14 Valentines 3: Logopetria (McKay/Sheppard pre-slash, G)
Title: Logopetria
Rating: G
Word Count: ~1,800
Warnings: Not a happy story.
Summary: John watched in horrified fascination as Rodney literally choked on his words, strangely-shaped objects spilling from his mouth in utter silence except for his coughing and ragged breath.
Notes: Beta-read by houseinrlyeh, broet-chan and zellieh. John/Rodney pre-slash. Also, Jeff Topham came up with Logopetria as a sickness, not me. If you want to know more, I strongly advise to get yourself a copy of The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases.
14 Valentines Essay: Day 3: Health
ETA: Please make sure you read taste_is_sweet's semi-sequel here in the comments.
ETA2: In fact, please make sure you read taste_is_sweet's real sequel Eloquence. ♥
~~~
When John got the call, he thought it was a joke. An elaborate prank which, granted, wasn't really Rodney's style, especially not with medical conditions, but there was a first time for everything, right? He held on to that hope all the way down to the infirmary, took refuge in it even as he listened to Keller's nervous attempts at explaining the curiously shaped… things… on the side table. Took Rodney's silence and Ronon's bemusement and Carter's confusion and Teyla's worry and refused to acknowledge them, his mind stuck in a constant replay of, joke, a joke, it's all a joke. Watched Rodney's face grow red and redder until finally the man just snapped and opened his mouth to spit out his frustration and anger.
It wasn't a joke.
John watched in horrified fascination as Rodney literally choked on his words, strangely-shaped objects spilling from his mouth in utter silence except for his coughing and ragged breath. The first thing was something green and slimy-looking that landed on the floor with a wet splat and what sounded like an indistinct mumble. Something roughly the shape of a sea urchin and apparently made out of wood followed, then a red uneven plastic ball, and a distorted, spiky lump of charred metal. They clattered to the floor in a cacophony of whispers, each uttering its secret over and over until it lay still. The red ball wobbled across the floor until it bounced off Ronon's boot with a faintly murmured, "incompetence," in Rodney's voice. Then there was no sound except for the blips and beeps of the infirmary and Rodney's wheezing breath.
"Okay." John bit on his bottom lip and rested his hands on his hips, looking for words as he tore his gaze from the ones that lay on the floor. "We'll figure this out."
Rodney threw him a disgusted look and crossed his arms. 'You better,' that look said.
~~~
They didn't figure it out. The medical department ran every test they could think of - blood tests, x-rays, PET scans, MRIs, EEGs, throat biopsies, though Rodney himself drew the line at a lumbar puncture with a few choice objects - and Zelenka had everyone searching for the Ancient device that might have caused what Teyla called a very peculiar sickness. To no avail.
"Dr. McKay's language processing occurs in the proper hemisphere of the brain, it's perfectly normal," Keller said. "There's a great deal of anomalous activity in the sylvian fissure closest to the visual cortex, but how the verbal impulses get turned into physical objects…" She shrugged helplessly.
"There have been no energy spikes," Zelenka said, "nothing to indicate that anything was activated. We ran a series of tests on every new artefact that we know has been touched over the last week, but to find the one that did this…" He spread his hands in a gesture of defeat.
"There's almost nothing in the database on this," Carter said, "apart from one passing reference to a sickness the Ancients called 'logopetria' that seems to fit Rodney's symptoms, but as for the cure…" She shook her head.
Huge black thing, gross smelly lump, grass-green nail, wobbly red ball, coin-like thing, Rodney said, and then he pressed his lips together and said nothing at all.
'How do you not choke?' John wanted to ask, and, 'Does your throat hurt?' and, 'How are you coping, buddy?' But he didn't. Instead, he picked up the odd shapes and materials and added them to his growing collection, trying to find out what Rodney had said. The logopetria sickness seemed to have no prepositions or verbs, copulas or pronouns, otherwise John had no doubt that his collection would be a lot more extensive. He lined up the words in the order they'd fallen from Rodney's lips and tapped them with the little mineralogist's hammer he'd stolen from the geologists. "None," "realisation," "life," "incompetence," "destroy," they said in Rodney's whisper-voice, making no sense at all, and John closed his eyes and clenched his fingers around the hammer and vowed again that the linguists could ask until their heads blew off. They wouldn't get this. Even if Carter stopped being on his side, they wouldn't get this. He wouldn't let them, because Rodney's words were his. He didn't even know why he felt that way, but he'd have time to figure it out. As soon as they'd fixed this, he'd take the time.
