So here's where it might get confusing again.

I hope not

If you need help understanding anything, ask in comments or message me... Only people I know seem to be reading this one.

 

 

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    By that point, Ken had already driven across the state border and was heading north.

He stopped long enough to change the empty bag of blood for a full one. As the sun started to rise the next day, Hongbin groaned.

    Ken pulled over and checked how he was doing.

    “Are you alive?”

    “I've never been in so much pain.” Hongbin said softly. His throat was sore from disuse… and possibly the tube that was down his windpipe.

    “. I didn't think to grab painkillers. I'm sorry. Do you think you can stand it long enough to get to a drug store?” He asked.

    “More importantly, I need food. How long have I been out? How did we get back to the car and how did you get away with robbing a hospital for all this stuff?”

    “You were in the hospital for close to two days and they didn't know if you'd even wake up. I had to get us out of there before anyone found us.”

    Ken pulled the last pint of blood out of the cooler and hung it on the handle above Hongbin's head before connecting it to the IV.

    “How long have you been driving?”

    “about ten hours.”

    “As soon as this is done, let's go get some food.” Hongbin pointed at the bag.

    Ken nodded and pulled onto the highway. The original plan was to go down the less populated roads and stop once in awhile when they needed to, but Hongbin's injuries and their exotic appearances caused them to stick out like sore thumbs. They stuck to major highways and stayed at smaller motels as long as they could before they finally had to go down a long dusty highway. It was hot. It was miserable. There was nothing for miles. Ken finally turned left. The road was flat but unpaved and went up the side of a mountain.

    “Are we going the right way?”

    “Yeah. Almost there.” he slowed the car down and turned to Hongbin. “If anything happens. I need you to know that there's magnesium that you have to give to Sigma. In the glove box.” He pointed.

    “Why does this sound like it's more dangerous than you told me?”

    “I might need to stay behind. I promised him that I'd protect you. That's what I'm going to do.”

    “How can you protect me if you're not with me?” Hongbin asked. Ken drove in silence, obviously trying to formulate an answer.

    “Remember what I said at the beginning of the trip?”

    “To trust you.”

    “And I'm gonna need you to trust Sigma too.” Hongbin looked out the window petulantly, watching the Joshua trees go by. “Please promise me…”

    “Fine.”

    “Hn,” Ken looked slightly amused. “This might be easier than I thought.” Hongbin looked up and noticed that they had taken the back entrance to a low security, completely normal, public hospital.

    They pulled into a parking lot and walked through the main doors. Hongbin leaned heavily on Ken and they went to the information desk.

    “How may I help you, sir?” An overpleasant woman smiled at them.

    “They told us to come here to get crutches for my friend.” He gestured to Hongbin.

    “Third floor.” The lady said and pointed to the elevators.

    “Thanks!” Ken chirped, helping the younger man to the elevator.

    “Do you know where we need to go yet?” Hongbin asked as the doors on the elevator closed with them inside.

    “Top floor is where he is.” Ken said, pushing the third floor button.

    “Then why aren't we going up?”

    “You can escape faster when you aren't hobbling along.” he replied.

    “Good point.”

    They walked up to the counter by the elevator and there was a man doing transcriptions in clothes that obviously belonged to a patient.

    “Excuse me?” Ken said softly.

    “Yes, non existent paper man?” He replied, “I see… I see you for what you really are. You and your pretty vampire. Posing so lovely as humans.” He took a deep breath, “your  friend is on the floor they took from me. Now Jack works here. Transcriptions. They let me because Jack is good at it. But your friend has Jack's room and they keep him locked there. Sleeping. Always asleep. Always hungry. Incomplete. He cries sometimes. Broken hearts so painful. This is the worst of all his five hundred years. Jannie cannot be with his love but his paper doll can. The best parts of his heart. He sees the love his pretty vampire has for the doll and his heart cries. loud. so loud. Jack hears Paper doll hears it too" he babbled at Ken.

    “We just need crutches…” Ken said uneasily.

“For the vampire whose heart will cry out as loudly as Jannie’s does.” He pointed down the hall and looked at Hongbin.

“Trust and love Jannie. Pretty Vampire's heart will cry but Jannie is good. It is meant to be.” He sat down and went back to typing out his transcripts.

 

    “Hi… I got pointed in this direction to get Hongbin some crutches… by the interesting guy doing transcripts out front.”

    “Jack. Thanks to budget cuts, not only is he a mental inpatient, but he also does medical transcripts for us. Really quiet, but he does good work.” The woman said, looking Hongbin over. “Real strange how they suddenly closed off the floor he was supposed to be on, but they never tell us anything.” She said.

    She lifted Hongbin's arm and pushed at the skin. Hongbin winced.

