Article 15 Part One of Two
Mar. 6th, 2011 03:31 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 of a fill for this prompt over at the kink meme
Um. So I had this fantasy idea.
Hannibal and Face are together and very happy. But then Face is accused of something horrible - IDK, drug-dealing, killing a fellow soldier, something horrible. He's innocent, but nobody believes him. Not even Hannibal... Hannibal's so disgusted and angry he breaks up with Face and gets him reassigned. (your choice if this happens pre-BA and Murdock or after the team has already been formed). Dub-con/punishment-sex totally welcome in here *hint hint*.
Face tries to get Hannibal to believe him, but he won't listen. Face ends up in a different unit and is heart-broken, Hannibal too by the apparent betrayal. Some time goes by, and slowly Hannibal realizes that Face is not coping well. He doesn't want to care, but Face sleeps around - maybe hooks up with a guy from the new team or someone else who's no good for him? - and gets in trouble etc., and his new boss can't deal with him. Eventually - insert fitting plot device here - it turns out that Face was innocent all along and Hannibal made a horrible mistake!!!
Now he has to get his boy back and earn back his trust... easier said than done!
Face shoots a woman on a mission, and Hannibal throws him out. But Face soon finds himself at the mercy of a colonel who’s not afraid to take what he wants from the young lieutenant.
The battalion commander sets the down the memorandum he was just reading, signing at the appropriate block. “... do you understand what I’ve just read you?”
Face steels himself, thumbs hard against the seams of his pants, ramrod straight, trying to prop up until this is over. But his eyes still stray over to Hannibal, also in service-As, eyes hooded, unsettling, calm, with the others crowded at the little table up here in the headquarters building.
Goddamn.
The first sergeant hands Face the paperwork. A pen, conveniently clicked open, comes with it.
“This is an acknowledgment of receipt only, Lieutenant Peck,” his military lawyer, the dumbass Area Defense Council says. "You've already entered your not guilty plea, and we have your rebuttal on file. Please sign."
He adjusts from the position of attention to bend over, take it, sign on the dotted line. “We all know I did it, Captain Hammond,” he replies. Inks his name right where it needs to go.
Hannibal’s eyes are boring into him.
An Article 15. One step below a court martial. A death sentence for an officer’s career. Everything. Everything he’s worked towards, the last seven years. His commission, sniper qualifications, Ranger school. None of it will mean shit after this.
But that’s not what he’s upset about.
It’s what comes with the Article 15 that’s tearing a hole in his world.
Transfer forms. A transfer. A goddamn PCA notification. Permanent change of assignment. It took Face three reads to parse that information out of the maze of boxes and words scrawled across the printed page. Permanent change of assignment.
“Do you have anything you want to say, lieutenant,” the battalion commander asks, “before we adjourn here?”
“Is... is it because she was a woman, Major Smith?” he asks, damn aware that the first sergeant and the Area Defense Council captain are both in the room and he needs to watch himself, not give anything away. Not the way he feels about Hannibal. Not the way Hannibal feels about him.
Felt, maybe, at this point. He doesn't know. Hannibal hasn't touched him since that night, almost two weeks ago now.
“Nothing to do with her being a woman,” the commander snaps.
But Face knows it only makes it worse, what happened, her being female. It’s worse, when it’s a woman. And he can’t stop thinking about her, leggy, those big fake tits, silky black hair. A stripper in that Bosnian bar on their last mission. Face can’t stop seeing her, the way her eyes stared at him, sprawled out beneath him, as the life drained away from her body. Double gunshot wounds to the stomach.
One to her forehead.
Right below him.
Walther smoking.
“It’s because of what you did to her, Lieutenant Peck,” the commander says. “Do you understand that what you did not only violated LOAC by killing a non-combatant needlessly...”
“We're black ops, we don’t follow LOAC!” Face protests, a little too heatedly.
Hannibal glares at him.
The ADC coughs. “I’m glad you didn’t put that in your rebuttal statement, Lieutenant Peck.”
“...but you crossed the line, in more ways than one.”
“Boss, please,” Face says desperately, looking over at Hannibal. “You know she was dying because of the shoot-out we had with those mafia assholes and...”
“I wasn’t in the room, lieutenant,” Hannibal says, monstrously calm, and that’s when Face knows the man is pissed beyond belief. The major’s backed him up, as best he could, but Hannibal didn’t lie for him.
“I need you to understand this, lieutenant,” the commander at the end of the table says, and holds his hand out for the signed forms. “Shooting that woman was beyond disgraceful. This entire battalion has been shamed by your actions and your exceptionally poor judgment. You’ve betrayed your oath as a commissioned officer of the United States Army and as a Ranger. And through this whole thing, you’ve displayed no emotion whatsoever. Disgraceful...”
Hannibal’s sitting just to the right of their commander, but the major’s not doing anything. He’s just blank. Completely blank, and right when Face has never felt more rejected in his life.
Out of the Rangers.
Out of Hannibal’s unit.
But maybe, maybe not everything’s lost here...
“...you will report in to your new commander, Colonel Harrison, 43rd Sustainment Brigade commander, at zero-seven-thirty tomorrow morning. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Face says in a low voice.
“You’re dismissed.”
He turns on his heel, the shiny coraframs he never wears clicking on the office floor, and when he hits the outer office, his stomach gives and he barely makes it to the bathroom in time.
Puking, gripping the bowl with nerveless fingers, Face doesn’t notice Hannibal coming in until the major taps on the metal stall door.
He’s got a folder in his hand. “I’ve got your copies of the paperwork, Face,” he says, guarded. “Clean yourself up. I’ll drive you home.”
“But...”
Hannibal fishes his car keys from a pocket. “You’re in no condition to drive.”
Face tastes bile burning in his throat, feels his hands shaking, and yeah, that makes a hell of a lot of sense right now.
On the way, off post, back through the winding narrows of the Colorado Springs streets, Face can feel himself getting colder and colder. It’s not the weather, not the gray overcast sky, that’s bothering the hell out of him. It’s Hannibal. Not talking, not even looking at him.
They turn right instead left and they’re going to his own shitty one-bedroom apartment.
This isn’t good.
Face would rather be going to Hannibal’s house. A nice house in one of the nicer neighborhoods in the foothills where military people don’t usually live. Face has really come to love the place, on the rare occasions they’re actually stateside. Comfortable and warm and safe. Like a home ought to be. Like how he’s always imagined it being, the last twenty five years of his life.
The lieutenant’s been hoping, over the last eight months, since he and Hannibal had started their little...whatever this is between them, that this might actually become home. Here, with Hannibal. Someday, maybe.
Hannibal parks close and doesn’t wait for him, before heading up the narrow concrete steps to the second-floor apartment. Face bites his lip, pausing, then follows as something sick starts building in his stomach again.
He throws up again, but this time, Hannibal’s not waiting conveniently nearby. No, the boss is in the hallway, waiting there, unlit cigar in his hand. He stands as Face cracks the door and shuffles out.
The boss, on his feet, and that has to be a good sign, right? Face sort of flows right over to him, up against him, spreading his hands across that strong body, letting himself feel, letting himself believe...
