The Problem With Frat
Oct. 29th, 2010 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: 63!Face
Summary: Fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Girl!Face/Hannibal, the fraternization-problem
Face and Hannibal have a good thing going on, but of course, rank gets in the way.
Hannibal never figured it’d be Face who broke down first.
She’s spread out on his desk when it happens, knees on the edge and wide, her calves hanging down and toes curling as he goes down on her, his tongue buried in her sweet sex, the stubble of his cheeks brushing the smooth skin on her inner thighs. He’s doing that little curl thing she loves so much, but instead of the moans it usually draws, Hannibal hears sobs.
He pulls back, gets off his knees into the chair, and pulls her carefully into his lap. Face, crying? She hardly ever does it. That one time Murdock was in a coma for a week. When BA’s mother died. Today, right now, in his hardly-used office after work hours.
He's glad they're the only two in the building.
Hannibal knows better than to ask her what’s wrong, or she’ll slap him and accuse him of being overbearing and shut down on him. He holds her slight weight against him, hoping the sobs wracking her body will stop, wishing she’d tell him what he can do to help. He’d go to hell and back for his lieutenant.
After long minutes, Face pulls back enough to look him in the eyes. She’s on some knife-edge between hurt and anger, and he knows immediately what the problem is.
“Are we really going to do this again?” he asks, not unkindly. She’s still dripping, and it’s soaking into his ACUs. He pushes a stray strand of hair out of the way, tucking it gently behind her ear. “Face, you know how much I love you...”
“But you can’t give me anything, colonel. I know. There’s nothing here, it’s meaningless, I’m a romantic idiot, I should know better than to expect anything, you’re my superior officer and my commander and the fucking Army...” She’s counting it off on her fingers, and Hannibal can’t stop himself from catching them and pressing them back against her chest.
“Stop,” he says, trying not to scare her away. “That’s all bullshit.”
“If it’s bullshit, then why do I have to lie to my friends about my boyfriend? Why do I have to tell Murdock and BA that we aren’t fucking, that it wasn’t my car they saw parked down the street from house last weekend? Why can’t I touch you in public?”
Her voice is cracking. “Shh,” he says, not knowing what else to do. “I know how hard this is for you...”
“No, no you really don’t!” she snaps, and pulls away from him violently. She swings her leg off his lap and pulls her panties back up from where they’ve fallen around her ankle. Face still has her t-shirt and her bra on, but her hair is down and she lost one of her earrings and she’s the most beautiful thing Hannibal’s ever seen. “Why don’t you just fucking tell them?”
“We’ve talked about this, kid.”
“I don't think you understand how hard this is, jackass.”
But he does know, because he feels it himself. Every little bit of contact, a brush as she leaves his office, his hand lingering as he takes her gun on the firing range, the way his thumb likes to brush over her knuckles whenever he pulls her inside a cheap hotel room far from base where nobody's going to see. She always tenses, unable to relax, not knowing when somebody’s going to walk around the corner, when somebody’s going to come in the room.
“Yes, I really do.”
But even as he says it, Hannibal knows she doesn't believe him.
+++++
Hannibal wants to touch her, wants the contact, wants to sweep her up every time he sees her and make everything else disappear. Wants to erase that doubt that he always sees in her.
But every time she walks past him outside, pops a salute, he sees the hope in her eyes, that sparkle that uniquely Temperance Peck, and the pain that follows when he salutes back and keeps walking. She used to people leaving her. She’s still so young. She doesn’t know how to deal with this.
He’s not entirely sure he’s any better off.
“I’ve got an appointment tomorrow.” She’s against far wall, staring off into space. “I’ve got two years left on my commitment...”
“No,” he says, standing up, trying to ignore the raging stiffness between his legs. How can he take this away from her? There’s no compromise with frat, and they both know it. Somebody has to lose something, and he will be damned if it’s going to be her commission. “I’m not letting you get out. You’re a damn fine officer, Peck.”
“Is that what I am? An officer in your unit?” she spits out, accentuating every syllable in a way that breaks his heart. “Just the girl it’s safe for you to fuck? Can’t get your rocks off any other way?”
“If you’re going to twist everything I say...”
“I’m not twisting! Just stop lying to me! Stop asking me to lie to everyone else!”
“I’m not lying...”
“You don’t love me,” Face says, the words falling still and lifeless to the ground. “I’m going to go talk to the brigade commander tomorrow. I’m asking for an early PCS.”
Hannibal goes cold. She can’t be threatening to leave. “I want you in my unit, Face.”
“Fuck what you want.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Her eyes glaze up with tears, and he really can’t stand to see that on her again. Twice in one day? “If I’m not in your unit, it’s not as big of a deal. We can date a little more openly. I can get out in two years...”
“You are not going to do that, lieutenant.”
“See, just one of your damn officers.”
“We could get married.” They weren’t legally allowed to stop marriages. They wouldn’t even investigate their relationship. Probably wouldn’t investigate.
“Neither one of us is the marrying type, darling.”
Hannibal takes a chance, and moves in until she’s flush with the wall and he’s resting on his elbows on either side on her, his face close. “You’re my woman, Temperance. I wouldn’t have it any other way. What do I need to do to prove it to you?”
For a moment, she doesn't say anything, staring into his eyes, and them she makes a decision.
