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sakon76First Romances
by K. Stonham
first released 3rd March 2022
By the time Douxie's bachelor suite in the basement is finished, he's sixteen and Theo is one and definitely too big for the bassinet. Jim and Claire have tried cosleeping with her, but it always goes badly, both of them terrified they're going to accidentally smother their daughter in the middle of the night. The hours spent sawing lumber and banging it together and hanging drywall, in comparison, seem like a delightful family project. Toby and Strickler and all of Douxie's "cousins" pitch in. In the end, Zelda proves to be the best at construction work, a distinction she hangs over her brothers' heads with smug pride.
Douxie, meantime, is delighted to have a room that's completely his from the get-go and gleeful about getting to pick out the colors and the carpet and, yes, even cutting up the insulation to go in between the 2x4s. Claire's mother sniffs and several times sends a city inspector out to make sure everything's up to par and the wiring's not going to burn the house down around their ears, but the joke's on her. Toby knew a guy who knew a guy who helped them with all the specs and details.
And then there's all the stuff Krel's adding onto the room. Things like actual changing star maps on the ceiling that accurately reflect the skies above Arcadia Oaks regardless of the season or weather, and paint that Douxie can scribble on with a pencil or marker or even just his fingers, then wipe clean with a wave of his hand. Plus Douxie got to choose the paint colors.
He went for eclectic: one wall deep blue, one wall sky blue, one purple, and one black. When they're not covered by scribbles, that is. He has his desk, and his bed, and a bookshelf filled with one-third novels, one-third sheet music, and one-third magic tomes. Now that he's legal to work, he's started picking up shifts at GDT Arcane Books again, and has taken more than one volume home in lieu of pay.
There is also a baby monitor on his bedside table, exactly the same as there is in Theo's room. He and Jim have a very careful, awkward conversation about how if Douxie should need some private alone time, he should please be sure to cover the monitor first. Because there are certain things one's parental figures really should not overhear, if possible. Jim's not sure which of them comes out of that conversation redder. "Look, I know you've never really been interested in anyone," he says, hand on the back of his neck and looking at the ceiling, "but you're physically sixteen, and I remember exactly what being sixteen was like."
"Hopefully I'll have a lot less fighting for my life situations than you did at sixteen," Douxie retorts, also definitely not looking at the other person in the conversation.
"Hopefully," Jim allows. "But even without that, the hormone cocktail is still pretty potent."
But Douxie still needs the monitor, needs them to be able to hear when he has nightmares. Which he still does. They're fewer and farther between, but they're still there. Archie thinks, and Meredith tentatively agrees, that they'll probably settle down to "a normal amount," whatever that is, when Douxie's memories finish fully integrating.
They're guessing it will be Douxie hits nineteen - the physical age he died at. So, in three more years.
Maja, Daja, and Eli Junior have returned to Akiridion-5, as have Taja and Faja. Douxie keeps in touch with them all by e-mail and occasional interstellar vid calls. This year it's Baja's and Waja's turn to experience the glories of education on Earth, and Douxie has by now become the septuplets' unofficial guide to their father's world.
Their Akiridion forms are nearly indistinguishable; in their human transductions, however, they look as much alike as any set of brothers. Waja is shorter and wears glasses. Baja, like his father before him, is the quintessential jock, and is already working his way through dating the fairer half of the school. Douxie doesn't quite understand it, but somehow none of Baja's exes seem to hold any animosity toward either him, or anyone else he dates.
The Kissing Tree, he thinks, is going to garner rather a long list of "BPT+" marks.
They're not the only new students in junior year, though. There's also a good-looking blond boy who sits in the back of the classroom and doesn't speak to anyone and eats alone at lunch. Douxie hasn't caught his name; he's not sure anyone has. He twitches when he notices anyone come near him, glares a lot, and generally looks like he'd rather be anywhere but in Arcadia Oaks High. But Douxie's also sure he's not a ghost, because the teachers pass him Scantrons for tests, even if he never gets called on in class.
