Grossly oversimplified, by americanleaguer (must be dreaming challenge)
Title: Grossly oversimplified.
Author: americanleaguer
Pairings: Sheppard/McKay
Rating: R
Word count: 3,926
Notes: Other people are using this challenge to write thought-provoking, emotional examinations of the human psyche and the nature of dreaming. This is not one of those fics.
Grossly oversimplified.
"It scans your brain for periods of waking brainwave activity paired with monoamine inhibition, records the wave patterns, overlays the data it already has from personal biometric readings, and extrapolates the result as..." McKay pages down the document on his scanner. "As a light and sound-based three dimensional manifestation within the chamber." He pages back up to check the translation, but he's pretty sure he's got it.
Sheppard runs a hand speculatively over one of the chamber's walls. He either gets it or he doesn't get it. McKay doesn't much care, because it's not important whether or not Sheppard understands the room, it's only important that he understands it, and he does. He's not quite certain how the three-dimensional manifestation comes to be, it's the point on which the Ancient document is the most vague, but he has a fairly good grasp of the rest of it.
It's a fascinating concept. The mechanics behind it are equally fascinating. The ability of the Ancient tech to scan for brainwave activity that corresponds to monoamine levels is something the medical team will be drooling over, although McKay is more interested in the chamber's ability to read not current brainwave activity, but brainwave activity from the recent past, as though it leaves some sort of traces in the brain's chemistry. Does it? He doesn't know enough about biochemistry to say for sure, but a couple hours with the medical database should clear that up, and if there's nothing in there on it... well, the tech is taking readings off of something, which might make this Pegasus Galaxy Revolutionary Discovery Number 436. It's amazing, it's brilliant, it's potentially of great medical and diagnostic significance, it's...
"It's like a holodeck for dreams!" Sheppard says, all kinds of pleased with himself.
McKay takes a half-second to close his eyes and breathe deeply. "I really hate you, you know that?"
"Just because you need a load of big words to say the same damn thing..."
"Holodeck for dreams, that is such a gross oversimplification, I can't even... what are you doing, don't touch that!" McKay snaps, and Sheppard snatches his hand away from the panel on the wall, but of course it's too late. It only takes the merest brush with Sheppard's stupid superpowered ATA gene to activate the panel, which glows first softly blue, then yellow. The walls pulse once with a wave of yellow light, and suddenly they're
----
on a boat in the middle of the ocean. A shining black fluke breaks the water 20 feet away and sinks back below in a mass of white foam. The boat is small and wooden and equipped with oars. They appear to be standing in the prow, although there shouldn't be enough room there for both of them to stand, and they should be tipping the boat off balance. McKay watches himself in the middle of the boat as he sees the tail of the whale, gasps, and starts rowing hard.
They're there, and they're not there. It's not like when they were dumped into each other's dreams by necessity and the crystal aliens; it was real, then, in a way that this isn't. McKay can see the ocean, the whale, the boat, himself, but he doesn't feel the heart-clenching terror that he knows goes with this dream. They're observers here, not participants.
"This is familiar," Sheppard says brightly. It's really only the last vestiges of Canadian politeness that keep McKay from punching him in the face.
----
Eventually Sheppard figures out how to pull up a control screen, using the highly scientific method of waving his hands around and poking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he tries to think really hard. Sometimes McKay really and truly hates this galaxy.
The screen, which floats in the air in front of them, invisible to the ravenous whale and the frantic dreamRodney, is not as helpful as McKay would have hoped. The controls seem to be for jumping to different dreams, not for turning off the chamber. He tells Sheppard to think off at it, and Sheppard does, or at least claims he does, but god forbid it should be so simple, and they're still stuck with the horrors of malignant marine mammals.
"This is all your fault, you realize," McKay says, folding his arms over his chest as dreamRodney flails around in the giant, unrealistically fanged mouth of the whale. It's a pretty awful sight, but he's had essentially the exact same dream so many times before that it's almost a relief to watch it instead of experiencing it.
Sheppard, though, is staring at the scene with a look on his face that's... well, McKay's not entirely sure what it is, but stricken is maybe the closest word he can think of. It's like Sheppard thinks that really is McKay down there getting turned into whale food, and there's not a damn thing that Sheppard, here as impartial bystander, can do to stop it.
Sheppard turns to look at him with an effort. "Shit. Yeah. I, shit, Rodney, sorry, let me just..." McKay has to roll his eyes, because of course this would trigger Sheppard's obnoxiously heroic protector complex. Then he's not rolling his eyes anymore, because Sheppard is reaching out for the control display, and before McKay can even manage to yell What have I told you about touching things before we know for sure what they'll do, you incomparable moron!, the ocean twists around them and they're
----
surrounded by yellow. McKay has two seconds to think Oh no, not this one before the field of yellow around them resolves itself, as he knew it would, into an endless horde of animate lemons with tiny spider-like legs. The dreamRodney in this scenario tries to run, but of course there's nowhere to go, and the lemons start jumping on his legs, climbing up his pants as he tries to shake them and their tiny lemony claws off.