Face arches up and in, kissing him so fiercely that it knocks the breath of him, pushing him back. Her hands are everywhere, and he thinks he hears his shirt rip, and feels a slight breeze over his chest and she pulls her own over her head and throws it away.
He takes that slight pause as an opportunity to regain control of the situation, grabbing her and throwing her around, her back contacting the wall with a slight thump. She grins, feral, and lets his dominate the next kiss, hard and bruising. Her fingernails dig into his back as he reaches down and yanks her panties back off, driving her up against the wall. She wraps her legs around his waist, her blonde hair falling all around them as she tugs insistently at his belt and he obliges by yanking it out, ripping a belt loop as he does it.
His uniform pants and briefs tumble down around his boots, the bottoms of his pants still bloused in, and he feels her heels pushing against the small of his back.
Hannibal doesn’t need any lube, because she’s soaking down there, and he doesn’t need a condom, because she says she’s on birth control and he wouldn’t really care if she was lying to him about it. He pushes in, and she cries out his name, tears still running down her cheeks.
Face’s kiss is salty now, as Hannibal sets a brutal pace, her perfect ass connecting with the wall in time with every thrust, every muscle under the smooth skin of her stomach tensed and humming under his roaming hands, her breasts bouncing against his pecs. He thinks she comes at least once before he does, and he bites lightly on her collarbone, raising a mark as he pumps his release into her.
They’re both sweating in the quiet, unlit office. He moves back, letting her slide down and catching her before she falls. He settles them both on the floor, trying to still the tremors in Face’s body. She’s a thousand miles away, he thinks, and then she moves a hand up to where he almost broke the skin.
“Below the neckline. Thanks, Hannibal.”
It cuts him to the core. She’s facing away from him, into the darkness, and for the first time since he met her three years ago, Hannibal has no idea what Face is thinking. He brushes uncertain fingertips down her arm.
“What can I do, kid? Please tell me.”
She draws a shuddering breath. They both knew the score, he thought, they both knew the way things worked, the rules, what they were going to have to do, when they started this thing. He thought she was okay with it then. When had everything changed?
Or had she been lying from the start?
Face’s hand moves back, gently tracing the outside of one ear, and down his neck, where he catches it and holds her still.
“Hannibal,” she whispers, “it’s always the senior officer’s fault. You know that. I couldn’t, I can’t, if I can’t control myself... I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“You could never hurt me, kid, no more than I could hurt you.”
She shifts her weight onto the balls of her feet and pushes up, standing, going for the bits and pieces of her uniform. She’s got her boots in hand. She’s lost the other earring. Her body is steady but her voice shakes. She’s still beautiful.
“Then stop doing this to me.”
Hannibal lets his head fall back against the wall as the office door opens softly and slams shut. He thinks it’s the loudest noise he’s ever heard.
+++++
“Stop doing this to me.”
Hannibal tries, he really, really does. She even makes it easy, at first. The next morning, after their fight, he finds a leave request sitting in his inbox. Face is asking for a week. She’s doesn’t come in to the mission planing cell that day. Technically, this isn’t how things are done, and he should call her and make her come back to work and chew her out for bucking protocol.
He waits until noon, hoping Face might come to her senses and report in, like she’s supposed to. But she never does what she’s told, and she’ll probably never listen to him again, and if he called her, she’d just accuse him of playing the colonel and hang up, and then he’d really have to punish her. And it won’t be fun anymore.
Heavy, Hannibal approved the request.
The next week, he sees her on the range, bright and early, pegging a two-inch-square metal target with ease. Face is prone against the sandbags, her M-4 tucked just so into her shoulder. “How’re you doing, lieutenant?” he asks her.
Face doesn’t bother to look up, just dials down the headphones so she can hear a little better. “Just fine, boss,” she says lightly and fires.
He leaves.
Hannibal’s pretty sure it’s hard for her, too. Although he can’t be sure. Face is really good at putting on a front. The best. Hell, it’s her job, it’s what she does, it’s what makes her so utterly appealing, because in the moments when her guard is down, Hannibal gets to see something nobody else ever will.
But she doesn’t let him see her any longer. Instead, he sees what everybody else sees. At the O-Club. Around the small offices they use sometimes. Out on missions. Just a happy, pleasantly sarcastic, cheery, gorgeous woman without a care in the world. That’s all Hannibal gets, and it eats at him, because he knows somewhere, deep inside, she’s bleeding.
That he catches in unguarded moments, like when she’s coming out of an elevator or the bathroom, her refusal to go to the Army’s Birthday Ball, or in her dying smiles when they’re in a room alone together. He offers to take her out to lunch one day, and she drops it all for a moment.
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea, do you?” she replies. Hannibal doesn’t ask again.
He figures she’ll get through it, that she’ll work her way back to him, straighten it all out in her head and come to him with some brilliantly reasoned explanation as to why they can be together. She does things like that. But the weeks turn into months, and she shows no sign of anything like that. For all appearances, Face isn’t struggling at all.
Then, in between a stroll in Columbia and a trip to Pakistan, he’s at the office late, the only one left, and goes around to switch off the lights. He hits the breakroom, cracks open the door, and hears two very familiar voices stop mid-sentence.
Face is sitting with her back to him. Murdock’s got a hand over hers on the table, which she slowly slides away from. The pilot looks a little... pissed? Worried? What is it?
