He likes order, most days, especially after living a few years with a group of high-strung goofballs as he has.

 

Unfortunately for him, his boyfriend very much is.

 

Jiho works so much, 24 hour days and then some, all of his hyper energy and outside ideas get bottled up and shoved to the side and ignored, until they can't be anymore. It can happen at any time, Taeil tries his hardest not to be surprised by it, after all these years. In the middle of recording, during a shower, especially in the middle of the night, Jiho will call him with some hair-brained scheme.

 

Like now. 

 

Taeil blinks awake with a beleaguered groan, swollen eyes murky in the darkness. His phone, and the obnoxious ringing coming from it, shines painfully at him front his bedside table.

 

With an exhausted sigh, Taeil answers it.

 

"Hyung," Jiho says immediately, voice fervent. "Come with me to get some donuts."

 

With a squinty glare at the clock, Taeil sighs again.

 

"Woo Jiho, it is two in the morning."

 

The line is silent for a moment.

 

"... So?"

 

And that is the story of how Taeil finds himself on the street at two thirty am, wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt, waiting for his boyfriend to show up and take him to get some donuts.

 

It's cold, and he's tired, and he feels gross from dance rehearsal three hours earlier, so he feels like it's justified that he doesn't return Jiho's smile once he climbs into his car.

 

"You ready for donuts hyung?" Jiho's eyes don't leave the road, they're bloodshot and he's fully dressed.

 

Taeil grunts, and turns the radio on.

 

He finds a ballad station and let's it lull him for a while, his head nodding against his chest as Jiho drives. Jiho babbles when he's like this, and endless stream of words so fast that Taeil really just lets them go in one ear and out the other. He's doing that now, tuning out Jiho's blabber about Japanese promotions and just letting the soothing vocals filter into his head. 

 

He doesn't mind when Jiho does this, really. It's a bit of an inconvenience, sure, and more than a little ridiculous, but it's his release, one of his less self-destructive ones, at that.

 

So Taeil sits in the car at three in the morning to go get donuts, and worms his hand across the divider to take Jiho's.