SGA Fic - The Man in the Box
Title: The Man in the Box
Rating: PG+
Characters: Sheppard, Team
Warnings: Language, possibly disturbing but non-graphic images.
Summary: Sheppard hates being touched, his team helps how they can. A big, huge thanks to sharpes_hussy for our chats about sensory deprivation, hyper-sensitivity and all around helping me better understand what I was writing about and letting me know it worked. Written for all us October babies... and it's still October, yay!
The Man in the Box
John was a brain in a box. Rodney might scoff that the body was no different, just another box, except it was a box that moved. Real boxes don't move, that's why they're boxes.
And Rodney wasn't here.
To hell with the new-age hippies who gushed over the wonders of floating in a box of water, the mental benefits and physical benefits and blah, blah, friggin' blah. John once had a copilot who swore by the damn things, called them the equivalent of being reborn. He said that when you stepped out of one after a couple of hours, you felt like a new man - literally.
When it was voluntary. When it wasn't voluntary, you felt like you were going to implode. You wandered through deep space the same temperature as your body, without stars or planets or direction. John knew he had a body; must have a body because he could feel his heart a meaty vibration in the nothing. It sketched his bones in sound-waves. Then he would try to move, twitch a finger or a toe, but there was nothing to twitch.
He floated, a brain in a box, a spirit in empty space, a sound in the darkness: thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.
“It's flying. I thought you liked flying,” said his dad. He brought a tumbler of Scotch to his rotten lips. A chunk of skin fell off with a wet plop and floated with the ice. “This should be a dream come true.” He tossed the last of the drink to the back of his throat. It splashed through the ragged hole in the front of his throat. Patrick Sheppard coughed, spraying liquid and skin. “Decay's a bitch.”
“Patrick, take it easy on him.” Mom wrapped fleshless fingers around John's arm. It was funny that he could feel it, all hard and cold, when he couldn't feel anything beyond his heart knock-knock-knocking on his ribs.
“It's okay, Johnny,” mom said with a clack of her fleshless teeth. “You know how your father is.”
“He was too easy on you,” old Sumner said, and slammed his hand into John's chest. John thought he might be screaming, but couldn't be sure. He couldn't hear anything, see anything except old Sumner. His heart did beat harder, and it hurt.
If his heart would just stop beating, then maybe he wouldn't feel anything, and life would be great.
All that new-age junk was a load of crap. John wasn't having any fun.
“You're not supposed to be having fun,” said dead dad, pinching a cigar between what was left of his lips. “Unless the dead really are your idea of a party.”
The charred corpses of Mitch and Dex high-fived each other. Many a shriveled or rotten marine and scientist lifted plastic cups full of beer.
“Sheppard,” Holland said, all smiles wrinkling his sun-burned face, “You are seriously one messed-up dude.”
“Oh, don't listen to them, Johnny,” mom tsked. She ruffled his head with her bony hands.
Then the Wraith joined in, wearing party hats, a beer in one hand and the other hand pulling years from John to the songs of Johnny Cash. They took turns, a little here and a little there, before moving on to the scientists and marines.
John saw his team, chained to a stone wall, begging for mercy while their skin shrank around their bones. They turned to dust and the dust floated away in spirals like a distant galaxy.
“Should have gone with the family business,” dad said with pseudo regret. “Least you wouldn't have to worry about anyone getting the life sucked out of them by aliens.”
“Unless those aliens found their way to Earth,” his mom sweetly countered. She continued to card her dead fingers through John's hair. John missed his mom, he really did, but wished she would stop.
It hurts, John whimpered.
“Shhhh,” Mom soothed.
And then there was light; big, bright, shining and blinding. It burned through his corneas and raged through his brain like knives. He felt his chest deflate and knew he was screaming. Or maybe exhaling really hard.
Then he had a body, arms and legs made of glass that pressed into his muscles and ground between his joints. He struggled, jerked, kicked, fought and, oh, how it hurt. It all hurt. He missed the empty space and the dead, because unpleasant as they'd been, the pain hadn't been like this. Then had been a nightmare. Now was dying.
John screamed, or exhaled, or something. Then he was back in empty space, minus the unpleasant dead.
--------------------
John felt himself within his rights to say that it sucked to be him. He'd been voluntarily and involuntarily blinded: light deprivation, which was forcing him to endure a bandage over his eyes until he could be weaned back into the world of sunshine and lamplight. His muscles had to be weaned back into motion. His skin weaned back into sensation.
That's what came with being a brain in a box for a week.
Then there was sound, too loud and too sudden until he missed the thump-thump-thump of his damn heart.
“At least they'd fed him,” Carson said. John wished he wouldn't; Beckett's voice was like an itch deep in his ear. “Liquid, through a tube but better than nothing.”
“Because they needed him alive for that stupid machine,” said Rodney. His voice was a rash. “A machine they couldn't fix even after one hundred years because it couldn't be fixed. They were stuffing people in those damn closets like food storage. They wouldn't have let Sheppard out until he was dead and decayed.”
“But it did not happen,” said Teyla, whose voice made John's nerves cringe.
“It'll never happen again.” Ronon, who made John's head hurt.
“Because Conan's solution to everything is to blow it up!” Rodney snarled. It made John force a noise through his throat and, suddenly, there was blessed silence.
Until Carson felt the need to speak. “Sorry, lad. Rodney, keep it down.”
They all needed to keep it down, go away, far away where John couldn't feel the displacement of the air where they stood. It pressed against him, over him, on him until he wanted to run, run, run. Except he couldn't so much as twitch a leg. A toe, yes. A finger, yes. But not the limbs that needed to move. He was still a brain in a box, this time crushed on all sides by itchy cloth on his body and cold air on his head.
A hand touched his shoulder, hot and heavy and malleable. It pressed his skin against his muscles like fine needles. Sheppard shivered and the weight of the hand lifted away.
Except the touch was still their, sticking to his skin like oil and sap.
“You're all right, lad,” Carson said, and returned the sticky, oily weight. “We've got you.”
Sheppard wanted to ask him to let him go, but his throat wouldn't twitch, either.
------------------------
Carson was a bastard, the nurses were bitches and deep down inside John knew he should have felt bad for thinking it. He would eventually feel guilty but at the immediate moment didn't care - it still sucked to be him. They hovered around him within the curtain, a box within a box within a box. They touched him with their fingers that were sometimes like fire and sometimes like ice, stabbed him with acidic needles and insulted his ears with cooing. They spoke like people eager to please but busied themselves like people who didn't give a damn.
They were always there. Sometimes one, sometimes many, but always there. John could hear their soft footfalls, see their shadows ripple across the curtains and feel the space they occupied when they moved closer thinking he was asleep.
It took two nurses to help him go to the bathroom, one to hold him up and one to adjust the bed pan. He said he could do it himself, they agreed but were siding with caution. It took one nurse to spoon-feed him when it was dinner time; his hands shook too much to do it on his own. The plastic spoon was cold and slick in his mouth, like hard slime, and the nurse was bound and determined to stab him in the back of the throat with the damn thing.
