First Times - Part Two of Two
Sep. 17th, 2011 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: discussions of child abuse (non-graphic)
Summary: A continuation of my little head!canon ‘verse, takes place after the events of Ring Dance.
After Face returns from his night with Sosa, Hannibal realizes that there’s a terrible secret his lover’s been keeping from him. And he’s determined to fix whatever’s gone wrong in Face’s life.
Part One here
Face checks his watch for the fifth time as he sits on the edge of the narrow bed in the small room.
Where’s Hannibal? Where the fuck is Hannibal?
He doesn’t exactly like being here.
St. Paul of Tarsus, the old rectory back behind the main church complex. It’s even the right room. The furnishings are slightly different but it still smells the same, still feels the same, and it’s...it’s making him nervous.
In the extreme.
He was a bit surprised that he’d been able to get it.
But then, he had run into Father Sanchez when he’d come in to the parish office the day before yesterday, and hell, the scam he was going to run died on his lips.
“Templeton!” the old priest had exclaimed excitedly. Older, frailer, thinner, that Face remembered him, but he’d still rushed over and opened his arms, and Face, to his surprise, had fallen into them.
“It’s good to see you, Father,” he’d told him, meaning it. “It’s really good to see you.”
Father Sanchez had just patted him on the back, leading him towards the church, and asked him if he wanted to talk.
And they’d found a pew, and talked.
The old priest, visiting some of his students at the rectory, had seen the news, the stories about their arrest, Face’s name implicated in some kind of bombing plot . Face explained what more he could, slowly, haltingly, and just trailed off in the middle of it, staring down at his hands.
“Sounds like it’s been a hard year on you, Temp,” his old college professor replied at length. “Very hard.”
It was an open-ended statement, more question than anything else, and Face knew it. “Look, Father,” he tried to say, “I...I’m not here looking to save my soul or anything like that...”
“Of course you aren’t,” the old priest replied, and patted his hand, smiling, sad, in that fatherly way of his. “You always thought that was beyond you.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, startled.
“That day you left my office, after you told me about your homosexual inclinations, I knew you weren’t coming back. You couldn’t accept yourself. You were looking for forgiveness you didn’t think you deserved. You were so torn.”
Face shook his head and stared up at the stained glass in the vault of the ceiling, far above, trying not to think about that day. How mortified he’d been. How shamed. “That’s...that’s not why I wanted to be a priest. I know Father Magill always said I shouldn’t do it, but...but I wanted to, you know.”
“I never doubted your sincerity, Templeton. Or your intentions. Please know that.”
He thought about that for a moment, and nodded. There was something reassuring about that statement. “I think...the Army was a good place for me. Or the Rangers were, at least. I...I felt whole, there. I found somebody who made me whole.”
“A woman?”
He smiled, and shook his head, thinking about Charisa, all the ugliness that passed between them before the end. And after. “I wanted...but I guess...I guess God had other plans, Father. You...you gonna condemn me for that?” he asked, hesitant.
“We condemn ourselves, Templeton. Only ever ourselves.” Father Sanchez said, and patted his hand again. “So tell me, what’s going on with you today?”
Face had given him some version of the truth. That some bad things had happened here and he’d been advised to try to revisit the place where the trauma had happened. “Just the night,” he finished. “Please. Everybody lives on the second floor anyway, right? My old room’s on the first, and nobody’s there at night. I'm just going to sleep, it's not a big deal for anyone...”
Father Sanchez had shaken his head, but touched Face’s hand again. “This...this partner of yours, from the Rangers. Was he good to you, Templeton?”
“He still is,” Face replied simply, and nodded again, feeling himself tear up, remembering Hannibal’s words to him that morning after his admission. After he’d let his darkest secret out. He’d been so afraid of saying it aloud to somebody, especially somebody as important to him as Hannibal. But there’d been nothing but soft words and soft touches. I want to give it back to you, sweetheart. I want to give you back everything he took. Can I do that for you? Can you trust me to do that for you? I swear, I won’t hurt you...
The key from the parish office, per Father Sanchez’s request, is on the little nightstand now.
But Hannibal’s not here yet.
And just when Face has had almost too much of this to take, just when he feels like he’s lost his nerve entirely, right as he reaches the absolute limit of his ability to stay in here by himself, there’s a knock on the door.
Thank fuck, he thinks, with no small amount of relief, and goes for the door. They’ve done role-playing before. This’ll be like that, right? Of course it will be. A bit different, but basically the same. Just the same. Nothing different...
But when he sees Hannibal there, in the hall, smiling a little, dressed all in black, that priest’s collar high against his neck...
...everything in him just snaps back, the years between then and now gone, and it scares the shit out of him.
+++++
Hannibal tries not to just lunge forward and scoop Face up in his arms as the kid stands there in the open door, mouth slightly open, almost scared in his t-shirt and jeans and scuffed up sneakers and his hair dyed light blonde, like it used to be, back when he first joined Hannibal’s unit as a twenty-something year old. He’s shaved, cleaner than Hannibal can remember seeing him in a long time. He looks...young.
Very, very young.
The colonel, for his part, feels awkward in this priest get-up he’s got on. Mildly guilty about it, even - he can’t remember a single Catholic church within a hundred miles of his hometown, but he’s had a lot of boys under his command, over the years, with that distinctive RC stamped on them, and there’s an element of this that feels like a betrayal of something...
He has to focus, though, has to do this right.
So, swallowing his own doubts, reminding himself that Face agreed to this, that they both know where this can and can’t go, that he wants this and Face seems to, too, Hannibal shuts the door behind him.
Metal clicks into place, solid wood closing them off from the world.
And it starts.
“Templeton,” he says softly, gently, locking the deadbolt behind his back, not taking his eyes off his lover for a second. “Templeton, I heard you were back with us. I didn’t believe it, I was so excited...”
“F-Father?” Face asks, nervousness flickering through his blue, blue eyes. “I...I didn’t realize you were back, either. I thought you were on a mission.”
They aren’t really playing to a script here. But they did talk about what happened that night, all those years ago. What Face remembered, what had been said, what...what had been done. Hannibal’s planning on sticking as close to that as possible, until, of course, it comes time for events to change. And a few other things, just in case. And then he’s thinking very seriously about hunting down the bastard who did this in the first place and ripping him open from throat to...
But that can come later. Not tonight. Tonight’s Face’s night. Focus, John, he tells himself and keeps going.
“I just got back yesterday from the ministry down in Nicaragua,” he tells Face in that same gentle voice, reaching out to lay a hand on the kid’s shoulder, feeling a tremble run through him. The kid’s even painted . “The things you see down there among the people... terrible.”
“Must be a lot of poverty,” comes the stammered answer, and Hannibal very much has the feeling that he isn’t talking to his Face any more, not his brave, confident, cocksure lieutenant. It wasn’t. He really does seem younger, less confident, less sure...just Templeton, Hannibal thinks, before Lt Faceman Peck, and he thinks about what he’d been like at that age. Angry, arrogant, yes, but never...
Head in the game, John...
And he keeps going.
“There is, Templeton. It makes you feel very lucky, for how fortunate we are here in America.”
Templeton - because it isn’t, really, Face - squirms. “Yeah, I guess so, Father.”
“I missed you,” Hannibal lets the priest collar say, a bit more direct now, pressing Temp back to sit on the bed, sitting down next to him. The kid’s biting his lip, and he strokes a hand down one smooth cheek, stopping it, guiding those eyes back up to his. “Do you know how much I missed you, Templeton? After you ran away from us, I worried for you, prayed for you. I was so afraid they’d find you dead on the streets. This is a mean city...”
Those eyes flick down, and then back up, fear warring with well-concealed anger. “Father, I...I’m sorry.”
