Dangling Challenge: The Empty Bell by Brighid
Challenge: Dangling
Title: The Empty Bell
Rating: Fully Adult
Author: Brighid
Summary: There will be only silence
Pairing:McKay/Sheppard (but the pairing isn't the point, you see)
Note: For some reason had Shell in mind when I wrote this.
The Empty Bell
by Brighid
John fucks Rodney for the first time in the middle of a rainstorm. A lashing wind rattles the shutters of the empty house they've bedded down in, and all night long there is the jangle of wind chimes, perhaps thousands of them. They coil tightly together on someone else's bed, a tangle of limbs and kisses and small, savage touches. Their bodies bruise each other, and it is too raw, too painful and far too much, but it is all they have.
)8(
Rodney watched the clouds rolling in with a wary eye. "It's really going to pour, isn't it?"
"Probably," Ford replied, and god, he almost seemed cheerful about it.
"You were a scout, weren't you?" Rodney said, and there were layers of scorn and amusement and even something oddly akin to affection in his tone.
"Hell, yeah," Ford replied. "Sewed on all my own badges, too. What'd you do when you were a kid?"
"I built nuclear bombs and made my parents yell. A lot. Oddly enough, there are no badges for that," Rodney replied. "Still, good to know someone at Atlantis can sew, otherwise we'll be seeing a lot more of each other than perhaps we would want."
"Prudish, Doc?" Ford reached into his right front pocket, pulled out a wrapped cookie and started eating.
"I share lab space with Kavanagh," Rodney said simply, and Ford shuddered in sympathy.
"Thanks a bunch, Rodney. Now that I've got that terrifying visual burned into my brain," Sheppard called back over his shoulder, "I think we need to change the topic. Let's talk about food, instead. Think the d'Yrylen will make that ... ah, hell, with the fish. What do they call it?" he called out to Teyla walking point.
"Ishe," she replied, but her tone was distracted. "Major? Do you smell burning?"
A moment later the freshening wind brought the smell back to Rodney, and he started running even before the order was given.
)8(
The bed shifts slightly as John opens Rodney's body up, and it thumps the wall gently, like a muffled heartbeat, as he starts stroking in steadily, wordlessly. Rodney makes soft, breathless sounds into the pillow, noises that fade into the wind and clatter and cry of prayer bells, hung from every tree in the small copse beside the village.
Every.
Damn.
Tree.
The steady slap-slap of their straining bodies rings loudly in his ears.
)8(
Rodney reached down, touched the face of a small child. It was impossible to tell its sex. He used his thumb and ring finger to pull the clouded, staring eyes shut. It looked like a paper doll, crumpled and forgotten on the ground.
"Fuck," said Ford at his shoulder, and Rodney nodded in grim agreement. "Major. We haven't found any survivors here. A few drained bodies, but mostly ... it's just been emptied out."
Sheppard's response was terse. "Negative here. The whole damn settlement's been culled. They took every last one of them. God damn them. Fucking God damn them." His voice thrummed with impotent rage, and Rodney closed his eyes, swallowing his own anger and fear.
"We have seven bodies here," Ford said finally. "I think maybe we should ... bury them or something?"
"The d'Yrylen do not bury their dead, they cremate them," Teyla's voice chimed in. "And there are other observations, as well, if you are willing."
Rodney opened his eyes, looked down at the small, frail twist of the child's body. "I'm willing," he said.
)8(
Rodney's breath comes in a sighing pant now, and John licks sweat from the hollow between his shoulders, the curve of his neck, even as he's jerking Rodney off. He can't quite make it what he wants; it's a little too rough and a little too fast. Perhaps because this is fucking, no room for polite euphemisms or finesse or small kindnesses.
Not that it's not about love; it is love but it's fierce and angry, too. It's everything they aren't supposed to be, everything that they've pretended not to be but today ... today, John is so fucking tired of pretending.
Pretending to be a leader, pretending to be in control of all this chaos, pretending that he believes, even for a second, that they're not every last one of them going to go just. Like. This.
And when they are all gone, there will be only silence.
)8(
Ford and John stacked the nineteen bodies in the clearing, right by a stand of trees that edged the west side of the village. While they laid out the hollowed dead, Rodney helped Teyla search the houses. In every house there was a small shrine by the kitchen hearth, with a lamp and three stones and something to mark the season. Beneath each shrine was a box, and inside each box were small bronze bells, with long, thin pieces of worked wood dangling beneath their clappers. He peered closely at a few, and found that each one was carved with symbols he couldn't read.
All the same, he knew that they were names.
In the end they carried 27 boxes to the trees, which looked a little like Japanese maples, all plum red and fully leafed. They would find a tree marked with the same name as the family box, and Teyla would climb up into the boughs while he passed her bell after bell to hang. She carefully spaced them so that they did not clap against older, weathered bells, so that each could dance in the steadily rising wind.
By the time they were done it was raining, stinging needles that made Rodney flinch. He helped Teyla out of the tree and together they went back to the clearing.