"Seriously?" Sheppard says. The lemons, McKay notices, run around Sheppard's legs like they're actually there, and when Sheppard bends down to pick one up, he's able to lift it in his hand. He holds it on its yellow pebbled back, its skinny legs flailing in the air. "Seriously?"
"You try living with the knowledge that death can sneak up on you in any improperly labeled meal," McKay grumbles. One of the lemons starts tentatively trying to crawl up his pantleg, but the terror, again, just isn't there, and when he kicks it away it doesn't come back.
Sheppard runs a finger down the back of the lemon he's holding. It quivers. He beams at it. "They're kinda cute."
"Some people keep poisonous tarantulas as pets." McKay stomps over to glare at the control screen, pointedly not looking over at where dreamRodney is lying on his back, being buried under a mound of deadly jumping lemons.
"You're no fun." Sheppard sets the lemon down and turns to look at the screen over McKay's shoulder. He reaches a hand over, pointing at something. "Here's where you poke it if you want to switch."
"Knock it off! I'm reading that!" McKay shoves Sheppard's hand away, but he's not fast enough to stop the forward motion of Sheppard's finger, which just barely brushes the space where the display would be if it was more than a light projection. The lemons twist up into an unrecognizable mass of yellow again and instead they find themselves
----
in a dark-paneled auditorium, looking up at a brightly lit stage, on which a beaming dreamRodney stands, one hand on the corner of the cloth covering the blackboard next to him. "Oh, OK," McKay says, dropping into the empty auditorium chair nearest to him. "If you're going to insist on dream-surfing, at least we can stick around for this one."
"Good dream?" Sheppard asks warily, sitting down next to McKay and eyeing the stage.
"Very." McKay sits back and relaxes. This is one of his absolute favorites.
Up on the stage, dreamRodney pulls back the cloth with a flourish. The blackboard is covered with equations. They are, as always, suffering from that dream-state where they seem logical and correct but at the same time vague and indistinct, so that McKay can never remember them when he wakes up. In the dream, though, everyone sees them with perfect clarity.
Off to their left in the audience, Eisenschon, the idiot from MIT who had tried (and failed) to disprove the theories in the last paper McKay had published back on Earth, stands up and shouts, "My god, the Universal Theory of Everything!" Two physicists visiting from CERN faint dramatically in the aisles. Mitkaff from Rennselaer throws all of his papers into the air and yells, "It is too perfect! Too brilliant! I quit science!"
"It was really quite obvious once I bothered applying myself to the problem," dreamRodney says. "If you have a good grasp of the math it's almost disappointingly easy."
"But, Dr. McKay, this is the most complex math I have ever seen!" the head of astrophysics at CalTech gasps, standing up in his seat and pressing a hand to his chest in obvious amazement.
The door at the back of the auditorium slams open and light floods in, haloing around Sam Carter as she strides down the center aisle. "No math is too complicated for Dr. McKay," she says, spinning on her heel when she reaches the base of the stage to face the crowd. "That's one thing I've learned from my years of close, constantly rewarding work with him. There's no problem too dense, no obstacle too stubborn to outlast Dr. McKay."
She marches up the stairs to stand next to dreamRodney. "Which is why he is so deserving of these acknowledgements of his greatness, on behalf of all of humanity, who have benefited immeasurably from his insights and contributions." Sheppard rolls his eyes so hard that McKay can almost feel it from the next seat over. Carter pulls a Nobel prize medal out of nowhere and hangs it around dreamRodney's neck. DreamRodney waves a hand as if to say, Oh, no, please, it was nothing.
"You deserve so much more than a simple medal," Carter says. She leans in and kisses dreamRodney lightly on the lips. DreamRodney, ever the gentleman, bears it with good grace while three of his rivals from Area 51 storm out of the auditorium in a jealous rage. Sheppard turns in his seat to watch them go, like he's making a note of their faces. McKay would be more interested in that, but the best part is just coming up.
"I hope this small token of appreciation will in some little way help you to understand how much we all are truly in your debt, Dr. McKay," Carter says, producing from nowhere a fully charged, gently glowing ZPM and pressing it into dreamRodney's hands. DreamRodney hugs the ZPM to his chest and McKay sighs happily. More of his rivals stand up and throw their papers aside and storm out. Two nuclear physicists from Oxford run up to the blackboard and start cooing over the equations.
"You might be the weirdest person I know," Sheppard says, but when McKay tears his eyes away from the stage to look at him, Sheppard's grinning teasingly. "I thought for sure Carter would be the highlight, but no, you'd rather make out with a ZPM."
"I am not making out with it," McKay protests, although dreamRodney is definitely cuddling the ZPM. Still, cuddling is not making out, unless Sheppard has some weird hypersexualized view of cuddling. Which, being Sheppard and an American, he probably does.
