Hook, Line and Sinker (Part Three)
Nov. 23rd, 2010 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: slight mention of child abuse
Summary: Part three of three of a fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Another Hannibal-meets-Face first time request, but with a twist. At that point, Face is one of/employed by the enemy. Either through ideals or lies or blackmail, Face is on the other side when Hannibal first meets him.
Hannibal, of course, sees the potential in the kid, and sets out to convince and/or seduce Face away from the Dark Side. Slash is preferred, but not strictly necessary.
Templeton Peck, conman and adopted son of mafia cappo Anthony Santori, gets more than he bargained for when he’s sent to take down the new VP of a major defense contractor, John Hamilton. Seducing John isn’t a problem. Dealing with the fallout, however... that gets a bit trickier, especially once he finds out who John really is, and what he’s trying to do.
Peck wasn’t there for the first official meeting.
He had been there for the first unofficial meeting, the one he’d set up with Santori that night he’d figured out that John, Hannibal, had been lying to him all along. The cappo had had a good laugh, found an excuse to go hit something repeatedly with a baseball bat, and then gotten down to doing some planning of his own.
I’m proud of you...
It involved letting VP John Hamilton come down to the strip club one afternoon and discuss some of the inconsistencies he’d found in the books and some of the problems he was having with accounting. Santori had hemmed and hawed and let Hannibal get to his point, which was that there was something fishy in the state of Denmark and he was not happy about it.
“We can’t continue doing business like this.”
“You can’t continue doing business at all if you terminate our agreements. I’ll pull labor, force you to hire outside the unions, tie you up in court for years for discriminatory employment processes...”
“You’re backing me into a corner here.”
“The government never looks at their books. We both know how it works. You charge them whatever the fuck you want and make windfall profits, we get a share, nobody gets hurt, everybody’s happy. What’s your fucking problem?”
Hannibal had actually blown a fucking smoke ring at Santori from across the table, and looked over at Peck, who was doing his homework and his absolute best impression of silenced resignation in the back corner of the messy room. Like he was there because he’d had to be, because Santori made him be there.
Peck caught Hannibal’s eyes, and quickly adverted his own. His face was burning, and in a way, he was grateful for that. He’d never delineated his relationship with the cappo to Hannibal, letting the other man have the room and time to form his own wrong opinions. Sure, he would occasionally let Santori fuck him, but it had been like that since his parents had died and it hadn’t mattered to him in a long, long time. Shame would make this all more believable for Hannibal, like he really had a reason to betray the man who’d taken care of him for the past ten years.
“We need to renegotiate this arrangment of yours.”
“Why, you arrogant motherfucker, it’s your fucking business model that’s broken, you...” and Santori had gone off, fountaining profanity, and Hannibal just sat there and waited for him to finish, and said something incredibly witty and the cappo had laughed and they’d talked for another half hour before shaking hands and agreeing to another meeting.
Hannibal had cast a strange little glance over Peck, wistful, maybe, before he’d left.
“Should I go catch him in the parking lot?”
“He’s completely distracted by you, Peck,” Santori observed calmly. “I don’t know how you do that.”
“Just like anybody else I go after, ‘cept you.”
“I know all your tricks, son.”
He hated it when Santori called him that, he really did. Mostly because he had to answer the same thing, “gee, thanks, dad,” and see that little shiver of pleasure. The cappo had his sick side, sure. But in Peck’s experience, so did the rest of the goddamn planet. Like Hannibal, pretending to care about him and being so sweet while all the time, underneath it all...
“He’s an asshole.”
“Well, let’s keep him on the hook. Go get him.”
So Peck had run out after him, backpack in hand, and curled up around Hannibal’s waist, clinging to him like a life raft in a storm, and let Hannibal bundle him up and take him out for a beer and a good, easy fuck to round out the day. Trying to con the conman into thinking he cared.
Laying there in bed afterward, Peck had listened to John’s light snoring, just thinking. He had no doubt the man cared about him on some level. It was evident in the way the older man touched him, the way he looked at him, like that look in the office earlier in the day. It made it all the worse, knowing he was lying to him. Knowing that beneath all those layers of concern and care and thoughtfulness, Hannibal was just like every other man he’d ever known.
Using him.
Normally, he was fine with that. Usually, he was doing the greater share of the using. It made it all balance out, made what he did okay and safe and fun, most of the time. But there was nothing fun about this. Here, there was no satisfying irony, just a knawing hypocrisy that somebody in his line of work, in his world, couldn’t afford to care about.
So why, why, was this bothering him so fucking much? Because he'd fallen in love? What the fuck was that, anyway, love? Useless.
All of it utterly fucking useless.
He hadn’t slept at all that night.
Peck was perfectly alright not being there for the next meeting a day or two later, the first official meeting,the one Hannibal and Santori had shaken hands on. He didn’t need to be there to watch Hannibal to pretend to be jealous of Santori’s casual and understated possessiveness. Watch Santori play him. Watch the damnation of the man he’d stupidly fallen for...
Besides, this was going to be a hell of a lot more fun.
“Are you sure you can’t do this legally?” he asked Murdock as they swung into the parking lot of the JFK helicopter terminal. Where the NYPD kept the police choppers. “Not that I’m complaining or anything.”
Murdock adjusted the name tape on the uniform flight suit Peck had located for him and grinned that lopsided grin of his. “Come on, faceman, dontcha wanna go wrangle us our own bird?”
“One Air Wolf, coming right up,” he grinned, liking the nickname the crazy pilot had started using for him, yeah, faceman, like the faceman for the con, and cause you’re so gosh-darn cute, hey BA, ain’t he cute...
He patted the captain on the shoulder, and they both cracked up laughing. Peck still felt a slight ache in his chest, though, even as he sidled up to the sergeant at the counter and Murdock lounged against it in his mirrored aviators, interjecting the occasional comment to Peck’s firehose of smooth talk and plausible explanations and forged paperwork. He felt it even after they’d secured Murdock full access to the flightline. After they walked out there to inspect, the pilot talking about planes like old girlfriends and the crazy maneuvers he’d pulled in them, the ache was there.
Because Peck realized that, in another life, he and Murdock might have been friends. Good friends, maybe. And he told the captain his eyes were stinging from the jet fumes and maybe they ought to go get BA and order pizza and get back to Hannibal’s apartment so they could get the skinny on the first official meeting.
It didn’t matter. After Santori got done with all of them, there wouldn’t be enough left to fit in a shoebox. And that’s just the way it was going to have to be.
+++++
Peck had brought his vintage Super NES from school over a week or two ago, and he and Murdock were vying for space on the short sofa, controllers in hand, yelling at each other over a not-so-friendly game of Mario Kart. They’d been at it for a couple of hours, and Peck was seriously considering swapping out to something a little less combative - Murdock had sharp elbows - when BA and Hannibal showed up.
“Who wants orange chicken?” Hannibal hollered out over the noise of the television, and Peck nearly caught another one in the chin when Murdock went vaulting over the back of the sofa. Peck paused and muted the game, and slid up next to Hannibal, bumping him good-naturedly. BA, unpacking the little white take-out cartons, nodded, and Peck smiled back. Maybe he was finally getting somewhere with the big guy.
And why would that fucking matter at this point in the game, Peck? that evil little voice asked him, and he bit his lip.
“How was your day?” Hannibal asked in a low voice, pitched perfect to carry under Murdock’s frenzied explanations and coordinating sock puppet story, BA’s mock-exasperated replies. He’d clearly had a lot of practice at that, Peck though, and snapped open a pair of chopsticks.
The conman grinned and started sniffing at the cartons, looking for his favorite mandarin chicken. “Wasn’t too bad. We got the chopper. And thank you for letting me do that, I’ve always been a little scared to try scamming from the police...” and then he trailed off as Hannibal’s big hand covered his own, fingers coming down to trace those veins on the underside of Peck’s wrist, effectively stopping his search. Sending a shiver clean through him.
BA and Murdock abruptly stopped talking, staring at their commanding officer, who made a little harrump sound deep in his throat and laughed weakly. “Pick one. You can’t have all of it, kid.”
Peck froze for a second. Murdock and BA were looking at them and John had asked him to keep things quiet, and Peck still wanted to do that for him. Wasn’t such a big thing, really, no matter how much he wanted to run a hand through that silvery-gray hair and kiss him square on the lips and show these other two that they might be the team, but he had more of a claim on John’s soul then they ever could.
But, there again, he was assuming that Hannibal felt the same way about him that he felt about...
“Just looking for the mandarin,” he said and jerked his hand free. The thanks in John’s eyes was subtle, but there, and he just started chatting with the team, everybody digging into their food with gusto, Hannibal talking about the meeting. Went well. Santori had agreed to renegotiate - something that made Peck incredibly happy, the man could be downright punchy at times - and they were having another meeting to finalize the day after tomorrow. Hannibal would be picked up, dropped off, never knowing where he was headed.
“Kid, do you know where they’re going to hold it?”
He shrugged, considering. “We’ve got a couple of fairly typical places. Usual stuff. Sure.”
“Good. Tomorrow you and BA go check those out. I want us prepared.”
Prepared? No such thing on this one.
Peck could let the man have his illusions for a few more days. And Hannibal was clearly a man who liked being in charge. Liked things going his way. Liked it when a plan came together. What it was going to be like for him, having all of that suddenly stripped away?
“Hey, fool, you wanna come out to a movie tonight?” BA asked gruffly, and Hannibal smirked a little bit out of the corner of Peck’s eye. “This idiot wants to go.”
Murdock nodded. “Come on, Faceman. It’ll be fun.”
Peck looked over at Hannibal. “You going?”
“I’m supposed to be a mild-mannered VP from the Midwest, remember, Face?”
Peck loved the way the nickname sounded, the way John just said it. Made him feel almost like he could be part of things. Like he could forget what he’d done to them and...“I already told you, they don’t have this place under surveillance and it’s not like you have to sit at home on your ass...”
“Reading tonight,” the colonel said firmly.
Peck knew how to take a hint and smiled at Murdock. “I’ve got a paper due tomorrow. I should probably go work on that. You guys know how to get there?”
Murdock brandished a map and subway directions and BA rolled his eyes, and all too soon, they were both gone and it was just him and Hannibal, picking up the remains of dinner, watching one another.
John broke first, foot heavy on the lever that opened the small trash can. “Do you really have a paper due tomorrow, kid?” he asked, and there was that fucking wistfulness again. Peck didn’t know if it made him want to strangle or kiss the man.
“No.”
“So,” and there was a little bit of a tease in John’s voice that wasn’t quite teasing as he threw away the rest of the trash, “you lied to me, kid.”
Peck didn’t feel like standing up, didn’t feel like moving, didn’t feel like doing anything right then. He certainly didn’t feel like playing around with John tonight. Every time he looked at him, at that handsome face, that strong body, that brilliant intelligence that overshone all the sadness and sweetness and goodness that was encapsulated there, Peck felt his stomach twist and his belly warm and a tingle come over his skin, that feeling, and he would have done anything, anything to be rid of it.
“My life’s a fucking lie,” he muttered, more to himself than anything else, but there John was, nonetheless, right next to him, cupping Peck’s hands together and up off the counter, holding them still.
“It doesn’t have to be, kid,” and Peck could almost let himself believe that was sincerity he heard in the other man.
Almost.
But he knew better.
He’s just using you, Peck...
