Archive of Our Own

There is more blood on the pavement at the man’s feet than there is in his veins.

Kun can smell it, the scent slick and heavy in the air like rust settling across his skin. He can taste it too, a heavy mist that settles across his tongue, the taste bitter. Acrid.

The stranger is propped against the wall at the far end of the alley, legs splayed out in front of him like a doll. His head lolls against his chest and even in the barely visible moonlight, Kun can make out puddles of blood gleaming black like oil slicks across the asphalt. Kun takes a step forward, cautiously, footsteps silent. It has been a while since he has been around so much blood.

He approaches not with hunger but with an almost trepidation, not fear but hesitation, and the man groans. His eyes are closed and his breaths labored, rattling in his chest. Kun can hear this, hear the sluggish welling of blood trickling through leaking veins. It is an empty sound.

“Hello?” Kun says softly, voice dampened by the night. 

The man stirs, but barely. Kun kneels next to him, the fabric of his pants soaking up the blood on the ground. 

Kun sees the wounds before he truly sees the man—long and thin gashes, messy with blood and rough edges. There are several of them, crisscrossing the man’s abdomen like a lattice. These are not wounds of convenience, Kun can tell. They are too deliberate, too numerous. These are wounds of anger. Revenge. Motive.

The man moves his lips, voice a silent rasp, and only then does Kun truly look at him. Pale skin, a sloped nose, feverish eyes. His lips are almost white, and Kun can see every dark vein beneath his eyes. His hair is dark and plastered to his forehead with sweat. It’s a pity—he would be beautiful if he wasn't dying.

The man tries to say something and Kun leans in close.

“Please,” the man says, his voice the broken rasp of a man who is falling apart. “Help me.”  He weakly presses his hand to his mangled abdomen, slim fingers painted red-black with blood.

“You’re dying,” Kun says. His voice holds no emotions.

The man’s lips flicker upwards at the words, as if Kun has just told a very funny but tasteless joke. “I know.”

The night is sticky with summer warmth, the nighttime humidity clinging to his skin like sweat would. He places two fingers on the man’s pale wrist, streaked with blood.

“Help me,” the man says again. His words are softer, forced out of his throat, but his eyes gleam with some type of fever. A desire, perhaps, to stay alive.

“What’s your name?” Kun can feel the man’s pulse beat like slow drums in the distance.

There is a song in the night: a whisper, a fading voice, the sluggish welling of blood onto the ground. The man has a beauty to him, even as he lay dying on the pavement.

“Ten,” the man says, chest shuddering. “I’m Ten.”

Kun slides an arm around Ten’s waist, supporting him as he tries to stand. It’s a valiant attempt but still fails—Ten collapses with only Kun’s arm to keep him upright.

“I can take you to the nearest hospital,” Kun says, but the man sluggishly shakes his head.

“No,” he gasps. “No hospitals.” His eyes are dipping closed.

Kun sweeps Ten up into his arms, the other man light as a feather, and takes him with him into the night.

....

Kun has lived many lives, each with a different name. He spent at least one of them as a doctor.

Kun drapes Ten’s thin frame on the only desk in his bookstore, unceremoniously shoving everything else to the floor. Ten’s throat bobs, blood staining his skin and everything else around him, and Kun runs to grab bandages and alcohol from the bathroom. He doesn't think it will help, but he hopes it will.

Ten's eyes remain shut as Kun bandages his abdomen and wipes away as much blood as he can. He peels off Ten’s shirt, once white and now stained red, throwing it to the ground.

Ten has scars, old scars—a thick white mark on his chest, several along his neck. However, the one that stands out the most is a thick rope of silvery white tissue, stretching across Ten’s throat like a necklace.

“Wake up,” Kun whispers, the scent of blood filling the air and putting Kun’s mind in a hazy red fog. His fingers feel almost numb, even though they are covered in blood. “Ten, you need to stay awake.”

Ten groans. His skin is so white, like marble, and Kun knows he is already far too gone. But still…

He has made many bad decisions. Perhaps this would be the worst. 

Kun leans close to Ten's ear, whispering. “Ten, I need you to listen to me very carefully,” he places a hand on Ten's scarred chest. “Do you have any family?”

Ten's eyes crack open, bleary. He shakes his head.

“Friends?” 

Ten lets out a gurgling noise that almost sounds like a laugh. He shakes his head again.

“Where do you live?” 

Ten shakes his head and there is a clarity in his eyes, a lucidity, as he grabs the hem of Kun’s shirt with fumbling fingers.

“I don't want to die,” he breathes. “I don't want to die.”

Kun nods, kneeling beside his desk. Ten stares at him. Blinks slowly.

"This is going to hurt," Kun whispers softly, brushing hair away from Ten's forehead. "There will be no going back."

Ten stares up at him.

Kun’s fangs slide out and he bites into his wrist, slicing the pale skin wide open. Blood wells to the surface slowly, reluctant. He wonders if Ten might fear him, in the parts of his mind that are not clouded with death, but sees Ten watching him with that fever gaze and knows he does not. He can taste his own blood, bitter as iron and twice as cold.

When Kun offers his bleeding wrist to Ten’s lips, the dying man does not hesitate.

Here is a song Kun knows well—a body leaving its life behind.

…

Kun has lived a very long time. He is no stranger to running away from one's past, running away from one's future. But he had never had the added weight of guilt, the added burden of a life in his hands. Kun does not want Ten. Does not want to be reminded that he has made a mistake.

Kun doesn't know what to do. He doesn't even know what to say. So, as Ten opens his eyes, he pulls back from the side of the bed.

“Good morning,” he says quietly. “How are you feeling?”

Ten groans. “Why do all my organs hurt?”

Mistakes. Mistakes weigh on him as if he were Atlas, holding the sky.

"It'll pass." Kun says patiently. The curtains are open and morning light filters through. Ten winces at the sharp ray across the floor on the other side of the room and Kun pulls the curtains shut with a snap, flooding the room black. Ten blinks.

He unconsciously brushes his hand across his stomach and then gasps, pulling up the shirt Kun has slipped him into to reveal nothing but clear skin. Not even a scar from last night. He looks at Kun with wonder in his eyes, then distrust.

“Do you remember what happened?” Kun asks.

Ten shakes his head. “Just barely. I think I… I almost died.”

Kun laughs wryly at that.

“Thanks for your help,” Ten says, standing. He moves haltingly, like he expects pain, but finds none. “But I really have to go now.” He turns to the door and when Kun speaks his voice is sharper than he intends it to be.

“You can't.”

Ten’s eyes burn through him like acid. “What?” 

“You can't leave,” Kun says. He is ill-equipped to handle someone like Ten, newly turned and unaware. “You haven't gained tolerance to the sun—it'll hurt you.”

Ten narrows his eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You need to stay here,” Kun says. “For a while.”

“Is this about money?” Ten says icily, face becoming that of a caged animal. “I don't have any.”

“No, it's-”

“Sex? Drugs? I can’t give you any of those.” His voice is stony.

“No!” Kun bursts out. He measures composure back into his voice. “You can't leave because you'll hurt yourself.”

Or someone else.

“What are you talking about? Who even are you?”

“My name is Kun.”

Ten moves fast, pulling a knife out of some hidden pocket along his thigh. The knife is long and silvery, innately engraved across the blade. It almost seems like an heirloom, priceless and loved. It is not silver, though—Kun can tell because it does not burn Ten where he holds it.

“Well, Kun, let me out.”

“I can't stop you,” Kun says. 

Ten stands, knife leveled in Kun’s direction. He turns to open the bedroom door and Kun throws back the curtain, catching Ten in the wide swath of sunlight that falls across the wall.

The effect is immediate: Ten screams out, skin blistering, and throws himself back into the shadows of the room. His chest heaves as he looks at Kun, framed by poisonous sunlight.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” Ten yells out, his hands red and burned. The side of his face bears the same sunburned appearance, the only marring of an otherwise perfect face.

“You can't leave,” Kun repeats. A numbness is spreading across his chest. “You'll hurt yourself.”

“Fuck you,” Ten says, sobbing. He presses a hand to his burned face. “Fuck you.”

Kun feels the situation slipping out of his control so he closes the curtains and kneels next to Ten, who shies away from him like a frightened child.

“Look at me,” Kun says softly. “Look at me.”

Ten does, hatred burning in his eyes like a forest fire. 

“You said last night you didn't want to die,” Kun starts. “But you did.”

