by E M Lindsey
“I know, and I meant it,” Sage said. He closed the door behind him and leaned up against it. “Is it because of Basil?”
Derek let out a frustrated breath, dragging both hands down his face. “Yes. And Jasmine, and anyone who has to deal with the rest of the world thinking they’re not worth some effort just because they’re not the fucking status quo.”
Sage winced, because he had to know what it meant for Derek to hear that, how short that leap was between a deaf person who used sign, and someone with PTSD who needed someone understanding and willing to do things a little differently. “He didn’t understand.”
“That’s fine,” Derek said, and he meant it. “It’s fine when someone doesn’t understand, but when their default is to shit on someone, I can’t trust them to understand what I need.”
“I just,” Sage started, then stopped and shook his head. He crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, his posture telling Derek he was approaching a possible conflict between them.
“Please don’t defend him. I’m not saying he’s a monster, I’m just saying he’s not someone I could date.”
“Do you think maybe he’d like the opportunity to learn?” Sage tried.
“And you think I’m the one who should teach him?” Derek spat. “You don’t think I have enough on my plate just getting by? Where the hell am I going to find the energy to hold his hand through all this shit, Sage?”
Sage winced, then grabbed the small chair in the corner of the room, flipped it backward, and sank down. He rested his arms on the back and leaned toward his brother. “I won’t ever understand, okay? I get that. You took the brunt of every single moment of dad’s cruelty…”
“No,” Derek said, putting his hand up. “You don’t get to belittle what you went through, Sage. That’s not what this is about.”
“I know that, and that’s not what I’m not doing,” Sage argued. “I’m not making this some sort of fucked up competition that you managed to win by sheer bad luck. I deal with plenty thanks to that old bastard, but I didn’t walk away with the same scars you did. And I would never, ever tell you that you had to be the one to guide someone through it.”
“Then what are you saying?” Derek asked, all the fight draining out of him. His limbs felt heavy, his emotions having him wrung out, and suddenly he just wanted his bed.
“I’m saying that if he tries, if he learns—on his own, maybe with one of us—you might give him another shot? He’s not a bad guy, he’s just one of the billions of ignorant morons on this planet who were fortunate enough to not know what all of this was like.”
Derek wanted to tell his brother to fuck off, to remind him he didn’t owe this blind date anything. Except he couldn’t help but recall how well the date had gone before, and how somewhere deep-down, Niko wasn’t a bad person. Sage was right—he was ignorant. It didn’t make him less than a person. In fact, he thought with some sarcasm, it almost made him more.
“I just don’t know if I can,” he finally admitted.
“That’s fair. I’m just asking you to consider it. I’m not even sure he wants to try again. He knows he fucked up when you left the way you did, and he didn’t hesitate to take all the blame for being an asshole.” Sage scratched the back of his head, then sighed and pushed up to stand. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I put you in the position to deal with something like this. I didn’t see it coming.”
“Neither did I,” Derek told him. “Up to that point, the date was so good. We were getting along, and I…shit,” he breathed out, rubbing his hands over his face again. “It felt so nice to just forget for a little while that I’m this hot mess of a person with no hope of ever being put together in a way most people can deal with.”
“Derek, don’t—”
“It is what it is, man,” Derek told him. “It’s fine. I’m sure there’s someone interested, and I can be patient until then. At least I’m trying, right?”
Sage gave him a long look, then backed up to open the door. “Yeah. Right. If you need anything…”
“I’m good,” Derek said, and he quickly turned his attention back to his work. At least, in these moments, his work gave him a sense of purpose, and ever made him feel like his existence was a burden.
‘You talk to your friend yet?’ Amit asked later that week over coffee.
Basil sighed, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what to say, and I hate writing so much. I saw him heading into the community center for the ASL class, but they’re not going to get into anything useful for months.’
Amit gave him a tiny smile, waggling his brows. ‘You could always offer to private tutor him.’
