Chapter Text
Jisung should be at home right now but instead, he’s heading to the stupid ASL class that his counselor put him into. Jisung’s convinced it’s because he hates him and refuses to let him have a free period.
He doesn't understand why he has to be here. He would have more than enough credits to graduate without it. His guess is that they find joy in not letting the students have any freedom. And why ASL out of all the classes they could’ve forced him to take? Why didn’t they even think to ask him what class he would want to take and at least give him somewhat of a choice?
He walks into the class and straight to the back, away from everyone.
The teacher, Mrs. Wilson, walks in. She’s fairly young, probably mid to late 20’s. She has light brown hair tied into a braid and she’s wearing a cute cardigan with flowers on it.
Class starts but she doesn’t say anything. She just keeps doing random gestures and pointing to the projector. Jisung guesses it would tell him what she’s signing but he doesn't care enough to pay attention to it.
He can probably find a way to get switched out of this class soon enough.
For the meantime he just looks around the room at all the decor. There’s a lot of different deaf awareness posters and a paper cutout of a hand doing the only sign Jisung actually knows, “I love you.” There’s also some plants in the window and a cute little cat plushie on the teacher’s desk. Above the whiteboard, is the alphabet but with drawings of a hand signing all the letters. As he’s looking around, someone catches his attention.
A boy sitting in the front by the window.
A boy with brown hair and pale skin. His features are all sharp in the softest way possible. Not that that even makes sense but it’s the only way he can think to describe it. He’s beautiful. Easily the most handsome guy Jisung has ever seen in his life.
The decor is forgotten and the lesson might as well just not exist at this point as he struggles to look away from the boy.
And just like that, Jisung has changed his mind about switching classes.
<3
Jisung has been in the class for about two weeks now and he’s probably learned like five signs at the most so he, obviously, has an F in the class.
He wasn’t too worried about the fact that he knew next to nothing. Until, he walked into class one day to find a seating chart projected on the board.
Jisung was expecting to just sit at the back and daydream about the pretty boy, like usual, but instead, he’ll be sitting in the front. Right next to him.
Shit! He thinks. Shit shit shit! Now he’s gonna look like a complete idiot. The teacher always has everyone practice signing with the person sitting next to them. Jisung has gotten lucky so far because the girl sitting next to him was equally as uninterested in the class so they just had an unspoken agreement to just not do it.
At this point, Jisung is just praying the pretty boy will also not know anything because Jisung has noticed that he’s rarely ever paying attention. He always seems to be working on homework for his other classes or something.
Jisung sits down next to him with his heart racing so loudly that he almost worries that he'll hear it. And the fact that he somehow looks even prettier from close up, certainly does not help Jisung’s poor heart. He's sitting straighter than he thought he was even capable of and he’s scared to even breathe. He can’t get his stupid leg to stop shaking and he worries that the vibrations from it are bothering the pretty boy because his dad always complains about it.
This time, he pays attention like his life depends on it. As if that would miraculously help him catch up on the last two weeks. Unfortunately, even with all of his focus, he can’t understand half of what’s going on.
What he can understand, though, is when the teacher instructs everyone to turn and sign with their partners. Jisung panics and tries turning to the other side to avoid the absolute humiliation that would come from this. His luck runs out when the person on the other side of him is already signing with someone else. Jisung slowly turns back, wishing that a giant hole would just open up under him and swallow him whole. Instead, he meets a pair of beautiful, almost cat-like eyes.
“Hi.” The boy signs with a simple wave. Ok, so far so good. He can do this. “Hi.” Jisung waves back. Then he signs something else and Jisung is completely lost. He thinks that one of the signs might've been “name” so he must be asking for his name. He’s supposed to finger spell his name but he doesn’t have the alphabet memorized yet. He only knows a few, like “O” and “L” cause they actually look like the letters. But neither of those are even in his name. He’s screwed, like actually.
Then, he remembers the alphabet posters above the whiteboard. For a moment, he thinks he’s been saved but when he finds J, the picture is confusing. It looks like there might be a movement in the sign or something that’s hard to depict with a drawing. Great.
Since Jisung still hasn’t responded, the boy signs the same thing again. Jisung just shakes his head and whispers, “Sorry, I don’t know the signs.” while avoiding eye contact as he feels his cheeks heat up from embarrassment.
The boy just sighs softly and grabs a piece of paper and a pencil out from his backpack. They’re technically not supposed to talk but using a paper to communicate just feels like a bit much. At least he’ll be able to understand him this way. He writes “Your name what?” on the paper then slides it over to him. “Jisung.” He writes.
Jisung expects him to just move on from there to the next question but instead, he points at each word and letter one-by-one and demonstrates how to sign them. Once Jisung has it all down he signs, “Your name what?” The boy smiles and nods before writing down “Minho” on the paper, not even bothering to try signing it because he knows that Jisung won’t understand. Then, once again, he points at each letter and shows him how to sign it.
