The One Where Justin Gets Sick
By: LaVieEnRose

I think everyone, even Brian, thought I understood a lot more than I did for a long time.

I've always been good at faking my way through things. Brian says that's not true, and it's just imposter syndrome, whatever that is, but I think it is true and I just have him fooled too. Back when I was in school, I used to get good grades on tests I had no business doing well on. It's like I could just sniff out the right answer without even knowing how I got there, somehow.

And that's what this was like. Someone would be talking to me, and they'd sound like they were underwater, and I'd panic and nod and say something and somehow, way more often than they should have, they'd smile at me and I'd know I'd passed the little test and they walked away happy.

And that's good, right? Keeping people happy. So it's good that I got to do that for as long as I could, and it's okay that that meant that I felt really, really alone for a long time.

Brian would totally kill me if he knew I thought that. If he knew I put having people—having HIM— feel at ease above my own happiness? God, he'd freak the fuck out. But it's not my fault putting him at ease is so goddamn important! Maybe if he really wants me to put myself first, he should like, fucking take it down a notch or something.

But I hope he doesn't.

And anyway, it eventually got to the point where even I couldn't fake it anymore. It was a few months after I was diagnosed with this genetic disease that eventually took all my hearing, and at that point I still thought I was doing an okay job getting by, but Brian was being really weird and boyfriendy—or husbandy, I guess, since he'd fucking decided to marry me by this point so I could get on his health insurance—and concerned about it and said we had to go back to the doctor, so we went, and he told me I needed to stop screwing around and wear hearing aids, and I just...couldn't bring myself to do it. Michael came over that night and me and Brian had this fight right in front of him, and Brian said I was scaring the shit out of him and after Michael left Brian and I did sort of a...experiment. I sat at the counter, and he stood on the other side and I said okay, turn around, put your back to me, and say something in a normal voice, and if I can tell what it was then I don't have to wear them.

And then I waited. A few seconds later, he turned around to me, one eyebrow up, and God, it was so not the time, but he looked so fucking sexy I almost just said fine I'll wear them so we could stop this whole thing and head to bed. Almost.

“Very funny,” I said.

He quirked that eyebrow, God.

Stay focused, Taylor. “You didn't say anything.”

Brian just started at me for a second, and then realization hit his face and he closed his eyes and gripped the counter and bent at the waist, just a little, like I'd punched him.

“You did?” I said.

He nodded, his head down, and then he pulled himself together but God, I felt so guilty. I was already fucking panicking. I wasn't even thinking about the fact that I hadn't heard anything, I was just so upset that I'd made him look like that.

“Do it again,” I told him.

He winced. “Justin...”

“Do it again! Just...a little louder.”

He took a deep breath and turned around and squared his shoulders and I closed my eyes to concentrate and that time I heard something. I really did. I just had no idea what it was. I couldn't even have told you whether or not it was Brian's voice, and I think that's the minute that it hit me that one day I was going to forget what Brian's voice sounds like, and I'm in a good place with all of this now but still if I think about that too hard I'm going to start bawling everywhere. I may not even have a great concept of what sound feels like anymore, but Goddamn do I remember Brian's voice.

He turned back around, and he looked so fucking desperate.

“I heard you,” I said.

He nodded.

“I heard you, I just don't...”

“It's okay,” he said. Easy words to lipread. God knows he'd said them plenty of times over the past few months, when I was freaking out.

I sighed and rested my chin on the counter, looked at the fucking hearing aids, then back at him. “So what did you say?”

He shrugged like it didn't matter, and then he told me what he said, and I got the words “Do” and “you” and that was it. And honestly, I didn't even hear those words, I just figured them out from context.

It's hard to describe what I did hear, partly because it was so long ago, partly because it's been a year and a half since I've heard anything at all so the whole issue of sound is sort of ridiculous to me at this point, and partly because the idea of losing your hearing freaks people out so hard that they refuse to imagine it, but I'm pretty sure back then it was like I was hearing static all of the time, and I couldn't make things out over it. I could catch voices on top of it, but it was like I was...I don't know, inside a washing machine or something, and people were yelling at me from outside. I was a radio halfway between two stations.

But I could usually still understand Brian. He was so great about it, always speaking clearly and not too slowly, standing close but not too close, making sure I had a clear view of him. He did absolutely everything he could, before we even had a diagnosis or anything, just when he could tell it was something I needed. We never even talked about it, he just...did it.

He was doing everything he could, and I had no fucking clue what he was saying.

I tried so, so hard not to freak out. I just swallowed and said, “Um, one more time?”

Brian paused, his lips parted a little, and then he leaned forward onto the counter, a little closer to me, and said it again, a little slower. And louder, I could tell, just from the way his chest moved and his throat looked because I know Brian, I know Brian so goddamn well, I know everything about Brian, but I did not know what the fuck he was saying.

