A Few Good Men: Epilogue
Chapter 1 * Chapter 2 * Chapter 3 * Chapter 4 * Chapter 5
“I can’t fucking do this!” Pike stormed into Ayel’s quarters, flung his jacket across the sofa and began to rifle through Ayel’s liquor cabinet.
Ayel looked up from where he had been working through a first draft of a possible new constitution for Earth.
“Can’t do what?”
“All this fucking consulting with people. It’s an utter waste of time. They should damned well do as they’re ordered.”
Ayel didn't reply. They’d been through all this before. The coup d’état had been oddly anticlimactic. The paralyzing shock of the destruction of Vulcan had been so great that when the Narada had materialized in the atmosphere above Starfleet Command and Pike had stalked into the command center - his crew on his heels, all armed to the teeth - and announced that the rule of Vulcans was over and he was taking control, there had been a considerable sense of relief. The Vulcans who had seemed so untouchable when they lorded it over the humans at Kirk’s cognitive correction session just two days previously now seemed small and pathetic. Most humans were only too glad to have someone to tell them what to do next.
The fleet, with unquestioning obedience to authority drilled into them for all of their careers, had capitulated with little resistance to the steely command of Captain One, and had returned to Earth in good order, leaving behind a newly promoted Admiral Boyce to complete negotiations with the Laurentian system rebels.
The challenge was what to do next. It was so tempting to just slip into the lives of the Vulcan overlords. Especially when they had finally entered the Vulcan-only quarters of the city and discovered just how luxuriously their lords had been living. Pike was not tempted by the wealth but he was tempted by the order that came with complete control. If everyone would just do as he said, he could have sweeping changes made very quickly.
Ayel had to keep reminding Pike that despite being head of the Imperial Transitional Council, now the de facto government of the Empire, it was not his place to simply decide for other people - let alone other species and other planets - what they wanted or needed. Hence the process of consultation, a process made more frustrating when most species were so cowed by Vulcan control that they simply didn’t know what they wanted, and they certainly didn’t trust humans to help them get it.
Ayel watched Pike throw back one glass of bourbon and then pour himself another. He knew that despite the other man’s frustration and exhaustion, there would only be two glasses. Although he was quietly horrified by how mistrustful and aggressive the Starfleet officers in this universe could be, he was also impressed by how disciplined and hardworking they were.
He sighed to himself. He wasn’t about to challenge Pike when he was in this mood, but he had frustrations of his own. Just living 130 years in the past was hard. He was constantly taken by surprise by how primitive much of their technology was. Add to that a culture so alien to him and very few of his own people to talk with, and he felt frighteningly isolated.
Suspicion still underlay every interaction. Despite the misery of life under Vulcan Imperial control, many had reason to fear change. The leaders of the many rebel factions feared losing their authority. The administrative classes feared losing their privileges. The laboring classes feared the impact of absorbing the off-grids back into the formal economy and the off-grids feared the whole thing was an elaborate trap to get them to declare themselves and then be eliminated.
Even his own people were being caught up in the atmosphere of suspicion, many of them horrified that Ayel had apparently literally stepped into the bed of the enemy with such alacrity. The humans were wary of him too. Although all were glad to be rid of the procreation protocols, many still supported the morality laws and were none too happy to be led by a man apparently fucking another male and an alien at that.
And despite what everyone thought, Ayel wasn't even getting any and he wasn't sure how to remedy that fact. Pike kept Ayel close to him as an advisor and confidante but shied away from anything more personal. They'd not touched since the kiss on the Enterprise.
His work was draining too. The environmental devastation of the Empire’s energy policies horrified him. The conditions in the labor camps on the mining planets were appalling and the corruption and kick-backs built into the system were making him realize that Pike had a point. Certain things would have to be changed at the point of a phaser. There were years of work ahead of him, even if he hadn't kept on getting sidetracked by other projects such as consulting on the setting up of interim governments for each of the Imperial planets, and putting processes in place towards multiparty elections and the writing of new constitutions.
