A Mother's Love - Part Twenty Seven
Nov. 4th, 2011 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_angelsThe drive to Adele’s hotel gave Face the time he needed to calm down just enough to pull together a rudimentary plan in his head. His initial thought of going straight to her room, kicking the door down and yelling at her until she gave him some answers was replaced by something with just slightly more elegance.
He smiled at the concierge as he arrived, sliding a few notes across the counter and wishing he’d thought to change out of his jeans and Hannibal’s sweatshirt. The concierge was putty in his hands, agreeing to pass his message along and Face wandered into the almost empty bar to wait, choosing a secluded table at the back of the room and ordering a club soda.
The twenty minute wait was hell on his nerves however, and by the time Adele drifted into the bar, her face a mask of anguished concern, Face had already caved in and asked for a shot of vodka in his soda.
“Darling,” she gushed, sliding into the booth opposite him and taking his hand in hers, “I got your message, whatever is the matter?”
Face had to physically stop himself from yanking his hand away from that cold, firm grip, and instead slid seamlessly into his prepared speech. “Mother,” he spoke quietly, holding her eyes with his best intense stare, “I need to know if you are serious about wanting me to come to New York with you.”
Adele’s eyes widened in fake shock, “Oh, course I am darling, why wouldn’t I be?”
Taking a deep breath, Face pushed on. “Well, we need to leave today then, right now. I’ve got a car, are you ready to go?”
The look on Adele’s face was priceless and Face had to work hard to make sure he didn’t laugh. He was sure it took a fair bit to pull the carpet out from underneath her, and he hoped it wouldn’t be the first time in this conversation that he managed to do it, but he needed answers, answers he knew damn well she would never give if he just asked. “I... well... yes, dear... but... now?”
Face pulled a look of anguish onto his face, thinking of Murdock lying pale and still in that hospital bed made it pretty easy, and drew out his next move. “Yes. I spoke to Hannibal and he won’t let me go with you, so I’ve snuck away from them. Once they find out I’ve gone, they’ll come after me which is why we need to leave now.”
For a second Adele was clearly lost for words, but then she got her head back into the game, “He won’t let you go?” She frowned, “Why would he stop you?”
Shrugging, Face took a swig of his drink, “Because he needs me for a job we’re doing. He’s my boss; he gets to say when I can get time off, just like any boss.”
“But,” Adele’s eyes were wide. “I’m dying. Didn’t you tell him that?”
Again Face shrugged, enjoying twisting this particular knife, “He says he’s not bothered and I shouldn’t be either. He says I’ve hardly known you five minutes, why should I care if you die?”
Adele’s face was a picture, and Face wondered if her ‘dying’ routine had been so convincing that she had even started to persuade herself it was true. But then the con-woman in her surfaced once more and moved onto the real objection she had to Face’s change of plan. “But, Danny, how can you just leave now, like this? Don’t you need to get your things?”
“I don't need any,” Face replied quickly. “I travel very light.”
Pausing, Adele let her mind whirl around the problem here; Danny in New York without any money was no use to anyone. “What about money?” she asked him carefully, “Do you have enough to see you through all your time without work?”
Face let his eyes widen and even fill with tears as he leaned towards her. “I don’t have any,” he whispered sadly, somehow feeling they were getting to the crux of the matter here, “I thought I could just stay with you in New York?”
And then he knew he’d got her. He watched as she flinched and almost pulled her hand away from him before thinking better of it and leaning in once again. “Danny,” she whispered, stroking his wrist in a way that sent shivers running up and down his spine, “I know about the money from Baghdad, you don’t have to hide that from me.”
So there it was, she thought he was rich; somehow hiding away a stash of those billions of dollars that had gone up in flames the night that Pike and Morrison had set them up, and even though it had been expected, that realisation was like an icy cold stake right through his heart and he struggled to hold back the tears. “That money?” he whispered, his voice rough. “That’s why you did it, hey? You pretended you were dying just to get your hands on some of that money?”
It was like time just stopped for a few seconds. Adele’s fingers froze in their act of stroking his wrist and their eyes locked – he could see the almost-panic in hers and he hoped to hell that she could see the barely contained fury in his.
Eventually she decided to brazen it out. “Money?” she had a perfect hurt/confused expression on her face as she carefully tried to withdraw her hand. “I have no idea what you mean, darling.”