“One more time?” I said.

He took a deep breath and said it again, and God, it was getting further and further way from me, and I knew there was no way I was going to get it at this point, not when I was this upset and it was all of a sudden so important, and it was probably just some stupid thing he'd thought of to say anyway!

Brian looked around, and I knew he was going to get a pen and paper and write it down for me, probably because he could tell I was about to lose my shit over some dumb sentence that meant nothing, but I grabbed his wrist and said, “Say it again, I can get it, I'm going to get it.”

So he did, and I was staring at his mouth, and that's how I saw his chin start shaking, and when I still couldn't get it he dropped his elbows onto the counter and put his face in his hands and I grabbed for him and said, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” until he grabbed my wrists and yelled “STOP,” too loudly for me to miss, and then he kissed me so, so hard, like he needed me in order to breathe, or something. That's how it felt.

It's funny how he would get really overwhelmed by small moments like that and then when it came to things that should have totally been way too much for him, he was so calm and amazing!

One of the worst parts about losing my hearing was how fucking lousy I felt for a ton of it. I had migraines a lot and all these problems with my balance and feeling super dizzy all the time, and it meant I was constantly nauseated and like, fucking running into furniture because it felt like everything was spinning.

Sometimes it got so, so bad. There was one night when I was on the bathroom floor and I could feel all this fluid in my ears just woosh-woosh-woosh and I couldn't stop shaking and I couldn't stop throwing up, and I kept wondering if this was how Brian felt when he had cancer, and how much I would fucking kill him if he tried to make me eat some soup. I kept trying to talk to him, just to tell him how bad I felt and how I was freaking out, as if there was some universe in which he couldn't tell, but I couldn't hear my own voice at all over the pounding in my ears, and I wasn't used to that yet so that was making me freak out even worse, and I felt so fucking sick that I swear to God I thought I was going to die there in our bathroom.

And he just stayed right there next to me, calmly rubbing my back like I had a hangover or some shit—not that Brian Kinney would ever rub my back for having a hangover, but you know what I mean. Like it was nothing. He cried because I couldn't hear his stupid sentence but he couldn't spare a tear when I thought I was actually gonna fucking drop dead any second? I get it now, that it's easier for him to stay calm when he feels like he HAS to, but at the time I really thought I wasn't getting through to him just how bad I felt or how scared I was, and that was really upsetting for some reason.

Finally I got up and he kept a hand under my elbow and I made it about two steps before the room tilted and my knees totally gave out. I would have knocked myself out on the floor if Brian hadn't been there, but he scooped me right up like he'd been expecting it and carried me to the bed, and then when we got there he just crawled up behind me and draped an arm over me and kissed the back of my neck all fucking casual, like this was nothing, like we were just going to bed like normal and he wasn't even worried at all, and then he put his lips on the bone under my ear and hummed so I would feel it. So fucking chill.

I'm gonna be trying to figure this guy out until I die and I can't fucking wait.

Most of the time it wasn't that bad, even on days I felt really shitty. One day I just woke up feeling totally spinny and terrible and he called in and told Ted he was going to work from home, and we ended up just sprawling out on the couch getting stoned all day. We watched shitty movies and took a nap and I lay there while he pretended to be totally sober on a conference call, and then we laughed about that for like twenty hours, and then we talked about Kinnetik and about my ears and about the comic and about Daphne in New York and about my mom's new boyfriend and all sorts of various other things and finally the conversation drifted to whether I felt up to going to Babylon in a few hours.

I crawled on top of him. “When I'm deaf, will you still take me to Babylon?”

“No way,” he said. “I'm not wasting a cover charge on music you can't even hear. Get excited for silent nights at home, Sunshine.” I was wearing the hearing aids full time then, and I hadn't gotten to the point yet where they were useless, so I was getting by pretty well. We'd started taking sign language classes so we were signing a little too. It was kind of like a game at that point, and I don't know if either of us really could imagine that in a few months it would be our main way of communicating, and shit, now it's like all we ever do! Back then we were just playing around. He made up the sign for Sunshine, which we later realized was basically just shower but y'know, no going back and all that.

“Noooo,” I said. God, I was so fucking stoned.

“Yep.” He kissed my chin. “Scrabble. Muted television. Long, significant glances. Utterly silent fucking.”

“You wouldn't.”

“I can't go enjoying all that sound all by myself, can I?”

“True, that wouldn't be very husbandy of you.”

He tackled me off of him and onto the floor and he tickled me and I screamed and I was just so fucking happy that we could joke about this, that we weren't fucking...paralyzed by how enormous and scary this was. It was like the only time I felt secure, besides when he was fucking me. I just needed Brian to keep acting like Brian. The thought that he might leave, or worse, that he'd permanently turn into some Stepford partner taking this thing happening to his poor defenseless lover Very Seriously and we'd never actually be us again freaked me out more than the impending silence.

