Chapter Text
If he doesn’t count his childhood paper route or the parttime gig shelving books at the local library when he was a teenager (Give him a number in the Dewey decimal system, and he can still tell you exactly what subject it is.), Murdock has never had a “normal” job. He went straight from high school to the military and got himself flight certified with record-setting speed. Whether it was for the US Army or the A-Team or those two involuntary missions for the CIA, working as a pilot is all he’s ever done to earn a living.
Once upon a time, he thought he might transition to flying for one of the big airlines after retiring from the military. Life (a.k.a. Vietnam) had other plans, and 15 years in the VA psych ward put any commercial career possibilities to bed. Even once he and the team are free from Stockwell’s control, he doubts a big fish like United or PanAm will hire a man with his psychological history—never mind that to this day he’s still considered one of the best Huey pilots the Army ever had. But a chopper’s not a jumbo jet and he gets why some folks might not want a guy like him flying a load of vacation travelers around the globe.
By the time Stockwell got him officially released from the VA, he’d already accepted that 747s were not in his future. At least he sort of got to fly that one big bird a few years ago, even if it was actually Hannibal’s eyes on the gauges and Hannibal’s hands on the yoke.
He sometimes wonders why Dr. Richter signed off on letting him out. Did he truly believe Murdock was cured, sane, rational, reasonable, stable? (He takes a breath, exhales on a ten count to stop the old synonym habit from taking over.) Or did Stockwell pressure him into it? Murdock doesn’t like the latter idea, so he chooses to believe the former even if it does strain the ol’ doc’s credibility a smidge. He wishes he’d been given a chance to ask Richter before being swept away to Langley where the rest of his team was already relocated, but they had him packed up and out of there so quick he’d barely had time to leash Billy and grab the dog’s favorite chew toy from under the bed.
So, in the grand scheme of his life, it’s no wonder he’s having trouble settling on a career path now.
He liked working for the pound, picking up stray dogs, but when he found out what happens if they aren’t adopted or returned to their owners, he opened all the cages and set them all free. Naturally, he was fired for it, but he has no regrets on that score.
Inspecting men’s undershorts was satisfying for a while. He liked the detail-oriented work and quickly rose up the ranks. But his illusions were dashed when he learned how much of Inspector #1’s work is in fact done by underlings who are far more qualified to do it. Any organization where you can’t trust the top dog is an organization doomed to failure. He left that job without so much as an “Adios, muchacho.”
Tending turkeys was a bad idea from the start, as was fortune writer for a fortune cookie company. And the incident when he’d gotten Face gut-shot and nearly killed had put him off waiting tables forever. He shudders at the memory even now, six months later.
“Hey, Murdock.” Face flops down on the big armchair in the living room of the house where everyone on the team lives but Murdock. (And don’t get him started on that subject because he’s super ambivalent and not at all certain he can explain the miasma of mixed emotions without a professional to help him sort them out.) “When did you get here?”
“About the same time B.A. left. Late night?” It’s nearly 11:00a.m. and Face has clearly just rolled out of bed, dressed as he is in silk pajamas, robe, and slippers.
He smiles one of his charming and satisfied smiles. “Late but oh so pleasant.”
Murdock glances around as far as peripheral vision allows, which is pretty far in his case. He’s got great eyesight. No leggy blondes or statuesque brunettes or cute-as-a-button red-heads appear. “No one else joining us this morning?”
“She left already. Had to get to church,” Face answers without a hint of irony. “That today’s paper?” He conveniently and expertly derails Murdock’s line of questioning.
Sunday’s paper is scattered by section across Murdock’s outstretched legs, over the coffee table, on the floor. “Yup.”
“What’re you reading?”
“Classifieds. You want the sports section or the funnies or anything?” He’s already read the whole thing front to back—a habit he got into at the VA early on, back when he had to steal the day-old newspapers from the nurses’ station trash can because God forbid the occupants of the loony bin know what was going on in the real world.
“Nah, but if there’s a personals section handy…”
Murdock folds down the section he holds and looks up sideways at Face from where he’s lying on the sofa. “Since when do you need personals ads to meet women?”
