What Goes Around (Part One)
Dec. 9th, 2010 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face, Face/OMC
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: non-con
Summary: Part One of Two for a fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Intense Face whomp and non-con, pwease?? With more than one person beating up on Face, too, because I see Face fighting them so much he has to be held down. And when Hannibal finds him, he has no clue what happened to Face and maybe doesn't find out until the people who took Face show up again (it can even be years later) asking for the team's help, and only Face recognizes them and freaks out. Cue Hannibal being all "suck it up, Lieutenant. We're taking this mission." And then more bad things happen to Face. And Hannibal's all guilty when he finds out. Face can forgive him or be pissed at him for not listening in the first place. Up to you, lovely. <3
H/F, obvs. End it however you want, too, happy or sad.
Face takes on more than he can handle when he doesn’t report a brutal rape he suffers as a young lieutenant. He doesn’t realize how deep the damage goes until they pick up a job, working for the same guy who raped him all those years ago... and it all starts up again.
His head hit the concrete, hands catching him barely in time, skin ripping on the pavement. Damn, they could run fast. There was blood in his mouth, on his arms, leaking out into his jeans...
He should have known better.
What the fuck had he been thinking?
Every once in a while, Face got that itch, the kind he couldn’t scratch on base, the kind that demanded immediate and swift attention. He took precautions. Never went to the same bar twice. Always made sure he was careful to screen, avoid any other military guys that might have the same issue. Fake name, condom, leaving when it was over... careful.
And the kid he’d picked up seemed just fine. A little nervous, a little scared. Probably one of those who hadn’t quite come to terms with himself, who he was, quite yet. College age, a year or two younger than him. But he’d been very eager, and sometimes Face was okay with that sort of thing, and why the hell not? Face remembered what that felt like, not really understanding yourself, not being sure. A combination of sympathy and alcohol had seen them both out of the bar.
Everything had seemed fine. The kid was begging for it, even if he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted, and Face ran a light hand down his back, reassuring him that he’d get it, nibbling at his ear, drawing some nervous, excited little laughs, telling him about all the naughty little...
“Hey, look at the fags! Hello!”
Face flipped the bird at the guys who’d just passed them. The undergrad he was with tensed up. “Just keep going,” Face said smoothly, and squeezed his side. “Bunch of drunk frat boys. Nothing to worry about.”
“I’m... I’m in a frat,” the student whispered back, scared now.
“Yo, faggots!”
That was screamed. Fuck. But Face knew a challenge when he heard one and stopped, dropped his arm, flexed a fist. He hated people like this.
“You know those guys?” he asked, craning his neck back around, and the student shook his head. Well, that was something. But the hair on his neck was bristling, and his nerves were singing. There was a fight coming. “As stupid as this sounds, you should probably get out of here.”
“You can’t fucking be serious.”
“Go.”
And then he got between the student’s retreat and the frat boys’ advance. He was a Ranger, right?
There had been no point in him running too. Face tried to talk his way out of it, but there hadn’t been any point in that, either. There were five of them, and they were big, football or something, and they were drunk. Stupid drunk, that kind of drunk that let people survive car crashes. They were angry, out cruising for trouble, bored and mean and indifferent.
And by the time the first one threw a punch, he had known exactly how it was going to end.
Right there, in an alley, one of the assholes with his arm broken in three places and left on the ground where Face dropped him and snapped it, forgetting in the red haze about the other four guys, where he’d been yanked up and thrown against the wall, his body pinned down, arms jerked back, legs kicked apart, his jeans, cold air... holy hell...
“You like it up the ass, pretty boy?”
He couldn’t stop himself. “Depends on if you’ve got anything to put there.”
The bastard did, and it hurt, ripping up through him, tearing him open, and Face had to start laughing as he was smashed into the slimy brick, barely able to breath, blood running down his leg as tissue burst under the battering assault. Again. And again. And again. Laughing, at the irony of it all. Laughing, because if he did anything else, he’d never make it out of here.
And when the fucker pulled out and one of his buddies took a turn and maybe another, Face wasn’t really sure, he barely held himself steady as he turned around. The frat boys were standing there, in shock, one of them gripping his arm, like they couldn’t quite believe what they’d done.
Except for that one, that first one, who almost seemed...
And Face had lunged out with the last of his strength and broke that fucker’s jaw.
They ran.
He fell.
The ground had hurt. Everything hurt.
Now, Face rolled onto his back, staring up aimlessly at the streetlight just beyond the darkness . Everything was swimming. He couldn’t focus on anything. He tried to sit up, but everything hurt. Ranger. Invincible.
Right.
Something shifted inside him, and he barely managed to roll onto his side before his stomach emptied itself all over the alley floor, abs spasming, tears springing to his eyes. He stared at the reeking puddle for a moment, and managed to inch himself away. It was hard. His limbs ached, adrenalin dying unused in his bloodstream, useless, all of it, useless...
Everything hurt.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket as soon as he trusted himself to talk, keeping very still, dialed with slippery fingers. It rang. Twice. Then... “Hannibal?” he said, trying to keep his voice from quavering.
“Kid, it’s two AM...”
“...boss, I...”
“Where are you, kid?”
He smiled, despite himself, something warm peeking through the spreading numbness. Hannibal...
Face told him the nearest corner he knew of, Hannibal told him ten minutes, and the lieutenant clicked the phone shut. Tried to push up again. Couldn’t. Something had definitely ripped. He needed stitches. He was going to need stitches, right, wasn’t he going to need... and with that, the sheer force of what had just happened came crashing down on him, something swelling up in his throat, and fuck, he was not going to start blubbering like a damn girl after a bad date, he wasn’t...
He groaned and somehow got to his feet. He was a Ranger, goddamn it, and one of Hannibal’s boys. He was not going to end up some fucking number on one of those sexual assault slides. Not going to have a report filed on this. He was not going to be the cause of Hannibal’s disappointment. Lieutenant Peck, got himself raped... Fuck that. Fuck. That.
He could handle this. He could.
So, when Hannibal showed up ten minutes later, as promised, in a near-by long-term parking lot, Face fixed a smile under the blood on his face, his cut lip, stopping himself from rushing forward, burying his face in the man's clean shirt, sobbing...
“What’s the other guy look like?”
“Guys. Five of them.”
“Jesus, kid...”
Face shrugged, shoving away that overwhelming impulse to break down, beg for help, tell Hannibal everything, trust him with this, like he trusted him with everything else. He couldn't bear to see the colonel's faith in him crushed, broken before it had a chance to take root. He'd only been in his unit a few months...
“I broke a guy’s arm!” he said brightly, and Hannibal kind of grinned, and then they didn’t talk for a while. It’s easy, Face told himself. Lock it away, don’t think about it, not an issue, you’re stronger than this...
“You okay, kid?”
There it was; concern. Couldn't have that. He might start talking. Couldn't have that. Couldn't let the boss down.
Deny, deny, deny...
“... yeah. Yeah, boss. I’m fine.”
Miraculously, Hannibal seemed to buy it.
Face wanted to die.
But he knew, he just knew, he’d never forget that fucker’s face, the way his jaw had snapped, that hot breath against his neck, sadistic and possessive and terrifying... and that was enough to get him, keep him mad.
And that? That was enough to keep him afloat.
+++++
Hannibal and the client shook hands.
The client got up to leave.
He couldn’t scream. If he screamed, somebody would come and he couldn’t bear it. Or nobody would, and he couldn’t bear that either. How the fuck had they pinned him? Hannibal was going to kill him for losing a fight this easily...
Face dug his nails into his leg and painted on a smile.
“Thank you,” the man, Andrew, Anthony, something like that, said. It was genuine and warm. His wife clung to his arm. Both of them, clearly upset, and why wouldn’t they be? But Face thought there might be a flicker of recognition, some brush of old memory, and the client’s smile twisted a little.
He felt his smile crack against his skin.
The client was gone, but he couldn’t quite relax. It was thrumming against the boundaries of his skin, that night.
The conman still remembered that night. Brick skinning his hands, the tearing, the way that guy’s breath had smelled, his muttered reassurances to Hannibal, the colonel insisting about the emergency room anyway. He’d even waited, waited out in the lobby with a cup of terrible cafeteria coffee, waited while the doctor got Face put back together and told him he really needed to consider testing, just in case. The way the boss grinned and he grinned back, an hour or two later, unnecessary stitches on a shallow gash on his forehead that had looked worse than it was.
Need ‘em somewhere else, don’t wanna have to lie on the incident report about getting patched up... he’d told the doctor, whod shaken his head but helped him out anyway.
Years ago. How many? Eleven, twelve? God, he’d been so cocky back then. And once it’d healed up... he cast a side glance at Hannibal, settling back down. Hannibal. Face looked away. That had never happened. A lot of things hadn’t happened, after that night.
And now...
“Don’t give me that look, kid.”
“What look?”
“Face...”
The former lieutenant leaned back in his chair. No good hiding from Hannibal. But he’d kept the story of that night locked up for this long... Shit. No good options. “I don’t like it, boss.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the guy, Face. And he needs our help.”
He did, and under normal circumstances, Face would be all for this. The guy’s son had been kidnapped, and he didn’t know why, didn’t know where, only knew that it had happened. That it was happening. That they needed to find him.
Poor kid.
One bite, right on that soft spot behind his ear, so hard he threw his head forward trying to avoid it, slicing the soft skin over his temple, the asshole’s laughter as his hand replaced teeth, holding him there, muscles in his arms screaming as he tried to thrash, held down by solid...
“Fucking frat boys.”
Hannibal flipped a few bills down on the table and shouldered on his coat, watching Face carefully, clearly getting irritated. “This is no time for your stupid prejudices, kid. They need our help.”
That laugh, that stupid fucking laugh, harsh and prickling, another thrust, this the one that went too fast, the one that changed the penetration, the desecration, from shallow and tight and rough, like sandpaper was rough, to deep and loose and wet, his own...
“Stupid?” Face protested as they hit the cold afternoon outside. “It’s not stupid, Hannibal! Remember that time...” and he stopped dead.
Remember the time you picked me up in an empty parking lot? Bleeding? Freshly raped by a couple of...
Yeah, sure.
Fuck honesty.
“What? When you got beaten up by a couple...”
“...five...” he muttered back darkly, sickened at himself for what had almost come out. Mercifully, Hannibal didn’t seem to notice.
“...five, whatever, it doesn’t change the fact...”
“This is a bad idea,” Face said again, a little firmer that time, scrambling against the bulwark of memory pushing its way to the surface, demanding attention. God, still so vivid. After all these years, after thinking he’d put it all to bed forever, all of it rushing back to the surface, hard and fast and dull, like it had been...