He said something and pinched me around the waist, but I was still laughing too hard to look at him. “Wait, say it again,” I said.

“I said, if you ever call me your husband again, I'll divorce you.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Mmm. Let's see how much you enjoy going deaf with no health insurance. That would really suck the fun out of the whole adventure.”

“This is an empty threat,” I said. “You bitch so much about paperwork, the last thing you'll do is follow through on a divorce. You'll just sneak out in the dead of night, never to be seen again.”

“And leave you with the loft?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“This is starting to sound more like your fantasy than a threat.”

“Was it that obvious?”

“Have fun with the property tax. Weren't you the one just asking me permission to go to Babylon? Suddenly he's a homeowner.”

“I was not asking you permission,” I said.

“That's the way I heard it.”

“Maybe we should get your hearing checked,” I said, pulling him into me, and that went into some of the predictable “please may I suck your cock, Mr. Kinney?” and other such standbys I'll leave to the imagination.

When that was over I said, “When I'm deaf, will you still fuck me so hard I scream?” I knew he'd just fake-threatened me with silent sex, but I don't know, I had to check.

Maybe he could tell I was little more serious now, because he said, “Of course. Constantly. Every minute you're awake. Some you're not.”

“I hope you realize when I'm deaf there's going to be music pounding in here loud enough for me to feel. At all hours. Between that and the scream-fucking you're never going to get any sleep.”

“Good. We'll open our very own Babylon.”

“What about the neighbors?” I said.

“We'll have to kill them.”

“Mmm, good.”

He said something else then, but I didn't catch it, and I knew he could tell because he just gave me this little smile and shook his head to show me it didn't matter and then said, nice and clear and calm, “You should drink some water.” His eyes were all heavy, like it was this really sexy thing he was saying to me, I don't know. And in a way it kind of was.

“Okay,” I said, and I felt really safe.

**

The bad news, aside from the whole I'm-losing-my-hearing thing, was the nightmares picked back up. I haven't slept reliably well since the bashing, but over time the nightmares started happening less and less often, from every night without fail down to once or twice a month, and they're less intense than they used to be. They still flare up when something stressful's going on—when I was living with Ethan they were damn near constant, and after Brian lost his job, and when he was sick—but for the most part they'd become really manageable over the past year before I got diagnosed.

And then I started losing one of my senses and all of that went bye-bye out the window. And the really fucking annoying part is that right when I'm waking up from a nightmare, I can't stand if anyone touches me. So take away sound and touch and I just have to hope Brian can look at me in a soothing enough way, pretty much.

Luckily back then I could still hear somewhat. I jerked awake from a brutal nightmare that night, probably my reward for smoking so much. Brian was already up, on his way to my side of the bed. I sat down on the edge and he switched on the lamp and crouched down in front of me. I know he wasn't pissed, but he looked like it, all squinty in the light. He handed me my hearing aids and waited while I slipped them on with shaky hands.

“You scream,” he said. “So much fucking louder than you used to.”

I took these big heaving breaths. I felt like I was drowning, and I was just trying not to start fucking bawling.

“Eyes on me,” Brian said, and that's another thing that sucks, because after a nightmare usually the last thing I want to do is look at someone, even Brian, but I don't really have that choice anymore. “You know where you are? Who I am?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell me.”

“You just want to hear me say your name,” I said, and his lip quirked a little.

“You want to talk about it?” he said.

“I don't remember it.”

“Okay.”

“God. God. Fuck.”

“Easy, Sunshine.” He signed it, even though it the middle of the night and I'd just screamed him out of a deep sleep, and nowadays of course that would just be normal, we wouldn't even think about it, but I remember thinking it was so fucking sweet. God, he was learning a new language for me, and he never complained about it once.

I sobbed a couple times without meaning to and folded up into my lap. I felt him lay a hand on my back, really hesitantly, and I nodded to show him it was okay.

He sat down next to me on the bed and tucked me under his arm. He probably said some shit, but I wasn't looking at him so fuck if I know what. I turned and looked at him eventually. “What did I miss?”

He kissed my forehead. “Oh, I said all the right things. It was amazing. No one's ever done a better job.”

“I knew it.” I rested my cheek against his hand. “You should get your therapy license.”

“You want a Klonopin?”

I shook my head.

“You sure? You're cute when you're stoned.”

“Brian Kinney just called me cute.”

“It's the middle of the night and you're crying. My defenses are lowered.”

“I'm not crying anymore.”

He shrugged. “Well, fuck you then.”

I kissed his collarbone. “Yes please.”

“That,” he said. “I am definitely licensed to do.”

“I remember,” I said.