Ten stares at him, uncomprehending. “That doesn't make any sense, what—”

Kun places two fingers on Ten’s wrist and feels exactly what he expects to feel. Nothing.

“Here,” he says. He places Ten’s hand where his was just moments before. “What do you feel?”

Ten looks wary, the wariness turning into confusion and then barely concealed shock. Ten’s hands fly to his neck, his chest, and Kun knows exactly what he is looking for.

“What did you do to me,” Ten asks, voice bordering on panic. “What did you do ?”

Kun grabs Ten’s knife off the floor and swipes it across his palm, offering it to Ten like a gift. 

Kun sees the change in Ten, the hunger, and he grabs Kun’s palm and greedily laps at it like a kitten would with a bowl of milk. His eyes burn red, his irises a miniature supernova in action. He looks at Kun and some kind of dim awareness flickers across his face. The blisters and burns on his hands and face fade, leaving behind nothing but smooth, dewy skin.

“What am I?” He whispers in muted horror, the expression so familiar it breaks Kun's heart. “What are you?”

“The only one who can help you,” Kun says quietly. He offers Ten his other hand, helping him to his feet.

…

When Kun turned, there was no one to help him. His maker had left him like a discarded toy, broken and bleeding, and Kun had screamed through his change. He had felt himself die, had known it deep in his chest, and when he had awakened he had screamed into the cold dirt beneath him wishing it wasn't so.

It had hurt, worse than any physical pain, and Kun had wandered. Had wandered and been lost for such a long time he can scarcely remember.

Over 600 years of half-life and Kun does not know what to tell someone who has just died. He doesn't know where to start, doesn't know what he should say. Everything he knows he learned through trials and suffering. 

Ten sits at Kun’s kitchen table, tracing his finger over patterns in the white marble surface. Usually, the windows would be open to let in the dazzling sunlight, but on this particular morning Kun has drawn all the curtains out of respect for his new… arrival? Protege? Kun doesn't know what to call him.

“So you mean to say I'm...what? A vampire? That's impossible.”

“It's true,” Kun says calmly. He brews tea, two cups, but it's unlikely his guest will be able to stomach it. The first few days are the most volatile.

“And you?” 

“What about me?”

“You're a… a vampire?”

“Last I checked, yes.” Kun hands Ten a cup of tea and Ten gazes at it, wary. His eyes are those of a caged animal, afraid of its captor.

“I have a reflection. Aren't I supposed to not have one of those?”

“That's just a myth.” Kun is so, so tired.

“What now?” Ten says, careful eyes searching Kun’s face. There's still blood on the edge of his lips. Kun’s blood.

“We'll see.”

…

Ten changes. Kun watches.

The blinds are all drawn to spare Ten from the sunlight and he wanders around Kun’s small apartment, eyes watchful. He doesn’t quite relax, and his red-rimmed irises glow in the darkness of the room.

“My throat burns,” he rasps out, some time later. “It hurts.”

“That happens,” Kun says. He has been watching Ten for the past few hours as he almost claws at the walls, as he slinks away from Kun’s watchful eyes. 

Ten gives him a wary look and Kun stands and heads towards the door. “I have things to attend to. Stay here.” 

Ten sneers at the command but does not move when Kun opens the door and heads downstairs.

…

Kun’s bookstore opens at 10 am every weekday and, as always, Kun flips the sign on the door from CLOSED to OPEN. 

He sits at his desk with the antique cash register. Business is always a little slow, if there is any, but it's not about money. He has gold in vaults across the world, accounts that have been gaining interest for several lifetimes. No, it’s not about money.

It’s about the old lady who stops by on Fridays to buy cheap paperbacks; it’s about the students looking for books for classes who widen their eyes at the steep student discounts Kun offers them; it’s about the view of the pier through the windows, the smell of paper. It is the little things, not the big things, that Kun looks for.

Kun hears footsteps upstairs, then heavy creaking that sounds like furniture moving. It is a shame that the sun sets so late during the summer. Ten must be hungry.

One girl stops by and leaves 30 minutes later with a copy of Hamlet , and she is the only person Kun sees that day.

Kun closes his shop at 5 pm. There are four hours until sunset.

…

“Are you hungry?” Kun asks, kneeling on the floor. Ten gives him a withering glare, hugging his knees to his chest as he hunches against the wall.

“Everything is so loud,” Ten whispers, voice almost forced. “Too bright.”

“That will pass,” Kun promises. Ten looks away from him, eyes fully red in the dark. The sofa is overturned and several chairs are lying on the ground, legs splintering.

“I’m hungry,” Ten says quietly. “It hurts.”

“That will pass.”

Outside, the sun sets.

…

The girl is in her early twenties, hair dyed green at the tips, and she does not scream. Her eyes are lidded as Kun takes her hand and leads her out of the back door of the club, entranced by Kun’s smile. He feels a little sick but this is the cost of their kind: lives manipulated.

Ten huddles in the alley behind the club and when he sees Kun, his vision flares red. He’s not ready to hunt on his own, not yet, so this meal must be obtained by Kun.

“Gently,” Kun says, laying the girl on the ground. Her dyed hair fans out on the pavement. “You must be very gentle.”

Ten nods but his eyes gleam with feverish hunger and Kun winces when he bites into the girl’s neck, stomach sick with the sound.

“Not too much,” Kun says. He places a hand on the back of Ten’s neck. “You don’t want to hurt her.”

Ten draws back slowly, mouth rimmed with red and fangs shining in the night. He looks feral but beneath that there is genuine fear, a horror in the widening of his eyes. That red glow is dimming now, fading to brown. He stands, wiping at his mouth until his hands come away bloody. He is shaking, quaking and stumbling and he reaches out to Kun, bloodied hands looking for something to hold onto. He looks lost, like an untethered buoy on the open ocean.

"What did you learn?" Kun murmurs, watching Ten flatten his palms against the brick wall of the nearest building. He grabs Kun’s wrist and looks at the girl lying unconscious on the ground.

Ten inhales sharply, sinking to his knees. He buries his hand in Kun's shirt, fingers leaving bloody trails down the fabric. “What have I done,” he whispers into the night. “What… am I?”

“It’s okay,” Kun says. He rests a hand on Ten’s shoulder.“She’ll be fine. The wound will close.”

"I'm scared," Ten says, eyes fixed on the girl’s bright green hair. "I'm scared. "

Scared of what he has become, Kun thinks.

…

Soon Ten can find his own food, with Kun’s supervision. He takes to the game of lure and catch with ease, smiling prettily at someone before sinking his pretty smile into their skin. He has a deadly efficiency to him, terrifying in his ease.

Kun watches, monitors. He takes him out at least once a week, sometimes twice. Sometimes Ten’s hunger gets the best of him and he takes too much; sometimes his chosen mark puts up a struggle. Kun is always there to intervene.

Kun doesn’t join Ten in his hunts; he doesn't feed as often as he should. It is one of his flaws, he knows this. Ten has no such reservations: he is lovely and ruthless, immortal and graceful.

He likes to think the hunger keeps him human, keeps him driven. He drinks maybe once or twice a month but he knows Ten, just coming into his power, needs more.

It's tempting, to drink more than he needs. To keep himself in a state of satiation, to never feel the burn of the hunger on his tongue. But he reminds himself what blood looks like, what a slowing pulse feels like, and abstains.

Here is a song Kun knows well: as long as he is hurting, he is alive.

…

They are not as confined to the night as one would imagine they are.

It takes time, of course, to acclimate Ten to the sun—days spent with light muted by curtains and almost darkness, days where the sun was far too bright and the shades had to be drawn completely. 

It takes time, but eventually Ten can stand in front of the window, skin free from burning. Kun doesn’t let him outside right away, though. He insists on Ten covering his eyes with sunglasses, covering exposed skin with sunscreen. He makes Ten wear jackets and long sleeves, even on the hottest of days.

They are walking outside on one of the hottest days of the summer, Ten wearing a dark jacket and sunglasses. He stops in the middle of the street and makes an exasperated noise, stomping his foot.

“This is ridiculous!” He exclaims, practically ripping off his jacket. 

“No, wait—”

Kun has a moment of panic until he realizes that Ten is not bursting into flames, and that everything is fine. It’s almost enough to send his unbeating heart racing. Almost.

Ten smiles at him, arms bared to the sun. He glows beneath it, alive and whole. “I’m fine! Look!”

Kun watches Ten twirl in the warmth of the sun and he almost smiles. Almost. Ten is fine. 

They walk along the pier, watching boats pass on the horizon, and Ten looks so much happier than Kun has ever seen him. He even grabs Kun’s hand, as if to pull him into whatever happiness he’s experiencing. 

