Medal of Honor
Oct. 31st, 2010 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Face/Hannibal
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the original kink meme.
I've heard BCoop state that his take on his character is that Face is the kind of guy who would live and die for the team, that's his focus and his motivation. I'd really like to read something that highlights this aspect of Face's character. And yes, I do think they're all like that in the sense that they'd die for each other, but I like the idea of Face placing their safety and well-being far above his own. Almost in an unhealthy way. *Please*, anon.
Face makes a big sacrifice for the team, and Hannibal’s there to deal with the fallout.
Face is quiet on the ride back to base. Everybody is. Murdock isn’t chattering over the headset like he usually does, BA’s awake and staring, and then there’s Hannibal.
The colonel is too busy taping the credit card in place over the sucking chest wound to talk to him. The blood’s foaming. Face hopes the silence is because Hannibal’s busy. Concentrating. Worried. Anything, as long as it’s not anger that keeps the stony expression firmly in place. He never could stand to see Hannibal angry. He’d never do anything to upset the man if he could help it.
At one point, he thinks the expression might have broken, and Hannibal might be trying to say something to him, a dam letting out the floodwaters of all that emotion, but it’s hard to tell. There was a ringing a while back. Now there’s nothing.
Part of Face, the part that's sat through a dozen different combat medicine briefings, knows what’s going on. Bullet to the chest. Punctured lung. Lost blood. He saw it puddling out of him, onto the desert floor, evaporating. The last of it’s on Hannibal’s shirt. He wants to apologize - Hannibal's always liked that shirt - but with all the sound gone, he has nothing to form words with.
Camp Victory’s trauma center is a blur. A doctor in a surgical mask and ACUs might be running over. That could be an oxygen mask they’re sliding over his nose and mouth. A squeeze on his hand? Was that what that sudden pressure was?
It releases something in his ears, and sound comes rushing back in.
“...ust a minute, doc.”
“If we don’t get him into surgery right now, he’s going to die.”
“He didn’t die on the Chinook, he’s not going to die in the next minute,” and Face recognizes that as Hannibal’s voice. Strong, deep, reassuring. He smiles a little, and hears a words Hannibal hardly ever uses. “Please, doc.”
Pain blasts through him, but that’s okay, because other sensations come back, too. Like the feel of the gurney beneath him, or Murdock’s hand clenching tightly over his, or BA's fingertips, light above his elbow. He wants to tell them that it’s all okay, that is doesn’t matter what happens now, that he understood exactly what he was doing when he dodged out from behind the cover of that half-collapsed wall, drawing the adversary’s fire long enough for them to get to safety.
They were exposed, he wants to say, and he could see it, and there was no way he was going to let them die. Not ever. They're all he has in the world, no family besides them, and they're everything to him. He couldn't wake up in the morning, with the guilt of not saving them. Whatever happens, it's better this way.
“You’re always pulling this medal of honor bullshit on me, Face,” Hannibal’s whispering to him now, breath hot on sandblasted skin and isn’t that nice? “I was five seconds behind you...”
Five seconds wouldn’t have been enough time, Face wants to say. Four seconds wouldn’t have been enough time.
“Remember Nicaragua, kid?” Hannibal asks. “Burma? Mexico? Same stupid stunts, and you didn’t die on me there.”
“Colonel, we need...”
There’s a noise, like maybe Hannibal pushed somebody away, and then Face feels those strong hands caressing his scalp, frantic and gentle and perfect. He wants to tell the colonel, his boss, the man above him, that he loves him, that he’d do anything for any of them and especially for him, but he’s not sure if the words come out. He wants to raise a hand, return the touch just this once, but his traitorous muscles refuse to comply.
“They’re going to put you under now, Face,” Hannibal’s voice says from a far distant shore. “You’re going to wake up. That’s an order, lieutena...”
Face can’t really tell what comes next after that. Everything’s all scrambled out of place, drifting away, leaving him alone in a vastness he's never seen before. It's peaceful, he thinks, breaking apart completely now.
But even that's alright.
The rest of the team’s okay.
That’s the only thing that’s ever mattered.
+++++
Face thinks he knows the last time he saw Hannibal, pinned down behind a low, desert-colored wall somewhere up in the mountains, sweat running in filthy streams off his forehead. He thinks that they might still be there, that he might not reach the others in time, that Hannibal is moving faster than he thinks he is, that it all ends right there in the sand.
But Hannibal’s there when the world cracks back into place.