We were both still tired, still at least a third asleep, so he fucked me slow and gentle and it was just...so fucking comforting. I'd relied on this more and more as my hearing slipped away, and I know communicating through sex is just so totally Brian of me, but hey, even a broken Kinney is right twice day, and I think maybe he was on to something with this one. We've never needed to talk much in bed; I can tell where he wants me to go, how he wants me to move, just from the way he pushes his body into mine, and he knows if I want him to speed up or slow down just from listening to how I breathe. And there's no easier way to get a handle on what Brian's mood is, and to level him out one way or the other, and sometimes that's all the comfort that I need. Just knowing that he's going to make it another day.

And sometimes it just feels really, really nice to have a dick up your ass, but I don't want to get too sentimental.

**

Going completely deaf was devastating at first. I just felt like...like I would never really be able to participate in life again. I was useless anywhere without Brian interpreting for me, and it's not like I could even use a regular interpreter at that point because my signing still wasn't good enough, and I know, I know interpreters are trained to adapt to that, but God, I was just so fucking embarrassed about the whole thing. I had literally no good method of communicating, and it wasn't because the world hadn't kept up and learned sign language or something, it was because of ME. There was nothing anyone could have done to communicate well with me. It was so fucking depressing.

And then I met Gregory. He's a few years older than me, and he lost seventy percent of the hearing in one ear and fifty percent in the other—so compared to me, he's some kind of hearing superhero, but still—suddenly from an illness when he was twenty. He told me when he met that he still didn't consider himself all the way fluent, but God, to me he was incredible. I'd watch him talk to his boyfriend and not be able to follow a fucking word, and he kept promising, “You will.” And he said he'd tutor me! He started learning to sign in school, and made all these Deaf friends, and now he's totally a part of the Deaf community—his boyfriend's even an interpreter! And then there was me, thinking I was going to be living this whole little life with people who felt sorry for me, and it turned out, there was a whole group of people who were happy, who fucking celebrated signing together. I hadn't even known the Deaf community EXISTED.

I spent the next week online, and it made me laugh over and over again because it kept reminding me of when I realized I was gay. It was like I was realizing I was Deaf, with a capital D. Both times, I had this moment of discovering a whole community had been under my nose this whole time, and I'd had no idea.

My house growing up wasn't like the Novotnys, where Michael being straight would have been recognized with its own national day of mourning, but it also wasn't like Brian's Irish Catholic nightmare, with all the screaming about hell and AIDS and God and all that jazz. Last time I saw my dad, he brought up the whole sin thing, but it felt so forced, like he was just desperately looking for justification for really just being uncomfortable with anything that's not his version of normal. I didn't grow up in some churchy family—we'd go on Christmas if we were visiting my grandmother, but that's about it—and I've actually tried to remember when I first learned about gay people, when I first found out we even exist, and I have no idea, because it was never, ever something we talked about at home.

Luckily, the internet existed—I seriously don't know what queers did before that, and God knows I can't ask Brian because he'll go on some week-long drunken bender about pushing forty—and obviously I'd heard the word 'gay' around school and whatever, so after my third confusing dream about Jonathan Taylor Thomas, I googled “am I gay” and, well, the rest is herstory.

This felt just like that, and God, just like the first time, I was so RELIEVED. It wasn't just me. I could fit in again.

Brian, of course, had trouble adjusting at first, but Brian has trouble adjusting to a new brand of dishwashing detergent so I didn't think a whole lot of it. We got into a big fight about it once after I dragged him to this Deaf party, and then he practically got on his knees and promised to love me forever and ever and ever, and after that he was the very picture of support even when I could tell he was feeling left out. And I made every effort to let him know that I planned to drag him into this world with me kicking and screaming, if necessary. Mostly by making him kick and scream.

My first year Deaf was actually pretty great for me and Brian, after the first rocky couple of months. I was getting my tutoring sessions with Gregory, and Brian was still going to classes with me and taking it so, so seriously. I was talking about going back to school, once I felt confident enough to work with an interpreter. Rage was doing well. I started painting more. Brian landed two huge accounts and took me to Hawaii for a whole week! I was spending a lot of time with Gregory and his friends, and I even had some awesome sex (and some mediocre, but such is life) with a bunch of Deaf guys in between the usual Babylon tricks, which I didn't tell Brian about because I knew he would get insecure about me being with Deaf guys even though he pretends he's toootally too good for that. I tried to spend time with the family too so they'd know I wasn't abandoning them and that I appreciated how hard they were working. Balancing act.

And Brian and I were just...God. So, so good. The sex was incredible, better than ever, now that we were both learning new and exciting things to do with our hands. And even outside of that...we just were making sense. One morning we went to the diner for breakfast and then we just...walked, for ages, talking totally in sign language like we'd been doing it our whole lives. And I just...the whole thing was like so overwhelming! I kept thinking about this guy seven years ago who picked me off the street thinking I was going to be a one-night stand, and now we're walking around speaking an entirely different language that he learned just for me, and he did it like it was NOTHING. Like it was just totally, totally a given that he would do it for me. God, sometimes I can't even stand it.