His hand is cold, even in the sunlight.

Ten may not disintegrate in the sun that day, but he sure does get one hell of a sunburn. Oh well. 

…

Ten does not talk about his past. Kun does not ask.

The question lingers, of course. Who tried to kill you? Who wanted you dead so bad they almost tore you apart?

There is a haunting in Ten’s eyes. He can balance a knife on any finger, twirl it over his knuckles. He watches people as if he knows how to take them apart, as if he could do it on command.

He looks at Kun like that, too.

For the most part, they are two ships passing each other in the dark. They only truly acknowledge each other when something needs to be done, when Ten is hungry and Kun cannot leave him alone. Kun fears what will happen if he leaves Ten alone.

Despite that, they have a bond; Kun knows because he can feel it. It is the first few weeks that it is strongest, an almost physical pull connecting them. It is a painful reminder of the choice Kun has made, a reminder that he is Ten’s maker now and forever.

It is a terrifying thing to know, a thing that haunts him every hour of the night as it stretches into the day. 

Ten has eternity before him, and Kun has Ten.

…

(“Who are you?” Kun asks the fanged boy.

“No one, really.” The boy smiles and his hands flutter his fan across his face. The gold thread embroidered along his sleeves glitters in the moonlight. He walks with an inhuman kind of grace.

Kun stares at the boy, at his fanged smile and red eyes. He is, in a word, breathtaking.

“Are you going to hurt me?” Kun asks, voice small.

The vampire smiles at him softly, resting a pale hand on Kun’s shoulder. 

“Would you like me to?”)

…

Kun has issues, of course he does. He’s had issues since his heart stopped all those years ago, he’s had issues since he believed that love came in the form of a blond boy with long, sharp teeth.

Ten is one of these issues. 

Kun takes Ten to a club to do some hunting, like he does most nights. He watches him work the crowd, drifting between people like a dancer. His smile is all brilliance and shine, nothing sharp. Kun is not hungry tonight, so watching is all he will do.

Kun watches Ten duck out into the hallway, alone for a moment, and waits at the edge of the room. The bass pounds in his skull and he knows how he must look, a man alone at the fringes of the crowd, unmoving and unnatural. He watches the people, looking for either an easy mark or a threat.

There are several men walking through the crowd, eyes intent and searching. They look casual enough but there is something in their watchful demeanor that puts Kun on edge. His instincts are never wrong.

On of the men stops by the bar and Kun sees him pull out something discreetly. A flash of metal and a card, quickly stowed away again. A badge. 

Kun inhales and looks toward the darkened hall, ducking away from the crowd. He hears a gasp and something like a breathy giggle at the end of the hallway, echoing off the walls. He inches forward to hear snatches of conversation, wisped away by distance. 

He turns the corner and sees Ten with some lovely young thing, a boy with wide innocent eyes and hair that falls across his eyebrows. He laughs at whatever Ten is whispering in his ear, blush red cross his cheeks. He doesn’t even seem to mind that Ten has him pinned against the wall, playfully nipping at his throat. He simply giggles with misplaced affection.

Kun stands there watching the two of them, his skin growing colder by the second. An unnameable feeling rises in his chest and his tongue feels heavy. He pushes it aside, this feeling, and stares at Ten, clearing his throat. Ten looks up, eyes cold. The boy looks shocked and embarrassed, eyes open and naive.

“Oh,” Ten says, bored. “It’s just you.”

“We have to go,” Kun says. He motions to the kid, who slips away from Ten and down the hall like he is fleeing from the scene of a crime. “Now.”

“You’re no fun.”

“I’m no fun, but at least I’m alive,” Kun replies, voice tight in his throat. The feeling is unfamiliar. "There are police here."

"So?"

"So, I can't have you slipping up and getting arrested." 

"But I'm hungry," Ten pouts, and Kun can see a boy with wide eyes, too innocent and trusting, neck an open wound.

"Not tonight," Kun says. "Maybe tomorrow."

Ten huffs, pushing past Kun to go back into the pulsing crowd of the club. Kun almost loses him amongst the shifting bodies, the neon strobing of the lights. He sees the man with the badge brush by him, head down. Someone grabs his hand, grasp familiar.

"At least dance with me," Ten says. He's a bit pale tonight but in the dark he looks fine, just another dancer on the floor. He pulls Kun closer and Kun stiffens, unused to the motion.

"I'm not a dancer—" Kun stammers out, but Ten is already whisking him closer, smiling. He is unnaturally beautiful in the haze of darkness, some other creature in the crowd.

"Then pretend," Ten whispers, the music swallowing his words.

...

“Tell me about your maker,” Ten says later. The club has closed, people spilling out onto the street. The cars buzz past them, headlights glowing yellow on the asphalt.

They both look unnatural in this light.

“There isn’t much to say,” Kun replies. He kicks a can off the corner of the street, watching it clank across the sidewalk and against the base of a building. 

“Did you love him?”

Kun pauses on the street, trapped between one step and the next, one moment and the next. Ten looks at him with curious eyes, jewels glittering at his ears and along his fingers, and Kun takes a deep breath.

“I did,” he replies, words like a breath of air lost in the night.

“Do you miss him?” Ten’s voice has a hopefulness that Kun doesn’t understand, a mixture of curiosity and longing that Kun can’t quite place.

Kun is silent, staring at the glitter of neon lights across the street. 

The night calls up images of a thin face, warm eyes, straw colored hair. A dancer in embroidered silk, watching him from over the edge of a fan. Kun had been so young then, just a boy, so unknowing and naive. He had believed in love, then. He had believed in many things.

The memory tastes like bitter medicine on his tongue.

His voice is hoarse when he finally speaks. “Stop asking me these things.” 

Ten doesn’t speak again for the rest of the night.

…

Unpredictable. Ten is too unpredictable. He is dangerous and unruly and he takes his power like it is a gift rather than a curse. He is dangerous because he does not yet realize what he is.

Kun has never met another of his kind, not since his maker and he does not know what to do if Ten goes rogue. It is a small fear that follows him, that one day he might have to stop Ten from doing something awful. That he might have to stop him, all together.

Ten gets irritated easily. Sometimes he sneers at Kun and snaps rudely at people he passes on the street. Kun isn't sure if it is hunger or discomfort, but whatever it is speaks of danger, uncertainty.

There are scratches in the walls of Kun's apartments. There are splinters of wood at the windowsills, cracked cups and plates in the cabinets.

Maybe Ten does not realize what he is now, but soon he will.

…

For their kind, death comes and goes. It comes with them, and when they go it follows them.

Kun loses Ten in the crowd of a night market and before he knows it he is running past the stalls to the darkest corners of the crowd, to the darkened abandoned buildings by the pier. He feels something in his chest and it burns, it burns.

Kun stops at the first building and busts the door open just in time to see Ten drop a body to the floor, a man whose eyes are glassy and staring. It hits the ground with a thud, a dull, empty sound.

Ten is laughing, mouth covered in blood. He wipes at it with his sleeve, smearing it across his lip and cheek. The man lies on the ground, neck wide and gashed open. It is a killing wound, a death stroke, and all that red burns against Kun’s vision.

“What have you done?” Kun says, placing delicate fingers on the man’s remaining throat. There is no pulse, no beat, nothing. He is looking at a corpse.

“I killed him,” Ten says, smiling. His mouth stretches across his teeth, sharp and cruel. "He was mean. Grabby."

Kun feels his skin grow cold, colder than ice and frost and he whirls to face Ten. Ten, whose eyes practically glow red in the dark. Ten, who has just killed a man without a second thought.

Ten wipes at his face again and Kun grabs his wrist, twisting it. Ten hisses, still more animal than human.

“We don’t do that,” Kun says quietly, anger simmering, his fingers digging into Ten’s thin wrist. Ten doesn’t flinch, just throws his head back and laughs. It is an awful sound, dry and mocking, and it fills the empty space between them.

“We?” Ten asks, voice holding that bitter edge it never seems to lose. “Who is ‘we’? Us? Our kind?” Ten throws his hand down and Kun lets go of him, can see anger boiling over in his eyes, untameable and uncaged. “There is no one else but us,” Ten hisses. “We are alone.”

"There are rules," Kun spits. "You're nothing but a young fool ."

"Am I?" Ten laughs again, right in Kun's face. "Who's going to stop me? You?"

"If I have to.” 

His voice is a hush.

