fic: we three, pike/winona/george, pg-13
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singularityTitle: We Three
Author:possibly_thrice
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Pike/Kirk/Winona. No, not that Kirk. The other one. Yeah. Yeaaaah.
Summary: Um. Exposition happens. Porn might happen later, if I continue this.
A/N: Really, really not what I was expecting to write next.
They were friends, perhaps inevitably, almost from the start. Kirk and Winona, one of the few married couples in the Academy, quite content to keep their own counsel until Pike was more or less thrown at them for private tutoring after one too many violent arguments with his teacher – and. Well. They were, after all, possibly the three brightest students in the school, each of them understood by the more perceptive teachers to be command material, and directed as such to certain courses, certain paths that could not help but overlap. And each of them was impatient and hungry for things they could not properly name and bored – qualities that sealed over the differences in age and interests and tempers. Most of the time.
So. Cadets Kirk and Winona (who disliked both her husband's surname and her maiden name and was less than inclined to comply with mere military regulations) and Pike, a close-knitted pair that became a closer-knitted trio. They spent every waking moment together and a good portion of the nonwaking ones, studying and crashing and dreaming ridiculous young dreams. One name always mentioned in conjunction with at least one other, and it was as if it had been that way forever a few days after they were introduced. Friends from the start, for sensible enoughreasons.
And then they became, perhaps inevitably... more than friends, the Kirks and Christopher Pike.
They were young, of course. And attractive. And, as has been noted, bored. Winona sometimes teased and Pike was a weird mix of reckless and genteel that tended to land him uncomfortable situations involving older men and women alike, even if they would never have considered intentionally applying their somewhat dubious charms within their own circle. Pike liked them both far too much to try it, anyway. The same could be said for Winona. Thus there were unspoken rules, mostly because Kirk, well, Kirk was the very definition of innocence, in a few specialized areas.
It is an undeniable narrative fault of this story that there was no sufficiently detached observer to comment on the irony of the fact that if anyone was to blame for the change it was Kirk. The irony happened anyway.
Kirk, and the Kobayashi Maru. For once there was nothing blunt Winona or eloquent Pike could say, when he slunk in, the afternoon after taking it, and proceeded to break every unspoken rule they had. He hit the wall, and flopped down onto the wrong bed, disrupting a whole strata of only slightly illegal records they'd been investigating for a research project, and looked utterly pathetic as he told them that he intended to never fucking lose again.
And then he'd kissed back. Indiscriminately.
Winona postulated, later, that what had followed was perfectly normal and to be expected, all factors taken into account. Pike was unimpressed; Kirk looked earnestly at her and told her not to be so logical; half an hour later Kirk was nursing a fat lip, Winona had agreed that time would be better spent touching than talking about touching, and Pike was extremely cheerful. Generally, they didn't worry about it.
It was just a thing they had, which needn't have continued after that one strange night and did so anyway. It was probably love, although no one ever felt the need to bring it up. The most outside acknowledgment, the nearest they came to trying to label it, was coughing embarrassedly when Kirk was assigned to study the mid-21st century civil rights motion surrounding polyamory. And that was... that, for a blissful while. They coasted through the Academy and did various inappropriate things on Academy property.
They were a little stupid and a little brilliant and that patched over their discontent, their restlessness. Happiness does that to people. For a while.
Then Winona and Kirk graduated, and reality came home from the party, its skirt riding high and its cheeks smudged, in the form of assignment to the U.S.S. Kelvin, active immediately.
“Not fair,” Pike moaned into Winona's elbow, that night. Kirk, sprawled on top of him, looked remarkably apologetic for someone naked and fairly pleased with himself just then.
“There's nothing we can do,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “Listen, you know we can probably get you on there by next shoreleave, when you'll have graduated --”
“-- in three years.”
“What other option do we have? They're not letting you on a mission for two years, which doesn't coincide with any earlier break. You're already on some kind of fucking accelerated track,” Winona pointed out, her hair spilling across her bare shoulder as she tilted her head to face him. “We can't turn this down. Hell, we've been wanting this since we came here.”
“I don't want you to turn it down, I want to stowaway,” Pike said, dryly, and sighed. “Look, I know. I don't like it, but I know.”
“'S right.” Kirk rolled off, incidentally elbowing him in the side, and proceeded to take up most of the bed. “Besides, it's not like we can't afford to send a few prank calls. Interstellar communication is fun! Cheer you up while you're cramming miserably, eh?”
