[CONTENTID1]Ratatouille and Running[/CONTENTID1]

[CONTENTID2]"I tell the truth if it's necessary. If someone's not ready to hear it, I'm not going to say anything."[/CONTENTID2]

[CONTENTID3] It was a little disconcerting that a week after the party, all Yeseul could think about was the almost kiss with Chanyeol, and not her ex-girlfriend moving on with someone else. 

She was going to blame it on the fact that Chanyeol had spent the last four nights at the apartment. She couldn't escape the memory of his mouth, or that gum he was always chewing, or the brush of his fingers against her cheek, or the way he'd pulled a Philip Larkin quote out of nowhere. The whole five minutes of their interaction was stuck in her brain, and though she'd tried to wash it away with alcohol that night, his perpetual presence wasn't exactly helping. As the old saying went: out of sight, out of mind. 

The only respite to all the frustration was that whatever rut Yeseul was in where Eunha was concerned, she was out of it now. Perhaps seeing Eunha with that other girl had given Yeseul's heart the final push it needed to just get over it already. 

Either way, Yeseul was too busy being annoyed over Chanyeol and his accurate quoting – accurate, despite the fact that he'd used poets she didn't much care for – and the suggestion of a kiss to think about Eunha all that much. 

She was craving a cigarette, but thinking about smoking made her think about sitting out on the patio at Kim Joonmyun's house and Chanyeol leaning inm so she went for a run instead. The chilly morning air and the steady beat of her trainers against the pavement made her feel a little better, lighter, clearer. 

Yeseul ran all the way to campus, skirting the student housing district so she didn't encounter any kids stumbling home from a night they probably didn't remember much of. She went around the park near her apartment twice, thinking that the longer she was out, the greater chance there'd be that Chanyeol would be gone by the time she got back. 

But as she jogged around the corner and her building came into view, someone was coming out of it, shoulders hunched against the breeze. Chanyeol's hair was tucked under a cap but he had also put up his hood. She noticed, with surprise, that he wasn't wearing the clothes he had come over in last night, but athletic shorts and trainers. Keys swung in his hands; his Hyundai was parked across the street, the permit Yeseul and Baekhyun had received upon moving in displayed on the dashboard. Though she considered turning around, she was too close now and he'd almost definitely seen her. Running away was worse than facing him; it made her seem afraid. 

Chanyeol happened to glance in her direction, and froze in the middle of the sidewalk. She could see the gum caught between his teeth, the surprise in his eyes, and pretended that the flutter in her chest was from the running, and not the boy before her. Yeseul slowed to a walk, her skin sticky beneath the black long sleeved top and matching running tights. Chanyeol's nose was red from the cold, but Yeseul hardly felt it. She got closer and closer and he stayed where he was, feet (in neon yellow trainers that Yeseul approved of at first, then scolded herself for doing so) positioned awkwardly on the pavement, like they were disagreeing on which direction to go. 

"Morning," she said, pulling the sleeves of her top over her hands. 

"I was just leaving," Chanyeol replied with a nervous swallow. 

Her eyebrows knit together. "Not that I care, but are you alright?" 

"Good. Yeah," Chanyeol muttered. "I was just, um, headed to the gym." 

"In your car?" 

"It's near my house." 

"Then what are you standing here for?" 

"You–" Chanyeol looked perplexed. He'd been acting very strange since he started staying at the apartment again, three days after the party. Keeping his distance. "Nevermind. See you later, Yeseul." 

Since he hardly ever called her by the full name, it was odd to hear it from Chanyeol's mouth. Yeseul finally started to feel the cold seeping into her skin when Chanyeol drove off down the road, and headed inside. 

In the apartment, Baekhyun was practicing talking points for Model UN. Yeseul did her post-run stretching in the foyer, then went straight to the bathroom for a shower. He was still lecturing at the muted television when she emerged from her room twenty minutes later – tracksuit bottoms on, ready for a day of analysing odes and reading Milton – and put on the kettle. 