The mystery of why Blond Boy never talks get solved one day during Physics, when the teacher fires up his laptop to do a presentation on a new section, and suddenly there's a horrible deafening screech from the room's speakers and Blond Boy's face goes pained in a flash and he yanks something out of both ears, shaking his head like he's dazed.
Strickler confirms for Douxie, later that day, that Blond Boy (name: Carter Howard) is almost completely deaf, nonverbal, and his hearing aids are of minimal help. And that he's never been in a mainstream school before, but had adamantly refused any sort of accommodations or assistance when enrolling. Principal Uhl, Strickler adds, is waiting for Carter to second-guess that decision, but Strickler thinks the boy is too stubborn to ask for help.
Douxie thinks, and considers, and ponders, and ends up deep-diving into YouTube ASL tutorials that night.
"Douxie, are you okay?" Claire asks the next morning as Theo bangs her spoon against the tray of her high chair.
"Stayed up late watching videos," he tells the table.
"Douxie," she starts to chide, but he interrupts with a whining mumble.
"What was that?" Jim asks from the kitchen.
"He'sreallycute," Douxie tells the table.
Carter's face when Douxie introduces himself in sign language is pretty close to priceless, but then he starts talking with his hands, going way too fast because Douxie's had one night of learning the language, he's nowhere near being fluent, let alone able to communicate at what's apparently called "deaf speed." So he explains that with fumbling fingers. What the heck, he can do actual magic, but talking with a cute boy makes him trip over himself? But Carter looks like someone's offered him a life raft in the middle of an ocean, so there's no way Douxie could ever walk this back.
Then Baja and Waja sit down on either side of Douxie and ask what he's doing, and find out that there's this whole other language that they can use to talk without anyone knowing what they're saying.
Baja lights up because it's mischief, and Waja is an actual genius like Krel, so Douxie sighs and resigns himself to being outstripped in this within a week, and shrivels up a little inside because it's not like he'll be special anymore, not like he'll be the only one able to talk to Carter. And, okay, he knows he's a decent actor, and actually a good musician, but what good is playing the guitar in the face of someone who can't hear it? Douxie's goth and awkward and dealing with all the crap a childhood on the streets and the memories of another lifetime have left him. He can't even claim to be the most amazing magician in the school, because there's a whole entire grade of students one year ahead of him who have blown some of his current capabilities out of the water.
And Carter is so fucking cute when he lights up like someone's shining a spotlight on him.
Douxie is screwed.
"You're whipped, Lake," Baja says.
"Shut up." Douxie shoves the other boy because Carter mainly gets along by lip-reading, and what if he'd been looking their way and caught that? Luckily, a glance toward the lunch line shows that Carter and Waja are still being served chicken surprise, so Douxie's safe for now.
Baja makes several gestures that Douxie is absolutely sure are part Akiridion body language insults and part ASL obscenities mixed together. He knows two of them, and that's because he had to ask Carter to slow down and tell him what they meant. Carter, it turns out, is frequently remarkably obscene in his speech. The teachers just don't know that because none of them understand ASL. Finding out that Carter's mom is ex-military, and that his dad, who left them, was also, explained a lot about that vocabulary quirk. Carter literally grew up on military bases and had a million and one uncles in passing, some of whom were delighted to help him get away with a lot. He's about as different from most of Arcadia Oaks High's student body as Baja, Waja, and Douxie are.
That said, the three of them have roped several of their classmates and relatives into studying ASL with varying degrees of enthusiasm, so for the first time since he's been in a mainstream school, Carter can actually talk with people.
"You should invite him over for dinner," Baja sing-songs, knowing he's on thin ice but finding needling Douxie more important. "You could show him your room and--"
Douxie rips a silencing spell off his bracelet and slaps it on Baja's stupid face. His mouth moves silently for a minute before he figures it out and switches to sign, which silencing spells absolutely do not cover. Maybe a smoke cloud centered around his hands...?
