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sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: hurt/comfort
Summary: Fill for this prompt over on the A Team Kink Meme.
A combination of several factors (no more DADT; the adrenalin rush from escaping and being on the run etc) lead to Hannibal and Face finally have sex. But then due to various misunderstandings they both think that's all that was involved - just a physical release. Neither understand that there are deeper feelings on both sides.... Until they do. I'd love angst, resentment, confusion, anger, and hot sex, please!
And it got angsty. Really, really angsty. Also, Hannibal makes pancakes. You’ve been warned.
Hannibal lay on his back, watching the light of passing cars play over the ceiling of the small condominium, long after Face had fallen asleep, warm in the afterglow.
This was Face’s plan, and a good one. It wasn’t quite ski season in the Rockies yet, so the resorts and timeshares were still fairly empty, but not so empty that the presence of their little group would draw any kind of attention. It hadn’t been much of anything for the conman to flatter and charm a vapid-headed brunette into believing that he really was the owner of this place for these two weeks out of the year. It gave them two free weeks in a quiet little town with close access to some nice amenities and a certain degree of privacy and a hot tub out on the deck.
Simple. Elegant. Classy. Like everything that Face did.
The older man rolled onto his side, tracing one still-slick finger down his lieutenant’s shoulder, and then some kind of inherent friction in the word stopped him cold.
It was all wrong.
There was no more Lieutenant Peck, he thought with a stab of guilt. There was no more Colonel Smith. Who were they?
Hannibal knew he was letting his thoughts go all kind of unpleasant places. He was exhausted, and he wasn't in the habit of letting exhaustion do his thinking. He stared into the darkness, and forced his thoughts to streamline.
Tonight was the first time they’d gotten to relax, even slightly, in the month since the container ship blew in Los Angeles. A month of hiding, of panic at the sound of every police siren, of avoiding surveillance cameras in gas stations and stealing cars to avoid being traced and sleeping in abandoned buildings.
For Face, sex was a pressure valve, a release. A girl at every bar, a quick blowjob behind a tent, those muffled groans in the night that Hannibal pretended not to hear. It was just the way the kid was. And tonight he’d come to Hannibal, needing release, nothing more than a hard and fast fuck.
Hannibal had given it to him, holding him down, driving in, making him squirm and pant and plead for it. Face had asked for it a little rough. Just another sign of how casually he regarded the entire endeavor, Hannibal thought with a sigh.
And there it was.
His lieutenant, the ex-soldier, the expert conman, whatever he was now, treated life like a big joke, with no room for anything real around all those padded corners he’d built up in his mind to protect himself from hard edges and sharp emotions.
Hannibal knew he had to be strong now. Strong for the unit. Even if it wasn’t really a unit any longer, they still depended on him. He’d given Face what he needed. It’d be selfish to take anything more. Foolish to ask, and suicidal to expect.
But Face was asleep, and Hannibal didn't think it harmed anything to spoon against him for a long moment, and then plant one last, chaste kiss on a cheek. “Love you, kid,” he whispered in Face’s ear, and with one last caress, pushed away.
Face, for his part, slept well for the first time since the trial, curled up in silent reassurance, touches and murmurs, words, sweet words, that he’d been longing for since the day he’d first laid eyes on one Colonel John Smith.
Words that turned out to be unfortunately, predictably just a part of another bullshit dream, when Face woke and found himself alone.
It’s not that Face had never woken up alone before.
He’d done it plenty of times, contentedly stretching out in some rented bed, cool and calm and easy. Normally, though, it was on his terms, his decision, his whispered “get out” and satisfied chuckles at the girl’s confusion, that precipitated this state that he found himself in now.
The only real exception to that had been Sosa, and whatever sleep had been lingering in Face evaporated at the cold reality that she and Hannibal now had something in common. But Sosa hadn’t waited for him to go to sleep, he tried to tell himself. She hadn’t even bothered with an excuse. Just got up and left. Hannibal hadn’t done that and that had to mean something.
But then, there was no point in lingering in disappointment, Face thought, and untangled himself from the ruins of the bed with a twinge of regret. Wasn’t every day that they got to bunk down in a place this nice. He would have liked to enjoy it a little longer.
The bathroom was just as insanely overdesigned as the rest of the condo, and Face took his time in the marble and chrome of the shower, letting his washcloth scrub every trace of Hannibal’s scent of himself, and of course, he didn’t mind that at all.
After he was done, and while he was drying off, Face rubbed a hole in the steam on the mirror and just stared at himself. He looked thinner, older. Strained. The last month had been hard on them all, hard on him.
All the betrayal. It had torn a hole straight through him. Tore a hole in him now.
But he wasn’t going to think about Hannibal in those terms. Hannibal was the one constant in their lives. Hannibal would never turn on them. Hannibal did love him. In his own way, and not how Face would have had it, but there was love there. He was sure of that.
For his own part, he’d never been so sure of his feelings for the colonel, his commanding officer, as he’d been this last month.
Everything else ripped away from them, all the team had left was each other. Everything that had always, always been in the way before was gone now. Feelings he’d tamped and tightened down before were free to rise to the surface, rushing in and filling all that empty space like water in a freshly-dug well. Face had endured it as best he could, trying to hold back the flood, until it burst through the last of his defenses last night.
He watched a flush spread up his neck and cheeks as he thought about how he’d pleaded, how he’d begged, how Hannibal had been too gentle at first and how unbearable that tenderness would have made this morning. How he’d asked for it rougher, and things weren’t any easier.
Face shook all of these thoughts away. Man up, lieutenant. Hannibal was just taking care of him, like always. Maybe taking care of himself, too; it’d been a long time since the old man had gotten any. There hadn’t been any kissing, no cuddling, none of that. Seemed like Hannibal enjoyed it. Great. Sex should be enjoyable. That’s all it had been. Good. Sex.
Face decided to leave any other considerations there, in the bathroom, and he peeled the door open. He didn’t want anything else rattling around in his head for the rest of the day.
Steam curled off in the mountainside morning as he padded back into the small bedroom, Face couldn’t help but examine the evidence as he picked through it for his clothes. It was real, wasn’t it? The proof of it was all around him, pillows and comforter shoved off in a heap on the hardwood floor, his last clean t-shirt half-ripped and draped over a nearby lamp, torn condom wrapper still where Hannibal had left it. Face had a sudden urge to pick it up and keep it.
“Face!” Murdock hollered, banging on the door. “Pancakes! Come and get ‘em 'afore I feed yours to Billy!”
“Great,” he muttered to himself, and then louder, to Murdock, “I’ll be out in a second!”
Face left the condom wrapper where it was, and started rooting for a clean shirt in the borrowed dresser. He really was a sentimental idiot sometimes.
+++++
The condo smelled good, Face noticed, like the way childhood memories ought to smell, sweet and warm and safe. But he pushed that away reflexively. No need to dwell on any more unpleasantness this morning. It would just make what he was about to do harder.
As he rounded out the hallway into the main living area, Murdock waved to him from behind a stack so huge it looked like it came straight from one of those Aunt Jemima commercials. A glass jug of maple syrup, the expensive stuff, sat at his elbow, a third of the way empty. The pilot had an absent look of delight on his face. “Hiya, Facey. Sleep tight?”
He nodded at Murdock. “Mornin’. How’s the assault on the castle going?” It was a well-known fact among the team that you never, ever, took Murdock to an IHOP. Why in the world was Hannibal making him pancakes?
And it was Hannibal’s doing. There was Hannibal, in the kitchen. Hannibal with the mixing bowl, Hannibal adjusting the heat on the griddle, Hannibal in a weird little half-apron that tied in the back and framed his ass, even through the jeans... Face dug his fingers into his hand. He could do this.
Murdock gestured down at his breakfast. “I’ll get back to you,” and he shoved a huge cross-section of four of his seven pancakes into his mouth, “s’n as, mmph...”
Face nodded. “You save that princess, buddy.” The colonel hadn’t turned around yet. Better to just get this over with now, he figured, and sidled over to where Hannibal was dropping another half-dozen or so dollops of batter onto the smoking iron.
Smartass remark, he told himself, smartass remark. “Shouldn’t I be doing that?”
Hannibal tensed a little, clearly not amused. “Why? You going to ask me if you should be wearing my shirt, too?”
“I am wearing one of your shirts, actually,” the lieutenant said with a grin he didn’t feel, picking at the collar. “Couldn’t find anything else.” That was only partially a lie.
“We are going to have to do something about that,” Hannibal said, tone inscrutable.
“Yeah, right,” Face replied after a moment. “Supplies, clothes...I’ll make a run later. Where’d you get the pancake mix, anyway?”
“It’s from scratch. This guy’s pantry was stocked,” Hannibal said, pointing at the open bag of flour to his left. “Very considerate. Found us a good place, kid.”
The colonel finally looked up at him, putting his spatula down and laying one hand on his shoulder. It was a familiar touch, one Hannibal had used on them all countless times. Friendly. Fatherly. And it lasted all of two seconds.
Hannibal cracked that good-natured smile of his. “These are almost done. How many do you want?”
“Murdock’s stack looks pretty good,” he replied with an ease he didn’t feel, and retreated to the safety of the other side of the counter.
“Sure, it’s nice to have room to stretch out, isn’t it?” he asked Murdock conversationally, reaching for the coffee pot and a mug.
“I ha’ sh’ring b‘ds.” Murdock smacked around a giant, sugar-drenched mouthful. Was he eating with a soup spoon? Yeah, he was definitely enjoying himself. “Don’t you, Face?”
His eyes trained on the back of his CO’s head, Face just shrugged and sipped at his coffee. Good Italian imported stuff, judging by the open bag. It tasted hot. No flavor at all. “You know me, buddy. Not really my thing.”
Murdock nodded. “Humperdinck’s going to show up at any minute, Face,” he said and went back to the attack on his pancakes.
From what Face could see of the melee, Murdock was winning. “Good job, buddy. You show that bastard what happens to people who kidnap Buttercup, eh?”
Banter. Banter was good. Even crazy-babble-banter.
They were in a borrowed house, on the run from just about everybody, and it hurt, just a little and in an entirely wonderful way, to slide onto a stool, but everything was normal. Absolutely nothing had changed.
Face felt like he would break under the strain. But he’d had worse, much worse, and he put on a smile and told himself it was real. Of course it was. It had to be. He was Face, and Face would be smiling right now.
He never had to pretend to be himself.
“Hey, boss, can I ask why?”
“About the pancakes?” Hannibal asked, cautious of what his lieutenant might be getting at. He’d already started joking around about last night, and that was not something Hannibal wanted his face rubbed in. “Not all of us feel the need to sleep until practically noon.”
He knew exactly what expression the other man would be wearing, and didn’t bother turning around. Those cute, wounded, puppy-dogs eyes all the girls fell for. And him, too Hannibal thought morosely. Yeah, that was something he didn’t want to see right now. And he had to make sure there were enough bubbles rising through the cooking pancakes before he flipped them over. Something about the precision of the batter and the estimation of actual cook time calmed him down. At least he knew how to get pancakes where he wanted them.
“Come on, boss,” Face joked. “Llate? It’s not late. Late is like, four in the afternoon.”
He glanced up at the clock. Okay, the kid was going for annoying. Of course he was. “Face, it’s almost eleven-hundr...” And he froze, the remainder of the sentence sticking in his throat.
Both of the other men in the room had caught the slipped phrase. They’d gone quiet. He could hear the clock over the sink ticking out his embarrassment, indifferent to its own role in his screw-up. Nearly twenty-four years of service, gone now, all the little habits remaining. The little habits all that remained.
It was Face who spoke first, clearing his throat. “Boss, it doesn’t, I mean, hey, Europeans use the twenty-four hour...”
“We’re civilians now, Face,” Hannibal snapped, not really believing that he had to remind him of that fact. At least the lieutenant was still trying to cheer him up, still acting the same as he always did. He was the only one turned around this morning. Dear god, what was wrong with him?
“Naw, sir, we’re fugitives!” Murdock added brightly.
“Murdock, cut it out. Hannibal!”
Hannibal cast a glance back over his shoulder. Face’s pancakes had a minute or two.
The pilot was sticky. Ridiculously sticky, and he was brandished his spoon out in front of his like a rapier, making slow circles in the air in Face’s direction. “My name is Inigo Montoya...”
“Hannibal!” Face protested again.
He grinned at that, and then started laughing. It was good to see that, his boys carrying on like nothing had changed. He couldn’t feel it, so at least it was good to see it.
