love makes not a sound
alexander/kevin
angst
nc17
4497 words
dream, daydream
Touch the forehead with the right index finger and move it upward and forward while bending and unbending the index finger
There are nights when Kevin dreams of sounds, rainfall and snow sliding off rooftops in the middle of the night, of freeway cars and piano music drifting slow through empty rooms. Behind that all, the constant hum of conversations long over somehow making their way back here. It feels as if this is some forgotten channel he’s tuning in to.
Kevin dreams and dreams and sometimes, on good days he’ll dream of Xander standing in this unknown open space where it’s always summer, just sunshine and blue skies stretching forever overhead, long grass that comes up to their knees. This Xander will always have a smile ready and he’ll say “Hey, where have you been?” with that barest hint of a Hong Kong lilt, the one with accents from the world over all askew. Where have you been, Kevin might want to ask back but the words won’t come. Either that or he’s already said it out loud but he can’t-
(“I’ve missed you, y’know. So much.”)
-just can’t hear himself.
(“Don’t you miss me?”)
Xander will turn to leave then, disappointed, and morning will come in his place. City-smog filtered light creeping through a slit in the curtains from last night when Kevin hadn’t closed them properly. It’s the middle of another week.
There’s a sign language class to show up for at around noon and maybe later, his mother might come by to take him out to an inconspicuous little cafe with cheap lunch sets. How are you doing? she’ll write on the napkin and Kevin will shrug in response, mumble something about things being just the same. No change. After that he’ll go back home around 3pm to clean the house a little, put chipped plates back in their rightful places. Perhaps he’ll pay his electricity bill, call-…no. Not call, just text Xander and pray he sees it.
This is how Wednesday and every other day in the week passes.
The world still turns with every minute that ticks by ever so quietly these days and Kevin dreams through them all, dreams and grasps, still trying his hardest to come to terms with the fact that he might never hear Xander’s voice again.
remember, memory, recall, recollect
Curl all fingers but thumb towards the palm until they are barely touching and place thumb upright, forming the manual alphabet for A. Form As with both hands. Place the thumb of the right A-hand on the forehead then bring it downwards to place on top of the left A-hand thumb.
Kevin misses the simple things the most, he supposes. Coffee makers humming metallic one note melodies, sneakers scuffing themselves raw on pavements. The sound of Xander’s laugh. He writes this to Xander who signs evasive things back, slow and clumsy because things like this take a long time to learn.
I’m still here. No change- he tries to say with his hands. They flutter uncertainly over whatever should come next and Kevin shakes his head, touching his lips before going to rest his fingers on the base of Xander’s throat. His Adam’s apple bobs and there are unfinished words left hanging midair. Once upon a time, Xander would have cuffed Kevin on the shoulder and called him an idiot for being such a sap but those days are long gone only to be replaced with this.
“Talk to me, Xander,” Kevin says the best he can. The lisp he’s been trying to keep down for so long has started showing up on the tail ends of his words again but it’s okay, Kevin can’t hear it. “Don’t sign. Just talk to me.”
So Xander talks. He’s not the kind to deny Kevin anything anyway. Kevin can feel the sounds humming under his touch and from that point on, it’ll probably be closest thing he’ll ever get to Xander’s voice.
change, adjust, adapt, alter
Place the thumb tips of both closed hands into the crook of the bend index fingers. Hold the palms facing with the left palm facing the chest and the right palm facing out; then reverse positions so that the right palm faces in. A-hands can be used.
Car rides have changed. Xander now drives with both hands on the wheel and Kevin rides shotgun, his fingers always tapping an uneasy rhythm on the upholstery, still finding himself reaching for the radio dial some days when it feels a little easier to forget. It’s hard to break habits like these but Kevin’s sure it’ll come to him with time. Don’t people always learn to live without certain things when they simply can’t have them? Maybe he’s just missed the memo on how hard it actually is.
Xander can’t sign when he’s driving but that doesn’t mean Kevin can’t talk to him, so he braves through one-man conversations, asking things he’ll only ever know delayed answers to. How was your day? Where did you go before this? What do you want for lunch later?
Do you ever think of the others?
The car stops for a red light and Kevin is looking out the window when Xander taps him lightly on the shoulder. There’s 25 seconds to go before the light turns back to green. Always, he signs fast, fingers tripping over the proper movements. Always, always thinking of them. An impatient honk from the SUV behind them turns Xander’s eyes back to the road and the car jerks forward, but not before Kevin can reach over and squeeze Xander’s shoulder tight.