Waja and Carter make their way over, and the way the chicken surprise jiggles on their trays makes Douxie slightly nervous. Waja's fine, he's half Akiridion and pretty much nothing biology-based can make him sick. But Carter...? Totally vulnerable to food poisoning.
Douxie unpacks his lunch bag, grateful that Jim has a printout of the cafeteria menu pinned to the fridge with several days each month crossed out in red Sharpie. The school lunch menu apparently hasn't changed since he was a student, and given some of the experiences with the cafeteria food that Douxie's seen his classmates have? He's really, really grateful there's certain days he's not allowed to eat the school food.
Great school, lousy menu.
But Carter smiles. "This is great!" he says with his hands, and digs in.
Douxie is appalled. But according to Carter, his mom is a lackluster cook, so he grew up eating in mess tents. He has a cast-iron stomach and a constitution a horse couldn't kick into submission.
Looking at him and Waja eating, Douxie shudders, and assembles himself a proper ploughman's lunch out of the array of Tupperwares Jim has sent with him today.
"What's that?" Carter asks, pointing.
"Chutney," Douxie tells him, smearing it across the crusty homemade bread and putting cheese on top so his fingers won't get sticky. "It's sort of a vinegary fruit and veg preserve. Jim made it."
"I still think it's weird that you call your parents by their names," Waja says. Douxie flips him off, which makes Carter and Baja laugh.
And the thing is, Douxie's tried. Jim and Claire are definitely his parents, legally and emotionally. But they're also his friends, so every time he tries to call Claire "Mam," his tongue trips over it because he remembers teaching her how to be confident in her shadowmancy. And how can he call Jim "Dad" when Jim was also a surly teenager butthurt because Douxie was better at flirting than him?
Plus every person Douxie has ever called his father has died on him, every single one across two lifetimes, and he doesn't think it's an actual curse, but what if it is?
So they're family, whatever they call each other, and that's enough.
"I got adopted too late for it to stick," he says instead.
"Wait, you're adopted?" Carter signs.
"A little over a year ago," Douxie says nonchalantly, trying to cover the way his heartbeat suddenly kicks up at the question. "I spent five years living on the streets. The great sob story of my life that practically everyone knows."
Baja smacks Douxie's arm. Then smacks it again, gesticulating impatiently. Douxie rolls his eyes and finally dissipates the spell.
"But you've got magic," Carter protests. He's still not entirely over staring when people do magic, even though it's pretty common around the high school.
"Which means jack shit," Baja says. Douxie's already tempted to hit him with another silencing spell. "Douxiekins here," he says, leaning his weight on Douxie, "was learning all on his own instead of having actual teachers like real wizards do, so he could barely do anything with it."
"I will hex you," Douxie threatens, because sometimes Baja's as much of an ass as his father. "You weren't even there."
"You should invite him to dinner," Claire says that night, while Douxie's got Theo in his arms and his face is being covered by deliberate wet sloppy baby kisses, because apparently "Mwa!" is the funniest thing in the world today.
Douxie groans. "Not you too."
"Du!" Theo slaps his cheek.
"Yes, yes, I'm paying attention to you," he assures his baby sister, who beams and plants another kiss on him.
"We've met all your other friends," Jim points out from the kitchen.
"This is a conspiracy," Douxie complains.
Claire grins. "Well, yeah," she replies. "We want to meet this boy."
"He doesn't even know I like him," Douxie points out.
Claire tilts her head to the side. "Douxie, you arranged for Waja to interpret the school play into ASL just so Carter could see you onstage. He may be a teenage boy, but he can't be that oblivious."
"It was Camelot," Douxie protests. "He'd never seen it before!"
"I'm still shocked you tried out for it."
"Yeah, well, just because Arthur was an ass and nothing about the play's accurate, doesn't mean I was going to skip a year." Douxie busies himself with luring Theo into playing peekaboo. Her shrieks of delight are almost deafening. "'Sides, it was funny using actual Excalibur as a prop one."
Jim grins. "It was," he agrees.