"Yeseul, help me out, does this make sense?" Baekhyun asked, coming around the sofa to sit on the table, legs swinging while he read from a sheet of paper. Half of what he said went over Yeseul's head, but is sounded good. 

"Sure, Baek." 

He pursed his lips and nodded to himself, then grabbed the pencil from behind his ear and scribbled something on the page. "We're doing a presentation for the board of directors on Monday and today the Execs are meeting up to put it all together. I've got this big speech and I've got not idea if I'm just talking or not." 

"Sounded fine to me," Yeseul shrugged, dropping a teabag into a mug. She turned away from the counter, arms folded over her chest, and took in his worried hunch and frantic hair. "You'll do fine, Baekhyun. You know your stuff." 

"Yeah," he breathed, and hopped off the table. "Are you working tonight?" 

"No, I am tomorrow though." 

"Shame," Baekhyun sighed, beginning to pack up his papers. 

The kettle boiled, and Yeseul filled her mug before raising an eyebrow at her flatmate. "Why's that?" 

"I won't be back until dinner, at least, and you aren't home tomorrow night. It's like we hardly ever see each other anymore!" He pouted, slinging his backpack over one shoulder. 

"The second I got back from lectures yesterday we spent the entire afternoon together!" Yeseul exclaimed. 

Baekhyun grinned. "I know. Brilliant, wasn't it? You're probably the only person I can spend so much time with without getting bored. If neither of us are married by thirty, let's do it, yeah?" 

Yeseul grimaced. "No deal. I can't stand you. Besides, I'll obviously marry Serin if it comes down to that." 

"That's my girl," Baekhyun said, unruffled, and kissed her temple on his way out. 

Once she had grabbed everything she needed from her bedroom, Yeseul settled on the sofa with her tea and the odes she'd printed out for her next lecture, pen tapping a steady rhythm against her knee. A classical music playlist playing softly from her computer; it was her favourite type of music to listen to while she revised. 

She had gotten through three pieces before Chanyeol – eyes curious, lips parted and wanting, telling her Bukowski was better than Keats – popped into her head. Yeseul let herself relieve the conversation, twisting a lock of hair around her finger, and then it occured to her. "You can't even compare them," he had said. Perhaps he wasn't implying that Bukowski was better, just that they were different. They were, without a doubt, but her mind hadn't been very clear that evening. Yeseul didn't know how this hadn't occurred to her earlier, and took a long drink of tea to compose herself before contemplating further. 

If Chanyeol had only meant that the two were different, did that mean he had read Keats? Yeseul was stuck with another memory, of Chanyeol teasing her for having Tennyson on her shelf. How deep did his knowledge of poetry go? If the boy could quote Larkin at the drop of a hat, could he do the same with Wordsworth? Elizabeth Barrett Browning? Auden? At the thought of Chanyeol reciting poetry she actually liked, made a cluster of feelings rise in Yeseul that she didn't want to ponder for too long, afraid of what they might mean. The nervous flutter in her chest had to be quelled with yet another gulp of tea. 

Yeseul threw herself back into her work with more energy than before, turning up the music on her laptop and bringing her knees up with the papers and book she was using as a hard writing surface in the hope that the closer proximity to her face would induce greater focus. 

She went back and forth between the odes and Milton for the rest of the day, with a few cigarettes and stretching breaks, and another longer break to eat leftover takeaway. It seemed that whenever Chanyeol wasn't in the house, she and Baekhyun either ordered food or made something that didn't come close to Chanyeol's skill level. They saved a lot on groceries, after all, with him buying most of the ingredients he used, making takeaway an easier option. 

Her third cup of tea resting in her lap and the scribbled notes on the Coleridge poem swimming before her eyes, Yeseul didn't even notice Chanyeol until he slammed the fridge door shut. She was startled at the sudden noise, spilling tea on her paper, and flinched a second time as the scalding liquid splashed over her hand. "Damn it," she hissed, setting down the mug on the floor and rushing over to the sink. Chanyeol watched with a detached sort of interest, hand still on the fridge door handle. There were a variety of vegetables on the counter; aubergines, tomatoes, and courgettes among them. Yeseul eyed the colourful array as she dried her hands, then looked at Chanyeol. 

