Radio Silence

Want to know something funny? Yeah? Trust me, it’s pretty hilarious.

You see, Alex really wanted to be able to communicate easily with the girl he was dating and ask her to be his girlfriend. Only, he was too much of a pussy to go out and ask this girl’s brother to help him out with some simple words. He already didn’t accept them going on dates, how was he supposed to trust him showing how to sign ‘will you be my girlfriend’? So, he turned to the only other option he could think of: The Internet. Quite a magical place with many answers to the weirdest questions one could think of.

But, oh, no. Alex didn’t have that great experience.

The Internet wasn’t that trustworthy either. Anybody from anywhere could post stuff on there, and Alex had to suffer the consequences. What he had signed on the latest date wasn’t exactly wrong, but it wasn’t right either (So Wrong, It’s Right, huh?). Yes, the gestures he had made did spell out ‘will you be my girlfriend?’ but not in the right language. Many people didn’t seem to realize that sign language wasn’t a universal thing. Sure, there were some very basic things that were spread across different languages, but you had American sign language, German sign language, Italian sign language. Practically any language you can think of. Hell, even British sign language was different to the American version!

That’s where he went wrong.

Of course he wasn’t stupid enough to suddenly find out the Italian translation or Turkish translation, he knew better than to use a website he couldn’t understand. But British English and American English do not differ enough when written or spoken. This led to him not seeing the difference there and learning the wrong version. So much for wanting to do a romantic gesture.

Riley had no clue what he was trying to say!

And then he was too embarrassed to say it out loud or to write it down for her. After screwing something up so majorly, he couldn’t bring himself to fix it right then and there. So, he ended the date feeling horrible and ashamed while Riley had no idea what was going on. To her, he just happened to make a simple mistake, she just wished he had told her what it was so she could have shown him the right way to sign it. And that encounter caused Alex to be too embarrassed to face her for a while. He refused to see her for nearly a week, trying his best to get over it all.

But that wasn’t the best way to deal with things. Casper did not like it one bit. To him, when Riley told him she hadn’t heard anything since their last date, it seemed like Alex had gotten bored and didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. This got him so enraged. He wanted to go over there and show Alex exactly what he meant when he told him to not mess with his sister. He had given him a warning, yet he still believed he could get away with something like that. Riley, of course, tried to stop her brother before it all escalated into something useless.

‘Don’t you dare hurt him’ Riley glared as she stood as a human barricade between him and the front door.

‘He’s an asshole who deserves to be hurt’ Casper furiously signed back, ready to punch a wall if he didn’t get to unleash his anger soon.

‘I like him’ Was one of the last argument Riley used. She hoped he would let it go because of love. Sure, she didn’t love him yet but there was a potential of it happening later on.

‘You liked a hearing guy before and look where that got you. It didn’t do you any good’ Casper showed his desperation.

It was true. Riley had been in a relationship with a ‘hearing guy’ before. Only, that didn’t end up too well. He went to Casper’s university and was one of his friends. One holiday (probably thanksgiving or something), said friend came along to Casper’s and Riley’s childhood home because his own parents lived too far away, and things happened from there. The guy seemed good at first. He treated Riley right in the first two years of their relationship. But the guy was quite a partier. Not only had he cheated multiple times without Riley realizing due to the communication barrier, but eventually he started getting bored. Riley couldn’t come along to the parties and socialize, so the asshole took his time to socialize with girls every other night. Casper found out and since then Riley had been living with him instead.

So, here Alex was, waltzing into Riley’s live like it was nothing. It wasn’t nothing. A rockstar wanting to date his sister? It was a disaster waiting to happen. He knew what those guys were like. Loud partiers that would kiss any girl that came their way. His sister deserved something better than that. Anybody but a rockstar. The perfect guy knew his way around the deaf community and wouldn’t consider being deaf an obstacle. Now, that was something he would have been ok with.

Alex, though? No fucking way.

However, he decided to let it be for the time being. And, boy, was it difficult to keep the rage to himself when Alex decided to ring the doorbell with a question that same day. You see, Alex had decided that the only way he was sure he would learn the right things was to ask Casper for some lessons. He pushed away the fear that the brother who disapproved the relationship would sabotage it all just by teaching him the wrong things.