“Me too.”
Xander won’t mention it to Kevin and Kevin won’t say anything about already knowing but on days like this, Xander takes the route with the most traffic light stops to wherever they’re going, if only to have a little more time.
disconnect, detach, release
Interlock the index fingers and thumbs of both hands with all other fingers extended. Pull them apart.
Kevin hasn’t seen Kibum in three months. Sometimes, there’ll be wordy texts from him, detailing his morning in Japan or a lazy Saturday in the street-cafes of Vietnam but those times get fewer and further in between. Hyungjun doesn’t apologize for taking Kibum away but then again, no one expects him to. Their little company has clawed its way up the ranks and Kevin lets them leave with a pang in his heart, tracks their progress around the world through news reports in the papers.
We’re not cutting ties, Kibum had written to him the last time they’d met face to face. His words had looked cramped on the restaurant napkin. I’ll always come back. You’ll always have me.
I know.
Then don’t look so sad.
Kevin had smiled for him then and its been five months ever since.
travel, journey, trip
Form the manual letter for V by imitating the peace sign. Leave the pointer and middle finger pointing upwards, curl the ring and pinkie towards the palm and place the thumb over the latter two. With the right palm facing down, imitate traveling along a winding road with right curved V-fingers.
California, Kevin scrawls to Xander one afternoon when the sky is dark with impending clouds. There’s the smell of summer rain on the wind, the windows of Xander’s apartment left wide open to let in what’s left of the light. Come home with me. He won’t say it to anyone but Kevin doesn’t know what he’s doing here anymore.
There’s nothing left for him in Seoul. It’s too hot to go out on most days and Kevin is sure he has already worn footprints into the floorboard of his house from all the aimless wandering from room to hall to kitchen back to room. He’s taken to staying over at Xander’s place lately, curled up on the sofa at the foot of Xander’s bed. Time passes a little faster there with milk tea making sessions and paragraphs of conversations on recycled notebook paper.
Xander has gotten up to turn the lamps on and a warm glow is falling across the page as he moves around the room. California, Kevin traces over and over again until Xander is stretched out by his side again, gently taking the pencil from his hand. Kevin turns the notebook towards him. California is underlined.
When?
Whenever you want. Tomorrow. Next week. We’ll go there for winter.
& come back?
There is a pause and Kevin makes no move to take the pencil from Xander. California has sun and surf, beaches, quiet places where he can pretend things are still the same. It’s starting to drizzle outside so Xander gets up again to shut the windows, leaving Kevin to toy with the pencil he’s left behind.
What does Seoul have that California can’t offer? Horrendous traffic jams and bad air, tabloid reporters hanging outside the apartment building trying to score one last interview. Empty houses boarded up for sale.
Xander comes back to find his sentence underlined. Okay, Kevin had written next to it.
Okay, because Seoul has Xander and that’s reason enough.
afraid, frightened, scared, terrified
Bring fingertips to thumb, forming the symbol for and. Move both and-hands simultaneously across the chest from the sides in opposite directions. During the movement, change the hand positions to open hands.
Kiseop won’t talk to any of them, won’t see anyone. Kevin doesn’t even know where he is anymore and he can tell that Xander is getting tired of trying to find out. Sometimes, he sees Xander on the phone, the cord wrapped around his fingers as he speaks rapid-fire into the receiver and he imagines that it’s Kiseop on the line.
“Where are you?” Xander might ask. “Why don’t you come back? Why act like we are the ones that have died?”
There might be a dry sob on the other end and Kiseop ends the call by hanging up again, leaving Xander to stare confusedly at the phone leaking dial tones in his hand. We aren’t dead but we could very well be, Kiseop says flatly in Kevin’s head before he slams the receiver down.
“He’ll come back,” Kevin tries telling Xander, when it feels like they’re the only two left. It’s more or less like that these days. “Just wait, he’ll pop out of nowhere and ask you for a coin so he can do that nose-trick again.”
But Kiseop doesn’t come back.
California
Touch the right ear with the right index finger, or grasp the right earlobe between the right index finger and thumb. Form the manual letter y by outstretching the thumb and pinkie finger, keeping the rest of the fingers curled towards the palm. Now shake the right y-hand as it moves down from your ear and forward.
