FIC: "Essence of Kerosene", an SGA off-the-cuff writing experiment

[lobelia321]

I know I planned this whole other thing but what the hey. Here's something off the cuff instead.

Title: Essence of Kerosene
Author: Lobelia
Fandom: SGA.
Category: Off-the-cuff writing experiment.
Rating: Mild yet wild.
Spoilers: 2.05, 'Condemned'.
Length: c. 1,000 words
Pairing: Eldon / Rodney McKay
For those gentle readers not familiar with this fandom: Who are these people? Answer: Who cares, writing experiment, slash, whee! Pics: Eldon the Olesian. Rodney McKay.
Warnings: Random stylistic criteria. Self-infliction of prose straitjackets, and then cheerful abandonment of same.



omniscient narrator, multiple pov, formal language

Eldon the Olesian from one of the inhabited planets of the Pegasus Galaxy rarely ceased speaking. He was particularly fond of orating over meals. Indeed, at times his food remained untouched upon his plate while his tongue wagged incessantly as he disburthened himself of not only his life's history but also of all the minutiae of his many exploits in the realm of low-technology engineering and mechanics.

Dr Rodney McKay from the only inhabited planet in the Milky Way rarely ceased speaking except when partaking of food and climaxing (although the latter fact was only known to a handful of fellow-planetarians). He also rarely ceased to be irritated by Eldon the Olesian's penchant for interminable chatter.


objective effect, nobody's pov, external description, techno-lingo

Dr McKay bent over the turbo-compressor and rotated the fuel maintenance valve by two-and-a-half degrees.

Eldon watched McKay over McKay's shoulder.

Dr McKay stretched up to adjust the petrochemical maintenance panel.

Eldon watched McKay over McKay's shoulder.

Dr McKay swore when the counter-corrosion applicator fell onto his foot, causing minor swelling in the region of the peroneal tibial.

Eldon stammered, "I... I think the p... the panel valve needed to be two degrees to the left... I mean, to the left."

"What?" snapped Dr McKay, cradling his aching ankle.

Eldon pointed to the panel valve.

Dr McKay dropped the ankle to the floor and frowned at the valve.


subjective effect, pov McKay
'O my gosh,' thought McKay. This was too weird. But impressive. Very impressive.

"Just goes to show," McKay said to nobody in particular, "what the mind will come up with, irrespective of the technological advances of the culture. Of course, it helps to have those advances. Mind and matter, and all that."

That strange Olesian. He should wash sometime, though.


subjective effect, pov Eldon
Eldon still cowered every time one of the Atlantean doors hissed open in front of him. The blinking lights on the consoles disturbed him, and the bubbles spurting around in those tall glass columns startled him. It had been too long since he'd been in any kind of built environment. All he had known for these past years had been the forest and the earth and the threatening sky.

Him crouched in the nethermost hut, tinkering with discarded spaceship bits.

McKay, though. He knew everything.


McKay's thoughts
What's he doing? Why's he staring at me like that with those shiny eyes? "Are you sure you've adjusted to the Atlantean illumination system yet? Because those dilations, you should have them looked at. They can give you drops for that. I had conjunctivitis once, it played havoc with my optical nerves."


Eldon's thoughts
I have no idea what he's talking about but if I listen long enough I am sure I will learn how to construct a hydraulic leverage arm.


Clipped sentences, metaphor of setting
Dr McKay sat on the bench. Eldon joined him. McKay cast him a short glance. The lamp sputtered. "It's the gene", said McKay.

Circles of air wavered across the interval.


What the heck, romantic ending
"It's the... the noumenal vaporiser," said Eldon.

"What? What are you talking about?" said Dr McKay.

"Here, the... I don't know, all I did was to calib... calibrate the... " Eldon lifted the device. A green lamp blinked.

"Calibrate the hydro-terminator, yes, yes, I see that," said Dr McKay, "it's quite, yes." He peered at the lamp, ran his finger around the thread of the washer, licked the liquid off the tip of his pinkie. "Petroleum?" he said. "Kerosene?"

"Carbonic," said Eldon.

"Yes, yes, that's it!" McKay stabbed the air. "Carbonic resin compound! Ingenious."

"Really?"

"Really what?"