    “I can't in good conscience give you crutches. You'll have to use the scooter instead.”

    “Scooter?” Hongbin looked confused.

    “This.” She pulled out a scooter that Hongbin was to rest his knee on and push off with his good foot.

    “Oh… ok.”

    As he scooted back to the elevator, Jack looked at them. “Don't forget to trust. Jannie waits in Jack's old room. Save him.”

    They got on the elevator and pushed the top floor’s button.

    There was only one door that wasn't open and it had a sign that had Jack's name on it in crayon. Hongbin went to open it, but Ken grabbed his wrist and pulled him away.

    “Bin. I need you to stay here. Stay here and no matter what you hear inside, don't try to open the door. It'll unlock on its own.” He seemed to be taking in every detail of Hongbin's face. It felt uncomfortably like a goodbye.

    “What if someone comes?”

    “Hide. I'll try to make this quick. Don't forget. Jaehwan will need the magnesium when you get out.” He fished in his pocket and put the keys in Hongbin's hands. “These.  You're gonna need these. Remember. Trust Jaehwan like you trusted me, ok?” Hongbin looked as if he was about to cry when Ken kissed him before opening the door.

    “Jaehwan? Who-”

    “Sigma’s real name. Promise me."

    He closed the door and Hongbin heard the lock as the door clicked shut. Hongbin pressed his ear to the wood and listened. He could barely hear anything and there was another click.

    The man slumped at the door looked like Ken with greasy, long hair. He looked at Hongbin like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

    “Where's Ken?” He asked. The man placed a crumpled paper doll in Hongbin's hand.

    “We have to go.” He said. “I'll explain everything in the car. We have to hurry.”

    “But where is he?”

    “Look in your ing hand. Get on your scooter and shift. We don’t have time for this, Kongs!”

    He glanced in the empty room and saw that it was, in fact, completely vacant, just before he saw this new man swoon. He caught him and sat him on the scooter before wheeling out of the hospital.

    Before Hongbin turned the car on, he remembered what Ken said. He opened the glove box and pointed.

    “He said something about magnesium.”

    “Good boy, er what was it you called him?”

    “Ken.” Hongbin didn't know if he liked this guy, but his lover sacrificed himself for him, so he had to at least be polite.

    “Don't look at me like I should know. You're the one who named him.” He pointed to the paper doll’s heart and in Hongbin's handwriting was the name ‘Ken’. Hongbin sobbed before shouting in pain when the other man stabbed him with a small preloaded needle.

    Hongbin glared as Jaehwan massaged the assaulted muscle to get the magnesium to circulate through his body.

    “You needed it too. Don't look at me like that.”

    Hongbin started the car with a frown, suddenly thankful he landed harder on his left side.

    “Where are we going?” Hongbin asked as he drove out of the main gates of the parking lot.

    Apparently Ken didn't need to take that long, confusing back road. The hospital was on the outskirts of a small town just off of the main highway.

    “We have to go back to the hotel you really liked and then I'm taking you home. I can deal with the company myself.”

    “Because you did such a good job last time.” Hongbin frowned.

    “They ambushed me. That's why we need to go to the hotel again. We should probably also stop there for food.” He pointed at a diner off the next exit.

    He dug through the back seat as Hongbin tried to unfold his scooter, finally finding the package he was looking for and tearing it open.

    Inside was a phone and wallet. He pushed a button and put the phone to his ear.

    “Hey, yeah. He got me out. I know. Hakyeon totally called it. Yeah. Shut up and get rid of the trace on my cards. I want to eat and I don't want to have a criminal record. See you in a few days.” He hung up and saw Hongbin still struggling with the scooter. He picked it up and flicked his wrist, snapping the parts into place.

    “It's easier to fold it down than to unfold it, it seems.” He said before heading to the restaurant with Hongbin following slowly.

    This place was massive. It may have been a bustling hub of social activity forty years ago, but currently it was just them and a few other weary travelers.

    The walls were covered in old metal lunch boxes and wooden railings that belonged on staircases. There were stained glass windows between each booth in the popular colours of the 70s. All in all Hongbin was not a fan.

    Then again, Hongbin was not in the best of moods or else he'd be having a discussion about the artistic value of places like this. Instead, he sat sullenly on a squeaky vinyl bench, glaring at the other man.

    “First things first, introductions.” He opened a menu and gestured for Hongbin to look at his, “I'm Jaehwan. I'm five hundred years old. I used to like long road trips, but not no much with petulant reincarnations of former lovers. I like having someone to talk to, but I do understand that you're getting over the shock that you've essentially been ing a paper doll for the past few weeks.”

    Their food showed up quickly and Hongbin asked why they needed so much magnesium as Jaehwan shovelled food into his mouth.

