Absolution (Part Three of Five)
Dec. 11th, 2011 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Hannibal’s not sure what to expect when he finally has to come back to the States, as commander of the Second Ranger Brigade up at Fort Lewis. But when a drunken hook-up turns into so much more, he finds himself involved in trying to bring down one very corrupt Major Pike while coping for his feelings for Lieutenant Peck...
Face stares up at the house for a moment, leaning on his steering wheel. He’s tired and dirty and completely without that sense of weary euphoria he always fakes for the post-maneuver debriefs.
He’s been driving in circles, not wanting to come back here, to go in, not having anywhere else to go.
He shouldn’t have moved in here. But Major Pike had been so insistent - builds teamwork, el-tee, and I won’t take no for an answer - and Murdock had already had his own room in the basement and said it wasn’t a bad place to be, and had smiled and then joked about slumber parties and pillow fights and doing each other’s hair...
He’d wanted that. A friend. Somebody with whom he might be able to have a meaningful relationship with...somebody who looked at him with respect and interest and something, something almost like affection, who’d always been so careful and so eager with him, like he was somebody worth knowing, like he was wanted...
The lieutenant squeezes his eyes in an attempt to shut those memories off. No, there’s no point in thinking about how he’d imagined things would be, back when he first met Murdock, back when Major Pike had brought him on, back when everything was still looking up for him. Back when he still thought the Army was the place he should be. Afghanistan had fucked any chance of it - any of it - ever being good and that was all there was to it.
Nothing ever turns out the way he wants it to.
Face shakes himself and grabs his gear, leaving the safety of his car.
At least the garage is empty. Nobody home.
Thank fuck.
He throws the bag over his shoulder and walks softly through the kitchen, trying to go carefully, just in case Murdock’s around. The crazy pilot’s the last person he wants to see right now. All he wants is to head upstairs and hit the shower and sleep until he wakes up from this fucking nightmare of a life.
The floorboards creak beneath his feet as he reaches the stairs and Face notices that the basement door’s cracked. The sound of some video game is leaking up, blue light flashing, and he curses under his breath. Fuck. Crazy is home. He’d really hoped that Pike would have dumped his ass at the clinic.
Taking off his shoes, Face tries to ignore it and heads upstairs as quietly as he can, his sack of guilt heavy on his back. And as it bumps his ass, he realizes he’s castigating himself for the wrong bad decision.
Last year, choosing to move in here?
Fuck that. That’s nothing.
What was he thinking, that night he picked up Colonel Smith in that fucking bar?
It’s been about a month since he first spotted the man, across the room in that club downtown. Tall, lanky, older, handsome...all things Face likes. Things he likes a lot. A good choice for the evening, he’d thought. He loves the feeling of being wrapped up against a body stronger, bigger than his own, the way older men always seem to appreciate him more, the experience they bring to bed, how it’s all somehow more comforting than a round with somebody his own age, how there are never any expectations on him in the morning. That’s all Hannibal had been to him. What they always were. An evening’s diversion, something to help him forget.
But then as he’d gotten closer, as he’d slid his hand over that gorgeous silver fox’s and smiled that smile that always, always worked, got whoever he wanted into bed, his potential partner had smiled back and Face had felt something stir in him that he hadn’t felt since...
He should have known better then. That trying to chase that was only going to bring him pain, more pain, worse pain. He should have walked away with a wink and a pat on that very nice ass of his and left it alone, found somebody who just wanted to fuck his brains out, and call it a night.
He hadn’t, though. Probably the booze. So he’d found himself in a taxi with that man instead.
He’d come again, later, on that cock, in that lap, cheek laid on the older man’s shoulder and burning with embarrassment as he heard the sounds being drawn from him. Begging, needy little sounds. And then his partner, half-senseless from orgasm and alcohol, hadn’t let him go when they were done. Kept him close, murmuring nonsense in some language Face didn’t speak, kissing his hair, his neck, fingers teasing and gentle and so careful, so, so careful...
And then the man, that gentle man with the wonderfully large cock and the beautiful big hands and that fucking amazing voice, has to turn out to be a fucking colonel. The brigade commander, no less. Who isn’t interested in anything but sex. Who growls and frowns at him around the unit and fucks him on the weekends but doesn’t really want him. Who doesn’t have any use for him besides his looks, his body, what he can do for him.
Just like everybody else.
Hannibal has made that damn clear. Won’t even kiss him when they’re together, takes him on his belly more often than not, unless he’s just watching Face get himself off, which he also seems to really, really enjoy...
You’re used to that, Face tells himself. So what’s your fucking problem with it? You’re the one who keeps calling him.
The lieutenant tosses his bag up on his bed, and starts stripping his filthy uniform off. It kind of makes sense, as much as he hates to admit that to himself. He doesn’t see anything in himself that anybody else would want. His body and everything, yeah, but anything else? Forget it. Nobody wants a man like him, the things he’s done...
Hannibal won’t want him, not even to fuck. Probably have him arrested, if he knew the truth.
And Face realizes how empty he is. Hollow and worthless and...
“Heya, Faceman!”
The lieutenant jumps at the sound of the voice from his half-open bedroom door, and drags his shirt closed as he turns around. “Goddammit, Murdock! What the hell, man!?”
Standing in the doorway, Murdock cringes as if hit. He looks terrible, dressed in nothing but a wifebeater and a pair of flannel sleep pants that are far too big for him, big black circles under haunted eyes, and one of those manic grins on his face. He cocks his head. “Heard you come in.”
“Yeah, well, back now,” he sighs. And what the fuck - why is Murdock here? Why isn’t Murdock in the fucking ward, where he was left? “What do you want?”
“I... I thought you might want lunch.”
“I already ate,” Face says shortly. An MRE, right before the out-brief. Shit food, but it beats his own cooking. Not that he realized Murdock was going to be home... and then he remembers. Fuck, he was supposed to pick Murdock up from the clinic on the way home, wasn’t he? “I was just gonna go take a shower.”
“D’ya want lunch?” Murdock asks again, a bit faster this time, rocking now. “It’s lunchtime and I was gonna make myself some lunch but since you’re home now I could make you some too you know how good I am at cookin’ and I thought it’d be rude not to make you sumthin’ too...”
Face tunes out the rambling, and turns around, tossing off his undershirt, working on the laces of his mud-crusted boots. God, he’s so sick of this shit. So sick of the rambling and the monosyllabic fits and the bullshit geek conversations and the way Murdock’s constantly in the kitchen scrubbing his goddamn pans. So, so sick of it. The Army needs to get him out of the fucking cockpit and into a padded room somewhere.
He mentally kicks himself yet again for ever thinking that he could friends with somebody like this.
“Get out,” he says quietly.
But Murdock’s already gone.
He sighs with relief and starts on his pants. Shower now. He can worry about Murdock later.
He makes sure to lock the bathroom door, though. Just in case.
The lieutenant takes as long as he can in the shower, watching the steam float out the high, small bathroom window. He takes some extra time on his hair, lathering it thoroughly. It’s growing out, nice and curly. He hates that, usually, but Hannibal, Hannibal had said he’d like it longer...
Which means he’s a fucking idiot. Face makes a note to shave it down to regulation tomorrow. Make a fuckin’ point to himself. He doesn’t need to spend all his time thinking of ways to try to get Hannibal to admit to something that he obviously doesn’t give two shits about.
Eventually he has to get out, and in the middle of his normal skin care routine - the one that prompts Pike to call him a fag, every time he catches him at it - Face can smell hardwood charcoal in the grill outside and the faintest hint of cooking meat, and his treacherous stomach growls in agreement.
“Fine,” he grumbles to himself, and goes back to his room to find something to wear.
When he gets downstairs, Murdock’s in the kitchen, putzing around as he works on a batch of that curry potato salad that BA’s admitted once to liking. Face goes to the fridge for a beer, and as he’s in there, looking at all the nearly-finished leftovers, he realizes he can’t remember the last time he complimented Murdock on his cooking. Or if Major Pike ever has. Or BA, aside from that first time the pilot made curry, real, honest-to-god, from scratch lamb curry, before that fucking deployment to Afghanistan.
Hannibal’s words come back to him.
He’s hurting, kid. And he’d probably hurt a lot less if you treated him with any amount of respect at all.
“Got chicken wings outside on the grill, Face,” Murdock says cheerfully, and for the first time in a year, the lieutenant can hear the strain beneath it. “Potato salad, and I was gonna make some lemonade. You gonna eat?”
Face sits down at the kitchen table and folds his hands up in front of him. “Sure.”
“Anything you want extra?” Murdock asks.
“Umm...” and Face tries to think. “I don’t think so, no.”
Murdock pauses and looks up from his bowl. “You sure? Cause I really could...”
“No, it’s...it’s fine, Murdock. Really.”
The captain nods back and stares down into the sauce he’s stirring for the salad, and back to a separate bowl with quartered, boiled potatoes. There’s a butter knife in there, and Murdock holds it up. “Could you, uhh, could you pick the lock on the knives? Can’t have potato salad without celery and onions...”
Face swallows. That’s right. Pike always locks the cooking knives up when Murdock’s at all possibly alone by himself. He gets up and goes for the drawer where they keep all the spare twist ties from Murdock’s vegetable bags. Kneeling down, he hears Hannibal’s words again, and realizes this probably hurts the pilot. Bad.
“I...Murdock, you know he only does this cause he’s worried about you,” Face tries to tell him, working on the lock. “He doesn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“I know how to use a knife, Face,” Murdock replies, sad.
“Yeah, but I’m not really all that keen on the idea of you getting in one of your fits and running around the house with that ten inch senkoku you’ve got in here...”
A strangled little noise has Face looking up just in time to see Murdock slumping over to the table, falling into one of the chairs, head in his hands.
Face closes his eyes, trying to block out the noise of Murdock’s quiet moans. Fuck that, fuck him, he tells himself, like he’s told himself every time since Afghanistan, since the orphanage in Charikar. Since everything went to hell.
That’s an order, Captain.
Major Pike, sir, please, I can’t...
This is not one of your fucking propaganda movies about World War Two, Murdock! Do it the fuck now!
Murdock! He's got a gun to my head!
I can’t, Faceman, I’m sorry, I can’t...
Murdock sounds the same now as he did that day, like he’s ripping apart under the force of whatever it is that lives in the corners of his mind. Face feels a rage coming over him, the same one from that day, from that half-collapsed mudbrick schoolhouse, sweat dripping off his forehead to crash down on his AK47, the screaming in too many dialects to follow, reality dull and distant, the smell of cordite, women’s blood in the air.
He hates that noise. Hates what it reminds him of. Hates Murdock for making it. But he remembers how Hannibal got him to shut up, that one night at the Club, so despite the fact he’d really rather just go outside until it passes, he gets up off the kitchen floor and wraps his arms around the pilot’s skinny shoulders where he’s sitting on the low stool.
Pulling him into a hug.
Like he used to do, back before.
It takes a couple of minutes, longer than with Hannibal, but Face holds on, eyes shut against it all, until Murdock quiets, and droops. His weight falls into the lieutenant’s arms, and Face almost loses his balance entirely, catching them both as Murdock slides off the stool, feet on the ground, body clinging to Face’s.
After a moment or two, Face eases away, Murdock on the stool and himself against the counter, distance between them. The pilot covers his face in a hand, rocking a little.
Neither of them talk for a little while.
Face feels...almost better.
Then Murdock has to open his big mouth again. “I’m sorry, Face. I’m sorry. I can’t...I’m sorry about everything.”
“You want your medication?” Face asks, wary. It wouldn’t be the first time Murdock’s tried to apologize for...
