Listen To Me
Title: Listen To Me (sequel to Life After Deaf)
Fandom: Queer as Folk
Pairing/Characters: Brian/Justin
Author: knittedshadow
Rating: adult
Words: 1,900
Description: Listening is an attitude of the heart, the patience required to achieve it is often found through no words at all.
Challenge: None
Disclaimer: Cowlip just won't hand over the QAF cast to me however many times I offer them money. Or bongs. Also this is dedicated to all the luffly feedback-people who told me they wanted more dammit.
Sequel to Life After Deaf, this one will probably be a little confusing if you haven't read LAD already, so I'd clickety on the link and then come back to enjoy this one in all its glory.
Listen To Me
Listening is an attitude of the heart,
The patience required to achieve it
Is often found through no words at all.
There are many things that Justin hates about being deaf. He hates the term “breakdown of communication” though it’s something he’s rapidly becoming all too familiar with. He hates how helpless he is in a conversation where the second person doesn’t understand sign language. He hates how quickly he’s lost his clarity of speech, marvels at how fast it goes when he forgets how his mouth should move to make sounds he can't hear. He can lip-read sure, but what’s the point in understanding when he can’t respond?
He hates the loss of music in his life, mourns all those missed dancing opportunities, how can he keep the beat when he can’t hear the rhythm? He hates the pitying looks he gets if a stranger tries to speak to him and he has to signal that he can’t hear a thing. He misses laughter, there’s no satisfactory equivalent for the deaf. He misses overheard conversations, it's hard to eavesdrop subtly when he has to stare constantly at the person’s mouth to know what they’re saying. And he misses Brian’s voice, more than he can say.
-----
The two of them make their way out of the crowded airport, Brian’s arm slung round Justin’s shoulders and Justin’s arm wrapped round Brian’s waist. They head for the road and Brian hails them a cab, giving the driver Justin’s address. Comfortably seated in the back, Justin can’t resist planting a second soft kiss on Brian’s lips, beaming up at him, all earlier nerves forgotten in the simple pleasure of seeing him again. Brian smiles back and then smugly signs “How are you?”
“Fine” Justin replies, then grins. “Great.”
The conversation continues slowly, Brian’s hardly fluent though God knows he’s proud of the little he’s learnt, and in the end they are reduced to part sign language, part lip-reading and a whole lot of general mime.
Brian’s just re-enacting his flying experience when the cab stops at some lights and the driver decides to stick his nose in. Clearly presuming that Brian’s the one he needs to speak to, he swivels on his seat, peering over his shoulder at them. Justin makes out the words “Your friend there deaf?” before the speech becomes too rapid and he’s lost the thread.
Brian watches the driver talk for a few seconds, then when the man finally seems to stop to draw breath, Brian blinks at him blankly, points at his own ears faux-apologetically, then shrugging and, as if uninterrupted, he turns back to Justin and continues his story.
Justin tries to hold back his smirk as the red-faced driver turns back to look at the road. He himself has found that, on occasion, deafness can be extremely useful when wanting to ignore someone. However he is deaf, Brian isn’t.
When they finally reach Justin’s apartment block the driver makes an obvious show of holding up his fingers to signal the fare. Brian just rolls his eyes and chucks a few bills his way without comment.
This must be about the fourth time he’s visited him in New York but as Justin leads Brian up the stairwell he can’t help the flutter of old nerves returning. The words one handicap too many keep circling his head and he can’t help worrying that with the dreaded “breakdown of communication” maybe they’ll find they have nothing left to say to each other anyway.
They reach the top step and Justin starts down the hallway. He’s a few steps from his front door when he realizes Brian hasn’t followed him. Turning around anxiously, he’s met with the sight of Brian, several paces behind, unashamedly checking out his ass. He grins and put his key in the lock. He shouldn’t have worried, like Brian had said when first heard about his hearing loss, they were never really ones for conversation anyway.