I’ll take care of you, kid...
“You’d don’t have to be... this...”
God, he was such an idiot, just a stupid, fucking idiot, letting himself let John get this close, developing these kinds of, of fucking feelings for a man who thought he was nothing more than a common whore.
"I..."
And then Peck stopped himself cold.
He shouldn’t have even been talking, not like this, so exposed, so close to bringing it all to an end, to cutting all of this away and going back to being himself and not playing this fucking role and not dealing with emotions that had no place in his life.
But Peck didn’t feel like lying. For the first time in ten years, he just couldn’t do it.
But he couldn’t not, so instead he found the strength to push up and away from the kitchen island and grab his backpack and head for the door and get through it and away before John did anything at all. And he managed to get the elevator shut before John could reach him. And he was almost half a block away before he heard the footsteps behind him, and all he could think of was how familiar this was, like that first night together when he’d done this specifically to piss John, specifically to get this reaction. And now all he wanted to do was get away but John was still following him.
He shoved his hands deep in his pockets against the creeping winter chill and cursed whatever twisted, godless fate had brought him here, to the other side of things. So now he was the one being manipulated, and holy hell, wasn’t there anything real in this world anymore?
“Temp!” John shouted, and since it sounded like John, really like John, and since it was really his name, Peck halted and listened as John ran the last few yards. He didn’t have a jacket on, just his paper-thin sweatshirt and jeans, but he didn’t look cold. Wasn’t even shivering. And for some reason, that single, small thing made him seem more a Ranger than anything Peck had seen in him before.
Peck started walking again.
“Temp, kid, please, wait!”
He turned and spread his arms wide, walking backwards. “Right here, John.”
John got in front of him, between him and everywhere else he wanted to be, and ran his hands down Peck’s shoulders. “Kid...”
“I’m not a whore,” he snapped. “Don’t worry, you don’t need to protect me from that. You can walk away from your job here, knowing that you did right by me, okay? Now can I go?”
“Back to school?”
“Wherever the fuck, doesn’t matter.”
“Temp,” and there was his name again, and John was holding his hands again, chuckling. “Shit, kid, I’m sorry, I’m just, I don’t usually, I...”
Under the words, through his own flaring anger, Peck caught the edge of something solid, something honest, in what John was trying to say, and he stepped a little closer, letting John pull him in. “Don’t usually what?”
The older man took a deep breath. Exhaled slowly. Like it was something worth hearing. “I haven’t done this before, and I’m not, not really sure...”
“Haven’t done what before, John?”
“You, this, with a man, Peck. I lied to you about... You’re the first time I...” and then John just looked away, staring over the top of Peck’s head, and Peck saw that throat bob as John swallowed his words. “Doesn’t matter. You’re right. It’s all gotten too tangled up and after this is over... I’ll let you get going.”
Peck felt something in him crack apart as John slid his hands away and started back towards the apartment, shoulders crunched a little against the cold. He could see his own breath, coming out in tight, hard pants, fogging the air between them, all that space...
...you’re the first time...
... and before he could stop himself, take stock and say you fucking retard, don’t you know he’s just fucking playing you, there’s no way he’s not gay, no man just switches teams for some pretty face, Peck was the one running. Peck was the one gathering the other up in a tight embrace, Peck was the one standing on his toes trying to reach the other’s mouth, smiling around those lips as he pulled him down for a kiss.
John seemed shaken, so Peck tightened his grip around those hard shoulders and pulled him in closer, seeking permission, wanting to share that white-hot fire inside him with this man, the man who put it there and fanned it and had just sent it into an all-consuming blaze. Peck didn’t even care if the little statement was true or not. He didn’t believe it for a second, and he wasn’t going to let it become any kind of reality, but he couldn’t ignore how it was making him feel. Maybe if he just got it all out of his system...
Yeah, that could work. That had to work. Because he couldn’t stop himself.
An arm played around his waist and held him in close, pulling him up a little. At the same time, John finally opened his mouth, giving Peck the slightest little touch, and the feeling of John’s tongue sliding over his own made Peck’s vision white around the edges.
The conman fisted his hands deep into that silver hair that he loved so much, groaning at how the slight change in angle seemed to bring them closer together now, and John’s hand strayed a little lower, thumbing the waistband of his tight jeans. John’s skin was cold, icy, despite everything, and Peck wanted nothing more right than for his lover to feel the heat he was feeling, know what he was doing to him...
He broke off and laid a cheek against John’s heaving chest, letting a hand come up to play along side, drawing a shudder out of the other man. Or maybe that was the cold. Peck wasn’t sure. He wasn’t feeling anything but this right now. “Take me to bed,” he murmured, and John just looked down and brushed the hair from his forehead.
“You really do have a beautiful face, kid.”
Peck started laughing as John unlocked the door and took him inside.
John maneuvered them both back to the bedroom somehow, so smooth, never losing contact, calm and easy. Peck didn’t even notice it until his lover turned him around, hands running down his front, stripping his jacket off, his button-down shirt, nibbling at his ear. It was different. Somehow, it was already different.
“There was something about you,” Peck realized John was growling in his ear, “the second I saw you sitting at that shitty little bar, I knew there was something about you.”
“Oh?” he half-laughed as the cool air of the room hit his bare skin, and John started on his pants, swaying a little as he pressed himself full against Peck’s back. “Some mob guy...”
“No, you weren’t like the guys I was coming to see.” John nipped lightly at Peck’s ear and moved down to slide his jeans off, his shoes and socks and underwear. “You were different. You are different, kid. You’re not like them...”
“Mmm, why not?” Peck asked, stepping backwards and stepping free, pulling John along by the belt, fingers nimble on the buckle, even as the older man pulled his own sweatshirt over his head and tossing it away. “I’m exactly like them.”
“No,” John said, shaking his head, kicking out of his pants as they pooled around his ankles. “You’re nothing like them...” and he grabbed Peck’s head with both hands, kissing him soundly even as he pushed him the rest of the way down to the bed and slid up over him. “You’re so much more...”
“No, I’m... oh god...” he groaned as John’s tongue laved up his neck, “no, John, I’m so much less, than them, than you, everyone...”
John pulled back a little, running a soft thumb along Peck’s cheekbone. The sheer intimacy of the touch brought stung in the young man’s eyes and John just stayed there for a moment before smiling and kissing him lightly on the tip of his nose. “No, no, Templeton Peck...no... you’re everything.... everything I ever...”
Nobody had spoken to him like that since the accident, since his mother and father had left him and now he was going to lose this, too, he was going to lose everything all over again... and he very nearly flew off the mattress, wrapping both arms around John’s neck, not crying, just shaking, and he felt John wrap an arm around his back, just holding him. Not asking for anything. Not trying to get something or steal something or anything like that.
Just holding him.
It undid Peck completely and he balled his fists against John’s back, murmuring what he thought was absolute nonsense until he felt John’s tighten around him and force his chin back, those perfect blue eyes shining.
“You love me?” John asked quietly, and Peck, far away from anything resembling common sense or survival instinct or familial obligations or anything real, let himself float up into this dream that he’d surely wandered into, and nodded.
Then everything started coming in images and clipped sensation, like he was watching it through a strobe light, like it was all too intense to be taken in as an unbroken whole, his brain not accepting all the stimulation at once, and he whimpered, wanting this, wanting everything.
John kissed him once more, this time with an infinite tenderness...
He laid Peck back down...
There was a slick finger at his entrance, the eager pad circling him slowly before pushing right in...
Peck’s back arched up and his head flew back as John went straight for his prostate, grazing it on every pass as he scissored the young man open, adding a second finger, more lube, a third...
He was drifting upwards, nothing holding him down as John moved back, and then crashing back down as John moved in, hands splayed around his hips, filling him, filling every hole and pit and empty spot within him, splitting in him two, pulling him together...
His heels dug into John’s back, feeling the delicious slide of flesh on flesh, the cool air overwhelmed by the heat building on their skin, filling the space between them, making that space irrelevant, pointless, non-existent...
A surge of warmth inside of him, delicious, John groaning his name, his real name, as he flooded into him, fucking perfect...
Those big calloused hands everywhere, stroking him, easing him down, smoothing him, pulling him close...everything between them in perfect synch now, like it had never been before this, everything laid bare, everything removed, and Peck had never considered how much better, how fucking wonderful it could be if he just let go of the lies... if it could be like this. Every day. Always. Honest. Between them, just like this.
...and only when John hugged him close, murmuring softly in his ear about how wonderful he was, how perfect and soft and lovely and right, fucking right, it all was and they were and how he was never going to let this go, never going to leave him, did Peck let himself fall back down to earth and remember.
Remember everything.
And then, then, that's when Peck started crying.
+++++
In the morning, John didn’t ask him about the tears. Just kissed him and laughed and pulled him into the bathroom for a very extended, very pleasant shower. The older man wasn’t given to overblown displays of emotion, last night's love-making notwithstanding, Peck knew, and the little smiles, the happy glances, light touches... it was enough. It was more than enough.
It was overwhelming.
But that he could deal with. One of his best friends, a made guy in their crew, had killed his girlfriend, straight out, about a year ago when he’d caught her cheating on him. Killed the other man, too. Peck had helped manhandle the bodies down to a dumpster in Jersey, and the whole time, his friend had been talking. Light, joking, usual bullshit. But his knuckles had been white on the steering wheel.
What it had taught him was this; everyone had something they loved, and in their line of work, sooner or later, you’d lose it.
Better sooner than later, that voice said, back from wherever it had been banished to last night. Peck poked at his cereal. Suddenly, he wasn’t hungry anymore.
John filled the reservoir up in the coffee maker and tapped a folder against the counter in front of Peck. He was smiling, all that sadness from the last few months gone, and Peck felt that warmth again. He found himself smiling back, and leaned up for a kiss, which was graciously given.
“Mm, kid, got something for you before the boys get here,” John said, handing him the folder. “Thought you might deserve a little something for helping us out.”
Peck furrowed his brow in question, and opened it slowly. “Paperwork, John?”
“Take a closer look.”
“NYPD...” and he stared up at John. “This is my juvee record.”
“And your CPA file, and the reports from our buddies at the FBI that mention you by name, and that one booking from the college police from last year for drunk and disorderly...”
“It’s everything,” he breathed, thumbing through it, not daring to hope. “Holy shit, John, this is everything. You got copies...”
“No, I got the originals. Everything’s been pulled. All of it. Digital, hard copy, all of it.”
“Why?”
John leaned down on his elbows right next to him, and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Because you deserve the choice of a different future. You may not trust the government, and I’d say that’s not a bad policy, but I believe in you, kid. You can make something of yourself, be that honorable man I know you can be. You think you can’t do it, but you can.” The door rang, and John pushed off and buzzed BA and Murdock in. “You just need the chance.”
It was the most Peck had heard John say at one time in the whole of the time he’d known the man. He closed the folder reverently, laying a hand on the cover. “Thank you, John,” he said, hoping his voice wasn’t shaking.
“Love you, kid,” John said, offhanded and affectionate all at once, and it almost broke Peck’s heart.
That kind of faith, in Peck, in people in general, was exactly why Santori was going to win this one. Why he always won.
Why John was going to end up dead.
The guys came in, Murdock with a pink cake box full of donuts. Peck grabbed three and Hannibal handed him a steaming mug of black coffee and Murdock jostled him and asked him if he’d seen Billy, his imaginary dog, and BA clapped him on the back and asked how he was doing. Peck smiled, despite himself. It was almost like he was part of the team.