The lights overhead cut into Face, and every nerve wants to be the first to tell him about the fascinating sensations in his chest. He doesn’t quite have an opinion on those yet.
“...the soul flies, insubstantial, you must crave sunlight soon...”
“Hospital,” he says, the sudden recall of memory dislodging an unknown number of days from his throat. It’s hard to talk through all that. “You got me to a hospital.”
The soft reading stops, a wooden thump follows. A cool hand runs, palm side away, down Face’s cheek. Anyone else would start screaming for a doctor, or crying, or cheering, but that’s not Hannibal.
“You are topping my shit list right now, lieutenant.”
It’s wonderful, fantastic, incomparable, unexpected.
That's different than all the other dreams he's had, the ones where Hannibal slid into bed next to him, or Hannibal cradled him to his chest and took him home, or when Hannibal skinned his shirt off Face with his fighting knife and kissed the hole in him away. Those are all things he wants.
He didn't want anger, so he's pretty sure he's not dreaming this.
He tries to say that, but he's forgotten to make the words to apologize, and he's not sure what he would need to apologize for anyway. Didn't he do everything he had to? Everything that was needed?
Face doesn't get his chance. The book’s off the table and the colonel’s out the door, and it all happens so quick that Face has a truly terribly moment where he thinks he might have been wrong about the dream thing after all.
The doctors in Germany tell Face that he’s got a month or two before they’ll release him. He’s been in a coma for six days. He’ll need a few more months to fully recover. Part of his lung died. They tell him all this with a solemnity that’s entirely out of place. Face wants to laugh. It’s a small price.
BA comes to see him. Murdock comes to see him. A couple of officers stationed in the area come to see him.
Hannibal doesn’t.
BA tells him him thanks, and that Hannibal’s been busy. Murdock tells him not to worry, and all about Billy’s last trip to the vet. His officer buddies tell him drinking stories and one of the females he used to date brings by linzer torte on Thursdays. It’s not enough.
They’ve got him on a lot of happy juice, some opiate or other, for the first few weeks. That’s good. It blurs everything out, lets Face imagine that it’s only been hours instead of days since the last time he saw Hannibal, that he doesn’t need to worry about him, that the faintest memories of the man are his presence instead. He’s okay.
The doctors tell him they have to ween him off it, or his body won’t heal up. The first few nights of this, he’s black inside. But after a while, the darkness subsides to the dimness of the hospital room, and he can make out a shape by the glow of its booklight and the faint whisper of words, familiar and deep.
“No one taught me, deep in my mind a god shaped all the various ways of life into a song...”
Face listens to it for a long time, trying to stay as still as he can for as long as it lasts.
After however long, the light switches off, the book closes, and there’s something soft and gentle on his forehead. “Sleep tight, lieutenant,” Hannibal’s voice tells him.
The next day, Face gets the doctors to take him off the painkillers completely. He doesn’t have trouble sleeping any more after that.
He lets this happen a few more times, enjoying the rare pleasure of somebody reading him a bedtime story. This is what he loves about his team, he tells himself, the fact that they’ll do things like this for each other. That Hannibal’s doing something nobody’s ever done for him before. But it’s not enough.
Face waits as long as he can, but he’s not a patient man. A few nights of this, and he needs an answer. When Hannibal leans in to give him that good-night kiss, Face turns just enough so that the older man contacts his lips instead of his forehead.
The effect is interesting.
Hannibal lets himself go with it for a split second. Face can feel that. Then Hannibal starts to pull back, probably startled, and Face can feel that, too. Exactly the opposite of what he wants. His hands shoot up and lock together around the back of his commander’s neck, stopping him from getting away. Face makes a little noise, and opens his mouth a little, begging. Hannibal doesn’t go for it, so Face moans again, opening wider and sucking on the older man’s lower lip.
He puts everything he has into it, wanting the colonel to want this. Needing him to. Begging.
Then something shifts, and he’s no longer kissing Hannibal. Hannibal’s kissing him, swinging a knee up over and around him, pressing Face back with only the force of his hands and his mouth, so careful to avoid the newly forming scar on his chest that Face has never thought about until now.
The light touches turn possessive, blood pools in all the right places, hands grab for belts and drawstrings and zippers. Off come the sheets and Face’s clothes with them. Hannibal breaks away long enough to rip his shirt off, and the lieutenant lets his hands wander over that magnificent expanse as the colonel finishes up with his pants.