He started walking away. No way was this going to be a topic of discussion, a blurted guilty confession on the car ride back to the safehouse. It was what, six miles? That was walking distance.
“Face!” and judging from the sudden tone shift in Hannibal’s voice as he yelled after him, his commander was getting worried now.
Face shoved his hands in his pockets. Just kept going, unable to turn around and face him, feeling like his control would snap, the dam would burst, and all the shame and fear he’d felt since then, all the terror at the idea of telling, would be for nothing. He’d done it after, shoved it in some back corner of his mind and never looked at it, never let it own him, never let it win. It was going to stay there.
He could handle this.
He had to.
And the worst part was, he couldn't even be angry at Hannibal for forcing himself into this position. No, he had only himself to blame.
+++++
It was dark by the time Face reached the rental house they’d gotten for this mission.
Part of him wanted Hannibal to be waiting up in the kitchen for him, sitting there with his scotch and a cigar, drumming his fingers on the table and demanding an answer. Face would break down and tell, Hannibal would rage against the assholes who had dared hurt his boy, they’d go off and just kill the motherfucker, like he’d always wanted to. Not held down by the Army, what difference would it make? And then Hannibal would realize, and give his lieutenant exactly what he’d always needed, give him back what he’d lost...
Face sighed as he reached the gate and passed through the small back yard, up to the deck, up the stairs, lost in the warmth of those thoughts. He could tell, right? It would be nice, finally having Hannibal like that, finally...
But then, he had a lot of fantasies about Hannibal, and this one, like all those others, turned out to be little better than a pipe dream.
The boss had been waiting, his second cigar tight between his fingers and the first dead in an ashtray at his side, staring down at Face from the top of deck steps. It was dark, but the conman could see the tension in those broad shoulders. “Have a good walk, lieutenant?”
Shit. That was Hannibal’s angry voice. Face stopped. “Uhh...”
“Because we got a call while you were out.”
Double shit. “Is the kid okay?”
“It was the kidnappers. As far as we can tell, the kid’s still alive.”
“Well, um... shouldn’t we let the police handle this one, boss? I mean, just cause the guy’s worried about how it’s going to look to his business partners...”
Hannibal puffed, and the end of the cigar glowed red above him. “They already discussed this with us. The wife’s freaked, thinks it’ll get her boy killed. He’s making the right decision.”
The lieutenant felt something hard forming in his throat. He wasn’t going to make it through this, and his thoughts from the sticky walk through the humid Maryland evening stayed with him, clinging. Urging. Begging. Hannibal, finally realizing... “Hannibal, I can’t...”
“Jesus, Face,” and there the boss was, two fingers clutching the cigar and jabbing his chest, “get over your stupid fucking ego for once, stop whining and get with the fucking program. It’s a little boy’s life at stake.”
Face shook his head, trying to hold onto the rapidly dwindling hope. “I know that, boss, I just...”
“I don’t give a shit about your personal bullshit, kid. We’ve already lost an hour waiting for you.”
Personal bullshit. That’s all it was. Nothing Face needed to dwell on, nothing he should. Nothing Hannibal was going to care about. Not while there was some little boy out there, scared, far from home. Wasn’t his fault. Didn’t ask for something bad to happen to him. Face could sympathize. He could suck it up. “We need to go now?”
“Yes,” Hannibal said, exasperated. “Aaron bought some time. The kidnappers are going to call back at their house in... fuck, forty-five minutes.”
Face nodded, shuddering a little as nerves discharged something akin to anxiety, something he couldn’t acknowledge right now. “BA and Murdock ready to go?”
“Waiting in the van. We were just about to go looking for you,” Hannibal said, and flicked the cigar off into the wet grass of the back yard and walked around to the front of the house, not looking back as he yelled back, “get your ass in gear, lieutenant!”
Face tilted back, looking at the stars. All that space, and he felt like the walls were closing in on him, closing him in. He cursed himself for his own weakness, for the stupid way he was handling this. Focus, damnit, just shut it off, he told himself, and snapped his head back down, narrowing his eyes. Focus.
“Coming, boss!”
Hannibal didn’t even hold the gate open from him, slammed it shut behind him.
Not that Face minded. Beyond those wooden slats was everything that was wrong with his life right now.
But Hannibal had made the decision, and Face wasn't going to let him down.
Even if pulling that damn gate open seemed like the hardest thing he'd ever done.
+++++
The client, the man Hannibal had called Aaron, had a sickeningly large house. One of those white Colonial monstrosities that littered the East Coast. Beautiful place, the long drive lit with a gold glow, ancient maples dragging leaves against the roof of the van as they pulled in. Murdock was chattering happily with Face, who was only half-heartedly in the conversation, both of them driving BA nuts as he threw the brake and twisted them into park.
Hannibal turned around in his seat. “You good, Face?”
“I still don’t like frat boys,” he said with just enough defiance to keep Hannibal from getting to suspicious, and flashed him a smile. “Look at this place. Ridiculous.”
“And it’s their summer home, kid,” Hannibal said, chewing on the end of his cigar, and Face knew he was looking for signs of whining. “Surprised you don’t love it.”
“I’m more of a post modern guy myself,” Face replied jokingly, and Murdock made some joke about Frank Lloyd Wright as he crawled over the conman’s lap, following BA up to the wide, bright porch, surveillance equipment in hand. The pilot, ever the tech geek, was happy about his new toy. Face didn’t exactly know what it did, exactly, just that it had been hard as hell to scam from the Anapolis police department, and it had made his buddy’s day when he’d brought it home.
“I’m serious, kid. Don’t start anything right now.”
“Nothing, boss. I promise.”
“Good,” Hannibal said, and finally smiled at him.
Face felt flush, ran a hand through his hair. He could do this, he had to...
The client, Aaron, was sitting with white knuckles at a small table in the kitchen. His wife, the fragile-looking blonde girl, probably a cheerleader Face’s rebellious brain volunteered sarcastically, was pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven. The counter was already covered in full cooling racks. She wiped her hands absently on his jeans and came over with a plate. “I needed a distraction,” she explained in a shaking voice. “Sorry if they aren’t...”
“Perfect!” Murdock declared around a cookie dangling out the corner of his mouth as he fiddled with their home modem and his new gear, BA adding a "never need to apologize for cookies, ma'am," and she laughed a little in relief.
“We’re going to get him back,” her husband assured her, bending around to look over at her as she went for the fridge. “The A-Team’s going to see to that, right, Colonel Smith?”
“If it can be done, we’ll do it,” Hannibal said, and Face felt a sudden stab of jealousy, wishing that kind of strength was being directed his way right now, supporting... he shook his head.
Stop thinking about it.
“So, did you recognize anything?” he asked the client, not really sitting down, needing to do something. “The voice, any of the demands...”
“They didn’t make any demands, Mr. Peck.”
Face thought the guy’s eyes flicked over him again, that suspicious little glint still there. He could have been imagining it, but he knew people. He knew what recognition looked like. He wasn’t seeing it yet, and the conman made a show of inspecting the cookies on the racks, like he was looking for the perfect one, like his body wasn’t screaming at him to get the hell out of here.
“Everybody wants something. It depends if you’ve got anything...” Face began thoughtlessly, and then went cold all over.
You like it up the ass, pretty boy?
Depends on if you’ve got anything to put there.
He looked over at the table, grabbing a cookie. Hannibal was frowning at him a little. And Aaron, Aaron...
Face shivered and went over to go see what Murdock was doing. But not even his friend’s unabashed excitement with the equipment, BA’s sheepish thanks for a huge glass of cold milk, or Hannibal’s soft, steady narrative of the possibilities for the kidnapping could distract the conman from the white-hot shot of panic running through him at his own stupid words.
“You okay, faceman?” Murdock asked, reaching out a hand, and Face forced a nod.
“Yeah, buddy. Just fine.”
It was true, Face told himself. It was true, he had to be okay.
He had to be.
But the kidnappers didn’t call back in the window, or the hour after, much to Murdock’s disappointment - the equipment remained unused as midnight rolled around. Hannibal was left with his cigar butt and the harried couple, peppering him with questions, and of course, his latest plan.
Face didn’t like this plan. He didn’t like this plan at all. But what the hell was he supposed to say?
“Hannibal,” the conman said urgently, trailing the boss, “can we please swap shifts?”
This plan involved them taking shifts. Twelve on, twelve off. Noon to midnight. Midnight to noon. That was the first shift, midnight to noon. His shift.
Nothing good ever happened after midnight. Every fiber in his body was screaming it. He trusted his instincts. If Hannibal left, the last of his security would be gone. Face knew it.
“You’re the one you hates the frat boys,” Hannibal replied expansively, following BA off the porch, out to the van. “Think you two need the night to kiss and make up. Enjoy the night, watch him grieve, figure out he’s human, too, settle your differences.”
Hannibal could not be doing this to him. “I already said it was okay...”
“Don’t need your permission, kid,” and the boss stared at him levelly, daring him to challenge the command structure, It was a losing proposition, Face knew, and he felt himself backing down automatically. He just didn’t have it in him for a fight right now. And then Hannibal’s face softened, a hand was on his shoulder. Was this it? Was this when Hannibal was going to recognize... “And Murdock’s with you. You’re not alone with our terrible, terrible client,” the boss added sarcastically.
“You’ve got no idea,” he muttered, but Hannibal, and the comfort of his presence, was already gone.
He watched the van pull out, tires squealing in the gravel, and Face trudged back in the house, hoping this would all be over quickly.
+++++
The cookies from last night were still out, the cheerleader-wife nowhere to been seen. She made good cookies though, stay at home mom, Face thought with an all-too-familiar pang. He grabbed three on the way over to the nook table where the pilot was doodling in three different sudoku books, handed one to his distracted friend. Nodded briefly to Aaron, and ignored him completely.
“Good times, buddy?”
Murdock didn’t look up, just kept tapping his pencil along to some rhythm in his head as he searched for the sixes on three different pages. Said it helped stop some of the chaos. “No call yet, Faceman. Think they’re gonna?”
“Hannibal’s going to let BA get some sleep, explore the leads off the previous call,” Face guessed, and rubbed Murdock’s shoulder. “Need another cookie?”
“Mr. Peck,” the client said, looking up from his coffee with a yawn and a stretch. “Or should I call you Face?”
“Call me whatever’s easiest, Aaron,” Face sighed, and turned his eyes back to Murdock. Sixes in place, he’d moved to the nines. Those always seemed to give him the most trouble.