They were so damn chatty. Their every action was punctuated with a river of pointless words filtered through John's ears as white noise that crowded out his thought. He just wanted them to go away, to stop handling him, to stop polluting his brain with sound. He just wanted to remember what silence and nothingness was like.
But some of the nurses thought it a bad idea. You'll go recluse, they said. It's not healthy for anyone to want to be alone. Others thought it was rude. They said, you should be more appreciative. You should get used to this, because you're going to have to eventually.
“Stop being such a baby,” said a nurse who thought leaving Sheppard alone meant giving him ample opportunity to kill himself. She'd thought he'd been asleep when he overheard her mention it to another nurse. She'd read about it in a book or magazine or something.
“How about you back off and I will,” John snapped.
“How about you cooperate and let me take your blood pressure.”
John yanked his arm from her grip. “A nurse already took it an hour ago.”
“Well, the results weren't clear. We have to take it again.” And she grabbed his wrist, squeezing it in her too-warm hand slick with moisture. Sheppard tried to pull it back, but he was weak, she was strong and his efforts were about as effectual as a three year old struggling in his mother's tight hug.
It scared the hell out of him, made his heart pound, made him want to run. He shoved the nurse back with his free hand rougher than intended and stronger than he thought he was capable of, enough to send her stumbling through the curtain onto her ass. She looked at John, John at her, both stunned but John heaving. She scrambled to her feet the very picture of angered parent, and stomped off to go tell.
John took the opportunity to slide out of bed for that needed run. But his legs shook, then his knees buckled. He held on to the bed for dear life as he was lowered to the floor whether he liked it or not. Carson burst through the curtains and found John a sweating, shaking heap of fast breathing human clinging to the bedsheets as though still liable to fall.
John said, weakly, “She wouldn't leave me alone.”
Carson looked at John sadly, then helped him back into bed.
---------------------
If Sheppard could run around naked, he would have in a heartbeat. But he still had his dignity and was damn well going to hang onto it. But it sucked. Really sucked. His shirt was a rock on his shoulders and sandpaper on his skin. He thought for sure he'd end up with a rash or two, but every chance he got for a peek in the mirror showed him pale skin, dark hair and nothing red and irritated.
Meal times were a bitch. He hated carrying the trays, hated the way the edges bit into his fingertips all the way to the bone. He kept expecting it to draw blood. It never did.
It was also nothing compared to his team, their need to sit closer than usual, granting him inches of false space. And it was false space, because John could feel them, like pressure against his arms, ribs, hip, thighs. He could feel the heat of them, the tiny brushes of air with their every movement, their moisture.
He endured, because this was stupid. Carson had warned that Sheppard might be a little hypersensitive to stimuli but like hell John was going to let it make him a recluse. He would get used to it, whether his body liked it or not.
John jerked his leg, up and down, rapid as though it were trying to run by itself. His team chatted away, Rodney taking the brunt of the conversation. It made John's leg jerk harder, the other leg twitching in anticipation to jiggle along.
Rodney talked of things, unimportant things - stupid machines and stupid scientists. Teyla listened, or pretended to. Ronon didn't even try, favoring his food instead. He moved his arm. John didn't see it, but he felt it, like insects and a cold breeze.
John couldn't take it anymore - he always couldn't take it anymore. He stood up, biting tray in hand, and made his excuse.
“I'm feeling a little tired.”
“You're always feeling a little tired,” McKay squawked. John fought not to cringe. He usually managed, like now.
“Rodney,” Teyla scolded softly. “It has only been three days since his release from the infirmary, and he still has much strength to regain.”
“Yeah,” John said, feeling defiant. He hurried from the mess without looking like he was hurrying; not a difficult feat with legs that felt like they were thirty percent Jello and a tray that kept increasing in weight the longer he held it. He took his meal in his room, at his computer desk. The padded chair was itchy, the desk-top cold, but nothing more than that. No motion and no crushing. He could handle it.
----------------------
Sheppard walked when he wanted to run. All he could do was walk until his body was stronger and able to deal. Sometimes, should he happen to be alone, sans Ronon or passer-bys, he would escalate into a light jog. It satisfied the itch in his legs to move, to keep moving, faster and faster.
Not for long. Never for long. His legs had too many limits.
He especially liked tempting fate at night. Always at night, when the itch hovered on the edge of being an ache that bled through his body. Wrapped up in a blanket made him feel confined. Sprawled under a blanket made him too cold too easily. And there was always pressure against his back and chest, above and below trying to crush him in between. He would start to drift on dreams where Wraith in party hats pressed their hands to his sternum. His father would watch, shaking his head. His mother would tsk, carding his hair with bony fingers.
John would wake up, gasping like he hadn't breathed in years. His heart would race - thump-thump, loud in the dark - and his body wanted to race with it. Except he couldn't so he walked, then jogged, then walked, and that was all right. Until he went to sleep, and dreamed, and wanted to run.
----------------
“I need your help,” Rodney said. “And how the hell can you sit like that?”
Sheppard looked up from his comic book, then down at his bed that he was currently sitting on - only the edge, not stretched out against a pillow. He didn't like how it felt against his back, the way it tried to push his spine in. His current position made his whole body hurt, but he thought it a hell of a lot easier to handle than the pressure of the pillow. He tossed the comic book aside and stood.
“Let's go.” He knew he must be pretty damn bored to help McKay so voluntarily and without asking for the details, but it had only been five days since his freedom from the infirmary, and a long ways yet to active duty.
The chair room was relatively empty except for Zelenka crouched at the base. Sheppard sat, activated the chair, and Rodney and Radek looked at readings, gave instructions and made adjustments. John had no idea what the goal was. He didn't really care. It was something else to do besides read and make excuses to take food into his room. The chair with all its ornate crap dug into his back like fingers poking him in the ribs, but he squirmed and endured.
After a moment, he stopped squirming.
Another moment, and bony fingers press into his skull as Wraith gathered around him and danced to the distant beat of Johnny Cash.
Sheppard woke up fast and lost and in desperate need to run. People were around him, people everywhere, leaning over him, asking what was wrong, why he couldn't breathe. Rodney was there, and Radek, some woman he didn't know and another woman and a man.
John gasped, “What the hell!”
“You were breathing fast. Sweating. Wouldn't wake up. I called the infirmary...” Rodney was rambling. A hand gripped his arm, pushing needles into his muscles, veins, bones. “Are you all right? You look pa--”
John swung his arm free so hard Rodney stumbled back onto his ass. John was up, out of the chair, shoving people aside, faces aside, heat and displacement and moisture. He ran, ran as fast as he could ever remember running until the air scraped his face and hands and pushed his clothes into his body. He ran, clipping bodies that cut, their heated feel lingering, like a stain that would never go away. His lungs burned, his heart kicked and punched, demanding more oxygen then he could take in.
A weight slammed into his back. Pins and needles shredded his nerves. A cry chafed his throat but died when he fell back into the empty space.
