They learn sign language together after it happens.

They take classes at a local community college every afternoon after Junmyeon gets home from work. The classes last for an hour and the lessons hold them over until they go home and they eat, in silence. After dinner, they sit on the couch together and they watch the news. Sehun reads the headlines and Junmyeon listens to the stories.

They do this until they tire and the sky grows dark. Then, they curl up in bed and Junmyeon signs to Sehun the first thing he’d learned and Sehun signs it back.

“I love you,” Junmyeon signs.

“I love you,” Sehun signs, too.

They hoped his hearing would come back, but it didn’t. They awaited a miracle for two weeks, but their luck just wasn’t good enough. So, Junmyeon signed them up for lessons, because Sehun turns out to be poor at lip reading and, for some reason, admits that he feels awkward talking when he can't hear it himself.

It’s only been a week since they’d started taking lessons, but Junmyeon thinks the silence is so unnerving that every sound he hears from Sehun is like music. The squeak that Sehun had made when he accidentally cut his finger on a tin can had been like a tune, the sound that had escaped Sehun when he almost tripped on their rug had been like a song, and the moan that slipped from Sehun’s lips when they were kissing the other night had been like a full-out orchestral performance, complete, sections full and all.

It’s rare, Junmyeon thinks, and sounds will most likelu be a rarity for as long as they’re together, but, he reasons, hands can do just as much talking as the mouth can, and they can touch and feel, too.
 

Their hands are still shaky and inexperienced two weeks later. They practice some nights instead of watching the news, sitting on the couch, facing each other and trying to recite vocabulary. Sometimes, Sehun messes up and he lets out a sound like a laugh and Junmyeon smiles and laughs, too, only to stop moments later because he remembers Sehun can’t hear it and gets a little sad. Maybe Sehun picks up on this, too, because his smiles fade just as quickly as they appear.

“Hi, how are you,” they sign to each other.

“Dishes,” Sehun signs, just because it’s a word they’d learned that day. He’s trying to practice his vocabulary, looking at some flashcards that had been provided by their instructor. He signs, “Mop.”

Their lesson a few hours before had been about household chores and appliances. Sehun signs, “Microwave oven.”

Junmyeon signs back, “Stove.”

Sehun signs, “Garbage disposal.”

Junmyeon signs back, “Lawn mowing.”

Sehun laughs again, but Junmyeon doesn’t do anything more than smile.

“Dog,” Sehun signs. They’d learned animals the day before.

“Elephant,” Junmyeon signs back.

“Rabbit,” Sehun signs.

“Tiger,” Junmyeon signs back.

“Bored,” Sehun signs, pulling from the emotions vocabulary he’d learned a week ago.

“Are you bored?” Junmyeon signs. He’s always been a quick learner, but Sehun hasn’t, so Sehun takes a few seconds to connect the signs. Instead of signing back, though, Sehun nods.

“I want,” Sehun signs. He flips through his flashcards, looking at all of them deliberately, trying to make a good decision. He signs, “Dance.”

“Dance?” Junmyeon signs. Sehun nods. He stands up and holds a hand out for Junmyeon’s. Junmyeon smiles and takes Sehun’s hand. He stands up, too, and Sehun moves them away from the coffee table in their living room and into a small patch of empty space in front of their television. He slings his arms over Junmyeon’s shoulders and looks at Junmyeon’s hands, expectant. Junmyeon puts his hands on Sehun’s waist and Sehun smiles at him, nodding.

Then, Sehun starts swaying. It’s tuneless yet rhythmic, Sehun keeping them to the time of his own silent beat. Then, he starts counting the beats aloud, and they start to do some sort of modified waltz, their feet shuffling on the carpet. After a while, though, Sehun stops counting, and they go back to swaying in silence. At some point, Sehun takes Junmyeon’s hand in his, holds Junmyeon’s arm up, and bends a bit to be able to do a spin. He’s delighted as he does as such, and Junmyeon can tell, because he laughs, and a symphony rings in Junmyeon’s head.

Sehun dances them into their room and they fall into bed. He falls backwards from the foot of it, bringing Junmyeon down onto his body. Junmyeon lies above him and Sehun smiles up at him. Junmyeon looks into Sehun’s eyes and it’s cheesy, so cheesy, but, Sehun isn’t looking back. Instead, Sehun’s eyes seem to flicker from Junmyeon’s eyes to his nose to his cupid’s bow to his lips and back up to his eyes again. Then, Sehun smiles, and Junmyeon smiles, leaning down to kiss him.