“Hey, hey, Faceman, what’s wrong?” Murdock asked around a mouthful of jelly-filled goodness.
“Had him come over a little early. Gave the kid the folder,” Hannibal said, emphasizing the last word, and the other two guys broke out in matching grins. “I think he liked it.”
“You happy about that, Face?” BA asked in that gruff voice of his, staring at him a little too intently, and Peck nodded around his own donut, blushing.
Face.
Almost like he was part of the team.
Except he wasn’t. And he never would be.
“Good. We need to go scope sites. Hannibal, can I borrow you little mobster here?”
“Ex-mobster,” Hannibal said proudly, tapping the folder. “And yeah, Face, you know what places we need to check out, right?”
He nodded and grabbed his stuff. “Santori uses a few of the same places for everything. Shouldn’t be an issue.”
Murdock handed him a GPS unit. “Make sure you get the coordinates, Face. So’s I can find the bossman.” He was going to be running air support tomorrow. Peck nodded and stuffed the small device into his bag. He smiled at BA, who kind of squinted back at him.
“Come on, big guy, let’s get going.”
Halfway down the hall, just in front of the elevator, Peck stopped, seized by the sudden, horrible thought. A single flash of his mother, ten years ago, running back inside the house and interrupting him right in the middle of a Zelda boss fight on his NES. I didn’t get my kiss before I left, Templeton she’d said, and you know I love you...
That had been her thing, always saying goodbye, always say I love you because you never know if that’s the last time you’re going to see...
Except he knew.
And Peck was running, right back to the door, right back inside, grabbing Hannibal around the shoulders, just like last night, pulling the taller man down for a long, deep kiss that left him gasping in horror, but Peck didn’t care about any of that, didn’t care that Murdock and BA were staring, didn’t even care about the triumphant little you owe me a hundred bucks, fool behind them, didn’t care about anything except whispering, “I love you,” in John’s ear and hearing the heated reply of “I love you too, now get going,” growled against his ear.
Peck nodded. He looked back over his shoulder at BA, who was shuffling some bills into his wallet with a grin.
“You ready t’go now, man?”
Peck stared at the man in his arms, wanting to remember him like this forever, happy, relaxed, silver hair bright in the morning light, practically glowing... and he realized he didn’t have a single photo of him. There’d be nothing...
But he couldn’t worry about that. He couldn’t think about it. He couldn’t let something like that affect him now. He couldn’t...
“Yeah, BA,” he grinned with an enthusiasm he didn't feel. “Let’s get going.”
+++++
Peck did know all the places. All the places Santori could possibly use to meet with John, all the places he usually used. He hadn’t given them a pre-set location because he didn’t want them to be doing what they were doing right now, driving and scoping and figuring sniper angles and extraction points and all that bullshit.
Which was why Peck wasn’t actually taking BA to any of those locations. Santori had ordered him not to.
Don’t show those motherfuckers any of the usual places. Got something special in mind...
“Ain’t much time to get set up anywhere, Face,” BA grunted as they pulled out of the third abandoned warehouse. “How many more we got to do?”
The sun was setting and this was going to be useless in a few hours anyway. “One more,” he said quietly, leaning his head up against the glass of the rental car, hating himself. He had his own plan, but it was going to be useless. He couldn’t save John from Santori. He couldn’t save Santori from John. Either way, he lost somebody important to him, the past he’d never asked for or the future he probably couldn’t live up to. He had no idea what he should do.
“Face?”
“What, BA? Oh, go left here.”
The black man’s face tightened as he turned into traffic on a major roadway, swinging them out of Astoria and back towards the city. “You break the boss’s heart, I’m gonna break you.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Good. Keep it that way. He don’t need to tell me, but I know he got plans for you...”
“He likes his plans, doesn’t he?”
BA laughed. “How else you think he get a call sign like that?”
Peck nodded, digesting that. Made sense, actually. The greatest classical strategist, an insane mission... “That story, the one he told me about the soldiers who died,” and BA’s hands tightened down on the steering wheel so hard that Peck was surprised the thing didn’t just break, “is that really why you’re here?”
“Yeah, that why we’re here. Some of them was my friends...”
They drove in silence for a few more minutes, and then Peck saw the turn he was going to need BA to take, the last place Santori had told him was okay to tell him about. That turn, right there... and they passed it.
Should he go back? Should he go forward, go with his own stupid plan?
“Go right and them right again at the next light,” Peck said, sinking a little lower in the seat. “That’ll be the last place.”
BA nodded. The morning’s revelation, the boss’ faith, seemed to have gone a long way to assauging the big man’s doubts. But Peck knew, absolutely knew, those were still there.
And he could have kissed him for it. That just might get John out of this alive. He was desperately hoping for that.
“Can you take me back to my dorm when we’re done? I need my car.”
“Why?”
“It’s Sunday night,” Peck explained as the pulled up to the ramshackle collection of buildings, right along the shore. “Family dinner.”
+++++
Peck managed to get away from BA without getting visibly upset. He’d made a life out of putting on a good face during even the most horrible of things, and it only mildly bothered him, having to lie to BA. It bothered him, because in lying to BA, he was really lying to John. He’d asked BA to pass the news along, that he had to go to Santori’s house tonight.
Had to go over there tonight.
Because John’s plan wasn’t going to work.
He wished like hell this could all be different, that he wasn’t going to have to do what he was going to do in the next twenty-four hours, that all of this wasn’t between them. That his parents had lived, and he’d grown up in lower-upper middle class comfort with mom and dad, and gone to West Point or enlisted or something like that, and had met the Legendary Hannibal Smith - as BA seemed to regard the man - under better circumstances, in kinder times. But this was the hand he’d been dealt, and while Peck knew the value of cheating, he also knew when when the deck was stacked against him and there was just no winning.
So everything was churning up in him. Churning, churning. Horrible.
The drive across tow barely registered, and it was a miracle he didn’t have an accident, as wrapped up in his own thoughts as he was. The city fell away and the suburbs began, trees appearing and the lights growing dimmer and further apart, until the headlights of his GTO told him that he’d pulled into the driveway of the house where he’d grown up.
Of his family.
Of that son of a bitch who’d...
Fuck, what the hell was wrong with him?
He hesitated for a second, and then got himself up and out and up the steps to push the doorbell.
It rang. Once, twice, and he almost lost his nerve and ran, but then Maria answered the door, standing there like some Roman goddess, smiling. “Templeton! How lovely! Haven’t had you Are you here to talk to Anthony, or did you just want dinne...”
But she didn’t get a chance to finish, because Peck wrapped his arms around her plump body and held on, letting his forehead hit the top of her hair, wanting to feel something solid. She fell silent, and patted him on the back, soft and maternal, waiting a few seconds before pushing him back and grabbing his chin, meeting him with her soft, worried gaze.
“What’s going on in that cute little head of yours, Temp?” she asked, leading him inside and into the kitchen. Warm goodness was bubbling away on the stove and the cutting board was still littered with tomato guts and cheese and crushed herbs. She deposited him on a stool and went to the liquor cabinet. “Talk to me. You don’t want my husband seeing you like this, so let’s get you pulled together before he gets home.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t ask.,” she said, and handed him a double whiskey, pouring one for herself as well, and settling down next to him. “What’s going on?”
He took a deep drag on the glass, and looked right at her. “I need your help.”
She nodded. “Is it something you need me to do, or something you need me to not do?”
He looked away and Maria slammed the glass down right in front of him. “You better have a damn good reason.”
“I didn’t start it, Maria, remember that.”
“Talk to me, Templeton,” she said, rubbing a hand over his knee. “Talk to me.”
And he didn’t want to, but pretty soon the whole story, everything, how he’d met a man and fallen in love but he was marked now, all of it, tumbling out of him, gushing, flooding the kitchen with the agony of the past three months, and soon he couldn’t talk anymore, because the words wouldn’t come. Dried up, his grief leaving him tired and shaking but dried eyed.
Maria’s hand hadn’t left his knee the entire time, but when he finished in with halting, seizing sobs, she enveloped him again, kissing the top of his head like she had when Santori had first brought him home, the first time it had happened...when she’d done nothing to stop it...
“I need it, Maria,” he said, although they both knew it was a lie.
“I can’t let you do that, sweetie,” she whispered, and just shook her head. “I can’t...”
“You could sit down here and let him drink. You could go upstairs. Like you always did,” Peck said evenly, without anger or judgment. He’d never blamed her for it. After his year on the streets, he’d never really minded. And if it helped now... he could...
She bit her lip, trembling a little and tried to smile. “Oh, you really do love this man, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Peck was surprised by how fast it came, swift, without hesitation. Even now.
“Okay.”
And he kissed her again as an SUV pulled into the garage and five or six voices could be heard chattering away, and she handed him a tissue.
“You’re a good man, Templeton,” she told him, a touch of admiration in his voice.
“That’s what he says, too.”
He wished he’d been able to take John up on his offer.
He wished he’d had a chance to find out.
+++++
The warehouse that Santori finally settled on was a dark tumble of buildings down by the shore. Not one of his usual places. Dark, even in midday. Didn’t help that it was cloudy and cold, and worse inside. Peck could see his breath, and inside the mechanic’s gloves, his fingers were still cold. He stuffed them into his arm pits. No good.
Maria had made pancakes this morning, studiously avoiding the eyes of her husband and adopted son, both. He had no idea what she believed about his little request. That he thought Santori could be talked out of this course of action by Peck offering himself up? That he was trying to save his lover? Provide a distraction? Erase the memory of a man who’d been marked for death? He didn’t know what she’d thought.
But he was fairly sure she didn’t know the truth.
He looked over at Santori, the four guys who’s come with them. The sick son of a bitch had demanded that he be here for the big reveal. Wanted to really make the fake VP suffer before he killed him.
Wanted him to know just how fucking hard he’d been had.
The cappo flashed him a quick grin and checked his watch. “Right on time.”
“Military punctuality, Mr. Santori,” Peck volunteered.
“Out of sight, son. Let’s not ruin the fun too soon.”
He nodded, and moved into the deep shadows. Peck felt nauseous, the morning’s meal disagreeing with him, seven hours later. He hadn’t eaten lunch. His stomach was screaming at him. Hell, everything was screaming at him. Everything. Trying to tell him that this wasn’t going to work, that he should just call John and tell him not to fucking come, that Santori was going to put a bullet in his brain, that the lives of his dead men weren’t worth that risk...
Hannibal would still come.
There was nothing he could do. Peck had already missed his chance to stop this. He could only hope that going forward wasn’t going to explode in his face.
I love you too kid...
And there he was, Hannibal himself, looking edible in one of those tailored suits, gorgeous, being escorted by one of Santori’s men, a bored expression on his handsome face.
Peck felt that stab of warmth, followed quickly by one of shame, and his smile faltered.
And then they started talking.
Santori was playing him, dangling the promise of maybe easing up on the fees in exchange for this or that, Hannibal insistent but still polite inside that John Hamilton persona, everybody else just waiting, waiting to see how this was going to go down. When the piano wire would come out, a knife, a gun with its suppressor firmly screwed on...
And there it was, the slightest shift in tone, that change in stance, Santori’s version of coiling, going for the kill, and he turned around and looked right at where he knew Peck was hiding.
