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sonora_conejaPairing: Morrison/Murdock, Hannibal/Murdock
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: non-con, also, Morrison
Summary: Fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Okay. In the movie Murdock seems to feel the most betrayed out of the guys when it's revealed that the Arab is Morrison. And earlier on, when they all think that Morrison's in the vehicle that just exploded, he sounds absolutely frantic.
You can see where this is going.
I totally want some Murdock/Morrison. Oh yeah. I'm thinking perhaps Morrison knew that Murdock was gay and told him that it was the only way he'd get to stay on Hannibal's team. And Murdock went along with it because, well, he has to do what the general says and because Morrison gave him just enough affection that Murdock thought that he meant something to him. Hence the betrayal.
Super bonus points if Murdock thinks that Hannibal knew about it all this time. And triple super bonus points if Hannibal finds out (either from Murdock or Morrison) and is PISSED AS ALL HELL.
/long prompt
The prompt says it all!
"How you doing tonight, son?”
Murdock’s doing just fine, dandy, fantastic, outstanding, until he feels that hand land on his shoulder and he realizes he’s still got a little smear of the night’s activities on his chin and crap, is that General Morrison?
“Oh, howdy, sir. We get those horse thieves yet?” the pilot says, wiping his face with a sweaty hand before turning around and giving his best crazy-man grin. It usually works. Turn it up to eleven, people back off. He’s been doing it for years.
Murdock’s got a whole soliloqy planned - he has a bigger library of the things than Shakespeare - but Morrison rubs his thumb thoughtfully over his chin, and that’s no good at all. He’s having a hard time staying present. Happens sometimes. He’s all wound up from a few minutes ago, looking forward to a nice jerk-off in the showers and then bed. His nerves are all smoothed but glowing hot, emotion like a lava flow through him, and it bubbles at Morrison’s touch. The general doesn’t look mad.
“Saw you behind the barriers again. Shouldn’t leave the sandbags, son. Ain’t safe out there.”
“Yes, sir, don’t want those Apaches getting at me, got it...”
“Why go back there?”
Murdock squirms a little. It’s hard to keep up two things at once, three with the conversation, but Morrison’s not going to get it like Hannibal does, and he doesn’t want to piss him off more. He tries. “Shootin’ at...”
“I don’t think you were the one doing the shooting, were you, captain?” Morrison murmurs, close now, and all Murdock can think of are those vulcanologists who got killed in an explosion back in the ninties, and he tries to shove Morrison away before he burns up.
No luck. The man catches him up by the wrists and holds him til he stops thrashing and starts shaking.
“You were sucking cock, weren’t you, son?”
“Oh, no, sir, there’re no queers in this man’s army.”
“I didn’t ask if you were gay, captain. But I can.”
“Oh, no sir, I ain’t...”
“It’s okay, son,” Morrison says, running a hand through his hair now, and Murdock can’t help the way his body pushes up into it, the way that hand pushes down. Force of nature. Can’t stop it. “What would Hannibal say if he found out? Little cock hound in his unit. Break his heart, having to sign your discharge papers. Think I could do that to my old friend?”
Murdock knows all about how to undo these uniform belts. He stares at it for a second, though, and Morrison strokes his hair softly, before gripping down hard. “Think I could do that to you, captain?”
Morrison’s not the best-preserved general Murdock’s come across, and it takes a little work getting him hard, but Murdock’s always up for a challenge and he wants to relieve that pressure before it erupts and covers his team’s area in killing ash. He’s not sure what it is anymore, definitely not him. Maybe it’s coming from Morrison, who’s holding him in and pumping his hips, fucking his mouth. Feels like. Could be.
His knees scrape the dirt for the fourth time tonight, hands gripping but useless, as he swallows down every bitter drop, tonguing the general’s softening cock once or twice more before pulling away and tucking him back in his pants. That tension from earlier seems to have settled now. He’s not hard anymore.
Morrison’s panting a little as he hauls Murdock back to his feet. “That was very good, captain.” He’s stroking Murdock’s face now, and it feels as nice as the praise against the stubble. “But I can’t protect you if you do this for anyone else.”
Murdock’s paying attention, to Morrison, to some little twinge of fear, but not really, because he’s thinking about that volcano - Pinatubo, that was it. He runs his mouth over his sleeve and heading back to their tents, heart light, but that’s only because nobody knows when the volcano’s going to erupt and kill everything in the valleys below.
+++++
They’re quarreling in Farsi, Face a little slower than the boss, sentences disjointed against the colonel’s near-perfect flow, BA with headphones hermetically sealed over his ears. Murdock can hear them before he gets to the tent.
Blue. Everything inside is blue but not real. The artificial glow of a computer screen sees to that. The disassembled guts of Face’s M4. Hannibal’s model cars. Red cleaning rags. Sock puppets. The boss working on one of those combat laptops. The lieutenant, trying to get the congealed yogurt out of the rifling.
Under that light, Murdock can see it. Everything’s still and silent, not moving, barely rippling, no breezes, monotone, flat. Sink conditions are forming in the sky, and he can’t stand for that at all. No pressure differentials, no flight...
“Didn’t know you spoke Farsi, Facey," Murdock says. He had to say something. He desperately needs to talk, stop thinking.
“Barely,” Hannibal grunts and knocks the ash off his cigar, still typing. “How’s your evening going, captain?”
“Dormant.”
Face buries his confusion with a smile. He’s good at hiding things, playing along, and sometimes Face might be frequency hopping with him, following the changes in wavelength. But that’s all it usually is, following. Tonight, that's just fine by him. “Well, as long as everything’s okay.”
Hannibal pushes the screen down a little. “How do you feel about an AC-130 tomorrow, captain?"
That’s what Murdock likes about Hannibal. He knows he doesn’t understand. He knows, unlike everyone else in Murdock's life, that he doesn't have to. That it doesn’t matter. He nods excitedly
"Good," Hannibal says around the cigar, and goes back to the form.
Ops-normal. Murdock’s proud. He doesn’t have to disappoint him tonight.
Not ever, if he's careful.
He tries. Over the next few days, Murdock tries not to pay any attention to the air pressure as it builds back up, the updrafts that push him to the places beyond the reach of base generators. It’s hard. Who argues with thermals? But he tries to maintain low altitude because he knows the general’s a busy man and he doesn’t want to bother him.
But it turns out the general has time, time to help him out, time to help him be okay, let him use that, because it’s not three days before Morrison comes and finds him.
“Having trouble, captain?” the general asks in a soft voice, running a hand around Murdock’s hip and pressing him back against him. They’re alone, some random tent that’s being used for storage and nothing else. Enclosed space, encircling arms. Murdock feels his heart start to race.
“I know you are, son,” Morrison tells him. “I’m having trouble, thinking of you all the time. Can’t figure out what I should do. It’s my obligation...”
“Oh, no, sir, that, no...” Murdock says, knowing his words are coming arhythmic and short.
“It’s hard on me, captain, knowing this about you.” Those hands are moving now, pressing Murdock back. “It’s difficult. Bad things might happen to you. And look at you. So, so hot for these bad things.”
The captain squirms, trying to get a grip. Somewhere Something. He has to hold on. The sink’s coming back. He could lose control completely.
“Yes, you can’t help yourself, can you?” Morrison asks, petting his hair now, and Murdock shakes his head, screwing his eyes shut. It makes things worse. He can feel it more like this.
“Please...”
“Hands on the crate, son,” Murdock hears, and sighes a long sigh of relief as his palms close down around something solid, the cool air suddenly on his back, the slide of spit as he’s opened and stretched and breeched and filled, oh god, as he’s filled with something solid and certain. There are little murmurs, lips nipping along the short hairs on the back his neck, pressure and tight, bursting thumbs along his hips, quicker, more frantic thrusts.
The world clarifies to blue. He tries to tell himself it's the sky, like he likes.
A hand slides around his front. “It’s no good if you don’t come where I’m leading, captain.”
“Yes sir,” Murdock gasps, and tries to think of Hannibal, tells himself that loss of altitude he's feeling is just his inner ear playing tricks on him, nothing real.
He bites his lip until it bleeds.
+++++
After a few days, things quiet down in his head. The descent stops. But only because he can’t fall any lower. Murdock gets stuck somewhere. It’s a place where things plump, inflate until only basic form remains. Some grow, some shrink, some change color, until there's no distinctions anymore. All the discreet little shadows the world casts in his mind used to be so present. Now, it all retreats from him when he reaches out for it.
It turns out the general has lots of time. Not every four or five days, like Murdock usually has to wait, but every other day. Sometimes every day. And it’s nice, not in the dirt, not hiding. Morrison knows every inch of the base.
So Murdock gets the rare pleasure of an actual bed sometimes, like tonight, smooth padding under his stomach cushioning the surprising force that Morrison brings to bear. But Murdock likes it rough, likes it however he can get it, and the edges are gone, all the bad bits rounded up. It’s all soft, so it's okay.
“I’m taking a huge risk to help you out,” Morrison tells him. “Do you know that, Murdock? It could be very bad for me...”
Face is shaking the pilot out of his sleeping bag, asking if he’s okay. He doesn’t have an answer.
A second finger sinks into him, and Murdock makes a little groaning noise, like the general likes. He doesn’t really feel it, but the general’s being so considerate, it’s the least he can do. Sometimes he can even come. That part’s getting easier. There’s a shape in his mind that makes that work. He can almost reach it...
A hand squeezes around the base of his cock, and Murdock sobs in what he thinks is probably a very real protest.
“Not before, captain.”
Lots of rules, the general seems to have lots of rules. Murdock forgets sometimes. There are so many trying to roll away from him these days that it's hard to keep track of these new things.
BA’s fixing his motorcycle, and Murdock doesn’t remember that he’s cooking until the big guy stops him from burning himself.
Murdock’s learned the appreciate the changing landscape of his aimless mental migrations, and it doesn't bother him. This is a place he's never been here before. That alone is distracting enough to hold his interest and yet keep him here, where Morrison is sliding cold plastic into his body.