The older he gets, the more his memories settle, the more Douxie is allowed to argue with Strickler in class. Well, assuming they're discussing a period of time he'd actually lived through. He is... had been... older than Strickler, and while his students know that their teacher has lived through some of the history they learn about, the fact that Douxie also has lived through some significant events is not a widely disseminated fact.
"Endless tinned mutton. Gah." Douxie pulls a face. "Made me wish to never see a sheep again once I got home. I remember my squad had a running one-upmanship on who could think up the vilest thing to do to the unfortunate lamb who'd become our so-called meal."
"Hmm." Strickler makes a note on his pad of paper. "Is there anything else you particularly remember from your time in the trenches?"
"There's other places you can get this from, you know," Douxie complains. "There's endless letters and journals surviving from both the wars."
"Yes, but I can ask questions of you," Strickler points out. "Most other primary sources are dead. And I was being a spy at that time, which was rather a different facet of the war than yours."
"Ugh." Douxie makes another face. He eyes Strickler warily. "Am I going to be given quiz questions based on my own experiences?"
"Who better to answer them?"
He rolls his eyes heavenward. "Nobody else has to write essays on their own life."
"If you wish to come clean to your classmates about your experience as a reincarnated being, feel free. Now, anything else?"
Douxie considers it, and shakes his head. "Wishing for dry woolen socks, and that's about it. Most of World War Two's a blur for me." He snorts. "Funny thing. I can remember hearing the eruption of Krakatoa, which was sixty years beforehand, and I can remember what I was doing in the 1960s, but France and Germany in the forties?" He waves his hands. "Still gone. And I've no idea why."
About two weeks later, Douxie is handed back his essay on "Wartime Production: Balancing the Needs of Soldiers' Feed and Feet in WWII." It has an A+ marked on it.
"Exemplary work, Mister Lake," Strickler comments. "Like your father before you."
Douxie grits his teeth and resists the urge to tell Strickler to fuck off. Probably also like his father before him, come to think of it.
"You got an A? This sucks," Carter complains later. "I only got a C+!"
"What did you write about?" Waja asks, looking over Carter's shoulder at his brandished essay.
"The evolution of the Allies' weapons in World War Two," Carter replies.
"I can see your problem right there," Douxie tells him, taking the essay out of Carter's hands and flipping to the back, where Strickler's remarks do indeed mesh with what he thinks. "It was supposed to be about wartime production."
"It was!" Carter argues. "They were weapons! They were produced! For the war!"
"Yeah, but Strickler specifically said he wanted this to be about the interaction between the domestic and military spheres," Douxie says, handing the essay back. "He probably wanted something about the scrap metal drives or something."
Carter would probably be growling if he was verbal. Instead he's smacking the back of his hand against his face repeatedly to signal his frustration.
"What about you, Waj'?" Douxie asks.
"An A," Waja replies, pleased. "I wrote about how domestic manufactories were reconfigured for the war effort."
"Baj'?"
"C-," Baja reports, sounding as pleased with a passing grade as his father ever had.
Douxie exchanges a look with Carter and Baja's brother. "Do I want to know what you wrote about?"
Baja runs a hand through his thick, glossy hair. All seven of the half-Akiridions inherited Steve's hair and are inordinately proud of it.
"Hair care products, how they became scarce, and how people worked around their absence, of course," Baja says. The duh is implied in his voice.
Douxie shakes his head. "Lord, you're like your father."
"Which is why he is Mama's favorite," Waja agrees, nodding.
"Oh, like you are not trying to be Uncle Krel's favorite!"
Douxie steps out of the way as the two brothers start shoving one another. "And there's five more of them at home," he mutters. "No wonder Krel doesn't want more than three visiting at a time."
Carter is staring at his lips.
"Um, sorry," Douxie says with his hands as well as his mouth. "I forgot to sign."
Carter doesn't look away. Douxie swallows. Butterflies are suddenly nesting in his stomach. "Um. Wouldyouliketocometodinner?" he blurts, panicking.
Carter blinks. "What?" he asks.