John woke up, pins and needles all over his skin. He was in a bed, white at the bottom, blue at the top, crushing him in between. But he could move this time, and did, shoving the blankets aside. He felt scrubs like something slick on his skin. He swung his feet around and planted them on an ice-cold floor that bit. He pulled sticky pads from his chest and it hurt.
But not like the scream of a heart-monitor. John covered his ears.
And ran. He kept running, his mind everywhere but his body on automatic. He didn't realize he'd stopped, panting and slimed with sweat. And stopping, he also realized he was in his room. The hiss of the door opening behind him made him jump and run, leaping over his bed then slamming himself into the corner when there was no place left to go.
Ronon stalked toward him fast, blaster held out. John pressed himself into the wall then slid to the floor.
“Don't,” John said. He'd meant it to sound like an order. What it sounded like was begging, and with that, he was hit with a third realization.
He was shaking. Not just shaking, he was huddled like some paranoid on the precipice of madness, waiting for all the bad things to press him into nothing. He even had a hand held out, a trembling hand, and when the hell had that happened?
“Sheppard?” Ronon asked, a warning and a question, but his gun never lowered.
“It, um...” John cleared his throat. “It hurts.”
“What hurts?” Ronon asked.
John's eyes darted to the gun. Ronon, always aware, noticed and lowered it.
“It hurts... when I wake up,” John said, trying hard to ignore pins and needles like real pins and needles. He winced, sucking air through his teeth. “Still does.”
Ronon actually looked horrified, and holstered his gun as though it had burned him.
-----------------------
Carson had talked with Heightmeyer, then both talked to John about something called touch therapy, which was supposed to help John get used to physical contact again. They told him about it in his room because Carson finally got it through his head that the infirmary wasn't a happy place for John.
“And why are we only learning about this touch thing, now?” Rodney demanded. John's team was there because they wanted to be, and John had been too tired and wired to think straight enough to say otherwise.
It was Carson who grimaced. “He seemed to be doing so well. I thought the anti-anxiety medication was helping.”
“I wasn't sure if it would be a method right for you, John,” Heightmeyer said. What she didn't say, but John knew she was thinking, was that John wasn't a fan of a whole lot of unnecessary touching. He never had been. And she was right.
“And,” Carson said, wringing his hands. “You're usually good about bouncing back, lad. It's easy to forget...” he trailed off.
Rodney finished harshly for him. “That anyone can crack?”
“Rodney!” Teyla chastised. But Rodney plowed on.
“I'm just saying. Sheppard was in a box, a damn box, for a week. I don't care who you are, that would drive anyone up the wall and beyond. Even Sheppard. Hell, even Ronon!”
Ronon shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
Carson looked ashamed, which wasn't all that fair since he was a medical doctor, not a psychologist.
John said, “It's all right. Thought the same thing.” And had been wrong, very wrong, which is what really pissed him off. But, then, he wasn't a psychologist, either. He mostly tried to avoid them if he could.
------------------
Touch therapy meant being touched in a controlled environment at a pace Sheppard set. Touches to the arms and hands only, and only when John allowed it and for however long he could stand it.
It was obnoxious as hell. It was Heightmeyer overseeing the sessions. She would ask him to hold out his hand and then she would touch his arm. Problem was, Heightmeyer was a delicate woman with a light, airy touch that tickled John's skin, and overly soft, cool hands. He didn't like her touch. It made him feel weird, and left an unseen residue on his skin that he couldn't wash away.
But his team gave him space, and it made it a little easier to eat in the mess. He still didn't last long.
John still wanted to run, especially at night when he was supposed to be sleeping. Every morning, he looked in the mirror at a pale face drawn sharp and shadowed under the eyes. He looked like crap, felt like crap; not sick but not healthy, either.
It was a constant source of worry for Carson who was still feeling guilty even if he wouldn't admit it. He'd been offering John sleeping pills ever since John left the infirmary. But when it finally sank into John's head that sleep was in need of some back-up, he took the pills.
They helped. He no longer moved at night. He did feel like hell in the morning, as though denying motion was like denying the body of it's usual fix. Not to any kind of extreme, but John was moody, snappy and Rodney was always quick to point it out.
“Perhaps meditation might help,” Teyla suggested during a third breakfast full of brooding silence.
John was reluctant given his track record with meditation, and didn't fancy the idea of potentially nodding off. Teyla, however, surprised John by letting him in on the fact that there was more than one way to meditate. Rather than sitting on the floor, they sat in chairs. Rather than closing both their eyes while Teyla told him how to breathe, Teyla had John close his eyes.
She then told him a story, in great detail, about a bird riding the wind to distant horizons. She talked of the warm air and blue skies and endless fields of bright green grass far below.
“You fly when you are afraid,” she told him. It didn't sound like she was giving him directions. It sounded like she was stating a fact, and it made his chest constrict and face flush with annoyance.
“I fly to run away. Is that what you're telling me?” John squeezed his eyes tighter instead of opening them.
“No,” Teyla said with an edge that still managed to be kind. “It is not what you do. It is where you go.”
John slitted one eye open, suspicious. “Where do you go?”
He saw Teyla's rueful smile. “Charrin once told me of the Alkordas. They are about the size of your dogs, but look like some of your rodents.”
John's mind popped to rodents of unusual size, but decided on the the gentlemanly course of not saying it out loud while Teyla told her own story.
“When afraid, they will flee into caves, as deep as they can go, through the smallest tunnels. They always know where to go, how to find the others of their brood, and so will always find each other in the deepest, safest cave where they have everything they need. Charrin has found those caves, seen the Alkordas gathered on the ceiling, too high for anyone to reach. It is... comfortable to imagine, when feeling frightened and alone. After my father was taken, it is the image that accompanied me to sleep. Few nightmares plagued me, after a time.”
John nodded. “So, you go underground. I go to the sky.” It made him smile. Teyla then told him to open his eyes and he did.
Her hand was hovering over his.
“May I?” she asked.
John nodded rigidly. His body screamed no. Teyla laid her hand over John's. It was warm, calloused with years of stick-fighting, but not light like Heightmeyers. Not touching as though John might break. But when she began to wrap her fingers around John's hand, he pulled it away.
John's cheeks flushed warm. “Sorry.”
Teyla, however, smiled. “No need to, John.”
--------------------
John took his sleeping pills like a good boy, but made sure to crawl into bed before they had a chance to kick in. He needed time, long enough to form a picture of a bird flying wide open skies, blue but not empty, because there was always a horizon and fields and places to land when he was ready to rest. He preferred holes in mountainsides, too deep for anyone to reach him, not so deep he couldn't see those skies.
----------------------
“Touch is overrated... damn it!” Rodney tilted the controls and twisted his body in the futile belief that he actually had that kind of control over an animated character. But his guy made a sharp enough turn to avoid getting shot. “And why do we have to play against two marines? I mean, how fair is that? Why can't it be Zelenka, even up the playing field a little?”
“Because Dr. Z doesn't like Halo,” John said. “And it's Lorne and Stackhouse, so you don't have to worry about them gloating over it afterwards.”
“They don't have to gloat. They just look at you and you know they're gloating in their heads.”