“Well, you’re back now, safe and sound,” he murmurs, leaning in, smelling hair gel and the intoxicating scent of his lover’s skin and cheap soap that was, if he had to guess, the same brand nineteen-year-old Templeton used here. “That’s what’s important.”
“Father, I...” Templeton stops, and licks his lips, wrapping a hand up around Hannibal’s, where it’s resting on his cheek. “Father, I don’t think I...I should do this anymore. With...with you.”
“Why not, beautiful boy?”
“It’s,” and that college boys scoots back, further up on his bed, until his back hits the wall, “it’s...between men, like...like this... it’s a sin, Father.”
It’s whispered.
Like he’s ashamed it’s even coming out.
And this, Hannibal knows from their discussion about it, is where things went wrong the first time around. This was where Richard crawled up over the top of him and held him down and told him he’d make sure he was thrown out of theology studies if he didn’t, that it was Templeton’s fault for seducing him, that it was okay, it happened all the time...
But that’s not how it’s going to happen tonight.
Hannibal pushes forward, following Temp’s movements, but he leaves a bit of distance. Just enough. Not touching any more.
“No, Temp, no. Please don’t say such things,” he whispers, switching from the false gentle of the words he’s been using so far, into the voice he reserves for their nights together, the voice only ever heard by Face.
Those blue eyes widen a bit, confused, and Hannibal wonders how damn deep his boy’s buried himself in the memories. Temp shakes his head, and looks away. “You’re...you’re a priest, Father. We can’t...”
“It’s just John, Templeton,” he gentles. He’d been worried, not wanting Face to link anything here with what had happened to him as a teen, to understand that this wasn’t an endorsement of it, but the kid said he understood the difference, that he accepted this was just a game. More serious than usual, but just a game, a fantasy, that he’s okay with that. Still, Hannibal feels the need to underscore that difference dramatically. Change a few of the facts. Rework it, just so. This is part of that. “Can you call me John?”
“John,” Templeton says, and there’s a bit of relief in his eyes. “John, still, you’re...”
“It doesn’t change what I feel for you,” he replies, sliding up a little bit more now. “Not a damn thing. I’ve...I’ve tried to deny myself, ignore what I felt for you, but I can’t do it any longer. You come back to us now, a beautiful man, and I can’t help...I can’t help the fact...” He trails off, and runs a hand into his lover’s hair, dryer than usual from the dye.
That chin raises a bit, that fine body pushing up, and Templeton stares right at him. “What if I said I want to be a priest and I can’t do this?”
“I’ll leave.”
“And what if I said you’re a priest, and it’s a betrayal for you to be doing this to me?”
“I’m gone.”
“And what if I said I think you just want to fuck me and none sentimentality bullshit is real?”
“I’d do anything you asked, to show you that it is.”
Templeton pushes forward, right up, a finger dipping under the white band at Hannibal’s throat. “And what if proving it to me means this goes away?”
Hannibal slips a finger down in next to Temp’s. “Then it’s gone.”
“Why?” That tone is more challenging now. “Why give your life up for me?”
“I love you,” he whispers, putting every ounce of what he feels for his boy into it as he tugs the collar away. He folds it into one of Temp’s hands, kissing his fingers as he folds it up. “I love you, Templeton Peck, like I’ve never loved anyone before, like I’ll never love anybody again.”
That blonde head shakes, and Templeton crushes the collar in his hand. “Nobody ever...” he whispers hoarsely, staring at it. “Nobody’s ever said that to me before.”
“You deserve to be told that every minute of every day, sweetheart. You deserve everything...”
“John...” he breathes, and looks up, something akin to wistfulness in his eyes. “John, I...I think I...I...but I’ve never...”
“Can I show you, sweetheart? Would you let me show you?”
And this is really what this is all about. What Face wanted. A choice. Being asked. Being given the opportunity to say no. Hannibal had sworn he’d respect whatever he says here, even if it’s get the fuck out...
But that’s not what the kid says.
Not at all.
“...yes,” Temp whispers back, dropping the collar behind him and reaching out for Hannibal, running a trembling hand up the older man’s knee. “John, yes...”
Hannibal’s never heard anything like that from Face before. Not ever. Not even after Sosa. He’s never heard him so...lost.
And suddenly, whether any of this is real or play or therapy or fantasy is inconsequential.
All he can see is a lonely boy who’s never known an unselfish touch in his life. A boy who’s been betrayed by everyone who‘s ever mattered to him, everyone who ever should have been there for him. A boy with fear in his eyes, but enough trust left in his heart to reach out, right now, on blind faith that this time, this time, it’ll be different. A boy who’s already started building defenses that’ll grow to be higher and thicker, more inpenetrable, than any military fortification he’ll ever come up against in his future, but who’s opening up to him anyway.
Letting him right into his heart.
Hannibal isn’t sure, not sure at all, about any of this, but it’s okay. It’s okay because he’s never been more certain of anything in his life.
Never been up against anything that needed doing more.
Never anything he’s needed more himself.
Never.
So he lays a hand over Temp’s, where it’s resting on his knee, turning it over, drawing their palms together. Drawing that scared, nervous boy closer, as close as he dares, smelling that cheap soap on his skin again. “You’re beautiful, Templeton,” he whispers, kissing him gently, slowly.
The kid flinches. “I’m not...”
“You are,” Hannibal tells him, running a hand down his spine, feeling that graceful body respond, arch into his as if he’s never been touched before. “Can’t you feel it? How beautiful you are?”
The kid shuffles closer, his knees bumping the inside of Hannibal’s, Hannibal guiding their joined hands up around his shoulder, but there’s something dark in those blue eyes. “I’ve...the year I spent away from here, John...what I had to...I don’t know if you’d want me, after...”
“You’re beautiful,” he says again, pulling at the edge of that t-shirt to let his fingers run up underneath. He spreads his hand wide, pressing down on the kid’s belly gently, and smiles at the way those eyes flutter for a moment. “Can’t you feel how beautiful you are?”
“John...” he gasps.
Hannibal leans in, capturing that open mouth with his own, a fleeting kiss. Leans in, and pulls that shirt off, grasping at his boy’s shoulders. Kisses him again. Longer now, deeper, licking up with his tongue against the soft roof of the younger man’s mouth, tasting him, feeling his groans echo through, into him, filling him, feeling the young body melt into his arms, melt against him. And when they both come up for air, those blue eyes have turned to midnight, soft, amazed, blinking up at him.
“Beautiful,” Hannibal murmurs again, stroking down that light blonde hair. “You are so beautiful...”
“Show me,” Templeton pleads, turning up for another kiss. His fingers drop to the top button of Hannibal’s shirt. “John, please...”
Hannibal wants to tell him that he never has to beg, that he can have anything he needs, anything in his power to give, but his fingers catch in those fine strands. All action stops.
He’s remembering. Remembering another night, another time. His house, a night at the O-Club. Both of them slightly drunk. Face, crawling into his lap, kissing him, begging him for something more. The way he’d shoved him away that night, betrayed him, like everybody betrayed him, when he’d reached out, fearful, wanting, needing...
...all those moment, he remembers. The moments between when he first pushed his boy away, to the night he barely made it in time to stop the kid from...from...
“I never meant to hurt you, love,” he says now, digging his hands into that hair, murmuring the words against his boy’s bared throat. “I’d burn in hell rather than hurt you...”
“I love you,” Templeton replies. He’s sinking back, laying down, pulling Hannibal’s shirt to his wrists, fingers brushing against the older man’s skin as he goes.
Drawing him back into the now. Away from the pain. Away from all the guilt he’s carried for all these years.
“You don’t have to deny yourself any more,” Temp whispers. “Just love me.”
And that’s when he realizes.
Face is doing this for him, too.
