FIC: "Eloquence" by taste_is_sweet (Companion story to "Logopetria") PG-13

Title: Eloquence
Author: taste_is_sweet
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count: 2670
Summary: John had sent him a message, in his own words. Rodney wondered why.

Notes: This is a companion story to lavvyan's fantastic Logopetria, and will be meaningless unless you've read her story first. I expanded the original commentfic I wrote for her story into this one, with her very kind permission. lavvyan's story just floored me, and I hope I've been able to do it justice.



1

They sent him to Area 51 again. His office was even bigger this time, the scientists sent to help him even more obsequious (obsequiousness: grey lump that squished like modeling clay). The work was no more rewarding.

At first, everyone talked; all the time. They scurried around him like mice, manically happy and pathetically grateful to be working with one of the greatest minds in two galaxies. And they never shut up, as if they could stack their words around him and make a barrier against his silence.

(Barrier: weathered wooden rectangle, covered in wire bristles.)

Eventually, they said less and less to him, until they stopped speaking altogether, just like it had been on Atlantis. And just like on Atlantis, Rodney had never understood if it was out of sympathy or a sense of awkwardness. (Awkwardness: turtle-shaped, green, jewel-toned, faceted). Rodney wrote notes in staccato, angry shorthand, sent imperious, stinging e-mails, left messaged in looming bold all-caps on their computers. They responded with addendums, theses-length treatises, groveling apologies: via e-mail, on used printer paper, curling sticky notes and ripped notebook pages. Words fluttered and fell like leaves. Constantly. Everywhere. But no one spoke.

The lab became a sanctuary of whispers, of quiet (light purple, paw-shaped, soft). People moved silent as shadows, spoke in tones so hushed their breath barely bent the air. Work was quick and efficient, courteous, smiling and calm. Rodney couldn't stand it.

(Hate: small, dark-green diamond.)

Rodney spent most of his workday in his cavernous office, words spilling from his fingertips onto deaf computer screens, his mouth stretched like a wire but never opening.

Sometimes, at night, late enough when even the most sycophantic of his subordinates had fled, he would allow himself to speak: gagging over the words as they filled his throat and dropped out of his mouth, tasting of acid and copper and bitterness. They would fall onto his desk like coins, then spill over onto the floor and skid and bounce into the corners.

Most of them Rodney swept into the garbage. He had no idea what happened to them. Maybe the janitorial staff kept them; maybe they had strict orders to give them to the linguists. Maybe his staff snuck in when he left the door unlocked and took them for souvenirs (thin cardboard rectangle, covered in black lines). Rodney didn't care.

Some, he kept. He wasn't even sure why. Maybe this one reflected the light in a particular way, perhaps that one was an interesting shape, or pleasant texture. But those few he put into an empty coffee tin he left on his bookshelf. Every so often, when he was especially bored or homesick, he'd take it down and open it. He would sort through the words like candy, then tap each one with the metal end of a pencil, listening as they whispered back to him.

Anger; want; laughter; never; ignorance; eye; solitude; amusement; hurt; ocean.

Once for fun he picked words at random from his head--the strangest, the most complicated, the crudest, the most disgusting--just to see what they looked like.

'Antidisestablishmentarianism' was a small, dark grey sugar cube that crumbled the fifth time he tapped it. 'Quark' was tan and thin as parchment and the color of sand. 'Waffle' was a tiny ball-bearing that smelled like cinnamon. 'Viscous' was fuzzy and red-brown.

'Shit' was small and bright pink and bounced when it dropped onto the desk. Rodney threw it out anyway. 'Pussy' was a clear violet glass teardrop. 'Cunt' was a pearlescent button. He considered keeping them, because they were ironically pretty, but ended up putting them in the trash as well, carefully buried under crumpled paper and the remains of his lunch. 'Dick' looked somewhat like a maple leaf, except it was burgundy and rough as sandpaper. 'Cock' had a shape a little like a bear, green and fuzzy as a tennis ball. 'Asshole' had the same consistency of honey, but dripped dark blue out of his mouth, sighing 'asshole', 'asshole', 'asshole', as it slowly pooled.

Rodney threw out all of them.

Then he sat at his desk, and said, "Lonely," into the quiet of the room. A crumpled ball of smooth black wire landed on his desk and rolled softly against his laptop. Rodney blew on it until it was completely dry, then put it in the coffee tin.

The last word he said was, 'John'. He caught the beautiful, iridescent sphere as it fell out of his mouth. And stared at it a long time.