The general can’t get hard tonight, so he’s using a vibrator. The echoes of movement as the toy switches on dilute along the surface and nothing penetrates in. Murdock buries his face in the issued sheets.
Hannibal’s handing him a flight plan. The words on the page refuse to flow into his head properly, but Murdock desperately needs to please him. Can't let him down. Can't. But he can't makes sense of the words.
Nothing penetrates.
+++++
Murdock likes this particular piece, all the disparate notes overlaying and building on top of each other, confusing all the confusion and leaving open spaces where his thoughts can hide. But it’s tumbling apart now, faltering...
The pilot jerks up, startled, as the blasts of Bach’s Fugue in G-minor fade to near nothingness, but Face is holding the volum control on his headphone. He nods over to where’s Hannibal’s having a discussion - a very heated discussion - with...
“General Morrison’s aide,” Face says.
Murdock feels a wave of heat pass over him that has nothing to do with the sun above the camo netting and licks his lips. “Is he askin’ about me?”
Face shrugs.
There’s no time. Murdock slides off the lounge chair and heads over, hands in pockets, the mp3 player providing just enough organ music to keep everything from flying out of control. He can do this.
He sidles up next to Hannibal, giving the aide, some exasperated major. “What’s going on, bossman?”
“Murdock, do you know anything about this?”
“About what?”
“Did you submit paperwork for a Chinook?”
Chinook, Chinook. He turns up his headphones, still dangling around his neck, and tries to pay attention. It helps. Not the wind-thing in Alaska, Hannibal’s not talking about that, no, he’s talking about... “We talked about needin’ a helicopter for...”
“Going through the general isn’t procedure for this kind of request,” the major says, and Hannibal’s answering glare is priceless.
Murdock’s relieved. Morrison’s conscious hasn’t gotten the better of him. The general’s still keeping him safe, and even if he doesn’t know what’s going on, Murdock’s got an obligation to return the favor, play along. “You mad at me, boss?” he asks softly.
“I like it, taking the initiative,” Hannibal tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. “General wants to see you about it. Major, you want a beer?”
He’s not in uniform, so he cranks up the music as high as it’ll go as he strides away. Unlaced boots flapping against his calves, his cut-off ACU pants fraying around his knees. Those structures start building back up around him in the polyphony of the music, everything bad locked out. Everything calm. Light, filtering out into all its different wavelengths, sorting his thoughts, illuminating everything.
He can see it.
He watches the general dismiss everyone from the tent as he comes in. Listens as the general brushes aside his questions about the helicopter. Feels those old, strong hands close down on his shoulders, his shoulder where Hannibal touched him not ten minutes ago, and he recognizes something in the dimming glow as the organ fugue gives way into the sadder strains of Bach’s last piece, and that’s when Murdock starts to panic.
“What’s wrong, son?” Morrison asks, pulling the headphones finally away. “You can tell me.”
“I... didn’t ask for the helicopter, sir...”
“I needed to see you, captain,” Morrison says, burying his face in Murdock’s hair, drawing in a deep, noisy breath that cuts down through everything. The beauty from earlier’s gone, and Murdock can see everything as the ceiling crumbles around him.
“No...”
“You’re doin’ things to me, Murdock. So beautiful. Your body...”
His hands are pulled towards the general’s belt, the hardness there, and he’s struggling now, twisting as hard as he can, trying to get away, but that grip on his wrists is tight, and he doesn’t mean to do it, he really doesn’t, but in ripping loose he must have punched the general, because the man’s crumpling, wheezing.
Murdock runs a hand through his hair and backs up, stumbling over his own feet, hitting the ground, and Morrison’s up, standing over him. “Why you fighin’ me, son? Don’t you want to be here? Don’t you want to be here with me?”
He offers the pilot a hand up.
Murdock tries to slow his breathing, and takes it as the shadows close back in.
+++++
Tomorrow morning they’re heading out for Baghdad, and Murdock’s naked, staring at the green above him. The sky will be there soon enough. It’s dark outside. He’s got splinters in his back and stomach and his cheeks are still stinging and he’s sore all over. When he pulls his hand away from his thighs, there's blood on his palm. He doesn't care. He needs to sleep.
That’s all the exterior stuff, but he’s got many layers of though, like lanes in traffic. One’s almost empty, except for a single car, accelerating towards a single truth. All evening it’s been going, but he isn’t quite there yet.
“How about a bottle of blue label tonight? For your mission?”
Morrison’s holding it out. It’s damn hard to get alcohol in theater - stuff’s still officially banned. It’s a gift, there’s no mistake.
Hannibal likes the stuff, so Murdock nods. He’s rewarded with a soft kiss on his lips, stiffens at the unexpected affection. “My lovely captain,” the general murmurs, and lets his free hand start straying. "I bet your don't hear it nearly enough, how beautiful you are."
"Thank you, sir," Murdock gasps, nerves sparking under the fingertips. He should just give into that, he thinks, just give in and let things be like this, stop fighting it. What good was fighting?
After he hit the general, the man growled about how he could have him jailed for that, about how he wasn't going to, cared about him too much. He'd stripped the pilot, fucked him hard without any preparation at all, which hurt, until something tore...
“I’m sorry I had to hurt you,” Morrison whispers.
“I deserved it, sir,” Murdock replies in a small voice. Wasn’t right, hitting this man, who’d showed him so much compassion.
“Anything you want, it’s yours.”
Murdock forces the tension from his body, makes himself relax as the general explores all the territory he’s conquered, inch by inch, acre by acre...
Associations well up, and Murdock shoves them all away. He can’t let himself get lost in himself right now. He’s got a mission to fly in a few hours.
“I should go, sir,” and he’s surprised by how contented his voice sounds.
“You should,” Morrison says reluctantly, and then grabs a handful of hair, forcing his head back, attacking his mouth. He seems almost desperate, despite the fucking he issued out a few minutes ago, sad and mournful, and Murdock curls his own hands up into the general’s t-shirt, despite himself, kissing him back.
It finally breaks, and Murdock’s worried, because Morrison doesn’t say anything more to him as he gathers his clothes and dresses and leaves, scrunching over the table.
Face and BA are sparring with his grilling tongs as he comes back to their area, and it’s hard for Murdock to fake the grin. He almost forgets to say something ridiculous about it, to keep the guys smiling and laughing and not suspicious as he fires up the grill and goes for the steaks in the cooler.
Morrison shows up, and Murdock stays by the grill. Part of him wants to run up to the other man, ask him what’s wrong, but he’s talking to Hannibal and he can’t let Hannibal know what’s been going on.
He knows now.
Morrison needs him, as much as Murdock needs Morrison. He’s able to give something to the general, him, the crazy captain. He’s doing something noble for the other man. Something grand and special and necessary. Nobody’s ever needed him before, not like this.
Hannibal drapes an arm around his shoulder, and Murdock can’t help the little shiver that runs through him.
“You doing okay, captain? You’ve been kind of jumpy lately,” Hannibal says, handing over a plate and Murdock starts plating up the remaining meat.
“Fine,” Murdock says, smiling for real now, smiling at where Morrison’s sitting by the fire.
Hannibal grabs his hand, and Murdock jerks it back. Too late.
“That blood, Murdock?”
“Prolly from the steak.”
In the firelight, he knows Hannibal doesn’t believe him.
“Come sit down, captain. We’re going to do a toast.”
But what choice does Murdock really have?
+++++
Murdock knows what a risk the general was taking, approving a black-ops mission like this under the table. He knows because Morrison told him so, the day Hannibal wrested it away from Pike and Black Forest. Told him that the team owed him, that he was doing it for Hannibal but he was also doing it for Murdock.
The pilot hides his nervousnes by unhooking that part of the thought-train. It’s an old trick, one he started perfecting back when the first of the fractures appeared. It’s not about stopping it, just controlling it, segmenting off parts of himself and assigning different tasks. It’s not hard, He can leave the crazy behind on the ground when he flies, everything bad he doesn’t like in himself, lose himself in the task and find himself there, above the surface of the planet. Like BA and his cars, like Face and his open scope rifle, like Hannibal and everything.
The colonel gives him the thumbs up from the top of the cargo container. Lines hooked. Friends secure. Everything Murdock needs to pilot that chopper back to base.
He wonders if things will be the same now.
They’ll be headed back to the States soon, after this is over. No more General Morrison. No need for his kindnesses, his cruel and biting touches, the little tugs in the darkness that end in fresh scabs and soft kissing.
Murdock almost cries when he hears the general’s voice come over the headset. “Be there in five,” he says.
And then the humvee blows up.
That part of himself, the part he leaves behind in the sky when he lands, tries to tell him something. How’d they get the explosives on base? Who was it? Why didn’t the driver do a pre-check of the vehicle?
But that other part of him, that bit he’s using to float along the surface of himself, that’s racing towards the burning wreckage, heart hammering, voice screaming, trying to reach that man who’s been so kind to him.
And the shipping container explodes with a force that knocks them all down, but probably should have killed them, and the MPs advance, and Murdock’s tenuous control starts to shatter. There’s a rain of paper money falling gently around them as the humvee continues to burn. Everything’s burning.
He feels himself slip away, and only the inarguable snap of metal down around his wrists tells him how fast the tailwind is at his back. The sky’s growing black - he hates flying through thunder storms. And then he hits a quiet patch.
“How you doing, captain?” Hannibal asks as they’re loaded into the back of a gray van. Face’s mouth is pinched shut. BA’s staring at the ceiling as if he could rip through it by will alone. Only Hannibal seems calm.
He’s not, of course he’s not, but Murdock knows who and what the bossman is to him; the lee side of the storm, the streetlight in the dark, the updraft through the turbulence.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Hannibal continues gently. “Everything okay?”