“Face,” Hannibal says, gentle but not kind. “Face, look at me.”
The younger man rolls his eyes up to catch the boss’ gaze. “Yeah, Hannibal?”
“What did you mean, we all know you did it?”
Face feels his blood go cold, as Hannibal’s hand tighten down around his biceps, swinging him around and crashing him belly-first into the hallway wall. Hands slide to meet his, yank, pinning his wrists over his head.
“Boss?”
“What did you mean, Face?” Hannibal growls against his neck, bringing his other hand around to the buckle of his belt, his fly. “What. Did. You. Mean?”
The lieutenant’s hips buck of their own accord, right back into Hannibal’s, and fuck, why is the man hard, Face wonders frantically as his green uniform trousers are jerked down, his briefs, his ass right against Hannibal’s groin as the older man slams him into the wall again. Painful, this time.
As Hannibal opens up and opens him up, just barely, spits in his hand, spreads him, Face can’t help himself. Rough, soft, kinky, whatever. His body responds to the slightest attention from his lover, longs for it, so he leans back into it, moaning as Hannibal breaches him in one long hard thrust.
“What did you mean, Temp?”
Behind him, Face can feel every ounce of the older man’s confusion, his frustration, pistoning into him, all the layers of uniform between them, and they’ve done this before, Hannibal fucking him through a wall after a bad mission, after a terrible day at home station, when something’s gone to shit and needs release. This is worse, more, than it usually is. Hard and desperate, like Hannibal’s trying to prove something to himself, convince himself of something, and it’s terrifying.
But Face still arches into him, moving just like he loves until Hannibal comes with a shuddered gasp, biting down on his shoulder through the thick wool, that same familiar heat spreading up through his belly, and Face sighs back into him, still painfully hard. “Boss,” he murmurs like he always does, “boss, please...”
Because after Hannibal’s done this, after the bruises come, after all the bad things pass, Hannibal will pull him away and lay him down and strip him naked and take him in hand, or mouth, play with him until he’s hard again himself, leisurely and sweet and slow, climbing up that curve together, coming together...
But there’s none of that. Just a hand in his hair, jerking him back around and throwing him back.
Face does not like the look on his lover’s face. “Boss?”
“Did you kill that woman, Face?”
Face knows, just fucking knows, that this is going to shit. Should have been expecting it, really. Everything goes to shit, sooner or later... and he lets his forehead hit the wall.
“You weren’t in the room,” he tries to explain, voice hitching a little as he tries to gather himself back up. “I had to do something.”
“So you murdered her?”
“John, it wasn’t like th...” he says desperately, pressing both hands onto his lover’s chest.
“Don’t you dare,” Hannibal snarls, and there’s something in his voice that’s going to shatter Face clean apart. “Don’t you fucking dare, Face!”
“Please, just... just...”
“You murdered her.”
“Boss...”
“Shut up! I know you did it! I wasn’t in the room, but I fucking heard the shot, lieutenant!” Hannibal roars, pushing Face away and zipping himself back up. “I’ve spent two weeks defending you to that man! And what the fuck do you say to him? We all know you did it? Could you have humiliated me more?”
“John...”
“Motherfucker, Face!” Hannibal yells, and punches the wall.
That stops everything, for a few seconds, Hannibal’s knucles as he pulls loose, the hole in the drywall deep enough to see the insulation through, and Face reaches out for him, feeling stunned by the force of the anger that just came out of his man. “Boss, you’re bleeding...”
Hannibal looks at his own hand, torn skin dripping red, and jerks it away from Face, heading for the kitchen. “I’ve had worse, kid,” and that’s almost sorrowful.
Maybe the anger’s passed, then, Face thinks and feels doubly encouraged when Hannibal sits down at the counter and lets him bring over a wet paper towel. Maybe Hannibal will let him explain.
“I wanted to tell you, boss, but...” Face starts, but Hannibal waves him off. Pushes him off, actually, taking the damp towel away and sliding his hand away from Face’s.
“I asked for the transfer, kid. You should know that.”
Face feels faint. “What?”
“You’re too emotional, kid, too reactive. Trigger-happy. You’re not Ranger material. And after this... I’m tired of trying to make you work. I can’t make you work. This is beyond...”
“But, you said... you said you defended me.” And Face thinks of all the times when Hannibal told him how proud he was, how pleased with his new lieutenant. How eager to learn his boy was, how clever, how quick, how beautiful...
“I can’t keep doing it, Face. I can’t have men in my unit or in my Rangers that need to be defended from themselves. There are bigger things at stake.”
“Am I... a liability, boss?”
He stands. “Goodbye, Templeton.”
And whatever’s been teetering in his head since Hannibal threw him against the wall suddenly breaks open, and all his internal supports are crumbling to dust. “John... are you... are you...?”
“Face, I love you and you know that,” Hannibal says slowly, and he’s all the way over by the door now. Opens it. Ready to walk out of his life forever. “But you’re not welcome in my Rangers any more.”
No, he wants to say. No, no, John, you’ve never said that to me, you’ve never told me you loved me, I love you, too, please... but all that comes out is that last bit. “Please, you gotta...”
“Or my bed,” Hannibal says in a soft, sad voice, and shuts the door behind him.
Face stares, and sags, and doesn’t get a chance to explain.
Not about how he’d come into that little back room after the firefight, as Hannibal was already starting to exchange the usual unpleasantries in heated Russian, how Face had found the stripper, shot in the stomach, bleeding out. A painful way to die. Hours, maybe days, if she was unlucky enough to get sent to a hospital in that part of the world. She’d looked up at him, held up a hand, begging, somehow begging for release, and he’d done the only merciful thing he could think of.
How he’d pulled the trigger.
Two weeks of nightmares. The only thing that’s made it bearable was knowing he’d wake up next to Hannibal. That every time it got too hard to handle, the memory of her face, he could reach out, and Hannibal would take it away. But now...
His ass hits the floor and his head hits the wall and Face doesn’t move for a while.
+++++
“I’m really sorry about this,” Face says, forehead on the passenger side window. “Didn’t mean to leave my care on base yesterday...”
“Oh, don’t apologize,” the captain replies with a slight smile. “Gives me time to talk.”
They know each other, a little. O-Club, mandatory fun. Face makes a point of keeping track of most of the girls on post, just so he knows who to go to when he needs to keep his reputation up. So he still knows her. Enough for him to have her phone number saved, enough for him to know she’s the brigade exec and she’s got an SUV.
“Don’t you mean, you know, for us to talk?”
“Naw,” and she’s still grinning, but it’s more forced now than when she picked him up, laughing at his call and whatever bullshit explanation he’d given her that he can’t remember now, “I meant me. I’m the brigade exec, and you’re going to be the deputy exec, or whatever, for the forseeable future, which means that I own your ass.” Her hands tighten on the steering wheel, just a little. “Not the colonel.”
He notices that, and stretches, doing his best to smile back, but the muscles in his face crack as he tries that particular expression on. Face doesn’t like the way he feels right now. Hollow, blank. Did he sleep last night? He can’t remember, and it scares him that he’s not scared of that. “That could be fun, Hannah.”
