Absolution (Part Four of Five)
Dec. 16th, 2011 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, potential disturbing images
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...
a/n: I want to get this out, but the next section's the actual mission, yikes! I probably won't have it up until the week after Christmas due to, well, Christmas... thanks for keeping in there with me!
Three clicks outside the village, and HM’s stopped, staring up at the mountains to the north like he always does, the dust settling around his non-regulation boots.
“Face? Go get crazy, would ya? We need to get in here before they try to run on us again.”
“I think he needs a minute, sir.”
“Don’t give a shit what he needs, Face. We’ve got a mission to execute.”
Major Pike’s staring at him. He’s been in a foul mood all week, ever since the brass told him he needed to sweep an area already under Northern Alliance control. Waste of his team’s talent, he’d groaned, but General Morrison had put his foot down, and here they are. Six days in, and empty-handed.
They’re looking for some bastard who escaped custody. Al...al-...something or other. Face knows French and Spanish fluently, and a smattering of half a dozen other languages he picked up from library books as a bored kid in the LA public school system, but he can’t get his head around the dialects here. Murdock picked it up in two weeks, which is why he’s along now instead of working close air support for another team.
BA, on point, sporting a full beard after this many months in the field, turns to nods in agreement.
Face nods back, and turns around to go shake his friend out of it. Much as he loves the guy, the boss is right; the team can’t afford this right now.
They aren’t like any mountains I’ve ever seen before, he said the first time Face asked him why he was always looking at them. On missions. In camp.
What’s that matter? Does it affect the choppers? Face had asked.
The pilot had shaken his head. Yeah, the altitude here’s already a bitch, and the drafts can be weird up over those, but that ain’t why they’re different.
Then why?
It’s like Mordor. Keep lookin’ for Gwadhir to come up over one of them peaks, HM had said, and smiled that lopsided grin of his.
Face hadn’t quite gotten the reference, but Murdock had explained it to him later, recited the passage from Lord of the Rings from heart, and promised to take him to go see the first movie if they ever got back to the States. Which, the way Murdock said it, could have been, maybe, something of a... date.
The lieutenant always tries to ignore that as a possibility. Just cause he enjoys sleeping with men doesn’t mean it’s a widely shared sentiment around the Army. And definitely not in the Rangers. Murdock would probably punch him for even suggesting it in jest.
But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about HM like that. Sometimes. When he’s alone or in the tents at night when he can force a woman’s name to his lips even as he imagines masculine strength wrapped around his dick instead of female softness.
A stupid thing to torture himself with, but he’s been with Pike’s team, with HM, for almost a year now. Five months on this campaign. It’s the kind of thing that really brings men together. And he’d like to think that he’s actually making friends here, that HM could really be a friend, a real friend, who actually understands Templeton Peck and likes him anyway, somebody Face could open up to, trust, be intimate with... it’d be nice to know, what that feels like.
Face jogs back to the team’s pilot, his M4 bouncing against his leg, trying to push those thoughts away. It’s a warzone, for god’s sake. Not the time, not the place. They’ve got some Taliban asshole to find before the week’s up, and Major Pike’s temper’s starting to get short as it is.
“Come on, buddy,” he says gently, touching the pilot’s thin shoulder. “We gotta catch up. You know the boss doesn’t like anybody fallin’ behind on these things.”
Murdock, instead of turning around, hunches down a little in his thick jacket. It’s a fucking desert, Afghanistan, in March, and it’s freezing. Face, who grew up in sunny southern California, can’t quite understand it.
“I don’t feel right ‘bout this one, Faceman.”
Face shakes his head. “Taliban assholes. What’s there to feel bad about?”
“Ain’t the target,” Murdock mutters, and is looking straight up at the sky. He sighs.
Face wraps an arm around his shoulders. “Come on, one more village to check and then we can head back to base.”
Murdock sighs, but starts walking. “Think the major’ll let me fly on the next mission?”
“I’ll talk to him, buddy,” Face promises, meaning it, and loves the way the captain’s eyes gleam as he says it.
Major Pike and BA are waiting for them on the edge of the little village, and they head in together. It’s like dozens they’ve seen in the last few months, nothing but mudbrick walls melting back into the desert sands, the creeping, gasping green of plants scattered through the flat spaces, half-naked children wearing a mix of local cottons and twenty-year-old t-shirts from America, swarthed women, men in dirty robes, skinny animals everywhere, and that smell, that smell that puts fucking Mexico to shame...
Usually on something like this, on this mission especially, they’ll talk to the village elders, a few of the other men, over tea and goat, and try to get answers in that rambling four hour lunch as to the whereabouts of who they’re looking for. This is a UIF-controlled town. That’s SOP for allied areas. Simple stuff.
Murdock lifts a hand and calls out a greeting in the local dialect, chattering away with the first few men who come up to him. BA heads back towards them, casually offering Face a fist-bump on the way, and claps his ahnd on Murdock’s shoulder as introductions begin.
And this is normally the part where Major Pike should be...oh, maybe three paces back, watching.
But not today. Today he’s still walking, headed for something other than the town’s little meeting hall, and that doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
So Face catches up with his boss, fast, gets in front of him, and stops him. “Sir?”
Major Pike looks at him and then back to where Murdock and BA are talking to the elders, cocking one of those huge eyebrows of his over the top of his Oakleys, and snorts, derisive, like he can be sometimes. “And where has that chickenshit tea-drinking tactic gotten us on this particular endeavor, el-tee?”
“Sir, it’s what we’re supposed to do. General Morrison...”
The stocky major laughs. “The brass want results. They don’t really care how we do it, they just have to bandy that shit around back home so Congress keeps the money taps on. I'm not fucking around with that diplomacy shit this time.”
Face shakes his head, confused. He knows first hand just how short Major Pike’s temper can be, how impatient he gets with ROEs that tie his hands If the el-tee’s learned anything over the past few months, it’s that Pike’s a damn good soldier. He’s unorthodox and he prefers direct action, but he’s not reckless and he’s not bloodthirsty. So...so what is this? Major Pike wouldn’t steer him wrong. He knows that much. It’s his team, it’s his boss... “I don’t follow.”
“Course you don’t,” and the boss chuckles as he pats Face’s cheek. Everyone’s stopping to stare at the American soldiers. “It’s okay. We haven’t gotten into this before, ‘s’all. You ready to follow my lead, lieutenant?”
“Haven’t steered me wrong yet, sir,” Face replies, suddenly feeling sick and not knowing why. Why ask that? Doesn’t make any sense...
“Sometimes you gotta be more direct with these stone-age goat fuckers,” Pike grins, and nods towards the direction he was headed. “You wanna learn what bein’ a Ranger’s all about, Face?”
“Course, sir,” Face says, meaning every damn word of it.
“Good man. Come on.” The major turns back around, bellowing. “Murdock, BA, cut that shit off. We’re dealin’ with this direct today!”
BA gives Murdock a look, but jogs over, and after a few hurried words to the now-protesting elders, Murdock follows. All three of them fall into step, but as they sweep into the low-slung structure, it's apparent to Face the second they enter what the place is.
An orphanage.
Pike’s already halfway towards the building, BA close, and Face is following along, trying to get those weird butterflies in his belly to shut the fuck up, when he hears the breath catch in his friend’s throat behind him.
He stops. “What is, Murdock?”
The pilot looks pale. He shakes his head. “You...you ever heard any of those rumors ‘bout the major?”
What? “What?”
“Face...” and Murdock looks at him, bleak. “I don’t got a good feelin’...”
“It’s okay,” Face says, and checks his own weapon as an excuse not to meet his friend’s eyes. “We gotta find this guy.”
He still has to bodily push Murdock forward in order to get him moving
Major Pike leaves BA outside on guard, but pulls Face and Murdock in with him. The main door, splintered and cracked, opens into a miserable main hall. There are a couple of women there, a few children sitting around on threadbare rugs, an older girl already in her hijab kneeling down, reading to a few of them.
They all look up.
Pike smiles, and waves Murdock up next to him. “Captain, ask her if she knows where al-Zahiri is hiding in this village. His kids were sent here, she has to know...”
Murdock bites his lip, but nods, and takes a step forward, bowing a little, and launches into that local dialect. Face catches maybe one word in five, but he can tell that whatever Murdock’s saying, the women are getting very agitated by it.
At length, Murdock stop and shakes his head. “He ain’t here, boss.”
“Ask again.”
“Boss, I can’t...they...they don’t know...”
“Ask. Again,” Pike growls and draws his sidearm, the click of the safety coming off a loud report in the silent room. The older girl, hides behind one of the women, clutching tightly to her hand, while the other woman tries to tell her something.
Murdock shakes his head again, distressed. “Boss, sir, please, don’t do this...”
“Murdock, you’ve been with me long enough to know better than to give me lip in front of the targets.”
Targets.
Targets.
An orphanage, Face’s brain is screaming at him, it’s an orphanage. What possibly...it’s just a sad place full of sad kids who lost their families, who can’t remember what their parents looked like...there aren’t any targets here, it’s just kids and a couple of women...
"Tell her you’re going to shoot her if she doesn’t tell you."
Pike's order comes through the haze of memory slamming through him right now, and Face turns. "Sir?"
It comes out in a whisper and Major Pike rolls his eyes. "Not you, el-tee. Murdock."
Murdock looks scared. Terrified. A kind of terror Face hasn't seen in the captain before. He's gone completely white. "Major, sir, you can't ask me to..."
"It's not a request, Captain," Pike says, sounding as if he's right on the cusp of irritation now. "Tell her."
"Sir..."
"TELL HER!" Pike roars, and the what clean air remained is sucked from the room.
Murdock, trembling ever so slightly, pulls his baseball cap off his head, wipes his brow, and turns back to the obscured collection of females. The Farsi flies fast between them, increasingly desperate from Murdock, and then one of the women lets out a bloodcurdling cry as the other starts yelling at the pilot.
Noise outside, and Face can hear BA yelling in guttural, rough words - so much different from Murdock's, he finds himself thinking wildly - and a stattacco burst of automatic weapons fire suddenly cuts it off, only to have it start up as the woman wails louder.
The walls are growing tighter around them. Face feels like he's being squeezed in a vice...
"It's no good sir," Murdock says over the growing din of his own hasty negotiations. "They don't know."
"Bullshit," Pike spits, and repeats his disbelief in vulgar Farsi to the women. "They're lying. Shoot one of them. Now."
Murdock's fingers automatically shoot to the grip of his own S&P 9mm, but don't pull it out. The blood's draining from his knuckles. "No, sir, I can't...the kids, I can't..."
"That's an order, soldier," and that's Pike's dangerous voice, Face realizes. Very, very dangerous.
Face finds his voice, unsticking himself from where his feet have glued themselves to the floor, and gets between his commander and his teammate. "This doesn't make any goddamn sense..."
Pike smiles at him, a smile Face has never seen on him before, but one he knows all too well from his own years on the streets as a teen. It's the smile of a man's who's got the scent of blood in his nose and the taste on his teeth and doesn't fucking care about the killing anymore...
"Stand down, Face," he orders. "This is what it takes sometimes."
"We don't kill innocent people, boss. That's not what we are..."
Pike just grins wider, an unhinged, terrifying grin, and taking a step back, just out of striking range, lifts his sights to the center of Face's neck.
"Shoot her, Captain," he orders again. “Fucking shoot her or I’m shooting your pal.”
Rumors, Face wonders frantically. What fucking rumors?
“I can’t,” Murdock says, a sob in his voice, shaking now. “I can’t.”
“Shoot her,” Pike continues, strangely calm, “or I will put a bullet in Peck’s brain.”
“Boss, we can’t do this, we can’t...”
“Ten, Murdock. Nine. Eight...”
And suddenly, for Face, everything stops.
All he can see right now in that veil, staring back at him with scared eyes, is Sister Mary-Margaret, the nice nun who'd come into the convent as a homeless teen and never left, the one who used to bake cookies for them for no reason at all, the nun who'd found him on the steps on the church all those years ago, who held held him and gave him a big glass of chocolate milk in the rectory kitchen and promised him everything was going to be fine, the one who tried to talk him out of leaving when he was fifteen, the one who came and found him, somehow, six months later in some reeking alley and begged him to come home...
But Major Pike’s got the draw on him, too far to reach before he pulls the trigger, counting down, and Face has absolutely no doubt in his mind that the man’s going to carry through. He always carries through, that’s what he does, that’s what makes him so damn good...
And Murdock, fucking Murdock’s having a breakdown, barely still on his feet, completely unable to stop what’s going on right now, unwilling to do what he’s been ordered to do...
...and Face feels a kind of rage come over him, standing here, betrayed like this by the two people he thought he could trust, the people he should have been able to trust with anything...
“Six...five...get off your ass, Murdock, and do your fucking job, these people are hiding him, makes them as guilty as he is... four...”
“Murdock, goddammit, he’s got a fucking gun on me!”
“Bu...bu neng...wo bu neng sha tamen...”
“...three...two...”
“Bu neng...”
And there’s something about that, the strangled Chinese Murdock’s trying to hide behind, shutting down, running away when he needs to be facing this, following orders, not letting his friend die over this, that snaps something deep inside Face entirely.
