Part of your world

A Language Seen Instead Of Heard

For the second day in a row, Carlos was woken up at 7am by Ricky, and by the sounds of it Big Red too that day, not so sneakily creeping downstairs.

Carlos sighed, for all the jibes he had thrown at the pair over the years about the strange habit, today he wasn't too bothered by it, if nothing else they made a pretty reliable alarm clock and these days Carlos found he actually had a reason to wake up early.

Despite Seb insisting that they were ok, Carlos couldn't help but feel like he had put his foot in it the day before, he wasn't sure exactly what it was he had said, but Seb had definitely been off after lunch and Carlos, very uncharacteristically, felt bad about whatever it was that he had done.

Carlos had never been one for feeling guilty, he was who he was and the people he cared about knew how to deal with that, Seb was different though. Carlos could hardly say Seb knew him, or that he knew Seb, but there was something about the blonde that still just felt so familiar that was beginning to drive the dancer mad. The fact that he wanted to spend more time with Seb was just to figure out that feeling, nothing more.

Besides, EJ had decided that he was going to give Seb a guided tour of the beach house that day and Carlos figured he may as well tag along, he wasn't sure he knew his way around the house himself, and Seb had disappeared off with Nini and Ashlyn after they had gotten back from their shopping trip the day before so Carlos hadn't seen him since lunchtime the day before.

Not bothering to change out of his pyjamas, Carlos rolled out of bed and headed down to the kitchen, as he was up so early he might as well eat breakfast for once.

Most of the group was already in the kitchen by the time Carlos got there, Carlos was one of the few in the group who weren't naturally early risers, by the looks of things, Seb was in the majority for that, they had already been awake when Carlos had gone to find him the morning before and now, there he was, sat at the kitchen island with EJ, Ricky and Ashlyn having what looked like a very animated conversation over a stack of pancakes that the four of them were sharing.

"You're doing it again"

Carlos almost jumped out of his skin as Gina appeared bening him, a small smirk on her face.

"Doing what? Also, where did you even come from?" Carlos mumbled, steadying himself on the back of a chair.

"That thing where you stare at him and think no one notices"

Carlos blushed slightly, "what-  that's not- I don't- that's not a thing I do" he spluttered out eventually, "they crawled out of the ocean two days ago, I just want to make sure he's ok"

Gina's smirk didn't falter, "who said I was talking about Seb?"

Carlos's shoulders sagged slightly as the girl walked away to sit beside Nini, he glanced back at Seb for a moment before averting his eyes again, the blush creeping back across his cheeks.

He was fairly sure Kourtney was quietly singgering at him too but he chooses to ignore this in favour of heavily plopping down into the chair beside Ashlyn and grabbing a pancake out of, a very affronted, Ricky's hands.

As Ricky stared at the dancer, with a (mostly) false look of betrayal, picking up a new pancake from the stack, Seb let out a wordless laugh at the two's antics.

Carlos considered it for a moment, he had heard it before, or rather not heard it, because Seb never made any noise. Carlos wasn't sure if that was the norm for mute people, Seb was the only one he had ever met and he didn't know why they couldn't speak, it felt insensitive to ask, but some things about Seb just confused Carlos in a way that did feel insensitive.

Seb couldn't talk, that was fine, it was hardly unheard of and at the end of the day it really didn't matter, they had found other, perfectly good means of communicating without speech, but Seb couldn't sign either, nothing past the basics of letters and thank you. And Seb didn't make any sound, not even the sound of a sigh or a laugh or ragged breath after crawling out of the ocean.