of ever going home is an enormous mountain of complications piled on complications. I'm... really not sure."

"Well, on the bright side, we make the most bizarre angsty young adult fiction protagonists."

...He laughs.

"I mean really, what genre even is this! You have a ray gun, we're both vampires, and I'm a witch! We're either the worst or best novel ever."

"They're not 'ray guns'," he snorts.

"And yet I think that, miraculously, my point still stands."

"Okay, yes."

She smiles at him.

"More seriously, I think I want..." She hesitates, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. "I'm having trouble putting it to words. The thing you did when I was high out of my mind. Where you followed along with my strange trains of thought and bantered pleasantly and kept me company but ultimately made sure I was okay."

...he smiles.