In the meantime, Rodney was talking less and less. Of course, he'd been trying to stop talking altogether right from the beginning, but he wouldn't have been Rodney if words hadn't kept slipping out. Only now the slipping out part was quite literal. John had no idea how Rodney knew that he'd... acquired the infirmary words for reasons he hadn't really gotten himself. The point was, somehow Rodney knew, and for some reason, at the end of each day, he'd hand John the collection of words he'd not-said that day; probably for safekeeping from the linguists, John supposed. And John would take them, playing them in different orders to try and figure out what Rodney might have said that day before carefully stowing them away in the cardboard box he'd liberated from the kitchen, like treasures.
Not only did Rodney hand over less and less of his quirky word-objects each day, he also stopped using his datapad - hastily refitted with a voice module - whenever someone talked to him. There were no more hastily scribbled notes, no more frantic typing, no emotionless, mechanical voice reciting invectives to the science team. Rodney's own search for a solution to the whole mess became grim and grimmer until he finally just threw his datapad against the wall, red-faced and panting and blinking furiously as he stared at the electronic mess.
John had no idea what to do, so he dragged Rodney off to the shooting range and made him kill paper targets, both of them silent. John was always silent around Rodney these days. He had no idea if Rodney was grateful for that or if he thought it was stupid, if he'd noticed at all.
When Rodney had emptied several clips and his hands had stopped shaking, he lowered the M9 and stared at the last shredded target for several long moments before he let out a sigh. John was still standing behind his shoulder, itching to reach out and hug Rodney but not sure if the contact would be welcome, so he stayed where he was. It had always been easy to reach out to Rodney, to give him a slap on the back or a pat on the arm, but now...
He'd be the first to admit he was bad at this.
Eventually, Rodney took a deep breath and held a hand under his mouth. A single word plopped into his palm, and he wiped it on his shirt before handing it to John. Then he just walked away, tossing the empty gun to the sergeant on duty on his way out.
John looked at the object in his hand. It was of a cheerful blue, slightly fluffy though seemingly made of wood, and reminded him vaguely of a toy horse in its shape. His heart pounding, John tapped his fingernail against it. "Forfeit," it whispered to him.
I give up.
John closed his eyes and held on. He wanted to yell at someone. At Rodney, maybe, for leaving them behind. He wanted Rodney to yell back. He wanted to take the last two weeks and undo them, somehow, to go back to rolling his eyes at the constant verbal barrage Rodney had so often subjected him to. Only he wouldn't roll his eyes, not anymore. He'd listen. I promise, he thought inanely, I'd listen, I promise. Except that wouldn't make any difference at all, would it?
Nothing John could do would make any difference.
Two days later, Rodney went back to Earth. John wished him luck. Everything else he wanted to say - 'Stay, don't leave, I want you here,' - stuck in his throat like he were the one who was sick. Rodney shook his hand, his eyes red-rimmed and resigned, and if John had known how to hug him, he would have.
He would have done so many things if he'd known how to do them.
~~~
The package arrived on the Apollo a few weeks after Rodney had left. It was a small thing, bearing only his name, but John's hand shook a little as he accepted it, because he would have recognised that handwriting anywhere.
He carried the package to his quarters, absently informing Carter that he'd take the rest of the day off. It was way past lunch already, so it wasn't like he'd be missed if he went off duty a few hours earlier. He put the package on his desk and simply stared at it for a while. Then he opened it.
Inside the package, wrapped in newspaper - and this was so Rodney, being all about content and not about presentation - was a perfectly round stone, about the size of those tinkling Chinese balls you were supposed to roll in your hand. It felt cool and smooth in John's palm when he picked it up, like polished marble. At first glance, it merely looked black, but there was a dark hazel pattern running through it, making it change its colour with every movement of the ball, like a tiger's-eye. It was easily one of the most beautiful things John had ever seen.
Nervous and intrigued - because it was a word, wasn't it? Rodney had sent him a word - John rummaged through the drawers, finally pulling out the small mineralogist's hammer he hadn't touched since Rodney had left. The cardboard box was collecting dust under his bed, and he'd stopped asking Zelenka and Carter and Keller if they'd found anything yet. But now Rodney had sent him a word, and it had to be an important one. Rodney didn't just send things because they were pretty.
John took a fortifying breath, picked up the little mineralogist's hammer and tapped it lightly against the marble.
And then he did it again and closed his eyes, gripping the hammer so hard that his fingers hurt as he listened to the faint word that was echoing through the room.