“Clear sailing, sir,” Murdock tells him miserably, wishing he could tell him more, knowing he can’t. “Did... did Pike really murder Morrison?”
Face startles up at that, giving Murdock a strange look. His eyes flicker over to Hannibal, then back to Murdock, and the pilot feels his guts clench up. Face reads people, Face is so good at reading people... “Nobody survived that explosion,” Face says slowly. “Probably killed the sergeant who’s been driving him around, too.”
“Poor kid,” Hannibal mutters under his breath, and flashes Murdock a smile. Smiles at all of them. “We’re going to get through this, boys...”
Murdock’s shaking now, still sore. Morrison. Dead. He can't parse out why he cares, why he should worry at all, why he can’t just accept his freedom, what’s wrong with...
“I need you to stay focused, captain,” Hannibal says, catching him for a moment as his voice comes through what seems to be the UHF.
Murdock tries, but he’s tired, so tired of trying. He needs to get above this, into lonely expanses of rare air where he doesn’t have to see anything going on down here on the skin of the world, where too many ugly things dwell.
He just leans his head back and doesn’t see so much as feel the worried look that passes an entire conversation between Face and Hannibal. He’s rising away.
He's okay with that.
Murdock stays up there.
It’s quiet. Sound travels further at these altitudes, but he’s alone, so there’s only echoes from down below, and those don’t trouble him that much. Occasionally there are bad stretches, things he remembers as medication and leather restraints, but he just soars around those. He’s been in these skies before. He knows how to hide from those things down below. Things are still white and hard and cold, ice forms on the wings, bingo fuel is reached, but he stays up there.
Until.
“... you’ve got a package here from Annabell Smith?”
Hannibal.
Then Murdock’s not real sure what’s real and what’s not, because he’s watching a movie and then it’s shooting at him, BA destroys a guard shack, he wins a game of chicken against a little German car, he’s back in the sky, they’re falling out of it. In an M-80 Abrams tank.
It’s dark in the tank, the only illumination coming from weapon systems displays. Murdock hasn’t been in one of these in a while. There’s no ay he could remember all these details, all the little buttons. There’s clarity in that, at least for a little while.
They’re all clustered in the nose as they fall, close and tight. Murdock thinks he’s close enough to touch Hannibal and he pokes the boss’s knee, just to make sure. Even now, Hannibal takes the time to reach back and Murdock takes the risk of threading his fingers through that big hand. They aren’t in the Army right now, so maybe he doesn’t need to protect...
“Hannibal?”
“Welcome back,” Hannibal says softly, almost too quiet to hear, and he doesn’t let go as the tank plummets into the lake below.
Something warm starts spreading in his belly.
They get to Berlin easily enough - Murdock’s convinced it was that nice lady’s directions that helped them along. The tank goes in the woods near a rest stop, Face and BA go to appropriate an appropriate vehicle, and Murdock stays with Hannibal.
Hannibal stays with Murdock.
“I’m sorry,” the boss finally tells him.
Murdock doesn’t know what to do with that. “Sorry ‘bout what, bossman?”
“Murdock, I...”
“It’s okay, Hannibal,” Murdock says sheepishly, hoping he’s not blushing. “Wasn’t your fault. We all know that.”
“I’m not talking about the hospital. Not just talking about the hospital, captain. There’s something else going on,” Hannibal says, and Murdock’s suddenly aware of how close the colonel is sitting to him, that arm coming down around his shoulders, and the closeness and the touching and the kindness and the consideration is something he hasn’t had in a long time.
Not since Morrison.
And now he’s shaking his head, swaying a little as his hands jerk up to his hair, wrapping around the edge of the baseball cap, as if this will somehow block it all out.
“What is it, Murdock?”
And now those hands are being tugged away, down, and he’s back as far as he can get from Hannibal, in the far corner of the tank, back against a block of crates in a supply dump, huddled down into nothingness that Morrison can still see, the blocky outline of his body standing over him, that cock being held out to his lips...
“Captain, eyes up, now!”
The command in the voice is unmistakable, and Murdock uncurls just enough to realize that this is Hannibal, just Hannibal, and there’s nothing bad about Hannibal, in front of him, on his knees, thumbing a cooling path along his sweating brow, fingertips just beyond his hairline, under the hat, teasing. He resists the urge to fall into it.
“You’re safe here, captain. You’re safe with me.”
“Yes...sir."
+++++
Re: Fill (8/?)
(Anonymous)
2010-10-03 06:00 am UTC (link) Track This
“So tell me, Murdock, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t, sir.”
“You can tell me anything.”
Murdock freezes, but Hannibal continues the gentle strokes, and he can’t help the way his body’s responding to that. Heating him all up, that familiar feeling coming back, the one he always needs help with, and he doesn’t know what to think. He closes his eyes. He can’t feel anything, think of anything. “Before, at camp, he...”
There’s a little jerk in the rhythm, and Hannibal presses a little harder as he keeps going. There’s a growl. There’s a comforting possessiveness. “Who was it? I’ll break his kneecaps for you.”
“I, uh, aw, shit, Hannibal. Wasn’t somebody after my lunch money.” He looks away. “It was m’ fault, bossman.”
Hannibal stops completely. “What was your fault?”
“He... he... had to help me, sir, caught me, said he didn’t want to hurt a friend, makin’ you sit through an investigation...”
“Morrison,” Hannibal breaths, and Murdock’s not so numb that he can’t hear the little bit of information clicking into larger suspicions. Oh, god, Hannibal might have found out anyway and after he’d tried so hard... “He...”
“He was just tryin’ to help me out...”
Some breed of anger storms Hannibal’s face, the same kind that’s driven many a fist into a baddie’s skull, and Murdock can’t make himself any smaller. “You... went to Morrison?”
“I know, chain of command, sir,” Murdock says miserably. “What else could I do? He, he caught me.”
“You come to me. Immediately. Goddamnit, Murdock, don’t you trust me?”
“O’ course I do, boss, but I couldn’t tell you that I’m...”
The boss draws a deep breath. “A fantastic pilot? My team’s captain? A...
“Queer?”
“A good man,” Hannibal says sadly, and Murdock thinks that maybe he won’t be mad after all. “You’re a good man, Murdock.”
The feeling that he screwed up is growing in him now. He didn’t do what he should have. He failed Hannibal, despite himself. “Couldn’t let you deal with that, sir.”
“It’s not your job to protect me, Murdock. It’s mine to protect you.”
“I need things, sir...”
“...I failed you, son. I failed you horribly.”
Murdock wants to offer further protest, insist that all the arguments on his head are real and true and valid, that this is his fault, that Morrison didn’t... but he can’t, because his face is buried in Hannibal’s shoulder now and because his body is pressing into Hannibal’s and his weakness is buttressed against all that solid assurance. He has no words for how it feels as Hannibal holds him close and lets him sob until his tears are spent and dry heaves are all that’s left.
Hannibal pushes him back, and Murdock feels himself start to scatter again. He stops his fall, grabbing onto Hannibal with frantic speed.
“I don’t want to hurt you, captain,” Hannibal says, uncertainty in his voice mirroring that in his eyes.
“You can’t,” Murdock begs, and Hannibal nods a tight nod. The pilot tries to throw himself into the now welcoming arms, but is held back a moment more.
“I need you to understand, captain, that I would have never wished this on you. I’d kill the bastard myself for this...”
“But he’s dead.” The words twist a little.
Hannibal’s left eyelid twitches, and Murdock can see this very clearly, because Hannibal’s nose is about three inches from his, one, no distance at all, and chapped lips close down to his own and it’s pretty much the best thing he’s ever felt. It’s open and warm and wonderful, everything Morrison never was, and the pilot feels himself start to melt, fall apart, pull together, make him whole. The way Hannibal’s got his arm formed around his waist, the intensity of the kiss, the hand in his hair, it all makes Murdock think that maybe Hannibal needs this too, needs this just as much as he does.
He whimpers a little, and Hannibal tries to move away, but Murdock anticipates this and tightens his grip, opening up his mouth for Hannibal, a clear invitation.
The boss accepts.
They stay like that until BA pulls the car up, and Face bangs on the side and they have to go.
+++++
Murdock lifts the small helicopter off the roof of the Berlin office building, fingers practically dancing over the controls. It’s light and responsive, so he’s not quite sure if it’s him he’s feeling or the craft, slipping down between glass canyons and catching the falling Arab by the parachute. Light. Everything is without mass, his body still humming from Hannibal’s earlier ministrations.
He can’t quite believe it. He wants to, wants to think that it could be real, that Hannibal could really... at least for right now. If they go back in to the Army, like the boss has planned, like they all know the boss wants, then there can’t be any of that. But for right now, right now it’s okay, and the boss seems to think so, and Murdock can’t quite believe it.
So he keeps thinking about the way Hannibal’s eye was twitching. A stress reaction, maybe, although he’s never seen anybody deal with stress as well as Hannibal, so he doesn’t think it’s that. It’s something he hasn’t seen before. It worries him.
He sets the helicopter down outside town, in a relatively abandoned industrial facility where Face is waiting with a car. It’s a bit tricky getting the Arab on the ground without smashing him, but Murdock manages it well enough, and Face manhandles the guy into the trunk, adding a few choice insults in standard Arabic, which is much better than his Farsi, and has both him and Murdock laughing halfway back to the safehouse by the ocean.
In between the jokes, which finally feel real to Murdock again, he thinks. Maybe he’s pushing Hannibal. Maybe Hannibal doesn’t want...
Face sees the expression, or something, and reaches over, rubs Murdock’s shoulder. “It’s all going to be over pretty soon, buddy.”
“Maybe I like this,” Murdock says softly.
The conman nods, and turns down the last road to the meeting place. “It’s not so bad, is it?”
“Do you want to go back?”
“Do you?”
There’s no answer.
Hannibal and BA are already waiting for them, and the boss is the one who hauls the Arab from the trunk, slamming a knee into the hooded man’s chest as he does it, muttering an insincere apology he sits him up on a stool inside the old boathouse. Starts talking to him, and the choice of English sets all of Murdock’s suspicions to live-fire.