+++++
That waver, that faintest hint of buckled intent, he just felt is gone now. Gone. Faded away from the way John’s touching him, the gentle pads of long fingers caressing the hard lines of his hipbones, the softest brush of warm lips to the hollow of his navel, loving murmurs prickling the line of fur leading down, past his strained and needy cock, pointing further down yet, down...
...down to what, tonight, is the last untouched part of his innocence.
So he lets all that experience, all that prowess, all those memories of empty, meaningless encounters that Faceman holds in this arena fade away.
Lets that part of him who remembers what it was like to be Templeton, the part that’s been sparking up again, that boy who still had something precious to lose, shudder back up into all that sensation.
He remembers this night, the way it went. How Father Richards came into his room and petted his hair and smiled at him and told him how very, very, very much he’d been missed, how he’d never been able to stop thinking about him, and then pinned him down and told him how the evening was going to go.
Templeton had protested, had tried to object, but in the end, kissed him, let him, bit the inside of his cheek as he was taken too tight and too dry, thinking that maybe, maybe, maybe it could be real, knowing it wasn’t, beyond caring either way.
Templeton had been out of the orphanage for a few years at that point, the first eight months of which had been spent homeless. Homeless. Conning hot meals from the local shelters and Hare Krishna Center on the weekends, lying to friends at school about a large extended family and rich parents who didn’t give a shit about him and wouldn’t mind if he spent the night, showering in the gym locker room before class so nobody would ever know, evenings without homework or social obligations on his knees at one bar or another, for money or not.
Needing to be filled.
That hunger Father Richards left in him.
Never sated, always empty, ever hollow.
And, while he’d never admitted it, while he’d never say it aloud to another living soul, Templeton knew part of the reason he’s come back here to the rectory while he’s going through pre-divinity, instead of trying to find a couple of roommates and strike it out on his own, is because he’s always wondered about what that was with the priest, what he felt, if he could ever get back what was taken.
Tonight it’s different, though. Tonight it wasn’t Richards on the other side of the door, no, not at all. Tonight it’s John, Father John.
Temp tells himself the not-quite fantasy, not-quite truth, as those gentle touches strip his second-hand jeans away, his cheap white underwear, as those soft lips find the tenderest of skin against his thigh, as those words tell him again how beautiful he is.
Father John. A man he’s always respected, watched from afar, the one who’s always treated him with so much care, always been so proper with him, always held to his station, but there’s always been an undercurrent between them, a something he couldn’t put his finger on, a something he’s always been afraid of, should it prove...should it prove untrue...
“You still with me, sweetheart?” John’s soft voice husks across his aching cock, red and stiff. “Are you here with me?”
Templeton bites his lip and looks down again, meeting heated blue eyes with his own, and nods as best he can. “Y-yes...yes, John...”
“This is for you, Templeton,” and a big hand wraps back into his, guiding it to his shoulder. “You can touch. I want you to touch me.”
He nods again, and barely has time to touch that bare, flexing shoulder before a strong arm hooks his knee out and a hot tongue licks up the underside of his balls, all the way up to the tip of his cock to smooth off the bead of moisture pooling there, and Templeton can hear himself crying out.
“Beautiful,” John says again, breath ghosting over the swollen, leaking head. “I love you so, my boy.”
“L-love...love you...” the younger man gasps, and then falls back into the pillows as John takes him in all the way.
As the priest starts a slow suction, a gentle bob, a patternless flicking and twisting, that has the college boy writhing in moments, pleasure sparking through his entire body. He lets himself fall into it, feel something he’s never felt before.
Feel it for the first time, he orders his body.
His body doesn't disappoint.
Then there’s a pressure against his entrance, a tight flare of pain and then a slow, glorious slide into him. His internal muscles clench around that penetration, so little and yet so, so much, and then it hits something deep and white and good, too good, washing out the world. He’s bucking up, hips lifting clean off the bed as that wave crashes through him, bright and pure and like nothing, nothing, ever before.
And as he rolls back up to the surface, he can hear himself babbling.
“Oh, oh god, god! John...”
“No taking the Lord’s name in vain, Templeton,” his newly minted lover teases, coming off his cock with an obscenely delicious sucking sound, lips cleaning him lovingly as they go, rubbing his belly with a big hand even as that finger continues to circle within. They lock eyes again, and John smiles reassuringly. “Nothing you don’t want needs to happen here tonight, sweetheart. Nothing.”
Temp feels the need thrum through him, and does something with his head that he means to say yespleasemore. “Don’t stop, John, no, don’t stop.”
John pushes back up to lay up behind him, the dark material of his pants brushing the backs of Templeton’s thighs, still trembling from orgasm. His finger stays deep inside, and the young man can feel the older mans erection throbbing hard against him, a promise of what can come. “It’s a sacred act, Templeton. Nothing to be undertaken lightly...”
Face smiles into the pillow, coming out again for a moment, thinking about Hannibal saying something like that after that time three weeks ago when the boss ripped his swim trunks right off him and...and he dives back into character again.
“John, please, I need you to fuck me...”
“That’s what I mean, Templeton,” and a kiss is pressed in between his shoulder blades. “I don’t want to fuck you. I don’t want some mutual sexual gratification. That’s... not what we’re meant for, not what we were made for. You deserve so much more than that. I want to make love to you, want to experience every inch of you, want to live in your heart and have you live in mine...”
An entirely different type of joy surging through him at those words, Templeton turns, feeling empty again as that fullness slips from him, as both those big, wonderful hands cup the bone of his hips, drawing them close. “I...I think I’d like that, John.”
“I do love you, Templeton.”
It’s whispered across the younger man’s forehead, warm and wonderful, as his lover lays him back down.
“I love you, John. Only you.” He rubs a cheek across that elegant neck, his mouth seeking John’s, as trembling hands open those pants and push them down. “Only ever you.”
“Never another,” John swears, shifting over him, kicking his pants away, the massive head of his cock drooling wetly against Templeton’s belly. There’s a packet of lube in his hand, and he’s shaking a little as he tears it open. “I’ve never loved anyone, sweetheart, the way I love you.”
“I’ve never loved anyone at all,” the college boy admits, and he touches John’s face, his silver hair, holds out that hand for the contents of the packet. He lingers, slicking his lover’s cock thoroughly. “Never thought I could.”
“I’m here with you, Templeton,” John says. His eyes are bright. He catches Templeton’s hand and moves it away, kissing him deeply, spreading his knees and settling between them. One hand urges his hips up and a pillow’s slid underneath. John kisses his fluttering abs once more. “I’m not going anywhere, I swear it.”
Templeton reaches out for him, smiling as their hands twine once more, as the slick head of John’s delicious cock brushes his entrance, lined up, ready to go. “Make love to me,” he murmurs, clinging tight to the man above him. “Take me, take my virginity, please...”
“Anything for you, sweetheart,” John groans, breaching the still-tight ring of muscle, starting to press in.
Templeton can’t breath as that pillar of flesh stretches and fills and warms him, making him whole, making them one, bringing them together on the narrow bed of his little college room, driving away the darkness, brimming him to the top with light.
Their foreheads press, their noses brush, their lips meet and come away again, inhaling each other’s breath as they settle, as they discover.
As John’s thighs meet his own.
“My beautiful virgin,” that sublime tenor voice murmurs, half in jest and half in awe. “My beautiful, blushing virgin.”
And then Face takes a deep breath to summons the courage to say the thing he’s been longing to say since Hannibal brought up this idea, give what he’s wanted to give since the first moment he saw the man. “It was always yours, J-John. I...I saved...”
“Saved what, sweetheart?”
He shakes his head and looks right up into his mate’s eyes, knowing in his deepest heart that somehow, now, after tonight, this isn’t a lie. “Myself...for...for you...”
