(no subject)

[samhain_sapphires]

[Sitting alone in a coffee shop.]

Comments

[fresh_to_deaf]

(Hi! I hope other OC's are okay with you - if not that's cool :) )

[Okay, he'd possibly picked the worst time to come in - with people everywhere he looked, spotting an empty seat seemed almost too good to be true. There was a young man sat at the table, but hey, hopefully he'd be willing to share for a while. Djem wasn't the disruptive type, and only wanted to enjoy his coffee in peace and maybe draw a little.

Approaching the table, he - albeit a little awkwardly - gets the guy's attention, and motions to the chair with a hopeful, questioning expression.]

OCs are fine. Sorry I didn't get to this earlier!

[samhain_sapphires]

[Whit looks up right away at the motion, and huddles back a bit smaller, as if, against all logic, he's somehow afraid of Djem. But he nods, timidly chewing at his bottom lip. His dark eyes are mostly glued to the table once he realizes he's been staring at Djem intently.

Smooth. He's going to just sip at his iced coffee, now. Um.]

No worries!

[fresh_to_deaf]

[He doesn't really notice the staring, or if he does, he doesn't act as though it bothers him.

He just takes a seat and puts his own drink down, signing a quick 'thank you' before he unhitches his bag from his shoulder with a brief, pained look of relief. It's not so much that he hauls a load of stuff everywhere he goes - just a few essentials, and an old sketchbook that looks like it's seen better days, that a second later is pulled into his lap.

He doesn't want to take up space on the table if he can help it, given that it's being shared.]

Sorry if tags are a little slow, my typing skills are lacking.

[samhain_sapphires]

[It's been a long time since he's had to use sign language. His uncle had been deaf, and been caught inbetween a mixture of the Eesti language hand signals his mother used and the actual ASL most people used. For the most part, after his uncle's passing away last year, Whit hadn't had to use the highly basic ASL he'd picked up via proximity and homespun lessons.

But he can at least say the most important thing of all with sign language:] I don't know how to sign most things. Sorry.

[He probably butchered even that much. When Estonian hand language and American Sign Language tried to coexist in the mind of a non-deaf person, what would come about would often be gibberish. Hopefully, though, that attempt got through, because his bag is full of random stuff that makes him look like a crazy person and he'd rather not have to open it and fish out his cellphone to write out texts.]

No problem!

[fresh_to_deaf]

[When the other signs to him, he blinks a moment before shaking his head, waving his hand at him as if to say 'No, it's okay'.

He wasn't expecting the other to know any ASL at all, so that much was a surprise. He'd only used it himself because he was used to it, and it would have seemed rude - to him at least - to not thank the other.]

Thanks!

[samhain_sapphires]

[Whit exhales, visibly relaxed. He was never particularly close to his uncle Koit - Koit hadn't approved of his sister marrying an American man, so that always put Whit into some kind of unwinnable, unknowable middle ground - but he'd made an effort to learn what he could and at least try to be there.

With time, most of it has faded. But if Whit is at least not expected to be active in a conversation, a lot of the tension can leave his body and mind and he can lean over and make a sort of curious head gesture to Djem's sketchbook, interested despite his own lack of artistic skill.]