au: Deaf!Wook

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Jongwoon told him time and time again that he didn’t have to work, but Ryeowook didn’t like the thought of sitting home all day with nothing to do. Finding someone who would hire him took some work, but not long after he moved in with Jongwoon, he got a part-time job at one of his favorite places.

Just in town, barely fifteen minutes by foot from their home, stood the city library. It was a stately two-story building filled with every kind of book imaginable and enough hiding places that a group of kids could be entertained for hours, not that the librarians particularly enjoyed it when children started running around and toppling over displays.

Ryeowook liked working there. He liked coming in early in the morning when no one was there and running his fingers along the spines of his favorite books in greeting. He liked breathing deeply and smelling that slightly musty and earthy but positively wonderful smell of the classics in their place of honor in the back corner. He liked carefully placing books back in their rightful places on the shelves – back in their homes – and flipping through them as he did, trying to find the next great thing to read.

The head librarian would watch him flutter around the shelves with a sad sort of smile sometimes. She loved him like a son, and her heart would clench when she saw what he didn’t; the way people would scowl and mutter to themselves when he didn’t answer their calls, the way people would point and whisper about the eccentric employee who didn’t talk to anyone, the way passersby would purposefully stand in his way so that he would have to take the longer route through the shelves of the books he loved so much.

It didn’t happen much. Most of the regular visitors loved him just as much as she did. But when it did happen, she did everything in her power to make sure Ryeowook didn’t find out about it.

One bright autumn afternoon, when Ryeowook was diligently shelving books in the children’s section, the head librarian saw a small boy pointing at him and staring up at his mom. She nearly asked Ryeowook to move to the adult nonfiction when she noticed that the child’s mom was signing something back to him. She smiled to herself and went back to the front desk to sort through paperwork.

The boy, short and scrawny for a five year old, slowly walked over to Ryeowook and tugged gently on his sleeve. The older man turned, surprised, and glanced down at him, blinking in confusion.

After a quick glance back at his mom, who gave him an encouraging smile, the boy smiled shyly and clumsily signed ‘hi.’

Ryeowook’s face immediately broke into a smile, his eyes crinkling up in that adorable way of theirs, and he quickly signed ‘hi’ back, bending down so he was more on the boy’s level. They exchanged names – the boy’s was Jung Hwa, he learned – and, just when he thought that they were going to part ways, Ryeowook was stopped when the boy signed him a question.

‘Will you tell me a story?’

The older man paused, staring blankly at Jung Hwa for a moment. No one ever asked him to tell a story. He’d seen some of the local kids ask a couple of the other librarians, who always obliged them, usually pushing off their work onto him. He’d resigned himself to never having that opportunity and, now that it was presenting itself to him, he didn’t quite know what to do. When he saw Jung Hwa’s hopeful face slowly sliding away, however, he grinned, pointing to a corner of the children’s section with bean bag chairs and pillows.

‘How about Jack and the Beanstalk?’

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Jongwoon got home before Ryeowook that night; that was something that rarely happened and immediately made the taller man nervous. There wasn’t a note from the younger man saying he would be home late, which made his absence all the more worrisome to the older. Jongwoon slid off his jacket and tossed it carelessly over the back of a chair in the living room before beginning to pace, biting his lower lip. When he heard the door open slowly thirty minutes later, he dashed into the foyer, his eyes wide and filled with fear.

Ryeowook, however, beamed up at him, his eyes sparkling. He didn’t give Jongwoon time to scold him or ask where he’d been; he immediately started signing excitedly, almost too quickly for his boyfriend to keep up.

‘I told someone a story!’

Jongwoon saw the pure joy radiating from Ryeowook’s childish smile and he felt his face soften as he pulled the shorter man into his arms. When Ryeowook first took the job, he told his hyung about how, sometimes, the other employees would be asked to tell stories to the children that visited the library as a way to keep them occupied while their parents looked for books. It was something that the younger man never had a chance to do. Ryeowook never complained about it, but Jongwoon knew that he sincerely wanted to be up there, bringing the text to life and letting it flutter off his fingertips.

Jongwoon pulled back a moment later, smiling himself, and Ryeowook saw the pride in his eyes and felt his heart swell with his hyung’s unspoken praise. His grip around the taller man’s waist tightened and the happy tears he didn’t know he’d been holding back all day finally fell from his eyes.

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Late that night, long after Ryeowook had fallen asleep, Jongwoon sat up, rubbing circles on his boyfriend’s back with his finger. After they’d eaten, he’d heard all about how Ryeowook had told Jung Hwa several stories that afternoon and how the boy promised to come back for ‘story time’ again soon. He hadn’t seen Ryeowook look that excited in a long time.

With a sigh, he pulled the smaller man to his chest, nestling his face in his hair and breathing deeply.

‘Someday,’ he signed lightly against Ryeowook’s back, ‘everyone else will see how special you are too.’