Fanfic- A Losing Battle 3/3
Title- A Losing Battle 3/3
Fandom- Catch Me If You Can
Ship- Carl/Frank
Rating- PG-13
Genre- slash, character study, drama, angst
Warnings- angst, language, UNBETAED CONTENT
Wordcount- 10,000
Disclaimer- I do not own Catch Me If You Can the movie, book, or play; furthermore, this is in no way related to the real person Frank Abagnale Jr.
Summary- Carl and Frank look back on their lives, and the role each has played in the other's
A/N- My first chaptered fanfic! Yay!
Part One
Part Two
It was Christmas again. It amazed Hanratty, how the year had flown by since The Kid had returned to the FBI. Now it was Christmas again, and like always, he was spending it with Frank. Only this time, it wasn’t over the phone or through a piece of glass. The Kid was actually there, in his kitchen, with Hanratty tonight.
He’d invited The Kid over for Christmas dinner, and he’d shown up in mid-afternoon, while Hanratty was preparing said dinner. At the moment, he was trying to explain to The Kid how to make the stuffing for Christmas duck. For someone who’d been on his own since a young age, The Kid had somehow never acquired basic household skills. Probably fraudulently paid people to do all of that for him, before.
They’d both lived off of takeout for the past few months. A little home cooking would do them both good. So would a break. They’d been on the tail of the latest forger for months, and flown all over the country after him. Hanratty had teased The Kid that this was even more difficult than chasing him. The kid replied that Hanratty was just getting old.
Once the duck had been put in the oven, the two of them came to the couch to watch TV. There was some kind of Christmas program on every channel, but it didn’t really matter what they watched. He was just glad to have The Kid here, with him. It was good not to be lonely anymore.
Hanratty hadn’t realized it until now, but he was more than used to having The Kid with him. They’d gone all over the country in the past few months, and Frank had always been right beside him, every step of the way. There had been times when he’d given the young man a gun and told Frank to cover him when he went into a forger’s hideout. He’d never once hesitated to give a gun to one of the most prolific con-men in history. He’d just done it, and trusted that The Kid would indeed have his back. And he had.
There had been times when they’d share a pair of single rooms connected by a bathroom, and take turns showering and brushing their teeth. It felt perfectly natural, like they’d been doing it for years. He’d once surprised himself, after a particularly long road trip, by waiting for several minutes outside the closed door of his own bathroom, before he’d realized that it was empty. There was no one else in his home.
But it was now that it finally hit home how much The Kid had become a fixture in his life. Up to now, he’d always been alone on Christmas. Even when he was calling Frank, or visiting him in prison, there had always been several hours when he was by himself. It was painfully sad. No one should ever be alone on Christmas.
And now he wasn’t. The Kid, Frank, he was here, now, in Hanratty’s apartment. The Kid was here, and he wasn’t alone any more. It was like having a family again. It made a warm, secure, comfortable feeling swell inside Hanratty’s chest. He hoped The Kid never left. At least not tonight. He didn’t want to be alone for any part of Christmas night.
Frank shifted on the couch next to him. He was blinking and his head was bobbing a bit. He was probably exhausted. It had been a rough couple days, and a rough couple months before that. Hanratty reached out and put an arm around The Kid’s shoulders, pulling him over to lean against Hanratty’s shoulder. The Kid didn’t object, but sighed softly and nuzzled against his shoulder. He must have been more tired than Hanratty had thought.
He turned down the volume on the TV to the level of pleasant background noise and ran the hand still around Frank’s shoulders gently down the young man’s back. “Go to sleep, Kid,” Hanratty told him, not caring that the nickname slipped out. He’d been getting much better about that, even in his head, so a little mistake could be forgiven. “I know you’re beat.”
“Don’ wanna miss the duck,” Frank mumbled.
“I’ll wake you up when it’s done. Won’t be for a couple hours. Sleep.” The Kid did as he was told, for once.
* * *
Hanratty watched Frank’s face as he slept. He always looked so peaceful when he was asleep. It was something Hanratty had first noticed on the plane back from France. When he was awake, Frank’s face was always dynamic, always alive with one emotion or another. When he was asleep, he was calm. It was good to see him like that.
Hanratty gently smoothed a few strands of hair from Frank’s angelic face. It occurred to him that he was really pushing it, having The Kid in his home. He’d known for a while that he was attracted to The Kid- that was even part of the reason he’d continued to use the nickname. To remind him that Frank was just a kid, and off-limits for a grown man.
Only he wasn’t a kid anymore. He was an adult, and he was capable of making his own decisions. He’d made a lot of progress since he’d willingly returned to the FBI, and he seemed to trust Hanratty implicitly now. That made it worse, though, when he thought about his feelings for The Kid.