Pike doesn’t reach one.
In place of the word, there’s three loud explosions. Gunfire. Face barely recognizes the sound. The room’s full of smoke. He’s staring right at Sister Mary-Margaret. Blood’s running down the bridge of her nose and spreading out on the dark fabric on her habit, right above her heart, and her body’s hitting the rough-packed dirt floor...
Pike claps him on the shoulder, sliding up next to him. “Where’s al-Zahari?” he demands of the remaining woman in Farsi. “Where?!?”
She shakes her head.
“Face?” Pike asks.
His hand, with his gun, raises again. Completely of its own volition, without his permission or consent. He can’t even feel the metal of the trigger as he squeezes it back.
Another shot.
Another body hits the floor.
Murdock makes an inhuman noise, and sinks down over his haunches, still muttering to himself in broken, bizarre Mandarin.
The kids still in the room are screaming wordlessly.
Face closes his eyes for a moment. The light isn't working anyway.
It's all very far away.
Pike looks down at that girl, that little girl in her concealing dress who can’t be more than thirteen. He smiles that killer’s smiling, and touches her on the cheek. “Where?” he repeats.
No answer.
Then he turns, looks up over his shoulder, and nods to Face as he pushes away.
The trigger depresses.
There’s nothing he can do to stop it at this point.
Not with Sister Mary-Margaret lying dead there on the floor, dead because she wouldn’t tell them where some fucking Taliban chieftain got his worthless ass off to...
But nothing happens, the round sticking in the chamber, and as Face is ejecting the dud bullet, racking the slide and letting it fall back into place, the girl’s eyes flicker and one trembling hand points.
Over to the wall.
Pike looks at Face again, holds a hand up in a universal sign to stop, his own weapon at the ready, and kicks in a section of the wall.
Al-Zahari falls out, sprawled on the floor, clearly cramped from his tiny hiding hole, and Face doesn’t even need Pike’s nod for this one. Two in the chest, one in the head, pure muscle memory, his unerring aim working automatically even as numbness threatens to overtake him completely.
Face stares down at that neat little hole in the front of the target, the real target’s, head, even as Pike pushes him aside and checks the fucker’s pulse. A compliment comes, good shooting, el-tee, from that distant place where everybody else seems to be right now.. A wave of hate comes over the lieutenant, but towards who, Pike or Murdock or al-Zahiri, he doesn’t know and can’t tell and doesn’t want to.
“See that, boys?” Pike sneers, standing again and wiping his hand on his pants, holstering his weapon. “That is why we ask questions properly. Because nobody in this shithole of a country has any goddamn sense at all. That’s how we do it on an alpha team. That’s how shit gets done.” He strides up, glaring down at Murdock, who’s collapsed in a head in on himself, and nudges his none too gently with a jungle-ventilated combat boot. “Don’t ever buck one of my orders again, Captain,” he growls and heads outside. “Face!” he yells over his shoulder on his way out, “get that piece of shit mental case!”
Face closes his eyes, and tears himself away from al-Zahiri’s body. He can see Sister Mary-Margaret. She’s crying for him. Wherever she is, whatever hell he just sent her to, she’s crying for him...
A whimper from Murdock brings him back to reality, that hate welling up over everything else, and he jerks the pilot off the floor, hating himself.
What was he thinking?
That there was righteousness in the Rangers? That there was brotherhood, a team, waiting for him here? When Murdock was willing to let him die, rather than carry out a fucking order that turned out to be the right call. When Murdock made him pull the trigger instead, when Murdock forced that on him. What an idiot he’s been, thinking that the pilot cared about him, that they could possibly ever be...that there was any way...that somebody might possibly...
“Temp,” Murdock says quietly, errily sane, “Temp, I am so...so sorry...”
“Get up,” he snaps, digging a hand into the sobbing pilot’s armpit and forcing him to his feet. “Just get the fuck up and don’t talk to me.”
“Face.”
“I’m serious, Murdock. Don’t fucking look at me,” he growls, and follows Major Pike out into the harsh desert afternoon.
As they walk out of the village, through the gathered, silent crowd, those eyes turned on them all, Face feels something in him burning to ash. And as they reach the edge, the final line of low walls and creeping vines, as the men start filtering back into the school, he can hear that girl screaming in pain.
“Probably figured out she gave him up,” Major Pike says, and shrugs, as if it’s every day they walk away from a mission with some thirteen year old girl getting raped to an inch of her life for helping them.
He’s grinning.
Murdock just whimpers.
BA doesn’t look at any of them as he radios base for a lift.
Their extraction meets them a few minutes later. Nobody challenges them. No opposition. Not even RPG fire on their way off the ground. A smooth, beautiful ride up into that sky Murdock loves so much.
“Welcome to the Rangers,” Pike tells them all over the intercom. “Good work today, Face.”
Face starts vomiting before they hit altitude, and that acrid burn in the back of his throat from the stomach acid seems so, so appropriate right now.
+++++
The story done, faded into nothing against the cool tile of the floor that they’ve sunk to over the telling of it, Face staring up at the ceiling, eyes close, heedless of Hannibal’s hand resting on his shoulder. The kid’s shaking, shaking badly, and Hannibal knows he should do something, say something, make this better somehow.
But he can’t.
He can’t hardly breath from the raw horror Face injected that narrative with, and it’s all he can do to keep his arms around the kid.
This...this is the sort of thing that has to be reported. Has to be brought forward. Has to be dealt with. Has to be...
It wasn’t Face’s fault. He knows that. Anybody would know that. No matter how much the kid thinks it is, it’s not. It was Pike’s. Brock Pike. Hurting his boy, hurting his whole team.
And this was a year ago. So a year of lying, a year of thinking they were entirely alone, a year, more than likely, of intimidation and threats and mind-fucks from Pike over those events, and how many more, how many more women were killed? How many other atrocities committed? What the fuck else has Pike gotten away with in the service of "the mission"?
You were too much of a coward to take the team and look what fucking happened, that voice whispers. This is your fault, you did this to him, to all of them. You don't love him, you don't deserve to love him...
Hannibal bows his head for a moment, the grief surging up anew, and then Face actually reaches out, reaches up, and lays his hand, his cheek, on top of Hannibal’s where it’s resting on his shoulder. Shattering that guilt. And the colonel, for the first time in three years, orders that voice to shut up.
There are more important things now, he tells himself, than your own fucking selfishness.
More important things to care about. Things outside himself. Other people, other problems. This beautiful, strong, scarred kid. This problem, that Pike’s still breathing after holding a gun to one of his men’s heads to get the other to comply with an illegal order...
“I’m going to fix this, Temp,” Hannibal replies, running his fingers through that hair once again. “I swear to god, I’m going to fix this...”
Face doesn’t move, doesn’t respond, doesn’t so much as groan, so Hannibal just sits with him there, on the floor of the kitchen, until the shaking subsides.
It takes a long, long time.
+++++
It’s doing that misty rain thing again, like it does so often in this part of the country, coating the windows with water droplets. The road’s completely empty. The only sign of life at all is the breathing of the man next to him, big hands gripping the steering wheel, keeping them on the road.
Hannibal.
Motherfucking John Hannibal Smith.
Face almost wants to laugh at himself. Laugh, or cry, or something. He feels itchy, uncomfortable, some kind of deep anger at himself that’s making him want to rip all his skin off and come out on the other side, naked and new and untouched by all the fucking horrible things he’s done over his life.
He can’t, though. Hannibal told him it wasn’t his fault when he’d finished his story, and then insisted on taking him home, god only knows why, and just threw his jacket around him and bundled him out to the car. That was half an hour ago. Not a word’s passed between them since.
He fingers the collar of Hannibal's jacket to distract himself from it. It's is warm and soft around him, smells of the older man’s rich but subtle musk, and he hates himself for still having it on. He doesn’t deserve anything that belongs to the colonel. Nothing at all.
And Hannibal deserves so, so much better than him.
He’s got no idea where they’re going. The streets don’t look right in the rain, and every time his eyes slip shut, all he can see is blood on a sand-splattered floor and dead nuns. It’s fucking horrible and he deserves every second of it, so he stays quiet and forces himself to see it, and tries not to hope that Hannibal wasn’t lying to him about not telling anyone.
He needs to be punished for it. He can’t understand why Hannibal doesn’t seem to care. Why the fuck doesn’t...
Then he sees where they are.
The big FORT LEWIS US ARMY INSTALLATION in white lettering on the green board.
Fort Lewis. Lock-up. Charges. Conviction. Discharge. Disgrace.
Face lays back down against the window and reflexively pulls Hannibal’s jacket tighter around him. Good, he thinks to himself.
Good.
ace is half-expecting Hannibal to just hand him over at the gate, but the colonel chats a little with the kid who’s checking his ID and drives on as if nothing’s at all wrong. Of course, Face realizes. Probably better to take him to the shop direct and have them book him there and just have this over with...
But Hannibal misses the turn for the MP headquarters, too, heading instead west to the base housing area. Face doesn’t really notice this until it’s too late, until the car’s pulling into the garage of a large redbrick house and Hannibal’s turning the engine off.
“We’re here, kid,” the colonel says, still awkward, and Face’s heart plummets. No. Fuck, no. Hannibal still wants him...
What the fuck is wrong with the man?
The house is big and cold and dark, not nearly enough furniture to fill it, hardly anything else in it at all. The kitchen’s well-appointed, Face notices, seeing the good-quality pots and pans hanging from that center rack over the island, but it’s a solitary effort. It’s a house built for a colonel, a man with a wife and a family, one that’s meant to have crayon drawings on the fridge and vacation photos on the walls. Hannibal’s never had a wife, never had a chance for a real family, and it makes Face angry right then. Hannibal deserves that, deserves more than some broken, worthless kid...
“You need anything, kid?
Face wants to shove Hannibal away, scream at him to leave him alone, to not be so goddamn nice, to not be so fucking gentle right now, to just take him down to the fucking MPs and let them do what they have to, but he can’t say anything. Just stands there mutely in the colonel’s living room, damp jacket still around his shoulders, shivering again.
Hannibal’s eyes are soft then, and he reaches back through the space between them to take Face’s cold hand in his own, and tugs him forward. Down a hallway.
Into the master bedroom.
“I’m not suggesting anything, kid, I just don’t have my guest room set up or anything like that,” Hannibal tells him, almost apologetically as he pulls him towards the giant California King that’s probably just barely long enough to hold the man’s tall frame. He pushes Face down on the edge of it and peels his jacket away. “You’ll be a lot more comfortable in here tonight, yeah?”
Face can’t bring himself to say anything.
Hannibal strips him down to his briefs, then, touch soft and expression neutral, strips him and maneuvers him under the covers and sits there on the edge of the bed for a moment, pettign his hair. Longer, Face thinks without really knowing why, longer like you wanted.
It goes on for too long and not long enough, and then Hannibal’s standing, telling him good night, throwing his discarded jacket over his arm, turning off the lights...
Leaving the room.
Good, Face thinks bitterly, wanting to be alone, wishing Hannibal would come back.
He settles for burrowing deep into the soft sheets, into the center of the bed where Hannibal’s reassuring male musk is the sweetest and thickest. Between the stress of the evening and the exhaustion of the training op of the past few days, he’s out in minutes.
Although he’s expecting those women’s faces to follow him, Face doesn’t dream that night.
+++++
Hannibal glances at the clock in the kitchen as the cigar smolders away in its ashtray on the counter in front of him. He can’t bring himself to smoke it, even though he thought he needed it right now. The nicotine’s not helping.
0315.
Is it really that late? Did it really take him that long to hear Face’s story, bring him home, put him to bed? His bed, his bed in his house, that beautiful kid in his bed...
Not that he should have done any of that. Listen, yeah sure, but not this. Not this part. Not while his own emotions are running so damn high over the kid.
Hannibal’s never felt like this before, about anyone, not even Maggie, and it's terrifying, how much he wants to reach into Face's life and make everything right for him. And Hannibal hates how helpless he feels in the face of this, how impotent and how lost. He wants to help this kid, has to help him, helping him is quickly becoming the most important thing in the whole damn world.
Pike's obviously been playing off this, using Face's uncertainties against him, getting him to do things, keeping him from talking. Hannibal briefly wonders if it's sexual, and hopes to hell it's not. This is a young man who desperately wants to be accepted and loved. If Pike’s been using that against Face, if Pike’s ever touched him...
He shakes it off, the anger that rises up at the thought. It’s not the time to get upset. It’s the time to think. Hannibal also prides himself on dealing with things in a logical, unemotional fashion. Emotion gets men killed in the field, and he needs to be no less careful with this.
The first priority, he knows, has to be neutralizing Pike. Then putting Face back under a good commander, maybe himself, maybe not, giving him a secure place to ground his feet, rebuild his pride as a man and a soldier. Then addressing the kid's deep-seated emotional distress, showing him he's loved, showing him he can be loved, that he deserves it, that he’s worth it...
But neutralizing Pike comes first.
He has to get that motherfucker out of the picture. In jail. Or dead, preferably dead...