Time to flip.
“I’m not critizing, kid. You can all use the sleep right now, things like they are.”
“But not you?”
Hannibal tightened his grip around the oven door to keep himself from going over there and dragging Face off that stool, throwing him against the nearest wall and wiping that ridiculous smirk right off him. Of giving up and giving in and damn the consequences and Face’s personal feelings about it.
But Face didn’t mean anything by it, and Hannibal certainly couldn’t let himself do anything because of it, so he . He plunked laden plate down on the counter in front of him, and scooted Face’s arm off with the spatula. “It’s not polite to eat with your elbows on the table, kid.”
Face negotiated the maple syrup carefully away from Murdock, and poked at his friend’s ribs. “Hey, what part are you at?
Murdock consulted the portion of plate he could see. “Miracle Max is trying to bring Westley back to life,” he announced. “Choose your weapon carefully, Face!”
Hannibal only hoped the pilot was going to finish before the big immolation scene. And the duel. The duel usually got pretty messy.
“Hannibal?” Face asked, and Hannibal couldn’t help it if his heart leaped a little at the plaintive tone he heard there. Thought he heard.
“Yes, kid?”
Wished he'd heard.
“Can you hand me a spoon?”
Imagined.
It was another ten minutes before Murdock and Face found Princess Buttercup beneath the last of the soaked crumbs of breakfast. Murdock wanted to be extra sure she wasn’t going to be forced to consummate her marriage, and he was licking his plate clean when BA came back from his run.
“Pancakes?” he asked Face, who just shrugged. “Aw, hell no. Was this your idea, Face?”
“I have to go talk to Hannibal,” Face told him.
BA puffed. “Fool, you are not leaving me to clean this up!”
“Hey, it’s Hannibal. You want to piss the old guy off right now?” Face bounced off his stool. “He left some in the microwave for you, but you’d better catch Murdock before he touches anything.”
Murdock dabbed at a bit of amber-colored liquid on the end of his nose. Face practically skipped outside by the hot tub.
Distractions were sure nice right now.
Hannibal’s coffee cup sat on the patio railing next to his hand. The older man was staring out over the mountains. Thinking, probably. Good place for it.
The day seemed all the more brilliant for framing the contemplative form of his commanding officer. Face knew that his boss thought better in clean air and open horizons. It was one of the reasons he’d brought them here. Because he was a sentimental idiot.
And because he was a sentimental idiot, he wanted nothing more in that moment than to press his chest against that exposed back, wrap his hands around that hard waist, nuzzle in to the sweet space between shoulder and ear and make everything okay. But that wasn’t going to help either of them, Face acting all desperate again.
He closed the door slowly, suddenly aware it was open when he heard Murdock’s shouted protests and BA’s irritated roars.
“Always liked Colorado,” Hannibal told him.
I know, Face wanted to say. “I’ve never been. It’s nice,” he said, walking over to the rail. "So...”
“I’m going to ask you something, Face,” he said, turning on one elbow to face him. “And I need you to be completely honest with me.”
His chest felt tight. Was that the caffeine? “Sure.”
“I’ve never asked you this before,” Hannibal said, going back to his mountains and his coffee. Face made a mental note to find the nearest humidor and get him some cigars. “And I’m sorry to be asking you now, I really am. In the bedroom, um...”
His hand clenched, Face realized what it was. Anticipation. Please, Hannibal, he willed. Pleasepleaseplease.
“...I noticed a safe, in the closet.”
Fuck. So much for Jedi mind powers. “Yeah, I saw it, too.”
“It got me thinking. I’m sure you’re aware of our situation. Everything, everybody's assets got frozen during the trial, you know that. And we can't keep this up forever.”
Face stared at his feet.
“You want me to steal.” It wasn’t a question. "That's the plan."
“Right now, yes.”
“I’ve done that before.”
“No, you haven’t, kid.”
“What do you call this?” Face said, waving an arm. "Not ours."
“You call it a con. I call it borrowing. Point is, the owners get it back at the end.” They both heard a crash from inside, and more yelling. Hannibal winced. “Maybe damaged, but they get it back.”
Turning around, Face let his elbows rest against the railing, considering.
He felt anger jut into his blood. It was a horrible thing to ask.
He knew he’d been walking that line for years already, and now they were convicted criminals, on the lam for the second time inside a six-month period, and there was nothing, nothing to keep him anchored. He’d thought that maybe, just maybe, that could be Hannibal, but Hannibal didn’t love him, Hannibal might not be there to catch him, Hannibal might not be able to stop him from slipping into that darkness. If Hannibal had any idea what this might do to him...
Then again, if Hannibal needed him to do something, if Hannibal needed him to be something, well, Face really was a sentimental idiot.
He tilted his head up, straight to the sun, hoping it would still be able to reach him when all of this was over. “What, when and where, boss?”
It was like lead in his lungs, this acquiescence spreading the corners of his lieutenant’s beautiful mouth. Hannibal thought about the day he’d pinned those silver bars to Peck’s shoulders, and the day the MPs had torn them away, and not even he, Hannibal Smith, had been able to get them back. He’d feared for Face, then. He feared for him now.
But he knew he wasn’t going to be able to offer Face any comfort that he would accept, so he just sighed and got on with it.
“Face, I’m being serious here.”
“So am I, boss. Seriously, whatever. D’you have a plan?”
“No plan, kid. You’re more experienced with this stuff than I am.” Aware of how it must have sounded, his toes curled, but Face didn’t even seem to notice. “You don’t have to go crazy. I’m working on a couple of things right now. This won’t last forever.”
That was a bald lie, but Face didn’t catch that either. “Yeah, I think I get it, Hannibal.”
“You okay with it?”
Face ran a hand through his hair. It’d gotten longer since their discharge, and had felt like heaven between Hannibal’s fingers last night. “Boss, really, everything’s fine. I’ll take care of this, you do that crazy planning thing you do, and we’ll all be in Hawaii drinking Mai-Tais at Duke’s by Christmas.”
Hannibal nodded. “One thing, Face.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t tell BA or Murdock. I'll handle the questions.”
He heard Face’s feet shuffle behind him, and the patio door creak open. “No prob.”
Hannibal put his head down on his hands in a vain attempt to get that low-pooling guilt to drain out of his skull. But then, maybe he deserved it. How had ten years under his command not instilled any more gravity in this young man? He thought about telling him not to go, but when he finally got back inside, a glowering BA told Hannibal that Face had already left with Murdock.
And then Hannibal just got pissed.
That faded a little when Face and Murdock came back with bags of perishable groceries and beer and fresh clothes and stories about the Breckenridge Walmart and absolutely no whisper of any wrong-doings.
Hannibal didn’t want anybody going out and roaming around, not until he got a better feel for how things were going. Face hooked up some kind of IP-masker for the condo’s computer, BA suggested TV and soon Murdock’s favorite cartoons were blaring from the gigantic flatscreen at the end of the living room.
There was nothing about them on any news site, major, minor, blog or otherwise. They seemed to have fallen off the grid entirely, and he wanted to keep it that way.
He didn’t ask Face what he’d done, and every concerned glance over in the TV's general direction found his boys laughing and arguing and making grabs for the remote that Murdock probably had a death-grip on.
But later, after they’d grilled up some steaks and managed a simple salad and beers, while BA and Murdock were fight over whether or not skinny-dipping was allowed in the hot tub, Hannibal came back into the kitchen find the conman, scissors in hand, snipping apart an unfamiliar credit card over the trash can.
Hannibal had no idea what one was supposed to say in this situation. “Dinner was good, kid.”
"Glad I could help." Face dusted the rest of the plastic bits into the can, his foot resting on the little lever that popped the lid up. “You really should only use one of those once. Problems, otherwise”
And how did Face know that?
“You can sleep in the bedroom, if you wanted. It's a big bed.” It wasn't really an offer, Hannibal told himself. No need to worry about rejection. Couldn't reject something that wasn't an offer.
Face hadn’t bothered to turn the kitchen lights back on, and the condo was dark, except for what the moon was spilling in. Hannibal had been entertaining the thought of bending the younger man all the way back over the counter and kissing him until nothing else registered, until the spectrum of sensation was saturated utterly by that one, simple touch.
Face just let the can lid fall back into place.
“I thought I’d try the sleeper sofa tonight. You know how I like to stretch out."
And that, Hannibal told himself, heading down the hall, slamming the door behind him, was that.
+++++
And that was how things went for the next week or so. They hung around the condo, Face explaining their little group’s peculiarities away to the bewildered staff, BA and Murdock getting on each other’s nerves, Hannibal reading every book he could get his hands on and cooking, which was bizarre, and Face taking care of the occasional acquisition request.
He actually found it entirely too easy to lift somebody’s wallet and take out what he wanted. He felt bad about it, but it wasn’t like he was stealing cash. Credit cards were easier to pull, and the person he’d taken it from could always just call the bank and have it canceled. Hell, they could get it refunded. So it wasn’t exactly like stealing.
That didn’t make him feel any better about it.
In face, Face didn’t feel good most of the time now. He wasn’t sitting in some holding cell, or a prison, or a dank cargo hold or getting shot at or anything, but he found himself missing it. No, not missing it. Longing for it. that was it. He was longing for it.
At first, he didn’t know why. Then, after a particularly strained conversation with Hannibal one afternoon, he realized what it was.
Hannibal wouldn’t look at him any more. But that left more questions
Was it because he’d rebuffed him about the bed the second night? Was it about the credit card thing? There was no way to know. He kept turning it over in his mind, wearing the edges of the question away in the stream of his thoughts until it was sand that got under his fingernails and beneath his clothes and itched.
Face knew he was irritating the rest of the team. They all had some heavy thinking to do, and rest to catch up on, and his constant, flighty outbursts and depressive observations weren’t helping any of them. Hannibal, carrying the weight of whatever future they might have, seemed especially susceptible to it. Murdock and BA had both noticed it, separately asking him what was going on. So everyone knew there was a problem.
But the younger man didn’t think any of them were ready for what happened that afternoon.
It was the seventh, no, eighth day after their arrival. Hannibal and BA were out on a hike, and Murdock was playing his own game of hide and seek with the cleaning girl, who thought he was the cutest thing she’d ever seen.
Maybe twenty-two, she was one of those ski-bum girls who lived in the mountains year-round, working whatever dead-end job she could find, saving up for the winter runs. Dreadlocks and pigtails, a neck tattoo, not really Face’s type. But she was sweet, and she wasn’t one of the guys, and she was excited about the season starting up in a month or two. So, Face was picking her brains about the good bowls and when to go, not that he really cared, when BA and Hannibal came back.
Hannibal took one look at her, shook his head and brushed right past Face, through the huge living room to the kitchen. Face followed, his stomach clenched up in knots.
Might as well.
Hannibal had moved towards the refrigerator, so Face decided to take up a defensive position on the opposite side of the small room. “What the hell, Hannibal?” he demanded, not really caring how loud he was or if anybody else was listening.
Hannibal just look irritated. “Face, do you have any sense of yourself? Do you know what you're doing?”
“We were just talking,” he protested.
“Face,” Hannibal told him, fishing a gatorade out of the fridge, “you and I both know, you are never just talking to a girl.”
“It's not like she's some private, and I'm..." Face caught himself. "Wait, what are you trying to say, boss?”
Hannibal took a long pull on the bottle, and Face instinctively knew he was doing it specifically to avoid answering. He panted a little after he set it down, and stared at a point on the wall behind him. “I’m saying that you need to get laid. Right now.”
To be fair, Hannibal had told him this before. If they’d been on a mission for too long. If they were in the middle of an Army base downrange for more than a few weeks. If they'd gotten a nice week or two off in a place like Italy or Spain.
...if they’d just stopped running from the DoD and CIA and the whole fucking planet, and found a nice little place in the Colorado Rockies, and finally had clean beds and one another...
Face wiped the corner of his eye. It was nothing. Meaningless. “Is that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“You offering to help me out again, boss?”
Again with the gatorade.
He steeled himself.
And then it came.
“No."
At least expected. The next part wasn't.
"You've been fucked up this last week, kid. I need you to get whatever the fuck this is, out of your system, right now."
"Sure, whatever the fuck this is," Face echoed. He closed his eyes and nodded, feeling odd. There wasn’t really a word for it. Odd seemed to work as well as anything else. “That an order?”
“I doubt you need me to make it one,” Hannibal replied. Face tried to collect himself. Tried. “The way you are, Face.”
