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living in the same dorm with jihoon, hyunsuk is used to waking up to kisses and cuddles — but this morning is quite different.
the bed creaks as hyunsuk rolls off of it and made a beeline to the kitchen where he found jihoon by the counter, bowls and cutlery messily placed all over the table.
“hyung,” jihoon jolts in surprise to see a half-awake hyunsuk walking towards him, “why are you up so early?”
“why are you trying to set our kitchen on fire this early?”
jihoon decided he’s not in the mood for an argument and turned to his back, getting back to cooking the food abomination he calls ramyeon.
“i’m trying to cook but it isn’t exactly going well“
“let me help you-”
and before hyunsuk could even take a step near the kitchen, jihoon shoots his head up with a shit-eating grin on his face, “with burning the kitchen?”
he’s got a point.
in terms of cooking, hyunsuk’s skills are at par with jihoon’s.
“you should learn when to shut up,”
“or you could just shut me up,”
“too early,” the older groans and lazily plops himself down the couch before fishing out the remote control to turn up the volume of the first show he saw.
while hyunsuk is normally not as touchy as jihoon, he isn’t one to turn down an opportunity to kiss his boyfriend.
and when it does happen, like right now, the probable cause of it has already been narrowed down in jihoon’s head.
he turned off the stove and finished the dish by cracking an egg to the ramyeon. his footsteps are light as he approaches his boyfriend who’s currently spacing out in the foyer.
“breakfast!” he chirps excitedly and set down the bowl on the center table before sitting himself down the floor, “you could taste it first and later tell me how good of a cook i am, go on”
the confidence jihoon exudes earned an eyebrow raise from hyunsuk who did not do anything to touch the food in front of them.
“promise me you did not add anything weird in this first,”
“I did not!”
“how much msg did you add-“
“just enough,”
“enough to shorten my lifespan for at least three years?”
“hyung!” jihoon whines, lips forming into that small pout he does when he’s upset, “just try it, i’ve skipped pilates to cook that.”
hyunsuk finds it cute when his boyfriend gets sulky, but jihoon does not need to know that.
although hyunsuk would prefer to just have coffee for breakfast, he knows how jihoon has exerted a lot of effort in “leveling up” (jihoon’s words) ramyeon these days.
that, plus the fact that it would be hard to get jihoon to stop whining once he chooses not to eat the breakfast he made.
he grabbed the noodles with chopsticks and picked up the soup spoon to rest it there, blowing to cool it down in fear that it might burn his tongue.
“hyung, hurry hurry hurry!” he laughs at the way jihoon’s eyebrows are furrowed and how he leans in the table, looking a little too expectant of hyunsuk’s feedback, “if i burn my tounge, would you take responsibility and buy me ice cream?”
the younger scrunches his nose at that, “how could you think of ice cream when a delicious bowl of ramyeon is getting cold and soggy in front of you?”
“right,” hyunsuk acknowledged defeat and finally had a taste of the dish. he could tell right off the bat that it’s shin ramyeon with egg, beef, and msg — lots of msg.
“how’s it?” jihoon’s eyes spark with excitement from across him and for that reason, hyunsuk suddenly felt the need to be careful on what he says about the food.
the older buys time by smacking his lips repeatedly; a lot of descriptions formed in his mind but for some reasons, all he managed to blurt out was a short and impactful, “salty”
much to his surprise, jihoon just laughed out loud before tasting the ramyeon himself, face immediately changing when the msg hit him, “it is really salty!”
“i told you so!” the older continued to complain but grabs himself another spoonful of the broth.
“hyung, i could tell you were being so careful on what to say, though. it was a sight to see,” jihoon teased before getting up and throwing himself beside hyunsuk on the couch, side hugging him, “i love you too!”
that caught hyunsuk off-guard.
don’t get them wrong, they love being clingy and could easily be the cheesiest individual when in the right mood — but they were friends for so long before they became a couple. for this reason, banters seemingly became a more natural medium to express love for each other.
in fact, jihoon could count on his fingers the number of times he heard hyunsuk say “i love you”.
the first time was at a random time of the day, back when they were fifteen.