Something’s clearly not right.
“...boss, you know who this is?”
Hannibal looks incredibly pained for a moment, and jerks the hood off. “We all do.”
Morrison.
The man looks at him.
“Jesus Christ,” Murdock moans, and he’s going numb again and BA has to drag him out of the warehouse when Hannibal tells them to leave. How to react to something like that? How can he possibly?
None of them talk out there. It’s cold, the very day depressed. There aren’t words for something like this. Murdock’s getting that feeling again, the one where he retreats from the surface of himself, where feeling peels back from the skin and nothing gets in, nothing can bother him...
Hannibal’s out now, walking along the shoreline, far from them. They leave him alone. He goes back in the warehouse. There’s something welling up in Murdock now, watching the boss stride like that, so graceful and easy, even now...
“This isn’t... we aren’t done here yet,” Face says finally, like he’s coming to some kind of decision. “This doesn’t change anything.”
That eyelid, twitching. Hannibal, hiding it from him even as they, even as he...
Something inside him explodes. Maybe it’s the container truck, or the humvee, again, finally reaching him, like the light from a distant supernova. That night, all those horrible nights afterwards, thinking Morrison was dead. All the nights before, thinking Morrison meant, thinking he meant something to Morrison.
Murdock’s striding back towards the warehouse before he realizes it, the scattering radiation from the explosion inside him washing out everything else, impossible to think, too late to stop himself, too late to do anything but take in the scene in front of him.
Hannibal’s got a gun to the general’s head. There’s already a trickle of blood from the man’s mouth, a red mark on his face that will bruise later, body doubled over in what Murdock hopes to hell is pain.
He looks up. Sees Murdock. Smiles. Weezes dramatically. “Going to help me out here, darling? Hannibal here thinks...”
The muzzle lowers, a few degrees below the horizon, just enough.
The sound is deafening. The scream is louder.
Murdock walks forward slowly, not really sure how he’s supposed to approach the writhing man on the ground, bleeding from the belly wound. He has another flash of himself, laying naked, pleading, on the HQ conference table, sand and shame grinding their way under his skin. His hands open and close a few times, his mouth opens and closes a few times, the sink coming back over him, and at that, Hannibal’s catching him, folding him under a strong arm,
“Hannibal...” Morrison gasps, reaching up a red-stained hand insistently, as if Hannibal will care about him now.
The boss just looks down at him. “I’m sorry it had to be this way, Russ.”
“I...” Breathing comes in painful jerks, and Murdock winces a little, thinking that maybe the bullet ripped the diaphragm. All those soft organs, all those fluids, blood bursting free, poisoning tissues. “You weren’t giving... him... what he... needed.”
“So you took it?”
“He... enjoyed it, Hannibal.”
“What happened to you, you sick fuck?” Hannibal asks, almost desperate, searching for an answer Murdock knows he won’t get.
“You’re one to... one to judge... stomach shot...”
“Getting me arrested I can forgive. But you hurt one of my boys, and that I can’t forgive.”
Morrison rolls those ancient, blearing eyes to Murdock, up to where Murdock’s plastered against Hannibal’s side, one more time. “You got a thing for older guys, don’t you, you submissive fairy faggot...”
The gun angles again. But Murdock doesn’t watch to watch Morrison die a second time, and his fingers clench in Hannibal’s shirt. The older man nods slightly, and walks them both out of there.
When it blows up, when Morrison blows up again, when they’re under the pier watching the MC-130 rain down fire, Murdock feels the last of that night, all those nights, burn away like so much ash, like so much paper money in the desert wind, the explosions overlapping in his head and erasing anything else. He closes his eyes, and all he sees is fire...
But Hannibal’s arm is around him, holding his head above water, holding him up, and he can live with that. He opens his eyes, sees Hannibal smiling at it, those lips pressing a kiss into his damp hair. And, for the first time in a long time, perhaps for the first time ever, he feels safe.
No more Army, no more institutions, no more horror. Just this.
He can live with this.
+++++
Murdock doesn’t know how much more of this he can take.
Everything’s been a rollercoaster ride to bullshitsville, ever since Morrison sent them on that op to retrieve those plates. Now the CIA’s got them, and Lynch, and Sosa got her rank back, and they’re still fugitives. Murdock doesn’t mind those details. He’s free, after all, busted out, on the lam. He can live with this.
What bothers him is the loss of faith, the complete and utter destruction of al the things he’s built his life around for the last fifteen years. It seems, as they’re hiding out at some abandoned vacation cabin in the northern Californian mountains, Face and BA in Sacramento trying to work the logistics of this new life of theirs, that everything solid he’s ever had is gone. He can feel the abyss at his feet, and he hates how easy it would be, just slipping away. There’s nothing left to cling to, the world bottomless and dark.
Except for Hannibal.
So maybe that’s why it only takes him about sixteen hours to find himself outside the master bedroom that all of them insisted the boss take for himself. It’s quiet, at the far end of the place, near the trees, near the night sky beyond, big and spacious and a little bit warmer than the rest of the rooms. Murdock thought it was only right. Only fitting.
Hannibal opens the door after only one light knock. His silver hair is messy, his face worn and tired, blue eyes glazed, despite being awake, a borrowed bathrobe wrapped around his lanky frame. Normally he’s so alert, and Murdock remembers, with a hitch of breath, that the boss shot his oldest friend. Not over his own betrayal, but over Murdock’s. They’ve both seen friends die before, but this? And Hannibal would have left him there, to bleed out, hours and hours...
“I’m so sorry,” he’s saying before he registers the words in his head, and Hannibal opens the door a little wider, silently letting him in. He sits down on the edge of the bed. “I know what Morrison was...”
A hand pulls his face around as a weight settles beside him. Blue eyes meet his own dark ones, and Murdock feels a stab of fear. How can Hannibal look at him? “How about what you are to me, captain?”
Murdock leans, hoping. He can hope, right? Sounds like hope in there. “You, you, shot him... for me...”
“I’d do more than that for you, captain.”
“You don’t have’ta...”
“Anything, Murdock. M’boy, I’m so sorry...”
“... need you, bossman...”
Murdock lets Hannibal guide it, lets Hannibal set the pace and the wind the timing. It’s slow and sweet and nothing like what Morrison was like, all sharp corners and prickly. Hannibal removes each article of clothing with gentle caresses, kisses every millimeter of freshly exposed skin, warmig Murdock through with big, calloused hands, stroking. At some point, the robe falls away, and there’s nothing between them now. Murdock moans up into it, undulating against Hannibal’s comforting mass as it presses his own slowly back into the impossibly nice mattress.
Definitely lawyers, Murdock thinks, like clouds but clouds are cold and wet and this is nothing like anything else, and he giggles a little as Hannibal’s lips start playing along his neck. He wraps his legs around Hannibal’s waist and bucks up into him a little, a delicious feeling as cocks slide against one another.
The boss pulls back, smiling, and reaches under the pillow under Murdock’s head. It’s a little bottle of lube, and the white tube in the moonlight causes Murdock to clench up and close down.
Hannibal rubs a hand down his arm. Murdock’s can’t feel it, oh god, falling away again... “What’s wrong?”
“You, you, did you... plan this?”
A flash of recognition shoots across Hannibal’s face, and the boss kisses his forehead. “I thought you, we, might... what do you want, Murdock? This is all for you.”
And it sounds like Hannibal means it.
Too many possibilities. He’s paralyzed with all of them. Hannibal, only doing this because he thinks Murdock wants it. Hannibal, only doing this because he wants to. Taking. Both of them, doing nothing but taking, no considerations to the contrary, no connection, can’t connect, not where he’s going, not where he’s falling, he doesn’t want Hannibal following him down in there, the place where light doesn’t grow...
“Can I trust you, boss?” he whispers in a small voice, hearing his words gripping on the edge.
“Even in hell,” is the whispered response in his ear, like he knows what Murdock is thinking, like he always knows without knowing, like he always understands he doesn’t need to understand, like he can always reach him. Like always.
Murdock nods, and lifts his hips again. There’s no more time for foreplay. Has to be now.
Hannibal seems to understand - of course he does - and Murdock pushes up a little as the first finger slick pushes through the tight ring of muscle, inside, a second, scissoring, teasing, working him open until Hannibal can fit into him like he fits into Hannibal, the very touch taking away all the rough edges and stabbing memories, until he’s whining softly and Hannibal brushes a hand down his face.
“You sure, baby?”
Murdock whines a little more at that, not trusting words, not trusting anything but the man over him, pushing in slowly, so slowly, until he’s practically sobbing with need, until Hannibal’s all the way in.
The man’s formidable, but Murdock can take it, and the ghost of a touch at the bossman’s hip is all it takes to get him moving. Long, smooth strokes, deep, driving away everything bad, pushing him up again into the clear skies and smooth fathoms of air, everything quiet, rocking a little, soft and then harder, a good rhythm.
He’s only dimly aware of his fingers along sweating flesh, hair, another kiss, then another, their bodies working together, until he hears murmurs in his ear for him to come back, come back down.
“Be here with me, baby. You can do it...”
Murdock’s eyes snap open, and he hopes Hannibal can see in him what he sees in Hannibal as he covers his own belly in warm release, as Hannibal jerks one more time, then moans, settling, filling him, making everything okay. Murdock wants to tell him how it feels. Wants him to know what it means, knowing there’s still something left for him here.
But Hannibal’s not a young man anymore, and he’s half senseless by the time he eases down and out. Murdock’s the one who gets up and pads to the bathroom for washcloths, the one who cleans them both up, who offers another long, leisurely kiss, who snuggles up into the protective, open embrace, the one who strokes Hannibal’s hair back out of his face, the one who watches him fade out into sleep.
He doesn’t get a chance to tell him.
Not yet.