And also I feel completely bad about it sometimes, because I got this whole new community out of it, all these new friends, and he got...nothing, he had to learn all of this just to be able to talk to me and nobody else. He says that's totally fucked because all he had to do was take a few classes and I had to lose one of my senses, but...I don't know. I don't really see it that way anymore, or maybe Brian and I are just going to spend our whole lives falling over each other to explain why the other has the raw end of the deal staying with us.

I can live with that. I like the rest of our lives part.

While we were on this walk I saw the reflection of some old church in a puddle, and the way the water rippled and distorted when Brian stepped on it made me totally desperate to go home and paint, so I had my easel set up and ready to go about ten seconds after we got home. Brian knows better by now than to bother me when I'm like this, so he sat at his computer for a while and then watched TV and then for all I know went and had a twelve person orgy on the floor behind me, fuck if I ever paid any attention to the outside world when I'm working even when I could hear.

Hours later, he came over and looked over my shoulder, and the way he ran his hands up and down me my arms made me shiver. He kissed behind my ear and hummed there, like he does sometimes.

Beautiful he signed, but still standing behind me. His hand, my face.

I turned around to face him. Me or the painting?

He looked me over, top to bottom, sooo slowly, and then he swallowed, actually swallowed, like he was nervous! Brian complains all the time about me getting paint everywhere, but he has such a kink about it. I came to Kinnetik one time after I'd just finished a painting and straightened his tie before he went into a big meeting, and I swear he almost lost it right then looking at my hands. He was back in his office the second his meeting was over, demanding I take my clothes off before the door was even shut. Mr. Kinney indeed.

But now he shook himself a little and said The painting, actually.

It's not finished.

He loped over to the fridge and got himself a beer. You know, he said, signing big across the loft, one handed. You need to do something. He pointed to the beer, asking if I wanted one. I nodded.

Do something? I said. Like give you a very colorful hand job?

He grinned. Well, absolutely that. He sighed, like talk about me jerking him off is such a fucking chore, or something. I'm trying to be serious here.

Sorry, sorry.

He gestured towards my easel with his beer bottle. You cannot keep storing your paintings in the closet. I'm running out of room.

Maybe you should get rid of some of your suits.

He snorted and handed me my beer. I'd sooner get rid of you.

You're welcome to try.

Brian pulled me over to the couch, and we kind of pawed at each other for a little while, nothing desperate.

Your paintings should be hanging somewhere. God, he was so close to me, looking at me with these eyes, and I just...I really believed him, for a second. That's how powerful I feel when he looks at me like that.

Then I snapped out of it. So hang them, I said, even though I knew that wasn't what he meant. Besides, there are already three Justin Taylor originals hung around the loft.

He waved his hand at me gently to get my attention. It's a Deaf thing; I taught it to him. You have shit to say, he said. Shit that's more complex than Michael writes for you in the comic book.

I squirmed. The comic book means a lot to queer people.

Brian nodded towards my canvas. You're painting a... He fumbled for a way to sign it. A fucked-up church. You have bigger things to say to queer people than Rage zooming around forcing guys to choke on their own dicks.

I laughed at how he managed to sign that out. I know I'm the artist here, but Brian is so fucking creative.

I gave my hand a shake—between the painting and the signing, I give the thing a beating nowadays—and he pulled it into his lap and massaged it. We just sat there for a little, him focusing on my fingers like they were so goddamn important, me just...mesmerized.

“Brian,” I said, out loud, and he looked up at me and smiled, his eyes dark.

That's not fair he signed, never letting go of my hand. You know your voice makes me hard.

Talking without being able to hear it is the weirdest fucking thing. I always feel like I could be saying anything and I wouldn't even know it. But I don't mind with him.“That's why I only use it on you,” I said. “I can't have all of Liberty Avenue running around horny all the time.”

He laughed. Yeah, that'd be a change of pace. He squeezed my hand and let it go.

Let's go out, I said.

He slapped me on the thigh and stood up. Thought you'd never ask.

We got dressed to go out—he wouldn't let me wash the paint off, so twisted—and at one point I turned around and he was paused pulling his shirt off, looking at me with the strangest expression on his face.

“What?” I said.

He kissed me, really gently, and I realized he was sad. You were singing.

No shit? I said. He nodded. How'd I sound?

He kissed me again. Terrible.

Ah well. I was never any good anyway.

Keep going he said.

