SGAfic: "Beyond Oneiromancy: A Rationalist's Guide To Understanding Your Dreams" (Adult) 2/2
Part 1
*
Rescue
To dream that you are being rescued or rescue others, represents an aspect of yourself that has been neglected or ignored. You are trying to find a way to express this neglected part of yourself.
That night there is to be a feast under the stars. Rodney has napped fitfully, sponged the dust off his arms and face and changed his t-shirt. He hasn't seen John all afternoon, but Teyla said he'd checked in regularly and has been back for some time.
"He's mad at me, you know," he blurts to her. "Apparently it's fine for him to fly into nuclear explosions three times a week without any warning, but my completely unplanned near death experience really pissed him off."
"I do not think that's the issue bothering Colonel Sheppard," Teyla says.
"Aha!" Rodney says, vindicated. "But you do agree there's an issue."
"I..." Teyla stops, clearly wary. Obviously the Colonel's talked to her. Maybe tweaked the story a little, exaggerated Rodney's mistakes, minimized his own. Like Rodney hasn't seen himself edged out like that oh fourteen gazillion times before. If the Colonel thinks Rodney's never been down and dirty in the office-politic trenches before, he has another think coming...
And, well, that certainly was a quick little side-step into Crazy Town. Not even a head wound he can blame it on, this time. His issues may be outgrowing the confines of his head. Maybe if he got them their own room he could get some fucking sleep...
"Is everything all right, Rodney?" Teyla asks, her hand warm and strong around his arm. Of course, his brain says. Hunky and dory. But what comes out is:
"No. Maybe? I don't know..." It's all so wrong. He's had his big epiphany. Yes, trust issues, he gets it. Things should all be getting better now, not worse.
"Perhaps you should talk to the Colonel," she says, reasonably.
I tried, he thinks, but knows it's not really true. When it comes to people he knows there are whole continents of things off-limits to McKays. You never ask a lady her age, a woman her weight or anyone who matters whether they give a damn.
"That's probably the wise thing to do," he says. To his surprise she pulls him around, centers his shoulders and touches her head to his head. He surprises her back by pulling her into an awkward hug. It's really easy. It feels like something anyone could do. Hunh.
Maybe he's been wrong about everything all along. Which is not as unacceptable a thought as it should be. The essence of scientific theory is it's potential for falsifiability, after all. The Griffin who lives in his head doesn't find that anywhere near as amusing as he should. Rodney gives Teyla a squeeze and lets her go.
"Right," he says awkwardly. "Food." He hurries away, feeling her smile like a narrow band of warmth at his back.
*
The feast itself is actually almost fun. Their coming has coincided with a ceremonial feast night and everything is laid out on ring of thick carpets under the stars. In the center of the ring there is a bonfire and part of the evening's main focus is the telling of a long, convoluted creation myth through dance, song and lots of razzing from the audience There is music too, and vast quantities of food and two kinds of alcohol -- a fermented beer-like drink of which there is a lot and something fruit-tart and much stronger which comes out in rounds throughout the night.
The Team all have places on the Apualla's great rug. Teyla seems comfortably ensconced at the head woman's side. Rodney finds himself down a ways sitting between Ronon and a bevy of plump-cheeked, bright-eyed young men and women who flirt with each other and with Ronon (and yes, okay, perhaps a little with him too, but in ways that never threaten to turn into actual offers of intergalactic sex.) Not quite the same for John, apparently, who is seated way down toward the opposite end of the Chief's rug between two seriously beautiful girls with dark facial tattoos and complicated hair bands, who seem to be feeding him and petting him and giggling behind their hands with him while the feast goes on around them. John doesn't seem the least bit resistant to their charms.
It makes Rodney wildly uncomfortable every time he forgets and catches an eyeful of what is obviously a seduction of someone by someone and someone else. It's bad enough during the festivities when it's just accidental glances and there's something else to snap his gaze to, but later in the evening, when the fire has burned down to red embers and thick, salt smoke Rodney is just drunk enough that he keeps forgetting to look away.
By now the seduction has moved on to kisses, three beautiful dark heads close together and John with his smiles in between and little touches.
It's not that it's any of Rodney's business what John does with hands in his off hours, but this is just wrong. John is on the job here. He shouldn't be... that. Helplessly, he looks again, sees John nuzzling the one girl's ear, one arm loose around her waist. She giggles. John laughs. Oh, yeah. It's going to be hilarious when the blowguns and machetes come out.
Teyla's hand on his back makes him start. She smiles at him gently when he looks up.