Real fear flashed over her as Face tightened his fingers, not permitting her to pull back from him and he let his expression fall open, allowing the anger, the seriousness, the coldness of his eyes wash over her. “Yes, you do,” he whispered, low and dangerous. “Somehow you found out about the counterfeit money and that was what prompted you to get in touch with me after all these years. All that business about wanting to get to know me, how you were dying,” Face felt the fury leak out in that one word and he reined himself back in; if he let it all out now, all the pain, all the anger... well, he had no idea what he would do. “That was all a load of horse shit wasn’t it? Just a ruse to try and get me to sign it all over to you.”
Adele stared at him, for once in her life lost for words as she looked into his cold blue eyes, recognising herself in him for the very first time.
“But it didn’t work did it?” Face smiled a brittle, hard smile, enjoying the fear that lurked in her eyes. “Because I never cared enough about you to want to give you anything,” he couldn’t resist the opportunity to inflict a little pain himself. “And that was before I found out that you had tried to poison Murdock, because you did, didn’t you?”
He let the silence fall, let it wash over them both. His fingers, tight on her wrist could feel her pulse jumping frantically against her skin and a savage satisfaction unfurled within him. She was scared, he was scaring her. Good.
But then Adele decided to fight back. “Yes I did!” she hissed, trying to drown her fear in anger. “He threatened to spoil my game and tip you off, and I couldn’t have that, not when I could tell you were so close to caving in.”
“So he deserved to die?” Face spat coldly.
“No,” Adele’s cold laugh chilled him, “he was never supposed to die! He was supposed to revert to type, have another one of his crazy spells, end up in the nut house again where he could rant and rave about me from the safety of his strait-jacket and no one would ever believe him!”
Face whipped his hand away in disgust and tightened his fingers into fists. He’d knocked people out for less than that in the past and her words cut him to the core as he knew how close they were to being true... and for Murdock to end up like that would be a fate worse than death for him - for them all.
Adele sneered at the horror in his face and pressed her advantage. “And yes, I came after you because of the money, of course it was because of the money, why on earth would I want you otherwise?”
Her words were like a solid slap and Face fought hard to get hold of some of that anger again, something that would protect him from the searing pain right through his chest. But it was suddenly so hard to find and instead he just looked at her, hiding his agony under nothing more substantial than a blank stare.
“After all, I went to all that trouble to ditch you the first time, grabbing, needy little thing that you were, why the hell would I ever want you back in my life again?”
“There was no one after you?” The words were out of Face’s mouth before he could stop them and he could have kicked himself for letting them out, especially when Adele laughed out loud at him.
“Oh, no! My poor little Danny! Did you believe that story, about the big, bad man wanting to catch your mommy?” She smirked coldly at him. “I suppose it’s easy to believe what you’ve always wanted to hear isn’t it? Would the truth have been harder to swallow?”
“Shut up,” Face muttered under his breath.
“What’s the matter? You don't want to hear what really happened back then?”
“Shut up!” he repeated, teeth clenched, finger nails digging crescents into his palms.
“Scared of the truth about yourself, darling?” Adele mocked.
“I know the truth already!” Face exploded, “I know about the trailer and your drinking and the whoring around and the way you’d get me to steal for you and hit me when I didn't do things right! I know about all the men as well and the way that you would let them touch me if they’d leave you a bit of hash or a bottle of vodka when they were done!”
All the blood drained from Adele’s face and her eyes quickly flicked around to make sure no one had heard him. “Oh, really?” she asked coldly. “Well, if you remember all that, then surely you would remember that I did meet a man and he offered to take me to New York and make me into a top model, living the high life and all that that entailed, and you!” she stabbed a manicured finger at him, “were most certainly not invited!”
Face felt his cheeks pale and hated himself for it when he saw the look of victory that swept across Adele’s face.
“That’s right, dear,” she hissed, twisting her own knife now, “you’d always been nothing more than an inconvenience to me in the past, but by then you were a blight on my entire existence! Always so damn clingy, wanting hugs and approval and climbing into bed with me the whole damn time and asking if you were a good boy...” she shook her head, her lipped curled in disgust. “You ought to count yourself lucky that we passed that orphanage that night, my original idea had been to just leave you on a street corner somewhere!”