Emotion, John, is not your friend right now, he tells himself again.
He forces himself to be logical about this. Always, always has to be logical.
Pike’s slippery, used to being left alone on the basis of his record and skilled manipulation of the only men who have solid testimony to the contrary. He’s used to being able to get what he wants, do what he wants, anytime, any way...
Except that he’s AWOL right now.
Which is pretty fucking serious.
Hannibal’s not stupid enough to think that he can just call the MPs and report this in and have something come of it. Pike’s an alpha team lead, which means he sets his own hours and his own duty schedule, to a certain extent, with direct OPCON being the boys back at Benning, not with the brigade commander. The only people who can prove, definitively, that Pike’s not authorized to be gone this weekend are Face, Murdock and BA, and Hannibal has a sick feeling that, based on what he heard tonight, none of them are going to testify against their commander while he’s still holding that over their heads.
No.
Hannibal knows that if he’s going to prove this AWOL thing, he’s going to need proof. His own gathered proof.
Which isn’t impossible. Everyone leaves a trail. Anyone can be hunted. It’s just a matter of gaining access to that information and knowing how to study it.
And despite the fact he hasn’t pulled a man-hunt mission in a first-world nation in almost ten years, Hannibal can suddenly see exactly how he can do it.
But only if... he knows.
Hannibal doesn’t even hesitate. He flips open his cell phoe and punches up one of the only numbers in his contact list.
He waits.
Three rings, four, and then a familiar voice answers on the other end.
“John. What the hell time is it up in Seattle?”
“Russ,” he replies, relaxing a little, and his fingers find the cigar out of long habit. Seems like there’s always cigars around when he and General Morrison have these little chats. “I’ve got a bit of a problem here, and I need the latitude to deal with it properly.”
“What are you planning, John?”
“Not exactly planning so much at this point, Russ. It’s more... see, one of my men’s AWOL...
“Jesus, why the fuck are you calling me about it? Hannibal, you need to get on the horn to...”
He finds himself sitting forward a little. “I can’t do that, Russ. I have to handle this one myself.”
“What does that mean?”
“I need some, err, latitude on it.”
“No plan, my ass, kiddo. Tell me. Now,” Morrison groans, and Hannibal almost starts laughing at the sound of it.
As he sits there on the phone with his old mentor, laying out his plans, Russ starts testing the angles, helping him refine it down, he almost, almost, feels like his old self in his old life again, right back where he needs to be.
Almost.
+++++
Hannibal wakes up the next morning later than he usually does. Sunlight’s streaming through half-closed blinds, falling over his bed-mate, who’s tucked up next to him, hands curled to fists, already awake.
He looks scared.
“Morning, kid,” Hannibal murmurs, trying to let Face know it’s not necessary. That there’s no reason for him to be scared. That he’s safe. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Face says, a little brightly, and stretches, rolls into him. “You wanna...”
“Kid, about last night...”
And Face crumples instantly, that false mask just peeling away.
The colonel sighs. He hadn’t gotten much sleep himself, talking to Russ, then curling up around this warm, pliant man, watching him sleep, wondering if his plan’s going to work, if he should just kill Pike instead.
But simply putting a bullet in the major’s brain or poisoning him in some undetectable way or arranging for a car crash, wasn’t going to fix anything. So he’d listened to Face breathe and tried to reassure himself. Russ approved it. H’es got free rein to deal with the asshole the way he sees fit.
Hannibal’s not sure, though, if it’s really the right way to handle this. If Face can still be hurt by it. By...by everything that happened in Charikar.
Face is obviously hurting over this, not sure whether he should blame himself or Murdock or Pike for what happened, not sure where he should direct all the hate he feels over it, all the disappointment and regret and loss. And this has to be what Murdock was talking about under the deck the other day, what he feels he failed at, what was eating into him that night in the parking lot. Has to be the reason why BA is so uncomfortable around all of them, why he feels the need to get in fights and get arrested and tells Pike with every action to fuck off.
So it’s something that’s affected them all. And that’s where he needs to start with it. Because he needs the boys’ support, their assistance, their trust, if he’s going to bring their boss down. It’s a tall order, but it has to be done.
“What time is Pike going to be home, Face?” Hannibal tries, hoping this is neutral enough to keep the kid on the level with him.
Face shakes his head. “He... he’s usually only gone two, three days. Usually just the weekends.”
“So you boys are on your own today?”
“...I guess.”
“Either of them up yet?”
Face rubs his cheek against the undershirt covering Hannibal’s chest, and lifts his head, glancing at the digital clock on the nightstand. “Umm...yeah, probably not.”
“Then get dressed, kid,” Hannibal murmurs, and lets a hand stray down the lightly furred chest arched up over him. “We’re going back over. I’ll make you all some breakfast and we’ll talk.”
That fear’s back on Face’s face. “Hannibal...”
“It’s okay. I'll make it okay. Trust me, my plans always work,” and he smiles. “Come on, let’s get going.”
Face, after a reluctant moment, nods, and lets Hannibal help him out of bed.
The colonel gets them both dressed and off-base without incident. Face doesn’t talk much on the way to Pike’s. If anything, it’s worse than what Hannibal dealt with with the younger man last night, but he just smiles and makes small talk and they survive the drive.
He bundles Face up to the kitchen, sits him down at the small table, and asks him where Murdock keeps the flour.
Face sighs, and points, and gets up to go turn on the living room TV. Not speaking at all.
I'm going to fix this, Hannibal swears to himself as he digs around for the measuring cups. If it kills Pike, I'm going to fix this...
Pike - or Murdock, more likely - keeps the fridge and pantry very well stocked, everything stored neatly in a wild assortment of glass jars, marked with everything from “self-rising flour” to “Madras curry powder”. It’s easy for Hannibal to find what he needs for breakfast. Flour, baking soda, eggs, maple syrup, oranges, bacon... everything, right down to a pint of blueberries in the fruit drawer.
He’s got the juicer running, berries already nestled in the first batch of cakes bubbling away on the stovetop griddle, bacon finishing up in the oven, coffee steaming up in Murdock’s percolator, trying to get Face to talk without success, by the time he sees hide or hair of the other two men who live in this house.
The sound of the footsteps plodding down the stairs is clear over the low whir of the juicer, and Hannibal turns in that direction, seeing Face stiffen. He smiles sadly, hoping to hell he’s not pushing the kid too hard, too fast with what he’s planning on doing this morning, and switches off the juicer. He pours a couple of low glasses of juice and goes over to the table where Face is hunched up, sliding it in front of the kid’s clenched hands.
He touches one of those lightly, quickly, and the kid’s eyes meet his. Hannibal can’t really tell what he sees there; Face is trying so hard to keep his walls up, find the safety he craves so in the same way he’s always done.
“I’ve got your back, kid,” Hannibal tells him, wishing he could pull him up into a kiss right now, give the lieutenant everything he desperately needs. Those eyes soften a little, but he still can’t read them. So the colonel smiles a little wider. “It’s going to be okay. Remember that this morning, okay?”
“Remember what, fool?” BA grunts, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, taking in the scene in the kitchen with something like disbelief stamped on his dark face. He’s got his gym bag over his shoulder and a pair of long athletic shorts screenprinted with a TAPOUT logo, and he’s got his van keys in his hand. “What the hell this?”
“This,” and Hannibal hands him a glass of orange juice, taking the bag and keys, “is breakfast, corporal. And I was just telling Face that he can trust me. You all can.”
BA takes the proffered juice, but his eyes are wary. “Whatchoo doin’ here, sir? Same clothes as last night and ev’rythin’...”
So much for that, Hannibal thinks, but it’s hardly a problem. “Face and I have been talking,” Hannibal says easily, patting Face’s shoulder in a purely friendly gesture, laying BA’s stuff aside, and goes back to the stove to start flipping pancakes.
“All night?” BA asks dubiously.
“I went home for a few hours’ sleep,” Hannibal lies.
“Whatever,” BA grunts in reply.
Hannibal watches him for a moment, wondering what the hell he can say, what he should, when Murdock pops up, far less awkward than the other two in a set of Spiderman footie pyjamas. It’s absurd and wonderful, and Hannibal has the sudden urge to hug the man.
“Mornin’, colonel! Is that pig I smell cookin’ away in here?” he says cheerfully, as he saunters in, right up to the stove, and starts fussing in one of the drawers.
Smiling a genuinely happy smile, Hannibal nods and goes to offload the pancakes onto a waiting serving platter. “That is indeed. The nice thick-cut bacon you’ve got in the fridge.”
Murdock grins back, and Hannibal notices he’s got an apron in hand, one that says Kiss the Cook. It looks old, but too clean to have been used any time lately. “Need a hand, sir?” he asks, brandishing the cloth.
“Go sit down with Face, captain,” he says gently, and hands him the platter on pancakes. “You boys get these dished out and I’ll get the next batch going, okay?”
There’s enough batter for another few rounds of pancakes, hopefully enough to cover three boys who ate nearly two hundred dollars worth of seafood last night between them, and the bacon’s ready, crisp and perfect, and Hannibal pours himself a cup of coffee while he watches BA grudgingly sit down at the table and the three of them start dishing it all out.
They do seem better. Not good, not okay, but somewhat better, and something about it reminds Hannibal about those first few holidays he had with Maggie, right after they were married, when they’d go to her parents’ house, when he’d cook in the mornings and she’d sit at the counter and smile over her coffee at him, her younger brothers all still in college and home for the season, squabbling over the last sausage and chattering about ...
But right now, now, there’s nothing like that. Instead, he’s got three broken young men who barely remember how to talk to each other, one of them looking at him now with pained blue eyes. More important that the ghosts of old regrets. Needing him more than Maggie ever did.
And it’s about time, Hannibal knows. So he slides the last of the pancakes onto another plate, grabs the container of juice, refreshes his coffee, and goes over to sit down at the small table with it all.
“So, you spent the night, sir?” Murdock asks, pointing at his shirt.
Hannibal smiles as he slides the majority of the cakes onto the platter, and slathers butter on the remaining few. Sharp, these boys. “Face and I spent some time talking last night.”
Murdock nods. “Whatcha talk about?”
“Well, actually, I wanted to talk with you about this...”
“Colonel Smith,” Face coughs, interrupting quickly, “I don’t think we should...”
Hannibal lays a reassuring hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder, and goes for it. “We talked about what happened at Charikar.”
The response is immediate from all the boys.
Face’s forehead hits the table with a little groan.
Murdock goes white, the glass of juice in his hand slipping out to shatter on the floor.
And BA...well, BA looks startled, but then he’s smiling grimly, like it’s the best damn thing he’s ever heard.
So that’s where Hannibal starts.
“Something funny about that, corporal?”
The big man shakes himself, and chuckles a little, humorless and cold. “Good,” he says. “I glad he told you.”
“BA...” Murdock says in disbelief.
“I glad he told you, cause you a colonel and you can report his sorry ass for...”
Murdock’s shaking a little, but Hannibal can’t tell if it’s anger or something else. “BA, you can’t want Face to get reported for this, you know what happened, he’d be...”
“He fucking should be!” BA roars suddenly, and shoves back from the table, pacing. “He fucking should be! After what he did, in front of those kids? He lucky I di’n’t frag him m’self for that...”
And that’s when Hannibal realizes it’s anger in the team’s pilot. That paleness is replaced by flushed red fury, and he stands too, hands clenching and unclenching. “What the fuck, Bosco?! You serious?! You can’t say things like that...”
“Why not?!” BA snaps back, loud, hands starting to gesture wildly. “He killed those women, fool! Shot ‘em like they was dogs and killed the target we needed for questioning...”
“What questioning, you stupid baboon? Al-Zahiri was on our kill list, we were there to kill him...”
“So what, that excuse the fucking el-tee from murderin’...”
“If you’d have been in there, you’d know how full of shit you are! But you weren’t, were you?!” Murdock practically yells, jamming a finger into BA’s chest. “You’d fucking understand if you were in there! But you weren’t! Pike left you outside and took me in instead! Your fucking pilot instead of goddamn real Ranger, askin’ me to pull the trigger on a bunch of ladies who didn’t do nuthin’ to us! It should have been you, BA! It should never have been me...”
“Should’a been me what, you fuckin’ coward?” BA taunts back. “You think I’m some kind o’ murdering trash like Faceman here?”
“Face ain’t a murderer...”
“Well, maybe you’re right, retard,” and Hannibal’s never heard so much righteous hate going into one word that he hears there. “I wouldn’ta let him do it! I’d’a stopped him...”
“Pike had a gun to his head!” Murdock screams, and pounds a fist right into BA’s chest, head following the stroke down. “Pike had a fucking gun to his head because of me, cause I couldn’t do it, cause I couldn’t take the order, couldn’t...couldn’t...couldn’t do what I needed to do and now Face has to carry it for me and it ain’t fair, ain’t, cause he grew up in a place like that and they raped that little girl and I am a coward, I am, couldn’t follow the order, everything’s so much different when you ain’t watchin’ it through the targeting computer, and you’re right, I’m a coward, I ruined everything because I’m a coward, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Face, I’m so sorry...”
