Page 38 of Spoonful

Then he replied to Diego to ask if he was still interested in that debrief lunch.

Diego replied in seconds with an enthusiasticyes, please distract me here I’m dying,so Jaylin left his drawings and grabbed his coat to head out.

***

Hiro had asked if Jaylin would prefer to go out or stay in, and Jaylin had admitted that he’d rather not go out to eat if that was okay. Enough time had passed now that he was feeling jittery over the fact that midterms were finished and all he could do was wait for his grades, and he didn't really want to be in a loud, crowded restaurant.

So instead Hiro beamed at him when he opened his door to let Jaylin inside.

“Chinese just arrived,” Hiro said, stepping back to let Jaylin in.

“Awesome,” Jaylin said, stepping out of his sneakers and nudging them into a neat line next to Hiro’s shoe rack. “Perfect timing then.”

“Was the ride over okay?” Hiro asked as Jaylin unwound his scarf.

“Yeah,” Jaylin said, moving to hang his coat in the hallway closet. “Thank you for sending the ride.” Jaylin hadn’t wanted Hiro to go out of his way to pick Jaylin up, so Hiro had insisted on paying for Jaylin’s ride over. It was far from the first time Hiro had done so.

“Of course,” Hiro said easily. “Now come on, dinner’s ready and I haven’t seen you in like a week. You’ve got to fill me in on all your adventures.”

“It’s not all that exciting,” Jaylin said, smiling foolishly anyway. Hiro brought that out in him. “Your life is way more exciting.”

Hiro rolled his eyes as they moved to sit down at Hiro’s table, where Chinese food boxes were spread all over. “‘Exciting,’ he says. I’ve been up to my elbows in potentially incriminating text messages.”

“That’s not exciting?” Jaylin asked, reaching for a set of chopsticks.

Hiro huffed. “Well it’s not like we cantalkabout the potentially incriminating text messages. So I don’t even get a fun story to share out of it.” He turned plaintive eyes onto Jaylin. “So you’ve got to carry the conversation. Tell me all about midterms week. How did your Sign Language presentation go?”

“I told you all about that on Tuesday,” Jaylin said, pointing at Hiro with his chopsticks. “I sent you like six messages about it. You replied to them!”

“But I missed out on all your facial expressions,” Hiro said earnestly as he served himself some General Tsao’s chicken. “Facial expressions are vital to telling a story.”

“Since when?” Jaylin laughed.

“Youliterally told methat facial expressions are grammatical in Sign Language,” Hiro said, with the tone of someone who wasn’t planning on losing this argument. “And I expect to get the full range of Jaylin-expression as he regales me with the tale of how he aced all his midterms.”

Jaylin’s face flushed, and he ducked his head. “I don’t know if I aced them yet,” he said, though he was stupidly pleased by Hiro’s faith in him. “Grades won’t be posted for another few days at least.”

“Jaylin,” Hiro said patiently. “If you get your grades back and you didn’t ace your midterms, I will eat your scarf.”

“You wouldn’t,” Jaylin said in mild, only-half-joking horror. “What if you lose that bet? Not only would you get sick but I’d lose my scarf. I like my scarf. It’s my favorite winter accessory.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing you aced your finals,” Hiro said with a grin.

Jaylin muttered something about jinxing his grades under his breath, but then Hiro drew him into a re-enactment of his ASL presentation anyway, even though Hiro had already seen it before because Jaylin had practiced on him.

He was pleasantly warm and full by the time they moved to Hiro's comfortable couch, though some nerves did creep in as he remembered the comics he had squirreled away in his backpack.

“I’ve got something to show you,” Jaylin blurted out, at the same time Hiro said, “I’ve got something to ask you.”

“Oh,” Jaylin said quickly. “Okay. You go first.”

“It’s okay,” Hiro said with a laugh, eyes glinting with curiosity. “What did you want to show me?”

Jaylin crossed his arms. “Question first,” he insisted. He doubted it was anything bad, but he didn't want it hanging over his head anyway. And this way he could put off showing Hiro the comics for a little longer.

“Okay, okay, you win.” Hiro smiled, holding up his hands. “I was just wondering if you had plans for—”

He was interrupted by Jaylin’s phone chiming. He stopped talking, lips pressing together.

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