girasol; or, the summer of '95 | chaîne un

II | 나는 너이 누구인지 이미 알고 있습니다 (i already know who you are)

 It's late, Jaehwan is tired, and it has been exactly thirteen hours since he rejected the pretty blonde boy who sat across from him at the corner table with sunflowers in his hair and eyes.

What's the Spanish word for sunflower? Jaehwan thinks idly as he starts tossing the beef in his pan with a spatula. He grabs what looks like the right spices from the spice rack, then starts measuring out the appropriate amounts to toss in─

"Hyung!" A hand snatches the spoon away from him, startling him as he jumps backward. "Why are you putting cinnamon in your carne asada?"

"No, I─" He looks more closely at the bottle, and realizes he doesn't even need to look when the overpowering scent reaches his nostrils. Sheepishly, he looks at Jaehyun. "Sorry. I'm tired."

"Tired, or distracted?"

"Get back to work."

"Is a certain someone stuck on your mind?"

Jaehwan's frown creases and deepens. "Shut up!" (In fact, there is nothing else on Jaehwan's mind except for that certain someone, but he sees no need to tell Jaehyun─or anyone else, for that matter, because Lee Jaehwan does not date. Or flirt. Or have crushes. That is not how the world works. Especially not on other men.)

"Whatever you say," the younger teases, dodging Jaehwan's arm as he scurries back to where he's been washing the dishes all this time. One of their waiters (well, to be honest, their only waiter, because Jaehwan can't afford another one) is out sick for the week, so the brothers are pulling double duty, although Jaehwan has enough sense to not let Jaehyun anywhere near a stove because he can't afford another visit from the fire department, either.

There's a ding from outside, signaling someone's opened the door, so Jaehwan quickly scrapes the meat onto a plate, tossing a couple sprigs of parsley and snagging a premade plate of tortillas (one of the few things Jaehyun can do) as he heads out the door. Plastering on a smile, he heads to what he hopes is the right table, flashes the briefest, genuine smile at the pair of kids squabbling over a crayon as he tosses them some tamarindos, and dodges the gracias, gracias, muchas gracias with the faded ends of that smile as he goes to the service counter.

"Hola, bienvenidos a Calle 95!", he says, without looking up from where he's tapping away at the computer. "Soy Jaehwan, el cocinero y dueño─"

"나는 너이 누구인지 이미 알고 있습니다, 이재환," a calm voice says, and Jaehwan whips his head up to see little more than a tuft of blonde hair.

"누구─?" He peers over the podium, forgetting his Spanish in his haste to see who it is, then almost bonks his head on the edge out of surprise.

(Well, okay, maybe a little bit of shame too.)

"You─what─why?─you─"

"Please stop spluttering like a fool," Taeil says calmly. "I'm just here to have dinner. I'm hoping to meet a friend of mine here and talk with him about something, though, if that's all right. I just don't know when his shift ends, so I thought I'd grab a meal beforehand."

"You..." Jaehwan's mind feels muddled, like he's wading through agave syrup in the middle of winter. Not that Mexican winters were really all that cold in comparison to Daegu. "You want to talk to Jaehyun?"

Taeil looks like he wants to take his wheelchair, ram it into the wall a dozen times (with himself in it, of course), then smash it into pieces using Jaehwan's head as a hammer. Not that Jaehwan can actually tell exactly what Taeil's thinking, but given what he knows about the blonde, he wouldn't put it past him.