**

If I didn't know better, I'd say Babylon was designed for Deaf people. The music hurts your ears if you can hear it but vibrates through your whole body if you can't, and it's too loud to talk but there's enough light to sign, at least until you get to the back room, and there's not usually a lot of talking to do there. Take it from someone who's experienced it both ways: it's better Deaf.

The bartender was new and the drinks were strong, and neither of us had work the next day so somewhere during the night we made some tacit agreement to get drunk off our asses. I started to feel dizzy after the fifth drink so I called it quit, but Brian kept going. I rarely see him totally wasted unless he's depressed about something, so it's always fun to see him plastered but happy. He kissed me on the dance floor, spinning me around, hands gripping my shoulders tightly enough to lift me off the floor.

A few guys came and danced with us after a while, and I didn't think they were anything special, but Brian's less discerning than I am and before long he and one of them were making serious eyes at each other. You good? he asked me, and after I gave him a thumbs up, he took the guy by the collar and started to pull him off to the back room, then changed his mind and pulled his buddy along with the other hand. I was not at all interested in the remaining guy, but I was already checking out this guy by the bar who'd been watching me, so when I felt up to another drink I went over and signaled the bartender and gave the guy a smile. “Hey,” I said to him, hopefully at an appropriate volume.

He said something back, but he wasn't facing me fully and my lipreading is not spectacular so I didn't get it, but I could tell from his body language it was some kind of pick up line. So I just gave him a cryptic kind of smile, which he seemed satisfied by, and I had barely finished my drink when he took my hand to drag me back to the dance floor. We danced a few minute, he tried to kiss me, I responded by yanking him to the back room, and everything was going great.

It was packed back there tonight, and my eyes adjusted to the dark as we looked for a bare patch of wall. We passed by Brian, pants open, two guys on their knees, who signed a quick, appreciative nice I could just barely make out when he got a look of my trick.

The guy was slight, almost Brian-skinny, but closer to my height. I had him with his jeans down, his hands on the wall, my palm on his ass, my mouth on his neck, when he turned his head just a little and said something. I could feel the vibration of his voice in his throat, in my lips.

I decided to hedge my bets that it wasn't important and kept nipping at his neck, but he spoke again, so I stopped and turned him around. He looked confused, and I tried so hard to focus on his mouth in this shitty lighting. I think he said, “Why'd you stop?”

“I couldn't hear what you said,” I said. “I'm Deaf.”

“You're Deaf?” he said, and I nodded, and then he said some shit I couldn't make out but it was clear he was second-guessing this whole thing, and look, whatever, if you have some arbitrary demand that a guy you fuck for five minutes needs to be able to hear, I'm better off without you. So I rolled my eyes and moved to the side to let him go, but then the guy's expression hardened and he said something to someone behind me and obviously I knew what was going on.

I said, “Brian, stay out of it, it's fine,” still glaring at the trick.

Brian did not stay out of it. I felt his hand on my shoulder a second later, then he grabbed me and the trick and yanked us both out to the back alley and under a streetlight.

He needs to be able to see you to understand you, Brian said, talking and signing at the same time, so probably not doing either of them all that well but, y'know. We make do. Talk to him now.

The trick talked, and I watched him and then looked at Brian.

Did you get that? he asked me.

No. It's fine, it doesn't matter.

No, I'll interpret. He said he didn't know you were Deaf.

I said, Obviously. How was he supposed to know? and Brian repeated it to the guy.

The guy said something else, looking uneasy, and Brian's glare hardened.

I waved my hand at him. What did he say?

Nothing, Brian said.

That's not how it works. You're supposed to tell me everything he says. Even if it's bullshit.

Brian sighed and said, He asked if you're positive.

Look, neither of us has any problem with a trick wanting to know our status before we hook up. That's fine. But all three of us knew that wasn't what was happening here. He wasn't asking everyone if they were positive. He was asking me, because I was...diseased. Defective.

To him. Don't worry, this isn't a story where I fall into some kind of shame spiral. I'm good.

I'm negative I said, and Brian interpreted. I'm just Deaf. Still have a great cock. I was just messing with this guy at this point; I wasn't going to fuck him no matter what he said next.

Which must have been some bullshit, because he kind of backed away and then left down the alley, and Brian signed What, you think you can do better than my Deaf husband?

You are so drunk, I told him.

No I'm not.

You didn't even say that out loud. You just signed it at him. And he doesn't know sign language. And he wasn't even looking at you.

Oh.

And you called me your husband.

He scoffed. I did not.

Afraid so.

He shook his head, utterly sure of himself. You must have misheard me.

I just told you, you signed--

He waved his hand, cut me off. Your signing's not as good as you think it is. Let's go home.

We walked back around to the front of the building. We were definitely taking a cab. He was totally swaying too much to walk home.

He grabbed my arm as we walked and said, You know, they really need to put some lights in that back room? His squinty drunk face made everything a question. I don't think that's even ADA compliant?

