Disclaimer – If I owned Eureka, then second season would have been slashier.
Author – Emcey
Info – AU of 2nd Season Episode "Noche de Suenos".
Teaser – It was all Dr. Childress' fault. If it hadn't been for her dream, Nathan never would have been standing around daydreaming about what kissing Jack Carter was really like. Stupid fangirl…
'If Not for the Slash Fans'
Chapter One
Nathan sat down on his chair and reclined it all the way. Snagging a blanket out of the basket he kept between the couch and chair, Nathan pulled it over himself and let his eyes close.
He wondered if Allison had left the dream device on. He might have refused to turn it off, but that didn't really matter. It wasn't exactly complicated to turn off. If Allie really thought that it was causing the shared dreams then she'd flip the damn thing off herself.
It was getting more and more difficult to deal with Allison since returning to Eureka. Nathan still cared about her and he'd fought hard before their divorce and even for some time afterwards to try and patch up their relationship. He'd wanted Kevin to have a family that was whole. Yet… it was after Kim Anderson's death that Nathan realized the truth.
Henry loved Kim – he adored Kim more than life itself. Losing Kim nearly tore Henry into pieces; Nathan could barely bring himself to look Henry in the eyes. If it weren't for Jack, Henry probably would have left Eureka then and there. Kim had been Henry's world…
Once, Nathan felt the same way about Allison. Once, he'd felt as if losing her would rip him to shreds. Once… before she really did rip him to shreds.
Their fights had started over Nathan's tendency to continue concentrating on his work after getting home. It irritated Allison that he couldn't just shut off part of himself. It irritated him that she couldn't understand that he was either all or nothing. If he did something, then Nathan gave it his everything.
Now the truth he was starting to understand was that he wasn't in love her anymore.
Really, he ought to get up and make himself dinner, but Nathan was warm and comfortable by that time, so he just shifted a little. Curling up a little and pulling the blanket higher, Nathan let himself drift off to sleep. Yet in those moments before he fell asleep completely, Nathan's mind moved away from Allison and towards something – someone – else.
-=-=
Nathan watched nervously as Allison walked down the stairs in her pajamas and robe. He wasn't exactly certain what he was doing there, but what he had to say was important. "Allison…"
"Nathan," she cut him off. "I've made up my mind."
"So have I," Nathan agreed, and then kissed her.
Wait… that was not what he'd wanted to do. What was going on here?!
Separating from Allison, Nathan glanced to the side and noticed the Sheriff standing there. He said "Carter?", but that was all the attention he could spare before inexplicably leaning in towards Allison again. Nathan had never been grateful for having a kiss interrupted before, but when Jack's hand slid between his face and Allison's, Nathan was glad to back off even though he was irritated it was Carter.
Then Carter was kissing Allison and the jolt of jealousy that Nathan had always felt seeing the two of them flirt together flooded him. It didn't make any sense. He wasn't in love with Allison anymore. She wasn't the one he wanted to be kissing.
She wasn't…
But what about Jack?
Dr. Childress appeared out of nowhere and started talking about efficiency. That's when everything clicked. They were in someone's dream and, judging by Childress' little rant, it was likely the efficiency expert's.
"Why don't you two try then?" Childress turned Jack around so that he was facing Nathan. "Remember, efficiency of movement is key…"
It was a dream, so Nathan figured 'why not?' Leaning down slightly, he captured Jack's mouth with his own and immediately felt the response. The feeling of Jack's lips on his own was electric and warmth spread from Jack's hands, which rested on Nathan's shoulders in order to pull the taller scientist closer. Nathan moaned softly when he felt Jack's tongue against his lips and then in his mouth. The taste of Jack was overwhelming…
Then it was over. For a moment he was a spectator watching a brief snippet of Henry flashing something familiar in Jack's face and then Nathan was participating again. Everything was being spoken in Spanish, Jo was wearing a period style dress, and Fargo had on an all black outfit. Nathan could only imagine how ridiculous he looked. They were clearly playing off of 'Zorro'.
So while Nathan's 'body' in the dream acted and spoke as directed, Nathan's mind wandered back to the kiss between himself and Jack. While everything else in the dreams had been out of his control, Nathan couldn't help but feel like the kiss had been completely under his power.
Jerking awake, Nathan's first reaction was to bring his right hand up to his mouth. Even if it was just a dream… he'd kissed Jack Carter. He wondered what it would've been like if it had been real…
-=-=
After changing into clean clothes, Nathan went to GD only to learn that he'd missed out on the initial testing, most of the investigation, and Jack thought that Nathan's dream device was responsible for what was going on. Allison had tried to defend him; not that she'd tried particularly hard.