There are times when Kevin thinks he doesn’t want to do this anymore, can’t and won’t. Wouldn’t it just-, he finds himself thinking, when the city is moving fast and unreachable from eighteenth floor heights -be so easy. Even though he might not realize just how much he’s doing, Xander doesn’t let Kevin get any further than that. He’ll steer Kevin away from the window and sit by him on the couch until the apartment is lit up from the outside in by skyscraper lights, Kevin curled up in his hold until it feels like it’s okay to say something.
“I want to hear again,” Kevin says in a voice barely above a whisper. “I want it so badly that it hurts.”
I know, Xander spells into Kevin’s palm. None of them feel like getting up to turn the lights on just yet, never mind the fact that Xander keeps misspelling things and it takes twice as long to get an answer out of him. I want it too. The shadows grow longer with every syllable, the spaces between them filling up with words and limbs that have grown far too comfortable around each other.
By the time nighttime rolls around, Kevin is stretched out on the carpet next to Xander, the couch too small for two at times like this.
“You know what I miss a lot?” Xander’s fingers are intertwined with Kevin’s and he untangles them just long enough to draw a lazy question mark on Kevin’s arm.
What?
“Talking in the dark.” He settles in closer towards Xander, their noses almost touching.
We’re still doing it.
“But it’s not the same and you know it.”
Better than nothing.
Kevin sighs and Xander’s hand switches places to be on top of his, the both of them just lying like that for a while.
“I know, I know. It’s just…you can’t help but still want it, y’know?”
Xander is watching him with sad eyes, as if to say yeah, I know all too well. Kevin sighs again and turns his face away, looking at the ceiling instead. The lights of passing cars float across it in slow succession.
“Hey, Xander,” he says after awhile and it’s soft enough to sound like a secret. Twenty seven cars should have passed by now. “I love you.” Twenty eight. Xander’s face drifts into view and Kevin is mildly aware of Xander’s weight bearing down on him, Xander holding himself up on his arms so he can lean downwards and kiss him.
“I love you too,” he says but Kevin can’t hear him.
want, covet, desire
With palms facing up, move both open curved hands toward self a few times.
Kevin can’t hear this either but he can feel Xander mouthing his name into his skin, pressing the word into the arch of Kevin’s neck and just above his heart. Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. Xander says it like a prayer of the devoted and from tonight, love is a religion, salvation. Kevin hasn’t seen anyone sin so beautifully before.
It had begun like this: Xander working one hand under Kevin’s shirt to lay one palm against his chest. “Don’t move, let me… for a while, a little while,” Xander finds himself mumbling, the words out of his mouth before he can even remember. Kevin shifts under his touch but doesn’t draw away, something about the way Xander is looking down at him making him lie very still. It makes Xander feel a little less guilty about forgetting.
“Are we doing this?” Kevin asks. His eyes are closed, as if seeing Xander’s face might just change the course of things.
Can we? Xander presses the letters into Kevin’s palm slowly and Kevin’s fingers close over Xander’s when he’s done.
He still has his eyes shut when he slips his shirt off over his head, drawing Xander down close to him so that light cotton meets bare skin, Xander’s breath hitching in his chest. Yes. The answer has always been yes, never mind the fact that neither had ever dared asked the question.
Kevin lets Xander take charge because that’s the way its always been, somehow. He lifts his hips when Xander tugs at his jeans and briefs, taking them off with shaking fingers and spreading Kevin just wide enough. This isn’t the way it should be but even with all the imperfections, Xander is convinced this is the most amazing side of Kevin he’s seen.
He traces the ridge of one collarbone and even that one small touch makes Kevin shudder, his eyes open now. It’s too late for cars on the road. No more lights on the ceiling, no way to count the time except in finger lengths and ghosting touches.
“I’ve gone and damned us both to hell, haven’t I?”
Xander kisses the inside of Kevin’s thigh before struggling out of his own shirt. Don’t distract me. By the time Xander straddles Kevin’s hips, Kevin has forgotten the question and Xander, his answer.
They fuck in the dark of Xander’s apartment. Kevin is pressed naked to the floor and keening when Xander slips deep inside him, taking him as slow as Kevin will allow.
