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There was admittedly a lot Kun didn’t know about life on Earth when he first arrived. Like how fucking gorgeous you are to human standards, Ten would tease him whenever the topic was brought up.
“Was this how you justified bringing a half dead man to the office on a Monday morning?” Xiaojun grumbled, unrolling tape over the kitchen door, red block letters reading WARNING!
“Now, do you think I would let a stranger bleed all over me if I didn’t have ulterior motives?” Ten seemed entirely unfazed, holding the adhesive tape roll for Xiaojun, and Kun was never sure whether to be flattered or offended by that.
Point was, it was truly limitless, the list of things Kun had been learning in the three years since he avoided dying from an imminent apocalypse by testing inter dimensional travel and ended up almost dying from its toll instead. Which is why he supposed he should have a bit of patience with beings going through a similar situation.
“Anyone care to explain what happened here?”
At least Yangyang had the decency to lower his head, and the guilty but repentant act would probably work if he wasn’t still smiling. “I only followed pink hair’s instructions, Master.”
“My name’s Hendery, dude,” Yangyang only blinked, and Hendery sighed, turning away, “Sicheng! No popcorn for lunch!”
“Honestly, how is it that you can figure out intergalacticmension travel on a budget,” Xiaojun raised a finger when Yangyang opened his mouth, “or whatever the fuck it is, but can’t deal with a heating box?”
A shrug. “Sustenance never goes cold where I come from,” and, well, Yangyang was right. Mostly because by sustenance he meant blood, and when cold, it served other purposes. But that was an entirely different topic.
Kun could repeat his question, but by the cranky comments and the scene in front of him, he could make a pretty solid guess as to what had happened.
Some of the foam from the fire extinguisher was already melting, creating a dirty puddle of soot in the middle of the room. Half a wall had burnt wallpaper, and the one window leading to the corridor cracked where a piece of metal collided when the office kitchen microwave exploded. There was a bundle of what was now pure coal in the middle of what was left of the turning plate. Yangyang’s lunch.
Kun pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Everyone, just go home for today,” he started carefully. Lucas whistled, and someone shushed him. “Xiaojun, I want you to call insurance on your way out. And you,” he pointed to Yangyang, talking through gritted teeth, “I think you’re due for another lesson.”
Now Yangyang lowered his head for real, muttering a dejected yes Master, standing a step behind Kun as he waited for everyone to leave so they could lock the office. By the elevator, Ten only nodded once for them to follow him to the parking lot, quiet the entire ride home. Every now and then he gripped the hem of his own shirt until his fingers turned white, but Kun pretended not to notice.
He wanted to reassure Ten he wouldn’t be too hard on Yangyang, but he couldn’t say that out loud if he wanted to be taken seriously by the youngster in the backseat. Ten had been oddly protective of Yangyang since they found him the previous month, in a condition worse than Sicheng and Kun were when they first arrived. Still unable to feed like they did in their world, Yangyang was healing slowly, full of bandages, long cast on his left arm and leg and crutches a bit too tall for him, inducing a misplaced sense of awkwardness as they sat face to face, cross legged on Ten’s living room rug.
Sicheng let go of that habit his very first week on Earth, and though Kun had been reluctant at first, he’d also come to appreciate the concept of couches. Yangyang understandably needed some familiarity, though, and that made him visibly less anxious — a calmness that only lasted until Kun started speaking.
He might’ve sounded stuck up, expression stern and voice cold, but it was because he cared for Yangyang too, and all that was a necessity if they were to keep him under the government’s radar. Sicheng, the first of them to arrive, had inadvertently witnessed what happened when the government got a hold of one of them, and years later all light still left his eyes whenever someone brought it up. They couldn’t let that happen to Yangyang too.
The kid also called him Master instead of brother, and Kun’s sense of responsibility only grew exponentially when wondering what happened to the class system after he left, how someone like Yangyang fared in it, and the things he had to go through to gain access to the apothecary Sicheng and Kun used to work in. So Kun’s lectures on Earth habits, gadgets and cultures were just concerned advice, honestly.
He really hoped Yangyang understood that, heart almost exploding in his chest out of pride when the kid successfully unlocked the front door alone. Without breaking anything.
“He’s not staying for dinner?” Ten’s head peeked out of the room.
“Xiaojun’s already downstairs,” a sigh, “After all he heard today, I think he deserves some rest.”
Ten hummed, pensive, and made his way over to Kun, a light bounce to his step. Kun narrowed his eyes in a second, fully attuned to Ten’s rather suspicious smile. He threw both arms around Kun’s neck, scanning his face for a moment.
“You look so hot when you’re mad,” rolling his eyes, Kun made his way into the kitchen, Ten still latched to his side, laughter filling the room. “I’m serious! You should’ve seen yourself today. Thought a vein was gonna pop on your head.”
“And you think that’s hot?”
