House of Desire || an ateez vampire au

Who Are You

                                *3rd Person POV*

   The figures of 6 boys can be seen huddled around a large window from outside the house, they all look shocked and some even look nervous.

   "What are you all doing?" asks a powerful voice from behind them, their leader, Hongjoong.

   The tallest of the group turns to the leader, "Ah Seonghwa is back Joong, but it looks like he has a girl with him and we were just curious."

   Hongjoong visibly tenses, "I sent him earlier to keep an eye on the girl from the coffee shop, Y/N. She could be hurt, Yunho."

    The boys hear the doorbell and Yunho bolts to the door, he opens it for the elder boy, "Seonghwa, what's wrong? Is she okay? Did she get hurt?"

   Seonghwa raises a hand, a signal for them to quiet down, "She's not physically injured but she is in distress, she fell asleep in my car on the way here."

   "Well why did you bring her here," asks Hongjoong, his voice sounding tired, "I thought I told everybody who was going to observe her you weren't supposed to have contact with her?"

    Seonghwa sighs, "I couldn't just stand in the shadows and watch some bastard assault her, I had to make contact."
 
   Hongjoong's face changes to one of concern, "Well lets get her a room to sleep in, for now."
 
   "She may have seen me beat the shit out of the guy who tried attacking her, so we may have to keep her here." Seonghwa replies, his head down as he stares at the girl in his arms, "I didn't mean to rage out like that but her aura is just so strong and I felt the need to protect her and then I lost control."
  
   "It's okay, she can stay here for forever if she so chooses to," Hongjoong says gently, his eyes grazing over the girls soft features, freaking out when he sees the tear rolling down her cheek.
 
    Seonghwa doesn't seem to notice, "Hey Joong can you get the door to my room open for me? I'll lay her down in here until we get a room ready for her. I can sleep on the couch."
  
   Hongjoong simply nods and opens the door, he's lost in thought, trying to figure out a way to bring up what happened to Y/N to Seonghwa so he knew best how to approach her the next morning.

    "We should gather everyone and discuss a few things about Y/N's stay here with us," Seonghwa suggests, his voice is soft, like he's tired. He lays Y/N down gently and moves her hair from her face. She shifts in her sleep, nuzzling her face into Seonghwa's open palm.
 
    "We'll meet in the study, get a pair of clothes for her to change into and make sure she changes out of what she has on," Hongjoong says, his voice just above a whisper.

    When Seonghwa nods he turns on his heel and pads around the house with his bare feet and his duck pajamas, looking for the rest of the boys of the house and letting them know what they needed to do.
  
   He passes by the front door on his way from the east wing to the west wing of the mansion sized house and notices a couple small bags by the door. Gingerly he picks them up, these must be Y/N's, he thinks to himself. He carries them to the study he was meeting the boys in and sets them on his desk.
  
   All the boys are gathered in the study, waiting for Hongjoong to speak.
  
    "Ah Joong, is the girl okay?" asks Mingi, his voice sounding worried, but not frantic.
  
    Hongjoong smiles at the sweet boy, "She'll be okay."
  
   From the other side of the room, the boy with the patch of teal hair speaks up, "What happened to her?"
  
    "San, I'll have Seonghwa fill all of us in, I don't know yet either."
  
    Seonghwa clears his throat, "Well then, uhm, I stopped in at her convenience store job tonight and bought a few snacks, made her insanely flustered with my natural good looks and-"
  
    "Not what I meant, Hwa, tell us about why she's with us now," Hongjoong warns, to the other boys around the study he seems on edge.
  
    "Ah, I was getting there! So when she got off work I shadowed her but so did some drunk guy and she got scared and walked faster away from him and that seemed to egg him on further," Seonghwa pauses for a quick breath of air, "And I lost sight of her for a few minutes when a foreigner asked me for directions to a bar she was trying to go to, by the time I caught up to them that sack of shit, good for nothing drunk bastard was touching her and she was crying. And I snapped, I threw the guy off of her and checked on her then I just hit him and I couldn't stop. And when I turned back to face Y/N all I could see was her shaking and crying and I threw him again."
  
   The room was quiet, "What was the man saying to her? You could hear him right?" asked a furious Yunho, obviously not furious with Seonghwa but with the man.
  
    Seonghwa sighs deeply, "I-I'm disgusted by even the idea of repeating what he was saying."
  
    Hongjoong looked at him sternly, "What did he say?"

     "He kept calling her kitten, and he was talking about her body and he rubbed himself on her and when she cried for help he said something along the lines of 'aww does little kitten think someone's going to save her' I don't know at that point I had lost control of my self and I started beating the shit out of the dude."

    Wooyoung starts clapping, "I would've beat the shit out of him too, it doesn't matter if it was Y/N or any other girl, what he did is deserving of a beating. So don't be ashamed Seonghwa."

    Yeosang also chimes in, "Any one of us would've done the same were we in your shoes, Hwa, it's okay." He closes his book and places it in his lap, "By the way Hwa, where is the girl?"

    "She's asleep, in Seonghwa's room," answers Hongjoong, "These two bags I will assume she brought with her, I'm going to look through them to figure out how to handle her staying with us now."

    San's eyes light up, "May I help you?"

    "Of course," Hongjoong says while carefully pulling the contents of Y/N's art bag out.
  