“hyung, come on, just say it!” jihoon stomps his feet on the wooden floor of hyunsuk’s bedroom.
it’s been around 30 minutes since he barged in poor hyunsuk’s room, asking the older guy to say the words that his friends told him were supposed to spark something magical within you — i love you.
hyunsuk lets out an audible sigh before looking up from the soccer match he was watching, sparing the stubborn jihoon a glance, “i told you it won’t work like that!”
“it has to be from someone you adore,” hyunsuk continues to explain, reaching his hand out to sit jihoon down at the edge of his bed, just beside him, “your friends heard it from their crushes! of course, it would feel different.”
“still, i want to know how it feels,” jihoon pouted before he continues to ramble, “i heard it makes you feel flustered. i don’t want to appear weak when my lover says it to me, so i need to hear it from someone else firs—“
“i love you”
oh boy was he right — jihoon, indeed, was not ready for that.
he doesn't like it. the sudden madness in his chest, his heart sending itself into a severe mode of palpitations.
suddenly, and jihoon swears it's sudden, the world decided to stop that all he could see is his bestfriend — hyunsuk, and the pretty dimples casually sitting on his right cheek that jihoon suddenly wanted to caress.
“see? it’s far from the rainbows and butterflies everyone makes it up to be when heard from the wrong person.”
it's supposed to be easy; those three words were supposed to not make him feel anything. this, right here, is far different from what he expected to happen.
“yeah,” jihoon says softly, almost to himself, “so, it does make you feel things.”
“hey?” hyunsuk worriedly asked when he noticed jihoon was not saying anything, head tilted and brows furrowed.
jihoon shook his head, trying to shrug away the foreign feeling he had just felt.
he always knew he liked hyunsuk. but he remembers thinking he couldn’t like him.. like that, right?
it didn’t take jihoon long enough to realize he could.
it was enchanting the first time he heard those three words from hyunsuk even though, admittedly, he forced it out of him.
what makes it intriguing, though, is that even after they decided to put a label on their relationship, the feeling remained the same. it’s stupid, he thinks, that those three words had became a trigger for a smile to easily form on his face.
over time, probably for the sake of jihoon keeping the sanity left in him, they learned that one does not have to say “i love you” to say i love you; that they can be put into different words, into actions, and it would still feel the same.
when hyunsuk chose to be careful of his words, he knew it was one of his ways to say he loves him.
“oh, but hyung, you seem a little upset,” jihoon muttered before letting go of his hold to the smaller guy’s frame, successfully snapping hyunsuk back to the present.
“it’s nothing,” he shrugs, leaning towards jihoon to rest his head on the younger’s shoulder, “yoshi couldn’t make it, we’re supposed to go to lego land today.”
“why is that a problem? i’ll go with you”
yoshi, jaehyuk, and hyunsuk usually hangs out in their dorm building lego blocks. jihoon, unlike them, is one who gets bored five minutes in doing anything that is related to legos.
“but you don’t really enjoy lego—“
“i like anything that i could use as an excuse to spend more time with you.” and when he looked up to see jihoon, he had that boxy smile that turns his eyes into a crescent shape.
“sappy,” hyunsuk teases, cheeks tainted red, poking his boyfriend’s sides to tickle him.
jihoon lets out a laugh before throwing a playful wink, “not like you don’t enjoy it”
hyunsuk can’t deny that. not when jihoon’s smiling at him. no, definitely not when he suddenly has the urge to kiss the pretty mole resting on the younger’s left cheek, just below that pretty eye smile.
“love,” hyunsuk presses a kiss on jihoon’s cheek with a cheeky smile, alerting jihoon that what’s about to come is nothing good for him, “get dressed comfortably. i’m planning to stay there for at least five hours”
“no, four hours.“
“how many pinches of msg did you add to this ramen?”
“five?”
“okay, five hours.”
“yAH-“
jihoon does wish he could say no to hyunsuk at times like this. (un)fortunately, this, too, is their way of saying i love you.