And failed.
“Wouldn’t matter anyway,” he said softly, feeling his skin peel away. “You’re not a colonel anymore, John, remember?, and I’m not a lieutenant. You can't give me orders any more.”
“Face...”
And he absolutely refused to let Hannibal finish that statement. He ignored the venom he’d injected the older man’s name with. Didn’t acknowledge Murdock, standing not five feet away. Stormed right past BA, watching aghast from the sofa.
He did stop to grab his jacket from the back of a chair and made a special point to kiss the confused cleaning girl square on the mouth on his way out. If he heard anything, if they tried to say anything on his way out, he refused to let it register against the slam of the door.
Face blinked a few times in the afternoon air as he walked down the gently sloping sidewalk, blocking from his mind the way Hannibal’s voice had sounded, saying his name like a prayer, low and throaty and sad and incredible.
There was no way he was going to let that man humiliate him any further.
As Face picked what car in the parking lot he wanted to hot-wire, he promised himself that he wasn’t going to cry.
+++++
Hannibal was reeling inside, but he couldn’t show that. It wasn’t that Face had used his first name. It was that Face had thrown it at him. How was it that he could have the kind of emotion he had for the kid, only to have it returned with such rabid hatred? He was an absolute fool.
“Somethin’s going on between you two,” BA was saying to him. “Since we got here. It’s been weird, man. You owe it to Face...”
“I owe it to Face?”
“Yeah, Hannibal. You needs to do something.”
“Fellas, Face is going to be fine.” He knew they wanted to go after him. He knew they knew he wasn't going to allow it.
“Ain’t never seen him like that, Hannibal.”
Hannibal crossed his arms and aped a confidence he wasn't really capable of at the moment. “Face is off the reservation for the evening, gentlemen. Accept it”
“We’re all off the reservation, man,” BA grumbled.
But when Face showed up the next morning, sporting a fresh lovebite below the ear, missing a couple of buttons, grinning, Hannibal felt redeemed.
And not one tiny bit jealous.
Something had changed, though. The lieutenant was flat, ironed out. His words were still bright and biting and witty, charming as ever, but his eyes were a little duller, the motions a little more labored.
He hated seeing Face caged up like this, and studiously gave him as much space as possible. The lieutenant didn’t complain and didn’t say thanks. He still slept on the sofa, but sometimes Hannibal roused to the sound of the front door softly opening or closing, and the colonel suspected he was sneaking out. That he could live with, as long as he came back.
His command of the kid had always been tenuous, based on mutual respect rather than regulation. Independence burned somewhere deep down in Face like the pilot light on a stove. It was at the core of who the man was. Had to keep it lit, or risk extinguishing all that. The colonel had traded away more favors and resources and better-qualified personnel over the years to safeguard that quality in his lieutenant.
It was the one thing in the man he'd treasured above all else.
But that was all in the past. The outburst had only served to confirm it. His lieutenant, the sweet, earnest kid he’d brought up from the uncertain post-commissioning days, was gone, the last shards now waterlogged cinders in the Lost Angeles port, that respect sunk to the bottom. Lost. It was a miracle that Face came back at all.
In the long, slow days, Hannibal weighed the pros and cons of moving on, and asked Face to see if he couldn’t extend their stay a little longer. “I’m sorry to ask,” he’d begun, but Face had only laughed it off, and said it wasn’t a problem at all. Another credit card ended up in the trash, and a new perfume clung to Face’s collar for a few days. It was sad, in a way, but Face made no indication of caring, and Hannibal tried to pretend he didn't either.
So the first week turned into the second, and they were rounding through the third.
His boys usually scattered around lunch time. Murdock like the gondola. BA liked the trails. And Hannibal had caught Face at the local coffee shop a few times, flirting with one of the girls who worked there, and wasn’t that the way it ought to be? They both ignored each other, the time or two this happened, and everything got along fine.
Today was one of those days. Hannibal had a latte and the overly cheery town rag in front of him. He wasn’t really interested in either.
Face was a stone’s throw away, talking to the barista in that low, halting, confident tone he used for cons and hook-ups. There had to be a sincere setting on that, Hannibal thought absently, and wished for a moment he could hear it, just once. Face had been so insistent that night, there hadn't been room for...
“Anything interesting in that thing today?”
Hannibal looked up. Voice belonged to some out-of-towner waiting for his coffee. He looked back at Face, engrossed with that girl. Talking. What could it hurt?
Face couldn’t have said what made him turn around just then.
Three guys, bit older, later thirties, standing around, talking to Hannibal. Could have been anything. Couldn’t be good.
“Excuse me, beautiful,” he said in the middle of whatever it was that the girl was talking about, and crooked a thumb back over his shoulder. “Need to rescue a buddy.”
“... oh, yeah, when?” one of the strangers was saying, and Face read the situation instantly as he sauntered up. Sideburns, stance, cadence of voice: military. Attitude, posture: Army. Brand of polo shirt: officers. Guys on some leave, probably with their familes.
This was very bad. He’d caught Hannibal doing this a few weeks back in Vegas, which had been a stupid place to stop anyway, and he was not going to let his CO get into that kind of trouble again.
“It was a while ago, after the First Gulf War, around...”
Face pounced, moving into Hannibal’s personal bubble like he owned it, and punctuating this with a hand on Hannibal’s wasit and a cheek on his shoulder. Automatically, Hannibal stroked a hand up his back and buried his fingers in his hair. It was gentle, almost sweet, and Face fought the urge to lean into it too forcefully. He was just there to unsettle, nothing more.
“Er, Temp, what are you doing?”
And it was working.
“Just wanted to see what you were up to, darling,” he said, throwing the faintest degree of lisp into his voice. Sure, it was insulting, but that was the point. He needed these guys, old majors or young lieutenant colonels, to back off before one of them recognized Hannibal.
“Sorry, kid,” Hannibal replied, and only Face would have noticed the hard edge of anger behind the words. “Didn’t realize I was ignoring you.”
Face stifled a whimper at the thought of Hannibal saying that to him, truly and without all the stupid pretense.
“Oh, look at this, dear, how rude of me,” he said, catching himself, “Haven’t gotten you to tell me who these nice people are.”
There were a couple of politely forced introductions, some small talk that nobody seemed interested in any more, a flash of anger from Hannibal when Face announced the receipt to be in his back pocket and would John be a dear and take it from him before it got lost?
But when Hannibal decided to get obstinate about Face’s subtle clues that they needed to go, the conman just did a mental shrug and rose up a little, capturing Hannibal’s ear lobe on the way to a whispered, “the fuck are you doing, boss?”
Hannibal forced a small laugh, and pushed at Face down with a gesture that would probably be interpreted as playful by their audience.
Fance may have just let the whole thing go, and play this out, but then Hannibal’s hand moved from his hair down a little to his neck, light circles rippling outward in shockwaves from the finger pads. That just wasn’t fair. It was either hit the old man or plant one soft, innocent kiss full on his mouth, and that, that got his attention.
“Well, if they don’t have anything he can drink, I probably need to get him back to the hotel,” Hannibal told the others, nothing but irritation showing. His hand moved down a little more, hooking around Face’s back belt loop and pushed.
Face’s jeans felt a little tight, and his consolation there was that at least it’d fit the part.
“What’s wrong with you, Face?” the colonel hissed as they got free of the main street. "You're like a three year old.
Face smirked to cover up the sudden, rending jab. “Wasn’t a total loss, boss. I did get their wallets.”
Hannibal was pissed.
Even if Face hadn’t been able to tell that by the other man’s footfalls, the pace, his breathing, that look he’d gotten over the wallets comment, or the way his shoulders had clenched up when Face had kissed him, the route would have been a dead giveaway. It appeared they were going the longest way back, through a woody finger of mountain that spilled down through the town.
Hannibal wanted to walk, Hannibal was pissed. Simple math.
Face tried again as he hustled to keep up with his CO. “Come on, Hannibal. You can’t get pissed at me for that. I saved our bacon back there.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Yeah, look,” he said, running ahead and turning around, walking backwards so he could show Hannibal. “We’ve got a signal-corps major, a police, oh, a police lieutenant colonel, and a combat search and rescue lieutenant colonel. Think any of them might possibly know you, boss?”
“You can’t get somebody’s job off their ID, Face,” Hannibal shot back irritably.
“But you can get it off the way they look,” Face protested, wielding an ID card as if it would do something. Hannibal just laid a hand on his chest, let it sit there for just a moment, thoughtful, and then pushed Face out of the way. The conman bit his lip and kept following. “I mean, have you ever seen anybody who wasn’t a cop with that stupid fucking haircut?”
Hannibal stopped. Face realized he’d practically yelled that last part, and he stopped too, a few paces behind, and grateful for the break. The air was a lot thinner up here, and both men were breathing hard.
“We’re all on the same team here, Face.”
“Boss, have you forgotten that we’re wanted fugitives? Wanted by the fucking DoD? That part of life is gone. It’s over. We’re going to jail forever if we get caught.” And part, a large part, of himself cringed from the thought of Hannibal, their commander, his commander, dying in Fort Leavenworth. “You have to let it go!”
“Is it that easy for you?”
“I’ve done harder things!” Like getting through the past weeks.
“Say I accept that." That was promising. "Are you trying to tell me, that’s the only reason you did that back there, Face?”
Maybe it wasn’t the lack of air that made Face light-headed just then. He thought there was something there, something he so desperately, desperately needed to hear. Hannibal had been ignoring him since the kitchen throw-down, and Face didn’t blame him for that. He’d been out of line, completely disrespectful, and while there were many things that Templeton Peck was not, one thing that he’d always be was loyal to this man.
Yet Face was sick of worrying, sick of sitting on the front step at night for hours on end, staring at the cold and distant stars, unable to sleep for fear all his dreams would turn to ash even there, and his last scrap of comfort would be gone. And now here Hannibal was, asking. Maybe, and this was a big maybe, the boss would work his magic, and make everything right side up again.
So Face gulped down all the rampage of doubt and made up the distance between them, not sure how close he should get.
“Hannibal, I...”
“You don’t need to make excuses for yourself, Face,” Hannibal said evenly, walking over. “I know what’s going on.”
Hannibal’s hand was on his shoulder.
Warm.
Fatherly.
Shit.
“If you want to leave, if things have changed too much, feel free.”
Hannibal was throwing him out. His brain refused to process those words in that order. Hannibal. Throwing him out. Throwing him away. And it was all his own damn fault. Had to be. Hannibal wouldn’t do this without a reason.
But what had he done wrong? Moved on? Tried to move on? He hadn’t, not really, but maybe he needed to. Let those skylight slider glide right back over the glass ceiling of his future. No point in looking upwards for things you couldn't have.
“Okay” he said, removing Hannibal’s hand slowly. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll take the damn things back to their hotel tonight. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Face...”
“Because I’m good at all that illegal shit, right? And I'll be fine?”
“Kid,” Hannibal began, but Face was already down the path, and he had no intention of allowing Hannibal to catch up with him.
+++++
The afternoon was sliding off the sky by the time Hannibal made it back to the condo. The door was closed, but not locked. He tensed out of long habit as he entered the place. Everything was dark, none of the lights switched on and the living room windows shuttered down. It was utterly still.
What had set Face off like that?
Face had freaked out over leaving. But Face wouldn’t leave on his own; no matter how pissed he was at his CO, there were still Murdock and BA to consider. And Face would consider them. No, he’d freaked out because he’d thought Hannibal was asking him to leave. And he’d do it, if Hannibal told him to, even if it was the last thing he'd ever consider doing himself.
Loyal to a fault.
The colonel realized with a burning embarrassment that he’d been throwing this in the kid’s face for weeks now; asking him to be loyal, to follow orders, to trust in his CO, when that CO was giving him what, once, would have been illegal orders and then berating him. When that CO was actively lying to him. When that CO couldn't handle the emotional fallout of one single night.
Did Face really deserve all that, just because Hannibal was afraid?
He checked every room. All of them, devoid of anything resembling Face. Same story outside. Defeated, he dragged into the room he’d been using, and there was the last thing Hannibal expected to see.
Face, curled up in his bed, head turned to the opposite wall, breathing slow and regular in sleep.
Hannibal stood there for a moment, considering. How long had Face been running on fumes? How many nights had he slept on floors? And the kid had such champagne taste sometimes. Made sense he’d pick the best place for a few minutes rest before heading out again. Hannibal didn't want to wake him up. Kid looked almost innocent like this, all the missions, all the sights, erased from the corners of his eyes in sleep. Sweet. Beautiful. The man he might had been, had he not come into the service.