"Here." John thrust a bottle into his hands, and when he pulled the stopper his eyes watered from the sharp, alcohol sting. Ford passed Teyla a bottle as well. She said a handful of words, a variation of Ancient, he suspected, and then she dumped the contents of the bottle over the bodies closest to her. Rodney did the same, and then John, and then Ford.
Ford lit a match, threw it down, and it caught and blazed up bright and hot. Rodney expected a stench, had steeled himself for it, but the smell wasn't really that bad, not like he'd expected. But then there hadn't been much left to the bodies; they'd just been shattered husks. As the fire surged and smoked they curled and blackened at the edges. He tried very hard not to think of paper dolls.
Of one paper doll.
)8(
Rodney comes first, and John bites down on his shoulder, hard enough to bruise.
But if you bruise, you're still alive, right? and if you're still alive you can fuck and fight and breathe and he's straining, toes digging into the thin mattress, hips slamming hard, body stuttering and falling off into nothing. He hangs there for a moment, suspended, and everything is pure and bright and soundless and he thinks, maybe, his heart stops.
And then he's falling down, knees suddenly turned to water. Rodney's still shaking underneath him. He kisses the side of Rodney's head, his shoulder, and he doesn't say it'll be okay because it won't.
They're a sweaty, tangled mess and the bed is half-wrecked. He's got no place to put the used condom, so he wraps it in Rodney's power bar wrapper and sticks it in an inner pocket of his vest. They lie curled together under Rodney's bedroll and listen to the wind and rain and the bells that are the last voice of the d'Yrylen.
When it's his turn for watch he goes out into the living room to relieve Teyla. Her gaze is remote, giving nothing at all away, at least not until she lets out a shaky breath and reaches up to touch her forehead to his. He holds her head gently in his hands and they breathe together a little while before she turns and goes to her own rest. He paces then, walking quietly from window to window but there is nothing out there, nothing at all.
)8(
The windows were glowing with the red and gold sunrise when Rodney came into the small kitchen. He nodded at Sheppard, boiling water over the hearth, then looked at the others. Teyla's eyes were smudged and heavy and Ford was almost frighteningly subdued. In near silence, they made instant oatmeal and weak tea and then they geared up and walked back to the gate.
There was no wind at all, just iron-grey skies and the prickly feeling before lightning. The looming silence was unnerving.
The d'Yrylen were all dead.
Rodney touched the bruise on his shoulder, underneath his shirt, and tried to remember that he was still alive.
)8(
End.
Title: The Empty Bell
Rating: Fully Adult
Author: Brighid
Summary: There will be only silence
Pairing:McKay/Sheppard (but the pairing isn't the point, you see)
Note: For some reason had Shell in mind when I wrote this.
The Empty Bell
by Brighid
John fucks Rodney for the first time in the middle of a rainstorm. A lashing wind rattles the shutters of the empty house they've bedded down in, and all night long there is the jangle of wind chimes, perhaps thousands of them. They coil tightly together on someone else's bed, a tangle of limbs and kisses and small, savage touches. Their bodies bruise each other, and it is too raw, too painful and far too much, but it is all they have.
)8(
Rodney watched the clouds rolling in with a wary eye. "It's really going to pour, isn't it?"
"Probably," Ford replied, and god, he almost seemed cheerful about it.
"You were a scout, weren't you?" Rodney said, and there were layers of scorn and amusement and even something oddly akin to affection in his tone.
"Hell, yeah," Ford replied. "Sewed on all my own badges, too. What'd you do when you were a kid?"
"I built nuclear bombs and made my parents yell. A lot. Oddly enough, there are no badges for that," Rodney replied. "Still, good to know someone at Atlantis can sew, otherwise we'll be seeing a lot more of each other than perhaps we would want."
"Prudish, Doc?" Ford reached into his right front pocket, pulled out a wrapped cookie and started eating.
"I share lab space with Kavanagh," Rodney said simply, and Ford shuddered in sympathy.
"Thanks a bunch, Rodney. Now that I've got that terrifying visual burned into my brain," Sheppard called back over his shoulder, "I think we need to change the topic. Let's talk about food, instead. Think the d'Yrylen will make that ... ah, hell, with the fish. What do they call it?" he called out to Teyla walking point.
"Ishe," she replied, but her tone was distracted. "Major? Do you smell burning?"
A moment later the freshening wind brought the smell back to Rodney, and he started running even before the order was given.
)8(
The bed shifts slightly as John opens Rodney's body up, and it thumps the wall gently, like a muffled heartbeat, as he starts stroking in steadily, wordlessly. Rodney makes soft, breathless sounds into the pillow, noises that fade into the wind and clatter and cry of prayer bells, hung from every tree in the small copse beside the village.
Every.
Damn.
Tree.
The steady slap-slap of their straining bodies rings loudly in his ears.