Just a glance, but a significant one, and Peck took a deep breath, and stepped out into the single pool of weak light to stand with the rest. There was no way of telling what was out there, standing here. He couldn’t see anything but John He had no eyes for anything else.
“... you see, Hannibal, I’d be inclined to accept your offier, and it is a good one,” Santori was saying, John jerking visibly at the use of his military handle, “but, see, your boy here is actually my boy. Which is probably why you’re here without backup, without your air support. They have no idea where to find you, do they?”
Hannibal’s eyes flickered over to Peck, who’d just made it into the weak light, and everything in him started to collapse, crumbling, like all the internal support was going out of him, like his spine had been removed and he couldn’t keep himself upright, fighting only with the hope... “Kid...”
“Like you said, John, I work for them,” he said, and palmed the gun out of his sleeve. He hated the way metal felt against gloves. No real feel for the weapon. Focus on that, he told himself, all the insignificant details, all of it, none of the bullshit...
He couldn’t see anything. He’d brought BA here, hadn't he? He’d given the coordinates to Murdock, right? All on a blind guess. He’d made a blind guess, and he’d been right, and he’d been ready to declare victory from that alone.
Alone.
He was alone.
He could have laughed.
Story of my life.
“Hey, colonel, did you really think I was going to let you waltz in here and destroy my operation?” He nodded to Peck. “Do it.”
“You motherfucking...” Hannibal started to yell, not at Santori, no, no, right at Peck, he was yelling right at Peck, and from a distance of two yards, his twenty-three year lover raised the six-shot revolver and squeezed the trigger.
What went through his head at that moment, Peck would spend the rest of his life trying to forget.
Hannibal actually screamed, a sound that reverberated through the rafters, and fell to his knees. Santori stepped forward, kicking the colonel over and spat on him, turning contemptuously. He looked straight at Peck. “Shoulder shot, Peck. Messy. Especially for you.”
John wasn’t screaming now. He was groaning, so different from the noises he’d made when they were together, in that soft bed with all those soft touches, too similar, too similar for Peck to stand, and he knew there were tears now. Santori was coming right for him now, two of the guys, men he’d known for the past ten year, lunging to hold him still, wrenching his gun away.
It took four of them, and he still dragged them nearly to the ground before the caress of a hot gun barrel against his forehead, Santori’s hand, jerking his head back, stopped him cold. Once he was sure he’d gotten the conman’s attention, he pointed the gun behind him.
Straight at Hannibal.
“You flipped on me, didn’t you?”
“No, no, I never...”
“DON’T LIE TO ME!” the cappo thundered, and Peck squeezed his eyes shut. “Did. You. Flip. On. Me?”
He could still see Hannibal. Still alive, a shoulder shot wouldn’t be fatal, if BA would only fucking show up. “... yes...”
Santori squatted down. “I’ve been worried about you, Peck. Your little pleading bullshit last night, the last few months... I should have dropped him in the East River the day the showed up. Should never have trusted you with it...”
“Boss, please, you don’t have to do this, he’s just some stupid soldier looking for revenge...”
“SHUT UP!” Santori roared, and pulled the trigger. Twice. Impossibly loud in the echoing space, those shots. But there was nothing more from Hannibal. “You’re too weak, Peck. You’re a weak little queer. There's no place for you here.”
Peck just glared at him, the red starting to haze up in his vision. What did it matter at this point? If John was dead, John was dead... six of them, one of him, somebody had to have a gun...
“Kill him.”
And then two things happened at once.
The forehead of the man above him vanished, a red mist filling the now-vacant air, another gunshot ringing clear.
Peck broke upwards with an elbow and back with a heel and he was out, free, and going for the dead man’s gun.
The warehouse exploded. The fight was fast, dirty and over entirely too fast. BA, from wherever he’d stashed himself, killed two, and Peck got three, two shots, one broken neck, and the rest of the clip emptied in the direction that Santori had fled, the opposite direction from where BA came out, the cappo vanishing into the gloom, Peck’s surge of adrenalin not enough to overcome the fury he was feeling, and the shots went wild.
He stared off, unwilling to look down, unable to see John’s body mangled by the .308 rounds. There wasn’t any sound. No sound at all.
BA came up behind him, M-4 tucked into his shoulder like an old friend. Peck turned to look at him, knowing the horror was showing in his face, and when BA reached out a hand and he heard a chopper in the distance and the faintest sound of those red-blue sirens, he ran, throwing the gun away, running as fast as he could, running away from the disaster that was his life, running through the adrenalin to the exhaustion on the other side, running until his knees gave and his muscles burned and he found himself under some bridge somewhere where he collapsed against a concrete wall and pulled his knees up to his chest and waited for the sun to fall and the darkness to take him away.
+++++
“What we doing here, fool?”
Murdock sighed and rubbed his face. He thought he’d explained this well enough. Maybe he hadn’t. It was entirely possible he’d imagined the entire conversation this morning, wasn’t it? Neither of them had slept in the past two days, not since the big charlie foxtrot down at the abandoned warehouse, the boss getting shot, Faceman running off like he had, setting down to find Bosco kneeling next to Hannibal, blood everywhere...
The pilot tried to get it out of his mind. He couldn’t focus, certainly not with the bossman who wasn’t even there bleeding on the carpet next to then, chewing a cigar impatiently, waiting for Murdock to come up with the answer.
“This little GPS doohickey,” and he waggled it, “had these coordinates punched in. Last line after the warehouse. Gotta mean something.”
“An NYU grad dorm?” BA asked sarcastically. He was never sarcastic, and it grated against Murdock’s already disturbed thoughts, like orange zest going into cake batter and he hated citrus in his baked goods, and it was having enough trouble pulling everything together anyway... he shook it off. Now was not the time to be indulging free association. Or cake cravings. He tried to crawl back on top of himself. Hannibal would've wanted him to do that.
“And a name,” Murdock said, pointing to a pair of initials. “BA, we gotta at least check it out. We’re here, ain’t we?”
The dorm manager, a mousy little woman with half-painted nails screwed the top back down on her bottle of Honeysuckle Peach polish - which didn’t smell anything like either, Murdock thought to himself - and nodded. “That’s probably Will McMasters.”
“Can we talk to him?”
“If he’s home,” she said and gave them his apartment number.
Three floors up. BA knocked on the door and Murdock leaned against the wall, wondering if the Hannibal in his mind had followed them up here, wondered if he might ask the man for some advice. But then, it’d only be advice comin’ from himself and not from the colonel at all and that didn’t seem like a good idea at all. He didn’t trust his own judgment right now.
“Think I’d be afraid to live in a building where the landlady just gave out my name to passing riffraff.”
“Be glad she did, fool.” BA hadn’t spoken much since the warehouse, not since Murdock had seen him, hands covered in red, jacket throw aside and his shirt ripped off, pressed against the boss’s chest, trying like hell to stop gushing wounds... and that was probably something he should mention, right?
“Hey, buddy, don’t get blood on the kid’s furniture,” Murdock said as the door cracked, and clapped him on the shoulder. BA glared.
“Um, can I help you?”
“Hey, look, BA, it’s a ginger! Are you the ginger formerly known as Will McMasters?”
“... goddamn it, Murdock...”
What was BA’s problem? The man was a ginger, bright red hair and pale skin, watching them warily.
“Umm, yeah...”
“We’re friends of Templeton Peck’s,” BA interjected.
“Templeton...” and the grad student scratched his head and snapped his fingers. “Peck? Cute, infuriating, nice body, raging asshole?”
The two Rangers exchanged a look and Murdock shrugged. “That’s the one, muchacho!”
And the door opened wide.
Will offered them both something to drink, which they declined, and then warmed up one of his computer monitors and grabbed an opened FedEx envelop from the messy coffee table. “Okay, so yesterday, I got this,” he said, handing over the mailing envelop, “with a CD and a note inside from Peck. Wasn’t his handwriting on the label, but whatever. Said that he’d be sending a couple of his friends by, and I should sit on this until they, you guys, got here.”
“Us guys?”
“Yeah, Captain HM Murdock and Corporal BA Baracus.”
They stared, and he laughed nervously. “I, uh, I pulled your records for him a few weeks ago. Pretty crazy job you guys have...”
“What was on the disc, fool?”
“A shitstorm,” the geek said with a faint grin, and opened a video player. Just a scene of a small bedroom, somebody lithe, thin, sitting there, reading a book on his stomach, facing away from the camera. “I mean, I thought it was just one of his jokes, you know, cause he’s kind of an asshole...”
Murdock leaned in. A door opened, a man coming into frame, darker, heavyset, and the man on the bed pushed up a little.
“Daddy?” came the voice through the speakers.
“Shh, baby, you don’t want mommy to hear, do you?”
“No, daddy...”
“Shut it off!” BA roared at the geek, and then turned to Murdock. “You brought us over here to watch porn?” BA demanded of Murdock, who just shook his head, recognizing something in the voices.
“No, buddy, that’s faceman. ‘S Peck.”
BA looked aghast. “...why?”
“I don’t really know, but this gets pretty, err, well, you know who that man is, right?”
Murdock nodded. “Santori, right?”
“I ain’t gonna ask you again, fool,” BA growled, “why're we here watching that kid’s home movies?”
The geek looked back and forth between them, holding out his hands. “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you know what this is? If this got out? That one of the biggest mobsters in New York is a flaming homo? His life would be worth shit. People would start testifying against him. Hell, he might turn himself in just to get away from all his buddies who’d be out there trying to kill him! Peck explained everything in the note...” and he offered that up, too.
BA ripped it out of his hands while Murdock stared at the footage on the screen. He hadn’t really asked Face what he’d done for the mobsters, teased him about it, but he hadn’t really asked. He wouldn’t have guessed... this
“... yeah, you right, he does say that in here,” BA said faintly, and handed the note back to the geek.
“Indictments are going to roll, arrests are going to be made, people’ll flip... good times,” the geek agreed. “Fun, isn’t it?”
Murdock was still staring at the computer screen, the cold reality of it leaving his thoughts surprisingly undisturbed, ice on a Minnesota pond in January.
Here Faceman was, not twenty-four hours after leaving them at Hannibal’s apartment, where Hannibal had seemed so happy, so at ease, in this thing between them, whoring himself out in such a humiliatating way... for what?
Had he known Hannibal’s plan wasn’t going to work from the start? Had this been his way of trying to redeem himself? Make sure Hannibal was still able to get his man, despite...
Had he really loved John this much, that he was willing to do this for him?
It wasn’t enough, and it never would be, and never could be, not after everything that had happened, a story he wasn’t privy to and had no business in knowing, but he himself had to honor this. What both men had tried to do, tried to give each other. What both men had lost.
Murdock had to do it. For both Hannibal and Face. They both deserved so much more from this situation, and so this, this just couldn't be the end.
It had to be a start. A beginning. Like neither man would ever receive. Fate was a cruel bitch sometimes...
“Hey, Bosco?” Murdock said quietly. “Let’s send it to everybody.”
BA blinked, and then grunted in agreement. “The whole fucking planet.”
"You up for that, ginger?"
“Hey, I don’t know how much you guys know about computers. It’s not like some magical do-everything box...” the geek began and then stopped, biting his lip, like he was thinking about some happy memory, and smiled. “But I should be able to get this on the six o’clock news.”
Murdock dug a hand into a pocket.
This had to be the start of something better.