"At least we finally got a good one," Sheppard says, reaching for the screen again.
"Stop that! We need to figure out how to turn it off, we don't need to keep dream-hopping..."
"Oh, relax, it's not like we're in any danger, we've already seen that."
Sheppard's finger edges towards the screen. "Oh no you don't!" McKay snaps, lunging to stop him. He needs to read through the information they have available to them without getting distracted by a new dream, and the restful sounds of scientists bowing down before his genius make a good background noise for figuring this thing out, they may as well stay here, but Sheppard nudges him, trying to reach the screen, and McKay's hand slips through it instead, swirling the stage and the auditorium and the scientists all up into a bright blur and
----
they're in the big conference room in Atlantis. The lights are low and Sheppard-- dreamSheppard, actually, since the real Sheppard is standing right next to McKay-- is sitting by himself at the table, idly tapping a thin folder.
"Oh, shit." Sheppard lunges for the display and McKay almost has to tackle him to the ground to stop him from reaching it. DreamSheppard sprawls at the conference table, undisturbed, looking like he's just waiting for something, completely relaxed.
"Turnabout's fair play," McKay says, poking Sheppard in the chest and driving him further from the screen. He examines it, careful to not touch it, looking for (and using his artificial ATA gene to feel for) the hack key he can usually find in any Ancient database, the one that lets him bypass the interface and get into the digital guts of the thing, where he's much more comfortable. "We had to sit through three of my dreams, you don't get to tap out the second we get into one of yours." He looks up. The conference room is quiet except for the sound of dreamSheppard messing with the papers in the folder a little, still looking calm and at ease. "Anyways, there's nothing going on here. Sit still and let me work on this."
Sheppard, the real one, pulls out a chair and slumps into it, looking deeply unhappy, a weird contrast to the contented Sheppard down at the other end of the table. McKay tries to concentrate on the control screen but keeps getting distracted by Sheppard's miserable little huffs and uneasy weight shifts. McKay's just about to ask why he would dream such a stupid boring dream anyways when the conference room doors rotate open, that breathtaking synchronized movement they always have, and he watches himself walk in.
He's in Sheppard's dream?
"You have that figured out by now, right?" Sheppard asks, and McKay's a little surprised by the desperation in his voice. "We can get out of here now, right?"
"Well, no, not yet, but if you give me twenty more minutes I should be able to--"
"No, Rodney, we need to get out of here now."
"Why?" Despite Sheppard's obvious concern, nothing crazy is happening in the dream. DreamRodney is standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, looking vaguely annoyed, and dreamSheppard is standing, leaning his hip on the edge of the table, slowly waving the file back and forth. "You saw the lemons, whatever this is it can't be worse than that."
"Rodney, please."
Sheppard really is desperate. McKay finds some pity for him in the depths of his generous soul and turns back to the display, very carefully and precisely reaching out and accessing the hack key. Code immediately consumes the screen, and he sighs in relief. So much better.
He doesn't take his eyes off the screen now that he's got it where he wants it, but in the background he can hear dreamRodney saying, "What was so important that you had to drag me away from my work which, I shouldn't have to remind you, keeps this entire city from sinking into the ocean on a regular basis?" He sounds righteously aggrieved, and McKay is a little impressed by the accuracy of Sheppard's dream version of himself.
"I've been working on that data you gave me," dreamSheppard drawls, flapping the file. "I think I got it cracked." McKay glances up in time to see dreamSheppard tease the edge of the file with his thumb in a manner that might almost be called coy. "You wanna take a look at it?"
DreamRodney unfolds his arms and strides over, grabbing the file out of dreamSheppard's hands. He opens it and runs his eyes over the numbers inside. His eyebrows go up, seemingly against his will, and he reluctantly says, "This is actually impressive work, Colonel."
"Thought you might get a kick outta it." DreamSheppard grins, all lazy rockstar, and leans more securely against the table. Real Sheppard makes a lunge for the display when he thinks McKay isn't looking, and McKay has to jump in front of it.
"What's wrong with you?" he shouts, grabbing both of Sheppard's hands and holding them off to the side. "I've got the raw code of this thing open, who knows what would happen if you went poking at it! Are you brain damaged?"
"Just... just get us out of here, McKay, c'mon, we need to leave..."
"You're always surprising me, Colonel," dreamRodney says. "If I had known you were this smart I would have done this a long time ago." He slaps the file down on the table with a loud noise in the quiet room, grabs dreamSheppard's face with both his hands, and kisses him hard.
McKay blinks. Sheppard groans, pulls his wrists out of McKay's grasp, and slumps back into his chair, covering his face with his hands. DreamSheppard also groans loudly and kisses dreamRodney back with immediate enthusiasm.
DreamRodney pushes dreamSheppard down onto the table, climbing up on top of him, straddling dreamSheppard's waist. "So," McKay asks, very tentatively, not even sure if he wants to know the answer or not. "Um. Is this a good dream, or a nightmare?"
