'I love you' is probably one of the most popular phrases that most people know in more than one language. Huang Zitao knows it in five.

As well as barely-there english, he knows it translates to 'Wo ai ni' in his native Mandarin, 'Saranghae' in his less fluent – but still impressive, mind you – Korean, 'Aieru' in unsteady Japanese and then finally sign language, palm outward facing, thumb at a forty five degree angle with middle and ring fingers bent towards the palm.

All these way to express himself and still he freezes at the breathless pauses between kisses, when he can taste Sehun on his tongue and he chokes around the words he's been wanting to say for weeks.

Five ways to say 'I love you' somehow doesn't feel like enough.

The Spanish say 'Te amo' and the French 'Je t'aime' but Sehun's never been that much into European culture other than what he has to know for concerts and appearances. When they were in Paris for SMTOWN, they took trips into the city undetected; EXO weren't as big back then and the Parisians let them exist in their own little bubble.

"It feels like we don't exist here," Sehun admitted, wrapping himself up in one of Zitao's nondescript scarves. "Like we're normal people again." It takes him a while to grasp what Sehun means but he finally understands later on, when they're stood beneath the legendary Eiffel Tower, hands trembling with cold as they ask a group of Chinese tourists if they can take a picture. For the first time since signing his contract under SM Entertainment, Zitao feels like... Zitao. If he'd have known then how much his feelings would – for lack of a better word – blossom, he would have mumbled his confession in French over freshly ground coffee and sickeningly sweet pastries.

In Arabic it would be 'Ana uhibbuki' but he finds it doubtful that they'll be visiting there any time soon, despite all his effort in learning to pronounce and recognise one single phrase. In Germany they use 'Ich liebe dich' but the last time they visited was around the time of Oktoberfest and the closest thing he got to a secret, romantic and personal confession was when a drunk Chanyeol cornered him in the bathroom stall and asked if 'Taozi' could hold his so he wouldn't pee all over the floor, or worse – himself.

Thinking back on it, Zitao has been in love with him for a while now. Ever since that first trip to Disneyland in California. It hadn't really been anything he'd said, just the fact that he didn't mind holding hands on space mountain or reassuring him that it's totally fine to miss home from the other side of the world. It made his heart warm and fuzzy. When the time came for split promotions, he boxed his feelings as buried his heart as deep as he could bear and told himself that no matter how many times Sehun actually said 'Saranghae', it doesn't always mean what he thinks. Lovestruck and lost in translation.

Words lose their meaning when they're overused. Like when he would repeat words over until they no longer felt like words, just phonetics relaying in the movements of his tongue, again and again, until 'hello, my name is, i am, thank you' no longer make sense any more. He was told that repetition is the best way to learn a language but Zitao, seventeen and naïve, remembers drowning under characters and syllables of an alphabet that will never be truly familiar to him. When he learnt the Korean for 'I love you', he promised himself he'd never use it.

(And yet, curled next to a sleeping Sehun, arms wrapped around each other under sheets only meant for one, he breaks his promise over and over.)

a/n: i keep posting stuff from my comm because i feel like i have nothing new to give u :((((( working on a huge baekyeol (10k of pwp ok) and a bunch of other fics but i'm just getting this out there now because i can, even tho it's short hmm :(((((

.. ._.. ___ ..._ . _.___ ___ .._' is 'I love you' in morse code