His fist is shaking against BA’s chest, his head hung, body shaking, and sobs overtake the screaming rant and all falls into silence in the kitchen for a moment.
Murdock’s crying now, quiet, thick tears splashing to the tile of the floor. BA looks like somebody just told him his mother died, like he’s in shock, like he can’t quite process the information. His eyes flick up to meet Hannibal’s, full of confusion, and as Murdock presses closer, hands fisted up in BA’s shirt now as the tears overtakes him, one big, tattooed arm comes up over him in some unconscious imitation of a hug, holding the captain as that old grief overtakes him.
“What order?” BA asks, looking at Face, who’s still watching from the relative safety of the table, and back to Hannibal. He sounds utterly lost. “What order?”
Hannibal feels sick, the discharge of emotion, violent and deadly as a lightning strike, still bouncing around inside of him, but he unleashed this. It’s his responsibility to deal with it. He just wasn’t expecting...that. What the hell has Pike been doing to these boys, lying to them about things as vital as mission details?
“Living room,” the colonel says softly, making a decision, and nudges a hand under Face’s arm to get him up. “Let’s take this somewhere a little more comfortable.”
He gets them settled, BA and Murdock on one couch and he and Face on the other. The pilot’s gone silent, but he won’t let go of BA. Face, on the other hand, is pale but steady, and sucks up against the opposite arm of the couch.
For a little while, it’s just Hannibal talking, with Face throwing in details or additional information when the colonel falters in the story. BA buries his face in his hands by the time they get to the part about Pike drawing on Face, and moans a little after the terrorist gets shot.
“I didn’t know, man,” he mutters. “Fuck, man, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. Major Pike tol’ me later...I didn’t know ‘bout...fuck...”
Murdock pats his arm. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay.”
Face shakes his head, eyes fixed on the floor in shame. “You are right, big guy,” he says slowly. “I am a murderer. I shouldn’t have taken that order, shouldn’t have done it...”
“Pike had a gun to your head,” Murdock says again, firm and certain. “It was my fault. I should have shot him or...or something...instead...”
“But was he wrong? Or were we? We found the target, that’s the only reason we found the target...”
“You never should’a had to do it...”
“Like you said in the kitchen, buddy, it’s your job to fly us around, not to shoot people. You shouldn’t have gotten dragged into it...”
“Boys,” Hannibal says gently but firmly, interjecting because the only thing Murdock and Face are doing is going round in circles. He waits until they all look up at him, and he nods, continuing. “Boys, this isn’t anybody’s fault. Nobody in this room is responsible for what happened that day. That order should have never been given. Pike should never have pulled a gun on any of you. None of you ever should have been put in that position. This is on him, not you, Face,” and he touches the kid’s knee, figuring that much is okay. “You’re not responsible.”
“I pulled the trigger,” the lieutenant whispers back, bleak. “It’s on me. I gotta answer for it.”
“It’s not yours, Temp,” Hannibal tells him again. “It isn’t.”
Murdock sits up, against the sofa instead of BA, and sighs. “So what are you gonna do with us, sir?”
Hannibal frowns. “What do you mean, captain?”
That gets him a hesitant, worried little smile. “I don’t know if a court martial’s gonna agree with you ‘bout the whole guilt thing...”
“Nobody’s getting court martialed,” Hannibal says quickly, and holds up his hand as all three of them make to say something. “I’m going to take care of Pike, but nobody’s getting court martialed. Not taking that risk with any of you. I won’t let any of you get punished for his sins.”
“But...”
He’s not sure who it’s coming from, but it doesn’t really matter. They don’t trust you, that voice in the back of his head whispers. Nobody does. Nobody would...
“Boys, I swear, I’m here to help, not punish. I’m not going to let any of you get hurt over this.”
Face snorts. “Maybe I... I don’t know, maybe I deserve to be punished.”
“You’ve already suffered enough, kid,” Hannibal tells him, resisting the urge to pull the kid into a deep, reassuring kiss, right here, at the heartbreak in his voice. What the fuck is wrong with him this morning, anyway, on the whole kissing thing? “You don’t need to be dragged through it again. I need to get you away from Pike, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He looks at the other two. “I need your help to do that, though. I need to know what else he’s been making you do, what other orders you’ve followed.”
Murdock and BA look at each other, and BA shakes his head. “Colonel Smith, I gots the same respect for you everyone else at Lewis does, but I gotta ask...cause you a colonel, man...how do we know you ain’t gonna turn us in for sumthin’?”
“BA!” Murdock admonishes.
“He a colonel,” BA repeats. “He supposed to do what’s good for the Army. And what’s good for the Army ain’t necessarily what good for us.”
“I’m sure it’s in the Army’s best interest to get rid of shitbag officers like Pike and save good men like yourselves,” Hannibal says.
BA shakes his head. “Ain’t good ‘nuff, sir. Major Pike... he’s got connections everywhere, and he’s got shit on all of us. If you start pokin’ around...or what happens if you decide you don’t like what you hear...”
“You can trust me, BA,” Hannibal tries. “I swear it.”
“Ain’t good ‘nuff,” BA repeats.
See? That voice is crowing in triumph. See, you can’t make them trust you. You aren’t shit anymore, you aren’t even the legendary Medal of Honor winner to them, not even your stupid fucking decoration can override the fact that you aren’t...
He shuts his eyes and pushes that voice away and says the only thing that he can think of that’ll do a damn bit of good here.
“I’m gay, corporal.”
The room’s silent.
Funny, Hannibal thinks. He’s never said that before, never said it aloud, never put into words this...this person he’s become since Maggie left him. He always thought it would be impossible to say, to admit, to give voice to. But there it was, rolling out without hardly being bidden.
So, eyes still closed, he repeats it. “I’m gay. You think I’m doing anything against what I’ve promised, BA, go straight to General Morrison at Benning and tell him that. He’ll have to investigate, and they’ll figure it out for themselves pretty quick.”
Nobody speaks, and then, when Hannibal finally finds himself able to open his eyes, he sees Murdock sort of smiling at him. BA’s staring very hard at the wall. Face has his hand over his mouth, feigning shock. Or maybe that’s real shock. Hannibal’s a little shaky himself at hearing those words come out of his mouth...
“I believe you, sir,” Murdock says, as if he’s speaking for all of them, and pulls his feet up under him, settling back into the sofa. “What d’you need to know?”
“Everything,” the colonel whispers, voice suddenly failing him.
They all exchange a look again, and start talking. And they don’t stop.
+++++
Everybody’s gone silent.
1430, almost six hours of talking, on and off, and now there’s nothing more to say. Words run out on hours of fighting and circular conversations and the airing of every sin, every single fucking one, drug out and laid bare and examined by Hannibal.
They’ve all been used by Pike. Manipulated, lied to, conned, abused. Face had had no idea how bad the problem was. None of them did. They’ve never compared notes like this before. BA had been shocked. Murdock smiled a little and said he was glad they were finally talking.
Face doesn’t feel like that. He doesn’t want to know any of what he’s learned today. Because it just comes back to him. Because that manipulation and lying and conning and abuse didn’t come direct from Pike.
It came through him.
Drugging Murdock. Giving BA decent reasons to go beat the shit out of somebody Pike didn’t like. Scamming shit that Pike wanted, using sex to get it. A hundred other things he doesn’t want to think about right now.
BA had no idea what was going on. Murdock was either too sick to understand or too scared of getting thrown back in that ward down in Mexico to say no. But Face? That’s different.
He sees it now. Face realizes now he’s gone along with it, every step of the way, done unconscionable things and explained it away, to himself and everyone around him, for nothing more sometimes than a kind word from the major. Small stuff, little stuff. He’s known. He’s seen it. He’s enabled it. And he’s done nothing against it, because after Charikar, nothing’s mattered.
This the most humiliated Face has ever been.
To the point where he’d blurted out that he’d gone to great lengths to avoid ever being in the same kind of situation as the orphanage ever again, just so they’d understand he’s tried, once or twice, to stop it, he really has. And he’d told them about how he spent the next four months at the beck and call of the colonel who ran the taskings shop, just so he could manipulate the mission assignment process. Make sure they were never put on a mission that might require a decision like that again. So they would know.
BA had stared. “That wa’n’t no lady runnin’...”
“Jesus, BA, no shit!” Murdock had snapped back.
Hannibal had just nodded, and thanked in him in a flat, careful voice for sharing. No emotion. No acknowledgment at all. Not that Face had expected the colonel to reach over and pull him into a hug or anything, like maybe...if he was out now too...maybe they could just be honest about that, too.
Face doesn’t blame him for not wanting to claim him, though. Sure, he was willing to hope a little bit, once he’d actually gotten to sleep in the man’s bed, in the man’s arms, and maybe even believe it was more than some kind of weird infatuation after Hannibal outed himself to them at the start of this little discussion. But after everything that’s been said, everything that’s been discovered today, Hannibal won’t want him anymore.
Shouldn’t want him.
Because Colonel Smith’s a good man. One of the best. He shouldn’t be tied to anything here. Shouldn’t have to deal with their bullshit. Shouldn’t be attached to some lieutenant who’s failed so utterly as he has.
Face looks up at the colonel and he can feel the grief of losing him in the palms of his hands. He still wants Hannibal, wants his help and his big cock and his love - goddamn it, he wants that love that was whispered to him yesterday, wants to know what that fucking feels like - but there’s no way now. There’s no way there’s anything left after the last twenty four hours. The lieutenant can’t even understand why the man’s in the same room as him. BA and Murdock, yeah, they deserve his help, but...
Hannibal’s nodding now. Smiling a little. Standing.
Going.
“Boys,” he says in that gentle, warm way of his, going over to shake BA’s hands, clasping firmly, “thank you so much for all of this. I know it was hard, but that’s how it starts.” BA doesn’t say anything, but he nods and yawns a little. The big guy’s glazed.
Hannibal touches Murdock’s forehead, where he’s fallen asleep, ear on BA’s lap, leaning in, but Face can just make out what he says. “I’’m going to get you a doctor, Murdock. Somebody who can help you.” And in his sleep, Murdock squirms a little bit. BA looks annoyed, but it’s more appearance than substance. Face can tell.
And then Hannibal’s in front of him.
Face drops his eyes to the floor, hunching up over his knees, staring at nothing.
“Kid...”
“I’m tired,” Face says, not wanting to hear whatever Hannibal has to say right now. He’s not in the mood. “And I’ve sure you’ve got stuff to put together for this plan thing. You should probably...”
“...go?” Hannibal finishes.
Face nods, and doesn’t dare look up from the floor as one of Hannibal’s hands squeezes the cup of his shoulder. He can feel the warmth radiating out from the older man’s palm, but he still can’t look up. If he does, he just fucking knows he’s going to start crying or something like that.
Doesn’t need to add being a pussy to his long, long list of crimes right now.
“If you need me, call. My number’s on the brigade roster,” Hannibal says as he moves away. “Are you all going to be okay, if I leave you with all of this?”
“You gonna nail his ass to the wall?” BA asks darkly, and Face lifts enough to notice that he’s running his fingers through Murdock’s shaggy mop of hair.
“Absolutely, corporal.”
“Then we be fine with Pike,” and BA grins. “He won’t know a damn thing outta place. I won't 'llow it.”
“Good. Good man,” Face hears Hannibal reply, and then there’s nothing but silence again in the living room as the front door opens and snicks shut once again.
And only then does Face unfold and fall back against the back of the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the noise of Hannibal’s engine rolling away down the street. Gone.
“Face,” BA says, but Face just shakes his head, and stands.
“I’m going to bed. I’m tired, I didn’t get much sleep last night,” he says, feeling like he’s not really here. Like he’s half out of his body, light-headed and distant.
“Face...”
“BA, bed,” he says, pointing at the stairs, and he’s halfway up them before he hears Murdock’s little nice talkin’, Faceman.
For the first time in a year, he says you’re welcome buddy back, because Murdock doesn’t deserve his scorn. Doesn’t deserve his anger. Neither of them do. None of this has been their fault. It’s his, god, it’s all his...
Face locks his door behind him and falls down on his bed, face-first, sprawled out, one hand in the subtle hollow that had been Hannibal’s last night. How wonderful had it been, despite everything else, to wake up with someone like that. No pain, no regret, no demands for another go, just the feeling of being held, kept safe...
His phone rings. Rings again.
Face lets it go to voicemail.
He takes the battery out again.
He can’t answer it.
He can’t let himself want it.
He has to let this go, has to give it up.
He doesn’t deserve Hannibal.
He knows that now. He’s not good enough. He’ll never be good enough. He’ll never be clean again. Not enough for Hannibal to ever love him...
And at that thought, Face curls up and cries like he hasn’t since he was ten, when the last adoption offer fell through and he just knew he was going to spend the rest of his life alone.
Nothing’s changed, he thinks, and clings harder to his pillow. Goddammit to hell, not a fucking thing’s changed...
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, potential disturbing images
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...
a/n: I want to get this out, but the next section's the actual mission, yikes! I probably won't have it up until the week after Christmas due to, well, Christmas... thanks for keeping in there with me!
