1/1

Joshua sat there, phone in hand, debating with himself over what to do. In truth, a phone call was really not a big deal. At all. It was better than talking to someone face to face, where your reactions and every movement are constantly under judgement.

It shouldn’t be a big deal. It shouldn’t–except Joshua rarely called people. But the situation was rather urgent, and phone calls drew more attention than texts, which could be left unread for long periods of time. He needed a certain someone’s advice. Because one of their friends–Seungkwan–was sad, and being the moodmaker of the group, having him sad left everybody downcast.

He needed somebody, like Seungkwan, that was always able to bring a smile to his face.

He picked up the phone and called Jeonghan.

Jeonghan watched his phone vibrate. Someone was calling him but for some odd reason, he couldn't find the resolve to pick it up.

"Who's that?” Seungcheol asked. He was tired of the noise–he couldn’t listen to his music peacefully as he usually did before lights out.

“Joshua.”

Seungcheol frowned. “Then why aren’t you picking it up?”

"He never calls me.”

Jeonghan just blankly stared at the illuminated screen like a cat who’d found a knife. Eventually, he missed the call. He didn’t even touch it, leaving it on his desk as if it was poisonous.

Seungcheol rolled his eyes. Figures.

It was a bit strange that Jeonghan hadn’t picked up. Is he busy? Maybe he’s taking a shower. Maybe he’s busy studying…yeah, unlikely.

Maybe…he doesn’t want to talk to me?

Joshua brushed the thought out of his mind. Jeonghan was probably busy. He’d try again later.

Jeonghan jumped with surprise when his phone rang again. He stood up to see who it was coming from–but of course he kind of already knew the answer.

It was Joshua. He didn’t pick up. But Seungcheol really wanted to enjoy his music, so he got off the bottom bunk and answered the call instead of Jeonghan.

The latter’s face was priceless. It screamed “Traitor!”–but it’s not like Seungcheol cared. He was just tired of Jeonghan’s childish romantic love struck behavior.

“Hey Joshua…good, you?…yeah, he’s here…okay, hold on–it’s about Seungkwan.”

Jeonghan’s eyes grew worried. “Seungkwan? What happened?”

"He didn’t tell me. It’s you he wants, after all."

Jeonghan’s face turned pink as he took the phone. Seungcheol watched him walk in round in the room for almost an hour. Jeonghan couldn’t stop running a hand through his hair during the conversation, and Seungcheol didn’t know if he ought to laugh or curl under the covers and hide from secondhand embarrassment.

When Jeonghan finally hung up, he had that stupid, satisfied grin plastered onto his face; something only Joshua could do to him and Seungcheol knew these two idiots needed to realize their feelings soon because there’s only so much cluelessness he could take.

Jeonghan sighed, a long, drawn out sigh as his eyes stared at nothing.

Love struck, Seungcheol thought. "Hey," he said, snapping Jeonghan out of his reverie.

"What?" Jeonghan answers, on the defense again–well it’s not like Seungcheol could blame him. Jeonghan knew him all too well, and he probably already knew he was going to make fun of him for the whole thing.

“Nothing. You look like my little sister when she’s on the phone with her crush–“

"Shut up–"

Seungcheol got hit by Jeonghan’s phone as his roommate disappeared from view, climbing into his own bed.

Jeonghan was an idiot. What a mistake. What a terrible, foolish mistake to leave Seungcheol with his phone.

He waited for Jeonghan to fall asleep, and as soon as he was certain he wouldn’t get caught, he took Jeonghan’s phone and sent a text. To none other than Joshua.

“Hey, can I ask you something? Why do you never call me?” he typed.

He hesitated a little, considering it might very well change Jeonghan’s life or his relationship with Joshua–and, with him, in case this were to be a failure. But he was sick of watching Jeonghan playing around and being shy and awkward about it, when, really, it wasn’t that hard to see the way Joshua looked at him, with stars in his eyes and all that.

