What He Knows
Oct. 31st, 2010 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Face/Hannibal
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: none
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the original kink meme.
I have to stay up all night to write a friggin' essay on American immigration and I'm bored :( Please, kind anons, would anyone fill this prompt for me?
Hannibal, all self-assured and awesome like he is, is convinced that Face LIKES him (what with Face being all, "I AM HANNIBAL'S SPECIAL PET!"). He's all for it and pursues Face, but when he makes a move on Face the latter is all, "Whoa, hey, sorry but you misunderstood, I don't like you like that."
Cue... Angsty Hannibal? Angry Hannibal? Determined-to-make-Face-see-reason-Hannibal? Movie or tv verse, happy or sad ending, it's all the same to me - just make Face actually reject Hannibal once ^^
Face reacts badly to Hannibal coming onto him, really badly, and Hannibal tries to figure out what’s going on with his boy...
Really, looking back at it, how the hell was he supposed to know? All the signs were there. Weren’t all the signs there? All the little glances, the touches, the way he moved, just shy of a saunter, not quite anything else. The bickering and the laughter, the way he pouted when he got an order and the way his eyes lit up when he got praise. All these things... weren’t they signs?
“Hannibal, what are you doing?”
He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to catch his breath. Opens them. How long has he wanted to do that? Just gather his courage and walk up behind the kid and just kiss him stupid like this, feel the kid’s body melt into his like it did, feel the kid’s lips open just a little, soft and intimate and so much better than he’d ever imagined.
Then Face went stiff, and now he’s asking him what’s he’s doing.
Face is just hesitating, probably worried about that stupid fucking policy... “It’s okay, kid, I know...”
“Know what?” Face breathes, quiet, unsure. It’s sweet.
He lets his hand stray up into the kid’s hair a little ways. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been wanting it, too.”
They’re both evaluating. He knows Face, and there’s a powerful range of something or other going through the kid’s head, considering what’s going on, thinking, mind racing towards an answer.
There it is. His eyes, those lovely blue eyes, are flashing with something that might be realization.
But it’s not exactly what Hannibal expects, because that’s when Face shoves him away. Hannibal’s not expecting it, so it almost knocks him over and he stumbles a little as he catches himself, avoiding the carpet.
All that warm, beautiful skin is gone. The kid’s staring at him, rejecting in a moment the kiss that’s taken the older man nearly six years to work up the courage to give.
“Oh, fuck that, Hannibal.”
What?
“Face...”
“Not okay. So not okay.”
So now Face is tense, a fist clenched, feet spread just a little, ready. Automatic, but no less threatening. There’s no humor in him now, not that natural, easy kind. The kid’s got a brittle smile on, a bitter kind of humor. He’s seen this in his lieutenant before, and it’s never, never a good thing.
“Sorry, uh, I... shit, kid...” He doesn’t have words for it. He’s embarrassed. It’s been years since he felt that particular emotion. He doesn’t like remembering how it feels.
“I... am not a fag.” He draws out the last word, biting it off, still staring at Hannibal.
“Watch your mouth, lieutenant,” Hannibal snaps, finding his voice in his rank, in the unexpected insult, hating himself for using it.
Face doesn’t relax. “Whatever you say, colonel,” he replies in that same heart-wrenching tone, and Hannibal knows, just knows, he’s lost this one.
He should have known. Shit, he should have known.
“Sorry for the presumption, kid,” Hannibal says softly, wanting to reassure the younger man by touching his shoulder, something like that, but it’s not the time and he beats a fast retreat from the small den, past the living room where Murdock’s watching cartoons and BA’s fiddling with some engine component, right back to his bedroom, where he locks the door and turns off the lights and falls back on the bed, hands over his eyes, miserable, trying to figure this out.
How did he miscalculate so badly?
He lays there for a long time, trying to figure it out, and when he finally drifts off to sleep, the question follows him into his dreams.
+++++
It’s a week before it comes up again.
Face acts like nothing’s wrong. Natural and friendly, joking and light, all those little things still there that Hannibal once thought were aimed at him. Wrong. He’d been so wrong to do that, to take that, without asking, without checking...
But there’s something else going on, under the surface. The little glances are still there, but he can’t figure out what he’s picking up. Face is a good actor, one of the best, but Hannibal knows his boy. And he’s definitely hiding something.
Hannibal thinks, at first, that it might be that the kid’s mad at him and doesn’t want the other two to know. That word, “fag”, hissed at him with such hatred, is still echoing through his head. Every time he looks at Face, he can hear him saying it again. The fury was unmistakable.
