Chanyeol had woken up early every day for a week now.  He was mostly unable to sleep long at all, for fear he would miss Alex at some point or else someone else would run into her first.  So far, he hadn’t seen much of her.  He had gone out most of the time and waited downstairs in the lobby in the hopes that when she did leave he could follow easily.  He would wait sometimes for hours, before either his schedule or his hunger got in the way.  One day he got lucky and saw her leaving in what looked like gym clothes at around 5am, through his peep hole in the front door, and as much as he wanted to he couldn’t pull himself together to get himself into the gym after her, so instead hung around in the hall way, looking demented, peeking through the glass doors at her as he watched her running on the treadmill for hours.

Today was no different, it was 6am, he’d been awake for at least an hour, and had paced the length of the apartment twice, suspended at the same spot just outside the doorway for minutes at a time, twisting his head, he definitely heard a door close out in the hallway this time, he looked through the peephole and waited, as she came into view and waited at the elevator doors.  She was not wearing gym clothes this morning though, and that intrigued him.  Scrambling as he threw on a pair of jeans, almost falling over twice, and a coat he followed her out.  He had to wait for the elevator to come back before he could try and figure out where she had gone, but fortunately her little legs had not carried her too far out into the street and he located her easily.  He had been going over and over how to talk to her, what to say to her, and he knew he was running out of time.  Today had to be the day he told himself over and over. 

Turning the corner of the street he lost her.  She couldn’t have just disappeared, could she?  He walked the length of the street and back again, before he spotted her, on the opposite side of the street, sitting outside of a coffee shop.  Knowing he couldn’t just stand around staring at her in the open street he walked up and down the street thinking about what he should do.  It really was the perfect opportunity.  She was having coffee, ‘Hey can I get you a coffee?’ no, no, come on now Chanyeol, that’s lame.  After walking past the coffee shop for the third time, he knew he had to do something, if she had actually noticed him by now, she must think he was crazy for walking up and down the same stretch of street several times.  There was nothing else for it, he had to go in.  Ordering himself a coffee, the idea was he would also go outside to drink, and hope inspiration came to him and maybe some balls to go and speak to her. 

The coffee didn’t take too long and before he knew it he was walking outside and sat himself a couple of tables away, opposite her.  He had wrapped himself up so much so that it was hard to drink the coffee without taking his scarf off, and he didn’t want to do that.  It was far to cold at this time in the early morning to be removing clothes.  He settled for pulling the scarf down to take a sip and then pull it back up over his nose, so he didn’t freeze while drinking.  He was thankful for putting his dark sunglasses on though, it meant his eyes were free to stare at her as much as he liked without really looking too strange. 

This morning she was wearing an oversized fluffy hat, she was just too cute for Chanyeol to keep his eyes off.  This was the closest he had been to her since she arrived, and all he wanted to do was shout to her that he knew her, she knew him, and he was in love. 

Her head tilted up, in his direction, he couldn’t be sure she was looking at him, she had also decided to wear sunglasses this morning, but his heart gave an uncontrollable leap anyway.  He smiled at her automatically and to his astonishment she smiled back.  She looked away before he did, though he wasn’t sure if he was altogether still in control of himself or not, since it seemed unlikely that he could actually tear himself away from looking at her.  Pulling his scarf back over his nose, his head rested into a tilt in her direction.  She had bent her head now, looking down at her phone, when without warning her head shot up at him again, this time, with a bit of a questioning frown around her lips, not the sweet smile she had just seconds before.  Irrational panic set in somewhere deep in his chest.  Why exactly was she giving me this strange look?  Did she recognise me? He couldn’t turn away though he knew he should, and again, she broke the contact before he did, but now he was out of sorts, he was thrown and although it was the perfect opportunity to have spoken, his voice was lost.  Eventually he tore his eyes from her to look at his own phone.  Half past 7, he hadn’t realised quite how long he had been sat here in the freezing morning, staring at her. 

Before he knew it, she had stood, and was walking slowly past him.  Dammit, he thought ruefully.  Taking the last sip of his long gone cold coffee, and at a much slower pace than he was used to, he followed her, as she made her way back home. 

He watched her as she keyed in the password to the building and made her way through the glass doors into the lobby.  Hovering at the door, he watched as Junmyeon exited the elevator doors in front of her, and like a horror movie unfolding in front of his eyes, he saw how she seemed not to be looking where she was going, Junmyeon was also not looking, and they walked smack into each other. 

Oh no. He groaned internally, wanting to stop this from happening and yet totally unable to wrench his eyes away or physically do anything.  Junmyeon bent to pick up her things that had exploded out of her bag as she dropped them.  His eyes widened as they spoke to each other, and he couldn’t fail to notice the smirk on Junmyeons face as he spoke to her.  No, no, no he prayed though he knew it was useless, it was too late.  They had met now, they had spoken and all he could hope was that she wasn’t interested.

He realised about a second before Junmyeon was coming out of the building that he would walk straight into him, pulling out his phone quickly, he pretended to have stopped to send a message, as the door swung open and Junmyeon saw him.

‘Chanyeol!  You’re up early,’ Junmyeon grinned at him.  His eyes were sparkling, and that smile was not a usual feature on his face. 

‘I had something to do,’ boomed Chanyeol’s deep voice back, attempting to be as vague as possible, but it di