“Okay, um, Face, can we go check my son’s bedroom?”
Something hot ran through him at the suggestion. At the word. Lighting everything up, hazing sensation. Face clenched a fist below the other man’s line of sight. No fucking way was he leaving himself alone with this guy. He’d kill him, he really, really would... but bloodlust wasn’t exactly what he was feeling right now. Similar. What came right before, actually.
Fear.
His least favorite of all emotions. Breaking over him like a wave.
“Pardon?” he asked, politely as he could manage.
“Your boss, the colonel, said you might want to check it, you know, just in case...” and the fucker had the nerve to actually look like he was breaking down in tears.
“Umm...” and dear christ, he needed an excuse. Excuse... He squeezed Murdock’s shoulder.
The pilot looked up from the nines to stare plaintively at Face. That stare than made him look like a dog next to a dinner table. Asking him to go help the grieving father. No help there.
“It’s upstairs,” Aaron said, pointing, gesturing, and Face handed Murdock the cookies, hoping like hell his hand wasn’t shaking.
“Keep the nines comfortable for me, ‘kay, man?” Face said, and followed up the stairs.
“So, where’s your wife?”
“She went to bed,” Aaron said, leading Face down the hall. The conman studied the walls, the pictures, him, trying to focus on anything and everything else. It was dark up here, a light on at the end of the hall, nothing else. The man was still built like a football player, huge and imposing under his tired suit. At least fifty pounds on him. Could he take the guy?
“Just like that?”
“I gave her something,” Aaron said sheepishly and stopped in front of a door. “She’s been so banged up in the last week since he’s been gone...”
Get yourself in line, Peck, Face ordered himself and nodded, like he understood. “Let’s have a look.”
Aaron held the door open for him and shut it behind, the quiet click of the deadlock punctuating what Face realized he already knew.
No kid-sized bed. No toys or trophies or posters or baseballs or colorful crap strewn around. Nothing to indicate a child lived in this space. Because he didn’t.
Just a futon and an assortment of random furniture banished from the more tasteful regions of the house. Guest bedroom. Figured.
Face folded his arms. Leaned up against a wall. Stared levelly at the client. He didn’t cry last time, he sure as shit wasn’t going to the second time around. “What’s this all about, Aaron?”
“I thought we should talk.”
“About what?”
Aaron smiled, wane and dangerous. Face knew that look. “About if you still like it in the ass. Don’t lie, soldier. I remember you.”
“It’s good to remember your first gay rape,” Face replied easily, the panic suddenly held down by the force of necessity, old habits. Snark first, kill later. “I’m assuming it was your first. Your technique was terrible.”
“It might be better the second time around.”
“Gotten some practice in, then?” Did he have his pocket knife on him today? No. Shit. Aaron probably had one, though. Back pocket, three inch, expensive...
“You could say that.”
“The wife know you’re a closet sadist? And a fag? A closeted sadistic fag? Or is that why you drugged her?”
“I’m not the fag in the room.”
“So, fucking a guy against his will doesn’t make you a homosexual? I like your logic. Should have tried that on the Army. But then, rape’s against the law, too...”
“You didn’t get discharged for being a butt pirate, Face. Rest of your team seems straight to me,” Aaron said, triumph creeping into his voice, and Face looked away.
“Did your research then.”
“Wouldn’t hire somebody to get my boy back, not knowing who they were.”
Neither of them had moved, but Face felt himself being backed into a corner, imposed upon. The initial dam against the panic was failing, the cracks showing in his facade. It was rushing back in. There had to be an angle, had to be a way out of this room, out of this... “And you’re willing to risk you kid’s safety by pissing me off?”
Aaron just smiled. “Your boss seems so sincere, doesn’t he? You didn’t tell him, did you? Maybe I should...”
And there it was, Face thought with relief, coiling, launching.
There was the need to kill.
Face registered exactly two things in the next twenty seconds.
Aaron did have a knife in his back pocket.
Fifty pounds didn’t mean shit.
The blade was pressing down against Aaron’s neck, Face holding him tight against the wall, arm twisted up and heel pressing down cruelly against the back of the client’s Achilles. Aaron was bleeding.
And he was chuckling.
“You gonna go for it, soldier?”
“I’m not into snuff, motherfucker,” Face snarled. He could feel the caroted artery, beating against his thumb. It would be so easy to just push, drag, open it up... why was he hesitating?
Aaron laughed harder, beat a fist against the wall. “You ever think of how easy it would be for me to call the authorities?”
“Not if you’re dead.”
“Then you’re going to leave evidence, fuck, my wife. They’ll find you, you’ll go to jail.”
“Been there,” Face said flatly, pulling a little, cutting deeper. “Isn’t so bad.”
“But your team? Your crazy little buddy, that colonel of yours? I saw you watching him...”
That was it. That was what woke Face up, slowed him down, brought him back down to earth, and he reached a hand around the front of the other man’s pants, feeling the bulge. That wave of panic was on him, over him, filling his noise and his ears, threatening to pull him under. He faltered. His hand fell.
Aaron caught him by the wrist, preventing him from moving away, twisting around just enough for Face to see that goddamn smirk. “It’s no fun like that.”
Face knew exactly Aaron wanted. But he just fucking couldn’t. No. No. He hadn’t let anybody top him since, since... but there was BA to think of, Murdock. Hannibal.
Hannibal.
A thousand reasons raced through his mind, all with that tag, that name attached. And Face hadn’t told him back then, and had missed his chance again today. He was going to get them all thrown back in prison. This was his fault. Because he was afraid of Hannibal knowing what had happened, because he couldn’t take the loss of that man from his life. Because he was afraid, this was his fault.
The former lieutenant swallowed hard, and snapped the knife shut, folding the blade back into the handle with a practiced flick.
If he agreed to it, he didn’t have to be scared, right?
If he agreed to it, it wasn’t rape, right?
He had no idea how the fuck one was expected to feel in a situation like this. It was insane...
“You don’t cut me,” Face said, calmer than he would have expected. He tossed the knife away, staring at the blood, the man’s flaring pupils, the arousal. He knew what the guy wanted. Somehow, he didn’t think it was going to be that hard to summon it. Just let it go... “Torso only. No biting. Nothing broken.”
“Take off your shirt, lieutenant, so we don’t mess it up.”
They were chest to chest now. Face closed his eyes and started on his buttons, let the panic come, drown his brain, shorting him out, everything to black. He barely heard the command to bend over, the wall hitting him, a blow to his kidney that took him down, pants falling, hardly felt it as the guy slid in, thought he might be slicker this time but couldn’t really tell. All he could hear was breathing. His, short and pained. Aaron’s, harsh and hot on his neck, prickling through cold sweat, heavier, heat drilling into him, unwelcome, inevitable. And when Aaron let him go, Face let himself hit the ground, legs aching, bruises forming, staring into that blackness until the client kicked him.
“Get dressed. Unless you want your insane little buddy to figure out what a slut you are.”
Face shivered at the word. “Patch up your neck, Aaron. See how long you last against my insane little buddy. He doesn’t really understand consequences like you and I do.”
And Murdock didn’t understand, didn’t get the message, wasn't subjected to the horror of finding out how much of a failure his bestest buddy was. The pilot had turned the page in all three books. On the fives. Another set of cookies. “D’you find anything?” he asked, turning that gaze of his up.
“Nothing,” Face said, biting his lip, holding it in, and went for the coffee, avoiding the depth of the question, the places it could take them. "Nothing at all, buddy."
+++++
At noon, Hannibal found Murdock chatting happily with the client’s wife over something or other, both of them still in the kitchen. Their client had gone to work, leaving her home alone to deal with this. The colonel felt something twist inside him, thinking about their little boy, the one the police couldn’t do anything for. They had to help these people, had to find their boy...
“Where’s Face?”
“Passed out on the couch in the TV room a few hours ago,” the wife said, and smiled. “I offered him the guest room upstairs, but he said the couch was fine.”
Hannibal shook his head. His boy could sleep on a concrete floor. One of those learned skills from their Army days. He turned to Murdock. “You get any sleep?”
“Right after Face got back from checkin’ the upstairs.”
Hannibal nodded and made for the sunny little den, just down the hall. What the hell had Face been doing, checking the upstairs? The police had already been through this place with a fine-tooth comb. If that boy was screwing around on this job, with this much at stake...
His boy.
He’d always felt protective towards the kid, from those first early days. His new second lieutenant had been a ball of neuroses and fears under all his bravado. It had taken months for Hannibal to work his way through all of that, establish something resembling trust between them, find the promise underneath. And in those first few months, Hannibal had thought there was the slightest stirring of something between them.
Wasn't to be. Once the fighting had started, like that first one with the frat boys, after his sexual exploits became common barracks gossip, he’d concluded the kid needed a father more than anything else and things had normalized into that dynamic. Where it remained.
Didn’t stop him from looking, though. Didn’t stop him from wanting.
Hannibal leaned up against the open door, realizing he was smiling a little. Face was sprawled across the wide leather couch in a pool of light, that hair catching the noon sun just so, a light blanket spread across him, hands dug into it. Soft breaths moved that chest up and down, slow, under the obscuring cover. His shoes lay on the floor. Strange he hadn’t taken anything else off.
Watching his boy sleep was a rare treat for the colonel. Face was always on guard, always guarded, and being able to see him like this, at his most relaxed, at his most vulnerable, exposed. What he might have been like, in some easier life. It was a shame to wake him, Hannibal thought, but they had do shift change.
Face jumped when Hannibal touched his shoulder, thrashing, and blue eyes snapped open. Narrowed immediately. All those defenses slamming back into place. Hannibal hated it. “Good morning, sunshine,” he joked, but the kid just pushed himself up, avoided Hannibal’s gaze. Guilty conscious, Hannibal wondered. Was the kid screwing around with the wife?
“Shift change time?” He jammed his feet back into his shoes. “Good. I’m fuckin’ starved.”
“Anything happen?”
Face paused. “No.” But the way he said it was more question than statement.
Hannibal took him in. The rumpled shirt, the kind of vacant expression. More than just waking up, he thought, and Face running a hand through his hair, laughing, was one of his classic blinds. “Anything you want to tell me, kid?”
“Definitely not.”
Something had been going on with Face. Hannibal knew him too well to fall for his everything’s-fine routine. But the kid was intensely private, and pushing him always led to collapse and denial and fuck-ups. Couldn’t afford one of those right now, not with the kidnapping. Whatever it was, it would wait. “Okay. Kitchen, debrief, and we’ll get you boys out of here.”