But then, if he hadn't come into the service, he wouldn't be the man he was. The man Hannibal was in love with.
“Ah, kid,” Hannibal said softly, sitting down on the opposite side of the mattress, “really fucked this one up, didn’t I?”
He reached a hand over to rest on Face’s calf. “I wasn’t trying to tell you to leave. Last thing I want is you gone.”
Hannibal planted his arm down on the other side of Face, turning over so he could watch him sleep one more time, idle fingers tucking errant hairs away.
“Goddamn it, Face,” he muttered to himself. “Why couldn’t this have meant something to you? Why didn’t I?”
“Mmmpm,” came the little sound from Face, and the lithe body rolled over a little bit, pinning Hannibal’s hand and dragging him down. The colonel found himself eye to sleep-filled eye with Face.
“Bed, 's'yours,” the conman muttered, half-awake, paddling the air with limp wrists.
“It’s okay. They’re all borrowed.”
“Sorry, H'n'bl," and his name suddenly sparked a tremor rocked Face fully awake, sleep banished from suddenly wild eyes. The younger man tried to throw Hannibal off but Hannibal wasn’t having it. Not today. Not if he would never got another chance to do this. He pinned the other man’s arms.
“Shh, Face, calm down. I’m not mad.”
“Fuck off, Hannibal. I don't car..."
I know you don't, kid, Hannibal thought to himself sadly.
He closed his eyes and let gravity pull him down, his lips closing down on target perfectly. Face squirmed a little under him, but soon Hannibal’s shy, hesitant peck changed in a way he’d never dared hope for, and there he was, ravishing the lieutenant’s mouth.
And Face was letting him.
+++++
Face didn’t think things could get any worse right now.
He hadn’t been getting much sleep lately, and the emotional drain was only making his semi-self-imposed deprivation worse. And then Hannibal had thrown him out of the unit, and he’d come back here anyway. To accomplish what? The place was empty. BA and Murdock off were in the gondola somewhere and Hannibal hadn't even tried to follow him. Void. Wasn't even theirs.
He couldn't say what pulled him back to Hannibal’s bed. It smelled of him, warm and secure and sure, and the next thing he knew, he was toeing off his shoes and crawling under the covers and falling asleep.
And then came the weight shift, and words he couldn't make out from under the surface of wakefulness, his unintentional turn, and Hannibal's little kiss, this horrendously unfair kiss.
It had to stop. Profanity hadn’t worked. Worse, his body was betraying him by melting up into Hannibal as if it belonged there. His heart wasn’t in the fight, but he untangled a hand anyway and forced Hannibal off.
Face swung his legs around, sitting up, hands twisting into his hair, struggling to get his breathing under control. His lips felt slightly swollen now, the feel of Hannibal's tongue lingering, tingling. Face was suddenly ashamed that he'd played something this good in a con, like it didn't matter at all. But it didn't, right? Not to Hannibal. Why did he have to make so much more out of it?
“What is your problem, Face?”
But if that was true, why'd Hannibal initiated it? The answer seemed plenty obvious.
“Goddamn it, Hannibal,” he groaned. “I don’t need your sympathy.”
“Sympathy?”
“Kicking me out, feeling bad, letting me have...” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t need this.”
“Letting you have what?”
“Nothing,” Face spit out, feeling an ache in his chest as he stared at the floor. “You let me have nothing.”
“Look at me, lieutenant,” Hannibal growled and that sound went straight to Face’s groin. There was that hand on his shoulder again, but it was different, sliding forward until the elbow crooked down and pulled him back just a little, until he was laying backwards against Hannibal's clothed chest. It felt wonderful. It was really too cruel.
“What are you doing, boss?” Face asked, thoroughly miserable now.
“I want you to have everything,” he breathed, his words itching against all Face’s better sense, twisting him around. Hannibal smiled. He ran a soft hand around the lieutenant’s face. “We'll get you whatever it is you need, Face. You want it rough tonight, kid?” And the last thing Face wanted was a repeat of last time. But Hannibal sounded sincere; it wasn't quite that paternal concern he was always exuding, the consideration of last time. “Anything you want, any way. It’s your call.”
Face closed his eyes. He’d get through this, and then he'd be gone and it wouldn't matter.
“Make love to me.”
Fuck. That was not getting through this. That was not making this not matter.
Behind him, he felt Hannibal freeze up, like every muscle in his body tensed at once. Flight response? No, not that. Please, not that. Face's breath hitched to a stop and he began back-pedaling as fast as he could. “Well, er, you know what I mean, I don’t like it too rough most of the time, so, yeah, just kinda gentle and normal speed and, not usually into biting, but yeah,” he said, letting his words fall off, unable to force even the slightest grin. “Ah, shit, Hannibal, I didn't mean to phrase it that way.”
“Easy, kid.” The hand moved down his cheek to a pulse point, and Hannibal's thumb pressed in, surprisingly hard. “I love you too, you know.”
And that undid Face completely.
Hands found buttons, shirts were pulled and discarded, socks lay forgotten in the smooth movement of flesh on flesh. It was all too much, so Face took it in in pieces. There was Hannibal’s tongue at his jaw, Hannibal’s hands on his waist, Hannibal’s hard cock grinding into his thigh, Hannibal’s rough, blissful fingers wrapped around his cock and Hannibal’s lips curving a trail down Face’s chest, leaving every nerve on fire in his wake.
Everything had blurred into soft color in the deepening night, and then something hot and wet engulfed him, teasing him into the lighter and lighter shades of the room, so close, and then hard fingers squeezed down around the base. He whimpered in protest.
Hannibal paused, coming up. A slow draw against Face’s lips, a murmured, "not yet" and then the bed shifted as Hannibal’s weight lifted away.
Face had a truly horrible moment where he’d made a mistake, he’d miscalculated, he really had said the wrong thing, where Hannibal was gone, Hannibal wasn’t coming back, Hannibal didn't care...
“Shh, I’ve got you.”
Reassurance slipped back around Face as the bed's box springs announced Hannibal's return. The older man pressed full-length against him, pulling chest to back. One hand reached around and stroked Face's length, drawing a needy gasp. The other hand was trapped between them, lingering right below Face's tailbone, one finger slicked and teasing. He’d been after lube. Face felt the relief in his toes and sighed. Something salty and wet was running down his face and the lieutenant would never, never admit to tears, so it had to be sweat. The temperature in the room seemed to be climbing.
The finger tickled as it slid inside him, up to the knuckle. The younger man undulated backwards against Hannibal’s chest, little uncontrollable sounds being pushed from him, unstoppable, as the older man crooked it and hit that little button that made stars explode up over the edges of his mind.
"Beautiful, Temp."
“Just for you, colonel,” he moaned, aware of how wanton it sounded and not caring.
A second finger joined the first, scissoring. “I’ve got a name, Temp. Maybe we should start using it.”
“You’ll always be my commanding officer, sir.”
The fingers inside him jerked, and then Hannibal nudged his face around for another searing kiss. "Ready, lieutenant?" he whispered when he finally broke away.
"Since the first time I saw you," Face murmured, and wasn't it nice to be capable of the truth for once?
“I do love you, kid.” Hannibal pulled his fingers free, Face quivering at the loss of sensation that was okay, it turned out, because that quickly replaced by something much, much better. Lovely. He’d had Hannibal’s cock in him once before, on that wonderful, horrible night, but that hadn't beenlike this.
This had a sense of completion, as if there was a part of him that was always missing was now clicking into place. Hannibal squeezed Face’s erection from behind with perfect, glorious pressure. Surrounded by Hannibal, who was holding onto him with an intensity long sought and never found before tonight. It was utterly overwhelming.
“Good?” Hannibal murmured, and all Face could do was nod. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
They found their rhythm together without words after that, sweet and slow, neither man wanting to rush this. There would be time for exploration and play and teasing later, but this was their first time, the first honest time, and there was no gain in ruining it with haste.
Still it was over too quickly for Face, the moments bleeding together and spreading like clear water through his head, washing away every other consideration, every other memory, of the last few weeks. It might have been minutes or hours that he found himself coming in Hannibal’s hand, felt Hannibal was coming inside him, and he had the sense of loss as the other man slipped out, a sheet being pulled up, before Hannibal’s warmth wrapped around him once again and followed into a dreamless sleep.
In the morning, Face yawned and stretched and reached, giddy at the prospect of waking, but his hands hit nothing except unoccupied corners and spent sheets.
Alone in bed.
He slammed his head back into the pillows. What had he done now?
+++++
The day was bright and sunny, BA reading the local daily rag at the and Murdock being, well, Murdock. Hannibal was at the stove again, chatting with the pilot across the room, and the inquiry about the imaginary dog only faltered a little at seeing Face.
“Mornin’, all,” Face yawned, shuffling over to the counter. He needed coffee, he decided, lots of coffee. He rubbed the last grainy remnants of sleep from him eyes and started as he got a good look at Hannibal. What the hell? “Bathrobe, Hannibal? Seriously?”
“It’s Turkish, Face,” Murdock replied. "Condo special."
"Yeah, I know. I'm the one who's been using them," Face protested. He supposed he really shouldn't. After all, he'd made a point of it to wear one of Hannibal's shirts today. "Guys, come on, have any of us ever, ever, seen Hannibal in a robe before?"
"Turkish cotton's nice stuff, Face," the pilot pointed out patiently.
Hannibal interjected. “How many pancakes do you want, kid?”
That again? Face's first instinct was to pretend like nothing was wrong, to carry forward and swallow the bitterness. But that didn’t make the bitterness go away. Might as well try a little honesty for once. “I wake up alone, and you’re making pancakes in a bathrobe? What's wrong with this image, boss?”
Murdock twisted around on his stool, his stage whisper clearly audible. “I knew it, BA, I knew it! Didn’t I tell you they were..."
“Shut up, fool! Let them have their moment or ain’t none of us gettin’ breakfast!” BA raised his rolled up paper in warning.
“Billy said newspapers ain’t nice.”
"Murdock, I swear..."
“Children, stop bickering,” Hannibal ordered without much heat as Face slid up to the counter and took the batter bowl away, setting down on the other side of him.
“Boss?” he asked plaintively, but Hannibal just huffed, reached over him, and scooted the discarded bowl back. "Boss, seriously, what the hell?"
Fingers drummed the marble counter-top for a moment. “You always say you like waking up alone,” Hannibal said with more uncertainty in his voice than Face has ever heard there before.
“Christ, Hannibal, I was lying.”
The colonel’s eyes were hard around the edges. "About?"
“Well, I toss the girls out, true, but they’re just back-scratchers. Don't sleep with them. That wasn’t some goddamn itch I was after last night,” Face said.
“Had me fooled."
"I'd never throw you out, boss," Face said, a sick feeling starting to spread in his stomach, and Hannibal immediately stopped what he was doing and drew the younger man into a bear hug. Face could hear his chest rumble as he spoke.
"Shit, I was joking. About the girls, kid. I don't doubt you."
"Guess I couldn't blame you if you did." Face shrugged, and watched the latest batch of pancakes bubble. “I lie. I’m good at it.”
“You're so much more than that,” Hannibal told him, tilting his chin up for a long, slow, breathless kiss. “You're so much more to me. And," he added in a teasing voice, a little lower, "now know how much you love sleeping in, we'll have to do a lot more of it."
Face just nodded, head back, savoring the warmth of it all. Then he smiled. “Oh, forgot to tell you, couple days back, I got a line from a buddy who’s got a big ranching operation down on the border. Big problems with drug runners. They could use our help.”
“You want to turn us into mercenaries, Face?” Murdock’s voice. Face had forgotten they had an audience, but Hannibal wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him in close, so he figured maybe it didn't matter all that much. BA rolled his eyes.
"Not really," Face nodded. “Pretty good pay, chance to do some crazy shit. Sure we could find you a plane, buddy. I’m thinking we could start calling ourselves soldiers of fortune.”
“Ohh, I like that,” Murdock said.
“I am not gettin’ in no airplanes, Hannibal!” BA protested.
“I’ll take it under advisement," the colonel said, and let Face go with a pat on the ass and a real smile. The one that said he had a plan in the works. Face had missed that. Hannibal just wasn't himself without it. And when Hannibal was himself, well, all was right with the world.
Confusion banished, Face smirked.