Despite everything that Face had ever gone through in his life up to that point, despite every low opinion that he’d ever had of himself and every put down that others had heaped upon him, those words hurt him more than anything that had ever come before. He just stared at her, hating the way he knew from her smirk that his agony was etched all over his face, hating her for saying those things, thinking those things, but most of all, hating himself for being nothing she’d wanted back then, being so unlovable and repulsive that she had wished him dead.
Adele could see the devastation in his eyes and knew her victory in this battle was just around the corner so she leant in for the death blow, “And you are just the same now aren’t you?” she whispered. “Except it’s not me that you are clinging onto all the time, refusing to see when you aren’t wanted. No, now you have latched yourself onto John and the others, sucking them dry like the emotional parasite you are!”
Face’s heart was pounding hard against his chest as her words wrapped round and round his mind like a giant boa constrictor. “You said John didn’t want you to go to New York?” she spat at him. “That was a lie wasn’t it? He wanted you to go really didn’t he? A chance to get you out from under his feet, to cut the ties that are slowly choking him to death!”
And now Face was reeling. Hannibal had said that hadn’t he? He had told Face to go to New York, said it was the best thing to do... Hadn’t he? Or had he? Suddenly it was all just a confusing blur. He heard Adele laugh at him and he fought hard in his memories for the words that had actually been spoken that night but they wouldn’t come, nothing about the New York discussion would come...
“Ahhh, what’s the matter?” Adele mocked him in a voice that had him longing to put a fist into her mouth, “Never noticed how much you annoy John before? Truth hurt, darling?”
She was right; he did annoy Hannibal, all the damn time. It was like Face had a hot wire straight to Hannibal’s temper; no one could get to the boss as much as he could, no one made him so angry and frustrated at times.
“Oh dear,” Adele laughed, “seems I’ve knocked open can of truth worms, hey, Danny?”
He suddenly wanted to run, get out of this booth and just flee, from this woman, the team who didn’t want him, from Hannibal who had obviously been wanting him to go for so, so long now...
“Go on,” she hissed, “run away. You know they want you to, you know John is just desperate to be free of you...”
Face tensed, the muscles in his legs bunching to do exactly what she was suggesting and then it suddenly came back to him, the words from that night, exactly what Hannibal had said to him, ’ The very, very, last thing I want to do is to spend one more night away from your side...’ And Face had believed him, why? Because Hannibal had held him and stroked him and then taken him to bed and loved him, because that’s what Hannibal did, he loved him, and so did Murdock, and so, in his own gruff way, did BA. Adele never had, and ever since he’d met her, Face had kind of known that any way, but his team, well they always had – and they always would.
He willed his muscles to relax and stop shaking and forced himself to meet Adele’s mocking stare head on. “You have no idea how stupid your lies sound,” he told her calmly. “Hannibal never wanted me to go anywhere. He loves me.” She raised a patronising eyebrow at him. “He’s in love with me,” Face clarified. “You always thought you had a chance with him?” Now it was his turn to look at her in mock sympathy, “You never did. He’s taken. By me.”
Emotions rolled over Adele’s face in almost comical quick succession. Shock, disbelief, humiliation and finally determination, and with a cold sneer, she had one more attempt at driving home her absolute destruction of him. “You think he loves you?” she scoffed. “Just because he fucks you every once in a while?” She saw the flinch that Face couldn’t hold back at her words and forged on. “He doesn’t love you! It’s no such thing at all. You said yourself how difficult it is for any of you to have a girlfriend in your current situation, all you are to him is sexual relief, a warm hole for him to come in! You think it’s more than that?” She shook her head at him, “Then I pity you and the heart ache you have coming your way.”
For a second, the desperation threatened to swallow him whole, but then Hannibal’s voice sounded loud and clear above the roaring in his ears. ‘I love you, Temp, with everything I am.’ and it gave him the strength he needed to swallow the threatening panic down and smile serenely at Adele. “He loves me,” he reiterated, knowing with absolute certainty that it was true. “Twenty years we’ve been lovers,” he smirked at the shock she couldn’t hide. “That’s right, from long before he had no other choices, he chose me to share his life with him.” Adele just stared as Face pushed on, “I was seventeen when he picked me out. He was the first person ever to love me, the first person ever to make love to me. He gave me my name and he gave me my life. He means more to me than you ever could, and that’s exactly the way I want it.”