“Wanted you to pin me against a wall right there,” Ten whispered in his ear, and Kun took a second to process the shiver that went down his spine before he could focus on opening the fridge. Still clinging to him, Ten closed the stainless steel door. “Hasn’t it been a while since you properly ate?” and the innuendo wasn’t lost to Kun’s ears.
He chuckled. “How come you’re so clingy today?” but that wasn’t an answer, and both of them knew. Ten sighed, making a dismissive motion before hugging Kun again.
“Was next to the door when the microwave exploded. Thought I was gonna die for a second, so I’m kinda still reeling from the adrenaline. Saw my entire life flash before my eyes, yada yada, got reminded of what’s actually important and all,” a shrug, “I guess.”
“Which is?” and at that point Kun was just teasing. The glint in Ten’s eyes told him that he knew.
“You,” the answer was also a joke, but the tone was sincere, and Kun’s heart skipped a beat. Ten was oddly protective of Yangyang, but it was like a parent to a child, much like he himself felt about the kid. Towards Kun, regardless of how many jokes he made or how many pranks he pulled, Ten would probably sacrifice himself for his safety. And it had been like that since Sicheng got the damn alert, and Ten stumbled over Kun in the debris.
Hoisting him up to sit on the kitchen island, Kun drummed his fingers on Ten’s waist. “Are we okay today?” in which we meant primarily Ten, but it affected Kun just as much. A slow, careful nod, and Kun leaned in, nosing the crook of Ten’s neck before biting down.
Vampire was the closest denomination on Earth to Kun’s people, except for the fact that in his world there were two suns they loved basking in, and that they also aged (albeit admittedly slower) and died. So, mostly the blood feeding part, really. And though it wasn’t a daily necessity, his people got weaker and risked serious injuries — on others first, and then on themselves — if they didn’t ingest some once every couple of weeks. Which was why Sicheng’s partner got taken away once they arrived on Earth, but that wasn’t the most pleasant of thoughts to have while feeding. He’d rather focus on Ten’s labored breaths instead, and the tiny, sweet sounds dripping out of his mouth, nails digging on the skin of Kun’s shoulder through his shirt.
With a kiss to the wound, Kun raised his head and cupped the side of Ten’s face. “You good?” a lazy nod, and he breathed in deep to keep himself from leaning in a second time at the sight of Ten’s blush and bitten lips.
“Very,” a chuckle as he pressed some clean cloth against his neck, and Kun shook his head.
“You’re insufferable,” but he was smiling as he placed a kiss on Ten’s forehead, and got one on his chin in return.
It was so easy, to spend time with Ten like that. Cuddling on the bed as he willed the hologram with some god awful reality show closer, and Kun commenting on his stubbornness against getting his eyesight fixed (Ten refused every time, still wanting no mods done by the government. When I find a friend that knows how to, I will). It was easy to pretend to be human, once he realized kettles worked better than cauldrons, the weather channel was way more reliable than scrying, and hover bikes were arguably much more comfortable — and faster — than horses. But it was only easy because Ten had been there since day one to make sure of it.
Nuzzling against his neck and throwing a leg over his waist, Kun felt Ten’s stifled laughter more than heard it. “Who’s clingy now?”
“Shut up,” he muttered. “Tomorrow’ll probably be busy.”
“Way to ruin the mood, asshole,” and Kun only hummed in response, relaxing further as Ten carded fingers through his hair.
He wasn’t wrong, though, and Lucas handing him a stack of at least forty pages first thing in the morning was proof of that.
“Sicheng said paper stopped being produced here a long time ago,” Kun eyed the envelope full of additions to their cash book with disgust.
A hum. “Well, yeah. But I think better with ink on paper, so you can just deal with that,” and it was hard to avoid throwing the stack away, but Lucas’ large smile and thumbs up just about stopped Kun from doing so.
The microwave wasn’t the first thing Yangyang broke in the lab. His very arrival blew up the entire east wing, although that had been considered an investment, not liability. It meant that human technology resonated back with his world, and that it was a two way street, instead of a dead end. Besides, Lucas argued, that’s what we have insurance for.
Insurance being a network of friends with fancy gadgets and fancier knowledge, because none of the seven people in that lab were registered to handle what they did. Or had permission to. And a perfect example of that was Hendery storing the box with that month’s samples of Kun’s bodily fluids on the fuel shelf.
“That’s my blood,” he said, amused, grateful for any distraction from Lucas’ handwriting.
“It’s purple?”
A shrug. “Didn’t ask for it to be like that either.”
Hendery picked it back up but stood by the shelf, unmoving. “Does the color vary?”
“Huh?”
“Like,” he precariously balanced it on one hand as he gestured with the other, vacutainers clinking inside. “Yangyang made a mess when he arrived, but he painted everything black, not purple. Never seen Sicheng bleed, but...”
Kun furrowed his brow. He kept forgetting that none of them knew anywhere as much about his people as he did about humans. “He hasn’t fed for a while— even before he arrived. That’s why his blood is closer to black than to clear.”