Rodney's man finally died. Rodney dropped the control to toss up his hands in graceless defeat. But there was still Sheppard, and he took down Stackhouse's man only seconds after Stackhouse had defeated McKay.
“That even enough for you?” John asked.
“No. Because I'm not playing anymore,” Rodney huffed, then sighed.
“When people touch you,” Rodney said next, after a moment. His voice would sometimes climb an octave or two when he was trying to go for casual but knew the topic was anything but casual. “Does it,” he twisted his hands around each other, as though miming something round. McKay always talked with his hands but practically painted invisible images with them when he was nervous. “Does it feel like... like it won't go away? The touch I mean, the feel of it. Like... like something was left behind on your skin and you have to rub it a lot before it goes away.”
John's man barely missed being shot; a messy mistake that shouldn't have been made. John wanted to say no, wanted to say he didn't want to talk about it, but his mind was mostly occupied by the game and his mouth had other ideas.
“Something like that.” Which siphoned off some of Rodney's unease when he nodded sagely.
“Just wondering. People don't get it. Especially the touchy-feely ones. They equate 'my family wasn't big into hugging' with sad childhood and suddenly they're all over you with hugs and shoulder pats and all that crap. Oh, and poking.”
John fumbled with the control buttons and couldn't figure how his guy was still alive. “Poking?”
“Yes, poking. As in poke me in the stomach. This may be hard to believe but I was quite sparse as a child. I didn't start gaining weight until my teens. People liked to point the fact out to me by poking me in the gut. Thought it was funny when I cringed. Morons.” Rodney gave John a shrewed look. “Let me guess; you were a fat kid growing up until joining some sports group or something.”
“Nope,” John said, and happily blew Lorne's guy out of the game. “I was so damn skinny they wouldn't let me play football.”
“Oh,” Rodney said with poorly concealed disappointment. “Anyway, even shaking hands. Unless it's done right. Kind of... firm and quick. Here, let me show you.”
Rodney stuck his hand out towards John, waiting to receive. John looked at it, then at Rodney.
“Can I show you?” Rodney asked.
John looked back at the hand - a harmless, empty, flesh-covered hand - then grabbed it. Rodney gripped John's, firm but not painful: warm at the palm, the skin of the fingertips hardened. Years of typing, with the addition of holding P-90s and nine mils had given Rodney mastery over his own hand-strength. Some people gripped too hard, liable to crush bones, and some not hard enough as though physical contact disturbed them. Rodney was the right kind of in-between. Then his hand was gone after two quick shakes of John's hand before John had a chance to pull away himself.
“Like that,” Rodney said. “Not many people seem able to do that. You're good at it, though.”
John nodded, then with a start, realized he was wiping his hand off along his thigh. Rodney didn't seem to notice, too busy wiping his hand off on his shirt front.
---------------------
Another reason to hate the mess hall or any hall was the way people sometimes liked to cluster. It reminded John of long hair, the way it would flow until you hit a massive knot of tangles. Or a river, smooth and slow, then you hit the rocks and its rapids and try not to get smashed to pieces. People didn't get it - you don't stop where there's supposed to be movement. You don't stand on a path and force others to move around you. It was dangerous if there was an emergency, obnoxious on a regular bases, and occasionally cruel to those who needed to get through right now.
But Atlantis was a beauty with its wide hallways, and the expedition a saint for having schedules that didn't pack bodies into the mess to the point that no one could move. Really, John couldn't complain.
Some days he could. Some days, there were emergencies, or mass times-off, or mass projects that put more people in the halls, more knots, more rocks, and arms and elbows would clip John. Displaced air would crush him, noise would crush him, and he couldn't breathe. Then he would find himself in some closet or empty room, remembering how his lungs worked.
Heightmeyer said that it was okay, to let it happen. She taught him breathing techniques that he'd learned plenty of times before - breathe through the nose, force the lungs to slow, and the rest would take care of itself.
John always managed to recall how his lungs worked.
-------------------
The problem with doing something you weren't normally used to doing was that it was easy to forget to do it. Sometimes he took the pills, but forgot to meditate. Sometimes he meditated, but forgot the pills. What really sucked was forgetting to take the pills, because to forgo meditation meant waking up feeling like crap. To forgo the pills was a powder keg of possibilities. Sometimes John didn't sleep. Sometimes he slept and dreamed of empty space, dead people and a party, and sometimes it was something in between that made him want to run.
He woke up in an empty hallway of blue-black darkness, sitting on the floor against the wall, gelatinous legs splayed out before him.
His body had run without him. Now he had no idea where the hell he was. It was a hell of a lot scarier than getting clipped in the hallway by people who didn't want to move.
“Sheppard?”
John jumped, expecting dead people and Wraith and empty space swallowing him whole. He turned his head, slowly, hesitant, and saw a shadow move from the shadows. His heart jammed itself into his throat.
“Sheppard,” the shadow said urgently, hurrying forward. It crouched beside Sheppard and materialized into Ronon's shape with a dash of features.
Sheppard breathed out. “Damn it, Chewy,” but it lacked any real reprimand.
“Saw you running,” Ronon said. He didn't elaborate on when and how and John didn't expect him to. “Think you can get up?”
John tried by bracing his back against the wall. He managed maybe four feet when his legs gave up and started sliding him back to the floor. Ronon's hand wrapped around John's bicep and squeezed. John tensed and winced: it hurt. He knew it shouldn't have hurt, knew Ronon's various holds that did hurt so knew for a fact that the hold now should not be causing any kind of pain. Except it did, and John's instincts had him pulling away despite what logic kept trying to tell him.
“Easy, John,” Ronon said. “Does it hurt?” He didn't wait for an answer, releasing John then sliding his arm between John's shoulder blades and the wall. It was uncomfortable, but not painful, so John forced himself to put up with it.
When John's legs submitted grudgingly to cooperating, Ronon diminished his support to a warm hand to the middle of John's back as they walked. It was large against John's spine, and rough even through the T-shirt: the hand of a survivor.
“Happened to me, once,” Ronon said.
John looked at him.
“First couple of weeks on Atlantis, after I decided to stay, I'd sometimes wake up someplace else. Some hall or something. A balcony.”
“Did it stop?” John asked.
“Eventually,” Ronon said. “Everything does after a while. And it wasn't bad, didn't happen all the time or when we were off-world. Heightmeyer told me I just needed to get used to staying in one place, then it would go away. Doc gave me some pills to help out. Haven't woken up in a hall since.”
When Ronon had John back in his bedroom, John remembered to take the pills before crawling back into bed.
--------------------
It was Teyla's idea to take dinner in the rec room while watching a movie. It was nothing new, but it felt like forever since someone had suggested it. John suspected it had something to do with how crowded the mess was tonight - inevitable when the dessert section finally had more to offer than Jello and pudding.
But the couch was small, and the only space John's team could give him was centimeters. He was surrounded in warm air and the pressure of their presence. It wasn't the most comfortable arrangement, but Sheppard supposed he must be improving, because it was easy to tolerate. He didn't feel trapped or crushed, and all that their warmth made him think of was how alive they all were.