Eldon who was half a head shorter than Dr McKay and a good deal grimier stood on tiptoes and kissed his lab mate.

After a while, he stopped kissing his lab mate. But continued to stand on wobbling tiptoes.

"Good gosh," said Dr McKay. "Can you do that again?"

Eldon obliged.

The green lamp turned orange.

Dr McKay, still caught in the kiss, threw his pupils into the corners of his eyes in order to check the lamp's doings.

The orange lamp turned red.

"Amazing!" cried Dr McKay, leaving Eldon's tongue without a home. "This is incredible! There must be something..." Waving the hands. "... some sort of enzyme, we've got to get the biologists onto this." Wiggling the fingers. "Perhaps some saliva compound? That activates the gene and then transfers itself onto the... the what?"

"I... I did not..."

"What? You had no idea this was going to happen?" And, 'o my gosh', he thought, 'what did that crazy Olesian kiss me for, in that case?'


metaphor of setting
There were a hundred different humming noises in the engineering laboratory of the Ancient City of Atlantis. Their frequencies ranged from beyond-the-bat to seven-fathoms-below-zero. Some would have made bees mate except there were no bees on Atlantis. Others would have made elks roar except, of course, as above.

The frequency emitted by the as-yet-unidentified device with The Green Lamp hovered somewhere between vanilla and Purcell.

Some would call it an aphrodisiac.


metaphor of body
Others wouldn't call it anything.

They would simply exchange salivary matter, at first in experimental burrowings, parcelling it out like a handover of spies. Then in deeper, tongues searching, scooping out hidden cavities.

The more they delved, the louder glowed the lamp.

McKay kept one hand on the ignition button, feeling it hum against his palm like blood. But after a while, he let go because the hand was needed elsewhere, and bubbles burst to the surface of his guts.

Eldon fell back into the memory of those tangential moments of his life. Prison-colony memories, bitter but also sweet, ginger mixed with lime, kerosene with essence of vanilla. The heat of a body was the same in all the worlds, it seemed.

THE END.
19 April 2006

Comments

[severusslave.livejournal.com]

Oh, I like this!
What the heck, romantic ending Heee!

And Eldon plus Rodney that's a stroke of genius, my dear!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

And as it turned out, it wasn't even an ending! Ack, that's off-the-cuffness for you. This one was surprisingly hard to write, actually.

I watched 'Condemned' and as soon as it was finished, the bunny hit me. Indeed, it slapped me in the face!! Has no one else written this?? It's like a whole new take on Radek/Rodney wondergeekness!

[severusslave.livejournal.com]

No, not that I know of. And believe me I read many things. But I had thought about Rodney slashed with that dirty, cute guy who knows some science, too.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am always strangely and unerringly attracted to the rare pairings. It is a condition. Ooh, you have a coffee icon! Did you participate in PEDW?

[severusslave.livejournal.com]

I'm a rare pairing kind of girl too. OTPs of other people? Like McShep in this fandom? Do nothing for me.

It's a tea icon, I love tea. Coffee, I only drink at the 'bucks with lots of caramel and vanilla. :)

Did I do what? Explanation of that acronym, please.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I toyed with the idea of acronyming or not acronyming but if you don't know the acronym you clearly didn't participate, :-) It was Post Every Day Week. It happened two weeks ago. This is the icon I made to go with it.

[severusslave.livejournal.com]

Ah, and what was it about? Posting fiction?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

No, it was just about posting every day for people who post very little. I, of course, post masses but I participated, anyway, because then it turned into a sort of thing where everybody tried to be as boring as possible in their posts and then everybody started posting what they had for breakfast every day. Hence the coffee / tea icon question.

[severusslave.livejournal.com]

*snicker*
...
Well, I just cooked and ate fried rice with sweet japanese omelette and am drinking a glass of orange juice. ;)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, and P.S. Thank you so much for reading! Also, whoa, Escher icon.

[severusslave.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yay, Escher!

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is a lot of fun. And yay, the world needs more (any) Rodney/Eldon.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Isn't there any more Rodney/Eldon?? severussnape just said something similar. I don't know, I finished watching 'Condemned' earlier today (thanks to your everlasting generosity!) and the plot bunny hit me almost as soon as the credits started rolling. It is like a whole new wondergeek Radek/Rodney. Is there really no other Eldon? Because I'm already having more Eldon bunnies! omg, is he my Sue??