Face looks at him, and he’s surprised by the venom there. “We were just leaving, bossman,” she says. Do her words know how her expression looks? “We’ll get the lights.”
She’s had an on-again, off-again relationship with Murdock ever since they sprang him from that Mexican looney bin three years ago. They aren’t anything more than very good friends who occasionally fuck. Hannibal tells himself not to be worried, that Face never was an exclusive kind of girl and he never demanded that she be. And that was always okay. Lieutenant. Captain. That, at least, is legal. He can’t ask her to give that up.
But every time he watches her sitting a little close to Murdock, or leaning into his shoulder or squeezing his arm or stroking his hair as he goes through a rough patch, the colonel can’t help but feel the jealousy, and wonder if there’s any way to win her back.
It doesn’t hurt any less with time.
Face doesn’t threaten to leave the team again, doesn’t make any kind further demands on Hannibal. Nothing but her normal, happy, smarmy self. Things aren’t any different between them, after she gets over the initial anger.
Either she’s being incredibly mature about it, or there’s something else going on that she doesn’t let Hannibal see.
It might be easy for her to forget, but he can’t. Every time he looks at her, he remembers. The way she smells, the way her skin feels, the way she breaths his name right before she climaxes. It’s all still there. Sometimes he reaches out for her at night. Sometimes he has to stop himself from touching her during the day.
Things go on like that for too long. When he met Face, she was a shy, unsure butterbar fresh out of West Point. The first time he kissed her, she was a little more certain, a little more confident, but there was still a softness about her. Now, that’s gone. The innocence about her’s burning away. Too many missions, too many men. She looks taller, thinner. She’s getting more aggressive.
Face makes captain, and loses it. It’s her fault, and she knows it. Still, she cries when he tells her, nothing loud and noisy, just a few stray, smearing tears. He has to hold on to the desk to stop himself from getting up and holding her. Hannibal has to sit there. He can’t do anything.
Murdock’s outside. She folds into him, and he takes her away.
Hannibal tries to talk to Murdock about it. Do this right, go to the senior-ranking soldier, talk to him first...
“Bossman, I know you two have history...”
“It’s not about that,” Hannibal says, wishing it was true, making it sound like it is, “but I’m worried. You’re going to come up for major soon enough, and she’s never going to make rank again after the tank incident...”
“I’m not an idiot. She don’t really want me, boss. Don’t got to worry. She only comes round when she needs it.” Murdock shuffles his feet. “We don’t lie to each other.”
When does she need it? Face can literally get any guy she wants, and does, frequently. At base, on missions. So, when does she need it?
There’s a stirring feeling he gets, sometimes, thinking back on the awkward conversation later, that maybe she goes to Murdock when she wants to be with him. But Hannibal’s an old man, with too many what-ifs as it is, so he tries not to think about it.
At night, though, when she should be there, when she’s with Murdock, when she’s with a stranger, sometimes his hand slips down below the sheets and he thinks about it. It’s a poor substitute, but it’s the best he can do.
+++++
They’re arrested. Escape. Arrested again. Escape again.
Not a colonel anymore. Not a military man. For twenty-three years, that’s all he’s been. First and foremost. The only thing he’s been. He's not sure how he feels about this.
Hannibal had a great deal of time to reflect while he’s in jail. That’s not a good thing. Too many opportunities to look back means too many chances to rework those memories, to put wistfulness in her eyes, to see her facade crack and resolve falter and footing slip, to see her wanting him.
It’s pointless. Face let him go, all those years ago.
There’s no recovering from that now. Even if rank doesn’t matter.
He doesn’t know what to do.
This was her call.
Face scams them a couple of rooms for the night in some cheap motel outside town. Nobody’s going to find them here. Her private savings, a not inconsiderable account, gets them clean clothes and food and she comes back with a smile on her lips, a real smile, like he hasn’t seen in years.
She snaps the deadbolt home as she closes the door behind her. It’s drizzly outside. She’s wet, strained and exhausted.
She’s still beautiful.
“I think I remember your size,” she says lamely, dropping the bag on the room’s small table. “But I didn’t get shoes.”
“That’s fine.”
“I also got these,” Face continues, and tosses him something small and shiny. It clatters into his open hand.
Dog tags. His dog tags. They glint in the light from the bathroom. He traces the embossed surface. Twenty-three years. Dog tags.
She’s shivering a little bit, probably from the cold. She’s changed so much, but she looks exactly the same as when she first reported into his office, nervous, pretending not to be, her eyes old and hopeful.
“I thought you might want them,” and that’s not like her at all, either, unsure and apologetic. “Chris, Sosa, he was able to get them back for me.”
“Yours?”
“I was never military material, Hannibal, you know that. You were the soldier. I just wanted free college.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true. Look at how easy it was for you to...”
“To what?”
She bites her lip, doesn’t reply. Doesn't need to.
He looks down at the dog tags again. All those years. That's what she's been thinking. That's the thing he's seen in her eyes, what's been haunting her.
That his fucking job mattered more than her.
But he has to ask. “To do what, Face?”
“To just, just let me walk away like that. Didn't want to. Wanted you, wanted you to... but you didn't, and I’m furious that I can’t get mad at you for it...”
She’s not talking anymore, because she’s swaying on her feet, and he has to catch her, and he’s got his face buried in her wet hair, and there’s no need to ask.