Finished up in the Epilogue...
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: slight mention of child abuse
Summary: Part three of three of a fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Another Hannibal-meets-Face first time request, but with a twist. At that point, Face is one of/employed by the enemy. Either through ideals or lies or blackmail, Face is on the other side when Hannibal first meets him.
Hannibal, of course, sees the potential in the kid, and sets out to convince and/or seduce Face away from the Dark Side. Slash is preferred, but not strictly necessary.
Templeton Peck, conman and adopted son of mafia cappo Anthony Santori, gets more than he bargained for when he’s sent to take down the new VP of a major defense contractor, John Hamilton. Seducing John isn’t a problem. Dealing with the fallout, however... that gets a bit trickier, especially once he finds out who John really is, and what he’s trying to do.
Peck wasn’t there for the first official meeting.
He had been there for the first unofficial meeting, the one he’d set up with Santori that night he’d figured out that John, Hannibal, had been lying to him all along. The cappo had had a good laugh, found an excuse to go hit something repeatedly with a baseball bat, and then gotten down to doing some planning of his own.
I’m proud of you...
It involved letting VP John Hamilton come down to the strip club one afternoon and discuss some of the inconsistencies he’d found in the books and some of the problems he was having with accounting. Santori had hemmed and hawed and let Hannibal get to his point, which was that there was something fishy in the state of Denmark and he was not happy about it.
“We can’t continue doing business like this.”
“You can’t continue doing business at all if you terminate our agreements. I’ll pull labor, force you to hire outside the unions, tie you up in court for years for discriminatory employment processes...”
“You’re backing me into a corner here.”
“The government never looks at their books. We both know how it works. You charge them whatever the fuck you want and make windfall profits, we get a share, nobody gets hurt, everybody’s happy. What’s your fucking problem?”
Hannibal had actually blown a fucking smoke ring at Santori from across the table, and looked over at Peck, who was doing his homework and his absolute best impression of silenced resignation in the back corner of the messy room. Like he was there because he’d had to be, because Santori made him be there.
Peck caught Hannibal’s eyes, and quickly adverted his own. His face was burning, and in a way, he was grateful for that. He’d never delineated his relationship with the cappo to Hannibal, letting the other man have the room and time to form his own wrong opinions. Sure, he would occasionally let Santori fuck him, but it had been like that since his parents had died and it hadn’t mattered to him in a long, long time. Shame would make this all more believable for Hannibal, like he really had a reason to betray the man who’d taken care of him for the past ten years.
“We need to renegotiate this arrangment of yours.”
“Why, you arrogant motherfucker, it’s your fucking business model that’s broken, you...” and Santori had gone off, fountaining profanity, and Hannibal just sat there and waited for him to finish, and said something incredibly witty and the cappo had laughed and they’d talked for another half hour before shaking hands and agreeing to another meeting.
Hannibal had cast a strange little glance over Peck, wistful, maybe, before he’d left.
“Should I go catch him in the parking lot?”
“He’s completely distracted by you, Peck,” Santori observed calmly. “I don’t know how you do that.”
“Just like anybody else I go after, ‘cept you.”
“I know all your tricks, son.”
He hated it when Santori called him that, he really did. Mostly because he had to answer the same thing, “gee, thanks, dad,” and see that little shiver of pleasure. The cappo had his sick side, sure. But in Peck’s experience, so did the rest of the goddamn planet. Like Hannibal, pretending to care about him and being so sweet while all the time, underneath it all...
“He’s an asshole.”
“Well, let’s keep him on the hook. Go get him.”
So Peck had run out after him, backpack in hand, and curled up around Hannibal’s waist, clinging to him like a life raft in a storm, and let Hannibal bundle him up and take him out for a beer and a good, easy fuck to round out the day. Trying to con the conman into thinking he cared.
Laying there in bed afterward, Peck had listened to John’s light snoring, just thinking. He had no doubt the man cared about him on some level. It was evident in the way the older man touched him, the way he looked at him, like that look in the office earlier in the day. It made it all the worse, knowing he was lying to him. Knowing that beneath all those layers of concern and care and thoughtfulness, Hannibal was just like every other man he’d ever known.
Using him.
Normally, he was fine with that. Usually, he was doing the greater share of the using. It made it all balance out, made what he did okay and safe and fun, most of the time. But there was nothing fun about this. Here, there was no satisfying irony, just a knawing hypocrisy that somebody in his line of work, in his world, couldn’t afford to care about.
So why, why, was this bothering him so fucking much? Because he'd fallen in love? What the fuck was that, anyway, love? Useless.
All of it utterly fucking useless.
He hadn’t slept at all that night.
Peck was perfectly alright not being there for the next meeting a day or two later, the first official meeting,the one Hannibal and Santori had shaken hands on. He didn’t need to be there to watch Hannibal to pretend to be jealous of Santori’s casual and understated possessiveness. Watch Santori play him. Watch the damnation of the man he’d stupidly fallen for...
Besides, this was going to be a hell of a lot more fun.
“Are you sure you can’t do this legally?” he asked Murdock as they swung into the parking lot of the JFK helicopter terminal. Where the NYPD kept the police choppers. “Not that I’m complaining or anything.”
Murdock adjusted the name tape on the uniform flight suit Peck had located for him and grinned that lopsided grin of his. “Come on, faceman, dontcha wanna go wrangle us our own bird?”
“One Air Wolf, coming right up,” he grinned, liking the nickname the crazy pilot had started using for him, yeah, faceman, like the faceman for the con, and cause you’re so gosh-darn cute, hey BA, ain’t he cute...
He patted the captain on the shoulder, and they both cracked up laughing. Peck still felt a slight ache in his chest, though, even as he sidled up to the sergeant at the counter and Murdock lounged against it in his mirrored aviators, interjecting the occasional comment to Peck’s firehose of smooth talk and plausible explanations and forged paperwork. He felt it even after they’d secured Murdock full access to the flightline. After they walked out there to inspect, the pilot talking about planes like old girlfriends and the crazy maneuvers he’d pulled in them, the ache was there.
Because Peck realized that, in another life, he and Murdock might have been friends. Good friends, maybe. And he told the captain his eyes were stinging from the jet fumes and maybe they ought to go get BA and order pizza and get back to Hannibal’s apartment so they could get the skinny on the first official meeting.
It didn’t matter. After Santori got done with all of them, there wouldn’t be enough left to fit in a shoebox. And that’s just the way it was going to have to be.
+++++
Peck had brought his vintage Super NES from school over a week or two ago, and he and Murdock were vying for space on the short sofa, controllers in hand, yelling at each other over a not-so-friendly game of Mario Kart. They’d been at it for a couple of hours, and Peck was seriously considering swapping out to something a little less combative - Murdock had sharp elbows - when BA and Hannibal showed up.
“Who wants orange chicken?” Hannibal hollered out over the noise of the television, and Peck nearly caught another one in the chin when Murdock went vaulting over the back of the sofa. Peck paused and muted the game, and slid up next to Hannibal, bumping him good-naturedly. BA, unpacking the little white take-out cartons, nodded, and Peck smiled back. Maybe he was finally getting somewhere with the big guy.
And why would that fucking matter at this point in the game, Peck? that evil little voice asked him, and he bit his lip.
“How was your day?” Hannibal asked in a low voice, pitched perfect to carry under Murdock’s frenzied explanations and coordinating sock puppet story, BA’s mock-exasperated replies. He’d clearly had a lot of practice at that, Peck though, and snapped open a pair of chopsticks.
The conman grinned and started sniffing at the cartons, looking for his favorite mandarin chicken. “Wasn’t too bad. We got the chopper. And thank you for letting me do that, I’ve always been a little scared to try scamming from the police...” and then he trailed off as Hannibal’s big hand covered his own, fingers coming down to trace those veins on the underside of Peck’s wrist, effectively stopping his search. Sending a shiver clean through him.
BA and Murdock abruptly stopped talking, staring at their commanding officer, who made a little harrump sound deep in his throat and laughed weakly. “Pick one. You can’t have all of it, kid.”
Peck froze for a second. Murdock and BA were looking at them and John had asked him to keep things quiet, and Peck still wanted to do that for him. Wasn’t such a big thing, really, no matter how much he wanted to run a hand through that silvery-gray hair and kiss him square on the lips and show these other two that they might be the team, but he had more of a claim on John’s soul then they ever could.
But, there again, he was assuming that Hannibal felt the same way about him that he felt about...
“Just looking for the mandarin,” he said and jerked his hand free. The thanks in John’s eyes was subtle, but there, and he just started chatting with the team, everybody digging into their food with gusto, Hannibal talking about the meeting. Went well. Santori had agreed to renegotiate - something that made Peck incredibly happy, the man could be downright punchy at times - and they were having another meeting to finalize the day after tomorrow. Hannibal would be picked up, dropped off, never knowing where he was headed.
“Kid, do you know where they’re going to hold it?”
He shrugged, considering. “We’ve got a couple of fairly typical places. Usual stuff. Sure.”
“Good. Tomorrow you and BA go check those out. I want us prepared.”
Prepared? No such thing on this one.
Peck could let the man have his illusions for a few more days. And Hannibal was clearly a man who liked being in charge. Liked things going his way. Liked it when a plan came together. What it was going to be like for him, having all of that suddenly stripped away?
“Hey, fool, you wanna come out to a movie tonight?” BA asked gruffly, and Hannibal smirked a little bit out of the corner of Peck’s eye. “This idiot wants to go.”
Murdock nodded. “Come on, Faceman. It’ll be fun.”
Peck looked over at Hannibal. “You going?”
“I’m supposed to be a mild-mannered VP from the Midwest, remember, Face?”
Peck loved the way the nickname sounded, the way John just said it. Made him feel almost like he could be part of things. Like he could forget what he’d done to them and...“I already told you, they don’t have this place under surveillance and it’s not like you have to sit at home on your ass...”
“Reading tonight,” the colonel said firmly.
Peck knew how to take a hint and smiled at Murdock. “I’ve got a paper due tomorrow. I should probably go work on that. You guys know how to get there?”
Murdock brandished a map and subway directions and BA rolled his eyes, and all too soon, they were both gone and it was just him and Hannibal, picking up the remains of dinner, watching one another.
John broke first, foot heavy on the lever that opened the small trash can. “Do you really have a paper due tomorrow, kid?” he asked, and there was that fucking wistfulness again. Peck didn’t know if it made him want to strangle or kiss the man.
“No.”
“So,” and there was a little bit of a tease in John’s voice that wasn’t quite teasing as he threw away the rest of the trash, “you lied to me, kid.”
Peck didn’t feel like standing up, didn’t feel like moving, didn’t feel like doing anything right then. He certainly didn’t feel like playing around with John tonight. Every time he looked at him, at that handsome face, that strong body, that brilliant intelligence that overshone all the sadness and sweetness and goodness that was encapsulated there, Peck felt his stomach twist and his belly warm and a tingle come over his skin, that feeling, and he would have done anything, anything to be rid of it.
“My life’s a fucking lie,” he muttered, more to himself than anything else, but there John was, nonetheless, right next to him, cupping Peck’s hands together and up off the counter, holding them still.
“It doesn’t have to be, kid,” and Peck could almost let himself believe that was sincerity he heard in the other man.
Almost.
But he knew better.
He’s just using you, Peck...
I’ll take care of you, kid...
