Titles: "Burning Bridges" & "The Thank You"
Author: Rebecca Bradstreet
Rated: PG-13
Summary: Face finds his way back to Lori years after their break up, and the end of the A-Team.
Warning: A little sex.
Disclaimer/Notes: These are two dream fragments I wrote down the day after I saw "Without Reservations" for the first time. Because I dreamt of myself as my vampiric OFC from my A-Team/Forever Knight fanfic "Feeling Peckish," I thought I'd put titles to them. The only characters that appear in the flesh are Face and Lori. Murdock, Hannibal, B.A., Janette and Vachon do get mentioned in conversation. :) I don't own any of The A-Team or Forever Knight characters, though I would love to own even the smallest piece of Face.
Special Thanks to: Isolde and TBstreet for beta-ing.
"Burning Bridges"
by Rebecca Bradstreet (c) 2000It was late at night, and I was alone in the little restaurant I'd purchased from Janette when she left L.A. We were closed, the chairs put up on the tables. I was waiting for Face to come. He was finally free to come to me, and I knew he would come – was coming tonight. He was looking for me, and I was waiting for him. I was standing just in side one of the back rooms watching the front door when he arrived.
Face effortlessly picked the lock on the front door and let himself in. He looked around the dining room, took down one of the chairs, and helped himself to a drink from the bar. He was wearing cowboy boots, blue jeans, a dark blue shirt, and a black leather jacket. Face hung his jacket over the back of the chair and sat down with his drink. He was older than the last time I'd seen him, with more lines in his face, his hair longer and darker.
I was wearing a short little dress, short on my 5' 5" frame. It was pale green with spaghetti straps. My softly curling red hair brushed the tops of my bare shoulders. I wanted to go out to him and say a lot of things -- like I love you, I need you, stay, but I wasn't sure where to begin. Finally, I walked silently out to his table. He turned to look at me when he could smell the perfume I was wearing. I smiled, "I can't see your ears anymore."
"Times change Lori, but you don't, do you?" He set his drink down, and turned his chair to face me.
"No, I don't. And you don't have to change, if you don't want to." I made the offer I couldn't make the last time I'd seen him.
"Lori I...," he said uncomfortably, and held his hands out to me.
"I know. I've been ancient a very long time. You feel ancient already. Hannibal's dead, Murdock is a family man with 2.5 kids, and you've kept 'working'." I took his hands in mine, and let him know I'd never stopped following them -- following him.
He pulled me down onto his lap before saying, "You know about all that?"
"I know about Hannibal and Murdock. I know about your missions to Tehran and Beijing. I told you after I'd tasted you we were linked. I've known about it all. I've just been waiting." I put my arms around him, and wondered what he would say to it all.
"It's been over a decade since we've seen each other. I thought about you...at Hannibal's funeral...and Murdock's wedding but I couldn't...." Face's voice trailed off, he shook his head, and hugged me to him.
"Couldn't pick up a phone?" I asked gently, hugging him back.
"I couldn't listen to the sound of your voice when I knew I wasn't going home to you." The ache in his voice resonated with the ache in my chest.
I kissed him long and soft, looked into those devastating blue eyes, and asked, "And now?"
"And now it's over, all of it. No more A-Team, no more 'jobs', just Templeton 'Faceman' Peck and whoever wants him." He brushed my hair back behind my ears, and looked into my eyes a question clear in his.
"Face I want you. I've always wanted you. But I knew then that I couldn't ask you to leave the A-Team. You took Hannibal's death hard enough, being there. How much worse would it have been if you'd been lounging with me half a world away when it happened?" My questions asked, I tensed nervously, not letting go of him and refusing to look away.
"Lori," he sighed softly in exasperation, before giving me a long soft kiss.
When he finished the kiss he spoke again, "At first I couldn't leave the A-Team for you. Then I couldn't leave the 'job', and finally I couldn't imagine what you'd do if I came to you."
"Oh, Face." I hugged him tight, close to tears.
"Lori I'm free. And all I want, in this entire world, is you." He squeezed me tight, breathing in the smell of my hair, and holding back tears of his own.