"John."
~~~
End.
Rating: G
Word Count: ~1,800
Warnings: Not a happy story.
Summary: John watched in horrified fascination as Rodney literally choked on his words, strangely-shaped objects spilling from his mouth in utter silence except for his coughing and ragged breath.
Notes: Beta-read by houseinrlyeh, broet-chan and zellieh. John/Rodney pre-slash. Also, Jeff Topham came up with Logopetria as a sickness, not me. If you want to know more, I strongly advise to get yourself a copy of The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases.
14 Valentines Essay: Day 3: Health
ETA: Please make sure you read taste_is_sweet's semi-sequel here in the comments.
ETA2: In fact, please make sure you read taste_is_sweet's real sequel Eloquence. ♥
~~~
When John got the call, he thought it was a joke. An elaborate prank which, granted, wasn't really Rodney's style, especially not with medical conditions, but there was a first time for everything, right? He held on to that hope all the way down to the infirmary, took refuge in it even as he listened to Keller's nervous attempts at explaining the curiously shaped… things… on the side table. Took Rodney's silence and Ronon's bemusement and Carter's confusion and Teyla's worry and refused to acknowledge them, his mind stuck in a constant replay of, joke, a joke, it's all a joke. Watched Rodney's face grow red and redder until finally the man just snapped and opened his mouth to spit out his frustration and anger.
It wasn't a joke.
John watched in horrified fascination as Rodney literally choked on his words, strangely-shaped objects spilling from his mouth in utter silence except for his coughing and ragged breath. The first thing was something green and slimy-looking that landed on the floor with a wet splat and what sounded like an indistinct mumble. Something roughly the shape of a sea urchin and apparently made out of wood followed, then a red uneven plastic ball, and a distorted, spiky lump of charred metal. They clattered to the floor in a cacophony of whispers, each uttering its secret over and over until it lay still. The red ball wobbled across the floor until it bounced off Ronon's boot with a faintly murmured, "incompetence," in Rodney's voice. Then there was no sound except for the blips and beeps of the infirmary and Rodney's wheezing breath.
"Okay." John bit on his bottom lip and rested his hands on his hips, looking for words as he tore his gaze from the ones that lay on the floor. "We'll figure this out."
Rodney threw him a disgusted look and crossed his arms. 'You better,' that look said.
~~~
They didn't figure it out. The medical department ran every test they could think of - blood tests, x-rays, PET scans, MRIs, EEGs, throat biopsies, though Rodney himself drew the line at a lumbar puncture with a few choice objects - and Zelenka had everyone searching for the Ancient device that might have caused what Teyla called a very peculiar sickness. To no avail.
"Dr. McKay's language processing occurs in the proper hemisphere of the brain, it's perfectly normal," Keller said. "There's a great deal of anomalous activity in the sylvian fissure closest to the visual cortex, but how the verbal impulses get turned into physical objects…" She shrugged helplessly.
"There have been no energy spikes," Zelenka said, "nothing to indicate that anything was activated. We ran a series of tests on every new artefact that we know has been touched over the last week, but to find the one that did this…" He spread his hands in a gesture of defeat.
"There's almost nothing in the database on this," Carter said, "apart from one passing reference to a sickness the Ancients called 'logopetria' that seems to fit Rodney's symptoms, but as for the cure…" She shook her head.
Huge black thing, gross smelly lump, grass-green nail, wobbly red ball, coin-like thing, Rodney said, and then he pressed his lips together and said nothing at all.
'How do you not choke?' John wanted to ask, and, 'Does your throat hurt?' and, 'How are you coping, buddy?' But he didn't. Instead, he picked up the odd shapes and materials and added them to his growing collection, trying to find out what Rodney had said. The logopetria sickness seemed to have no prepositions or verbs, copulas or pronouns, otherwise John had no doubt that his collection would be a lot more extensive. He lined up the words in the order they'd fallen from Rodney's lips and tapped them with the little mineralogist's hammer he'd stolen from the geologists. "None," "realisation," "life," "incompetence," "destroy," they said in Rodney's whisper-voice, making no sense at all, and John closed his eyes and clenched his fingers around the hammer and vowed again that the linguists could ask until their heads blew off. They wouldn't get this. Even if Carter stopped being on his side, they wouldn't get this. He wouldn't let them, because Rodney's words were his. He didn't even know why he felt that way, but he'd have time to figure it out. As soon as they'd fixed this, he'd take the time.
