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Laring Gytus
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She doesn't even notice his voice is gone.
Not at first.
And Nina is surprised, because the sound of him hassling Calvin awake is usually the very first thing she hears in the morning. Saying it's a relief would be an understatement, and when he tugs on the back of her dress that morning - the funny thing is - she thinks it's Calvin. Turning to look, she finds Roark, grimacing and rubbing his throat. He tries to say "Aunt Nina," but nothing aside from air and a hoarse squeak comes out, and he swallows, coughs a little, and tries again in a whisper,
"Aunt Nina..." He gestures. "I can't -"
"Y'can't talk," she says, and maybe feels a wee bit guilty for sounding as excited as she does.
A sound that's barely a word, and Roark nods vigorously. He tries to clear his throat, ends up coughing, and rubs his neck again, his tail sweeping the kitchen floor. A thump on the stairs alerts her to Calvin next, who is making his way down them as quickly and carefully as he can, small hands grasping the banister. He looks at his feet the whole time and apparently hasn't noticed that Roark has beat him down the stairs and already addressed the problem.
"Momma," he says urgently, glancing through the posts at her and almost missing a step completely, "Somet'in's wrong. Rocky's not talkin' an'e just makes funny noises."
A small smile graces Nina's face as she looks down at Roark.
"I've heard."
He doesn't think this is funny, but there's nothing he can say about it (though that certainly doesn't stop him from trying). The end result is another bout of coughing and scratchy noises and Roark stomping his feet, crouching down with his elbows between his knees and his hands against his neck, and frustrated because he can't even groan or shout or properly illustrate his discomfort.
Standing beside him, now, Calvin looks on in sympathy and twists his fingers. He glances up at his mother, because he's never seen her not be able to fix something. Nina wipes her hands on her apron.
She takes Roark's face in her hands, makes him stand upright, and even though he isn't the type to sulk he frowns and refuses to look at her, instead finding the wallpaper and cabinets extremely interesting.
"Let me see," she says, tilting his chin up, her fingers pressing against both sides of his throat, "Open up and say Aaah."
He tries. Three or four times.
And is only more frustrated when he struggles to produce the simple noise. He clamps his mouth shut under Nina's watchful gaze, but knows better than to swat her hands away. His blue eyes dart back to the wallpaper, the cabinets.
"Does it hurt?" Nina asks, still feeling his throat.
He gestures again, his hand between her arms, and tries to force the words out. Nina listens patiently, and Calvin leans in, ears pricked forward, whiskers tickling Nina's arm.
"It what?" he asks.
Roark scowls at him, biting his lip.
"It itches," Nina verifies, and Roark nods glumly.
She cups his face in her hands, feels his forehead so long he starts to fidget and becomes uncomfortable, and then, without any warning or prompting, she picks him up. Roark protests as soon as his feet leave the floor; he's too old to be carried and his legs work just fine, thank-you-very-much. He kicks and starts to say as much, but the words get lodged in his throat and he only manages to frown disapprovingly at his aunt as she sets him in one of the kitchen chairs and turns the stove on to boil water.
Thinking this is going to be what cures his ailing cousin, Calvin climbs into the chair across from Roark, rests his elbows on the table, and bites his knuckles, waiting. Roark sulks, not knowing why he's been sat down and - though the last bit is silent, it is still understood - why he is not to get up from the chair. The water is hardly bubbling before his patience runs thin.
Rocky smacks his palm on the table and starts to say something to Freckle, who sits up and pays very close attention to him. Rocky clears his throat a few times, tries again, and again, grimaces, then gestures. He mouths the words, "Ask about breakfast," and twists his wrist toward his mouth with a pretend spoon, because even whispering is starting to hurt.
Wide-eyed, Freckle mimics the gesture, his mouth open and moving silently.
He doesn't get it.
Frustrated, Rocky pronounces the words more exaggeratedly as if this will help get them across. Freckle's brow knots. He scrutinizes his cousin's mouth, still aimlessly moving his own hand in the same motion without understanding any of it.
"I'm...?" Freckle asks, slowly, shaking his head, "I'm... somet'in'. What, Rocky?"