Face smiled, and something twisted up inside of Hannibal, thinking about what was wrong his boy, and what the hell kind of trouble he was getting himself into this time.
It bothered him all day.
And then Hannibal watched him slide in for evening, laughing and joking with Murdock, playing with Billy, coffee, donuts and Mountain Dew in hand. They’d made some progress the last few nights, gotten a few phone calls, which revealed all sorts of beneficial information. Like how the kidnappers weren’t interested in money. How the whole point seemed to be to hurt the family. Hannibal hadn’t figured out the details yet, but those were coming together. The pilot, it was turning out, was pretty good with the computer stuff. For everything else, everything analog, there was Face and BA, running scams and busting heads.
Maybe that’s why the kid had been so messed up lately. Hannibal was pretty sure the only sleep he was catching was an hour or two during the night shift. He suddenly felt bad about sticking the kid on nights. Why had he done it, anyway? Just to teach him a lesson about being nice to other people? What was the point in that kind of pettiness? No wonder the kid had been looking at him with such uncertainty lately. Probably took offense at being treated like a kindergartener...
“Left you one out in the car,” Face said, sipping at the gigantic cup in his hand, expression unreadable, as Murdock bounced into the kitchen, towards his equipment and fresh zuccini bread. Hannibal had the TV on, low, infomercials. Face stared at it. “Where’s Aaron?”
“They both went to bed about an hour ago.”
“Oh, thank god,” Face murmured, and collapsed into one of the armchairs in the den, throwing his feet up on the coffee table. “Where’s BA?”
Hannibal frowned. “Up in Baltimore, looking into...”
“Oh, right,” Face said with a long, deep yawn. “Forgot, sorry.”
“You need to be getting more sleep, kid.”
“Yeah, well, not until we get this case solved, right, boss? Poor little kid...” and he cutting himself off, yawning again. He still wouldn’t look at Hannibal, so the colonel pushed up and laid a hand on Face’s shoulder, squeezing hard enough to get his attention. Face shuddered, a little grunt escaping him, and batted at the hand. Like it hurt. Had Hannibal come down that hard? “Damn, Hannibal, I’m awake, I’m paying attention, we’re going to be fine here. What’s your problem?”
Part of the colonel wanted to give his lieutenant a sharp reminder about respect, but that wasn’t really the problem, he knew. That tone he’d just used was a symptom. But of what, exactly? Anger? Irritation? Guilt? Guilt. Had to be guilt. Guilt he always tried to hide, forming a void. Everything else he covered up, piling up.
Hannibal slid around front of the kid's chair, hands on either arm rest, staring down. Face was still watching the TV.
“Face, look at me.”
Nothing.
“Lieutenant, eyes up.”
That got the kid’s attention, and he shook himself out a little, like he was coming back to the surface. “What?”
“Are you sleeping with her?”
Face went red, and he dropped his eyes again. “Fuck, no, boss...”
Hannibal grabbed his chin and forced his head up. He had to see the truth of that for himself. It was probably an unfair thing to ask, but that was his job. Ask the hard questions, get the real answers, keep the op from being compromised by his lieutenant’s overactive libido. “Look at me, kid. Tell me that straight.”
“You don’t believe me.” It was a statement of fact.
“You’re not exactly a paragon of self-control when it comes to women.”
His boy’s beautiful face kind of contorted for a second, and then he jammed a hard thumb up into the nerve cluster at the base of Hannibal’s wrist, yanking that hand away, strong fingers squeezing down hard. Couple of short, shallow breaths.
“Fuck you, Hannibal,” he said in a neutral voice. Not angry, not joking, not anything, really. Designed to annoy. Hannibal just knew it was going to bug him the rest of the way back to the safehouse and he folded his arms, glaring at his lieutenant. He hated few things more than Face trying to manipulate him, trying to...
“When are you going to stop lying to me, kid?” he growled.
Face went for the remote, and started flipping the channels, the quick toss of the car keys punctuating his short, angry, “see you at lunch, boss.”
Hannibal paused at the door, looking back at all the tension he saw in the kid, remembering how he’d looked here a few days ago, asleep, peaceful. He wanted to kick the kid’s ass. He wanted to pull him into an embrace, let him know...
Neither would do any good right now, so Hannibal had to settle for storming out instead, hating the kid for his malicious indifference. Hating himself for not being able to reach through it right now. If that little boy died...
Hannibal shook that away, into the warm night air, and went for a cigar. He couldn’t start assigning blame before something even happened. But however he wanted to look at it, whatever approach he wanted to take, the facts were irrefutable; there was something wrong with Face.
Later, Hannibal promised himself, and threw the car into drive.
+++++
Face listened to Hannibal’s fast departure. A little faster than usual. Man was probably pissed.
And why wouldn’t he be? Face asked himself bitterly. He was acting like an ass, and he knew it. Not that he had much choice in the matter.
Every night. Every night for the last four nights. Tonight would be night five. Between the stressful, sleepless days and the batterings he was taking... well, his body wasn’t going to last forever. And the lieutenant wasn’t a religious man, but if he was, he would have been on his knees over this. They had to find this kid soon...
“Comfy, honey?”
He flicked the TV off. Figured the bastard wasn’t in bed. And he’d told Murdock that he was going to take a nap, so...
Face stretched himself with an exaggerated yawn, and batted his eyes. “Absolutely, darling.”
“Thought we’d do it different tonight ,” Aaron snarled, hauling him to his feet, hand wound into the back of Face’s hair. “Give that ass of yours a rest.”
Fantastic. At least he got to protest. He didn’t even have to fake the anger. “... no, I’m not...”
“Shut up,”Aaron hissed with a smile, and shoved Face back, twisting him around, and the client took a seat in the armchair. Face let himself puddle down at the man’s feet, and that hand was still in his hair. Pulling hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. Fucking nerve endings...
Aaron stroked down the fly of his pants with his free hand, dragging down the zipper. His cock sprang free, hard already, like it was every night. Jesus, the anticipation was enough to get this guy up... “Open up.”
“Eat shit and die.”
A thumb jabbed into the joint, not quite pressing him open, and the first thing that surged through Face’s mind was how many men this asshole had done this to, how many times... and then it just hurt. “Open. Up.”
“Fuck. You.”
Face knew it was coming, but the speed caught him by surprise. A heel came down hard against his spine, legs wrapping him up, crushing him down, dragging him forward. A fist, against his ribs, right into the livid purple bruise from last night, and then both those hands were aorund his neck, thumbs pressing into that little dent between his collarbones, pressing, driving in...
His cough exploded out of him, violent as if he’d been vomiting, and his lungs scrambled for air. But before Face could catch his breath back, his head was dragged down and Aaron shoved his not inconsiderable length all the way in. His moan of pleasure matched Face’s pained whimper, cut off by the thick shaft driving all the way through him, choking him. Then those hands clamped down, and Aaron started fucking his mouth brutally.
Face couldn’t move, couldn’t bring his hands up at all. Vision blurred in and out of focus, the world seemed to slide out from under him. He tried to center on something, center on anything, ignore his body, pleading for air, begging, for the first time scared, truly scared, as instinct short-circuited any of his higher functions.
Aaron was talking, dimly, far away, keep your teeth in, my god, so sweet, Peck, such a little slut for cock, you’re loving this, you sick bitch, fucking lovely, fucking take it...
Then, under the moans from the man fucking his mouth, Face heard something which made his blood run cold, which almost had him up and beating the shit out of this guy, which very nearly felled him, right there.
A board creaked in the hallway. Then another.
Face jerked, earning him a vicious slap as his teeth more than grazed the man’s engorged cock, and he felt something in him collapse.
Murdock.
Face was crying freely now, snot dribbling out of his nose. Fuck, he couldn't breath... But it was over. Aaron was coming, the rush of semen too much for Face to take, and it was oozing down his chin, thick and hot and horrible.
“Fucking fag can’t even get that right,” Aaron said, and threw him back. Face landed hard on his back, limbs sprawled out, staring up. He didn’t dare spit out what was left in his mouth, swallowing the remnant of the bitter come.
The client stood, shaking a little from the force of his release, and tucked himself back in. “Goddamn fairy-fuck,” he growled as he walked out, and kicked Face in the ribs again. This time, the lieutenant felt something snap, but he’d taken worse beatings than this. He rolled over, clutching his side, and the second he heard the door snick shut and the footsteps fade upstairs, he was on his feet and down the hall and puking in the bathroom. White and green, from bile and the Mountain Dew he’d had earlier. His throat muscles burned, the acid tearing into raw tissue...
“Face, you okay?” asked Murdock’s soft voice, and Face groaned internally. He couldn’t take any more humiliation. Not tonight. Not like this. So he grabbed for a towel and wiped his mouth, nodding, not daring to turn around. He twisted the water on. Grabbed a few handfuls. Let it wash the burn out of his throat.
“Just, just fine, buddy,” he replied, knowing he sounded hoarse and hating himself for it.
“Whadda think you’re doin’?”
“Aaron needed it, I needed it,” he said with an ease his didn’t feel. “Sometimes I...”
“You gonne tell me that was consensual?” Murdock said in that same quiet voice, the one that was sending chills dow Face’s trobbing spine. He kind of dragged out the last word, pronouncing each syllableas if it was its own word.
Face closed his eyes against his own lie, and splashed some water on his sweating skin. He couldn’t see the expression on his friend’s face, couldn’t face the disapproval. Murdock wasn’t freaking out. Why wasn’t Murdock freaking out? “I like it rough.”
“Hannibal ain’t gonna be happy, you screwin’ ‘round with a...”
“Guy?”
“Married guy. Married.”
“Then let’s not say anything to him. Okay?”
Murdock shook his head. “I don’t know...”
“We can’t screw up this mission.” His lips were really swollen. “Gotta get that kid back, right?”
Murdock stared at him for a moment through the mirror, laid a hand on Face’s shoulder, friendly and sad all at once. Then he was gone. Face let his forehead slam forward. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
When he finally had the courage to venture out, back to the kitchen, Murdock was all smiles and jokes and playing ball with Billy, like nothing had happened at all. Face grinned back at him and found a ginger ale in the cupboard. Let it go flat. Sipped at it slowly as Murdock discussed the necessity of obedience training, and it didn’t do a damn thing to ease the anxiety pooling in his stomach. What Murdock was doing was an act, like his own joviality was an act. Both of them skirting the issue, pretending, ignoring. Face’s mind kept running the possibilities, what might be said, what might be found out, and the steps skipped, the logic bent, and he was consumed by one overwhelming thought as the hours ticked slowly by.
Murdock was going to tell.
