Fic: QAF "Vocabulary Lessons"
Title: Vocabulary Lessons
Rating: PG
Summary: Justin's a student who realizes that learning a new tongue sometimes has more than one meaning.
Disclaimer: The characters of QAF belong to Showtime, CowLip and themselves. I'm just having fun.
Okay, so I know what insouciant means. It’s not like it turned up on the SATs, but I know what it means. I’ve got a fucking huge vocabulary. Thanks to reading everything and a bunch of good teachers and yes, even my Mom who patiently explained what all the big words were when I insisted I could read James Joyce and should have stuck to books more my own level. So, English was a snap.
Learning French, that was tougher. But Daph and I turned it into a game, and before you could say Sacre bleu I was getting A’s in that class. Besides, French is a sexy language. All those things you have to do with your tongue, just to make the sounds come out right-yeah, I loved language lab and practicing, ‘cause I could dream about how I’d use that ‘rolling R’ thing the next time I had Brian’s cock in my mouth.
But learning Brian’s language? That was a lot harder.
See, he’s the king of wisecracks and snappy repartee (I told you I had a big vocabulary), but most of what he says isn’t spoken out loud. And that took me a long time to figure out, because unlike French, he didn’t come with a vocabulary list and a set of practice drills to help me understand what he meant by what he didn’t say.
The first lesson I had was the night we met. When he asked me if I’d had a busy night, and I gave a glib response about some clubs I’d heard of, his eyebrows arched in the middle, and his eyes opened a little wider. I thought it meant ‘impressed.’
Five points off for that mistake and try again.
I got the next translation right, though. When he let his lower lip curl under the upper one, and it came back out all wet, slick, and sexy? That one meant ‘I could make this worth your while.’ No wonder I gave him the same lip-movement back again. I wanted him to know that I understood him exactly.
There was one more translation exercise that night, while he was stroking me off, settled on top of my thighs, in command. When I told him I loved rimming, his eyebrows both rose in the middle again, but this time the corner of his mouth curled upwards too. At first I thought it meant ‘I’m intrigued’ but after he called my bluff, I realized that he’d really been saying a combination of ‘You liar. Show me.’
At least I was two for three. I fucking loved learning this language.
My command of Kinney-speak increased by leaps and bounds the very next morning. He saw how he’d trashed his apartment, and his head dipped down to one side while he ran some fingers across his face and cursed somebody named Anita for the drugs she’d given him. That head turn and finger thing was an admission of weakness-‘I wish I didn’t love the drugs so much, or I’d kill her.’ Of course, I blew it when I gave him a completely reasonable reply about prescriptions and reliable pharmacists, but that got me a silent stare, eyes narrowed. Translation obvious: ‘Asshole.’
The phrases started coming fast and furious when Michael delivered his jeep with its new spray-paint job. Once we saw the word ‘faggot’ on the side, he asked if I cared about being dropped at school. There was three seconds of ‘I won’t if you’re afraid’ and about fifteen seconds of ‘I dare you’ mixed into the glance and the shrug he gave me, though it was harder to read him in a suit than with all his clothes off. Sort of a Provençal instead of a Parisian accent, if you know what I mean. Still, I could tell I had the idea pegged right when I said ‘fuck no’ in reply. Those lips of his curved upwards faintly at the corner, and I learned another phrase: ‘That’s the right answer. Good boy.’
That tiny lip-curl drove me crazy, like an intransitive, irregular verb.
In the first nine months of intensive Kinney-speak training, I learned a lot of the more common meanings for that faint lip-curl. What you’d call ‘secondary meanings’ in the dictionary, I suppose. ‘Good boy’ sometimes also translated as ‘I’ll fuck you later for that’ or ‘You think you’re in charge but we both know who’s boss.’
The silent stare with narrowed eyes also had a bunch of secondary definitions: ‘Asshole’ could also mean ‘You twerp,’ ‘You princess,’ ‘You’re being a drama queen,’ and most eloquent of all ‘Isn’t it obvious? You’re not really that stupid, are you?’
Of course, I couldn’t learn everything at once, though I studied harder than I had for any exam in school. I watched him constantly, trying to pick up nuances.
And unlike French, sometimes Brian didn’t want to be understood. Like a book that knew how to close itself, there were times when he would make it harder for me to understand what he was really thinking.
A classic example: the night of the Rage party at Babylon. He saw me with Ethan, and he just stood there. I expected the pout (‘You disappoint me’ or ‘Do you have to be so obvious?’) or the smirk (‘You’ll never forget me’ or ‘You must be joking’), but he said neither. He pulled the mask up, so I could see his whole face, but I couldn’t understand it. He might as well have left it covering his eyes. Maybe the darkness in the club made translation harder, but at the time, I had no idea what he was saying.
Later on, I figured out what he meant. ‘You have to do this, because you’re young. I’ll survive.’
When I got the internship at Vanguard, I had reached proficiency in Kinney-speak, although I was a little rusty after a crash-course in Classical Egotist. I also got a pointed reminder that learning a language isn’t just about speaking. Listening comprehension is a must to achieve fluency. And I wanted fluency.
“You don’t hear what you want, so you leave.”
I guess I wasn’t the only one picking up a new tongue, but I hadn’t realized that I was teaching Taylor at the same time I was learning Kinney. Must’ve been a change in the curriculum when I wasn’t looking.
When I went to Brian’s office, to tell him that he should take me back, I told him that I knew what I could expect from him. And he gave me the final exam with the look that followed: one eyebrow lifted, the faintest smile.
Which meant ‘Really? You think you’ve got me completely figured out?’
Guess I’ll have to sign up for Kinney 102 next semester and see for myself.
----------------
The icon with this story is the 'one eyebrow lifted, faintest smile' that Justin talks about.