Thank you so much for reading and commenting! :-)

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I encourage you to write more Rodney/Eldon.

In fact, I was just reflecting that I can think of no fewer than three episodes where Rodney "collects" a local geek-boy who follows him around adoringly and the sexual chemistry flares: Eldon in Condemned, Jace in Lost Boys, and Baldric in The Tower. Clearly he attracts a type!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Rodney collecting local geek boys! Hm, I have forgotten who Jace was -- wasn't Rodney followed around by two little children, a girl and a boy? Was Jace that blond one? And I haven't yet watched Tower, I'm only up to episode 2.06, *g*. But Baldric!! There's a Baldric in SGA? Just a second ago, I was telling sheldrake how Eldon reminded me of Baldrick (as in Blackadder's sidekick). Homonymity rules.

[melagan.livejournal.com]

OMG Rodney/Eldon. *hugs you like a mad thing* Very good Eldon voice too. I find it no surprise that Rodney has groupies *g*

Write just as much Rodney/Eldon as your heart desires. /encouraging nod/

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you! Er, *is distracted by your phallic icon* *stares*

Plot bunnies with Eldon / Rodney are already forming in my brain apace! They have chemistry! They sprang into my head within seconds of the end of 'Condemned'!

[melagan.livejournal.com]

*is distracted by your phallic icon*

/giggles/

I made it for the advent_atlantis Rodney Mckay:Sex God
weekend. I've gotten kind of fond of it and I'm happy to share.

[ios-pillow-book.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is wild. I'm wildly confused now. I don't know the fandom, I have no idea who these guys are, but that's not the point because, oh!, all these PoVs mixed up wildly and I wonder, can you do that? Obviously, you can - I need to analyse this, but the Great Green Lamp (why do I picture something like a 60s lava lamp here?) has clearly slowed my mind.

Hey, this fic is like a psychedelic trip, induced by eating some extraterrestial hallucinogenic plants, in other words, it's highly entertaining.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Wow, I psychedelized you?! Lava lamp'n' all. I am so pleased! And to entertain someone who has no clue about the fandom, even! What I realised was that I wanted to do some writing experiments and plucking people from an established fandom is the best and quickest and funnest way to do that. My earlier experiments were with Dom and Karl but now I'm elsewhere so I just went with what is there around me at the moment. And the whole, can you do that -- you know I am so glad you said that. Because I have been, for the past two years or so of posting-fic-drought, in a terrible quandary about what one can or cannot do. And these experiments are just so liberating in reminding me that, yes, you can do anything! Anything! In fact, the straiter the jacket, the more liberating it is -- paradoxical, perhaps, but true (as no doubt, every musician knows...)

Come and join in the fun!

Although these were surprisingly more difficult to write than my previous batches. I have yet to analyse why.

Thank you for reading!!

[2am-optimism.livejournal.com]

Hey - Rodney/Eldon! neat :)

Very cool idea for a pairing. I agree that it's v. surprising that he hasn't really appeared in fic before - Rodney/Eldon and John/Keras (the kid from 'Childhood's End', who I have had rather a crush on since seeing that ep.) would definitely be top of my rare pairings list, and there should be more, definitely.

I love your internal Rodney-voice, I really do :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ah, Keras, that was his name! I was trying to remember him. But hey, it was the Eldon bunny that jumped me and what could I do? There is more where that one came from, too; bunnies of Eldon/Rodney are taking shape in my brain even as I type!

Thank you so much for reading and commenting! I am happy that you liked the Rodney-voice, :-)

[2am-optimism.livejournal.com]

could eldon possibly get a bath? it bothers me, for some reason

*slinks off*

:)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*laughs and laughs*

[mice1900.livejournal.com]

I was quite taken with Eldon and also imagined a few interesting scenarios, though I think he'd get on better with Radek, to be honest. Yay to you for writing this!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

With Radek? *chokes on own tongue* Argh, the bunnies multiply! Because, of course, he has as yet to meet Radek, after going through the Gate and being bamboozled by Atlantis and taking off his cap and washing his face and turning into a Pegasian love god. Um. I am possibly getting carried away here.

Thanks so much for reading and commenting on this madcapness! More where this came from... ;-)