But that, too, will come. Murdock’s got faith.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: non-con, also, Morrison
Summary: Fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Okay. In the movie Murdock seems to feel the most betrayed out of the guys when it's revealed that the Arab is Morrison. And earlier on, when they all think that Morrison's in the vehicle that just exploded, he sounds absolutely frantic.
You can see where this is going.
I totally want some Murdock/Morrison. Oh yeah. I'm thinking perhaps Morrison knew that Murdock was gay and told him that it was the only way he'd get to stay on Hannibal's team. And Murdock went along with it because, well, he has to do what the general says and because Morrison gave him just enough affection that Murdock thought that he meant something to him. Hence the betrayal.
Super bonus points if Murdock thinks that Hannibal knew about it all this time. And triple super bonus points if Hannibal finds out (either from Murdock or Morrison) and is PISSED AS ALL HELL.
/long prompt
The prompt says it all!
"How you doing tonight, son?”
Murdock’s doing just fine, dandy, fantastic, outstanding, until he feels that hand land on his shoulder and he realizes he’s still got a little smear of the night’s activities on his chin and crap, is that General Morrison?
“Oh, howdy, sir. We get those horse thieves yet?” the pilot says, wiping his face with a sweaty hand before turning around and giving his best crazy-man grin. It usually works. Turn it up to eleven, people back off. He’s been doing it for years.
Murdock’s got a whole soliloqy planned - he has a bigger library of the things than Shakespeare - but Morrison rubs his thumb thoughtfully over his chin, and that’s no good at all. He’s having a hard time staying present. Happens sometimes. He’s all wound up from a few minutes ago, looking forward to a nice jerk-off in the showers and then bed. His nerves are all smoothed but glowing hot, emotion like a lava flow through him, and it bubbles at Morrison’s touch. The general doesn’t look mad.
“Saw you behind the barriers again. Shouldn’t leave the sandbags, son. Ain’t safe out there.”
“Yes, sir, don’t want those Apaches getting at me, got it...”
“Why go back there?”
Murdock squirms a little. It’s hard to keep up two things at once, three with the conversation, but Morrison’s not going to get it like Hannibal does, and he doesn’t want to piss him off more. He tries. “Shootin’ at...”
“I don’t think you were the one doing the shooting, were you, captain?” Morrison murmurs, close now, and all Murdock can think of are those vulcanologists who got killed in an explosion back in the ninties, and he tries to shove Morrison away before he burns up.
No luck. The man catches him up by the wrists and holds him til he stops thrashing and starts shaking.
“You were sucking cock, weren’t you, son?”
“Oh, no, sir, there’re no queers in this man’s army.”
“I didn’t ask if you were gay, captain. But I can.”
“Oh, no sir, I ain’t...”
“It’s okay, son,” Morrison says, running a hand through his hair now, and Murdock can’t help the way his body pushes up into it, the way that hand pushes down. Force of nature. Can’t stop it. “What would Hannibal say if he found out? Little cock hound in his unit. Break his heart, having to sign your discharge papers. Think I could do that to my old friend?”
Murdock knows all about how to undo these uniform belts. He stares at it for a second, though, and Morrison strokes his hair softly, before gripping down hard. “Think I could do that to you, captain?”
Morrison’s not the best-preserved general Murdock’s come across, and it takes a little work getting him hard, but Murdock’s always up for a challenge and he wants to relieve that pressure before it erupts and covers his team’s area in killing ash. He’s not sure what it is anymore, definitely not him. Maybe it’s coming from Morrison, who’s holding him in and pumping his hips, fucking his mouth. Feels like. Could be.
His knees scrape the dirt for the fourth time tonight, hands gripping but useless, as he swallows down every bitter drop, tonguing the general’s softening cock once or twice more before pulling away and tucking him back in his pants. That tension from earlier seems to have settled now. He’s not hard anymore.
Morrison’s panting a little as he hauls Murdock back to his feet. “That was very good, captain.” He’s stroking Murdock’s face now, and it feels as nice as the praise against the stubble. “But I can’t protect you if you do this for anyone else.”
Murdock’s paying attention, to Morrison, to some little twinge of fear, but not really, because he’s thinking about that volcano - Pinatubo, that was it. He runs his mouth over his sleeve and heading back to their tents, heart light, but that’s only because nobody knows when the volcano’s going to erupt and kill everything in the valleys below.
+++++
They’re quarreling in Farsi, Face a little slower than the boss, sentences disjointed against the colonel’s near-perfect flow, BA with headphones hermetically sealed over his ears. Murdock can hear them before he gets to the tent.
Blue. Everything inside is blue but not real. The artificial glow of a computer screen sees to that. The disassembled guts of Face’s M4. Hannibal’s model cars. Red cleaning rags. Sock puppets. The boss working on one of those combat laptops. The lieutenant, trying to get the congealed yogurt out of the rifling.
Under that light, Murdock can see it. Everything’s still and silent, not moving, barely rippling, no breezes, monotone, flat. Sink conditions are forming in the sky, and he can’t stand for that at all. No pressure differentials, no flight...
“Didn’t know you spoke Farsi, Facey," Murdock says. He had to say something. He desperately needs to talk, stop thinking.
“Barely,” Hannibal grunts and knocks the ash off his cigar, still typing. “How’s your evening going, captain?”
“Dormant.”
Face buries his confusion with a smile. He’s good at hiding things, playing along, and sometimes Face might be frequency hopping with him, following the changes in wavelength. But that’s all it usually is, following. Tonight, that's just fine by him. “Well, as long as everything’s okay.”
Hannibal pushes the screen down a little. “How do you feel about an AC-130 tomorrow, captain?"
That’s what Murdock likes about Hannibal. He knows he doesn’t understand. He knows, unlike everyone else in Murdock's life, that he doesn't have to. That it doesn’t matter. He nods excitedly
"Good," Hannibal says around the cigar, and goes back to the form.
Ops-normal. Murdock’s proud. He doesn’t have to disappoint him tonight.
Not ever, if he's careful.
He tries. Over the next few days, Murdock tries not to pay any attention to the air pressure as it builds back up, the updrafts that push him to the places beyond the reach of base generators. It’s hard. Who argues with thermals? But he tries to maintain low altitude because he knows the general’s a busy man and he doesn’t want to bother him.
But it turns out the general has time, time to help him out, time to help him be okay, let him use that, because it’s not three days before Morrison comes and finds him.
“Having trouble, captain?” the general asks in a soft voice, running a hand around Murdock’s hip and pressing him back against him. They’re alone, some random tent that’s being used for storage and nothing else. Enclosed space, encircling arms. Murdock feels his heart start to race.
“I know you are, son,” Morrison tells him. “I’m having trouble, thinking of you all the time. Can’t figure out what I should do. It’s my obligation...”
“Oh, no, sir, that, no...” Murdock says, knowing his words are coming arhythmic and short.
“It’s hard on me, captain, knowing this about you.” Those hands are moving now, pressing Murdock back. “It’s difficult. Bad things might happen to you. And look at you. So, so hot for these bad things.”
The captain squirms, trying to get a grip. Somewhere Something. He has to hold on. The sink’s coming back. He could lose control completely.
“Yes, you can’t help yourself, can you?” Morrison asks, petting his hair now, and Murdock shakes his head, screwing his eyes shut. It makes things worse. He can feel it more like this.
“Please...”
“Hands on the crate, son,” Murdock hears, and sighes a long sigh of relief as his palms close down around something solid, the cool air suddenly on his back, the slide of spit as he’s opened and stretched and breeched and filled, oh god, as he’s filled with something solid and certain. There are little murmurs, lips nipping along the short hairs on the back his neck, pressure and tight, bursting thumbs along his hips, quicker, more frantic thrusts.
The world clarifies to blue. He tries to tell himself it's the sky, like he likes.
A hand slides around his front. “It’s no good if you don’t come where I’m leading, captain.”
“Yes sir,” Murdock gasps, and tries to think of Hannibal, tells himself that loss of altitude he's feeling is just his inner ear playing tricks on him, nothing real.
He bites his lip until it bleeds.
+++++
After a few days, things quiet down in his head. The descent stops. But only because he can’t fall any lower. Murdock gets stuck somewhere. It’s a place where things plump, inflate until only basic form remains. Some grow, some shrink, some change color, until there's no distinctions anymore. All the discreet little shadows the world casts in his mind used to be so present. Now, it all retreats from him when he reaches out for it.
It turns out the general has lots of time. Not every four or five days, like Murdock usually has to wait, but every other day. Sometimes every day. And it’s nice, not in the dirt, not hiding. Morrison knows every inch of the base.
So Murdock gets the rare pleasure of an actual bed sometimes, like tonight, smooth padding under his stomach cushioning the surprising force that Morrison brings to bear. But Murdock likes it rough, likes it however he can get it, and the edges are gone, all the bad bits rounded up. It’s all soft, so it's okay.
“I’m taking a huge risk to help you out,” Morrison tells him. “Do you know that, Murdock? It could be very bad for me...”
Face is shaking the pilot out of his sleeping bag, asking if he’s okay. He doesn’t have an answer.
A second finger sinks into him, and Murdock makes a little groaning noise, like the general likes. He doesn’t really feel it, but the general’s being so considerate, it’s the least he can do. Sometimes he can even come. That part’s getting easier. There’s a shape in his mind that makes that work. He can almost reach it...
A hand squeezes around the base of his cock, and Murdock sobs in what he thinks is probably a very real protest.
“Not before, captain.”
Lots of rules, the general seems to have lots of rules. Murdock forgets sometimes. There are so many trying to roll away from him these days that it's hard to keep track of these new things.
BA’s fixing his motorcycle, and Murdock doesn’t remember that he’s cooking until the big guy stops him from burning himself.
Murdock’s learned the appreciate the changing landscape of his aimless mental migrations, and it doesn't bother him. This is a place he's never been here before. That alone is distracting enough to hold his interest and yet keep him here, where Morrison is sliding cold plastic into his body.