And yet in many ways this was the most exhilarating thing he had ever done. He had never been so close to the heart of power before. Never been able to make such important changes to so many lives so quickly. He was constantly awed by Pike’s ability to rise above his cultural conditioning and inspire his men and women to follow him in finding a new way forward, however difficult it might be.
He was making friends too. Leonard McCoy had been the first to sidle up to him, clearly unable to believe that Pike really meant the sweeping changes he was implementing. At Ayel’s urging he had gone to Pike with the stuttering request that the Physicians' Oath be reintroduced for doctors. He’d emerged from the meeting as the interim head of the World Health Organization, told to get on with it.
Although the Enterprise would eventually return to deep space, for now Pike needed them to maintain order at home. Jim Kirk and Spock were reorganizing the Academy and Starfleet Command, using templates provided to them by the elder Spock.
When the elder Spock was not with them suggesting ways forward, he was on the new colony planet where all surviving Vulcans were now under a form of home arrest, stuck with listening to him explain to them in painstaking, extended and utterly logical detail how they had fundamentally misunderstood the tenents of Surak.
Ayel found McCoy to be the most ‘human’ of the cabal around Pike, but everyone was fascinated by his life experience. Both the Kirk brothers had taken to interrogating him whenever he had time. Some of the time Jim simply wanted to hear tales of how important his other self had been. Ayel was happy to tell him, all the while emphasizing heavily compassion and trust and respect. The rest of the time both men were relentlessly curious about anything to do with Ayel’s universe and the different ways in which armies could be led and political systems could be organized.
It amused him to watch the humans try to find new ways of interacting, to watch Jim Kirk and McCoy try to work out how to acknowledge that they were - and in fact always had been - friends, to watch the Kirk boys try to reestablish their familial bond, to watch Spock and Uhura wonder what to do with Jim Kirk's determined, if clumsy, offers of friendship.
And every so often moments came that made all the difficulties worthwhile for Ayel. Like the day a small woman with slate grey hair had entered their command center. She'd looked old enough to be Pike's mother but instead she had grabbed an ear of each Kirk boy, both of them over six foot tall and towering over her, and began a detailed lecture about what exactly did they think they were doing running off to join Starfleet and the rebel army respectively and hadn't she brought them up to have more sense than a flea?
Over a decade in a Vulcan-mandated psychiatric institution had not broken Winona Kirk's spirit. The youngest captain in Starfleet and the legendary rebel general had done their best to look contrite for all of two minutes before looking at each other over her head and picking her up between them in a bone-crushing hug.
Another moment he had loved had been at the end of a weekly strategy meeting - meetings designed to try and keep the inner circle focused and effective in working out which of a thousand different priorities needed to be done next. Pike had lent back in his chair and announced that the entire schools' curricula on Earth needed to be reworked now that Vulcan history and philosophy was no longer the basis of all education. "I've found an educational psychologist from Georgia who turns out to have been supplying teaching materials to the off-grids in those swamps nearby. I'm bringing her in as the head of our new educational task force."
Ayel had watched him curiously. Pike didn't normally deal with that level of detail himself. "And did I mention that all arranged marriages under the procreation protocols are annulled if one or both partners wish it?" That had been met with a puzzled silence as to why it related to teaching. "Anyway," Pike had continued, nodding towards the door, "meet our new head of education, Jocelyn Darnell." A slender woman with dark curls cascading down her back had stood awkwardly in the door, with eyes for only one person at their table. McCoy had gaped at her, dumbfounded.
The pair had remarried within the week, with Pike officiating and the wedding had been followed by an appallingly raucous party as the humans had rediscovered the joys of unlimited supplies of alcohol at a celebration. Spock had sat rigid in one corner, in the company of an increasingly tipsy Uhura, looking stoically horrified by the unbridled emotionalism on display. Eventually the older Spock had taken pity on him and whispered a few things in Uhura's ear about why chocolate had been banned in the Empire along with alcohol. Once she had supplied him with chocolate cream liqueur Spock had livened up considerably and won over many of the more suspicious humans in the process.