The End
Rating: PG+
Characters: Sheppard, Team
Warnings: Language, possibly disturbing but non-graphic images.
Summary: Sheppard hates being touched, his team helps how they can. A big, huge thanks to sharpes_hussy for our chats about sensory deprivation, hyper-sensitivity and all around helping me better understand what I was writing about and letting me know it worked. Written for all us October babies... and it's still October, yay!
The Man in the Box
John was a brain in a box. Rodney might scoff that the body was no different, just another box, except it was a box that moved. Real boxes don't move, that's why they're boxes.
And Rodney wasn't here.
To hell with the new-age hippies who gushed over the wonders of floating in a box of water, the mental benefits and physical benefits and blah, blah, friggin' blah. John once had a copilot who swore by the damn things, called them the equivalent of being reborn. He said that when you stepped out of one after a couple of hours, you felt like a new man - literally.
When it was voluntary. When it wasn't voluntary, you felt like you were going to implode. You wandered through deep space the same temperature as your body, without stars or planets or direction. John knew he had a body; must have a body because he could feel his heart a meaty vibration in the nothing. It sketched his bones in sound-waves. Then he would try to move, twitch a finger or a toe, but there was nothing to twitch.
He floated, a brain in a box, a spirit in empty space, a sound in the darkness: thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.
“It's flying. I thought you liked flying,” said his dad. He brought a tumbler of Scotch to his rotten lips. A chunk of skin fell off with a wet plop and floated with the ice. “This should be a dream come true.” He tossed the last of the drink to the back of his throat. It splashed through the ragged hole in the front of his throat. Patrick Sheppard coughed, spraying liquid and skin. “Decay's a bitch.”
“Patrick, take it easy on him.” Mom wrapped fleshless fingers around John's arm. It was funny that he could feel it, all hard and cold, when he couldn't feel anything beyond his heart knock-knock-knocking on his ribs.
“It's okay, Johnny,” mom said with a clack of her fleshless teeth. “You know how your father is.”
“He was too easy on you,” old Sumner said, and slammed his hand into John's chest. John thought he might be screaming, but couldn't be sure. He couldn't hear anything, see anything except old Sumner. His heart did beat harder, and it hurt.
If his heart would just stop beating, then maybe he wouldn't feel anything, and life would be great.
All that new-age junk was a load of crap. John wasn't having any fun.
“You're not supposed to be having fun,” said dead dad, pinching a cigar between what was left of his lips. “Unless the dead really are your idea of a party.”
The charred corpses of Mitch and Dex high-fived each other. Many a shriveled or rotten marine and scientist lifted plastic cups full of beer.
“Sheppard,” Holland said, all smiles wrinkling his sun-burned face, “You are seriously one messed-up dude.”
“Oh, don't listen to them, Johnny,” mom tsked. She ruffled his head with her bony hands.
Then the Wraith joined in, wearing party hats, a beer in one hand and the other hand pulling years from John to the songs of Johnny Cash. They took turns, a little here and a little there, before moving on to the scientists and marines.
John saw his team, chained to a stone wall, begging for mercy while their skin shrank around their bones. They turned to dust and the dust floated away in spirals like a distant galaxy.
“Should have gone with the family business,” dad said with pseudo regret. “Least you wouldn't have to worry about anyone getting the life sucked out of them by aliens.”
“Unless those aliens found their way to Earth,” his mom sweetly countered. She continued to card her dead fingers through John's hair. John missed his mom, he really did, but wished she would stop.
It hurts, John whimpered.
“Shhhh,” Mom soothed.
And then there was light; big, bright, shining and blinding. It burned through his corneas and raged through his brain like knives. He felt his chest deflate and knew he was screaming. Or maybe exhaling really hard.
Then he had a body, arms and legs made of glass that pressed into his muscles and ground between his joints. He struggled, jerked, kicked, fought and, oh, how it hurt. It all hurt. He missed the empty space and the dead, because unpleasant as they'd been, the pain hadn't been like this. Then had been a nightmare. Now was dying.
John screamed, or exhaled, or something. Then he was back in empty space, minus the unpleasant dead.
--------------------
John felt himself within his rights to say that it sucked to be him. He'd been voluntarily and involuntarily blinded: light deprivation, which was forcing him to endure a bandage over his eyes until he could be weaned back into the world of sunshine and lamplight. His muscles had to be weaned back into motion. His skin weaned back into sensation.
That's what came with being a brain in a box for a week.
Then there was sound, too loud and too sudden until he missed the thump-thump-thump of his damn heart.
“At least they'd fed him,” Carson said. John wished he wouldn't; Beckett's voice was like an itch deep in his ear. “Liquid, through a tube but better than nothing.”
“Because they needed him alive for that stupid machine,” said Rodney. His voice was a rash. “A machine they couldn't fix even after one hundred years because it couldn't be fixed. They were stuffing people in those damn closets like food storage. They wouldn't have let Sheppard out until he was dead and decayed.”
“But it did not happen,” said Teyla, whose voice made John's nerves cringe.
“It'll never happen again.” Ronon, who made John's head hurt.
“Because Conan's solution to everything is to blow it up!” Rodney snarled. It made John force a noise through his throat and, suddenly, there was blessed silence.
Until Carson felt the need to speak. “Sorry, lad. Rodney, keep it down.”
They all needed to keep it down, go away, far away where John couldn't feel the displacement of the air where they stood. It pressed against him, over him, on him until he wanted to run, run, run. Except he couldn't so much as twitch a leg. A toe, yes. A finger, yes. But not the limbs that needed to move. He was still a brain in a box, this time crushed on all sides by itchy cloth on his body and cold air on his head.
A hand touched his shoulder, hot and heavy and malleable. It pressed his skin against his muscles like fine needles. Sheppard shivered and the weight of the hand lifted away.
Except the touch was still their, sticking to his skin like oil and sap.
“You're all right, lad,” Carson said, and returned the sticky, oily weight. “We've got you.”
Sheppard wanted to ask him to let him go, but his throat wouldn't twitch, either.
------------------------
Carson was a bastard, the nurses were bitches and deep down inside John knew he should have felt bad for thinking it. He would eventually feel guilty but at the immediate moment didn't care - it still sucked to be him. They hovered around him within the curtain, a box within a box within a box. They touched him with their fingers that were sometimes like fire and sometimes like ice, stabbed him with acidic needles and insulted his ears with cooing. They spoke like people eager to please but busied themselves like people who didn't give a damn.
They were always there. Sometimes one, sometimes many, but always there. John could hear their soft footfalls, see their shadows ripple across the curtains and feel the space they occupied when they moved closer thinking he was asleep.
It took two nurses to help him go to the bathroom, one to hold him up and one to adjust the bed pan. He said he could do it himself, they agreed but were siding with caution. It took one nurse to spoon-feed him when it was dinner time; his hands shook too much to do it on his own. The plastic spoon was cold and slick in his mouth, like hard slime, and the nurse was bound and determined to stab him in the back of the throat with the damn thing.