In the meantime, Rodney was talking less and less. Of course, he'd been trying to stop talking altogether right from the beginning, but he wouldn't have been Rodney if words hadn't kept slipping out. Only now the slipping out part was quite literal. John had no idea how Rodney knew that he'd... acquired the infirmary words for reasons he hadn't really gotten himself. The point was, somehow Rodney knew, and for some reason, at the end of each day, he'd hand John the collection of words he'd not-said that day; probably for safekeeping from the linguists, John supposed. And John would take them, playing them in different orders to try and figure out what Rodney might have said that day before carefully stowing them away in the cardboard box he'd liberated from the kitchen, like treasures.
Not only did Rodney hand over less and less of his quirky word-objects each day, he also stopped using his datapad - hastily refitted with a voice module - whenever someone talked to him. There were no more hastily scribbled notes, no more frantic typing, no emotionless, mechanical voice reciting invectives to the science team. Rodney's own search for a solution to the whole mess became grim and grimmer until he finally just threw his datapad against the wall, red-faced and panting and blinking furiously as he stared at the electronic mess.
John had no idea what to do, so he dragged Rodney off to the shooting range and made him kill paper targets, both of them silent. John was always silent around Rodney these days. He had no idea if Rodney was grateful for that or if he thought it was stupid, if he'd noticed at all.
When Rodney had emptied several clips and his hands had stopped shaking, he lowered the M9 and stared at the last shredded target for several long moments before he let out a sigh. John was still standing behind his shoulder, itching to reach out and hug Rodney but not sure if the contact would be welcome, so he stayed where he was. It had always been easy to reach out to Rodney, to give him a slap on the back or a pat on the arm, but now...
He'd be the first to admit he was bad at this.
Eventually, Rodney took a deep breath and held a hand under his mouth. A single word plopped into his palm, and he wiped it on his shirt before handing it to John. Then he just walked away, tossing the empty gun to the sergeant on duty on his way out.
John looked at the object in his hand. It was of a cheerful blue, slightly fluffy though seemingly made of wood, and reminded him vaguely of a toy horse in its shape. His heart pounding, John tapped his fingernail against it. "Forfeit," it whispered to him.
I give up.
John closed his eyes and held on. He wanted to yell at someone. At Rodney, maybe, for leaving them behind. He wanted Rodney to yell back. He wanted to take the last two weeks and undo them, somehow, to go back to rolling his eyes at the constant verbal barrage Rodney had so often subjected him to. Only he wouldn't roll his eyes, not anymore. He'd listen. I promise, he thought inanely, I'd listen, I promise. Except that wouldn't make any difference at all, would it?
Nothing John could do would make any difference.
Two days later, Rodney went back to Earth. John wished him luck. Everything else he wanted to say - 'Stay, don't leave, I want you here,' - stuck in his throat like he were the one who was sick. Rodney shook his hand, his eyes red-rimmed and resigned, and if John had known how to hug him, he would have.
He would have done so many things if he'd known how to do them.
~~~
The package arrived on the Apollo a few weeks after Rodney had left. It was a small thing, bearing only his name, but John's hand shook a little as he accepted it, because he would have recognised that handwriting anywhere.
He carried the package to his quarters, absently informing Carter that he'd take the rest of the day off. It was way past lunch already, so it wasn't like he'd be missed if he went off duty a few hours earlier. He put the package on his desk and simply stared at it for a while. Then he opened it.
Inside the package, wrapped in newspaper - and this was so Rodney, being all about content and not about presentation - was a perfectly round stone, about the size of those tinkling Chinese balls you were supposed to roll in your hand. It felt cool and smooth in John's palm when he picked it up, like polished marble. At first glance, it merely looked black, but there was a dark hazel pattern running through it, making it change its colour with every movement of the ball, like a tiger's-eye. It was easily one of the most beautiful things John had ever seen.
Nervous and intrigued - because it was a word, wasn't it? Rodney had sent him a word - John rummaged through the drawers, finally pulling out the small mineralogist's hammer he hadn't touched since Rodney had left. The cardboard box was collecting dust under his bed, and he'd stopped asking Zelenka and Carter and Keller if they'd found anything yet. But now Rodney had sent him a word, and it had to be an important one. Rodney didn't just send things because they were pretty.
John took a fortifying breath, picked up the little mineralogist's hammer and tapped it lightly against the marble.
And then he did it again and closed his eyes, gripping the hammer so hard that his fingers hurt as he listened to the faint word that was echoing through the room.
"John."
~~~
End.