"Just get us out of here, McKay," Sheppard says, muffled behind his hands.
----
McKay had said he only needed twenty more minutes, and that should be about right. Unfortunately, that's plenty of time for dreamRodney and dreamSheppard to lose all their clothes (far too easily, but McKay assumes dream logic) and start doing... things. On the conference table. He tries to avoid looking at them, he really does, but when dreamRodney makes a noise he's pretty sure he never once made in real life, he has to glance over.
DreamRodney has been ousted from the top position and is lying on his back on the conference table with dreamSheppard crouched over his lap, deepthroating him with an effortlessness that McKay is certain no one outside of professional erotica could pull off in real life. DreamSheppard seems to sincerely love having dreamRodney's dick in his mouth, if the way he's frantically stroking himself is any indication. McKay drags his attention back to the screen, face bright red.
It's not that he wants to stick around and see any more of this than he absolutely has to, especially when Sheppard is trying to silently kill himself in the corner. It's just that, well, it's distracting, it would distract anyone, and if a twenty minute job ends up taking him something more like forty minutes, well, no one's to blame except for Sheppard's stupid horny brain and stupid... detail-oriented... very visual... imagination.
Really, though, If I'd known you were this smart I would have done this a long time ago? Does Sheppard really think he's that cheesy?
"Fuck, yeah, suck it, Colonel," dreamRodney says, and yes, Sheppard apparently does think he's that cheesy. McKay ignores the burning all along the tops of his ears and concentrates as hard as he can on the screen, the screen, the screen and absolutely nothing else.
----
DreamRodney and dreamSheppard have moved on to actual sex, dreamSheppard with dreamRodney's legs thrown over his shoulders (McKay is pretty sure he's not actually that flexible, although it's nice of Sheppard to imagine that he is), slamming his dick into dreamRodney's ass (McKay is also pretty sure Sheppard's dick is not that big-- not that he's been looking, but he's been in the field with Sheppard an awful lot, it's not like he hasn't seen it before, and... well, anyways, Sheppard has some dream enhancement going on, that's all) (he's also pretty sure that neither of their stomachs are that muscular) (not that he's looking) by the time McKay manages to shut the chamber down.
The conference room twists away, taking with it the pornographic sights and sounds that apparently populate Sheppard's dreams. Sheppard is standing all the way at the other end of the chamber, as far from McKay as he can get, with his arms folded and his shoulders hunched up. He starts when the dream disappears and bolts for the door, but McKay is closer and gets there first, holding out his arms to block it.
"It was just a dream," Sheppard says, breathing kind of fast and looking at the floor, "it's not like I can control my dreams, OK, it was just a freak dream thing, it's over and done with and we never need to talk about this again." He's rapidly shifting from one foot to the other, obviously itching to get out.
McKay has been accused of being many, many things, but stupid isn't one of them. "No. You dreamed that you seduced me. With math. And then we had sex. In the conference room." He pokes Sheppard in the chest. "You dreamed that I was easy!"
"Not... I didn't... I..."
"You are brain damaged. What was it, blunt force trauma from the stone-throwing cavemen on MS-eleventy-one? The concussion you got when you fell into that sinkhole on that planet with the purple trees? Cumulative tissue degeneration from years of hairspray use?"
Sheppard's still staring determinedly at the floor. "Look, Rodney, McKay, I'm. I'm really, really sorry. It wasn't anything I could control, it's not going to affect our working relationship, it's not..."
"It's amazing that they let you lead the military here with such obvious mental deficiencies."
"Right. OK. Are you done? Can we get to the part where we never talk about this again?"
McKay thinks about it for half a second. "No," he says. He grabs Sheppard's face and kisses him hard. For real, not in a dream, or an Ancient holodeck-style projection of a dream (although of course the holodeck is a gross oversimplification, but trust Sheppard to not understand that).
Sheppard gasps into his mouth, then sinks into the kiss, hands coming up and nervously patting at McKay's shoulders in a tentative way that makes McKay need to break the kiss off so he can laugh out loud. After a moment Sheppard starts laughing too.
"I don't look like that," McKay says, taking a deep breath and forcing down the only slightly hysterical laughter that still wants to break through. "What I looked like in your dream. I'm not... I don't work out as much as you, I have more important things to do with my brain, that's why we keep you and Ronon around, and I am never going to say 'suck it, Colonel,' not ever, not even if you beg."
Sheppard finally looks up and meets his eyes. "I know. I know. I won't get a pet lemon. Are we even?"
"I kind of hate you a lot," McKay says, sliding a hand around the side of Sheppard's neck. Because Sheppard needs to know. Needs to realize that this is him, that he's not a dream, and anyways, it's true, in that very Sheppard-specific way where the hate is maybe more like exasperated fondness.
