Enclosed Spaces Challenge: Devours the Face by Brighid

Challenge: Enclosed Spaces Challenge
Category: slash (though somewhat obliquely)
Rating: PG-13
Author: Brighid
Summary: The hole goes in but does not come out.


Devours The Face

**With a crunching sound
**the praying mantis devours
**the face of a bee.
-- Yamaguchi Seishi

A soft voice wakes him; he can feel a hand touching him, a wisp of nothing, air and spider silk and ... god. He opens his eyes and a sharp light cuts him in half, pricks from him an involuntary noise of fear and pain. He tries to curl away but his body is not his own and there were...

two blasts, front and side, dropping him, strings cut, utterly helpless. This can't be good echoing inside and a circle of predators gathering around him, lifting him up and carrying him away, and this can't be ... can't be... can't be...

"Major Sheppard!" and there are still hands all over him, touching him shallowly, pulling him free of the winding sheet. "Major, you must be quiet!" and her voice is thin, not *her* voice, no layers of ages and appetite, just simple human fear, but her hands are touching him and he just can't *bear* it, he can't. He tries to drop away, gagging with the effort to breathe, to tell her "no", and then there's a new voice.

"Let him go! Let him go!"

Two hands hold his face and he's looking up into pale blue sky. He knows the sky, how it is open and wide and safe. "Major. *John*. We haven't got time. I promise you can have any number of psychotic breaks when we get back to Atlantis, but. Not. Now!" He follows the voice, the hard hands, only chokes a little when they touch him *there*, where the hole went into him and never came out.

Darkness creeps back and is almost welcome.

)o(

He dreams of teeth, her face and hands breaching the suffocation of his chrysalis, his unbecoming. Her wet red mouth is smiling.

"You will live a long time," she says, her finger piercing him almost delicately, tasting him, searing his nerve endings until they flare sharp and bright. "A very long time," and her smile is full of sharp teeth, like she could eat him right up, as though, oh *fuck*, she is nothing but teeth and want and the hole goes in but does not come out.

"John." Heavy palm shaking him, thin-lipped mouth tight-drawn and the sky is over him again, thunderous and thank fucking *Christ*, distant. His body slides, moves, shifts; somewhere ahead stars streak and lights flare blue-white and there are so many voices. But they aren't the drowning voices, ageless and patient. They are brief and shallow and pulsing.

"John!'

He says, "Hey. R'ny." And then he's wrapped up tight again, so tight he can't breathe.

)0(

John Sheppard wakes up and there's a tube down his throat, an IV line in his arm and a catheter in his dick. He wants to rip them all out; he can barely even stand the blankets over his body, the rub of the hospital gown against his skin.

Teyla has been sitting quietly in a chair. Her eyes snap open and focus instantly. "Welcome home, Major Sheppard. I will notify Dr. Beckett that you are conscious." She rises fluidly, moves towards his bed to touch her forehead to his head but pulls away when he flinches.

He closes his eyes and it's only darkness between rows of red, jagged teeth.

)0(

Rodney is there the next time he wakes up, and he's watching John like he's the secret of dark matter or a pound of espresso roast coffee beans.

"So. Are you going to try being sane for a little while this time?" He reaches over to a hospital table and pours ice-chips out of little bucket into a plastic cup, then leans over John and spoons a small mouthful over his lips.

"How bad?" John asks finally, his voice jagged and rusty.

"Three days, but she wasn't really feeding. Just ... sampling. We, uh, saw the last time." Rodney's mouth twists, and his hands fiddle with the spoon and glass. "It looked painful."

"It is," John says.

Rodney nods after a moment, then spoons up a few more ice chips for John to swallow. Rodney looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn't, he just stirs the ice chips around the cup until they make a shushing noise.

Finally, Rodney leans in and gently presses his palm against the dressing on John's chest, and John can feel the way his hand shakes.

John puts his hand over Rodney's; he does not pull away.

When he falls asleep again, he dreams of the sky.

)0(

Brighid 2005

)0(