He sent the message. He waited, and the answer didn’t take long.

Joshua: I guess I never really know what to say.

Seungcheol knew at that moment that Jeonghan had rubbed off on him more than he’d realized, because instead of backing away and forgetting this ever happened, he persisted. He knew that Jeonghan would probably hate him but, oh well, why not? If Jeonghan didn’t feel ready to take the first step then Joshua was definitely going to wait for all of eternity.

"How about you talk about how much you love me?"

This would probably create earthquakes. But considering these two idiots were the only one not aware of how they felt for each other, Seungcheol thought he should be given an award for his meddling. He didn’t expect an answer any time soon, and so, bored after a few minutes of waiting, he began to read old messages sent between Jeonghan and Joshua.

Surprisingly, there weren’t a lot. And nothing flirty either. Once in a while Jeonghan would tack on a winking emoticon and that was about as flirtatious as the messages got. Heaven forbid Joshua use anything besides the “ :] ” face.

He was growing tired of reading stuff about tests and homework and–oh, Joshua answered.

Joshua: ???

Well, what did he expect? Seungcheol wondered why Jeonghan liked that guy so much–no, he didn’t just like him, he loved him. It was written on his idiotic face in big, red, flashing capital letters every time the two saw each other. It was like a confession without words–there but also not quite in the open. It was so damn obvious that Seungcheol got especially irritated whenever Jeonghan blatantly denied it.

There was a lot of hesitation in the texts they sent to each other. Jeonghan almost always started the conversations, with casual or uninteresting subjects–small talk, homework–and Seungcheol could picture Joshua struggling to find an answer to keep the conversation going. It looked like he was trying quite hard but eventually failed each time.

It looked like they really, really want to talk to each other but at the end of the day, they were too tense, too scared of their own inaptitude and so sure that they would mess up what they already had, that they chose to not speak at all. It was such a shame. Seungcheol hoped it would change now. He hoped Joshua would find the words this time, that Jeonghan would (somehow) finds the guts to confess, that they would finally talk together as much as they desperately wanted, no, needed to.

Jeonghan’s phone vibrated again. The person in question was still peacefully asleep on the top bunk, having no idea of what his best friend was doing behind his back–saving his neck, probably.

Joshua’s answer was miles away from all the possibilities he could have thought of.

Joshua: You > guitar

Now matter how many times Seungcheol read it, and reread it, he couldn’t find anything positively romantic out of this message. If the dude had said something like “You > the world” or “You > diamonds ” it’d be understandable, but a cheap wooden instrument?

The guy was just even more useless than Jeonghan was already. This was an impossible task from the start. Seungcheol half wanted to cry from how hopeless it all was.

Well, at least he’d tried, hadn’t he?

He deleted the conversation and put the phone back on Jeonghan’s bed, falling asleep quickly after that. He hoped Jeonghan dreamt of Joshua, of a way to make him understand how much he loved him, so he could stop being annoyed by how pathetic the whole situation was.

Call it fate or destiny or whatever, but the next day at lunch, they saw someone practicing tuning their guitar, surrounded by eager listeners.

“…That girl and her guitar…” Jeonghan said in an exasperated tone.

"Why do you sound pissed?" Seungcheol took one bite of bread. “She didn’t do anything to you.”

"No it’s not…it’s just…Joshua…”

Yeah of course, it had to be related to Joshua, to be able to affect Jeonghan that much. Anyway.

"He just loves guitars so much. Like, seriously, you have no idea, he is completely and utterly, from the moon and back, obsessed with guitars, like, I really think that if he could, he would marry a guitar, he loves them to death–HEY SEUNGCHEOL STOP–DON’T CHOKE ON YOUR BREAD!”

His face was close to turning blue when he finally managed to spit out the chunk of bread that had lodged itself down his throat. Honestly, it didn’t matter how at this point. Those two would definitely be the death of him.