"You're not going," Rodney says a little desperately.
"It is late," Teyla says. "And someone with a clear head is needed to keep the watch."
"Yeah," says Rodney, bitterly, his gaze firmly locked on the flickering embers. "I was just thinking something exactly like that."
He feels the movement as Teyla crouches down beside him, her hand still on his shoulder.
"Rodney," she says, in that reasonable tone that makes him bristle. "Perhaps there are some things that need only the stars for an audience." He looks up at her sharply then, but she nods to their left, where Ronon is necking with a girl in his lap. Their faces are flushed and gleaming, and Ronon's hair is actually in more disarray than usual. He glances up suddenly, feeling their attention and his expression is both sheepish and wary. Teyla just smiles at him and raises her eyebrows and Ronon shrugs and goes back to his kiss, one eye open just a slit, but glittering in the firelight.
Teyla squeezes Rodney's shoulder and he knows it's his cue for a graceful exit but he's not feeling at all graceful tonight. Or generous.
"Well, have fun," he says, sullenly, eyes still on the dying fire. Teyla hesitates, but she doesn't say anything more, just squeezes his shoulder again and then she's gone. It's quiet now, but for the sounds of the fire and the wind. Soft sighs. The rustle of bodies in contact.
He feels it, every lip smack, every swallowed moan. It's been a long time. A really long time. And this is torture. Punishment. He can't help looking then, across the span. There is no more flirting now. Just the three of them entwined in one embrace and then another. Three lovely heads close together and John sprawled back in the arms of one, head thrown back to drink her kisses while the other slides hands under his shirt.
Rodney realizes he's watching open mouthed and nearly panting. Embarrassed and turned on and so empty he aches.
Of course John looks over right then. Their eyes meet and Rodney feels all the blood leave his face, like he's going to faint. If he could just say something, if his mouth hadn't gone bone dry -- but John's eyes are all shadows and knowing and his smile is just so pitiless. It leaves Rodney breathless and he staggers to his feet, needing very much to be elsewhere.
He's unsteady on his feet but manages not to step in the fire, despite his scramble and sway. All he wants is to be alone with this feeling, to stuff it all back down inside. He doesn't even know which way he walks, just that it's away -- from John, from the lights, from all the things that he has no reason to be shoving in his own face. What had he been thinking?
He walks until he remembers that he's on a strange planet and he's kind of drunk and he's walking down the middle of a dirt road in the dark. He's not sure exactly what is going to leap out of the tall, whispering grain but experience has been pretty consistent on the point that something will. He stops, the world swaying a little and runs a hand over his sweaty forehead.
He's not sure it wouldn't be worse to head back.
"Run out of steam already?" John's voice comes from a little ways back behind him. "I was thinking we were in for some kind of cross country race."
"Leave me alone, please," Rodney says, not turning around, humiliation and rage warring like Greek Gods in his head. Thunderbolts pound behind his eyes..
"No, I don't think so," says John, footsteps come nearer. "Seeing as it's my job to come after you when you get yourself in trouble." Rage wins in a sudden upset, pinning humiliation to the mat. His job?
"Is that what this is about?" Rodney says, whirling on him. "I didn't, what, say 'thank you'?" John is actually a lot closer than he expected. Close enough to smell: sweat and alcohol and, oh god, sex. He needs to not be thinking that. John's eyes are hooded but his voice is suddenly quiet. Way too calm.
"You said a lot of things," he says. His eyes glitter in the starlight. Rodney thinks: oh... And also: Oh!
"You..." his mouth goes dry again and he has to swallow, hard. "You remember that?"
John doesn't answer, just stares at him with this intent, fierce non-expression on his face. It's absolutely nothing to go on, but Rodney is close enough to see the tiny tremors that shake John to the rhythm of his heartbeat. That close. He steps closer. John doesn't back away. Nothing to go on but everything he knows and doesn't know about John, life, the universe, himself.
It isn't just a leap of faith, because he is not, never has been, never planned to be, a believer -- but then again...
He closes his eyes anyway, and leans in.
*
Tomatoes
To see tomatoes in your dream symbolizes domestic happiness and harmony. To dream that you are eating tomatoes, foretells of good health.
The Lab is actually quiet this time of night; only himself and Radek, each at work in their own little island of laptops, whiteboards and silent chaos.
There was actually a moment, Rodney realizes every now and then as his fingers tap away, when he and John stopped there, lip to lip. When he opened his eyes and they looked at each other and breathed each other's breath and Rodney remembered the things he'd tried not to remember telling John as the jumper rose to the surface of the ocean and the things John had said to him while refusing to let him die.
