Stardust || seongjoong

10. Clinical Observations

As Seonghwa falls asleep - in, yet again, his own bed - he thinks back to how he answered Hongjoong's final question.

Why Hongjoong.

"At the time," Seonghwa had started, "I didn't specifically mean to choose you. But it is you who I chose to stay with, and learn about, and show myself to."

"Out of pity?" Hongjoong asked, stiffly.

"Not because I pitied you," Seonghwa does his best to avoid pleading, "but because I found you intriguing."

"Because I'm sick?" Hongjoong went through every possibility.

"I had no idea you were sick at first."

Seonghwa noticed how Hongjoong looked down, unsure, so the older continued. "The night I first came to you, it was because I heard you singing. My whole life, over half a millennia, I've been taking care of people; it was second nature that I went to you. It was incredibly late, and your song was mournful, so I just wanted you to sleep."

"So it was pity." Hongjoong would not let the explanation go.

"Perhaps," Seonghwa thought back, "in the beginning it was just me desiring to comfort you."

"They say codependent people confuse pity and care."

"Hongjoong," Seonghwa raised his brows, "do you think I'm codependent on you?"

But no, no Hongjoong did not, so they moved on.

"If that's what it was in the beginning," Hongjoong asked, "what is it now?"

Now... Another facet to the question. "It makes me happy to be with you. It makes me happy to hear your stories and see how your family and friends all help you, and help each other. Perhaps, too," Seonghwa looked at Hongjoong with those galaxy eyes, "I like the way you look at me, like I'm a challenge, but not a scary one; like I intrigue you, too."

And perhaps Hongjoong did not even hear those last words, because he seemed to be entirely caught up in the other's eyes.

As Seonghwa falls closer to the edge of sleep, his memories descend further back, to when he and Vincent painted that swirling night sky; to the days he was a model at the Royal Academy. What would normally be an arduous, months long journey from Korea to Belgium, took Seonghwa mere hours as he travelled along with the wind.

In those days, Vincent had been so enthralled by Seonghwa's luminescent eyes, that they became his most well-known work.

He was the only one during that time privileged to see Seonghwa's eyes in any form, shade, or pattern he desired, because Vincent was the only one to not ask questions: to not assume that something was devious or amiss.

But even the way Vincent used to gaze upon Seonghwa, it was not the same as Hongjoong. Because where Vincent saw a god on a pedestal, Hongjoong sees a puzzle on his same level.

Seonghwa finally bridges that gap between consciousness and sleep, falling into the darkness of a dreamless night.

When he wakes, Seonghwa's lips form a smile before he even realizes, before he even opens his eyes. Wider and winder the smile grows until he bites his lip to restrain it. In his mind's eye, a small-faced man with eyes piercing in their intelligence gaze upon him. When Seonghwa changes his eyes to look like the scene of a vast galaxy, the other man's eyes change, too, looking almost childlike in their wonder.

The smile clings to Seonghwa as he washes for the day, and as he enters the grand kitchen, and even as he serves Yeosang his beloved chicken and waffles.