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Ever since Yukwon Tuned with Sunhye a couple of months ago, things have been crazy around their circle of friends. Call it competitiveness or peer pressure, if you might.
“It’s easy for Taeil, being his short cute asexual self, not desperately looking for love..” Jiho sounds all dreamy, but is fuming on the inside, Kyung is sure of that.
“But he’s gay?” The older finally looks up from the crumpled paper he’d been staring at for the last two hours.
It feels like the air got sucked out of them room with a whoop.
“What?!” Jiho is on him like a bloodhound, wanting, begging for information. The library lady, super old and wrinkly, shushes them from across the room.
“He’s been doing the push and pull with Jihoon, the young tall annoyingly hyperactive guy, hasn’t he?” Kyung asks, suddenly really uncomfortable cause Jiho is hovering over him, looking like a vampire holding his cloak over them with his arms.
“Idiot, that doesn’t mean they’ve been Tuned!” The younger flaps his imaginary cloak once, twice, over Kyung’s head for good measure.
Kyung just punches him in the sternum with his pointiest knuckle, “Don’t call me an idiot, you dickpiano!”
The old lady has had enough of these two bickering idiots for the day so she drives them away, chasing the guys out of the university library with a broom.
“Hyuuuung, can we try Tuning?” Jihoon is all over him again. It makes Taeil’s face too hot and he doesn’t like that feeling.
“No!” The older has learned all the tricks of the trade in handling Jihoon so he dodges him easily when the younger comes bouncing at him behind the corner.
“But why nooottt~” Jihoon does the thing where he shakes his shoulders while grinding onto things (usually that thing is Taeil) while making unnecessary child noises.
“No!” fuck fuck fuck fuck where to hide, where to HIDE?!
“B-but—” Jihoon uses his final move and holds onto Taeil’s hand with both of his.
“No!” The older pulls his hand away, wondering what hand lotion Jihoon uses cause his hands are so soft, like babies.
“Hyuuuuu~ng~” By the time Jihoon continues his begging, Taeil has fled the scene and is now sitting inside the climbing thing (that Jihoon doesn’t fit into) in the kids playground, trying to put earplugs into his ears to block the existence of Pyo Jihoon.
“I SAID NO, JIHOON PLEASE STOP TOUCHING MY BOOBS!” there are two hands coming through either holes of the climbing thingie, and yes, these hands are caressing his pecks.
To be honest, Taeil is terrified.
Not because Jihoon keeps fondling his boobs, he does that all the time..
He’s scared shitless that if they try Tuning, it won’t work.
Jiho is still sitting on the floor, trying to use the god damn recorder, singing a part of his Tune but his voice cracks throughout and he realizes he forgot to press play on the recorder. To top it off, it didn’t sound anything like the song playing in his head.
'There are new recordings of single Tunes found in Itaewon, the woman found her soulmate after 30 years, just after 4 days of posting the recording.' The news pisses him off even more than usual, so he glares at it, long and hard.
“Can you let it go for a while, you ass clarinet.” Kyung’s getting tired of this topic.
“What’s with your recent fascination with body parts and musical instruments?” Jiho adds under his breath, “also with calling me names but that’s not considered a recent fascination..”
“Not sure.. but please stop with your obsession over Tuning with someone.” Kyung slides from the bed to sit on the floor next to his best friend.
“Can’t. It’s driving me crazy. I met a super cute girl today and I’m wondering if we Tune.” Jiho does look like a crazy person, though. So Kyung decides to take him walking.
They watch the sunset on a hill that has a view over the whole town and it’s all romantic and cheesy and Kyung’s pretty sure it’s a mayor ‘no homo’ moment for Jiho.
They kinda run out of random topics to talk about after some time so they sit there in this soothing silence until the whole sky is this dark violet colour and lamps are lit in the little squares around town.
And for some unknown reason, they start humming.
Jiho’s tune starts from one end, Kyung’s the other.
They meet halfway and it clicks.
It’s all fireworks and butterflies and bees doing somersaults in their tummies after that.
Then a pause where everything is still.
Neither says a word to each other on their way back to the dorm.
As their knuckles brush against each other, walking side by side, Jiho suddenly has this surge of want.
Want to hold Kyung’s hand in his.
Taeil decides to voice his concerns.