“You’d don’t have to be... this...”
God, he was such an idiot, just a stupid, fucking idiot, letting himself let John get this close, developing these kinds of, of fucking feelings for a man who thought he was nothing more than a common whore.
"I..."
And then Peck stopped himself cold.
He shouldn’t have even been talking, not like this, so exposed, so close to bringing it all to an end, to cutting all of this away and going back to being himself and not playing this fucking role and not dealing with emotions that had no place in his life.
But Peck didn’t feel like lying. For the first time in ten years, he just couldn’t do it.
But he couldn’t not, so instead he found the strength to push up and away from the kitchen island and grab his backpack and head for the door and get through it and away before John did anything at all. And he managed to get the elevator shut before John could reach him. And he was almost half a block away before he heard the footsteps behind him, and all he could think of was how familiar this was, like that first night together when he’d done this specifically to piss John, specifically to get this reaction. And now all he wanted to do was get away but John was still following him.
He shoved his hands deep in his pockets against the creeping winter chill and cursed whatever twisted, godless fate had brought him here, to the other side of things. So now he was the one being manipulated, and holy hell, wasn’t there anything real in this world anymore?
“Temp!” John shouted, and since it sounded like John, really like John, and since it was really his name, Peck halted and listened as John ran the last few yards. He didn’t have a jacket on, just his paper-thin sweatshirt and jeans, but he didn’t look cold. Wasn’t even shivering. And for some reason, that single, small thing made him seem more a Ranger than anything Peck had seen in him before.
Peck started walking again.
“Temp, kid, please, wait!”
He turned and spread his arms wide, walking backwards. “Right here, John.”
John got in front of him, between him and everywhere else he wanted to be, and ran his hands down Peck’s shoulders. “Kid...”
“I’m not a whore,” he snapped. “Don’t worry, you don’t need to protect me from that. You can walk away from your job here, knowing that you did right by me, okay? Now can I go?”
“Back to school?”
“Wherever the fuck, doesn’t matter.”
“Temp,” and there was his name again, and John was holding his hands again, chuckling. “Shit, kid, I’m sorry, I’m just, I don’t usually, I...”
Under the words, through his own flaring anger, Peck caught the edge of something solid, something honest, in what John was trying to say, and he stepped a little closer, letting John pull him in. “Don’t usually what?”
The older man took a deep breath. Exhaled slowly. Like it was something worth hearing. “I haven’t done this before, and I’m not, not really sure...”
“Haven’t done what before, John?”
“You, this, with a man, Peck. I lied to you about... You’re the first time I...” and then John just looked away, staring over the top of Peck’s head, and Peck saw that throat bob as John swallowed his words. “Doesn’t matter. You’re right. It’s all gotten too tangled up and after this is over... I’ll let you get going.”
Peck felt something in him crack apart as John slid his hands away and started back towards the apartment, shoulders crunched a little against the cold. He could see his own breath, coming out in tight, hard pants, fogging the air between them, all that space...
...you’re the first time...
... and before he could stop himself, take stock and say you fucking retard, don’t you know he’s just fucking playing you, there’s no way he’s not gay, no man just switches teams for some pretty face, Peck was the one running. Peck was the one gathering the other up in a tight embrace, Peck was the one standing on his toes trying to reach the other’s mouth, smiling around those lips as he pulled him down for a kiss.
John seemed shaken, so Peck tightened his grip around those hard shoulders and pulled him in closer, seeking permission, wanting to share that white-hot fire inside him with this man, the man who put it there and fanned it and had just sent it into an all-consuming blaze. Peck didn’t even care if the little statement was true or not. He didn’t believe it for a second, and he wasn’t going to let it become any kind of reality, but he couldn’t ignore how it was making him feel. Maybe if he just got it all out of his system...
Yeah, that could work. That had to work. Because he couldn’t stop himself.
An arm played around his waist and held him in close, pulling him up a little. At the same time, John finally opened his mouth, giving Peck the slightest little touch, and the feeling of John’s tongue sliding over his own made Peck’s vision white around the edges.
The conman fisted his hands deep into that silver hair that he loved so much, groaning at how the slight change in angle seemed to bring them closer together now, and John’s hand strayed a little lower, thumbing the waistband of his tight jeans. John’s skin was cold, icy, despite everything, and Peck wanted nothing more right than for his lover to feel the heat he was feeling, know what he was doing to him...
He broke off and laid a cheek against John’s heaving chest, letting a hand come up to play along side, drawing a shudder out of the other man. Or maybe that was the cold. Peck wasn’t sure. He wasn’t feeling anything but this right now. “Take me to bed,” he murmured, and John just looked down and brushed the hair from his forehead.
“You really do have a beautiful face, kid.”
Peck started laughing as John unlocked the door and took him inside.
John maneuvered them both back to the bedroom somehow, so smooth, never losing contact, calm and easy. Peck didn’t even notice it until his lover turned him around, hands running down his front, stripping his jacket off, his button-down shirt, nibbling at his ear. It was different. Somehow, it was already different.
“There was something about you,” Peck realized John was growling in his ear, “the second I saw you sitting at that shitty little bar, I knew there was something about you.”
“Oh?” he half-laughed as the cool air of the room hit his bare skin, and John started on his pants, swaying a little as he pressed himself full against Peck’s back. “Some mob guy...”
“No, you weren’t like the guys I was coming to see.” John nipped lightly at Peck’s ear and moved down to slide his jeans off, his shoes and socks and underwear. “You were different. You are different, kid. You’re not like them...”
“Mmm, why not?” Peck asked, stepping backwards and stepping free, pulling John along by the belt, fingers nimble on the buckle, even as the older man pulled his own sweatshirt over his head and tossing it away. “I’m exactly like them.”
“No,” John said, shaking his head, kicking out of his pants as they pooled around his ankles. “You’re nothing like them...” and he grabbed Peck’s head with both hands, kissing him soundly even as he pushed him the rest of the way down to the bed and slid up over him. “You’re so much more...”
“No, I’m... oh god...” he groaned as John’s tongue laved up his neck, “no, John, I’m so much less, than them, than you, everyone...”
John pulled back a little, running a soft thumb along Peck’s cheekbone. The sheer intimacy of the touch brought stung in the young man’s eyes and John just stayed there for a moment before smiling and kissing him lightly on the tip of his nose. “No, no, Templeton Peck...no... you’re everything.... everything I ever...”
Nobody had spoken to him like that since the accident, since his mother and father had left him and now he was going to lose this, too, he was going to lose everything all over again... and he very nearly flew off the mattress, wrapping both arms around John’s neck, not crying, just shaking, and he felt John wrap an arm around his back, just holding him. Not asking for anything. Not trying to get something or steal something or anything like that.
Just holding him.
It undid Peck completely and he balled his fists against John’s back, murmuring what he thought was absolute nonsense until he felt John’s tighten around him and force his chin back, those perfect blue eyes shining.
“You love me?” John asked quietly, and Peck, far away from anything resembling common sense or survival instinct or familial obligations or anything real, let himself float up into this dream that he’d surely wandered into, and nodded.
Then everything started coming in images and clipped sensation, like he was watching it through a strobe light, like it was all too intense to be taken in as an unbroken whole, his brain not accepting all the stimulation at once, and he whimpered, wanting this, wanting everything.
John kissed him once more, this time with an infinite tenderness...
He laid Peck back down...
There was a slick finger at his entrance, the eager pad circling him slowly before pushing right in...
Peck’s back arched up and his head flew back as John went straight for his prostate, grazing it on every pass as he scissored the young man open, adding a second finger, more lube, a third...
He was drifting upwards, nothing holding him down as John moved back, and then crashing back down as John moved in, hands splayed around his hips, filling him, filling every hole and pit and empty spot within him, splitting in him two, pulling him together...
His heels dug into John’s back, feeling the delicious slide of flesh on flesh, the cool air overwhelmed by the heat building on their skin, filling the space between them, making that space irrelevant, pointless, non-existent...
A surge of warmth inside of him, delicious, John groaning his name, his real name, as he flooded into him, fucking perfect...
Those big calloused hands everywhere, stroking him, easing him down, smoothing him, pulling him close...everything between them in perfect synch now, like it had never been before this, everything laid bare, everything removed, and Peck had never considered how much better, how fucking wonderful it could be if he just let go of the lies... if it could be like this. Every day. Always. Honest. Between them, just like this.
...and only when John hugged him close, murmuring softly in his ear about how wonderful he was, how perfect and soft and lovely and right, fucking right, it all was and they were and how he was never going to let this go, never going to leave him, did Peck let himself fall back down to earth and remember.
Remember everything.
And then, then, that's when Peck started crying.
+++++
In the morning, John didn’t ask him about the tears. Just kissed him and laughed and pulled him into the bathroom for a very extended, very pleasant shower. The older man wasn’t given to overblown displays of emotion, last night's love-making notwithstanding, Peck knew, and the little smiles, the happy glances, light touches... it was enough. It was more than enough.
It was overwhelming.
But that he could deal with. One of his best friends, a made guy in their crew, had killed his girlfriend, straight out, about a year ago when he’d caught her cheating on him. Killed the other man, too. Peck had helped manhandle the bodies down to a dumpster in Jersey, and the whole time, his friend had been talking. Light, joking, usual bullshit. But his knuckles had been white on the steering wheel.
What it had taught him was this; everyone had something they loved, and in their line of work, sooner or later, you’d lose it.
Better sooner than later, that voice said, back from wherever it had been banished to last night. Peck poked at his cereal. Suddenly, he wasn’t hungry anymore.
John filled the reservoir up in the coffee maker and tapped a folder against the counter in front of Peck. He was smiling, all that sadness from the last few months gone, and Peck felt that warmth again. He found himself smiling back, and leaned up for a kiss, which was graciously given.
“Mm, kid, got something for you before the boys get here,” John said, handing him the folder. “Thought you might deserve a little something for helping us out.”
Peck furrowed his brow in question, and opened it slowly. “Paperwork, John?”
“Take a closer look.”
“NYPD...” and he stared up at John. “This is my juvee record.”
“And your CPA file, and the reports from our buddies at the FBI that mention you by name, and that one booking from the college police from last year for drunk and disorderly...”
“It’s everything,” he breathed, thumbing through it, not daring to hope. “Holy shit, John, this is everything. You got copies...”
“No, I got the originals. Everything’s been pulled. All of it. Digital, hard copy, all of it.”
“Why?”
John leaned down on his elbows right next to him, and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Because you deserve the choice of a different future. You may not trust the government, and I’d say that’s not a bad policy, but I believe in you, kid. You can make something of yourself, be that honorable man I know you can be. You think you can’t do it, but you can.” The door rang, and John pushed off and buzzed BA and Murdock in. “You just need the chance.”
It was the most Peck had heard John say at one time in the whole of the time he’d known the man. He closed the folder reverently, laying a hand on the cover. “Thank you, John,” he said, hoping his voice wasn’t shaking.
“Love you, kid,” John said, offhanded and affectionate all at once, and it almost broke Peck’s heart.
That kind of faith, in Peck, in people in general, was exactly why Santori was going to win this one. Why he always won.
Why John was going to end up dead.
The guys came in, Murdock with a pink cake box full of donuts. Peck grabbed three and Hannibal handed him a steaming mug of black coffee and Murdock jostled him and asked him if he’d seen Billy, his imaginary dog, and BA clapped him on the back and asked how he was doing. Peck smiled, despite himself. It was almost like he was part of the team.