Three clicks outside the village, and HM’s stopped, staring up at the mountains to the north like he always does, the dust settling around his non-regulation boots.
“Face? Go get crazy, would ya? We need to get in here before they try to run on us again.”
“I think he needs a minute, sir.”
“Don’t give a shit what he needs, Face. We’ve got a mission to execute.”
Major Pike’s staring at him. He’s been in a foul mood all week, ever since the brass told him he needed to sweep an area already under Northern Alliance control. Waste of his team’s talent, he’d groaned, but General Morrison had put his foot down, and here they are. Six days in, and empty-handed.
They’re looking for some bastard who escaped custody. Al...al-...something or other. Face knows French and Spanish fluently, and a smattering of half a dozen other languages he picked up from library books as a bored kid in the LA public school system, but he can’t get his head around the dialects here. Murdock picked it up in two weeks, which is why he’s along now instead of working close air support for another team.
BA, on point, sporting a full beard after this many months in the field, turns to nods in agreement.
Face nods back, and turns around to go shake his friend out of it. Much as he loves the guy, the boss is right; the team can’t afford this right now.
They aren’t like any mountains I’ve ever seen before, he said the first time Face asked him why he was always looking at them. On missions. In camp.
What’s that matter? Does it affect the choppers? Face had asked.
The pilot had shaken his head. Yeah, the altitude here’s already a bitch, and the drafts can be weird up over those, but that ain’t why they’re different.
Then why?
It’s like Mordor. Keep lookin’ for Gwadhir to come up over one of them peaks, HM had said, and smiled that lopsided grin of his.
Face hadn’t quite gotten the reference, but Murdock had explained it to him later, recited the passage from Lord of the Rings from heart, and promised to take him to go see the first movie if they ever got back to the States. Which, the way Murdock said it, could have been, maybe, something of a... date.
The lieutenant always tries to ignore that as a possibility. Just cause he enjoys sleeping with men doesn’t mean it’s a widely shared sentiment around the Army. And definitely not in the Rangers. Murdock would probably punch him for even suggesting it in jest.
But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about HM like that. Sometimes. When he’s alone or in the tents at night when he can force a woman’s name to his lips even as he imagines masculine strength wrapped around his dick instead of female softness.
A stupid thing to torture himself with, but he’s been with Pike’s team, with HM, for almost a year now. Five months on this campaign. It’s the kind of thing that really brings men together. And he’d like to think that he’s actually making friends here, that HM could really be a friend, a real friend, who actually understands Templeton Peck and likes him anyway, somebody Face could open up to, trust, be intimate with... it’d be nice to know, what that feels like.
Face jogs back to the team’s pilot, his M4 bouncing against his leg, trying to push those thoughts away. It’s a warzone, for god’s sake. Not the time, not the place. They’ve got some Taliban asshole to find before the week’s up, and Major Pike’s temper’s starting to get short as it is.
“Come on, buddy,” he says gently, touching the pilot’s thin shoulder. “We gotta catch up. You know the boss doesn’t like anybody fallin’ behind on these things.”
Murdock, instead of turning around, hunches down a little in his thick jacket. It’s a fucking desert, Afghanistan, in March, and it’s freezing. Face, who grew up in sunny southern California, can’t quite understand it.
“I don’t feel right ‘bout this one, Faceman.”
Face shakes his head. “Taliban assholes. What’s there to feel bad about?”
“Ain’t the target,” Murdock mutters, and is looking straight up at the sky. He sighs.
Face wraps an arm around his shoulders. “Come on, one more village to check and then we can head back to base.”
Murdock sighs, but starts walking. “Think the major’ll let me fly on the next mission?”
“I’ll talk to him, buddy,” Face promises, meaning it, and loves the way the captain’s eyes gleam as he says it.
Major Pike and BA are waiting for them on the edge of the little village, and they head in together. It’s like dozens they’ve seen in the last few months, nothing but mudbrick walls melting back into the desert sands, the creeping, gasping green of plants scattered through the flat spaces, half-naked children wearing a mix of local cottons and twenty-year-old t-shirts from America, swarthed women, men in dirty robes, skinny animals everywhere, and that smell, that smell that puts fucking Mexico to shame...
Usually on something like this, on this mission especially, they’ll talk to the village elders, a few of the other men, over tea and goat, and try to get answers in that rambling four hour lunch as to the whereabouts of who they’re looking for. This is a UIF-controlled town. That’s SOP for allied areas. Simple stuff.
Murdock lifts a hand and calls out a greeting in the local dialect, chattering away with the first few men who come up to him. BA heads back towards them, casually offering Face a fist-bump on the way, and claps his ahnd on Murdock’s shoulder as introductions begin.
And this is normally the part where Major Pike should be...oh, maybe three paces back, watching.
But not today. Today he’s still walking, headed for something other than the town’s little meeting hall, and that doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
So Face catches up with his boss, fast, gets in front of him, and stops him. “Sir?”
Major Pike looks at him and then back to where Murdock and BA are talking to the elders, cocking one of those huge eyebrows of his over the top of his Oakleys, and snorts, derisive, like he can be sometimes. “And where has that chickenshit tea-drinking tactic gotten us on this particular endeavor, el-tee?”
“Sir, it’s what we’re supposed to do. General Morrison...”
The stocky major laughs. “The brass want results. They don’t really care how we do it, they just have to bandy that shit around back home so Congress keeps the money taps on. I'm not fucking around with that diplomacy shit this time.”
Face shakes his head, confused. He knows first hand just how short Major Pike’s temper can be, how impatient he gets with ROEs that tie his hands If the el-tee’s learned anything over the past few months, it’s that Pike’s a damn good soldier. He’s unorthodox and he prefers direct action, but he’s not reckless and he’s not bloodthirsty. So...so what is this? Major Pike wouldn’t steer him wrong. He knows that much. It’s his team, it’s his boss... “I don’t follow.”
“Course you don’t,” and the boss chuckles as he pats Face’s cheek. Everyone’s stopping to stare at the American soldiers. “It’s okay. We haven’t gotten into this before, ‘s’all. You ready to follow my lead, lieutenant?”
“Haven’t steered me wrong yet, sir,” Face replies, suddenly feeling sick and not knowing why. Why ask that? Doesn’t make any sense...
“Sometimes you gotta be more direct with these stone-age goat fuckers,” Pike grins, and nods towards the direction he was headed. “You wanna learn what bein’ a Ranger’s all about, Face?”
“Course, sir,” Face says, meaning every damn word of it.
“Good man. Come on.” The major turns back around, bellowing. “Murdock, BA, cut that shit off. We’re dealin’ with this direct today!”
BA gives Murdock a look, but jogs over, and after a few hurried words to the now-protesting elders, Murdock follows. All three of them fall into step, but as they sweep into the low-slung structure, it's apparent to Face the second they enter what the place is.
An orphanage.
Pike’s already halfway towards the building, BA close, and Face is following along, trying to get those weird butterflies in his belly to shut the fuck up, when he hears the breath catch in his friend’s throat behind him.
He stops. “What is, Murdock?”
The pilot looks pale. He shakes his head. “You...you ever heard any of those rumors ‘bout the major?”
What? “What?”
“Face...” and Murdock looks at him, bleak. “I don’t got a good feelin’...”
“It’s okay,” Face says, and checks his own weapon as an excuse not to meet his friend’s eyes. “We gotta find this guy.”
He still has to bodily push Murdock forward in order to get him moving
Major Pike leaves BA outside on guard, but pulls Face and Murdock in with him. The main door, splintered and cracked, opens into a miserable main hall. There are a couple of women there, a few children sitting around on threadbare rugs, an older girl already in her hijab kneeling down, reading to a few of them.
They all look up.
Pike smiles, and waves Murdock up next to him. “Captain, ask her if she knows where al-Zahiri is hiding in this village. His kids were sent here, she has to know...”
Murdock bites his lip, but nods, and takes a step forward, bowing a little, and launches into that local dialect. Face catches maybe one word in five, but he can tell that whatever Murdock’s saying, the women are getting very agitated by it.
At length, Murdock stop and shakes his head. “He ain’t here, boss.”
“Ask again.”
“Boss, I can’t...they...they don’t know...”
“Ask. Again,” Pike growls and draws his sidearm, the click of the safety coming off a loud report in the silent room. The older girl, hides behind one of the women, clutching tightly to her hand, while the other woman tries to tell her something.
Murdock shakes his head again, distressed. “Boss, sir, please, don’t do this...”
“Murdock, you’ve been with me long enough to know better than to give me lip in front of the targets.”
Targets.
Targets.
An orphanage, Face’s brain is screaming at him, it’s an orphanage. What possibly...it’s just a sad place full of sad kids who lost their families, who can’t remember what their parents looked like...there aren’t any targets here, it’s just kids and a couple of women...
"Tell her you’re going to shoot her if she doesn’t tell you."
Pike's order comes through the haze of memory slamming through him right now, and Face turns. "Sir?"
It comes out in a whisper and Major Pike rolls his eyes. "Not you, el-tee. Murdock."
Murdock looks scared. Terrified. A kind of terror Face hasn't seen in the captain before. He's gone completely white. "Major, sir, you can't ask me to..."
"It's not a request, Captain," Pike says, sounding as if he's right on the cusp of irritation now. "Tell her."
"Sir..."
"TELL HER!" Pike roars, and the what clean air remained is sucked from the room.
Murdock, trembling ever so slightly, pulls his baseball cap off his head, wipes his brow, and turns back to the obscured collection of females. The Farsi flies fast between them, increasingly desperate from Murdock, and then one of the women lets out a bloodcurdling cry as the other starts yelling at the pilot.
Noise outside, and Face can hear BA yelling in guttural, rough words - so much different from Murdock's, he finds himself thinking wildly - and a stattacco burst of automatic weapons fire suddenly cuts it off, only to have it start up as the woman wails louder.
The walls are growing tighter around them. Face feels like he's being squeezed in a vice...
"It's no good sir," Murdock says over the growing din of his own hasty negotiations. "They don't know."
"Bullshit," Pike spits, and repeats his disbelief in vulgar Farsi to the women. "They're lying. Shoot one of them. Now."
Murdock's fingers automatically shoot to the grip of his own S&P 9mm, but don't pull it out. The blood's draining from his knuckles. "No, sir, I can't...the kids, I can't..."
"That's an order, soldier," and that's Pike's dangerous voice, Face realizes. Very, very dangerous.
Face finds his voice, unsticking himself from where his feet have glued themselves to the floor, and gets between his commander and his teammate. "This doesn't make any goddamn sense..."
Pike smiles at him, a smile Face has never seen on him before, but one he knows all too well from his own years on the streets as a teen. It's the smile of a man's who's got the scent of blood in his nose and the taste on his teeth and doesn't fucking care about the killing anymore...
"Stand down, Face," he orders. "This is what it takes sometimes."
"We don't kill innocent people, boss. That's not what we are..."
Pike just grins wider, an unhinged, terrifying grin, and taking a step back, just out of striking range, lifts his sights to the center of Face's neck.
"Shoot her, Captain," he orders again. “Fucking shoot her or I’m shooting your pal.”
Rumors, Face wonders frantically. What fucking rumors?
“I can’t,” Murdock says, a sob in his voice, shaking now. “I can’t.”
“Shoot her,” Pike continues, strangely calm, “or I will put a bullet in Peck’s brain.”
“Boss, we can’t do this, we can’t...”
“Ten, Murdock. Nine. Eight...”
And suddenly, for Face, everything stops.
All he can see right now in that veil, staring back at him with scared eyes, is Sister Mary-Margaret, the nice nun who'd come into the convent as a homeless teen and never left, the one who used to bake cookies for them for no reason at all, the nun who'd found him on the steps on the church all those years ago, who held held him and gave him a big glass of chocolate milk in the rectory kitchen and promised him everything was going to be fine, the one who tried to talk him out of leaving when he was fifteen, the one who came and found him, somehow, six months later in some reeking alley and begged him to come home...
But Major Pike’s got the draw on him, too far to reach before he pulls the trigger, counting down, and Face has absolutely no doubt in his mind that the man’s going to carry through. He always carries through, that’s what he does, that’s what makes him so damn good...
And Murdock, fucking Murdock’s having a breakdown, barely still on his feet, completely unable to stop what’s going on right now, unwilling to do what he’s been ordered to do...
...and Face feels a kind of rage come over him, standing here, betrayed like this by the two people he thought he could trust, the people he should have been able to trust with anything...
“Six...five...get off your ass, Murdock, and do your fucking job, these people are hiding him, makes them as guilty as he is... four...”
“Murdock, goddammit, he’s got a fucking gun on me!”
“Bu...bu neng...wo bu neng sha tamen...”
“...three...two...”
“Bu neng...”
And there’s something about that, the strangled Chinese Murdock’s trying to hide behind, shutting down, running away when he needs to be facing this, following orders, not letting his friend die over this, that snaps something deep inside Face entirely.
Pike doesn’t reach one.