The general can’t get hard tonight, so he’s using a vibrator. The echoes of movement as the toy switches on dilute along the surface and nothing penetrates in. Murdock buries his face in the issued sheets.
Hannibal’s handing him a flight plan. The words on the page refuse to flow into his head properly, but Murdock desperately needs to please him. Can't let him down. Can't. But he can't makes sense of the words.
Nothing penetrates.
+++++
Murdock likes this particular piece, all the disparate notes overlaying and building on top of each other, confusing all the confusion and leaving open spaces where his thoughts can hide. But it’s tumbling apart now, faltering...
The pilot jerks up, startled, as the blasts of Bach’s Fugue in G-minor fade to near nothingness, but Face is holding the volum control on his headphone. He nods over to where’s Hannibal’s having a discussion - a very heated discussion - with...
“General Morrison’s aide,” Face says.
Murdock feels a wave of heat pass over him that has nothing to do with the sun above the camo netting and licks his lips. “Is he askin’ about me?”
Face shrugs.
There’s no time. Murdock slides off the lounge chair and heads over, hands in pockets, the mp3 player providing just enough organ music to keep everything from flying out of control. He can do this.
He sidles up next to Hannibal, giving the aide, some exasperated major. “What’s going on, bossman?”
“Murdock, do you know anything about this?”
“About what?”
“Did you submit paperwork for a Chinook?”
Chinook, Chinook. He turns up his headphones, still dangling around his neck, and tries to pay attention. It helps. Not the wind-thing in Alaska, Hannibal’s not talking about that, no, he’s talking about... “We talked about needin’ a helicopter for...”
“Going through the general isn’t procedure for this kind of request,” the major says, and Hannibal’s answering glare is priceless.
Murdock’s relieved. Morrison’s conscious hasn’t gotten the better of him. The general’s still keeping him safe, and even if he doesn’t know what’s going on, Murdock’s got an obligation to return the favor, play along. “You mad at me, boss?” he asks softly.
“I like it, taking the initiative,” Hannibal tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. “General wants to see you about it. Major, you want a beer?”
He’s not in uniform, so he cranks up the music as high as it’ll go as he strides away. Unlaced boots flapping against his calves, his cut-off ACU pants fraying around his knees. Those structures start building back up around him in the polyphony of the music, everything bad locked out. Everything calm. Light, filtering out into all its different wavelengths, sorting his thoughts, illuminating everything.
He can see it.
He watches the general dismiss everyone from the tent as he comes in. Listens as the general brushes aside his questions about the helicopter. Feels those old, strong hands close down on his shoulders, his shoulder where Hannibal touched him not ten minutes ago, and he recognizes something in the dimming glow as the organ fugue gives way into the sadder strains of Bach’s last piece, and that’s when Murdock starts to panic.
“What’s wrong, son?” Morrison asks, pulling the headphones finally away. “You can tell me.”
“I... didn’t ask for the helicopter, sir...”
“I needed to see you, captain,” Morrison says, burying his face in Murdock’s hair, drawing in a deep, noisy breath that cuts down through everything. The beauty from earlier’s gone, and Murdock can see everything as the ceiling crumbles around him.
“No...”
“You’re doin’ things to me, Murdock. So beautiful. Your body...”
His hands are pulled towards the general’s belt, the hardness there, and he’s struggling now, twisting as hard as he can, trying to get away, but that grip on his wrists is tight, and he doesn’t mean to do it, he really doesn’t, but in ripping loose he must have punched the general, because the man’s crumpling, wheezing.
Murdock runs a hand through his hair and backs up, stumbling over his own feet, hitting the ground, and Morrison’s up, standing over him. “Why you fighin’ me, son? Don’t you want to be here? Don’t you want to be here with me?”
He offers the pilot a hand up.
Murdock tries to slow his breathing, and takes it as the shadows close back in.
+++++
Tomorrow morning they’re heading out for Baghdad, and Murdock’s naked, staring at the green above him. The sky will be there soon enough. It’s dark outside. He’s got splinters in his back and stomach and his cheeks are still stinging and he’s sore all over. When he pulls his hand away from his thighs, there's blood on his palm. He doesn't care. He needs to sleep.
That’s all the exterior stuff, but he’s got many layers of though, like lanes in traffic. One’s almost empty, except for a single car, accelerating towards a single truth. All evening it’s been going, but he isn’t quite there yet.
“How about a bottle of blue label tonight? For your mission?”
Morrison’s holding it out. It’s damn hard to get alcohol in theater - stuff’s still officially banned. It’s a gift, there’s no mistake.
Hannibal likes the stuff, so Murdock nods. He’s rewarded with a soft kiss on his lips, stiffens at the unexpected affection. “My lovely captain,” the general murmurs, and lets his free hand start straying. "I bet your don't hear it nearly enough, how beautiful you are."
"Thank you, sir," Murdock gasps, nerves sparking under the fingertips. He should just give into that, he thinks, just give in and let things be like this, stop fighting it. What good was fighting?
After he hit the general, the man growled about how he could have him jailed for that, about how he wasn't going to, cared about him too much. He'd stripped the pilot, fucked him hard without any preparation at all, which hurt, until something tore...
“I’m sorry I had to hurt you,” Morrison whispers.
“I deserved it, sir,” Murdock replies in a small voice. Wasn’t right, hitting this man, who’d showed him so much compassion.
“Anything you want, it’s yours.”
Murdock forces the tension from his body, makes himself relax as the general explores all the territory he’s conquered, inch by inch, acre by acre...
Associations well up, and Murdock shoves them all away. He can’t let himself get lost in himself right now. He’s got a mission to fly in a few hours.
“I should go, sir,” and he’s surprised by how contented his voice sounds.
“You should,” Morrison says reluctantly, and then grabs a handful of hair, forcing his head back, attacking his mouth. He seems almost desperate, despite the fucking he issued out a few minutes ago, sad and mournful, and Murdock curls his own hands up into the general’s t-shirt, despite himself, kissing him back.
It finally breaks, and Murdock’s worried, because Morrison doesn’t say anything more to him as he gathers his clothes and dresses and leaves, scrunching over the table.
Face and BA are sparring with his grilling tongs as he comes back to their area, and it’s hard for Murdock to fake the grin. He almost forgets to say something ridiculous about it, to keep the guys smiling and laughing and not suspicious as he fires up the grill and goes for the steaks in the cooler.
Morrison shows up, and Murdock stays by the grill. Part of him wants to run up to the other man, ask him what’s wrong, but he’s talking to Hannibal and he can’t let Hannibal know what’s been going on.
He knows now.
Morrison needs him, as much as Murdock needs Morrison. He’s able to give something to the general, him, the crazy captain. He’s doing something noble for the other man. Something grand and special and necessary. Nobody’s ever needed him before, not like this.
Hannibal drapes an arm around his shoulder, and Murdock can’t help the little shiver that runs through him.
“You doing okay, captain? You’ve been kind of jumpy lately,” Hannibal says, handing over a plate and Murdock starts plating up the remaining meat.
“Fine,” Murdock says, smiling for real now, smiling at where Morrison’s sitting by the fire.
Hannibal grabs his hand, and Murdock jerks it back. Too late.
“That blood, Murdock?”
“Prolly from the steak.”
In the firelight, he knows Hannibal doesn’t believe him.
“Come sit down, captain. We’re going to do a toast.”
But what choice does Murdock really have?
+++++
Murdock knows what a risk the general was taking, approving a black-ops mission like this under the table. He knows because Morrison told him so, the day Hannibal wrested it away from Pike and Black Forest. Told him that the team owed him, that he was doing it for Hannibal but he was also doing it for Murdock.
The pilot hides his nervousnes by unhooking that part of the thought-train. It’s an old trick, one he started perfecting back when the first of the fractures appeared. It’s not about stopping it, just controlling it, segmenting off parts of himself and assigning different tasks. It’s not hard, He can leave the crazy behind on the ground when he flies, everything bad he doesn’t like in himself, lose himself in the task and find himself there, above the surface of the planet. Like BA and his cars, like Face and his open scope rifle, like Hannibal and everything.
The colonel gives him the thumbs up from the top of the cargo container. Lines hooked. Friends secure. Everything Murdock needs to pilot that chopper back to base.
He wonders if things will be the same now.
They’ll be headed back to the States soon, after this is over. No more General Morrison. No need for his kindnesses, his cruel and biting touches, the little tugs in the darkness that end in fresh scabs and soft kissing.
Murdock almost cries when he hears the general’s voice come over the headset. “Be there in five,” he says.
And then the humvee blows up.
That part of himself, the part he leaves behind in the sky when he lands, tries to tell him something. How’d they get the explosives on base? Who was it? Why didn’t the driver do a pre-check of the vehicle?
But that other part of him, that bit he’s using to float along the surface of himself, that’s racing towards the burning wreckage, heart hammering, voice screaming, trying to reach that man who’s been so kind to him.
And the shipping container explodes with a force that knocks them all down, but probably should have killed them, and the MPs advance, and Murdock’s tenuous control starts to shatter. There’s a rain of paper money falling gently around them as the humvee continues to burn. Everything’s burning.
He feels himself slip away, and only the inarguable snap of metal down around his wrists tells him how fast the tailwind is at his back. The sky’s growing black - he hates flying through thunder storms. And then he hits a quiet patch.
“How you doing, captain?” Hannibal asks as they’re loaded into the back of a gray van. Face’s mouth is pinched shut. BA’s staring at the ceiling as if he could rip through it by will alone. Only Hannibal seems calm.
He’s not, of course he’s not, but Murdock knows who and what the bossman is to him; the lee side of the storm, the streetlight in the dark, the updraft through the turbulence.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Hannibal continues gently. “Everything okay?”
“Clear sailing, sir,” Murdock tells him miserably, wishing he could tell him more, knowing he can’t. “Did... did Pike really murder Morrison?”