“I’m serious, Face,” she says, and he remembers she goes to that megachurch north of town. “I need you to trust me on this. Just do what I tell you to do, without whining, and we’ll have a great time with your little disciplinary action here until they pull you back to the...”
“They’re not pulling me back,” he says quietly, and the captain slams on the brakes a little too hard at the light.
“No?” And she looks at him.
“No.”
“Okay, then.” She nods. “Just... stay away from Colonel Harrison.”
“Why?”
“I... I don’t think I should talk about it,” she tells him with one of those judgmental sighs in her voice that only ever mean one thing, and then they’re pulling up to the Fort Carson gate. She’s fishing in her pocket for her ID, and doesn’t look at him again. “Now, where’s your damn car?”
Hannah doesn’t make him go back for it, though. She hands him off to the secretaries, telling them to go get their new el-tee some coffee, and takes his car keys and jogs down there to his old unit herself. The secretaries are both Army wives, chubby girls with thick, happy laughs who are already just charmed to no end by the cute new lieutenant who they can admire from a safe distance and push a great deal of their workload off on.
Face smiles along with it all, their vapid chatter and probing little questions, grinning like he doesn’t have a care in the world and he’s perfectly fine and everything is just fucking peachy right now. And that’s when he realizes.
It’s all going to be a con from now on. Everything is going to be a con. He lost the one person in his life he didn’t have to lie to. He’s lost him.
Hannibal...
“Mornin’, sir,” one of the secretaries chirps, and Face looks up from where’s he’s just put too much creamer in his own coffee. They’re in the break room, surrounded by the floor’s snack bar, one of the secretaries digging into a bowl of microwaved oatmeal that smells like blueberries, the other talking to the man that just walked in. A tall, fading blonde. In BDUs. With colonel rank.
The senior officer goes for the pot and stops with it, half over to a clean mug.
“Lieutenant Peck?”
“Yes, sir?”
The older man holds out his hand, smirks just a little. “Colonel Harrison. Glad to have you.”
Face isn’t thinking about this man. He’s thinking of another, tall, fading chestnut, catching up to him on the trails, early in the morning, chilly. The way that other man clapped him on the back and introduced himself and welcomed his new lieutenant in and Face had thought... he clearly remembered thinking... that maybe this time, with this man, things might turn out...
But that’s all over.
He was nothing but a disappointment to Hannibal. A fucking disappointment.
I can’t keep doing it, Face...
He grins over the top of it all, though, the con and all that, and shakes his new boss’ hand.
And when the colonel, when this colonel, doesn’t let go right when he should, Face finds himself wondering, why the fuck not?
And It takes exactly ten days for him to crack.
Him, Colonel Harrison, not Face.
Face doesn’t really give a shit, however the new boss wants to handle this. Flirting or fucking, doesn't matter.
He'll do it. Why not?
He figures that out on day two, when the colonel calls him into his office to go over expectations and all that crap, and the colonel leans forward in the middle of it and says something that the lieutenant just fucking knows is going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Lieutenant Peck... Face, can I call you Face?”
“Everyone does.”
“Face, I know you’re probably struggling. Losing your qualifications, having that all... thrown away. But your career doesn’t have to be over. You can still recover from this...”
“Sir...” He didn’t want to hear it.
But the colonel kept going. “...depending, of course, on my evaluation of your performance, that sort of thing. But,” and he laid his hand down on top of Face’s, where it was resting on the cool walnut of the table, “I don’t want you to think that means anything other than doing the best job you can, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And for the record, I’m so sorry.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“I assumed, I mean, Face, Colonel Smith has pull with people across the command. If he’d tried a little harder, I’m sure he could have gotten you out of this. It wouldn’t be the first time...”
And Face had smiled. “He did what he thought was right,” he said, no confidence at all, and Colonel Harrison had patted his hand, and gone back to whatever he’d been saying about email protocol, or some shit like that.
If he’d tried a little harder...
But he hadn’t.
So fuck him. Face figures he doesn't owe Hannibal anything anymore. Not loyalty. Not love. Not those goddamn dreams he keeps having about the man, the glowing memories of all the things they'd had, dreams where Hannibal forgives him, where Hannibal shows up at his apartment and apologizes and takes him by the hand and...
No, Hannibal's done nothing to deserve that kind of agony on Face's part.
Hannibal hadn’t thought him worth the time. And Hannibal was... a man like Hannibal had judging him unworthy was pretty much the final verdict on one Templeton Peck, first lieutenant, United States Army.
Fucking worthless.
Confirming everything everyone else had ever told him, really. So it's almost a relief, when Face realizes that. He doesn't have to try anymore, doesn't have to strive to become something he'll never be, something he never could be. Hannibal did him a favor, really.
Didn't he?
So now here he is, working late, very late, the sun down for hours now, proofing awards packages and wanting nothing more than to go home and drink himself stupid. It’s a Wednesday. Why the hell not? It’s not like he’s got anything more important to be doing. Not like he's good for anything more than this.
“You still here, Face?”
Colonel Harrison, shrugging into his gortex BDU jacket. It's cold outside. Face had left his at home this morning. Fucking jackets. Fucking October snowstorms.
“Guess so, sir.”
“You should head home, before the roads ice up,” the colonel says, and pauses. “They’re predicting more snow later.”
Face brandishes the pile of gray folders that Hannah left him with for tomorrow. “Got at least six more of these to go, sir.”
“You know,” the colonel says, taking the folders away and sitting on the edge of Face’s desk, “I am aware that you’ve probably got a personal life that must be wanting some attention right about...”
“What personal life?” Face laughs, feeling cold inside.
“No family, girlfriend?” the colonel asks, a little more interested now.
“No, the uhh, no... I usually just hit the bars downtown or something if...”
The colonel nods. “That’s not good, Face. You need human contact. Especially right now. I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” he murmurs, and lifts a hand to stroke Face’s cheek, absolutely unmistakable. The lieutenant schools himself still, pushing away the irrational thought that only Hannibal’s allowed to touch him like this, only Hannibal’s allowed to...
“Oh, I'm living the dream, boss,” Face replies, letting himself lean into that hand just a little. Not really able to stop himself. It's different from Hannibal's hand. Soft, thumbs a little tweaked from too many hours on the computer. A bureaucrat's hand. But still, there it is.
Where Hannibal's isn't.
“I don’t know how he could have just thrown you away like last week’s newspaper, gorgeous boy like you,” Harrison murmurs, and shifts around so he’s right in front of Face. “He was fucking you, wasn’t he? Told it meant something? Made you feel... I don’t know, whole, wanted, loved. Am I right?”
Not trusting himself to speak, Face nods. Once. Slow.
Colonel Harrison runs a hand through his hair, smiling a little, and kisses his forehead as he undoes his belt, the button fly on those damn uniform pants. “I’ll never lie to you like he did, Face,” he says, walking Face up and out of his chair. “I promise you that.”
“So what's this?” the lieutenant asks, feeling weak, forcing himself steady.
