It takes exactly five times for Jihoon to tell Taeil he loves him before Taeil gets the message.

The first time wasn’t intentional – not really. It had been something Jihoon had been feeling for a while (something that he’d had more than one crisis over, alone in his bedroom at night, because they’ve all heard the stories of people getting caught in vans or by their managers and he’d never thought he would be one of those) but not something he dared to verbalise to anyone, not even Jiho. It happened when they were all out to dinner to celebrate Toy’s first win – paid for by Jiho, of course. They’d all been nervous about how the album would go on the charts after their long hiatus, and although Jiho had claimed to be perfectly confident (“you saw how well A Few Years Later did, come on, Jihoonie, we’ll be fine”) the others all could see he was as worried as they were. So they were all getting steadily drunk to celebrate, as they always did, and Jihoon had leaned over to Taeil next to him and giggled, “love you, hyung,” the words just falling out of him.

It was at the point in the night where Taeil had slammed back enough alcohol to put any normal person on their back, so he’d just slung an arm around Jihoon’s shoulders and pressed a wet kiss to his cheek. “Love you too, Jihoonie,” he slurred, ruffling Jihoon’s hair as he pulled back.

Jihoon had blushed and looked at the floor, because he had meant it in an entirely different way than Taeil had.

The second time was intentional, although Jihoon wondered if it really counted since Taeil didn’t even hear it.

It was movie night at the dorm – something that they hadn’t had in a while since they all began going their separate ways. But Kyung had insisted, and so the seven of them had piled into the dorm – which suddenly seemed very small again, Jihoon having gotten used to just the four of them – to squabble over what movie to watch. Kyung had gotten his way, so they were all engrossed in the the latest Avengers film (“brought to you by the Pirate Bay,” Kyung’d smirked, waving his laptop in the air perilously) on the lounge. Or at least Jihoon and Jiho were – Minhyuk and Taeil and Jaehyo were dead asleep, Kyung was curled around Jiho gazing up at him in a way that had Jihoon feeling like he was interrupting, and Yukwon was texting Sunhye, his fingers flying over the keys.

Jihoon shifted so that Taeil’s head fell onto his shoulder, and he held his breath for a long moment, expecting the older man to wake up. But he didn’t, he just snuggled up to Jihoon, slinging an arm around his waist and tugging him closer in his sleep. It had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to kiss the top of Taeil’s head and whisper a soft “I love you,” into his hair, quiet enough so the others wouldn’t hear.

The third time didn’t really count, either, since he was interrupted before he could even get the words out properly.

“I’m bored. Let’s do something,” Jaehyo had whined, flopping himself down on Jihoon’s bed, closing his laptop and dragging it away.

Jihoon narrowed his eyes and reached for his laptop, but Jaehyo held it out of reach. “I was writing lyrics, hyung, you can’t just interrupt me, I didn’t save my –”

“You sound just like Jiho,” Jaehyo warned, and that shut Jihoon right up. “I’m bored and we’re doing something.”

“And you sound just like Kyung,” Jihoon retorted, but he hauled himself off the bed not unwillingly and stretched. “What do you want to do?”

As a result of an extremely intense scissors-paper-rock game between Kyung and Taeil – with Jaehyo and Jihoon standing by ready to pull either of them away, because for a moment there things got tense – they ended up at the aquarium. It was probably the fifth time Taeil had gone there that month alone (despite the hundreds of fish he already owned he inexplicably had a soft spot for the ones at the aquarium, and once Jiho had found out that he actually named them) but he was still as gleeful as ever, even as Jihoon looked at the other two and rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

“Hyung, wait up,” he called, realising that Taeil had broken away from them and was making a beeline for where Jihoon knew the corydoras tanks were. “You walk so damn fast.”

The way to the corydoras was through the shark tanks, but the way the aquarium had set it up is you had to walk through a tunnel with sharks swimming all around you. It made for great photos – Jaehyo had come here a lot with his first DSLR when he was just starting out, posing them in front of the tanks and capturing their silhouettes – but the aesthetic of it all nearly made Jihoon stop in his tracks. Framed in the electric blue of the water all around them, Taeil looked more beautiful than Jihoon had ever seen him, especially when he looked back over his shoulder to beckon Jihoon forward. They were in a tunnel full of tourists, the din making Taeil hard to hear, but bathed in this light all of that faded away to nothing; it was just the two of them in that moment, and Jihoon took a step forward somewhat helplessly, being into Taeil’s orbit.

