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He was fine with who he was. He was good with what he wanted. He was even fairly certain he knew what a future with Percy would look like. But there might be times when he just…couldn’t.
Percy might want to feel like more than a friend in those moments.
And Wren might not be able to give that to him.
He knew it would kill Percy, who had been treated like shit for so long. He’d endure it because that was the kind of man he was, but Wren wasn’t sure he could be the person who was the cause of Percy’s pain.
He felt a tap on his leg, and he looked up at Luke, whose face was drawn in concern. “Talk to me.”
Wren let out a trembling breath. “I think…well, no. I know I’m aromantic.” He spelled it because he wasn’t sure Luke would know the sign for it that Ravi had used.
Luke shifted the kitten from his hand to his lap and scooted a little closer. Peh-peh.
Wren’s fingers twisted together as he tried to gather his thoughts. “But I like someone.”
“Percy,” Luke offered. To his credit, he didn’t pull a face when he spelled his name, which meant the world to Wren right then.
“Yes.” He swallowed heavily and ran his fingers through his hair. His nail rubbed too roughly over his implant magnet, and he winced as it shot a little zing of nerve pain through his neck.
“Does he know?”
Wren nodded. “I told him.”
Luke’s expression shifted into a familiar one of warning. “Is he making it difficult for you?”
“No,” Wren signed quickly. “No. It’s not him. It’s me. He seems fine with it. He accepts me exactly like this.”
“So—" Luke’s hands hovered for a second. “—what’s the problem?”
“Me,” Wren said, his finger jabbing against his chest. “Me. Me. I’m the problem. I want him, even though I don’t know if I can give him what he needs. I want to keep him—I want to be with him. But I can’t be like everyone else. I can’t be like Caleb and Bodhi. I can’t be like you and Ananda.”
“Is he asking you to?”
Wren slapped a hand over his face and felt himself groan loudly. “No,” he answered with his other hand, then looked up. “But he’ll probably want things I can’t give him.”
Peh-peh. Luke stroked his fingers over his chin in thought. “Ananda and I are different. We come from different cultures. Not just Deaf family and hearing. Her parents are immigrants. They had an arranged marriage, and they wanted her to have one too.”
Wren’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know that.”
“She doesn’t talk about it much,” Luke admitted. “It was normal for her growing up. She thought she was going to have one too, but her parents struggled to find her a husband because she was Deaf.”
Wren winced, and Luke nodded.
“She didn’t talk to them for a year when they introduced her to this old widower who was…almost fifty, I think?”
Horror rushed through Wren. True biz?
True biz. “Please don’t think they’re bad people,” Luke added quickly. “They realized that was a mistake, and they’ve spent the last few years making it up to her. They even accepted her when she told them she wasn’t sure she was religious at all and didn’t want a religious marriage. But they weren’t happy when she met me. They didn’t want her to be Deaf. They don’t want her to have kids with me. They still won’t learn to sign, and there’s a good chance our kids will be Deaf, and they know that.”
Wren bit his lip. “But she loves you. She wants all that with you.”
“Yes. But it kills her because she knows choosing me means choosing to compromise on a lot. She didn’t always want a Deaf identity. She just wanted to be happy.” Luke shrugged and took a second to scratch the kitten between the ears. “I know it’s not the same for you, but I understand a little. There are things that I need to put first in my life, and sometimes those don’t align with what Ananda needs. Sometimes that hurts her. And it hurts me.”
“How do you deal with it?”
“We talk,” Luke said, rolling his eyes to emphasize what a dumbass question he thought that was. “We acknowledge the hurt. We accept it. We try not to minimize it as much as we can. We don’t stop caring about each other, and we work on giving each other what we need. I’ll never ask her to deny her culture or where she comes from. I want her to raise our kids with a strong connection to that. Just like I want our kids to be connected to my family too. Even if they’re hearing. I want them to feel like they belong.”
He noticed that Luke didn’t use the word “love” when it came to his fiancée, and maybe that was out of not understanding what Wren was capable of feeling. But the truth was, Wren would love Percy. Just like he always and unconditionally loved his family. He couldn’t deny that, and he wasn’t about to try. And while it might not be the same as romantic love, maybe it would be good enough.