“Come on now, son,” Harrison says, and takes himself out, starts stroking. Smaller than Hannibal. Smaller than Hannibal in every regard, Face thinks. “I would hate to have to report I’ve got a homosexual in my unit. You’ve had enough trouble already. You don’t need anything else comin' down on you right now. Do you?”
"Quid pro quo, then, sir?"
"Hardly."
"Sir..."
"Don't tell me you don't need this."
Face stares at him for a minute, thinking, you got me there, sir, forces that smile again, the fake one that only Hannibal was ever able to see through.
And drops to his knees.
+++++
Face knew, somewhere, in the back of his mind, the part he didn’t really care to listen to right now, that he wasn’t going to get away with just blowing the guy. For a few weeks, he managed it, but he was always aware that it wasn’t going to last. That the colonel was going to want more.
So he wasn’t surprised, about a month later, when Harrison locked his office door, after everyone else had gone home, and grabbed him by the collar.
“Desk, lieutenant. Now.”
It wasn’t hard. It was surprisingly easy, actually.
Everything else had been slipping. Why not this, too?
It started with the little things, like the day Face forgot to stop by the BX for toilet paper on his way home, and hadn’t gotten back to the story for another three days. He had paper towels, didn’t he? Or the morning he slept through his alarm, and barely had time to get to work, much less hit the trails. How easy it seemed, not to worry about his morning run anymore after that - it wasn’t like he needed all that muscle to jockey a desk. Or when he ran out of one of his favorite skin products, and didn’t bother to make the drive up to Denver to get more.
What was the point? What was the point of any of it?
So, Face doesn’t fight it, the way Colonel Harrison throws him towards the piece of furniture in question. Feels hot breath on his ear and a hand ghosting around his front and he tightens his grip on the curved wooden edge until he could see his knuckles go white, bloodless, and a hand was forcing him apart.
He spreads his legs as far as he can, hobbled by those BDU pants he’d never had to wear in Hannibal’s unit. Bites the inside of his cheek.
Shuts his eyes.
When he gets home that night, about an hour or so later, sweaty and cold and dirty in places he knows he’ll never get clean, not anymore, and flicks on the lightswitch in the kitchen, the lights don’t come on. With a sigh, he hits the penlight on his keychain, and there it is.
The electric bill, sitting on the counter, under a McDonald’s bag he really should have thrown away yesterday. A month overdue, Face realizes, and the utilities company has a twenty-four hour hotline, this time of year.
But he can handle it in the morning, he tells himself, and goes to sleep without bothering to shower.
+++++
Face didn’t exactly lie to Colonel Harrison.
He still does go out on the weekends, when he needs it, to that little strip of downtown bars full of college girls and Academy cadets and enlisted from any of the area’s five bases. Too many military, really, for his taste, but the college girls are always nice, and it’s one of these that he’s charming, beer in hand, the girl blushing furiously but obviously putting on that brave front like college girls usually do, playing with the edge of her completely non-functional scarf and smiling.
And he’s right at the good part, the part where he gets to lean over and ask her if she wants to get out of here and take her home and screw her stupid, regain some kind of control, have it, if even for a little while. So close, right there, tucking a bit of blonde hair back out of her face, right...
“Face?”
She giggles, and turns around and Face groans internally but puts on his best smile. He knows that voice.
“Sergeant Davies,” the lieutenant says slowly. “What are you doing here?”
“Implying I’m too old for the club scene?” Hannibal’s first sergeant smiles back. He’s got something clear in his hand. Probably club soda, Face knows, and feels his smile crack into something a little more honest. This guy’s a fucking saint.
“It is a little weird,” Face admits. The girl smiles at him, sipping at her beer, and slips away. Fuck. Well, he can get rid of the shirt and go find another one. Plenty of girls where that one came from.
“Well, we had a going away at the Old Chicago’s, and some of the leadership stuck around to do some drinking and...” the sergeant kind of peers at Face in the dim light. “You want to go up on the roof? It’s kind of noisy for catching up here.”
He sighs and sets his drink down. “Fine.”
It’s quieter up on the rooftop, open to the night, colder, snowy, the pool tables quiet, the karaoke stage empty and dark. The first sergeant shrugs and finds a place at the bar and Face, after a minute, joins him.
“So,” he asks, “good to see you, I guess?”
“I know you’re probably pissed at me,” the first sergeant says. “After the Article 15 and everything and my role in all of that, but it is good to see you. We haven’t heard from you in over two months. They treating you okay over at Sustainment?”
Face tries to laugh, but it dies in his throat before it comes out. “What difference does it make to you people? Not a Ranger anymore.”
“I didn’t know the general was going to strip you of your...”
“He didn’t. It was Hannibal’s recommendation,” Face replies, and signals the bartender over, asks for tequila. “Hs decision, me being gone.”
“Face, Hannibal had a lot of hope for you, I’m sure...”
The shot’s down in front of him now, and he picks it up, rolls it in his figners for a moment or two. “Yeah, and I disappointed him.” The tequila burns on the way down. Fuck, the cheap stuff. Or no, wait, that’s perfect. He taps, asking for another. “In every single possible way, I disappointed him.”
“He was pissed about the shooting, but el-tee, that shit happens on missions, sad fact of life, but...”
“Evidently not under his command,” Face snaps and downs the next shot as fast as the first. Normally he wouldn’t be talking about this. Normally, he would keep his mouth shut. But he’s drunk and horny and the sergeant just cock-blocked him and he’s really not in the mood to be keeping himself under control. “Evidently there are no mistakes shooting some woman who’s already dying when she asks you to is completely unethical.”
The sergeant jerks a little bit. “What do you mean, Face, already...”
But just then, his cell phone buzzes, a text coming in, and he looks at it with a groan. Colonel Harrison’s number. A hotel name, room number, time. Tonight. Soon.
Shit, this is new, and Face wonders if maybe he shouldn’t...
But no. There’s no support now. Nobody to go to, and if he turns Harrison in, Harrison will turn Hannibal in, and despite everything, Face can’t bear the thought of that happening.
So he’ll just have to take a cab.
“Going somewhere, Face?” the first sergeant asks, worry furrowing his brow. “Cause Hannibal’s here downstairs somewhere, I’m sure he’d love to see...”
“Can’t,” Face says, that fake grin sliding out of place now as he slips off the stool and tucks his phone back in his pocket. “Booty call.”
“Doesn’t that usually work the other way around?” the shirt asks, a little too sharp.
“It’s all very egalitarian these days, shirt,” he says, and pauses, feeling very awkward. “Don’t... don’t tell Hannibal you saw me, okay?”
“He hasn’t bee right, since you left, Face. You know that, right?”
“What are you trying to say, shirt?” he asks, sharp.
The sergeant holds out a hand. “Face, I’m not saying anything except...”
“He’s probably just pissed he failed so bad with me,” Face says, surprising himself at how bitter that all sounds. “You know how he is. One chance with him...”
“El-tee, I’m sure...”
“...and I blew mine. What are you gonna do?"
"Face, are you sure she was..."
"Sorry, Davies, but I have to go,” he says curtly, and brushes past the sergeant and all his fucking belated concern back down into the darkness of the club and the street and the cab and the hotel beyond.
