sonora_coneja (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sonora_coneja) wrote2010-10-29 09:23 pm
sonora_coneja) wrote2010-10-29 09:23 pm
A Little Bump
Pairing: Face/Murdock
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: none
Summary: Fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
I want Face assuming the role of a normal nice guy for a con, but then he suffers a head injury/is drugged and temporarily forgets his real identity and believes that he really is Mr. Joe Normal. Cue the rest of the team trying to persuade him that he's actually a wanted fugitive called 'Face'.
Face is all... "stay away from me, you crazy people." While they're trying to convince him. Maybe in the end they kidnap him and hold him hostage in a room while they try to think of things that will convince him. Or maybe he finds out himself that maybe there's something to what they say - i.e. he gets in a fight and finds that he instinctively knows ten different ways to kill a guy with his pinkie ;) Well, you get the idea. Make it a bit angsty if you can please, kind anon.
Face loses his memory, reacts badly to the stuff they’re trying to tell him and comes on to Murdock...
He woke with a hand on his forehead, calloused palms brushing the edges of his hair away from his face, and it felt good for a moment.
And then the hand hit something sticky and painful. He yelped.
“Hold on there, faceman,” drawled a Southern accent. “Boss, I think he’s going to need stitches.”
“As long as you’re not the one giving them, fool,” said somebody else, deeper and gruffer.
The hand was still in his hair. It felt good again, until it was replaced by something cool and cold and a little rough. A wet washcloth, maybe. He realized he was shaking when an arm moved to wrap around his shoulders.
“Nobody’s going to the hospital, Murdock,” a third voice said with authority.
Details were blurry still, like his eyes were clogged with sleep or something, and the scene filled in slowly.
There was a man standing right in front of him, tall and gray-haired, one hand on the arm of the sofa where he was sitting, leaning in over him. Somebody else, a big black guy, was over by the door. The first person who’d spoken, the Southerner, was uncormfortably close, and had a kind of crazy intensity about him.
“Where...” he managed, his throat dry.
“We had to hole up for a bit,” the man next to him explained, “on account of you getting your head near ‘most knocked in.”
“I don’t remember that,” he replied, trying to shift away and collect his bearings. There wasn’t much in the room besides the sofa and a bed with a cheap-looking duvet. The carpet was worn and the paint had seen better days.
“BA,” the man in front of him asked the man over by the window. “Anything?”
“Looks like we lost them, Hannibal.”
The man next to him whined. “Can’t we get face somewhere and get him checked out?”
“Can’t be too careful right now, Murdock,” the man, Hannibal, replied. “Head wounds bleed a lot. Look a lot worse than they are. Face is going to be fine, aren’t you?”
He realized that the man was talking to him. Face? Is that what that Hannibal guy had called him? What kind of a name was Hannibal, anyway?
What kind of a name was Face?
He didn’t realize he’d said it out loud until the man next to him pulled back a little, eying him suspiciously. “Hannibal, I don’t think it’s our Face any more.”
“Murdock, who else is it going to be?” the tall man asked in a weary voice, as if this kind of question was fairly common and he had no patience for it now.
The man at the window turned around. “Hannibal, you stop that crazy from running off that fool. Shit, I don’t want to be catching it next.”
“Nobody’s going crazy here, guys,” Hannibal said, and suddenly he found himself staring the tall man straight in the face, his hand curled under his chin, forcing his head up. “Come on, what do you remember?”
The man on the sofa gulped audibly for air. This close, with his clearing vision, the man could make out a shoulder holster. Shit, this guy was packing, and something in his stance seemed to indicate that he really, really knew what he was doing with it. What the hell was going on?
“Nothing,” he gasped. “Absolutely nothing.”
He couldn’t remember his name. He could remember the days of the week and colors and recognize the fact that this was a cheap, seedy motel and identify that smell as dried sex, but he couldn’t remember his name.
“Face?” the older man tried, obviously trying to get his attention. “Templeton Peck?”
Neither of those sounded like names. Sounded completely made up. From his uncomfortable position on the sofa, the man started to consider his options. But that wasn’t exactly easy.
“Lieutenant Templeton Peck?” Hannibal said a little louder, a little more forceful, and he started laughing.
“I’m definitely no lieutenant,” he laughed.
“Are you saying you don’t remember anything, Face?” The older guy, Hannibal, had released his chin and was staring at him. It was absolutely withering. It was making it hard to think. And the guy next to him, Murdock or something, had completely peeled off and was considering him with a strange expression on his face, like he was trying really hard to recognize him but couldn’t. He could sympathize, he really could.
Murdock bounced in. “Nothing? Not us, not the court-martial, not the fact that we’re wanted fugitives, and we’re a little more wanted right now cause of the thing at the party?“
A dozen scenarios ran through his head, what he could say, what they might do when he said it, but his focus was distracted by that pistol tucked comfortably against the boss’s ribs. Clearly, something was very wrong here, and he had no desire to end up bleeding in some crappy pay-by-the-hour kind of place. Well, not any more than he already was.
He cracked a smile and reached up to palm the compress that the Murdock guy was still holding to his head. Had to get through this. “I guess that blow was kind of disorienting, huh?”
Hannibal frowned, and he started laughing a little. Just convince them you’re okay, he told himself. “Really, boss,” he said, making an intuitive leap off an earlier comment, “I’m fine. Just a little shaken up ’s all. I’ll be fine.”
“An AR-15 butt to the forehead’s no joke, kid,” the older man said, relaxing a little.
An AR-15? Were these people serious?
“Could be a concussion or something like that. Maybe we should get you to a hospital.”
“But he’s a clone, boss!”
“Then the company’s going to want him back in one piece, right, Murdock?”
“Seems like I was at a party or something,” he murmured, mostly to himself, getting a sudden flash of a wide green lawn behind some gorgeous antebellum house, sunlight and pretty girls and champagne everywhere. They were celebrating something…
“You take him to a hospital and we ain’t never getting him back! The doctors’ll put him in a big pickling jar and keep him in some specimen room,” the man next to him declared loudly.
And with that, the memory was gone. The man on the sofa groaned in frustration and pressed a little too hard on the washcloth that was rapidly becoming soaked in blood.
“Murdock, would you shut your mouth?” the man by the window growled, and Murdock practically melted into the cushions. “We can’t go to the hospital.”
Hannibal waved him out. “We might not have a choice. Go bring the van around, BA.”
The second the door clicked open and shut again, the man next to him clambered up, almost even with Hannibal. “I am telling you, that is not Face. He’s been switched out on us! That gang put our Face somewhere and what we’ve got is, is a copy or somethin’.”