He slowly got to his feet, holding her eyes with his own as he stood. “I am going to walk out of here now, Adele, and you are going to pack your bags and get the hell out of LA.” She just stared at him, lost for words once more. He considered her, tilting his head in thought. “If I could have my time with you again, you know, I actually wouldn’t change a single thing, even if I could pick any woman at random off the street and know damn well that she would make a better mother than you ever did. You said once that walking out on me was for the best, and out of all the lies you’ve spun, that’s the one true thing that left your lips. You leaving me pushed me into Hannibal’s path, and with that my life is complete. The next time you consider the fact that your handsome prince never arrived, remember that I have been living with mine for over half my life now.” Face smiled as he saw the realisation of the truth in his words as it hit her.
He tugged Hannibal’s sweatshirt down over his hips. “You are never going to darken my door again,” he told her, quiet but confident. “And if I ever find you anywhere near BA or Hannibal or Murdock...” he shook his head sadly, “then I will kill you. You understand me?” He was gratified to see the fear in her eyes. “And if Murdock doesn’t make a full recovery from your little stunt,” he shrugged, “I’ll kill you anyway. Poison you with something you don’t even see coming. Think on that the next time you stuff a three course meal down your neck in a restaurant.”
Adele looked up at him, and he knew she was taking him very, very seriously indeed. “Goodbye,” he said quietly, turned on his heel, and walked out.
He stalked straight out into the sunshine, but he could already feel the shaking starting up in his legs and the cold sweat across his back. He looked for a taxi and reached out to hail one, but then realised he would never make it and instead turned into the alley at the side of the hotel, only just managing to get behind the cover of the first trash can before his breakfast came up all over the ground.
He wretched over and over again, even when there was nothing left to come up, but then his sixth sense kicked in and he felt someone behind him as he dry heaved into the gutter. In a flash he straightened and turned, bringing his arm up at the same time and feeling the satisfying thump of cheekbone against elbow even as the sharp sting of a needle in his neck caught his attention.
He stumbled as he looked up, his vision already starting to grey around the edges, and frowned as his knees hit the ground with a bone jarring thud. His last conscious thoughts as the blackness swirled in and took him were, who was that man in the dark suit smiling coldly at him? And why did he look so damn familiar?
Next
He smiled at the concierge as he arrived, sliding a few notes across the counter and wishing he’d thought to change out of his jeans and Hannibal’s sweatshirt. The concierge was putty in his hands, agreeing to pass his message along and Face wandered into the almost empty bar to wait, choosing a secluded table at the back of the room and ordering a club soda.
The twenty minute wait was hell on his nerves however, and by the time Adele drifted into the bar, her face a mask of anguished concern, Face had already caved in and asked for a shot of vodka in his soda.
“Darling,” she gushed, sliding into the booth opposite him and taking his hand in hers, “I got your message, whatever is the matter?”
Face had to physically stop himself from yanking his hand away from that cold, firm grip, and instead slid seamlessly into his prepared speech. “Mother,” he spoke quietly, holding her eyes with his best intense stare, “I need to know if you are serious about wanting me to come to New York with you.”
Adele’s eyes widened in fake shock, “Oh, course I am darling, why wouldn’t I be?”
Taking a deep breath, Face pushed on. “Well, we need to leave today then, right now. I’ve got a car, are you ready to go?”
The look on Adele’s face was priceless and Face had to work hard to make sure he didn’t laugh. He was sure it took a fair bit to pull the carpet out from underneath her, and he hoped it wouldn’t be the first time in this conversation that he managed to do it, but he needed answers, answers he knew damn well she would never give if he just asked. “I... well... yes, dear... but... now?”
Face pulled a look of anguish onto his face, thinking of Murdock lying pale and still in that hospital bed made it pretty easy, and drew out his next move. “Yes. I spoke to Hannibal and he won’t let me go with you, so I’ve snuck away from them. Once they find out I’ve gone, they’ll come after me which is why we need to leave now.”
For a second Adele was clearly lost for words, but then she got her head back into the game, “He won’t let you go?” She frowned, “Why would he stop you?”
Shrugging, Face took a swig of his drink, “Because he needs me for a job we’re doing. He’s my boss; he gets to say when I can get time off, just like any boss.”