For a moment, Hannibal doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe.
And then, for the first time in the nearly fifteen years Face has known the man, tears fill those perfect blue eyes, crowding his lashes, spilling down the crook of his nose to mingle salty in the kiss they both fall into, a intensity he’s never felt before in the way they’re touching each other, thrusting against each other, crying out together, and so lost is he in that Face hardly feels himself come for a second time, and Hannibal’s climax only registers but dimly.
They’re already full of light, already so, so full, there’s no room for anything else, no way for them to shine any brighter than they already are.
“I love you, Face.” Hannibal’s voice comes to him across the noiseless sea. “More than life, I love you.”
He wants to reply, wants to reply in kind, echo Hannibal’s sentiment, as he feels it no less deeply. But then Face realizes that he’s sobbing, his voice too heavy with tears to carry anything else, and all he can do is hold onto Hannibal, let Hannibal hold onto to him with all that strength as they drift together far, far out to the depths of what always should have been.
+++++
“Father? There’s somebody here to see you.”
Father Miguel Sanchez looks up from his computer at his TA, a first-year seminarian from St. John’s, up in Camarillo. He comes down here to UCLA twice a week to help grade papers and give lecture. But right now, the young man’s standing there with an older gentleman. Tall, gray-haired, lean and lanky, a strange kind of intensity about him. Something familiar about him...
The old priest remembers the newspaper report about Templeton’s trial, the other men on his team, the boy’s words to him, not four days ago. And he sighs. Seems You’re sending me a challenge today, he thinks wryly, and pushes back from his chair.
“Thank you, David,” he says, and pats his TA on the shoulder. “You can go back to the papers now.”
The newcomer doesn’t so much as turn as David leaves and shuts the office door behind them, but there’s something in him clearly attentive to the young man’s movements. Interesting, Father Sanchez thinks, and holds out a hand.
“Father Sanchez, head of theology here at UCLA. What can I do for you, Mr...”
“John,” the man replies, shaking that proffered hand absently. “You can just leave it at John.”
“It’s nice to meet you, John,” the priest says, and goes back around his desk, sitting down, bidding his guest do the same. “I think I can guess what you’re here about.”
“Oh?”
It’s slightly wary, and the priest shakes his head, smiling. “I’m not going to call the federal authorities, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
John raises an eyebrow. “What...”
“You’re...” and he pauses for a moment, wondering how to best say this. Just say it, Miguel. It’s not as if we don’t know it happens. “You’re Templeton’s partner, aren’t you?”
The man, John, blanches a bit, like he wasn’t expecting to hear that from a priest. He looks a bit uncomfortable, actually, eying the figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe on one of his back shelves. Protestant, Father Sanchez thinks, only half-jokingly, or Mormon. “I...did he tell you, about...that?”
“He told me he felt you made him whole,” and the priest smiles. “It was good to see him happy. He was never happy, when I knew him in college. He so needed a place to belong...”
John smiles, a fragile expression. “He belonged in the Rangers. A dedicated soldier, a true professional. Dead shot, tactically brilliant, flexible and adaptable, brave. Bravest man I’ve seen in a long time. Leave him in the desert with a box of paperclips and no boots and tell him to go blow up a target a hundred miles away at a specified time, he’d be there, with the proper ordinance, to the second...” He looks away, sadness in his voice. “He was happy in the Rangers.”
“He says he’s happy with you...”
“I thought...I thought the Catholic Church...you’re just okay with this?” John asks, incredulous, cutting him off.”
“John, I know Templeton’s gay. I knew that before I was informed of it,” he explains, patient, trying not to remember how furious he’d been at Richard once he’d found out how exactly the then-Franciscan knew about the boy’s orientation.
“Is that why you told him he had to be a good man to be a priest?”
John’s words are flat and cutting, and Father Sanchez realizes it’s not just Templeton’s hurt echoing through him. He’s angry on behalf of his lover, and part of the old priest is warmed to hear it. But still, those words...
“Yes, I did tell him that,” Sanchez says, and judging from the look on John’s face, that isn’t going to cut it. So he keeps going. “But not because I thought his homosexuality made him a bad person. One of the priests at the rectory where he was staying at the time came to me, expressing concern over some of boy’s nighttime behaviors. That, those choices, were something he needed to re-evaluate if he wanted to continue with his studies here.”
John’s fist tightens on his lap. “That, from the man who...when he was a kid...”
“I don’t agree with the way the diocese handled all of that,” the old priest agrees, remembering the horror, the betrayal, he’d felt at it all. “The impulse was to forgive, but punishment should have followed more swiftly than it did.”
“Was that bastard punished?”
Father Sanchez nods, and leans back in his chair, wondering if he should say, trying to buy himself some time. “That’s the question you came up here to ask me, isn’t it, John?”
The former Ranger’s eyes flash, flitting emotions mixing there, and then a key’s tossed up on the desk. “I came to return this,” John says, and gets up again. “I don’t want Temp having to walk back into that place.”
The slight sneer on that place makes the old priest wonder what, exactly, the boy wanted the key for to begin with, if Templeton had lied to him about his intentions, and decides it’s probably better not to push. So he picks it up and slips it into his desk, telling John, “I’ll make sure the diocese gets it back.”
“Thank you,” the tall man replies tersely, and goes for the door.
A challenge, Father Sanchez thinks again, and folds his hands up on his desk. “He went to jail, John.”
John stops, and turns.
So the priest continues, quiet, remembering.
“He was thrown out of the Order, defrocked, if you know that term. He’d...he’d hurt other boys, ones who testified. He went to San Quentin, and you know they try to separate the child molesters, for their safety, but...Richard...I buried him myself. I’d thought him a good man once. It was...it was a hard descent to watch.”
John’s mouth disappears into a thin line, but he doesn’t say what the priest was expecting him, a former soldier, to say.
“I’m sorry,” he says instead.
I’m sorry, like he knows what it’s like to lose a friend in such a final way, a friend who’d been anything but what one thought him to be, and the priest feels such sadness in those words that he can’t help but ask one more thing.
“John,” he calls out, as the tall man’s leaving his office, an enormous hand on the knob. “John, would you mind if I prayed for you and your team?”
His guest snorts a little, like it’s funny, the very thought of it, but nods anyway. “I’m sure the boys would be okay with that. ”
“Are you?” the priest challenges.
“Father, if there is a god out there somewhere, he is not going to start listening to me now,” John says, not quite laughing, and is gone before Father Sanchez can say anything more about it.
The old priest gets up again, wandering over to his window, leaning into the California sunlight, enjoying the warmth on his aching bones. For all that stress, the underlying anger and uncertainty and sorrow that he’d seen there, there’s a good man at the core. A very good man.
And then he sees John come out of the building, negotiating the narrow front steps with huge shoes. A suit makes an elliptical arc across the sidewalk, right into him, and Father Sanchez realizes, from the way the crowd’s parting around them, from the way a few of the girls have started to walk slower, than they’re kissing.
Just for a moment, and they’re swallowed up again, passed away, out of his life as if they’ve never been.
Father Sanchez smiles to himself, looking down at all those students, the young people with young dreams, who will never in their entire lives live a quarter of what Templeton had been through by their age.
He remembers anew, the last conversation he had with Templeton, all those years ago...
You sure about this, Templeton? Do you truly want to withdraw? Do ROTC?
I can’t turn off who I am, Father. I wish...but this...I just can’t.
The Army’s no easier. Worse, in a lot of ways.
There...I feel like there’s something there for me. Like...like maybe I can find a home there...or...all these...bad...things I am might be useful. Or...I don't know. Does that make any sense?
“Yes, Temp,” Father Sanchez murmurs to the empty room, and heads back to his emails. “It makes all the sense in the world.”