He gave a nervous laugh, hoping that this wasn’t going to escalate. Clearly he was suffering from amnesia, he knew that much. But these guys were holding him hostage, or at best, had him confused with one of their gang. The room wasn’t very brightly lit, it was night outside, it could happen. Right? Right. “Murdock, it’s me.” And how could that possibly be convincing, when he didn’t believe it himself?
“Hannibal, come on. Talk to him,” he pleaded, trying to maintain the façade that the other two seemed to be buying. Damn, he must be really good at lying.
“I’m telling you, colonel, they gave us some kind of Face-clone thingy here.”
“Captain, we’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we? What did I say?”
The other man kicked at the carpet sheepishly. “Said just cause we were doing the job at the pharmaceutical company didn’t mean we were gonna see clones or flesh-eatin’ viruses or zombies or nuthin’ like that.”
“And did we, captain?”
Captain? The man they kept calling Face held his peace. Probably wouldn’t be a very good time to ask something like that, something he was probably supposed to know. And he did find himself very curious about Murdock. There was a certain attraction about him, apparent crazy and everything.
Right now, he looked like he was going to answer, when somebody banged on the door. Hannibal moved just behind it, holding his finger up to his lips and drawing his gun. Yeah, definitely comfortable using one of those things. Murdock pulled Face down behind the bed. In the tight space between the bathroom wall and the cheap mattress, the captain, drew in close, pressing almost full-length against him, and he felt his breathing get a little ragged.
“You in there, Facey?” the man asked, pulling up an eyelid.
He was about to protest, or point out that they were obviously in some kind of dangerous situation, or something, but he didn’t think the other man cared. He wasn’t sure if he cared. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, they all heard a voice on the other side of the door.
“Hannibal?”
“Murdock, get Face,” the older man ordered, and Murdock’s hands closed carefully, almost sweetly, down around the man’s bicep. Hospital bound. There had to be a chance to escape.
He’d expected they’d go to the hospital. Looking around at the dog growth charts and the little metal cages, he guessed he’d been wrong. A vet clinic. They’d actually taken him to a veterinary clinic. If he hadn’t been so freaked out, he was sure he’d be sneering at how cliche that was.
The ride had been long and uncomfortable, BA swearing from the driver’s seat as Hannibal tried to keep him from speeding, Hannibal trying to get Murdock to knock it off with the clone-themed psyco-babble, and Murdock obviously really intent not to let Face go to sleep.
All the attention was a little mind-numbing. Or maybe that was the amnesia. He couldn’t tell.
All in all, it’d been a weird couple of hours.
“Tell me how you’re doing, Mr. Peck,” the doctor asked. He was a little dishevelled, as if he’d thrown his clothes on in a hurry. He had no idea where this guy had come from, only that he’d been almost tossed in the room by a very irate looking Hannibal. He hadn’t entirely believed the man was even a doctor until he’d started unpacking gauze with the same kind of authority that Hannibal hefted his weapon with.
“Could you please not call me that?” he pleaded. He’d managed to sneak a look at his wallet during the car ride. A couple of credit cards, some cash. Nice leather. And a driver’s license that listed his name as Brian Cole.
“Yeah,” Murdock piped up from his corner perch on a small cabinet, a Smith and Wesson M&P compact 9mm out on his lap - and how the hell did he know that, anyway? - “I don’t think we should call clones after their original people. Not polite, seems.”
“Do you really have to have that gun on me, Murdock?” the man asked plantively.
“I saw those new Star Wars movies,” Murdock declared, as if it were obvious. “I need it in case you go clone-kiling-spree on me.”
“Hold still,” the doc said, swabbing the wound with something that stung. “Iodine, Mr. Peck.”
“Come on, do I look like, er, whatever these guys are?”
“A mercenary? Soldier of fortune? Black Forest rejects?” the doctor offered with a touch of humor the man, Brian, definitely didn’t appreciate. He moved the examination light a little, and tilted his head back. “Because that’s what I’ve been told. The A-Team. Best around for crazy missions.”
“I get the crazy part,” Brian muttered, looking over at the lanky captain who Hannibal hadn’t been able to drag from the room. He wondered, briefly, if there might be some truth in what the others were trying to tell him. Seemed like he’d known Murdock a long time.
“Hold still, please,” the doctor repeated, steely fingers closing down, and the man barely winced as the needle slid into the skin around the cut on his forehead. Doc must have numbed it. He didn’t know if he liked the idea of kitty tranquilizers being pumped into him just then.
“I did some absolutely legendary things back when we were all still in the military,” Murdock said with a touch of pride. “Always looking for my next, near death experience.”
“Murdock, you have to let him figure things back out for himself,” the doctor said patiently. “That’s how he’s going to get his memory back.”
“He don’t got a memory to get back, doc. Don’t mind if I explain some stuff, does it?”
Brian could have cared less right then. “What happened?”
“Court-martial, for killing a general, stealing some mint plates, that sort of thing. El diablo got us all booted out, colonel keeps us together,” Murdock said, and the expression in the other man’s eyes clenched at something inside Brian. Yeah, whatever else was going on here, there was definitely something going on there.
“How’d you get mixed up in this, doc?” the man asked.
“Oh, that’s simple,” the doc said, tugging a little, snipping the end, and turning around for another gauze. “I’m the one that hired the A-Team.”
He’d reacted almost before he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t even sure what he’d done until he stopped to think about it.
Up over the small metal examination table.
Doctor’s arm twisted and pinned to the small of his back.
Murdock kicked against cabinet.
Elbow throw.
Doctor knocked to floor.
Gun seized from Murdock.
Gun trained on Murdock.
That’s what his senses brought him back to, a pistol grip hard and warm and reassuring in his right palm, a look of relief on the captain’s face and a groan from the ground where the doctor was trying to right himself. Brian didn’t want to allow himself the possibility of wondering what he’d just done, or how, so he turned that little voice off in the back of his mind that was just screaming about the perfect spot to make a little red circle appear...
“What did you pay them to do to me!” he yelled at the doctor, his voice loud in the enclosed space.
“Wasn’t paying them to...”
“To what, to kidnap me? What was the plan? What were you trying to do?!”
“Face!” and that was Hannibal, standing in the now-open door. It was the same tone he’d used when he’d tried to call him a lieutenant earlier. Except it was worse now. Almost impossible to disobey. “Stand down, soldier!”
Automatically, his arms started to lower. Hadn’t Murdock made some mention of this guy being a colonel? Because Brian was starting to think that made a lot of sense. Even if he still didn’t believe the whole lieutenant thing.