“I’m sorry about the orphanage,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean...I didn’t mean for that to happen, any of it, I didn’t really think Pike would pull the trigger, I didn’t...”
And yeah, there it is. The younger officer feels himself clenching a fist. “Maybe you should have let him,” he hisses. “So I didn’t have to do your fucking job for you.”
“I couldn’t,” he starts to stammer, his hands starting to twitch. “I...I...Face, I couldn’t...”
Face stares at him for a moment, that fury rising anew, and storms out of the kitchen. He can’t handle this right now. Not after last night.
He takes the stairs two at a time and digs his cell phone from the pants he wore home. He locks his bedroom door - just in case - and dials BA.
“What you want, fool?” the corporal grunts as he picks up. There’s lots of noise in the background, the roar of a crowd.
“Where the fuck are you?”
“Ima headed downtown, UFC fight. I done told you I was goin’.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t fucking want to deal with Murdock right now.”
“Ain’t my problem,” BA shoots back, an answer that’s no an answer at all. “ I ain’t gonna be home tonight, so crazy’s your problem.”
Face hangs up and falls back on his bed, still staring at the screen on his phone, bright in the weak Washington State afternoon light. And before he knows what he’s doing, he’s thumbing in Hannibal’s number and pressing the call button.
It rings. Twice. Then Face hangs up. Fucking stupid idea. What’s the colonel going to do about this? What’s the point? It’s not like Hannibal’s going to care about his fuck toy’s personal problems, at least, not if those problems aren’t imposing on his command...
His cell rings. He lets it go to voicemail. Five minutes later, it rings again. Face pulls the battery out and tosses it aside, off into the mess of his closet. He lays there on his back for who knows how long, drumming his fingers against his chest, wishing John was there to wrap him up, hold him, whisper in his ear, make everything okay with his presence alone.
Face wants it. Closeness, intimacy, commitment. Belong to someone, with someone, someone who loves him..
But that’s impossible. After Charikar, after what Murdock forced him into doing, after what BA said to him about it, after Pike explained how the military really works, it’s impossible. He can’t be intimate with another man, can’t be honest and open and full in another, the way he wants. He has to keep his distance. Stay back. Seal up. Not let anyone in.
Especially Colonel John Smith, brigade commander.
He lays there like that in his own gloom, fingers stroking the deep bruise on his chest through his shirt, and when a car pulls into the drive much later, Face just figures that Pike must be home, and isn't that just the fucking cherry on top of this bullshit sundae?
+++++
Hannibal pauses at the door to Major Pike's house, worried. He's not really sure if he should go in or not. Face did just hang up on him twenty minutes ago. Maybe it was a mistake coming over here. Maybe Face just accidentally hit his number and didn't really mean to call him and that's why he hung up. Or maybe...
But in his heart, Hannibal knows there's something wrong. The kid's car is the only one here, the lights are all off, and this is the first time Face has tried to call his cell phone since the colonel gave him the number a couple of weeks ago, and drug the kid's out of him. He hasn't used it, and if he's using it now...
Hannibal knocks.
No answer.
He waits a moment, knocks again. Harder now and longer, just in case the kid didn't hear him.
Again, no answer.
Hannibal chews at the inside of his lip, wanting a cigar, not sure what the proper course of action is here. He can't just go inside, right? Because that would involve picking the lock on the door and he really prefers not breaking into junior officers' houses if he can at all avoid that...
And then he remembers. The garage is open, and that inner door looked like it was cracked as he walked past.
Hannibal walks softly through the garage, past the place where BA's van was last time - the big corporal must be out at one of his fights or something like that - and yeah, it’s open. Feeling slightly bad about it, knowing Face needs him right now, heslips into the house.
It's dark in here. Dark and quiet, the October afternoon already starting to fail, and it's chilly in here, no heat on or anything like that. There's the half-formed start of potato salad on the kitchen island, and it doesn't escape his notice that there's a butter knife, coated in white potato, sitting in a big pile of crusting mash on the board. He frowns. What the...
It smells like woodsmoke in here, too, doesn't it? Woodsmoke, and the faintest hint of burning, like meat, and Hannibal notices that the back kitchen door is open as well.
The glass door swings out onto a big, beautifully stained deck, wide and expansive, that takes up most of the small yard. Hannibal can smell the grill, very strongly, but he can't see it until he looks down the stairs.
It is, was, a beautiful set-up that's down there. Ruined now. Laying on its side, the stainless steel lid is ripped half off from the force of what to be a violent fall, the base broken apart at the screws, charcoal scattered across the brick landing at the bottom, the burnt remains of something that looks like chicken wings scattered throughout. It's an absolute mess, and Hannibal stares at it for a moment, wondering what happened and why, and if this is why Face called, when he hears sniffling under his feet.
Murdock, Hannibal thinks, groaning inside, and heads down the steps, dodging smoldering charcoal pieces on the way.
The captain is under there in premature twilight, back to a support pillar, legs crossed on moss-slimed rocks, staring off into space. Hannibal kneels down, squatting over his haunches, not really sure what to say, knowing he needs to say something, do something, about this situation. He doesn't want to take Murdock to the hospital, he does not want to do that, not when he just took the man out of there. And he wonders, then, suddenly, if this is all his fault.
"I didn't mean it," Murdock says suddenly, and Hannibal realizes that the captain's staring right at him. "I didn't want to make Face do it. He didn't want to and I made him cause I couldn't...I couldn't take it, couldn't..."
"The grill, Captain?" Hannibal asks softly.
The pilot smiles weakly. "Didn't see much point in just cookin' for m'self, and...". He shakes his head. "Had to stop it from laughin' at me."
"Why was it laughing at you, Captain?" the colonel prompts.
"Ain't my job but I do it anyway cause it's the only thing I can do for 'em but they don't care, don't care at all what I do for 'em cause it don't matter, just nuthin' I do matters and it's a joke, it's a big joke..."
Hannibal doesn't know what to say as the pilot rambles, on and on, in that circular logic, so he cuts right through it instead. Scoots in a little, ducking his head to get it under the overhang of the deck, and holds out a hand. "Then how 'bout you don't cook tonight?"
Murdock shakes his head. "Then Face'll just have a big bowl of Cap't Crunch and spend all day tomorrow worried he's gonna get fat...I don't like him worrin' over things like that, things that are my fault..."
"Lieutenant Peck's problems are his, not yours," Hannibal says firmly, and reaches out to touch Murdock's knee. "You don't have to take this all on yourself."
Murdock looks down at the colonel's hand, head hung. "But all this, it's all my fault."
"I doubt that," Hannibal tells him, warm as he can, and smiles. "How about I take you boys out to dinner tonight?"
Murdock smiles and then it fades, as quickly as it came. "I don't think Face wants to talk to me right now."
"Why don't I talk to him for you?" Hannibal suggests, hoping like hell Face will be receptive. He knows, after all, he’s got no knowledge of what it is between these two. Fuck, why the fuck does that information have to be missing? He’s got no datapoints to start from, nothing to work with to help these boys resolve whatever it was happened to them. "How upset could he be about dinner?"
And fuck Pike and whatever the hell he’s going to think about that, Hannibal tells himself, before that little voice can offer a fucking opinion about it.
Murdock nods. "Okay, sir."
"Outstanding, captain.” And Hannibal starts backing out the gloom, leaving Murdock room to exit.
The captain watches him for a moment more, nods again, and follows.
Murdock appears much better by the time Hannibal gets him inside the house, even if he does studiously avoid looking at the kitchen, and he heads over to the basement door, explaining he's going to go take a shower.
Hannibal watches him go, waits for the faint sound of the shower turning on, and then dumps the entire mess on the kitchen counter into the wide sink, running the water as he goes. Quick fix, but he can clean it up properly when he gets back. He makes a fast call to a good restaurant he's found in Seattle- cheap, good, local food - and gets them a reservation for an hour from now, asking for the most secluded booth he can get. He finds BA’s cell phone stuck to the fridge and gets ahold of him, the corporal sounding somewhat awed under the irritation at having to leave wherever the fuck he is and show up...
Only when that's all done does he head upstairs, looking for Face.
It's a strange feeling, walking through somebody else's house that he hasn't been invited into. All the doors up here are open, save one, and he figures that that's probably the kid's.
It’s locked, and he jiggles it lightly. When there’s no response, he knocks. And when there’s nothing to that, Hannibal pulls a credit card from his wallet and works it open, not sure what he’s going to find.
It’s just Face, though. Face. Curled up on his bed in a ragged pair of cargo shorts and an old USC college shirt, damp head spreading wet across an old, rumpled quilt. There’s hardly anything in here, rudimentary furniture that’s obviously expensive but very plain, a dresser and a bed and a desk in the corner with a closed laptop. There’s a pile of clothes in the closet, more off the hanger than on, and...and that’s it. No memorabilia, no photos, no nick-nacks of any kind, not even a poster to break up the unrelenting taupe of the walls.
Something about the kid, sleeping like that...
Hannibal steps into the darkened space, closing the door softly behind him, and toes his shoes off. Leaving them there at the door, he pads over to the bed as quietly as he can, watching for a moment, and then sits down on the edge.
He doesn’t want to wake the boy. Not when he looks like this.
But he promised Murdock, and BA actually seemed receptive to the idea, and he does want to sit them all down together and maybe get them talking. Not about Charikar or whatever happened tonight. Just...talking. About football or guns or something.
Get them out of this hellhole he damned them all to when he ran away to Asia.
Reaching over, Hannibal runs his fingers across a broad shoulder, into that still-drying hair, feeling the chill in the damp caramel locks. “You have any idea what you do to me, beautiful boy?” he murmurs.
And god, he is beautiful. Lean and graceful and unique, unlike anyone Hannibal’s ever known before, beyond any man he’s ever been with, any man he ever thought would want to be with him, any man he ever thought he could have. Except he can’t. He can’t risk it again, his heart, his soul...if he loses Face, like he lost Maggie, Hannibal knows he won’t survive it. Knows he can’t endure it again.
But his stomach’s twisting up, just touching this young man, and Hannibal’s not so old yet, not so jaded, that he doesn’t remember what it’s like to fall in love. Like with Maggie, how he’d met her at a blood drive when she was volunteering, was slipping the cuff up onto his arm to take his blood pressure. Her fingers brushed his tattoo and they’d looked up, right at the same time, and somehow, for some reason, that Lieutenant Smith found the courage to ask her if she wanted to get a drink when she was done with this.
Years later, after they’d gotten married, before things got bad, when they were laying together in bed, sweat cooling on their skin, she’d ask him why he’d asked her out that day. And his answer to her was always the same.
I felt like I knew you, baby...
It wasn’t the truth. It was what she liked to hear, but it wasn’t the truth.
He'd lied. Every time.
He’d asked her out because she was beautiful and she had a nice smile and some of the other guys had been giving him shit about how he never seemed to have a girlfriend and when did he ever get laid, how did he survive without it - the sex was fun, but it had always felt more like mutual masturbation to him, and thus wasn’t really fair to anyone - and he'd figured it was time to start.
Maybe, Hannibal thinks now as he keeps petting Face’s hair, that that was why nothing ever worked between them. Maybe, no matter how much he did truly love her, no matter how much he wanted her, wanted her to want him, Maggie knew it was all a lie...
But now...
That? That is how he feels about Face. Like he’s known this kid forever. Like he could walk out of here now and come back in ten years and they could pick right back up again, no distance or loss at all, nothing but joy at the reunion.