The feelings… were difficult to describe. He wasn’t sure when they’d begun. It had started out as grudging respect for the skilled con-man. Then he’d started digging into Frank’s past and studying his movements and actions, and the information he found made him feel like he knew him, understood what made him tick.
Then the calls had started, and he’d begun to understand Frank beyond knowing why he did what he did. He saw Frank as a person, rather than just facts on a sheet or someone far away that he was hunting. They were alike, in a way. Neither had a family they could go back to, so they threw themselves into their work and tried not to think about it.
That was when it had started, Hanratty supposed, the desire to protect Frank. He understood that Frank felt betrayed by his family, and that this was a big part of why he did what he did. He wanted to protect Frank from feeling betrayed again. And after he’d caught up with The Kid in France, he’d truly been terrified of what the French police would do to him. It was then that the desire to protect him physically had begun.
Some time during the chase, after the first phone call, but before the second, a physical attraction had begun. It was strange, considering he’d only seen The Kid once, but the feeling persisted. He couldn’t get the thought to go away, even after he’d found out Frank was only 16. He was attracted to Frank, but it wasn’t a burning, consuming sort of thing. It was always near-eclipsed by other, stronger feelings, like the desire to protect. And anyway, he respected Frank too much to be thinking about him when he jacked off.
After the arrest, in an effort to keep from betraying Frank himself, Hanratty had kept visiting The Kid in prison. He’d started to talk with him, and think of him as a real friend. When they’d started working together, the feeling had only been solidified. As partners, they had to trust each other, have each other’s backs.
And they spent a lot of time together, too. On road trips, in the office, out to lunch. Even though they rarely went to each other’s homes, there was something about the way they could coexist, and their friendship, and the way they continued to tease and pick at one another, that made Hanratty think of a married couple. Only this was much better than his last marriage.
He loved Frank; that was all there was to it. Carl Hanratty was in love with Frank Abagnale Jr. He wanted to hold him, kiss him, lie on the couch like this with him, and cook dinner with him, like they were doing now. It wasn’t about the physical part of a romantic relationship that he desire, as much as the emotional part.
All the same, it probably wasn’t good to have Frank in his apartment. Hanratty couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t slip up and hug The Kid, or kiss his cheek, or call him ‘Sweetheart’ like in his daydreams.
Because that would be sexual harassment. Not a good thing to have on one’s record with any coworker, but much worse when it was with someone you were clearly in a position of power over. If he slipped up, and Frank told on him, he’d be out the door before he could blink. The Bureau didn’t take such things lightly, and there had been a lot of problems with that of late.
* * *
When the oven beeped, Hanratty found that he would have to wake Frank up before he could get up to take the duck out. But he couldn’t bear to disturb The Kid when he was sleeping so peacefully. As a result, he ended up sitting still until the decision of whether or not to wake Frank was taken from his hands, when the beeping of the oven did it for him.
“Is it done?” Frank asked sleepily. He pushed himself off of Hanratty’s shoulder to sit up straight, then rubbed his eyes and yawned.
“Sounds like it,” Carl replied. “You must be pretty tired.”
“Yeah,” Frank sighed. “I was up all night going through some files. I thought I’d found a lead.”
“Anything?” Hanratty asked eagerly as he opened the oven to remove the duck. It had been so long since they’d last gotten anything new on this guy.
“No. Turned out to be nothing.” Frank sighed heavily, and Hanratty looked over at him. The Kid was sitting on the couch with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, looking worn both physically and mentally. Hanratty felt his heart contract at the sight.
He set the duck on the counter quickly and went over the Frank. Hanratty sat next to the young man on the couch and reached out to clap his shoulder. “It’s alright, Frank, we’ve all chased our share of false leads. Pretty soon this guy’s gonna slip up, and when he does, we’ll get him.”
“I sure hope so, Carl.” Frank turned his head to face Hanratty. “I’m not sure if I’m cut out for this.”
“Maybe not,” Hanratty admitted, giving the man’s shoulder a squeeze where his hand still lay. “But it’s all you can do for now. If you help us with a lot of cases, you may be released from FBI custody even sooner. Then you can do whatever you want.”
“I want to do this,” Frank asserted, glaring just a bit. Then his face fell, and he looked away. “I just don’t know if I can. God, Carl, I never knew how much I put you through.”
Hanratty looked at Frank for a long time. He wanted to say so many things. That Frank was forgiven a thousand times for everything he’d done before. That after this tough case, it’d be easier. That Frank could always come and talk to him, if he needed it.
But he didn’t say any of those things. “Come on. Dinner’s getting cold.”
Hanratty stood, and Frank sighed heavily before pushing himself up. Hanratty put a hand on the young man’s shoulder as he led him into the kitchen, all the comfort he could offer right then.