“Friends like you, I don't need enemies,” Pike said. “You'd better come back for me.”
“Of course,” Winona said, while Kirk slid down, mouth distracting in other ways, too busy kissing to make his promises.
Christopher Pike dreams both their deaths, and stops sleeping, and knows that there's no hope. They always were fucking heroic, not to mention utterly abysmal at keeping their word.
But Winona comes back.
Too early, and not for him, but she comes back, whole and full, the baby he's seen across light-years in her arms. It's more surprising than it should be, this crack in his nightmares, this revelation. The survivor lists aren't posted yet and as he eases her into his apartment like the childhood secret he supposes she's become, as he glances at her old sharp shoulderblades rather than her new face, fat and lovely with grief, he allows himself to pretend that this is what he wanted three years ago, and this is what he wanted last night when he read and read and understood. That love is all there is to the wobbling ache in his wrists when he shifts the boy – (“Jim, we, I, we named him Jim”) off her hands without thinking, because she holds him the wrong way, big beautiful hands wrapped gracelessly around the boy's fragile, loose-fitted skin. First time he's seen her incompetent. Probably the last.
She smiles at him, then. It's sardonic and not as familiar as it should be and it suits her like pain does, like the butterfly-fine tracery of lines around her mouth, the tragic traces of lipstick that hasn't been changed for (six exactly six) days. She turns, slowly, drinking in him and his apartment, cataloguing changes. He expected her to avoid him, to avoid this planet, actually; he might have cleared the news, the data pad covered with analysis of the Kelvin, might have bothered to button up his own meticulous break-down, had he predicted this visit. In the end maybe it doesn't matter. There's no apology in the slant of her wintry, lidded eyes, no acknowledgment, no sentiment that neither of them could afford. He's grateful.
“How... are you?” they say, almost at the same time, stumbling echoes. Winona continues alone. “I think I'm not going to die.” She sounds like she's answering herself.
“You didn't. And you won't.”
“I don't even want to. Isn't that weird?” she says.
“I don't know. When's your next flight out?”
She laughs, runs her fingers through her stringy blonde hair, a dangerously unsteady laugh. “You and me, Pikey, we know each other too fucking well, huh?”
He leans towards her, sliding the baby down onto his hip as best he can. He's aware that he is not a little ridiculous looking – he's in uniform, for fuck's sake – but she doesn't mock him. He wishes she would and he stares at her teeth. He's pretty sure that's dried blood between her incisors. Christ.
“Yes.”
“Three months. They insisted. Therapy.”
“Assholes,” he says. “Starfleet High Command. Gotta love their sense of proportion.”
And it's almost like the once-upon-a-time rhythms, camaraderie and flippancy and an excess of affection. Not quite. She doesn't retort, she doesn't assume an indignant pose, melodramatic and languid. Instead he hears paper crinkling under her shoe, and then she's right up against him, her long body barely touching at precise, dangerous points, a constellation of warmth. She reaches up and presses her palms against his cheeks and bites his lower lip, stills there, teeth digging into the delicate skin and her eyes close and large and dark, looking up at his through lowered lashes although she's his height, stooping now. She chews him like a fruit, tilts his head to suit her, and sucks on his tongue. He thinks of old women licking cellophane wrappers for a taste of what is gone.
Their love was undocumented, written in water and sand. He doesn't think it can survive Kirk. He doesn't think it has survived Kirk.
She feels like a religion.
“Your son,” he breathes, pulling the kid back up, hefting him into the crook of his elbow.
Winona opens her mouth and steps back and her mouth is still open, wet, and shocked. “Oh, my god,” she mutters. “I – I can't – I don't know what I was –“
“Winona - we aren't this," he says. "Not anymore."
“No,” she agrees, with an odd look.
And she stays in his kitchen for an hour and drinks coffee and doesn't talk, she drapes herself over his shoulder; not intimate, just heavy. Eventually they might remember how to be friends, he muses, and when she shakes her head, nervous, exasperated with everything and everyone and herself, he tries a awkward, reassuring pat. On the back.
Author:
possibly_thriceRating: PG-13
Pairing: Pike/Kirk/Winona. No, not that Kirk. The other one. Yeah. Yeaaaah.
Summary: Um. Exposition happens. Porn might happen later, if I continue this.
A/N: Really, really not what I was expecting to write next.