Like today, this morning, driving back from Vancouver. They’d gotten coffee on the way down and talked, talked for the whole ride, both of them avoiding the subject of the evening but still managing to get each other laughing again, finishing each other’s sentences, lapsing into silence every so often that wasn’t uncomfortable until they pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Like Face is the one he’s been wanting all along...
And if he’d taken that damn team, if he’d only reached out when Russ offered, if he’d shuffled the kid’s file back to the top of the pile, touched that photo, agreed... would Face have been his first? Would Face have been the one to show him who he really was? Would they have found each other like this? Would Face be this broken, this horrifically broken...
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Hannibal murmurs, leaning over him, daring to kiss his neck, right below his ear, on the soft skin without stubble. “My god, I’m so sorry. If...if I’d known you’d be here, waiting for me, I...I would have come. I would have saved you from all of this...”
Face grumbles in his sleep, and curls up tighter, turning away, and Hannibal follows, laying down next to him, draping a soft arm around his ribs, and pulls that warm body against his own.
“...john...” Face moans softly in his sleep. “John...”
“Right here, sweetheart,” Hannibal says, hand sweeping down the kid’s hard, smooth chest, reveling in being able to touch so freely. “I’m right here.”
That gets him a little sigh, and right then, Hannibal forgets all about Murdock showering in the basement, about this being another man’s house, about all the reasons why he can’t have this amazing young man for his own, about fucking anything that doesn’t involve doing what he does right now.
Which is tipping Face’s perfect chin around.
And kissing him awake, lips imploring, that sweet mouth parting for his, flicking his tongue just in, just against the top of his palate, deepening, holding, offering...
Those blue eyes flicker open and then, for a moment, Face kisses him back. Hard, hard, hard.
Right before it all falls away again.
And Face closes his eyes and turns away again. “What do you want?” he asks, voice neutral, nothing to it at all.
Nothing to any of this at all.
Hannibal feels his heart plummet. Shatter to dust.
What a fucking idiot he is...
For a moment, he can’t say anything, and then shakes his head. “You called.”
Face is still staring at the wall. “Yeah, and then I hung up.”
“I was worried.”
“Why?”
“Because,” and Hannibal reaches out with a hand, wanting to touch, not sure if he should, and pulls back again, “because you’ve never called, and I just saw you, so...”
“So you didn’t think I’d want sex again that soon after training so something had to be wrong?”
Hannibal recoils, stung, and gets up, walking over to the wall, leaning against it as he tries to figure this one out. He wants, wants so badly, to tell him... but he can’t. Not if Face doesn’t want to hear it. “No...kid, I was worried. And then I find Murdock downstairs, with the grill all fucked up and him under the deck...”
“Right,” Face sighs. “Murdock. Of course. You were so worried about him that night...”
“Kid, this is about all of you. I’m worried about all of you.”
“Right. Not about me.”
“How else would I have known to come over?”
Face pushes up on his elbow, staring at him. “What do you mean?”
Hannibal rolls his eyes to the ceiling, trying to get away from that questing gaze. “It’s you, Templeton. John’s...I’m here for you.”
It’s not quite what he wants to say, not nearly everything that’s rattling around in him right now, but it’s enough to get Face sitting up and that numb expression off his face, replacing it with something else, something almost like...
“Hey, you ready to go, Faceman?” Murdock crows happily, bouncing into the room and throwing the door wide. He’s in a leather jacket and a baseball cap and some t-shirt that has Sailor Moon written on it in Japanese and Converse and a big, big smile, and it all looks so right, so much better than that sad parody of the hospital room, Hannibal wants to wrap him up in a hug.
Instead, he just smiles back.
“Go where?” Face groans, suddenly twice as sleepy and groggy as he was before. “Colonel, what the fuck?”
“Get up and get dressed, el-tee,” Hannibal replies, still smiling, and moves to take Murdock from the room. “I’m taking you boys out for dinner tonight.”
“Seafood!” Murdock adds, like this is the best news ever.
“Sir...”
And that’s pure, unadulterated whining. How can Face shift gears this fast? So Hannibal just grins wider and lays a hand around Murdock’s shoulders, patting him gently, which just gets the pilot practically bouncing. “Don’t make me make it an order, el-tee,” he drawls, but keeps his eyes fixed on the young man, mentally pleading with him to come.
Face hesitates a moment more, and then nods. “Better not be a Red Lobster,” he warns theatrically and makes a show of stumbling as he gets up.
“Brat,” Hannibal mutters to himself, still smiling at Face.
And finally, with a shake of his head and a little sigh, Face smiles back.
+++++
Halfway through dinner, Face can’t take it any more, and excuses himself, tossing his napkin in his chair, muttering something about needing to take a piss.
It’s not that this isn’t...good.
Far from that.
Hannibal found them a good place. One of the really good places around, right at that intersection of cheap prices, huge portions, good food and better beer. It’s crowded and noisy and tacky and the waitress seems to tug her blouse just a little lower down her cleavage, every time she comes back to their table with another platter of food. The colonel’s telling stories about camel spiders in Desert Storm and the time they found a couple of P-51s buried on Diego Garcia and it took every enlisted kid on the installation to drag them out of their pit.
Hannibal’s laughing. He hasn’t asked about the grill or whatever preceded it, or anything else, for that matter. He’s been laughing since they got here. Murdock got immediately both calmer and more present than Face has seen him in the last two years. Hell, even BA, who steadfastly refuses to go to anything Pike tries to make him come to and then sulks when he’s dragged along anyway, loosened up pretty damn quick and seems to be having a good time now.
But Face, for his part...he can’t.
Face knows he should have just “woken up” the second the colonel’s ass hit his quilt. But no, he just had to keep pretending, just in the case the interfering bastard wanted something out of him, and then...
“Hey, kid,” the colonel says now, pausing in the middle of his story, brushing a stray bit of french fry from the front of his shirt, “where you off to?”
Face can’t look at him. “Uhh, bathroom?”
Those amazing blue eyes, filled with humor, dim slightly. “Oh, okay...”
“Get back soon,” BA chuckles, and yanks a shrimp off Face’s plate, “or Murdock and I gonna eat the rest o’ these for ya.”
Murdock chuckles, looks at Hannibal like he’s asking for permission, and then stabs another one with his fork.
He nods, distracted, and makes a beeline for the bathroom. Life’s small mercies, this place is just small enough to get away with a single-pot room, so he can lock the door behind him.
Face clutches the sink, staring down at the little ring of slime around the drain. Hannibal... Hannibal’s words...
I’m so sorry, baby...
Seriously... just...what the fuck?
What did that even mean? Why would Hannibal say something like that? Was the colonel trying to mess with him? Did he realize he wasn’t asleep, that he was just faking it so the colonel would go away and wanted to show him what...or had Hannibal wanted...wanted what? And why would he fucking apologize? This isn’t his fault, none of this is his fault.
But...
The lieutenant bites his lip, shutting his eyes. That. What’s the story here? Was Hannibal offered an assignment here earlier? One of his past units? What? What could it possibly fucking be?
No. That has to be...well, not true. Hannibal’s fucking with him. Plain and simple. cold-hearted bastard...
But..
...if I’d known you’d be here, waiting for me...
But there was the kiss, too, he remembers, a stab of heat flowing through him again. That felt real. Not like last night, with the hesitation, the grudging return. No, that kiss today was Hannibal holding him and caressing him as if he was something precious, something worthy, desirable, wanted.
God, Face wants to be wanted.
But there’s too much to know. Too much left unknown. If he can trust Hannibal. If he can trust himself. If Hannibal would still want him, if he knew what kind of man he really was. If this isn’t just some fucking game for the older man. If any of this is, in fact, real. Because if it’s not, and he gives into it, it’s going to kill him...
He lifts his eyes, catching his own reflection in the mirror.
Could he? he asks himself. Could you?
And it scares the shit out of him that he doesn’t have a good answer to that.
+++++
After Face leaves, Murdock and BA finish his food and move off, over to the pool table across the small restaurant, and Hannibal’s glad for it. Those two bicker like school-girls, but where it was heated and irritated when they first got here, it seems to be mellowing out now. BA relaxing, Murdock coming out of that strange, manic depression of his. Both of them seem to be enjoying themselves.
They aren’t quite sure of what to do, but they aren’t at each other’s throats or ignoring each other, and that has to count for something.
Amazing that a couple rounds of beer and beer-battered North Atlantic cod can have that sudden an effect, the colonel thinks, and it makes him want to weep, thinking about what it must be like for them, living with Pike. And he can’t quite figure that one out. Why do they do it? Why does Pike make them? He clearly has nothing but contempt for all of them...
“Hey, sir.”
Hannibal pulls his gaze back to the here and now, to Face, who’s slipping into his seat next to him. He can’t help but smile. Fuck, the kid’s beautiful...
“Hey, Face,” Hannibal replies, getting that smile in check, keeping himself as neutral as possible. He can’t...he can’t just say it, can he? No matter how much he wants to, he can’t. Not until...well, not yet anyway. Not now. Not here. “You want anything else? The boys ate the rest of yours.”
“Sure,” Face nods, blank as Hannibal’s trying to be. And of course he is. It’s not as if he wants some dried-up old Ranger, young, beautiful thing like he is. “Umm... the mussels were good. We could get another bucket of those?”
Hannibal nods. “Anything you want, Face,” he tells him, and realizes it’s true. Anything Face wants, he’d give him. Even if it was Pike’s heart on a plate. Which isn’t really a bad idea, considering.
He waves the waitress over. More mussels, more beer, and Hannibal decides it’s high time for a cigar.
“She unbuttoned another button, didn’t she?” the colonel asks conversationally, flicking his lighter open, trying to get the flint to catch.
“Looks like,” Face replies and - surprisingly enough - reaches over for the lighter, working the little wheel mechanism slow and easy, a flame darting up. He holds it out for Hannibal. “Much more and those C-cups are hers are going to fall right out.”
Hannibal rolls his cigar, puffing it awake. “I think she’s trying to impress you.”
“If only she knew,” Face replies with a grin, and snaps the lighter shut.
Passing it back, fingers brush, just for a moment, and Hannibal has to resist, hard, the urge to just pull Face into his lap, right here and now, and kiss him senseless.
The touch passes, far too fast, and the moment’s gone.
Hannibal wraps the lighter up in his hand, letting his cigar smolder, staring down at it. Fuck, he has no idea what to do about this. About the unwelcome feelings for this boy, growing in him. About Murdock and BA. About this unit.
About this entire fucking thing.
After all it’s not as if today, tonight, any night that comes after, can change anything.
But yet, Face is smiling as he takes the beers from the waitress and smiling as he sets them down, smiling...
Beautiful, Hannibal thinks again, and sips his lager.
+++++
Hannibal takes the boys home an hour or so later. He’s just sober enough to manage the drive, and he doesn’t want to push things too hard with any of them right now. Things, at least with two of them, seem pretty good.
BA tried to say he was taking his van, but five minutes into the drive and he’s passed out in the back seat, on Face’s shoulder, so the colonel feels pretty okay with not letting him go back to his fight. He can leave the corporal the money for the taxi. Boys at that rank don’t make very much.
Murdock’s in the front passenger seat, calmer than Hannibal’s seen him yet, happy and smiling. He doesn’t say anything the whole ride, but that’s okay too. Happy is good. And Hannibal vows to himself that he’s going to get the poor boy a doctor with the clearance to talk to him about whatever’s haunting him. There are a few out there in the DoD, and the colonel’s willing to blow the entirety of the brigade’s not-considerable discretionary fund on bringing one of them here TDY to Fort Lewis for as long as it takes.
Face, though, Face... Face isn’t talking, and Hannibal’s pretty sure it’s not because he’s happy or asleep. No, there’s some kind of nervous energy thrumming through the young man, and Hannibal’s at a complete loss as to what to do about it.