“Hey, hey, Faceman, what’s wrong?” Murdock asked around a mouthful of jelly-filled goodness.
“Had him come over a little early. Gave the kid the folder,” Hannibal said, emphasizing the last word, and the other two guys broke out in matching grins. “I think he liked it.”
“You happy about that, Face?” BA asked in that gruff voice of his, staring at him a little too intently, and Peck nodded around his own donut, blushing.
Face.
Almost like he was part of the team.
Except he wasn’t. And he never would be.
“Good. We need to go scope sites. Hannibal, can I borrow you little mobster here?”
“Ex-mobster,” Hannibal said proudly, tapping the folder. “And yeah, Face, you know what places we need to check out, right?”
He nodded and grabbed his stuff. “Santori uses a few of the same places for everything. Shouldn’t be an issue.”
Murdock handed him a GPS unit. “Make sure you get the coordinates, Face. So’s I can find the bossman.” He was going to be running air support tomorrow. Peck nodded and stuffed the small device into his bag. He smiled at BA, who kind of squinted back at him.
“Come on, big guy, let’s get going.”
Halfway down the hall, just in front of the elevator, Peck stopped, seized by the sudden, horrible thought. A single flash of his mother, ten years ago, running back inside the house and interrupting him right in the middle of a Zelda boss fight on his NES. I didn’t get my kiss before I left, Templeton she’d said, and you know I love you...
That had been her thing, always saying goodbye, always say I love you because you never know if that’s the last time you’re going to see...
Except he knew.
And Peck was running, right back to the door, right back inside, grabbing Hannibal around the shoulders, just like last night, pulling the taller man down for a long, deep kiss that left him gasping in horror, but Peck didn’t care about any of that, didn’t care that Murdock and BA were staring, didn’t even care about the triumphant little you owe me a hundred bucks, fool behind them, didn’t care about anything except whispering, “I love you,” in John’s ear and hearing the heated reply of “I love you too, now get going,” growled against his ear.
Peck nodded. He looked back over his shoulder at BA, who was shuffling some bills into his wallet with a grin.
“You ready t’go now, man?”
Peck stared at the man in his arms, wanting to remember him like this forever, happy, relaxed, silver hair bright in the morning light, practically glowing... and he realized he didn’t have a single photo of him. There’d be nothing...
But he couldn’t worry about that. He couldn’t think about it. He couldn’t let something like that affect him now. He couldn’t...
“Yeah, BA,” he grinned with an enthusiasm he didn't feel. “Let’s get going.”
+++++
Peck did know all the places. All the places Santori could possibly use to meet with John, all the places he usually used. He hadn’t given them a pre-set location because he didn’t want them to be doing what they were doing right now, driving and scoping and figuring sniper angles and extraction points and all that bullshit.
Which was why Peck wasn’t actually taking BA to any of those locations. Santori had ordered him not to.
Don’t show those motherfuckers any of the usual places. Got something special in mind...
“Ain’t much time to get set up anywhere, Face,” BA grunted as they pulled out of the third abandoned warehouse. “How many more we got to do?”
The sun was setting and this was going to be useless in a few hours anyway. “One more,” he said quietly, leaning his head up against the glass of the rental car, hating himself. He had his own plan, but it was going to be useless. He couldn’t save John from Santori. He couldn’t save Santori from John. Either way, he lost somebody important to him, the past he’d never asked for or the future he probably couldn’t live up to. He had no idea what he should do.
“Face?”
“What, BA? Oh, go left here.”
The black man’s face tightened as he turned into traffic on a major roadway, swinging them out of Astoria and back towards the city. “You break the boss’s heart, I’m gonna break you.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Good. Keep it that way. He don’t need to tell me, but I know he got plans for you...”
“He likes his plans, doesn’t he?”
BA laughed. “How else you think he get a call sign like that?”
Peck nodded, digesting that. Made sense, actually. The greatest classical strategist, an insane mission... “That story, the one he told me about the soldiers who died,” and BA’s hands tightened down on the steering wheel so hard that Peck was surprised the thing didn’t just break, “is that really why you’re here?”
“Yeah, that why we’re here. Some of them was my friends...”
They drove in silence for a few more minutes, and then Peck saw the turn he was going to need BA to take, the last place Santori had told him was okay to tell him about. That turn, right there... and they passed it.
Should he go back? Should he go forward, go with his own stupid plan?
“Go right and them right again at the next light,” Peck said, sinking a little lower in the seat. “That’ll be the last place.”
BA nodded. The morning’s revelation, the boss’ faith, seemed to have gone a long way to assauging the big man’s doubts. But Peck knew, absolutely knew, those were still there.
And he could have kissed him for it. That just might get John out of this alive. He was desperately hoping for that.
“Can you take me back to my dorm when we’re done? I need my car.”
“Why?”
“It’s Sunday night,” Peck explained as the pulled up to the ramshackle collection of buildings, right along the shore. “Family dinner.”
+++++
Peck managed to get away from BA without getting visibly upset. He’d made a life out of putting on a good face during even the most horrible of things, and it only mildly bothered him, having to lie to BA. It bothered him, because in lying to BA, he was really lying to John. He’d asked BA to pass the news along, that he had to go to Santori’s house tonight.
Had to go over there tonight.
Because John’s plan wasn’t going to work.
He wished like hell this could all be different, that he wasn’t going to have to do what he was going to do in the next twenty-four hours, that all of this wasn’t between them. That his parents had lived, and he’d grown up in lower-upper middle class comfort with mom and dad, and gone to West Point or enlisted or something like that, and had met the Legendary Hannibal Smith - as BA seemed to regard the man - under better circumstances, in kinder times. But this was the hand he’d been dealt, and while Peck knew the value of cheating, he also knew when when the deck was stacked against him and there was just no winning.
So everything was churning up in him. Churning, churning. Horrible.
The drive across tow barely registered, and it was a miracle he didn’t have an accident, as wrapped up in his own thoughts as he was. The city fell away and the suburbs began, trees appearing and the lights growing dimmer and further apart, until the headlights of his GTO told him that he’d pulled into the driveway of the house where he’d grown up.
Of his family.
Of that son of a bitch who’d...
Fuck, what the hell was wrong with him?
He hesitated for a second, and then got himself up and out and up the steps to push the doorbell.
It rang. Once, twice, and he almost lost his nerve and ran, but then Maria answered the door, standing there like some Roman goddess, smiling. “Templeton! How lovely! Haven’t had you Are you here to talk to Anthony, or did you just want dinne...”
But she didn’t get a chance to finish, because Peck wrapped his arms around her plump body and held on, letting his forehead hit the top of her hair, wanting to feel something solid. She fell silent, and patted him on the back, soft and maternal, waiting a few seconds before pushing him back and grabbing his chin, meeting him with her soft, worried gaze.
“What’s going on in that cute little head of yours, Temp?” she asked, leading him inside and into the kitchen. Warm goodness was bubbling away on the stove and the cutting board was still littered with tomato guts and cheese and crushed herbs. She deposited him on a stool and went to the liquor cabinet. “Talk to me. You don’t want my husband seeing you like this, so let’s get you pulled together before he gets home.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t ask.,” she said, and handed him a double whiskey, pouring one for herself as well, and settling down next to him. “What’s going on?”
He took a deep drag on the glass, and looked right at her. “I need your help.”
She nodded. “Is it something you need me to do, or something you need me to not do?”
He looked away and Maria slammed the glass down right in front of him. “You better have a damn good reason.”
“I didn’t start it, Maria, remember that.”
“Talk to me, Templeton,” she said, rubbing a hand over his knee. “Talk to me.”
And he didn’t want to, but pretty soon the whole story, everything, how he’d met a man and fallen in love but he was marked now, all of it, tumbling out of him, gushing, flooding the kitchen with the agony of the past three months, and soon he couldn’t talk anymore, because the words wouldn’t come. Dried up, his grief leaving him tired and shaking but dried eyed.
Maria’s hand hadn’t left his knee the entire time, but when he finished in with halting, seizing sobs, she enveloped him again, kissing the top of his head like she had when Santori had first brought him home, the first time it had happened...when she’d done nothing to stop it...
“I need it, Maria,” he said, although they both knew it was a lie.
“I can’t let you do that, sweetie,” she whispered, and just shook her head. “I can’t...”
“You could sit down here and let him drink. You could go upstairs. Like you always did,” Peck said evenly, without anger or judgment. He’d never blamed her for it. After his year on the streets, he’d never really minded. And if it helped now... he could...
She bit her lip, trembling a little and tried to smile. “Oh, you really do love this man, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Peck was surprised by how fast it came, swift, without hesitation. Even now.
“Okay.”
And he kissed her again as an SUV pulled into the garage and five or six voices could be heard chattering away, and she handed him a tissue.
“You’re a good man, Templeton,” she told him, a touch of admiration in his voice.
“That’s what he says, too.”
He wished he’d been able to take John up on his offer.
He wished he’d had a chance to find out.
+++++
The warehouse that Santori finally settled on was a dark tumble of buildings down by the shore. Not one of his usual places. Dark, even in midday. Didn’t help that it was cloudy and cold, and worse inside. Peck could see his breath, and inside the mechanic’s gloves, his fingers were still cold. He stuffed them into his arm pits. No good.
Maria had made pancakes this morning, studiously avoiding the eyes of her husband and adopted son, both. He had no idea what she believed about his little request. That he thought Santori could be talked out of this course of action by Peck offering himself up? That he was trying to save his lover? Provide a distraction? Erase the memory of a man who’d been marked for death? He didn’t know what she’d thought.
But he was fairly sure she didn’t know the truth.
He looked over at Santori, the four guys who’s come with them. The sick son of a bitch had demanded that he be here for the big reveal. Wanted to really make the fake VP suffer before he killed him.
Wanted him to know just how fucking hard he’d been had.
The cappo flashed him a quick grin and checked his watch. “Right on time.”
“Military punctuality, Mr. Santori,” Peck volunteered.
“Out of sight, son. Let’s not ruin the fun too soon.”
He nodded, and moved into the deep shadows. Peck felt nauseous, the morning’s meal disagreeing with him, seven hours later. He hadn’t eaten lunch. His stomach was screaming at him. Hell, everything was screaming at him. Everything. Trying to tell him that this wasn’t going to work, that he should just call John and tell him not to fucking come, that Santori was going to put a bullet in his brain, that the lives of his dead men weren’t worth that risk...
Hannibal would still come.
There was nothing he could do. Peck had already missed his chance to stop this. He could only hope that going forward wasn’t going to explode in his face.
I love you too kid...
And there he was, Hannibal himself, looking edible in one of those tailored suits, gorgeous, being escorted by one of Santori’s men, a bored expression on his handsome face.
Peck felt that stab of warmth, followed quickly by one of shame, and his smile faltered.
And then they started talking.
Santori was playing him, dangling the promise of maybe easing up on the fees in exchange for this or that, Hannibal insistent but still polite inside that John Hamilton persona, everybody else just waiting, waiting to see how this was going to go down. When the piano wire would come out, a knife, a gun with its suppressor firmly screwed on...
And there it was, the slightest shift in tone, that change in stance, Santori’s version of coiling, going for the kill, and he turned around and looked right at where he knew Peck was hiding.