“That means yes, doesn’t it, boss?” he observed, and ran a finger through the pancake batter.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: hurt/comfort
Summary: Fill for this prompt over on the A Team Kink Meme.
A combination of several factors (no more DADT; the adrenalin rush from escaping and being on the run etc) lead to Hannibal and Face finally have sex. But then due to various misunderstandings they both think that's all that was involved - just a physical release. Neither understand that there are deeper feelings on both sides.... Until they do. I'd love angst, resentment, confusion, anger, and hot sex, please!
And it got angsty. Really, really angsty. Also, Hannibal makes pancakes. You’ve been warned.
Hannibal lay on his back, watching the light of passing cars play over the ceiling of the small condominium, long after Face had fallen asleep, warm in the afterglow.
This was Face’s plan, and a good one. It wasn’t quite ski season in the Rockies yet, so the resorts and timeshares were still fairly empty, but not so empty that the presence of their little group would draw any kind of attention. It hadn’t been much of anything for the conman to flatter and charm a vapid-headed brunette into believing that he really was the owner of this place for these two weeks out of the year. It gave them two free weeks in a quiet little town with close access to some nice amenities and a certain degree of privacy and a hot tub out on the deck.
Simple. Elegant. Classy. Like everything that Face did.
The older man rolled onto his side, tracing one still-slick finger down his lieutenant’s shoulder, and then some kind of inherent friction in the word stopped him cold.
It was all wrong.
There was no more Lieutenant Peck, he thought with a stab of guilt. There was no more Colonel Smith. Who were they?
Hannibal knew he was letting his thoughts go all kind of unpleasant places. He was exhausted, and he wasn't in the habit of letting exhaustion do his thinking. He stared into the darkness, and forced his thoughts to streamline.
Tonight was the first time they’d gotten to relax, even slightly, in the month since the container ship blew in Los Angeles. A month of hiding, of panic at the sound of every police siren, of avoiding surveillance cameras in gas stations and stealing cars to avoid being traced and sleeping in abandoned buildings.
For Face, sex was a pressure valve, a release. A girl at every bar, a quick blowjob behind a tent, those muffled groans in the night that Hannibal pretended not to hear. It was just the way the kid was. And tonight he’d come to Hannibal, needing release, nothing more than a hard and fast fuck.
Hannibal had given it to him, holding him down, driving in, making him squirm and pant and plead for it. Face had asked for it a little rough. Just another sign of how casually he regarded the entire endeavor, Hannibal thought with a sigh.
And there it was.
His lieutenant, the ex-soldier, the expert conman, whatever he was now, treated life like a big joke, with no room for anything real around all those padded corners he’d built up in his mind to protect himself from hard edges and sharp emotions.
Hannibal knew he had to be strong now. Strong for the unit. Even if it wasn’t really a unit any longer, they still depended on him. He’d given Face what he needed. It’d be selfish to take anything more. Foolish to ask, and suicidal to expect.
But Face was asleep, and Hannibal didn't think it harmed anything to spoon against him for a long moment, and then plant one last, chaste kiss on a cheek. “Love you, kid,” he whispered in Face’s ear, and with one last caress, pushed away.
Face, for his part, slept well for the first time since the trial, curled up in silent reassurance, touches and murmurs, words, sweet words, that he’d been longing for since the day he’d first laid eyes on one Colonel John Smith.
Words that turned out to be unfortunately, predictably just a part of another bullshit dream, when Face woke and found himself alone.
It’s not that Face had never woken up alone before.
He’d done it plenty of times, contentedly stretching out in some rented bed, cool and calm and easy. Normally, though, it was on his terms, his decision, his whispered “get out” and satisfied chuckles at the girl’s confusion, that precipitated this state that he found himself in now.
The only real exception to that had been Sosa, and whatever sleep had been lingering in Face evaporated at the cold reality that she and Hannibal now had something in common. But Sosa hadn’t waited for him to go to sleep, he tried to tell himself. She hadn’t even bothered with an excuse. Just got up and left. Hannibal hadn’t done that and that had to mean something.
But then, there was no point in lingering in disappointment, Face thought, and untangled himself from the ruins of the bed with a twinge of regret. Wasn’t every day that they got to bunk down in a place this nice. He would have liked to enjoy it a little longer.
The bathroom was just as insanely overdesigned as the rest of the condo, and Face took his time in the marble and chrome of the shower, letting his washcloth scrub every trace of Hannibal’s scent of himself, and of course, he didn’t mind that at all.
After he was done, and while he was drying off, Face rubbed a hole in the steam on the mirror and just stared at himself. He looked thinner, older. Strained. The last month had been hard on them all, hard on him.
All the betrayal. It had torn a hole straight through him. Tore a hole in him now.
But he wasn’t going to think about Hannibal in those terms. Hannibal was the one constant in their lives. Hannibal would never turn on them. Hannibal did love him. In his own way, and not how Face would have had it, but there was love there. He was sure of that.
For his own part, he’d never been so sure of his feelings for the colonel, his commanding officer, as he’d been this last month.
Everything else ripped away from them, all the team had left was each other. Everything that had always, always been in the way before was gone now. Feelings he’d tamped and tightened down before were free to rise to the surface, rushing in and filling all that empty space like water in a freshly-dug well. Face had endured it as best he could, trying to hold back the flood, until it burst through the last of his defenses last night.
He watched a flush spread up his neck and cheeks as he thought about how he’d pleaded, how he’d begged, how Hannibal had been too gentle at first and how unbearable that tenderness would have made this morning. How he’d asked for it rougher, and things weren’t any easier.
Face shook all of these thoughts away. Man up, lieutenant. Hannibal was just taking care of him, like always. Maybe taking care of himself, too; it’d been a long time since the old man had gotten any. There hadn’t been any kissing, no cuddling, none of that. Seemed like Hannibal enjoyed it. Great. Sex should be enjoyable. That’s all it had been. Good. Sex.
Face decided to leave any other considerations there, in the bathroom, and he peeled the door open. He didn’t want anything else rattling around in his head for the rest of the day.
Steam curled off in the mountainside morning as he padded back into the small bedroom, Face couldn’t help but examine the evidence as he picked through it for his clothes. It was real, wasn’t it? The proof of it was all around him, pillows and comforter shoved off in a heap on the hardwood floor, his last clean t-shirt half-ripped and draped over a nearby lamp, torn condom wrapper still where Hannibal had left it. Face had a sudden urge to pick it up and keep it.
“Face!” Murdock hollered, banging on the door. “Pancakes! Come and get ‘em 'afore I feed yours to Billy!”
“Great,” he muttered to himself, and then louder, to Murdock, “I’ll be out in a second!”
Face left the condom wrapper where it was, and started rooting for a clean shirt in the borrowed dresser. He really was a sentimental idiot sometimes.
+++++
The condo smelled good, Face noticed, like the way childhood memories ought to smell, sweet and warm and safe. But he pushed that away reflexively. No need to dwell on any more unpleasantness this morning. It would just make what he was about to do harder.
As he rounded out the hallway into the main living area, Murdock waved to him from behind a stack so huge it looked like it came straight from one of those Aunt Jemima commercials. A glass jug of maple syrup, the expensive stuff, sat at his elbow, a third of the way empty. The pilot had an absent look of delight on his face. “Hiya, Facey. Sleep tight?”
He nodded at Murdock. “Mornin’. How’s the assault on the castle going?” It was a well-known fact among the team that you never, ever, took Murdock to an IHOP. Why in the world was Hannibal making him pancakes?
And it was Hannibal’s doing. There was Hannibal, in the kitchen. Hannibal with the mixing bowl, Hannibal adjusting the heat on the griddle, Hannibal in a weird little half-apron that tied in the back and framed his ass, even through the jeans... Face dug his fingers into his hand. He could do this.
Murdock gestured down at his breakfast. “I’ll get back to you,” and he shoved a huge cross-section of four of his seven pancakes into his mouth, “s’n as, mmph...”
Face nodded. “You save that princess, buddy.” The colonel hadn’t turned around yet. Better to just get this over with now, he figured, and sidled over to where Hannibal was dropping another half-dozen or so dollops of batter onto the smoking iron.
Smartass remark, he told himself, smartass remark. “Shouldn’t I be doing that?”
Hannibal tensed a little, clearly not amused. “Why? You going to ask me if you should be wearing my shirt, too?”
“I am wearing one of your shirts, actually,” the lieutenant said with a grin he didn’t feel, picking at the collar. “Couldn’t find anything else.” That was only partially a lie.
“We are going to have to do something about that,” Hannibal said, tone inscrutable.
“Yeah, right,” Face replied after a moment. “Supplies, clothes...I’ll make a run later. Where’d you get the pancake mix, anyway?”
“It’s from scratch. This guy’s pantry was stocked,” Hannibal said, pointing at the open bag of flour to his left. “Very considerate. Found us a good place, kid.”
The colonel finally looked up at him, putting his spatula down and laying one hand on his shoulder. It was a familiar touch, one Hannibal had used on them all countless times. Friendly. Fatherly. And it lasted all of two seconds.
Hannibal cracked that good-natured smile of his. “These are almost done. How many do you want?”
“Murdock’s stack looks pretty good,” he replied with an ease he didn’t feel, and retreated to the safety of the other side of the counter.
“Sure, it’s nice to have room to stretch out, isn’t it?” he asked Murdock conversationally, reaching for the coffee pot and a mug.
“I ha’ sh’ring b‘ds.” Murdock smacked around a giant, sugar-drenched mouthful. Was he eating with a soup spoon? Yeah, he was definitely enjoying himself. “Don’t you, Face?”
His eyes trained on the back of his CO’s head, Face just shrugged and sipped at his coffee. Good Italian imported stuff, judging by the open bag. It tasted hot. No flavor at all. “You know me, buddy. Not really my thing.”
Murdock nodded. “Humperdinck’s going to show up at any minute, Face,” he said and went back to the attack on his pancakes.
From what Face could see of the melee, Murdock was winning. “Good job, buddy. You show that bastard what happens to people who kidnap Buttercup, eh?”
Banter. Banter was good. Even crazy-babble-banter.
They were in a borrowed house, on the run from just about everybody, and it hurt, just a little and in an entirely wonderful way, to slide onto a stool, but everything was normal. Absolutely nothing had changed.
Face felt like he would break under the strain. But he’d had worse, much worse, and he put on a smile and told himself it was real. Of course it was. It had to be. He was Face, and Face would be smiling right now.
He never had to pretend to be himself.
“Hey, boss, can I ask why?”
“About the pancakes?” Hannibal asked, cautious of what his lieutenant might be getting at. He’d already started joking around about last night, and that was not something Hannibal wanted his face rubbed in. “Not all of us feel the need to sleep until practically noon.”
He knew exactly what expression the other man would be wearing, and didn’t bother turning around. Those cute, wounded, puppy-dogs eyes all the girls fell for. And him, too Hannibal thought morosely. Yeah, that was something he didn’t want to see right now. And he had to make sure there were enough bubbles rising through the cooking pancakes before he flipped them over. Something about the precision of the batter and the estimation of actual cook time calmed him down. At least he knew how to get pancakes where he wanted them.
“Come on, boss,” Face joked. “Llate? It’s not late. Late is like, four in the afternoon.”
He glanced up at the clock. Okay, the kid was going for annoying. Of course he was. “Face, it’s almost eleven-hundr...” And he froze, the remainder of the sentence sticking in his throat.
Both of the other men in the room had caught the slipped phrase. They’d gone quiet. He could hear the clock over the sink ticking out his embarrassment, indifferent to its own role in his screw-up. Nearly twenty-four years of service, gone now, all the little habits remaining. The little habits all that remained.
It was Face who spoke first, clearing his throat. “Boss, it doesn’t, I mean, hey, Europeans use the twenty-four hour...”
“We’re civilians now, Face,” Hannibal snapped, not really believing that he had to remind him of that fact. At least the lieutenant was still trying to cheer him up, still acting the same as he always did. He was the only one turned around this morning. Dear god, what was wrong with him?
“Naw, sir, we’re fugitives!” Murdock added brightly.
“Murdock, cut it out. Hannibal!”
Hannibal cast a glance back over his shoulder. Face’s pancakes had a minute or two.
The pilot was sticky. Ridiculously sticky, and he was brandished his spoon out in front of his like a rapier, making slow circles in the air in Face’s direction. “My name is Inigo Montoya...”
“Hannibal!” Face protested again.
He grinned at that, and then started laughing. It was good to see that, his boys carrying on like nothing had changed. He couldn’t feel it, so at least it was good to see it.