    He scans the loose sketches of people, of animals, of buildings, of rooms, of crowds. To say he's impressed would be an understatement. He looks through what appears to be a sketchbook and sees multiple drawings of the same person, they're all labeled Felix, that has to be someone important to her.
  
    Wooyoung smiles looking at the pages of the sketchbook over Hongjoong's shoulder, "I recognize him! That's her best friend Lee Felix! They walked to the university together today."
  
   "Her best friend? She draws him a lot for being only best friends," Jongho scoffs.
 
   "I doubt they're more than friends, when I went into the store last night she was giving him shit for not talking to some guy he has a crush on," says San, rather bluntly.
  
    Wooyoung sticks his tongue out at Jongho, "Told you they were only friends."
 
    San is focused on the single canvas in the bag, he pulls it out and slowly pulls away the cover. When the painting itself is exposed he gasps.
  
    "What is it San?" Hongjoong says, curiously, "Find something juicy?" Hongjoong turns to see San holding a painting of himself.
   
    "Incredible," sighs Mingi, "She's so talented." He stares at the painting trying to take in all the extra detail around the leader.
   
   Hongjoong was rendered speechless, he's in such awe of the detail, "It's me? She painted me?" His usual authoritative tone replaced with a much smaller, more vulnerable tone.
  
    "When could she have ever actually seen you, Joong?" San asks, carefully, he's not in the mood to set off Hongjoong.
  
   Hongjoong inhales sharply, "The day I asked you to look after her, we made eye contact while she helped someone pick up the contents of their bag."
 
    "And she had enough time to memorize details about you like this? To draw this?" Yeosang asks in awe of the girls talent, "According to the binder in her bag she had a classic literature lecture today, it's the only one in this bag though. She must swap out binders for each class she attends."
  
    "Look at her writing, even her writing looks like artwork."
  
    Hongjoong smiles while reading her notes, "She definitely pays attention to detail, she's got little notes on her professors behavior in the margins."

    "I really just want to get to know this girl more with every little thing we find out about her," gushes Yunho, the look in his eyes reminiscent of a puppy.
 
   "Do you think she'll be safe around us? That's my real concern," questions Seonghwa playing with the string of his hoodie, "More specifically, will she be safe around me?"

    The boys looked up from the papers they were shuffling through and stared at their friend, shocked.

    Hongjoong rests a hand on the taller boys shoulder and sighs, "The fact that you're even concerned about that should be proof enough that she will be safe around you."
  
    Seonghwa kept his gaze at his own feet, "If you believe so, then I will as well, Joong."
  
    "Yunho, have you found anything interesting?" Asks San, his voice is bright and happy, so child like.
  
   Yunho looks up from the book he's been reading, "Not particularly, I'm just amazed by her in general. She's a genius and she's so talented."
  
   Jongho rummages through the other bag again, unzipping the front pockets and pulls a small device from one of them, "I found her phone, this might help us a ton."
  
   This catches the attention of the other boys, Wooyoung reaches for the device to look through it, but Jongho evades Wooyoung's grasp.
  
    "Now that's what I'm talking about," says Mingi, "We can finally figure more about her based off of social media and text messages and whatnot."
  
    Hongjoong stands tall as his smaller frame allows, "Jongho, will you hand me the phone when you've finished going through it. Each of us should take a look at it and see what information we can garner." He heavily sighs, "Maybe then we'll be able to figure out just who Lee Y/N is."

    Jongho silently goes through the phone, looking at her photo gallery and recent calls, "This girl must've been terrified earlier but none of her friends answered her call." His heart breaks for the girl in the other room as he scrolls through the call log, "She called Felix, her best friend like 6 times, some guy named Seungmin like 4 times, and a girl named Sujin only a couple times. Sujin was probably a last resort."

     Hongjoong's ears perk up when he hears Sujin's name, "I recognize that name, I'm positive that Sujin is the girl who works at Utopia café. She's a friend of Y/N's and Y/N's favorite barista."
 
   "She plays a lot of games on her phone," Jongho states blandly, "Probably even more than Wooyoung."
 
     "Are you almost done looking through her phone?" Hongjoong asks, he's impatient he just wants to know everything he can about the girl asleep upstairs.
 
    Jongho nods and hands the phone to his leader with a smile.
  
   Hongjoong opens up a few social media apps and checks her profiles, "She posts a lot of her finished artwork on social media, and she has a pretty decent following." He takes a moment to check out a few of her pieces, "She has incredible skill, it's like she's been blessed by the god's themselves."
 
    He finds her spam account and checks a few of the posts, most of them about the stresses of school. But one in particular catches his eyes, the most recent post. It was a positive post, one about how winter will always be beautiful to her even in the city where the snow turns grey. How she loves painting ice sparkling in the sunlight and doesn't mind when a chill seeps into her bones. But also how she couldn't wait for the weather to warm so she can use paints that are vivid and stark against a canvas in place of the same shades of blue, grey, brown, black, and green.
  
    "She really has a way with words," whispers Hongjoong, "And she has such an artists mind."

    The other boys stare at their leader and nod, no one else speaks. When they all grow tired of prying into the pretty girls belongings they retire their own bed, all except Seonghwa. He decides to take the sofa just outside of his room, one to keep an eye on the girl and two to leave her where she's currently sleeping peacefully.