A/N: I'm not really the biggest slash fan around, and I rarely write romance anymore, but someone over at the A-Team prompts meme was seeking a little fictional comfort so I thought I'd give it a go. And hey, sometimes you just gotta branch out.

Into the Shoals

"Jesus, HM," Face murmured, dabbing at the blood flowing from Murdock's torn knuckles, "that hit must've been all teeth." He pressed down on the wound with a blue and white checked dish towel, now crosshatched and brushed with dark red.

Murdock's free left hand clenched a fist on his knee. It was shaking. His right hand was steady and warm, wrapped up in cloth and Face's soothing touch, but Murdock was silent and unsoothed. The angry flush was fading from his cheeks, but he couldn't seem to keep still.

Face leaned in, keeping his lover's hand held tightly, trying to make eye contact. "HM? You with me, buddy?"

The distant gaze in the pilot's eyes indicated that he was most certainly not with him, was somewhere else, with someone else, someone who wouldn't keep him safe. Perhaps he was still in that bar, still fighting that nobody whose face he'd beat in earlier.

Face remembered the fight with a cringe.

He'd been sitting at the bar, swirling a smoky scotch over the ice in his glass, tracking the movement of the team's prospective client around the pool table. Mark O'Reilly was a cool, confident man when in the stride of a game. He was beating Hannibal, who was wearing a tweed hat and jacket and a fake beard, and had a pipe clenched between his teeth, though he did not smoke it. He was losing purposefully, Face thought, to feel O'Reilly out.

BA was in the corner with a toolkit, showing the old jukebox who was boss. He was dressed in khaki green overalls – the only time he ever volunteered to put on a costume for a job was when there was tinkering to be done. He probably wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to the client, lost in the inner workings of the broken machine.

Murdock was sitting alone at a table between the bar and the pool table with his feet up on the chair in front of him. He was drinking a Pepsi and playing solitaire with a deck of red Bicycle cards. He had four quarters resting on the edge of the pool table, waiting to take the winner in a game. The occasional creak of his chair told Face that Murdock was fidgeting in his seat, and the constant flip-flip-flip-shuffle of the cards indicated that he probably was unaware of it, either totally immersed in his bored passerby role or trying not to think of something.

Face was wearing a suit, tie loosened and top button undone, hunched shoulders projecting tiredness and frustration as if he'd just gotten off work after a long hard day.

The bar was mostly quiet; there was the low rumble of Hannibal's voice, the flipping cards, the tools rotating dutifully out of the kit, the clinking of ice, and not much else. Until the bell over the door rang, and Goonface walked in.

He was a good looking guy with a cold face and a stylish leather jacket. He had his arm around a pretty girl, and he was dragging her around like little more than fancy luggage. She didn't complain.

The couple settled at the bar next to Face, the guy predictably placing himself between Face and the girl. He nudged the girl toward a bar stool and signalled the cute brunette bartender for a beer.

"Dave, are we gonna be here long?" the girl asked, barely louder than a whisper. "'Cause I told Sandra we'd meet them at ten."

"Honey, we just got here," he replied, "Sandra can wait." His words weren't unreasonable, but his tone was dismissive. The bartender was wiping a glass and hadn't gotten his drink yet, so Dave waved his hand to her in a get-on-with-it gesture.

Face immediately disliked him.

His luck was against him tonight, though, since he was close by and well-enough attired to draw Dave's attention. Dave looked at him with a half-grin and a gleam in his eyes and said, "Howdy."

The greeting reminded Face of Murdock, and so he was tricked into half-smiling back.

"Service here is a bit slow, isn't it?" Dave said to Face even as the bartender handed him a glass of beer.

Face swirled his drink pointedly. "Seems fine to me." He nodded at the scowling bartender as she turned away.

Dave laughed at that. "Well I guess you didn't walk in with a ring on your finger, did you? Maybe I should've tried that." He raised his ring hand and ignored the girl, his wife, as she squawked indignantly. "Then again," Dave continued, leaning a bit toward Face, "that might not have worked quite so well for me, hmm?"

This gave Face enough pause that he heard the cards stop flipping, then he laughed and ran a hand through his hair. "Well, you know how it is," he said, "The whole suit and tie thing . . ."

"Dave," the girl interrupted again. "We really should get going."

Dave's jaw clenched a little. "I told you," he said, turning back to her, "that Sandra could wait. I'm trying to have a conversation here!"

"Yeah but I told her– "

"Well you shouldn't have told her, now would you quit bitching about it?" She stopped arguing at that, going red in the face, embarrassed. "Christ," Dave shook his head, turning back to Face, "They never do shut up, do they? You were saying?" He sidled closer again, turning his back to the girl to lean casually against the bar, giving Face his full attention.