They were so damn chatty. Their every action was punctuated with a river of pointless words filtered through John's ears as white noise that crowded out his thought. He just wanted them to go away, to stop handling him, to stop polluting his brain with sound. He just wanted to remember what silence and nothingness was like.
But some of the nurses thought it a bad idea. You'll go recluse, they said. It's not healthy for anyone to want to be alone. Others thought it was rude. They said, you should be more appreciative. You should get used to this, because you're going to have to eventually.
“Stop being such a baby,” said a nurse who thought leaving Sheppard alone meant giving him ample opportunity to kill himself. She'd thought he'd been asleep when he overheard her mention it to another nurse. She'd read about it in a book or magazine or something.
“How about you back off and I will,” John snapped.
“How about you cooperate and let me take your blood pressure.”
John yanked his arm from her grip. “A nurse already took it an hour ago.”
“Well, the results weren't clear. We have to take it again.” And she grabbed his wrist, squeezing it in her too-warm hand slick with moisture. Sheppard tried to pull it back, but he was weak, she was strong and his efforts were about as effectual as a three year old struggling in his mother's tight hug.
It scared the hell out of him, made his heart pound, made him want to run. He shoved the nurse back with his free hand rougher than intended and stronger than he thought he was capable of, enough to send her stumbling through the curtain onto her ass. She looked at John, John at her, both stunned but John heaving. She scrambled to her feet the very picture of angered parent, and stomped off to go tell.
John took the opportunity to slide out of bed for that needed run. But his legs shook, then his knees buckled. He held on to the bed for dear life as he was lowered to the floor whether he liked it or not. Carson burst through the curtains and found John a sweating, shaking heap of fast breathing human clinging to the bedsheets as though still liable to fall.
John said, weakly, “She wouldn't leave me alone.”
Carson looked at John sadly, then helped him back into bed.
---------------------
If Sheppard could run around naked, he would have in a heartbeat. But he still had his dignity and was damn well going to hang onto it. But it sucked. Really sucked. His shirt was a rock on his shoulders and sandpaper on his skin. He thought for sure he'd end up with a rash or two, but every chance he got for a peek in the mirror showed him pale skin, dark hair and nothing red and irritated.
Meal times were a bitch. He hated carrying the trays, hated the way the edges bit into his fingertips all the way to the bone. He kept expecting it to draw blood. It never did.
It was also nothing compared to his team, their need to sit closer than usual, granting him inches of false space. And it was false space, because John could feel them, like pressure against his arms, ribs, hip, thighs. He could feel the heat of them, the tiny brushes of air with their every movement, their moisture.
He endured, because this was stupid. Carson had warned that Sheppard might be a little hypersensitive to stimuli but like hell John was going to let it make him a recluse. He would get used to it, whether his body liked it or not.
John jerked his leg, up and down, rapid as though it were trying to run by itself. His team chatted away, Rodney taking the brunt of the conversation. It made John's leg jerk harder, the other leg twitching in anticipation to jiggle along.
Rodney talked of things, unimportant things - stupid machines and stupid scientists. Teyla listened, or pretended to. Ronon didn't even try, favoring his food instead. He moved his arm. John didn't see it, but he felt it, like insects and a cold breeze.
John couldn't take it anymore - he always couldn't take it anymore. He stood up, biting tray in hand, and made his excuse.
“I'm feeling a little tired.”
“You're always feeling a little tired,” McKay squawked. John fought not to cringe. He usually managed, like now.
“Rodney,” Teyla scolded softly. “It has only been three days since his release from the infirmary, and he still has much strength to regain.”
“Yeah,” John said, feeling defiant. He hurried from the mess without looking like he was hurrying; not a difficult feat with legs that felt like they were thirty percent Jello and a tray that kept increasing in weight the longer he held it. He took his meal in his room, at his computer desk. The padded chair was itchy, the desk-top cold, but nothing more than that. No motion and no crushing. He could handle it.
----------------------
Sheppard walked when he wanted to run. All he could do was walk until his body was stronger and able to deal. Sometimes, should he happen to be alone, sans Ronon or passer-bys, he would escalate into a light jog. It satisfied the itch in his legs to move, to keep moving, faster and faster.
Not for long. Never for long. His legs had too many limits.
He especially liked tempting fate at night. Always at night, when the itch hovered on the edge of being an ache that bled through his body. Wrapped up in a blanket made him feel confined. Sprawled under a blanket made him too cold too easily. And there was always pressure against his back and chest, above and below trying to crush him in between. He would start to drift on dreams where Wraith in party hats pressed their hands to his sternum. His father would watch, shaking his head. His mother would tsk, carding his hair with bony fingers.
John would wake up, gasping like he hadn't breathed in years. His heart would race - thump-thump, loud in the dark - and his body wanted to race with it. Except he couldn't so he walked, then jogged, then walked, and that was all right. Until he went to sleep, and dreamed, and wanted to run.
----------------
“I need your help,” Rodney said. “And how the hell can you sit like that?”
Sheppard looked up from his comic book, then down at his bed that he was currently sitting on - only the edge, not stretched out against a pillow. He didn't like how it felt against his back, the way it tried to push his spine in. His current position made his whole body hurt, but he thought it a hell of a lot easier to handle than the pressure of the pillow. He tossed the comic book aside and stood.
“Let's go.” He knew he must be pretty damn bored to help McKay so voluntarily and without asking for the details, but it had only been five days since his freedom from the infirmary, and a long ways yet to active duty.
The chair room was relatively empty except for Zelenka crouched at the base. Sheppard sat, activated the chair, and Rodney and Radek looked at readings, gave instructions and made adjustments. John had no idea what the goal was. He didn't really care. It was something else to do besides read and make excuses to take food into his room. The chair with all its ornate crap dug into his back like fingers poking him in the ribs, but he squirmed and endured.
After a moment, he stopped squirming.
Another moment, and bony fingers press into his skull as Wraith gathered around him and danced to the distant beat of Johnny Cash.
Sheppard woke up fast and lost and in desperate need to run. People were around him, people everywhere, leaning over him, asking what was wrong, why he couldn't breathe. Rodney was there, and Radek, some woman he didn't know and another woman and a man.
John gasped, “What the hell!”
“You were breathing fast. Sweating. Wouldn't wake up. I called the infirmary...” Rodney was rambling. A hand gripped his arm, pushing needles into his muscles, veins, bones. “Are you all right? You look pa--”
John swung his arm free so hard Rodney stumbled back onto his ass. John was up, out of the chair, shoving people aside, faces aside, heat and displacement and moisture. He ran, ran as fast as he could ever remember running until the air scraped his face and hands and pushed his clothes into his body. He ran, clipping bodies that cut, their heated feel lingering, like a stain that would never go away. His lungs burned, his heart kicked and punched, demanding more oxygen then he could take in.
A weight slammed into his back. Pins and needles shredded his nerves. A cry chafed his throat but died when he fell back into the empty space.
John woke up, pins and needles all over his skin. He was in a bed, white at the bottom, blue at the top, crushing him in between. But he could move this time, and did, shoving the blankets aside. He felt scrubs like something slick on his skin. He swung his feet around and planted them on an ice-cold floor that bit. He pulled sticky pads from his chest and it hurt.