“Please,” Kevin whispers the first time around, as if Xander has more to give. “Please, Xander, please just-”. They aren’t made for this and the pieces don’t fit too well but somehow they make do. Kevin holds onto Xander by the shoulders, makes desperate sounds at the back of his throat when Xander thrusts unchecked into him.
Later, Xander will stand in the stark light of his bathroom and shiver when Kevin traces the half moon indents he had left on Xander’s back from when he had come hard, clinging to Xander with the kind of desperation that comes with knowing this is the start of something wonderfully wrong.
“I’m sorry,” he says and circles a bruise with his thumb. Xander wraps the both of them in the softest towels he can find and signs no, don’t be.
grief, mourn
Bring the palm sides of both A-hands together in front of the heart and rotate back and forth, as though crushing something between the hands.
Somewhere over the hill, there are year-old graves and falling leaves. The air is still dry in late summer and Kevin thinks the flowers they have will wilt before the day is over but how does that saying go again? That it’s the thought that counts? Someone had come here before them, leaving behind shoe prints in the grass and baby’s breath already dropping violet heads in the sunlight, flowers rustling paperlike when Xander shifts them a little to make space. They have sunflowers with them today.
“Hey,” Kevin says in a perfectly conversational tone and arranges the stalks to face sunwards. “Hey, I’m missing you guys.” There’s a bit of moss growing along the side of one gravestone and he picks at it with a blade of grass, action almost mindless as he talks. Xander is kneeling by where Dongho is buried a little way off, head bowed. “It’s getting colder lately, if you haven’t already noticed.” A pause. “We might be going back to the States for Christmas.”
The grass blade is flicked away and Kevin crouches on the ground, hugging his knees to his chest. “Isn’t that something?” he asks softly. Somewhere in the tall grass, cicadas are stirring, noisy as they wake. “I don’t want to come back but I’m not too sure. Maybe we won’t,” he adds after a while but isn’t sure how much he means it. Xander is already walking over towards him with streaks of fresh tears down his cheeks and dirt on the knees of his pants. There are too many ghosts to leave behind here.
hope, anticipate, expect
Touch the forehead with the right index finger, then bring both flat hands before the chest or head with palms facing. Bend and unbend them simultaneously a few times.
They pool their money and come up with just enough for a cramped little studio apartment that has most of its windows looking out to the sea. California is kind to them, generous with sunlight and lazy days abundant. Kevin doesn’t dream so much these days and Xander is more relaxed than he usually is, working only when he feels like walking out to the internet café three streets away.
Seoul is more than half a world away from here and Kevin won’t have it any other way. He never wants to leave California.
“I haven’t been this happy in a long time,” Kevin tells Xander on a daily basis. They pass Saturday mornings reading the newspaper in the sun, sharing pages and swapping over when Xander is done with his Sudoku, Kevin satisfied with his fill of local news.
“Me too,” Xander says in return and bites back the question about when they’re booking their return flight back home. Winter has left Seoul a long time ago but the more time they spend here, the more the seasons seem to merge with one another. The nights had started off cool but now, Kevin has taken to stripping their bed and laying the sheets on the floor to sleep on, declaring that mattresses too hot for this weather.
California breathes life into Kevin and he speaks so much more here, Xander catching Kevin humming bars of out-dated pop songs under his breath.
Sometime in April, Xander decides that Seoul can have all the winters it wants, as long as California can give him this Kevin back.
promise
Touch the lips with the right index finger; then move the right flat hand down and slap it against the thumb and index-finger side of the closed left hand.
It’s a Monday morning with skies clear enough to dream about. Kevin has spent the better part of the morning sitting by the window seat, reading a book on his lap with one hand curled around a warm cup of coffee. He’s drifting in and out of page 177 when Xander nudges him.
there’s a centre about an hour from here. they teach lip-reading.
Kevin exchanges his coffee for Xander’s pen and paper almost hesitantly. Xander hovers next to him as he waits, sipping at the cooling coffee that tastes a little too sweet. There had been classes in Seoul of course but Kevin hadn’t been sure how much he wanted to keep staying, learning to read a language he just might not use.
it’s an hour away.
The hour is underlined and Xander shrugs when he sees it, setting the coffee on the floor so he can climb onto the window seat with Kevin. Squeezing into tight spaces together comes a little too easily these days.
it’s not like we have anything else to do.
winter’s almost over in Seoul
so?