“I don’t need them, per se,” Face protests too quickly. “I just like to see what’s out there. Get an idea what women are looking for so I can adjust accordingly.”
“Uh-huh.” Murdock sort of believes him. Face has always been good at molding himself to be whatever someone else needs him to be—whether it be the demands of a mission or his own desire to woo the ladies. Like whoever the lady was who’d slipped out to get to church. He wishes his buddy could be himself out in the world like he is here in the privacy of his home among his friends. Maybe someday that will happen and Face can be happy with that wife and 2.3 kids he’s mentioned just a little too often to be meaningless chatter.
Murdock sifts through the pages on his lap and thrusts the personals section in Face’s direction. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
They fall into companionable silence. Hannibal is out doing whatever he does in his down time, and B.A. is teaching kids at a nearby youth center about repairing engines. Or something. Murdock only half-listened when B.A. blew out past him mere moments after he arrived that morning. And Frankie is in New York, having somehow finagled a three-day weekend away with one of the team’s prettier handlers—ostensibly to attend the Mets series against the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers.
“Mind if I put on some music?” Face asks when the quiet starts to feel heavy.
“Go ahead. You got the new Springsteen album yet? Or maybe Def Leppard’s latest?” Murdock’s heard songs from both on the local rock station and they’re really good.
Face rises, setting the paper aside, and goes to the fancy stereo system Hannibal expensed to the government last month on B.A.’s behalf. “Uh, no. I was thinking something a little more classic.”
“Oh! Doobie Brothers? Hendrix?” Murdock could go for some vintage rock-n-roll.
“I should’ve said classical.” Face puts an album on the turntable and soon an orchestra is flowing from the speakers. He turns the volume to where he can hear it but still comfortably converse over it.
“That’s nice. What is it?” asks Murdock.
“Mozart. Piano concerto number 21 in C.”
“I don’t hear a piano.”
“Give it a minute.”
Murdock lets the classifieds rest on his belly and tucks his hands behind his head on the throw pillow propped against the arm of the sofa. “Oh. There it is.” He listens for a few moments. “You know, they sometimes used classical music at the VA for therapy.”
“What kind of therapy didn’t they use at the VA?” The question is rhetorical, but Murdock answers anyway.
“That is a very dark list, muchacho.” Considering some of the sketchier practices that were still considered acceptable when he was first committed, it’s also a disturbingly short list. He doesn’t see a reason to tell Face that part though. He knows how much Face disliked having to take him back to the VA after every mission, even though it was for the best for everyone. Especially Murdock.
“I’m sorry I asked.” Face says it in an off-hand tone, but Murdock hears the regret beneath the surface.
“It’s okay, Faceman. It’s all in the past now. Now, I’m looking at the future.” He picks up his paper again and continues perusing the help-wanted section. “We’re gonna be out from under Stockwell’s thumb pretty soon.”
“That doesn’t mean we’ll stop doing what we do best.”
“No, I know.” They all agreed they were needed now just as much as they had been since they first started doing what the A-Team does. It won’t be long, though, before they no longer have the military or the Organization breathing down their necks making that job harder than it already is. However… “I’m thinking about what I want to do between missions. You know? It was one thing when I had nowhere to go but the VA and no one expecting me to show up for anything but therapy or meals. Things are different now. I wanna be a functional part of society now that I have that luxury.”
“Luxury. That’s an interesting way of putting it.” Face’s idea of luxury is a flashy car, a fancy pad, a beautiful woman (or two), and a bottle of fine wine. And no one shooting at him or throwing punches that knock out his caps. Hearing Murdock’s perspective humbles him a bit, but he swallows it down. This isn’t about him.
“I don’t think I wanna clock into some 9-to-5 gig,” Murdock goes on. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for anything that linear. You know?”
“I get that. I don’t think any of us is wired that way anymore, if we ever were in the first place.”
“Right? And it’s especially tough when you know we’ll have to take off for days or weeks at a time when we get hired to rescue some environmentalist bigwig’s naïve kid from an evil dictator’s pollution dungeon or something.”
“That’s a very specific scenario.” Face gives up on the personals and focuses on Murdock, the music a comfortable soundtrack underscoring their conversation.