So he doesn’t talk either. None of them do. Not until he pulls up in Pike’s garage and helps Face and Murdock rouse BA. There’s a split second, a fleeting moment, where Murdock doesn’t feel haunted and Face doesn’t feel angry and BA doesn’t seem upset at the help. Like they’re an actual team...
It passes fast, though. BA lets them help him up the garage steps into the house, and then pushes out, going for his bedroom upstairs, hand tight on the banister, leaving them all without so much as a backwards glance. Hannibal thinks he hears a gruff “’night, fools!” thrown back, but he’s not really sure.
Murdock’s next, shifting on his feet a little, and clearly wanting a hug. He doesn’t ask, though, and Hannibal doesn’t want to embarrass him by offering.
“Thanks, sir, I had a good time,” he says quietly, staring down at those shuffling Converse.
Hannibal pats him on the shoulder. “My pleasure, Captain,” he replies softly.
Murdock’s eyes lift to his for a moment, and he nods, smiling still, even as he shuffles off down the stairs to the basement. A pilot living in the basement. For some reason, it unsettles Hannibal greatly.
As the door closes, it leaves hm and Face. Together. Alone.
The kid’s right here, close enough to touch but also out of reach, butt against the edge of the low island counter, arms folded and a hand rubbing over his mouth. He looks tired, worn, very, very old. Like everything in him’s been used up. Like he’s empty.
It’s unbearable.
“Kid,” Hannibal says, looking at him, feeling that rip inside of him widening now. “Kid, please...”
What?” Face sighs, desolate, and his eyes roll up to the ceiling. “What the fuck do you want from me, colonel?”
You’re drunk, old man, Hannibal tells himself for even daring to think about this, but takes a step in anyway. Close enough to slip his hand between Face’s mouth and palm. Close enough to push his fingers through, force them down, and wrap his other hand around the kid’s trim waist. Close enough to lay their foreheads together, the kid’s flawless skin flushed beneath the clammy fear of his own. His heart’s beating hard, fast enough to crack his ribs. He feels hot enough to burst into flames. And he doesn’t understand it.
It was never like this with Maggie.
He wants to say it. Wants to say everything, everything he’s feeling, wants to pull Face into his arms and kiss him and tell him...tell him he’s wanted, needed, desired, loved...
But he doesn’t. He can’t. He can’t meet those lips that are just begging to be kissed, can’t slip his hand into that soft caramel hair and pull them both into it.
He almost does, though.
Almost.
And stops, blood freezing, wondering why the fuck he hasn’t thought about this before.
“Kid?” he asks.
“Y-yeah?” Face replies, a little breathless, and what the hell is that about, Hannibal wonders.
“Where’s Pike?”
Face’s eyes go wide, like he’s just realizing it himself. “I... I don’t know. If he’s not home yet, he’s...” and then the kid groans. “Fuck...”
“He’s what?”
+++++
“You sure those boys of yours are going to be alright with something like this, Brock?”
“Little bastards will do anything I tell them, Vance. Come on, you know that.”
It’s loud in here, music throbbing and walls vibrating, the dance floor below a seething, sweating mass of muscle and testosterone. Not really to the major’s taste, at least, not on nights when he’s not up for a hunt. And as for his buddy Vance, well, that sonofabitch would probably prefer to drag him to some performance of Carmen and hold this little conversation in some back practice room, like they were in a goddamn James Bond film. But this, a gay club in downtown Portland, is the one place in the whole fucking universe where they are not going to run into any fucking military who could possibly see them together. Anonymity is the name of the game here.
And not just because Vance is CIA.
“Yeah, but we’re talking about heroine here...”
“They’re housebroken,” he replies, and raises an eyebrow at the man across from him in the little booth in the back of the club. “You don’t think I can handle my own people, then fuck you.”
And fuck, he’s put in a lot of work to getting them to that point.
Murdock had been easy. Already half-crazy from shit the FARC put him through back in the day, Vance had suggested him and once Pike had pulled him out of that mental instution in Mexico, he’d been the perfect fucking lap dog. BA had been a fantastic combination of loyalty, anger and hotheadedness, and that was something that was easy to use against a man. Face had been a bit more of a challenge, but he’s turning out to be the best of them all.
He’d been a firey brat when Pike had first gotten him, eager and excited and terribly annoying about how happy he was to be a Ranger, to have made Major Pike’s team, yadda, yadda, yadda. But that first deployment had taken care of that, thank fuck. A little taste of reality and he’d just crumpled in on himself. Oh, sure, he’d never again questioned an order, never tried to protest again, but Pike wasn’t stupid enough to think it was because the boy agreed with him, or his methods.
No, nothing like that.
The Lieutenant Peck that walked away from that Charikar mission was not the same one that walked in. Something in him broke that day. Well, too fucking bad, Pike’s always figured. Welcome to the world. Ain’t a pretty place. Not his problem that Face decided to be a little bitch about it, screwing everything in sight and coming home smelling like sex and booze more nights than not. But at least he still does his job and does it well.
So the major’s willing to tolerate it, if Face feels the need to go on a sex bender every so often. Just like he tolerates BA’s fights, in and out of the ring. Like he makes allowances for Murdock’s little mental problems. Even if he has to keep them under his roof to ensure nobody gets cute and tries to start thinking for themselves again. They’re a damn good team in the field, honestly, one of the best, probably better for Face’s disillusioned morality and BA’s anger and Murdock’s craziness. Makes them fight harder, better, longer, tougher. Makes them open to orders that, before, none of them would take.
Pike likes them just the way they are. He’s quite proud of it, actually.
“They’ll do their fucking job. I’ll make sure our buyer knows that when we meet with him tomorrow,” he says, confident that this is completely true, and leers at his partner. If he’ll let the business end of this little visit go, the major thinks, imagining exactly what he’s going to do with him once he gets him back to their hotel. He better have been wearing the plug for the last couple of days...
Lynch adjusts the drape of his suit collar around him, a bead of persperation sliding just below it. Pike wants to latch his mouth on to that spot, right there, and bite hard. He loves that about his CIA buddy. Corrupt motherfucker, through and through, likes it hard and rough, always dishes just enough snark back to keep things from getting too affectionate...
“We’re talking about thirty million dollars here. Wholesale. At some point, they’re going to figure out it’s not a routine confiscation.”
...and has a fantastically devious ability for turning a profit in a warzone. He’s like the evil Face sometimes, Pike thinks, and has the sudden mental image of tying the kid down and letting Vance have his way with his virgin ass.
Wouldn’t that be a lovely lesson for the little slut? Or, and Pike thinks this would probably be better, maybe there’s a way of making the el-tee take it more or less willingly...
Pike grins back at Vance, thinking about it. Maybe after the next deployment. Kid’ll probably be completely crushed at that point, if he’s got anything to say about it. “Housebroken,” he repeats, growling, and reaches across the small table to grab Lynch’s collar. “Just like you.”
Vance just smiles back. That irritating, excited, sarcastic, challenging smile.
The one that goes straight to Pike’s groin. Every single fucking time.
“Bathroom, now, bitch,” he orders, dragging them both out of the booth, undoing one of Vance’s top buttons. Fucking pretentious yuppie shirt. He’s going to rip it off him, mark him up, fuck him so hard he’s not going to be able to sit for a week.
Vance just keeps smiling, so Pike bites that spot on his neck, and Vance shoots back about how sad it is he has to stand on his tiptoes to do that and Pike squeezes his dick so hard through those tailored trousers of his that he yelps.
Pike grins to himself then, and all but drags his partner in crime back to the nearest bathroom.
Fuck, but he does love his weekends away.
+++++
Hannibal knows he’s staring at the kid, knows his jaw is probably hanging open, but still, this...
“What do you mean, he just leaves sometimes?”
Face looks intensely uncomfortable from his perch on one of the kitchen’s barstools. “I don’t know, he just disappears.”
“I haven’t seen any leave in the system for him, so...”
That gets a short, barking laugh from the lieutenant. “No, jesus, no, he doesn’t take leave for it. He just goes. He’ll get a call or something and the next day, he’s just gone. Doesn’t tell us where or how, he just leaves.”
“For long? How frequently?” Hannibal presses, a little stunned by that kind of illegal, irresponsible behavior from a major.
Face shrugs. “Maybe... maybe a few days at a time.”
“To do what?”
Face shrugs again and heads over to the fridge, pulling out two frosty bottles of beer. He offers one to Hannibal, who doesn’t take it, and pulls a bottle opener out of some drawer for his own. “Like I said, he doesn’t exactly share it with us, Hannibal.”
“That’s completely unacceptable. You boys ever report him for it?”
“Umm...” and the lieutenant’s eyes roll down to his beer. He tosses the cap away, squirms a bit, doesn’t answer.
Hannibal gets the feeling that’s a very, very uncomfortable subject for the kid. Why, though, he doesn’t know.
“Why?” he asks again, standing, going over to Face and running a hand down his arm. “Why the hell not? You three obviously hate him,” blue eyes lift at that, confused and worried, and Hannibal has to really stop himself from pressing a kiss right to that furrowed brow that’s presented to him, “so why not use something like this? It’s not even out of line. In fact, you really should report it...”
“I can’t!” Face practically shouts, and twists out of Hannibal’s startled grasp. “Fucking A, sir, I wish I could, but I... I just can’t.”
Hannibal’s heart constricts a bit at that broken tone he hears there, and takes a step closer to the kid. “Why not?”
“I...” But Face is in no state to be forming sentences right now. He’s shaking, pale under that artful tan of his, nervous, Hannibal thinks to himself, and suddenly realizes what this is. “I... I can’t...”
“It’s whatever happened at Charikar, isn’t it?” Hannibal asks, low and fast, the words tumbling out before he can even think about what they could do to the kid. “It’s about the orphanage.”
Nothing but a nod so subtle it might as well have not happened. Face hugs his arms around himself. His eyes are squeezed shut. He’s rocking a little. It’s so raw, so damaged, that Hannibal regrets saying a damn word.
But the cat’s out of the bag now. And if he can use this little AWOL stunt of Pike’s, if he wants to use it, as an excuse to get the fucker investigated, Hannibal needs all the information, all possible variables. Especially if there’s something that can hurt the rest of the boys in here. “Tell me.”
“I can’t, Hannibal,” and the kid’s tone, when it comes, is desperate now in a way that makes the older man physically hurt, “you’re a colonel, you’ll have to report...”
Hannibal eases around, sitting flush to Face’s warm thigh but other than that, not touching him at all. “Then tell John, Temp. Let him make that decision for himself.”
Face groans into his knees. “You’ll hate me. I... I hate me for it.”
Hannibal nods in understanding, and pulls the back of his fingers through the kid’s growing curls, pulls the kid in for a hug, rests his cheek against his shoulder, tries his damndest to let him know it’s okay, that he’s not alone, that he needs to let this out. Whatever it is, Face needs to let it out.
The kid can’t carry this alone forever. And maybe, Hannibal thinks, hating himself for thinking it, if Face can open up, if Face can let him in, all the masks will come down, all the barriers between them, open up a chance for something real, just like Face deserves...
“I swear I won’t, kid. I won’t speak of word of it to anyone,” he murmurs. “Just talk to me. ”
And after a long moment, stretched out to what seems like hours, Face does.
“We were five months into OEF, back in 2002. It was an entirely routine day, and we’d just set down in this village a little ways north of Charikar...”