Yet...
Face reacted, didn’t he? Didn’t he lean into it, didn’t he let it go on for long seconds? He didn’t push Hannibal away immediately, and would be enough for the colonel, if he didn’t feel so horrible about forcing himself on the kid.
So, he stays torn between wanting Face and wanting Face to be happy, which are now two completely different things. Hannibal’s always hoped they could be one and the same. Not now. Maybe never now.
He’s determined to leave the subject alone, completely, never bring it up again at all, except they’re at the O-Club and Face is drinking heavier than he usually does and hustling pool and Murdock’s tugging Hannibal away from his conversation with one of the brigade commanders.
“What is it, captain?”
“You may wanna stop this,” Murdock says quietly he points. Face is leaning on his cue, laughing loudly, and his voice is carrying.
Gay jokes are standard around the DoD. Nobody else on the fucking planet, it seems, are as touchy about their sexuality as American military men. Hannibal’s gotten used to it over the years, although there’s always a bit of a sting when he hears one. Part of the job.
Face is currently in middle of one of his stories, about a trip downtown to Dubai, where he kept getting hit on by men the whole night. The Arabs aren’t shy about that kind of thing, and everyone’s had some kind of passing encounter on a deployment. But Face is starting to get mean about it and everyone else is laughing right along and it sort of implodes something in Hannibal’s chest.
He doesn’t know whether he’s hurt or worried, mad or concerned, but he goes over there anyway. “Face, we’re leaving.”
The kid looks at him with booze-bleared eyes. “Haven’t even gotten to the good part, yet, boss. Remember when that one asshole tried to get his hand down my pants?”
“Fucking homos,” one the pilots he’s playing with says, and Murdock’s watching, close enough to jump in if he needs to.
“No shit,” Face says loudly and off-key, and finishes off a shot of something brown and strong-looking. Why is the kid doing shots? “And then Hannibal here, like, socks the guy in the head. Remember that, boss? You were so pissed off...”
Yeah, he remembers. Face laughs about it now, but Hannibal clearly remembers him crying on his shoulder later that night. Maybe he should have remembered that last week. Kid's clearly got some kind of issue here. But they’re not going to talk about that right now, and not in front of a bunch of flyboys who aren’t part of the family and wouldn’t understand. Hannibal pries the pool cue out of his hands and grabs him bodily by the collar. “We’re leaving, lieutenant,” he growls, and hauls his boy out of the club.
Murdock offers to take him back to the dorms, but there’s no way Hannibal’s leaving him alone tonight. Something’s going on. He’d be doing Face a disservice to not at least try to understand.
He takes the kid back to his own apartment, a small place in a decent neighborhood and dumps him on the couch with a stern warning and a couple of tylenol, but Face is too sleepy at this point to care. He curls up, muttering to himself, but the colonel definitely catches his own name in there.
"Hannibal..."
“Right here, kid,” he says, and lets a hand kind of fall on the lieutenant’s shoulder. He can’t help it. But there are tears of Face’s cheeks now, and he’s either asleep or pretending to be. There won't be any talk tonight.
Hannibal watches him for a moment. All his boys have crashed here before, right there on the couch, Face most frequently of all. Those nights were always sleepless for Hannibal, the lieutenant so close and so far away. He shakes himself out of that - Face has made himself pretty damn clear - and goes for a blanket for the kid.
He doesn't sleep well that night, either.
+++++
He’s woken by the sound of the front door opening, and that’s just fucking wonderful.
Face is outside on the landing, cell phone out, calling Murdock or a cab or whoever his girl is this week, and doesn’t even look up as Hannibal sits down next to him.
“You aren’t going anywhere, kid,” Hannibal tells him, taking the phone away.
“Can’t keep me here, boss.”
“We need to talk.”
Face groans melodramatically and drops his head into his hand. “Fucking headache.” Hannibal hands him the bottle of pills and Face swallows four down dry. “I am never doing Wild Turkey again.”
Hannibal winces in sympathy. Bad choice. Bad, bad choice in alcohol there. “You were certainly going at it last night, kid. Remember anything?”
The kid is silent for a moment, and then turns bright red. “Was I talking about Dubai?”
“Yeah.”
“I, I...you’re probably pretty pissed at me.”
“Why would I be mad with you? You were extremely drunk,” Hannibal says, and tries to chuckle. “And it is kind of a funny story.”
“I don’t want you to think that I think about you like... like... that. I’ve got nothing but respect, boss...”