He had moved by then, and was pushing aside the vegetables to make room for a cutting board. Yeseul didn't want to get caught staring, so she returned to the sofa and dropped down on one of the cushions, grabbing her partly annotated copy of Paradise Lost and flipping to where she had left off. They weren't required to read the entire text, thankfully, but Yeseul's professor was a big fan of Milton, so there was still a fair amount to get through. 

Without any particular discussion, Yeseul turned down her music and switched to something that wasn't classical or the score to a movie. "Baekhyun's isn't home," she said, more to stop herself from thinking about why Chanyeol wasn't talking to her than for the actual conversation. She was so used to the constant chatter and teasing, even though she hated it ninety percent of the time, that it was weird for there to be so much silence, tension, awkwardness between them. 

"Yeah, I know," Chanyeol said, shoulders hunched as he chopped vegetables. 

"And so you're here because?" she asked, drawing out the last word. She might have committed herself to a life of not getting so easily frustrated, but she also couldn't deny the itch to have it out with him she'd been wanting to scratch all week. 

Because this, whatever this was, was so much worse than arguing with him all the time. At least when they were fighting Yeseul knew what he was thinking. Now that he was ignoring her, she had no idea what to do with herself when he was around. It should have been a relief, this was all she'd ever wanted out of Chanyeol, for him to just be this person who went through her life and didn't bother her, but now that she had it, the relief she had been expecting wasn't there. 

All she felt was confusion, more frustration, and that ridiculous little flutter. 

He just had to go and recite poetry. 

"Kyungsoo has his football friends over," Chanyeol said, still chopping. "I've been picking up a lot more shifts, and I have to practice making the rest of the menu so it isn't when I'm cooking for paying customers." 

It made sense. But out of her own selfishness, Yeseul wanted him at his own house, so he wasn't here making her thoughts all jumbled. "Do you ever get tired of it?" 

"What?" 

"Cooking." 

Chanyeol finally turned around, gaze flicking down to the book in her lap before returning to her face. "Do you ever get tired of reading?" 

"Touché." 

He went back to his cooking, procuring a large dish from the cupboard to put all the vegetables in. Yeseul busied herself with her work, but her gaze kept on drifting back to him. The muscles in his back moving beneath the thin fabric of his t-shirt as he chopped and transferred the neatly cut veg into the dish, bending over to carefully arrange it all. He'd thrown his hair up, and she could see the sharp line of his jaw whenever he tilted his head to the side. He worked efficiently, utterly focused on his task, unlike her and her revision. Yeseul didn't understand how he could change so completely, even when there was nothing around to make her angry, there was a little crackle of frustration in her. It never really went away. So where had annoying, teasing, gleeful Chanyeol gone? He had to be in there somewhere, probably making up a cheeky comment about her mismatched socks. 

Yeseul wouldn't go so far as to say she missed it, but it was definitely unsettling when he was like this, all quiet. 

Because she knew that work wasn't going to get done unless she went back to her room, Yeseul decided to do precisely that. She set down her book and grabbed the mug from the floor, striding over to the sink to dump out the remaining tea that hadn't been spilled out on her person. As she rinsed it out, she could feel Chanyeol glance her way, and she was looking back at him before her brain could tell her it was a bad idea. 

He had a thoughtful look on his face, not unlike the one from the patio. His eyes were tired, and he looked a little pale. More so than this morning, even. Maybe sleeping on a sofa half the time was finally catching up to him. Water began to overflow from the mug, but they kept on staring. Then Yeseul had an idea. "You look like ." 

To her surprise, he snorted, cracking a smile. "Thanks, Seullie. I can always count on you to tell me the truth."