He lets the dog tags fall to the floor, and stops her from picking them up. He tucks her hand into his, kissing the palm. “Doesn’t matter anymore, Face. It’s over.”
Her blue eyes register some variety of shock, but she doesn’t move. Towards or away. At least it’s not away.
“I’d never have asked you to choose...”
“It was unfair of me to put that on you,” he whispers, sliding his hands around her waist and lifting her up. “Never should have been your decision to make.”
Face leans her cheek against his shoulder. Having he this close, after so long. It’s almost more than he can take. “But you couldn’t make it,” she says, and his heart feels like it’s shattering.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her. It’s not good enough. Nothing is. Not now, but he wants to try and explain. Wants to let her know.
Her feet brush up off the floor as Hannibal carries her over to the bed. He lays her down, gently, like she’ll break, and moves over her, catching her mouth in a deep, searing kiss.
Face moans, moving a little underneath him, smooth arms winding up along his shoulders, into his hair, down his back, tugging. He breaks away for a moment, takes off his shirt.
She’s got hers off when he looks back down, going back to unsnap the bra. He brushes her fingers away. “Let me.”
“You don’t have to play it like this.”
“Like what?”
She reaches and jerks on his belt. Laughs a little. “John, just fuck me, already.”
He grabs her wrist. Face deserves better than that. He draws her back in, the kiss harder, more forceful this time. His tongue traces the inside of her mouth, his hands heavy along her neck, and she sighs into it, falling back and pulling him with her, trying to roll them over so she’s on top.
“No, you don’t, Temp,” he whispers. He wants to control this, wants to let her know he’s controlling this. She adopts a mock-pout, but lets him go back to ravishing her. He trails kisses along her chest, down to the hard nipples. Her breasts are a little bigger than they used to be, but she still makes the same little noise as he sucks one, then the other.
She’s writhing now, and he moves quickly to pull off her shoes and pants, lingering for a moment on the task of sliding her undies off, letting his fingers tickle along the still-smooth skin he finds under there, straying down to brush over her clit lightly. He stays there for a moment, remembering old patterns.
“Need you,” she murmurs, reaching a hand down, beckoning. "Please..."
He sheds his own pants, freeing his erection. He’s been hard since she walked in the room. Making no secret of it, Hannibal climbs back over her, and she’s got a sultry smirk on her face. His hands find breasts, hers reach a little lower, roaming, and soon breaths are quickening, little pants interrupting the flow.
Rain’s beating down outside now. She’s wet, her hand teasing the head of his cock, rubbing the slit. He’s got two fingers inside her, thumb rubbing that nub, stimulation thrumming through her now. They used to be able to keep this up for hours, pushing each other to the edge but never too far, dancing on it, enjoying for as long as they could. But there’s no time for that tonight; for all of Hannibal’s good intentions, he needs to be inside her, and she seems to be wanting the same thing, if the spread of her legs is any indication.
Face is oddly passive. Fully engaged but waiting, following his lead.
He pushes up into that familiar, so familiar heat, and they both groan.
Like the last time they did this, he doesn’t worry about a condom, anything, just rocks up into her. But this is better than that. Better than every time before. Better than the first time, where she was so clumsy and so excited. He’s missed this. He’s missed her.
Her hands splay over his chest, bracing, as Hannibal sets a slow, easy rhythm. It’s easy, this is easy, like they never stopped, the eight years between them gone, like it was only last night that she looked down at him with hooded eyes from where he’d fucked her into the wall.
He hears it again, those little words.
“I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“You could never hurt me kid, no more than I could hurt you.”
A lie/
A lie Hannibal hadn’t known he’d told, but a lie nonetheless, and he could still see her in his mind’s eye, picking her uniform off the floor, sees how her heart must have been breaking, how she must have been holding it all back, trying to be strong, pretending like it was all okay.
His climax is slow and wonderful, building softly, perfectly in tune with hers. She cries out as she comes. He follows a moment later, filling her, and she refuses to unwrap her legs. He rolls them to the side.
"John," she murmurs, voice thick, wistful.
"I'm here, baby."
Face falls asleep like that, with Hannibal still buried deep inside, her hands flopped around him, her breath exhaling against the fine hair of his chest.
He can’t fall asleep so easily. Face is young, even now, she’ll spring back. She already looks better, all the fine worry lines smoothed from her tightly shut eyes. It won’t be so quick for Hannibal.
That office. He remembers it, lying there in bed with her now, drifting off.
He’s still there, somehow, and maybe it’s the stress of the last couple days or the exhaustion or the tingle of orgasm running live through him yet. He’s here with here, he’s there with her, and back then, Hannibal get between her and the door, takes the boots from her, stops her from leaving.
“You’re what matters, Face,” he tells her, should have told her, desperately needs to tell her. “You. Not the army, not the mission. You. It’s you that I love. Nothing else comes before...”
And in his dream, she doesn’t let him say any more, because her lips are on his, sharing his breath, everything about her an extension of him, and everything he is a mere footnote to her, and they stay like that, locked together, until he forces himself back to the surface, stroking her hair, waiting for morning.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: 63!Face
Summary: Fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Girl!Face/Hannibal, the fraternization-problem
Face and Hannibal have a good thing going on, but of course, rank gets in the way.
Hannibal never figured it’d be Face who broke down first.