Horrifying, emotional stuff. Bleeding hearts and flowers. Mortifying promises. He blushes even now..
He supposes Radek must have heard them, but Radek's not the kind to bring up uncomfortable subjects. Another thing Rodney really likes about Radek.
John. Definitely gives a damn.
And it's embarrassing, true, and messily painfully raw to know that you are a set of two people who know these things about each other. About how much you need -- another rush of heat at that word -- need each other. Count on each other. Believe.
He suspects John is never going to be exactly easy with it. Not that he's one to talk, but there is something. It makes him feel unexpectedly... wise.
There was at that moment nothing but certainty in his mind that he would kiss John, that John was so hungry for his kiss that they would come together with a clash of teeth and sparks of pain, that the kiss and everything that followed would be a door opening into, well, sunshine.
He blushes again, his face heating as he sits tapping away at a new algorithm for more efficient water desalination. There's nothing he can do about it. His new life is full of this... this burble. This embarrassing happiness.
By the time John stops by the lab, stupid grin barely concealed by his usual smirk, Rodney is flushed red from head to toe.
It's a little like hypoxia all the time. Maybe his own personal version of walking rapture of the deep.
Radek tells him in Czech that he might as well leave since he's useless once his boyfriend comes around. It's a testament to the utter breaking of Rodney's brain that all he does is laugh and shut his laptop down. Grab his jacket off the chair.
"Hey," John says, slinging an arm around Rodney's shoulder and leaning back to point an accusatory finger at Zelenka. "I told you. I understand every word you say."
Radak breaks into something regional and rapid fire that Rodney only gets one word in ten from. He chooses to interpret it as 'Please ask Elizabeth to drop by the lab at just around 2300 hours Atlantis time so I can have an excuse to drink coffee with her in the mess.'
And he will. He gets this now. How easy it is to let go, fall back. The ocean of true love has thundered in.
And Rodney McKay has lived to tell the tale.
*
Authors Notes: I don't usually do Authors Notes but I've cribbed enough stuff here to warrant it. All the dream interpretations are from Dream Moods. Do I believe there is a common symbolic vocabulary of dreams -- yes and no. Yes, in that there is a common symbolic vocabulary among various groups of people so why not? And no, because check it, dreams are just whack, yo.
*
Rescue
To dream that you are being rescued or rescue others, represents an aspect of yourself that has been neglected or ignored. You are trying to find a way to express this neglected part of yourself.
That night there is to be a feast under the stars. Rodney has napped fitfully, sponged the dust off his arms and face and changed his t-shirt. He hasn't seen John all afternoon, but Teyla said he'd checked in regularly and has been back for some time.
"He's mad at me, you know," he blurts to her. "Apparently it's fine for him to fly into nuclear explosions three times a week without any warning, but my completely unplanned near death experience really pissed him off."
"I do not think that's the issue bothering Colonel Sheppard," Teyla says.
"Aha!" Rodney says, vindicated. "But you do agree there's an issue."
"I..." Teyla stops, clearly wary. Obviously the Colonel's talked to her. Maybe tweaked the story a little, exaggerated Rodney's mistakes, minimized his own. Like Rodney hasn't seen himself edged out like that oh fourteen gazillion times before. If the Colonel thinks Rodney's never been down and dirty in the office-politic trenches before, he has another think coming...
And, well, that certainly was a quick little side-step into Crazy Town. Not even a head wound he can blame it on, this time. His issues may be outgrowing the confines of his head. Maybe if he got them their own room he could get some fucking sleep...
"Is everything all right, Rodney?" Teyla asks, her hand warm and strong around his arm. Of course, his brain says. Hunky and dory. But what comes out is:
"No. Maybe? I don't know..." It's all so wrong. He's had his big epiphany. Yes, trust issues, he gets it. Things should all be getting better now, not worse.
"Perhaps you should talk to the Colonel," she says, reasonably.
I tried, he thinks, but knows it's not really true. When it comes to people he knows there are whole continents of things off-limits to McKays. You never ask a lady her age, a woman her weight or anyone who matters whether they give a damn.
"That's probably the wise thing to do," he says. To his surprise she pulls him around, centers his shoulders and touches her head to his head. He surprises her back by pulling her into an awkward hug. It's really easy. It feels like something anyone could do. Hunh.
Maybe he's been wrong about everything all along. Which is not as unacceptable a thought as it should be. The essence of scientific theory is it's potential for falsifiability, after all. The Griffin who lives in his head doesn't find that anywhere near as amusing as he should. Rodney gives Teyla a squeeze and lets her go.
