Hearts Aflame

031: Remedy

Mina caught Chanyeol sitting in front of her apartment when she returned from Minseok, and at first, she's taken aback at seeing him gathering his long and messy legs around his body, his arms wrapped around them to lock them in their place. Then, when she registered his presence, she sighed and continued her way to the door. Chanyeol instantly snapped his head upward to meet her eyes with his wide, puppy ones, apology glinting so clearly in the brilliant brown of his iris.

She inserted her keys in the door's keyhole, sighing again and wholeheartedly ignoring him. In a panic attack, he jumped to his long legs and waited beside her she she got inside her apartment. Seeing this, he called her with a whimper.

"Mina, I—"

"Do you wanna come in?" She simply said, turning around in her apartment to give him a blank look and holding the door for him to enter. Hurriedly, he scrambled inside, dragging his long legs and bending down a little so he won't end up smacking the door frame. Tall people had that disadvantages, that's why the doors at his apartment are built big for his special case.

She closed the door behind her, threw the keys in the fish bowl on the table right beside and then wandered inside to disclose of her coat, Chanyeol so awkwardly standing at the door, fiddling his large, calloused fingers nervously.

"Um, I—"

"Wanna a beer?" She called back as she walked toward the mini kitchen, opening her fridge and taking out bottles of beers. She gave him her back and she didn't turn around to acquaint herself with his pleading eyes.

"Eh, no?" He answered nervously.

"I think it'd be better if you had one."

She threw him one anyway, and he caught it messily, gasping at the sudden unexpected throw. She went inside once again and dropped herself lazily in the couch Sehun always liked to possess with his tall self. Mina rarely had any time of herself to occupy, unless she was drunk and had to lie down on it. Then Sehun at least had the decency to give it away.

Mina noticed the awkward potato standing beside her and began patting the seat beside her, looking at him. "Sit. Here on the couch, sit down."

He did as he was told slowly, leaving a big space between them, knowing that calm and quiet Mina meant only angry Mina, or sad Mina, or both. He didn't want to poke her winds. He sat silently for a bit, eyeing his beer, the couch, the apartment, and then her as she drank her own beer with a big sip, clicking his fingers on his own cold bottle patiently. When she finished her bottle and smacked it loudly on the table across her, did he finally open his mouth.

"Are you.."

Only to be interrupted.

"Angry at you? Yes I am."

He gulped, realizing with a purging intensity that he was pretty simply fucked. Not because she told him she was angry, but because he knew she truly was. Now he realized her teetering calmness is a sign of her massively welting anger, and that was never a good thing, not in Mina. She wasn't a person who rarely blew things by anger. She had tons of anger episodes, especially a few years ago when she was still indulged with her stupidly abusive past. These anger issues of hers dwindled a lot recently, but they didn't completely disappear.

And now he fucked things up for them, for him, for her, and he was going to get his ass bitten really fucking close.

He stayed silent for so long, limbs frozen and lips closed shut like a pussycat. He was scaredy like that. Unlike his werewolf friends, he was gentle. He was soft. He was tender in a sense (except when he was angry himself which made him blurt incredibly moronic shits) so he didn't know how to deal with anger, particularly Mina's anger. He sat in his place like a statue, a fiddling in nerves one.