They make love a little bit later, and then fall back onto their pillows together, side by side, sweaty and spent. Junmyeon almost wants an encore of all the noises Sehun had made, every moan, every whine, every whimper, but that would be selfish of him, he thinks, because Sehun seems tired, soft, sleepy.

He feels Sehun shift a bit and then feels three pokes to the back of his shoulder. Junmyeon turns and Sehun’s rolled over onto his side. Junmyeon does the same, facing Sehun. Sehun smiles and he signs, “Goodnight.”

Junmyeon signs back, “Goodnight.”

Sehun signs, “I love you.”

And Junmyeon signs, “I love you.”
 

Hands could convey more than Junmyeon could ever say, but Sehun has never been too physical or verbal about his feelings, so maybe, Junmyeon thinks, he just couldn’t take it anymore, because, one night, on the couch, Sehun bursts into tears and Junmyeon holds him with his whole body, trying to pet Sehun to calmness.

Sehun had been tearing up a little bit all day, but Junmyeon didn’t expect for this to happen. It’s normal for people to be sad sometimes.

But Sehun is getting tears on Junmyeon’s pajama shirt, sobbing. Junmyeon doesn’t know the sign language for “what’s wrong”, so he just signs, “what” and hopes that Sehun will see it through his tears. Junmyeon isn’t sure if Sehun does, but Sehun starts talking, anyway.

“I miss your voice,” Sehun cries. He’s choking his words out through sobs. “I miss it so much, I want to hear it again.”

Junmyeon rocks Sehun back and forth like he’s a child. Sehun weeps. He says, “I’m scared of never hearing your voice ever again. I wouldn’t care if I just stopped hearing music, that’s okay. I just want to hear your voice.”

Junmyeon doesn’t know how to sign, “it’s okay”, so, instead, he runs his hands down Sehun’s body and tries to assure him it’ll be okay with his hands a different way. Sehun, sitting in Junmyeon’s lap and putting his face into Junmyeon’s neck, keeps crying. Junmyeon kisses Sehun’s forehead. Sehun says, “I miss it. I miss it so much I didn’t love it enough when I could hear it and now I miss it.”

“It’s okay,” Junmyeon says out loud, on accident. Then, he just keeps patting Sehun’s back, because Sehun didn’t hear it, anyway. Couldn’t have heard it.

Sehun keeps crying into Junmyeon’s neck, onto Junmyeon’s skin, and it’s warm, and Junmyeon can’t do anything but hold Sehun, cradling him and collecting him in his own arms, hugging his body with all of his, trying to sooth by swaying from side to side. Before, when Sehun was sad and crying, Junmyeon would tell him, “It’s okay, it’s okay, shh, shh, shh, it’s okay,” but to say it now would be worthless and painful.

“I love you so much, I love you so much, and I just want to hear you say you love me, too,” Sehun says. “Just once, I want to hear your voice, saying it, I want to.”

Junmyeon doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to sign, so he keeps patting Sehun’s back, running his fingers through Sehun’s hair, petting the spot behind Sehun’s ear that gives Sehun a pleasant tickle.

Sehun cries for a few more minutes and then the sound starts to go away. It’s the only sound that sounds like a cacophony to Junmyeon, one that sounds like cymbals crashing right by his eardrum. For a moment, he wishes that he, too, were deaf, but then he stops thinking that immediately, because he would miss Sehun’s voice too much, just as Sehun misses his.

Sehun says, “I want to sleep.”

Junmyeon knows Sehun could just as well sign it, but Sehun doesn’t. Junmyeon gathers all his strength and struggles a bit, but he manages to carry Sehun into their room, laying him on the bed. Sehun immediately burrows into the sheets and hits Junmyeon’s side of the bed. Junmyeon takes that as cue for him to lie down beside Sehun. Once he’s in bed, he starts to hold Sehun again, and Sehun sniffles. He hiccups.

Sehun, then, brings his hands up and signs, “I love you.”

Junmyeon smiles, bringing a hand up to push Sehun’s hair away from his face. He looks Sehun in the eyes and everywhere else. He kisses Sehun and signs in back. Then, he makes sure Sehun is looking as he says, out loud, “I love you.”

Sehun’s no good at reading lips, so he looks confused. Junmyeon keeps saying it, though. He says it over and over again, enunciating until Sehun gets it. Then Sehun nods and says, too, out loud, “I love you.”

Junmyeon signs, “I love you.”

Then, they go to bed.