Rating: PG
Summary: Justin's a student who realizes that learning a new tongue sometimes has more than one meaning.
Disclaimer: The characters of QAF belong to Showtime, CowLip and themselves. I'm just having fun.
Okay, so I know what insouciant means. It’s not like it turned up on the SATs, but I know what it means. I’ve got a fucking huge vocabulary. Thanks to reading everything and a bunch of good teachers and yes, even my Mom who patiently explained what all the big words were when I insisted I could read James Joyce and should have stuck to books more my own level. So, English was a snap.
Learning French, that was tougher. But Daph and I turned it into a game, and before you could say Sacre bleu I was getting A’s in that class. Besides, French is a sexy language. All those things you have to do with your tongue, just to make the sounds come out right-yeah, I loved language lab and practicing, ‘cause I could dream about how I’d use that ‘rolling R’ thing the next time I had Brian’s cock in my mouth.
But learning Brian’s language? That was a lot harder.
See, he’s the king of wisecracks and snappy repartee (I told you I had a big vocabulary), but most of what he says isn’t spoken out loud. And that took me a long time to figure out, because unlike French, he didn’t come with a vocabulary list and a set of practice drills to help me understand what he meant by what he didn’t say.
The first lesson I had was the night we met. When he asked me if I’d had a busy night, and I gave a glib response about some clubs I’d heard of, his eyebrows arched in the middle, and his eyes opened a little wider. I thought it meant ‘impressed.’
Five points off for that mistake and try again.
I got the next translation right, though. When he let his lower lip curl under the upper one, and it came back out all wet, slick, and sexy? That one meant ‘I could make this worth your while.’ No wonder I gave him the same lip-movement back again. I wanted him to know that I understood him exactly.
There was one more translation exercise that night, while he was stroking me off, settled on top of my thighs, in command. When I told him I loved rimming, his eyebrows both rose in the middle again, but this time the corner of his mouth curled upwards too. At first I thought it meant ‘I’m intrigued’ but after he called my bluff, I realized that he’d really been saying a combination of ‘You liar. Show me.’
At least I was two for three. I fucking loved learning this language.
My command of Kinney-speak increased by leaps and bounds the very next morning. He saw how he’d trashed his apartment, and his head dipped down to one side while he ran some fingers across his face and cursed somebody named Anita for the drugs she’d given him. That head turn and finger thing was an admission of weakness-‘I wish I didn’t love the drugs so much, or I’d kill her.’ Of course, I blew it when I gave him a completely reasonable reply about prescriptions and reliable pharmacists, but that got me a silent stare, eyes narrowed. Translation obvious: ‘Asshole.’
The phrases started coming fast and furious when Michael delivered his jeep with its new spray-paint job. Once we saw the word ‘faggot’ on the side, he asked if I cared about being dropped at school. There was three seconds of ‘I won’t if you’re afraid’ and about fifteen seconds of ‘I dare you’ mixed into the glance and the shrug he gave me, though it was harder to read him in a suit than with all his clothes off. Sort of a Provençal instead of a Parisian accent, if you know what I mean. Still, I could tell I had the idea pegged right when I said ‘fuck no’ in reply. Those lips of his curved upwards faintly at the corner, and I learned another phrase: ‘That’s the right answer. Good boy.’
That tiny lip-curl drove me crazy, like an intransitive, irregular verb.
In the first nine months of intensive Kinney-speak training, I learned a lot of the more common meanings for that faint lip-curl. What you’d call ‘secondary meanings’ in the dictionary, I suppose. ‘Good boy’ sometimes also translated as ‘I’ll fuck you later for that’ or ‘You think you’re in charge but we both know who’s boss.’
The silent stare with narrowed eyes also had a bunch of secondary definitions: ‘Asshole’ could also mean ‘You twerp,’ ‘You princess,’ ‘You’re being a drama queen,’ and most eloquent of all ‘Isn’t it obvious? You’re not really that stupid, are you?’
Of course, I couldn’t learn everything at once, though I studied harder than I had for any exam in school. I watched him constantly, trying to pick up nuances.
And unlike French, sometimes Brian didn’t want to be understood. Like a book that knew how to close itself, there were times when he would make it harder for me to understand what he was really thinking.
A classic example: the night of the Rage party at Babylon. He saw me with Ethan, and he just stood there. I expected the pout (‘You disappoint me’ or ‘Do you have to be so obvious?’) or the smirk (‘You’ll never forget me’ or ‘You must be joking’), but he said neither. He pulled the mask up, so I could see his whole face, but I couldn’t understand it. He might as well have left it covering his eyes. Maybe the darkness in the club made translation harder, but at the time, I had no idea what he was saying.
Later on, I figured out what he meant. ‘You have to do this, because you’re young. I’ll survive.’
When I got the internship at Vanguard, I had reached proficiency in Kinney-speak, although I was a little rusty after a crash-course in Classical Egotist. I also got a pointed reminder that learning a language isn’t just about speaking. Listening comprehension is a must to achieve fluency. And I wanted fluency.
“You don’t hear what you want, so you leave.”
I guess I wasn’t the only one picking up a new tongue, but I hadn’t realized that I was teaching Taylor at the same time I was learning Kinney. Must’ve been a change in the curriculum when I wasn’t looking.
When I went to Brian’s office, to tell him that he should take me back, I told him that I knew what I could expect from him. And he gave me the final exam with the look that followed: one eyebrow lifted, the faintest smile.
Which meant ‘Really? You think you’ve got me completely figured out?’
Guess I’ll have to sign up for Kinney 102 next semester and see for myself.
----------------
The icon with this story is the 'one eyebrow lifted, faintest smile' that Justin talks about.