Casper hesitantly agreed, actually not wanting the relationship to continue and go any further, but also not wanting to be the reason why Riley’s heart was broken. It was one thing to have her heart broken by a guy, another to actually be the reason why that happened. Sure, it might have been selfish, but he didn’t want his relationship with his sister to turn bad over something like that.

So, two days later, Riley and Casper, along with Iggy by their side, went over to Alex’s house to help him out a little. The only reason Riley wanted to come along was to see Alex again and to make sure Casper wouldn’t threaten him in any way. She loved her brother, but she knew leaving him alone with Alex wasn’t the safest thing to do. Of course, she hoped that one day they could be friends (again), but first Casper would have to trust that Alex wouldn’t hurt her on purpose.

When Alex opened the door, he greeted the pair and quickly kissed Riley. After not having spoken to her for a week, he would have loved to make a way more romantic gesture that did not just consist of pecking her on the lips, but doing something like that around her brother probably wasn’t a good idea. Oh, and Jack (who also decided to come over, pretty interested in the whole ASL thing himself. Mainly just to insult people without them understanding, of course) would continuously make sly comments, not making the whole brother situation any better. Riley and Alex hadn’t even gone that far yet, and at this rate, it definitely wasn’t going to happen anytime soon either. First, he had to impress the brother, then he could work on making his relationship more serious.

Not that he should have… Of course Riley was completely able to participate in sexual activities, but communication was a key point. And so far, not so good. Not good at all.

Casper made sure that they immediately started with the ‘lesson’ so that there was no time for Alex and Riley to catch up or anything of the like. He was still going to do anything to prevent the doomed relationship. Jack had already heard things about Casper from Alex and despite the fact that it wasn’t all good things, he still gave him a friendly introduction and told him how excited he was, that he thought it was awesome that he would also be able to communicate with Alex’s girlfriend.

Well, that got Casper to glare at Alex menacingly. He had never heard about this whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing going on. All he knew about was the couple of dates they had been on. He never heard anything about them becoming exclusive. Yes, of course he didn’t want Alex seeing other girls while dating his sister, but he didn’t want it to go this far already! However, Riley did not seem to sense anything that was going on. She hadn’t been participating in the conversation and had been more focused on seeing how her dog was interacting with Alex’s.

They had tried before to let them meet each other, but it didn’t go well. Alex’s dogs would get too excited and then Iggy would become too protective. So, whenever even a short interaction could occur, Alex would put his dogs away for the time being. This time, however, he had completely forgotten. But it must say something that nobody realized the dogs seeing each other, other than Riley. There was no loud barking this time. Sure, Alex’s smaller dogs were still very excited, especially the one that went by the name Sebastian, his tail wagging as he tried to get Iggy to play. Iggy, however, stayed in place and tried her best to ignore. Riley just stared at it all happening at her feet.

When she looked up, she made eye contact with Alex who had been staring at her. She gave him an elated smile and looked back down at the dogs to show him what was happening. The three guys stopped their conversation to see what was going on as well. Jack’s eyes widened when he saw that both of Alex’s dogs were right there.

“Shit, I forgot to lock them up!” He squeaked and wasn’t sure what to do anymore. While Alex was busy trying to clean up the place, Jack had the job to hide them for the time being again. Obviously, that didn’t work out, that idiot.

“Well, it looks like it’s all going just fine.” Alex grinned, taking it as a sign that everything was going to be just, maybe even more than, fine. If his dogs had managed to make such a sudden progress, well, then he could too.

Never had he been more wrong. Really. It was going absolutely horrible.

Riley decided to start off with the alphabet, something that was always useful if you didn’t know the gesture for a word and it was the way to communicate if there wasn’t even a gesture. A really basic thing to start with, right? It might have been learning 36 different motions to do with your hand, but they were very easy and made complete sense to Riley. Of course, it made sense to her, though, because she had been taught it as soon as she was old enough.