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
Hannibal’s not sure what to expect when he finally has to come back to the States, as commander of the Second Ranger Brigade up at Fort Lewis. But when a drunken hook-up turns into so much more, he finds himself involved in trying to bring down one very corrupt Major Pike while coping for his feelings for Lieutenant Peck...
Face stares up at the house for a moment, leaning on his steering wheel. He’s tired and dirty and completely without that sense of weary euphoria he always fakes for the post-maneuver debriefs.
He’s been driving in circles, not wanting to come back here, to go in, not having anywhere else to go.
He shouldn’t have moved in here. But Major Pike had been so insistent - builds teamwork, el-tee, and I won’t take no for an answer - and Murdock had already had his own room in the basement and said it wasn’t a bad place to be, and had smiled and then joked about slumber parties and pillow fights and doing each other’s hair...
He’d wanted that. A friend. Somebody with whom he might be able to have a meaningful relationship with...somebody who looked at him with respect and interest and something, something almost like affection, who’d always been so careful and so eager with him, like he was somebody worth knowing, like he was wanted...
The lieutenant squeezes his eyes in an attempt to shut those memories off. No, there’s no point in thinking about how he’d imagined things would be, back when he first met Murdock, back when Major Pike had brought him on, back when everything was still looking up for him. Back when he still thought the Army was the place he should be. Afghanistan had fucked any chance of it - any of it - ever being good and that was all there was to it.
Nothing ever turns out the way he wants it to.
Face shakes himself and grabs his gear, leaving the safety of his car.
At least the garage is empty. Nobody home.
Thank fuck.
He throws the bag over his shoulder and walks softly through the kitchen, trying to go carefully, just in case Murdock’s around. The crazy pilot’s the last person he wants to see right now. All he wants is to head upstairs and hit the shower and sleep until he wakes up from this fucking nightmare of a life.
The floorboards creak beneath his feet as he reaches the stairs and Face notices that the basement door’s cracked. The sound of some video game is leaking up, blue light flashing, and he curses under his breath. Fuck. Crazy is home. He’d really hoped that Pike would have dumped his ass at the clinic.
Taking off his shoes, Face tries to ignore it and heads upstairs as quietly as he can, his sack of guilt heavy on his back. And as it bumps his ass, he realizes he’s castigating himself for the wrong bad decision.
Last year, choosing to move in here?
Fuck that. That’s nothing.
What was he thinking, that night he picked up Colonel Smith in that fucking bar?
It’s been about a month since he first spotted the man, across the room in that club downtown. Tall, lanky, older, handsome...all things Face likes. Things he likes a lot. A good choice for the evening, he’d thought. He loves the feeling of being wrapped up against a body stronger, bigger than his own, the way older men always seem to appreciate him more, the experience they bring to bed, how it’s all somehow more comforting than a round with somebody his own age, how there are never any expectations on him in the morning. That’s all Hannibal had been to him. What they always were. An evening’s diversion, something to help him forget.
But then as he’d gotten closer, as he’d slid his hand over that gorgeous silver fox’s and smiled that smile that always, always worked, got whoever he wanted into bed, his potential partner had smiled back and Face had felt something stir in him that he hadn’t felt since...
He should have known better then. That trying to chase that was only going to bring him pain, more pain, worse pain. He should have walked away with a wink and a pat on that very nice ass of his and left it alone, found somebody who just wanted to fuck his brains out, and call it a night.
He hadn’t, though. Probably the booze. So he’d found himself in a taxi with that man instead.
He’d come again, later, on that cock, in that lap, cheek laid on the older man’s shoulder and burning with embarrassment as he heard the sounds being drawn from him. Begging, needy little sounds. And then his partner, half-senseless from orgasm and alcohol, hadn’t let him go when they were done. Kept him close, murmuring nonsense in some language Face didn’t speak, kissing his hair, his neck, fingers teasing and gentle and so careful, so, so careful...
And then the man, that gentle man with the wonderfully large cock and the beautiful big hands and that fucking amazing voice, has to turn out to be a fucking colonel. The brigade commander, no less. Who isn’t interested in anything but sex. Who growls and frowns at him around the unit and fucks him on the weekends but doesn’t really want him. Who doesn’t have any use for him besides his looks, his body, what he can do for him.
Just like everybody else.
Hannibal has made that damn clear. Won’t even kiss him when they’re together, takes him on his belly more often than not, unless he’s just watching Face get himself off, which he also seems to really, really enjoy...
You’re used to that, Face tells himself. So what’s your fucking problem with it? You’re the one who keeps calling him.
The lieutenant tosses his bag up on his bed, and starts stripping his filthy uniform off. It kind of makes sense, as much as he hates to admit that to himself. He doesn’t see anything in himself that anybody else would want. His body and everything, yeah, but anything else? Forget it. Nobody wants a man like him, the things he’s done...
Hannibal won’t want him, not even to fuck. Probably have him arrested, if he knew the truth.
And Face realizes how empty he is. Hollow and worthless and...
“Heya, Faceman!”
The lieutenant jumps at the sound of the voice from his half-open bedroom door, and drags his shirt closed as he turns around. “Goddammit, Murdock! What the hell, man!?”
Standing in the doorway, Murdock cringes as if hit. He looks terrible, dressed in nothing but a wifebeater and a pair of flannel sleep pants that are far too big for him, big black circles under haunted eyes, and one of those manic grins on his face. He cocks his head. “Heard you come in.”
“Yeah, well, back now,” he sighs. And what the fuck - why is Murdock here? Why isn’t Murdock in the fucking ward, where he was left? “What do you want?”
“I... I thought you might want lunch.”
“I already ate,” Face says shortly. An MRE, right before the out-brief. Shit food, but it beats his own cooking. Not that he realized Murdock was going to be home... and then he remembers. Fuck, he was supposed to pick Murdock up from the clinic on the way home, wasn’t he? “I was just gonna go take a shower.”
“D’ya want lunch?” Murdock asks again, a bit faster this time, rocking now. “It’s lunchtime and I was gonna make myself some lunch but since you’re home now I could make you some too you know how good I am at cookin’ and I thought it’d be rude not to make you sumthin’ too...”
Face tunes out the rambling, and turns around, tossing off his undershirt, working on the laces of his mud-crusted boots. God, he’s so sick of this shit. So sick of the rambling and the monosyllabic fits and the bullshit geek conversations and the way Murdock’s constantly in the kitchen scrubbing his goddamn pans. So, so sick of it. The Army needs to get him out of the fucking cockpit and into a padded room somewhere.
He mentally kicks himself yet again for ever thinking that he could friends with somebody like this.
“Get out,” he says quietly.
But Murdock’s already gone.
He sighs with relief and starts on his pants. Shower now. He can worry about Murdock later.
He makes sure to lock the bathroom door, though. Just in case.
The lieutenant takes as long as he can in the shower, watching the steam float out the high, small bathroom window. He takes some extra time on his hair, lathering it thoroughly. It’s growing out, nice and curly. He hates that, usually, but Hannibal, Hannibal had said he’d like it longer...
Which means he’s a fucking idiot. Face makes a note to shave it down to regulation tomorrow. Make a fuckin’ point to himself. He doesn’t need to spend all his time thinking of ways to try to get Hannibal to admit to something that he obviously doesn’t give two shits about.
Eventually he has to get out, and in the middle of his normal skin care routine - the one that prompts Pike to call him a fag, every time he catches him at it - Face can smell hardwood charcoal in the grill outside and the faintest hint of cooking meat, and his treacherous stomach growls in agreement.
“Fine,” he grumbles to himself, and goes back to his room to find something to wear.
When he gets downstairs, Murdock’s in the kitchen, putzing around as he works on a batch of that curry potato salad that BA’s admitted once to liking. Face goes to the fridge for a beer, and as he’s in there, looking at all the nearly-finished leftovers, he realizes he can’t remember the last time he complimented Murdock on his cooking. Or if Major Pike ever has. Or BA, aside from that first time the pilot made curry, real, honest-to-god, from scratch lamb curry, before that fucking deployment to Afghanistan.
Hannibal’s words come back to him.
He’s hurting, kid. And he’d probably hurt a lot less if you treated him with any amount of respect at all.
“Got chicken wings outside on the grill, Face,” Murdock says cheerfully, and for the first time in a year, the lieutenant can hear the strain beneath it. “Potato salad, and I was gonna make some lemonade. You gonna eat?”
Face sits down at the kitchen table and folds his hands up in front of him. “Sure.”
“Anything you want extra?” Murdock asks.
“Umm...” and Face tries to think. “I don’t think so, no.”
Murdock pauses and looks up from his bowl. “You sure? Cause I really could...”
“No, it’s...it’s fine, Murdock. Really.”
The captain nods back and stares down into the sauce he’s stirring for the salad, and back to a separate bowl with quartered, boiled potatoes. There’s a butter knife in there, and Murdock holds it up. “Could you, uhh, could you pick the lock on the knives? Can’t have potato salad without celery and onions...”
Face swallows. That’s right. Pike always locks the cooking knives up when Murdock’s at all possibly alone by himself. He gets up and goes for the drawer where they keep all the spare twist ties from Murdock’s vegetable bags. Kneeling down, he hears Hannibal’s words again, and realizes this probably hurts the pilot. Bad.
“I...Murdock, you know he only does this cause he’s worried about you,” Face tries to tell him, working on the lock. “He doesn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“I know how to use a knife, Face,” Murdock replies, sad.
“Yeah, but I’m not really all that keen on the idea of you getting in one of your fits and running around the house with that ten inch senkoku you’ve got in here...”
A strangled little noise has Face looking up just in time to see Murdock slumping over to the table, falling into one of the chairs, head in his hands.
Face closes his eyes, trying to block out the noise of Murdock’s quiet moans. Fuck that, fuck him, he tells himself, like he’s told himself every time since Afghanistan, since the orphanage in Charikar. Since everything went to hell.
That’s an order, Captain.
Major Pike, sir, please, I can’t...
This is not one of your fucking propaganda movies about World War Two, Murdock! Do it the fuck now!
Murdock! He's got a gun to my head!
I can’t, Faceman, I’m sorry, I can’t...
Murdock sounds the same now as he did that day, like he’s ripping apart under the force of whatever it is that lives in the corners of his mind. Face feels a rage coming over him, the same one from that day, from that half-collapsed mudbrick schoolhouse, sweat dripping off his forehead to crash down on his AK47, the screaming in too many dialects to follow, reality dull and distant, the smell of cordite, women’s blood in the air.
He hates that noise. Hates what it reminds him of. Hates Murdock for making it. But he remembers how Hannibal got him to shut up, that one night at the Club, so despite the fact he’d really rather just go outside until it passes, he gets up off the kitchen floor and wraps his arms around the pilot’s skinny shoulders where he’s sitting on the low stool.
Pulling him into a hug.
Like he used to do, back before.
It takes a couple of minutes, longer than with Hannibal, but Face holds on, eyes shut against it all, until Murdock quiets, and droops. His weight falls into the lieutenant’s arms, and Face almost loses his balance entirely, catching them both as Murdock slides off the stool, feet on the ground, body clinging to Face’s.
After a moment or two, Face eases away, Murdock on the stool and himself against the counter, distance between them. The pilot covers his face in a hand, rocking a little.
Neither of them talk for a little while.
Face feels...almost better.
Then Murdock has to open his big mouth again. “I’m sorry, Face. I’m sorry. I can’t...I’m sorry about everything.”
“You want your medication?” Face asks, wary. It wouldn’t be the first time Murdock’s tried to apologize for...
“I’m sorry about the orphanage,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean...I didn’t mean for that to happen, any of it, I didn’t really think Pike would pull the trigger, I didn’t...”