In place of the word, there’s three loud explosions. Gunfire. Face barely recognizes the sound. The room’s full of smoke. He’s staring right at Sister Mary-Margaret. Blood’s running down the bridge of her nose and spreading out on the dark fabric on her habit, right above her heart, and her body’s hitting the rough-packed dirt floor...
Pike claps him on the shoulder, sliding up next to him. “Where’s al-Zahari?” he demands of the remaining woman in Farsi. “Where?!?”
She shakes her head.
“Face?” Pike asks.
His hand, with his gun, raises again. Completely of its own volition, without his permission or consent. He can’t even feel the metal of the trigger as he squeezes it back.
Another shot.
Another body hits the floor.
Murdock makes an inhuman noise, and sinks down over his haunches, still muttering to himself in broken, bizarre Mandarin.
The kids still in the room are screaming wordlessly.
Face closes his eyes for a moment. The light isn't working anyway.
It's all very far away.
Pike looks down at that girl, that little girl in her concealing dress who can’t be more than thirteen. He smiles that killer’s smiling, and touches her on the cheek. “Where?” he repeats.
No answer.
Then he turns, looks up over his shoulder, and nods to Face as he pushes away.
The trigger depresses.
There’s nothing he can do to stop it at this point.
Not with Sister Mary-Margaret lying dead there on the floor, dead because she wouldn’t tell them where some fucking Taliban chieftain got his worthless ass off to...
But nothing happens, the round sticking in the chamber, and as Face is ejecting the dud bullet, racking the slide and letting it fall back into place, the girl’s eyes flicker and one trembling hand points.
Over to the wall.
Pike looks at Face again, holds a hand up in a universal sign to stop, his own weapon at the ready, and kicks in a section of the wall.
Al-Zahari falls out, sprawled on the floor, clearly cramped from his tiny hiding hole, and Face doesn’t even need Pike’s nod for this one. Two in the chest, one in the head, pure muscle memory, his unerring aim working automatically even as numbness threatens to overtake him completely.
Face stares down at that neat little hole in the front of the target, the real target’s, head, even as Pike pushes him aside and checks the fucker’s pulse. A compliment comes, good shooting, el-tee, from that distant place where everybody else seems to be right now.. A wave of hate comes over the lieutenant, but towards who, Pike or Murdock or al-Zahiri, he doesn’t know and can’t tell and doesn’t want to.
“See that, boys?” Pike sneers, standing again and wiping his hand on his pants, holstering his weapon. “That is why we ask questions properly. Because nobody in this shithole of a country has any goddamn sense at all. That’s how we do it on an alpha team. That’s how shit gets done.” He strides up, glaring down at Murdock, who’s collapsed in a head in on himself, and nudges his none too gently with a jungle-ventilated combat boot. “Don’t ever buck one of my orders again, Captain,” he growls and heads outside. “Face!” he yells over his shoulder on his way out, “get that piece of shit mental case!”
Face closes his eyes, and tears himself away from al-Zahiri’s body. He can see Sister Mary-Margaret. She’s crying for him. Wherever she is, whatever hell he just sent her to, she’s crying for him...
A whimper from Murdock brings him back to reality, that hate welling up over everything else, and he jerks the pilot off the floor, hating himself.
What was he thinking?
That there was righteousness in the Rangers? That there was brotherhood, a team, waiting for him here? When Murdock was willing to let him die, rather than carry out a fucking order that turned out to be the right call. When Murdock made him pull the trigger instead, when Murdock forced that on him. What an idiot he’s been, thinking that the pilot cared about him, that they could possibly ever be...that there was any way...that somebody might possibly...
“Temp,” Murdock says quietly, errily sane, “Temp, I am so...so sorry...”
“Get up,” he snaps, digging a hand into the sobbing pilot’s armpit and forcing him to his feet. “Just get the fuck up and don’t talk to me.”
“Face.”
“I’m serious, Murdock. Don’t fucking look at me,” he growls, and follows Major Pike out into the harsh desert afternoon.
As they walk out of the village, through the gathered, silent crowd, those eyes turned on them all, Face feels something in him burning to ash. And as they reach the edge, the final line of low walls and creeping vines, as the men start filtering back into the school, he can hear that girl screaming in pain.
“Probably figured out she gave him up,” Major Pike says, and shrugs, as if it’s every day they walk away from a mission with some thirteen year old girl getting raped to an inch of her life for helping them.
He’s grinning.
Murdock just whimpers.
BA doesn’t look at any of them as he radios base for a lift.
Their extraction meets them a few minutes later. Nobody challenges them. No opposition. Not even RPG fire on their way off the ground. A smooth, beautiful ride up into that sky Murdock loves so much.
“Welcome to the Rangers,” Pike tells them all over the intercom. “Good work today, Face.”
Face starts vomiting before they hit altitude, and that acrid burn in the back of his throat from the stomach acid seems so, so appropriate right now.
+++++
The story done, faded into nothing against the cool tile of the floor that they’ve sunk to over the telling of it, Face staring up at the ceiling, eyes close, heedless of Hannibal’s hand resting on his shoulder. The kid’s shaking, shaking badly, and Hannibal knows he should do something, say something, make this better somehow.
But he can’t.
He can’t hardly breath from the raw horror Face injected that narrative with, and it’s all he can do to keep his arms around the kid.
This...this is the sort of thing that has to be reported. Has to be brought forward. Has to be dealt with. Has to be...
It wasn’t Face’s fault. He knows that. Anybody would know that. No matter how much the kid thinks it is, it’s not. It was Pike’s. Brock Pike. Hurting his boy, hurting his whole team.
And this was a year ago. So a year of lying, a year of thinking they were entirely alone, a year, more than likely, of intimidation and threats and mind-fucks from Pike over those events, and how many more, how many more women were killed? How many other atrocities committed? What the fuck else has Pike gotten away with in the service of "the mission"?
You were too much of a coward to take the team and look what fucking happened, that voice whispers. This is your fault, you did this to him, to all of them. You don't love him, you don't deserve to love him...
Hannibal bows his head for a moment, the grief surging up anew, and then Face actually reaches out, reaches up, and lays his hand, his cheek, on top of Hannibal’s where it’s resting on his shoulder. Shattering that guilt. And the colonel, for the first time in three years, orders that voice to shut up.
There are more important things now, he tells himself, than your own fucking selfishness.
More important things to care about. Things outside himself. Other people, other problems. This beautiful, strong, scarred kid. This problem, that Pike’s still breathing after holding a gun to one of his men’s heads to get the other to comply with an illegal order...
“I’m going to fix this, Temp,” Hannibal replies, running his fingers through that hair once again. “I swear to god, I’m going to fix this...”
Face doesn’t move, doesn’t respond, doesn’t so much as groan, so Hannibal just sits with him there, on the floor of the kitchen, until the shaking subsides.
It takes a long, long time.
+++++
It’s doing that misty rain thing again, like it does so often in this part of the country, coating the windows with water droplets. The road’s completely empty. The only sign of life at all is the breathing of the man next to him, big hands gripping the steering wheel, keeping them on the road.
Hannibal.
Motherfucking John Hannibal Smith.
Face almost wants to laugh at himself. Laugh, or cry, or something. He feels itchy, uncomfortable, some kind of deep anger at himself that’s making him want to rip all his skin off and come out on the other side, naked and new and untouched by all the fucking horrible things he’s done over his life.
He can’t, though. Hannibal told him it wasn’t his fault when he’d finished his story, and then insisted on taking him home, god only knows why, and just threw his jacket around him and bundled him out to the car. That was half an hour ago. Not a word’s passed between them since.
He fingers the collar of Hannibal's jacket to distract himself from it. It's is warm and soft around him, smells of the older man’s rich but subtle musk, and he hates himself for still having it on. He doesn’t deserve anything that belongs to the colonel. Nothing at all.
And Hannibal deserves so, so much better than him.
He’s got no idea where they’re going. The streets don’t look right in the rain, and every time his eyes slip shut, all he can see is blood on a sand-splattered floor and dead nuns. It’s fucking horrible and he deserves every second of it, so he stays quiet and forces himself to see it, and tries not to hope that Hannibal wasn’t lying to him about not telling anyone.
He needs to be punished for it. He can’t understand why Hannibal doesn’t seem to care. Why the fuck doesn’t...
Then he sees where they are.
The big FORT LEWIS US ARMY INSTALLATION in white lettering on the green board.
Fort Lewis. Lock-up. Charges. Conviction. Discharge. Disgrace.
Face lays back down against the window and reflexively pulls Hannibal’s jacket tighter around him. Good, he thinks to himself.
Good.
ace is half-expecting Hannibal to just hand him over at the gate, but the colonel chats a little with the kid who’s checking his ID and drives on as if nothing’s at all wrong. Of course, Face realizes. Probably better to take him to the shop direct and have them book him there and just have this over with...
But Hannibal misses the turn for the MP headquarters, too, heading instead west to the base housing area. Face doesn’t really notice this until it’s too late, until the car’s pulling into the garage of a large redbrick house and Hannibal’s turning the engine off.
“We’re here, kid,” the colonel says, still awkward, and Face’s heart plummets. No. Fuck, no. Hannibal still wants him...
What the fuck is wrong with the man?
The house is big and cold and dark, not nearly enough furniture to fill it, hardly anything else in it at all. The kitchen’s well-appointed, Face notices, seeing the good-quality pots and pans hanging from that center rack over the island, but it’s a solitary effort. It’s a house built for a colonel, a man with a wife and a family, one that’s meant to have crayon drawings on the fridge and vacation photos on the walls. Hannibal’s never had a wife, never had a chance for a real family, and it makes Face angry right then. Hannibal deserves that, deserves more than some broken, worthless kid...
“You need anything, kid?
Face wants to shove Hannibal away, scream at him to leave him alone, to not be so goddamn nice, to not be so fucking gentle right now, to just take him down to the fucking MPs and let them do what they have to, but he can’t say anything. Just stands there mutely in the colonel’s living room, damp jacket still around his shoulders, shivering again.
Hannibal’s eyes are soft then, and he reaches back through the space between them to take Face’s cold hand in his own, and tugs him forward. Down a hallway.
Into the master bedroom.
“I’m not suggesting anything, kid, I just don’t have my guest room set up or anything like that,” Hannibal tells him, almost apologetically as he pulls him towards the giant California King that’s probably just barely long enough to hold the man’s tall frame. He pushes Face down on the edge of it and peels his jacket away. “You’ll be a lot more comfortable in here tonight, yeah?”
Face can’t bring himself to say anything.
Hannibal strips him down to his briefs, then, touch soft and expression neutral, strips him and maneuvers him under the covers and sits there on the edge of the bed for a moment, pettign his hair. Longer, Face thinks without really knowing why, longer like you wanted.
It goes on for too long and not long enough, and then Hannibal’s standing, telling him good night, throwing his discarded jacket over his arm, turning off the lights...
Leaving the room.
Good, Face thinks bitterly, wanting to be alone, wishing Hannibal would come back.
He settles for burrowing deep into the soft sheets, into the center of the bed where Hannibal’s reassuring male musk is the sweetest and thickest. Between the stress of the evening and the exhaustion of the training op of the past few days, he’s out in minutes.
Although he’s expecting those women’s faces to follow him, Face doesn’t dream that night.
+++++
Hannibal glances at the clock in the kitchen as the cigar smolders away in its ashtray on the counter in front of him. He can’t bring himself to smoke it, even though he thought he needed it right now. The nicotine’s not helping.
0315.
Is it really that late? Did it really take him that long to hear Face’s story, bring him home, put him to bed? His bed, his bed in his house, that beautiful kid in his bed...
Not that he should have done any of that. Listen, yeah sure, but not this. Not this part. Not while his own emotions are running so damn high over the kid.
Hannibal’s never felt like this before, about anyone, not even Maggie, and it's terrifying, how much he wants to reach into Face's life and make everything right for him. And Hannibal hates how helpless he feels in the face of this, how impotent and how lost. He wants to help this kid, has to help him, helping him is quickly becoming the most important thing in the whole damn world.
Pike's obviously been playing off this, using Face's uncertainties against him, getting him to do things, keeping him from talking. Hannibal briefly wonders if it's sexual, and hopes to hell it's not. This is a young man who desperately wants to be accepted and loved. If Pike’s been using that against Face, if Pike’s ever touched him...
He shakes it off, the anger that rises up at the thought. It’s not the time to get upset. It’s the time to think. Hannibal also prides himself on dealing with things in a logical, unemotional fashion. Emotion gets men killed in the field, and he needs to be no less careful with this.
The first priority, he knows, has to be neutralizing Pike. Then putting Face back under a good commander, maybe himself, maybe not, giving him a secure place to ground his feet, rebuild his pride as a man and a soldier. Then addressing the kid's deep-seated emotional distress, showing him he's loved, showing him he can be loved, that he deserves it, that he’s worth it...
But neutralizing Pike comes first.
He has to get that motherfucker out of the picture. In jail. Or dead, preferably dead...
Emotion, John, is not your friend right now, he tells himself again.
He forces himself to be logical about this. Always, always has to be logical.
Pike’s slippery, used to being left alone on the basis of his record and skilled manipulation of the only men who have solid testimony to the contrary. He’s used to being able to get what he wants, do what he wants, anytime, any way...