Jack managed to nearly do it flawlessly. He tripped up a little bit in the beginning when it was all just being shown to him, but as soon as he actually got to do it as well, it was stuck in his brain. After a little while he could even go through the entire alphabet without help, only needing some pauses to remember what came next. But that seems as easy as memorizing a dance. Alex could even do the whole alphabet in order with slightly longer pauses than Jack. It was learning it in a sequence.

Then Casper decided to try and make it more difficult. He gave them a challenge, the person who managed to make the least mistakes got to choose what was taught next. Of course Alex was hoping to win so he could ask his question that had started all of this in the first place. All the ‘challenge’ was that Casper was going to say a letter out loud and then the guys had to sign it back. It didn’t seem that difficult.

Well, ha. Let me tell you how bad it went.

Jack only made occasional mistakes, like barely showing any difference between the ‘P’ and the ‘Q’ while there was supposed to be a significant difference. They really weren’t all that similar. But it was nothing compared to Alex. He couldn’t even remember the signs let alone all the right ones. At least he knew the ‘L’ which was practically the easiest along with the ‘C’ and ‘O’ to remember. It was obvious Jack was doing way better, and Alex wasn’t exactly liking it. It made him feel like he was way too slow and terrible at the whole thing, but actually, his progress was normal and Jack’s was extraordinary. However, it did mean Alex couldn’t ask his question, and Jack’s immaturity was addressed instead.

He requested to learn some swear words. Riley didn’t even need her brother to translate what Jack said to understand what he wanted. To be honest, though, Casper didn’t even want to translate that. Even though his sister was twenty-five years old, he did not want her to be using swear words. Very hypocritical, if you ask me. Casper wasn’t exactly clean with his language either. Being four years older than Riley made him think of her as his baby sister. He did not want anything corrupting her.

Riley, however, grinned at Jack’s request already having expected it from the very beginning. It was also fun for her to translate things like that. Alex was quite pissed off, though. He had told Jack the entire reason why he wanted to do this in the first place and he didn’t even think about that when getting to choose something. And now Jack was also making his girl laugh!

Well, jealousy isn’t healthy in a relationship.

Riley started signing out the first word, but before she even got further than holding up her hands, her brother intervened. Talking wouldn’t help, so he grabbed her hands, giving her a stern look. Riley immediately snapped her head towards the source and yanked her arms out of her brother’s grasp. He needed to stop being so protective and attached to her. Sure, he was her older brother and took good care of her, which she was grateful for, but this was going too far. Not only was it annoying to her, especially with him trying to get in between her relationship with Alex, but he was twenty-nine himself. Didn’t he ever want to settle down and have a life of his own? Riley sure as hell did.

So, when she looked back at Jack, she tried again, only to have Casper interrupting it in the same way as before. However, it didn’t just stay at Riley trying to escape his grip this time. Casper kept trying to stop her, but Riley would hit his hands away and wouldn’t hesitate to push him. If she could hear perfectly fine, she would have been screaming at her brother like siblings do whenever they fight. But it just looked weirdly aggressive yet playful without either of them making noise.

When Iggy noticed what was going on, she got up from her spot beside Sebastian’s dog bed and charged up towards the scene. Soon enough the growling and loud barking started as she tried to fend off the attacker. If Riley had even remotely realized that her dog was starting to get protective and was thinking of attacking her brother, she would have told Iggy to back off. But, no, she was too focused on her annoying brother for her surroundings to have any significance. Alex’s dogs even started barking along from where they had been lying with Iggy before. Before Alex could get up and tell his dogs to shut up since the noise level was just getting louder and louder, Iggy jumped up on the couch and started biting Casper’s arm. She didn’t bite all too hard, it was more like a warning, that she wasn’t afraid to go further if needed. It did cause Casper enough pain to get him to stop, however.

Only then did Riley see the dog obviously trying to hurt him. She wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Iggy was way too stimulated to pay attention to Riley’s signing, and, well, Riley couldn’t say anything in replacement. So, all she could really do was reach out and force Iggy’s mouth open so that Casper could remove his arm.

Here’s a tip. Don’t ever get close to a dog that’s aggressive at that moment.