And yeah, there it is. The younger officer feels himself clenching a fist. “Maybe you should have let him,” he hisses. “So I didn’t have to do your fucking job for you.”
“I couldn’t,” he starts to stammer, his hands starting to twitch. “I...I...Face, I couldn’t...”
Face stares at him for a moment, that fury rising anew, and storms out of the kitchen. He can’t handle this right now. Not after last night.
He takes the stairs two at a time and digs his cell phone from the pants he wore home. He locks his bedroom door - just in case - and dials BA.
“What you want, fool?” the corporal grunts as he picks up. There’s lots of noise in the background, the roar of a crowd.
“Where the fuck are you?”
“Ima headed downtown, UFC fight. I done told you I was goin’.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t fucking want to deal with Murdock right now.”
“Ain’t my problem,” BA shoots back, an answer that’s no an answer at all. “ I ain’t gonna be home tonight, so crazy’s your problem.”
Face hangs up and falls back on his bed, still staring at the screen on his phone, bright in the weak Washington State afternoon light. And before he knows what he’s doing, he’s thumbing in Hannibal’s number and pressing the call button.
It rings. Twice. Then Face hangs up. Fucking stupid idea. What’s the colonel going to do about this? What’s the point? It’s not like Hannibal’s going to care about his fuck toy’s personal problems, at least, not if those problems aren’t imposing on his command...
His cell rings. He lets it go to voicemail. Five minutes later, it rings again. Face pulls the battery out and tosses it aside, off into the mess of his closet. He lays there on his back for who knows how long, drumming his fingers against his chest, wishing John was there to wrap him up, hold him, whisper in his ear, make everything okay with his presence alone.
Face wants it. Closeness, intimacy, commitment. Belong to someone, with someone, someone who loves him..
But that’s impossible. After Charikar, after what Murdock forced him into doing, after what BA said to him about it, after Pike explained how the military really works, it’s impossible. He can’t be intimate with another man, can’t be honest and open and full in another, the way he wants. He has to keep his distance. Stay back. Seal up. Not let anyone in.
Especially Colonel John Smith, brigade commander.
He lays there like that in his own gloom, fingers stroking the deep bruise on his chest through his shirt, and when a car pulls into the drive much later, Face just figures that Pike must be home, and isn't that just the fucking cherry on top of this bullshit sundae?
+++++
Hannibal pauses at the door to Major Pike's house, worried. He's not really sure if he should go in or not. Face did just hang up on him twenty minutes ago. Maybe it was a mistake coming over here. Maybe Face just accidentally hit his number and didn't really mean to call him and that's why he hung up. Or maybe...
But in his heart, Hannibal knows there's something wrong. The kid's car is the only one here, the lights are all off, and this is the first time Face has tried to call his cell phone since the colonel gave him the number a couple of weeks ago, and drug the kid's out of him. He hasn't used it, and if he's using it now...
Hannibal knocks.
No answer.
He waits a moment, knocks again. Harder now and longer, just in case the kid didn't hear him.
Again, no answer.
Hannibal chews at the inside of his lip, wanting a cigar, not sure what the proper course of action is here. He can't just go inside, right? Because that would involve picking the lock on the door and he really prefers not breaking into junior officers' houses if he can at all avoid that...
And then he remembers. The garage is open, and that inner door looked like it was cracked as he walked past.
Hannibal walks softly through the garage, past the place where BA's van was last time - the big corporal must be out at one of his fights or something like that - and yeah, it’s open. Feeling slightly bad about it, knowing Face needs him right now, heslips into the house.
It's dark in here. Dark and quiet, the October afternoon already starting to fail, and it's chilly in here, no heat on or anything like that. There's the half-formed start of potato salad on the kitchen island, and it doesn't escape his notice that there's a butter knife, coated in white potato, sitting in a big pile of crusting mash on the board. He frowns. What the...
It smells like woodsmoke in here, too, doesn't it? Woodsmoke, and the faintest hint of burning, like meat, and Hannibal notices that the back kitchen door is open as well.
The glass door swings out onto a big, beautifully stained deck, wide and expansive, that takes up most of the small yard. Hannibal can smell the grill, very strongly, but he can't see it until he looks down the stairs.
It is, was, a beautiful set-up that's down there. Ruined now. Laying on its side, the stainless steel lid is ripped half off from the force of what to be a violent fall, the base broken apart at the screws, charcoal scattered across the brick landing at the bottom, the burnt remains of something that looks like chicken wings scattered throughout. It's an absolute mess, and Hannibal stares at it for a moment, wondering what happened and why, and if this is why Face called, when he hears sniffling under his feet.
Murdock, Hannibal thinks, groaning inside, and heads down the steps, dodging smoldering charcoal pieces on the way.
The captain is under there in premature twilight, back to a support pillar, legs crossed on moss-slimed rocks, staring off into space. Hannibal kneels down, squatting over his haunches, not really sure what to say, knowing he needs to say something, do something, about this situation. He doesn't want to take Murdock to the hospital, he does not want to do that, not when he just took the man out of there. And he wonders, then, suddenly, if this is all his fault.
"I didn't mean it," Murdock says suddenly, and Hannibal realizes that the captain's staring right at him. "I didn't want to make Face do it. He didn't want to and I made him cause I couldn't...I couldn't take it, couldn't..."
"The grill, Captain?" Hannibal asks softly.
The pilot smiles weakly. "Didn't see much point in just cookin' for m'self, and...". He shakes his head. "Had to stop it from laughin' at me."
"Why was it laughing at you, Captain?" the colonel prompts.
"Ain't my job but I do it anyway cause it's the only thing I can do for 'em but they don't care, don't care at all what I do for 'em cause it don't matter, just nuthin' I do matters and it's a joke, it's a big joke..."
Hannibal doesn't know what to say as the pilot rambles, on and on, in that circular logic, so he cuts right through it instead. Scoots in a little, ducking his head to get it under the overhang of the deck, and holds out a hand. "Then how 'bout you don't cook tonight?"
Murdock shakes his head. "Then Face'll just have a big bowl of Cap't Crunch and spend all day tomorrow worried he's gonna get fat...I don't like him worrin' over things like that, things that are my fault..."
"Lieutenant Peck's problems are his, not yours," Hannibal says firmly, and reaches out to touch Murdock's knee. "You don't have to take this all on yourself."
Murdock looks down at the colonel's hand, head hung. "But all this, it's all my fault."
"I doubt that," Hannibal tells him, warm as he can, and smiles. "How about I take you boys out to dinner tonight?"
Murdock smiles and then it fades, as quickly as it came. "I don't think Face wants to talk to me right now."
"Why don't I talk to him for you?" Hannibal suggests, hoping like hell Face will be receptive. He knows, after all, he’s got no knowledge of what it is between these two. Fuck, why the fuck does that information have to be missing? He’s got no datapoints to start from, nothing to work with to help these boys resolve whatever it was happened to them. "How upset could he be about dinner?"
And fuck Pike and whatever the hell he’s going to think about that, Hannibal tells himself, before that little voice can offer a fucking opinion about it.
Murdock nods. "Okay, sir."
"Outstanding, captain.” And Hannibal starts backing out the gloom, leaving Murdock room to exit.
The captain watches him for a moment more, nods again, and follows.
Murdock appears much better by the time Hannibal gets him inside the house, even if he does studiously avoid looking at the kitchen, and he heads over to the basement door, explaining he's going to go take a shower.
Hannibal watches him go, waits for the faint sound of the shower turning on, and then dumps the entire mess on the kitchen counter into the wide sink, running the water as he goes. Quick fix, but he can clean it up properly when he gets back. He makes a fast call to a good restaurant he's found in Seattle- cheap, good, local food - and gets them a reservation for an hour from now, asking for the most secluded booth he can get. He finds BA’s cell phone stuck to the fridge and gets ahold of him, the corporal sounding somewhat awed under the irritation at having to leave wherever the fuck he is and show up...
Only when that's all done does he head upstairs, looking for Face.
It's a strange feeling, walking through somebody else's house that he hasn't been invited into. All the doors up here are open, save one, and he figures that that's probably the kid's.
It’s locked, and he jiggles it lightly. When there’s no response, he knocks. And when there’s nothing to that, Hannibal pulls a credit card from his wallet and works it open, not sure what he’s going to find.
It’s just Face, though. Face. Curled up on his bed in a ragged pair of cargo shorts and an old USC college shirt, damp head spreading wet across an old, rumpled quilt. There’s hardly anything in here, rudimentary furniture that’s obviously expensive but very plain, a dresser and a bed and a desk in the corner with a closed laptop. There’s a pile of clothes in the closet, more off the hanger than on, and...and that’s it. No memorabilia, no photos, no nick-nacks of any kind, not even a poster to break up the unrelenting taupe of the walls.
Something about the kid, sleeping like that...
Hannibal steps into the darkened space, closing the door softly behind him, and toes his shoes off. Leaving them there at the door, he pads over to the bed as quietly as he can, watching for a moment, and then sits down on the edge.
He doesn’t want to wake the boy. Not when he looks like this.
But he promised Murdock, and BA actually seemed receptive to the idea, and he does want to sit them all down together and maybe get them talking. Not about Charikar or whatever happened tonight. Just...talking. About football or guns or something.
Get them out of this hellhole he damned them all to when he ran away to Asia.
Reaching over, Hannibal runs his fingers across a broad shoulder, into that still-drying hair, feeling the chill in the damp caramel locks. “You have any idea what you do to me, beautiful boy?” he murmurs.
And god, he is beautiful. Lean and graceful and unique, unlike anyone Hannibal’s ever known before, beyond any man he’s ever been with, any man he ever thought would want to be with him, any man he ever thought he could have. Except he can’t. He can’t risk it again, his heart, his soul...if he loses Face, like he lost Maggie, Hannibal knows he won’t survive it. Knows he can’t endure it again.
But his stomach’s twisting up, just touching this young man, and Hannibal’s not so old yet, not so jaded, that he doesn’t remember what it’s like to fall in love. Like with Maggie, how he’d met her at a blood drive when she was volunteering, was slipping the cuff up onto his arm to take his blood pressure. Her fingers brushed his tattoo and they’d looked up, right at the same time, and somehow, for some reason, that Lieutenant Smith found the courage to ask her if she wanted to get a drink when she was done with this.
Years later, after they’d gotten married, before things got bad, when they were laying together in bed, sweat cooling on their skin, she’d ask him why he’d asked her out that day. And his answer to her was always the same.
I felt like I knew you, baby...
It wasn’t the truth. It was what she liked to hear, but it wasn’t the truth.
He'd lied. Every time.
He’d asked her out because she was beautiful and she had a nice smile and some of the other guys had been giving him shit about how he never seemed to have a girlfriend and when did he ever get laid, how did he survive without it - the sex was fun, but it had always felt more like mutual masturbation to him, and thus wasn’t really fair to anyone - and he'd figured it was time to start.
Maybe, Hannibal thinks now as he keeps petting Face’s hair, that that was why nothing ever worked between them. Maybe, no matter how much he did truly love her, no matter how much he wanted her, wanted her to want him, Maggie knew it was all a lie...
But now...
That? That is how he feels about Face. Like he’s known this kid forever. Like he could walk out of here now and come back in ten years and they could pick right back up again, no distance or loss at all, nothing but joy at the reunion.
Like today, this morning, driving back from Vancouver. They’d gotten coffee on the way down and talked, talked for the whole ride, both of them avoiding the subject of the evening but still managing to get each other laughing again, finishing each other’s sentences, lapsing into silence every so often that wasn’t uncomfortable until they pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Like Face is the one he’s been wanting all along...