Except that he’s AWOL right now.
Which is pretty fucking serious.
Hannibal’s not stupid enough to think that he can just call the MPs and report this in and have something come of it. Pike’s an alpha team lead, which means he sets his own hours and his own duty schedule, to a certain extent, with direct OPCON being the boys back at Benning, not with the brigade commander. The only people who can prove, definitively, that Pike’s not authorized to be gone this weekend are Face, Murdock and BA, and Hannibal has a sick feeling that, based on what he heard tonight, none of them are going to testify against their commander while he’s still holding that over their heads.
No.
Hannibal knows that if he’s going to prove this AWOL thing, he’s going to need proof. His own gathered proof.
Which isn’t impossible. Everyone leaves a trail. Anyone can be hunted. It’s just a matter of gaining access to that information and knowing how to study it.
And despite the fact he hasn’t pulled a man-hunt mission in a first-world nation in almost ten years, Hannibal can suddenly see exactly how he can do it.
But only if... he knows.
Hannibal doesn’t even hesitate. He flips open his cell phoe and punches up one of the only numbers in his contact list.
He waits.
Three rings, four, and then a familiar voice answers on the other end.
“John. What the hell time is it up in Seattle?”
“Russ,” he replies, relaxing a little, and his fingers find the cigar out of long habit. Seems like there’s always cigars around when he and General Morrison have these little chats. “I’ve got a bit of a problem here, and I need the latitude to deal with it properly.”
“What are you planning, John?”
“Not exactly planning so much at this point, Russ. It’s more... see, one of my men’s AWOL...
“Jesus, why the fuck are you calling me about it? Hannibal, you need to get on the horn to...”
He finds himself sitting forward a little. “I can’t do that, Russ. I have to handle this one myself.”
“What does that mean?”
“I need some, err, latitude on it.”
“No plan, my ass, kiddo. Tell me. Now,” Morrison groans, and Hannibal almost starts laughing at the sound of it.
As he sits there on the phone with his old mentor, laying out his plans, Russ starts testing the angles, helping him refine it down, he almost, almost, feels like his old self in his old life again, right back where he needs to be.
Almost.
+++++
Hannibal wakes up the next morning later than he usually does. Sunlight’s streaming through half-closed blinds, falling over his bed-mate, who’s tucked up next to him, hands curled to fists, already awake.
He looks scared.
“Morning, kid,” Hannibal murmurs, trying to let Face know it’s not necessary. That there’s no reason for him to be scared. That he’s safe. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Face says, a little brightly, and stretches, rolls into him. “You wanna...”
“Kid, about last night...”
And Face crumples instantly, that false mask just peeling away.
The colonel sighs. He hadn’t gotten much sleep himself, talking to Russ, then curling up around this warm, pliant man, watching him sleep, wondering if his plan’s going to work, if he should just kill Pike instead.
But simply putting a bullet in the major’s brain or poisoning him in some undetectable way or arranging for a car crash, wasn’t going to fix anything. So he’d listened to Face breathe and tried to reassure himself. Russ approved it. H’es got free rein to deal with the asshole the way he sees fit.
Hannibal’s not sure, though, if it’s really the right way to handle this. If Face can still be hurt by it. By...by everything that happened in Charikar.
Face is obviously hurting over this, not sure whether he should blame himself or Murdock or Pike for what happened, not sure where he should direct all the hate he feels over it, all the disappointment and regret and loss. And this has to be what Murdock was talking about under the deck the other day, what he feels he failed at, what was eating into him that night in the parking lot. Has to be the reason why BA is so uncomfortable around all of them, why he feels the need to get in fights and get arrested and tells Pike with every action to fuck off.
So it’s something that’s affected them all. And that’s where he needs to start with it. Because he needs the boys’ support, their assistance, their trust, if he’s going to bring their boss down. It’s a tall order, but it has to be done.
“What time is Pike going to be home, Face?” Hannibal tries, hoping this is neutral enough to keep the kid on the level with him.
Face shakes his head. “He... he’s usually only gone two, three days. Usually just the weekends.”
“So you boys are on your own today?”
“...I guess.”
“Either of them up yet?”
Face rubs his cheek against the undershirt covering Hannibal’s chest, and lifts his head, glancing at the digital clock on the nightstand. “Umm...yeah, probably not.”
“Then get dressed, kid,” Hannibal murmurs, and lets a hand stray down the lightly furred chest arched up over him. “We’re going back over. I’ll make you all some breakfast and we’ll talk.”
That fear’s back on Face’s face. “Hannibal...”
“It’s okay. I'll make it okay. Trust me, my plans always work,” and he smiles. “Come on, let’s get going.”
Face, after a reluctant moment, nods, and lets Hannibal help him out of bed.
The colonel gets them both dressed and off-base without incident. Face doesn’t talk much on the way to Pike’s. If anything, it’s worse than what Hannibal dealt with with the younger man last night, but he just smiles and makes small talk and they survive the drive.
He bundles Face up to the kitchen, sits him down at the small table, and asks him where Murdock keeps the flour.
Face sighs, and points, and gets up to go turn on the living room TV. Not speaking at all.
I'm going to fix this, Hannibal swears to himself as he digs around for the measuring cups. If it kills Pike, I'm going to fix this...
Pike - or Murdock, more likely - keeps the fridge and pantry very well stocked, everything stored neatly in a wild assortment of glass jars, marked with everything from “self-rising flour” to “Madras curry powder”. It’s easy for Hannibal to find what he needs for breakfast. Flour, baking soda, eggs, maple syrup, oranges, bacon... everything, right down to a pint of blueberries in the fruit drawer.
He’s got the juicer running, berries already nestled in the first batch of cakes bubbling away on the stovetop griddle, bacon finishing up in the oven, coffee steaming up in Murdock’s percolator, trying to get Face to talk without success, by the time he sees hide or hair of the other two men who live in this house.
The sound of the footsteps plodding down the stairs is clear over the low whir of the juicer, and Hannibal turns in that direction, seeing Face stiffen. He smiles sadly, hoping to hell he’s not pushing the kid too hard, too fast with what he’s planning on doing this morning, and switches off the juicer. He pours a couple of low glasses of juice and goes over to the table where Face is hunched up, sliding it in front of the kid’s clenched hands.
He touches one of those lightly, quickly, and the kid’s eyes meet his. Hannibal can’t really tell what he sees there; Face is trying so hard to keep his walls up, find the safety he craves so in the same way he’s always done.
“I’ve got your back, kid,” Hannibal tells him, wishing he could pull him up into a kiss right now, give the lieutenant everything he desperately needs. Those eyes soften a little, but he still can’t read them. So the colonel smiles a little wider. “It’s going to be okay. Remember that this morning, okay?”
“Remember what, fool?” BA grunts, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, taking in the scene in the kitchen with something like disbelief stamped on his dark face. He’s got his gym bag over his shoulder and a pair of long athletic shorts screenprinted with a TAPOUT logo, and he’s got his van keys in his hand. “What the hell this?”
“This,” and Hannibal hands him a glass of orange juice, taking the bag and keys, “is breakfast, corporal. And I was just telling Face that he can trust me. You all can.”
BA takes the proffered juice, but his eyes are wary. “Whatchoo doin’ here, sir? Same clothes as last night and ev’rythin’...”
So much for that, Hannibal thinks, but it’s hardly a problem. “Face and I have been talking,” Hannibal says easily, patting Face’s shoulder in a purely friendly gesture, laying BA’s stuff aside, and goes back to the stove to start flipping pancakes.
“All night?” BA asks dubiously.
“I went home for a few hours’ sleep,” Hannibal lies.
“Whatever,” BA grunts in reply.
Hannibal watches him for a moment, wondering what the hell he can say, what he should, when Murdock pops up, far less awkward than the other two in a set of Spiderman footie pyjamas. It’s absurd and wonderful, and Hannibal has the sudden urge to hug the man.
“Mornin’, colonel! Is that pig I smell cookin’ away in here?” he says cheerfully, as he saunters in, right up to the stove, and starts fussing in one of the drawers.
Smiling a genuinely happy smile, Hannibal nods and goes to offload the pancakes onto a waiting serving platter. “That is indeed. The nice thick-cut bacon you’ve got in the fridge.”
Murdock grins back, and Hannibal notices he’s got an apron in hand, one that says Kiss the Cook. It looks old, but too clean to have been used any time lately. “Need a hand, sir?” he asks, brandishing the cloth.
“Go sit down with Face, captain,” he says gently, and hands him the platter on pancakes. “You boys get these dished out and I’ll get the next batch going, okay?”
There’s enough batter for another few rounds of pancakes, hopefully enough to cover three boys who ate nearly two hundred dollars worth of seafood last night between them, and the bacon’s ready, crisp and perfect, and Hannibal pours himself a cup of coffee while he watches BA grudgingly sit down at the table and the three of them start dishing it all out.
They do seem better. Not good, not okay, but somewhat better, and something about it reminds Hannibal about those first few holidays he had with Maggie, right after they were married, when they’d go to her parents’ house, when he’d cook in the mornings and she’d sit at the counter and smile over her coffee at him, her younger brothers all still in college and home for the season, squabbling over the last sausage and chattering about ...
But right now, now, there’s nothing like that. Instead, he’s got three broken young men who barely remember how to talk to each other, one of them looking at him now with pained blue eyes. More important that the ghosts of old regrets. Needing him more than Maggie ever did.
And it’s about time, Hannibal knows. So he slides the last of the pancakes onto another plate, grabs the container of juice, refreshes his coffee, and goes over to sit down at the small table with it all.
“So, you spent the night, sir?” Murdock asks, pointing at his shirt.
Hannibal smiles as he slides the majority of the cakes onto the platter, and slathers butter on the remaining few. Sharp, these boys. “Face and I spent some time talking last night.”
Murdock nods. “Whatcha talk about?”
“Well, actually, I wanted to talk with you about this...”
“Colonel Smith,” Face coughs, interrupting quickly, “I don’t think we should...”
Hannibal lays a reassuring hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder, and goes for it. “We talked about what happened at Charikar.”
The response is immediate from all the boys.
Face’s forehead hits the table with a little groan.
Murdock goes white, the glass of juice in his hand slipping out to shatter on the floor.
And BA...well, BA looks startled, but then he’s smiling grimly, like it’s the best damn thing he’s ever heard.
So that’s where Hannibal starts.
“Something funny about that, corporal?”
The big man shakes himself, and chuckles a little, humorless and cold. “Good,” he says. “I glad he told you.”
“BA...” Murdock says in disbelief.
“I glad he told you, cause you a colonel and you can report his sorry ass for...”
Murdock’s shaking a little, but Hannibal can’t tell if it’s anger or something else. “BA, you can’t want Face to get reported for this, you know what happened, he’d be...”
“He fucking should be!” BA roars suddenly, and shoves back from the table, pacing. “He fucking should be! After what he did, in front of those kids? He lucky I di’n’t frag him m’self for that...”
And that’s when Hannibal realizes it’s anger in the team’s pilot. That paleness is replaced by flushed red fury, and he stands too, hands clenching and unclenching. “What the fuck, Bosco?! You serious?! You can’t say things like that...”
“Why not?!” BA snaps back, loud, hands starting to gesture wildly. “He killed those women, fool! Shot ‘em like they was dogs and killed the target we needed for questioning...”
“What questioning, you stupid baboon? Al-Zahiri was on our kill list, we were there to kill him...”
“So what, that excuse the fucking el-tee from murderin’...”
“If you’d have been in there, you’d know how full of shit you are! But you weren’t, were you?!” Murdock practically yells, jamming a finger into BA’s chest. “You’d fucking understand if you were in there! But you weren’t! Pike left you outside and took me in instead! Your fucking pilot instead of goddamn real Ranger, askin’ me to pull the trigger on a bunch of ladies who didn’t do nuthin’ to us! It should have been you, BA! It should never have been me...”
“Should’a been me what, you fuckin’ coward?” BA taunts back. “You think I’m some kind o’ murdering trash like Faceman here?”
“Face ain’t a murderer...”
“Well, maybe you’re right, retard,” and Hannibal’s never heard so much righteous hate going into one word that he hears there. “I wouldn’ta let him do it! I’d’a stopped him...”
“Pike had a gun to his head!” Murdock screams, and pounds a fist right into BA’s chest, head following the stroke down. “Pike had a fucking gun to his head because of me, cause I couldn’t do it, cause I couldn’t take the order, couldn’t...couldn’t...couldn’t do what I needed to do and now Face has to carry it for me and it ain’t fair, ain’t, cause he grew up in a place like that and they raped that little girl and I am a coward, I am, couldn’t follow the order, everything’s so much different when you ain’t watchin’ it through the targeting computer, and you’re right, I’m a coward, I ruined everything because I’m a coward, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Face, I’m so sorry...”
His fist is shaking against BA’s chest, his head hung, body shaking, and sobs overtake the screaming rant and all falls into silence in the kitchen for a moment.