“Hey, boss, let me take care of this, okay?” and that was Murdock asking as the other two men peeled the doctor from the sealed concrete floor.
Hannibal gave the captain a look, and then turned his attention to Brian. “Fine,” he said at length, and brushed past, cleverly removing the gun from the man’s nerveless grip as he passed. “But Murdock, we can’t stay here too much longer.”
“Won’t take very long, boss,” he said, moving a little closer to Brian. “I think Jango Fett passed some memories along to Boba here after all.”
Re: Fill: A Little Bump (6/8)
(Anonymous)
2010-08-24 04:46 am UTC (link) Track This
As soon as Hannibal left the room with the delirious doctor, the captain got close, real close, personal space close, and Brian found himself backed up against a wall before he knew it. He was still a little dazed from whatever it was he’d just done, he told himself, and there was nothing appealing at all in the faint edge of sweat and hotel soap clinging to Murdock. Nothing good at all about having his hips pinned like that.
Really nothing good about the way Murdock’s hand were working their way under his t-shirt and up, rough palms burning paths on his skin as they went.
“Hey!” he said, regaining his equilibrium and grabbing at one of the captain’s wandering wrists.
The other man just looked at him with some puppy-dog combination of hurt, interest and sadness. “I need to check something out,” he said in a low voice, without a trace of the previous accent. “Let me, okay?”
Brian caught his breath, and after a long moment, nodded.
Murdock’s hesistence gave way to excitement again, and the man soon found himself shirtless and pulled in front of the room’s single mirror. He didn’t figure the captain had much reason for doing this, unless there was some scene in those movies he’d missed. Why did he have to remember stuff like that, when he couldn’t even place his own name?
Brian took a minute. He told himself he knew what he looked like. That wasn't something you forgot. But while the reflection seemed right, it wasn't exactly familiar. Maybe it was all the stuff he thought wouldn't be there, like the two inch gash above his heart, or a burn scar the size of his hand on his left hip, or the tattoo on his upper arm...
This he inspected. It was military. Army Ranger.
Was it possible that these guys weren’t so bad, coming out of that? But then, Murdock had never said they hadn’t killed that general. And it suddenly hit him; wasn’t that weird? “Hey, Murdock, why’d you have to take off my shirt, again?”
“Now I’m confused,” the captain was saying, ignoring his words completely as he picked over the man’s bare chest like a monkey looking for fleas in one of those nature documentaries. Why did he have to remember those, too? “I don’t see any reason for a clone to have a tattoo. Or any of those scars. Hmm.”
“You're absolutely right. A clone wouldn't have any of these. So... maybe I’m not a clone, Murdock.”
“Then where’s Face?” Murdock said, halting in honest confusion.
“Supposing I believed you,” he asked, unsure of how this was going to come across, “what would you say I, Face, am?”
“My best friend,” the captain said instantly.
“Anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Like...” How did one ask a mental patient about something like this? But then, he was a mental patient too, right now, right? So why not? “Why’d you take my shirt off?”
Murdock started laughing, the accent getting thicker out of what he realized was discomfort. “Oh, darlin’, you ask the silliest questions sometimes, I do declare...”
“It’s not really a problem,” he said quickly - instinctively, came a little whisper, to stop Murdock before babbling set in. “I was just wondering. It felt, I don’t know, normal, maybe. Like it's happened before, and I was thinking it might be a memory or something.” Shit. Now he was the one babbling.
The captain brightened. “There was that one time I had to strip Face nekkid in the shower bays after we...”
But before Brian, Face, whoever he was, could ask for a cessation of the story or clarification of intentions or his shirt back or anything useful, automatic fire hit the small vet clinic and both of them had to go diving for cover.
The noise only lasted a moment or two, but for the man who couldn’t remember who he was, it felt like a little bit of home somehow. More recognizable than the sound of a car engine, it seemed in that brief period that he’d always known that sound. Explosions. Comforting. He could have laughed, but there wouldn’t have been any point to it. Would have been lost in all that eardrum-bursting mayhem outside the examination room.
Finally, it stopped.
Murdock crawled over to him, and both of them edged slowly towards the door. “Hannibal and BA,” the captain whispered, and reached up for the light switch. When it was off, Brian swung the door open as far as he dared.
They heard boots, voices. Low, arguing. He strained to hear, but he couldn’t make anything out, and poked his head around the edge of the jamb. If he remembered right, which it turned out he did, there was a clear shot down the hallway to the main waiting room, where the others probably were, which they were.
Three, no, four men, all armed, all dressed in studiously non-descript ways, were standing, backs to him, not ten yards away. They hadn’t turned any of the office lights on when they’d come in, except fo this exam room, and they’d made sure it was shuttered, with a towel stuffed against the outside, to block any light from escaping and giving them away.
“Who are these guys?” he asked Murdock, who just rolled his eyes up. “More clones.”
Great. That probably meant they worked for the pharmaceutical company, or whatever. It didn’t really matter. They had guns on Hannibal and BA and the doctor, and for some reason, that made him incredibly mad.
Whatever they were discussing seemed to be coming to a head, voices heating up and rising to the ceiling like so much hot air. From what he could make out...
“They’re looking for us,” he whispered back to Murdock, who just nodded.
One of the men broke off from the gang. The man stood up slowly, keeping his eyes trained down the hallway. He was dimly aware that Murdock was backing up against the cabinet he’d been sitting on earlier. The Clone Army dude (he really couldn’t think of anything better to call him) was checking rooms, he realized with a cold wash of adrenaline. He had just disappeared into the supply closet. There was only one more door before this one.
He moved back a little, inching back behind the door. He felt like he was on autopilot. Definitely not in control. He had a mental note to ask Murdock more about that Ranger thing later.
They both heard the quiet snick of the x-ray room opening.
His hand fumbled backwards, searching for something, anything within reach, and a cold, hard, roundish thing was pressed into his hand. He recognized it, and his heart rate as he realized what he was doing. And no time to think about that right then, because the door was opening.
He held his breath.
When the Clone stepped fully into the room, that autopilot kicked in again, just like with the doctor, except this time it was a little worse, because this time, he found himself lowering a twitching body to the ground, one hand over the dying man’s mouth and another still twisting the scissors into the throat. There was something hot and wet and unpleasant all over his arms, arterial blood most likely, and he was keenly aware of Murdock watching him in the darkness.
“Is he...” he began, and then realized the idiocy of finishing that question. The answer was pretty damn clear, and he’d done it, and he wasn’t too sure how he felt about that. Not that the guy was dead. That’d he’d done it.
Movement.