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: discussions of child abuse (non-graphic)
Summary: A continuation of my little head!canon ‘verse, takes place after the events of Ring Dance.
After Face returns from his night with Sosa, Hannibal realizes that there’s a terrible secret his lover’s been keeping from him. And he’s determined to fix whatever’s gone wrong in Face’s life.
Part One here
Face checks his watch for the fifth time as he sits on the edge of the narrow bed in the small room.
Where’s Hannibal? Where the fuck is Hannibal?
He doesn’t exactly like being here.
St. Paul of Tarsus, the old rectory back behind the main church complex. It’s even the right room. The furnishings are slightly different but it still smells the same, still feels the same, and it’s...it’s making him nervous.
In the extreme.
He was a bit surprised that he’d been able to get it.
But then, he had run into Father Sanchez when he’d come in to the parish office the day before yesterday, and hell, the scam he was going to run died on his lips.
“Templeton!” the old priest had exclaimed excitedly. Older, frailer, thinner, that Face remembered him, but he’d still rushed over and opened his arms, and Face, to his surprise, had fallen into them.
“It’s good to see you, Father,” he’d told him, meaning it. “It’s really good to see you.”
Father Sanchez had just patted him on the back, leading him towards the church, and asked him if he wanted to talk.
And they’d found a pew, and talked.
The old priest, visiting some of his students at the rectory, had seen the news, the stories about their arrest, Face’s name implicated in some kind of bombing plot . Face explained what more he could, slowly, haltingly, and just trailed off in the middle of it, staring down at his hands.
“Sounds like it’s been a hard year on you, Temp,” his old college professor replied at length. “Very hard.”
It was an open-ended statement, more question than anything else, and Face knew it. “Look, Father,” he tried to say, “I...I’m not here looking to save my soul or anything like that...”
“Of course you aren’t,” the old priest replied, and patted his hand, smiling, sad, in that fatherly way of his. “You always thought that was beyond you.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, startled.
“That day you left my office, after you told me about your homosexual inclinations, I knew you weren’t coming back. You couldn’t accept yourself. You were looking for forgiveness you didn’t think you deserved. You were so torn.”
Face shook his head and stared up at the stained glass in the vault of the ceiling, far above, trying not to think about that day. How mortified he’d been. How shamed. “That’s...that’s not why I wanted to be a priest. I know Father Magill always said I shouldn’t do it, but...but I wanted to, you know.”
“I never doubted your sincerity, Templeton. Or your intentions. Please know that.”
He thought about that for a moment, and nodded. There was something reassuring about that statement. “I think...the Army was a good place for me. Or the Rangers were, at least. I...I felt whole, there. I found somebody who made me whole.”
“A woman?”
He smiled, and shook his head, thinking about Charisa, all the ugliness that passed between them before the end. And after. “I wanted...but I guess...I guess God had other plans, Father. You...you gonna condemn me for that?” he asked, hesitant.
“We condemn ourselves, Templeton. Only ever ourselves.” Father Sanchez said, and patted his hand again. “So tell me, what’s going on with you today?”
Face had given him some version of the truth. That some bad things had happened here and he’d been advised to try to revisit the place where the trauma had happened. “Just the night,” he finished. “Please. Everybody lives on the second floor anyway, right? My old room’s on the first, and nobody’s there at night. I'm just going to sleep, it's not a big deal for anyone...”
Father Sanchez had shaken his head, but touched Face’s hand again. “This...this partner of yours, from the Rangers. Was he good to you, Templeton?”
“He still is,” Face replied simply, and nodded again, feeling himself tear up, remembering Hannibal’s words to him that morning after his admission. After he’d let his darkest secret out. He’d been so afraid of saying it aloud to somebody, especially somebody as important to him as Hannibal. But there’d been nothing but soft words and soft touches. I want to give it back to you, sweetheart. I want to give you back everything he took. Can I do that for you? Can you trust me to do that for you? I swear, I won’t hurt you...
The key from the parish office, per Father Sanchez’s request, is on the little nightstand now.
But Hannibal’s not here yet.
And just when Face has had almost too much of this to take, just when he feels like he’s lost his nerve entirely, right as he reaches the absolute limit of his ability to stay in here by himself, there’s a knock on the door.
Thank fuck, he thinks, with no small amount of relief, and goes for the door. They’ve done role-playing before. This’ll be like that, right? Of course it will be. A bit different, but basically the same. Just the same. Nothing different...
But when he sees Hannibal there, in the hall, smiling a little, dressed all in black, that priest’s collar high against his neck...
...everything in him just snaps back, the years between then and now gone, and it scares the shit out of him.
+++++
Hannibal tries not to just lunge forward and scoop Face up in his arms as the kid stands there in the open door, mouth slightly open, almost scared in his t-shirt and jeans and scuffed up sneakers and his hair dyed light blonde, like it used to be, back when he first joined Hannibal’s unit as a twenty-something year old. He’s shaved, cleaner than Hannibal can remember seeing him in a long time. He looks...young.
Very, very young.
The colonel, for his part, feels awkward in this priest get-up he’s got on. Mildly guilty about it, even - he can’t remember a single Catholic church within a hundred miles of his hometown, but he’s had a lot of boys under his command, over the years, with that distinctive RC stamped on them, and there’s an element of this that feels like a betrayal of something...
He has to focus, though, has to do this right.
So, swallowing his own doubts, reminding himself that Face agreed to this, that they both know where this can and can’t go, that he wants this and Face seems to, too, Hannibal shuts the door behind him.
Metal clicks into place, solid wood closing them off from the world.
And it starts.
“Templeton,” he says softly, gently, locking the deadbolt behind his back, not taking his eyes off his lover for a second. “Templeton, I heard you were back with us. I didn’t believe it, I was so excited...”
“F-Father?” Face asks, nervousness flickering through his blue, blue eyes. “I...I didn’t realize you were back, either. I thought you were on a mission.”
They aren’t really playing to a script here. But they did talk about what happened that night, all those years ago. What Face remembered, what had been said, what...what had been done. Hannibal’s planning on sticking as close to that as possible, until, of course, it comes time for events to change. And a few other things, just in case. And then he’s thinking very seriously about hunting down the bastard who did this in the first place and ripping him open from throat to...
But that can come later. Not tonight. Tonight’s Face’s night. Focus, John, he tells himself and keeps going.
“I just got back yesterday from the ministry down in Nicaragua,” he tells Face in that same gentle voice, reaching out to lay a hand on the kid’s shoulder, feeling a tremble run through him. The kid’s even painted . “The things you see down there among the people... terrible.”
“Must be a lot of poverty,” comes the stammered answer, and Hannibal very much has the feeling that he isn’t talking to his Face any more, not his brave, confident, cocksure lieutenant. It wasn’t. He really does seem younger, less confident, less sure...just Templeton, Hannibal thinks, before Lt Faceman Peck, and he thinks about what he’d been like at that age. Angry, arrogant, yes, but never...
Head in the game, John...
And he keeps going.
“There is, Templeton. It makes you feel very lucky, for how fortunate we are here in America.”
Templeton - because it isn’t, really, Face - squirms. “Yeah, I guess so, Father.”
“I missed you,” Hannibal lets the priest collar say, a bit more direct now, pressing Temp back to sit on the bed, sitting down next to him. The kid’s biting his lip, and he strokes a hand down one smooth cheek, stopping it, guiding those eyes back up to his. “Do you know how much I missed you, Templeton? After you ran away from us, I worried for you, prayed for you. I was so afraid they’d find you dead on the streets. This is a mean city...”
Those eyes flick down, and then back up, fear warring with well-concealed anger. “Father, I...I’m sorry.”