Just a glance, but a significant one, and Peck took a deep breath, and stepped out into the single pool of weak light to stand with the rest. There was no way of telling what was out there, standing here. He couldn’t see anything but John He had no eyes for anything else.
“... you see, Hannibal, I’d be inclined to accept your offier, and it is a good one,” Santori was saying, John jerking visibly at the use of his military handle, “but, see, your boy here is actually my boy. Which is probably why you’re here without backup, without your air support. They have no idea where to find you, do they?”
Hannibal’s eyes flickered over to Peck, who’d just made it into the weak light, and everything in him started to collapse, crumbling, like all the internal support was going out of him, like his spine had been removed and he couldn’t keep himself upright, fighting only with the hope... “Kid...”
“Like you said, John, I work for them,” he said, and palmed the gun out of his sleeve. He hated the way metal felt against gloves. No real feel for the weapon. Focus on that, he told himself, all the insignificant details, all of it, none of the bullshit...
He couldn’t see anything. He’d brought BA here, hadn't he? He’d given the coordinates to Murdock, right? All on a blind guess. He’d made a blind guess, and he’d been right, and he’d been ready to declare victory from that alone.
Alone.
He was alone.
He could have laughed.
Story of my life.
“Hey, colonel, did you really think I was going to let you waltz in here and destroy my operation?” He nodded to Peck. “Do it.”
“You motherfucking...” Hannibal started to yell, not at Santori, no, no, right at Peck, he was yelling right at Peck, and from a distance of two yards, his twenty-three year lover raised the six-shot revolver and squeezed the trigger.
What went through his head at that moment, Peck would spend the rest of his life trying to forget.
Hannibal actually screamed, a sound that reverberated through the rafters, and fell to his knees. Santori stepped forward, kicking the colonel over and spat on him, turning contemptuously. He looked straight at Peck. “Shoulder shot, Peck. Messy. Especially for you.”
John wasn’t screaming now. He was groaning, so different from the noises he’d made when they were together, in that soft bed with all those soft touches, too similar, too similar for Peck to stand, and he knew there were tears now. Santori was coming right for him now, two of the guys, men he’d known for the past ten year, lunging to hold him still, wrenching his gun away.
It took four of them, and he still dragged them nearly to the ground before the caress of a hot gun barrel against his forehead, Santori’s hand, jerking his head back, stopped him cold. Once he was sure he’d gotten the conman’s attention, he pointed the gun behind him.
Straight at Hannibal.
“You flipped on me, didn’t you?”
“No, no, I never...”
“DON’T LIE TO ME!” the cappo thundered, and Peck squeezed his eyes shut. “Did. You. Flip. On. Me?”
He could still see Hannibal. Still alive, a shoulder shot wouldn’t be fatal, if BA would only fucking show up. “... yes...”
Santori squatted down. “I’ve been worried about you, Peck. Your little pleading bullshit last night, the last few months... I should have dropped him in the East River the day the showed up. Should never have trusted you with it...”
“Boss, please, you don’t have to do this, he’s just some stupid soldier looking for revenge...”
“SHUT UP!” Santori roared, and pulled the trigger. Twice. Impossibly loud in the echoing space, those shots. But there was nothing more from Hannibal. “You’re too weak, Peck. You’re a weak little queer. There's no place for you here.”
Peck just glared at him, the red starting to haze up in his vision. What did it matter at this point? If John was dead, John was dead... six of them, one of him, somebody had to have a gun...
“Kill him.”
And then two things happened at once.
The forehead of the man above him vanished, a red mist filling the now-vacant air, another gunshot ringing clear.
Peck broke upwards with an elbow and back with a heel and he was out, free, and going for the dead man’s gun.
The warehouse exploded. The fight was fast, dirty and over entirely too fast. BA, from wherever he’d stashed himself, killed two, and Peck got three, two shots, one broken neck, and the rest of the clip emptied in the direction that Santori had fled, the opposite direction from where BA came out, the cappo vanishing into the gloom, Peck’s surge of adrenalin not enough to overcome the fury he was feeling, and the shots went wild.
He stared off, unwilling to look down, unable to see John’s body mangled by the .308 rounds. There wasn’t any sound. No sound at all.
BA came up behind him, M-4 tucked into his shoulder like an old friend. Peck turned to look at him, knowing the horror was showing in his face, and when BA reached out a hand and he heard a chopper in the distance and the faintest sound of those red-blue sirens, he ran, throwing the gun away, running as fast as he could, running away from the disaster that was his life, running through the adrenalin to the exhaustion on the other side, running until his knees gave and his muscles burned and he found himself under some bridge somewhere where he collapsed against a concrete wall and pulled his knees up to his chest and waited for the sun to fall and the darkness to take him away.
+++++
“What we doing here, fool?”
Murdock sighed and rubbed his face. He thought he’d explained this well enough. Maybe he hadn’t. It was entirely possible he’d imagined the entire conversation this morning, wasn’t it? Neither of them had slept in the past two days, not since the big charlie foxtrot down at the abandoned warehouse, the boss getting shot, Faceman running off like he had, setting down to find Bosco kneeling next to Hannibal, blood everywhere...
The pilot tried to get it out of his mind. He couldn’t focus, certainly not with the bossman who wasn’t even there bleeding on the carpet next to then, chewing a cigar impatiently, waiting for Murdock to come up with the answer.
“This little GPS doohickey,” and he waggled it, “had these coordinates punched in. Last line after the warehouse. Gotta mean something.”
“An NYU grad dorm?” BA asked sarcastically. He was never sarcastic, and it grated against Murdock’s already disturbed thoughts, like orange zest going into cake batter and he hated citrus in his baked goods, and it was having enough trouble pulling everything together anyway... he shook it off. Now was not the time to be indulging free association. Or cake cravings. He tried to crawl back on top of himself. Hannibal would've wanted him to do that.
“And a name,” Murdock said, pointing to a pair of initials. “BA, we gotta at least check it out. We’re here, ain’t we?”
The dorm manager, a mousy little woman with half-painted nails screwed the top back down on her bottle of Honeysuckle Peach polish - which didn’t smell anything like either, Murdock thought to himself - and nodded. “That’s probably Will McMasters.”
“Can we talk to him?”
“If he’s home,” she said and gave them his apartment number.
Three floors up. BA knocked on the door and Murdock leaned against the wall, wondering if the Hannibal in his mind had followed them up here, wondered if he might ask the man for some advice. But then, it’d only be advice comin’ from himself and not from the colonel at all and that didn’t seem like a good idea at all. He didn’t trust his own judgment right now.
“Think I’d be afraid to live in a building where the landlady just gave out my name to passing riffraff.”
“Be glad she did, fool.” BA hadn’t spoken much since the warehouse, not since Murdock had seen him, hands covered in red, jacket throw aside and his shirt ripped off, pressed against the boss’s chest, trying like hell to stop gushing wounds... and that was probably something he should mention, right?
“Hey, buddy, don’t get blood on the kid’s furniture,” Murdock said as the door cracked, and clapped him on the shoulder. BA glared.
“Um, can I help you?”
“Hey, look, BA, it’s a ginger! Are you the ginger formerly known as Will McMasters?”
“... goddamn it, Murdock...”
What was BA’s problem? The man was a ginger, bright red hair and pale skin, watching them warily.
“Umm, yeah...”
“We’re friends of Templeton Peck’s,” BA interjected.
“Templeton...” and the grad student scratched his head and snapped his fingers. “Peck? Cute, infuriating, nice body, raging asshole?”
The two Rangers exchanged a look and Murdock shrugged. “That’s the one, muchacho!”
And the door opened wide.
Will offered them both something to drink, which they declined, and then warmed up one of his computer monitors and grabbed an opened FedEx envelop from the messy coffee table. “Okay, so yesterday, I got this,” he said, handing over the mailing envelop, “with a CD and a note inside from Peck. Wasn’t his handwriting on the label, but whatever. Said that he’d be sending a couple of his friends by, and I should sit on this until they, you guys, got here.”
“Us guys?”
“Yeah, Captain HM Murdock and Corporal BA Baracus.”
They stared, and he laughed nervously. “I, uh, I pulled your records for him a few weeks ago. Pretty crazy job you guys have...”
“What was on the disc, fool?”
“A shitstorm,” the geek said with a faint grin, and opened a video player. Just a scene of a small bedroom, somebody lithe, thin, sitting there, reading a book on his stomach, facing away from the camera. “I mean, I thought it was just one of his jokes, you know, cause he’s kind of an asshole...”
Murdock leaned in. A door opened, a man coming into frame, darker, heavyset, and the man on the bed pushed up a little.
“Daddy?” came the voice through the speakers.
“Shh, baby, you don’t want mommy to hear, do you?”
“No, daddy...”
“Shut it off!” BA roared at the geek, and then turned to Murdock. “You brought us over here to watch porn?” BA demanded of Murdock, who just shook his head, recognizing something in the voices.
“No, buddy, that’s faceman. ‘S Peck.”
BA looked aghast. “...why?”
“I don’t really know, but this gets pretty, err, well, you know who that man is, right?”
Murdock nodded. “Santori, right?”
“I ain’t gonna ask you again, fool,” BA growled, “why're we here watching that kid’s home movies?”
The geek looked back and forth between them, holding out his hands. “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you know what this is? If this got out? That one of the biggest mobsters in New York is a flaming homo? His life would be worth shit. People would start testifying against him. Hell, he might turn himself in just to get away from all his buddies who’d be out there trying to kill him! Peck explained everything in the note...” and he offered that up, too.
BA ripped it out of his hands while Murdock stared at the footage on the screen. He hadn’t really asked Face what he’d done for the mobsters, teased him about it, but he hadn’t really asked. He wouldn’t have guessed... this
“... yeah, you right, he does say that in here,” BA said faintly, and handed the note back to the geek.
“Indictments are going to roll, arrests are going to be made, people’ll flip... good times,” the geek agreed. “Fun, isn’t it?”
Murdock was still staring at the computer screen, the cold reality of it leaving his thoughts surprisingly undisturbed, ice on a Minnesota pond in January.
Here Faceman was, not twenty-four hours after leaving them at Hannibal’s apartment, where Hannibal had seemed so happy, so at ease, in this thing between them, whoring himself out in such a humiliatating way... for what?
Had he known Hannibal’s plan wasn’t going to work from the start? Had this been his way of trying to redeem himself? Make sure Hannibal was still able to get his man, despite...
Had he really loved John this much, that he was willing to do this for him?
It wasn’t enough, and it never would be, and never could be, not after everything that had happened, a story he wasn’t privy to and had no business in knowing, but he himself had to honor this. What both men had tried to do, tried to give each other. What both men had lost.
Murdock had to do it. For both Hannibal and Face. They both deserved so much more from this situation, and so this, this just couldn't be the end.
It had to be a start. A beginning. Like neither man would ever receive. Fate was a cruel bitch sometimes...
“Hey, Bosco?” Murdock said quietly. “Let’s send it to everybody.”
BA blinked, and then grunted in agreement. “The whole fucking planet.”
"You up for that, ginger?"
“Hey, I don’t know how much you guys know about computers. It’s not like some magical do-everything box...” the geek began and then stopped, biting his lip, like he was thinking about some happy memory, and smiled. “But I should be able to get this on the six o’clock news.”
Murdock dug a hand into a pocket.
This had to be the start of something better.
Finished up in the Epilogue...