“But,” Adele’s eyes were wide. “I’m dying. Didn’t you tell him that?”
Again Face shrugged, enjoying twisting this particular knife, “He says he’s not bothered and I shouldn’t be either. He says I’ve hardly known you five minutes, why should I care if you die?”
Adele’s face was a picture, and Face wondered if her ‘dying’ routine had been so convincing that she had even started to persuade herself it was true. But then the con-woman in her surfaced once more and moved onto the real objection she had to Face’s change of plan. “But, Danny, how can you just leave now, like this? Don’t you need to get your things?”
“I don't need any,” Face replied quickly. “I travel very light.”
Pausing, Adele let her mind whirl around the problem here; Danny in New York without any money was no use to anyone. “What about money?” she asked him carefully, “Do you have enough to see you through all your time without work?”
Face let his eyes widen and even fill with tears as he leaned towards her. “I don’t have any,” he whispered sadly, somehow feeling they were getting to the crux of the matter here, “I thought I could just stay with you in New York?”
And then he knew he’d got her. He watched as she flinched and almost pulled her hand away from him before thinking better of it and leaning in once again. “Danny,” she whispered, stroking his wrist in a way that sent shivers running up and down his spine, “I know about the money from Baghdad, you don’t have to hide that from me.”
So there it was, she thought he was rich; somehow hiding away a stash of those billions of dollars that had gone up in flames the night that Pike and Morrison had set them up, and even though it had been expected, that realisation was like an icy cold stake right through his heart and he struggled to hold back the tears. “That money?” he whispered, his voice rough. “That’s why you did it, hey? You pretended you were dying just to get your hands on some of that money?”
It was like time just stopped for a few seconds. Adele’s fingers froze in their act of stroking his wrist and their eyes locked – he could see the almost-panic in hers and he hoped to hell that she could see the barely contained fury in his.
Eventually she decided to brazen it out. “Money?” she had a perfect hurt/confused expression on her face as she carefully tried to withdraw her hand. “I have no idea what you mean, darling.”
Real fear flashed over her as Face tightened his fingers, not permitting her to pull back from him and he let his expression fall open, allowing the anger, the seriousness, the coldness of his eyes wash over her. “Yes, you do,” he whispered, low and dangerous. “Somehow you found out about the counterfeit money and that was what prompted you to get in touch with me after all these years. All that business about wanting to get to know me, how you were dying,” Face felt the fury leak out in that one word and he reined himself back in; if he let it all out now, all the pain, all the anger... well, he had no idea what he would do. “That was all a load of horse shit wasn’t it? Just a ruse to try and get me to sign it all over to you.”
Adele stared at him, for once in her life lost for words as she looked into his cold blue eyes, recognising herself in him for the very first time.
“But it didn’t work did it?” Face smiled a brittle, hard smile, enjoying the fear that lurked in her eyes. “Because I never cared enough about you to want to give you anything,” he couldn’t resist the opportunity to inflict a little pain himself. “And that was before I found out that you had tried to poison Murdock, because you did, didn’t you?”
He let the silence fall, let it wash over them both. His fingers, tight on her wrist could feel her pulse jumping frantically against her skin and a savage satisfaction unfurled within him. She was scared, he was scaring her. Good.
But then Adele decided to fight back. “Yes I did!” she hissed, trying to drown her fear in anger. “He threatened to spoil my game and tip you off, and I couldn’t have that, not when I could tell you were so close to caving in.”
“So he deserved to die?” Face spat coldly.
“No,” Adele’s cold laugh chilled him, “he was never supposed to die! He was supposed to revert to type, have another one of his crazy spells, end up in the nut house again where he could rant and rave about me from the safety of his strait-jacket and no one would ever believe him!”
Face whipped his hand away in disgust and tightened his fingers into fists. He’d knocked people out for less than that in the past and her words cut him to the core as he knew how close they were to being true... and for Murdock to end up like that would be a fate worse than death for him - for them all.
Adele sneered at the horror in his face and pressed her advantage. “And yes, I came after you because of the money, of course it was because of the money, why on earth would I want you otherwise?”
Her words were like a solid slap and Face fought hard to get hold of some of that anger again, something that would protect him from the searing pain right through his chest. But it was suddenly so hard to find and instead he just looked at her, hiding his agony under nothing more substantial than a blank stare.