They were friends, perhaps inevitably, almost from the start. Kirk and Winona, one of the few married couples in the Academy, quite content to keep their own counsel until Pike was more or less thrown at them for private tutoring after one too many violent arguments with his teacher – and. Well. They were, after all, possibly the three brightest students in the school, each of them understood by the more perceptive teachers to be command material, and directed as such to certain courses, certain paths that could not help but overlap. And each of them was impatient and hungry for things they could not properly name and bored – qualities that sealed over the differences in age and interests and tempers. Most of the time.
So. Cadets Kirk and Winona (who disliked both her husband's surname and her maiden name and was less than inclined to comply with mere military regulations) and Pike, a close-knitted pair that became a closer-knitted trio. They spent every waking moment together and a good portion of the nonwaking ones, studying and crashing and dreaming ridiculous young dreams. One name always mentioned in conjunction with at least one other, and it was as if it had been that way forever a few days after they were introduced. Friends from the start, for sensible enoughreasons.
And then they became, perhaps inevitably... more than friends, the Kirks and Christopher Pike.
They were young, of course. And attractive. And, as has been noted, bored. Winona sometimes teased and Pike was a weird mix of reckless and genteel that tended to land him uncomfortable situations involving older men and women alike, even if they would never have considered intentionally applying their somewhat dubious charms within their own circle. Pike liked them both far too much to try it, anyway. The same could be said for Winona. Thus there were unspoken rules, mostly because Kirk, well, Kirk was the very definition of innocence, in a few specialized areas.
It is an undeniable narrative fault of this story that there was no sufficiently detached observer to comment on the irony of the fact that if anyone was to blame for the change it was Kirk. The irony happened anyway.
Kirk, and the Kobayashi Maru. For once there was nothing blunt Winona or eloquent Pike could say, when he slunk in, the afternoon after taking it, and proceeded to break every unspoken rule they had. He hit the wall, and flopped down onto the wrong bed, disrupting a whole strata of only slightly illegal records they'd been investigating for a research project, and looked utterly pathetic as he told them that he intended to never fucking lose again.
And then he'd kissed back. Indiscriminately.
Winona postulated, later, that what had followed was perfectly normal and to be expected, all factors taken into account. Pike was unimpressed; Kirk looked earnestly at her and told her not to be so logical; half an hour later Kirk was nursing a fat lip, Winona had agreed that time would be better spent touching than talking about touching, and Pike was extremely cheerful. Generally, they didn't worry about it.
It was just a thing they had, which needn't have continued after that one strange night and did so anyway. It was probably love, although no one ever felt the need to bring it up. The most outside acknowledgment, the nearest they came to trying to label it, was coughing embarrassedly when Kirk was assigned to study the mid-21st century civil rights motion surrounding polyamory. And that was... that, for a blissful while. They coasted through the Academy and did various inappropriate things on Academy property.
They were a little stupid and a little brilliant and that patched over their discontent, their restlessness. Happiness does that to people. For a while.
Then Winona and Kirk graduated, and reality came home from the party, its skirt riding high and its cheeks smudged, in the form of assignment to the U.S.S. Kelvin, active immediately.
“Not fair,” Pike moaned into Winona's elbow, that night. Kirk, sprawled on top of him, looked remarkably apologetic for someone naked and fairly pleased with himself just then.
“There's nothing we can do,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “Listen, you know we can probably get you on there by next shoreleave, when you'll have graduated --”
“-- in three years.”
“What other option do we have? They're not letting you on a mission for two years, which doesn't coincide with any earlier break. You're already on some kind of fucking accelerated track,” Winona pointed out, her hair spilling across her bare shoulder as she tilted her head to face him. “We can't turn this down. Hell, we've been wanting this since we came here.”
“I don't want you to turn it down, I want to stowaway,” Pike said, dryly, and sighed. “Look, I know. I don't like it, but I know.”
“'S right.” Kirk rolled off, incidentally elbowing him in the side, and proceeded to take up most of the bed. “Besides, it's not like we can't afford to send a few prank calls. Interstellar communication is fun! Cheer you up while you're cramming miserably, eh?”
“Friends like you, I don't need enemies,” Pike said. “You'd better come back for me.”
“Of course,” Winona said, while Kirk slid down, mouth distracting in other ways, too busy kissing to make his promises.
Christopher Pike dreams both their deaths, and stops sleeping, and knows that there's no hope. They always were fucking heroic, not to mention utterly abysmal at keeping their word.