He had to lunge to stop Murdock from running out into the hall. The captain didn’t struggle too long against him, and it was when Murdock settled down that Brian realized he had both arms around the other man.
“Let me go!” the lanky man hissed at him. “Come on, Face. Let me go. Gotta support your unit.”
“I’ll take care of it, sweetie,” he said lightly, trying to cover up that slightly sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was just this feeling that this was what the other man needed from him right now. Like calming a scared dog, best thing to do was exude confidence. And he wasn’t exactly lying, although he was good at that, because there was confidence coming from somewhere. Half in jest, he planted a sloppy kiss on Murdock’s cheek, not really thinking about it, and let him go.
He pried the gun loose from the dead man’s hand and dropped the magazine as he stepped over the body, into the hall. The emergency lighting glinted off the dull metal. Five rounds. He couldn’t miss.
Hannibal and BA had gone silent. Made sense. The bad guys were just shadows against the pale waiting room wall, but he could tell by the stance and slight shift that they were bringing their guns back up.
He had a quick flash of himself, young, dust in his nose, knees in the dust, the M-16 propped up against his forearm, the explosion, the smell of cordite and the distant ping of a metal target in the hot Texas sun. Shooting ammo during rangetime he’d conned on hid off day.
Face didn’t grin, not yet, not until he spent three of the five rounds and there were three more bodies on the floor in the vet clinic, and none of them were his friends. Then he could. Then he could sink down against the nearest wall, and not think about anything but how nice it was to not be anything but what he was.
A shoe nudged his, and he looked up into the blinding glare of a flashlight. “Shit, BA, I’m okay. Turn that thing off.”
“It’s me, kid.”
“Hannibal?”
“I’m going to ask you a question, Face, and you better not lie to me again.”
He slammed his head back into the wall once. Yeah, that had been a bad idea. Amnesia or no, Hannibal probably wasn’t going to let that go so easily. “Yes, boss?”
“What happened to your shirt?”
Face’s shirtlessness problems cleared up as soon as they got the lights on and Murdock found it over by the mirror. It was balled up and wrinkled and slightly blood-splattered - like everything else in the room, but Face didn’t want to think about that. Still serviceable, though, and he’d slipped it back on without a second thought.
They cleaned up as best they could, took the doctor home, and headed back towards a rented house they’d been using for a base on this mission. Murdock fell asleep the second they hit the van, and if he happened to do this with his head in Face’s lap, and if Face occassionally stroked the pilot’s unruly hair back, Hannibal and BA didn’t comment about it.
Face got the story out of Hannibal, against the doctor’s wishes, but Hannibal always did what he wanted anyway. They’d been working private security for the doctor while looking into a series of death threats that he’d been getting from, as it turned out, his old employers. Face had been accompanying him under the guise of a grad student when the attack had come at some lawn party he’d been throwing at the local country club. They were in Georgia. Face had no been shot up with kitty tranqs. That was about all the detail Face got before lapsing into insensibility himself.
His memory didn’t return nearly as fast as his shirt did, though. He got bits and pieces over the next month or so, fragments of his past sliding back into place in his mind. The doctor had told them it might never return fully. That might have even been okay with him, given the kind of life he realized he’d had, if there wasn’t something critical missing.
Murdock. He was missing Murdock. Sure, there were memories of sock puppets, of some ridiculous helicopter rides, but none like he’d expected. Nothing... close.
And the worst part was, the pilot wouldn’t talk to him about it.
He bore that as long as he could, not wanting to pressure the other man’s delicate mental state with demands and promises and so on. But he had to know. He asked Hannibal, who just shook his head, and BA, who just rolled his eyes. The only answer was owned by Murdock, and Face was careful to wait until he thought he had the whole thing figured out.
+++++
He scammed his way into the pilot’s ward with an old favorite about the parasites in the Euphrates River and needing to examine the patient right now, and got a private room with a locking door, and Murdock’s undivided attention.
“Do I really have worms, doc?” he asked in that southern accent of his.
"No, Murdock."
"Oh, good. Because those things, let me tell you, are nasty."
Face really didn't want to thing about how the pilot knew about that. “Murdock, it’s me.”
“Me, who?”
He took a deep breath. “Face. It’s Face, Murdock. I’m really here.”
The pilot perked for a moment, but it was short-lived. He sagged back down quick enough that Face found himself longing for the clinging, protective man who’d been with him in that vet clinic such a short time ago. What had been going through his head? “You’re the clone, aren’t you?”
That. “No, Murdock. Not the clone. I’m the real one. They let me out.”
“I knew it!” Murdock declared, snapping his fingers. “Tell me, Face, was it truly awful?”
“Big pickling jar, captain. I’ve had more fun in my life.”
“I knew it!” Then he got quiet. “But I guess you talked to him, then?”
“Yup.”
“He tried to kiss me, Face.”
“Said you tried to kiss him, too.”
A blush rose up Murdock’s neck, all the way to his cheekbones. Face would have never said it, but it made him look adorable. “He just looked so much like you...” he muttered, trying to turn away.
“Hey, captain,” Face said, catching Murdock’s cheek with one hand. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you felt this way?”
“I tried a couple of times, but...”
“I never listened?” He watched his friend nod slowly. “I’m sorry about that, Murdock.”
“Oh, it’s okay, facey,” the pilot drawled, drawing out the syllables in that nervous exaggeration. “No need for sympathy here. ‘E was a clone, anyway, not such a great copy, they changed a bunch of stuff on Camino anyway, probably not something you really feel.”
“Murdock, I, uh, it wasn't the clone. I just didn't know before. But he got to look at you for the first time all over again." Face was uncomfortably aware of the distance between them. "I've been really jealous, actually."
Then any hope of a serious conversation vanished back into the swirling stream of consciousness that Murdock seemed to float down in an inner tube with beer. Although maybe that was pretty okay right now. The pilot’s face was all lit up. “What happened to the clone-you, Brian wots-his-name?”
“Somewhere he can just be whoever it is he is.” Face had come prepared for this one, and he sat down on the table next to Murdock. “Sounds like they’re putting him out on a ranch.”
“Would you like to be on a ranch, faceman? With cows and cook-outs and everything?”
“Nope. That’s just for clones. Supposed to be a real nice place.” Sure, it was ridiculous. But it was Murdock, and he deserved a good end to the story. “I like being here, with Hannibal and BA and you.”
That was pretty much the end of whatever it was he'd come here to talk about. But, since it ended there with Face putting an arm around the captain, and Murdock leaning into his shoulder and slipping a hand onto the lieutenant's thigh, it probably had been really had been a good conversation. He didn't remember everything yet, but that had to be a good sign.