There’s a delicious friction between them now, smooth and solid, the planes of their bodies fitting together as if intended to be that way. Face bucks into it, that feel of their cocks sliding together the one thing he’s aware of right now, the only thing that exists. But it’s not enough, so he hooks a leg over Hannibal’s knee and presses him in closer, lifting a little, the invitation clear.
He’d give this man anything
Hannibal’s fingers are in Face’s mouth now, and Face laves gently, noticing how the colonel lingers on this task a bit longer than he strictly needs to. Hannibal’s fingers are inside him, stretching him open, and he lingers on this task, too. Hannibal’s fingers are gripping his arm, and there’s no lingering on this part.
Face is an impatient man, and thrusts up.
Everything’s connected for a few wild seconds, pleasure sparking in the back of his eyes, neither one of them prepared to last, and then there’s something warm and wet and good inside him, between them, and Hannibal lets his head drop to the pillow.
The only sound in the room is that of spent air, exiting the three and a half lungs tucked into the narrow bed.
From outside the window, gray light replaces the nighttime blacks, and Face is still awake, hand still tight against the colonel’s neck. A copy of The Odyssey is sitting on the side-table, and the conman starts laughing when he picks it up.
“It’s all they had in the library that wasn’t trash,” Hannibal grumbles, turning over and smacking the book out of Face’s hands.
“It’s about a commander who loses all his men,” Face replies, feeling bad for laughing, and feeling bad for saying it, the second he sees Hannibal’s eyes. Sad. Hannibal should never be sad. “Boss...”
“You’re always doing these ridiculous things, Face.”
“But you all...”
“What would it do to us, losing you?” Hannibal asks softly, the words stinging in Face’s eyes. “Do you know what it would do to me?”
“I did it to save you all. The team...”
Hannibal draws Face in close, settling his own chin over the younger man’s shoulder. It feels good there. Feels right. “You’re part of the team, too, Templeton. You’re no less important than the rest of us. I need you here, with me.”
And then Face is pretty sure he’s crying, because Hannibal’s stroking down his hair and soothing him with sweet little words and pulling him in tight, until all of him slots into place within Hannibal, and everything's okay again.
“I’ll never leave you, boss.” He couldn't now. Not ever again
“I know, kid. I know.”
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the original kink meme.
I've heard BCoop state that his take on his character is that Face is the kind of guy who would live and die for the team, that's his focus and his motivation. I'd really like to read something that highlights this aspect of Face's character. And yes, I do think they're all like that in the sense that they'd die for each other, but I like the idea of Face placing their safety and well-being far above his own. Almost in an unhealthy way. *Please*, anon.
Face makes a big sacrifice for the team, and Hannibal’s there to deal with the fallout.
Face is quiet on the ride back to base. Everybody is. Murdock isn’t chattering over the headset like he usually does, BA’s awake and staring, and then there’s Hannibal.
The colonel is too busy taping the credit card in place over the sucking chest wound to talk to him. The blood’s foaming. Face hopes the silence is because Hannibal’s busy. Concentrating. Worried. Anything, as long as it’s not anger that keeps the stony expression firmly in place. He never could stand to see Hannibal angry. He’d never do anything to upset the man if he could help it.
At one point, he thinks the expression might have broken, and Hannibal might be trying to say something to him, a dam letting out the floodwaters of all that emotion, but it’s hard to tell. There was a ringing a while back. Now there’s nothing.
Part of Face, the part that's sat through a dozen different combat medicine briefings, knows what’s going on. Bullet to the chest. Punctured lung. Lost blood. He saw it puddling out of him, onto the desert floor, evaporating. The last of it’s on Hannibal’s shirt. He wants to apologize - Hannibal's always liked that shirt - but with all the sound gone, he has nothing to form words with.
Camp Victory’s trauma center is a blur. A doctor in a surgical mask and ACUs might be running over. That could be an oxygen mask they’re sliding over his nose and mouth. A squeeze on his hand? Was that what that sudden pressure was?
It releases something in his ears, and sound comes rushing back in.
“...ust a minute, doc.”
“If we don’t get him into surgery right now, he’s going to die.”
“He didn’t die on the Chinook, he’s not going to die in the next minute,” and Face recognizes that as Hannibal’s voice. Strong, deep, reassuring. He smiles a little, and hears a words Hannibal hardly ever uses. “Please, doc.”
