Derek followed behind, Basil could feel the thudding vibrations of his shoes on the stairs as they trudged to the top, and he led the way in. It didn’t smell as intensely floral up there—more like sun-soaked pine and old dust from boxes and boxes of archived hand-written orders. Basil didn’t look back at Derek as he turned the lights on, but when he turned, Derek was watching him again from the doorway.
‘Sit,’ Basil said, then pointed to the sofa.
Derek’s gaze roamed over the sink which had evidence of the old take-out containers of lasagne he brought the week before, and acouple of empty coffee mugs. He eventually crossed the room in three quick strides and sat, leaving enough room for Basil to join him without touching—but only just.
Basil found he didn’t want the room. He wanted to compromise every single thing he’d decided for himself about too-good looking hearing men who didn’t know his language well and threatened to sweep him off his feet. He stopped to remind himself that Derek was nothing like Chad. He was trying far more and far better in these short weeks with no promise of sex or even real friendship than Chad had done in the entire time they were together.
On the first date, Chad had asked Basil to say his name, and when he’d fucked it up, he laughed. At the time it had seemed good natured, but he knew the truth about him now. Never once had Derek asked Basil to voice anything, not even when their communication was a struggle and he was frustrated with his inability to understand what Basil was trying to say.
It meant something.
‘I had a blind date,’ Derek signed to him, pausing to see if the sign for blind and sign for date were the right ones. Basil waved him on, and Derek smiled. ‘My brother met him, thought he and I would be good together. We went to gelato.’
Basil bit down on his lip, struggling with whether or not to tell Derek the truth—that Amit had told him everything, he knew exactly what happened. He wanted to wait, to see where Derek was going with it, so he just nodded.
‘It was bad,’ Derek signed, laughing a little. ‘I left and went home, was angry at Sage for the bad date. Then he came to the shop later. The day you got your tattoo.’
Basil’s hand went to his arm, a reflexive habit he’d been engaging in lately, feeling the still-raised lines of the image even as the shading began to peel in huge, inky flakes every time he rubbed lotion over it. Derek’s eyes followed his motion, and for a second, he looked like he was lost in the sight of the flower.
After a second, he shook himself out of it. ‘He wanted to saysorry,’ Derek went on. ‘My brother thinks he and I would make a good couple, he thinks it’s time for me to start dating.’
Basil couldn’t ignore a sudden pang of possessive anger and jealousy at the thought of Derek moving on to anyone who wasn’t him. He hadn’t yet committed, expressed any real outward interest, and yet, he let himself feel it. ‘Do you want to date?’
Derek bit his lip as he considered the question. ‘Yes. I’m lonely, but it’s hard. I have PTSD,’ he signed the letters slowly, with only a slight tremble in his fingers. ‘The night at the bank, it happens sometimes. My dad…’ He stopped again, and Basil didn’t dare ask him to go on. He didn’t need to, his trauma was more than obvious. ‘I don’t want to be a burden.’ When he spelled the last word, he didn’t ask Basil for clarification.
‘You’re not,’ Basil told him quickly.
Derek shrugged. ‘I will never be normal. Never be fine. Always afraid, always a little broken.’ He hesitated, his hands fluttering a little in front of him. ‘My brother fell in love. He was engaged. Then his fiancé got sick and died. Rare disease, they didn’t know he had it, and then he was gone.’
Basil let out an involuntary rush of air, unable to stop himself from making a small noise in the back of his throat with it. It was unreal to think about how much Derek and his brother had suffered, and how long that suffering had continued through his life. ‘I’m sorry.’
Derek shook his head. ‘I’m afraid of that, too. Afraid I’ll fall in love and lose him.’
Basil didn’t really need to consider what he was going to say next. He never talked about Chad—occasionally with Amaranth but only when she pushed until he was forced to give in. But as he raised his hands, he felt the words come without that familiar resistance. ‘I went to University. A Deaf University, you know?’ Derek nodded. ‘It’s in DC, and I worked at a coffee shop by campus. A guy used to come in, he was an intern for a senator, and he liked me. I never dated a hearing person before, but he was nice, my friends told me it was agood idea.’ He paused to make sure Derek was following, and though Derek probably wasn’t getting all of it, by his face it was obvious he was getting enough. ‘We were together a long time. Two years. We shared an apartment. He told me to take speech therapy, he didn’t know much sign, wanted to voice and write. He would invite friends over and before I could read lips at all, they would mock me to my face because I couldn’t understand.’
“Fuck,” Derek’s lips said, an involuntary slip that Basil could read easily.
He huffed a laugh and nodded. ‘One day I could understand, and I knew. The whole time, it was like that. So, I left, and I promised I would never date a hearing person again.’ He watched in that moment a Derek’s face crumpled when he fully understood what Basil was saying, his emotions playing out before he was able to control it. And it was in that moment Basil knew without a doubt there was more than just friendly interest.
And he knew he was okay with it.
‘I understand,’ Derek finally replied, that look still on his face.
‘I know,’ Basil told him with a half-smile. ‘That’s why I let myself like you.’
Derek’s entire body twitched with surprise, his gaze flickering back and forth between Basil’s hands and face like maybe he’d read the signs all wrong. But Basil had gone slow, had spelled the words he knew Derek didn’t know yet, had mouthed them, taken his time because he wanted to be understood.
‘You like?’ Derek’s hands repeated.
Basil licked his lips, then took a step in close—not enough to encroach on their signing space, but enough he could just feel the heat of Derek’s body. ‘I like you,’ he repeated.
Derek’s entire face pinked, and he lifted both hands, curled them into the I love you sign, then circled them in front of each other. ‘Romance.’
It was probably one of those cheesy throw-away signs his teacher had given as a reward at the end of one of their classes. Itwas how all the hearing people he’d met knew swears and pick-up lines, but this felt different. He could picture Derek practicing the sign, clinging to it, hoping to use it one day.
Maybe that was an arrogant line of thought, but the way Derek was looking at him mirrored the way he was feeling inside. Because if the roles were reversed, he might have done the same thing. Basil’s bitterness toward Chad had eclipsed his growing feelings for Derek for a little while, but he was too far gone now to ignore it. The moment Derek had pressed his hand against his arm and marked his skin forever, he was lost.
Basil nodded, stepping in even closer now, making it impossible for them to talk. His hands raised, curling around Derek’s neck, watching his face for any signs that he didn’t want it. Derek’s lips parted and he felt a rush of air hit him. His breath was sweet from the ice cream, and still a little cold, and under his fingers he felt the slight vibration of what might have been a moan.