Still, Ayel's favorite moment to date had come completely unexpectedly when he had been crossing a courtyard in the command center at Pike's side soon after Pike had made his first major public policy address to the people of Earth. Sam Kirk had approached them, two strangers at his side. Sam was now the general liaison with all rebel groups - not an easy job, given that not all of them were glad to see the Empire go, and many of them trusted neither Pike's leadership nor each other. Sam's world view had taken something of a shaking when he'd learnt that the father whom he'd hated passionately had not been just a poodle of the Empire. He'd mostly forgiven Jim for joining Starfleet once he knew the full story and he'd become a good friend to Ayel but he still despised the Starfleet personnel in general and enjoyed needling Pike whenever he could.
"Look what I found trying to make their way into the command center," he'd said, gesturing to two teenagers at his side who were holding hands with quiet desperation, dressed in the uniforms of an elite military boarding academy. "And?" Pike had asked impatiently.
"We... you... umm..." The boy, the older of the pair, had stumbled over the words.
"You're our father," the girl had said in a rapid rush.
Pike had faced down Starfleet Admirals, Vulcan overlords, rebel generals and aliens from the future with a steady calm. Now, confronted by the two children he'd never met, he'd looked terrified.
"I hate you," she'd continued defiantly. "All my life, I've hated you, and your job and the Empire. I've been writing a speech for years now, to tell you when I finally met you how much I hate you." She'd hesitated, looking lost. "But now everything's changed and I don't know what to think." She'd paused again. "It was a good speech, though."
"It's okay," Pike had said at last. "You can still give it to me if you want. I probably deserve it. You're Andrea, right? And you're John." He'd looked at the boy. "What do you think?"
The boy had stared back at him, as if paralyzed by shock.
"I hate him too," Andrea had said, still holding tightly onto his hand. "He's spent his entire life trying to be the perfect little Imperial clone so you'd be impressed when you finally met him. And now you've destroyed the Empire."
"Shut up," John had muttered, staring down at his feet. "Just fucking shut up."
Pike had turned to Ayel. "What do I do with them?" he'd whispered, sounding utterly panicked.
Ayel had shrugged. "What do you wish your father had done for you?" he'd said softly.
Pike had regarded the teenagers as if they were some dangerous alien explosive that might go off at any minute. Finally he'd taken a deep breath and stepped forward, placing a hand on the shoulder of each child. "I don't know you," he'd said. "I don't know who you are, what you like, what matters to you both. You don't have to agree with my politics, in the past or now. I'm not going to tell you what to believe. But I'd like to get to know you."
"Go on, hug them," Ayel had whispered. "Remember the Kirks?"
Cautiously Pike had pulled the children towards him. They had gone eagerly, burying their faces against his jacket. Next to Ayel, Sam Kirk had sighed in annoyance. "I hate it when he does something that makes me like him."
Ayel smiled to himself at the memory. The trouble was the more time he spent with Pike, the more he liked him. Half the time Ayel thought he was totally mad to consider Pike as a possible lover. It was like thinking that a paranoid tiger could be turned into a house cat. The rest of the time he thought that Pike - with his command, his discipline, his capacity for change and his dry humor - was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. And that included Josh. He might not entirely trust Pike but he was certainly attracted to him.
He had mixed feelings about that attraction. If he was honest with himself, he had to acknowledge that if none of this had happened, and Jim Kirk hadn't derailed Pike's career, Pike would probably still be acting as a good little tool of Imperial oppression, ruthlessly suppressing what doubts he may have had. But then again Ayel and his compatriots had been responsible for the annihilation of seven Imperial vessels, and the death of nearly three thousand humans who had been friends, colleagues or students of Pike. In the end all of them were in bed with the enemy one way or another, making huge compromises for the sake of a vision of a better future.
But he wasn't sure how to find that better future for Pike and himself, how to break through the tritanium-hard protective shell the man had wrapped around him. When there was so much to be done that affected so many people, it seemed selfish to push his own agenda. Although he was trying to persuade them to spread power more widely, for now everything and everyone revolved around the figure that was pacing restlessly across his room. Ayel watched warily. Rather than relaxing in Ayel's company as he normally did, Pike seemed increasingly agitated. There was a growing tension that suggested something was brewing.