"Good," Sheppard says fervently, like he's relieved, and McKay knows, thank god, that he gets it.
Author: americanleaguer
Pairings: Sheppard/McKay
Rating: R
Word count: 3,926
Notes: Other people are using this challenge to write thought-provoking, emotional examinations of the human psyche and the nature of dreaming. This is not one of those fics.
Grossly oversimplified.
"It scans your brain for periods of waking brainwave activity paired with monoamine inhibition, records the wave patterns, overlays the data it already has from personal biometric readings, and extrapolates the result as..." McKay pages down the document on his scanner. "As a light and sound-based three dimensional manifestation within the chamber." He pages back up to check the translation, but he's pretty sure he's got it.
Sheppard runs a hand speculatively over one of the chamber's walls. He either gets it or he doesn't get it. McKay doesn't much care, because it's not important whether or not Sheppard understands the room, it's only important that he understands it, and he does. He's not quite certain how the three-dimensional manifestation comes to be, it's the point on which the Ancient document is the most vague, but he has a fairly good grasp of the rest of it.
It's a fascinating concept. The mechanics behind it are equally fascinating. The ability of the Ancient tech to scan for brainwave activity that corresponds to monoamine levels is something the medical team will be drooling over, although McKay is more interested in the chamber's ability to read not current brainwave activity, but brainwave activity from the recent past, as though it leaves some sort of traces in the brain's chemistry. Does it? He doesn't know enough about biochemistry to say for sure, but a couple hours with the medical database should clear that up, and if there's nothing in there on it... well, the tech is taking readings off of something, which might make this Pegasus Galaxy Revolutionary Discovery Number 436. It's amazing, it's brilliant, it's potentially of great medical and diagnostic significance, it's...
"It's like a holodeck for dreams!" Sheppard says, all kinds of pleased with himself.
McKay takes a half-second to close his eyes and breathe deeply. "I really hate you, you know that?"
"Just because you need a load of big words to say the same damn thing..."
"Holodeck for dreams, that is such a gross oversimplification, I can't even... what are you doing, don't touch that!" McKay snaps, and Sheppard snatches his hand away from the panel on the wall, but of course it's too late. It only takes the merest brush with Sheppard's stupid superpowered ATA gene to activate the panel, which glows first softly blue, then yellow. The walls pulse once with a wave of yellow light, and suddenly they're
----
on a boat in the middle of the ocean. A shining black fluke breaks the water 20 feet away and sinks back below in a mass of white foam. The boat is small and wooden and equipped with oars. They appear to be standing in the prow, although there shouldn't be enough room there for both of them to stand, and they should be tipping the boat off balance. McKay watches himself in the middle of the boat as he sees the tail of the whale, gasps, and starts rowing hard.
They're there, and they're not there. It's not like when they were dumped into each other's dreams by necessity and the crystal aliens; it was real, then, in a way that this isn't. McKay can see the ocean, the whale, the boat, himself, but he doesn't feel the heart-clenching terror that he knows goes with this dream. They're observers here, not participants.
"This is familiar," Sheppard says brightly. It's really only the last vestiges of Canadian politeness that keep McKay from punching him in the face.
----
Eventually Sheppard figures out how to pull up a control screen, using the highly scientific method of waving his hands around and poking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he tries to think really hard. Sometimes McKay really and truly hates this galaxy.
The screen, which floats in the air in front of them, invisible to the ravenous whale and the frantic dreamRodney, is not as helpful as McKay would have hoped. The controls seem to be for jumping to different dreams, not for turning off the chamber. He tells Sheppard to think off at it, and Sheppard does, or at least claims he does, but god forbid it should be so simple, and they're still stuck with the horrors of malignant marine mammals.
"This is all your fault, you realize," McKay says, folding his arms over his chest as dreamRodney flails around in the giant, unrealistically fanged mouth of the whale. It's a pretty awful sight, but he's had essentially the exact same dream so many times before that it's almost a relief to watch it instead of experiencing it.
Sheppard, though, is staring at the scene with a look on his face that's... well, McKay's not entirely sure what it is, but stricken is maybe the closest word he can think of. It's like Sheppard thinks that really is McKay down there getting turned into whale food, and there's not a damn thing that Sheppard, here as impartial bystander, can do to stop it.
Sheppard turns to look at him with an effort. "Shit. Yeah. I, shit, Rodney, sorry, let me just..." McKay has to roll his eyes, because of course this would trigger Sheppard's obnoxiously heroic protector complex. Then he's not rolling his eyes anymore, because Sheppard is reaching out for the control display, and before McKay can even manage to yell What have I told you about touching things before we know for sure what they'll do, you incomparable moron!, the ocean twists around them and they're
----
surrounded by yellow. McKay has two seconds to think Oh no, not this one before the field of yellow around them resolves itself, as he knew it would, into an endless horde of animate lemons with tiny spider-like legs. The dreamRodney in this scenario tries to run, but of course there's nowhere to go, and the lemons start jumping on his legs, climbing up his pants as he tries to shake them and their tiny lemony claws off.