And as Murdock snuggled in a little closer with each breath, Face figured it was almost worth losing all those memories to make room for all these new ones.
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: none
Summary: Fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
I want Face assuming the role of a normal nice guy for a con, but then he suffers a head injury/is drugged and temporarily forgets his real identity and believes that he really is Mr. Joe Normal. Cue the rest of the team trying to persuade him that he's actually a wanted fugitive called 'Face'.
Face is all... "stay away from me, you crazy people." While they're trying to convince him. Maybe in the end they kidnap him and hold him hostage in a room while they try to think of things that will convince him. Or maybe he finds out himself that maybe there's something to what they say - i.e. he gets in a fight and finds that he instinctively knows ten different ways to kill a guy with his pinkie ;) Well, you get the idea. Make it a bit angsty if you can please, kind anon.
Face loses his memory, reacts badly to the stuff they’re trying to tell him and comes on to Murdock...
He woke with a hand on his forehead, calloused palms brushing the edges of his hair away from his face, and it felt good for a moment.
And then the hand hit something sticky and painful. He yelped.
“Hold on there, faceman,” drawled a Southern accent. “Boss, I think he’s going to need stitches.”
“As long as you’re not the one giving them, fool,” said somebody else, deeper and gruffer.
The hand was still in his hair. It felt good again, until it was replaced by something cool and cold and a little rough. A wet washcloth, maybe. He realized he was shaking when an arm moved to wrap around his shoulders.
“Nobody’s going to the hospital, Murdock,” a third voice said with authority.
Details were blurry still, like his eyes were clogged with sleep or something, and the scene filled in slowly.
There was a man standing right in front of him, tall and gray-haired, one hand on the arm of the sofa where he was sitting, leaning in over him. Somebody else, a big black guy, was over by the door. The first person who’d spoken, the Southerner, was uncormfortably close, and had a kind of crazy intensity about him.
“Where...” he managed, his throat dry.
“We had to hole up for a bit,” the man next to him explained, “on account of you getting your head near ‘most knocked in.”
“I don’t remember that,” he replied, trying to shift away and collect his bearings. There wasn’t much in the room besides the sofa and a bed with a cheap-looking duvet. The carpet was worn and the paint had seen better days.
“BA,” the man in front of him asked the man over by the window. “Anything?”
“Looks like we lost them, Hannibal.”
The man next to him whined. “Can’t we get face somewhere and get him checked out?”
“Can’t be too careful right now, Murdock,” the man, Hannibal, replied. “Head wounds bleed a lot. Look a lot worse than they are. Face is going to be fine, aren’t you?”
He realized that the man was talking to him. Face? Is that what that Hannibal guy had called him? What kind of a name was Hannibal, anyway?
What kind of a name was Face?
He didn’t realize he’d said it out loud until the man next to him pulled back a little, eying him suspiciously. “Hannibal, I don’t think it’s our Face any more.”
“Murdock, who else is it going to be?” the tall man asked in a weary voice, as if this kind of question was fairly common and he had no patience for it now.
The man at the window turned around. “Hannibal, you stop that crazy from running off that fool. Shit, I don’t want to be catching it next.”
“Nobody’s going crazy here, guys,” Hannibal said, and suddenly he found himself staring the tall man straight in the face, his hand curled under his chin, forcing his head up. “Come on, what do you remember?”
The man on the sofa gulped audibly for air. This close, with his clearing vision, the man could make out a shoulder holster. Shit, this guy was packing, and something in his stance seemed to indicate that he really, really knew what he was doing with it. What the hell was going on?
“Nothing,” he gasped. “Absolutely nothing.”
He couldn’t remember his name. He could remember the days of the week and colors and recognize the fact that this was a cheap, seedy motel and identify that smell as dried sex, but he couldn’t remember his name.
“Face?” the older man tried, obviously trying to get his attention. “Templeton Peck?”
Neither of those sounded like names. Sounded completely made up. From his uncomfortable position on the sofa, the man started to consider his options. But that wasn’t exactly easy.
“Lieutenant Templeton Peck?” Hannibal said a little louder, a little more forceful, and he started laughing.
“I’m definitely no lieutenant,” he laughed.
“Are you saying you don’t remember anything, Face?” The older guy, Hannibal, had released his chin and was staring at him. It was absolutely withering. It was making it hard to think. And the guy next to him, Murdock or something, had completely peeled off and was considering him with a strange expression on his face, like he was trying really hard to recognize him but couldn’t. He could sympathize, he really could.
Murdock bounced in. “Nothing? Not us, not the court-martial, not the fact that we’re wanted fugitives, and we’re a little more wanted right now cause of the thing at the party?“
A dozen scenarios ran through his head, what he could say, what they might do when he said it, but his focus was distracted by that pistol tucked comfortably against the boss’s ribs. Clearly, something was very wrong here, and he had no desire to end up bleeding in some crappy pay-by-the-hour kind of place. Well, not any more than he already was.
He cracked a smile and reached up to palm the compress that the Murdock guy was still holding to his head. Had to get through this. “I guess that blow was kind of disorienting, huh?”
Hannibal frowned, and he started laughing a little. Just convince them you’re okay, he told himself. “Really, boss,” he said, making an intuitive leap off an earlier comment, “I’m fine. Just a little shaken up ’s all. I’ll be fine.”
“An AR-15 butt to the forehead’s no joke, kid,” the older man said, relaxing a little.
An AR-15? Were these people serious?
“Could be a concussion or something like that. Maybe we should get you to a hospital.”
“But he’s a clone, boss!”
“Then the company’s going to want him back in one piece, right, Murdock?”
“Seems like I was at a party or something,” he murmured, mostly to himself, getting a sudden flash of a wide green lawn behind some gorgeous antebellum house, sunlight and pretty girls and champagne everywhere. They were celebrating something…
“You take him to a hospital and we ain’t never getting him back! The doctors’ll put him in a big pickling jar and keep him in some specimen room,” the man next to him declared loudly.
And with that, the memory was gone. The man on the sofa groaned in frustration and pressed a little too hard on the washcloth that was rapidly becoming soaked in blood.
“Murdock, would you shut your mouth?” the man by the window growled, and Murdock practically melted into the cushions. “We can’t go to the hospital.”
Hannibal waved him out. “We might not have a choice. Go bring the van around, BA.”
The second the door clicked open and shut again, the man next to him clambered up, almost even with Hannibal. “I am telling you, that is not Face. He’s been switched out on us! That gang put our Face somewhere and what we’ve got is, is a copy or somethin’.”