Time to flip.
“I’m not critizing, kid. You can all use the sleep right now, things like they are.”
“But not you?”
Hannibal tightened his grip around the oven door to keep himself from going over there and dragging Face off that stool, throwing him against the nearest wall and wiping that ridiculous smirk right off him. Of giving up and giving in and damn the consequences and Face’s personal feelings about it.
But Face didn’t mean anything by it, and Hannibal certainly couldn’t let himself do anything because of it, so he . He plunked laden plate down on the counter in front of him, and scooted Face’s arm off with the spatula. “It’s not polite to eat with your elbows on the table, kid.”
Face negotiated the maple syrup carefully away from Murdock, and poked at his friend’s ribs. “Hey, what part are you at?
Murdock consulted the portion of plate he could see. “Miracle Max is trying to bring Westley back to life,” he announced. “Choose your weapon carefully, Face!”
Hannibal only hoped the pilot was going to finish before the big immolation scene. And the duel. The duel usually got pretty messy.
“Hannibal?” Face asked, and Hannibal couldn’t help it if his heart leaped a little at the plaintive tone he heard there. Thought he heard.
“Yes, kid?”
Wished he'd heard.
“Can you hand me a spoon?”
Imagined.
It was another ten minutes before Murdock and Face found Princess Buttercup beneath the last of the soaked crumbs of breakfast. Murdock wanted to be extra sure she wasn’t going to be forced to consummate her marriage, and he was licking his plate clean when BA came back from his run.
“Pancakes?” he asked Face, who just shrugged. “Aw, hell no. Was this your idea, Face?”
“I have to go talk to Hannibal,” Face told him.
BA puffed. “Fool, you are not leaving me to clean this up!”
“Hey, it’s Hannibal. You want to piss the old guy off right now?” Face bounced off his stool. “He left some in the microwave for you, but you’d better catch Murdock before he touches anything.”
Murdock dabbed at a bit of amber-colored liquid on the end of his nose. Face practically skipped outside by the hot tub.
Distractions were sure nice right now.
Hannibal’s coffee cup sat on the patio railing next to his hand. The older man was staring out over the mountains. Thinking, probably. Good place for it.
The day seemed all the more brilliant for framing the contemplative form of his commanding officer. Face knew that his boss thought better in clean air and open horizons. It was one of the reasons he’d brought them here. Because he was a sentimental idiot.
And because he was a sentimental idiot, he wanted nothing more in that moment than to press his chest against that exposed back, wrap his hands around that hard waist, nuzzle in to the sweet space between shoulder and ear and make everything okay. But that wasn’t going to help either of them, Face acting all desperate again.
He closed the door slowly, suddenly aware it was open when he heard Murdock’s shouted protests and BA’s irritated roars.
“Always liked Colorado,” Hannibal told him.
I know, Face wanted to say. “I’ve never been. It’s nice,” he said, walking over to the rail. "So...”
“I’m going to ask you something, Face,” he said, turning on one elbow to face him. “And I need you to be completely honest with me.”
His chest felt tight. Was that the caffeine? “Sure.”
“I’ve never asked you this before,” Hannibal said, going back to his mountains and his coffee. Face made a mental note to find the nearest humidor and get him some cigars. “And I’m sorry to be asking you now, I really am. In the bedroom, um...”
His hand clenched, Face realized what it was. Anticipation. Please, Hannibal, he willed. Pleasepleaseplease.
“...I noticed a safe, in the closet.”
Fuck. So much for Jedi mind powers. “Yeah, I saw it, too.”
“It got me thinking. I’m sure you’re aware of our situation. Everything, everybody's assets got frozen during the trial, you know that. And we can't keep this up forever.”
Face stared at his feet.
“You want me to steal.” It wasn’t a question. "That's the plan."
“Right now, yes.”
“I’ve done that before.”
“No, you haven’t, kid.”
“What do you call this?” Face said, waving an arm. "Not ours."
“You call it a con. I call it borrowing. Point is, the owners get it back at the end.” They both heard a crash from inside, and more yelling. Hannibal winced. “Maybe damaged, but they get it back.”
Turning around, Face let his elbows rest against the railing, considering.
He felt anger jut into his blood. It was a horrible thing to ask.
He knew he’d been walking that line for years already, and now they were convicted criminals, on the lam for the second time inside a six-month period, and there was nothing, nothing to keep him anchored. He’d thought that maybe, just maybe, that could be Hannibal, but Hannibal didn’t love him, Hannibal might not be there to catch him, Hannibal might not be able to stop him from slipping into that darkness. If Hannibal had any idea what this might do to him...
Then again, if Hannibal needed him to do something, if Hannibal needed him to be something, well, Face really was a sentimental idiot.
He tilted his head up, straight to the sun, hoping it would still be able to reach him when all of this was over. “What, when and where, boss?”
It was like lead in his lungs, this acquiescence spreading the corners of his lieutenant’s beautiful mouth. Hannibal thought about the day he’d pinned those silver bars to Peck’s shoulders, and the day the MPs had torn them away, and not even he, Hannibal Smith, had been able to get them back. He’d feared for Face, then. He feared for him now.
But he knew he wasn’t going to be able to offer Face any comfort that he would accept, so he just sighed and got on with it.
“Face, I’m being serious here.”
“So am I, boss. Seriously, whatever. D’you have a plan?”
“No plan, kid. You’re more experienced with this stuff than I am.” Aware of how it must have sounded, his toes curled, but Face didn’t even seem to notice. “You don’t have to go crazy. I’m working on a couple of things right now. This won’t last forever.”
That was a bald lie, but Face didn’t catch that either. “Yeah, I think I get it, Hannibal.”
“You okay with it?”
Face ran a hand through his hair. It’d gotten longer since their discharge, and had felt like heaven between Hannibal’s fingers last night. “Boss, really, everything’s fine. I’ll take care of this, you do that crazy planning thing you do, and we’ll all be in Hawaii drinking Mai-Tais at Duke’s by Christmas.”
Hannibal nodded. “One thing, Face.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t tell BA or Murdock. I'll handle the questions.”
He heard Face’s feet shuffle behind him, and the patio door creak open. “No prob.”
Hannibal put his head down on his hands in a vain attempt to get that low-pooling guilt to drain out of his skull. But then, maybe he deserved it. How had ten years under his command not instilled any more gravity in this young man? He thought about telling him not to go, but when he finally got back inside, a glowering BA told Hannibal that Face had already left with Murdock.
And then Hannibal just got pissed.
That faded a little when Face and Murdock came back with bags of perishable groceries and beer and fresh clothes and stories about the Breckenridge Walmart and absolutely no whisper of any wrong-doings.
Hannibal didn’t want anybody going out and roaming around, not until he got a better feel for how things were going. Face hooked up some kind of IP-masker for the condo’s computer, BA suggested TV and soon Murdock’s favorite cartoons were blaring from the gigantic flatscreen at the end of the living room.
There was nothing about them on any news site, major, minor, blog or otherwise. They seemed to have fallen off the grid entirely, and he wanted to keep it that way.
He didn’t ask Face what he’d done, and every concerned glance over in the TV's general direction found his boys laughing and arguing and making grabs for the remote that Murdock probably had a death-grip on.
But later, after they’d grilled up some steaks and managed a simple salad and beers, while BA and Murdock were fight over whether or not skinny-dipping was allowed in the hot tub, Hannibal came back into the kitchen find the conman, scissors in hand, snipping apart an unfamiliar credit card over the trash can.
Hannibal had no idea what one was supposed to say in this situation. “Dinner was good, kid.”
"Glad I could help." Face dusted the rest of the plastic bits into the can, his foot resting on the little lever that popped the lid up. “You really should only use one of those once. Problems, otherwise”
And how did Face know that?
“You can sleep in the bedroom, if you wanted. It's a big bed.” It wasn't really an offer, Hannibal told himself. No need to worry about rejection. Couldn't reject something that wasn't an offer.
Face hadn’t bothered to turn the kitchen lights back on, and the condo was dark, except for what the moon was spilling in. Hannibal had been entertaining the thought of bending the younger man all the way back over the counter and kissing him until nothing else registered, until the spectrum of sensation was saturated utterly by that one, simple touch.
Face just let the can lid fall back into place.
“I thought I’d try the sleeper sofa tonight. You know how I like to stretch out."
And that, Hannibal told himself, heading down the hall, slamming the door behind him, was that.
+++++
And that was how things went for the next week or so. They hung around the condo, Face explaining their little group’s peculiarities away to the bewildered staff, BA and Murdock getting on each other’s nerves, Hannibal reading every book he could get his hands on and cooking, which was bizarre, and Face taking care of the occasional acquisition request.
He actually found it entirely too easy to lift somebody’s wallet and take out what he wanted. He felt bad about it, but it wasn’t like he was stealing cash. Credit cards were easier to pull, and the person he’d taken it from could always just call the bank and have it canceled. Hell, they could get it refunded. So it wasn’t exactly like stealing.
That didn’t make him feel any better about it.
In face, Face didn’t feel good most of the time now. He wasn’t sitting in some holding cell, or a prison, or a dank cargo hold or getting shot at or anything, but he found himself missing it. No, not missing it. Longing for it. that was it. He was longing for it.
At first, he didn’t know why. Then, after a particularly strained conversation with Hannibal one afternoon, he realized what it was.
Hannibal wouldn’t look at him any more. But that left more questions
Was it because he’d rebuffed him about the bed the second night? Was it about the credit card thing? There was no way to know. He kept turning it over in his mind, wearing the edges of the question away in the stream of his thoughts until it was sand that got under his fingernails and beneath his clothes and itched.
Face knew he was irritating the rest of the team. They all had some heavy thinking to do, and rest to catch up on, and his constant, flighty outbursts and depressive observations weren’t helping any of them. Hannibal, carrying the weight of whatever future they might have, seemed especially susceptible to it. Murdock and BA had both noticed it, separately asking him what was going on. So everyone knew there was a problem.
But the younger man didn’t think any of them were ready for what happened that afternoon.
It was the seventh, no, eighth day after their arrival. Hannibal and BA were out on a hike, and Murdock was playing his own game of hide and seek with the cleaning girl, who thought he was the cutest thing she’d ever seen.
Maybe twenty-two, she was one of those ski-bum girls who lived in the mountains year-round, working whatever dead-end job she could find, saving up for the winter runs. Dreadlocks and pigtails, a neck tattoo, not really Face’s type. But she was sweet, and she wasn’t one of the guys, and she was excited about the season starting up in a month or two. So, Face was picking her brains about the good bowls and when to go, not that he really cared, when BA and Hannibal came back.
Hannibal took one look at her, shook his head and brushed right past Face, through the huge living room to the kitchen. Face followed, his stomach clenched up in knots.
Might as well.
Hannibal had moved towards the refrigerator, so Face decided to take up a defensive position on the opposite side of the small room. “What the hell, Hannibal?” he demanded, not really caring how loud he was or if anybody else was listening.
Hannibal just look irritated. “Face, do you have any sense of yourself? Do you know what you're doing?”
“We were just talking,” he protested.
“Face,” Hannibal told him, fishing a gatorade out of the fridge, “you and I both know, you are never just talking to a girl.”
“It's not like she's some private, and I'm..." Face caught himself. "Wait, what are you trying to say, boss?”
Hannibal took a long pull on the bottle, and Face instinctively knew he was doing it specifically to avoid answering. He panted a little after he set it down, and stared at a point on the wall behind him. “I’m saying that you need to get laid. Right now.”
To be fair, Hannibal had told him this before. If they’d been on a mission for too long. If they were in the middle of an Army base downrange for more than a few weeks. If they'd gotten a nice week or two off in a place like Italy or Spain.
...if they’d just stopped running from the DoD and CIA and the whole fucking planet, and found a nice little place in the Colorado Rockies, and finally had clean beds and one another...
Face wiped the corner of his eye. It was nothing. Meaningless. “Is that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“You offering to help me out again, boss?”
Again with the gatorade.
He steeled himself.
And then it came.
“No."
At least expected. The next part wasn't.
"You've been fucked up this last week, kid. I need you to get whatever the fuck this is, out of your system, right now."
"Sure, whatever the fuck this is," Face echoed. He closed his eyes and nodded, feeling odd. There wasn’t really a word for it. Odd seemed to work as well as anything else. “That an order?”
“I doubt you need me to make it one,” Hannibal replied. Face tried to collect himself. Tried. “The way you are, Face.”