**

So everything was going really great, in other words. And then I got really fucking sick.

Nothing gold can stay, right?

I started feeling really shitty one night during my shift at the diner. I texted Brian on my break and asked if he could pick me up when my shift was over so I wouldn't have to walk back to the loft. He just said “okay” and nothing else, and in that moment I really, really missed talking on the phone with him. I wanted him to hear in my voice how crappy I felt, and I wanted to pick out that note of concern he would try to hide. All that “okay” told me was that he was busy in the office and didn't have time to either mock me or worry about me, and I just...I don't miss things all that often, but right then I really, really did.

He came into the diner a few minutes before my shift ended and God, I was so fucking happy to see him, you'd think he'd been away at war or something. I put my coffee pot down and and wrapped my arms around him, and I could feel him laugh a little.

He stopped when I pulled away from him enough to see me. Christ, you look like shit.

Thanks. I told you I didn't feel well.

I thought you were just being a drama queen. He palmed my forehead. Christ, he said again. Come on.

My shift isn't over.

Your shift is over. He waited while I hung up my apron and waved apologetically to Deb, who signed Feel better! as Brian practically dragged me to the car by my ear.

I shivered on way to the car. It's cold out here.

He had his hand on my back. It's really not. But he let me turn the heat on in the car, and he was staying pretty calm at that point.

Something about being in the loft made me feel worse, like I had permission to be sick now so I was going full speed ahead. I sat down on the side of the bed and kind of folded in on myself, and I let Brian take my shoes off and take my temperature and pour water down my throat. He handed me a box of cold medicine and had me read the back to double check it was okay, and after I nodded he punched out two.

He pulled the covers over me and lay down next to me. I knew he wasn't staying there—it was early, and his clothes were still on—but I liked that he was there. I made some half-hearted grab for his dick, and he rolled his eyes and swatted me away, which like, thank God, and I fell asleep.

After that it's all kind of a blur. I remember coughing, so much fucking coughing, and Brian's hand on my back. I remember waking up from a nightmare and trying to scream but I couldn't, so I kept fucking screaming, and I couldn't find Brian and I kept feeling these hot licks of pain against my skin. I kept swatting against them and just begging for Brian and trying and trying to scream but no sound came out. I remember at one point, God, it was so bad, I felt like I was fucking boiling inside my skin, and he was running this cool cloth down my arm and I was so goddamn freaked out and I didn't understand why he wasn't whispering my name like he usually does when I'm sick or upset, just that little “Justin, Justin,” so I said, “Brian, I can't hear you, I can't hear you,” and he looked really upset, so totally not-Brian, and I tried to ask him what was wrong but I couldn't remember how to do it, and my vision was swimming so badly I could barely see him.

He woke me up at one point really gently, this small, calming smile on his face, and sat me up and started putting clothes on me. I started crying because I knew that meant we were going somewhere and I felt so, so goddamn awful, and for some reason I was sure he was making me go back to the diner for work. Like, I was a hundred percent sure that was what was going on, and I kept telling him I wasn't ready.

We're getting you ready right now, see? he said, helping me into some sweatpants, and one of his softest t-shirts.

He didn't understand, and I didn't know what to say to make him understand, and everything was so fuzzy. He helped me to the car, and I curled up as small as I could get in the seat. At red lights he'd reach over and play with the hair on the back of my neck.

We were going to the doctor, obviously. He kept signing to me in the waiting room, just normal stuff, telling me about work or this article he'd read online, I don't know, I couldn't focus, and I kept realizing I'd missed what he was saying and feeling bad about it. He squeezed my shoulder and nodded to the nurse when I guess they called my name, and then I sat on that cold exam table and shivered and didn't even try to follow what the doctor was saying. Brian sat in a chair across the room and even through the fog I realized he was dutifully interpreting every single word, even though he knew I wasn't watching. Just in case I started.

We went to the pharmacy and then he brought me home and lay down next to me and pressed his lip behind my ear and hummed, and just like that everything was okay.

I woke up panting after God knows how many days of that sucking shit. Brian was asleep next to me, and man, he looked like utter shit. He hadn't shaved in forever, and his eyes looked kind of swollen. I reached out and touched his cheek, running my fingers over his stubble, and he blinked himself awake. I smiled at him, and he smiled back, and then reached over and put his palm on my forehead. He sighed—relief—and pulled me into his collarbone, and we both fell back asleep pretty quickly.

He was gone when I woke up a while later, but there was a package of aspirin on the table next to me and a bottle of water that was still cold. I took them, and drank some, and followed the smell of steam and Brian's shampoo into the bathroom. He opened the door to let me in, and then kissed me under the spray. It felt fucking amazing. The kiss, yeah, but also the shower. Like I was rinsing the last of the sickness off me. I was still feeling pretty weak, though, and after a couple minutes of making out and hair-washing I sat down on the floor of the shower, but Brian rolled his eyes, turned it off, and pulled me up and sat me on the sink instead. I watched him shave.