-----
Justin shuts the door behind them and leans his back against it, waiting. He doesn’t have to wait for long. Brian had been admiring a half-finished painting on the table but, evidently hearing the sound of the door close, he turns round to face Justin. Meeting his gaze with a smile he advances on him, tipping his head back as their lips meet in a kiss.
And as Justin feels the wood of the door pressing into his back and Brian’s mouth covering his own, he decides perhaps it’s lucky their relationship doesn’t revolve around conversation. For one thing, sign language is rather hard to achieve when their hands are occupied feverishly tugging off clothes and smoothing over bare skin.
And when Brian spins him round so he can brace himself against the front door, he can’t help but wonder what words could possibly compare to this. The familiar burn as Brian pushes inside him. The touch of hot breath across his neck. The straining tense of muscles. The final sweet release. What good could mere words be after that?
When they finally collapse, panting in a tangled heap on the floor, Brian only just has the energy left to repeat the first words he signed to Justin, raised finger, moved to chin, pointed, before he collapses again with a satisfied smirk. Missed you.
-----
They argue on the third day of Brian’s visit. Justin wakes up in one of those inexplicable foul moods, the ones his mother used to call “getting out of the wrong side of bed” and his father called “sulkiness”. But whatever it was, Justin thought he’d grown out of it long ago. Perhaps bad moods were his heightened sense in return for the loss of his hearing. If so, then Justin thought it was an unfair trade and it only served to irritate him further.
It started when he discovered someone had used all the hot water, and continued when he found the culprit dancing in his kitchen, coffee in one hand, Kinnetik papers in the other. Eyes flicking to Brian’s small portable radio sitting on the table and Justin can see it’s on.
It sets Justin’s teeth on edge to think of Brian strolling into his home and taking it upon himself to play music that he couldn’t hear. Irritably he signs to Brian to “Turn that shit off”. Brian raises his eyebrows over his coffee mug then shrugs and flicks the switch, putting down both the mug and his work before signing “What’s up your ass?” He’s getting more and more eloquent as each day goes by but Justin is in no mood to appreciate it and he just shrugs and sits down to work on one of his painting.
The bad mood follows him throughout the morning. They hardly talk, Justin morosely sketching and Brian using the time to make some phone calls, Oblivious, or perhaps not so, to Justin’s sulk he wanders around the apartment laughing and joking into his cell. Justin glares at him from above his easel, knowing he’s being unreasonable and only irritating himself further with the knowledge.
The tension eventually comes to a head over lunch. Brian orders pizza and as they pick at it he brings up the subject of Pittsburgh. He talks about Mikey for a bit, then remembers that Debbie had sent her love and wanted to know when Justin would be back for a visit.
Justin only shrugs again then signs, “I’ve had enough of being their freak-show.”
Brian rolls his eyes then puts down his slice of pizza, “Stop being such a queen.”
Justin flushes red, “I’m tired of their fucking pity Brian.”
Brian stares at him, his hands flashing as he replies, “They just wanna say hi, you ungrateful little shit.”
“Ungrateful?” Justin signs bitterly. “What the fuck have I got to be grateful for?”
Brian stands up angrily. He starts in sign language but switches unconsciously to speech when his hands can’t keep up. Justin follows the first few seconds but then Brian’s going too fast and Justin’s breathing rapidly and clenching his fists because Brian knows he can’t lip-read that quickly, words jumbling into one another until it’s just one confusing stream of unreadable nonsense in the endless, stifling silence going on and on and on.
Justin opens his mouth and screams. At least he thinks he does. Brian certainly steps back, lips frozen halfway through a word. But Justin can’t stop now he’s started, mouth opening wider as Brian backs off, his throat straining with the effort to produce noise he can’t hear. For a moment Brian looks like he’s about to reach forward and shake him but he doesn’t and Justin carries on, squeezing his eyes shut, almost doubled over as he screams out his anger.
When he eventually has to stop to draw ragged, choking breaths, he opens his eyes and realizes Brian has gone.