)8(
Rodney reached down, touched the face of a small child. It was impossible to tell its sex. He used his thumb and ring finger to pull the clouded, staring eyes shut. It looked like a paper doll, crumpled and forgotten on the ground.
"Fuck," said Ford at his shoulder, and Rodney nodded in grim agreement. "Major. We haven't found any survivors here. A few drained bodies, but mostly ... it's just been emptied out."
Sheppard's response was terse. "Negative here. The whole damn settlement's been culled. They took every last one of them. God damn them. Fucking God damn them." His voice thrummed with impotent rage, and Rodney closed his eyes, swallowing his own anger and fear.
"We have seven bodies here," Ford said finally. "I think maybe we should ... bury them or something?"
"The d'Yrylen do not bury their dead, they cremate them," Teyla's voice chimed in. "And there are other observations, as well, if you are willing."
Rodney opened his eyes, looked down at the small, frail twist of the child's body. "I'm willing," he said.
)8(
Rodney's breath comes in a sighing pant now, and John licks sweat from the hollow between his shoulders, the curve of his neck, even as he's jerking Rodney off. He can't quite make it what he wants; it's a little too rough and a little too fast. Perhaps because this is fucking, no room for polite euphemisms or finesse or small kindnesses.
Not that it's not about love; it is love but it's fierce and angry, too. It's everything they aren't supposed to be, everything that they've pretended not to be but today ... today, John is so fucking tired of pretending.
Pretending to be a leader, pretending to be in control of all this chaos, pretending that he believes, even for a second, that they're not every last one of them going to go just. Like. This.
And when they are all gone, there will be only silence.
)8(
Ford and John stacked the nineteen bodies in the clearing, right by a stand of trees that edged the west side of the village. While they laid out the hollowed dead, Rodney helped Teyla search the houses. In every house there was a small shrine by the kitchen hearth, with a lamp and three stones and something to mark the season. Beneath each shrine was a box, and inside each box were small bronze bells, with long, thin pieces of worked wood dangling beneath their clappers. He peered closely at a few, and found that each one was carved with symbols he couldn't read.
All the same, he knew that they were names.
In the end they carried 27 boxes to the trees, which looked a little like Japanese maples, all plum red and fully leafed. They would find a tree marked with the same name as the family box, and Teyla would climb up into the boughs while he passed her bell after bell to hang. She carefully spaced them so that they did not clap against older, weathered bells, so that each could dance in the steadily rising wind.
By the time they were done it was raining, stinging needles that made Rodney flinch. He helped Teyla out of the tree and together they went back to the clearing.
"Here." John thrust a bottle into his hands, and when he pulled the stopper his eyes watered from the sharp, alcohol sting. Ford passed Teyla a bottle as well. She said a handful of words, a variation of Ancient, he suspected, and then she dumped the contents of the bottle over the bodies closest to her. Rodney did the same, and then John, and then Ford.
Ford lit a match, threw it down, and it caught and blazed up bright and hot. Rodney expected a stench, had steeled himself for it, but the smell wasn't really that bad, not like he'd expected. But then there hadn't been much left to the bodies; they'd just been shattered husks. As the fire surged and smoked they curled and blackened at the edges. He tried very hard not to think of paper dolls.
Of one paper doll.
)8(
Rodney comes first, and John bites down on his shoulder, hard enough to bruise.
But if you bruise, you're still alive, right? and if you're still alive you can fuck and fight and breathe and he's straining, toes digging into the thin mattress, hips slamming hard, body stuttering and falling off into nothing. He hangs there for a moment, suspended, and everything is pure and bright and soundless and he thinks, maybe, his heart stops.
And then he's falling down, knees suddenly turned to water. Rodney's still shaking underneath him. He kisses the side of Rodney's head, his shoulder, and he doesn't say it'll be okay because it won't.
They're a sweaty, tangled mess and the bed is half-wrecked. He's got no place to put the used condom, so he wraps it in Rodney's power bar wrapper and sticks it in an inner pocket of his vest. They lie curled together under Rodney's bedroll and listen to the wind and rain and the bells that are the last voice of the d'Yrylen.
When it's his turn for watch he goes out into the living room to relieve Teyla. Her gaze is remote, giving nothing at all away, at least not until she lets out a shaky breath and reaches up to touch her forehead to his. He holds her head gently in his hands and they breathe together a little while before she turns and goes to her own rest. He paces then, walking quietly from window to window but there is nothing out there, nothing at all.
)8(
The windows were glowing with the red and gold sunrise when Rodney came into the small kitchen. He nodded at Sheppard, boiling water over the hearth, then looked at the others. Teyla's eyes were smudged and heavy and Ford was almost frighteningly subdued. In near silence, they made instant oatmeal and weak tea and then they geared up and walked back to the gate.
There was no wind at all, just iron-grey skies and the prickly feeling before lightning. The looming silence was unnerving.
The d'Yrylen were all dead.
Rodney touched the bruise on his shoulder, underneath his shirt, and tried to remember that he was still alive.
)8(
End.