Basil felt his cheeks heat up, even as he shook his head. ‘He was on a date.’
‘One that ended almost as badly as yours, man,’ Amit pointed out. ‘I’d say a comfort blow-job is always a good conversation starter.’
Basil gave him a dry, expressionless stare. ‘Why are we friends?’
‘Because I’m amazing, and you’re kind of a loner who doesn’t like to socialize,’ he told him with a grin and a shrug. ‘Anyway, I’m just saying it might not be the worst thing in the world that the dude walked out on a date because some gym-rat insulted Deaf people.’
Basil couldn’t deny that. That fact had been haunting him since he and Amit had eavesdropped on Derek’s date. Amit was a skilled lip-reader which made it much easier for him to interpret what was being said from four tables away, and Basil had been on the edge of panic until Derek all-but told his date to fuck off and then walked away.
It was almost a near echo of Basil’s own bad date—the roles reversed, and he couldn’t ignore how it made him feel that Derek had just as quickly and just as easily jumped to his defense. He hadn’t told his sister about it, who was still feeling contrite and apologetic after the date with Jay, but he’d told Amit everything which was why they were out for ice cream that night.
‘He offered me a free tattoo,’ Basil eventually said.
Amit choked on his drink, swiping the back of his hand over his mouth to wipe away latte foam. Setting his drink down, he stared at him. Hard. ‘He offered you a free tattoo. A free tattoo at Irons and Works?’
Basil flushed a little, shrugging one shoulder. ‘Is that weird?’
‘Irons and Works,’ Amit started, spelling the name out very carefully, ‘is not the kind of shop that just gives stuff away. They’re expensive because they’re good. Every person who works there is employed because they’re able to prove their talent is a step above others. This is like getting free music lessons from Mozart.’ When Basil raised both his brows, Amit rolled his eyes. ‘Okay not Mozart, but close. I’m just trying to make a point that if this guy offered that to you, take it.’
Basil found himself brushing fingers along his forearm, the place he’d get that damn Night-Blooming blossom tattoo if he really was going to go through with it. He’d been thinking about it since Katherine chased after him and explained what Derek really meant by the offer. ‘I can’t seem to stop thinking about him.’
‘I noticed,’ Amit replied, a dry expression on his face. ‘Are you really set on never dating him?’
Basil shrugged, glancing away for just a second to gather his thoughts. ‘No. I want to say yes, because the thought of going through anything like my ex put me through sends me into a panic spiral and I can’t live like that. But every one of my instincts is telling me Derek won’t be like that. None of them will.’
Amit considered him for a long moment. ‘I’ve spent most of my teenage and adult life in the Deaf Community. I don’t have a lot of hearing friends, and the only reason I know those guys is because they were the best rated and I wanted good ink. I’m not the kind of guy who would tell you to start dating outside of our community, or to give hearies a chance, because I don’t really feel like that. But those guys are different. I was there when the owner’s daughter came home from her doctor’s appointment after they were told she was hard of hearing.’
Basil’s eye
s widened. ‘They came to the shop?’
‘It’s their family, all those guys,’ Amit clarified. ‘I was getting one of my side pieces done, so I was laying on a table. Sage had been going for a while, and he was in the zone, so he didn’t want to stop, but it was obvious there was news. I always take my hearing aids out because the buzzing is overwhelming, but Tony’s really easy to read.’
Basil knew this story. He’d seen it a hundred times on social media—parents struggling and crying because their child was deaf. He’d read a hundred captions on a hundred videos, ‘We didn’t know what to do when we got the diagnosis, we were heart broken.’
Then some inspo story about finding some amazing speech therapist or audiologist and their baby smiled for the first time after they got CIs or hearing aids or whatever. He didn’t need Amit to tell him this.