-----
Justin doesn’t know how long Brian’s been standing outside his door. Last month he’d installed what was lovingly referred to as the ‘Deaf Doorbell’, a sensor which emitted a bright red light whenever anyone pressed the button outside. But the bright red light is rather lost on Justin when he spends most of the afternoon lying face down on his bed.
He feels a bit like a teenager again, banished to his bedroom after a temper tantrum. But after a while his anger dissolves and he starts to feel ashamed of his outburst.
It’s about four in the afternoon when he finally pulls himself together and gets off the bed. He’s on his way to the kitchen to fetch some much-needed caffeine when he spots the light. He knows who’s behind the door before he opens it, he never gets visitors in New York.
Brian stalks in without comment. He doesn’t apologize but then again, neither does Justin. They stand awkwardly apart in his kitchen, coffee mugs and endless different paths lying between them. In the end it’s Brian who breaks the proverbial silence, he points at the flashing light and gestures, “What the fuck is that?”
“My deaf doorbell,” Justin signs back, his face blank. Brian stares at him for a moment then shakes his head in amazement. Justin shrugs.
“I have a deaf alarm clock too, and a deaf smoke alarm. My Mom sent me a deaf traffic detector. It…” he pauses. “It detects traffic, so I can tell if a car’s coming when I cross the road.”
“No shit” Brian replies and then, with a sigh, he moves forward so he can kiss Justin gently on the forehead. “They’ve thought of everything.”
They stand still, breathing each other in, letting the last argument, like all the ones before it, fade away. Then Brian moves again, this time to kiss Justin on the mouth. When the kiss finally ends, Justin can feel Brian tugging him away from the wall into the space between the table and the door. He looks up at him confused and Brian signs “Dance with me?”
Justin bites his lip, lifting his hands up in the gap between them to say, “I can’t dance… I won’t hear the song.”
But Brian only smiles and leans gently back from him, “Haven’t we always danced to our own music?” And for the first time that day Justin smiles, relaxing into the embrace as he rests his head in the crook of Brian’s neck. And in the silent, cluttered kitchen, wrapped in each other’s arms, they dance.
Fandom: Queer as Folk
Pairing/Characters: Brian/Justin
Author: knittedshadow
Rating: adult
Words: 1,900
Description: Listening is an attitude of the heart, the patience required to achieve it is often found through no words at all.
Challenge: None
Disclaimer: Cowlip just won't hand over the QAF cast to me however many times I offer them money. Or bongs. Also this is dedicated to all the luffly feedback-people who told me they wanted more dammit.
Sequel to Life After Deaf, this one will probably be a little confusing if you haven't read LAD already, so I'd clickety on the link and then come back to enjoy this one in all its glory.
Listen To Me
Listening is an attitude of the heart,
The patience required to achieve it
Is often found through no words at all.
There are many things that Justin hates about being deaf. He hates the term “breakdown of communication” though it’s something he’s rapidly becoming all too familiar with. He hates how helpless he is in a conversation where the second person doesn’t understand sign language. He hates how quickly he’s lost his clarity of speech, marvels at how fast it goes when he forgets how his mouth should move to make sounds he can't hear. He can lip-read sure, but what’s the point in understanding when he can’t respond?
He hates the loss of music in his life, mourns all those missed dancing opportunities, how can he keep the beat when he can’t hear the rhythm? He hates the pitying looks he gets if a stranger tries to speak to him and he has to signal that he can’t hear a thing. He misses laughter, there’s no satisfactory equivalent for the deaf. He misses overheard conversations, it's hard to eavesdrop subtly when he has to stare constantly at the person’s mouth to know what they’re saying. And he misses Brian’s voice, more than he can say.
-----
The two of them make their way out of the crowded airport, Brian’s arm slung round Justin’s shoulders and Justin’s arm wrapped round Brian’s waist. They head for the road and Brian hails them a cab, giving the driver Justin’s address. Comfortably seated in the back, Justin can’t resist planting a second soft kiss on Brian’s lips, beaming up at him, all earlier nerves forgotten in the simple pleasure of seeing him again. Brian smiles back and then smugly signs “How are you?”
