Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s a special experience to feel your body rebuild itself in a blink.

One moment he’s swimming in the endless stream of the beyond and the next there’s light, more light than a living creature should emit and he’s gasping, coughing up blood and weak but alive, alive and bright, alive and burning.

Being alive doesn’t mean he’s come back without something to show for it though, right now, with the malnutrition from prison, the lack of sleep and the hectic nature of the past few days he might as well be dead.

Returning always made all his old pains flare up, he’d like to say that the likeness of the phoenix and its searing heat eats away all traces of the man he was before every brush with the grim reaper, but that’s not the case, if anything it makes sure Pyke remembers what brought him so close to supernova in the first place. With a grim sense of retribution his body reminds him of every familiar ache, every old scar and long forgotten scrape.

As he laid down in bed, eyes heavy with the weight of half-delirious pain, Pyke feels his knees burn, in fact all points of articulation in his body burn with vengeance, as his foot twitches slightly it send a shock that runs through his body like a tsunami over a boat. All forgotten memories rush in the tapestry of a well-worn body, when he twisted his ankle, every time he stubbed his pinky toe, years ago when a thug just missed him with a knife, the scar of a shiv in prison and a scrape on his knee when he was five.

They live in his body and they remind him of it, this body is a home but not just for you, so he lays down and twitches and hopes it will go away so he can properly sleep for once.

Pyke’s stubborn resignation lasts all of five minutes until the headaches start to come in and suddenly everything is just too much.

With a weary sigh that accerbates his rough vocal cords and rattles his skull, Pyke stands up in search of salvation, he slinks through the corridors in socket feet keeping extra care to make as little sound as possible while also counting every creak, twist and crunch of his bones.

Salvation comes in the form of a pug, a small robotic thing that is busy doing its rounds, making sure there is no loose thread on the halls as the ship sails off in auto-pilot. It doesn’t startle when he catches sight of Pyke, if anything Hank looks relieved to see him wandering around the halls in the middle of the night again.

Hank yips, walks closer to Pyke in that little “tap, tap, tap, tap” rhythm that lives in a space in his heart, but right now every little sound is like nails on chalkboard as his life claws at his body like chains. Though his knees don’t buckle they get close to it, and the effort he puts on keeping them straight makes them resent him tenfold.

At the sight of Pyke fighting a war against his own body Hank stops, squints his massive eyes at him and the hydraulics in his head twist with a light “ruff?”. From there it is a slippery slope of the robo-pug playing hard to get against the solari batting his eyelashes with a pitiful expression, in no time Hank was giving up and leading Pyke towards the med-bay to get him some of the good stuff.

The “good stuff” as it is, are painkillers strong enough to drop a space horse but that do just the trick against the solari genetics burning everything they come in close contact with, the only drawback is how sleepy Pyke gets after he takes some, but anything is worth it as long as he gets a moment of respite from the hell he’s experiencing at the moment.

Hank bullies him into sitting down with a glass of water and busies himself with tidying up the med-bay until medicine starts to kick in, after the robo-pug does a quick checkup he leads Pyke back to his room and disappears to go back into manning the ship.

It's been around four hours since they made it back into the Rhapsody, he finally takes a breath in without his chest constricting in anger. Laying down in the soft darkness of his room Pyke waits as slowly the pain is reduced to a phantom sensation, just like molasses dripping down a spoon his senses start come back, his keen hearing can now notice the light sound of shuffling a few doors down in the room Ziggy just settled in.

Finally, brought back into an imitation of his usual state thanks to potent drugs, Pyke lays down in bed and stares at his ceiling with his eyelids weighing heavy with drowsiness. The one thing stopping the dark clutches of sleep from dragging him under is the newly discovered problem, the cold.

Cold seeps from his mattress, though the block of foam he rests upon still remembers the shape of his body; it has grown unfamiliar to its weight, its presence, its heat. Even with the hours he’s already spent half-dead in his bed the moment Pyke left the room the mattress grew colder than ever, despite being able to get in a comfortable position it still felt so alien, so far removed from his current state like his well-used bed was unfamiliar with their old routine.

The worst part was that Pyke felt the same. Every piece of this room, of this ship, a ship he’s called home for so many years feels daunting, it’s like he’s back to being young and hurt and waiting for the next shoe to drop, never still never resting, scared to grow familiar with comfort in expectation it will be ripped away. His memories keep him in the present, they remind him of all his experiences in this ship, he could walk it blind, could tell each room apart by touch alone but just like his every forgotten wound he’s just suppressed, they seem so far removed from his day to day to the point the familiarity becomes to much and it’s unbearable to experience.

So leeches in the cold, through the walls into his mattress past blanket and clothing directly to his skin freezing him from the inside. Cold should be a strange feeling to a creature made of so much heat, but everything to him feels cold, despite his body producing heat with no comparable magnitude everything he comes in contact seems bordering on freezing to his sensitive skin. Maybe this is what the stars put in space feel like, burning with desperation just to be met with nothing but empty, empty and cold and pressure that crushes.