But Winona comes back.
Too early, and not for him, but she comes back, whole and full, the baby he's seen across light-years in her arms. It's more surprising than it should be, this crack in his nightmares, this revelation. The survivor lists aren't posted yet and as he eases her into his apartment like the childhood secret he supposes she's become, as he glances at her old sharp shoulderblades rather than her new face, fat and lovely with grief, he allows himself to pretend that this is what he wanted three years ago, and this is what he wanted last night when he read and read and understood. That love is all there is to the wobbling ache in his wrists when he shifts the boy – (“Jim, we, I, we named him Jim”) off her hands without thinking, because she holds him the wrong way, big beautiful hands wrapped gracelessly around the boy's fragile, loose-fitted skin. First time he's seen her incompetent. Probably the last.
She smiles at him, then. It's sardonic and not as familiar as it should be and it suits her like pain does, like the butterfly-fine tracery of lines around her mouth, the tragic traces of lipstick that hasn't been changed for (six exactly six) days. She turns, slowly, drinking in him and his apartment, cataloguing changes. He expected her to avoid him, to avoid this planet, actually; he might have cleared the news, the data pad covered with analysis of the Kelvin, might have bothered to button up his own meticulous break-down, had he predicted this visit. In the end maybe it doesn't matter. There's no apology in the slant of her wintry, lidded eyes, no acknowledgment, no sentiment that neither of them could afford. He's grateful.
“How... are you?” they say, almost at the same time, stumbling echoes. Winona continues alone. “I think I'm not going to die.” She sounds like she's answering herself.
“You didn't. And you won't.”
“I don't even want to. Isn't that weird?” she says.
“I don't know. When's your next flight out?”
She laughs, runs her fingers through her stringy blonde hair, a dangerously unsteady laugh. “You and me, Pikey, we know each other too fucking well, huh?”
He leans towards her, sliding the baby down onto his hip as best he can. He's aware that he is not a little ridiculous looking – he's in uniform, for fuck's sake – but she doesn't mock him. He wishes she would and he stares at her teeth. He's pretty sure that's dried blood between her incisors. Christ.
“Yes.”
“Three months. They insisted. Therapy.”
“Assholes,” he says. “Starfleet High Command. Gotta love their sense of proportion.”
And it's almost like the once-upon-a-time rhythms, camaraderie and flippancy and an excess of affection. Not quite. She doesn't retort, she doesn't assume an indignant pose, melodramatic and languid. Instead he hears paper crinkling under her shoe, and then she's right up against him, her long body barely touching at precise, dangerous points, a constellation of warmth. She reaches up and presses her palms against his cheeks and bites his lower lip, stills there, teeth digging into the delicate skin and her eyes close and large and dark, looking up at his through lowered lashes although she's his height, stooping now. She chews him like a fruit, tilts his head to suit her, and sucks on his tongue. He thinks of old women licking cellophane wrappers for a taste of what is gone.
Their love was undocumented, written in water and sand. He doesn't think it can survive Kirk. He doesn't think it has survived Kirk.
She feels like a religion.
“Your son,” he breathes, pulling the kid back up, hefting him into the crook of his elbow.
Winona opens her mouth and steps back and her mouth is still open, wet, and shocked. “Oh, my god,” she mutters. “I – I can't – I don't know what I was –“
“Winona - we aren't this," he says. "Not anymore."
“No,” she agrees, with an odd look.
And she stays in his kitchen for an hour and drinks coffee and doesn't talk, she drapes herself over his shoulder; not intimate, just heavy. Eventually they might remember how to be friends, he muses, and when she shakes her head, nervous, exasperated with everything and everyone and herself, he tries a awkward, reassuring pat. On the back.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-08 07:10 am (UTC)Your prose, darling, is so beautiful it makes me starry-eyed. I don't always agree 100 percent with your characterizations (an odd thing to say, because although you make me believe in them 100 percent, it doesn't always slot into the neat boxes and universes you play around in, if that makes sense? I suppose it's the fact that you're willing to write the characters as human and flawed as opposed to the Paragons of Virtue that the silver screen portrays) but God. Your prose. Unf.
Plus, Pike. Which alone is love. ♥
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-08 07:20 am (UTC)(Also: ISN'T HE AWESOME? :DDDD)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-08 12:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-08 08:37 pm (UTC)