Vile Beginnings Seongjoong

03

  Third pov

  "Hongjoong..." Bumjoong mumbled, his eyes misty as he pushed himself upright on his bed. Hongjoong remained on the carpet, his head lowered like a scolded child.

  "Why would you do that?" Bumjoong continued. Hongjoong sniffled and wiped his cheeks dry, though more tears fell.

  "I didn't want to lose you, too, Hyung. You're all I have left."

  The elder Kim brother's eyes welled with tears as he sunk onto the carpet beside his brother. He tugged Hongjoong into a hug and rubbed his back soothingly.

  "I'm sorry that my illness put so much pressure on you, Hongjoong. I- I didn't realize how much it was also affecting you," Bumjoong spoke softly. Hongjoong grabbed fistfuls of his brother's shirt as he cried still.

  "That wasn't your fault, Hyung. You didn't ask to be sick, nor ask me to care for you."

  "Why would you trade yourself for my health, Joong?"

  "You haven't even had a chance to live yet, Hyung; your life shouldn't end like this. You didn't get to walk in your high school graduation, you didn't get to go to prom, you weren't even allowed to leave the apartment unsupervised.

  "Now- now you can. Now you can live instead of survive, Hyung. Go to Georgia, and live, please." Hongjoong gave his brother a slightly tighter hug before he separated them.

  Hongjoong smiled softly at his brother before walking out of his room and into his own.

  "Do you need any help?" Seonghwa asked, scaring the younger a bit.

   "What do I pack?" Hongjoong pulled a suitcase out of his closet and began to put clothes in it.

"Whatever you could need. You're moving in," Seonghwa said, causing the younger to go still. Hongjoong grit his teeth at that, but continued to pack his clothes silently from then on.

  As the younger Kim brother packed his bags, the elder walked as silently as he could into the kitchen.

  Bumjoong couldn't recall the last time he had held a knife, but the man slowly pulled a large chef's knife from it's block set and felt the weight in his hand.

Bumjoong now knew Hongjoong was willing to give his own life for his, so Bumjoong was going to make sure they both could run off now that he was well. He wasn't going to let his little brother be harmed at his expense- never in a million years would he allow his brother with a heart of gold get hurt.

Bumjoong walked past the drawers of the kitchen counter before pausing. He stood in thought for a second before grabbing a set of disposable wooden  chopsticks. He wasn't dealing with a human who would easily be killed by a knife- he was dealing with a vampire, who could be killed by wood through the heart.

  Bumjoong took both, the knife and the chopsticks, and walked silently towards Hongjoong's bedroom.

   He paused for a split second seeing the vampire's hands on his younger brother's nape before rushing towards the vampire with the two weapons in hand to stab through his chest.

  Before Bumjoong could puncture Seonghwa anywhere, Hongjoong put his hands out to stop his brother, "Bummie, stop!"

   Bumjoong was too slow to lower the knife from where he wanted it, causing it to cut through his brother's hand. The youngest man let out a loud scream as the sharp blade pierced clean through his skin.

  "Shit, Joong, why would you-"

  "Why did you have a knife?!" Hongjoong exclaimed, his normal hand clutching a black shirt onto his wounded palm.

"Why was he so close to you?!" Bumjoong retorted.

  "We were stood like that for literally two seconds before you came in with a knife and.. chopsticks? Hyung, were you trying to kill us both?!" Hongjoong asked, looking at his brother incredulously.

  "No, just him!"

  "I may have healed you, but don't think I won't kill you!" Seonghwa snarled, picking the older human up by his shirt collar.

  As the oldest two men began an argument, the youngest was still bleeding quite quickly from his pierced palm.

  "Hyung, it went... all the way... through," Hongjoong spoke up quietly, his body feeling weak and his knees wobbling under him.

  "No!" Seonghwa shouted, looking towards the fallen human. He released the human in his grasp and knelt on the carpet beside the man who bled from his palm.

Seonghwa bit into his wrist for the third time and let it drip into Hongjoong's mouth. Bumjoong looked at the scene with disgust clear on his face.

"Is that what you had to do to me?" He questioned. The vampire lifted his gaze from the wounded human.

"You'd better go pack your bags before I send you as cargo instead."

"Is he gonna-"

"He'll be fine- leave." Seonghwa glared at the older human. The vampire was confused with himself as he noticed how gently he clutched the weaker human to his chest.

  Seonghwa noticed water droplets falling onto the younger's tanned cheeks. He looked towards the ceiling, but saw no leak coming from it.

  He laughed humorlessly as he realized the water on the human's cheeks was his own tears. He hadn't cried in ages, and here he was crying over a human he had met mere hours ago.

  If his parents were to find out he was crying over another human- another human male- they'd have his head on a stake.

  He underwent hours of feeling his bones break to be reset, then broke again- repeatedly for months after he had turned a human into a vampire two centuries ago.

  Although Seonghwa hadn't been in love with that human, Yeosang didn't deserve to die by the drugs he was forced to consume by his poor excuse of a father.

  Seonghwa turned Yeosang into a vampire in 1822, and he was the first human the prior had ever cared for. Now he was crying over another, almost two centuries later?

"What have you done to me, little human?" Seonghwa asked, softly caressing Hongjoong's tan cheekbone.

  A/N: I'm gonna set the time/year of this book to be around 2010 so that way Hongjoong would be able to be the age of a surgeon in Sweet Confessions, which is set around the early 2020s. So, the only Ateez members who'll be in this story will be Seonghwa and Hongjoong, as Yeosang is still in America until the 2020s when SC started! (And the rest wouldn't be old enough to have actual character significance in here)

  So here's the like birthdates for them all I guess??
Seonghwa- April 3, 1250
Yeosang- June 15, 1822
Hongjoong- November 7, 1989
Yunho- March 23, 1999
San- July 10, 1999
Mingi- August 9, 1999
Wooyoung- November 26, 1999
Jongho- October 12, 2000