“Face, it’s okay,” Hannibal says, staring up at the eves of the apartment complex, struggling against himself now. It’s not okay. It’s not okay at all. But he can’t stand listening to half-baked explanations and justifications. “I should apologize, for...”
But Face is still going. “...I mean, I don’t have anything against it, I was just in that orphanage and the sisters were all hard-core and then there was the Army, which hates it even more than the Church does...”
There was an interesting point Hannibal hadn’t considered before, and he’s trying to pay attention, but his brain’s definitely latched onto this idea and won’t let it go. “So, what are you trying to say, kid?”
“I’m just,” and his hands fall open between his crooked knees, “it’s just not something I’ve ever been really comfortable with and, er, I...”
The light comes on in Hannibal’s head, and he feels his heart skip a beat.
“Good old guilt,” the kid finally says, trying to smile and then falls back on the step with another groan. “Goddamn headache!”
It all makes sense now. The reaction, the anger, the drinking. Kid’s conflicted. Has to be. So, maybe he really does want to... maybe he would be receptive to... but Hannibal’s not going to make the same mistake twice. “Face,” he says very slowly, “have you ever thought about it? Me and you? Like that?”
The kid’s eyes are closed, and he lays there for a while before answering, so faint Hannibal can barely hear it. “Yeah,” he finally says. “All the time. But...” And there’s a world of pain wrapped up in that single word that has nothing to do with how much he drank last night.
Hannibal considers his options.
There are a hundred things he could say. Like how it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Or why Face is okay with sleeping with every girl he can get his hands on, and the Catholics certainly don’t endorse that and what's-the-issue-here? Or how the Army’s full of shit. Or how Hannibal’s been in love with him since that first day, and that’s the only thing that really matters, and he just wants to bring back that laugh in those blue eyes, no matter what he gets in return...
But he doesn’t say any of that, doesn’t move into Face’s personal space, doesn’t do any of the things he wants to do, because he doesn’t want to spook the kid any more than he already is. It’s not the time to shatter a lifetime of self-image and prejudice and perception and hiding right now. One chip at a time, and maybe that wall might come down.
“You want to go inside and talk about it?” Hannibal asks. Seems innocuous enough, easy and threat-free, and Face pushes himself off the cold concrete with something like fear in his eyes, but not quite.
“Talk?”
“Talk.”
The kid nods, and, for Hannibal, right now, that’s enough.
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: none
Summary: A fill for this prompt on the original kink meme.
I have to stay up all night to write a friggin' essay on American immigration and I'm bored :( Please, kind anons, would anyone fill this prompt for me?
Hannibal, all self-assured and awesome like he is, is convinced that Face LIKES him (what with Face being all, "I AM HANNIBAL'S SPECIAL PET!"). He's all for it and pursues Face, but when he makes a move on Face the latter is all, "Whoa, hey, sorry but you misunderstood, I don't like you like that."
Cue... Angsty Hannibal? Angry Hannibal? Determined-to-make-Face-see-reason-Hannibal? Movie or tv verse, happy or sad ending, it's all the same to me - just make Face actually reject Hannibal once ^^
Face reacts badly to Hannibal coming onto him, really badly, and Hannibal tries to figure out what’s going on with his boy...
Really, looking back at it, how the hell was he supposed to know? All the signs were there. Weren’t all the signs there? All the little glances, the touches, the way he moved, just shy of a saunter, not quite anything else. The bickering and the laughter, the way he pouted when he got an order and the way his eyes lit up when he got praise. All these things... weren’t they signs?
“Hannibal, what are you doing?”
He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to catch his breath. Opens them. How long has he wanted to do that? Just gather his courage and walk up behind the kid and just kiss him stupid like this, feel the kid’s body melt into his like it did, feel the kid’s lips open just a little, soft and intimate and so much better than he’d ever imagined.
Then Face went stiff, and now he’s asking him what’s he’s doing.
Face is just hesitating, probably worried about that stupid fucking policy... “It’s okay, kid, I know...”
“Know what?” Face breathes, quiet, unsure. It’s sweet.
He lets his hand stray up into the kid’s hair a little ways. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been wanting it, too.”
They’re both evaluating. He knows Face, and there’s a powerful range of something or other going through the kid’s head, considering what’s going on, thinking, mind racing towards an answer.
There it is. His eyes, those lovely blue eyes, are flashing with something that might be realization.
But it’s not exactly what Hannibal expects, because that’s when Face shoves him away. Hannibal’s not expecting it, so it almost knocks him over and he stumbles a little as he catches himself, avoiding the carpet.