Riley was lucky and Iggy didn’t lash out at her and instead calmed down, but it could have gotten way worse and with more than one casualty. Casper’s arm fortunately also wasn’t screwed up badly. The teeth hadn’t sunken deep, but it was enough to puncture his skin in six small round gashes. It didn’t look all too pretty, the blood already slowly seeping out. At least it didn’t look like stitches were needed and bandaging was going to be good enough.

“I’m getting the first aid kit!” Alex rushed up and down the hallway to the bathroom on that floor.

While he was doing that, Jack made sure to take Iggy away from Casper by distracting her but still staying in the living room. Riley stayed with her brother, holding his arm in her arms. She frowned, feeling guilty and signing ‘I’m sorry’, but also not feeling like scolding Iggy would do any good. If there ever was any potential serious threat, Iggy should not hold back, and getting mad at her now would only tell her that doing that was not ok. All Casper did was shrug it off without much of an emotion showing. He couldn’t say anything back without being able to use his arm to sign along with it.

Alex came speedwalking back with a small plastic tin in his hands and passed it to Riley. However, as his actions looked a little like hitting her, Iggy began with barking again, Jack holding onto the collar and hoping for dear life his hand wouldn’t get bitten off. Alex raised his hands up in defense and decided watching from a little distance was probably a better idea.

Riley opened the first aid kit and pulled out the antiseptic spray and showed her brother the label before signing ‘stingy’. While he nodded and knew it was going to come, he still hissed out in pain as Riley targeted each wound. Since she couldn’t hear it and only saw him retracting his arm a little, she continued with putting the gauze on and taping it down with medical tape, a simple band-aid wouldn’t suffice.

When that was done, Riley reached out for the pen and paper that had been placed on the coffee table before she even came over and wrote out something for Alex and Jack: ‘maybe it’s better if we leave now before she hurts one of you as well’. At first, Alex wanted to decline the offer and make her stay for a bit longer, but just as he was about to, Iggy growled at Jack, causing him to let go of her and yelp while retracting all his limbs. So, Alex hesitantly nodded.

I told you everything was going to go wrong. Honestly, I also didn’t expect it to go this downhill and escalate this quickly, but it did. What were they expecting to happen next? It would be crazy of them to think Iggy would totally be ok again and even more ridiculous to believe neither Alex or Jack were going to be afraid of the yellow labrador at least a little. How was Alex ever going to make further advances with that dog most likely always coming in between them? It made him shiver to think of the possibility of this happening when he was naked.

After showing Casper, Riley and Iggy out, he slammed the front door shut quite loudly and turned to glare at Jack. “This was your fault.”

“How is it my fault?!” Jack stuttered out in a high pitched and defensive voice, looking at his best friend with innocent eyes.

“You had to ask the question about the swear words! Why couldn’t you just ask my question? It was the one thing I really wanted to know quickly. Now I didn’t even get an answer and it will take even longer before I will get an answer from Riley!” He complained, knowing that taking it out on Jack wasn’t the right thing to do. But what else was there for him to take his anger out on?

“Let’s be honest here, though. This doesn’t have to be some large romantic gesture. It’s not like you’re proposing to her. You can easily just say it slowly or write it down.”

“I know, but I wanted to impress her, like you definitely managed to impress them.”

Jack shrugged and lied down on the couch he had been sitting on the entire time. “I’ll act dumb next time.”

“Are you calling me dumb?” Alex gasped, his glare turning even harder.

“No, I’m calling myself smart.”

Well, that caused Alex to laugh.

So far, things definitely weren’t going the way Alex wished they had. He knew that liking a deaf girl wouldn’t have been like the perfect fairytale, but this was something else. Just like I’ve warned you. Things aren’t going to get better than this. No, it’s not possible for everything to go through a sudden change and become that love story everybody expected. Casper is not going to do a full one-eighty and be ok with the relationship, Iggy isn’t going to be the friendly fluffy dog every kid dreams of, Alex isn’t going to stop being a perfectionist, and there will be no magical cure for Riley.

It’s starting to seem more like a tragedy. How funny is that?

Was warning you really not enough?