He gave a nervous laugh, hoping that this wasn’t going to escalate. Clearly he was suffering from amnesia, he knew that much. But these guys were holding him hostage, or at best, had him confused with one of their gang. The room wasn’t very brightly lit, it was night outside, it could happen. Right? Right. “Murdock, it’s me.” And how could that possibly be convincing, when he didn’t believe it himself?
“Hannibal, come on. Talk to him,” he pleaded, trying to maintain the façade that the other two seemed to be buying. Damn, he must be really good at lying.
“I’m telling you, colonel, they gave us some kind of Face-clone thingy here.”
“Captain, we’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we? What did I say?”
The other man kicked at the carpet sheepishly. “Said just cause we were doing the job at the pharmaceutical company didn’t mean we were gonna see clones or flesh-eatin’ viruses or zombies or nuthin’ like that.”
“And did we, captain?”
Captain? The man they kept calling Face held his peace. Probably wouldn’t be a very good time to ask something like that, something he was probably supposed to know. And he did find himself very curious about Murdock. There was a certain attraction about him, apparent crazy and everything.
Right now, he looked like he was going to answer, when somebody banged on the door. Hannibal moved just behind it, holding his finger up to his lips and drawing his gun. Yeah, definitely comfortable using one of those things. Murdock pulled Face down behind the bed. In the tight space between the bathroom wall and the cheap mattress, the captain, drew in close, pressing almost full-length against him, and he felt his breathing get a little ragged.
“You in there, Facey?” the man asked, pulling up an eyelid.
He was about to protest, or point out that they were obviously in some kind of dangerous situation, or something, but he didn’t think the other man cared. He wasn’t sure if he cared. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, they all heard a voice on the other side of the door.
“Hannibal?”
“Murdock, get Face,” the older man ordered, and Murdock’s hands closed carefully, almost sweetly, down around the man’s bicep. Hospital bound. There had to be a chance to escape.
He’d expected they’d go to the hospital. Looking around at the dog growth charts and the little metal cages, he guessed he’d been wrong. A vet clinic. They’d actually taken him to a veterinary clinic. If he hadn’t been so freaked out, he was sure he’d be sneering at how cliche that was.
The ride had been long and uncomfortable, BA swearing from the driver’s seat as Hannibal tried to keep him from speeding, Hannibal trying to get Murdock to knock it off with the clone-themed psyco-babble, and Murdock obviously really intent not to let Face go to sleep.
All the attention was a little mind-numbing. Or maybe that was the amnesia. He couldn’t tell.
All in all, it’d been a weird couple of hours.
“Tell me how you’re doing, Mr. Peck,” the doctor asked. He was a little dishevelled, as if he’d thrown his clothes on in a hurry. He had no idea where this guy had come from, only that he’d been almost tossed in the room by a very irate looking Hannibal. He hadn’t entirely believed the man was even a doctor until he’d started unpacking gauze with the same kind of authority that Hannibal hefted his weapon with.
“Could you please not call me that?” he pleaded. He’d managed to sneak a look at his wallet during the car ride. A couple of credit cards, some cash. Nice leather. And a driver’s license that listed his name as Brian Cole.
“Yeah,” Murdock piped up from his corner perch on a small cabinet, a Smith and Wesson M&P compact 9mm out on his lap - and how the hell did he know that, anyway? - “I don’t think we should call clones after their original people. Not polite, seems.”
“Do you really have to have that gun on me, Murdock?” the man asked plantively.
“I saw those new Star Wars movies,” Murdock declared, as if it were obvious. “I need it in case you go clone-kiling-spree on me.”
“Hold still,” the doc said, swabbing the wound with something that stung. “Iodine, Mr. Peck.”
“Come on, do I look like, er, whatever these guys are?”
“A mercenary? Soldier of fortune? Black Forest rejects?” the doctor offered with a touch of humor the man, Brian, definitely didn’t appreciate. He moved the examination light a little, and tilted his head back. “Because that’s what I’ve been told. The A-Team. Best around for crazy missions.”
“I get the crazy part,” Brian muttered, looking over at the lanky captain who Hannibal hadn’t been able to drag from the room. He wondered, briefly, if there might be some truth in what the others were trying to tell him. Seemed like he’d known Murdock a long time.
“Hold still, please,” the doctor repeated, steely fingers closing down, and the man barely winced as the needle slid into the skin around the cut on his forehead. Doc must have numbed it. He didn’t know if he liked the idea of kitty tranquilizers being pumped into him just then.
“I did some absolutely legendary things back when we were all still in the military,” Murdock said with a touch of pride. “Always looking for my next, near death experience.”
“Murdock, you have to let him figure things back out for himself,” the doctor said patiently. “That’s how he’s going to get his memory back.”
“He don’t got a memory to get back, doc. Don’t mind if I explain some stuff, does it?”
Brian could have cared less right then. “What happened?”
“Court-martial, for killing a general, stealing some mint plates, that sort of thing. El diablo got us all booted out, colonel keeps us together,” Murdock said, and the expression in the other man’s eyes clenched at something inside Brian. Yeah, whatever else was going on here, there was definitely something going on there.
“How’d you get mixed up in this, doc?” the man asked.
“Oh, that’s simple,” the doc said, tugging a little, snipping the end, and turning around for another gauze. “I’m the one that hired the A-Team.”
He’d reacted almost before he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t even sure what he’d done until he stopped to think about it.
Up over the small metal examination table.
Doctor’s arm twisted and pinned to the small of his back.
Murdock kicked against cabinet.
Elbow throw.
Doctor knocked to floor.
Gun seized from Murdock.
Gun trained on Murdock.
That’s what his senses brought him back to, a pistol grip hard and warm and reassuring in his right palm, a look of relief on the captain’s face and a groan from the ground where the doctor was trying to right himself. Brian didn’t want to allow himself the possibility of wondering what he’d just done, or how, so he turned that little voice off in the back of his mind that was just screaming about the perfect spot to make a little red circle appear...
“What did you pay them to do to me!” he yelled at the doctor, his voice loud in the enclosed space.
“Wasn’t paying them to...”
“To what, to kidnap me? What was the plan? What were you trying to do?!”
“Face!” and that was Hannibal, standing in the now-open door. It was the same tone he’d used when he’d tried to call him a lieutenant earlier. Except it was worse now. Almost impossible to disobey. “Stand down, soldier!”
Automatically, his arms started to lower. Hadn’t Murdock made some mention of this guy being a colonel? Because Brian was starting to think that made a lot of sense. Even if he still didn’t believe the whole lieutenant thing.
“Hey, boss, let me take care of this, okay?” and that was Murdock asking as the other two men peeled the doctor from the sealed concrete floor.
