Unedited as if now :(

plz ignore typos and grammatical mistakes.

Daeon’s eyes flicker sideways at the man next to her, Baekhyun, and then at the other beastly man in front of her; his eyebrows furrowed so deeply he might as well have a unibrow. His lips is creased into a deep scowl and a blind man could feel the tension that’s currently seeping out of his body like hot fires. Daeon could have easily ignored his laser eyes if they weren’t directed to her and the man next to her. The awkwardness in the air surrounding them could be cut with a steel knife and nothing the soft song the cafe was broadcasting could slither between them and soothe their emotions. 

She should have been smart and prevented this meet up by ignoring their tenacious anxiety pooling through their faces and simply go in her own way. But when Chanyeol’s angry, it tends to make the atmosphere all shaded and dangerous. So she had to meet up with them all. Not like she’s good at ignoring Chanyeol anyway.

She stares at him, and he stares at her; their eyes saying too much and having a secret conversation between each other. Then, he sighs, drags the chair he’s sitting on backward so he can free his legs.

“I’ll go buy something to drink.” He comments expressionlessly; shooting Baekhyun a glare when he gives him attention, before standing up and queuing behind the customers to order.

Almost as soon as he’s gone, Daeon turns to the nervous male beside her. Baekhyun’s looking down at the table, his fingers making an annoying rhythm on the surface as he tries and indulges himself with different ways on how he can disappear from this whole place, and the conversation he knows that’s about to come. His fingers prod the table cloth, and he tenses when he feels Daeon leans against his side, her chin slowly falling on his shoulder blade. However, he relaxes as soon as possible, knowing that the woman wouldn’t do anything to harm him.

“You okay?” She murmurs, her breath attacking his cheek, his jaw, and his neck. He shivers, but it’s a pleasant shiver, and he unconsciously leans down so he gets closer to her than before.

“Y—yeah,” he clears his throat, nudging his shoulder down so she doesn’t have to strain her neck to reach him. He looks further ahead at the coffee shop; his cheeks red. “I guess. Just,” he brushes his fingers under his eyes and causes the glasses to raise a little. He whispers. “He’s scary.”

She snorts, fighting off a smile, and raises her chin from his shoulder to shoot him a smug smile. “Chanyeol’s a lot of things, but scary isn’t one of them. He’s merely being an Alpha male right now, trying to set his dominance over you. Also, he’s very overprotective.”

“Yeah, overprotective.” He grumbles annoyingly.

She gives him an amused look, raising one of her brows. “Are you grumbling right now?”

Baekhyun doesn’t entertain her question, especially since it’s full of teasing. He finally breaks his eyes from the mainstream decor of the cafe and locks them with hers. She almost combusts with how brown his eyes are; or how much emotions they are filled with. She leans back so she doesn’t have to submerge herself into the beady colors of his eyes; her heart racing, and he furrows his eyebrows, looking serious for a second. “Who is he anyway? To you?”

Her face shifts into a lot of emotions, and she gives him the same tension-filled serious face that he’s pulling so it doesn’t show that she’s succumbing to the beauty that’s radiating from him. “He’s my soulmate.” She answers easily, and she wishes that she feels as easy as she looks. 

His eyes widens, and then his face falls. His hair seemed so bouncy earlier, like ruffled fur of a poodle; but now it seems to wilt sadly, reciprocating his tenacious feelings. “Oh.” 

“Yeah.” She nods uneasily, avoiding his eyes.

She hadn’t felt so ashamed of having so many soulmates until this exact moment, and a beady feeling of lack of fulfillment and contentment swallows her whole. She hadn’t understood when people who knew of her multiple soulmate marks gave her disgusting looks, but seeing the disappointment in Baekhyun’s face rung something deep within her, and she felt disgusting, too. 

“I thought I was the first one,” Baekhyun manages to say with a soft voice, detached; before face planting the table with a groan, “No wonder he’s so mad at me. He probably wants to punch me.”

She says nothing.

He gives her a look of horror. “He wants to punch me?”

She purses her lips silently. A part of her is a little worried that he’s so scared, wondering if he can even protect himself, but another part wants to laugh at him. He’s so.. vulnerable, totally different than the man she had seen at the club who appeared to be dauntless and brave. He flops his head on the table again, groaning out loud. She reaches for his arm and begins to rub it soothingly. She doesn’t miss the shudder that raises up in his skin at her touch, and she feels a sort of delight at seeing him reacting to her in the same way that she’s reacting to him.