“Your blood is clear?!” Xiaojun’s head perked up at that.
“You’re saying that all I gotta do to stop him from staining all of our furniture when changing bandages is to feed him?”
Lucas coughed loudly across the room, and Ten looked rather flushed beside him. Sicheng was in the basement, but Kun supposed he wouldn’t have handled the question any better. “Yangyang shouldn’t... be fed yet,” he cleared his throat, “And if you want to feed him, it would probably be best to do so over a blood bag,” convenient little things Earth had. You’d think that for a society that survived on blood exchange, one where the act of feeding itself was so... peculiar, they’d have come up with a concept like that already. But then again, Earth looked like what he thought his home would do in about half a millennia of development. If anyone there survived until then.
“Oh, but I think we do have some in storage. Also—”
Xiaojun was cut short by the sound of an explosion. The papers flew from Kun’s hands, and hopefully not many vials had broken when Hendery let the box fall to the floor in surprise. Stumbling up the stairs and fanning his face to get rid of the rising smoke, Yangyang coughed a couple of times.
If the kid was going to cause one explosion a day, Kun should just lock him in Xiaojun’s spare bedroom until further notice. He could feel a migraine forming before Yangyang even opened his mouth to speak.
“It wasn’t me,” he coughed again, “it wasn’t me. The... thing, it’s acting up. Sicheng said there’s something wrong with—” Kun was out of his chair before the end of the sentence, the others close on his heels. Covering his nose with the shirt collar, he jogged down the stairs to meet a frazzled Sicheng crouching on the floor. There was soot on his hands, and some strands of his hair looked burnt. As did his lab coat, and the piece of plastic by his feet that looked like they once were goggles.
“What was that?”
“Baby’s upset,” the thing, baby, door of doom, and who can pronounce the fucking name were all ways the group used to describe the machine in the basement. With its hundreds of tubes hooked up to six different generators, the exposed metal skeleton of a horrendous — It ain’t ugly, just eerie, Hendery would say — octahedron structure was the love child of Sicheng’s alchemy mastery and Lucas’ technological expertise.
I don’t question it, really, Ten once told him, I thought Lucas was delusional at first. That he was hooked up on narcotics. But then they got it working, his voice got smaller then, and Kun could never forget the look in his eyes, And it led me to you.
Kun didn’t understand it either. And he didn’t need to, tasked with leading and supervising the group, delegating tasks and making sure deadlines were met so they could maintain a roof over their heads while Sicheng worked. The thing had nothing to do with him. He wanted nothing to do with it either. But sometimes, the machine would come to life on its own, and Kun would wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, desperately searching for Ten’s hands in the dark, fearing that everything would disappear and he’d find himself back in the dim and humid apothecary, chains digging on his wrists and ankles.
Most times, it was some kind of malfunction, some kind of false alarm. Except the thing had also pinpointed Kun’s arrival, and almost imploded when it left a broken and bleeding Yangyang right by its control panel. So it wasn’t really unusual for it to go haywire every now and then, for it to cause a blackout in the facility, for strange, almost-not-there voices to echo around it. But it was none of those minor things if Sicheng commented on it.
“What do you think?” Kun’s voice wasn’t above a whisper, and Sicheng couldn’t stop staring at the weak flickering lights roaming like blood through the veins of the machine.
“I’m not sure.”
It was expected for Kun to feel sick to his stomach whenever something like that happened, but it surprisingly took a toll on Ten too. He didn’t talk for the rest of the day, during the ride home, or for hours before and after dinner. When Kun found him curled up by the side of the couch, holding a half empty mug, he sat down as well, opening his arms so Ten could lean in.
“I hate it that they still try to use that thing,” he mumbled, head under Kun’s chin. “Hate thinking that at every goddamn malfunction you could be near and it will—”
“It won’t.”
Ten raised his head, and Kun gently swiped a thumb between his furrowed eyebrows. “You can’t be sure.”
“You’re right. I can’t. But what I’m sure of,” Ten sighed, already knowing what the following words would be, and Kun tightened his arms around him. “Is that whatever happens, I’m coming back to you.”
It wasn’t much of a guarantee, but it was as good as any promise. Especially when they unlocked the office doors the following morning to the fire sprinklers drenching everything.
“What—”
“Yangyang destroyed the fucking coffee machine!”
“It only stopped working because it started raining inside!”
“What the fuck was that sound then?” Xiaojun screamed back, soaked to the bones and trying to pull a tarp over the tables. It was chaos, the other five men running around trying to salvage whatever was still salvageable, Kun and Ten still frozen by the threshold. It took a minute before Ten grabbed Kun’s forearm, nails piercing the skin.
“Guys?”
And maybe it was his tone, the only person not screaming in that situation, or maybe it was just Ten, but everyone halted, turning to him, eyes following the direction he was pointing to. And rising from the basement stairs, all that could be seen was the top of a head followed by a spasming hand, purple blood soaking the carpet.