Face startles up at that, giving Murdock a strange look. His eyes flicker over to Hannibal, then back to Murdock, and the pilot feels his guts clench up. Face reads people, Face is so good at reading people... “Nobody survived that explosion,” Face says slowly. “Probably killed the sergeant who’s been driving him around, too.”
“Poor kid,” Hannibal mutters under his breath, and flashes Murdock a smile. Smiles at all of them. “We’re going to get through this, boys...”
Murdock’s shaking now, still sore. Morrison. Dead. He can't parse out why he cares, why he should worry at all, why he can’t just accept his freedom, what’s wrong with...
“I need you to stay focused, captain,” Hannibal says, catching him for a moment as his voice comes through what seems to be the UHF.
Murdock tries, but he’s tired, so tired of trying. He needs to get above this, into lonely expanses of rare air where he doesn’t have to see anything going on down here on the skin of the world, where too many ugly things dwell.
He just leans his head back and doesn’t see so much as feel the worried look that passes an entire conversation between Face and Hannibal. He’s rising away.
He's okay with that.
Murdock stays up there.
It’s quiet. Sound travels further at these altitudes, but he’s alone, so there’s only echoes from down below, and those don’t trouble him that much. Occasionally there are bad stretches, things he remembers as medication and leather restraints, but he just soars around those. He’s been in these skies before. He knows how to hide from those things down below. Things are still white and hard and cold, ice forms on the wings, bingo fuel is reached, but he stays up there.
Until.
“... you’ve got a package here from Annabell Smith?”
Hannibal.
Then Murdock’s not real sure what’s real and what’s not, because he’s watching a movie and then it’s shooting at him, BA destroys a guard shack, he wins a game of chicken against a little German car, he’s back in the sky, they’re falling out of it. In an M-80 Abrams tank.
It’s dark in the tank, the only illumination coming from weapon systems displays. Murdock hasn’t been in one of these in a while. There’s no ay he could remember all these details, all the little buttons. There’s clarity in that, at least for a little while.
They’re all clustered in the nose as they fall, close and tight. Murdock thinks he’s close enough to touch Hannibal and he pokes the boss’s knee, just to make sure. Even now, Hannibal takes the time to reach back and Murdock takes the risk of threading his fingers through that big hand. They aren’t in the Army right now, so maybe he doesn’t need to protect...
“Hannibal?”
“Welcome back,” Hannibal says softly, almost too quiet to hear, and he doesn’t let go as the tank plummets into the lake below.
Something warm starts spreading in his belly.
They get to Berlin easily enough - Murdock’s convinced it was that nice lady’s directions that helped them along. The tank goes in the woods near a rest stop, Face and BA go to appropriate an appropriate vehicle, and Murdock stays with Hannibal.
Hannibal stays with Murdock.
“I’m sorry,” the boss finally tells him.
Murdock doesn’t know what to do with that. “Sorry ‘bout what, bossman?”
“Murdock, I...”
“It’s okay, Hannibal,” Murdock says sheepishly, hoping he’s not blushing. “Wasn’t your fault. We all know that.”
“I’m not talking about the hospital. Not just talking about the hospital, captain. There’s something else going on,” Hannibal says, and Murdock’s suddenly aware of how close the colonel is sitting to him, that arm coming down around his shoulders, and the closeness and the touching and the kindness and the consideration is something he hasn’t had in a long time.
Not since Morrison.
And now he’s shaking his head, swaying a little as his hands jerk up to his hair, wrapping around the edge of the baseball cap, as if this will somehow block it all out.
“What is it, Murdock?”
And now those hands are being tugged away, down, and he’s back as far as he can get from Hannibal, in the far corner of the tank, back against a block of crates in a supply dump, huddled down into nothingness that Morrison can still see, the blocky outline of his body standing over him, that cock being held out to his lips...
“Captain, eyes up, now!”
The command in the voice is unmistakable, and Murdock uncurls just enough to realize that this is Hannibal, just Hannibal, and there’s nothing bad about Hannibal, in front of him, on his knees, thumbing a cooling path along his sweating brow, fingertips just beyond his hairline, under the hat, teasing. He resists the urge to fall into it.
“You’re safe here, captain. You’re safe with me.”
“Yes...sir."
+++++
Re: Fill (8/?)
(Anonymous)
2010-10-03 06:00 am UTC (link) Track This
“So tell me, Murdock, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t, sir.”
“You can tell me anything.”
Murdock freezes, but Hannibal continues the gentle strokes, and he can’t help the way his body’s responding to that. Heating him all up, that familiar feeling coming back, the one he always needs help with, and he doesn’t know what to think. He closes his eyes. He can’t feel anything, think of anything. “Before, at camp, he...”
There’s a little jerk in the rhythm, and Hannibal presses a little harder as he keeps going. There’s a growl. There’s a comforting possessiveness. “Who was it? I’ll break his kneecaps for you.”
“I, uh, aw, shit, Hannibal. Wasn’t somebody after my lunch money.” He looks away. “It was m’ fault, bossman.”
Hannibal stops completely. “What was your fault?”
“He... he... had to help me, sir, caught me, said he didn’t want to hurt a friend, makin’ you sit through an investigation...”
“Morrison,” Hannibal breaths, and Murdock’s not so numb that he can’t hear the little bit of information clicking into larger suspicions. Oh, god, Hannibal might have found out anyway and after he’d tried so hard... “He...”
“He was just tryin’ to help me out...”
Some breed of anger storms Hannibal’s face, the same kind that’s driven many a fist into a baddie’s skull, and Murdock can’t make himself any smaller. “You... went to Morrison?”
“I know, chain of command, sir,” Murdock says miserably. “What else could I do? He, he caught me.”
“You come to me. Immediately. Goddamnit, Murdock, don’t you trust me?”
“O’ course I do, boss, but I couldn’t tell you that I’m...”
The boss draws a deep breath. “A fantastic pilot? My team’s captain? A...
“Queer?”
“A good man,” Hannibal says sadly, and Murdock thinks that maybe he won’t be mad after all. “You’re a good man, Murdock.”
The feeling that he screwed up is growing in him now. He didn’t do what he should have. He failed Hannibal, despite himself. “Couldn’t let you deal with that, sir.”
“It’s not your job to protect me, Murdock. It’s mine to protect you.”
“I need things, sir...”
“...I failed you, son. I failed you horribly.”
Murdock wants to offer further protest, insist that all the arguments on his head are real and true and valid, that this is his fault, that Morrison didn’t... but he can’t, because his face is buried in Hannibal’s shoulder now and because his body is pressing into Hannibal’s and his weakness is buttressed against all that solid assurance. He has no words for how it feels as Hannibal holds him close and lets him sob until his tears are spent and dry heaves are all that’s left.
Hannibal pushes him back, and Murdock feels himself start to scatter again. He stops his fall, grabbing onto Hannibal with frantic speed.
“I don’t want to hurt you, captain,” Hannibal says, uncertainty in his voice mirroring that in his eyes.
“You can’t,” Murdock begs, and Hannibal nods a tight nod. The pilot tries to throw himself into the now welcoming arms, but is held back a moment more.
“I need you to understand, captain, that I would have never wished this on you. I’d kill the bastard myself for this...”
“But he’s dead.” The words twist a little.
Hannibal’s left eyelid twitches, and Murdock can see this very clearly, because Hannibal’s nose is about three inches from his, one, no distance at all, and chapped lips close down to his own and it’s pretty much the best thing he’s ever felt. It’s open and warm and wonderful, everything Morrison never was, and the pilot feels himself start to melt, fall apart, pull together, make him whole. The way Hannibal’s got his arm formed around his waist, the intensity of the kiss, the hand in his hair, it all makes Murdock think that maybe Hannibal needs this too, needs this just as much as he does.
He whimpers a little, and Hannibal tries to move away, but Murdock anticipates this and tightens his grip, opening up his mouth for Hannibal, a clear invitation.
The boss accepts.
They stay like that until BA pulls the car up, and Face bangs on the side and they have to go.
+++++
Murdock lifts the small helicopter off the roof of the Berlin office building, fingers practically dancing over the controls. It’s light and responsive, so he’s not quite sure if it’s him he’s feeling or the craft, slipping down between glass canyons and catching the falling Arab by the parachute. Light. Everything is without mass, his body still humming from Hannibal’s earlier ministrations.
He can’t quite believe it. He wants to, wants to think that it could be real, that Hannibal could really... at least for right now. If they go back in to the Army, like the boss has planned, like they all know the boss wants, then there can’t be any of that. But for right now, right now it’s okay, and the boss seems to think so, and Murdock can’t quite believe it.
So he keeps thinking about the way Hannibal’s eye was twitching. A stress reaction, maybe, although he’s never seen anybody deal with stress as well as Hannibal, so he doesn’t think it’s that. It’s something he hasn’t seen before. It worries him.
He sets the helicopter down outside town, in a relatively abandoned industrial facility where Face is waiting with a car. It’s a bit tricky getting the Arab on the ground without smashing him, but Murdock manages it well enough, and Face manhandles the guy into the trunk, adding a few choice insults in standard Arabic, which is much better than his Farsi, and has both him and Murdock laughing halfway back to the safehouse by the ocean.
In between the jokes, which finally feel real to Murdock again, he thinks. Maybe he’s pushing Hannibal. Maybe Hannibal doesn’t want...
Face sees the expression, or something, and reaches over, rubs Murdock’s shoulder. “It’s all going to be over pretty soon, buddy.”
“Maybe I like this,” Murdock says softly.
The conman nods, and turns down the last road to the meeting place. “It’s not so bad, is it?”
“Do you want to go back?”
“Do you?”
There’s no answer.
Hannibal and BA are already waiting for them, and the boss is the one who hauls the Arab from the trunk, slamming a knee into the hooded man’s chest as he does it, muttering an insincere apology he sits him up on a stool inside the old boathouse. Starts talking to him, and the choice of English sets all of Murdock’s suspicions to live-fire.