Rocky collapses onto the table top, smacks his forehead against it. Wanting to groan, or hum, or something, he instead opts for biting his lip until it hurts and banging his fists on the table.
"Stop that, Roark," Nina says, and sets a steaming bowl down in front of him, "It's not goin' t'make y'feel any better. Now lean over this 'til y'oatmeal's ready, and take deep breaths."
The bowl, and consequently whatever is occupying it aside from water, smells terrible. Calvin covers his nose with both hands and sinks into his seat, almost under the table, and Roark grimaces at it, his ears laying back. He glances at Aunt Nina, and she nudges him upright, pushing the bowl under his nose.
"Just for a few minutes."
She drops a towel over his head, tenting him in with the steam in so he'll breathe it all in, and returns to the stove to put more water on. Under the towel, Rocky sucks in a breath, coughs, and sighs. When he rubs his throat the towel shifts, and Freckle curiously stands up in his chair, laying against the table and peeking underneath the edge of the towel to see what Rocky is doing, if the stinky stuff is helping.
"Calvin, y'get out from under there," Nina says without looking.
He quickly backs off, crouching on his knees and hugging the edge of the table, staring at his cousin, who fidgets restlessly.
And the worst of it is, it's still early.
Roark spends the morning choking down what he can of his oatmeal, and slumped miserably under the towel. Calvin moves around the table so he can sit beside his cousin, eats quietly, and then goes upstairs to fetch a coloring book and his crayons after Rocky poorly translates his boredom with inaccurate Morse code against the table.
When breakfast is over, and Nina feels that Roark has spent enough time breathing in her home remedy, she takes his temperature, fixes him a glass of warm milk and honey to ease the swelling in his throat, and then sends him to bed.
"Buh... but," Roark forces out just four steps up, swallowing, grimacing, "I'm..."
"Burnin' up," Nina says, and shoos him up the stairs, "Get up there. Y'need t'rest."
"What'm I... expected... to do all day, exactly?" he asks slowly under his breath, but turns around, as ordered, and slinks up to the guest room, coughing and rubbing his throat.
There's no clever retort about how he's probably "burnin' up" because he's been under a steaming towel all morning, only because he doesn't feel like mutilating his throat any further with the scratchy wheezing that has become his voice. Calvin thunders up the stairs right on his tail, his book and crayon box clamped in his short arms as he watches his feet.
"And don't be talkin', Roark," Nina calls after them.
She ignores Roark's incredulous stare and goes to ring the doctor. The man confirms her suspicions, after he arrives an hour or so later and gives an increasingly indignant Roark a once-over, and then a big aweful spoonful of medicine that coats his throat and makes him feel even more sick than he did originally.
"Laryngitis," the doctor says, clipping his bag closed.
"From talkin' too much," Nina adds with a pointed, amused look.
Calvin's mouth falls open in disbelief, sitting on the side of the bed opposite his cousin with books, cards, crayons, pencils and loose paper sprawled out between them. He's been coloring and drawing; Rocky has been writing out the alphabet and notes in an attempt to speed up the learning-to-read process because his throat hurts and Freckle, who is just familiarizing himself with his letters, isn't comprehending any of his overzealous gestures and it is becoming increasingly frustrating.
He isn't amused. He's also strangely exhausted and bored of writing out things Freckle can hardly read (even though he tries, but the whole point's sort of lost after it takes him five minutes to get a single word pronounced aloud).
The doctor chuckles.
"More likely it's from that nasty bout a cold that was goin' around last week," he says, turning to go, "This weather just gives everyone a good run for it. But 'is fever'll come down b'fore too long, and 'is throat'll get back to normal in a few days if ye can keep 'im from talkin' too much."
"Well, at least his fever'll come down," Nina says positively, showing the doctor out.
Rocky groans.
Well, he tries to. Wants to. Feels like he needs to.
He can't.
And instead falls forward against the book he's used to write on and smacks himself in the forehead with it a few times because the noises don't come out and it hurts and his ears itch. Freckle watches the door where his mother and the doctor have disappeared, then stretches out over the comforter, papers, and books to where Rocky has collapsed against his knees, inconsolable.