Ten sneers at him, face stained pink. In the nighttime glow of the moon, he looks almost normal. Almost innocent.

"Then do it," Ten says icily. He walks away from Kun, anger surrounding him like a mist, and Kun does not follow. Instead, he looks at the dead body at his feet, leaking blood onto the concrete floor like a spilled glass of wine. He grabs the man's sleeve, hoisting him up as if he were assisting a drunk friend and not carrying a corpse.

The pier isn't too far away. The high tide carries bodies and secrets the same distance, miles and miles into the open ocean.

Like all murders, this one must go unnoticed and unsolved.

...

“You are going to listen to me,” Kun says, Ten staring at him with violence in his eyes. “I’ve been too lenient with you, too kind. Things are going to change.”

Silence.

"I'm not letting you leave this house," Kun says, and he knows how harsh he sounds. "Until you have learned your lesson."

"You can't do that," Ten snarls, eyes flashing. "I'm a grown man, not some toddler."

"You were a grown man until you died," Kun says. "Now? You're just a child, and children do what they're told."

Ten looks like he's going to leap forward and wrap his hands around Kun's neck, like he's going to separate each of Kun's ribs and carve out his chest. He doesn't, and Kun finds he is bracing himself for a nonexistent impact.

"You can't keep me here." Ten's voice is low.

"I can."

Kun’s little bookstore has become a spawning point of storms, a place where misery brews between the two of them.

“I don’t need you,” Ten says, voice cold. “You just hold me back.”

“If it wasn’t for me,” Kun says, struggling to keep his voice level, “you would have bled to death in the street.”

“So?” Ten says. “Would it really have been that bad? At least I wouldn't have to deal with you. You could’ve let me die, left me behind!”

“I couldn’t!” Kun yells.

“I would have been fine without you,” Ten yells. “Even after you turned me!”

There it is—a stone drops in Kun’s throat as he swallows.

“You don’t have half the control I do,” Kun says, anger flaring up in his vision. “You want to know what I did after I turned? I killed people. I killed lots of people because there was no one there to stop me!”

Ten looks stricken, face pale as he reels back from Kun’s anger. But still he grinds his teeth, still his eyes glow.

“Everything I’m teaching you I had to learn myself because I didn’t have anyone,” Kun seethes, the memory aching in his chest. “I was alone because my maker decided he didn’t want a burden like me.”

Kun hates the memory, buries it beneath everything else but it still haunts him; trusting someone who had ended his life, who had left him to die, who had made a mistake and run from it. Kun remembers the pain as his body destroyed itself and remade itself, as he had watched the star-filled sky, unable to move.

(“Will it hurt?” Kun asks the blonde boy, heart hammering in his chest.

“Just a little,” the vampire says, giving Kun that smile that had dazzled him so many times before. “Only a little bit.”

“Stay here with me,” Kun says, grabbing his hand. The vampire’s eyes are lovely, rimmed red, his features delicate.

“Of course,” he says. He leans forward, mouth on Kun’s neck, the stars bright above them. “I would never leave you.”

It was a lie.)

Kun’s eyes sting with unshed tears. “I might have made a mistake, turning you,” Kun says. “But people shouldn't die because of my error!”

Ten is silent for a moment. " I died."

"You would have died either way," Kun says, and it is true.

Silence. Red eyes in the black between them.

Here is a song Kun knows: loneliness, the crushing kind. Hundreds of years all by himself, drifting across the world on a current of his own devising, unable to look back. A bloodstained past. A star-filled sky. A hunger that never subsides.

“Don’t ask me to leave,” Kun says. “Don’t tell me you don’t need me, because…”

I need you, Ten. I’ve been so lonely. Maybe we are the only ones of our kind left, maybe I'm responsible for this mess, maybe… maybe I’ll miss you.

“You need me,” Kun says, all the fire going out of him. “You don’t know it, but you need me.”

Ten looks at him for a long time, eyes searching his face. He stands and goes into his room, door shutting softly behind him. He says nothing.

…

Ten doesn't come out, not when the sun sets nor when it rises again. Kun doesn't know what he is doing. Maybe he is plotting the best way to kill him, or simply waiting.

Waiting. They both do quite a lot of waiting.

Kun runs his bookstore. He makes tea. And still Ten does not leave his room, or move. Kun can't even hear movement from beyond the door, and wonders if maybe Ten has snuck out, escaped.

He knows in his chest that is not true.

He knocks on the door 3 days later, whispering with his palm against the wood. "Ten. You can come out now."

Kun hears an irritated huff and shuffling from the other side. The door swings open and Ten has the grace to look both irritated, tired, and sad.

"I'm sorry," he says, voice harsh from three days of disuse. His skin is almost white, eyes dull. "Is that what you want? I'm sorry."

Kun does not respond, just nods. "Would you like some tea?"

…

Here is a song Kun knows:

Once upon a time there was a boy, young and foolish. He thought that he understood the world, thought that he knew everything there was to know.

Then one night he met a stranger, and over time he grew to love this stranger, to think he knew him as a lover. This was not true. The boy did not know the stranger at all.

The boy gave his life to this stranger because he thought he loved him, but this too was not true. And as he lay dying, he vowed to never feel that vulnerability ever again, to never believe the lies he had believed before.

The boy died with the name of the person he thought he had loved hovering on his lips.

The boy changed, and then, the boy came back.

...

Ten has always adorned himself like a king—rings on his fingers, metal studded along his ears, dripping down his neck. But Ten’s most singular adornment is the one he cannot remove nor cover.

The scar on Ten’s neck gives Kun pause. It always does. It’s hard to look at it without wondering where it came from, wondering if it hurt when it was inflicted. How long did it take to heal? How long until the skin became silvery and thick?

Kun stays quiet with his questions because he knows when curiosity is unwanted. Ten carries his secrets beneath his skin, wears them like a shroud around his heart. He is scarred from head to toe, scarred in places where the wounds must have left him near death.

It takes time but finally Kun asks.

"Tell me," Kun starts. "Why do they call you Ten?'

A strange question, but Kun feels he already knows the answer.  It’s not the question he means to ask, but it is something.

Ten pulls down his collar and his scar shines bright against his skin. "You've seen this scar."

Kun nods.

"I have ten scars," he continues. "Ten scars for ten times someone tried to kill me and ten times I survived." Ten's hand falls away from his neck. "Do you know what it is to fear death?"

Yes. Not his death but others. Afraid of hurting, of making a mistake.

"I do." Kun's voice echoes.

"I used to be afraid of death. I'm not afraid of it anymore."

"There are other things on this earth to fear," Kun says quietly.

“I know.” Ten exhales softly. "I know."

…

“I’m going out,” Kun says, pulling on his jacket.

“To do what?” Ten asks, as if affronted that Kun is going somewhere without him.

Kun shrugs. Ten frowns and then looks down at the book he’s reading, unbothered. 

The night air is crisp tonight, the sky cloudless and clear. He stops by a bar, charming the waitress to come meet him outside after her shift ends in, oh, maybe 15 minutes? Her blood is bitter and tastes like cigarettes and late nights wishing for better days. She doesn’t even resist, and Kun wishes that she has good dreams, that she can escape this place someday. He places her on a bench, head lolling as she sleeps. The entire ordeal is over in less than thirty minutes.

Kun walks to the end of the pier, looking at the shifting shapes of waves in the distance. The smell of salt is stronger here, the sound of the waves loud enough that it can drown everything else out. There’s a lighthouse in the distance, the light winking in and out like the pupil of a closing eye.

Kun sits at the edge of the pier, wood rough beneath his palms.

(“What’s it like, living forever?”

The vampire looks down at Kun, his fingers carding through his dark hair. “It gets lonely, sometimes.”

“But aren’t there others? Like you?”

The vampire shakes his head. “I have never met another of my kind.”

Kun looks at the vampire, at his lovely eyes and angular face, the lonely smile. “Would you want to?”

Silence, a pause. He shakes his head. “No, I wouldn’t.”)

Kun hears footsteps behind him but doesn’t turn. The gait is familiar, slinking, and Ten sits next to him on the edge of the pier. He looks oddly thoughtful.

“So you came out here just to brood?”

Kun watches the waves. “I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

Kun shrugs. 

“Come home,” Ten says, voice softer than it usually is. “It’s lonely without you.”

Kun looks at him, really looks at him: the worried crease in his forehead, the way his hands curl into his pockets like he is hiding something. He looks anxious about something, worried about someone. It surely isn’t Kun, surely.

Kun stands and Ten watches him, eyes curious. 