Douxie takes a deep breath and tries again. "Would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow?" he asks, and this time, thank god, Carter is watching his hands as much as his mouth, because Douxie knows he's blushing, he's being obvious--
But Carter's mouth curves up in a smile. "I would love to," he signs.
Carter, fuck him very much, is early. Douxie's on the living room floor keeping Theophania busy while Claire is upstairs changing out of the suit she had to wear to a board of directors meeting today, and Jim is in the kitchen cooking, when the doorbell rings.
Douxie looks around himself helplessly, but Theo's now discovered bipedal locomotion and also has a decided tendency to run herself into the corners of coffee tables because they look fun and the right height to hold onto or something. So she's currently not to be trusted alone.
Sighing, he scoops her up and ends up answering the door with a baby in his arms.
Carter blinks and stares and signs a hesitant "Hi?"
Theo sees new person and immediately lights up, lunging for him with grabby hands. While Douxie's distracted by trying to not have her topple out of his arms, she plants a hand on each of Carter's cheeks and greets him with a giant "Mwa!" baby kiss on the nose.
"I am so sorry," Douxie apologizes immediately, unable to sign while containing his beaming baby sister.
Carter just blinks and smiles, wiping the baby slobber off his face with one arm. "No problem," he signs.
Douxie shows him in and then, thank god, Claire comes down the stairs and takes Theo from him. "Hi, you must be Carter," she says, signing awkwardly with one hand.
Douxie blinks. When had Claire picked up sign?
Carter lights up, and it turns out that Jim and Claire have both been studying ASL behind Douxie's back. All because he has a stupid crush on a deaf boy, or something.
God, he loves his family.
Dinner, as always, is exquisite, and from the expression that Carter makes after he puts the first forkful of Jim's pot roast in his mouth, you'd think he'd never had food before. Because he takes the fork out of his mouth and stares at it like it's an alien lifeform or something, and then grins broadly and sets to.
The conversation is stuttering; Jim and Claire both have full-time jobs, and two children, as well as other duties, and haven't been devoting as much study to ASL as Douxie has. But even so, it's clear that Carter's amazed that anyone's taken the effort. And from what they say - Jim can see where knowing ASL would be good for his work, and Claire's been talking with the board about hiring an ASL interpreter for the playhouse's shows, to make them more accessible - Douxie thinks they'll keep up with the study even if he and Carter end up having a falling out.
Which he really hopes doesn't happen.
After dinner, he shows Carter down to his room, which Douxie has absolutely not cleaned for the occasion. It just needed a bit of tidying up, that's all. Really.
Theophania stands at the gate at the top of the basement stairs, rattling the bars and calling "Du!" after him. It's clear she wants to come along, but for once Douxie's not inclined to bow to her every whim.
"This is nice," Carter signs about Douxie's room as Douxie stands nervously in the door. Douxie's rubbing his index finger against his thumb to try to deal with the fact that the boy he likes is in his room, examining the band posters Douxie has tacked to the wall in his music corner. It's not really helping much.
"Why do you like music?" Carter asks, and sits down on Douxie's bed, bouncing on the mattress a little. "I can't really hear it, so I don't get it. Can you tell me?"
Douxie sits down next to him and tries to explain why he likes it so much, more than acting even, probably just as much as magic. His fingers feel fat and his explanation fumbling, but it doesn't seem to matter to Carter, who just sits there watching him with a smile on his face.
Eventually Carter's smile broadens and he reaches out with both hands, putting them on Douxie's cheeks, stilling his nervous babbling.
Carter leans in.
His lips meet Douxie's.
Everything else in the world, everything that's not this beautiful golden boy and his touch, falls away.
Only the quiet of his kiss remains.
Author's Note: Carter Howard is HoneyxMonkey's creation, from her story All Is Fair In Love And War and is used here with permission. My apologies for anything I may have gotten wrong in writing a deaf character; I did do research, but such things are always imperfect. Please feel free to offer constructive criticism, if there's any way you feel I could write Carter better.