And if he’d taken that damn team, if he’d only reached out when Russ offered, if he’d shuffled the kid’s file back to the top of the pile, touched that photo, agreed... would Face have been his first? Would Face have been the one to show him who he really was? Would they have found each other like this? Would Face be this broken, this horrifically broken...
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Hannibal murmurs, leaning over him, daring to kiss his neck, right below his ear, on the soft skin without stubble. “My god, I’m so sorry. If...if I’d known you’d be here, waiting for me, I...I would have come. I would have saved you from all of this...”
Face grumbles in his sleep, and curls up tighter, turning away, and Hannibal follows, laying down next to him, draping a soft arm around his ribs, and pulls that warm body against his own.
“...john...” Face moans softly in his sleep. “John...”
“Right here, sweetheart,” Hannibal says, hand sweeping down the kid’s hard, smooth chest, reveling in being able to touch so freely. “I’m right here.”
That gets him a little sigh, and right then, Hannibal forgets all about Murdock showering in the basement, about this being another man’s house, about all the reasons why he can’t have this amazing young man for his own, about fucking anything that doesn’t involve doing what he does right now.
Which is tipping Face’s perfect chin around.
And kissing him awake, lips imploring, that sweet mouth parting for his, flicking his tongue just in, just against the top of his palate, deepening, holding, offering...
Those blue eyes flicker open and then, for a moment, Face kisses him back. Hard, hard, hard.
Right before it all falls away again.
And Face closes his eyes and turns away again. “What do you want?” he asks, voice neutral, nothing to it at all.
Nothing to any of this at all.
Hannibal feels his heart plummet. Shatter to dust.
What a fucking idiot he is...
For a moment, he can’t say anything, and then shakes his head. “You called.”
Face is still staring at the wall. “Yeah, and then I hung up.”
“I was worried.”
“Why?”
“Because,” and Hannibal reaches out with a hand, wanting to touch, not sure if he should, and pulls back again, “because you’ve never called, and I just saw you, so...”
“So you didn’t think I’d want sex again that soon after training so something had to be wrong?”
Hannibal recoils, stung, and gets up, walking over to the wall, leaning against it as he tries to figure this one out. He wants, wants so badly, to tell him... but he can’t. Not if Face doesn’t want to hear it. “No...kid, I was worried. And then I find Murdock downstairs, with the grill all fucked up and him under the deck...”
“Right,” Face sighs. “Murdock. Of course. You were so worried about him that night...”
“Kid, this is about all of you. I’m worried about all of you.”
“Right. Not about me.”
“How else would I have known to come over?”
Face pushes up on his elbow, staring at him. “What do you mean?”
Hannibal rolls his eyes to the ceiling, trying to get away from that questing gaze. “It’s you, Templeton. John’s...I’m here for you.”
It’s not quite what he wants to say, not nearly everything that’s rattling around in him right now, but it’s enough to get Face sitting up and that numb expression off his face, replacing it with something else, something almost like...
“Hey, you ready to go, Faceman?” Murdock crows happily, bouncing into the room and throwing the door wide. He’s in a leather jacket and a baseball cap and some t-shirt that has Sailor Moon written on it in Japanese and Converse and a big, big smile, and it all looks so right, so much better than that sad parody of the hospital room, Hannibal wants to wrap him up in a hug.
Instead, he just smiles back.
“Go where?” Face groans, suddenly twice as sleepy and groggy as he was before. “Colonel, what the fuck?”
“Get up and get dressed, el-tee,” Hannibal replies, still smiling, and moves to take Murdock from the room. “I’m taking you boys out for dinner tonight.”
“Seafood!” Murdock adds, like this is the best news ever.
“Sir...”
And that’s pure, unadulterated whining. How can Face shift gears this fast? So Hannibal just grins wider and lays a hand around Murdock’s shoulders, patting him gently, which just gets the pilot practically bouncing. “Don’t make me make it an order, el-tee,” he drawls, but keeps his eyes fixed on the young man, mentally pleading with him to come.
Face hesitates a moment more, and then nods. “Better not be a Red Lobster,” he warns theatrically and makes a show of stumbling as he gets up.
“Brat,” Hannibal mutters to himself, still smiling at Face.
And finally, with a shake of his head and a little sigh, Face smiles back.
+++++
Halfway through dinner, Face can’t take it any more, and excuses himself, tossing his napkin in his chair, muttering something about needing to take a piss.
It’s not that this isn’t...good.
Far from that.
Hannibal found them a good place. One of the really good places around, right at that intersection of cheap prices, huge portions, good food and better beer. It’s crowded and noisy and tacky and the waitress seems to tug her blouse just a little lower down her cleavage, every time she comes back to their table with another platter of food. The colonel’s telling stories about camel spiders in Desert Storm and the time they found a couple of P-51s buried on Diego Garcia and it took every enlisted kid on the installation to drag them out of their pit.
Hannibal’s laughing. He hasn’t asked about the grill or whatever preceded it, or anything else, for that matter. He’s been laughing since they got here. Murdock got immediately both calmer and more present than Face has seen him in the last two years. Hell, even BA, who steadfastly refuses to go to anything Pike tries to make him come to and then sulks when he’s dragged along anyway, loosened up pretty damn quick and seems to be having a good time now.
But Face, for his part...he can’t.
Face knows he should have just “woken up” the second the colonel’s ass hit his quilt. But no, he just had to keep pretending, just in the case the interfering bastard wanted something out of him, and then...
“Hey, kid,” the colonel says now, pausing in the middle of his story, brushing a stray bit of french fry from the front of his shirt, “where you off to?”
Face can’t look at him. “Uhh, bathroom?”
Those amazing blue eyes, filled with humor, dim slightly. “Oh, okay...”
“Get back soon,” BA chuckles, and yanks a shrimp off Face’s plate, “or Murdock and I gonna eat the rest o’ these for ya.”
Murdock chuckles, looks at Hannibal like he’s asking for permission, and then stabs another one with his fork.
He nods, distracted, and makes a beeline for the bathroom. Life’s small mercies, this place is just small enough to get away with a single-pot room, so he can lock the door behind him.
Face clutches the sink, staring down at the little ring of slime around the drain. Hannibal... Hannibal’s words...
I’m so sorry, baby...
Seriously... just...what the fuck?
What did that even mean? Why would Hannibal say something like that? Was the colonel trying to mess with him? Did he realize he wasn’t asleep, that he was just faking it so the colonel would go away and wanted to show him what...or had Hannibal wanted...wanted what? And why would he fucking apologize? This isn’t his fault, none of this is his fault.
But...
The lieutenant bites his lip, shutting his eyes. That. What’s the story here? Was Hannibal offered an assignment here earlier? One of his past units? What? What could it possibly fucking be?
No. That has to be...well, not true. Hannibal’s fucking with him. Plain and simple. cold-hearted bastard...
But..
...if I’d known you’d be here, waiting for me...
But there was the kiss, too, he remembers, a stab of heat flowing through him again. That felt real. Not like last night, with the hesitation, the grudging return. No, that kiss today was Hannibal holding him and caressing him as if he was something precious, something worthy, desirable, wanted.
God, Face wants to be wanted.
But there’s too much to know. Too much left unknown. If he can trust Hannibal. If he can trust himself. If Hannibal would still want him, if he knew what kind of man he really was. If this isn’t just some fucking game for the older man. If any of this is, in fact, real. Because if it’s not, and he gives into it, it’s going to kill him...
He lifts his eyes, catching his own reflection in the mirror.
Could he? he asks himself. Could you?
And it scares the shit out of him that he doesn’t have a good answer to that.
+++++
After Face leaves, Murdock and BA finish his food and move off, over to the pool table across the small restaurant, and Hannibal’s glad for it. Those two bicker like school-girls, but where it was heated and irritated when they first got here, it seems to be mellowing out now. BA relaxing, Murdock coming out of that strange, manic depression of his. Both of them seem to be enjoying themselves.
They aren’t quite sure of what to do, but they aren’t at each other’s throats or ignoring each other, and that has to count for something.
Amazing that a couple rounds of beer and beer-battered North Atlantic cod can have that sudden an effect, the colonel thinks, and it makes him want to weep, thinking about what it must be like for them, living with Pike. And he can’t quite figure that one out. Why do they do it? Why does Pike make them? He clearly has nothing but contempt for all of them...
“Hey, sir.”
Hannibal pulls his gaze back to the here and now, to Face, who’s slipping into his seat next to him. He can’t help but smile. Fuck, the kid’s beautiful...
“Hey, Face,” Hannibal replies, getting that smile in check, keeping himself as neutral as possible. He can’t...he can’t just say it, can he? No matter how much he wants to, he can’t. Not until...well, not yet anyway. Not now. Not here. “You want anything else? The boys ate the rest of yours.”
“Sure,” Face nods, blank as Hannibal’s trying to be. And of course he is. It’s not as if he wants some dried-up old Ranger, young, beautiful thing like he is. “Umm... the mussels were good. We could get another bucket of those?”
Hannibal nods. “Anything you want, Face,” he tells him, and realizes it’s true. Anything Face wants, he’d give him. Even if it was Pike’s heart on a plate. Which isn’t really a bad idea, considering.
He waves the waitress over. More mussels, more beer, and Hannibal decides it’s high time for a cigar.
“She unbuttoned another button, didn’t she?” the colonel asks conversationally, flicking his lighter open, trying to get the flint to catch.
“Looks like,” Face replies and - surprisingly enough - reaches over for the lighter, working the little wheel mechanism slow and easy, a flame darting up. He holds it out for Hannibal. “Much more and those C-cups are hers are going to fall right out.”
Hannibal rolls his cigar, puffing it awake. “I think she’s trying to impress you.”
“If only she knew,” Face replies with a grin, and snaps the lighter shut.
Passing it back, fingers brush, just for a moment, and Hannibal has to resist, hard, the urge to just pull Face into his lap, right here and now, and kiss him senseless.
The touch passes, far too fast, and the moment’s gone.
Hannibal wraps the lighter up in his hand, letting his cigar smolder, staring down at it. Fuck, he has no idea what to do about this. About the unwelcome feelings for this boy, growing in him. About Murdock and BA. About this unit.
About this entire fucking thing.
After all it’s not as if today, tonight, any night that comes after, can change anything.
But yet, Face is smiling as he takes the beers from the waitress and smiling as he sets them down, smiling...
Beautiful, Hannibal thinks again, and sips his lager.
+++++
Hannibal takes the boys home an hour or so later. He’s just sober enough to manage the drive, and he doesn’t want to push things too hard with any of them right now. Things, at least with two of them, seem pretty good.
BA tried to say he was taking his van, but five minutes into the drive and he’s passed out in the back seat, on Face’s shoulder, so the colonel feels pretty okay with not letting him go back to his fight. He can leave the corporal the money for the taxi. Boys at that rank don’t make very much.
Murdock’s in the front passenger seat, calmer than Hannibal’s seen him yet, happy and smiling. He doesn’t say anything the whole ride, but that’s okay too. Happy is good. And Hannibal vows to himself that he’s going to get the poor boy a doctor with the clearance to talk to him about whatever’s haunting him. There are a few out there in the DoD, and the colonel’s willing to blow the entirety of the brigade’s not-considerable discretionary fund on bringing one of them here TDY to Fort Lewis for as long as it takes.
Face, though, Face... Face isn’t talking, and Hannibal’s pretty sure it’s not because he’s happy or asleep. No, there’s some kind of nervous energy thrumming through the young man, and Hannibal’s at a complete loss as to what to do about it.