Pain blasts through him, but that’s okay, because other sensations come back, too. Like the feel of the gurney beneath him, or Murdock’s hand clenching tightly over his, or BA's fingertips, light above his elbow. He wants to tell them that it’s all okay, that is doesn’t matter what happens now, that he understood exactly what he was doing when he dodged out from behind the cover of that half-collapsed wall, drawing the adversary’s fire long enough for them to get to safety.
They were exposed, he wants to say, and he could see it, and there was no way he was going to let them die. Not ever. They're all he has in the world, no family besides them, and they're everything to him. He couldn't wake up in the morning, with the guilt of not saving them. Whatever happens, it's better this way.
“You’re always pulling this medal of honor bullshit on me, Face,” Hannibal’s whispering to him now, breath hot on sandblasted skin and isn’t that nice? “I was five seconds behind you...”
Five seconds wouldn’t have been enough time, Face wants to say. Four seconds wouldn’t have been enough time.
“Remember Nicaragua, kid?” Hannibal asks. “Burma? Mexico? Same stupid stunts, and you didn’t die on me there.”
“Colonel, we need...”
There’s a noise, like maybe Hannibal pushed somebody away, and then Face feels those strong hands caressing his scalp, frantic and gentle and perfect. He wants to tell the colonel, his boss, the man above him, that he loves him, that he’d do anything for any of them and especially for him, but he’s not sure if the words come out. He wants to raise a hand, return the touch just this once, but his traitorous muscles refuse to comply.
“They’re going to put you under now, Face,” Hannibal’s voice says from a far distant shore. “You’re going to wake up. That’s an order, lieutena...”
Face can’t really tell what comes next after that. Everything’s all scrambled out of place, drifting away, leaving him alone in a vastness he's never seen before. It's peaceful, he thinks, breaking apart completely now.
But even that's alright.
The rest of the team’s okay.
That’s the only thing that’s ever mattered.
+++++
Face thinks he knows the last time he saw Hannibal, pinned down behind a low, desert-colored wall somewhere up in the mountains, sweat running in filthy streams off his forehead. He thinks that they might still be there, that he might not reach the others in time, that Hannibal is moving faster than he thinks he is, that it all ends right there in the sand.
But Hannibal’s there when the world cracks back into place.
The lights overhead cut into Face, and every nerve wants to be the first to tell him about the fascinating sensations in his chest. He doesn’t quite have an opinion on those yet.
“...the soul flies, insubstantial, you must crave sunlight soon...”
“Hospital,” he says, the sudden recall of memory dislodging an unknown number of days from his throat. It’s hard to talk through all that. “You got me to a hospital.”
The soft reading stops, a wooden thump follows. A cool hand runs, palm side away, down Face’s cheek. Anyone else would start screaming for a doctor, or crying, or cheering, but that’s not Hannibal.
“You are topping my shit list right now, lieutenant.”
It’s wonderful, fantastic, incomparable, unexpected.
That's different than all the other dreams he's had, the ones where Hannibal slid into bed next to him, or Hannibal cradled him to his chest and took him home, or when Hannibal skinned his shirt off Face with his fighting knife and kissed the hole in him away. Those are all things he wants.
He didn't want anger, so he's pretty sure he's not dreaming this.
He tries to say that, but he's forgotten to make the words to apologize, and he's not sure what he would need to apologize for anyway. Didn't he do everything he had to? Everything that was needed?
Face doesn't get his chance. The book’s off the table and the colonel’s out the door, and it all happens so quick that Face has a truly terribly moment where he thinks he might have been wrong about the dream thing after all.
The doctors in Germany tell Face that he’s got a month or two before they’ll release him. He’s been in a coma for six days. He’ll need a few more months to fully recover. Part of his lung died. They tell him all this with a solemnity that’s entirely out of place. Face wants to laugh. It’s a small price.
BA comes to see him. Murdock comes to see him. A couple of officers stationed in the area come to see him.
Hannibal doesn’t.
BA tells him him thanks, and that Hannibal’s been busy. Murdock tells him not to worry, and all about Billy’s last trip to the vet. His officer buddies tell him drinking stories and one of the females he used to date brings by linzer torte on Thursdays. It’s not enough.
They’ve got him on a lot of happy juice, some opiate or other, for the first few weeks. That’s good. It blurs everything out, lets Face imagine that it’s only been hours instead of days since the last time he saw Hannibal, that he doesn’t need to worry about him, that the faintest memories of the man are his presence instead. He’s okay.
The doctors tell him they have to ween him off it, or his body won’t heal up. The first few nights of this, he’s black inside. But after a while, the darkness subsides to the dimness of the hospital room, and he can make out a shape by the glow of its booklight and the faint whisper of words, familiar and deep.