“Well?” Kun says. “Aren’t you coming?”

…

If Ten kills, he does it so discreetly that Kun does not know. Ignorance is a strange kind of bliss, but it is bliss nonetheless.

It happens one night while they are out walking the streets: a homeless drunk, grizzled from long nights roaming where he shouldn’t be, rests a hand on Kun’s shoulder and murmurs something about how pretty his eyes are. Between that second and the next, he is dead.

Kun whirls to Ten, who is snarling at the corpse on the ground, his hands bloody. The man’s throat has been shorn open with his hands and is lying open like a void, blood almost black.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Kun hisses. “Ten, what the hell?”

“He could have hurt you,” he says, and his voice doesn’t sound like Ten’s voice at all. 

“He was just a human,” Kun says, angry. “I don’t know if you realized this, Ten, but when humans die they stay dead!”

Ten stares at him, and his eyes are completely red.

Kun lifts the leg of the man’s body and Ten hoists him up by the shoulders, and together they throw the body over the pier into the ocean below. It thuds against the waves and sinks, and Kun can trace the very smallest trails of blood as it drifts to the open sea.

Ten looks calm, too calm, as he wipes blood from his hands. He jumps off the other edge of the pier, onto the sandy beach, and dips his hands in the saltwater. Red lifts off of his hands and leaves a film on the water before the waves crash against it again.

“Ten,” Kun says, voice stern. “Look at me.”

“I was trying to protect you,” Ten says, voice biting in the night.

“I don’t need you to protect me,” Kun says, and he realizes his voice sounds just as mean. “I need you to stop acting on every impulse that runs through your stupid head.”

Ten glares at him, then steps into the water. The waves crash against his legs and Ten looks out at the stars lining the horizon.

“You call me a killer now,” he says, and his voice is carried aloft by the waves. “But I have always been a killer.”

Kun stands behind him on the sand, watching his silhouette. Ten raises his arms as if he is welcoming the moon into his embrace, as if welcoming the stars into his body.

“I killed people for a living, Kun. It became as easy as breathing, as walking, as being alive.” His voice sounds so faraway. Kun steps into the sea spray to stand beside him, and he can see the stars glittering red in Ten’s irises.

Ten is, in a word, breathtaking. 

“You were human, then.” Kun can feel the water seep into his shoes, the hems of his jeans. It is cold, so cold, but so is Kun. “Now you are not.”

“I was a human that killed other humans.” Ten’s voice is flat. “Now I am a monster that does the same thing.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“Kun, stop.” Ten kneels and plucks something out of the water: a crystalline shell, cracked at the edges. “Stop trying to make me a better person. It won’t work.”

“I’m not trying to make you a better person,” Kun says. “I’m trying to make you a different one. The Ten you were is gone,” Kun continues, and the moon shines bright on the waves. “The Ten you are now… that is the Ten that will live for hundreds of years.”

“What if I don’t want to?” Ten asks. “What if I don’t want to live forever?”

“You’ve already made your choice,” Kun says. “When you told me you didn’t want to die, you made your choice.”

Ten huffs, then trudges out of the water onto the sandy shore.

“Kun?”

“Yes?”

“You said you killed people, after you turned.” His voice is quiet. “How many?”

Kun is silent for a while. “I can’t remember,” he admits. His throat is dry. “But I...I know I murdered everyone in my village.”

“Oh.” Ten looks at the ground. 

“It is the past,” Kun says, his throat tight. “You cannot dwell on the past.”

Oh, but he does. The past haunts him at all hours of his existence, follows him like a ghost. He does not dwell on the past but the past dwells on him.

He steps out of the water, and the waves rush into place as if he had never been there at all.

…

“I want to leave.”

Kun looks up from his book. Ten’s expression is unreadable, hesitant, dark. 

Kun closes his book, and fixes Ten with a calm expression. “Why?”

“It’s been almost two months,” Ten says. A ring glints along his finger as he rubs his hands together. “You’ve taught me a lot, and I think I should leave.”

“You aren’t ready yet,” Kun says.

“I think I am,” Ten says, and there is an edge in his voice. “I want to leave.”

“And what if I say no?” Kun stands. “What will you do?”

“I’ll leave anyway.”

Kun walks to the door, Ten’s gaze following him, and stands in front of it. “You aren’t ready.”

Silence. A song in the dark.

Ten’s eyes flash red and his expression slips from stoic neutrality to something colder, something deadlier. “I will tear you apart,” he hisses.

“You can try,” Kun replies.

Ten almost leaps forward, and in the space between breaths he is already across the room, hands closing around Kun’s throat. His eyes are as red as blood or cherries or wine, or maybe some poisonous mixture of all three.

“Why can’t you let me leave,” he snarls. “Why can’t you let me be ?”

“You aren’t ready,” Kun gasps, pulling Ten’s hands from his neck.

"I hate you," Ten seethes, anger rolling off of him in waves. "I hate you so much, I—"

Kun pushes him against the wall and Ten simply bounces back, grabbing Kun by the collar. One of his rings scrapes the edge of Kun's jaw, jewel coming away red. Even with rage painting his face, he is still the most beautiful being Kun has seen in a very, very long time.

"Hate me all you want, it doesn't change anything." Kun keeps his voice level, struggles to keep that familiar anger from surging up in his veins. So many years in solitude and now he doesn't know how to cope anymore, how to handle the burning of emotions he has not felt in a long, long time. He cannot even distinguish them, doesn't know the difference between hate or love or happiness. Everything blends together, mixes in his still veins, pools on his tongue.

"I hate you!" Ten screams. He looks like a petulant child, save for the tears streaming down his face and the red lining his irises. "I hate being like this! I hate being like you! "

The words are like a blow to Kun's chest, a sledgehammer right between his ribs.

“You were dying,” Kun says, another unknowable feeling rising in his chest. It feels like loss. Like desperation.

“I was being a fool!” He spits back at Kun, words scathing. “You should have just let me die! You should’ve just let me bleed to death on the street like I was supposed to!” Ten’s chest is heaving as he speaks but his face remains pale. It will always remain pale.

“You begged me to help you.”

“You shouldn’t have done it!” Ten’s hands are curled into fists and Kun knows that he has finally realized the weight on him, the burden he will never be able to shake. Immortality is never a gift—just a curse in sheep’s clothing.

“What should I have done,” Kun says softly, anger simmering beneath the words. “Let you bleed to death in front of me?”

“I was a stranger to you,” Ten says back. “Why did you do it? What would it have mattered? ”

To protect his conscience, maybe. To ease the loneliness, maybe. Kun has no good reason for what he has done to Ten, and he knows it. He will always know it.

"I hate you," Ten says, chest heaving, his pause between breaths a storm in the making. "I have never hated anyone like I hate you!"

He lunges forward and Kun is caught by surprise by the blur Ten has become, the way he yells and howls at Kun as he hits him. Kun's blood boils, and finally he can name the emotion he feels.

They descend on each other, gnashing teeth and anger and an almost insanity as they pull at each other. Here is a song they both know: frustration, anger, longing.

Ten pushes Kun down, fingers digging into his skin hard enough to bruise, eyes wild in the dark. They exchange blows, legs tangling as they fall backward onto the floor. The rug bunches up beneath Kun’s back, scratchy and stiff and he hisses at Ten, trying to throw him off.

No words. There are no words for the monsters they are. There is only bated breath and pale hands and bruises that almost immediately fade. There is only the eternity between them, the fragments of space broken by scrabbling hands and snapping teeth.

Ten curls his hands in Kun’s shirt, nails scraping through the thin material, his eyes wide and angry as he gazes down at Kun. He’s breathing heavily, more so out of instinct than necessity.

“Do you hate me?” He asks, voice a strained whisper. In the darkness, his anger has become something else entirely. Desperation, maybe. Nothing more.

“Only sometimes,” Kun admits, pushing Ten onto his back. He barely resists, body soft and pliant as he withdraws, grip tightening on Kun’s wrists. “Only a little.”

"Why don't you hate me," Ten says, gasping voice almost a whine in the dark. “ Why? ”

Kun is honest. He leans over Ten, watching his eyes dilate, watching his throat flutter beneath his skin, always watching.

"I can't hate you," Kun says softly. "Because I made you."

Ten bares his teeth, fangs long and sharp, but does not resist when Kun presses his mouth against his neck, teeth forming divots in his skin. Ten grabs Kun’s wrists so hard they could break, staring at Kun with wide, burning red eyes. He lets out a choking noise, almost a sob, back arching.