So he doesn’t talk either. None of them do. Not until he pulls up in Pike’s garage and helps Face and Murdock rouse BA. There’s a split second, a fleeting moment, where Murdock doesn’t feel haunted and Face doesn’t feel angry and BA doesn’t seem upset at the help. Like they’re an actual team...
It passes fast, though. BA lets them help him up the garage steps into the house, and then pushes out, going for his bedroom upstairs, hand tight on the banister, leaving them all without so much as a backwards glance. Hannibal thinks he hears a gruff “’night, fools!” thrown back, but he’s not really sure.
Murdock’s next, shifting on his feet a little, and clearly wanting a hug. He doesn’t ask, though, and Hannibal doesn’t want to embarrass him by offering.
“Thanks, sir, I had a good time,” he says quietly, staring down at those shuffling Converse.
Hannibal pats him on the shoulder. “My pleasure, Captain,” he replies softly.
Murdock’s eyes lift to his for a moment, and he nods, smiling still, even as he shuffles off down the stairs to the basement. A pilot living in the basement. For some reason, it unsettles Hannibal greatly.
As the door closes, it leaves hm and Face. Together. Alone.
The kid’s right here, close enough to touch but also out of reach, butt against the edge of the low island counter, arms folded and a hand rubbing over his mouth. He looks tired, worn, very, very old. Like everything in him’s been used up. Like he’s empty.
It’s unbearable.
“Kid,” Hannibal says, looking at him, feeling that rip inside of him widening now. “Kid, please...”
What?” Face sighs, desolate, and his eyes roll up to the ceiling. “What the fuck do you want from me, colonel?”
You’re drunk, old man, Hannibal tells himself for even daring to think about this, but takes a step in anyway. Close enough to slip his hand between Face’s mouth and palm. Close enough to push his fingers through, force them down, and wrap his other hand around the kid’s trim waist. Close enough to lay their foreheads together, the kid’s flawless skin flushed beneath the clammy fear of his own. His heart’s beating hard, fast enough to crack his ribs. He feels hot enough to burst into flames. And he doesn’t understand it.
It was never like this with Maggie.
He wants to say it. Wants to say everything, everything he’s feeling, wants to pull Face into his arms and kiss him and tell him...tell him he’s wanted, needed, desired, loved...
But he doesn’t. He can’t. He can’t meet those lips that are just begging to be kissed, can’t slip his hand into that soft caramel hair and pull them both into it.
He almost does, though.
Almost.
And stops, blood freezing, wondering why the fuck he hasn’t thought about this before.
“Kid?” he asks.
“Y-yeah?” Face replies, a little breathless, and what the hell is that about, Hannibal wonders.
“Where’s Pike?”
Face’s eyes go wide, like he’s just realizing it himself. “I... I don’t know. If he’s not home yet, he’s...” and then the kid groans. “Fuck...”
“He’s what?”
+++++
“You sure those boys of yours are going to be alright with something like this, Brock?”
“Little bastards will do anything I tell them, Vance. Come on, you know that.”
It’s loud in here, music throbbing and walls vibrating, the dance floor below a seething, sweating mass of muscle and testosterone. Not really to the major’s taste, at least, not on nights when he’s not up for a hunt. And as for his buddy Vance, well, that sonofabitch would probably prefer to drag him to some performance of Carmen and hold this little conversation in some back practice room, like they were in a goddamn James Bond film. But this, a gay club in downtown Portland, is the one place in the whole fucking universe where they are not going to run into any fucking military who could possibly see them together. Anonymity is the name of the game here.
And not just because Vance is CIA.
“Yeah, but we’re talking about heroine here...”
“They’re housebroken,” he replies, and raises an eyebrow at the man across from him in the little booth in the back of the club. “You don’t think I can handle my own people, then fuck you.”
And fuck, he’s put in a lot of work to getting them to that point.
Murdock had been easy. Already half-crazy from shit the FARC put him through back in the day, Vance had suggested him and once Pike had pulled him out of that mental instution in Mexico, he’d been the perfect fucking lap dog. BA had been a fantastic combination of loyalty, anger and hotheadedness, and that was something that was easy to use against a man. Face had been a bit more of a challenge, but he’s turning out to be the best of them all.
He’d been a firey brat when Pike had first gotten him, eager and excited and terribly annoying about how happy he was to be a Ranger, to have made Major Pike’s team, yadda, yadda, yadda. But that first deployment had taken care of that, thank fuck. A little taste of reality and he’d just crumpled in on himself. Oh, sure, he’d never again questioned an order, never tried to protest again, but Pike wasn’t stupid enough to think it was because the boy agreed with him, or his methods.
No, nothing like that.
The Lieutenant Peck that walked away from that Charikar mission was not the same one that walked in. Something in him broke that day. Well, too fucking bad, Pike’s always figured. Welcome to the world. Ain’t a pretty place. Not his problem that Face decided to be a little bitch about it, screwing everything in sight and coming home smelling like sex and booze more nights than not. But at least he still does his job and does it well.
So the major’s willing to tolerate it, if Face feels the need to go on a sex bender every so often. Just like he tolerates BA’s fights, in and out of the ring. Like he makes allowances for Murdock’s little mental problems. Even if he has to keep them under his roof to ensure nobody gets cute and tries to start thinking for themselves again. They’re a damn good team in the field, honestly, one of the best, probably better for Face’s disillusioned morality and BA’s anger and Murdock’s craziness. Makes them fight harder, better, longer, tougher. Makes them open to orders that, before, none of them would take.
Pike likes them just the way they are. He’s quite proud of it, actually.
“They’ll do their fucking job. I’ll make sure our buyer knows that when we meet with him tomorrow,” he says, confident that this is completely true, and leers at his partner. If he’ll let the business end of this little visit go, the major thinks, imagining exactly what he’s going to do with him once he gets him back to their hotel. He better have been wearing the plug for the last couple of days...
Lynch adjusts the drape of his suit collar around him, a bead of persperation sliding just below it. Pike wants to latch his mouth on to that spot, right there, and bite hard. He loves that about his CIA buddy. Corrupt motherfucker, through and through, likes it hard and rough, always dishes just enough snark back to keep things from getting too affectionate...
“We’re talking about thirty million dollars here. Wholesale. At some point, they’re going to figure out it’s not a routine confiscation.”
...and has a fantastically devious ability for turning a profit in a warzone. He’s like the evil Face sometimes, Pike thinks, and has the sudden mental image of tying the kid down and letting Vance have his way with his virgin ass.
Wouldn’t that be a lovely lesson for the little slut? Or, and Pike thinks this would probably be better, maybe there’s a way of making the el-tee take it more or less willingly...
Pike grins back at Vance, thinking about it. Maybe after the next deployment. Kid’ll probably be completely crushed at that point, if he’s got anything to say about it. “Housebroken,” he repeats, growling, and reaches across the small table to grab Lynch’s collar. “Just like you.”
Vance just smiles back. That irritating, excited, sarcastic, challenging smile.
The one that goes straight to Pike’s groin. Every single fucking time.
“Bathroom, now, bitch,” he orders, dragging them both out of the booth, undoing one of Vance’s top buttons. Fucking pretentious yuppie shirt. He’s going to rip it off him, mark him up, fuck him so hard he’s not going to be able to sit for a week.
Vance just keeps smiling, so Pike bites that spot on his neck, and Vance shoots back about how sad it is he has to stand on his tiptoes to do that and Pike squeezes his dick so hard through those tailored trousers of his that he yelps.
Pike grins to himself then, and all but drags his partner in crime back to the nearest bathroom.
Fuck, but he does love his weekends away.
+++++
Hannibal knows he’s staring at the kid, knows his jaw is probably hanging open, but still, this...
“What do you mean, he just leaves sometimes?”
Face looks intensely uncomfortable from his perch on one of the kitchen’s barstools. “I don’t know, he just disappears.”
“I haven’t seen any leave in the system for him, so...”
That gets a short, barking laugh from the lieutenant. “No, jesus, no, he doesn’t take leave for it. He just goes. He’ll get a call or something and the next day, he’s just gone. Doesn’t tell us where or how, he just leaves.”
“For long? How frequently?” Hannibal presses, a little stunned by that kind of illegal, irresponsible behavior from a major.
Face shrugs. “Maybe... maybe a few days at a time.”
“To do what?”
Face shrugs again and heads over to the fridge, pulling out two frosty bottles of beer. He offers one to Hannibal, who doesn’t take it, and pulls a bottle opener out of some drawer for his own. “Like I said, he doesn’t exactly share it with us, Hannibal.”
“That’s completely unacceptable. You boys ever report him for it?”
“Umm...” and the lieutenant’s eyes roll down to his beer. He tosses the cap away, squirms a bit, doesn’t answer.
Hannibal gets the feeling that’s a very, very uncomfortable subject for the kid. Why, though, he doesn’t know.
“Why?” he asks again, standing, going over to Face and running a hand down his arm. “Why the hell not? You three obviously hate him,” blue eyes lift at that, confused and worried, and Hannibal has to really stop himself from pressing a kiss right to that furrowed brow that’s presented to him, “so why not use something like this? It’s not even out of line. In fact, you really should report it...”
“I can’t!” Face practically shouts, and twists out of Hannibal’s startled grasp. “Fucking A, sir, I wish I could, but I... I just can’t.”
Hannibal’s heart constricts a bit at that broken tone he hears there, and takes a step closer to the kid. “Why not?”
“I...” But Face is in no state to be forming sentences right now. He’s shaking, pale under that artful tan of his, nervous, Hannibal thinks to himself, and suddenly realizes what this is. “I... I can’t...”
“It’s whatever happened at Charikar, isn’t it?” Hannibal asks, low and fast, the words tumbling out before he can even think about what they could do to the kid. “It’s about the orphanage.”
Nothing but a nod so subtle it might as well have not happened. Face hugs his arms around himself. His eyes are squeezed shut. He’s rocking a little. It’s so raw, so damaged, that Hannibal regrets saying a damn word.
But the cat’s out of the bag now. And if he can use this little AWOL stunt of Pike’s, if he wants to use it, as an excuse to get the fucker investigated, Hannibal needs all the information, all possible variables. Especially if there’s something that can hurt the rest of the boys in here. “Tell me.”
“I can’t, Hannibal,” and the kid’s tone, when it comes, is desperate now in a way that makes the older man physically hurt, “you’re a colonel, you’ll have to report...”
Hannibal eases around, sitting flush to Face’s warm thigh but other than that, not touching him at all. “Then tell John, Temp. Let him make that decision for himself.”
Face groans into his knees. “You’ll hate me. I... I hate me for it.”
Hannibal nods in understanding, and pulls the back of his fingers through the kid’s growing curls, pulls the kid in for a hug, rests his cheek against his shoulder, tries his damndest to let him know it’s okay, that he’s not alone, that he needs to let this out. Whatever it is, Face needs to let it out.
The kid can’t carry this alone forever. And maybe, Hannibal thinks, hating himself for thinking it, if Face can open up, if Face can let him in, all the masks will come down, all the barriers between them, open up a chance for something real, just like Face deserves...
“I swear I won’t, kid. I won’t speak of word of it to anyone,” he murmurs. “Just talk to me. ”
And after a long moment, stretched out to what seems like hours, Face does.
“We were five months into OEF, back in 2002. It was an entirely routine day, and we’d just set down in this village a little ways north of Charikar...”
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Date: 2011-12-12 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-12-13 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-12-14 06:43 am (UTC)Glad you're enjoying it so far. This is my favorite thing about AUs, trying to tweak the universe while leaving the character intact as much as possible.
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Date: 2011-12-18 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-12-19 06:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-19 11:35 pm (UTC)