“What do you want from me?” The blunt demand took Ayel by surprise and he was uncertain how to answer. It seemed too difficult to explain to Pike that this was normally done in a delicate dance of increasingly overt signs of mutual interest, followed by tumbling happily into bed.
“Because I can’t give it to you, whatever it is. This is what I know.” Ayel didn’t react fast enough to stop Pike hauling him out of his chair, pushing him against the nearest wall and pressing a flick-knife to his throat. Agonizers might be gone but the officers remained heavily armed. The news that assassinations had gone out of fashion had not reached everyone in the Empire.
“I know how to hurt people. I know how to force people. My whole life has been training in violence. If I’m going to fuck you, I could take you here and now, tear you apart for my own pleasure.” The knife edge pressed inexorably against his neck. He felt the skin split, felt the white-hot line of pain, felt the blood trickle down to pool against his collar.
Ayel looked steadily back, making no move to push the knife away. There were times when he found Pike thoroughly frightening but he knew better than to let that show. “Actually I'm a lot stronger than you are. But yes, using weapons or drugs, you could probably rape me. But you’d despise yourself afterwards. And you’d lose me.”
“So what the fuck do you want?” ground out Pike.
Ayel hesitated. He could take the easy way out. Let Pike take him. Let him release all that bound-up tension deep in Ayel’s body. Show him how to make it good, how to be gentle. Let Pike retain the control he craved. But if he did that, he’d become Pike’s sub. Treated well, no doubt, respected, but with no hope of every establishing the kind of equality he believed to be vital to a healthy relationship.
“I want you to let me fuck you.”
“You want me to submit to you?” demanded Pike.
Ayel sighed. It seemed so hard to get Pike to see this as anything other than control or capitulation.
“I want you to let me take charge in this instance, to give us what we both want,” he replied. He carefully pushed the knife away from his throat. “I won’t be your exotic pet, Chris.”
Pike stared at him stubbornly, face grim, fists clenched. Ayel looked back, not threatening but not backing down either.
Suddenly, shockingly, Pike threw the knife across the room, sunk down to his knees and rested his bowed head against Ayel’s hip. Ayel stared down at the thick grey hair.
“Dammit, Chris, that’s not what I meant!”
Pike lifted his head, eyes blazing in defiance. “Then what the fuck do you want? I don’t understand you.”
Ayel ran a hand gently through Chris’s hair, down the side of the lean, lined face. He hesitated. Admiral Pike on his knees was a surprisingly inspiring sight. For a moment he felt an intense rush of power. He suspected such rushes were part of what kept this Empire running. Learning the pleasures of equality, the mutual acknowledgement of respect and dignity, was a more complex reality.
“You do want this,” challenged Pike, turning to rub his face against the side of Ayel’s swelling erection, forcing himself into what Ayel suspected he saw as a deliberate act of humiliation.
“Yeah, you on your knees? It’s fucking sexy. Maybe at some future date when we’re both more confident with this, we can play this way. But this is not what I’m trying to show you right now.”
Ayel sunk down onto his knees in front of Pike, so that they were both lined up torso to torso. He cupped Pike’s face in his hands. “This is not defeat, Chris. It’s not self-abasement. It’s you letting me take charge of both of us, just for a while. It’s you trusting me to take care of us.”
Leaning forward he caught Pike’s mouth with his own, trying to make the kiss heated without being aggressive, assertive without being dominating. Pike still hesitated, as if unable to find any ground between control and passivity. “Did you ever play follow-the-leader as a kid?” asked Ayel.
“Yeah, but I was always the leader,” replied Pike.
Ayel laughed. “I bet you were. Well, for now, just follow my lead. Do what I do.”
That seemed to be an order Pike could understand. Being the competitive bastard that he was, each action of Ayel’s Pike tried to do better. He matched move for move, each hot slide of tongue, each lick and kiss and nip and nibble, each slide of hands over smooth skin and tickle of fingers in sensitive spots.
He was willing enough to be pushed towards the bed and divested of his clothes. But Ayel had no intention of getting down and dirty any time soon. Pike needed to understand that this was about a lot more than just cocks and holes.
“This isn’t sex,” protested Pike as Ayel lay draped half over him, sucking sloppy kisses along the base of his hairline. “When the fuck do we get to the fucking?”