“Maybe,” he gasps, face close to Kun's, “I could have loved you.”

“Maybe,” Kun echoes, voice hollow as Ten presses his lips to his. The night is endless as they fall into each other, roiling shadows in the black.

Here is a song they both know: the world turns, even when they do not. And when they do turn, the world falls away.

...

"You have a choice."

The morning sun streams through the windows, bright and loving. It is a sun meant for people that live and love and die, maybe in that order and maybe not. It is a sun for good men. It is not a sun meant for Kun and Ten.

"What is it?" Ten asks, slipping on his shirt. His old scars shine against his pale skin and Kun knows them each quite well, know the way the skin feels beneath his fingers. It is perhaps a memory he will carry to his grave, far into the future.

"A month. And then you choose."

Ten is quiet for a moment, buttoning up his shirt. He slips on one ring, then another.

"A month." He repeats, voice far, far away. "A month, and then I can leave?"

"You can either leave or stay," Kun says. He had awakened early, dressed in the dark and waited, watching Ten sleep as he had considered what to do next. It had taken some time. "Leave, or stay and learn."

Ten slips an earring into his ear, a small cross. It is made of stainless steel—he can no longer tolerate silver. "A month," he whispers. "Fine." His back stiffens and his face becomes that face that Kun knows so well: arrogant, blank, beautiful.

"I will not try to keep you here after a month." Kun watches the sunlight glint off of Ten's rings. "You have my word."

Ten lets out a dry laugh, but there is no mirth behind it. He slips on his jacket, then slips out the door. He doesn't look at Kun as he leaves, but he pauses in the doorway.

“Thank you,” he says softly.

And then he is gone.

Kun stands and stretches. The day drags out ahead of him, long and lonely and bright.

…

"I knew who tried to kill me," Ten says softly. It is late but not quite night, and he is sitting on a plush armchair in the bookstore. 

"Who?" Kun asks, stacking books on shelves.

Ten is silent. "He was a friend," he says. "That's why he was able to get so close. If it had been anybody else I would have been on edge but I … wasn't, this time."

"You trusted him."

"Yeah," Ten says. He laughs for a second, sad and lost in thought. "I did."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Ten says. "That's how things are, were , in my line of work. You do what you have to. You take orders and don't question them. You do anything to stay alive."

Kun nods; he understands. Here is a song they both know: betrayal cuts deep.

"Do you want revenge?" Kun asks, and the question surprises him.

"No." Ten shifts in the chair, grabbing a book off a table. "He… he cried, as he killed me. Me living is revenge enough."

Kun nods. "What would you do if you saw him again?" 

Ten thinks for a moment. Then he looks up, eyes burning. 

"Nothing," he says, but there is something beneath the words. "I would do nothing."

…

They do not love each other, at least not in any way that counts.

Ten leaves in the mornings, and some nights he doesn't come home. He stays out until the sun rises the next day, eventually trudging home as the sky turns red, then pink, then orange. He always smells like blood and someone else’s skin, almost warm to the touch. Kun never asks, and Ten never tells. They both know the other knows, so why say it?

Some nights Ten rips at the walls, at himself, at Kun before stalking out into the black night. He comes home with his skin streaked with blood, eyes almost glowing as Kun watches. Kun doesn’t feel fear but instead a type of regret, resentment. It tastes bitter on his tongue. Sometimes, on nights like these, they kiss until their lips bleed, until Ten can lap the blood from Kun's mouth like he would an open wound. On nights like these, they are both the worst versions of themselves.

Some nights Ten curls up next to Kun, spent from fighting, his head against Kun’s chest as if listening for the heartbeat he knows he will not find. On these nights Kun brushes the hair away from his forehead and tells him stories that have long since faded into history. On these nights there is only the peace that shatters with the dawn, leaving them both with nothing but each other.

No, they do not love each other. Not in any way that could truly be called love.

…

There is a boy following them in the crowd. Kun sees him first, watches him peer at them from around a corner before dashing out of view.

Kun taps Ten's shoulder. The crowd on the pier is thick: it is summer, after all, and today is supposed to be a cooler day.

"We're being followed," Kun says, kneeling down to look at some seagulls milling at the edge of the road.

"Where? By who?"

"A boy," Kun says, throwing the birds some bread. "Dark hair. T-shirt and shorts. He was behind us."

Ten nods and kneels next to Kun, cooing at the birds. They both hear footsteps and Ten twirls around, eyes widening.

“Ten?” The boy says, eyes open in honest surprise. “Is that you?”

Ten smiles widely and the kid runs to him, grinning. 

“I thought you were dead! We all did!”

Ten continues to smile, but some of the light leaves his eyes.

The boy looks warily at Kun and Kun realizes that both Ten and this boy have lived the same kind of life. A dangerous one.

“Who is he?” The boy whispers cautiously. Ten slings an arm around his shoulders.

“Don't worry,” Ten says cheerfully. “That’s Kun. He’s a friend. Kun, this is Yangyang.”

Yangyang gives a guarded smile and then turns back to Ten. “How did you survive? I heard what happened.”

“A miracle, I guess.” Ten offers no other explanation.

“They couldn't find your body,” Yangyang says nervously, steely resolve in his eyes. “The boss is still looking.”

“He can keep looking,” Ten says bitterly. “Until he dies. As far as he's concerned, I'm done.”

“Your reputation precedes you. They're worried you’ll come back.”

“Maybe I will,” Ten says darkly. He exchanges an unreadable glance with Kun. “But enough about me. What's up with you?”

Yangyang is young and free spirited but carries a heavy weight with him. From what Kun hears he learns that Yangyang has been living with an organized gang, the same that had previously been using Ten as a killer for hire. There is no blood on Yangyang’s hands—he doesn’t carry that kind of weight—but there is something dark that shadows his watchful nature.

“Things are in disarray,” Yangyang says, licking at the ice cream Kun buys them. “You were a favorite. If you came back…”

“I'm not coming back,” Ten says. “I won't.”

Yangyang nods. “Still… you're the only one who could fix this mess.”

“Not anymore. I don't live that kind of life.”

Yangyang motions to Kun, sitting as still as a statue and watching the waves break against the pier. “Is it because of him?”

Ten pauses. “Maybe. Partially.”

“Be safe,” Yangyang says, voice carrying age and wisdom. “They won't stop until they know you're dead.”

Ten’s fingers curl and he, too, is looking at the sea. “Let them come. I am not afraid.”

Yangyang gives him a look that borders on sympathy then leaves, vanishing into the crowd so fast it is as if he was never even there.

…

Ten doesn’t talk about his past. It remains as elusive as the rest of him, always slinking away from mentions of who he was before , of what he did before . Kun notices that Ten separates his life into the definite before and the less certain after , Kun in the middle.

That night Ten is silent for a long, long time. And then, finally, he speaks.

“I was the best at my job,” Ten says, toying with the glass in his hand. Tonight it holds only wine, and nothing else. “No one could stop me.”

Kun says nothing. He just watches the reminiscent flicker of Ten's gaze, down and up and then at Kun.

He runs a finger along the scar on his neck, silvery in the lamplight. “I got this a couple of years ago,” he starts. “Was hired to kill some bigwig politician. His bodyguard tried to strangle me with a wire. Cut through my skin all the way around.” Ten laughs, sips his wine. “I still finished my job. Burned the wound closed, killed the guy, and went home.” He stares at his reflection in his glass, red liquid making him seem less human. “I was unstoppable, then. People were afraid that no matter what they did, how they tried to kill me, I would come back."

“It must have been dangerous,” Kun says. “You must have been afraid.”

“Afraid?” Ten laughs. “I didn’t fear anything. I was wild, Kun. People feared me. You should have seen me, then.”

Kun feels a type of distant sadness creep into his chest, settling right beside his unbeating heart.

“And now?”

“I fear nothing but loss.” Ten’s words are numb. “I have already lost so much.”

"I'm sorry," Kun says, but he means something else. He means forgive me, he means maybe I made a mistake.

But another part of him, the part that is greedy and inhuman, means I want you here with me forever.

…

That night Kun holds Ten tightly to his chest, and doesn't say that he loves him. It's such a strange thing, love , this concept that says he would gladly give the world, give himself to another person. He thought he knew this feeling but he has known only a fraction of it, the tiniest amount.

He does not love Ten. No, he would not call it that. It is something much, much stronger than that.

...

And now. And yet…

Kun takes Ten out to hunt and turns a blind eye as he seduces the room with his crystal smile, liquid grace. He doesn’t even bat an eyelash as Ten lures a man out into the darkest corners of the club. He simply does not care. 