And Hannibal was going to fucking kill him.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: non-con
Summary: Part One of Two for a fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Intense Face whomp and non-con, pwease?? With more than one person beating up on Face, too, because I see Face fighting them so much he has to be held down. And when Hannibal finds him, he has no clue what happened to Face and maybe doesn't find out until the people who took Face show up again (it can even be years later) asking for the team's help, and only Face recognizes them and freaks out. Cue Hannibal being all "suck it up, Lieutenant. We're taking this mission." And then more bad things happen to Face. And Hannibal's all guilty when he finds out. Face can forgive him or be pissed at him for not listening in the first place. Up to you, lovely. <3
H/F, obvs. End it however you want, too, happy or sad.
Face takes on more than he can handle when he doesn’t report a brutal rape he suffers as a young lieutenant. He doesn’t realize how deep the damage goes until they pick up a job, working for the same guy who raped him all those years ago... and it all starts up again.
His head hit the concrete, hands catching him barely in time, skin ripping on the pavement. Damn, they could run fast. There was blood in his mouth, on his arms, leaking out into his jeans...
He should have known better.
What the fuck had he been thinking?
Every once in a while, Face got that itch, the kind he couldn’t scratch on base, the kind that demanded immediate and swift attention. He took precautions. Never went to the same bar twice. Always made sure he was careful to screen, avoid any other military guys that might have the same issue. Fake name, condom, leaving when it was over... careful.
And the kid he’d picked up seemed just fine. A little nervous, a little scared. Probably one of those who hadn’t quite come to terms with himself, who he was, quite yet. College age, a year or two younger than him. But he’d been very eager, and sometimes Face was okay with that sort of thing, and why the hell not? Face remembered what that felt like, not really understanding yourself, not being sure. A combination of sympathy and alcohol had seen them both out of the bar.
Everything had seemed fine. The kid was begging for it, even if he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted, and Face ran a light hand down his back, reassuring him that he’d get it, nibbling at his ear, drawing some nervous, excited little laughs, telling him about all the naughty little...
“Hey, look at the fags! Hello!”
Face flipped the bird at the guys who’d just passed them. The undergrad he was with tensed up. “Just keep going,” Face said smoothly, and squeezed his side. “Bunch of drunk frat boys. Nothing to worry about.”
“I’m... I’m in a frat,” the student whispered back, scared now.
“Yo, faggots!”
That was screamed. Fuck. But Face knew a challenge when he heard one and stopped, dropped his arm, flexed a fist. He hated people like this.
“You know those guys?” he asked, craning his neck back around, and the student shook his head. Well, that was something. But the hair on his neck was bristling, and his nerves were singing. There was a fight coming. “As stupid as this sounds, you should probably get out of here.”
“You can’t fucking be serious.”
“Go.”
And then he got between the student’s retreat and the frat boys’ advance. He was a Ranger, right?
There had been no point in him running too. Face tried to talk his way out of it, but there hadn’t been any point in that, either. There were five of them, and they were big, football or something, and they were drunk. Stupid drunk, that kind of drunk that let people survive car crashes. They were angry, out cruising for trouble, bored and mean and indifferent.
And by the time the first one threw a punch, he had known exactly how it was going to end.
Right there, in an alley, one of the assholes with his arm broken in three places and left on the ground where Face dropped him and snapped it, forgetting in the red haze about the other four guys, where he’d been yanked up and thrown against the wall, his body pinned down, arms jerked back, legs kicked apart, his jeans, cold air... holy hell...
“You like it up the ass, pretty boy?”
He couldn’t stop himself. “Depends on if you’ve got anything to put there.”
The bastard did, and it hurt, ripping up through him, tearing him open, and Face had to start laughing as he was smashed into the slimy brick, barely able to breath, blood running down his leg as tissue burst under the battering assault. Again. And again. And again. Laughing, at the irony of it all. Laughing, because if he did anything else, he’d never make it out of here.
And when the fucker pulled out and one of his buddies took a turn and maybe another, Face wasn’t really sure, he barely held himself steady as he turned around. The frat boys were standing there, in shock, one of them gripping his arm, like they couldn’t quite believe what they’d done.
Except for that one, that first one, who almost seemed...
And Face had lunged out with the last of his strength and broke that fucker’s jaw.
They ran.
He fell.
The ground had hurt. Everything hurt.
Now, Face rolled onto his back, staring up aimlessly at the streetlight just beyond the darkness . Everything was swimming. He couldn’t focus on anything. He tried to sit up, but everything hurt. Ranger. Invincible.
Right.
Something shifted inside him, and he barely managed to roll onto his side before his stomach emptied itself all over the alley floor, abs spasming, tears springing to his eyes. He stared at the reeking puddle for a moment, and managed to inch himself away. It was hard. His limbs ached, adrenalin dying unused in his bloodstream, useless, all of it, useless...
Everything hurt.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket as soon as he trusted himself to talk, keeping very still, dialed with slippery fingers. It rang. Twice. Then... “Hannibal?” he said, trying to keep his voice from quavering.
“Kid, it’s two AM...”
“...boss, I...”
“Where are you, kid?”
He smiled, despite himself, something warm peeking through the spreading numbness. Hannibal...
Face told him the nearest corner he knew of, Hannibal told him ten minutes, and the lieutenant clicked the phone shut. Tried to push up again. Couldn’t. Something had definitely ripped. He needed stitches. He was going to need stitches, right, wasn’t he going to need... and with that, the sheer force of what had just happened came crashing down on him, something swelling up in his throat, and fuck, he was not going to start blubbering like a damn girl after a bad date, he wasn’t...
He groaned and somehow got to his feet. He was a Ranger, goddamn it, and one of Hannibal’s boys. He was not going to end up some fucking number on one of those sexual assault slides. Not going to have a report filed on this. He was not going to be the cause of Hannibal’s disappointment. Lieutenant Peck, got himself raped... Fuck that. Fuck. That.
He could handle this. He could.
So, when Hannibal showed up ten minutes later, as promised, in a near-by long-term parking lot, Face fixed a smile under the blood on his face, his cut lip, stopping himself from rushing forward, burying his face in the man's clean shirt, sobbing...
“What’s the other guy look like?”
“Guys. Five of them.”
“Jesus, kid...”
Face shrugged, shoving away that overwhelming impulse to break down, beg for help, tell Hannibal everything, trust him with this, like he trusted him with everything else. He couldn't bear to see the colonel's faith in him crushed, broken before it had a chance to take root. He'd only been in his unit a few months...
“I broke a guy’s arm!” he said brightly, and Hannibal kind of grinned, and then they didn’t talk for a while. It’s easy, Face told himself. Lock it away, don’t think about it, not an issue, you’re stronger than this...
“You okay, kid?”
There it was; concern. Couldn't have that. He might start talking. Couldn't have that. Couldn't let the boss down.
Deny, deny, deny...
“... yeah. Yeah, boss. I’m fine.”
Miraculously, Hannibal seemed to buy it.
Face wanted to die.
But he knew, he just knew, he’d never forget that fucker’s face, the way his jaw had snapped, that hot breath against his neck, sadistic and possessive and terrifying... and that was enough to get him, keep him mad.
And that? That was enough to keep him afloat.
+++++
Hannibal and the client shook hands.
The client got up to leave.
He couldn’t scream. If he screamed, somebody would come and he couldn’t bear it. Or nobody would, and he couldn’t bear that either. How the fuck had they pinned him? Hannibal was going to kill him for losing a fight this easily...
Face dug his nails into his leg and painted on a smile.
“Thank you,” the man, Andrew, Anthony, something like that, said. It was genuine and warm. His wife clung to his arm. Both of them, clearly upset, and why wouldn’t they be? But Face thought there might be a flicker of recognition, some brush of old memory, and the client’s smile twisted a little.
He felt his smile crack against his skin.
The client was gone, but he couldn’t quite relax. It was thrumming against the boundaries of his skin, that night.
The conman still remembered that night. Brick skinning his hands, the tearing, the way that guy’s breath had smelled, his muttered reassurances to Hannibal, the colonel insisting about the emergency room anyway. He’d even waited, waited out in the lobby with a cup of terrible cafeteria coffee, waited while the doctor got Face put back together and told him he really needed to consider testing, just in case. The way the boss grinned and he grinned back, an hour or two later, unnecessary stitches on a shallow gash on his forehead that had looked worse than it was.
Need ‘em somewhere else, don’t wanna have to lie on the incident report about getting patched up... he’d told the doctor, whod shaken his head but helped him out anyway.
Years ago. How many? Eleven, twelve? God, he’d been so cocky back then. And once it’d healed up... he cast a side glance at Hannibal, settling back down. Hannibal. Face looked away. That had never happened. A lot of things hadn’t happened, after that night.
And now...
“Don’t give me that look, kid.”
“What look?”
“Face...”
The former lieutenant leaned back in his chair. No good hiding from Hannibal. But he’d kept the story of that night locked up for this long... Shit. No good options. “I don’t like it, boss.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the guy, Face. And he needs our help.”
He did, and under normal circumstances, Face would be all for this. The guy’s son had been kidnapped, and he didn’t know why, didn’t know where, only knew that it had happened. That it was happening. That they needed to find him.
Poor kid.
One bite, right on that soft spot behind his ear, so hard he threw his head forward trying to avoid it, slicing the soft skin over his temple, the asshole’s laughter as his hand replaced teeth, holding him there, muscles in his arms screaming as he tried to thrash, held down by solid...
“Fucking frat boys.”
Hannibal flipped a few bills down on the table and shouldered on his coat, watching Face carefully, clearly getting irritated. “This is no time for your stupid prejudices, kid. They need our help.”
That laugh, that stupid fucking laugh, harsh and prickling, another thrust, this the one that went too fast, the one that changed the penetration, the desecration, from shallow and tight and rough, like sandpaper was rough, to deep and loose and wet, his own...
“Stupid?” Face protested as they hit the cold afternoon outside. “It’s not stupid, Hannibal! Remember that time...” and he stopped dead.
Remember the time you picked me up in an empty parking lot? Bleeding? Freshly raped by a couple of...
Yeah, sure.
Fuck honesty.
“What? When you got beaten up by a couple...”
“...five...” he muttered back darkly, sickened at himself for what had almost come out. Mercifully, Hannibal didn’t seem to notice.
“...five, whatever, it doesn’t change the fact...”
“This is a bad idea,” Face said again, a little firmer that time, scrambling against the bulwark of memory pushing its way to the surface, demanding attention. God, still so vivid. After all these years, after thinking he’d put it all to bed forever, all of it rushing back to the surface, hard and fast and dull, like it had been...