“Well, you’re back now, safe and sound,” he murmurs, leaning in, smelling hair gel and the intoxicating scent of his lover’s skin and cheap soap that was, if he had to guess, the same brand nineteen-year-old Templeton used here. “That’s what’s important.”
“Father, I...” Templeton stops, and licks his lips, wrapping a hand up around Hannibal’s, where it’s resting on his cheek. “Father, I don’t think I...I should do this anymore. With...with you.”
“Why not, beautiful boy?”
“It’s,” and that college boys scoots back, further up on his bed, until his back hits the wall, “it’s...between men, like...like this... it’s a sin, Father.”
It’s whispered.
Like he’s ashamed it’s even coming out.
And this, Hannibal knows from their discussion about it, is where things went wrong the first time around. This was where Richard crawled up over the top of him and held him down and told him he’d make sure he was thrown out of theology studies if he didn’t, that it was Templeton’s fault for seducing him, that it was okay, it happened all the time...
But that’s not how it’s going to happen tonight.
Hannibal pushes forward, following Temp’s movements, but he leaves a bit of distance. Just enough. Not touching any more.
“No, Temp, no. Please don’t say such things,” he whispers, switching from the false gentle of the words he’s been using so far, into the voice he reserves for their nights together, the voice only ever heard by Face.
Those blue eyes widen a bit, confused, and Hannibal wonders how damn deep his boy’s buried himself in the memories. Temp shakes his head, and looks away. “You’re...you’re a priest, Father. We can’t...”
“It’s just John, Templeton,” he gentles. He’d been worried, not wanting Face to link anything here with what had happened to him as a teen, to understand that this wasn’t an endorsement of it, but the kid said he understood the difference, that he accepted this was just a game. More serious than usual, but just a game, a fantasy, that he’s okay with that. Still, Hannibal feels the need to underscore that difference dramatically. Change a few of the facts. Rework it, just so. This is part of that. “Can you call me John?”
“John,” Templeton says, and there’s a bit of relief in his eyes. “John, still, you’re...”
“It doesn’t change what I feel for you,” he replies, sliding up a little bit more now. “Not a damn thing. I’ve...I’ve tried to deny myself, ignore what I felt for you, but I can’t do it any longer. You come back to us now, a beautiful man, and I can’t help...I can’t help the fact...” He trails off, and runs a hand into his lover’s hair, dryer than usual from the dye.
That chin raises a bit, that fine body pushing up, and Templeton stares right at him. “What if I said I want to be a priest and I can’t do this?”
“I’ll leave.”
“And what if I said you’re a priest, and it’s a betrayal for you to be doing this to me?”
“I’m gone.”
“And what if I said I think you just want to fuck me and none sentimentality bullshit is real?”
“I’d do anything you asked, to show you that it is.”
Templeton pushes forward, right up, a finger dipping under the white band at Hannibal’s throat. “And what if proving it to me means this goes away?”
Hannibal slips a finger down in next to Temp’s. “Then it’s gone.”
“Why?” That tone is more challenging now. “Why give your life up for me?”
“I love you,” he whispers, putting every ounce of what he feels for his boy into it as he tugs the collar away. He folds it into one of Temp’s hands, kissing his fingers as he folds it up. “I love you, Templeton Peck, like I’ve never loved anyone before, like I’ll never love anybody again.”
That blonde head shakes, and Templeton crushes the collar in his hand. “Nobody ever...” he whispers hoarsely, staring at it. “Nobody’s ever said that to me before.”
“You deserve to be told that every minute of every day, sweetheart. You deserve everything...”
“John...” he breathes, and looks up, something akin to wistfulness in his eyes. “John, I...I think I...I...but I’ve never...”
“Can I show you, sweetheart? Would you let me show you?”
And this is really what this is all about. What Face wanted. A choice. Being asked. Being given the opportunity to say no. Hannibal had sworn he’d respect whatever he says here, even if it’s get the fuck out...
But that’s not what the kid says.
Not at all.
“...yes,” Temp whispers back, dropping the collar behind him and reaching out for Hannibal, running a trembling hand up the older man’s knee. “John, yes...”
Hannibal’s never heard anything like that from Face before. Not ever. Not even after Sosa. He’s never heard him so...lost.
And suddenly, whether any of this is real or play or therapy or fantasy is inconsequential.
All he can see is a lonely boy who’s never known an unselfish touch in his life. A boy who’s been betrayed by everyone who‘s ever mattered to him, everyone who ever should have been there for him. A boy with fear in his eyes, but enough trust left in his heart to reach out, right now, on blind faith that this time, this time, it’ll be different. A boy who’s already started building defenses that’ll grow to be higher and thicker, more inpenetrable, than any military fortification he’ll ever come up against in his future, but who’s opening up to him anyway.
Letting him right into his heart.
Hannibal isn’t sure, not sure at all, about any of this, but it’s okay. It’s okay because he’s never been more certain of anything in his life.
Never been up against anything that needed doing more.
Never anything he’s needed more himself.
Never.
So he lays a hand over Temp’s, where it’s resting on his knee, turning it over, drawing their palms together. Drawing that scared, nervous boy closer, as close as he dares, smelling that cheap soap on his skin again. “You’re beautiful, Templeton,” he whispers, kissing him gently, slowly.
The kid flinches. “I’m not...”
“You are,” Hannibal tells him, running a hand down his spine, feeling that graceful body respond, arch into his as if he’s never been touched before. “Can’t you feel it? How beautiful you are?”
The kid shuffles closer, his knees bumping the inside of Hannibal’s, Hannibal guiding their joined hands up around his shoulder, but there’s something dark in those blue eyes. “I’ve...the year I spent away from here, John...what I had to...I don’t know if you’d want me, after...”
“You’re beautiful,” he says again, pulling at the edge of that t-shirt to let his fingers run up underneath. He spreads his hand wide, pressing down on the kid’s belly gently, and smiles at the way those eyes flutter for a moment. “Can’t you feel how beautiful you are?”
“John...” he gasps.
Hannibal leans in, capturing that open mouth with his own, a fleeting kiss. Leans in, and pulls that shirt off, grasping at his boy’s shoulders. Kisses him again. Longer now, deeper, licking up with his tongue against the soft roof of the younger man’s mouth, tasting him, feeling his groans echo through, into him, filling him, feeling the young body melt into his arms, melt against him. And when they both come up for air, those blue eyes have turned to midnight, soft, amazed, blinking up at him.
“Beautiful,” Hannibal murmurs again, stroking down that light blonde hair. “You are so beautiful...”
“Show me,” Templeton pleads, turning up for another kiss. His fingers drop to the top button of Hannibal’s shirt. “John, please...”
Hannibal wants to tell him that he never has to beg, that he can have anything he needs, anything in his power to give, but his fingers catch in those fine strands. All action stops.
He’s remembering. Remembering another night, another time. His house, a night at the O-Club. Both of them slightly drunk. Face, crawling into his lap, kissing him, begging him for something more. The way he’d shoved him away that night, betrayed him, like everybody betrayed him, when he’d reached out, fearful, wanting, needing...
...all those moment, he remembers. The moments between when he first pushed his boy away, to the night he barely made it in time to stop the kid from...from...
“I never meant to hurt you, love,” he says now, digging his hands into that hair, murmuring the words against his boy’s bared throat. “I’d burn in hell rather than hurt you...”
“I love you,” Templeton replies. He’s sinking back, laying down, pulling Hannibal’s shirt to his wrists, fingers brushing against the older man’s skin as he goes.
Drawing him back into the now. Away from the pain. Away from all the guilt he’s carried for all these years.
“You don’t have to deny yourself any more,” Temp whispers. “Just love me.”
And that’s when he realizes.
Face is doing this for him, too.
