Stardust || seongjoong

5. Schemes and Objectives

Early in the morning, before Hongjoong wakes, Seonghwa leaps down from the duvet and out onto the wet earth.

The grass, however, quickly dries in a path before him so he will not have the misfortune of harming his waterphobic paws.

Strolling through the empty streets, Seonghwa creeps back into Yeosang's house and up to the younger's bathroom where he... - - BOO! -now in the likeness of a spirit-, and Yeosang, in that deep voice of his, screams bloody murder.

"H-hyung!" Yeosang stuttered with a mouth full of toothpaste. "What if I had choked?"

"Sang-ah, you spend too much time in your human form. You can't choke. Or rather, you can't choke if you don't want to."

At that, a blush quickly spread over Yeosang's cheeks, which left Seonghwa wondering what was running through his mind.

"Okay..." Seonghwa watches with suspicion as Yeosang quickly finishes brushing and moves to wash his face. "I was thinking chicken and waffles for breakfast?"

Yeosang freezes, staring in the mirror at his hyung with sparkling eyes. "Thank you."

"Chicken and waffles it is then." A moment: "and oranges."

"You know we could just synthesize vitamin C!" Yeosang yells out after him.

But Seonghwa already has music on in the kitchen.

Sitting down at table, plates smothered in pure maple syrup, Seonghwa hesitantly starts a thread of conversation. "So Sang-ah, you know that person I've been spending the nights with?"

"Hongjoong, yes?" Yeosang happily eats his home-fried chicken.

"Yes... I want to be able to talk with him."

After a frozen moment, Yeosang sets down his fork, looking the other in the eyes. "You'd have to become friends with him like a regular human, then." Yeosang sighs. "People don't really get the whole stella pulvii thing. Three hundred years ago, we could just be a kitsune or something, but now with science... Not that I have anything against scie-"

"Sang-ah." Seonghwa interrupts. "We're talking about now, and I don't have time to let a normal friendship develop." He puts that with the air quotes Yeosang taught him. "Every night he talks to me, and I want to help him more than a cat can."

Yeosang looks between his hyung and his breakfast. "Do you ever think your parental instincts come on too strong?"

"No."

"Tell me, though, why do you want to befriend this particular person?"

Seonghwa takes a bite in order to spare himself a moment. "He reminds me of myself when I was little, when I was human." Yeosang doesn't bother to remind him that, technically, he is still human. "Hongjoong is hurting... He's hurting like all the children who came into my care when I was in the nursery- hurting like you were- and scared, and I don't like seeing people suffer."

"Hyung, is that the only reason?"

Yeosang is soft now as confusion sweeps Seonghwa's face. "What other reason would there be?"

Yeosang nods, letting the conversation be. "Okay, then. If you really want to do this, we need a plan."

However after clearing the table, washing the dishes, and sitting back down in the livingroom, no plan is reached.

"You could say you know Yunho?" Yeosang suggests, "and that he...I don't know."

"Lies are one of the reasons I'm hardly ever on earth, Sang, I'm not lying."