Prompt: 'My family insisted on going to the pantomime this year, and I was the one who had to sit next to a stranger, meaning I sat next to you.'
Characters: Khun Aguero Agnis, Jue Viole Grace/Twenty-Fifth Baam, assorted Khun family members, Hwa-Ryun
Tags: Deaf!Baam, First Name Basis, Christian tradition, no romance, no dialogue, Aguero being himself, over-analyzation
Notes: I am not Christian and have never seen a 'pantomime', but I didn't want to butcher the prompt.
Aguero had no idea why his family had decided to attend the event, they had never shown any distinct interest in it before. In fact, they hadn't shown interest in even celebrating holidays since he was a very small child, and even then he could only recall them having a party for one of his eldest sister's birthdays. He honestly wasn't quite sure if a birthday counted as a holiday, since it really only affected one person.
Nonetheless he found himself standing in a dusty theatre, only half-listening to his father discuss seating arrangements while he peered around the red velvet seats that spread away from the stage like waves. There weren't many, probably less than four hundred, and they looked as if they hadn't been replaced in at least twenty years.
"Aguero."
At the sound of his name he snapped back to attention, allowing his gaze to meet his father's for only a moment. His father pointed to a seat in the audience and he followed the alabaster finger's direction to a rickety seat next to somebody with a long brown ponytail. Lovely.
He had never been particularly fond of human interaction. He could talk to people, heck he could talk circles around people. (To quote a certain nuisance of a brother, he could talk a penguin into buying sand.) To him however, that was all conversation was. Convincing somebody into doing or seeing what he needed them to, making people help him achieve his own selfish goals. Talking was useless when he had no goal, and he could only hope the person he was to sit beside shared that sentiment.
They apparently didn't. The moment he sat down the figure had smiled at him, giving a small wave. Why they didn't just say hello, Aguero had no idea. There was no rule saying they couldn't talk before the show began, just about everybody in the high-ceilinged room was doing it anyways. He was more polite than to point this out though, simply inclining his head to the other in acknowledgement.
He filed away the other's appearance quickly in the brief moments he was focuses on them, running things through his mind as he faced the stage. Long smooth hair, the colour of rich coffee and eyes that glowed an expensive shade of gold. Pale skin that showed a lack of sunlight, though perhaps not as pale as Aguero's own, and a somewhat built physique. Their face however was almost childish, the slightest bit of baby fat clinging to their cheeks. If Aguero were feeling more talkative he might ask the stranger their pronouns, if only so he could analyze them further in his mind. Making a decision based on the fact that he might never see them again, he decided to refer to them as male.
His thought were pulled away as the lights dimmed, a stunning woman with long red hair and a pitch black eye patch stepping out from the deep green curtain. Her skin seemed to glow under the stage light that had been placed over her in a way that was not simply achieved with make-up. Her presence demanded silence.
Before her mouth opened, her hands began to speak, a series of movements he did not understand, but could label as sign language without much thought. Her voice, with accompanied the signs, was both naturally light and heavy with suspense, like a pale honey one might use on fruit. The sound of the voice itself was hard to define, nothing he had ever heard before. The voice of a storyteller, of somebody who guided an audience through events they themselves might not be able to fathom.
As she finished speaking she moved the side of the stage, the light on her dimming but not disappearing. An interpreter.
It was around half-way through the first act when he noticed. The way the boy next to him laughed, just a beat after everybody else. The same way the interpreter finished each sentence just a beat after the actor's finished saying them. The way his laugh was light and unrestrained, and perhaps slightly off vocal of how a laugh normally sounded. His laugh seemed to match him flawlessly in its ever irregularity, and in his mind he silently dubbed him as just that. The irregular. Not in a bad way, but rather a fond one.
This deaf boy was somebody h could see himself talking to again, getting to know. Maybe even referring to him as a friend, maybe one day learning his name.
He never did see the boy again.