Red and Black – Chapter 17
I said there would be more to come didn't I?
In which Tim is just so unbelievably cute like I actually squealed when writing this…
Gordon was bombarded with the massive presence of an ensemble of all sorts of people, from all sorts of places. It was less of a conference, but more of an exhibition. Huge and brightly displayed trade stalls advertised translation and tutoring services, as well as new linguistic apps and technology; tiny computers that could interpret whole tables of people at a time.
Amongst this, Gordon was quick to notice the assault the place made on his ears; the noise was deafening. He soon noticed that this was down to the swarming groups of people who wavered past him, a high portion of them were unbelievably young people. Bilingual toddlers with their professor parents to polyglot students and obsessed teenagers, shouting and yelling at each other in tangle upon tangle of languages; and he was pretty sure he could someone screaming in Elfish. How the fuck am I supposed to find him in here? Gordon asked himself.
For a while, Gordon stumbled around the hall craning his neck above the crowd without really looking where he was going; this was a time that being shorter than average really sucked. He thought it best to begin in the corner of the room and sweep his way across, Gordon turned to try and reach the nearest corner of the room; but conveniently a pathway free of people presented itself to him, for him to see Tim sitting in a circle on a large rug talking to a group of Portuguese high school students. Gordon stopped where he was to watch them, unnoticed; while it was hard to hear exactly what was going on, he got a pretty good idea when Tim flipped up a small whiteboard that read: 'I want to contact my embassy.' He was teaching emergency English. Gordon almost jumped when he heard one girl in the circle yell considerably loudly:
"Eu quero contactar com a minha embaixada!" And then Gordon once again became lost, but mesmerised by Tim's smile as he praised the girl; he was right, Tim was amazing with kids. He wandered to the near edge of the circle to see Tim look up at him and put his whiteboard down. Gordon towered over them, Tim looked round at his boisterous class, saying;
"Isto é Gordon, meu namorado." All the children looked round at him, there some waves and some thickly accented hellos directed at him. Gordon muttered a nervous 'olá' and knelt down at the back of the group. He heard Tim speak a few words, incomprehensible to him and the class upped and left. They stood up together and came together, they exchanged a quick kiss; they knew it was safe. Holding each other's hands they began to stroll across the hall floor.
"How did you even find me in all this?" Tim asked,
"Stroke of luck if I'm honest, I can't get over how manic this all is; how does anyone know where anything is?" They continued to duck and dive between people, never letting go for fear of losing one another.
"It'll all calm down once the games and speeches start." He said, sort reluctantly.
"Games? Do they the linguistic Hunger Games or something?" They laughed a little, but were almost too quiet to hear.
"Weirdly it is like that. Like how fast can you write out the Japanese alphabet charts against other people while still making it legible? Seriously it's hard as fuck." It was only now, as the population of the convention swarmed like angry bees towards the atrium that Gordon noticed the competitive sense. A few students were breaking down, one was walking backwards holding a whiteboard while her friend painfully scribbled out an Arabic text from memory; and a couple of opposing Swedish boys were trying to out-sing each other in German. He knew that Tim was only making a speech, but it still felt like there was some sort of rival waiting for them. They continued to rush towards the atrium and two very large Korean men rammed their shoulders against Tim, causing him to fall backwards slightly and into Gordon. Why does he attract big scary weirdos as well as me?
"Nadevvo' peghos!" One of them yelled in their direction as they lumbered away smirking.
"Hab sosli' quch!" Tim screamed back, both men froze on the spot and spun on their heels; Tim gripped onto Gordon's hand for dear life,
"Run." He said, and dragged Gordon along with him as they shot through the crowd like a speeding bullet and keeping their heads low, they jumped into their seats and picked up the programs underneath and tried to blend in. The two Koreans were nowhere to be seen.
"What was that even about?" Gordon asked, his heart still racing from the surprise escape.
"I made a Your Mum joke in Klingon." Gordon rolled his eyes and giggled a little at his boyfriend's merciless sass which clearly failed to diminish, even with a language barrier.
Firstly in the arena where 'The Games' that Tim had mentioned previously, and they were just as brutal as he had described them; people burst into tears every so often, some the most ridiculous victory dances and some had the most ridiculous judges; marking them down for a single outplaced flick of wrist in writing characters. To Gordon, it was vicious and awfully barbaric, almost unfair; but Tim was captured by the art in the competition, he connected better than anyone else, he had been in their place, he knew what it meant write a certain way if it meant winning or losing.
Tim's speech was at the end of day, and was to Gordon's disadvantage, to be delivered entirely in French. He made a mental note to ask John if he would teach him some new languages, after all, Gordon's speciality was Spanish rather than anything else and had no problem understanding it here but even with its similarities French was a whole new level for him.
But in almost no time at all, it was Tim's turn to rise to the microphone. Luckily, someone was translating Tim's speech into English subtitles on the screen behind him as he spoke.
"Des métiers pour les hommes et des métiers pour les femmes n'existent pas, seuls des emplois existent. Aussi, je trouve que l'idée qu'il y a des métiers pour les hommes et des métiers pour les femmes démodée et bête." Gordon found himself concentrating slightly more on Tim than on the subtitles but still proceeded to read them.
'You are not too old to learn, none of you. Not just a language, but anything, even down to love.' Tim made eye contact with Gordon on his final words, he truly meant it; and the hall erupted into applause, and Gordon even managed start a standing ovation, and had to use every piece of his self-restraint to not run up the aisle and kiss Tim right there and then. Tim was practically glowing with exaltation and as the crowd started to dissipate, he ran to Gordon himself; who sort of managed to swing him around slightly as they crashed into each other for a kiss with Gordon's arms wrapped around his waist and Tim's arms dangling casually over his shoulders.
Hand in hand, they weaved their way back through the hellish exhibition hall and dribbled out into the street outside, only to be hit with a much-needed gust of fresh air. They pair walked back the hotel, Gordon knowing that Tim would be there managed to plan everything out carefully with Scott; who had ordered a double room on a different floor and arranged for Gordon's bag to be put in Tim's room.
As they continued to stroll, their firstly joined hands began slowly dance around each other and by the time they had arrived at the hotel they had very nearly reached each other's asses. They couldn't help but almost sprint for the elevator, desperate to be alone together; as soon as the doors had closed and Tim had pressed a button for a floor that Gordon had not cared to remember, they both hoped for the love of God that someone would call for the lift to open as they tangled their fingers through each other's hair, marvelling at the perfection of the other as Tim leant lightly against the wall in the midst of their timeless, breathless kiss.
Together stumbled out at their floor, still joined together and waltzed along the long corridor until they reached the door of Tim's room...
We have reached the moment that you have been waiting for people! And if you don't get where this is going you're probably not old enough to be reading this story anyway and you need to stop. But if you're down the inevitable that is to follow please stay on this ride.
Hopefully I will be able to find time tomorrow before I go back to school to write and post the next chapter, if not it will be up the end of the month (unfortunately.)
BestUsernameEver54321: Basically imagine a prison without locks on the cell doors but just gates outside and school work instead of manual labour, that's what boarding school is.
BYEEEEEE!