Continue to Part Two
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: non-con
Summary: Part One of Two of a fill for this prompt over at the kink meme
Um. So I had this fantasy idea.
Hannibal and Face are together and very happy. But then Face is accused of something horrible - IDK, drug-dealing, killing a fellow soldier, something horrible. He's innocent, but nobody believes him. Not even Hannibal... Hannibal's so disgusted and angry he breaks up with Face and gets him reassigned. (your choice if this happens pre-BA and Murdock or after the team has already been formed). Dub-con/punishment-sex totally welcome in here *hint hint*.
Face tries to get Hannibal to believe him, but he won't listen. Face ends up in a different unit and is heart-broken, Hannibal too by the apparent betrayal. Some time goes by, and slowly Hannibal realizes that Face is not coping well. He doesn't want to care, but Face sleeps around - maybe hooks up with a guy from the new team or someone else who's no good for him? - and gets in trouble etc., and his new boss can't deal with him. Eventually - insert fitting plot device here - it turns out that Face was innocent all along and Hannibal made a horrible mistake!!!
Now he has to get his boy back and earn back his trust... easier said than done!
Face shoots a woman on a mission, and Hannibal throws him out. But Face soon finds himself at the mercy of a colonel who’s not afraid to take what he wants from the young lieutenant.
The battalion commander sets the down the memorandum he was just reading, signing at the appropriate block. “... do you understand what I’ve just read you?”
Face steels himself, thumbs hard against the seams of his pants, ramrod straight, trying to prop up until this is over. But his eyes still stray over to Hannibal, also in service-As, eyes hooded, unsettling, calm, with the others crowded at the little table up here in the headquarters building.
Goddamn.
The first sergeant hands Face the paperwork. A pen, conveniently clicked open, comes with it.
“This is an acknowledgment of receipt only, Lieutenant Peck,” his military lawyer, the dumbass Area Defense Council says. "You've already entered your not guilty plea, and we have your rebuttal on file. Please sign."
He adjusts from the position of attention to bend over, take it, sign on the dotted line. “We all know I did it, Captain Hammond,” he replies. Inks his name right where it needs to go.
Hannibal’s eyes are boring into him.
An Article 15. One step below a court martial. A death sentence for an officer’s career. Everything. Everything he’s worked towards, the last seven years. His commission, sniper qualifications, Ranger school. None of it will mean shit after this.
But that’s not what he’s upset about.
It’s what comes with the Article 15 that’s tearing a hole in his world.
Transfer forms. A transfer. A goddamn PCA notification. Permanent change of assignment. It took Face three reads to parse that information out of the maze of boxes and words scrawled across the printed page. Permanent change of assignment.
“Do you have anything you want to say, lieutenant,” the battalion commander asks, “before we adjourn here?”
“Is... is it because she was a woman, Major Smith?” he asks, damn aware that the first sergeant and the Area Defense Council captain are both in the room and he needs to watch himself, not give anything away. Not the way he feels about Hannibal. Not the way Hannibal feels about him.
Felt, maybe, at this point. He doesn't know. Hannibal hasn't touched him since that night, almost two weeks ago now.
“Nothing to do with her being a woman,” the commander snaps.
But Face knows it only makes it worse, what happened, her being female. It’s worse, when it’s a woman. And he can’t stop thinking about her, leggy, those big fake tits, silky black hair. A stripper in that Bosnian bar on their last mission. Face can’t stop seeing her, the way her eyes stared at him, sprawled out beneath him, as the life drained away from her body. Double gunshot wounds to the stomach.
One to her forehead.
Right below him.
Walther smoking.
“It’s because of what you did to her, Lieutenant Peck,” the commander says. “Do you understand that what you did not only violated LOAC by killing a non-combatant needlessly...”
“We're black ops, we don’t follow LOAC!” Face protests, a little too heatedly.
Hannibal glares at him.
The ADC coughs. “I’m glad you didn’t put that in your rebuttal statement, Lieutenant Peck.”
“...but you crossed the line, in more ways than one.”
“Boss, please,” Face says desperately, looking over at Hannibal. “You know she was dying because of the shoot-out we had with those mafia assholes and...”
“I wasn’t in the room, lieutenant,” Hannibal says, monstrously calm, and that’s when Face knows the man is pissed beyond belief. The major’s backed him up, as best he could, but Hannibal didn’t lie for him.
“I need you to understand this, lieutenant,” the commander at the end of the table says, and holds his hand out for the signed forms. “Shooting that woman was beyond disgraceful. This entire battalion has been shamed by your actions and your exceptionally poor judgment. You’ve betrayed your oath as a commissioned officer of the United States Army and as a Ranger. And through this whole thing, you’ve displayed no emotion whatsoever. Disgraceful...”
Hannibal’s sitting just to the right of their commander, but the major’s not doing anything. He’s just blank. Completely blank, and right when Face has never felt more rejected in his life.
Out of the Rangers.
Out of Hannibal’s unit.
But maybe, maybe not everything’s lost here...
“...you will report in to your new commander, Colonel Harrison, 43rd Sustainment Brigade commander, at zero-seven-thirty tomorrow morning. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Face says in a low voice.
“You’re dismissed.”
He turns on his heel, the shiny coraframs he never wears clicking on the office floor, and when he hits the outer office, his stomach gives and he barely makes it to the bathroom in time.
Puking, gripping the bowl with nerveless fingers, Face doesn’t notice Hannibal coming in until the major taps on the metal stall door.
He’s got a folder in his hand. “I’ve got your copies of the paperwork, Face,” he says, guarded. “Clean yourself up. I’ll drive you home.”
“But...”
Hannibal fishes his car keys from a pocket. “You’re in no condition to drive.”
Face tastes bile burning in his throat, feels his hands shaking, and yeah, that makes a hell of a lot of sense right now.
On the way, off post, back through the winding narrows of the Colorado Springs streets, Face can feel himself getting colder and colder. It’s not the weather, not the gray overcast sky, that’s bothering the hell out of him. It’s Hannibal. Not talking, not even looking at him.
They turn right instead left and they’re going to his own shitty one-bedroom apartment.
This isn’t good.
Face would rather be going to Hannibal’s house. A nice house in one of the nicer neighborhoods in the foothills where military people don’t usually live. Face has really come to love the place, on the rare occasions they’re actually stateside. Comfortable and warm and safe. Like a home ought to be. Like how he’s always imagined it being, the last twenty five years of his life.
The lieutenant’s been hoping, over the last eight months, since he and Hannibal had started their little...whatever this is between them, that this might actually become home. Here, with Hannibal. Someday, maybe.
Hannibal parks close and doesn’t wait for him, before heading up the narrow concrete steps to the second-floor apartment. Face bites his lip, pausing, then follows as something sick starts building in his stomach again.
He throws up again, but this time, Hannibal’s not waiting conveniently nearby. No, the boss is in the hallway, waiting there, unlit cigar in his hand. He stands as Face cracks the door and shuffles out.
The boss, on his feet, and that has to be a good sign, right? Face sort of flows right over to him, up against him, spreading his hands across that strong body, letting himself feel, letting himself believe...