She’s spread out on his desk when it happens, knees on the edge and wide, her calves hanging down and toes curling as he goes down on her, his tongue buried in her sweet sex, the stubble of his cheeks brushing the smooth skin on her inner thighs. He’s doing that little curl thing she loves so much, but instead of the moans it usually draws, Hannibal hears sobs.
He pulls back, gets off his knees into the chair, and pulls her carefully into his lap. Face, crying? She hardly ever does it. That one time Murdock was in a coma for a week. When BA’s mother died. Today, right now, in his hardly-used office after work hours.
He's glad they're the only two in the building.
Hannibal knows better than to ask her what’s wrong, or she’ll slap him and accuse him of being overbearing and shut down on him. He holds her slight weight against him, hoping the sobs wracking her body will stop, wishing she’d tell him what he can do to help. He’d go to hell and back for his lieutenant.
After long minutes, Face pulls back enough to look him in the eyes. She’s on some knife-edge between hurt and anger, and he knows immediately what the problem is.
“Are we really going to do this again?” he asks, not unkindly. She’s still dripping, and it’s soaking into his ACUs. He pushes a stray strand of hair out of the way, tucking it gently behind her ear. “Face, you know how much I love you...”
“But you can’t give me anything, colonel. I know. There’s nothing here, it’s meaningless, I’m a romantic idiot, I should know better than to expect anything, you’re my superior officer and my commander and the fucking Army...” She’s counting it off on her fingers, and Hannibal can’t stop himself from catching them and pressing them back against her chest.
“Stop,” he says, trying not to scare her away. “That’s all bullshit.”
“If it’s bullshit, then why do I have to lie to my friends about my boyfriend? Why do I have to tell Murdock and BA that we aren’t fucking, that it wasn’t my car they saw parked down the street from house last weekend? Why can’t I touch you in public?”
Her voice is cracking. “Shh,” he says, not knowing what else to do. “I know how hard this is for you...”
“No, no you really don’t!” she snaps, and pulls away from him violently. She swings her leg off his lap and pulls her panties back up from where they’ve fallen around her ankle. Face still has her t-shirt and her bra on, but her hair is down and she lost one of her earrings and she’s the most beautiful thing Hannibal’s ever seen. “Why don’t you just fucking tell them?”
“We’ve talked about this, kid.”
“I don't think you understand how hard this is, jackass.”
But he does know, because he feels it himself. Every little bit of contact, a brush as she leaves his office, his hand lingering as he takes her gun on the firing range, the way his thumb likes to brush over her knuckles whenever he pulls her inside a cheap hotel room far from base where nobody's going to see. She always tenses, unable to relax, not knowing when somebody’s going to walk around the corner, when somebody’s going to come in the room.
“Yes, I really do.”
But even as he says it, Hannibal knows she doesn't believe him.
+++++
Hannibal wants to touch her, wants the contact, wants to sweep her up every time he sees her and make everything else disappear. Wants to erase that doubt that he always sees in her.
But every time she walks past him outside, pops a salute, he sees the hope in her eyes, that sparkle that uniquely Temperance Peck, and the pain that follows when he salutes back and keeps walking. She used to people leaving her. She’s still so young. She doesn’t know how to deal with this.
He’s not entirely sure he’s any better off.
“I’ve got an appointment tomorrow.” She’s against far wall, staring off into space. “I’ve got two years left on my commitment...”
“No,” he says, standing up, trying to ignore the raging stiffness between his legs. How can he take this away from her? There’s no compromise with frat, and they both know it. Somebody has to lose something, and he will be damned if it’s going to be her commission. “I’m not letting you get out. You’re a damn fine officer, Peck.”
“Is that what I am? An officer in your unit?” she spits out, accentuating every syllable in a way that breaks his heart. “Just the girl it’s safe for you to fuck? Can’t get your rocks off any other way?”
“If you’re going to twist everything I say...”
“I’m not twisting! Just stop lying to me! Stop asking me to lie to everyone else!”
“I’m not lying...”
“You don’t love me,” Face says, the words falling still and lifeless to the ground. “I’m going to go talk to the brigade commander tomorrow. I’m asking for an early PCS.”
Hannibal goes cold. She can’t be threatening to leave. “I want you in my unit, Face.”
“Fuck what you want.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Her eyes glaze up with tears, and he really can’t stand to see that on her again. Twice in one day? “If I’m not in your unit, it’s not as big of a deal. We can date a little more openly. I can get out in two years...”
“You are not going to do that, lieutenant.”
“See, just one of your damn officers.”
“We could get married.” They weren’t legally allowed to stop marriages. They wouldn’t even investigate their relationship. Probably wouldn’t investigate.
“Neither one of us is the marrying type, darling.”
Hannibal takes a chance, and moves in until she’s flush with the wall and he’s resting on his elbows on either side on her, his face close. “You’re my woman, Temperance. I wouldn’t have it any other way. What do I need to do to prove it to you?”
For a moment, she doesn't say anything, staring into his eyes, and them she makes a decision.
Face arches up and in, kissing him so fiercely that it knocks the breath of him, pushing him back. Her hands are everywhere, and he thinks he hears his shirt rip, and feels a slight breeze over his chest and she pulls her own over her head and throws it away.