Chanyeol comes back and he’s holding two large coffee cups, his face a perfect canvas of serene calm and tenderness. However, as soon as he sees Baekhyun next to Daeon and the soft look in her eyes as she stares at him, his lips purse into a dissatisfied crunch, and his hands squeeze around the plastic cups he’s holding. Once he’s sitting back in his place and catches everyone’s attention, he slides the larger cup towards Daeon and she accepts it dutifully. However, she quickly notices that he hadn’t brought Baekhyun anything.

“Where’s Baekhyun’s drink?” She asks, frowning.

Chanyeol gives the older man a grimace, not even bothering to give his girlfriend a look, knowing that at this point; the woman wouldn’t exactly treat him with roses and kindness. “Baekhyun has perfectly working legs.”

“Chanyeol,” Daeon shoots him a reprimanding look. “You were already ordering—“

“It’s okay,” Baekhyun interrupts her more than unnecessary drawl, putting a gentle hand over her head as if she’s his pet, and softly ruffling her bangs; smiling, and then standing up. “I’ll go bring myself a drink. I don’t drink coffee anyway.”

He walks away from the table, and Daeon breaks herself out of the dreamy stupor that she fell into because of his smile and snaps her head towards Chanyeol, who’s already watching her with an unpleasant frown on. 

The older man looks away, knowing that his manner has been anything but pleasantry, his lower lip juts into a cute pout. But Daeon strengthens her heart so she doesn’t fall for it. 

“C’mon, Yeol,” she begins, voice tender and caressing. “You’re still angry?” She reaches her arms forward and then takes his large, vein-full hands in her own hands and starts to his knuckles, producing shivers from the older man that he’d probably always feel regarding her every time she touches him. This gesture of hers, though, doesn’t pull his attention away from the sidelines he has been watching, and is determined to keep his attention away from her. 

“Listen to me,” Daeon says strongly, her eyes soft yet brave; painting her with the same strength that is layering her tone. It manages to yank his attention back to her, and he stares at her with tenderness yet showing vivid signs of stubbornness, still. She sighs. “He and I talked, and I can assure you that he has gone through a lot. He has lost so many people and he’s afraid he’s going to lose more. People like that go through a severe emotional trauma, Chanyeol, and you’re a doctor, you know how things of this sort affect people. He’s not a bad person.”

Chanyeol takes a bit of time to say anything. And in the meanwhile, he studies the gentle cranes of emotions like mountains taking over the blankness of her eyes. He doesn’t know what they talked about or what exactly went through them to coax the older man into submitting; but he knows that from whatever she just told him, the man must’ve gone through severe to make him the avoidant man that he is. Still, this information doesn’t thaw the ice in his heart, and he gives her a pair of soft yet unsurrendering eyes. “He still hurt you.”

“And I forgive him,” she croons gently, rubbing her thumbs against his fingers to soothe his reluctance away. “Can’t you do it, too?”

“I’ll think about it.” And there’s that. His voice sounded too determined and she knows that she lost to him. She can’t always coax him anyway. He might not look like it with his soft personality and his softer affection; but he’s headstrong.

She gives up. She shifts her attention to her drink and takes a sip from it; only to grimace at it as if its the most disgusting thing she has ever drank. “Urgh, americano, Chanyeol? Really?”

He looks down at his drink but he’s got a tiny smile on his face. “Serves you right.”

She has a look of disbelief in her face as she regards him. “You can’t be angry at me too!”

“I can do what I want.”

She pouts. “Yeol.”

The small smile that quickly shifted into a large grin fades away, and he takes a deep breath to help him articulate the muddled emotions that are circulating his being. He fiddles his plastic cup with his fingers, weighing his thoughts and considering which one he’s okay to say without making the sphere awkward and tangible. “Listen,” he starts, his voice husky and timbre. “You’re right. I don’t know what he has gone through and I don’t know what prompted him to do the things he did.” Chanyeol takes another deep intake of breath in, reeling his sporadic emotions in. “I’ll try to get along with him, for you. But I’m not promising anything.”

She smiles big and delighted, touched with his words while knowing that he struggled to create them and go with them; and reaches for his hand. “Yeol..”

“Don’t give me that smile,” even then, he’s smiling back, giving her the same happy smile that she’s wearing, albeit