Face couldn't recall what he'd been saying, seeing the girl's lip tremble. He didn't get a chance to either, because then Murdock was beside them, kindly suggesting that the gentleman apologize to the lady. And when the "gentleman" responded that he could talk to "his lady" however he damn well pleased, Murdock decked him.

Dave's impolite response quickly earn him another hit, and then it was on.

Face squeezed Murdock's hand a little too tightly, and he tried to pull it away instinctively. "Sorry buddy," Face murmured. Slowly, carefully, he lifted the wrapped hand so that its palm faced him, and kissed the tips of its fingers. A shiver coursed up Murdock's arm, but he didn't say make a sound, just kept staring off into the middle distance. So Face did it again.

"Murdock?" he questioned, after, "Where are you buddy? What's going on in that head of yours?" He'd been silent since he'd been led from the bar, and it was starting to freak Face out. Face ghosted his lips down the pilot's fingers, past the bloodstained cloth, and whispered into his wrist. "Come back to me, HM."

Because it was Face, and because it was love, and because he'd promised that if he could snap out of it when Face asked then he always would, Murdock did. "Face?"

Face pulled Murdock's hand to his chest, probably getting blood on his shirt and not caring, and wrapped his arms around the rest of him. "What happened back there, buddy?" In any circumstance, Murdock could be counted on to defend an innocent woman from an asshole, but today had been different. Murdock didn't jump to fists very often, not when he could run circles with words.

"That guy was a jerk," Murdock whispered. "I didn't like him."

"I got that," Face chuckled. "But what else?"

"I didn't like him," Murdock repeated. "But you liked him. He was a jerk, and nobody liked him but you did, and you smiled at him, and you flirted with him!" Murdock pushed out of Face's arms and shoved him back a little, and the dish towel unwrapped itself from his hand. "Just like last week with that waiter," the floodgates were open now, "and yesterday with the woman at the grocery store, and two days ago with the valet, and with everybody else who you meet."

Face cringed. "I didn't like him," he defended, "and those people were just– "

"For cons, I know," Murdock snapped. "So you didn't like him, and you were just using them, and you still flirt with them all, and you never flirt with me!"

Face was shocked into silence for the second time that day.

"You never flirt with me," Murdock repeated, and now he was as clear as his favourite skies, aware and together and looking to Face for answers.

"Of course I don't," Face replied, finally, and Murdock's eyes got stormy. "Why would you want that?"

"You mean why would I want to feel wanted, or attractive, or like you care about me?"

Face flinched. "You think I don't care about you?"

No, wait, that wasn't right, Murdock thought. That came out wrong. He stepped toward Face, reaching his hand out to touch him, forgetting that it was bleeding. Face stepped back. "No," Murdock said, "That's not what I meant."

"Because I don't like them, Murdock." Face's voice trembled, "And I don't care about them, and I flirt to get what I want from them, and it's cheap and it's fake and it doesn't mean anything, and why would you ever want me to do that with you?"

Murdock would have sprouted wings right then if he couldn't close the space between them as fast as he did. He reached out and pulled Face into his arms as Face had done with him a moment ago. "I'm sorry, Facey, I didn't mean that." Face's breath hitched and Murdock wished the floor would open up and swallow him. "I didn't mean that, I just saw you smile at him, at all of them, and I just went a little crazy. I do that sometimes." He turned his head toward Face and kissed his hair, his neck, his ear, anything he could reach.

Sometimes Murdock didn't know why Face was with him at all, he wanted to say, but that would only open up another hurt, and it was foolish anyway.

After a few moments, Face gave a shuddering sigh. "This is what I like," he whispered into Murdock's shoulder. "This is what I care about. This is what I want."

"I know," Murdock whispered back, and then they slowly released each other.

Face leaned down and picked up the cloth and tossed it into the corner of the room, then grabbed another from the table. "Sit," he directed, and went back to work cleaning and bandaging Murdock's knuckles.

A few moments passed in silence, with Murdock trying not to notice the traces of red around Face's eyes and Face concentrating solely on the red on Murdock's hand, before Face spoke again.

"So, uh. . . . You come here often?"

End.

Also, I had a lot of trouble deciding whether this was movie-verse or TV-verse. I think I was picturing movie-verse all along, but with the nickname HM, and Hannibal in disguise, I think ultimately what I wrote was TV-verse. So I changed the 'antique' jukebox to just an old one, and I hope it works! (The story I mean, not the jukebox – it's in good hands I'm sure.)