“Face,” Hannibal says, gentle but not kind. “Face, look at me.”
The younger man rolls his eyes up to catch the boss’ gaze. “Yeah, Hannibal?”
“What did you mean, we all know you did it?”
Face feels his blood go cold, as Hannibal’s hand tighten down around his biceps, swinging him around and crashing him belly-first into the hallway wall. Hands slide to meet his, yank, pinning his wrists over his head.
“Boss?”
“What did you mean, Face?” Hannibal growls against his neck, bringing his other hand around to the buckle of his belt, his fly. “What. Did. You. Mean?”
The lieutenant’s hips buck of their own accord, right back into Hannibal’s, and fuck, why is the man hard, Face wonders frantically as his green uniform trousers are jerked down, his briefs, his ass right against Hannibal’s groin as the older man slams him into the wall again. Painful, this time.
As Hannibal opens up and opens him up, just barely, spits in his hand, spreads him, Face can’t help himself. Rough, soft, kinky, whatever. His body responds to the slightest attention from his lover, longs for it, so he leans back into it, moaning as Hannibal breaches him in one long hard thrust.
“What did you mean, Temp?”
Behind him, Face can feel every ounce of the older man’s confusion, his frustration, pistoning into him, all the layers of uniform between them, and they’ve done this before, Hannibal fucking him through a wall after a bad mission, after a terrible day at home station, when something’s gone to shit and needs release. This is worse, more, than it usually is. Hard and desperate, like Hannibal’s trying to prove something to himself, convince himself of something, and it’s terrifying.
But Face still arches into him, moving just like he loves until Hannibal comes with a shuddered gasp, biting down on his shoulder through the thick wool, that same familiar heat spreading up through his belly, and Face sighs back into him, still painfully hard. “Boss,” he murmurs like he always does, “boss, please...”
Because after Hannibal’s done this, after the bruises come, after all the bad things pass, Hannibal will pull him away and lay him down and strip him naked and take him in hand, or mouth, play with him until he’s hard again himself, leisurely and sweet and slow, climbing up that curve together, coming together...
But there’s none of that. Just a hand in his hair, jerking him back around and throwing him back.
Face does not like the look on his lover’s face. “Boss?”
“Did you kill that woman, Face?”
Face knows, just fucking knows, that this is going to shit. Should have been expecting it, really. Everything goes to shit, sooner or later... and he lets his forehead hit the wall.
“You weren’t in the room,” he tries to explain, voice hitching a little as he tries to gather himself back up. “I had to do something.”
“So you murdered her?”
“John, it wasn’t like th...” he says desperately, pressing both hands onto his lover’s chest.
“Don’t you dare,” Hannibal snarls, and there’s something in his voice that’s going to shatter Face clean apart. “Don’t you fucking dare, Face!”
“Please, just... just...”
“You murdered her.”
“Boss...”
“Shut up! I know you did it! I wasn’t in the room, but I fucking heard the shot, lieutenant!” Hannibal roars, pushing Face away and zipping himself back up. “I’ve spent two weeks defending you to that man! And what the fuck do you say to him? We all know you did it? Could you have humiliated me more?”
“John...”
“Motherfucker, Face!” Hannibal yells, and punches the wall.
That stops everything, for a few seconds, Hannibal’s knucles as he pulls loose, the hole in the drywall deep enough to see the insulation through, and Face reaches out for him, feeling stunned by the force of the anger that just came out of his man. “Boss, you’re bleeding...”
Hannibal looks at his own hand, torn skin dripping red, and jerks it away from Face, heading for the kitchen. “I’ve had worse, kid,” and that’s almost sorrowful.
Maybe the anger’s passed, then, Face thinks and feels doubly encouraged when Hannibal sits down at the counter and lets him bring over a wet paper towel. Maybe Hannibal will let him explain.
“I wanted to tell you, boss, but...” Face starts, but Hannibal waves him off. Pushes him off, actually, taking the damp towel away and sliding his hand away from Face’s.
“I asked for the transfer, kid. You should know that.”
Face feels faint. “What?”
“You’re too emotional, kid, too reactive. Trigger-happy. You’re not Ranger material. And after this... I’m tired of trying to make you work. I can’t make you work. This is beyond...”
“But, you said... you said you defended me.” And Face thinks of all the times when Hannibal told him how proud he was, how pleased with his new lieutenant. How eager to learn his boy was, how clever, how quick, how beautiful...
“I can’t keep doing it, Face. I can’t have men in my unit or in my Rangers that need to be defended from themselves. There are bigger things at stake.”
“Am I... a liability, boss?”
He stands. “Goodbye, Templeton.”
And whatever’s been teetering in his head since Hannibal threw him against the wall suddenly breaks open, and all his internal supports are crumbling to dust. “John... are you... are you...?”
“Face, I love you and you know that,” Hannibal says slowly, and he’s all the way over by the door now. Opens it. Ready to walk out of his life forever. “But you’re not welcome in my Rangers any more.”
No, he wants to say. No, no, John, you’ve never said that to me, you’ve never told me you loved me, I love you, too, please... but all that comes out is that last bit. “Please, you gotta...”
“Or my bed,” Hannibal says in a soft, sad voice, and shuts the door behind him.
Face stares, and sags, and doesn’t get a chance to explain.
Not about how he’d come into that little back room after the firefight, as Hannibal was already starting to exchange the usual unpleasantries in heated Russian, how Face had found the stripper, shot in the stomach, bleeding out. A painful way to die. Hours, maybe days, if she was unlucky enough to get sent to a hospital in that part of the world. She’d looked up at him, held up a hand, begging, somehow begging for release, and he’d done the only merciful thing he could think of.
How he’d pulled the trigger.
Two weeks of nightmares. The only thing that’s made it bearable was knowing he’d wake up next to Hannibal. That every time it got too hard to handle, the memory of her face, he could reach out, and Hannibal would take it away. But now...
His ass hits the floor and his head hits the wall and Face doesn’t move for a while.
+++++
“I’m really sorry about this,” Face says, forehead on the passenger side window. “Didn’t mean to leave my care on base yesterday...”
“Oh, don’t apologize,” the captain replies with a slight smile. “Gives me time to talk.”
They know each other, a little. O-Club, mandatory fun. Face makes a point of keeping track of most of the girls on post, just so he knows who to go to when he needs to keep his reputation up. So he still knows her. Enough for him to have her phone number saved, enough for him to know she’s the brigade exec and she’s got an SUV.
“Don’t you mean, you know, for us to talk?”
“Naw,” and she’s still grinning, but it’s more forced now than when she picked him up, laughing at his call and whatever bullshit explanation he’d given her that he can’t remember now, “I meant me. I’m the brigade exec, and you’re going to be the deputy exec, or whatever, for the forseeable future, which means that I own your ass.” Her hands tighten on the steering wheel, just a little. “Not the colonel.”
He notices that, and stretches, doing his best to smile back, but the muscles in his face crack as he tries that particular expression on. Face doesn’t like the way he feels right now. Hollow, blank. Did he sleep last night? He can’t remember, and it scares him that he’s not scared of that. “That could be fun, Hannah.”