Hannibal gave the captain a look, and then turned his attention to Brian. “Fine,” he said at length, and brushed past, cleverly removing the gun from the man’s nerveless grip as he passed. “But Murdock, we can’t stay here too much longer.”
“Won’t take very long, boss,” he said, moving a little closer to Brian. “I think Jango Fett passed some memories along to Boba here after all.”
Re: Fill: A Little Bump (6/8)
(Anonymous)
2010-08-24 04:46 am UTC (link) Track This
As soon as Hannibal left the room with the delirious doctor, the captain got close, real close, personal space close, and Brian found himself backed up against a wall before he knew it. He was still a little dazed from whatever it was he’d just done, he told himself, and there was nothing appealing at all in the faint edge of sweat and hotel soap clinging to Murdock. Nothing good at all about having his hips pinned like that.
Really nothing good about the way Murdock’s hand were working their way under his t-shirt and up, rough palms burning paths on his skin as they went.
“Hey!” he said, regaining his equilibrium and grabbing at one of the captain’s wandering wrists.
The other man just looked at him with some puppy-dog combination of hurt, interest and sadness. “I need to check something out,” he said in a low voice, without a trace of the previous accent. “Let me, okay?”
Brian caught his breath, and after a long moment, nodded.
Murdock’s hesistence gave way to excitement again, and the man soon found himself shirtless and pulled in front of the room’s single mirror. He didn’t figure the captain had much reason for doing this, unless there was some scene in those movies he’d missed. Why did he have to remember stuff like that, when he couldn’t even place his own name?
Brian took a minute. He told himself he knew what he looked like. That wasn't something you forgot. But while the reflection seemed right, it wasn't exactly familiar. Maybe it was all the stuff he thought wouldn't be there, like the two inch gash above his heart, or a burn scar the size of his hand on his left hip, or the tattoo on his upper arm...
This he inspected. It was military. Army Ranger.
Was it possible that these guys weren’t so bad, coming out of that? But then, Murdock had never said they hadn’t killed that general. And it suddenly hit him; wasn’t that weird? “Hey, Murdock, why’d you have to take off my shirt, again?”
“Now I’m confused,” the captain was saying, ignoring his words completely as he picked over the man’s bare chest like a monkey looking for fleas in one of those nature documentaries. Why did he have to remember those, too? “I don’t see any reason for a clone to have a tattoo. Or any of those scars. Hmm.”
“You're absolutely right. A clone wouldn't have any of these. So... maybe I’m not a clone, Murdock.”
“Then where’s Face?” Murdock said, halting in honest confusion.
“Supposing I believed you,” he asked, unsure of how this was going to come across, “what would you say I, Face, am?”
“My best friend,” the captain said instantly.
“Anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Like...” How did one ask a mental patient about something like this? But then, he was a mental patient too, right now, right? So why not? “Why’d you take my shirt off?”
Murdock started laughing, the accent getting thicker out of what he realized was discomfort. “Oh, darlin’, you ask the silliest questions sometimes, I do declare...”
“It’s not really a problem,” he said quickly - instinctively, came a little whisper, to stop Murdock before babbling set in. “I was just wondering. It felt, I don’t know, normal, maybe. Like it's happened before, and I was thinking it might be a memory or something.” Shit. Now he was the one babbling.
The captain brightened. “There was that one time I had to strip Face nekkid in the shower bays after we...”
But before Brian, Face, whoever he was, could ask for a cessation of the story or clarification of intentions or his shirt back or anything useful, automatic fire hit the small vet clinic and both of them had to go diving for cover.
The noise only lasted a moment or two, but for the man who couldn’t remember who he was, it felt like a little bit of home somehow. More recognizable than the sound of a car engine, it seemed in that brief period that he’d always known that sound. Explosions. Comforting. He could have laughed, but there wouldn’t have been any point to it. Would have been lost in all that eardrum-bursting mayhem outside the examination room.
Finally, it stopped.
Murdock crawled over to him, and both of them edged slowly towards the door. “Hannibal and BA,” the captain whispered, and reached up for the light switch. When it was off, Brian swung the door open as far as he dared.
They heard boots, voices. Low, arguing. He strained to hear, but he couldn’t make anything out, and poked his head around the edge of the jamb. If he remembered right, which it turned out he did, there was a clear shot down the hallway to the main waiting room, where the others probably were, which they were.
Three, no, four men, all armed, all dressed in studiously non-descript ways, were standing, backs to him, not ten yards away. They hadn’t turned any of the office lights on when they’d come in, except fo this exam room, and they’d made sure it was shuttered, with a towel stuffed against the outside, to block any light from escaping and giving them away.
“Who are these guys?” he asked Murdock, who just rolled his eyes up. “More clones.”
Great. That probably meant they worked for the pharmaceutical company, or whatever. It didn’t really matter. They had guns on Hannibal and BA and the doctor, and for some reason, that made him incredibly mad.
Whatever they were discussing seemed to be coming to a head, voices heating up and rising to the ceiling like so much hot air. From what he could make out...
“They’re looking for us,” he whispered back to Murdock, who just nodded.
One of the men broke off from the gang. The man stood up slowly, keeping his eyes trained down the hallway. He was dimly aware that Murdock was backing up against the cabinet he’d been sitting on earlier. The Clone Army dude (he really couldn’t think of anything better to call him) was checking rooms, he realized with a cold wash of adrenaline. He had just disappeared into the supply closet. There was only one more door before this one.
He moved back a little, inching back behind the door. He felt like he was on autopilot. Definitely not in control. He had a mental note to ask Murdock more about that Ranger thing later.
They both heard the quiet snick of the x-ray room opening.
His hand fumbled backwards, searching for something, anything within reach, and a cold, hard, roundish thing was pressed into his hand. He recognized it, and his heart rate as he realized what he was doing. And no time to think about that right then, because the door was opening.
He held his breath.
When the Clone stepped fully into the room, that autopilot kicked in again, just like with the doctor, except this time it was a little worse, because this time, he found himself lowering a twitching body to the ground, one hand over the dying man’s mouth and another still twisting the scissors into the throat. There was something hot and wet and unpleasant all over his arms, arterial blood most likely, and he was keenly aware of Murdock watching him in the darkness.
“Is he...” he began, and then realized the idiocy of finishing that question. The answer was pretty damn clear, and he’d done it, and he wasn’t too sure how he felt about that. Not that the guy was dead. That’d he’d done it.
Movement.
He had to lunge to stop Murdock from running out into the hall. The captain didn’t struggle too long against him, and it was when Murdock settled down that Brian realized he had both arms around the other man.
