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Love was a weakness. That was perhaps the only lesson his father had ever successfully beat into him. Giving another human being that much power over your happiness, your state of mind, your very soul...
No. His father (and poor, sweet Kenny) had proven that beyond a doubt.
Love was a weakness. And Hawkins Fuller was bulletproof.
Relationships meant nothing for him. He fucked his way through at least half of the homosexual men in DC and didn't give a damn about seeing any of them ever again. He was happy with his life. He didn't need anything more than that.
Love was a weakness that was never going to touch him.
Yet...
Marcus once said Hawk was a damn good liar. And the first step in being the best damned liar that ever set foot in Washington, was the necessity of being able to lie to yourself.
Hawk had been lying to himself for so long - about so many things - even he didn't think he would know his own truth if it was laid bare before him.
Until soft brown eyes and a kiss that tasted like milk and eternity.
Until Skippy.
Tim entered his life in a whirlwind of morality and passion. He burrowed his way past Hawk's defenses, having the audacity to make Hawk want to be more. To be better.
Even with Kenny, Hawk had never felt the need to be anyone other than who he was. Or, perhaps it was more truthful to say that Tim was the only one who actually wanted who Hawk truly was.
Regardless, it was an uncomfortable proposition. Hawk couldn't be who Tim needed, and yet he couldn't bear to be parted from him.
Those four weeks Tim hadn't spoken to him were some of the most hellish since Hawk had gotten his head straight after the war.
And, in retrospect, that ought to have been Hawk's first clue. How do I love thee, let me count the weeks...
Sadly, as even his own mother would confirm, for all his many qualities (good and bad), emotional intelligence had never been one of them.
Still, when he was younger - before Kenny and before his father came home too early (and didn't knock) - Hawk had imagined what it might be like. To fall in love. A lightning bolt, surely. Some grand and momentous occasion, something worthy of the name. Falling in love. That jolt in his stomach: a sudden, irrevocable alteration of his entire world.
Even as a child, and with no real model to show for what love should be, Hawk had had unreasonable expectations.
Falling in love was no jolt in the pit of his stomach. No grand and momentous occasion. Certainly no lightning bolt.
Falling in love was easy. Like slipping into a warm bath, or between sheets already warmed by a partner's body. Like kissing someone and having it feel like the first time and the millionth all at once. Like doe brown eyes and fiery passion, an off-key voice, and a golden cross hanging from a bedpost.
Falling in love was right. Possibly one of the only things in his life that was.
Realising it, that was another matter entirely.
No momentous occasion, no lightning bolt out of the blue. Just the simplest and most important thing.
Touch.
Hawk had dozed off. He shouldn't have, but these long winter's nights gave them more leeway than either of them could resist. Tim, his sweet Skippy, had once again proven that a slightly off key voice was no hindrance to sounding like the angel he was. He'd lulled Hawk off to slumber with a sweet little song about being his baby bumblebee; his fingers carding slowly, tenderly through Hawk's hair.
Now Hawk was awake, he heard the echo of Tim's voice in his ear; felt his heart beat and his chest rise and fall beneath him. There, still, in Hawk's bed, not vanished into the night like he thought Hawk was afraid to have him stay.
Hawk didn't need to see his watch to know that the hour was the kind of late that blurred into early without really belonging to either. The hour was of no matter, midnight or dawn and it was all the same. It didn't change the moment one bit.
Skippy- Tim was awake. His angel probably had no idea that Hawk was, but that was all the better. Awake or asleep, Tim was never shy of showing Hawk the way he felt. His fascination with Hawk's ears, the way he kissed his hair and stroked his skin - it said more than inadequate words could ever say.
Words were cheap, especially here in the capital of ulterior motives. Touch, that couldn't lie. And Skippy's touch, it said all those things his eyes screamed... I'm here, I've got you, I never want to leave.
I love you.
I love you.
Every press of his lips to Hawk's hair - I love you.
Every caress of his fingers through his hair - I love you.
Every time he held Hawk closer, refused to let Hawk move from his home against Tim's chest - I love you.