2

That night, his name sitting on his desk, John knelt next to his bed and pulled out the cardboard box. He sorted through the words--Rodney's words--one by one: pulling them out and gently wiping off the dust with a hand cloth from his bathroom, before lining them up on his bed like toys.

There were surprisingly few of them, overall, compared to all the words John remembered Rodney speaking. In the end there were barely more than two hundred, in a careful phalanx on his bed, and John wondered how many words Rodney had held back. How many words were still in his head, unspoken, waiting like ghosts.

John clutched the little hammer, licked his lips, and struck the first shape. It was the wet, green thing that had splattered on the infirmary floor, now dried to a shell the color of seaweed. John was afraid it would fall apart if he tapped it, but when the hammer touched it, he heard a whispered, no.

He put that one on his desk.

The spiky, charred metal was a good choice--it hissed gone when John hit it. It joined the dried shell. The wobbly red ball made him smile, but it wasn't right, so he put it back in the box. The same with the wooden sea urchin (knowledge), and the smelly lump, which had dried and shrunk until it just squeaked incomprehensibly when he tapped it.

The coin went on the desk. So did the copper spiral, and the bright orange thing that reminded John of a ladybug. He held the flat, grey, pitted stone in his hand for a moment, though it never warmed, then put it next to the coin. The last shape was the almost-wooden fuzzy blue horse.

John lined them up and gently tapped each one with the hammer, smiling a little. Then he carefully wrapped each one in shredded pieces of an old t-shirt, and packed them tightly into another box he'd taken from the kitchen. He wrote 'Rodney McKay' on the box, and brought it to Sergeant Campbell for the Apollo's return trip.

Then he waited.

Two months later, he got another package. This one was only slightly larger than the first, with just his name written on it. He didn't even ask Carter's permission to take it to his quarters.

The word was wrapped in one of the pieces of his t-shirt, which made John chuckle. He spent a moment feeling the shape through the cloth--pointed, but not sharp, rounded at the bottom.

The word looked a little like a tiny sand-castle, pentagram-shaped. The bottom was curved, so that it wobbled when he put it on his desk, spun when he pushed it. The top was five tiny uneven shapes, tipped but not sharp, pointing upwards as if aching for the sky. It was grey, blending to deep blue at the bottom, but flecked with silver so that it caught the light.

John held it steady between his forefinger and thumb. He took a breath, then hit it lightly with the hammer, once.

And it whispered, home.

3

The package arrived at Area 51 a few days after the Apollo returned from Atlantis--a nondescript cardboard box that must have come from the kitchen. The only words on it were his name. He recognized the handwriting.

Rodney remembered to smile at the scientist who had worshipfully handed it to him, then took it to his office and made very sure to lock the door before he put the box gently on his desk. He thought he heard a faint series of whispers coming from it, when it moved, but he couldn't be sure.

He opened the box carefully, smiling when he recognized the black cloth. His smile faded when he took out the first object and unwrapped it. He remembered the fuzzy blue horse. It was the last word he'd given to John before he'd left two months ago.

John had sent him a message, in his own words. Rodney wondered why.

He put the blue horse on the table and picked up the second cloth-covered ball. He was fairly certain that John had packed the box right to left, so Rodney had pulled out the last word first. He gently unwrapped the dried green crust, wincing as bits of it flaked off. It was the color of seaweed, and looked like it had once been unpleasantly wet. He had a distant memory of something like that falling out of his mouth, but he didn't remember what he might have been saying at the time. He put it to the left of the horse.

The flat, grey stone came next, and Rodney remembered this one. He had one in the coffee tin, recently added: pitted like moon rock and always cold, no matter how long he held it. That one was sorrow. Like 'forfeit', two words he already knew.

A dull copper spiral went to the left of the sorrow stone. Rodney couldn't remember the spiral, when he might have spoken it. He did remember taking his words to John when he'd still been on Atlantis--boxes, bags of them, back when he was still hopeful, when he still spoke (Hope had been big and yellow, with wavy orange rays like a child's sculpture of a sun. Rodney hadn't said it in a long time). Teyla had told him John wanted the words. Rodney hadn't known why, but he hadn't questioned it. It had been comforting, somehow, to think of John keeping his words for him. It made him feel like someone, at least, was still listening to him, even though every utterance he made was a grotesque spectacle that communicated nothing.