“Fine” Justin replies, then grins. “Great.”
The conversation continues slowly, Brian’s hardly fluent though God knows he’s proud of the little he’s learnt, and in the end they are reduced to part sign language, part lip-reading and a whole lot of general mime.
Brian’s just re-enacting his flying experience when the cab stops at some lights and the driver decides to stick his nose in. Clearly presuming that Brian’s the one he needs to speak to, he swivels on his seat, peering over his shoulder at them. Justin makes out the words “Your friend there deaf?” before the speech becomes too rapid and he’s lost the thread.
Brian watches the driver talk for a few seconds, then when the man finally seems to stop to draw breath, Brian blinks at him blankly, points at his own ears faux-apologetically, then shrugging and, as if uninterrupted, he turns back to Justin and continues his story.
Justin tries to hold back his smirk as the red-faced driver turns back to look at the road. He himself has found that, on occasion, deafness can be extremely useful when wanting to ignore someone. However he is deaf, Brian isn’t.
When they finally reach Justin’s apartment block the driver makes an obvious show of holding up his fingers to signal the fare. Brian just rolls his eyes and chucks a few bills his way without comment.
This must be about the fourth time he’s visited him in New York but as Justin leads Brian up the stairwell he can’t help the flutter of old nerves returning. The words one handicap too many keep circling his head and he can’t help worrying that with the dreaded “breakdown of communication” maybe they’ll find they have nothing left to say to each other anyway.
They reach the top step and Justin starts down the hallway. He’s a few steps from his front door when he realizes Brian hasn’t followed him. Turning around anxiously, he’s met with the sight of Brian, several paces behind, unashamedly checking out his ass. He grins and put his key in the lock. He shouldn’t have worried, like Brian had said when first heard about his hearing loss, they were never really ones for conversation anyway.
-----
Justin shuts the door behind them and leans his back against it, waiting. He doesn’t have to wait for long. Brian had been admiring a half-finished painting on the table but, evidently hearing the sound of the door close, he turns round to face Justin. Meeting his gaze with a smile he advances on him, tipping his head back as their lips meet in a kiss.
And as Justin feels the wood of the door pressing into his back and Brian’s mouth covering his own, he decides perhaps it’s lucky their relationship doesn’t revolve around conversation. For one thing, sign language is rather hard to achieve when their hands are occupied feverishly tugging off clothes and smoothing over bare skin.
And when Brian spins him round so he can brace himself against the front door, he can’t help but wonder what words could possibly compare to this. The familiar burn as Brian pushes inside him. The touch of hot breath across his neck. The straining tense of muscles. The final sweet release. What good could mere words be after that?
When they finally collapse, panting in a tangled heap on the floor, Brian only just has the energy left to repeat the first words he signed to Justin, raised finger, moved to chin, pointed, before he collapses again with a satisfied smirk. Missed you.
-----
They argue on the third day of Brian’s visit. Justin wakes up in one of those inexplicable foul moods, the ones his mother used to call “getting out of the wrong side of bed” and his father called “sulkiness”. But whatever it was, Justin thought he’d grown out of it long ago. Perhaps bad moods were his heightened sense in return for the loss of his hearing. If so, then Justin thought it was an unfair trade and it only served to irritate him further.
It started when he discovered someone had used all the hot water, and continued when he found the culprit dancing in his kitchen, coffee in one hand, Kinnetik papers in the other. Eyes flicking to Brian’s small portable radio sitting on the table and Justin can see it’s on.
It sets Justin’s teeth on edge to think of Brian strolling into his home and taking it upon himself to play music that he couldn’t hear. Irritably he signs to Brian to “Turn that shit off”. Brian raises his eyebrows over his coffee mug then shrugs and flicks the switch, putting down both the mug and his work before signing “What’s up your ass?” He’s getting more and more eloquent as each day goes by but Justin is in no mood to appreciate it and he just shrugs and sits down to work on one of his painting.
