SWEET • chanbeak ✔️

0.3

Chanyeol lit one just below the 'No Smoking' sign and took a deep breath.  He paused and then his gaze went to Baekhyun, standing small in the corner with his slim shoulders hunched to his ears.  He spoke too softly for Baekhyun to hear, and then the man behind the counter handed him another small box, yellow with a writing, very familiar to Baekhyun. 

Chanyeol threw it at him and Baekhyun picked it up.  It was a box of candy.  His eyes lit up and he looked up as if to say 'For me?' Chanyeol smiled and the smoke curled around his mouth. He turned to Baekhyun without saying a word. Baekhyun looked down at the box in his hands, carefully grasping it  as he ran after Chanyeol again. He wondered what it meant. He stuffed it into the coat pocket that hung from his slim shoulders, the sleeves hanging past the tips of his fingers. The next time Chanyeol stopped, Baekhyun stopped.

He took the time to wind his fists up to his wrists.  He stopped nearby, far enough away to give the man privacy, but still in sight as Chanyeol made a phone call and then another and another.  I have a long time.  Baekhyun ended up sitting in a small plastic chair in the corner.  He took the box of sweets out of his pocket.  He was hungry, but he didn't want to eat them all at once because he couldn't get another one.  He carefully removed the box by opening it at one end and put six of the little candies in his hand.  He recalled the last time he had eaten peeps in a theater with his two best friends from childhood;  Tao and Kris.  They had seen a Marvel together.

Baekhyun's eyes burned with unshed tears and nostalgia stirred in his stomach as he slid one after another over his tongue and let the caramel melt until it was slimy and sticky.  It was sweet and gave the child some comfort, the sugar aiding in his paleness.  Everything still seemed like a bad dream.  Lost in thought, he didn't notice another man enter the room.

The man looked at Chanyeol, turned pale, and went to the other end of the room.  He lifted the handle of the receiver on the last phone, then noticed the pretty blond sitting in the corner.  A cruel smile crossed his face when he noticed the distant, unguarded expression on the Baekhyun's face.  Not paying attention in prison was practically an invitation to be mugged.  It was like a jungle full of wild animals;  predators and prey.  It was perfectly obvious what Baekhyun was. 

Baekhyun gasped as the rat-faced man moved above him, his shadow falling between him and the fluorescent lights.  He watched in horror as the man pressed his crotch close to Baekhyun's body and began to unbutton his jumpsuit.  The boy didn't even have time to react before the man turned back, his feet over his head as his back crashed to the ground with a sickly crunch.  Baekhyun shuddered involuntarily.   The sole of Chanyeol's shoe pressed against the other convict's windpipe and he gurgled before he was silenced. 

Baekhyun had not even seen Chanyeol move, that was how fast it had happened.  He looked with wide eyes.  Chanyeol looked at the man on the floor coldly, without a hair out of place. 

"Look at him again and I'll take your eyes off.  Play it again and they'll be picking up pieces of you from the ceiling."

His voice sounded more like a growl than a human's voice.  Chanyeol bent down and looked the man in the eye "If someone else dares to touching him and I will hold you personally responsible, so you better spread the word. He is mine."

A dark stain spread across the front of the other man's pants.  That was a satisfactory answer in Chanyeol's book, Baekhyun guessed, and his foot rose up enough for the thin-faced man to come out from underneath.  He ran out of the room, gasping and breathing hard and holding his ribs.  Chanyeol stared at Baekhyun.  "Pay more attention to your surroundings," he ordered.  Baekhyun nodded vehemently.  He definitely agreed.  The boy's face was completely white.  Chanyeol's expression quieted and he held out his hand.  -Come on kid.

Chanyeol stood him up and Baekhyun brushed off his pants.  His hands trembled, but only slightly. 

"Would you like to make a call?"