‘I thought it was going to be some bullshit, and I couldn’t decide if I was going to get defensive or not, because you don’t fuck with people permanently altering your skin. It ended up not being necessary. He sat down at a computer, and when someone asked him what was up, he just turned around and said, ‘Jazz is deaf, so you fuckers better be ready to learn sign with me.’ Then he found a couple of classes and made some calls, and before I was wiped down and wrapped up, he was registered for ASL.’ Amit gave Basil a second to absorb all that. ‘I know the guys have been slow about it, but they’re nothing like Derek’s date. And nothing like your ex. No one’s forcing this girl to verbalize. They sign with her all the time. They let me sign with her. They all try.’
Basil knew that. He knew it in the effortless way he’d seen Sage and Derek handle the kids, in the way they were with his sister, and how Derek always used every bit of sign he knew with Basil before resorting to paper and pen. Maybe if he started slow. Maybe if he took up Katherine, and now Amit’s, advice and worked with him, gave him time so they could get to know each other without communication creating a barrier between them, there could be something real there.
‘Start with the tattoo,’ Amit said. ‘Go from there.’
At home, Basil paced his room, annoyed with himself and unable to stop replaying his conversation with Amit over and over in his head. Boiled down to the bare bones of the situation, it was simple. He liked Derek, Derek wasn’t anything like Chad, and he would probably be safe.
But that didn’t erase his fear of what could be, of what it all meant, and the not knowing how serious Derek was about any of it. They could try this—they could move forward and try something more, and then Derek could get annoyed, or bored, or tired of not speaking his own language and eventually they’d reach an impasse. Mostly because Basil would not voice—he would not. He would not compromise that part of himself again for anyone, no matter what they meant to him. A word or two here or there—fine. But he’d never carve away at his Deaf identity because it made some hearing person’s life easier.
And he didn’t know if there was middle ground between him and Derek with that between him.
Walking to his chair, he flopped down and pushed back, a little too hard. He hit the wall with a thud, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the octopus painting crash to the floor. With a gasp, he jumped to his feet, terrified that the canvas had been torn, and he yanked it from between the desk and the wall.
It looked fine, and then he saw a scrap of something poking out of the wood frame in the back. For a moment, he thought the canvas had torn, but as he picked at it, he realized it was something else. A folded bit of paper, and he could see ink bleed on one side.
With trembling hands, he unfolded it and stared down at the writing, the surprise of it all preventing him from absorbing the words for a long moment.
Basil,
* * *
I don’t really know why I’m writing this except to tell you that what you did for me the other night meant everything. Part of me isn’t sure this painting is for you. Hell, maybe you showed your sister and somehow she had a thing for sea creatures, I don’t know. But another part of me thinks maybe this means something. That maybe living through dark moments, you get to have something like this. I don’t know if we’ll be friends—if we’ll be more—if we’ll be less, but I do know that I’ll carry the other night with me probably forever. You’re not the first person to talk me down from the ledge, but please you know are the first person who I walked away from without drowning in guilt and feeling like I’d been a burden. You just let me feel like a person, and I can’t tell you what that meant. So thank you. If you ever get this note, just…thank you.
* * *
Always,
Derek
He stared down at the words, his hands shaking so hard he wasn’t able to read them clearly when he went back a second time, but it didn’t matter. He’d memorized it from that single pass. Maybe he was a fool for letting it get to him, maybe he should just burn the damn thing and be done with it. But instead, he folded it up and laid it on his nightstand, and he knew that tomorrow would bring a change.
Chapter Nine
Basil headed over to Irons and Works on Wednesday afternoon. His own shop was all-but dead, and Amit said that was the slowest day for most tattoo shops that he knew of. He couldn’t be sure Derek was working, but he was taking the plunge. His feet dragged on the walk, but he finally made it to the door, and his heart stuttered a little in his chest because he could see Derek inside working in his stall at his drawing table.
He swallowed thickly, fighting the flight urge, and forced himself to walk through the door. It must have had a bell or buzzer, because the moment it swung open, Derek’s head lifted, and his mouth parted in surprise. Basil could see his lips form a word, then Derek got to his feet and hurried toward the low swinging door.