Something’s clearly not right.
“...boss, you know who this is?”
Hannibal looks incredibly pained for a moment, and jerks the hood off. “We all do.”
Morrison.
The man looks at him.
“Jesus Christ,” Murdock moans, and he’s going numb again and BA has to drag him out of the warehouse when Hannibal tells them to leave. How to react to something like that? How can he possibly?
None of them talk out there. It’s cold, the very day depressed. There aren’t words for something like this. Murdock’s getting that feeling again, the one where he retreats from the surface of himself, where feeling peels back from the skin and nothing gets in, nothing can bother him...
Hannibal’s out now, walking along the shoreline, far from them. They leave him alone. He goes back in the warehouse. There’s something welling up in Murdock now, watching the boss stride like that, so graceful and easy, even now...
“This isn’t... we aren’t done here yet,” Face says finally, like he’s coming to some kind of decision. “This doesn’t change anything.”
That eyelid, twitching. Hannibal, hiding it from him even as they, even as he...
Something inside him explodes. Maybe it’s the container truck, or the humvee, again, finally reaching him, like the light from a distant supernova. That night, all those horrible nights afterwards, thinking Morrison was dead. All the nights before, thinking Morrison meant, thinking he meant something to Morrison.
Murdock’s striding back towards the warehouse before he realizes it, the scattering radiation from the explosion inside him washing out everything else, impossible to think, too late to stop himself, too late to do anything but take in the scene in front of him.
Hannibal’s got a gun to the general’s head. There’s already a trickle of blood from the man’s mouth, a red mark on his face that will bruise later, body doubled over in what Murdock hopes to hell is pain.
He looks up. Sees Murdock. Smiles. Weezes dramatically. “Going to help me out here, darling? Hannibal here thinks...”
The muzzle lowers, a few degrees below the horizon, just enough.
The sound is deafening. The scream is louder.
Murdock walks forward slowly, not really sure how he’s supposed to approach the writhing man on the ground, bleeding from the belly wound. He has another flash of himself, laying naked, pleading, on the HQ conference table, sand and shame grinding their way under his skin. His hands open and close a few times, his mouth opens and closes a few times, the sink coming back over him, and at that, Hannibal’s catching him, folding him under a strong arm,
“Hannibal...” Morrison gasps, reaching up a red-stained hand insistently, as if Hannibal will care about him now.
The boss just looks down at him. “I’m sorry it had to be this way, Russ.”
“I...” Breathing comes in painful jerks, and Murdock winces a little, thinking that maybe the bullet ripped the diaphragm. All those soft organs, all those fluids, blood bursting free, poisoning tissues. “You weren’t giving... him... what he... needed.”
“So you took it?”
“He... enjoyed it, Hannibal.”
“What happened to you, you sick fuck?” Hannibal asks, almost desperate, searching for an answer Murdock knows he won’t get.
“You’re one to... one to judge... stomach shot...”
“Getting me arrested I can forgive. But you hurt one of my boys, and that I can’t forgive.”
Morrison rolls those ancient, blearing eyes to Murdock, up to where Murdock’s plastered against Hannibal’s side, one more time. “You got a thing for older guys, don’t you, you submissive fairy faggot...”
The gun angles again. But Murdock doesn’t watch to watch Morrison die a second time, and his fingers clench in Hannibal’s shirt. The older man nods slightly, and walks them both out of there.
When it blows up, when Morrison blows up again, when they’re under the pier watching the MC-130 rain down fire, Murdock feels the last of that night, all those nights, burn away like so much ash, like so much paper money in the desert wind, the explosions overlapping in his head and erasing anything else. He closes his eyes, and all he sees is fire...
But Hannibal’s arm is around him, holding his head above water, holding him up, and he can live with that. He opens his eyes, sees Hannibal smiling at it, those lips pressing a kiss into his damp hair. And, for the first time in a long time, perhaps for the first time ever, he feels safe.
No more Army, no more institutions, no more horror. Just this.
He can live with this.
+++++
Murdock doesn’t know how much more of this he can take.
Everything’s been a rollercoaster ride to bullshitsville, ever since Morrison sent them on that op to retrieve those plates. Now the CIA’s got them, and Lynch, and Sosa got her rank back, and they’re still fugitives. Murdock doesn’t mind those details. He’s free, after all, busted out, on the lam. He can live with this.
What bothers him is the loss of faith, the complete and utter destruction of al the things he’s built his life around for the last fifteen years. It seems, as they’re hiding out at some abandoned vacation cabin in the northern Californian mountains, Face and BA in Sacramento trying to work the logistics of this new life of theirs, that everything solid he’s ever had is gone. He can feel the abyss at his feet, and he hates how easy it would be, just slipping away. There’s nothing left to cling to, the world bottomless and dark.
Except for Hannibal.
So maybe that’s why it only takes him about sixteen hours to find himself outside the master bedroom that all of them insisted the boss take for himself. It’s quiet, at the far end of the place, near the trees, near the night sky beyond, big and spacious and a little bit warmer than the rest of the rooms. Murdock thought it was only right. Only fitting.
Hannibal opens the door after only one light knock. His silver hair is messy, his face worn and tired, blue eyes glazed, despite being awake, a borrowed bathrobe wrapped around his lanky frame. Normally he’s so alert, and Murdock remembers, with a hitch of breath, that the boss shot his oldest friend. Not over his own betrayal, but over Murdock’s. They’ve both seen friends die before, but this? And Hannibal would have left him there, to bleed out, hours and hours...
“I’m so sorry,” he’s saying before he registers the words in his head, and Hannibal opens the door a little wider, silently letting him in. He sits down on the edge of the bed. “I know what Morrison was...”
A hand pulls his face around as a weight settles beside him. Blue eyes meet his own dark ones, and Murdock feels a stab of fear. How can Hannibal look at him? “How about what you are to me, captain?”
Murdock leans, hoping. He can hope, right? Sounds like hope in there. “You, you, shot him... for me...”
“I’d do more than that for you, captain.”
“You don’t have’ta...”
“Anything, Murdock. M’boy, I’m so sorry...”
“... need you, bossman...”
Murdock lets Hannibal guide it, lets Hannibal set the pace and the wind the timing. It’s slow and sweet and nothing like what Morrison was like, all sharp corners and prickly. Hannibal removes each article of clothing with gentle caresses, kisses every millimeter of freshly exposed skin, warmig Murdock through with big, calloused hands, stroking. At some point, the robe falls away, and there’s nothing between them now. Murdock moans up into it, undulating against Hannibal’s comforting mass as it presses his own slowly back into the impossibly nice mattress.
Definitely lawyers, Murdock thinks, like clouds but clouds are cold and wet and this is nothing like anything else, and he giggles a little as Hannibal’s lips start playing along his neck. He wraps his legs around Hannibal’s waist and bucks up into him a little, a delicious feeling as cocks slide against one another.
The boss pulls back, smiling, and reaches under the pillow under Murdock’s head. It’s a little bottle of lube, and the white tube in the moonlight causes Murdock to clench up and close down.
Hannibal rubs a hand down his arm. Murdock’s can’t feel it, oh god, falling away again... “What’s wrong?”
“You, you, did you... plan this?”
A flash of recognition shoots across Hannibal’s face, and the boss kisses his forehead. “I thought you, we, might... what do you want, Murdock? This is all for you.”
And it sounds like Hannibal means it.
Too many possibilities. He’s paralyzed with all of them. Hannibal, only doing this because he thinks Murdock wants it. Hannibal, only doing this because he wants to. Taking. Both of them, doing nothing but taking, no considerations to the contrary, no connection, can’t connect, not where he’s going, not where he’s falling, he doesn’t want Hannibal following him down in there, the place where light doesn’t grow...
“Can I trust you, boss?” he whispers in a small voice, hearing his words gripping on the edge.
“Even in hell,” is the whispered response in his ear, like he knows what Murdock is thinking, like he always knows without knowing, like he always understands he doesn’t need to understand, like he can always reach him. Like always.
Murdock nods, and lifts his hips again. There’s no more time for foreplay. Has to be now.
Hannibal seems to understand - of course he does - and Murdock pushes up a little as the first finger slick pushes through the tight ring of muscle, inside, a second, scissoring, teasing, working him open until Hannibal can fit into him like he fits into Hannibal, the very touch taking away all the rough edges and stabbing memories, until he’s whining softly and Hannibal brushes a hand down his face.
“You sure, baby?”
Murdock whines a little more at that, not trusting words, not trusting anything but the man over him, pushing in slowly, so slowly, until he’s practically sobbing with need, until Hannibal’s all the way in.
The man’s formidable, but Murdock can take it, and the ghost of a touch at the bossman’s hip is all it takes to get him moving. Long, smooth strokes, deep, driving away everything bad, pushing him up again into the clear skies and smooth fathoms of air, everything quiet, rocking a little, soft and then harder, a good rhythm.
He’s only dimly aware of his fingers along sweating flesh, hair, another kiss, then another, their bodies working together, until he hears murmurs in his ear for him to come back, come back down.
“Be here with me, baby. You can do it...”
Murdock’s eyes snap open, and he hopes Hannibal can see in him what he sees in Hannibal as he covers his own belly in warm release, as Hannibal jerks one more time, then moans, settling, filling him, making everything okay. Murdock wants to tell him how it feels. Wants him to know what it means, knowing there’s still something left for him here.
But Hannibal’s not a young man anymore, and he’s half senseless by the time he eases down and out. Murdock’s the one who gets up and pads to the bathroom for washcloths, the one who cleans them both up, who offers another long, leisurely kiss, who snuggles up into the protective, open embrace, the one who strokes Hannibal’s hair back out of his face, the one who watches him fade out into sleep.
He doesn’t get a chance to tell him.
Not yet.
But that, too, will come. Murdock’s got faith.