"The receiver I adapted from Suenos' device visually interprets the electrical impulses created during REM sleep," Nathan explained to the group that Carter and Allison had convened.
"So why is it messing with our acetometiphine levels?" Jack asked, sounding worn out.
"Acetylcholine," Nathan corrected automatically, with a bit of a smirk. Though really he was starting to feel worried. There were already a few people who weren't waking up and Jack looked like hell.
"Don't push me," Jack warned, his eyes sharp despite his obvious exhaustion. Nathan nodded slightly, letting Jack know he'd gotten the message. Don't mess with the sleep-deprived Sheriff: check.
"There's no reason why it would affect one person, much less half the town." Nathan glanced over at Allison and immediately knew that she would not be his ally in this.
"How many people show elevated levels?" she asked, ignoring Nathan altogether.
"Fifty, total," Henry responded immediately.
"Wait," Jack interrupted quietly, "fifty even?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Jo, you were taking the dream statements, right?" Jack turned to his deputy, who looked down at her notes.
"Yeah and I had around about fifty different dreams that were shared by everyone else."
"Well, they're the sources of the dreams," Henry sounded excited. Not that Nathan could blame him. This was the break they'd been looking for. Fifty was an even number that made for a good initial testing pool. Clearly this was caused by some GD experiment, not Nathan's dream device. "I mean, that's why their acetylcholine levels are so high."
Jack took the pad away from Jo to look over her findings. "Okay, so what do we know about these fifty people?"
"But my name isn't on there," Fargo pointed out.
"That's a good thing, Fargo," Nathan muttered, not really paying attention anymore. It was completely impossible that he'd had any control in those dreams last night so it couldn't have been his own impulses that led to him kissing Carter. It was all on Childress, apparently. So why did that make him feel so disappointed?
"I know," Fargo sounded amused, "because that means that I wasn't the one who had the man in black dream."
Nathan looked up to see everyone looking between himself and Jo. "Well it sure as hell wasn't me." He smirked at Jo whose reaction was a little slow; clearly she was pretty tired herself.
"Oh god," she mumbled and then closed her eyes. Her hands made the trip to her face, but she managed to resist the urge to hide her face behind them.
"Focus," Jack's tone was growing more urgent. "Jake, you, me… we're all on the list, alright? So we're searching his house and what do we find we have in common?"
"Uh… none of us realized our full potential?" Jo shrugged as Jack shot her an irritated look.
"Well… yes… but we're also the same pay grade: G3." Jack handed the computer pad over to Allison. "Can you run this list and tell me who else is G3?"
Allison tapped a few buttons, frowned at the results, and then looked up. "All of you," she confirmed.
"So fifty people, all the same pay grade, all with cranked levels of," Jack glanced over at Henry, who filled in the word 'acetylcholine' before Jack continued. "Thank you. That's got to mean something, right?"
"G3 refers to work schedule, not pay level." Allison corrected. "All the jobs have set hours so that overtime doesn't compromise safety or security."
"L-like truck drivers." Nathan noticed that Jack was starting to stammer out his words and it was increasing the longer the Sheriff spoke.
"Yes. Or reactor technicians or weapons test specialists… uh, network engineers?" Allison trailed off and shook her head. She just couldn't see the connection.
"The network…" Jack interrupted, latching onto something that everyone else was overlooking. Even when he was so fatigued that he was beginning to stutter, Jack Carter still managed to see connections where scientists failed. Nathan suddenly knew that Jack was about to prove that the dream device was partially responsible for what was going on.
"What about it?" Allison asked.
"Um… Childress was saying she was working on some… some sort of neural network." Jack looked irritated that he couldn't remember more.
"Yes, she's beta testing a system of distributive computing with humans," Allison filled in.
"Okay…" Jack didn't appear to really know what to do with the extra information. "But given that Stark's dream receiver isn't powerful enough to cause shared dreaming, could the neural network be used as an amplifier?"
Carter shoots, he scores! Dammit…
"It's possible," Nathan admitted, moving to standing up. "We should shut it down."
"Carter?" Jo sounded panicky and Nathan looked over to where she was sitting on the couch. He hadn't even noticed her go over there.
"Yeah?" Jack responded.
"Do it fast."
"You're not coming?"
Nathan had a sinking feeling that was confirmed with Jo's next few words.
"Um, I would," Jo looked scared despite the calm tone she was using, "but I can't move my legs."