But not like the scream of a heart-monitor. John covered his ears.
And ran. He kept running, his mind everywhere but his body on automatic. He didn't realize he'd stopped, panting and slimed with sweat. And stopping, he also realized he was in his room. The hiss of the door opening behind him made him jump and run, leaping over his bed then slamming himself into the corner when there was no place left to go.
Ronon stalked toward him fast, blaster held out. John pressed himself into the wall then slid to the floor.
“Don't,” John said. He'd meant it to sound like an order. What it sounded like was begging, and with that, he was hit with a third realization.
He was shaking. Not just shaking, he was huddled like some paranoid on the precipice of madness, waiting for all the bad things to press him into nothing. He even had a hand held out, a trembling hand, and when the hell had that happened?
“Sheppard?” Ronon asked, a warning and a question, but his gun never lowered.
“It, um...” John cleared his throat. “It hurts.”
“What hurts?” Ronon asked.
John's eyes darted to the gun. Ronon, always aware, noticed and lowered it.
“It hurts... when I wake up,” John said, trying hard to ignore pins and needles like real pins and needles. He winced, sucking air through his teeth. “Still does.”
Ronon actually looked horrified, and holstered his gun as though it had burned him.
-----------------------
Carson had talked with Heightmeyer, then both talked to John about something called touch therapy, which was supposed to help John get used to physical contact again. They told him about it in his room because Carson finally got it through his head that the infirmary wasn't a happy place for John.
“And why are we only learning about this touch thing, now?” Rodney demanded. John's team was there because they wanted to be, and John had been too tired and wired to think straight enough to say otherwise.
It was Carson who grimaced. “He seemed to be doing so well. I thought the anti-anxiety medication was helping.”
“I wasn't sure if it would be a method right for you, John,” Heightmeyer said. What she didn't say, but John knew she was thinking, was that John wasn't a fan of a whole lot of unnecessary touching. He never had been. And she was right.
“And,” Carson said, wringing his hands. “You're usually good about bouncing back, lad. It's easy to forget...” he trailed off.
Rodney finished harshly for him. “That anyone can crack?”
“Rodney!” Teyla chastised. But Rodney plowed on.
“I'm just saying. Sheppard was in a box, a damn box, for a week. I don't care who you are, that would drive anyone up the wall and beyond. Even Sheppard. Hell, even Ronon!”
Ronon shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
Carson looked ashamed, which wasn't all that fair since he was a medical doctor, not a psychologist.
John said, “It's all right. Thought the same thing.” And had been wrong, very wrong, which is what really pissed him off. But, then, he wasn't a psychologist, either. He mostly tried to avoid them if he could.
------------------
Touch therapy meant being touched in a controlled environment at a pace Sheppard set. Touches to the arms and hands only, and only when John allowed it and for however long he could stand it.
It was obnoxious as hell. It was Heightmeyer overseeing the sessions. She would ask him to hold out his hand and then she would touch his arm. Problem was, Heightmeyer was a delicate woman with a light, airy touch that tickled John's skin, and overly soft, cool hands. He didn't like her touch. It made him feel weird, and left an unseen residue on his skin that he couldn't wash away.
But his team gave him space, and it made it a little easier to eat in the mess. He still didn't last long.
John still wanted to run, especially at night when he was supposed to be sleeping. Every morning, he looked in the mirror at a pale face drawn sharp and shadowed under the eyes. He looked like crap, felt like crap; not sick but not healthy, either.
It was a constant source of worry for Carson who was still feeling guilty even if he wouldn't admit it. He'd been offering John sleeping pills ever since John left the infirmary. But when it finally sank into John's head that sleep was in need of some back-up, he took the pills.
They helped. He no longer moved at night. He did feel like hell in the morning, as though denying motion was like denying the body of it's usual fix. Not to any kind of extreme, but John was moody, snappy and Rodney was always quick to point it out.
“Perhaps meditation might help,” Teyla suggested during a third breakfast full of brooding silence.
John was reluctant given his track record with meditation, and didn't fancy the idea of potentially nodding off. Teyla, however, surprised John by letting him in on the fact that there was more than one way to meditate. Rather than sitting on the floor, they sat in chairs. Rather than closing both their eyes while Teyla told him how to breathe, Teyla had John close his eyes.
She then told him a story, in great detail, about a bird riding the wind to distant horizons. She talked of the warm air and blue skies and endless fields of bright green grass far below.
“You fly when you are afraid,” she told him. It didn't sound like she was giving him directions. It sounded like she was stating a fact, and it made his chest constrict and face flush with annoyance.
“I fly to run away. Is that what you're telling me?” John squeezed his eyes tighter instead of opening them.
“No,” Teyla said with an edge that still managed to be kind. “It is not what you do. It is where you go.”
John slitted one eye open, suspicious. “Where do you go?”
He saw Teyla's rueful smile. “Charrin once told me of the Alkordas. They are about the size of your dogs, but look like some of your rodents.”
John's mind popped to rodents of unusual size, but decided on the the gentlemanly course of not saying it out loud while Teyla told her own story.
“When afraid, they will flee into caves, as deep as they can go, through the smallest tunnels. They always know where to go, how to find the others of their brood, and so will always find each other in the deepest, safest cave where they have everything they need. Charrin has found those caves, seen the Alkordas gathered on the ceiling, too high for anyone to reach. It is... comfortable to imagine, when feeling frightened and alone. After my father was taken, it is the image that accompanied me to sleep. Few nightmares plagued me, after a time.”
John nodded. “So, you go underground. I go to the sky.” It made him smile. Teyla then told him to open his eyes and he did.
Her hand was hovering over his.
“May I?” she asked.
John nodded rigidly. His body screamed no. Teyla laid her hand over John's. It was warm, calloused with years of stick-fighting, but not light like Heightmeyers. Not touching as though John might break. But when she began to wrap her fingers around John's hand, he pulled it away.
John's cheeks flushed warm. “Sorry.”
Teyla, however, smiled. “No need to, John.”
--------------------
John took his sleeping pills like a good boy, but made sure to crawl into bed before they had a chance to kick in. He needed time, long enough to form a picture of a bird flying wide open skies, blue but not empty, because there was always a horizon and fields and places to land when he was ready to rest. He preferred holes in mountainsides, too deep for anyone to reach him, not so deep he couldn't see those skies.
----------------------
“Touch is overrated... damn it!” Rodney tilted the controls and twisted his body in the futile belief that he actually had that kind of control over an animated character. But his guy made a sharp enough turn to avoid getting shot. “And why do we have to play against two marines? I mean, how fair is that? Why can't it be Zelenka, even up the playing field a little?”
“Because Dr. Z doesn't like Halo,” John said. “And it's Lorne and Stackhouse, so you don't have to worry about them gloating over it afterwards.”
“They don't have to gloat. They just look at you and you know they're gloating in their heads.”