“Of course this is sex,” Ayel retorted. “The back of my neck is totally an erogenous zone for me. I want to see if the same is true of you.”
Pike grabbed a spare hand and drew it down to his groin. “Let me introduce you to a real erogenous zone.” He groaned as Ayel squeezed on the hot length, the hard core contained within velvet-soft skin.
“Be like that then.” Ayel reached over Pike to rummage through drawer of his bedside table, pulling out a tube of lube. Pike froze. Ayel locked gazes with him. “Trust me.” Pike made a clearly deliberate effort to relax. “I’ll make it good. I promise.” With Pike still watching him warily, Ayel pushed him back onto the bed, settling down between the other man’s knees. He stroked gently up Pike’s cock before bending forward and sucking the swollen tip into his mouth.
Pike swore a blue streak. Ayel grinned. In the face of Pike’s ruthless authority and natural confidence, it was easy to forget that a lifetime spent trying to obey the Vulcans’ morality laws had left him with relatively little sexual experience. Ayel settled in to deliver a leisurely blow-job of the very highest quality. As Pike fell apart under his expert ministrations, he let one generously lubed finger wander down below the heavy, furred balls, across the softly crinkled perineum, to the small pucker concealed between the firm buttocks.
Pike shifted uneasily but Ayel distracted him with dexterous flicks of his tongue at that sensitive spot just below the glans. He pushed a finger gently into the wet, velvet-soft depths of Pike’s anus, letting the gentle slide get lost as he sucked Pike’s cock deep into his mouth. A second finger found its way in as he tongued the small slit, teeth pressing dangerously close around the rolled-back foreskin.
When the pads of his searching fingers found the small nub set in the anal wall, Pike’s iron control finally dissolved and the man began to whimper, hands clutching at the sheets, head tossing from side to side.
“Get on with it,” he demanded, trying to trust up into Ayel’s mouth. Ayel pulled back.
“I think not. I’m not sure how long you’ll need to get it back up again. Some other time you can shoot down my throat. But this time you are coming on my cock.”
Pike lifted himself up onto his elbows, staring hard at Ayel, his expression suddenly unreadable. Then slowly, deliberately, he pulled up his knees and let his long legs drop open. “Get on with it,” he repeated.
Ayel swallowed. Watching this man leap deliberately into the unknown, an unknown he been taught to fear and to despise, was breathtaking. The trust he was showing in Ayel, whether or not he fully understood it, was humbling.
Ayel sat back on his heels, thighs spread, sitting between Pike’s legs. Holding the other man’s deep blue eyes locked with his own, he found the lube by feel and slowly spread a generous helping across his throbbing cock. He teased himself gently, trying to ramp down his arousal so that he wouldn’t ruin the scene by coming all over Pike the first time he pushed up against that tight pucker.
He hadn’t had this kind of uninhibited sex since the Vulcans first invaded his world nearly three years ago by his timeline. For a moment his heart ached for Josh, for all that he would never have again. But life went on.
He moved in close, pushing the strong thighs even further open. “This might be more comfortable for you from behind but I’d rather be able to see your face.”
“I don’t know you well enough to trust you with my back,” retorted Pike.
Ayel snorted. “You’re about to know me very well indeed. Now lie back and relax.”
“Says the man who’s not about to have giant alien cock shoved up his ass.”
“I’ll make it good, baby, I promise,” cooed Ayel, letting the teasing distract Pike from his knees pushing up under Pike’s ass, his cock nudging against the tight hole.
“In no universe do you get to call me baby!”
“So sorry, Admiral, Supreme Leader and Emperor in all but name. Now, push out.”
Ayel thrust in with slow short strokes, teasing Pike’s cock with his hand as he did, trying to let the arousal overwhelm the discomfort and - he suspected - the shame of this in Pike’s mind.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” whispered Pike under his breath. “Are all you Romulans quite so damned over-endowed?”
“Stop whining and take it like a man,” retorted Ayel. “Hells breath, you’re tight. Fucking fist of death.”
Having finally bottomed out, both men took a moment to get their breath back. Ayel began to rock gently. Pike lay beneath him, tense and passive, teeth gritted.