Kun doesn’t drink. He does not want to. The act has never felt right to him, and now his stomach feels like lead. He can hear the pulse of the room, every pulse but his own, and wonders if he might be going mad. Maybe.

It’s been 600 years. Surely it had to happen sometime.

Ten finishes and they duck out into the alley, Ten’s skin warm and glowing and alive. No one could mistake him for anything but a living human being. It’s nice, that he still gets to pretend. It’s nice.

A man enters the alley, then another. They both have the hoods of their sweatshirts up, shadows covering their faces. Ten narrows his eyes, angling himself in front of Kun as they walk forward.

A man reaches out his hand, fingers splayed on the front of Ten’s shirt.

“Is there a problem?” Ten asks, and Kun recognizes the lethal edge creeping into his voice.

“Ten,” the man says. His pockmarked and scarred face splits into a wide smile. “We've been looking for you. Can’t believe you’re still alive.”

“Well, you know me,” Ten says lightly. “You can never put a good man like me down.”

The second man swings out, a pocketknife in his hand. Instead of pointing it at Ten, however, he levels it at Kun’s throat. Kun waits.

“We got orders to make sure you stay dead this time,” the scarred man says. “And I can’t wait.”

The muscles in Ten’s jaw clench and unclench. “Step away from my friend.”

The second man presses his knife to Kun’s throat, the edge slicing into his skin. Kun is not worried. It would take more than a thug with a knife to end his life.

“Your friend? We don’t give a fuck about your friend. We could kill him right now. No, Ten—you’re going to come with us and we are going to cut you into little itty bitty pieces.” He smiles, his teeth yellowing.

Kun looks at Ten, face blank, and he sighs. The scarred man takes a knife out from his own pocket, the blade slicing out. He grins wide and Ten’s eyes flash red in the yellow alley light. He is a different creature, now.

Ten's grace is that of a dancer, not a killer, and even Kun can marvel at the way he moves, like silk rippling through the air. It is a beautiful and deadly sight, lovely to behold. and Kun wonders if he might have been that type of beautiful, a long time ago.

Ten snaps the first man’s neck as easily as cracking an egg, the man’s face going completely slack as he crumples to the ground like a doll. Unlike Kun, Ten was a killer before he died and never stopped being one—where he was graceful before now he is fluid, unstoppable.

The second man holds his knife to Kun’s neck, a truly harmless thing that Kun would laugh at in any other moment. The man’s hand shakes as he watches Ten come closer, thin as a wraith and twice as dark, and the blade scrapes the side of his neck. It stings.

“Step back,” Ten says, voice low. The man, still shaking, takes a hurried step away from Kun. 

“Don’t you ever touch him again,” Ten says, voice still low as he advances, “you hear me?”

The man nods hurriedly as Ten wraps his hand around his throat. Kun simply watches, a chill growing in his bones.

“Tell whoever sent you to never try a stunt like this again,” Ten continues. “Or I’ll do to him what I did to your buddy over there.”

The man chokes out a sobbing yes and Ten lets him go, watching him run away into the night. Ten wipes his hands on his jeans and turns to Kun, face completely still. He has been carved in marble, it seems, his outstretched hand pale and cold.

“Are you okay?”

Kun nods, wiping away the blood on his neck. “You didn’t have to do that,” he says.

“I did what I had to do.” Ten nudges the dead body on the pavement with his foot. “The body’s still warm. Are you hungry?”

He is.

…

“They know I’m alive now,” Ten says in the dark. “They will come for me.”

“I expect they will,” Kun replies. 

“They’ve seen you. They’ll come for you as well.”

Kun sighs, arms around Ten’s waist. “So?”

“It’s not safe here for you.”

Kun sits up. “I’ve lived a great deal longer than you have, Ten. I can take care of myself.”

“But you don’t know these people,” Ten says softly. “The second they realize they can’t kill you like anyone else they will lock you away, use you. Someone like you… they could use someone like you.”

“I almost burned to death in the Great Fire of London,” Kun says. “I was almost beheaded, almost drawn and quartered, almost burned as a witch. I have seen every type of death and I am still here.”

“Are you really?” Ten gives him a fond smile in the dark. “There are other types of dying.”

It is as if he speaks from experience.

…

The man in a suit comes when Ten is not home. That is a good thing. Not for Ten, but for him.

“Hello,” the man says. His smile is wide and friendly, but Kun has spent 600 years on this earth and can spot a liar when he sees one. “Are you Qian Kun?”

“Yes, I am.” He slides a stack of books to the side of the counter. “How may I help you?”

The man pulls out a gun and points it at Kun’s chest. “I'd like you to come with me.”

Several scenarios flicker through Kun's mind: it’s only one man, he could snap his neck; he could bludgeon him with the heavy books on his desk; he could twist his arm so hard it snaps in two.

Kun does none of these things. He simply finishes piling books on his desk, straightens his jacket around his shoulders, and as they walk outside he flips the OPEN sign on the door to CLOSED. He smiles at the man with the gun.

Here is a song Kun knows: the most harmless looking things are the most dangerous.

…

“What is your relationship to Ten?” A man stares at him, hair a brilliant cherry red. His voice is young but gruff, one long scar trailing over his eye.

“He's a friend.” Kun keeps his voice pleasantly neutral. He's handcuffed to a chair, in an abandoned boathouse somewhere along the pier. The handcuffs around his wrist are wholly unnecessary—if he wanted to, he could snap them like tissue paper.

“I don't trust this guy,” the man in the suit says. “He's probably working for someone.”

“Who do you work for?” The red haired man asks.

“I'm self employed,” Kun replies. “I run a bookstore.”

“Bullshit.” The man in the suit spits on the floor.

“I really don't see what the problem is,” Kun says, brows furrowed in confusion.

“I'm only going to ask this one more time,” the red haired man says. “Who do you work for?”

“I told you, I run a bookstore—”

The blow comes fast and sharp and Kun can feel the skin on his cheek split open. It burns, but he does not cry out.

I am older than you by hundreds of years, Kun thinks. I have seen things you could never even imagine, have been places you will never even dream of. I was on this earth before you and will remain after you. I will be here long after you die, and your children die, and for an eternity after that.

“Wait,” the man in the suit says, eyes widening. “His face…”

His skin no longer stings. Kun knows that whatever had existed before, a small scrape or cut, is gone now.

“What the hell,” the red haired man says. “What the fuck .”

“Listen,” Kun says. “I have things to do. Can't we just call it a day? Go home?”

“He's some type of freak,” the man in the suit says. “Like those X-Men guys.”

Kun sighs.

“ Experimental drugs,” the man with the red hair says, unsure. “It must be.”

Kun sighs. Again.

…

When Ten comes home Kun is gone. The door is not locked but the CLOSED sign hangs from the knob. Kun never closes this early—it's only a little past noon.

Nothing seems out of order except the fact that Kun is not there. He is nowhere to be found: not upstairs, not in the back room, not even hiding in the shelves. Ten pushes down his immediate panic. Maybe he just went out for a bit, he thinks. Maybe he'll be back soon.

Ten goes to the desk near the door, uncluttered save for a pile of books on the edge. He looks over the covers, some old and fading. 

The top book has the words Kidnapped printed on the cover in fading silver letters. Ten picks it up, frowning. His eyes widen and the book slips from his fingers, thudding against the desk as he races out the door.

…

The cut on Kun’s arm is wide and deep and blood drips out of it onto the concrete floor, vivid against the gray. Kun grits his teeth, the handcuffs digging into his wrists.

The man in the suit watches carefully as the cut on Kun’s arm knits itself together, skin folding together until it is smooth and unblemished. The reaction is slower this time, and Kun is getting tired.

“It’s amazing,” the man in the suit says. “Absolutely amazing.”

“Where’s Ten?” The red haired man asks Kun.

“I don’t know,” Kun says, veins burning as he pretends that he can’t feel Ten in his blood, as if they are not just offshoots of each other, both monsters of their own making.

“You’re a liar,” the man with the red hair says. “I can tell.”

And you, Kun thinks, are a fool.

He briefly considers killing them both, but only very briefly. Kun hasn’t killed someone in so long that to do so now might change him in some foreseeable way, might drive him over the edge. His killing days are long over.

A shift in the air, a pull, and here is a song Kun knows well: Ten’s hurried footsteps outside the door.

The door to the room bangs open, practically splinters inwards, and Kun sees Ten storm in. His eyes are almost fully red and they gleam against the pallor of his skin, making him seem so much more unearthly than before.

