Work Text:
When Heart had first found out that Li Ming would be leaving for America, his only question was, "Why?"
Li Ming hadn't responded- just wiped the tears running down Heart's face with his thumbs and pulled him in an embrace.
And when neither of them were crying anymore, just sitting on the porch of Jim's diner, basking in the afternoon sun after sharing a plate of chicken rice, Li Ming signed, "I'm going to chase my dream."
Heart blinked, once, twice. Then nodded like he meant to say, "It's alright."
"What's your dream?"
Heart thought for a few seconds. Did he know what he wanted most in life? Or did he have no expectations with where his parents' restrictions had brought him? He didn't know. Until he realised that he did, in fact, know.
"You," he signed.
The way Li Ming scrunched up his nose and shyly pushed him away, he probably thought Heart was being cheesy.
"I'm serious," Heart wrote on the notepad between them. "You know that I was never allowed to communicate with anyone other than my parents after I lost my hearing. Since then, I convinced myself that no one wanted to associate with me, much less understand or love me. All I wanted was to have a person who did. And I found him."
Li Ming was quiet.
"You," Heart pressed the tip of his finger onto Li Ming's chest.
Under the bright sun of mid-July, Li Ming's eyes glistened with tears. He never said anything, simply slipped his fingers through Heart's. He tightened his grip, promising himself, that once he fulfilled his dream of living independently, he would come back to Pattaya.
Not for Jim, not for Saleng, not for anybody else. He would come back, back for Heart, and take him along with him to somewhere where they were happier and as in love as could possibly be.