this is my midnight vampire pilled brain talking but. what if the astrophage crisis were replaced by some sort of vampire epidemic instead, and stratt has to assemble a team of every doctor and scientist known to man to fix it, including her lovely childhood best friend—you. except she doesn't realise that in all the years you've been apart, you've been turned into the very thing she's hiring you to exterminate.
so okay, you do fine at first, because you'd quite like to cure this mysterious affliction, too. it's incredibly annoying to have to hide because you're really wanting to not die but it's getting increasingly hard the longer you have to go without blood. you can use headaches as an excuse to keep the lights low in your lab, you can make a mental map of all the mirrors and avoid them without drawing suspicion, but you have a timer above your head.
the tremors in your hand, the slowing of your movements, the hazy focus, you can feel it all getting worse. until, one day, your resolve snaps. luckily, eva's called you into her office to talk about your worsening results. you feel bad, but if there's anyone who'll accept you as you are, you hope it's her. you go into her office, and god, the smell of her blood in particular makes you dizzy.
she tells you about your recent papers. the handwriting has gotten messier, worse sentence structure, and asks you what's wrong with those deceptively neutral eyes. it's convincing to lie, but you can't take another day of doing that to her. so you apologize, instead. she just nods, expecting you to go on.
all you can give is a “don't panic” before you're right in front of her, hand on her mouth, and bite into her neck. or maybe you bite into her lips instead to keep her quiet, but either way, she's definitely panicking. her hands are scarily close to that walkie-talkie, so you grab them both and hold them so very tightly.
she's trying to get you to stop, obviously, but you can tell there's hesitancy. she's trying to trust that you'll only take what you absolutely need, won't drain your beloved friend dry. she's right to trust you, as always, but it takes everything to rip yourself away when she tastes so perfect.
the face you give her when you lift yourself up is nothing short of ecstatic. you're blushing all over, giving her a weak smile while you let her wrists go. but they don't move away from you anymore.