"Right," he says awkwardly. "Food." He hurries away, feeling her smile like a narrow band of warmth at his back.
*
The feast itself is actually almost fun. Their coming has coincided with a ceremonial feast night and everything is laid out on ring of thick carpets under the stars. In the center of the ring there is a bonfire and part of the evening's main focus is the telling of a long, convoluted creation myth through dance, song and lots of razzing from the audience There is music too, and vast quantities of food and two kinds of alcohol -- a fermented beer-like drink of which there is a lot and something fruit-tart and much stronger which comes out in rounds throughout the night.
The Team all have places on the Apualla's great rug. Teyla seems comfortably ensconced at the head woman's side. Rodney finds himself down a ways sitting between Ronon and a bevy of plump-cheeked, bright-eyed young men and women who flirt with each other and with Ronon (and yes, okay, perhaps a little with him too, but in ways that never threaten to turn into actual offers of intergalactic sex.) Not quite the same for John, apparently, who is seated way down toward the opposite end of the Chief's rug between two seriously beautiful girls with dark facial tattoos and complicated hair bands, who seem to be feeding him and petting him and giggling behind their hands with him while the feast goes on around them. John doesn't seem the least bit resistant to their charms.
It makes Rodney wildly uncomfortable every time he forgets and catches an eyeful of what is obviously a seduction of someone by someone and someone else. It's bad enough during the festivities when it's just accidental glances and there's something else to snap his gaze to, but later in the evening, when the fire has burned down to red embers and thick, salt smoke Rodney is just drunk enough that he keeps forgetting to look away.
By now the seduction has moved on to kisses, three beautiful dark heads close together and John with his smiles in between and little touches.
It's not that it's any of Rodney's business what John does with hands in his off hours, but this is just wrong. John is on the job here. He shouldn't be... that. Helplessly, he looks again, sees John nuzzling the one girl's ear, one arm loose around her waist. She giggles. John laughs. Oh, yeah. It's going to be hilarious when the blowguns and machetes come out.
Teyla's hand on his back makes him start. She smiles at him gently when he looks up.
"You're not going," Rodney says a little desperately.
"It is late," Teyla says. "And someone with a clear head is needed to keep the watch."
"Yeah," says Rodney, bitterly, his gaze firmly locked on the flickering embers. "I was just thinking something exactly like that."
He feels the movement as Teyla crouches down beside him, her hand still on his shoulder.
"Rodney," she says, in that reasonable tone that makes him bristle. "Perhaps there are some things that need only the stars for an audience." He looks up at her sharply then, but she nods to their left, where Ronon is necking with a girl in his lap. Their faces are flushed and gleaming, and Ronon's hair is actually in more disarray than usual. He glances up suddenly, feeling their attention and his expression is both sheepish and wary. Teyla just smiles at him and raises her eyebrows and Ronon shrugs and goes back to his kiss, one eye open just a slit, but glittering in the firelight.
Teyla squeezes Rodney's shoulder and he knows it's his cue for a graceful exit but he's not feeling at all graceful tonight. Or generous.
"Well, have fun," he says, sullenly, eyes still on the dying fire. Teyla hesitates, but she doesn't say anything more, just squeezes his shoulder again and then she's gone. It's quiet now, but for the sounds of the fire and the wind. Soft sighs. The rustle of bodies in contact.
He feels it, every lip smack, every swallowed moan. It's been a long time. A really long time. And this is torture. Punishment. He can't help looking then, across the span. There is no more flirting now. Just the three of them entwined in one embrace and then another. Three lovely heads close together and John sprawled back in the arms of one, head thrown back to drink her kisses while the other slides hands under his shirt.
Rodney realizes he's watching open mouthed and nearly panting. Embarrassed and turned on and so empty he aches.
Of course John looks over right then. Their eyes meet and Rodney feels all the blood leave his face, like he's going to faint. If he could just say something, if his mouth hadn't gone bone dry -- but John's eyes are all shadows and knowing and his smile is just so pitiless. It leaves Rodney breathless and he staggers to his feet, needing very much to be elsewhere.
He's unsteady on his feet but manages not to step in the fire, despite his scramble and sway. All he wants is to be alone with this feeling, to stuff it all back down inside. He doesn't even know which way he walks, just that it's away -- from John, from the lights, from all the things that he has no reason to be shoving in his own face. What had he been thinking?