He takes that slight pause as an opportunity to regain control of the situation, grabbing her and throwing her around, her back contacting the wall with a slight thump. She grins, feral, and lets his dominate the next kiss, hard and bruising. Her fingernails dig into his back as he reaches down and yanks her panties back off, driving her up against the wall. She wraps her legs around his waist, her blonde hair falling all around them as she tugs insistently at his belt and he obliges by yanking it out, ripping a belt loop as he does it.
His uniform pants and briefs tumble down around his boots, the bottoms of his pants still bloused in, and he feels her heels pushing against the small of his back.
Hannibal doesn’t need any lube, because she’s soaking down there, and he doesn’t need a condom, because she says she’s on birth control and he wouldn’t really care if she was lying to him about it. He pushes in, and she cries out his name, tears still running down her cheeks.
Face’s kiss is salty now, as Hannibal sets a brutal pace, her perfect ass connecting with the wall in time with every thrust, every muscle under the smooth skin of her stomach tensed and humming under his roaming hands, her breasts bouncing against his pecs. He thinks she comes at least once before he does, and he bites lightly on her collarbone, raising a mark as he pumps his release into her.
They’re both sweating in the quiet, unlit office. He moves back, letting her slide down and catching her before she falls. He settles them both on the floor, trying to still the tremors in Face’s body. She’s a thousand miles away, he thinks, and then she moves a hand up to where he almost broke the skin.
“Below the neckline. Thanks, Hannibal.”
It cuts him to the core. She’s facing away from him, into the darkness, and for the first time since he met her three years ago, Hannibal has no idea what Face is thinking. He brushes uncertain fingertips down her arm.
“What can I do, kid? Please tell me.”
She draws a shuddering breath. They both knew the score, he thought, they both knew the way things worked, the rules, what they were going to have to do, when they started this thing. He thought she was okay with it then. When had everything changed?
Or had she been lying from the start?
Face’s hand moves back, gently tracing the outside of one ear, and down his neck, where he catches it and holds her still.
“Hannibal,” she whispers, “it’s always the senior officer’s fault. You know that. I couldn’t, I can’t, if I can’t control myself... I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“You could never hurt me, kid, no more than I could hurt you.”
She shifts her weight onto the balls of her feet and pushes up, standing, going for the bits and pieces of her uniform. She’s got her boots in hand. She’s lost the other earring. Her body is steady but her voice shakes. She’s still beautiful.
“Then stop doing this to me.”
Hannibal lets his head fall back against the wall as the office door opens softly and slams shut. He thinks it’s the loudest noise he’s ever heard.
+++++
“Stop doing this to me.”
Hannibal tries, he really, really does. She even makes it easy, at first. The next morning, after their fight, he finds a leave request sitting in his inbox. Face is asking for a week. She’s doesn’t come in to the mission planing cell that day. Technically, this isn’t how things are done, and he should call her and make her come back to work and chew her out for bucking protocol.
He waits until noon, hoping Face might come to her senses and report in, like she’s supposed to. But she never does what she’s told, and she’ll probably never listen to him again, and if he called her, she’d just accuse him of playing the colonel and hang up, and then he’d really have to punish her. And it won’t be fun anymore.
Heavy, Hannibal approved the request.
The next week, he sees her on the range, bright and early, pegging a two-inch-square metal target with ease. Face is prone against the sandbags, her M-4 tucked just so into her shoulder. “How’re you doing, lieutenant?” he asks her.
Face doesn’t bother to look up, just dials down the headphones so she can hear a little better. “Just fine, boss,” she says lightly and fires.
He leaves.
Hannibal’s pretty sure it’s hard for her, too. Although he can’t be sure. Face is really good at putting on a front. The best. Hell, it’s her job, it’s what she does, it’s what makes her so utterly appealing, because in the moments when her guard is down, Hannibal gets to see something nobody else ever will.
But she doesn’t let him see her any longer. Instead, he sees what everybody else sees. At the O-Club. Around the small offices they use sometimes. Out on missions. Just a happy, pleasantly sarcastic, cheery, gorgeous woman without a care in the world. That’s all Hannibal gets, and it eats at him, because he knows somewhere, deep inside, she’s bleeding.
That he catches in unguarded moments, like when she’s coming out of an elevator or the bathroom, her refusal to go to the Army’s Birthday Ball, or in her dying smiles when they’re in a room alone together. He offers to take her out to lunch one day, and she drops it all for a moment.
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea, do you?” she replies. Hannibal doesn’t ask again.
He figures she’ll get through it, that she’ll work her way back to him, straighten it all out in her head and come to him with some brilliantly reasoned explanation as to why they can be together. She does things like that. But the weeks turn into months, and she shows no sign of anything like that. For all appearances, Face isn’t struggling at all.
Then, in between a stroll in Columbia and a trip to Pakistan, he’s at the office late, the only one left, and goes around to switch off the lights. He hits the breakroom, cracks open the door, and hears two very familiar voices stop mid-sentence.
Face is sitting with her back to him. Murdock’s got a hand over hers on the table, which she slowly slides away from. The pilot looks a little... pissed? Worried? What is it?
Face looks at him, and he’s surprised by the venom there. “We were just leaving, bossman,” she says. Do her words know how her expression looks? “We’ll get the lights.”
She’s had an on-again, off-again relationship with Murdock ever since they sprang him from that Mexican looney bin three years ago. They aren’t anything more than very good friends who occasionally fuck. Hannibal tells himself not to be worried, that Face never was an exclusive kind of girl and he never demanded that she be. And that was always okay. Lieutenant. Captain. That, at least, is legal. He can’t ask her to give that up.