“No one taught me, deep in my mind a god shaped all the various ways of life into a song...”
Face listens to it for a long time, trying to stay as still as he can for as long as it lasts.
After however long, the light switches off, the book closes, and there’s something soft and gentle on his forehead. “Sleep tight, lieutenant,” Hannibal’s voice tells him.
The next day, Face gets the doctors to take him off the painkillers completely. He doesn’t have trouble sleeping any more after that.
He lets this happen a few more times, enjoying the rare pleasure of somebody reading him a bedtime story. This is what he loves about his team, he tells himself, the fact that they’ll do things like this for each other. That Hannibal’s doing something nobody’s ever done for him before. But it’s not enough.
Face waits as long as he can, but he’s not a patient man. A few nights of this, and he needs an answer. When Hannibal leans in to give him that good-night kiss, Face turns just enough so that the older man contacts his lips instead of his forehead.
The effect is interesting.
Hannibal lets himself go with it for a split second. Face can feel that. Then Hannibal starts to pull back, probably startled, and Face can feel that, too. Exactly the opposite of what he wants. His hands shoot up and lock together around the back of his commander’s neck, stopping him from getting away. Face makes a little noise, and opens his mouth a little, begging. Hannibal doesn’t go for it, so Face moans again, opening wider and sucking on the older man’s lower lip.
He puts everything he has into it, wanting the colonel to want this. Needing him to. Begging.
Then something shifts, and he’s no longer kissing Hannibal. Hannibal’s kissing him, swinging a knee up over and around him, pressing Face back with only the force of his hands and his mouth, so careful to avoid the newly forming scar on his chest that Face has never thought about until now.
The light touches turn possessive, blood pools in all the right places, hands grab for belts and drawstrings and zippers. Off come the sheets and Face’s clothes with them. Hannibal breaks away long enough to rip his shirt off, and the lieutenant lets his hands wander over that magnificent expanse as the colonel finishes up with his pants.
There’s a delicious friction between them now, smooth and solid, the planes of their bodies fitting together as if intended to be that way. Face bucks into it, that feel of their cocks sliding together the one thing he’s aware of right now, the only thing that exists. But it’s not enough, so he hooks a leg over Hannibal’s knee and presses him in closer, lifting a little, the invitation clear.
He’d give this man anything
Hannibal’s fingers are in Face’s mouth now, and Face laves gently, noticing how the colonel lingers on this task a bit longer than he strictly needs to. Hannibal’s fingers are inside him, stretching him open, and he lingers on this task, too. Hannibal’s fingers are gripping his arm, and there’s no lingering on this part.
Face is an impatient man, and thrusts up.
Everything’s connected for a few wild seconds, pleasure sparking in the back of his eyes, neither one of them prepared to last, and then there’s something warm and wet and good inside him, between them, and Hannibal lets his head drop to the pillow.
The only sound in the room is that of spent air, exiting the three and a half lungs tucked into the narrow bed.
From outside the window, gray light replaces the nighttime blacks, and Face is still awake, hand still tight against the colonel’s neck. A copy of The Odyssey is sitting on the side-table, and the conman starts laughing when he picks it up.
“It’s all they had in the library that wasn’t trash,” Hannibal grumbles, turning over and smacking the book out of Face’s hands.
“It’s about a commander who loses all his men,” Face replies, feeling bad for laughing, and feeling bad for saying it, the second he sees Hannibal’s eyes. Sad. Hannibal should never be sad. “Boss...”
“You’re always doing these ridiculous things, Face.”
“But you all...”
“What would it do to us, losing you?” Hannibal asks softly, the words stinging in Face’s eyes. “Do you know what it would do to me?”
“I did it to save you all. The team...”
Hannibal draws Face in close, settling his own chin over the younger man’s shoulder. It feels good there. Feels right. “You’re part of the team, too, Templeton. You’re no less important than the rest of us. I need you here, with me.”
And then Face is pretty sure he’s crying, because Hannibal’s stroking down his hair and soothing him with sweet little words and pulling him in tight, until all of him slots into place within Hannibal, and everything's okay again.
“I’ll never leave you, boss.” He couldn't now. Not ever again
“I know, kid. I know.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 12:33 am (UTC)Thank You so much for this Beauty!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 01:38 am (UTC)*blushes*
When I first wrote it, I was going to just let Face die but... yeah, I'm glad somebody asked me to keep going.