He walks until he remembers that he's on a strange planet and he's kind of drunk and he's walking down the middle of a dirt road in the dark. He's not sure exactly what is going to leap out of the tall, whispering grain but experience has been pretty consistent on the point that something will. He stops, the world swaying a little and runs a hand over his sweaty forehead.
He's not sure it wouldn't be worse to head back.
"Run out of steam already?" John's voice comes from a little ways back behind him. "I was thinking we were in for some kind of cross country race."
"Leave me alone, please," Rodney says, not turning around, humiliation and rage warring like Greek Gods in his head. Thunderbolts pound behind his eyes..
"No, I don't think so," says John, footsteps come nearer. "Seeing as it's my job to come after you when you get yourself in trouble." Rage wins in a sudden upset, pinning humiliation to the mat. His job?
"Is that what this is about?" Rodney says, whirling on him. "I didn't, what, say 'thank you'?" John is actually a lot closer than he expected. Close enough to smell: sweat and alcohol and, oh god, sex. He needs to not be thinking that. John's eyes are hooded but his voice is suddenly quiet. Way too calm.
"You said a lot of things," he says. His eyes glitter in the starlight. Rodney thinks: oh... And also: Oh!
"You..." his mouth goes dry again and he has to swallow, hard. "You remember that?"
John doesn't answer, just stares at him with this intent, fierce non-expression on his face. It's absolutely nothing to go on, but Rodney is close enough to see the tiny tremors that shake John to the rhythm of his heartbeat. That close. He steps closer. John doesn't back away. Nothing to go on but everything he knows and doesn't know about John, life, the universe, himself.
It isn't just a leap of faith, because he is not, never has been, never planned to be, a believer -- but then again...
He closes his eyes anyway, and leans in.
*
Tomatoes
To see tomatoes in your dream symbolizes domestic happiness and harmony. To dream that you are eating tomatoes, foretells of good health.
The Lab is actually quiet this time of night; only himself and Radek, each at work in their own little island of laptops, whiteboards and silent chaos.
There was actually a moment, Rodney realizes every now and then as his fingers tap away, when he and John stopped there, lip to lip. When he opened his eyes and they looked at each other and breathed each other's breath and Rodney remembered the things he'd tried not to remember telling John as the jumper rose to the surface of the ocean and the things John had said to him while refusing to let him die.
Horrifying, emotional stuff. Bleeding hearts and flowers. Mortifying promises. He blushes even now..
He supposes Radek must have heard them, but Radek's not the kind to bring up uncomfortable subjects. Another thing Rodney really likes about Radek.
John. Definitely gives a damn.
And it's embarrassing, true, and messily painfully raw to know that you are a set of two people who know these things about each other. About how much you need -- another rush of heat at that word -- need each other. Count on each other. Believe.
He suspects John is never going to be exactly easy with it. Not that he's one to talk, but there is something. It makes him feel unexpectedly... wise.
There was at that moment nothing but certainty in his mind that he would kiss John, that John was so hungry for his kiss that they would come together with a clash of teeth and sparks of pain, that the kiss and everything that followed would be a door opening into, well, sunshine.
He blushes again, his face heating as he sits tapping away at a new algorithm for more efficient water desalination. There's nothing he can do about it. His new life is full of this... this burble. This embarrassing happiness.
By the time John stops by the lab, stupid grin barely concealed by his usual smirk, Rodney is flushed red from head to toe.
It's a little like hypoxia all the time. Maybe his own personal version of walking rapture of the deep.
Radek tells him in Czech that he might as well leave since he's useless once his boyfriend comes around. It's a testament to the utter breaking of Rodney's brain that all he does is laugh and shut his laptop down. Grab his jacket off the chair.
"Hey," John says, slinging an arm around Rodney's shoulder and leaning back to point an accusatory finger at Zelenka. "I told you. I understand every word you say."
Radak breaks into something regional and rapid fire that Rodney only gets one word in ten from. He chooses to interpret it as 'Please ask Elizabeth to drop by the lab at just around 2300 hours Atlantis time so I can have an excuse to drink coffee with her in the mess.'
And he will. He gets this now. How easy it is to let go, fall back. The ocean of true love has thundered in.
And Rodney McKay has lived to tell the tale.
*
Authors Notes: I don't usually do Authors Notes but I've cribbed enough stuff here to warrant it. All the dream interpretations are from Dream Moods. Do I believe there is a common symbolic vocabulary of dreams -- yes and no. Yes, in that there is a common symbolic vocabulary among various groups of people so why not? And no, because check it, dreams are just whack, yo.