Mind Games 1 (garrote), a General Hospital vignette by Sue Castle. Rated NC17, no copyright infringement intended, just a little outing for the brothers. This series follows Variations on a Corpse and won't make much sense without reading them first.

Lucky knew as soon as he saw Elizabeth come tearing up to him that something was dreadfully wrong. With the memory of standing up to Helena and not bowing to her programming fresh in his mind, the only thing he could think was that somehow, Helena had attacked Elizabeth. He caught her hand.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

"It's Nikolas!"

His heart froze in his chest. Her words washed over him, painting a vivid picture of Luke rendering his brother unconscious and kidnapping him. Somehow, his father had found out about Helena's part in Faison's kidnapping and brainwashing him. Now Luke was going to take it out on the one person in the world Helena cared about.

The one person in the world Lucky loved more than anyone else alive.

No way in hell.

"He's taken him to Helena's," he growled, grabbing Elizabeth's arm and hauling her after him at a dead run. "Come on! We have to hurry!"

As fast as they went, they were still too close to too late. Bursting into the room, tearing around Helena's still form, Lucky'd seen his father tighten the garrote around Nikolas' neck with a decisive twist.

"NO!" he screamed, breath short, hands out as if he could stop Luke from across the room. Hard blue eyes met his, and finally, too damned slowly, his father took the cord away from his brother's throat.

"You coming with me or you staying with them?" Luke asked as he turned to go. Lucky gave the question all the consideration it deserved. None.

"I'm not leaving without my brother." He glared at his father. Luke shrugged.

"Figured you'd say that."

He left, and Lucky didn't waste time watching him go. He was too busy touching Nikolas' face, staring at the unnatural paleness under the warm brown skin. This was too much. Going too far. Getting too close.

Nikolas finally did come around, and the first thing he did was turn on Helena. Good. He was always better with words than Lucky was. The only thing Lucky could add to his brother's stinging condemnation of their elders' continued warfare was to tell Helena, flat out, "You're alone. So's my father. That's all you'll ever be. That's all you'll ever have. Next time, why don't you just try to kill each other, and leave us out of it!"

"Get me out of here," Nikolas demanded, but his eyes were begging.

"Can you make it?" Lucky asked even as he was rounding the end of the couch and taking his brother's arm, helping him to stand.

"With your help," Nikolas told him.

Lucky swallowed hard against the tightness in his throat and hovered behind Nikolas all the way back to the docks. Covering his brother's back. Staying as close to his heat as he could get.

Then they were back on what passed for dry land, and he could see his father lurking in the shadows, waiting for him. The hardest thing he'd ever done was get rid of Nikolas for a little while, but Elizabeth had seen Luke too, and she made it easier. Lucky didn't turn to watch as Nikolas left. He didn't need to; he could feel the warmth leaving him, turning him to ice as his father came down to face him.

He didn't remember, afterward, what he'd said. He'd known it hadn't made any difference. Vengeance was the only thing Luke cared about. Love didn't come into it. Never had. Never would. Luke didn't give a shit who he hurt, as long as that stupid scorecard he kept in his head said he'd won at the end of the day. As far as Lucky was concerned, it was the end.

Not waiting for his father's footsteps to fade away, he headed for Kelly's. Very shortly after that, he showed up on the steps of Nikolas' cottage. To his intense surprise, Gia answered the door. She looked as surprised to see him as he was to see her, and just as displeased.

"Hi, what do you want?" she snapped.

"None of your damned business," he snapped back. "Where's Nikolas?"

"Upstairs. But he's already gone to bed. Looked like he'd been put through a wringer, and the place was a mess -- "

He'd brushed past her and was up the stairs before she finished babbling. He knew why the place had been trashed, and by whom, and what toll it had taken on Nikolas. That was why he was there. It was still none of Gia's business. As to why she'd taken up residence in Nikolas' place ... he'd get that out of his brother later.

Much later. There were more important things to see to right now. Like what state Nikolas was in and what, if anything, Lucky could do to help.

He stopped on the threshold of his brother's room and stared at the figure huddled in a ball in the middle of the bed. The pillows were bunched beneath him and all the covers were pulled up tight around him. He was sound asleep, but even in sleep, there were frown lines around his mouth and eyes. He looked like a stressed, scared, and very much alone little kid.

It made Lucky's heart break.

In the hall outside, he heard Gia's footsteps. He turned to look at her just as she opened her mouth. Putting his fingers to her lips, he shook his head, then pulled away and closed the door in her face. She looked confused, calculating, like she was balancing a profit sheet in her head. Standard Gia. Not giving a particular damn about her at the moment, being much more concerned with his brother, Lucky dropped his jacket on the floor, turned the lock in the door handle, and angled a chair under it, for added insurance.

After all, she'd blackmailed once. There was nothing to say she wouldn't do it again, unless he made damned sure she didn't get the ammunition.

