A Note From Lara: So I'm pretty much convinced Peter's learning sign-language while he's in Offscreenville. He's too nice a guy to leave scaling the communication barrier up to Emma. This was partially inspired by "Off Duty" by Cadence. Check it out, it's amazing.
Peter was a little nervous as he approached Emma that morning. He hadn't slept in two days because he'd spent the entire night trying to memorize as many hand signals as possible. He'd learned a little bit of basic signing in preparation for his work as a hospice nurse, but that had been ages ago and he didn't really recall much of it.
"Good morning," he said, signing as he spoke.
"You've been learning sign language?" she asked with a smile.
He shrugged. "Yeah. It didn't seem fair to you to leave it up to lip-reading." For a moment, Emma just stared at him. Then she burst out laughing. "What?" he asked indignantly.
"You just signed 'It didn't seem fair to you to kiss a bus,'" she said, still chuckling.
Peter turned scarlet.