He looked at his reflection instead of me. That was fucking awful, he said.

“I'm sorry,” I said, and he winced.

Your voice sounds terrible, he said.

Yeah, doesn't feel great either.

He rinsed the razor off and turned and looked at me finally, but he kept darting his glance from me and then back again, like it was too hard to keep his eyes on me. And I knew of course how tired he was, but I think that was when it hit me how completely emotionally spent he was, that it wasn't just that he'd been missing out on sleep. God, he looked worse than he had when I actually lost my hearing, and this was just the fucking flu. I was okay.

You were worried, I said, and I meant it like an apology.

He scratched his chest, looking down. How much do you remember?

I shrugged, then said, “Not a lot.”

Stop talking.

Then stop not looking at me.

He sighed, and I just sat there and gave him time to get himself in a place to talk about it. It was so hard not to just put my arms around him, tell him I was okay, but I knew if I didn't make him tell me about it he'd just smash it all into a nice little snowball of resentment and like, spare me, I am Deaf and convalescing.

So I just waited.

You didn't know where you were, he said. Your fever was so fucking high and I couldn't get it down. The doctor said it just had to wait to run its course, and he wouldn't listen to me that you were...newly Deaf and confused and fucking miserable. You were so fucking confused..You didn't understand why you couldn't hear. You were having these nightmares and you'd scream that I was hurting you when I touched you and Jesus, you wouldn't stop screaming...He closed his eyes, shook his head. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing I could do.

You stayed.

He shrugged.

You stayed, I insisted. I'm so glad you stayed.

Another shrug, and this time I took him by the wrist and tugged him into me. He resisted, just a little, and then stood in front of the sink and brushed my hair away from my face. I curled my legs around his waist.

Got the idea from you, he said.

It took us a little while to go back to normal after that. Brian was shaky and nervous and worried and made me pay for seeing him shaky and nervous and worried by going out without me and snapping at me when he was home, and then we'd lay down together at night and he'd handle me like I was the most precious thing on earth, when he'd just gotten through being a dick to me! He is so fucking weird. I don't know why he still has to put on this whole act like he doesn't care about me sometimes. And then people are always pulling me aside, reassuring me that it's not me, that he loves me, like...maybe I needed that when I was eighteen and suffering from PTSD, but I'm good now, guys! Brian Kinney is the world's most transparent goddamn person and every once in a while he needs to queen out and pretend like everyone doesn't see right through him, and...okay, fine. You do you, Kinney. At the end of the day, we know who you're coming home to.

He went out one evening around seven and I wasn't expecting to see him again until he'd crawl back into bed looking contrite at the crack of dawn, but instead he showed up an hour later with Chinese food and we ate on the floor and I fed him Kung Pao shrimp and he fucked me on the floor like I wasn't precious or fragile at all, and I knew that everything was finally back to normal.

**

Now, I know you're wondering. Everyone does. So, yes. I still get really sad about it sometimes.

It's not often, because most of the time I really don't feel that way and even when I do, I try to not let myself get bogged down in it, but sometimes...I just start thinking about stuff. Like how I'll never hear Molly say “I Do,” or my dad say he's sorry, even though that was probably never going to happen anyway. I'll never hear Debbie's laugh, or any new song, ever. I won't hear J.R. say my name, or Gus tell me he got into college. And Brian.

I start thinking about Brian.

That snarl in his throat when I say something funny and he's trying not to laugh. The little “mmph” when he grabs me and hugs me from behind. The way he'd murmur “hey” like it's my name. The whinny in the back of his throat when he comes. The way his voice breaks when he's upset, and stretches when he yawns, and softens when he talks about Gus, curls when he talks about me.

I get sad about how hard he has to work to talk to me, how much less sleep he gets than he used to, how much I know he worries about me no matter how much he tries to hide it.

He loves me so fucking much and sometimes I feel like that's been nothing but painful for him.

I don't really have a point here. But just...in case you were wondering. Everyone does. I still get sad sometimes.

**

On my twenty-fifth birthday, Brian rimmed me on the floor, and I swear to God, I was just about to come when he stopped suddenly and I whined and he grabbed me and flipped me onto my back.

Why'd you stop? I asked.

He smiled, really slow. Do you remember, he said, when you didn't want to wear the hearing aids, so we did that test?

I nodded, panting.

Remember how you didn't know what I was saying?

"Yes."

Brian grinned and kissed from my mouth down across my collarbone, and stopped.

I said, he signed. Do you want to fuck me tonight?

God knows what noise I made when he hoisted me into his arms and carried me off to bed.