The bad mood follows him throughout the morning. They hardly talk, Justin morosely sketching and Brian using the time to make some phone calls, Oblivious, or perhaps not so, to Justin’s sulk he wanders around the apartment laughing and joking into his cell. Justin glares at him from above his easel, knowing he’s being unreasonable and only irritating himself further with the knowledge.
The tension eventually comes to a head over lunch. Brian orders pizza and as they pick at it he brings up the subject of Pittsburgh. He talks about Mikey for a bit, then remembers that Debbie had sent her love and wanted to know when Justin would be back for a visit.
Justin only shrugs again then signs, “I’ve had enough of being their freak-show.”
Brian rolls his eyes then puts down his slice of pizza, “Stop being such a queen.”
Justin flushes red, “I’m tired of their fucking pity Brian.”
Brian stares at him, his hands flashing as he replies, “They just wanna say hi, you ungrateful little shit.”
“Ungrateful?” Justin signs bitterly. “What the fuck have I got to be grateful for?”
Brian stands up angrily. He starts in sign language but switches unconsciously to speech when his hands can’t keep up. Justin follows the first few seconds but then Brian’s going too fast and Justin’s breathing rapidly and clenching his fists because Brian knows he can’t lip-read that quickly, words jumbling into one another until it’s just one confusing stream of unreadable nonsense in the endless, stifling silence going on and on and on.
Justin opens his mouth and screams. At least he thinks he does. Brian certainly steps back, lips frozen halfway through a word. But Justin can’t stop now he’s started, mouth opening wider as Brian backs off, his throat straining with the effort to produce noise he can’t hear. For a moment Brian looks like he’s about to reach forward and shake him but he doesn’t and Justin carries on, squeezing his eyes shut, almost doubled over as he screams out his anger.
When he eventually has to stop to draw ragged, choking breaths, he opens his eyes and realizes Brian has gone.
-----
Justin doesn’t know how long Brian’s been standing outside his door. Last month he’d installed what was lovingly referred to as the ‘Deaf Doorbell’, a sensor which emitted a bright red light whenever anyone pressed the button outside. But the bright red light is rather lost on Justin when he spends most of the afternoon lying face down on his bed.
He feels a bit like a teenager again, banished to his bedroom after a temper tantrum. But after a while his anger dissolves and he starts to feel ashamed of his outburst.
It’s about four in the afternoon when he finally pulls himself together and gets off the bed. He’s on his way to the kitchen to fetch some much-needed caffeine when he spots the light. He knows who’s behind the door before he opens it, he never gets visitors in New York.
Brian stalks in without comment. He doesn’t apologize but then again, neither does Justin. They stand awkwardly apart in his kitchen, coffee mugs and endless different paths lying between them. In the end it’s Brian who breaks the proverbial silence, he points at the flashing light and gestures, “What the fuck is that?”
“My deaf doorbell,” Justin signs back, his face blank. Brian stares at him for a moment then shakes his head in amazement. Justin shrugs.
“I have a deaf alarm clock too, and a deaf smoke alarm. My Mom sent me a deaf traffic detector. It…” he pauses. “It detects traffic, so I can tell if a car’s coming when I cross the road.”
“No shit” Brian replies and then, with a sigh, he moves forward so he can kiss Justin gently on the forehead. “They’ve thought of everything.”
They stand still, breathing each other in, letting the last argument, like all the ones before it, fade away. Then Brian moves again, this time to kiss Justin on the mouth. When the kiss finally ends, Justin can feel Brian tugging him away from the wall into the space between the table and the door. He looks up at him confused and Brian signs “Dance with me?”
Justin bites his lip, lifting his hands up in the gap between them to say, “I can’t dance… I won’t hear the song.”
But Brian only smiles and leans gently back from him, “Haven’t we always danced to our own music?” And for the first time that day Justin smiles, relaxing into the embrace as he rests his head in the crook of Brian’s neck. And in the silent, cluttered kitchen, wrapped in each other’s arms, they dance.