“I’m serious, Face,” she says, and he remembers she goes to that megachurch north of town. “I need you to trust me on this. Just do what I tell you to do, without whining, and we’ll have a great time with your little disciplinary action here until they pull you back to the...”
“They’re not pulling me back,” he says quietly, and the captain slams on the brakes a little too hard at the light.
“No?” And she looks at him.
“No.”
“Okay, then.” She nods. “Just... stay away from Colonel Harrison.”
“Why?”
“I... I don’t think I should talk about it,” she tells him with one of those judgmental sighs in her voice that only ever mean one thing, and then they’re pulling up to the Fort Carson gate. She’s fishing in her pocket for her ID, and doesn’t look at him again. “Now, where’s your damn car?”
Hannah doesn’t make him go back for it, though. She hands him off to the secretaries, telling them to go get their new el-tee some coffee, and takes his car keys and jogs down there to his old unit herself. The secretaries are both Army wives, chubby girls with thick, happy laughs who are already just charmed to no end by the cute new lieutenant who they can admire from a safe distance and push a great deal of their workload off on.
Face smiles along with it all, their vapid chatter and probing little questions, grinning like he doesn’t have a care in the world and he’s perfectly fine and everything is just fucking peachy right now. And that’s when he realizes.
It’s all going to be a con from now on. Everything is going to be a con. He lost the one person in his life he didn’t have to lie to. He’s lost him.
Hannibal...
“Mornin’, sir,” one of the secretaries chirps, and Face looks up from where’s he’s just put too much creamer in his own coffee. They’re in the break room, surrounded by the floor’s snack bar, one of the secretaries digging into a bowl of microwaved oatmeal that smells like blueberries, the other talking to the man that just walked in. A tall, fading blonde. In BDUs. With colonel rank.
The senior officer goes for the pot and stops with it, half over to a clean mug.
“Lieutenant Peck?”
“Yes, sir?”
The older man holds out his hand, smirks just a little. “Colonel Harrison. Glad to have you.”
Face isn’t thinking about this man. He’s thinking of another, tall, fading chestnut, catching up to him on the trails, early in the morning, chilly. The way that other man clapped him on the back and introduced himself and welcomed his new lieutenant in and Face had thought... he clearly remembered thinking... that maybe this time, with this man, things might turn out...
But that’s all over.
He was nothing but a disappointment to Hannibal. A fucking disappointment.
I can’t keep doing it, Face...
He grins over the top of it all, though, the con and all that, and shakes his new boss’ hand.
And when the colonel, when this colonel, doesn’t let go right when he should, Face finds himself wondering, why the fuck not?
And It takes exactly ten days for him to crack.
Him, Colonel Harrison, not Face.
Face doesn’t really give a shit, however the new boss wants to handle this. Flirting or fucking, doesn't matter.
He'll do it. Why not?
He figures that out on day two, when the colonel calls him into his office to go over expectations and all that crap, and the colonel leans forward in the middle of it and says something that the lieutenant just fucking knows is going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Lieutenant Peck... Face, can I call you Face?”
“Everyone does.”
“Face, I know you’re probably struggling. Losing your qualifications, having that all... thrown away. But your career doesn’t have to be over. You can still recover from this...”
“Sir...” He didn’t want to hear it.
But the colonel kept going. “...depending, of course, on my evaluation of your performance, that sort of thing. But,” and he laid his hand down on top of Face’s, where it was resting on the cool walnut of the table, “I don’t want you to think that means anything other than doing the best job you can, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And for the record, I’m so sorry.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“I assumed, I mean, Face, Colonel Smith has pull with people across the command. If he’d tried a little harder, I’m sure he could have gotten you out of this. It wouldn’t be the first time...”
And Face had smiled. “He did what he thought was right,” he said, no confidence at all, and Colonel Harrison had patted his hand, and gone back to whatever he’d been saying about email protocol, or some shit like that.
If he’d tried a little harder...
But he hadn’t.
So fuck him. Face figures he doesn't owe Hannibal anything anymore. Not loyalty. Not love. Not those goddamn dreams he keeps having about the man, the glowing memories of all the things they'd had, dreams where Hannibal forgives him, where Hannibal shows up at his apartment and apologizes and takes him by the hand and...
No, Hannibal's done nothing to deserve that kind of agony on Face's part.
Hannibal hadn’t thought him worth the time. And Hannibal was... a man like Hannibal had judging him unworthy was pretty much the final verdict on one Templeton Peck, first lieutenant, United States Army.
Fucking worthless.
Confirming everything everyone else had ever told him, really. So it's almost a relief, when Face realizes that. He doesn't have to try anymore, doesn't have to strive to become something he'll never be, something he never could be. Hannibal did him a favor, really.
Didn't he?
So now here he is, working late, very late, the sun down for hours now, proofing awards packages and wanting nothing more than to go home and drink himself stupid. It’s a Wednesday. Why the hell not? It’s not like he’s got anything more important to be doing. Not like he's good for anything more than this.
“You still here, Face?”
Colonel Harrison, shrugging into his gortex BDU jacket. It's cold outside. Face had left his at home this morning. Fucking jackets. Fucking October snowstorms.
“Guess so, sir.”
“You should head home, before the roads ice up,” the colonel says, and pauses. “They’re predicting more snow later.”
Face brandishes the pile of gray folders that Hannah left him with for tomorrow. “Got at least six more of these to go, sir.”
“You know,” the colonel says, taking the folders away and sitting on the edge of Face’s desk, “I am aware that you’ve probably got a personal life that must be wanting some attention right about...”
“What personal life?” Face laughs, feeling cold inside.
“No family, girlfriend?” the colonel asks, a little more interested now.
“No, the uhh, no... I usually just hit the bars downtown or something if...”
The colonel nods. “That’s not good, Face. You need human contact. Especially right now. I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” he murmurs, and lifts a hand to stroke Face’s cheek, absolutely unmistakable. The lieutenant schools himself still, pushing away the irrational thought that only Hannibal’s allowed to touch him like this, only Hannibal’s allowed to...
“Oh, I'm living the dream, boss,” Face replies, letting himself lean into that hand just a little. Not really able to stop himself. It's different from Hannibal's hand. Soft, thumbs a little tweaked from too many hours on the computer. A bureaucrat's hand. But still, there it is.
Where Hannibal's isn't.
“I don’t know how he could have just thrown you away like last week’s newspaper, gorgeous boy like you,” Harrison murmurs, and shifts around so he’s right in front of Face. “He was fucking you, wasn’t he? Told it meant something? Made you feel... I don’t know, whole, wanted, loved. Am I right?”
Not trusting himself to speak, Face nods. Once. Slow.
Colonel Harrison runs a hand through his hair, smiling a little, and kisses his forehead as he undoes his belt, the button fly on those damn uniform pants. “I’ll never lie to you like he did, Face,” he says, walking Face up and out of his chair. “I promise you that.”
“So what's this?” the lieutenant asks, feeling weak, forcing himself steady.