“Oh, I’ve got a ton of ’em,” Murdock assures him cheerfully. “I have a great imagination.” He shoots Face a cheeky grin that Face returns with a smirk.
“I have no doubt about it.”
Murdock grows thoughtful again. “I need something flexible. Something I like doing would be good, too.”
“You’re more likely to stick with a job when you enjoy it,” Face agrees.
“Exactly.” He rattles the classifieds as if he can shake the ideal job out of the printed listings. “But even if I find the perfect normal-type job—whatever that is—I’ll have to ditch it every time the team takes a normal-for-us-type job.”
“You’re not having second thoughts about—?”
“No, no. Not at all,” Murdock rushes to reassure his friend before Face can finish the question. “I love what we do. It matters. And it’s fun. Mostly.”
Face fills in the blanks from his own thoughts of a couple minutes ago. “Except when people are shooting at us or beating us up.”
Murdock’s brain ricochets like a struck pool ball to a tangential line of thought. “You know, if we had those scanner thingies from Star Trek—tricorders? It’d make ol’ Doc McCoy’s head spin to see all the injuries we’ve healed up from over the years.”
“Can they see that? The…tricorders?” None of them saw Star Trek when it first aired. Mostly they were hip deep in jungle warfare at the time. Murdock is the only one who watched the show—in syndication on the black-and-white TV in the patient lounge at the VA. That was before the guys got him his own color TV for his room.
“Sure. Why not? They can do pretty much everything else.”
“Sounds useful.”
They fall into another companionable silence, the music of Mozart’s concerto filling the conversational gap until an idea occurs to Face and he voices it. “Why don’t you work for yourself?”
“Huh?” Murdock’s gotten caught in the music (old VA habits die hard) and forcibly refocuses his attention on Face.
“Work for yourself. Then if you disappear for a day or a week or even a month, no one’s going to fire you because you’re your own boss.”
“Doing what? Anyway, I don’t know how to run a business.”
“You could learn. You’re smart.”
“When I’m not being crazy, you mean,” Murdock says resentfully.
“Do I look or sound like B.A. to you? I was not going to say that.”
It’s a fair retort, and Murdock sinks into himself regretfully. “Habit. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Face isn’t offended, but he is upset that Murdock’s default response to a compliment is to presume there’s an insult coming right behind it. He resolves to encourage B.A. to lighten up on Murdock a little. He doesn’t pretend it will change anything, and he understands what drives B.A.’s attitude toward the pilot even if none of them ever talk about it out loud. Still, officially Murdock isn’t crazy anymore. The words on paper—even if they are on verified VA letterhead—don’t change reality, but it’s a fallback Face is willing to lean on in defense of his best friend.
He sees how Murdock has withdrawn and draws him out with encouraging questions. “So? If you could work for yourself doing anything you want to, what would you love to do?”
Murdock’s response is immediate. “Fly.”
“Yes, good. What else?”
He shrugs against the sofa cushion and tries to ignore how much this feels like a session with him lounging on the couch in Dr. Richter’s office. Tries to ignore how comfortable he feels in the situation. “I don’t know. I’m not really good at anything but flying.”
“That is patently untrue. Try again.”
Tries to ignore how much like Dr. Richter Face sounds right now. “Dogs,” he says after a moment’s thought. “I like working with dogs.”
“Good, good. How is Billy these days, anyway? Did you bring him with you today?” He glances around as if he’ll actually see the dog. Sometimes in the past he has, but he’s content to let the others think he was merely playing along. Today, the dog is invisible to him and he knows it’s for the best that way.
“Yeah, he’s sleeping over by the fireplace. He sleeps a lot these days. He’s really gettin’ up there in dog years.” Murdock glances to where Billy’s softly snoring on a pillow he put down for him earlier.
Face looks over, too, and talks as if he sees the dog that Murdock conjured up a long time ago to keep himself—well, not sane because nothing managed to do that, but to keep himself from giving up when it felt like death would be preferable to the hell of a VC POW camp. “I’m sure he’ll be around for as long as you need him. He’s always been loyal like that.”
