Sign Language (BoyxBoy)

Chapter nineteen - shards

Lars' POV

The buzz of a rather fun and alcoholic party at work was still coursing through my veins as I opened the front door to our house, yelling an obnoxiously loud greeting to my beautiful boyfriend. I grinned when the door to the living room opened while I was trying to get my shoes of my feet, but frowned when I saw it was my sister coming through. 

"Is Nick upstairs?" I asked her, maybe he hadn't heard me, had he taken advantage of my school party to get to bed early. She shook her head, her curls rippling next to her face.

"He's out. I'm going to join him for a bit. Might as well get to bed bro." She smiled, though it seemed strained, and kissed me briefly on the cheek before throwing her summer jacket over her shoulder and whirling out the door. 

I frowned at myself in the large mirror on the wall under the stairs, finding it all very strange but went upstairs like she suggested. The pleasant buzz making room for a rather nauseating churning of my stomach. Something seemed very wrong, I just wish I knew what it was.

After watching and feeling my room spin around my bed for a while, I shrugged the covers off and tried to get up, only to be overwhelmed with nausea. Right, no shower for now then. I let myself fall back on the mattress and left my foot on the floor next to the bed, an anchor to keep te spinning of the room to a minimum. I blacked out shortly after that, unaware of anything happening in our house for the rest of the night.

Nick's POV

The sun was up for quite a while and Lars was still snoring loudly. The room stank of booze and stale smoke, but it barely registered. My bottom was sore from sitting on the floor, back leaning against the cupboard and my nails had been reduced to nearly nothing, I'd soon be drawing blood from my fingers if I kept biting them as furiously as I had done the hours before. 

Silke had still been here when I got home with Zoe, her face pale with obvious worry, her embrace tight as she held me close. Zoe and I explained to her what had happened, and we spent the better part of the night discussing what I should and could do. I was fairly certain that I couldn't let Joey down. I was the only proper family she had, even if we hadn't seen each other since she'd been a little girl with pig tails and flowery dresses. Zoe and Silke understood, agreed even, but we didn't have to say how worried we were about Lars' reaction to all of it. I wasn't sure how exactly he would react. Angry? Disappointed? Resigned? Sad? It was that question that had kept me up all night, waiting for him to wake up.

It took until half past nine for him to start stirring. In any other situation, I would've found it adorable how he woke up, trashing his head from side to side, stretching his long arms and legs, and finally, rubbing his eyes before opening them, blinking against the harsh sunlight invading our room. I wiped my eyes and cheeks to get rid of any tears that could have been left and put on a smile, a reassuring one, I hoped. It was easy to tell I had failed. He located me at the other side of the room and relief washed over his face with a tiny smile in its wake. It only lasted about three seconds before a frown took over and he quickly crossed the distance to sit down opposite me, his legs crossed. 7

"Spill it." He signed right before grabbing my left hand in both of his, watching me with worry, yet incredible kindness etched on his face.

I took a deep breath and started off, using one handed signing and a bit of speech to tell him all about yesterday. His face remained unreadable througout my entire story, and it was nerve wracking to say the least. I continued though, keeping eye contact the whole time, hoping it would show him how much I cared about him, too. 

"What are you going to do now?" His voice was croaky and hoarse, but I got a strange kind of reassurance from the fact that he was still holding my hand in favour of signing. 

"I'm going to call social services, ask them what exactly they expect from me."

He nodded silently, squeezed my hand and brought it to his mouth to press a kiss to my knuckles before standing. "I'm going to shower and head downstairs for breakfast. Come find me when you're done?"

I smiled the tiniest smile and nodded, my hand reaching for his ankle as he walked past.

The lady from social services was nice, and she couldn't add more to the story than what Annabelle had already told me. She explained how Joey had asked if they could contact me to ask if I wanted to be her guardian since our mother was really not an option and her foster family was moving away. She'd asked if I could give her a call, so before I realised what was happening I was scrambling around the desk to find paper and a pen to write down her number. 

It felt a bit strange, but I knew I might back out if I didn't deal with it right away, so I took a deep breath and dialed the numbers I had just written down. The dial tone sounded far away and muffled by my erratic heartbeat. The rushing of my blood sounded so loud I almost missed her picking up.

"Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!" She slurred out, it almost made me smile at the way she'd obviously picked up without checking the caller id.

"Joey?" I croaked, and I could hear her muffled cursing before she replied again.

"Uhm, yes, this is she. Who is this?"

"It's... it's Nick."

It was to be expected that the conversation was a bit awkward, to say the least. After all, we hadn't seen each other in more than half of her life and besides our last name, there was little we still shared. After about fifteen minutes, Joey told me a couple of memories she had of us, and that appeared to be the ice breaker we needed. We talked for a little while longer, and even though we weren't much more than acquaintances by the time we hung up, it felt alright. We'd swapped skype ID's and agreed to talk at the weekend over the internet, maybe I could even convince Lars to join our conversation.

Zoe's POV

Lars had taken the entire situation better than I would've thought before. He remained calm, though I suspected that he was in denial about the possible consequences of Nick's sister turning up all of a sudden. Nick and Joey had agreed to skype each other on Sunday afternoon, and it had taken Nick a lot of effort but he'd managed to convince Lars to join him behind the computer. Silke and Charlie were around our house as well, and although Nick had assured us it'd be alright if we joined their chat as well, it felt a bit like invading, so we hung out in the background, mostly lounging around in the garden while the computer was set up on the terrace. I shot a couple of glances in their direction, and was immediately charmed by the girl on the screen. The resemblance to Nick was clear. They had the same strong jaw and her head of blond curls was even more untamed than Nick's. In spite of all the trouble her sudden appearance was causing and probably would cause in the future, I was happy that Nick had found himself some family again. He didn't talk about it very often, but I knew he missed the feeling of belonging somewhere because of a blood bond. 

From what I could hear, they were mostly catching up on each other's lives, and I could tell Lars had charmed her within minutes. He was terribly good at it if he wanted too, and the fact that he was using his charm on Nick's sister warmed my heart. He really loved him.

Lars' POV

She was nice enough, Joey. And she reminded me of Nick a lot, making it hard to despise her for disrupting our lovely little life. It was all right at first, they talked over skype almost every day halfway through July, texted for the next week and a half while we were out camping at a recreational area 30 miles away from home, and went back to their skype routine after. It had me almost forgetting that other things were expected from Nick, or asked, at least. 

Almost, because when I came home from an afternoon movie with Silke, it wasn't hard to guess what his lip biting was about. He'd go to visit Joey for a week, next week already. See if they hit it off in real life, and figuring out how things could be when her foster parents moved away. I swallowed the big lump in my throat and smiled around it before hugging Nick. My vision blurred but somehow I succeeded in not crying, I refused to believe anything was changing in the long run.