All that warm, beautiful skin is gone. The kid’s staring at him, rejecting in a moment the kiss that’s taken the older man nearly six years to work up the courage to give.
“Oh, fuck that, Hannibal.”
What?
“Face...”
“Not okay. So not okay.”
So now Face is tense, a fist clenched, feet spread just a little, ready. Automatic, but no less threatening. There’s no humor in him now, not that natural, easy kind. The kid’s got a brittle smile on, a bitter kind of humor. He’s seen this in his lieutenant before, and it’s never, never a good thing.
“Sorry, uh, I... shit, kid...” He doesn’t have words for it. He’s embarrassed. It’s been years since he felt that particular emotion. He doesn’t like remembering how it feels.
“I... am not a fag.” He draws out the last word, biting it off, still staring at Hannibal.
“Watch your mouth, lieutenant,” Hannibal snaps, finding his voice in his rank, in the unexpected insult, hating himself for using it.
Face doesn’t relax. “Whatever you say, colonel,” he replies in that same heart-wrenching tone, and Hannibal knows, just knows, he’s lost this one.
He should have known. Shit, he should have known.
“Sorry for the presumption, kid,” Hannibal says softly, wanting to reassure the younger man by touching his shoulder, something like that, but it’s not the time and he beats a fast retreat from the small den, past the living room where Murdock’s watching cartoons and BA’s fiddling with some engine component, right back to his bedroom, where he locks the door and turns off the lights and falls back on the bed, hands over his eyes, miserable, trying to figure this out.
How did he miscalculate so badly?
He lays there for a long time, trying to figure it out, and when he finally drifts off to sleep, the question follows him into his dreams.
+++++
It’s a week before it comes up again.
Face acts like nothing’s wrong. Natural and friendly, joking and light, all those little things still there that Hannibal once thought were aimed at him. Wrong. He’d been so wrong to do that, to take that, without asking, without checking...
But there’s something else going on, under the surface. The little glances are still there, but he can’t figure out what he’s picking up. Face is a good actor, one of the best, but Hannibal knows his boy. And he’s definitely hiding something.
Hannibal thinks, at first, that it might be that the kid’s mad at him and doesn’t want the other two to know. That word, “fag”, hissed at him with such hatred, is still echoing through his head. Every time he looks at Face, he can hear him saying it again. The fury was unmistakable.
Yet...
Face reacted, didn’t he? Didn’t he lean into it, didn’t he let it go on for long seconds? He didn’t push Hannibal away immediately, and would be enough for the colonel, if he didn’t feel so horrible about forcing himself on the kid.
So, he stays torn between wanting Face and wanting Face to be happy, which are now two completely different things. Hannibal’s always hoped they could be one and the same. Not now. Maybe never now.
He’s determined to leave the subject alone, completely, never bring it up again at all, except they’re at the O-Club and Face is drinking heavier than he usually does and hustling pool and Murdock’s tugging Hannibal away from his conversation with one of the brigade commanders.
“What is it, captain?”
“You may wanna stop this,” Murdock says quietly he points. Face is leaning on his cue, laughing loudly, and his voice is carrying.
Gay jokes are standard around the DoD. Nobody else on the fucking planet, it seems, are as touchy about their sexuality as American military men. Hannibal’s gotten used to it over the years, although there’s always a bit of a sting when he hears one. Part of the job.
Face is currently in middle of one of his stories, about a trip downtown to Dubai, where he kept getting hit on by men the whole night. The Arabs aren’t shy about that kind of thing, and everyone’s had some kind of passing encounter on a deployment. But Face is starting to get mean about it and everyone else is laughing right along and it sort of implodes something in Hannibal’s chest.
He doesn’t know whether he’s hurt or worried, mad or concerned, but he goes over there anyway. “Face, we’re leaving.”
The kid looks at him with booze-bleared eyes. “Haven’t even gotten to the good part, yet, boss. Remember when that one asshole tried to get his hand down my pants?”
“Fucking homos,” one the pilots he’s playing with says, and Murdock’s watching, close enough to jump in if he needs to.
“No shit,” Face says loudly and off-key, and finishes off a shot of something brown and strong-looking. Why is the kid doing shots? “And then Hannibal here, like, socks the guy in the head. Remember that, boss? You were so pissed off...”
Yeah, he remembers. Face laughs about it now, but Hannibal clearly remembers him crying on his shoulder later that night. Maybe he should have remembered that last week. Kid's clearly got some kind of issue here. But they’re not going to talk about that right now, and not in front of a bunch of flyboys who aren’t part of the family and wouldn’t understand. Hannibal pries the pool cue out of his hands and grabs him bodily by the collar. “We’re leaving, lieutenant,” he growls, and hauls his boy out of the club.