I leaned back just a little to look at him, to smile at the two of us sitting there nearly in tears. We'd been waiting, all that time, for the moment when we wouldn't have to be apart anymore.
"Face, I love you. Come with me." Sliding out of his lap, I pulled him to the back room where stairs led down to the small space, under the restaurant, that I had turned into my apartment.
I led him to my bedroom. "I'm right here, Face. Right here for as long as you want me -- as long as you need me." I pulled his head down to mine for a long hard kiss.
He gasped when we broke the kiss, and smiled sheepishly, "Lori...Lori, will you make me a vampire? I've lost so much time with you. Will you give it back to me?"
Laughing joyously, I hugged him tightly as I unbuttoned his shirt. I said, "Face, vampires don't make love the same way humans do. Make love to me one last time before I change you?"
"Yes ma'am!" He smiled at me wickedly, as he slid the spaghetti straps off my shoulders, and reached around me to unzip the dress.
I giggled and squirmed as he slithered the dress down my body. (I wasn't wearing a bra or stockings but I was wearing underpants.)
"No fair, you're getting ahead of me!" I mock-pouted, as I pulled off his shirt and started to undo his belt. (He wasn't wearing an undershirt, but he was wearing underpants.)
"Need some help?" he teased, sliding his hands down my sides to my underpants.
"No, I can do this." I smiled widely, as I tossed aside his belt, and began to slide his pants down his body.
His pants and both our underpants hit the floor all at once. We stood there for a long moment smiling wickedly at each other. Then he picked me up and carried me to the bed. (I remember making the decision not to use my vampiric strength to pick *him* up and carry him to the bed.)
"Enough preliminaries my love?" He asked climbing over me, kissing me, and waiting for my word.
"Oh yes!" I pressed myself to him, letting him enter me.
We rocked together. I rubbed my hands along his sides and moaned encouragingly. When we climaxed, I bit him. I was careful, so careful to keep the bite shallow, to let just a taste of him cross my lips. I remember the feeling of my fangs in his flesh, and the taste of his blood in my mouth. I remember knowing more about him from that mouthful of blood, than I could learn in a thousand words.
He relaxed, and I kept him gently in my arms, as he slid out of me and onto the bed beside me. I listened to him breathe, waited for him to say something.
"You bit me." He smirked.
"Don't I always?" I asked with a smirk of my own.
"Always," he agreed before asking, "What will it feel like to become a vampire?"
I whistled soft and low, and sat up so that I could look down at him, while brushing his bangs back out of his eyes.
"Face, you *would* have to ask. You couldn't just wait to find out," I said, sounding tired to my own ears, but amused.
"I was just wondering how...how it compares to...ah...one of your 'little' bites." He touched my cheek with one hand, and his newest set of bite marks with the other.
"I don't really remember what it felt like to be made, anymore. I mean I remember my maker still...but the moment.... And it's different being the maker rather than the made. Not that I've made a vampire in a thousand years." (I could remember when I'd made my last child and why.)
"A thousand years...every time I start to think of you as a slightly unusual girl, you have to remind me you’re an ancient one." Face propped himself up on his elbows to kiss me again.
I knew when he lay back down on the bed he could taste his own blood on his lips, because he'd kissed it off of mine. He didn't say anything about the blood though: what he said was, "I want to try to know you -- all of you."
"Then I need to make you a vampire." I gathered him to me, and he looked at me silently for a long moment, still in my arms.
"Lori...I need you." He reminded me why I was going to make him a vampire, because I needed him.
"I have to drain you nearly dry, and then feed you some of my blood. You have to...have to come to me when I feed you, or you'll die. Face don't leave me!" I begged him, letting him hear the concern in my voice, see the worry on my face.
He laughed, a warm amused laugh, and smiled at me with the thousand watt smile that made me warm from head to toe. He said one word, "Never!"
I bit him, bit deep this time, drinking him in. I listened carefully to his heartbeat, careful not to lose him, careful not to drown in him. Finally it was time to feed him, call him, make him if I could. I fed him, called him, and he came.