Walking quietly over to stand at the bedside, he reached a hand out toward Nikolas. As the shadow of his movement passed over his brother's face, Nikolas flinched, still asleep, obviously still jumpy. Lucky couldn't blame him. It wasn't every day a guy got kidnapped out of his own home, dragged to his dragon grandmother's lair, nearly throttled by his half-brother's deranged father, then barely escaped just to return home to, of all people, Gia.

Tip-toeing to the other side of the bed, Lucky stripped off his clothes and carefully, slowly slipped under the covers beside Nikolas. Even in his sleep, wired as he was, his brother knew him. He put his arms around the balled-up shape, and Nikolas turned to him, burrowing into his arms like he had just come home. Lucky felt his throat tighten again, and buried his face against Nikolas' hair, smothering the tears before they could fall.

One more thing to blame Luke for; one more crime to lay at Helena's door. They'd hurt Nikolas. That was unforgivable.

He didn't sleep at all that night, simply lay there and kept watch. For so long others had kept watch over him, for him. It was Lucky's turn now, one he took gladly. It wasn't much, but it was something. And if Nikolas slept better because Lucky was holding him, watching over him, then it was something important.

For both of them.

It was very early in the morning when Nikolas finally stirred. He came awake all at once, eyes darting around the room, body tensed for a fight.

"It's okay," Lucky whispered, patting him gently. "It's me."

Bright dark eyes stared up at him through the shadows. "Lucky?" Nikolas whispered just as quietly.

"Yeah. You okay?" His fingers were moving even as he asked, pushing the fall of dark hair off Nikolas' forehead, touching the bruises at the side of his mouth lightly, trailing down his jaw line to trace, butterfly-light, the ligature bruise across his throat. Damn Luke, anyway.

White teeth glinted briefly up at him. "When you touch me like that, nothing hurts."

Lucky had to grin back at him, before reaching down and brushing a kiss across the darkest bruise below his cheekbone where Luke had manhandled him with the chloroform rag. "I'm sorry," he said somberly.

"Not your fault," Nikolas told him roughly. "You're not accountable for Luke's actions, just as I'm not accountable for Helena's. We can only be responsible for what we ourselves do, not the harm our families do to one another." Then he stretched up far enough to touch his mouth to Lucky's, and sighed. "Thank you for coming."

"Not yet," Lucky whuffed against his lips. Nikolas started to chuckle, and Lucky swallowed the sound in a deep kiss. When they got their tongues untangled again, he finished the thought. "But soon."

"Not too soon, I hope," Nikolas mouthed against his chest. Lucky shivered.

Nothing else ever felt this right. He put the thought of dreams, and New York, and Elizabeth to the back of his mind. It was as if he lived two lives. One was in a dream world of sunlight and paint, lipstick on Elizabeth's mouth tasting waxy on his tongue, hair smelling of flowers tucked under his chin. The other was a dream world of shadows and strength, warmth he never felt anywhere else, honey skin and strong hands and a connection he'd never have with anyone else.

The worlds never touched one another.

Sometimes he wondered if the weird split in his life was an offshoot of the brainwashing. Sometimes he wondered what would happen if the worlds ever did collide. Most of the time he didn't think about it at all. He just went with his instincts.

At the moment, his instincts were screaming at him to move. So he did.

Reassurance joined with possession as he ran his hands and his mouth over Nikolas' body, starting at his mouth and roaming to his knees. He spent a long time kissing and stroking every bruise Luke had left on Nikolas, from the rope marks on his wrists to the fingerprints on his arms, the cord bruises on his throat and the long dark bruises the stairs had made on his thighs and ass as Luke had dragged him up the steps.

The only sounds in the room were sighs, and kisses, and the occasional shushing as Lucky remembered Gia, probably sitting right outside the door trying to listen through it. The silence made the touches even more intense, if that was possible. By the time Nikolas came in his mouth, they were both covered with sweat and shuddering with strain.

He would have come himself, from the feel and the taste of Nikolas, but his brother urged him up and moved against him. The invitation was clear, and he was in no state to resist even if he'd had the will to say no. Sliding up behind Nikolas, heads sharing the same pillow, his face buried in the curve of Nikolas' neck, he slowly entered Nikolas, smothering his gasp in Nikolas' skin, covering his brother's gasp with the palm of his hand.

As close to the edge as he was, even with the best intentions in the world, he couldn't last long, and Nikolas didn't make it easy for him to last at all. Shoving back onto him as fiercely as Lucky pushed forward, it took very little time for him to come. The world spun, and he clutched Nikolas hard against him, his anchor in a universe that wouldn't stop turning on him.

They held one another for a long time afterward. Nothing much was said; it didn't need to be. It was the two of them against the world, against their families, against anything and anyone who would harm either of them.

Always.

end mind games 1

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