    “It's a side effect of our condition. Vampires drink blood, we require magnesium. It's a temporary substitute to the ki you'd been giving to Ken.”

    “What ki?” Hongbin furrowed his eyebrows.

    “Every time you two made love, you gave off tremendous amounts of energy. I… he used the energy for sustenance. But because he was a small part of me, the energy came to me.” He sighed softly, “it was a bit diffused by the time it got to me, though.” he leaned over the table and gave Hongbin a seductive face, causing him to blush. It was slightly less effective than it would have been if he didn't look like a bum. “So not only is it fun, it's functional.” he sat back down and went back to eating his meal, “It's preferable to food, but I couldn't ask you for that, you're injured, still hung up on my shikigami and we were in a bit of a hurry.”

    “Why do you keep talking about paper dolls and what do I have to do with any of this… and what's a… shiki...whatever it was?”

    Jaehwan ate some more food before talking again.

    “You know how when you were a kid you had those paper dolls to do things for you?”

    “I… never told anyone about those.” Hongbin looked nervous.

    “Ken was mine, you named him, by the way, and that's part of the reason why he was so attached to you... The other part is because no matter how many times you're reincarnated, I can't help but love you… no matter how insufferable you are… and he felt that way too.”

Hongbin ignored the insufferable part of that and the intense way Jaehwan looked at him when he said that, only to continue asking questions.

    “I still don't get it, my dolls barely lasted five, minutes. They were tiny. They could barely lift a heavy box-I”

    “How old were you when you made those dolls, Kongs?”

    “Er… five… maybe six?”

    “If you hit five hundred, tell me you haven't learned any tricks along the way.”

    “... You're really 500?”

    “Ish...I stopped counting a while back.” he gestured toward the plate in front of the younger man. “Eat. You need it.”

    “Don't have much of an appetite.” He poked at a leafy green with his fork.

    “Eat something, you mopey onmyouji.”

    “Onmiwhat now?”

    “That's what you are. That's how you could make those shikigami as a kid. That's why you even survived their ridiculous experiment.”

    “Are you saying I'm not human?” Hongbin shoved a broccoli floret in his mouth.

    “You're as human as I am, I'm just saying you've got abilities that set you apart from others. Onmyouji are kinda like… natural wizards for lack of better word.”

    “You're over 500, how does that make you human?”

    “I'm just… really well preserved. I don't know. I don't feel any different than I did when I was your age.”

    Hongbin went back to poking at the food and looking dour.

    “Look, if you don't eat, we'll have a repeat of what happened when Ken met you at the library, and I don't have any vegetable juice or almonds to give you this time.”

    “How did you know about that?” Hongbin asked.

    “Everything you two saw or did together, I saw too. Ken was an extension of me.” He tried to explain.

    “Even when we- uh" Hongbin’s ears turned red.

    “Yep.” He took a bite of his steak and took a large sip of milk. “Kongs, there is nothing to be ashamed about. You were really really good.” He smirked when it looked like Hongbin was about to faint. “Now, eat. I don't want you passing out on me.”

 

    Hongbin drove for a few more hours before Jaehwan told him to pull over at a motel. Hongbin plopped onto the bed and curled up as close to the edge as possible. Jaehwan made a beeline for the shower.

    Once he was washed up, he sat on the bed and watched Hongbin for a moment.

    “Don't you want to wash the day's grime off? I know you're not sleeping. The breathing is all wrong.”

    Hongbin stood and grabbed his bag of clothes. He looked at Jaehwan, looking so similar yet so different from Ken.

    Hongbin ran into the shower as well as he could and took off his air casts. He was almost happy about the fact that the water pressure ran a little high when it pelted his skin a little harder than comfortable.

    He stood for a few minutes with his face pointed toward the stream. He sobbed once before leaning against the wall and covering his face with his good hand.

    By the time he came out, Jaehwan was watching tv and trying to brush the long, tangled hair.

    “When we get back to the hotel, I'm totally getting my hair cut.”

Hongbin looked confused when he noticed that Jaehwan had put their bags in a small pile at the foot of the bed.

    “Put your leg on that. Keep it elevated…” he looked at Hongbin who was desperately trying to get into a jar of anti inflammatories. “Lay down, Kongs, I got it.” He went to get a glass of water and dropped a pair of pills in Hongbin's right hand. He turned off the lights and Hongbin started to drift off.

    His eyes opened when Jaehwan wrapped himself strangely around the younger man.

    “What are you doing?” Hongbin was afraid to turn his head. Jaehwan was practically breathing into his ear.

    Keeping your arm elevated so you don't have to consciously do it.

    “Oh...thanks.” that night the presence of a second heartbeat was so strange to Hongbin, but he didn't fight when sleep finally came.