“Let me go!” the lanky man hissed at him. “Come on, Face. Let me go. Gotta support your unit.”
“I’ll take care of it, sweetie,” he said lightly, trying to cover up that slightly sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was just this feeling that this was what the other man needed from him right now. Like calming a scared dog, best thing to do was exude confidence. And he wasn’t exactly lying, although he was good at that, because there was confidence coming from somewhere. Half in jest, he planted a sloppy kiss on Murdock’s cheek, not really thinking about it, and let him go.
He pried the gun loose from the dead man’s hand and dropped the magazine as he stepped over the body, into the hall. The emergency lighting glinted off the dull metal. Five rounds. He couldn’t miss.
Hannibal and BA had gone silent. Made sense. The bad guys were just shadows against the pale waiting room wall, but he could tell by the stance and slight shift that they were bringing their guns back up.
He had a quick flash of himself, young, dust in his nose, knees in the dust, the M-16 propped up against his forearm, the explosion, the smell of cordite and the distant ping of a metal target in the hot Texas sun. Shooting ammo during rangetime he’d conned on hid off day.
Face didn’t grin, not yet, not until he spent three of the five rounds and there were three more bodies on the floor in the vet clinic, and none of them were his friends. Then he could. Then he could sink down against the nearest wall, and not think about anything but how nice it was to not be anything but what he was.
A shoe nudged his, and he looked up into the blinding glare of a flashlight. “Shit, BA, I’m okay. Turn that thing off.”
“It’s me, kid.”
“Hannibal?”
“I’m going to ask you a question, Face, and you better not lie to me again.”
He slammed his head back into the wall once. Yeah, that had been a bad idea. Amnesia or no, Hannibal probably wasn’t going to let that go so easily. “Yes, boss?”
“What happened to your shirt?”
Face’s shirtlessness problems cleared up as soon as they got the lights on and Murdock found it over by the mirror. It was balled up and wrinkled and slightly blood-splattered - like everything else in the room, but Face didn’t want to think about that. Still serviceable, though, and he’d slipped it back on without a second thought.
They cleaned up as best they could, took the doctor home, and headed back towards a rented house they’d been using for a base on this mission. Murdock fell asleep the second they hit the van, and if he happened to do this with his head in Face’s lap, and if Face occassionally stroked the pilot’s unruly hair back, Hannibal and BA didn’t comment about it.
Face got the story out of Hannibal, against the doctor’s wishes, but Hannibal always did what he wanted anyway. They’d been working private security for the doctor while looking into a series of death threats that he’d been getting from, as it turned out, his old employers. Face had been accompanying him under the guise of a grad student when the attack had come at some lawn party he’d been throwing at the local country club. They were in Georgia. Face had no been shot up with kitty tranqs. That was about all the detail Face got before lapsing into insensibility himself.
His memory didn’t return nearly as fast as his shirt did, though. He got bits and pieces over the next month or so, fragments of his past sliding back into place in his mind. The doctor had told them it might never return fully. That might have even been okay with him, given the kind of life he realized he’d had, if there wasn’t something critical missing.
Murdock. He was missing Murdock. Sure, there were memories of sock puppets, of some ridiculous helicopter rides, but none like he’d expected. Nothing... close.
And the worst part was, the pilot wouldn’t talk to him about it.
He bore that as long as he could, not wanting to pressure the other man’s delicate mental state with demands and promises and so on. But he had to know. He asked Hannibal, who just shook his head, and BA, who just rolled his eyes. The only answer was owned by Murdock, and Face was careful to wait until he thought he had the whole thing figured out.
+++++
He scammed his way into the pilot’s ward with an old favorite about the parasites in the Euphrates River and needing to examine the patient right now, and got a private room with a locking door, and Murdock’s undivided attention.
“Do I really have worms, doc?” he asked in that southern accent of his.
"No, Murdock."
"Oh, good. Because those things, let me tell you, are nasty."
Face really didn't want to thing about how the pilot knew about that. “Murdock, it’s me.”
“Me, who?”
He took a deep breath. “Face. It’s Face, Murdock. I’m really here.”
The pilot perked for a moment, but it was short-lived. He sagged back down quick enough that Face found himself longing for the clinging, protective man who’d been with him in that vet clinic such a short time ago. What had been going through his head? “You’re the clone, aren’t you?”
That. “No, Murdock. Not the clone. I’m the real one. They let me out.”
“I knew it!” Murdock declared, snapping his fingers. “Tell me, Face, was it truly awful?”
“Big pickling jar, captain. I’ve had more fun in my life.”
“I knew it!” Then he got quiet. “But I guess you talked to him, then?”
“Yup.”
“He tried to kiss me, Face.”
“Said you tried to kiss him, too.”
A blush rose up Murdock’s neck, all the way to his cheekbones. Face would have never said it, but it made him look adorable. “He just looked so much like you...” he muttered, trying to turn away.
“Hey, captain,” Face said, catching Murdock’s cheek with one hand. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you felt this way?”
“I tried a couple of times, but...”
“I never listened?” He watched his friend nod slowly. “I’m sorry about that, Murdock.”
“Oh, it’s okay, facey,” the pilot drawled, drawing out the syllables in that nervous exaggeration. “No need for sympathy here. ‘E was a clone, anyway, not such a great copy, they changed a bunch of stuff on Camino anyway, probably not something you really feel.”
“Murdock, I, uh, it wasn't the clone. I just didn't know before. But he got to look at you for the first time all over again." Face was uncomfortably aware of the distance between them. "I've been really jealous, actually."
Then any hope of a serious conversation vanished back into the swirling stream of consciousness that Murdock seemed to float down in an inner tube with beer. Although maybe that was pretty okay right now. The pilot’s face was all lit up. “What happened to the clone-you, Brian wots-his-name?”
“Somewhere he can just be whoever it is he is.” Face had come prepared for this one, and he sat down on the table next to Murdock. “Sounds like they’re putting him out on a ranch.”
“Would you like to be on a ranch, faceman? With cows and cook-outs and everything?”
“Nope. That’s just for clones. Supposed to be a real nice place.” Sure, it was ridiculous. But it was Murdock, and he deserved a good end to the story. “I like being here, with Hannibal and BA and you.”
That was pretty much the end of whatever it was he'd come here to talk about. But, since it ended there with Face putting an arm around the captain, and Murdock leaning into his shoulder and slipping a hand onto the lieutenant's thigh, it probably had been really had been a good conversation. He didn't remember everything yet, but that had to be a good sign.
And as Murdock snuggled in a little closer with each breath, Face figured it was almost worth losing all those memories to make room for all these new ones.