Rodney placed the spiral softly on the unfolded cloth next to the grey stone, being very careful not to make it sound. He didn't want to hear any part of the message, not yet. John had chosen these words, each one in particular, out of all the ones Rodney had given him. He knew this was something important, and he didn't want to spoil the meaning.

He ran his finger down the curved edge of the spiral, imagining John holding it, tapping it with something--maybe his fingernail. He resisted the urge to do the same, to hear what John heard, and reached into the box again.

Only three words left now. The coin-like object was vaguely familiar, and it went next to the spiral. He was almost certain he knew what the charred ball of metal spikes was, but he resisted the urge to tap it to make sure. It looked like a harsh word, anyway, though Rodney had long since discovered that form almost never followed referent.

The last word was a surprisingly cheerful orange, its shape reminiscent of a beetle. It went next to the charred metal, pleasant and incongruous.

All the words were lined up, after that: orange ladybug; charred metal spikes; coin; spiral; flat, pitted stone; dried green crust; blue fuzzy horse. Rodney looked at them for a moment, rubbed his mouth. He realized he was stalling.

The last word was forfeit. One of the other words was sorrow, that much he knew. The rest could make those two terrible, or wonderful, and Rodney wasn't entirely sure what would be worse.

Maybe they'd found a cure for his condition. Maybe this was John's way of finally saying goodbye.

Rodney swallowed, then picked up his pencil, and tapped the sentence.

You; gone; life; deficient; sorrow; no; forfeit.

He blinked, listening to the last breath of the final word drift away into the quiet. He steadied his hand, and tapped the sentence again.

You gone, life deficient. Sorrow. No forfeit.

I'm sad. I miss you in my life. Don't give up.

Rodney put the pencil down next to the blue horse. He closed his eyes. The silence of the room pressed down on him like stone.

"I miss you too," he said. The words fell down around him.

4

Two weeks after John got Rodney's second package, Rodney came home.

John greeted him in the gate room along with everyone else--a quick, friendly clap on the shoulder that made Rodney jump, and a 'welcome home' that John wasn't even sure he heard. Rodney looked overwhelmed and kind of bewildered, and he said nothing at all. He just kept smiling uncomfortably and nodding, as if English wasn't a language he understood anymore.

"Come on," John said to him quietly, finally, when the crowd had started to thin and Rodney's smile was so tight John thought it would snap. He wondered what words Rodney was holding back, what they'd look like if he said them. "You probably want to unpack before dinner," he said. And Rodney nodded gratefully.

No one looked twice at him casually walking the chief of science back to his quarters.

When they got to his room, Rodney dropped his bag on the floor and went right to his bed. John thought he was going to lie down, was prepared to leave, but Rodney just sat down and put his head in his hands.

John stood in front of the door, uncertain. "Do you want me to leave?" he asked.

Rodney shook his head.

"Okay," John said softly. He hesitated, then crossed the few steps until he was next to the bed, then sat down as well. He put his forearms on his thighs and clasped his hands.

"You can talk to me, if you want," John said.

Rodney snorted derisively, but he said nothing.

"I missed you," John said. He kept his eyes down on his hands, clenched together. "I miss your voice, Rodney," he said.

He heard Rodney sigh.

John swallowed. He shifted, made himself look up at the side of Rodney's face. Then he put his hand on the back of Rodney's neck.

"I'm not good with words either," John said.

Rodney snapped up to stare at him.

"I'm not good with words," John said again. "But I can show you." And when he gently pulled Rodney towards him, Rodney leaned in too.

They kissed, and John imagined that he could taste the longing in Rodney's mouth, and the frustration, and loneliness, and anger. He pretended he could lick them away, replace the words with his own: complete, and faith, and promise, and always, but he didn't know if Rodney understood him.

But when they finally broke apart, Rodney pressed his forehead to John's, and whispered something. It dropped out of Rodney's mouth and landed between them on the bed.

John picked it up. It was silver, shaped like a leaf, with a faint scent of cloves, still warm. Rodney was the one who tapped it.

Gratitude, it said.

5

It never went away, not entirely. Eventually, though, Rodney was able to speak again, in sounds instead of objects. He was never quite as loquacious as he had been, though maybe it was only John and Teyla who noticed that. But Rodney went back to leading his division, back to being on John's off-world team. And mostly, if Rodney suddenly stopped talking to discreetly drop something into his hand, no one mentioned it.

6

One morning, John woke up to find a word on his pillow. It was a round box of beaten gold, glowing in the light of the early morning.

John picked it up, and opened it. And it whispered, love.

His name fit perfectly inside.


END