fic: torture would make anyone maudlin, okay?, pike/george kirk, pg

[possibly_thrice]

Title: Torture Would Make Anyone Maudlin, Okay?
Author: possibly_thrice 
Rating: PG
Pairing: Pike/George Kirk, Pike/George/Winona implied. (I never INTENDED for them to be my OT3, okay? *ducks*)
Summary: Prompt from st_xi_kink : "While Pike is near death after what happened with Nero (maybe during surgery or whatever) he gets a visit from George Kirk." Aboard the Narada, left to rot, Pike is receives a Visitor from Beyond The Grave. Can be read as part of my spontaneous ongoing threesome thing, doesn't have to be.
A/N: Seriously, though, I kind of love them. And I don't even know why.

When George Kirk fades into (agony-streaked) view, they stare at each other for a full minute in silence.

"You know, I'd never pinned you for the ectoplasmic type," Pike says at last, conversationally as he can manage.

"I'm a hallucination, not a ghost."

"Yeah, but you're shimmering," Pike says. It's true. George isn't transparent, but under the impossibly bright lamp the Romulan called Ayel set up to get a better look at his, hah, work, the man is a little flimsy, a shade less solid than he should be: delineated more by glints and long lines of reflected light on bare skin than by the contrast between his flesh and the chilly air.

George glances down. "Whoa. Huh. You're right. Maybe I am a ghost. Memory's a little fuzzy."

"Oh, no, now you're definitely a hallucination; if you were actually George Kirk's dearly departed spirit, there is no way you would have given in that easily."

"Yeah, unless I had other things on my mind, like you dying," George retorts, stepping forward until he's looming over Pike's upturned face. "Memory's a lot fuzzy. I'd forgotten how argumentative blood loss makes you. Who the hell did you piss of this badly?"

"Your man Nero," Pike says, wryly. Well, he intends it as wryly. It comes out sort of... bubbling. His throat is not, currently, a happy throat, for reasons he doesn't really want to think about. His blood tastes thin and bitter. Kind of like the lesser grade of tap water. "History came back to bite me in the ass. Your fault, probably."

George's lips purse gorgeously, rounded and dangerous around his translucent teeth. "Why would you go near him?"

"Why'd you?"

He blinks, and his gaze skims away from to Pike's face to his stained but still recognizably gold shirt. "Oh," he says. "Captain now, is it? And your crew --"

"Yes," Pike murmurs. He's too tired and in too much pain to explain about Vulcan, hell, about Earth, (the slippery movement at the base of his spine, an alien thing's feelers tangled around vertebrae and too-honest nerves; too far gone to explain about betrayal). He wants to, though, and that worries him, under the circumstances. He wants to free his aching, restrained arm and cup George's narrow jaw in his hand and empty his mouth into the familiar ear.

"Goddamnit," George says, kneeling right through the liquid at the base of the slab -- there's no lapping, no characteristic sucking noises as he drops to eye level and tries without success to smooth back Pike's hair from his bruised forehead. His fingers are more opaque than the rest of him, brown and clever and cool, as if someone is spreading a fine layer of clay over his face. It occurs to Pike that he might be the one who's vanishing, here. "You had to get yourself mixed up with a psychopath? Winona's not here somewhere, is she?"

"I -- no. No. No, she's not."

"Well, that's something," George mutters. "She always was smarter than both of us combined. Did you two soldier on bravely after my tragic and abrupt exit from our little arrangement?"

"No," Pike says. He doesn't tremble, but it's a close thing.

"Ah. Pity." And without warning, quite matter-of-factly, George straddles Pike's hips. Pike can't decide whether he owes his subconscious gratitude or a broken nose, although he's pretty sure ids don't actually have noses to break, and George is kissing him, which cuts the rambling short, at least. In form it's exactly like it was, which makes sense, since this apparition is just (if that's the word -- just) a recollection unfolded, made gloriously real by his desperate brain, neither more or less. But George goes deep, tongue sliding against Pike's tongue, mouth moving as if to swallow the breath from Pike's lungs, and he believes in this, whatever else. Even the feel of it is nearer what it was, a roughness added to the smooth electricity of before.

"So. Dying, hmm?" Pike says, after a while of being enveloped by half-registered touches, straining against his straps for more or for relief, he can't tell which.

"Well... yeah. Fortunately, you can't go towards the light while I'm sitting on you," George says, lifting his head an inch or two, and in an instant becomes heavier, apparently by smiling his shy smile. His outdated uniform scrapes against the crusting cloth over Pike's stomach, he looks like he might be breaking into a proper sweat.

Pike squints at him. "Let me get this straight. You're making yourself more real to keep my, hah, my spirits up and body down so I won't die -- and you're at the same time a symptom of my dissolving higher cognitive function? That makes... wow, absolutely no sense."

"I don't want to think about it any more than you do."

"What do you want, George?" Pike says quietly.

"Not to see you again for another half a century?" George says.

"You make a really unconvincing dead guy," Pike informs him. George laughs and laughs.

"I want you," he says, and then, following a slightly too long pause, which he uses to bite gently down on Pike's neck, and no, Pike definitely doesn't whimper, no, of course not "...to win this, you fuckwit. If that means being a paradox on legs, hey, I can do that. I'm told I have very nice legs."

"By who?"

"You."

Pike doesn't bother to contest that one. George falls forward, lying on top of him, draped like a blanket or, possibly, a tiger-skin rug.

"Did you just compare me to a rug?"

"No regrets," Pike says. George nods.

"I'd exact a painful revenge right now except you'd die of it, just to be spiteful. So instead --"

The second kiss is slow and sweet and soft. He loses it a little, recovers when his vision starts to flicker worryingly, distractingly. Through George's lowered lashes he watches someone run towards him. Them. "Who's that?" George mouths on Pike's cheek, slipping sideways, trailing wet gentle heat.

Pike stares until his eyes are dry. "I think it's your son," he mouths back.

"That's my cue," George says, with a small sigh, and melts into Pike's aching bones.

"Of all the times to respect genre conventions," Pike mumbles, exhaling.

But he supposes that this way everybody wins. Which is, of course, the point.

Bastard, Pike thinks, only a little blissfully, and turns to face his rescuer. Alive.