“Come on now, son,” Harrison says, and takes himself out, starts stroking. Smaller than Hannibal. Smaller than Hannibal in every regard, Face thinks. “I would hate to have to report I’ve got a homosexual in my unit. You’ve had enough trouble already. You don’t need anything else comin' down on you right now. Do you?”
"Quid pro quo, then, sir?"
"Hardly."
"Sir..."
"Don't tell me you don't need this."
Face stares at him for a minute, thinking, you got me there, sir, forces that smile again, the fake one that only Hannibal was ever able to see through.
And drops to his knees.
+++++
Face knew, somewhere, in the back of his mind, the part he didn’t really care to listen to right now, that he wasn’t going to get away with just blowing the guy. For a few weeks, he managed it, but he was always aware that it wasn’t going to last. That the colonel was going to want more.
So he wasn’t surprised, about a month later, when Harrison locked his office door, after everyone else had gone home, and grabbed him by the collar.
“Desk, lieutenant. Now.”
It wasn’t hard. It was surprisingly easy, actually.
Everything else had been slipping. Why not this, too?
It started with the little things, like the day Face forgot to stop by the BX for toilet paper on his way home, and hadn’t gotten back to the story for another three days. He had paper towels, didn’t he? Or the morning he slept through his alarm, and barely had time to get to work, much less hit the trails. How easy it seemed, not to worry about his morning run anymore after that - it wasn’t like he needed all that muscle to jockey a desk. Or when he ran out of one of his favorite skin products, and didn’t bother to make the drive up to Denver to get more.
What was the point? What was the point of any of it?
So, Face doesn’t fight it, the way Colonel Harrison throws him towards the piece of furniture in question. Feels hot breath on his ear and a hand ghosting around his front and he tightens his grip on the curved wooden edge until he could see his knuckles go white, bloodless, and a hand was forcing him apart.
He spreads his legs as far as he can, hobbled by those BDU pants he’d never had to wear in Hannibal’s unit. Bites the inside of his cheek.
Shuts his eyes.
When he gets home that night, about an hour or so later, sweaty and cold and dirty in places he knows he’ll never get clean, not anymore, and flicks on the lightswitch in the kitchen, the lights don’t come on. With a sigh, he hits the penlight on his keychain, and there it is.
The electric bill, sitting on the counter, under a McDonald’s bag he really should have thrown away yesterday. A month overdue, Face realizes, and the utilities company has a twenty-four hour hotline, this time of year.
But he can handle it in the morning, he tells himself, and goes to sleep without bothering to shower.
+++++
Face didn’t exactly lie to Colonel Harrison.
He still does go out on the weekends, when he needs it, to that little strip of downtown bars full of college girls and Academy cadets and enlisted from any of the area’s five bases. Too many military, really, for his taste, but the college girls are always nice, and it’s one of these that he’s charming, beer in hand, the girl blushing furiously but obviously putting on that brave front like college girls usually do, playing with the edge of her completely non-functional scarf and smiling.
And he’s right at the good part, the part where he gets to lean over and ask her if she wants to get out of here and take her home and screw her stupid, regain some kind of control, have it, if even for a little while. So close, right there, tucking a bit of blonde hair back out of her face, right...
“Face?”
She giggles, and turns around and Face groans internally but puts on his best smile. He knows that voice.
“Sergeant Davies,” the lieutenant says slowly. “What are you doing here?”
“Implying I’m too old for the club scene?” Hannibal’s first sergeant smiles back. He’s got something clear in his hand. Probably club soda, Face knows, and feels his smile crack into something a little more honest. This guy’s a fucking saint.
“It is a little weird,” Face admits. The girl smiles at him, sipping at her beer, and slips away. Fuck. Well, he can get rid of the shirt and go find another one. Plenty of girls where that one came from.
“Well, we had a going away at the Old Chicago’s, and some of the leadership stuck around to do some drinking and...” the sergeant kind of peers at Face in the dim light. “You want to go up on the roof? It’s kind of noisy for catching up here.”
He sighs and sets his drink down. “Fine.”
It’s quieter up on the rooftop, open to the night, colder, snowy, the pool tables quiet, the karaoke stage empty and dark. The first sergeant shrugs and finds a place at the bar and Face, after a minute, joins him.
“So,” he asks, “good to see you, I guess?”
“I know you’re probably pissed at me,” the first sergeant says. “After the Article 15 and everything and my role in all of that, but it is good to see you. We haven’t heard from you in over two months. They treating you okay over at Sustainment?”
Face tries to laugh, but it dies in his throat before it comes out. “What difference does it make to you people? Not a Ranger anymore.”
“I didn’t know the general was going to strip you of your...”
“He didn’t. It was Hannibal’s recommendation,” Face replies, and signals the bartender over, asks for tequila. “Hs decision, me being gone.”
“Face, Hannibal had a lot of hope for you, I’m sure...”
The shot’s down in front of him now, and he picks it up, rolls it in his figners for a moment or two. “Yeah, and I disappointed him.” The tequila burns on the way down. Fuck, the cheap stuff. Or no, wait, that’s perfect. He taps, asking for another. “In every single possible way, I disappointed him.”
“He was pissed about the shooting, but el-tee, that shit happens on missions, sad fact of life, but...”
“Evidently not under his command,” Face snaps and downs the next shot as fast as the first. Normally he wouldn’t be talking about this. Normally, he would keep his mouth shut. But he’s drunk and horny and the sergeant just cock-blocked him and he’s really not in the mood to be keeping himself under control. “Evidently there are no mistakes shooting some woman who’s already dying when she asks you to is completely unethical.”
The sergeant jerks a little bit. “What do you mean, Face, already...”
But just then, his cell phone buzzes, a text coming in, and he looks at it with a groan. Colonel Harrison’s number. A hotel name, room number, time. Tonight. Soon.
Shit, this is new, and Face wonders if maybe he shouldn’t...
But no. There’s no support now. Nobody to go to, and if he turns Harrison in, Harrison will turn Hannibal in, and despite everything, Face can’t bear the thought of that happening.
So he’ll just have to take a cab.
“Going somewhere, Face?” the first sergeant asks, worry furrowing his brow. “Cause Hannibal’s here downstairs somewhere, I’m sure he’d love to see...”
“Can’t,” Face says, that fake grin sliding out of place now as he slips off the stool and tucks his phone back in his pocket. “Booty call.”
“Doesn’t that usually work the other way around?” the shirt asks, a little too sharp.
“It’s all very egalitarian these days, shirt,” he says, and pauses, feeling very awkward. “Don’t... don’t tell Hannibal you saw me, okay?”
“He hasn’t bee right, since you left, Face. You know that, right?”
“What are you trying to say, shirt?” he asks, sharp.
The sergeant holds out a hand. “Face, I’m not saying anything except...”
“He’s probably just pissed he failed so bad with me,” Face says, surprising himself at how bitter that all sounds. “You know how he is. One chance with him...”
“El-tee, I’m sure...”
“...and I blew mine. What are you gonna do?"
"Face, are you sure she was..."
"Sorry, Davies, but I have to go,” he says curtly, and brushes past the sergeant and all his fucking belated concern back down into the darkness of the club and the street and the cab and the hotel beyond.
Continue to Part Two