And failed.
“Wouldn’t matter anyway,” he said softly, feeling his skin peel away. “You’re not a colonel anymore, John, remember?, and I’m not a lieutenant. You can't give me orders any more.”
“Face...”
And he absolutely refused to let Hannibal finish that statement. He ignored the venom he’d injected the older man’s name with. Didn’t acknowledge Murdock, standing not five feet away. Stormed right past BA, watching aghast from the sofa.
He did stop to grab his jacket from the back of a chair and made a special point to kiss the confused cleaning girl square on the mouth on his way out. If he heard anything, if they tried to say anything on his way out, he refused to let it register against the slam of the door.
Face blinked a few times in the afternoon air as he walked down the gently sloping sidewalk, blocking from his mind the way Hannibal’s voice had sounded, saying his name like a prayer, low and throaty and sad and incredible.
There was no way he was going to let that man humiliate him any further.
As Face picked what car in the parking lot he wanted to hot-wire, he promised himself that he wasn’t going to cry.
+++++
Hannibal was reeling inside, but he couldn’t show that. It wasn’t that Face had used his first name. It was that Face had thrown it at him. How was it that he could have the kind of emotion he had for the kid, only to have it returned with such rabid hatred? He was an absolute fool.
“Somethin’s going on between you two,” BA was saying to him. “Since we got here. It’s been weird, man. You owe it to Face...”
“I owe it to Face?”
“Yeah, Hannibal. You needs to do something.”
“Fellas, Face is going to be fine.” He knew they wanted to go after him. He knew they knew he wasn't going to allow it.
“Ain’t never seen him like that, Hannibal.”
Hannibal crossed his arms and aped a confidence he wasn't really capable of at the moment. “Face is off the reservation for the evening, gentlemen. Accept it”
“We’re all off the reservation, man,” BA grumbled.
But when Face showed up the next morning, sporting a fresh lovebite below the ear, missing a couple of buttons, grinning, Hannibal felt redeemed.
And not one tiny bit jealous.
Something had changed, though. The lieutenant was flat, ironed out. His words were still bright and biting and witty, charming as ever, but his eyes were a little duller, the motions a little more labored.
He hated seeing Face caged up like this, and studiously gave him as much space as possible. The lieutenant didn’t complain and didn’t say thanks. He still slept on the sofa, but sometimes Hannibal roused to the sound of the front door softly opening or closing, and the colonel suspected he was sneaking out. That he could live with, as long as he came back.
His command of the kid had always been tenuous, based on mutual respect rather than regulation. Independence burned somewhere deep down in Face like the pilot light on a stove. It was at the core of who the man was. Had to keep it lit, or risk extinguishing all that. The colonel had traded away more favors and resources and better-qualified personnel over the years to safeguard that quality in his lieutenant.
It was the one thing in the man he'd treasured above all else.
But that was all in the past. The outburst had only served to confirm it. His lieutenant, the sweet, earnest kid he’d brought up from the uncertain post-commissioning days, was gone, the last shards now waterlogged cinders in the Lost Angeles port, that respect sunk to the bottom. Lost. It was a miracle that Face came back at all.
In the long, slow days, Hannibal weighed the pros and cons of moving on, and asked Face to see if he couldn’t extend their stay a little longer. “I’m sorry to ask,” he’d begun, but Face had only laughed it off, and said it wasn’t a problem at all. Another credit card ended up in the trash, and a new perfume clung to Face’s collar for a few days. It was sad, in a way, but Face made no indication of caring, and Hannibal tried to pretend he didn't either.
So the first week turned into the second, and they were rounding through the third.
His boys usually scattered around lunch time. Murdock like the gondola. BA liked the trails. And Hannibal had caught Face at the local coffee shop a few times, flirting with one of the girls who worked there, and wasn’t that the way it ought to be? They both ignored each other, the time or two this happened, and everything got along fine.
Today was one of those days. Hannibal had a latte and the overly cheery town rag in front of him. He wasn’t really interested in either.
Face was a stone’s throw away, talking to the barista in that low, halting, confident tone he used for cons and hook-ups. There had to be a sincere setting on that, Hannibal thought absently, and wished for a moment he could hear it, just once. Face had been so insistent that night, there hadn't been room for...
“Anything interesting in that thing today?”
Hannibal looked up. Voice belonged to some out-of-towner waiting for his coffee. He looked back at Face, engrossed with that girl. Talking. What could it hurt?
Face couldn’t have said what made him turn around just then.
Three guys, bit older, later thirties, standing around, talking to Hannibal. Could have been anything. Couldn’t be good.
“Excuse me, beautiful,” he said in the middle of whatever it was that the girl was talking about, and crooked a thumb back over his shoulder. “Need to rescue a buddy.”
“... oh, yeah, when?” one of the strangers was saying, and Face read the situation instantly as he sauntered up. Sideburns, stance, cadence of voice: military. Attitude, posture: Army. Brand of polo shirt: officers. Guys on some leave, probably with their familes.
This was very bad. He’d caught Hannibal doing this a few weeks back in Vegas, which had been a stupid place to stop anyway, and he was not going to let his CO get into that kind of trouble again.
“It was a while ago, after the First Gulf War, around...”
Face pounced, moving into Hannibal’s personal bubble like he owned it, and punctuating this with a hand on Hannibal’s wasit and a cheek on his shoulder. Automatically, Hannibal stroked a hand up his back and buried his fingers in his hair. It was gentle, almost sweet, and Face fought the urge to lean into it too forcefully. He was just there to unsettle, nothing more.
“Er, Temp, what are you doing?”
And it was working.
“Just wanted to see what you were up to, darling,” he said, throwing the faintest degree of lisp into his voice. Sure, it was insulting, but that was the point. He needed these guys, old majors or young lieutenant colonels, to back off before one of them recognized Hannibal.
“Sorry, kid,” Hannibal replied, and only Face would have noticed the hard edge of anger behind the words. “Didn’t realize I was ignoring you.”
Face stifled a whimper at the thought of Hannibal saying that to him, truly and without all the stupid pretense.
“Oh, look at this, dear, how rude of me,” he said, catching himself, “Haven’t gotten you to tell me who these nice people are.”
There were a couple of politely forced introductions, some small talk that nobody seemed interested in any more, a flash of anger from Hannibal when Face announced the receipt to be in his back pocket and would John be a dear and take it from him before it got lost?
But when Hannibal decided to get obstinate about Face’s subtle clues that they needed to go, the conman just did a mental shrug and rose up a little, capturing Hannibal’s ear lobe on the way to a whispered, “the fuck are you doing, boss?”
Hannibal forced a small laugh, and pushed at Face down with a gesture that would probably be interpreted as playful by their audience.
Fance may have just let the whole thing go, and play this out, but then Hannibal’s hand moved from his hair down a little to his neck, light circles rippling outward in shockwaves from the finger pads. That just wasn’t fair. It was either hit the old man or plant one soft, innocent kiss full on his mouth, and that, that got his attention.
“Well, if they don’t have anything he can drink, I probably need to get him back to the hotel,” Hannibal told the others, nothing but irritation showing. His hand moved down a little more, hooking around Face’s back belt loop and pushed.
Face’s jeans felt a little tight, and his consolation there was that at least it’d fit the part.
“What’s wrong with you, Face?” the colonel hissed as they got free of the main street. "You're like a three year old.
Face smirked to cover up the sudden, rending jab. “Wasn’t a total loss, boss. I did get their wallets.”
Hannibal was pissed.
Even if Face hadn’t been able to tell that by the other man’s footfalls, the pace, his breathing, that look he’d gotten over the wallets comment, or the way his shoulders had clenched up when Face had kissed him, the route would have been a dead giveaway. It appeared they were going the longest way back, through a woody finger of mountain that spilled down through the town.
Hannibal wanted to walk, Hannibal was pissed. Simple math.
Face tried again as he hustled to keep up with his CO. “Come on, Hannibal. You can’t get pissed at me for that. I saved our bacon back there.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Yeah, look,” he said, running ahead and turning around, walking backwards so he could show Hannibal. “We’ve got a signal-corps major, a police, oh, a police lieutenant colonel, and a combat search and rescue lieutenant colonel. Think any of them might possibly know you, boss?”
“You can’t get somebody’s job off their ID, Face,” Hannibal shot back irritably.
“But you can get it off the way they look,” Face protested, wielding an ID card as if it would do something. Hannibal just laid a hand on his chest, let it sit there for just a moment, thoughtful, and then pushed Face out of the way. The conman bit his lip and kept following. “I mean, have you ever seen anybody who wasn’t a cop with that stupid fucking haircut?”
Hannibal stopped. Face realized he’d practically yelled that last part, and he stopped too, a few paces behind, and grateful for the break. The air was a lot thinner up here, and both men were breathing hard.
“We’re all on the same team here, Face.”
“Boss, have you forgotten that we’re wanted fugitives? Wanted by the fucking DoD? That part of life is gone. It’s over. We’re going to jail forever if we get caught.” And part, a large part, of himself cringed from the thought of Hannibal, their commander, his commander, dying in Fort Leavenworth. “You have to let it go!”
“Is it that easy for you?”
“I’ve done harder things!” Like getting through the past weeks.
“Say I accept that." That was promising. "Are you trying to tell me, that’s the only reason you did that back there, Face?”
Maybe it wasn’t the lack of air that made Face light-headed just then. He thought there was something there, something he so desperately, desperately needed to hear. Hannibal had been ignoring him since the kitchen throw-down, and Face didn’t blame him for that. He’d been out of line, completely disrespectful, and while there were many things that Templeton Peck was not, one thing that he’d always be was loyal to this man.
Yet Face was sick of worrying, sick of sitting on the front step at night for hours on end, staring at the cold and distant stars, unable to sleep for fear all his dreams would turn to ash even there, and his last scrap of comfort would be gone. And now here Hannibal was, asking. Maybe, and this was a big maybe, the boss would work his magic, and make everything right side up again.
So Face gulped down all the rampage of doubt and made up the distance between them, not sure how close he should get.
“Hannibal, I...”
“You don’t need to make excuses for yourself, Face,” Hannibal said evenly, walking over. “I know what’s going on.”
Hannibal’s hand was on his shoulder.
Warm.
Fatherly.
Shit.
“If you want to leave, if things have changed too much, feel free.”
Hannibal was throwing him out. His brain refused to process those words in that order. Hannibal. Throwing him out. Throwing him away. And it was all his own damn fault. Had to be. Hannibal wouldn’t do this without a reason.
But what had he done wrong? Moved on? Tried to move on? He hadn’t, not really, but maybe he needed to. Let those skylight slider glide right back over the glass ceiling of his future. No point in looking upwards for things you couldn't have.
“Okay” he said, removing Hannibal’s hand slowly. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll take the damn things back to their hotel tonight. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Face...”
“Because I’m good at all that illegal shit, right? And I'll be fine?”
“Kid,” Hannibal began, but Face was already down the path, and he had no intention of allowing Hannibal to catch up with him.
+++++
The afternoon was sliding off the sky by the time Hannibal made it back to the condo. The door was closed, but not locked. He tensed out of long habit as he entered the place. Everything was dark, none of the lights switched on and the living room windows shuttered down. It was utterly still.
What had set Face off like that?
Face had freaked out over leaving. But Face wouldn’t leave on his own; no matter how pissed he was at his CO, there were still Murdock and BA to consider. And Face would consider them. No, he’d freaked out because he’d thought Hannibal was asking him to leave. And he’d do it, if Hannibal told him to, even if it was the last thing he'd ever consider doing himself.
Loyal to a fault.
The colonel realized with a burning embarrassment that he’d been throwing this in the kid’s face for weeks now; asking him to be loyal, to follow orders, to trust in his CO, when that CO was giving him what, once, would have been illegal orders and then berating him. When that CO was actively lying to him. When that CO couldn't handle the emotional fallout of one single night.
Did Face really deserve all that, just because Hannibal was afraid?
He checked every room. All of them, devoid of anything resembling Face. Same story outside. Defeated, he dragged into the room he’d been using, and there was the last thing Hannibal expected to see.
Face, curled up in his bed, head turned to the opposite wall, breathing slow and regular in sleep.
Hannibal stood there for a moment, considering. How long had Face been running on fumes? How many nights had he slept on floors? And the kid had such champagne taste sometimes. Made sense he’d pick the best place for a few minutes rest before heading out again. Hannibal didn't want to wake him up. Kid looked almost innocent like this, all the missions, all the sights, erased from the corners of his eyes in sleep. Sweet. Beautiful. The man he might had been, had he not come into the service.