Baekhyun nodded again and Baekhyun squeezed a quarter in his palm.  Baekhyun looked at him.  Apparently even a phone call took money.  His eyes filled with gratitude that Baekhyun didn't recognize when he turned and took up a position against the wall, out of earshot, and lit another cigarette.  Baekhyun put it in the old pay phone and listened as the metal dug into the machine.  Having grown up on cell phones, it was a sound I had only heard in the movies.  When he finally heard the dial tone on the receiver, he dialed his father's number.  It rang four times before her mother's voice hit the line. 

Just the answering machine, but still hear your  voice was like a punch to the stomach.  Baekhyun's voice was hoarse when he left a short message and hung up.  Chanyeol ignored the tears in the boy's eyes.  It was kindness.  He turned and went back to the cafeteria.  When Chanyeol got a tray, so did Baekhyun, and what he asked for, Baekhyun asked for.  He followed him and sat close to him, like a whipped puppy.  He could feel the eyes on both of them, following them, but no one approached him.  He realized that his breathing was getting easier and easier, his fear vanished.  When he drew the confidence of Chanyeol's presence, Baekhyun raised his eyes to walk around the other men in the cafeteria. 

They were clearly segregated by race.  They were all tattooed and all of them showing their tattoos, despite the cold.  Some even got tattoos on their faces, hands and necks.  Baekhyun's gaze moved to Chanyeol and for the first time he realized that aside from himself, Chanyeol was the only one with no visible tattoos.  All the men were fit and muscular, and Chanyeol was no exception to that rule. 

From under his lashes, Baekhyun could see the muscles coiling and curling up under the sleeves of Chanyeol's orange jumpsuit.  It was a silent threat and Baekhyun could see how, in a place like this, the older a man, the more muscular, the less chance he had of being attacked.  It was like establishing a kind of hierarchy.  From high to low, and Baekhyun certainly knew where he was on the scale;  he was at the bottom, by far the smallest. 

Chanyeol was among the largest, but Chanyeol's size did not entirely account for the wide its morning.  For a time, Baekhyun forgot where he was, engrossed in the familiar but beloved Tale of Two Cities.  Chanyeol turned to the filthy looking law books and completely ignored it. 

Sometime in the late afternoon, Chanyeol had him sign up for a library card and each took a single book back to their cell.  After closing the cell door with a resonant sound, Chanyeol placed his on a shelf and Baekhyun carefully placed hers next to it.  He did it without thinking, getting close enough to touch the huge criminal and when Chanyeol turned around, they met face to face.  Baekhyun gasped when he realized how close they were.  It was at eye level with Chanyeol's chest.  The top of his head didn't even reach Chanyeol's chin.

He backed away carefully, his light brown eyes wide and scared.  Chanyeol looked at him dispassionately.  -Get up in your bunk.  -W..- He started to ask 'why' and then he remembered their agreement.  He shouldn't ask questions.  Baekhyun walked over to his bunk and looked at her as if Chanyeol had asked him to climb a mountain.  There were no stairs.  For a medium-height man, the bunk would have hit them mid-chest and they could easily have gotten up with a small jump and their arms.  The litter was over his head and he really had no good way to get it, let alone get up.

He jumped a few times, backing away each time, and Chanyeol watched him fight before sighing.  Without saying a word, he grabbed him around the waist and under the ass to propel him.  Baekhyun screeched in outrage in surprise and landed face-first on the mattress with an embarrassing waving of his arms.  Her cheeks flushed and he growled under his breath. It would have obtained it, in the end.  Chanyeol smiled and then disappeared under the bunk.  Moments later, the TV turned on.  It was a baseball game.  Baekhyun turned and looked at him for a while.  He hadn't taken Chanyeol for a sports fanatic, but he gradually realized that the game's purpose was simply to drown out the rest of the prison sounds.

The boy's eyelids grew heavy despite the bright lights coming out of the hall and out of the window, and he quickly fell into an exhausted sleep, his lumpy pillow under his head and Chanyeol's coat wrapped around him.  It was still cold, but now it was bearable.  He fell asleep with his hand in his pocket, clutching the small box of candy like a lifeline.

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