He started walking away. No way was this going to be a topic of discussion, a blurted guilty confession on the car ride back to the safehouse. It was what, six miles? That was walking distance.
“Face!” and judging from the sudden tone shift in Hannibal’s voice as he yelled after him, his commander was getting worried now.
Face shoved his hands in his pockets. Just kept going, unable to turn around and face him, feeling like his control would snap, the dam would burst, and all the shame and fear he’d felt since then, all the terror at the idea of telling, would be for nothing. He’d done it after, shoved it in some back corner of his mind and never looked at it, never let it own him, never let it win. It was going to stay there.
He could handle this.
He had to.
And the worst part was, he couldn't even be angry at Hannibal for forcing himself into this position. No, he had only himself to blame.
+++++
It was dark by the time Face reached the rental house they’d gotten for this mission.
Part of him wanted Hannibal to be waiting up in the kitchen for him, sitting there with his scotch and a cigar, drumming his fingers on the table and demanding an answer. Face would break down and tell, Hannibal would rage against the assholes who had dared hurt his boy, they’d go off and just kill the motherfucker, like he’d always wanted to. Not held down by the Army, what difference would it make? And then Hannibal would realize, and give his lieutenant exactly what he’d always needed, give him back what he’d lost...
Face sighed as he reached the gate and passed through the small back yard, up to the deck, up the stairs, lost in the warmth of those thoughts. He could tell, right? It would be nice, finally having Hannibal like that, finally...
But then, he had a lot of fantasies about Hannibal, and this one, like all those others, turned out to be little better than a pipe dream.
The boss had been waiting, his second cigar tight between his fingers and the first dead in an ashtray at his side, staring down at Face from the top of deck steps. It was dark, but the conman could see the tension in those broad shoulders. “Have a good walk, lieutenant?”
Shit. That was Hannibal’s angry voice. Face stopped. “Uhh...”
“Because we got a call while you were out.”
Double shit. “Is the kid okay?”
“It was the kidnappers. As far as we can tell, the kid’s still alive.”
“Well, um... shouldn’t we let the police handle this one, boss? I mean, just cause the guy’s worried about how it’s going to look to his business partners...”
Hannibal puffed, and the end of the cigar glowed red above him. “They already discussed this with us. The wife’s freaked, thinks it’ll get her boy killed. He’s making the right decision.”
The lieutenant felt something hard forming in his throat. He wasn’t going to make it through this, and his thoughts from the sticky walk through the humid Maryland evening stayed with him, clinging. Urging. Begging. Hannibal, finally realizing... “Hannibal, I can’t...”
“Jesus, Face,” and there the boss was, two fingers clutching the cigar and jabbing his chest, “get over your stupid fucking ego for once, stop whining and get with the fucking program. It’s a little boy’s life at stake.”
Face shook his head, trying to hold onto the rapidly dwindling hope. “I know that, boss, I just...”
“I don’t give a shit about your personal bullshit, kid. We’ve already lost an hour waiting for you.”
Personal bullshit. That’s all it was. Nothing Face needed to dwell on, nothing he should. Nothing Hannibal was going to care about. Not while there was some little boy out there, scared, far from home. Wasn’t his fault. Didn’t ask for something bad to happen to him. Face could sympathize. He could suck it up. “We need to go now?”
“Yes,” Hannibal said, exasperated. “Aaron bought some time. The kidnappers are going to call back at their house in... fuck, forty-five minutes.”
Face nodded, shuddering a little as nerves discharged something akin to anxiety, something he couldn’t acknowledge right now. “BA and Murdock ready to go?”
“Waiting in the van. We were just about to go looking for you,” Hannibal said, and flicked the cigar off into the wet grass of the back yard and walked around to the front of the house, not looking back as he yelled back, “get your ass in gear, lieutenant!”
Face tilted back, looking at the stars. All that space, and he felt like the walls were closing in on him, closing him in. He cursed himself for his own weakness, for the stupid way he was handling this. Focus, damnit, just shut it off, he told himself, and snapped his head back down, narrowing his eyes. Focus.
“Coming, boss!”
Hannibal didn’t even hold the gate open from him, slammed it shut behind him.
Not that Face minded. Beyond those wooden slats was everything that was wrong with his life right now.
But Hannibal had made the decision, and Face wasn't going to let him down.
Even if pulling that damn gate open seemed like the hardest thing he'd ever done.
+++++
The client, the man Hannibal had called Aaron, had a sickeningly large house. One of those white Colonial monstrosities that littered the East Coast. Beautiful place, the long drive lit with a gold glow, ancient maples dragging leaves against the roof of the van as they pulled in. Murdock was chattering happily with Face, who was only half-heartedly in the conversation, both of them driving BA nuts as he threw the brake and twisted them into park.
Hannibal turned around in his seat. “You good, Face?”
“I still don’t like frat boys,” he said with just enough defiance to keep Hannibal from getting to suspicious, and flashed him a smile. “Look at this place. Ridiculous.”
“And it’s their summer home, kid,” Hannibal said, chewing on the end of his cigar, and Face knew he was looking for signs of whining. “Surprised you don’t love it.”
“I’m more of a post modern guy myself,” Face replied jokingly, and Murdock made some joke about Frank Lloyd Wright as he crawled over the conman’s lap, following BA up to the wide, bright porch, surveillance equipment in hand. The pilot, ever the tech geek, was happy about his new toy. Face didn’t exactly know what it did, exactly, just that it had been hard as hell to scam from the Anapolis police department, and it had made his buddy’s day when he’d brought it home.
“I’m serious, kid. Don’t start anything right now.”
“Nothing, boss. I promise.”
“Good,” Hannibal said, and finally smiled at him.
Face felt flush, ran a hand through his hair. He could do this, he had to...
The client, Aaron, was sitting with white knuckles at a small table in the kitchen. His wife, the fragile-looking blonde girl, probably a cheerleader Face’s rebellious brain volunteered sarcastically, was pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven. The counter was already covered in full cooling racks. She wiped her hands absently on his jeans and came over with a plate. “I needed a distraction,” she explained in a shaking voice. “Sorry if they aren’t...”
“Perfect!” Murdock declared around a cookie dangling out the corner of his mouth as he fiddled with their home modem and his new gear, BA adding a "never need to apologize for cookies, ma'am," and she laughed a little in relief.
“We’re going to get him back,” her husband assured her, bending around to look over at her as she went for the fridge. “The A-Team’s going to see to that, right, Colonel Smith?”
“If it can be done, we’ll do it,” Hannibal said, and Face felt a sudden stab of jealousy, wishing that kind of strength was being directed his way right now, supporting... he shook his head.
Stop thinking about it.
“So, did you recognize anything?” he asked the client, not really sitting down, needing to do something. “The voice, any of the demands...”
“They didn’t make any demands, Mr. Peck.”
Face thought the guy’s eyes flicked over him again, that suspicious little glint still there. He could have been imagining it, but he knew people. He knew what recognition looked like. He wasn’t seeing it yet, and the conman made a show of inspecting the cookies on the racks, like he was looking for the perfect one, like his body wasn’t screaming at him to get the hell out of here.
“Everybody wants something. It depends if you’ve got anything...” Face began thoughtlessly, and then went cold all over.
You like it up the ass, pretty boy?
Depends on if you’ve got anything to put there.
He looked over at the table, grabbing a cookie. Hannibal was frowning at him a little. And Aaron, Aaron...
Face shivered and went over to go see what Murdock was doing. But not even his friend’s unabashed excitement with the equipment, BA’s sheepish thanks for a huge glass of cold milk, or Hannibal’s soft, steady narrative of the possibilities for the kidnapping could distract the conman from the white-hot shot of panic running through him at his own stupid words.
“You okay, faceman?” Murdock asked, reaching out a hand, and Face forced a nod.
“Yeah, buddy. Just fine.”
It was true, Face told himself. It was true, he had to be okay.
He had to be.
But the kidnappers didn’t call back in the window, or the hour after, much to Murdock’s disappointment - the equipment remained unused as midnight rolled around. Hannibal was left with his cigar butt and the harried couple, peppering him with questions, and of course, his latest plan.
Face didn’t like this plan. He didn’t like this plan at all. But what the hell was he supposed to say?
“Hannibal,” the conman said urgently, trailing the boss, “can we please swap shifts?”
This plan involved them taking shifts. Twelve on, twelve off. Noon to midnight. Midnight to noon. That was the first shift, midnight to noon. His shift.
Nothing good ever happened after midnight. Every fiber in his body was screaming it. He trusted his instincts. If Hannibal left, the last of his security would be gone. Face knew it.
“You’re the one you hates the frat boys,” Hannibal replied expansively, following BA off the porch, out to the van. “Think you two need the night to kiss and make up. Enjoy the night, watch him grieve, figure out he’s human, too, settle your differences.”
Hannibal could not be doing this to him. “I already said it was okay...”
“Don’t need your permission, kid,” and the boss stared at him levelly, daring him to challenge the command structure, It was a losing proposition, Face knew, and he felt himself backing down automatically. He just didn’t have it in him for a fight right now. And then Hannibal’s face softened, a hand was on his shoulder. Was this it? Was this when Hannibal was going to recognize... “And Murdock’s with you. You’re not alone with our terrible, terrible client,” the boss added sarcastically.
“You’ve got no idea,” he muttered, but Hannibal, and the comfort of his presence, was already gone.
He watched the van pull out, tires squealing in the gravel, and Face trudged back in the house, hoping this would all be over quickly.
+++++
The cookies from last night were still out, the cheerleader-wife nowhere to been seen. She made good cookies though, stay at home mom, Face thought with an all-too-familiar pang. He grabbed three on the way over to the nook table where the pilot was doodling in three different sudoku books, handed one to his distracted friend. Nodded briefly to Aaron, and ignored him completely.
“Good times, buddy?”
Murdock didn’t look up, just kept tapping his pencil along to some rhythm in his head as he searched for the sixes on three different pages. Said it helped stop some of the chaos. “No call yet, Faceman. Think they’re gonna?”
“Hannibal’s going to let BA get some sleep, explore the leads off the previous call,” Face guessed, and rubbed Murdock’s shoulder. “Need another cookie?”
“Mr. Peck,” the client said, looking up from his coffee with a yawn and a stretch. “Or should I call you Face?”
“Call me whatever’s easiest, Aaron,” Face sighed, and turned his eyes back to Murdock. Sixes in place, he’d moved to the nines. Those always seemed to give him the most trouble.
“Okay, um, Face, can we go check my son’s bedroom?”