He gasped, and blinked, then gave me a toothy smile, "I can hear entirely too much of the city from here."
I laughed and hugged him to me. "It's all a matter of practice my boy -- practice."
"Didn't you say something about vampire love making being different from human?" He asked with a feral grin.
I shook my head, "You need to feed on something other than me first."
He nibbled me a bit, and then we went off to look for blood that wasn't as...umm...recycled as mine.
*Note: That's the end of the first dream fragment I remember. The other isn't as long and it's smut free, but it does come somewhere after the first chronologically. Significantly later I think, both because of how quietly comfortable we are together, and because it doesn't bother him to talk about the team in the past tense.
"The Thank You"
by Rebecca BradstreetWe were standing together on an old pier, in the full moonlight. We were bundled up against the cold ocean breeze and the sea mist it was carrying. He stood behind me with his arms around me and we listened to the waves for some time before he spoke.
"You knew where I was every second of every day after you fed from me the first time. How did you manage to stay away?" His voice was filled with the mixture of wonder and curiosity that came whenever he asked about those strengths he once assumed were gained only with extreme age.
"I didn't completely. When you were shot at that little Italian restaurant that Murdock use to work at, I flew to you." I admitted to him that one break in my control, all those years ago.
"Oh?" He sounded truly astonished that I'd admit some failure to resist him.
I turned to look at him, to meet his eyes while I spoke. The ocean breeze blew my hair in my face, and he held my hair back for me, laughing softly at the sight.
"I felt it -- felt the moment you were shot. Janette was livid at the damage I did to her bar, but then she saw my face, and knew what was happening. She called Vachon and they put me on a plane to D.C." I hugged Face to me, closing my eyes against the wind, and the memory.
"I don't remember seeing you in D.C." Face said into my hair, his voice fuzzy with the effort to remember my being there.
"You were unconscious for thirty-six hours. I spent twenty-four of them curled up in a chair next to your hospital bed. B.A. tried to move me. He was surprised to discover how unmovable I can be." I smiled at the memory of B.A. discovering that a five thousand year old vampire of any size may be an immovable object whenever she wants to be.
Face laughed, unable to resist the image that sprung into his mind. "I can understand B.A. not mentioning that, but how did you handle Murdock and Hannibal?"
"Murdock tried to talk me out of the room instead of forcing me. He apologized, and held me when I started to cry." I opened my eyes once more to peer through the mist and my hair at Face.
"Murdock never mentioned that either." His eyes and mouth were beginning to show how the conversation was weighing on both of us.
"Hannibal only said three things to me. He asked, 'You came?' And I told him, 'I had to.' He asked, 'He means that much to you?' And I told him, 'He means more than anything else in the world to me, but don't tell him I said that, don't tell him I was even here.' Hannibal said, 'All right Lori I promise not to tell him.' I think Murdock and B.A. took on the promise with him even though I never asked them." I placed my hands on his cheeks, covering them from the wind.
"The team never told me. You were that scared for me? Why didn't you make me a vampire then?" He asked, curiosity winning out over any fear of my answer.
"I don't make people vampires without asking them first. Even when they love you, even when they're happy to be...undead, there may be a resentment of you that changes their relationship with you -- that changes them. I didn't make you a vampire then because I couldn't. I couldn't make you a vampire not knowing if you'd hate me for it," I told him, part of me shrinking even then from the thought of loosing him, while the other part of me felt his cheeks under my finger tips.
He smiled at me with his warmest smile, covered my hands with his own, and said, "Then I guess we should both be grateful I lived to become yours. No?"
I kissed him, tasting the ocean mist on his lips and relishing the pressure of his lips against mine. I smiled at him when we broke the kiss, and said, "Thank you, Face. Thanks for understanding."
He hugged me, a bear hug that moved me from side to side and warmed me through. He told me, "I'm still learning to understand you, but I trust that Hannibal knew the right thing to do."
We stood quietly a bit longer on the pier, and then we went off in search of shelter from the wind and cold.
~Fini~