‘Hi,’ he signed.
Basil smiled at him. ‘Can we talk?’ He hoped Derek’s lessons and his work with Jasmine had gotten him that far, and by the blush on Derek’s face, Basil thought maybe it had.
Derek gestured for Basil to follow him through, then led him to the seats they’d occupied last time he was there. Nothing looked different, apart from the spread of paper Derek had been working on, and though Basil was curious, wanted to poke and prod and learn Derek from the inside out, he held back. He sat down, then reached into his pocket for the short note he’d carefully crafted before coming over.
I am here for apologize. I didn’t understand what you mean about free tattoo. I was think pity, but Katherine explain. So I say yes. If you want.
Derek read the note, then looked up with bright eyes and the curve of a smile on his lips. He carefully set the paper down, then signed, ‘Yes. I want.’
‘Book,’ Basil signed, then pointed to where Derek had pulled out his sketchbook. ‘With flowers.’
Basil felt a measure of relief when Derek nodded and reached for it. Their communication was half pantomime and nothing more advanced than the infant he was learning for, but it was something. He handed it over, and Basil wasted no time flipping to the back page where the Night-Blooming Cereus had been sketched. He wanted that, and something a little more, something that was all Derek, and a little bit of him—but not something Derek had pre-drawn.
He motioned for a pen and paper, and Derek handed over a blank notebook and a little golf pencil which barely fit between Basil’s fingers. It would do, though, enough to explain what he was looking for. My mother have this flower. I want, but not this, you understand? Want new, but same flower.
Derek read the note, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip, and Basil felt a hot surge of want he tried desperately to ignore. Friends, he reminded himself. First, they would try for friends. First, he would see if he really had the ability to trust him and let him in, because he owed it to himself to go slow.
Okay, Derek wrote beneath Basil’s scribbled note. I have an idea, and you let me know if you like it. Some of my clients, ones that trust me a lot, let me do something free hand. I’ll draw it on you with my pen first, but I don’t stencil it. I just see where the work
takes me. Would you want something like that, or do you want me to draw it out first?
That, Basil thought. That’s what I want, what I need. He laid one hand over Derek’s wrist for a second, then signed, ‘Yes. Perfect,’ and, ‘please.’
Derek’s cheeks bloomed a soft pink, but he nodded and carefully put the notepad to the side of the desk. After a long moment he lifted his hands. ‘I’m learning ASL. Beginner’s class. I’m sorry I’m slow, but I’m trying.’
Basil ducked his head a little shyly and he nodded. ‘I’m happy. Jasmine,’ he used the sign name the twins had showed his sister, ‘it will mean a lot to her when she grows up.’ He mouthed along with his words, going slow, slower even when he saw Derek’s eyebrows dip into a frown of confusion. But he didn’t back down, he didn’t dumb it down. ‘I can help you.’
‘Help me,’ Derek repeated. Basil could tell from the way he moved his lips, he said the word aloud and he felt an inexplicable urge to lay his hand to Derek’s throat and feel the vibrations of his voice. His fingers tingled with the barely repressed urge. ‘Sign?’
Basil nodded. ‘Every day. We can meet, drink coffee, practice.’
Derek’s lips lifted into a grin that reached his eyes, making them stand out gorgeous and almost hypnotizing. ‘Thank you. I…’ His finger hovered in the air, pointing to himself like there was so much more he wanted to say but didn’t know how yet. Which was fine. It was okay. Some day he would have the words, and Basil was almost positive he’d be there when Derek could finally give them.
‘You are out of your damn mind,’ Amaranth said, though she was smiling at him. She had her legs up on the arm of the sofa, her head pillowed on a folded afghan, her signs a little sloppy from the half-gone bottle of wine at the floor near the edge of the table. ‘A tattoo. You?’