“Yeah. Yeah, he has. Good boy, Billy.” The invisible dog doesn’t wake, but his paws twitch and he snuffles in his sleep. Murdock smiles. “He’s still chasin’ rabbits in his dreams.”
“Sounds nice.” The music swells and Face uses the remote control to turn it down. He’s not listening to it anymore but turning it off might change the atmosphere enough to stop the conversation or shift the subject, and he doesn’t want to do that. Murdock’s attitude ever since Face found him there has been a little off. He wants to help lift the cloud that’s settled over him. “Flying and dogs,” he muses.
“Flying dogs?” Murdock says. It might be a joke, a pretense at mishearing him, but even Murdock isn’t entirely sure about that.
Face snaps his fingers and sits up sharply. “That’s it!”
“What’s it? Sorry to burst your bubble, muchacho, but dogs can’t fly. Even at my craziest I knew that.”
“No, no. You fly the dogs. In an airplane,” he clarifies because sometimes Murdock is exceptionally literal.
“To where?”
“To wherever they need to go.”
For the first time since Face sat down, Murdock sits up. Some papers fall aside, and he shoves others away, uncaring where the fluttering pages land. “I don’t mean to sound like a Negative Nelly, Faceman, but that sounds like a really niche market, if you know what I mean. I mean, how many dogs do you know who can afford to hire a private plane to take ’em to doggy daycare? Oo!” His brain latches onto the idea and takes a fresh ricochet. “I could work at a doggy daycare! Part time, maybe, or weekends or something to start with.”
Before Murdock can drag the topic too far sideways, Face interrupts. “No, think about this. The dogs you used to pick up for the pound—”
Murdock frowns. “I don’t like that place anymore.”
“No, I get it and I agree. But what if those dogs could be adopted somewhere else?”
“Wait, what? Where’re you goin’ with this, Faceman?” He’s still confused, his brown eyes narrowed as he tries to read Face’s mind and fails. Fortunately, Face is happy to explain.
“We could start small. Research animal rescue groups along the East Coast. Find the ones that won’t euthanize animals no matter how long they’re there for starters.”
“I like that idea, but what—?”
“Let me finish.” Face is on a roll now and the ideas are sparking. It’s like the best part of setting up a con, only it’s for real and it’s for a friend. “We see which ones have room for more animals or have folks looking to adopt. We set up a network and you—” He pins Murdock with his bright blue gaze. “—you fly the dogs from the pound here in Langley to wherever they need to go to get adopted!”
“Me?” Murdock’s eyes are wide as he considers the possibilities, the ramifications of what Face is suggesting. Once he grasps it, he’s all in. “I’ll need my own plane. A good one. Doesn’t need to be big, but it’s gotta be reliable and comfortable for the pooches.”
“Figure out what you want, get me the specs, and I’ll get you what you need.”
“Legit like, though. This is for the long haul. A legitimate entrepreneurial enterprise. So, no scams.”
“Of course,” Face assures him, but he will use his finely honed skills to get Murdock the best damned deal possible within the law when the time comes.
Murdock grins. “I been saving up my pennies for a while. Now I know what I was saving ’em for.” His smile slips a little. “You really think we can pull this off? You think folks’ll go for it?”
“I think it’s the future of pet adoption. That’s what I think.”
“And you’ll be my business partner? You said ‘we’,” he points out in a tone like a kid saying, “But you promised.”
“Of course. I’ll set you up with a business license, handle the finances and taxes. All that stuff. I can picture it now.” Face swipes his hand across the air, sketching a headline. “Murdock’s Mobile Mutts providing dog-to-door service from Key West to Bar Harbor. And that’s just the beginning.”
“Just the beginning,” Murdock echoes. They still have to finish out their time with Stockwell, but now that he’s got a plan for afterward, he feels a lot more optimistic.
He glances over at Billy, still sound asleep on the pillow by the fireplace, and his smile broadens into a fond grin. “We already have the perfect mascot.”
“We can put his picture on the business cards,” Face says, understanding perfectly. “Maybe even paint it on the side of your new plane. Then he’ll always be with you, even after he’s gone.”
Murdock turns his smile on Face and nods. “I like that. I like that a whole lot.”