“After all, I went to all that trouble to ditch you the first time, grabbing, needy little thing that you were, why the hell would I ever want you back in my life again?”
“There was no one after you?” The words were out of Face’s mouth before he could stop them and he could have kicked himself for letting them out, especially when Adele laughed out loud at him.
“Oh, no! My poor little Danny! Did you believe that story, about the big, bad man wanting to catch your mommy?” She smirked coldly at him. “I suppose it’s easy to believe what you’ve always wanted to hear isn’t it? Would the truth have been harder to swallow?”
“Shut up,” Face muttered under his breath.
“What’s the matter? You don't want to hear what really happened back then?”
“Shut up!” he repeated, teeth clenched, finger nails digging crescents into his palms.
“Scared of the truth about yourself, darling?” Adele mocked.
“I know the truth already!” Face exploded, “I know about the trailer and your drinking and the whoring around and the way you’d get me to steal for you and hit me when I didn't do things right! I know about all the men as well and the way that you would let them touch me if they’d leave you a bit of hash or a bottle of vodka when they were done!”
All the blood drained from Adele’s face and her eyes quickly flicked around to make sure no one had heard him. “Oh, really?” she asked coldly. “Well, if you remember all that, then surely you would remember that I did meet a man and he offered to take me to New York and make me into a top model, living the high life and all that that entailed, and you!” she stabbed a manicured finger at him, “were most certainly not invited!”
Face felt his cheeks pale and hated himself for it when he saw the look of victory that swept across Adele’s face.
“That’s right, dear,” she hissed, twisting her own knife now, “you’d always been nothing more than an inconvenience to me in the past, but by then you were a blight on my entire existence! Always so damn clingy, wanting hugs and approval and climbing into bed with me the whole damn time and asking if you were a good boy...” she shook her head, her lipped curled in disgust. “You ought to count yourself lucky that we passed that orphanage that night, my original idea had been to just leave you on a street corner somewhere!”
Despite everything that Face had ever gone through in his life up to that point, despite every low opinion that he’d ever had of himself and every put down that others had heaped upon him, those words hurt him more than anything that had ever come before. He just stared at her, hating the way he knew from her smirk that his agony was etched all over his face, hating her for saying those things, thinking those things, but most of all, hating himself for being nothing she’d wanted back then, being so unlovable and repulsive that she had wished him dead.
Adele could see the devastation in his eyes and knew her victory in this battle was just around the corner so she leant in for the death blow, “And you are just the same now aren’t you?” she whispered. “Except it’s not me that you are clinging onto all the time, refusing to see when you aren’t wanted. No, now you have latched yourself onto John and the others, sucking them dry like the emotional parasite you are!”
Face’s heart was pounding hard against his chest as her words wrapped round and round his mind like a giant boa constrictor. “You said John didn’t want you to go to New York?” she spat at him. “That was a lie wasn’t it? He wanted you to go really didn’t he? A chance to get you out from under his feet, to cut the ties that are slowly choking him to death!”
And now Face was reeling. Hannibal had said that hadn’t he? He had told Face to go to New York, said it was the best thing to do... Hadn’t he? Or had he? Suddenly it was all just a confusing blur. He heard Adele laugh at him and he fought hard in his memories for the words that had actually been spoken that night but they wouldn’t come, nothing about the New York discussion would come...
“Ahhh, what’s the matter?” Adele mocked him in a voice that had him longing to put a fist into her mouth, “Never noticed how much you annoy John before? Truth hurt, darling?”
She was right; he did annoy Hannibal, all the damn time. It was like Face had a hot wire straight to Hannibal’s temper; no one could get to the boss as much as he could, no one made him so angry and frustrated at times.
“Oh dear,” Adele laughed, “seems I’ve knocked open can of truth worms, hey, Danny?”
He suddenly wanted to run, get out of this booth and just flee, from this woman, the team who didn’t want him, from Hannibal who had obviously been wanting him to go for so, so long now...
“Go on,” she hissed, “run away. You know they want you to, you know John is just desperate to be free of you...”