But then, if he hadn't come into the service, he wouldn't be the man he was. The man Hannibal was in love with.
“Ah, kid,” Hannibal said softly, sitting down on the opposite side of the mattress, “really fucked this one up, didn’t I?”
He reached a hand over to rest on Face’s calf. “I wasn’t trying to tell you to leave. Last thing I want is you gone.”
Hannibal planted his arm down on the other side of Face, turning over so he could watch him sleep one more time, idle fingers tucking errant hairs away.
“Goddamn it, Face,” he muttered to himself. “Why couldn’t this have meant something to you? Why didn’t I?”
“Mmmpm,” came the little sound from Face, and the lithe body rolled over a little bit, pinning Hannibal’s hand and dragging him down. The colonel found himself eye to sleep-filled eye with Face.
“Bed, 's'yours,” the conman muttered, half-awake, paddling the air with limp wrists.
“It’s okay. They’re all borrowed.”
“Sorry, H'n'bl," and his name suddenly sparked a tremor rocked Face fully awake, sleep banished from suddenly wild eyes. The younger man tried to throw Hannibal off but Hannibal wasn’t having it. Not today. Not if he would never got another chance to do this. He pinned the other man’s arms.
“Shh, Face, calm down. I’m not mad.”
“Fuck off, Hannibal. I don't car..."
I know you don't, kid, Hannibal thought to himself sadly.
He closed his eyes and let gravity pull him down, his lips closing down on target perfectly. Face squirmed a little under him, but soon Hannibal’s shy, hesitant peck changed in a way he’d never dared hope for, and there he was, ravishing the lieutenant’s mouth.
And Face was letting him.
+++++
Face didn’t think things could get any worse right now.
He hadn’t been getting much sleep lately, and the emotional drain was only making his semi-self-imposed deprivation worse. And then Hannibal had thrown him out of the unit, and he’d come back here anyway. To accomplish what? The place was empty. BA and Murdock off were in the gondola somewhere and Hannibal hadn't even tried to follow him. Void. Wasn't even theirs.
He couldn't say what pulled him back to Hannibal’s bed. It smelled of him, warm and secure and sure, and the next thing he knew, he was toeing off his shoes and crawling under the covers and falling asleep.
And then came the weight shift, and words he couldn't make out from under the surface of wakefulness, his unintentional turn, and Hannibal's little kiss, this horrendously unfair kiss.
It had to stop. Profanity hadn’t worked. Worse, his body was betraying him by melting up into Hannibal as if it belonged there. His heart wasn’t in the fight, but he untangled a hand anyway and forced Hannibal off.
Face swung his legs around, sitting up, hands twisting into his hair, struggling to get his breathing under control. His lips felt slightly swollen now, the feel of Hannibal's tongue lingering, tingling. Face was suddenly ashamed that he'd played something this good in a con, like it didn't matter at all. But it didn't, right? Not to Hannibal. Why did he have to make so much more out of it?
“What is your problem, Face?”
But if that was true, why'd Hannibal initiated it? The answer seemed plenty obvious.
“Goddamn it, Hannibal,” he groaned. “I don’t need your sympathy.”
“Sympathy?”
“Kicking me out, feeling bad, letting me have...” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t need this.”
“Letting you have what?”
“Nothing,” Face spit out, feeling an ache in his chest as he stared at the floor. “You let me have nothing.”
“Look at me, lieutenant,” Hannibal growled and that sound went straight to Face’s groin. There was that hand on his shoulder again, but it was different, sliding forward until the elbow crooked down and pulled him back just a little, until he was laying backwards against Hannibal's clothed chest. It felt wonderful. It was really too cruel.
“What are you doing, boss?” Face asked, thoroughly miserable now.
“I want you to have everything,” he breathed, his words itching against all Face’s better sense, twisting him around. Hannibal smiled. He ran a soft hand around the lieutenant’s face. “We'll get you whatever it is you need, Face. You want it rough tonight, kid?” And the last thing Face wanted was a repeat of last time. But Hannibal sounded sincere; it wasn't quite that paternal concern he was always exuding, the consideration of last time. “Anything you want, any way. It’s your call.”
Face closed his eyes. He’d get through this, and then he'd be gone and it wouldn't matter.
“Make love to me.”
Fuck. That was not getting through this. That was not making this not matter.
Behind him, he felt Hannibal freeze up, like every muscle in his body tensed at once. Flight response? No, not that. Please, not that. Face's breath hitched to a stop and he began back-pedaling as fast as he could. “Well, er, you know what I mean, I don’t like it too rough most of the time, so, yeah, just kinda gentle and normal speed and, not usually into biting, but yeah,” he said, letting his words fall off, unable to force even the slightest grin. “Ah, shit, Hannibal, I didn't mean to phrase it that way.”
“Easy, kid.” The hand moved down his cheek to a pulse point, and Hannibal's thumb pressed in, surprisingly hard. “I love you too, you know.”
And that undid Face completely.
Hands found buttons, shirts were pulled and discarded, socks lay forgotten in the smooth movement of flesh on flesh. It was all too much, so Face took it in in pieces. There was Hannibal’s tongue at his jaw, Hannibal’s hands on his waist, Hannibal’s hard cock grinding into his thigh, Hannibal’s rough, blissful fingers wrapped around his cock and Hannibal’s lips curving a trail down Face’s chest, leaving every nerve on fire in his wake.
Everything had blurred into soft color in the deepening night, and then something hot and wet engulfed him, teasing him into the lighter and lighter shades of the room, so close, and then hard fingers squeezed down around the base. He whimpered in protest.
Hannibal paused, coming up. A slow draw against Face’s lips, a murmured, "not yet" and then the bed shifted as Hannibal’s weight lifted away.
Face had a truly horrible moment where he’d made a mistake, he’d miscalculated, he really had said the wrong thing, where Hannibal was gone, Hannibal wasn’t coming back, Hannibal didn't care...
“Shh, I’ve got you.”
Reassurance slipped back around Face as the bed's box springs announced Hannibal's return. The older man pressed full-length against him, pulling chest to back. One hand reached around and stroked Face's length, drawing a needy gasp. The other hand was trapped between them, lingering right below Face's tailbone, one finger slicked and teasing. He’d been after lube. Face felt the relief in his toes and sighed. Something salty and wet was running down his face and the lieutenant would never, never admit to tears, so it had to be sweat. The temperature in the room seemed to be climbing.
The finger tickled as it slid inside him, up to the knuckle. The younger man undulated backwards against Hannibal’s chest, little uncontrollable sounds being pushed from him, unstoppable, as the older man crooked it and hit that little button that made stars explode up over the edges of his mind.
"Beautiful, Temp."
“Just for you, colonel,” he moaned, aware of how wanton it sounded and not caring.
A second finger joined the first, scissoring. “I’ve got a name, Temp. Maybe we should start using it.”
“You’ll always be my commanding officer, sir.”
The fingers inside him jerked, and then Hannibal nudged his face around for another searing kiss. "Ready, lieutenant?" he whispered when he finally broke away.
"Since the first time I saw you," Face murmured, and wasn't it nice to be capable of the truth for once?
“I do love you, kid.” Hannibal pulled his fingers free, Face quivering at the loss of sensation that was okay, it turned out, because that quickly replaced by something much, much better. Lovely. He’d had Hannibal’s cock in him once before, on that wonderful, horrible night, but that hadn't beenlike this.
This had a sense of completion, as if there was a part of him that was always missing was now clicking into place. Hannibal squeezed Face’s erection from behind with perfect, glorious pressure. Surrounded by Hannibal, who was holding onto him with an intensity long sought and never found before tonight. It was utterly overwhelming.
“Good?” Hannibal murmured, and all Face could do was nod. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
They found their rhythm together without words after that, sweet and slow, neither man wanting to rush this. There would be time for exploration and play and teasing later, but this was their first time, the first honest time, and there was no gain in ruining it with haste.
Still it was over too quickly for Face, the moments bleeding together and spreading like clear water through his head, washing away every other consideration, every other memory, of the last few weeks. It might have been minutes or hours that he found himself coming in Hannibal’s hand, felt Hannibal was coming inside him, and he had the sense of loss as the other man slipped out, a sheet being pulled up, before Hannibal’s warmth wrapped around him once again and followed into a dreamless sleep.
In the morning, Face yawned and stretched and reached, giddy at the prospect of waking, but his hands hit nothing except unoccupied corners and spent sheets.
Alone in bed.
He slammed his head back into the pillows. What had he done now?
+++++
The day was bright and sunny, BA reading the local daily rag at the and Murdock being, well, Murdock. Hannibal was at the stove again, chatting with the pilot across the room, and the inquiry about the imaginary dog only faltered a little at seeing Face.
“Mornin’, all,” Face yawned, shuffling over to the counter. He needed coffee, he decided, lots of coffee. He rubbed the last grainy remnants of sleep from him eyes and started as he got a good look at Hannibal. What the hell? “Bathrobe, Hannibal? Seriously?”
“It’s Turkish, Face,” Murdock replied. "Condo special."
"Yeah, I know. I'm the one who's been using them," Face protested. He supposed he really shouldn't. After all, he'd made a point of it to wear one of Hannibal's shirts today. "Guys, come on, have any of us ever, ever, seen Hannibal in a robe before?"
"Turkish cotton's nice stuff, Face," the pilot pointed out patiently.
Hannibal interjected. “How many pancakes do you want, kid?”
That again? Face's first instinct was to pretend like nothing was wrong, to carry forward and swallow the bitterness. But that didn’t make the bitterness go away. Might as well try a little honesty for once. “I wake up alone, and you’re making pancakes in a bathrobe? What's wrong with this image, boss?”
Murdock twisted around on his stool, his stage whisper clearly audible. “I knew it, BA, I knew it! Didn’t I tell you they were..."
“Shut up, fool! Let them have their moment or ain’t none of us gettin’ breakfast!” BA raised his rolled up paper in warning.
“Billy said newspapers ain’t nice.”
"Murdock, I swear..."
“Children, stop bickering,” Hannibal ordered without much heat as Face slid up to the counter and took the batter bowl away, setting down on the other side of him.
“Boss?” he asked plaintively, but Hannibal just huffed, reached over him, and scooted the discarded bowl back. "Boss, seriously, what the hell?"
Fingers drummed the marble counter-top for a moment. “You always say you like waking up alone,” Hannibal said with more uncertainty in his voice than Face has ever heard there before.
“Christ, Hannibal, I was lying.”
The colonel’s eyes were hard around the edges. "About?"
“Well, I toss the girls out, true, but they’re just back-scratchers. Don't sleep with them. That wasn’t some goddamn itch I was after last night,” Face said.
“Had me fooled."
"I'd never throw you out, boss," Face said, a sick feeling starting to spread in his stomach, and Hannibal immediately stopped what he was doing and drew the younger man into a bear hug. Face could hear his chest rumble as he spoke.
"Shit, I was joking. About the girls, kid. I don't doubt you."
"Guess I couldn't blame you if you did." Face shrugged, and watched the latest batch of pancakes bubble. “I lie. I’m good at it.”
“You're so much more than that,” Hannibal told him, tilting his chin up for a long, slow, breathless kiss. “You're so much more to me. And," he added in a teasing voice, a little lower, "now know how much you love sleeping in, we'll have to do a lot more of it."
Face just nodded, head back, savoring the warmth of it all. Then he smiled. “Oh, forgot to tell you, couple days back, I got a line from a buddy who’s got a big ranching operation down on the border. Big problems with drug runners. They could use our help.”
“You want to turn us into mercenaries, Face?” Murdock’s voice. Face had forgotten they had an audience, but Hannibal wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him in close, so he figured maybe it didn't matter all that much. BA rolled his eyes.
"Not really," Face nodded. “Pretty good pay, chance to do some crazy shit. Sure we could find you a plane, buddy. I’m thinking we could start calling ourselves soldiers of fortune.”
“Ohh, I like that,” Murdock said.
“I am not gettin’ in no airplanes, Hannibal!” BA protested.
“I’ll take it under advisement," the colonel said, and let Face go with a pat on the ass and a real smile. The one that said he had a plan in the works. Face had missed that. Hannibal just wasn't himself without it. And when Hannibal was himself, well, all was right with the world.
Confusion banished, Face smirked.
“That means yes, doesn’t it, boss?” he observed, and ran a finger through the pancake batter.
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