They keep that same system for the rest of the questions and for the first time since he started taking this class, Jisung can finally say he actually learned something. And not only did he learn a few signs, he also learned some things about Minho. For starters, now he actually knows that his name is Minho. And he learned that he’s 16, his favorite color is mint green, and his favorite animals are cats.
That night, Jisung stays up until sunrise watching sign language lessons on youtube.
<3
“You look tired.” Felix, one of Jisung’s friends, says when he sits down for lunch the next day. Jisung doesn’t even bother to respond, he just nods and then lays his head down, using his arms as a pillow.
“Are you not gonna eat?” His other friend, Chan, asks. He just groans before mumbling, “too tired.” Suddenly, something hits him on the head. He looks up to see what it was and there’s a ziplock bag with half a sandwich sitting in front of him. “I don’t care. Chan says. “Eat anyway.” Jisung just rolls his eyes before grabbing the sandwich and starting to slowly munch on it.
“Why are you so tired anyway?” Felix asks. Jisung yawns before answering, “Stayed up all night trying to learn sign language.” At that, both Felix and Chan look confused. “I thought you said you were just gonna fail that class cause you didn’t need it to graduate?” Chan says. Jisung sighs before saying, “Yeah, that was the plan.” Then Felix asks, “So, what happened to give you this sudden motivation?”
Just then, the rest of their friends: Changbin, Jeongin, Seungmin, and Hyunjin all show up together. “Well, you know that one pretty guy that’s in that class?” Jisung asks. “The one you never shut up about?” Changbin asks, teasingly. Jisung just rolls his eyes and nods. “What about him?” Changbin asks.
“The teacher made a seating chart and now, I’m sitting next to him.” Changbin just smirks at that and Hyunjin says, “So, you’re panicking cause now he’s gonna know that you’re an idiot?” Chan slaps Hyunjin on the shoulder for saying that but Hyunjin just shrugs, as if saying, what? I’m not wrong, without actually saying it.
“So, you stayed up all night studying so that you don’t make a total fool out of yourself?” Chan asks. “Well, I kinda already did.” Jisung answers. “It’s mostly just so that I don’t make it any worse than it already is.” Hyunjin just laughs and says, “Good luck with that. I’m sure that even if you were fluent in sign language you would still find some other way to make it worse. You seem to just have a special talent for that.” Jisung chuckles softly. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m screwed.”
<3
Jisung only has ASL class every-other day because his school has an A/B day system. So, luckily, that means that he’ll have another extra day to study even more before he’ll have to face Minho again.
Does that also mean that he didn’t actually need to stay up all night studying? Maybe, but he’s just an idiot with a crush and besides, he probably wasn’t gonna be getting much sleep regardless. Because if he wasn’t studying, he probably would’ve just scrolled on his phone instead. At least this way, he was actually being productive.
<3
Even after all the preparation Jisung did, when he walks into class the next day he still feels like he’s gonna mess something up.
Like, what if he tries to sign something and accidentally does some super offensive sign instead without even realizing it. Although, the teacher, obviously, hasn’t taught them any curse words or anything like that so even if he did accidentally sign something bad, Minho probably wouldn’t know it either but still. Jisung just can’t help but worry and overthink.
Minho is already sitting at his spot when Jisung gets there, like he always is, so Jisung walks up and sits down next to him. Minho smiles softly when he notices him and the sight makes Jisung want to worship the counselor that forced him into this class.
When class starts, Jisung is fully paying attention again and he finds that he actually recognized a decent amount of the signs this time from his studying so that’s a good sign.
Once she’s done teaching, she puts a list of questions on the board and once again, asks everyone to work with their partners. With one last deep breath, Jisung turns to face Minho and waves, “Hi.” Minho smiles again and Jisung thinks it might be the prettiest sight he’s ever seen in his life. Like, they should take down the Mona Lisa and replace it with a picture of Minho’s smile. “Hi.” He waves back.
Jisung starts out by asking the first question. “You have siblings?” Minho pauses, looking completely shocked that Jisung actually knew the signs this time. Eventually, he realizes that he still needs to answer and he signs, “Yes. I have older sister.”
They keep going through the list of questions and Jisung feels so proud of himself for not needing any help from Minho this time. He also makes sure to take a mental note of all of Minho’s answers because, as stressful as all of this is, it’s at least a great excuse for Jisung to get to know him.
One of the last questions on the list is, “are you deaf or hearing?” so Jisung asks it, even though it’s kinda obvious what the answer is gonna be. Except, when Minho taps his face twice, once by the mouth and once by the ear, Jisung starts to second guess if maybe he mixed up the signs somehow because he could’ve sworn that was the sign for deaf.