The red-haired man stands. “Ten! We’ve been looking for you!”

Ten punches him right in the face and he hits the ground with a heavy thud, nose bloody.

“What type of bullshit, ” Ten seethes, grabbing the man in the suit by his neck. “Are you trying to pull here?”

“We couldn’t find you, so we found the next best thing,” the man in the suit says calmly. 

“I told you people to leave me alone,” Ten says. “I told your thugs to tell you to leave me alone. ”

The man in a suit pulls out a gun and fires it and Ten dodges to the side. He gives Kun a disappointed look.

“Really? You couldn’t have done this yourself?”

Kun snaps his wrists apart and the handcuffs snap with them. “I don’t prefer it.”

The man with the red hair gets up off the floor, grabbing Ten’s leg and pulling him down. Ten curses at him and they trade punches, rolling across the concrete. The man in the suit fires several more shots and Kun grabs his arm, forcing it upwards. There’s a crack of bone and the man cries out. The gun falls from his hand and Kun pushes him away.

Kun watches Ten, fluid and deadly, his teeth snapping at the man’s neck. There’s motion in the edge of his vision and Kun turns.

The man in the suit runs toward Kun, and even though Kun is fast and unnatural and inhuman all he can do is stand rooted to the spot. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ten slice a man's neck open with all the ease of ripping a piece of paper. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a knife, edge shining like pure light, streaking like a star towards him.

“Kill him!” Ten shouts, voice muted in Kun’s ears. “Kill him!”

It would be so easy, so, so easy. Humans are so fragile, just blood and bone and willpower. It is so incredibly easy to kill a man. Kun has done it before.

But now… Kun had left that part of himself behind. He hasn’t killed someone in centuries and even the thought of it makes him sick to the core. Once he had painted himself in blood but now even the sight of it makes him feel unfinished. Unwhole. He hesitates.

(“I’m sorry!” Kun sobs into the night. The world spins in shades of red and Kun can feel blood running down his hands and onto the dirt. Can feel his lack of a pulse, can feel the fading pulses of corpses in the distance.

The world turns.)

Kun does nothing as the man in the suit steps forward, plunging the knife into his chest. The knife enters through the thin gap in his ribs and exits through his back, close to his spine. It’s a shooting pain that follows, as if a comet has streaked its way through Kun’s chest and left his insides burning.

A gasp. And then a cacophony, all in Kun's head. The silence of dying only comes after one is dead.

Kun grabs the edge of the knife and it burns against his skin, the edge shining brighter than steel or iron ever could. His fingers steam when he tries to grab it, the edge of his wound smoking. There is a searing smell as the silver eats at him, corroding him from the inside out.

Kun drops to his knees, head swimming. Panic sets in, clawing up his throat. He can’t grab the knife, can’t even touch it, to pull it out is almost impossible. And yet, he cannot heal with a knife sticking out of his chest.

The man in the suit looks at him, smirking. “Guess you can’t heal from this one, can you?”

Kun doesn’t look at him. Instead he looks at the stars outside the window, so bright in the vivid night. He can hear the waves crashing against the pier, sound like the rustling of the fabric of the world. He keeps his eyes open because he must, because if he closes them he might not open them, he might not ever wake up.

(“Wake up,” Kun whispers, the scent of blood filling the air and putting Kun’s mind in a hazy red fog. His fingers feel almost numb, even though they are covered in blood. “Ten, you need to stay awake.”)

Kun puts his hands on the floor, pushing himself upright, trying to stay afloat amongst the pain but even then it threatens to carry him away, a wave with no ending. A sea with no horizon. Words without a voice.

He can taste blood on his lips, can taste his own dying and Kun finally realizes that after all this time, he doesn’t want to die. The realization hits him like a comet, like a fist with rings on each finger. He wants to be alive, wants to stay alive.

He wants to see Ten again. Wants to live for him, even if that is the only thing. That is what love is, he realizes. Living.

(“I don't want to die,” he breathes. “I don't want to die.”)

Somewhere in Kun’s mind there is the haze of starlight, of sunshine, of Ten’s lips on his, hands pulling him through the dark. Somewhere in Kun’s mind is 600 years worth of memories that only he will have, 600 years worth of people who will experience their second death when he leaves. There is nothing left but him, spinning backwards into the void. His eyelids are so, so heavy.

Kun gasps in air that he has never truly needed and he hears shouting, feels a hand on his chest, feels his veins burning like molten lead. He sees a face, one that is familiar—a sloped nose, red eyes smoldering in a pale face.

“Ten,” he whispers, mouth full of stones. He looks up at the night sky, eyes slipping shut.

The stars are just as beautiful now as they were the night he died.

…

This, too, is a song Kun knows. This, too, is a type of death.

When he opens his eyes the stars are gone, replaced with cloudless skies of endless blue. He hears waves crash against the shore, sound somewhere far off in the distance. The summer sun streams through the open window, air tasting of salt.

Ten, who was sitting in the chair next to the bed, rushes over and draws Kun into his arms. His breath fans across Kun’s cheek, and he wraps his arms around Kun's waist so tightly it is as if he is afraid to let go. His palms are rough against Kun’s skin, scarred white, and Kun feels a flash of a phantom pain, deep in his chest.

“Don't ever do that again,” Ten says, voice harsh but face kind. “You scared the shit out of me.”

Kun places a kiss on Ten’s cheek, which is damp with what Kun knows are tears. “I’m sorry.”

He takes Ten’s hand in his, tracing over the raw pink-white scars burned into the skin. It matches the scar in the center of Kun’s chest, harsh and deep. Something comes to Kun, then; something that seems like a memory or a dream. A hand on his chest, a scream and the smell of burning flesh, the slice of metal leaving his body.

“Did it hurt?” Kun asks. The marks left by silver burns never quite vanish.

“Like hell,” Ten replies. His eyes hold a blank glimmer. “But I knew losing you would hurt worse.”

The edges of his sleeves are still stained with blood. His skin is warm to the touch, as if he is still fully and incredibly alive. Kun doesn’t remember what that feels like, but imagines that someday he will.

“Never again,” Kun says quietly, holding Ten close. The sun streams through the windows and the bed is soft beneath Kun’s aching body, the future stretching out for an eternity ahead of them.

“Never again,” Ten repeats.

...

"Your month is almost up."

Ten toys with one of the rings on his hand, twisting it over and around. "I know."

Kun wants to stop the words from leaving his mouth but knows that he has made a promise. "Have you made your decision?"

And oh, the look in Ten's eyes rips Kun apart, makes him wish for something that isn't his. He made Ten and he could just as easily keep him but Kun's promise burns along his fingertips, burns like the scar on his chest, burns like teeth on skin and wounds that only partially heal.

"I've decided."

...

The suitcase is small. Ten is traveling light.

Kun is, too.

(“I have to leave,” Ten says. His rings glint in the sunlight and he slips one off, rolling it between his fingers. “You know that.”

Kun swallows, mouth dry. It's what he promised but his throat still burns in disappointment, in loss. “I know.”

Ten pauses. He reaches forward for Kun’s hand, slipping his ring onto Kun’s finger. The metal is cool against his skin, blackish sheen iridescent in the sun.

“I want you to come with me,” he says, and Kun can see the hope in his eyes, can feel the scars on his palms. “I want you to be there by my side, wherever I go.”

“Are you sure?” Kun is waiting, waiting, waiting.

Ten’s eyes glitter, flashing red. “I have never been more sure of anything.”)

Kun packs very few things: his favorite jacket, a time-worn shirt. A book with an aging cover, letters gilded on the fabric.

“The boat leaves soon,” Ten says, peering around the doorway. His hair is wet and his skin has a pale warmth to it.

"You're the one who's always late," Kun quips, shutting his suitcase.

The bookstore was just part of this life and he does not think he will miss it. The idea, maybe, but as he walks out into the sun does not feel any type of regret. The building is on the market and soon someone will buy it. Maybe it will become a flower shop, maybe a bakery. Maybe Kun will come back here in 50 years and it will be a ruin. One can never truly know.

Kun waits outside and he hears Ten behind the door. The air smells like salt and promises that Kun has done his best to keep.

"Let's go!" Ten says, shoving the door open so fast it almost hits Kun's shoulder. His smile is just as radiant as the sun, eyes as warm and changing as the sea.

Kun smiles back and grabs his hand. "Let's go."

The air smells like salt and for the first time in a long time, Kun’s heart beats.