But every time he watches her sitting a little close to Murdock, or leaning into his shoulder or squeezing his arm or stroking his hair as he goes through a rough patch, the colonel can’t help but feel the jealousy, and wonder if there’s any way to win her back.
It doesn’t hurt any less with time.
Face doesn’t threaten to leave the team again, doesn’t make any kind further demands on Hannibal. Nothing but her normal, happy, smarmy self. Things aren’t any different between them, after she gets over the initial anger.
Either she’s being incredibly mature about it, or there’s something else going on that she doesn’t let Hannibal see.
It might be easy for her to forget, but he can’t. Every time he looks at her, he remembers. The way she smells, the way her skin feels, the way she breaths his name right before she climaxes. It’s all still there. Sometimes he reaches out for her at night. Sometimes he has to stop himself from touching her during the day.
Things go on like that for too long. When he met Face, she was a shy, unsure butterbar fresh out of West Point. The first time he kissed her, she was a little more certain, a little more confident, but there was still a softness about her. Now, that’s gone. The innocence about her’s burning away. Too many missions, too many men. She looks taller, thinner. She’s getting more aggressive.
Face makes captain, and loses it. It’s her fault, and she knows it. Still, she cries when he tells her, nothing loud and noisy, just a few stray, smearing tears. He has to hold on to the desk to stop himself from getting up and holding her. Hannibal has to sit there. He can’t do anything.
Murdock’s outside. She folds into him, and he takes her away.
Hannibal tries to talk to Murdock about it. Do this right, go to the senior-ranking soldier, talk to him first...
“Bossman, I know you two have history...”
“It’s not about that,” Hannibal says, wishing it was true, making it sound like it is, “but I’m worried. You’re going to come up for major soon enough, and she’s never going to make rank again after the tank incident...”
“I’m not an idiot. She don’t really want me, boss. Don’t got to worry. She only comes round when she needs it.” Murdock shuffles his feet. “We don’t lie to each other.”
When does she need it? Face can literally get any guy she wants, and does, frequently. At base, on missions. So, when does she need it?
There’s a stirring feeling he gets, sometimes, thinking back on the awkward conversation later, that maybe she goes to Murdock when she wants to be with him. But Hannibal’s an old man, with too many what-ifs as it is, so he tries not to think about it.
At night, though, when she should be there, when she’s with Murdock, when she’s with a stranger, sometimes his hand slips down below the sheets and he thinks about it. It’s a poor substitute, but it’s the best he can do.
+++++
They’re arrested. Escape. Arrested again. Escape again.
Not a colonel anymore. Not a military man. For twenty-three years, that’s all he’s been. First and foremost. The only thing he’s been. He's not sure how he feels about this.
Hannibal had a great deal of time to reflect while he’s in jail. That’s not a good thing. Too many opportunities to look back means too many chances to rework those memories, to put wistfulness in her eyes, to see her facade crack and resolve falter and footing slip, to see her wanting him.
It’s pointless. Face let him go, all those years ago.
There’s no recovering from that now. Even if rank doesn’t matter.
He doesn’t know what to do.
This was her call.
Face scams them a couple of rooms for the night in some cheap motel outside town. Nobody’s going to find them here. Her private savings, a not inconsiderable account, gets them clean clothes and food and she comes back with a smile on her lips, a real smile, like he hasn’t seen in years.
She snaps the deadbolt home as she closes the door behind her. It’s drizzly outside. She’s wet, strained and exhausted.
She’s still beautiful.
“I think I remember your size,” she says lamely, dropping the bag on the room’s small table. “But I didn’t get shoes.”
“That’s fine.”
“I also got these,” Face continues, and tosses him something small and shiny. It clatters into his open hand.
Dog tags. His dog tags. They glint in the light from the bathroom. He traces the embossed surface. Twenty-three years. Dog tags.
She’s shivering a little bit, probably from the cold. She’s changed so much, but she looks exactly the same as when she first reported into his office, nervous, pretending not to be, her eyes old and hopeful.
“I thought you might want them,” and that’s not like her at all, either, unsure and apologetic. “Chris, Sosa, he was able to get them back for me.”
“Yours?”
“I was never military material, Hannibal, you know that. You were the soldier. I just wanted free college.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true. Look at how easy it was for you to...”
“To what?”
She bites her lip, doesn’t reply. Doesn't need to.
He looks down at the dog tags again. All those years. That's what she's been thinking. That's the thing he's seen in her eyes, what's been haunting her.
That his fucking job mattered more than her.
But he has to ask. “To do what, Face?”
“To just, just let me walk away like that. Didn't want to. Wanted you, wanted you to... but you didn't, and I’m furious that I can’t get mad at you for it...”
She’s not talking anymore, because she’s swaying on her feet, and he has to catch her, and he’s got his face buried in her wet hair, and there’s no need to ask.
He lets the dog tags fall to the floor, and stops her from picking them up. He tucks her hand into his, kissing the palm. “Doesn’t matter anymore, Face. It’s over.”
Her blue eyes register some variety of shock, but she doesn’t move. Towards or away. At least it’s not away.
“I’d never have asked you to choose...”
“It was unfair of me to put that on you,” he whispers, sliding his hands around her waist and lifting her up. “Never should have been your decision to make.”