"Seriously?" Sheppard says. The lemons, McKay notices, run around Sheppard's legs like they're actually there, and when Sheppard bends down to pick one up, he's able to lift it in his hand. He holds it on its yellow pebbled back, its skinny legs flailing in the air. "Seriously?"
"You try living with the knowledge that death can sneak up on you in any improperly labeled meal," McKay grumbles. One of the lemons starts tentatively trying to crawl up his pantleg, but the terror, again, just isn't there, and when he kicks it away it doesn't come back.
Sheppard runs a finger down the back of the lemon he's holding. It quivers. He beams at it. "They're kinda cute."
"Some people keep poisonous tarantulas as pets." McKay stomps over to glare at the control screen, pointedly not looking over at where dreamRodney is lying on his back, being buried under a mound of deadly jumping lemons.
"You're no fun." Sheppard sets the lemon down and turns to look at the screen over McKay's shoulder. He reaches a hand over, pointing at something. "Here's where you poke it if you want to switch."
"Knock it off! I'm reading that!" McKay shoves Sheppard's hand away, but he's not fast enough to stop the forward motion of Sheppard's finger, which just barely brushes the space where the display would be if it was more than a light projection. The lemons twist up into an unrecognizable mass of yellow again and instead they find themselves
----
in a dark-paneled auditorium, looking up at a brightly lit stage, on which a beaming dreamRodney stands, one hand on the corner of the cloth covering the blackboard next to him. "Oh, OK," McKay says, dropping into the empty auditorium chair nearest to him. "If you're going to insist on dream-surfing, at least we can stick around for this one."
"Good dream?" Sheppard asks warily, sitting down next to McKay and eyeing the stage.
"Very." McKay sits back and relaxes. This is one of his absolute favorites.
Up on the stage, dreamRodney pulls back the cloth with a flourish. The blackboard is covered with equations. They are, as always, suffering from that dream-state where they seem logical and correct but at the same time vague and indistinct, so that McKay can never remember them when he wakes up. In the dream, though, everyone sees them with perfect clarity.
Off to their left in the audience, Eisenschon, the idiot from MIT who had tried (and failed) to disprove the theories in the last paper McKay had published back on Earth, stands up and shouts, "My god, the Universal Theory of Everything!" Two physicists visiting from CERN faint dramatically in the aisles. Mitkaff from Rennselaer throws all of his papers into the air and yells, "It is too perfect! Too brilliant! I quit science!"
"It was really quite obvious once I bothered applying myself to the problem," dreamRodney says. "If you have a good grasp of the math it's almost disappointingly easy."
"But, Dr. McKay, this is the most complex math I have ever seen!" the head of astrophysics at CalTech gasps, standing up in his seat and pressing a hand to his chest in obvious amazement.
The door at the back of the auditorium slams open and light floods in, haloing around Sam Carter as she strides down the center aisle. "No math is too complicated for Dr. McKay," she says, spinning on her heel when she reaches the base of the stage to face the crowd. "That's one thing I've learned from my years of close, constantly rewarding work with him. There's no problem too dense, no obstacle too stubborn to outlast Dr. McKay."
She marches up the stairs to stand next to dreamRodney. "Which is why he is so deserving of these acknowledgements of his greatness, on behalf of all of humanity, who have benefited immeasurably from his insights and contributions." Sheppard rolls his eyes so hard that McKay can almost feel it from the next seat over. Carter pulls a Nobel prize medal out of nowhere and hangs it around dreamRodney's neck. DreamRodney waves a hand as if to say, Oh, no, please, it was nothing.
"You deserve so much more than a simple medal," Carter says. She leans in and kisses dreamRodney lightly on the lips. DreamRodney, ever the gentleman, bears it with good grace while three of his rivals from Area 51 storm out of the auditorium in a jealous rage. Sheppard turns in his seat to watch them go, like he's making a note of their faces. McKay would be more interested in that, but the best part is just coming up.
"I hope this small token of appreciation will in some little way help you to understand how much we all are truly in your debt, Dr. McKay," Carter says, producing from nowhere a fully charged, gently glowing ZPM and pressing it into dreamRodney's hands. DreamRodney hugs the ZPM to his chest and McKay sighs happily. More of his rivals stand up and throw their papers aside and storm out. Two nuclear physicists from Oxford run up to the blackboard and start cooing over the equations.
"You might be the weirdest person I know," Sheppard says, but when McKay tears his eyes away from the stage to look at him, Sheppard's grinning teasingly. "I thought for sure Carter would be the highlight, but no, you'd rather make out with a ZPM."
"I am not making out with it," McKay protests, although dreamRodney is definitely cuddling the ZPM. Still, cuddling is not making out, unless Sheppard has some weird hypersexualized view of cuddling. Which, being Sheppard and an American, he probably does.