Something hot ran through him at the suggestion. At the word. Lighting everything up, hazing sensation. Face clenched a fist below the other man’s line of sight. No fucking way was he leaving himself alone with this guy. He’d kill him, he really, really would... but bloodlust wasn’t exactly what he was feeling right now. Similar. What came right before, actually.
Fear.
His least favorite of all emotions. Breaking over him like a wave.
“Pardon?” he asked, politely as he could manage.
“Your boss, the colonel, said you might want to check it, you know, just in case...” and the fucker had the nerve to actually look like he was breaking down in tears.
“Umm...” and dear christ, he needed an excuse. Excuse... He squeezed Murdock’s shoulder.
The pilot looked up from the nines to stare plaintively at Face. That stare than made him look like a dog next to a dinner table. Asking him to go help the grieving father. No help there.
“It’s upstairs,” Aaron said, pointing, gesturing, and Face handed Murdock the cookies, hoping like hell his hand wasn’t shaking.
“Keep the nines comfortable for me, ‘kay, man?” Face said, and followed up the stairs.
“So, where’s your wife?”
“She went to bed,” Aaron said, leading Face down the hall. The conman studied the walls, the pictures, him, trying to focus on anything and everything else. It was dark up here, a light on at the end of the hall, nothing else. The man was still built like a football player, huge and imposing under his tired suit. At least fifty pounds on him. Could he take the guy?
“Just like that?”
“I gave her something,” Aaron said sheepishly and stopped in front of a door. “She’s been so banged up in the last week since he’s been gone...”
Get yourself in line, Peck, Face ordered himself and nodded, like he understood. “Let’s have a look.”
Aaron held the door open for him and shut it behind, the quiet click of the deadlock punctuating what Face realized he already knew.
No kid-sized bed. No toys or trophies or posters or baseballs or colorful crap strewn around. Nothing to indicate a child lived in this space. Because he didn’t.
Just a futon and an assortment of random furniture banished from the more tasteful regions of the house. Guest bedroom. Figured.
Face folded his arms. Leaned up against a wall. Stared levelly at the client. He didn’t cry last time, he sure as shit wasn’t going to the second time around. “What’s this all about, Aaron?”
“I thought we should talk.”
“About what?”
Aaron smiled, wane and dangerous. Face knew that look. “About if you still like it in the ass. Don’t lie, soldier. I remember you.”
“It’s good to remember your first gay rape,” Face replied easily, the panic suddenly held down by the force of necessity, old habits. Snark first, kill later. “I’m assuming it was your first. Your technique was terrible.”
“It might be better the second time around.”
“Gotten some practice in, then?” Did he have his pocket knife on him today? No. Shit. Aaron probably had one, though. Back pocket, three inch, expensive...
“You could say that.”
“The wife know you’re a closet sadist? And a fag? A closeted sadistic fag? Or is that why you drugged her?”
“I’m not the fag in the room.”
“So, fucking a guy against his will doesn’t make you a homosexual? I like your logic. Should have tried that on the Army. But then, rape’s against the law, too...”
“You didn’t get discharged for being a butt pirate, Face. Rest of your team seems straight to me,” Aaron said, triumph creeping into his voice, and Face looked away.
“Did your research then.”
“Wouldn’t hire somebody to get my boy back, not knowing who they were.”
Neither of them had moved, but Face felt himself being backed into a corner, imposed upon. The initial dam against the panic was failing, the cracks showing in his facade. It was rushing back in. There had to be an angle, had to be a way out of this room, out of this... “And you’re willing to risk you kid’s safety by pissing me off?”
Aaron just smiled. “Your boss seems so sincere, doesn’t he? You didn’t tell him, did you? Maybe I should...”
And there it was, Face thought with relief, coiling, launching.
There was the need to kill.
Face registered exactly two things in the next twenty seconds.
Aaron did have a knife in his back pocket.
Fifty pounds didn’t mean shit.
The blade was pressing down against Aaron’s neck, Face holding him tight against the wall, arm twisted up and heel pressing down cruelly against the back of the client’s Achilles. Aaron was bleeding.
And he was chuckling.
“You gonna go for it, soldier?”
“I’m not into snuff, motherfucker,” Face snarled. He could feel the caroted artery, beating against his thumb. It would be so easy to just push, drag, open it up... why was he hesitating?
Aaron laughed harder, beat a fist against the wall. “You ever think of how easy it would be for me to call the authorities?”
“Not if you’re dead.”
“Then you’re going to leave evidence, fuck, my wife. They’ll find you, you’ll go to jail.”
“Been there,” Face said flatly, pulling a little, cutting deeper. “Isn’t so bad.”
“But your team? Your crazy little buddy, that colonel of yours? I saw you watching him...”
That was it. That was what woke Face up, slowed him down, brought him back down to earth, and he reached a hand around the front of the other man’s pants, feeling the bulge. That wave of panic was on him, over him, filling his noise and his ears, threatening to pull him under. He faltered. His hand fell.
Aaron caught him by the wrist, preventing him from moving away, twisting around just enough for Face to see that goddamn smirk. “It’s no fun like that.”
Face knew exactly Aaron wanted. But he just fucking couldn’t. No. No. He hadn’t let anybody top him since, since... but there was BA to think of, Murdock. Hannibal.
Hannibal.
A thousand reasons raced through his mind, all with that tag, that name attached. And Face hadn’t told him back then, and had missed his chance again today. He was going to get them all thrown back in prison. This was his fault. Because he was afraid of Hannibal knowing what had happened, because he couldn’t take the loss of that man from his life. Because he was afraid, this was his fault.
The former lieutenant swallowed hard, and snapped the knife shut, folding the blade back into the handle with a practiced flick.
If he agreed to it, he didn’t have to be scared, right?
If he agreed to it, it wasn’t rape, right?
He had no idea how the fuck one was expected to feel in a situation like this. It was insane...
“You don’t cut me,” Face said, calmer than he would have expected. He tossed the knife away, staring at the blood, the man’s flaring pupils, the arousal. He knew what the guy wanted. Somehow, he didn’t think it was going to be that hard to summon it. Just let it go... “Torso only. No biting. Nothing broken.”
“Take off your shirt, lieutenant, so we don’t mess it up.”
They were chest to chest now. Face closed his eyes and started on his buttons, let the panic come, drown his brain, shorting him out, everything to black. He barely heard the command to bend over, the wall hitting him, a blow to his kidney that took him down, pants falling, hardly felt it as the guy slid in, thought he might be slicker this time but couldn’t really tell. All he could hear was breathing. His, short and pained. Aaron’s, harsh and hot on his neck, prickling through cold sweat, heavier, heat drilling into him, unwelcome, inevitable. And when Aaron let him go, Face let himself hit the ground, legs aching, bruises forming, staring into that blackness until the client kicked him.
“Get dressed. Unless you want your insane little buddy to figure out what a slut you are.”
Face shivered at the word. “Patch up your neck, Aaron. See how long you last against my insane little buddy. He doesn’t really understand consequences like you and I do.”
And Murdock didn’t understand, didn’t get the message, wasn't subjected to the horror of finding out how much of a failure his bestest buddy was. The pilot had turned the page in all three books. On the fives. Another set of cookies. “D’you find anything?” he asked, turning that gaze of his up.
“Nothing,” Face said, biting his lip, holding it in, and went for the coffee, avoiding the depth of the question, the places it could take them. "Nothing at all, buddy."
+++++
At noon, Hannibal found Murdock chatting happily with the client’s wife over something or other, both of them still in the kitchen. Their client had gone to work, leaving her home alone to deal with this. The colonel felt something twist inside him, thinking about their little boy, the one the police couldn’t do anything for. They had to help these people, had to find their boy...
“Where’s Face?”
“Passed out on the couch in the TV room a few hours ago,” the wife said, and smiled. “I offered him the guest room upstairs, but he said the couch was fine.”
Hannibal shook his head. His boy could sleep on a concrete floor. One of those learned skills from their Army days. He turned to Murdock. “You get any sleep?”
“Right after Face got back from checkin’ the upstairs.”
Hannibal nodded and made for the sunny little den, just down the hall. What the hell had Face been doing, checking the upstairs? The police had already been through this place with a fine-tooth comb. If that boy was screwing around on this job, with this much at stake...
His boy.
He’d always felt protective towards the kid, from those first early days. His new second lieutenant had been a ball of neuroses and fears under all his bravado. It had taken months for Hannibal to work his way through all of that, establish something resembling trust between them, find the promise underneath. And in those first few months, Hannibal had thought there was the slightest stirring of something between them.
Wasn't to be. Once the fighting had started, like that first one with the frat boys, after his sexual exploits became common barracks gossip, he’d concluded the kid needed a father more than anything else and things had normalized into that dynamic. Where it remained.
Didn’t stop him from looking, though. Didn’t stop him from wanting.
Hannibal leaned up against the open door, realizing he was smiling a little. Face was sprawled across the wide leather couch in a pool of light, that hair catching the noon sun just so, a light blanket spread across him, hands dug into it. Soft breaths moved that chest up and down, slow, under the obscuring cover. His shoes lay on the floor. Strange he hadn’t taken anything else off.
Watching his boy sleep was a rare treat for the colonel. Face was always on guard, always guarded, and being able to see him like this, at his most relaxed, at his most vulnerable, exposed. What he might have been like, in some easier life. It was a shame to wake him, Hannibal thought, but they had do shift change.
Face jumped when Hannibal touched his shoulder, thrashing, and blue eyes snapped open. Narrowed immediately. All those defenses slamming back into place. Hannibal hated it. “Good morning, sunshine,” he joked, but the kid just pushed himself up, avoided Hannibal’s gaze. Guilty conscious, Hannibal wondered. Was the kid screwing around with the wife?
“Shift change time?” He jammed his feet back into his shoes. “Good. I’m fuckin’ starved.”
“Anything happen?”
Face paused. “No.” But the way he said it was more question than statement.
Hannibal took him in. The rumpled shirt, the kind of vacant expression. More than just waking up, he thought, and Face running a hand through his hair, laughing, was one of his classic blinds. “Anything you want to tell me, kid?”
“Definitely not.”
Something had been going on with Face. Hannibal knew him too well to fall for his everything’s-fine routine. But the kid was intensely private, and pushing him always led to collapse and denial and fuck-ups. Couldn’t afford one of those right now, not with the kidnapping. Whatever it was, it would wait. “Okay. Kitchen, debrief, and we’ll get you boys out of here.”
Face smiled, and something twisted up inside of Hannibal, thinking about what was wrong his boy, and what the hell kind of trouble he was getting himself into this time.