Face leans her cheek against his shoulder. Having he this close, after so long. It’s almost more than he can take. “But you couldn’t make it,” she says, and his heart feels like it’s shattering.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her. It’s not good enough. Nothing is. Not now, but he wants to try and explain. Wants to let her know.
Her feet brush up off the floor as Hannibal carries her over to the bed. He lays her down, gently, like she’ll break, and moves over her, catching her mouth in a deep, searing kiss.
Face moans, moving a little underneath him, smooth arms winding up along his shoulders, into his hair, down his back, tugging. He breaks away for a moment, takes off his shirt.
She’s got hers off when he looks back down, going back to unsnap the bra. He brushes her fingers away. “Let me.”
“You don’t have to play it like this.”
“Like what?”
She reaches and jerks on his belt. Laughs a little. “John, just fuck me, already.”
He grabs her wrist. Face deserves better than that. He draws her back in, the kiss harder, more forceful this time. His tongue traces the inside of her mouth, his hands heavy along her neck, and she sighs into it, falling back and pulling him with her, trying to roll them over so she’s on top.
“No, you don’t, Temp,” he whispers. He wants to control this, wants to let her know he’s controlling this. She adopts a mock-pout, but lets him go back to ravishing her. He trails kisses along her chest, down to the hard nipples. Her breasts are a little bigger than they used to be, but she still makes the same little noise as he sucks one, then the other.
She’s writhing now, and he moves quickly to pull off her shoes and pants, lingering for a moment on the task of sliding her undies off, letting his fingers tickle along the still-smooth skin he finds under there, straying down to brush over her clit lightly. He stays there for a moment, remembering old patterns.
“Need you,” she murmurs, reaching a hand down, beckoning. "Please..."
He sheds his own pants, freeing his erection. He’s been hard since she walked in the room. Making no secret of it, Hannibal climbs back over her, and she’s got a sultry smirk on her face. His hands find breasts, hers reach a little lower, roaming, and soon breaths are quickening, little pants interrupting the flow.
Rain’s beating down outside now. She’s wet, her hand teasing the head of his cock, rubbing the slit. He’s got two fingers inside her, thumb rubbing that nub, stimulation thrumming through her now. They used to be able to keep this up for hours, pushing each other to the edge but never too far, dancing on it, enjoying for as long as they could. But there’s no time for that tonight; for all of Hannibal’s good intentions, he needs to be inside her, and she seems to be wanting the same thing, if the spread of her legs is any indication.
Face is oddly passive. Fully engaged but waiting, following his lead.
He pushes up into that familiar, so familiar heat, and they both groan.
Like the last time they did this, he doesn’t worry about a condom, anything, just rocks up into her. But this is better than that. Better than every time before. Better than the first time, where she was so clumsy and so excited. He’s missed this. He’s missed her.
Her hands splay over his chest, bracing, as Hannibal sets a slow, easy rhythm. It’s easy, this is easy, like they never stopped, the eight years between them gone, like it was only last night that she looked down at him with hooded eyes from where he’d fucked her into the wall.
He hears it again, those little words.
“I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“You could never hurt me kid, no more than I could hurt you.”
A lie/
A lie Hannibal hadn’t known he’d told, but a lie nonetheless, and he could still see her in his mind’s eye, picking her uniform off the floor, sees how her heart must have been breaking, how she must have been holding it all back, trying to be strong, pretending like it was all okay.
His climax is slow and wonderful, building softly, perfectly in tune with hers. She cries out as she comes. He follows a moment later, filling her, and she refuses to unwrap her legs. He rolls them to the side.
"John," she murmurs, voice thick, wistful.
"I'm here, baby."
Face falls asleep like that, with Hannibal still buried deep inside, her hands flopped around him, her breath exhaling against the fine hair of his chest.
He can’t fall asleep so easily. Face is young, even now, she’ll spring back. She already looks better, all the fine worry lines smoothed from her tightly shut eyes. It won’t be so quick for Hannibal.
That office. He remembers it, lying there in bed with her now, drifting off.
He’s still there, somehow, and maybe it’s the stress of the last couple days or the exhaustion or the tingle of orgasm running live through him yet. He’s here with here, he’s there with her, and back then, Hannibal get between her and the door, takes the boots from her, stops her from leaving.
“You’re what matters, Face,” he tells her, should have told her, desperately needs to tell her. “You. Not the army, not the mission. You. It’s you that I love. Nothing else comes before...”
And in his dream, she doesn’t let him say any more, because her lips are on his, sharing his breath, everything about her an extension of him, and everything he is a mere footnote to her, and they stay like that, locked together, until he forces himself back to the surface, stroking her hair, waiting for morning.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-05-04 04:54 pm (UTC)And I loved the somewhat open ending! And Chris Sosa, for some reason that made me squee a lot, haha!
Great fic, I loved it!
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Date: 2011-05-04 09:06 pm (UTC)And yeah, 63!Face getting her heart broken by 63!Sosa... hmm...
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Date: 2011-05-04 10:01 pm (UTC)Anyway... oh yes: usually it's all male or all female, I like the "mix" lol!
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Date: 2011-05-04 10:34 pm (UTC)And het is good sometimes. Usually I favor the m/m, but het is good too!
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Date: 2011-05-04 10:47 pm (UTC)