"At least we finally got a good one," Sheppard says, reaching for the screen again.
"Stop that! We need to figure out how to turn it off, we don't need to keep dream-hopping..."
"Oh, relax, it's not like we're in any danger, we've already seen that."
Sheppard's finger edges towards the screen. "Oh no you don't!" McKay snaps, lunging to stop him. He needs to read through the information they have available to them without getting distracted by a new dream, and the restful sounds of scientists bowing down before his genius make a good background noise for figuring this thing out, they may as well stay here, but Sheppard nudges him, trying to reach the screen, and McKay's hand slips through it instead, swirling the stage and the auditorium and the scientists all up into a bright blur and
----
they're in the big conference room in Atlantis. The lights are low and Sheppard-- dreamSheppard, actually, since the real Sheppard is standing right next to McKay-- is sitting by himself at the table, idly tapping a thin folder.
"Oh, shit." Sheppard lunges for the display and McKay almost has to tackle him to the ground to stop him from reaching it. DreamSheppard sprawls at the conference table, undisturbed, looking like he's just waiting for something, completely relaxed.
"Turnabout's fair play," McKay says, poking Sheppard in the chest and driving him further from the screen. He examines it, careful to not touch it, looking for (and using his artificial ATA gene to feel for) the hack key he can usually find in any Ancient database, the one that lets him bypass the interface and get into the digital guts of the thing, where he's much more comfortable. "We had to sit through three of my dreams, you don't get to tap out the second we get into one of yours." He looks up. The conference room is quiet except for the sound of dreamSheppard messing with the papers in the folder a little, still looking calm and at ease. "Anyways, there's nothing going on here. Sit still and let me work on this."
Sheppard, the real one, pulls out a chair and slumps into it, looking deeply unhappy, a weird contrast to the contented Sheppard down at the other end of the table. McKay tries to concentrate on the control screen but keeps getting distracted by Sheppard's miserable little huffs and uneasy weight shifts. McKay's just about to ask why he would dream such a stupid boring dream anyways when the conference room doors rotate open, that breathtaking synchronized movement they always have, and he watches himself walk in.
He's in Sheppard's dream?
"You have that figured out by now, right?" Sheppard asks, and McKay's a little surprised by the desperation in his voice. "We can get out of here now, right?"
"Well, no, not yet, but if you give me twenty more minutes I should be able to--"
"No, Rodney, we need to get out of here now."
"Why?" Despite Sheppard's obvious concern, nothing crazy is happening in the dream. DreamRodney is standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, looking vaguely annoyed, and dreamSheppard is standing, leaning his hip on the edge of the table, slowly waving the file back and forth. "You saw the lemons, whatever this is it can't be worse than that."
"Rodney, please."
Sheppard really is desperate. McKay finds some pity for him in the depths of his generous soul and turns back to the display, very carefully and precisely reaching out and accessing the hack key. Code immediately consumes the screen, and he sighs in relief. So much better.
He doesn't take his eyes off the screen now that he's got it where he wants it, but in the background he can hear dreamRodney saying, "What was so important that you had to drag me away from my work which, I shouldn't have to remind you, keeps this entire city from sinking into the ocean on a regular basis?" He sounds righteously aggrieved, and McKay is a little impressed by the accuracy of Sheppard's dream version of himself.
"I've been working on that data you gave me," dreamSheppard drawls, flapping the file. "I think I got it cracked." McKay glances up in time to see dreamSheppard tease the edge of the file with his thumb in a manner that might almost be called coy. "You wanna take a look at it?"
DreamRodney unfolds his arms and strides over, grabbing the file out of dreamSheppard's hands. He opens it and runs his eyes over the numbers inside. His eyebrows go up, seemingly against his will, and he reluctantly says, "This is actually impressive work, Colonel."
"Thought you might get a kick outta it." DreamSheppard grins, all lazy rockstar, and leans more securely against the table. Real Sheppard makes a lunge for the display when he thinks McKay isn't looking, and McKay has to jump in front of it.
"What's wrong with you?" he shouts, grabbing both of Sheppard's hands and holding them off to the side. "I've got the raw code of this thing open, who knows what would happen if you went poking at it! Are you brain damaged?"
"Just... just get us out of here, McKay, c'mon, we need to leave..."
"You're always surprising me, Colonel," dreamRodney says. "If I had known you were this smart I would have done this a long time ago." He slaps the file down on the table with a loud noise in the quiet room, grabs dreamSheppard's face with both his hands, and kisses him hard.
McKay blinks. Sheppard groans, pulls his wrists out of McKay's grasp, and slumps back into his chair, covering his face with his hands. DreamSheppard also groans loudly and kisses dreamRodney back with immediate enthusiasm.
DreamRodney pushes dreamSheppard down onto the table, climbing up on top of him, straddling dreamSheppard's waist. "So," McKay asks, very tentatively, not even sure if he wants to know the answer or not. "Um. Is this a good dream, or a nightmare?"