Kevin looks up at Xander smiling at him in the sun, hair streaked with sunlight. “We’re staying?” he says softly. “We’re staying?”
for as long as you want.
Kevin pulls Xander off the seat with him so he can hug him, face buried in the crook of Xander’s shoulder. “Thank you,” Kevin keeps saying, Xander holding him close. Someone has accidentally kicked over the cup of coffee and by the time they’ve untangled themselves, there’s bittersweet footprints all over the floor.
find, discover
Hold the right open hand in front with the palm facing down. Bring the index finger and thumb together as if the hand is raised.
It starts with one word out of ten, two out of ten, now three. Kevin will sit Xander in front of him and make him recite passages upon passages of the most inane things (global warming: why we’re living in a melting society) until he can memorize how each sound looks and then restart all over again. It takes time but Kevin can catch more than just the tail end of Xander’s sentences these days.
“Where-…eat-…night?”
“Pass that please.”
“Pick-…later-…hour.”
Lip reading is nothing like hearing actual conversations but Kevin remembers enough of how Xander's voice sounds like to pretend that it's close enough. He revels in the simplest of sentences these days and Xander humors him the best he can. Conversations at the breakfast table get longer by the day, Kevin saying nothing but the constant smile on face betraying everything about how they seem to be buying less notepads and pens on their weekly shopping excursions.
Xander is on the phone one day when Kevin passes by him, lingering about curiously until Xander mouths “It’s my mom” to him. No hesitation. No semi-awkward fumbling for papers and pens before remembering they don’t need those much anymore. Not even the split second pause that comes with every reconsideration. Just…speaking, like how they used to do.
Kevin doesn’t know why he has tears in his eyes or why he’s even smiling this wide but Xander is already grinning back at him, telling his mother he’ll have to call back home some other time.
quiet, calm, still, silent
Touch the lips with the right index finger and move both flat hands down and to the sides with palm facing down.
Kevin had read somewhere once that Eskimos have over a hundred words for different types of snow. First falling snow, snow beaten from clothes, snow floating on water. Snow on the boughs of trees. If that’s the case, Kevin thinks, then there must be over a hundred words for different types of silences too.
Xander has the TV on in the living room and Kevin keeps getting distracted by the shift of colours across his page as he reads, reds and blues and greens shading the words for split seconds. So this is silence when the TV is on perpetual mute.
Later on there will be other silences to classify. Silence in the middle of a conversation, silence when walking down the street on a Friday night, when Xander puts on music to dance to on weekends and Kevin can feel the bass line through the soles of his bare feet as Xander pulls him up, pressing the counts into his side. One two sidestep three four turn repeat.
There’s silence on the Fourth of July as well, the night passing in a flurry of lights without sounds, Xander pressed up close to him on the roof of their apartment as they watch the fireworks explode overhead. “Happy Fourth of July,” Kevin whispers next to Xander’s ear and another dynamite flower blooms across the skyline, lighting buildings up with the warmest of glows. They wake up in the early morning light on the second with cramped legs and each other’s hands in the wrong pockets.
It doesn’t seem like it but there are some kinds that aren’t too bad. The studio apartment they’ve rented only comes with one bedroom and one bed with creaky springs. Just before morning, when Xander is pressed up close against Kevin’s back, fast asleep, there is a still quiet that Kevin thinks he can learn to live with. It’s almost as if it would have been this way all along, back then and now.
believe
Touch the forehead with the right index finger; then bring the right hand down until it clasps left hand in front of chest.
One day, Kevin will wake up to the sound of Xander showering in the bathroom and the sound of waves crashing on the shoreline, let in from the windows left wide open. Xander will be singing to a tune Kevin doesn’t recognize but it doesn’t matter, it’s still the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. He’ll stare at the shadows the sunlight makes on the ceiling, just trying to remember every dip and rise of every semitone until Xander walks into the room, hair still damp with a towel round his shoulders.
“Kevin-” Xander will start to say and every syllable of every word from then on out will sound better than the last.
One day.
love
Cross either the closed or flat hands over the heart with palms facing in
end.
A/N- So that turned out far longer than I intended D; whoops. And sorry if things turned out a little awkward as well, still struggling a little with this pairing rofl the sign language instructions are taken from Signing Illustrated so they're actual, usable signs~
if I'm going to blame someone for this, it'll be italic lol death threats to her LJ please and thank you!