He lifts off the bed again, if his body is not fighting through the cold then he’ll find a source of heat for himself. Pyke wraps the soft blanket around his shoulders and stubbles to his door once more, his feet do not protest this time but the tips of his fingers begin to tingle.

Pyke keeps an eye out for Hank and finds nothing in his short trek two doors down to a familiar room, he lifts his hand up to knock on the door but instead his whole body lurches forward, his forehead presses into the steel door just as his single knock rings into empty air, cold begins to blossom through the contact of his skin and the door, yet something in Pyke prefers to persist through it rather than bear the weight of his body completely.

It is barely a minute, but time stretches like hours until there’s shuffling behind the door and it opens to reveal a groggy stout man who squints up at him through the sun light.

“Pyke? What’re you doin’ standin’ there?” Rett looks up at him and suddenly Pyke’s chest blossoms with a sticky familiar feeling.

The solari takes one step forward pushing into the atheron's space and leans down to catch his lips in a kiss, it’s soft at first, then a big hot hand steadies Pyke by the hips and he pushes deeper, opening his mouth to allow the other man to taste. It’s hot, warms him from the inside as Rett hums in a mix of appreciation and surprise, the sound reverberates down his throat to his chest were it settles on the bottom of his lungs.

Pyke takes a careful step forward, Rett allows him to lead, always happy to indulge the red sun attempting to fuse their bodies together, they clutch at each other with the closest thing to desperation they can still muster at this stage, eager to bathe in the exquisite energy of each other during the most delicate moments of privacy.

When the back of Rett’s legs hit the side of his bed he doesn’t fall backwards, he stops to lower himself slowly pulling Pyke along with him with great care, they end up tangled in a mix of limbs and blankets as Pyke rests over him lips kiss-bruised and eyes reflecting adoration.

They stay in silence staring at each other before the solari lays back down, burying his face in Rett’s chest with a light sigh. The atheron’s one hand snakes up his back beneath his night shirt and begins to rub soft circles that make Pyke stretch like a sleepy cat resting upon the best sun spot, his hands rest softly to either side of his head over Rett’s chest tracing meandering patterns and sometimes squishing the soft flesh.

Pyke got a little lost on the figure of Rett’s body, the curve of his muscles so soft and squishy relaxed like this, he could grope and feel and would never guess the power beneath, all of Rett is soft like this, on the outside, during work he puts on this image he flexes his muscle so to say and feels so harsh, stiff like a living moving wall, a statue carved out of stone. Pyke had never known soft things, he was used to sharp edges, light features, skin against muscle and nothing else.

Then there was Rett, the Rhapsody despite its daunting visage, despite the empty hallways, the tall ceilings and its mechanized everything. It was a home, it was warm and soft, so different from everything Pyke had felt before, and its capitan a reflection of the ship itself, daunting, harsh, blocked away and suddenly so caring, so delicate around his wounds, so soft spoken when he needed him to.

Maybe he squeezed too hard, caught up in his heart but there’s suddenly a calloused hand cupping his chin with care guiding his eyes upwards.

“What’s th’ matter sunshine?” Rett drawls, that stupid little nickname Pyke won’t admit he loves so much, the one he won’t admit he missed. “What’s got you so gloomy?”

The hum that builds in his throat rasps just a little too much, his voice feels unused, ragged.

“Just…. Thinking”

Rett hums, his thumb rubbing lightly beneath his eye as if cleaning away tears that aren’t coming out.

“It’s just, everything… prison and the bounty and coming back and being back you know how I get it’s just…” he takes a deep breath in, “it’s just too much”

Pyke knows himself to be an escapist, despite the his nihilistic approach to most situations he understands that there is simply something that keep him floating away, like a balloon he needs something to tie him down, and Rett has always been much like a tree, sturdy, massive, a safe space and most important than anything steady. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object and oddly enough they fall in love.

He gets pulled forward, a soft kiss pressed to his lips and then another to his cheek and forehead and his jaw and his temple and his ear. Rett presses the sides of their faces together and rubs them softly as he twists, placing Pyke’s back against the wall and himself between him and the door.

Rett wraps his arm around his waist and Pyke hitches one leg up Rett's hips and wraps his arms around his neck burying his neck in the space between his clavicle and neck, he feels the warmth of his body being reflected on Rett’s soon enough it’ll be like a furnace warming him up from the inside out.

“I got’cha” he hears, softly against his ear. “I’m here, I’ll be here when you need me”

Pyke closes his eyes but doesn’t fall asleep, instead he waits and waits until Rett’s breathing has evened out and the clutch on his waist is completely gone, he pressed his face against his chest again and rubs it softly, Pyke doesn’t cry but feels close to as reality falls on him.

He’s back. He’s back and alive, back home. No more solitary, no more fighting for his life on a daily basis, no more looking behind his back every hour, no more fighting against guards, no more being pushed around his back. Back home in the arms of his better half and everything is fine. He’s alright. They're alright. It’s going to be alright, even though his body flares with pain and something burning and hungry wrecks it from inside.

He can feel something soft. He just has to ask.