Murdock offers to take him back to the dorms, but there’s no way Hannibal’s leaving him alone tonight. Something’s going on. He’d be doing Face a disservice to not at least try to understand.
He takes the kid back to his own apartment, a small place in a decent neighborhood and dumps him on the couch with a stern warning and a couple of tylenol, but Face is too sleepy at this point to care. He curls up, muttering to himself, but the colonel definitely catches his own name in there.
"Hannibal..."
“Right here, kid,” he says, and lets a hand kind of fall on the lieutenant’s shoulder. He can’t help it. But there are tears of Face’s cheeks now, and he’s either asleep or pretending to be. There won't be any talk tonight.
Hannibal watches him for a moment. All his boys have crashed here before, right there on the couch, Face most frequently of all. Those nights were always sleepless for Hannibal, the lieutenant so close and so far away. He shakes himself out of that - Face has made himself pretty damn clear - and goes for a blanket for the kid.
He doesn't sleep well that night, either.
+++++
He’s woken by the sound of the front door opening, and that’s just fucking wonderful.
Face is outside on the landing, cell phone out, calling Murdock or a cab or whoever his girl is this week, and doesn’t even look up as Hannibal sits down next to him.
“You aren’t going anywhere, kid,” Hannibal tells him, taking the phone away.
“Can’t keep me here, boss.”
“We need to talk.”
Face groans melodramatically and drops his head into his hand. “Fucking headache.” Hannibal hands him the bottle of pills and Face swallows four down dry. “I am never doing Wild Turkey again.”
Hannibal winces in sympathy. Bad choice. Bad, bad choice in alcohol there. “You were certainly going at it last night, kid. Remember anything?”
The kid is silent for a moment, and then turns bright red. “Was I talking about Dubai?”
“Yeah.”
“I, I...you’re probably pretty pissed at me.”
“Why would I be mad with you? You were extremely drunk,” Hannibal says, and tries to chuckle. “And it is kind of a funny story.”
“I don’t want you to think that I think about you like... like... that. I’ve got nothing but respect, boss...”
“Face, it’s okay,” Hannibal says, staring up at the eves of the apartment complex, struggling against himself now. It’s not okay. It’s not okay at all. But he can’t stand listening to half-baked explanations and justifications. “I should apologize, for...”
But Face is still going. “...I mean, I don’t have anything against it, I was just in that orphanage and the sisters were all hard-core and then there was the Army, which hates it even more than the Church does...”
There was an interesting point Hannibal hadn’t considered before, and he’s trying to pay attention, but his brain’s definitely latched onto this idea and won’t let it go. “So, what are you trying to say, kid?”
“I’m just,” and his hands fall open between his crooked knees, “it’s just not something I’ve ever been really comfortable with and, er, I...”
The light comes on in Hannibal’s head, and he feels his heart skip a beat.
“Good old guilt,” the kid finally says, trying to smile and then falls back on the step with another groan. “Goddamn headache!”
It all makes sense now. The reaction, the anger, the drinking. Kid’s conflicted. Has to be. So, maybe he really does want to... maybe he would be receptive to... but Hannibal’s not going to make the same mistake twice. “Face,” he says very slowly, “have you ever thought about it? Me and you? Like that?”
The kid’s eyes are closed, and he lays there for a while before answering, so faint Hannibal can barely hear it. “Yeah,” he finally says. “All the time. But...” And there’s a world of pain wrapped up in that single word that has nothing to do with how much he drank last night.
Hannibal considers his options.
There are a hundred things he could say. Like how it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Or why Face is okay with sleeping with every girl he can get his hands on, and the Catholics certainly don’t endorse that and what's-the-issue-here? Or how the Army’s full of shit. Or how Hannibal’s been in love with him since that first day, and that’s the only thing that really matters, and he just wants to bring back that laugh in those blue eyes, no matter what he gets in return...
But he doesn’t say any of that, doesn’t move into Face’s personal space, doesn’t do any of the things he wants to do, because he doesn’t want to spook the kid any more than he already is. It’s not the time to shatter a lifetime of self-image and prejudice and perception and hiding right now. One chip at a time, and maybe that wall might come down.
“You want to go inside and talk about it?” Hannibal asks. Seems innocuous enough, easy and threat-free, and Face pushes himself off the cold concrete with something like fear in his eyes, but not quite.
“Talk?”
“Talk.”
The kid nods, and, for Hannibal, right now, that’s enough.