He thinks of telling Jiho but he’ll probably tell Kyung cause he can’t keep a fuckin’ secret from the dude and Kyung is the market lady who’ll spread rumors like wildfire after that. Kwonnie is too occupied being Tuned with his girlfriend these days that it’s near impossible to even see him. He decides on Minhyuk. He’s a good listener, right?
He asks discreetly what ‘his friend’ should do when he likes someone and wants to try Tuning but is too scared and Minhyuk totally bit through his ‘friend’ bullshit and corners him right away.
“You wanna try with me?” No, really, he corners him, Taeil is squished in the corner of the Minhyuk’s Tv room next to those disgusting dust bunnies that love to hang around in there.
“Hahaa, saved by the bell!” Taeil looks weirdly victorious about this.
There was no bell, just Jaehyo fumbling and rattling his keys in the keyhole on the other side of their front door.
Taeil escapes as fast as he can, Jaehyo thought he saw a ghost flying out the front door.
Now, Taeil is scared that his and Minhyuk’s songs will Tune and to be honest, that’s scarier than not Tuning with Jihoon because Taeil can’t handle the amount of cosmetics this man possesses. It freaks him out so much when they go over to Minhyuk’s.
The minute they arrive at their dorm, waterworks starts.
A lot of staring and crying goes on, mostly done by Kyung.
He stares, all wide terrified eyes and a whole lot of weeping and snotty nose.
Jiho sits there, across from him on the floor where just a couple of hours ago he was innocently trying to record his song to Tune with a random girl that wasn’t even that perfect (not as perfect as Kyung though).
“..So what now?”
“Can you fucking give me a fucking moment, you butt contrabass!” Kyung has this hilarious post-crying high pitch and he’s wiping away the snot that formed to his upper lip.
Jiho is so nervous. He’s ready to give them a chance, he knows the dude from top to bottom already anyway (also saw him naked once, not on purpose, though).
“This is so fucked up—” Jiho tries to make the heavy air pressing onto both of hem lessen a bit.
“Yeah, can I kiss you?” Kyung doesn’t wait for an answer, just dives in.
The rest is history, to be honest.
All kissing and tongues and sucking and some hot sexing and “Fuck I am so happy right now”-s.
Taeil decides to Do the Tune. That’s what he says to Jihoon over the phone. He mentally slaps himself in the face for sounding so girly and dumb.
Jihoon’s at his door in exactly 19 seconds, wheezing and panting.
“Hyuunng~” He looks so happy, half moon eyes and a picture perfect smile.
Taeil’s heart falls to the bottom of his left shoe. It’s one thing breaking his own heart when they don’t Tune but it’s a whole other thing when it’s Jihoon’s heart.
“After what Minhyuk hyung told me about your conversation, I thought you don’t want to Tune with me. I’ve been trying to show you how much I love you for so long and you didn’t seem to like me back, I thought I’d have to give u—” Taeil kisses him right on that dumb-talking mouth, holding onto his cheeks with his palms.
Fuck that tuning.
Fuck that whole soulmate thing.
This is now.
“But I do like you!” Taeil smiles when they part, he’s still so nervous but the happiness shadows it almost completely.
“Say it again!” Jihoon beams.
“I like you!”
“Again!”
“I like you, Jihoonie~”
“Again!”
“No!” Taeil tries crawling away from the younger but Jihoon has a death grip on him in his hug.
Turns out they do Tune and Taeil feels like the most idiotic guy on earth for being so scared. They’re still having their aftershock from the tuning, fuzzy fingertips and frantic heartbeats and that annoying beeping sound in the brain but in a good way, when Jihoon tells him he was so scared, too.
“How we ended up as a group of fags, I have no idea, bros.. But I love it.” Jiho summarizes this (dumb) chapter in their lives perfectly.
“That was beautiful, my harp penis!” Kyung coos a little, snuggling into his newfound boyfriend.
Taeil tightens his hold on Jihoon’s hand. Because Kyung’s sick fetish of calling Jiho after musical instruments is totally disgusting but also because Jihoon’s hands give him this super nice comforting feeling.
Sunhye and Ukwon look at each other awkwardly because of Jiho’s stupid outburst, but smile right after, Sunhye intertwining their fingers.
Jaehyo’s there with his new boytoy, too, the one that likes to grab his ass a lot in front of people.
Minhyuk cries a little on the inside, he’s yet to find the one to share his Tune with.
But there’s time.
They’re out there somewhere.
The end.