Murdock’s crying now, quiet, thick tears splashing to the tile of the floor. BA looks like somebody just told him his mother died, like he’s in shock, like he can’t quite process the information. His eyes flick up to meet Hannibal’s, full of confusion, and as Murdock presses closer, hands fisted up in BA’s shirt now as the tears overtakes him, one big, tattooed arm comes up over him in some unconscious imitation of a hug, holding the captain as that old grief overtakes him.
“What order?” BA asks, looking at Face, who’s still watching from the relative safety of the table, and back to Hannibal. He sounds utterly lost. “What order?”
Hannibal feels sick, the discharge of emotion, violent and deadly as a lightning strike, still bouncing around inside of him, but he unleashed this. It’s his responsibility to deal with it. He just wasn’t expecting...that. What the hell has Pike been doing to these boys, lying to them about things as vital as mission details?
“Living room,” the colonel says softly, making a decision, and nudges a hand under Face’s arm to get him up. “Let’s take this somewhere a little more comfortable.”
He gets them settled, BA and Murdock on one couch and he and Face on the other. The pilot’s gone silent, but he won’t let go of BA. Face, on the other hand, is pale but steady, and sucks up against the opposite arm of the couch.
For a little while, it’s just Hannibal talking, with Face throwing in details or additional information when the colonel falters in the story. BA buries his face in his hands by the time they get to the part about Pike drawing on Face, and moans a little after the terrorist gets shot.
“I didn’t know, man,” he mutters. “Fuck, man, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. Major Pike tol’ me later...I didn’t know ‘bout...fuck...”
Murdock pats his arm. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay.”
Face shakes his head, eyes fixed on the floor in shame. “You are right, big guy,” he says slowly. “I am a murderer. I shouldn’t have taken that order, shouldn’t have done it...”
“Pike had a gun to your head,” Murdock says again, firm and certain. “It was my fault. I should have shot him or...or something...instead...”
“But was he wrong? Or were we? We found the target, that’s the only reason we found the target...”
“You never should’a had to do it...”
“Like you said in the kitchen, buddy, it’s your job to fly us around, not to shoot people. You shouldn’t have gotten dragged into it...”
“Boys,” Hannibal says gently but firmly, interjecting because the only thing Murdock and Face are doing is going round in circles. He waits until they all look up at him, and he nods, continuing. “Boys, this isn’t anybody’s fault. Nobody in this room is responsible for what happened that day. That order should have never been given. Pike should never have pulled a gun on any of you. None of you ever should have been put in that position. This is on him, not you, Face,” and he touches the kid’s knee, figuring that much is okay. “You’re not responsible.”
“I pulled the trigger,” the lieutenant whispers back, bleak. “It’s on me. I gotta answer for it.”
“It’s not yours, Temp,” Hannibal tells him again. “It isn’t.”
Murdock sits up, against the sofa instead of BA, and sighs. “So what are you gonna do with us, sir?”
Hannibal frowns. “What do you mean, captain?”
That gets him a hesitant, worried little smile. “I don’t know if a court martial’s gonna agree with you ‘bout the whole guilt thing...”
“Nobody’s getting court martialed,” Hannibal says quickly, and holds up his hand as all three of them make to say something. “I’m going to take care of Pike, but nobody’s getting court martialed. Not taking that risk with any of you. I won’t let any of you get punished for his sins.”
“But...”
He’s not sure who it’s coming from, but it doesn’t really matter. They don’t trust you, that voice in the back of his head whispers. Nobody does. Nobody would...
“Boys, I swear, I’m here to help, not punish. I’m not going to let any of you get hurt over this.”
Face snorts. “Maybe I... I don’t know, maybe I deserve to be punished.”
“You’ve already suffered enough, kid,” Hannibal tells him, resisting the urge to pull the kid into a deep, reassuring kiss, right here, at the heartbreak in his voice. What the fuck is wrong with him this morning, anyway, on the whole kissing thing? “You don’t need to be dragged through it again. I need to get you away from Pike, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He looks at the other two. “I need your help to do that, though. I need to know what else he’s been making you do, what other orders you’ve followed.”
Murdock and BA look at each other, and BA shakes his head. “Colonel Smith, I gots the same respect for you everyone else at Lewis does, but I gotta ask...cause you a colonel, man...how do we know you ain’t gonna turn us in for sumthin’?”
“BA!” Murdock admonishes.
“He a colonel,” BA repeats. “He supposed to do what’s good for the Army. And what’s good for the Army ain’t necessarily what good for us.”
“I’m sure it’s in the Army’s best interest to get rid of shitbag officers like Pike and save good men like yourselves,” Hannibal says.
BA shakes his head. “Ain’t good ‘nuff, sir. Major Pike... he’s got connections everywhere, and he’s got shit on all of us. If you start pokin’ around...or what happens if you decide you don’t like what you hear...”
“You can trust me, BA,” Hannibal tries. “I swear it.”
“Ain’t good ‘nuff,” BA repeats.
See? That voice is crowing in triumph. See, you can’t make them trust you. You aren’t shit anymore, you aren’t even the legendary Medal of Honor winner to them, not even your stupid fucking decoration can override the fact that you aren’t...
He shuts his eyes and pushes that voice away and says the only thing that he can think of that’ll do a damn bit of good here.
“I’m gay, corporal.”
The room’s silent.
Funny, Hannibal thinks. He’s never said that before, never said it aloud, never put into words this...this person he’s become since Maggie left him. He always thought it would be impossible to say, to admit, to give voice to. But there it was, rolling out without hardly being bidden.
So, eyes still closed, he repeats it. “I’m gay. You think I’m doing anything against what I’ve promised, BA, go straight to General Morrison at Benning and tell him that. He’ll have to investigate, and they’ll figure it out for themselves pretty quick.”
Nobody speaks, and then, when Hannibal finally finds himself able to open his eyes, he sees Murdock sort of smiling at him. BA’s staring very hard at the wall. Face has his hand over his mouth, feigning shock. Or maybe that’s real shock. Hannibal’s a little shaky himself at hearing those words come out of his mouth...
“I believe you, sir,” Murdock says, as if he’s speaking for all of them, and pulls his feet up under him, settling back into the sofa. “What d’you need to know?”
“Everything,” the colonel whispers, voice suddenly failing him.
They all exchange a look again, and start talking. And they don’t stop.
+++++
Everybody’s gone silent.
1430, almost six hours of talking, on and off, and now there’s nothing more to say. Words run out on hours of fighting and circular conversations and the airing of every sin, every single fucking one, drug out and laid bare and examined by Hannibal.
They’ve all been used by Pike. Manipulated, lied to, conned, abused. Face had had no idea how bad the problem was. None of them did. They’ve never compared notes like this before. BA had been shocked. Murdock smiled a little and said he was glad they were finally talking.
Face doesn’t feel like that. He doesn’t want to know any of what he’s learned today. Because it just comes back to him. Because that manipulation and lying and conning and abuse didn’t come direct from Pike.
It came through him.
Drugging Murdock. Giving BA decent reasons to go beat the shit out of somebody Pike didn’t like. Scamming shit that Pike wanted, using sex to get it. A hundred other things he doesn’t want to think about right now.
BA had no idea what was going on. Murdock was either too sick to understand or too scared of getting thrown back in that ward down in Mexico to say no. But Face? That’s different.
He sees it now. Face realizes now he’s gone along with it, every step of the way, done unconscionable things and explained it away, to himself and everyone around him, for nothing more sometimes than a kind word from the major. Small stuff, little stuff. He’s known. He’s seen it. He’s enabled it. And he’s done nothing against it, because after Charikar, nothing’s mattered.
This the most humiliated Face has ever been.
To the point where he’d blurted out that he’d gone to great lengths to avoid ever being in the same kind of situation as the orphanage ever again, just so they’d understand he’s tried, once or twice, to stop it, he really has. And he’d told them about how he spent the next four months at the beck and call of the colonel who ran the taskings shop, just so he could manipulate the mission assignment process. Make sure they were never put on a mission that might require a decision like that again. So they would know.
BA had stared. “That wa’n’t no lady runnin’...”
“Jesus, BA, no shit!” Murdock had snapped back.
Hannibal had just nodded, and thanked in him in a flat, careful voice for sharing. No emotion. No acknowledgment at all. Not that Face had expected the colonel to reach over and pull him into a hug or anything, like maybe...if he was out now too...maybe they could just be honest about that, too.
Face doesn’t blame him for not wanting to claim him, though. Sure, he was willing to hope a little bit, once he’d actually gotten to sleep in the man’s bed, in the man’s arms, and maybe even believe it was more than some kind of weird infatuation after Hannibal outed himself to them at the start of this little discussion. But after everything that’s been said, everything that’s been discovered today, Hannibal won’t want him anymore.
Shouldn’t want him.
Because Colonel Smith’s a good man. One of the best. He shouldn’t be tied to anything here. Shouldn’t have to deal with their bullshit. Shouldn’t be attached to some lieutenant who’s failed so utterly as he has.
Face looks up at the colonel and he can feel the grief of losing him in the palms of his hands. He still wants Hannibal, wants his help and his big cock and his love - goddamn it, he wants that love that was whispered to him yesterday, wants to know what that fucking feels like - but there’s no way now. There’s no way there’s anything left after the last twenty four hours. The lieutenant can’t even understand why the man’s in the same room as him. BA and Murdock, yeah, they deserve his help, but...
Hannibal’s nodding now. Smiling a little. Standing.
Going.
“Boys,” he says in that gentle, warm way of his, going over to shake BA’s hands, clasping firmly, “thank you so much for all of this. I know it was hard, but that’s how it starts.” BA doesn’t say anything, but he nods and yawns a little. The big guy’s glazed.
Hannibal touches Murdock’s forehead, where he’s fallen asleep, ear on BA’s lap, leaning in, but Face can just make out what he says. “I’’m going to get you a doctor, Murdock. Somebody who can help you.” And in his sleep, Murdock squirms a little bit. BA looks annoyed, but it’s more appearance than substance. Face can tell.
And then Hannibal’s in front of him.
Face drops his eyes to the floor, hunching up over his knees, staring at nothing.
“Kid...”
“I’m tired,” Face says, not wanting to hear whatever Hannibal has to say right now. He’s not in the mood. “And I’ve sure you’ve got stuff to put together for this plan thing. You should probably...”
“...go?” Hannibal finishes.
Face nods, and doesn’t dare look up from the floor as one of Hannibal’s hands squeezes the cup of his shoulder. He can feel the warmth radiating out from the older man’s palm, but he still can’t look up. If he does, he just fucking knows he’s going to start crying or something like that.
Doesn’t need to add being a pussy to his long, long list of crimes right now.
“If you need me, call. My number’s on the brigade roster,” Hannibal says as he moves away. “Are you all going to be okay, if I leave you with all of this?”
“You gonna nail his ass to the wall?” BA asks darkly, and Face lifts enough to notice that he’s running his fingers through Murdock’s shaggy mop of hair.
“Absolutely, corporal.”
“Then we be fine with Pike,” and BA grins. “He won’t know a damn thing outta place. I won't 'llow it.”
“Good. Good man,” Face hears Hannibal reply, and then there’s nothing but silence again in the living room as the front door opens and snicks shut once again.
And only then does Face unfold and fall back against the back of the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the noise of Hannibal’s engine rolling away down the street. Gone.
“Face,” BA says, but Face just shakes his head, and stands.
“I’m going to bed. I’m tired, I didn’t get much sleep last night,” he says, feeling like he’s not really here. Like he’s half out of his body, light-headed and distant.
“Face...”
“BA, bed,” he says, pointing at the stairs, and he’s halfway up them before he hears Murdock’s little nice talkin’, Faceman.
For the first time in a year, he says you’re welcome buddy back, because Murdock doesn’t deserve his scorn. Doesn’t deserve his anger. Neither of them do. None of this has been their fault. It’s his, god, it’s all his...
Face locks his door behind him and falls down on his bed, face-first, sprawled out, one hand in the subtle hollow that had been Hannibal’s last night. How wonderful had it been, despite everything else, to wake up with someone like that. No pain, no regret, no demands for another go, just the feeling of being held, kept safe...
His phone rings. Rings again.
Face lets it go to voicemail.
He takes the battery out again.
He can’t answer it.
He can’t let himself want it.
He has to let this go, has to give it up.
He doesn’t deserve Hannibal.
He knows that now. He’s not good enough. He’ll never be good enough. He’ll never be clean again. Not enough for Hannibal to ever love him...
And at that thought, Face curls up and cries like he hasn’t since he was ten, when the last adoption offer fell through and he just knew he was going to spend the rest of his life alone.
Nothing’s changed, he thinks, and clings harder to his pillow. Goddammit to hell, not a fucking thing’s changed...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-12-17 10:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-17 02:11 pm (UTC)Please find Pike and kick his ass good!
Love,
Cuke
P.S. can't wait for moooore! :)
no subject
Date: 2011-12-17 06:12 pm (UTC)Merry Chrismas to you, too! And I'm sorry this is taking so long, but, you know, tis the season...I should have the rest up before the end of the year.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-17 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-18 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-18 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-18 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-18 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-18 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-19 03:50 am (UTC)