The way he nestled himself into Hawk's chest, curling upon him on Hawk's chair, stroking the back of Hawk's neck as they sat together - I love you.
Love. Skippy's weakness. Oh, but he wore it with pride. Made his greatest weakness something far more - something uncannily like his greatest strength.
Hawk had known for weeks, months even, that Tim loved him. Knew it like he knew his own name, like a simple fact of life. By some miracle known only to Tim's god, Tim Laughlin loved him. Loved him and understood him enough to say it in the only way Hawk could accept.
(His chest rose and fell underneath Hawk, lips nuzzling against his temple - I love you.)
Hawk knew that Skippy loved him. But he never thought he too would fall to that same inevitability.
And yet, here Hawk was. Fallen.
Hawk laid there in the circle of Tim's arms, his world reduced to his angel and his angel alone. Tim's heart beat steady and strong in his ear, a sound that imprinted itself on Hawk's soul. A sound that haunted his dreams on those lonely nights they spend apart. Tim's scent filled his nose - soap and sex and the cologne he only wore on special occasions (like seeing Hawk, apparently) - and it welcomed him home more than any other smell in his lifetime. Hawk laid on Tim's chest and there was nowhere else in the world he wanted to be.
Separately, anything about his angel was enough to make Hawk's heart race. All together? The very thought of him was like a sun bursting into life in his chest.
He was lost. Long since abandoned to the fall. His heart had accepted it long before his mind read the memo.
In fitting tribute, it was Tim's soft, deliberate touch that made those three words burst into glorious Technicolor in the front of his mind.
Featherlight, almost ticklish, Tim circled his finger tips around his scar. Gentle, soothing, healing. As if Tim thought by tracing it's contours enough, he could heal that scar as easily as he healed the scars once deep and bleeding on Hawk's heart.
Laying there, eyes closed, lost to everything but the circling caress of Tim's fingers - that same caress Tim had bestowed upon Hawk almost since their very first night - it was the simplest thing in the world to stop lying to himself.
It was as if his heart just gave up waiting for Hawk to get with the programme. This one, his heart said, and the rest of him was helpless to agree.
Hawk raised his head, meeting Tim's sweet, surprised gaze. There was nothing Hawk could do in that moment but kiss him, taste his love in the sweetness of his lips. Tim's hand pressed hard against Hawk's back, keeping him there, keeping him close.
I love you.
Hawk thought it giddily. An echo from the romantic young kid he'd been, that he still was - for Tim.
I love you.
No shaking alteration of his world-view, just the realisation of another unshakeable fact of life. Tim Laughlin loved Hawk, true. And Hawk loved Tim. Maybe he'd never be able to say it, or show it more adequately than this, but he loved him. And there was no scale in the world, no measurement that could quantify how much.
Tim pulled back, a little kiss drunk but smiling so soft and warm. His nose crinkled, watching Hawk with his loving gaze.
Hawk shuddered to imagine how soft he looked right now, staring at Tim with unbridled adoration. Maybe he didn't look any different at all, maybe besotted and in love was the way Hawk always looked at Tim.
He had to chuckle a little; apparently Hawkins Fuller did smitten. Because he certainly was smitten with Tim.
"Hawk?"
Hawk shook his head. Any words Hawk could say would only cheapen this moment. Instead, he peppered Tim's soft skin with kisses, each one saying the words Hawk couldn't yet bring himself to utter.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Tim's hands stroked over his skin, lips pressing against his hair. A reply in the language they both understood.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
If he ever lost Tim, Hawk didn't think he could survive it. The thought of a world without Tim's sweetness was unfathomable, unacceptable. Love, his love for his Skippy, was his weakness. But. Lying here with Tim's heartbeat under his ear, Tim's fingers tracing idle patterns on his skin (I love you, I love you), Hawk had the funniest suspicion. He could be found out tomorrow, be called in and fired, have his secret outed to the whole world. As long as Tim was there, waiting for him, loving him, Hawk knew he could endure it all. Would endure it all. As long as he had his Skippy, what more could he possibly need?
So, his father had been right. Love was a weakness. But it was also the source of a strength greater than that cold-hearted bastard could ever have imagined.