+++++
That waver, that faintest hint of buckled intent, he just felt is gone now. Gone. Faded away from the way John’s touching him, the gentle pads of long fingers caressing the hard lines of his hipbones, the softest brush of warm lips to the hollow of his navel, loving murmurs prickling the line of fur leading down, past his strained and needy cock, pointing further down yet, down...
...down to what, tonight, is the last untouched part of his innocence.
So he lets all that experience, all that prowess, all those memories of empty, meaningless encounters that Faceman holds in this arena fade away.
Lets that part of him who remembers what it was like to be Templeton, the part that’s been sparking up again, that boy who still had something precious to lose, shudder back up into all that sensation.
He remembers this night, the way it went. How Father Richards came into his room and petted his hair and smiled at him and told him how very, very, very much he’d been missed, how he’d never been able to stop thinking about him, and then pinned him down and told him how the evening was going to go.
Templeton had protested, had tried to object, but in the end, kissed him, let him, bit the inside of his cheek as he was taken too tight and too dry, thinking that maybe, maybe, maybe it could be real, knowing it wasn’t, beyond caring either way.
Templeton had been out of the orphanage for a few years at that point, the first eight months of which had been spent homeless. Homeless. Conning hot meals from the local shelters and Hare Krishna Center on the weekends, lying to friends at school about a large extended family and rich parents who didn’t give a shit about him and wouldn’t mind if he spent the night, showering in the gym locker room before class so nobody would ever know, evenings without homework or social obligations on his knees at one bar or another, for money or not.
Needing to be filled.
That hunger Father Richards left in him.
Never sated, always empty, ever hollow.
And, while he’d never admitted it, while he’d never say it aloud to another living soul, Templeton knew part of the reason he’s come back here to the rectory while he’s going through pre-divinity, instead of trying to find a couple of roommates and strike it out on his own, is because he’s always wondered about what that was with the priest, what he felt, if he could ever get back what was taken.
Tonight it’s different, though. Tonight it wasn’t Richards on the other side of the door, no, not at all. Tonight it’s John, Father John.
Temp tells himself the not-quite fantasy, not-quite truth, as those gentle touches strip his second-hand jeans away, his cheap white underwear, as those soft lips find the tenderest of skin against his thigh, as those words tell him again how beautiful he is.
Father John. A man he’s always respected, watched from afar, the one who’s always treated him with so much care, always been so proper with him, always held to his station, but there’s always been an undercurrent between them, a something he couldn’t put his finger on, a something he’s always been afraid of, should it prove...should it prove untrue...
“You still with me, sweetheart?” John’s soft voice husks across his aching cock, red and stiff. “Are you here with me?”
Templeton bites his lip and looks down again, meeting heated blue eyes with his own, and nods as best he can. “Y-yes...yes, John...”
“This is for you, Templeton,” and a big hand wraps back into his, guiding it to his shoulder. “You can touch. I want you to touch me.”
He nods again, and barely has time to touch that bare, flexing shoulder before a strong arm hooks his knee out and a hot tongue licks up the underside of his balls, all the way up to the tip of his cock to smooth off the bead of moisture pooling there, and Templeton can hear himself crying out.
“Beautiful,” John says again, breath ghosting over the swollen, leaking head. “I love you so, my boy.”
“L-love...love you...” the younger man gasps, and then falls back into the pillows as John takes him in all the way.
As the priest starts a slow suction, a gentle bob, a patternless flicking and twisting, that has the college boy writhing in moments, pleasure sparking through his entire body. He lets himself fall into it, feel something he’s never felt before.
Feel it for the first time, he orders his body.
His body doesn't disappoint.
Then there’s a pressure against his entrance, a tight flare of pain and then a slow, glorious slide into him. His internal muscles clench around that penetration, so little and yet so, so much, and then it hits something deep and white and good, too good, washing out the world. He’s bucking up, hips lifting clean off the bed as that wave crashes through him, bright and pure and like nothing, nothing, ever before.
And as he rolls back up to the surface, he can hear himself babbling.
“Oh, oh god, god! John...”
“No taking the Lord’s name in vain, Templeton,” his newly minted lover teases, coming off his cock with an obscenely delicious sucking sound, lips cleaning him lovingly as they go, rubbing his belly with a big hand even as that finger continues to circle within. They lock eyes again, and John smiles reassuringly. “Nothing you don’t want needs to happen here tonight, sweetheart. Nothing.”
Temp feels the need thrum through him, and does something with his head that he means to say yespleasemore. “Don’t stop, John, no, don’t stop.”
John pushes back up to lay up behind him, the dark material of his pants brushing the backs of Templeton’s thighs, still trembling from orgasm. His finger stays deep inside, and the young man can feel the older mans erection throbbing hard against him, a promise of what can come. “It’s a sacred act, Templeton. Nothing to be undertaken lightly...”
Face smiles into the pillow, coming out again for a moment, thinking about Hannibal saying something like that after that time three weeks ago when the boss ripped his swim trunks right off him and...and he dives back into character again.
“John, please, I need you to fuck me...”
“That’s what I mean, Templeton,” and a kiss is pressed in between his shoulder blades. “I don’t want to fuck you. I don’t want some mutual sexual gratification. That’s... not what we’re meant for, not what we were made for. You deserve so much more than that. I want to make love to you, want to experience every inch of you, want to live in your heart and have you live in mine...”
An entirely different type of joy surging through him at those words, Templeton turns, feeling empty again as that fullness slips from him, as both those big, wonderful hands cup the bone of his hips, drawing them close. “I...I think I’d like that, John.”
“I do love you, Templeton.”
It’s whispered across the younger man’s forehead, warm and wonderful, as his lover lays him back down.
“I love you, John. Only you.” He rubs a cheek across that elegant neck, his mouth seeking John’s, as trembling hands open those pants and push them down. “Only ever you.”
“Never another,” John swears, shifting over him, kicking his pants away, the massive head of his cock drooling wetly against Templeton’s belly. There’s a packet of lube in his hand, and he’s shaking a little as he tears it open. “I’ve never loved anyone, sweetheart, the way I love you.”
“I’ve never loved anyone at all,” the college boy admits, and he touches John’s face, his silver hair, holds out that hand for the contents of the packet. He lingers, slicking his lover’s cock thoroughly. “Never thought I could.”
“I’m here with you, Templeton,” John says. His eyes are bright. He catches Templeton’s hand and moves it away, kissing him deeply, spreading his knees and settling between them. One hand urges his hips up and a pillow’s slid underneath. John kisses his fluttering abs once more. “I’m not going anywhere, I swear it.”
Templeton reaches out for him, smiling as their hands twine once more, as the slick head of John’s delicious cock brushes his entrance, lined up, ready to go. “Make love to me,” he murmurs, clinging tight to the man above him. “Take me, take my virginity, please...”
“Anything for you, sweetheart,” John groans, breaching the still-tight ring of muscle, starting to press in.
Templeton can’t breath as that pillar of flesh stretches and fills and warms him, making him whole, making them one, bringing them together on the narrow bed of his little college room, driving away the darkness, brimming him to the top with light.
Their foreheads press, their noses brush, their lips meet and come away again, inhaling each other’s breath as they settle, as they discover.
As John’s thighs meet his own.
“My beautiful virgin,” that sublime tenor voice murmurs, half in jest and half in awe. “My beautiful, blushing virgin.”
And then Face takes a deep breath to summons the courage to say the thing he’s been longing to say since Hannibal brought up this idea, give what he’s wanted to give since the first moment he saw the man. “It was always yours, J-John. I...I saved...”
“Saved what, sweetheart?”
He shakes his head and looks right up into his mate’s eyes, knowing in his deepest heart that somehow, now, after tonight, this isn’t a lie. “Myself...for...for you...”
