Mind Games 3 (target), a General Hospital vignette by Sue Castle. Rated NC17, no copyright infringement intended, just a little outing for the brothers. (note : does not follow canon for Port Charles and bends canon for General Hospital)

Lucky felt more relaxed than he had in a long time as he stepped off the elevator and walked to the counter to check in for his weekly head examination with Kevin. Things were going well with Elizabeth; his mom was happy and excited about the future; Luke hadn't kidnapped or threatened anybody lately; Lulu was healthy and having fun in school; Emily had her family to worry about her, and who cared what was up with Zander; the shrink lessons had finally snapped the leash Helena had held him on; and Nikolas was doing well, opening up about missing Stefan and allowing Lucky to do some comforting for a change.

It was the last thought that had him smiling as he walked up to his Aunt Amy. Life was good. Weird, but that was normal. For the first time in too long, it was a good weird instead of a bad weird.

"Hi," he greeted Amy cheerfully. "Here to get my head shrunk!"

She grinned back at him, then looked confused. "It says here that your appointment is with Doctor Baldwin, Lucky. Did you stop seeing Kevin?"

"Not that I know of." He felt as confused as she looked. "Who changed the appointment?"

"Doctor Collins did," a lady's voice behind him said reassuringly. "I'm Gail Baldwin, Lucky. Can we talk?"

He swung around and instinctively took her outstretched hand. Her words were friendly, and her face was neutral, but her eyes were warning him. He glanced up at the little round mirror that allowed the nurses to see down the corridor without leaving the nurses' station, and saw Helena lurking. She was watching them like some sort of alligator with its eyes barely peering out of the water in a swamp. Hungry, and mean with it. He shook Gail's hand gently.

"Yeah. I'd like that." He didn't know what was going on, but he'd play along. If Kevin trusted this woman, he would too, and he sure as hell didn't trust Helena -- so if it made the Wicked Witch nervous, he'd definitely go for it.

Once in Doctor Baldwin's office, she waved him to a seat. "I haven't been told all the details, Lucky, but Kevin needs to talk with you without letting Mrs. Cassadine know. So we arranged this small deception in order to allow you to meet with him without interference." She motioned to someone standing behind him, and Lucky craned to look over his shoulder. Kevin was standing in the corner.

"Sorry about all the cloak and dagger business," Kevin said, with a helpless shrug. "But something's happened, and you need to know about it before we go any further."

Gail stood up and, smiling at both of them, excused herself. Using the connecting door between her office and the side hall, she slipped out where Helena couldn't see her, leaving the men alone together. Kevin walked around the desk slowly, perching on the corner and staring down at Lucky seriously.

"Do you remember the last time you talked with Helena Cassadine?"

Lucky stared back up at him. "Yeah, a couple days ago, out on the docks. She tried to trigger me to stay with her, listen to her, and I blew her off. It's working, doc."

"Not well enough, apparently." Kevin took a deep breath, and Lucky looked at him. The situation was making him jumpy. "I need to tell you a few things, Lucky, and they're going to be upsetting. You need to know that nothing that happened is your fault, and that I'm not going to abandon you. The subterfuge with Gail is a smoke screen we may need to keep up for awhile until we can figure out what Helena has done to you and neutralize the damage. But I'm not giving up on you, and I don't want you to give up on yourself."

Lucky gulped. Kevin's eyes were staring right through him, and he thought, in the midst of wondering what the hell was going on, that the guy would make a great hypnotist. "What happened?" he croaked.

"She got to you one last time before you were able to break her first level hold." Kevin reached for a VCR remote and switched on a television sitting beside his desk. "This will be disturbing, but remember -- it was not your fault. I don't blame either one of us."

The tape started to run, and he froze, staring at the screen, unable to blink much less turn away. He saw himself creeping into a bedroom he didn't recognize. Going up to a sleeping Doctor Collins and handcuffing him to his bed. Giving him a pretty damned efficient blow job. Kissing him and taking the cuffs off and covering him up and sneaking back out.

He didn't know whether to be turned on or freaked out. After giving it a little thought, he decided he was both. "Shit," was all he could find to say.

"Deep," Kevin agreed. "If we let it stop us. But that's up to you. Do you feel confident, having seen this, in allowing me to continue to try to help you?"

Lucky looked up at him like he'd lost his mind. "Of course I do. I was the one chaining you to the bed and sucking you off." Kevin blushed uncontrollably; Lucky ignored it and continued. "If you can trust me, man, I can certainly trust you."

Kevin swallowed, then nodded. "Good. Second thing I need to tell you. There are indications that your programming goes quite deeply into your unconscious mind. Will you allow me to hypnotize you in an effort to determine how deeply it goes?"

Grinning slightly at his earlier thoughts, Lucky nodded. "Yeah. Let's do it." Looking into those eyes wouldn't be a chore. From what he'd just seen, he'd done a lot worse.

The last thing he remembered was counting slowly back from a hundred, and the intent look in Kevin's eyes. The next thing he knew, those eyes were back, staring into him, and he felt wiped out.

"Get anything interesting?" he asked, surprised to find his throat dry. He must've talked a lot.

"Yes," Kevin told him bluntly.

"Do I want to hear it?" Lucky wasn't sure he did.

"One part, at least." Kevin reached for the remote again, and Lucky flinched. "This is the session we just completed. You need to know this."

The tape wound back, and Lucky saw himself, eyes open, face relaxed, appearing to be completely aware of a conversation he didn't remember having. It was weirdness on top of weirdness. Kevin stopped the tape and played it forward, catching himself mid-question.

" -- will be the target if Helena is threatened?"

"The person I love most in the world," Lucky responded calmly. Kevin, on the tape, looked distraught, but recovered himself quickly.