“Chris, you don’t have to just lie there and suffer. We’re doing this together. Move with me. Help me make it good.”
Pike narrowed his eyes and then experimentally clenched his ass muscles. Ayel yelped. Pike laughed and began to wriggle curiously under him, meeting his thrusts, changing the angle slightly. As he slowly stretched and relaxed, Ayel was able to slide with more confidence, and with more force.
Pike’s breath suddenly hitched. Ayel, holding the angle, thrust again. Pike whimpered. “Found the pot of gold,” said Ayel, raking across Pike’s prostate with short, targeted thrusts.
Pike’s powerful hands wrapped tightly around his biceps. “Fuck me!” he demanded. “Fuck me like you mean it.”
Ayel let his head hang down between his shoulders as he gave himself up to doing Pike with all his considerable skill. He hadn’t even realized that his eyes had drifted closed until Pike’s voice cut through his sexual reverie.
“What are you imagining when you close your eyes?” challenged Pike. “Are you trying to pretend that you’re with Josh instead?”
Ayel looked down at him. “Dammit, Chris, this is one hell of time to want to talk about this. I loved Josh. I love him still. That won’t change. But that doesn’t mean I’m not capable of loving again.”
“That makes no sense,” retorted Pike. “If you cared that much, he’d be irreplaceable.”
Ayel stilled, staying deeply buried in Pike, rocking in a gentle tease. “That’s not how it works. Psychologists in my universe tell us that those who are happily married and then widowed are more likely to marry again than most. We know that life is better with a partner. We know that you don’t replace love, you expand it.”
Pike suddenly sat up, grabbed Ayel by the waist and rolled them over so that he now had the Romulan pinned under him. Sitting astride Ayel’s thighs he deliberately and tightly squeezed his anal muscles. “I’ll make you forget him,” he declared.
“No you won’t,” replied Ayel, relaxing and then thrusting upwards hard, ruining Pike’s rhythm. “But if it makes you feel better, I suspect he’d have been damn jealous of this.”
“Of you with me?”
“No, of me having you. He always had a thing for older men, and he worshipped the ground you walked on. He’d have been dead jealous of me for getting to fuck you in your prime!”
Ayel’s grin was infectious and Pike found his envy fading away into laughter. He bent down over Ayel, licking along the line of the cut on his neck, trailing apologetic kisses across his face. “I don’t find this easy,” he admitted softly.
“I know,” said Ayel with affection. “But I think you’re getting the idea, being the fast-learner over-achiever that you are. It’s not about either one of us dominating. It’s about sharing something.” He pushed up again. Pike squeezed around him, grinding down. The conversation was lost in a race to see who could get the other to lose all control first.
* * *
They lay in a sticky heap, Ayel with his head on Pike’s chest, playing idly with the human’s chest hair, Pike running curious fingers along the outline of Ayel’s facial tattoos. “I don’t think there is any way we can get you home,” Pike said at last, reluctance clear in his voice, “but we can try if you want.”
Ayel lifted himself up on one elbow to look down at Pike. He was touched by the offer but - frustrating though it was at times to live in this world - he knew what he wanted. “Now that we’ve changed the timeline, I’ve no idea what version of my universe exists. I don’t think there is any way to go back. I’d rather stay here and move forward. Help to build a world here that ensures the safety of whatever version of myself and my people still exists over there.”
Pike wrapped a hand possessively around Ayel’s neck. “Good. I want you here. If I'm going to win an Empire and then give it away, I deserve a little something to keep for myself.”
“You like this?” Ayel asked, running a hand down Pike’s chest and along the treasure trail on his stomach.
“Yes,” said Pike without hesitation. “I find it confusing but I’m sure more practice will help.”
Ayel laughed and lay down once more, tucking his head into the crook of Pike’s neck. This was not a future he’d ever envisaged. Whatever Chris might think, he’d never lose his feelings for Josh. But he hoped that somewhere, somehow, Josh was proud of what he’d chosen to do.
- THE END -
With beautiful artwork by squarededdie and gorgeous music by amechiro.
Many thanks to you both!