For a moment, Hannibal doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe.
And then, for the first time in the nearly fifteen years Face has known the man, tears fill those perfect blue eyes, crowding his lashes, spilling down the crook of his nose to mingle salty in the kiss they both fall into, a intensity he’s never felt before in the way they’re touching each other, thrusting against each other, crying out together, and so lost is he in that Face hardly feels himself come for a second time, and Hannibal’s climax only registers but dimly.
They’re already full of light, already so, so full, there’s no room for anything else, no way for them to shine any brighter than they already are.
“I love you, Face.” Hannibal’s voice comes to him across the noiseless sea. “More than life, I love you.”
He wants to reply, wants to reply in kind, echo Hannibal’s sentiment, as he feels it no less deeply. But then Face realizes that he’s sobbing, his voice too heavy with tears to carry anything else, and all he can do is hold onto Hannibal, let Hannibal hold onto to him with all that strength as they drift together far, far out to the depths of what always should have been.
+++++
“Father? There’s somebody here to see you.”
Father Miguel Sanchez looks up from his computer at his TA, a first-year seminarian from St. John’s, up in Camarillo. He comes down here to UCLA twice a week to help grade papers and give lecture. But right now, the young man’s standing there with an older gentleman. Tall, gray-haired, lean and lanky, a strange kind of intensity about him. Something familiar about him...
The old priest remembers the newspaper report about Templeton’s trial, the other men on his team, the boy’s words to him, not four days ago. And he sighs. Seems You’re sending me a challenge today, he thinks wryly, and pushes back from his chair.
“Thank you, David,” he says, and pats his TA on the shoulder. “You can go back to the papers now.”
The newcomer doesn’t so much as turn as David leaves and shuts the office door behind them, but there’s something in him clearly attentive to the young man’s movements. Interesting, Father Sanchez thinks, and holds out a hand.
“Father Sanchez, head of theology here at UCLA. What can I do for you, Mr...”
“John,” the man replies, shaking that proffered hand absently. “You can just leave it at John.”
“It’s nice to meet you, John,” the priest says, and goes back around his desk, sitting down, bidding his guest do the same. “I think I can guess what you’re here about.”
“Oh?”
It’s slightly wary, and the priest shakes his head, smiling. “I’m not going to call the federal authorities, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
John raises an eyebrow. “What...”
“You’re...” and he pauses for a moment, wondering how to best say this. Just say it, Miguel. It’s not as if we don’t know it happens. “You’re Templeton’s partner, aren’t you?”
The man, John, blanches a bit, like he wasn’t expecting to hear that from a priest. He looks a bit uncomfortable, actually, eying the figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe on one of his back shelves. Protestant, Father Sanchez thinks, only half-jokingly, or Mormon. “I...did he tell you, about...that?”
“He told me he felt you made him whole,” and the priest smiles. “It was good to see him happy. He was never happy, when I knew him in college. He so needed a place to belong...”
John smiles, a fragile expression. “He belonged in the Rangers. A dedicated soldier, a true professional. Dead shot, tactically brilliant, flexible and adaptable, brave. Bravest man I’ve seen in a long time. Leave him in the desert with a box of paperclips and no boots and tell him to go blow up a target a hundred miles away at a specified time, he’d be there, with the proper ordinance, to the second...” He looks away, sadness in his voice. “He was happy in the Rangers.”
“He says he’s happy with you...”
“I thought...I thought the Catholic Church...you’re just okay with this?” John asks, incredulous, cutting him off.”
“John, I know Templeton’s gay. I knew that before I was informed of it,” he explains, patient, trying not to remember how furious he’d been at Richard once he’d found out how exactly the then-Franciscan knew about the boy’s orientation.
“Is that why you told him he had to be a good man to be a priest?”
John’s words are flat and cutting, and Father Sanchez realizes it’s not just Templeton’s hurt echoing through him. He’s angry on behalf of his lover, and part of the old priest is warmed to hear it. But still, those words...
“Yes, I did tell him that,” Sanchez says, and judging from the look on John’s face, that isn’t going to cut it. So he keeps going. “But not because I thought his homosexuality made him a bad person. One of the priests at the rectory where he was staying at the time came to me, expressing concern over some of boy’s nighttime behaviors. That, those choices, were something he needed to re-evaluate if he wanted to continue with his studies here.”
John’s fist tightens on his lap. “That, from the man who...when he was a kid...”
“I don’t agree with the way the diocese handled all of that,” the old priest agrees, remembering the horror, the betrayal, he’d felt at it all. “The impulse was to forgive, but punishment should have followed more swiftly than it did.”
“Was that bastard punished?”
Father Sanchez nods, and leans back in his chair, wondering if he should say, trying to buy himself some time. “That’s the question you came up here to ask me, isn’t it, John?”
The former Ranger’s eyes flash, flitting emotions mixing there, and then a key’s tossed up on the desk. “I came to return this,” John says, and gets up again. “I don’t want Temp having to walk back into that place.”
The slight sneer on that place makes the old priest wonder what, exactly, the boy wanted the key for to begin with, if Templeton had lied to him about his intentions, and decides it’s probably better not to push. So he picks it up and slips it into his desk, telling John, “I’ll make sure the diocese gets it back.”
“Thank you,” the tall man replies tersely, and goes for the door.
A challenge, Father Sanchez thinks again, and folds his hands up on his desk. “He went to jail, John.”
John stops, and turns.
So the priest continues, quiet, remembering.
“He was thrown out of the Order, defrocked, if you know that term. He’d...he’d hurt other boys, ones who testified. He went to San Quentin, and you know they try to separate the child molesters, for their safety, but...Richard...I buried him myself. I’d thought him a good man once. It was...it was a hard descent to watch.”
John’s mouth disappears into a thin line, but he doesn’t say what the priest was expecting him, a former soldier, to say.
“I’m sorry,” he says instead.
I’m sorry, like he knows what it’s like to lose a friend in such a final way, a friend who’d been anything but what one thought him to be, and the priest feels such sadness in those words that he can’t help but ask one more thing.
“John,” he calls out, as the tall man’s leaving his office, an enormous hand on the knob. “John, would you mind if I prayed for you and your team?”
His guest snorts a little, like it’s funny, the very thought of it, but nods anyway. “I’m sure the boys would be okay with that. ”
“Are you?” the priest challenges.
“Father, if there is a god out there somewhere, he is not going to start listening to me now,” John says, not quite laughing, and is gone before Father Sanchez can say anything more about it.
The old priest gets up again, wandering over to his window, leaning into the California sunlight, enjoying the warmth on his aching bones. For all that stress, the underlying anger and uncertainty and sorrow that he’d seen there, there’s a good man at the core. A very good man.
And then he sees John come out of the building, negotiating the narrow front steps with huge shoes. A suit makes an elliptical arc across the sidewalk, right into him, and Father Sanchez realizes, from the way the crowd’s parting around them, from the way a few of the girls have started to walk slower, than they’re kissing.
Just for a moment, and they’re swallowed up again, passed away, out of his life as if they’ve never been.
Father Sanchez smiles to himself, looking down at all those students, the young people with young dreams, who will never in their entire lives live a quarter of what Templeton had been through by their age.
He remembers anew, the last conversation he had with Templeton, all those years ago...
You sure about this, Templeton? Do you truly want to withdraw? Do ROTC?
I can’t turn off who I am, Father. I wish...but this...I just can’t.
The Army’s no easier. Worse, in a lot of ways.
There...I feel like there’s something there for me. Like...like maybe I can find a home there...or...all these...bad...things I am might be useful. Or...I don't know. Does that make any sense?
“Yes, Temp,” Father Sanchez murmurs to the empty room, and heads back to his emails. “It makes all the sense in the world.”