It bothered him all day.
And then Hannibal watched him slide in for evening, laughing and joking with Murdock, playing with Billy, coffee, donuts and Mountain Dew in hand. They’d made some progress the last few nights, gotten a few phone calls, which revealed all sorts of beneficial information. Like how the kidnappers weren’t interested in money. How the whole point seemed to be to hurt the family. Hannibal hadn’t figured out the details yet, but those were coming together. The pilot, it was turning out, was pretty good with the computer stuff. For everything else, everything analog, there was Face and BA, running scams and busting heads.
Maybe that’s why the kid had been so messed up lately. Hannibal was pretty sure the only sleep he was catching was an hour or two during the night shift. He suddenly felt bad about sticking the kid on nights. Why had he done it, anyway? Just to teach him a lesson about being nice to other people? What was the point in that kind of pettiness? No wonder the kid had been looking at him with such uncertainty lately. Probably took offense at being treated like a kindergartener...
“Left you one out in the car,” Face said, sipping at the gigantic cup in his hand, expression unreadable, as Murdock bounced into the kitchen, towards his equipment and fresh zuccini bread. Hannibal had the TV on, low, infomercials. Face stared at it. “Where’s Aaron?”
“They both went to bed about an hour ago.”
“Oh, thank god,” Face murmured, and collapsed into one of the armchairs in the den, throwing his feet up on the coffee table. “Where’s BA?”
Hannibal frowned. “Up in Baltimore, looking into...”
“Oh, right,” Face said with a long, deep yawn. “Forgot, sorry.”
“You need to be getting more sleep, kid.”
“Yeah, well, not until we get this case solved, right, boss? Poor little kid...” and he cutting himself off, yawning again. He still wouldn’t look at Hannibal, so the colonel pushed up and laid a hand on Face’s shoulder, squeezing hard enough to get his attention. Face shuddered, a little grunt escaping him, and batted at the hand. Like it hurt. Had Hannibal come down that hard? “Damn, Hannibal, I’m awake, I’m paying attention, we’re going to be fine here. What’s your problem?”
Part of the colonel wanted to give his lieutenant a sharp reminder about respect, but that wasn’t really the problem, he knew. That tone he’d just used was a symptom. But of what, exactly? Anger? Irritation? Guilt? Guilt. Had to be guilt. Guilt he always tried to hide, forming a void. Everything else he covered up, piling up.
Hannibal slid around front of the kid's chair, hands on either arm rest, staring down. Face was still watching the TV.
“Face, look at me.”
Nothing.
“Lieutenant, eyes up.”
That got the kid’s attention, and he shook himself out a little, like he was coming back to the surface. “What?”
“Are you sleeping with her?”
Face went red, and he dropped his eyes again. “Fuck, no, boss...”
Hannibal grabbed his chin and forced his head up. He had to see the truth of that for himself. It was probably an unfair thing to ask, but that was his job. Ask the hard questions, get the real answers, keep the op from being compromised by his lieutenant’s overactive libido. “Look at me, kid. Tell me that straight.”
“You don’t believe me.” It was a statement of fact.
“You’re not exactly a paragon of self-control when it comes to women.”
His boy’s beautiful face kind of contorted for a second, and then he jammed a hard thumb up into the nerve cluster at the base of Hannibal’s wrist, yanking that hand away, strong fingers squeezing down hard. Couple of short, shallow breaths.
“Fuck you, Hannibal,” he said in a neutral voice. Not angry, not joking, not anything, really. Designed to annoy. Hannibal just knew it was going to bug him the rest of the way back to the safehouse and he folded his arms, glaring at his lieutenant. He hated few things more than Face trying to manipulate him, trying to...
“When are you going to stop lying to me, kid?” he growled.
Face went for the remote, and started flipping the channels, the quick toss of the car keys punctuating his short, angry, “see you at lunch, boss.”
Hannibal paused at the door, looking back at all the tension he saw in the kid, remembering how he’d looked here a few days ago, asleep, peaceful. He wanted to kick the kid’s ass. He wanted to pull him into an embrace, let him know...
Neither would do any good right now, so Hannibal had to settle for storming out instead, hating the kid for his malicious indifference. Hating himself for not being able to reach through it right now. If that little boy died...
Hannibal shook that away, into the warm night air, and went for a cigar. He couldn’t start assigning blame before something even happened. But however he wanted to look at it, whatever approach he wanted to take, the facts were irrefutable; there was something wrong with Face.
Later, Hannibal promised himself, and threw the car into drive.
+++++
Face listened to Hannibal’s fast departure. A little faster than usual. Man was probably pissed.
And why wouldn’t he be? Face asked himself bitterly. He was acting like an ass, and he knew it. Not that he had much choice in the matter.
Every night. Every night for the last four nights. Tonight would be night five. Between the stressful, sleepless days and the batterings he was taking... well, his body wasn’t going to last forever. And the lieutenant wasn’t a religious man, but if he was, he would have been on his knees over this. They had to find this kid soon...
“Comfy, honey?”
He flicked the TV off. Figured the bastard wasn’t in bed. And he’d told Murdock that he was going to take a nap, so...
Face stretched himself with an exaggerated yawn, and batted his eyes. “Absolutely, darling.”
“Thought we’d do it different tonight ,” Aaron snarled, hauling him to his feet, hand wound into the back of Face’s hair. “Give that ass of yours a rest.”
Fantastic. At least he got to protest. He didn’t even have to fake the anger. “... no, I’m not...”
“Shut up,”Aaron hissed with a smile, and shoved Face back, twisting him around, and the client took a seat in the armchair. Face let himself puddle down at the man’s feet, and that hand was still in his hair. Pulling hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. Fucking nerve endings...
Aaron stroked down the fly of his pants with his free hand, dragging down the zipper. His cock sprang free, hard already, like it was every night. Jesus, the anticipation was enough to get this guy up... “Open up.”
“Eat shit and die.”
A thumb jabbed into the joint, not quite pressing him open, and the first thing that surged through Face’s mind was how many men this asshole had done this to, how many times... and then it just hurt. “Open. Up.”
“Fuck. You.”
Face knew it was coming, but the speed caught him by surprise. A heel came down hard against his spine, legs wrapping him up, crushing him down, dragging him forward. A fist, against his ribs, right into the livid purple bruise from last night, and then both those hands were aorund his neck, thumbs pressing into that little dent between his collarbones, pressing, driving in...
His cough exploded out of him, violent as if he’d been vomiting, and his lungs scrambled for air. But before Face could catch his breath back, his head was dragged down and Aaron shoved his not inconsiderable length all the way in. His moan of pleasure matched Face’s pained whimper, cut off by the thick shaft driving all the way through him, choking him. Then those hands clamped down, and Aaron started fucking his mouth brutally.
Face couldn’t move, couldn’t bring his hands up at all. Vision blurred in and out of focus, the world seemed to slide out from under him. He tried to center on something, center on anything, ignore his body, pleading for air, begging, for the first time scared, truly scared, as instinct short-circuited any of his higher functions.
Aaron was talking, dimly, far away, keep your teeth in, my god, so sweet, Peck, such a little slut for cock, you’re loving this, you sick bitch, fucking lovely, fucking take it...
Then, under the moans from the man fucking his mouth, Face heard something which made his blood run cold, which almost had him up and beating the shit out of this guy, which very nearly felled him, right there.
A board creaked in the hallway. Then another.
Face jerked, earning him a vicious slap as his teeth more than grazed the man’s engorged cock, and he felt something in him collapse.
Murdock.
Face was crying freely now, snot dribbling out of his nose. Fuck, he couldn't breath... But it was over. Aaron was coming, the rush of semen too much for Face to take, and it was oozing down his chin, thick and hot and horrible.
“Fucking fag can’t even get that right,” Aaron said, and threw him back. Face landed hard on his back, limbs sprawled out, staring up. He didn’t dare spit out what was left in his mouth, swallowing the remnant of the bitter come.
The client stood, shaking a little from the force of his release, and tucked himself back in. “Goddamn fairy-fuck,” he growled as he walked out, and kicked Face in the ribs again. This time, the lieutenant felt something snap, but he’d taken worse beatings than this. He rolled over, clutching his side, and the second he heard the door snick shut and the footsteps fade upstairs, he was on his feet and down the hall and puking in the bathroom. White and green, from bile and the Mountain Dew he’d had earlier. His throat muscles burned, the acid tearing into raw tissue...
“Face, you okay?” asked Murdock’s soft voice, and Face groaned internally. He couldn’t take any more humiliation. Not tonight. Not like this. So he grabbed for a towel and wiped his mouth, nodding, not daring to turn around. He twisted the water on. Grabbed a few handfuls. Let it wash the burn out of his throat.
“Just, just fine, buddy,” he replied, knowing he sounded hoarse and hating himself for it.
“Whadda think you’re doin’?”
“Aaron needed it, I needed it,” he said with an ease his didn’t feel. “Sometimes I...”
“You gonne tell me that was consensual?” Murdock said in that same quiet voice, the one that was sending chills dow Face’s trobbing spine. He kind of dragged out the last word, pronouncing each syllableas if it was its own word.
Face closed his eyes against his own lie, and splashed some water on his sweating skin. He couldn’t see the expression on his friend’s face, couldn’t face the disapproval. Murdock wasn’t freaking out. Why wasn’t Murdock freaking out? “I like it rough.”
“Hannibal ain’t gonna be happy, you screwin’ ‘round with a...”
“Guy?”
“Married guy. Married.”
“Then let’s not say anything to him. Okay?”
Murdock shook his head. “I don’t know...”
“We can’t screw up this mission.” His lips were really swollen. “Gotta get that kid back, right?”
Murdock stared at him for a moment through the mirror, laid a hand on Face’s shoulder, friendly and sad all at once. Then he was gone. Face let his forehead slam forward. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
When he finally had the courage to venture out, back to the kitchen, Murdock was all smiles and jokes and playing ball with Billy, like nothing had happened at all. Face grinned back at him and found a ginger ale in the cupboard. Let it go flat. Sipped at it slowly as Murdock discussed the necessity of obedience training, and it didn’t do a damn thing to ease the anxiety pooling in his stomach. What Murdock was doing was an act, like his own joviality was an act. Both of them skirting the issue, pretending, ignoring. Face’s mind kept running the possibilities, what might be said, what might be found out, and the steps skipped, the logic bent, and he was consumed by one overwhelming thought as the hours ticked slowly by.
Murdock was going to tell.
And Hannibal was going to fucking kill him.
