He did, however, find himself in the shop a lot in the few weeks since the night he and Derek ended up in Amit’s bar, confronted by Jay. When he let himself think about it for longer than a moment—the idea that Jay had followed Derek into the bathroom to confront him without Basil there—he found himself overcome with a rage he wasn’t used to feeling. The situation had been handled, though a few days after the incident Basil found himself having to block Jay on his messenger after waking up to a novel of why the two of them should be together instead of him and Derek. It was the same drivel Jay vomited at the bar, and Basil’s feelings hadn’t changed on the matter.
‘He’s not like us,’ Jay had insisted, his hands tense and pointed.
‘I don’t even know what that means,’ Basil countered. ‘Just because he has tattoos…’
Jay scoffed, his eyes rolling. ‘I don’t mean the tattoos, though I noticed yours and I can’t believe you let someone do that to you.’
‘Him,’ Basil signed pointedly, his hand steady as he indicated Derek who was across the bar with Amit. ‘I let him do it to me.’
Jay’s cheeks pinked and he looked almost uncertain, which was what Basil was hoping for. ‘I don’t care. I can learn to live with it. But I won’t sit by and watch you waste more time on some hearing guy who will eventually just treat you like shit. I know about Chad.’
Basil felt rage boiling in him, his hands trembling now in an effort to keep from clocking the guy in the face. ‘You’re hearing.’
Jay flinched like he’d been slapped. ‘Not the way he is.’
‘Worse than he is,’ Basil told him, his face screwed up in a grimace. ‘You’re entitled and superficial and you refuse to acknowledge that you’re part of the problem. You’re more like my shitty ex than Derek will ever be, and I would rather take a thousand hours of speech therapy and never sign another word for the rest of my life than go on another date with you.’ Basil took a breath for courage, then leaned in close, cleared his throat, and dredged up ancient muscles he hadn’t used in years. “So fuck you,” he said, and watched Jay visibly step back at the sound of his voice. “Never text me again.”
He stalked off and went right back to Derek and made sure he spent the rest of the night reassuring Derek he was exactly where he wanted to be. Any doubts of what he wanted had been erased by Jay’s confrontation, and in spite of knowing it would be harder as their relationship progressed, he wasn’t afraid anymore.
He wouldn’t start speaking now, but he had meant what he said to Jay. Not that he’d ever be in that sort of position, but he would have chosen giving up sign over dating a person like Jay, and he wouldn’t have resented it for a second.
He opened his eyes after a moment, looking down at Derek’s face which was drawn and almost blank in his concentration. It took some getting used to, reading far more subtle facial expressions onDerek than Basil had grown accustomed to in his own community, but in a way, he liked it. It was like learning a private language, and when he managed to get something right, it felt overwhelmingly rewarding.
Like tonight, for example, their lesson before his next tattoo, there had been a tension in Derek most people might have missed, but he didn’t. There was also a quiet, private look that begged anyone who had seen it not to ask, and Basil hadn’t missed that either. So he simply gave Derek a soft, lingering kiss, and then handed over his arm to let Derek work. The profound gratitude in Derek’s eyes was enough to tell Basil he’d done the right thing. Eventually Derek would trust him to share, and that’s all that mattered.
It was more than an hour into the session when Basil noticed Sage—who was sitting in his periphery doing something on a woman’s ankle—sat up straight. It was often startling just how much he looked like Derek, but there were differences in the way his face rested. Now though, as Basil looked between both brothers, it was difficult to see them. They wore identical expressions of worry.
It took Basil a second to realize the interruption was from Derek’s phone. Sage had stood up, pointing at it, and Derek shook his head as he switched off his machine and reached for it. Basil couldn’t read their lips well enough, but he did catch, ‘Dad,’ from Sage, and he saw the way Derek’s cheeks pinked.
Basil wanted to stand up and demand that Derek let Sage take over. He knew what interacting with their father cost the man he was falling for, but it wasn’t his place. He simply looked back and forth, and felt his stomach drop when Derek finally reached for his phone and pressed it to his ear.
He shed his gloves as his lips formed the words, ‘Yeah, dad?’ As he moved to drop his gloves into the bin, Basil watched as all the color drained from his face. There was a sudden and subtle tremor to his fingers, and he sat back with a dull expression. Basil caught, ‘Yeah,’ and, ‘when,’ but that was it, though he knew whatever else he was saying had startled Sage.
Someone else had taken over the ankle-tattoo woman, and Sage had squeezed himself into Derek’s stall, touching his shoulder. The two of them stared at each other, like everything in the shop had faded away, and Basil felt a little like a voyeur as he stared at them.
After what felt like an hour, though couldn’t have been more than five minutes, Sage backed away and Derek set his phone down. There was a hollowness to his eyes as he glanced back up, like he was just remembering what he was doing, and who was sitting in his chair. Then he licked his lips and raised his fist. ‘Sorry.’
Basil leaned forward, reaching out to touch him, but felt his heart stutter when Derek pulled away and shook his head.
‘My dad,’ he signed, and then he faltered.
Swallowing thickly, Basil got his attention and focused hard. ‘Say it,’ he signed. ‘I’ll read your lips.’
Derek hesitated, like he wanted to tell him no, then he shrugged and said, “My dad died.”
Basil fell back against the seat in shock. His hands lifted, then dropped down, then lifted again, but he didn’t know what to tell him. What the hell could he say? When his parents had died, every word a person said or signed for months after felt trite and meaningless. The sympathies and the condolences only made him felt worse, and more alone, to the point his grief began to feel like rage, and he had to fight the urge to punch people every time they spoke.
After a beat, Derek picked up the machine again, but Basil moved to the end of the chair and gently laid a hand on his arm. ‘No,’ he signed. ‘Stop.’
Derek looked at him with desperate eyes. “Please,” he said aloud. “I need this.”
Basil bit his lip, but he knew Derek would deal in his own way. He looked around, but Sage was long gone, and finally he settled back and offered his arm again. Some of the tension drained out of Derek’s shoulders, and when he took Basil’s arm, he stroked his thumb near an unmarked patch of skin and gave him a look of such gratitude and thanks, it made Basil’s heart twist.
He felt the vibrations of the machine start up again, felt the sting of needles pressing into his skin, and he closed his eyes to let it happen. He expected Derek to take hours more, expected him to use Basil’s body to work through his grief. But suddenly, he was finished. Suddenly, the machine was off, and he was being wiped down and wrapped up, and then Derek stood and walked out of the room.
Basil blinked, startled by the abrupt ending, and he glanced around to see Sam wheeling closer to him, a concerned look on his face. ‘Sorry,’ Sam mouthed.
Basil shook his head, feeling a little irritated that no one else in the shop spoke any real sign, and it triggered a little bit of his hesitance at continuing something more serious with Derek. This. This was the position he didn’t want to be in.