"Just get us out of here, McKay," Sheppard says, muffled behind his hands.
----
McKay had said he only needed twenty more minutes, and that should be about right. Unfortunately, that's plenty of time for dreamRodney and dreamSheppard to lose all their clothes (far too easily, but McKay assumes dream logic) and start doing... things. On the conference table. He tries to avoid looking at them, he really does, but when dreamRodney makes a noise he's pretty sure he never once made in real life, he has to glance over.
DreamRodney has been ousted from the top position and is lying on his back on the conference table with dreamSheppard crouched over his lap, deepthroating him with an effortlessness that McKay is certain no one outside of professional erotica could pull off in real life. DreamSheppard seems to sincerely love having dreamRodney's dick in his mouth, if the way he's frantically stroking himself is any indication. McKay drags his attention back to the screen, face bright red.
It's not that he wants to stick around and see any more of this than he absolutely has to, especially when Sheppard is trying to silently kill himself in the corner. It's just that, well, it's distracting, it would distract anyone, and if a twenty minute job ends up taking him something more like forty minutes, well, no one's to blame except for Sheppard's stupid horny brain and stupid... detail-oriented... very visual... imagination.
Really, though, If I'd known you were this smart I would have done this a long time ago? Does Sheppard really think he's that cheesy?
"Fuck, yeah, suck it, Colonel," dreamRodney says, and yes, Sheppard apparently does think he's that cheesy. McKay ignores the burning all along the tops of his ears and concentrates as hard as he can on the screen, the screen, the screen and absolutely nothing else.
----
DreamRodney and dreamSheppard have moved on to actual sex, dreamSheppard with dreamRodney's legs thrown over his shoulders (McKay is pretty sure he's not actually that flexible, although it's nice of Sheppard to imagine that he is), slamming his dick into dreamRodney's ass (McKay is also pretty sure Sheppard's dick is not that big-- not that he's been looking, but he's been in the field with Sheppard an awful lot, it's not like he hasn't seen it before, and... well, anyways, Sheppard has some dream enhancement going on, that's all) (he's also pretty sure that neither of their stomachs are that muscular) (not that he's looking) by the time McKay manages to shut the chamber down.
The conference room twists away, taking with it the pornographic sights and sounds that apparently populate Sheppard's dreams. Sheppard is standing all the way at the other end of the chamber, as far from McKay as he can get, with his arms folded and his shoulders hunched up. He starts when the dream disappears and bolts for the door, but McKay is closer and gets there first, holding out his arms to block it.
"It was just a dream," Sheppard says, breathing kind of fast and looking at the floor, "it's not like I can control my dreams, OK, it was just a freak dream thing, it's over and done with and we never need to talk about this again." He's rapidly shifting from one foot to the other, obviously itching to get out.
McKay has been accused of being many, many things, but stupid isn't one of them. "No. You dreamed that you seduced me. With math. And then we had sex. In the conference room." He pokes Sheppard in the chest. "You dreamed that I was easy!"
"Not... I didn't... I..."
"You are brain damaged. What was it, blunt force trauma from the stone-throwing cavemen on MS-eleventy-one? The concussion you got when you fell into that sinkhole on that planet with the purple trees? Cumulative tissue degeneration from years of hairspray use?"
Sheppard's still staring determinedly at the floor. "Look, Rodney, McKay, I'm. I'm really, really sorry. It wasn't anything I could control, it's not going to affect our working relationship, it's not..."
"It's amazing that they let you lead the military here with such obvious mental deficiencies."
"Right. OK. Are you done? Can we get to the part where we never talk about this again?"
McKay thinks about it for half a second. "No," he says. He grabs Sheppard's face and kisses him hard. For real, not in a dream, or an Ancient holodeck-style projection of a dream (although of course the holodeck is a gross oversimplification, but trust Sheppard to not understand that).
Sheppard gasps into his mouth, then sinks into the kiss, hands coming up and nervously patting at McKay's shoulders in a tentative way that makes McKay need to break the kiss off so he can laugh out loud. After a moment Sheppard starts laughing too.
"I don't look like that," McKay says, taking a deep breath and forcing down the only slightly hysterical laughter that still wants to break through. "What I looked like in your dream. I'm not... I don't work out as much as you, I have more important things to do with my brain, that's why we keep you and Ronon around, and I am never going to say 'suck it, Colonel,' not ever, not even if you beg."
Sheppard finally looks up and meets his eyes. "I know. I know. I won't get a pet lemon. Are we even?"
"I kind of hate you a lot," McKay says, sliding a hand around the side of Sheppard's neck. Because Sheppard needs to know. Needs to realize that this is him, that he's not a dream, and anyways, it's true, in that very Sheppard-specific way where the hate is maybe more like exasperated fondness.
"Good," Sheppard says fervently, like he's relieved, and McKay knows, thank god, that he gets it.