His ears flicking back, Freckle tentatively taps Rocky's shoulder. His cousin sits up, looks at him, and Freckle bites his lip, resting on his elbows and holding his face in his hands. He covers his mouth, Rocky grumpily waits because he has to, then Freckle voices his fear, because he can and because he feels like he should.
"Rocky," he says - whispers it, really, leaning in close, "Is your voice never comin' back?"
The thought is inconceivable.
Frowning at his diminutive cousin, Rocky sucks in a deep breath and sighs (it hitches, even more frustration), and rolls his blue eyes toward the ceiling. "Didn't you listen?" wants to come out, but doesn't.
Dih gets stuck in his throat, twice, and Rocky clenches his fists. He bites his lip, eyebrows drawn together with such concentration his forehead is starting to hurt as he casts around for his pencil. Finding it, he grabs a new piece of paper, leans over it, and starts writing, scrawling, looping, repetitive letters:
Don't be an idiot!
Don't be an idiot!
Don't be an idiot!
DON'T BE AN IDIOT, Freckle, for Pete's sake!
And half-way through the "sake", he moves the pencil upwards and scratches out every line until he deems it unreadable, thinking the same four words, wads the paper up and hurls it, pencil and all, towards the waste basket in the corner. He falls against his knees again, swallows, and clears his throat. The papers and books rustle as Freckle shifts.
Rocky coughs, rubbing his throat.
Slowly, he sits up, takes one of Freckle's crayons and a new piece of paper. He writes "No Talking. It'll be fine," and passes it to Freckle, who spends more time sounding it all out than Rocky does, afterwards, trying to explain that Freckle can talk, he meant himself because his voice is hurt from that damnable cold they caught from that one excursion out into the snow.
An innocent-enough snowball fight had gone awry with a badly place throw on Rocky's part and had ultimately resulted in Freckle surprising everyone by holding and shoving his bigger cousin down in a snow bank until every layer of him (jacket, sweater, under shirt, and jeans) was soaked through with the melty remains of snow.
Being reminded of this via Rocky's scrawly penmanship and airy gesticulations, Freckle suddenly feels guilty, because he thinks laring gytus is some terrible disease and that he's the reason Rocky's voice is gone forever. So Rocky spends the next several minutes mulling over what exactly laryngitis is (even though he assumes it's just a fancy, doctor way of saying "sore throat") and trying to explain this to Freckle with gestures and half-muttered words, none of which come out as reassuring as he intends for them to.
When he finally convinces Freckle that he is going to be fine, his voice will come back and his tongue won't fall out, he just needs some rest and to, regrettably, not speak for a while - the medicine, and the fever, kicks in in earnest. Freckle is preoccupied with coloring inside the lines, because he has decided that this is an apology picture, and is so intent on his work that he doesn't even notice that Rocky has fallen asleep, laid back against the pillows with a book open again his chest.
Freckle blinks at him, his tail twitching, bites his lip, and resumes his coloring.
Nina later comes up to check on them, because the silence is unsettling and is typically never a sign of something good to come. However, this time, for once, when she pushes open the bedroom door, she finds them both quiet, and still, and asleep. Calvin stretched out alongside Roark, who is buried under several coloring books, crudely-drawn pictures and folded cards that Calvin has warbley signed,
Freckle, and Sorry, and Talk again soon.
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(A/n) Done for the Lackadaisy Forum's December-January prompt: WINTER. The three hundred extra words I had to cut back where they belong and ITALICIZED where it's supposed to be. ...Not that it hurt my OCD or anything for the italics not to be there on the forum; I just spent 10 minutes plugging in all those brackets because I enjoy finding new, asinine ways to break the monotony that it my daily routine.
And congrats to the three contest winners! Apparently I assumed incorrectly when I figured a contest on the LACKADAISY forum would be utilized to help spread some actual fanfiction around. xD I'm honestly, maybe, a little disappointed, but in favor of not being an insufferable twat, I'll be quiet and just say, "thank you for reading and reviewing if you deign to!" I appreciate all forms of feedback~
-Motcn