Henry and Fargo hurried over to check on Jo while Nathan and Jack exchanged looks. Nathan wondered what Jack saw on his face that made the Sheriff avert his eyes so fast.
Jo couldn't move, there was a dead truck driver, and there were a lot of people not waking up. Oh god, what had he done? He just wanted to save his son.
Oh god…
-=-=
"We all sleep a third of our lives away," Childress was saying. Nathan was paying more attention to the way Jack's hand kept clenching and unclenching. "I figured why not find a way to use our brains during the downtime?"
"Yeah, sure, why not?" Jack muttered, clearly not impressed.
Nathan tuned out the next conversation, not bothering to point out that technically Childress was still supposed to obtain permission to mess with someone's neural chemistry instead of conducting a double blind study. She was also supposed to ensure that the subjects were actually getting the correct amount of sleep since it was a sleep study instead of assuming they were. It should have been at least a little obvious that the town's Sheriff and Deputy didn't sleep regular hours since one of them had to be on call at all hours of the day.
"But why the sudden build up of acetylcholine?" Allison asked, getting Nathan's attention back on topic.
"Probably lack of sleep," Nathan answered quietly.
Childress practically bristled at him. "No, the people in the study were selected based on the regularity of their sleep patterns," she objected.
"Yeah, but Jake's been secretly doing double shifts and no one in town's been sleeping normally this week," Jack explained.
The look of guilt on Childress' face was oh so very familiar to Nathan. It matched how he felt exactly. "I'll shut the network down immediately," Childress assured them.
"That won't solve the buildup of acetylcholine in the test subjects," Nathan spoke up. He could barely make himself look at Jack so he looked between Jack and Childress instead of one directly. "Their bodies are overproducing the compound like a hyperactive gland."
"If you can cleanse the system of the compound entirely it may reset the body's rate of production," Childress offered.
"Oh-okay," Jack nodded, acting rather twitchy. "Good, let's do that."
"The excess neural transmitters are acting like toxins in your body and I have no idea how we scrub that out," Allison snapped. She was looking pretty scared herself. Nathan didn't blame her, though. He hadn't a clue how to fix his latest screw up either.
Jack looked annoyed as his eyes traveled from face to face. "So GD has the most advanced waste reduction system in the world, but we can't clean this stuff out of us?"
Allison looked like she wanted to tell Jack that it wasn't that simple but couldn't find the right words. So she turned her attention to Nathan and gave him a look that practically begged him to explain things to Jack. Except… Jack's words had sparked an idea.
"Maybe we can," Nathan hedged.
Thirty minutes later, Jack was in a wet suit in a tank filled with oxygen rich plasma that, theoretically, would purge the acetylcholine from Jack's body. In reality, Jack looked like he was drowning.
Well fuck. All Nathan really wanted to do with Jack was see what kissing him outside of their dreams was like and here he was almost drowning the man instead. He could only dimly hear Allison's objections as he stared at Jack, willing the man to breathe… to survive.
"Come on, Carter," Allie muttered, echoing Nathan's thoughts.
Still, inside the tank, Jack jerked and struggled as he tried to breathe in the plasma. Then the readouts began to stabilize and, as though a switch had been flicked, Jack was breathing the plasma normally, as if it was unusually thick air.
"His acetylcholine levels are dropping," Allison observed in relief.
"Oxygen's on the rise," he confirmed.
"He's going to be okay." Allison sounded like she was smiling.
"He's going to be fine… and we have a cure," Nathan absolutely hated himself for what he had to say next, but Kevin was still his first priority, "which means we can keep moving forward with our research." The look on Allison's face was torn, which about matched how Nathan felt. He didn't want to use the dream device anymore, but what choice was there? Nathan left before Allison could say anything or, worse, he said something he'd regret.
Wandering aimlessly, Nathan didn't have a destination in mind but wasn't all that surprised when he found himself standing in front of his empty lab. Walking inside, Nathan seated himself in one of the chairs and leaned forward. His head rested in his hands while his elbows perched precariously on his knees. Without warning, his whole body began to shake as everything – the guilt over what his dream device had caused, his fears for Kevin, and the sudden onslaught of feelings for Carter – finally overwhelmed him.
A/N - Here's part one of three. This episode is one of my favorites all because of the 'man if black' dream. The swordfight between Fargo and Stark was hilarious and the blatant Zorro references... the kissing scene was funny too, but it really needed one little addition... having Nathan and Jack kiss. So adding that in was the perfect segue into the 'slash fan' challenge that Kit presented me with.
Hehehe...