Face tensed, the muscles in his legs bunching to do exactly what she was suggesting and then it suddenly came back to him, the words from that night, exactly what Hannibal had said to him, ’ The very, very, last thing I want to do is to spend one more night away from your side...’ And Face had believed him, why? Because Hannibal had held him and stroked him and then taken him to bed and loved him, because that’s what Hannibal did, he loved him, and so did Murdock, and so, in his own gruff way, did BA. Adele never had, and ever since he’d met her, Face had kind of known that any way, but his team, well they always had – and they always would.
He willed his muscles to relax and stop shaking and forced himself to meet Adele’s mocking stare head on. “You have no idea how stupid your lies sound,” he told her calmly. “Hannibal never wanted me to go anywhere. He loves me.” She raised a patronising eyebrow at him. “He’s in love with me,” Face clarified. “You always thought you had a chance with him?” Now it was his turn to look at her in mock sympathy, “You never did. He’s taken. By me.”
Emotions rolled over Adele’s face in almost comical quick succession. Shock, disbelief, humiliation and finally determination, and with a cold sneer, she had one more attempt at driving home her absolute destruction of him. “You think he loves you?” she scoffed. “Just because he fucks you every once in a while?” She saw the flinch that Face couldn’t hold back at her words and forged on. “He doesn’t love you! It’s no such thing at all. You said yourself how difficult it is for any of you to have a girlfriend in your current situation, all you are to him is sexual relief, a warm hole for him to come in! You think it’s more than that?” She shook her head at him, “Then I pity you and the heart ache you have coming your way.”
For a second, the desperation threatened to swallow him whole, but then Hannibal’s voice sounded loud and clear above the roaring in his ears. ‘I love you, Temp, with everything I am.’ and it gave him the strength he needed to swallow the threatening panic down and smile serenely at Adele. “He loves me,” he reiterated, knowing with absolute certainty that it was true. “Twenty years we’ve been lovers,” he smirked at the shock she couldn’t hide. “That’s right, from long before he had no other choices, he chose me to share his life with him.” Adele just stared as Face pushed on, “I was seventeen when he picked me out. He was the first person ever to love me, the first person ever to make love to me. He gave me my name and he gave me my life. He means more to me than you ever could, and that’s exactly the way I want it.”
He slowly got to his feet, holding her eyes with his own as he stood. “I am going to walk out of here now, Adele, and you are going to pack your bags and get the hell out of LA.” She just stared at him, lost for words once more. He considered her, tilting his head in thought. “If I could have my time with you again, you know, I actually wouldn’t change a single thing, even if I could pick any woman at random off the street and know damn well that she would make a better mother than you ever did. You said once that walking out on me was for the best, and out of all the lies you’ve spun, that’s the one true thing that left your lips. You leaving me pushed me into Hannibal’s path, and with that my life is complete. The next time you consider the fact that your handsome prince never arrived, remember that I have been living with mine for over half my life now.” Face smiled as he saw the realisation of the truth in his words as it hit her.
He tugged Hannibal’s sweatshirt down over his hips. “You are never going to darken my door again,” he told her, quiet but confident. “And if I ever find you anywhere near BA or Hannibal or Murdock...” he shook his head sadly, “then I will kill you. You understand me?” He was gratified to see the fear in her eyes. “And if Murdock doesn’t make a full recovery from your little stunt,” he shrugged, “I’ll kill you anyway. Poison you with something you don’t even see coming. Think on that the next time you stuff a three course meal down your neck in a restaurant.”
Adele looked up at him, and he knew she was taking him very, very seriously indeed. “Goodbye,” he said quietly, turned on his heel, and walked out.
He stalked straight out into the sunshine, but he could already feel the shaking starting up in his legs and the cold sweat across his back. He looked for a taxi and reached out to hail one, but then realised he would never make it and instead turned into the alley at the side of the hotel, only just managing to get behind the cover of the first trash can before his breakfast came up all over the ground.
He wretched over and over again, even when there was nothing left to come up, but then his sixth sense kicked in and he felt someone behind him as he dry heaved into the gutter. In a flash he straightened and turned, bringing his arm up at the same time and feeling the satisfying thump of cheekbone against elbow even as the sharp sting of a needle in his neck caught his attention.
He stumbled as he looked up, his vision already starting to grey around the edges, and frowned as his knees hit the ground with a bone jarring thud. His last conscious thoughts as the blackness swirled in and took him were, who was that man in the dark suit smiling coldly at him? And why did he look so damn familiar?
Next
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-11-05 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-06 09:05 pm (UTC)