Rodney's man finally died. Rodney dropped the control to toss up his hands in graceless defeat. But there was still Sheppard, and he took down Stackhouse's man only seconds after Stackhouse had defeated McKay.
“That even enough for you?” John asked.
“No. Because I'm not playing anymore,” Rodney huffed, then sighed.
“When people touch you,” Rodney said next, after a moment. His voice would sometimes climb an octave or two when he was trying to go for casual but knew the topic was anything but casual. “Does it,” he twisted his hands around each other, as though miming something round. McKay always talked with his hands but practically painted invisible images with them when he was nervous. “Does it feel like... like it won't go away? The touch I mean, the feel of it. Like... like something was left behind on your skin and you have to rub it a lot before it goes away.”
John's man barely missed being shot; a messy mistake that shouldn't have been made. John wanted to say no, wanted to say he didn't want to talk about it, but his mind was mostly occupied by the game and his mouth had other ideas.
“Something like that.” Which siphoned off some of Rodney's unease when he nodded sagely.
“Just wondering. People don't get it. Especially the touchy-feely ones. They equate 'my family wasn't big into hugging' with sad childhood and suddenly they're all over you with hugs and shoulder pats and all that crap. Oh, and poking.”
John fumbled with the control buttons and couldn't figure how his guy was still alive. “Poking?”
“Yes, poking. As in poke me in the stomach. This may be hard to believe but I was quite sparse as a child. I didn't start gaining weight until my teens. People liked to point the fact out to me by poking me in the gut. Thought it was funny when I cringed. Morons.” Rodney gave John a shrewed look. “Let me guess; you were a fat kid growing up until joining some sports group or something.”
“Nope,” John said, and happily blew Lorne's guy out of the game. “I was so damn skinny they wouldn't let me play football.”
“Oh,” Rodney said with poorly concealed disappointment. “Anyway, even shaking hands. Unless it's done right. Kind of... firm and quick. Here, let me show you.”
Rodney stuck his hand out towards John, waiting to receive. John looked at it, then at Rodney.
“Can I show you?” Rodney asked.
John looked back at the hand - a harmless, empty, flesh-covered hand - then grabbed it. Rodney gripped John's, firm but not painful: warm at the palm, the skin of the fingertips hardened. Years of typing, with the addition of holding P-90s and nine mils had given Rodney mastery over his own hand-strength. Some people gripped too hard, liable to crush bones, and some not hard enough as though physical contact disturbed them. Rodney was the right kind of in-between. Then his hand was gone after two quick shakes of John's hand before John had a chance to pull away himself.
“Like that,” Rodney said. “Not many people seem able to do that. You're good at it, though.”
John nodded, then with a start, realized he was wiping his hand off along his thigh. Rodney didn't seem to notice, too busy wiping his hand off on his shirt front.
---------------------
Another reason to hate the mess hall or any hall was the way people sometimes liked to cluster. It reminded John of long hair, the way it would flow until you hit a massive knot of tangles. Or a river, smooth and slow, then you hit the rocks and its rapids and try not to get smashed to pieces. People didn't get it - you don't stop where there's supposed to be movement. You don't stand on a path and force others to move around you. It was dangerous if there was an emergency, obnoxious on a regular bases, and occasionally cruel to those who needed to get through right now.
But Atlantis was a beauty with its wide hallways, and the expedition a saint for having schedules that didn't pack bodies into the mess to the point that no one could move. Really, John couldn't complain.
Some days he could. Some days, there were emergencies, or mass times-off, or mass projects that put more people in the halls, more knots, more rocks, and arms and elbows would clip John. Displaced air would crush him, noise would crush him, and he couldn't breathe. Then he would find himself in some closet or empty room, remembering how his lungs worked.
Heightmeyer said that it was okay, to let it happen. She taught him breathing techniques that he'd learned plenty of times before - breathe through the nose, force the lungs to slow, and the rest would take care of itself.
John always managed to recall how his lungs worked.
-------------------
The problem with doing something you weren't normally used to doing was that it was easy to forget to do it. Sometimes he took the pills, but forgot to meditate. Sometimes he meditated, but forgot the pills. What really sucked was forgetting to take the pills, because to forgo meditation meant waking up feeling like crap. To forgo the pills was a powder keg of possibilities. Sometimes John didn't sleep. Sometimes he slept and dreamed of empty space, dead people and a party, and sometimes it was something in between that made him want to run.
He woke up in an empty hallway of blue-black darkness, sitting on the floor against the wall, gelatinous legs splayed out before him.
His body had run without him. Now he had no idea where the hell he was. It was a hell of a lot scarier than getting clipped in the hallway by people who didn't want to move.
“Sheppard?”
John jumped, expecting dead people and Wraith and empty space swallowing him whole. He turned his head, slowly, hesitant, and saw a shadow move from the shadows. His heart jammed itself into his throat.
“Sheppard,” the shadow said urgently, hurrying forward. It crouched beside Sheppard and materialized into Ronon's shape with a dash of features.
Sheppard breathed out. “Damn it, Chewy,” but it lacked any real reprimand.
“Saw you running,” Ronon said. He didn't elaborate on when and how and John didn't expect him to. “Think you can get up?”
John tried by bracing his back against the wall. He managed maybe four feet when his legs gave up and started sliding him back to the floor. Ronon's hand wrapped around John's bicep and squeezed. John tensed and winced: it hurt. He knew it shouldn't have hurt, knew Ronon's various holds that did hurt so knew for a fact that the hold now should not be causing any kind of pain. Except it did, and John's instincts had him pulling away despite what logic kept trying to tell him.
“Easy, John,” Ronon said. “Does it hurt?” He didn't wait for an answer, releasing John then sliding his arm between John's shoulder blades and the wall. It was uncomfortable, but not painful, so John forced himself to put up with it.
When John's legs submitted grudgingly to cooperating, Ronon diminished his support to a warm hand to the middle of John's back as they walked. It was large against John's spine, and rough even through the T-shirt: the hand of a survivor.
“Happened to me, once,” Ronon said.
John looked at him.
“First couple of weeks on Atlantis, after I decided to stay, I'd sometimes wake up someplace else. Some hall or something. A balcony.”
“Did it stop?” John asked.
“Eventually,” Ronon said. “Everything does after a while. And it wasn't bad, didn't happen all the time or when we were off-world. Heightmeyer told me I just needed to get used to staying in one place, then it would go away. Doc gave me some pills to help out. Haven't woken up in a hall since.”
When Ronon had John back in his bedroom, John remembered to take the pills before crawling back into bed.
--------------------
It was Teyla's idea to take dinner in the rec room while watching a movie. It was nothing new, but it felt like forever since someone had suggested it. John suspected it had something to do with how crowded the mess was tonight - inevitable when the dessert section finally had more to offer than Jello and pudding.
But the couch was small, and the only space John's team could give him was centimeters. He was surrounded in warm air and the pressure of their presence. It wasn't the most comfortable arrangement, but Sheppard supposed he must be improving, because it was easy to tolerate. He didn't feel trapped or crushed, and all that their warmth made him think of was how alive they all were.
The End