"Who would that be?"

Lucky expected to hear himself say Lulu, since his little sister was the one he was most protective of in his family. Or his mother, perhaps, she'd be a good target for Helena -- wouldn't be the first time. Even Elizabeth. She'd been a target of a sort already, when he'd been trained like a seal to push her toward Nikolas every time he opened his mouth. So his actual answer shocked the hell out of him.

"Nikolas," he said, as if it was the most self-evident thing in the world.

Well. That explained a lot.

"What now, doc?" he asked when he got over the shock and could talk again.

"You need to talk to your brother," Kevin answered him. "And so do I."

Walking into Luke's office wasn't the easiest thing Nikolas had ever done, but it was one of the most satisfying. He was a Cassadine; he never admitted fear. That didn't mean he didn't feel it, and Luke was nuts enough that Nikolas would have been crazy not to be a little nervous around him. Not to mention the last time the man had been around him he'd had a garrote pulled tight around Nikolas' throat. He didn't have to remember that for it to make him uptight.

He said what he had to say and left. Luke had tried to intimidate him, then tried to brush him off, then called him a martyr and tried to patronize him. Nikolas let it all roll off.

"If you and Helena want to come at one another with daggers drawn yelling 'vengeance is mine,' go for it. But leave Lucky and me out of it."

"Helena started this round -- " Luke tried to justify himself again. Nikolas was having none of it.

"Keep the blinders on, Luke. You can blame Helena. You can blame Stefan. Heck, you can even blame me. Anything to keep from having to look in the mirror and hold yourself accountable."

As an exit line, it had some heft to it. He tried to leave like an adult but couldn't quite resist slamming the door. Stewing about it all the way back to Kelly's, he pulled up short when he saw Lucky and Elizabeth kissing at a table on the patio. The thought struck him that anyone seeing him would think he was jealous of Lucky.

How wrong they'd be.

At that moment, his brother noticed him and drew back. Nikolas noticed that Lucky's lips were a little swollen, gleaming in the reflected light coming from Kelly's windows. He wanted to kiss him then and there. He crammed his hands deep in his pockets to keep from reaching out and holding on tight.

The dam he usually kept around his emotions had been weakened, first by his outburst to Helena, then by the confrontation with Luke. It wasn't long before he was admitting to Lucky and Elizabeth how very much he missed Stefan, and how alone he felt. Elizabeth reacted first, tender hearted as always, and Lucky was a beat behind, his hand going up around Nikolas' back, supporting him, warming him. Easing away some of that loneliness and replacing it with love.

Then their mother was there, and Lucky was kissing Elizabeth good-night, and he was having to assure Laura that he was, indeed, all right. There was no way on God's green Earth he could ever tell her that he was wishing he was Elizabeth at that moment. She told him that she loved him, replacing a little more of the loneliness with a little more love, and he and Lucky escorted her home.

Once they'd seen Laura safely inside, he glanced over at his brother, who was staring steadily back at him.

"What?" he asked, feeling a little defensive. He hadn't been that transparent, surely?

"My place," Lucky told him, a suggestion of invitation behind the matter-of-fact words. "Gotta talk."

They didn't. Talk, that was. They glanced at one another, then looked away, and kept a careful three inches between them all the way to Lucky's room. Once inside, Lucky locked the door and shoved a chair beneath the handle.

"You expecting intruders?" Nikolas eyed the fortifications and looked questioningly at Lucky.

"In this town, you never know." Then Lucky was across the room, and Nikolas was backed against the wall, and their hands were all over one another, and talking was the last thing on his mind.

"Been thinking about this all night," Lucky muttered into his belly as he worked Nikolas' slacks off his legs and pulled his briefs down to join them. Then his mouth was around Nikolas' erection and the only thing Nikolas could think was 'it's about bloody time.'

The first time was fast and furious, jetting down Lucky's throat as Lucky jerked himself off, then sliding down the wall to land in a jumbled heap, wrapped around each other. His hands were in Lucky's hair and Lucky's hands were on his ass, and they were kissing like they'd never stop, never need to breathe, never need anything else but what they got from one another.

He didn't know how they ever made it to the bed. It wasn't important. The only important thing was that they did, and by the time they did they were naked, so nothing got in the way of the explorations that followed. Nikolas returned the favor his brother had given him against the wall, using hands and mouth and tongue to bring Lucky to aching hardness, then leaving him there while he teased him unmercifully. Lucky didn't complain. He was too busy whimpering. The second time Nikolas made him come, Lucky screamed out loud.

Nikolas stuffed the corner of the pillow in his mouth. Happily, none of the neighbors called the cops or came to see who was getting killed. He took that as encouragement and started all over again.

By the time he finally took pity on Lucky and eased his way in, Lucky was out of his mind, thrashing beneath him like a wild animal. It was a challenge to get him to lay still long enough to mount him, but worth every bit of the effort once they were joined. Having taken the edge off, Nikolas was able to hold out a little longer on this go-round, but the extended foreplay took its toll on him. Lucky came first, and although he had little left to give, his orgasm rocked them both, jolting Nikolas nearly off him as he arched against the arms and legs holding him to the bed. The convulsions around and under him pulled Nikolas into his own climax following immediately on Lucky's.

Lying wrapped together, lazily dabbling at the stickiness on his belly, drawing abstract designs on Lucky's skin as well, Nikolas wasn't thinking of much of anything when Lucky brought him back down to earth with a thump.

"She did it to me again."

Welcome to the nightmare world of Helena Cassadine, Nikolas groaned silently. No place is safe. Then he reached over to hold Lucky tight as his brother told him about the latest mind game the grandmother from hell had played with him.

end of mind games 3

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