𝙈𝙄𝙎𝙎 / Chanbaek.

III

"I said-" the blonde glared once again,
"Who are you?"

Baekhyun gulped.
"My name is Byun Baekhyun..." He murmured, cringing away, embarrassed of his actions, making the man, looming overhead, raise a thin, carved eyebrow with his impatience.
"A-and I'm twenty-three years old- living with my parents and older brother. I work at the Main Street café." The brunette added, disappointingly uneasy, his dirtied knees turning numb against the frozen mud.

"You're twenty-three..." he repeated, making the waiter nod. "and you're stalking a nineteen year old?" He chuffed with such patronising disgust as Baekhyun then stalled, looking away from the wide-eyed, kneeling man below.

So now Baekhyun knew his name, age, family status and childhood employment. Win.

But that was when he realised- the blonde had to have also been stalking Sehun. Because then, how else would he have found him here, bordering this empty forest, all the way out of town?
"Hey!" He called out, the viciousness of his snap being lost to their current dynamic.

The man snapped his head back over, his eyes flashing snow-white with an enraged heat for a single moment. Baekhyun was too focused to notice.
"Care to explain why you're here too? I don't see you announcing your presence to them either." Baekhyun hissed, trying to keep his voice down in order to avoid any further detection.
The blonde's top lip curled.

"Don't talk to me like that old man, if I get angry... you're really not going to like it." He replied, making the brunette roll his eyes at such a childish phrase. Wasn't he angry enough already? How disrespectful.

"'Old man'? You have no manners. I should have known you were still a child." He grumbled, pushing up off of his strained thighs to stand up from the metal-dusted, dead grass.
He patted himself clean quite quickly, brushing at the stained fabric needlessly, now staring up at the man with an angered, furrowed brow.
They were much more equal now.
And the waiter stood his ground.

"Chanyeol!" Yelled an elated, silken voice from way behind, gaining the arguing pair's instant alarm and attention.
Sehun had spotted the taller in the brush, his head showing above the stacked, amber cars.

Thankfully, the blonde's built frame conveniently hid Baekhyun from the raven's perceptive view, 'Chanyeol' sending the waiter a shadowy, piercing glower, very briefly, before turning around to meet eyes with his out-calling friend.
Baekhyun remembered how his constantly-glaring, bottomless state had flown open for a single second at the shock of it all.

"Just passing by." He shouted back, in that irritating, gravelly, raw tone of his, waving his right hand only once.
The blonde then finally glanced back at a stunned Baekhyun, through his peripheral, his lips barely moving as he spoke.
"Now get lost." He barked out, hissing through sharp rows of pearly, clenched teeth.

And so the boy did just that.

"Chanyeol?" Baekhyun huffed as he walked back into town, "chan-ye-ol." he sounded out.
Saying that cursed name felt like he was sucking on rose thorns.
He grumbled about in self-pity, kicking at all the loose stones laying in his path.
How embarrassing- to be humiliated by a six-foot-something teenager with a bad dye job.
He even saved him! Letting the boy off, his premature scolding was thankfully cut short.

The sun had risen fully now and the navy-hued clouds that normally hung in their barren, lifeless sky were slowly creeping their way back into view. The peach-skied perfection of the early morning was now morphing into a mere, hopeful memory, the winter warmth of the golden sunlight now solely due to broken, whirring streetlights, cursed to shine on, long into the day. Midday.