“I lo–” he began, knowing that that he just had to get the words out, knowing that it was right, that it had never been more right, and Taeil was looking back at him, waiting for the words to come out –

“Hurry up, Jihoon,” Kyung muttered impatiently, shouldering past him and catching up to Taeil, and just like that the moment was shattered and irreparable.

The fourth time wasn’t spoken like the previous ones; it was lyrics, scribbled on scraps of paper that Jihoon left floating around the dorm innocuously like he could get the message through that way. To the impartial observer, they didn’t make any sense at all – on one was written I think I’m in love with you; on another, and that terrifies me; on yet another I don’t think you feel the same. It was easy to say it like this, where at least he was putting the words out there to be read even if they didn’t make any sense to Taeil, if he would even read them. He didn’t dare even recording it lest someone found the file (and with as nosy as everyone was, that was a distinct possibility), even though the lyrics had bounced around in his head for weeks.

That continued for a while until Kyung had started finding them, which lead to Taeil yelling at Jihoon for being messy and Jihoon snatching the small pile of scraps from his hands. He’d sat on the floor of his room and burnt them one by one after that, creating a small pile of ashes that hid his shame.

The fifth time is the last, and possibly the most anticlimactic.

Kyung’s around at Jiho’s, a regular occurrence on Friday nights now, and Jaehyo is holed up in his room playing Overwatch, and they both know not to disturb him when he’s like that. It’s just the two of them in the dorm, and they’d spent most of the evening just hanging out and talking about . They hadn’t done that for a while, since before promotions started, and it’s nice to just get back to the regular rhythm of things, even if Jihoon’s chest tightens every time Taeil laughs at something he says. It’s normal and safe and Jihoon feels so ing confident in the love that he’s feeling – love that he can’t be making up, not when Taeil’s gaze contains more affection than Jihoon knows what to do with – that when Taeil slides a bowl of ramen across the table to him he picks up his chopsticks, his head to the side and says, “I love you, Taeil hyung.”

Taeil’s in the middle of slurping up a mouthful of ramen, so he looks up at Jihoon and gives him a smile (that isn’t dimmed even with noodles hanging out of his mouth). “I love you too, Jihoonie,” he mumbles.

“No,” Jihoon replies, with a calmness that belies his nerves as he set his chopsticks down on the table, flattening his palms to stop his hands shaking. “I said, I love you.”

“And I said I –” Taeil begins, before the weight of Jihoon’s words sinks in, and he settles back in his chair slowly. “Oh.”

Jihoon wants to say a million things – oh? that’s all you have to say, oh, when I’ve been trying to give you ing hints all this time? when the thought of you putting your hands on me makes me want to die in the sweetest way? when I can’t even look at you anymore without seeing the way you smile for me? – but all that comes out is a decidedly weak, “yeah.”

Taeil shrugs nonchalantly, like Jihoon’s confession is no big deal for him, and picks up his chopsticks again. “Well, obviously. I love you too. How long were you waiting to say it?”

“Say – what?” Jihoon asks, his brain tripping over itself in an effort to catch up. “You – what?”

“I love you too,” Taeil replies patiently, with the voice he uses when he’s talking to kids. Or dogs. “Come on, I thought that was obvious. I didn’t think it needed to be said. The others all knew.”

Jihoon’s brain is still trying to catch up on and process the words that Taeil is saying – either that or he’s missing something vital, like a segment of conversation has just been erased and he’s left floundering. “Knew what?”

“About us,” Taeil says around his noodles, looking up at Jihoon, his eyes creasing up as he smiles.

“There’s an us?” Jihoon mutters, feeling like he’s about to fall out of his chair. All the time he’d been trying to give Taeil hints about how he felt, only to find that Taeil was actually two steps ahead of him the whole time, beckoning for Jihoon to catch up like that day in the aquarium.

Taeil looks up at that, and for the first time Jihoon senses a bit of self-consciousness in his words. “Well… I mean, only if you want.”

Jihoon doesn’t even have to think about his response – it’s instinctual, as easy as breathing, and he reaches across the table to link his fingers with Taeil’s, staring at their joined hands. “Yeah. I want,” he breathes, squeezing Taeil’s hand gently and looking up to grin at him.