The duck wasn’t cold, but it had cooled enough not to burn when eaten. As soon as Frank took one bite of it, he seemed to forget about the case. His eyes lit up, and he began wolfing down the food, actually lifting up the plate to shovel it into his mouth. Hanratty had to laugh out loud at the display; it was not what he would have expected from someone who had dined in five-star restaurants.
“Carl!” Frank spoke through a mouthful of stuffing. “This is great! You’ve got to teach me how to cook like this!”
Hanratty chuckled. “I don’t do this very often, since I’m always at the office eating take-out, but I can do a little better than pancakes.”
“So I can only cook pancakes. Sue me!” The Kid said cheerfully, flashing a roguish grin as he leaned back in his seat, plate clean.
“I’ll teach you whatever you want to know. For now, seconds?”
“Nah, I’m stuffed.” Frank patted his stomach. “You haven’t even touched yours!”
“Some people don’t feel the need to devour their food in record time!” Hanratty joked, continuing to eat at a normal pace. Frank laughed softly and leaned back more, so that his chair tipped back on its hind legs.
After a minute he spoke. “Hey, Frank, can I ask you something? A favor?”
Hanratty stopped eating to look at the man. Frank dropped the chair onto all four legs. “Sure, Frank, anything.”
“Can I spend the night here?” He seemed embarrassed by the request, for he quickly looked away. “I’ll sleep on the couch. I just don’t want to be alone on Christmas.”
“Sure, Frank,” Hanratty said with the utmost seriousness. “Of course you can.”
“Really?” Frank smiled a little. “Thanks, Carl.”
The rest of the meal was finished with companionable chatter, which both of them made certain stayed away from both work and family. After the meal had been eaten, dishes were loaded into the washer, and the leftover food was packed away.
It was late, so Hanratty began looking for spare blankets and pillows to accommodate Frank. The young man, meanwhile, made use of the spare toothbrush in the bathroom. By the time he came out, Hanratty had arranged a small blanket and a quilt on the couch, as well as the second pillow from his bed.
Frank was wearing only his shirt and boxers when he came out of the bathroom. He surveyed the makeshift bed and sat on it, looking up at Hanratty. “Thanks for letting me stay here, Carl.”
“You can stay here whenever you want,” Hanratty assured him. “Probably better than that tiny apartment you have.”
“The FBI doesn’t pay me.” Frank didn’t sound bitter. Angry, a little, but not bitter. “All they’ll give me is what they’d pay to house an inmate at a prison, and they expect me to live off of that.”
Hanratty sat next to him. “I can help you out, Frank, if you want.”
“No,” The Kid said insistently. “No, I don’t want your help.” He seemed to think it had come out too rudely, and tried to explain. “I mean, I don’t want charity. You understand, right?”
“Yeah,” Hanratty sighed. “Yeah, I understand. But I want you to understand, I’m here for you, whatever you need. If you want to talk about the case, or get it off your mind, or anything, you can come to me. You never have to be alone, unless you want to be.”
Frank leaned against his shoulder and his hand clutched at the fabric of the arm of his shirt. “Thanks, Carl.”
Hanratty wrapped his arm around the young man. “It’s a tough case, but we’ll solve it, and then everything else’ll seem a thousand times easier. And you can come to me for anything. I’m not going to leave you, Frank.”
Frank shifted away enough to look up and meet Hanratty’s eyes. For a moment Frank’s blue eyes filled his field of vision. They were beautiful eyes, deep and expressive. A person could get lost in those eyes.
The next thing Hanratty knew, Frank was leaning forward and the young man’s lips were touching his, and for a moment he froze in shock. Then he felt a soft, wet tongue slide lightly over his lips, jolting him into moving. Hanratty pulled back, hands on both of Frank’s shoulders to ward off more not-unwanted advances.
“Frank! We can’t do this!”
“Why not?” Frank was pouting, goddamnit! How was he supposed to resist that?
“Because!” Hanratty cried frantically. “I’m more than ten years older than you, and I have a kid, and I’m your boss while you’re with the FBI, and I could send you back to prison any time I want, and what the hell are you smiling about?” He was shouting now, and Frank was just sitting there, grinning, and he hoped to God this wasn’t just another joke, because if it was, his response probably wasn’t what The Kid had imagined.
“Because,” Frank said, somehow managing to keep his grin in place even as he spoke. “You didn’t say because you don’t like me.”
Well. Frank had him there; he hadn’t said it, and it wasn’t the truth. But still.
“I- You- That’s not-”
“Sure it is,” Frank said. “It’s the only thing that matters.” Frank kissed him again, a quick peck on the lips. “I love you.”
Hanratty could see he was fighting a losing battle. May as well surrender with some dignity. “I love you too, Frankie.”