"Lying's a waste of time," Yeseul replied. "You don't have to tell people everything, but it's easier not to lie about it when you do." 

"That explains a lot, actually," Chanyeol said. "You aren't afraid of being mean." 

"I didn't think you were either."

"I tell the truth if it's necessary. If someone's not ready to hear it, I'm not going to say anything." 

Yeseul shut off the tap and left the mug there. "I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one." 

"I can't imagine it any other way." 

She gathered up her things and went to her room. Headphones in, so she wouldn't hear Chanyeol banging around in the kitchen, Yeseul got through an entire two pages before she was feeling restless again. Usually this didn't happen when she had gone for a run and had her tea, but she'd been off all week. Yeseul leapt off her bed and snatched the cigarette pack off her desk, hoping a smoke and some fresh air would settle her nerves. 

Chanyeol had his head stuck in the fridge when she emerged from the corridor. Yeseul shut the balcony door gently behind her, and instead of sitting down on the plastic chair, she left the pack there, tossing her lighter alongside it once she'd lit her cigarette. Arms draped over the railing, Yeseul stared up at the sky, most of the stars blanked out by clouds or light pollution. A few peeked through, shimmering amidst the haze, a reminder of how much bigger it all was than anyone realised. Yeseul liked staring at the sky; it made her think about how infinitesimal her problems were in the grand scheme of things. It helped when it all felt like too much, like all the expectations and disappointments were crushing her soul and preventing her from being the person she wanted to be, the person she was inside. She'd done a lot of sky-staring when she lived at home. 

When her cigarette was halfway spent, Yeseul leaned over to flick the end on the ashtray and the balcony door opened, Chanyeol sliding out. Yeseul straightened and raised an eyebrow, waiting for the question of where something was or explanation as to why he was out here. But he simply stared at her for half a beat, then slumped against the balcony and stretched his legs out before him, one ankle crossed over the other. His lips puckered in a thoughtful way as he folded his arms over his chest and looked straight ahead. 

Yeseul didn't know what Chanyeol was thinking about for the entire ten minutes he was stook out with her, because he didn't say a word, but she couldn't help but wonder if he was thinking about the almost kiss too. 

Yeseul, a lover of silence, couldn't stand it any longer. "What did you make, then?" 

Chanyeol's head snapped at her, his jaw working as he chewed his gum and pulled his eyebrows together. Like her speaking had interrupted some inner monologue. It probably had; Yeseul wouldn't be surprised if Chanyeol had mental conversations with himself. The bastard probably recited poetry too. 

"It's–er, ratatouille." 

"Like the movie?" Yeseul sat down and crossed her legs, taking a drag of her cigarette. 

"Brilliant movie," he replied. "They made it at the end, I think, the actual dish." 

"It's just roasted vegetables, isn't it?" 

Chanyeol looked perplexed, yet again. Like he couldn't fathom why she was willingly speaking to him, especially now. Maybe he was just surprised she knew what ratatouille was. But Yeseul couldn't handle his silence or the tension, she'd rather be talking to him than having him stand there impassive. "Yeah." 

Yeseul raised her eyebrows, and turned her head to the side to blow out a stream of smoke. "Baekhyun won't like that." 

"Baekhyun's not here." 

"He'll be back soon, though," Yeseul informed him. "I expect he'll be hungry as well." 

Chanyeol frowned and stood up straight. "Baekhyun said he wasn't home tonight." 

"You were planning on his absence, then?" 

"No." 

Then Chanyeol went inside and Yeseul saw him through the glass door, leaning against the sink with his notebook in one hand, furiously scribbling something in it with the other. Cigarette done, but not feeling much calmer, Yeseul went in just in time to hear the front door slam. Yeseul was relieved, because Baekhyun would definitely not notice any tension and act like everything was just the same as always. She could feel the frustration, just a flicker before, frowing into a steady flame. Because while Baekhyun might not notice Chanyeol's strange behaviour, sh