Title: And Sand Was Everywhere
Fandom: The A-Team
Rating: er, PG-13, if only for cursing
Pairing: established Face/Murdock
Genre: humour and fluff
A/N: Ok, so now I've seen The A-Team six times in theatre. ♥ This fic is in response to
this prompt over at
a_team_kink. I decided it was too cute to pass up and I had a bunch of ideas for it. It was written in little snippets, and I've compiled them all togheter for posting here. Can be read movie!verse or tv!verse. Comments and con-crit are awesome!!
Disclaimer: I don't own the Rangers, but I wish I was one. ;D
**********
There's no telling for sure how Face and Murdock got from the back of the van to the ocean. One minute the two of them had been sending prank texts together with Face's new cell phone (he hadn't had an opportunity until now to procure a new one since his took a bullet for him four missions ago, and he was gleefully abusing it,) and the next they were racing each other across the sand to the water, losing their shirts and shoes along the way. BA groaned, saying something about sand getting all over his 'girl' before he and Hannibal decided to climb out and join their fellow soldiers.
They set up a spot on the beach for themselves, which consisted of some folding chairs, a small grill, an ice chest full of food that Face had insisted on, and bundled towels that held essential items. Murdock drug Face out of the water, trying (and failing) to run in the sand, and pulled out four inflatables from amongst these items. The conman came up behind him, tossing their retrieved clothes into a pile by the chair Hannibal was setting up for himself.
"Which of those is mine, bud?" He asked the pilot with a large grin, eyes flitting to the side as a pair of women walked by in small bikinis, biting their bottom lips.
Murdock held a rubber flamingo up to the conman's face, forcing Face to lean back a bit and blink. He was snickering. "This one is yours, Faceguy," he informed, dropping the blown-up toy into Face's hand while he began to push and pull his way into the ring of a bright red octopus.
Face only shrugged, following suit, having worse trouble than his friend. By the time Murdock was situated and turned around to face Hannibal and BA with two other inflatables clutched to his chest, Face had fallen backwards in a mess of limbs.
Reaching up, Murdock started to set a disfigured sort of puffer fish atop BA's head, since there was no way it was going around him, but the menacing look BA landed him with made Murdock lower the spiney floaty, pouting.
"You know I ain't wearing that, fool," BA growled.
"Face and I picked them all out to match each of us, Bosco. It was either this one for you or a seahorse, but Face said that as much as you love kids, you'd never get pregnant."
"Because men can't have babies, Murdock," Face supplied from the side, noticing his amused smirk mirrored on Hannibal.
"Well of course not, Face. Not human men. But seahorse men do, and you said that even if BA was a seahorse, there was no way he'd have baby seahorsies because-"
"Murdock, show Hannibal the one we got him," Face leapt in, guiding the pilot by his shoulders to stand on the opposite side of Hannibal's chair, a barrier between them and a fuming, disgusted looking BA.
Happily, the pilot presented Hannibal with a circle-shaped shark, the glittery silver plastic shimmering under the sun. Face laughed out loud as his colonel sighed and let Murdock drop it around his neck, then rushed back to the ocean, feet burning in the sand.
**********
"Face! Get your fool ass back here and put this on!"
"Fuck you!"
"Don't make me come in and get you! Cos you ain't gonna like it if I do!"
Face ignored BA, throwing himself into another wave that went over his head and pulled him further out away from the beach at the same
time.
BA let an annoyed growl escape him and threw down a tube of sunblock, turning to Hannibal, whose attention was focused on a book and his cigar. The sergent wore a serious scowl. "Hannibal! Face is gonna fry if you don't get him to put this shit on."
Hannibal looked up, tilted his head slightly, and smirked. "He'll finally get a natural tan."
BA sighed heavily. "And he'll complain for the next week. During which you'll be taking care of his sunburns." He pointed at Hannibal meaningfully, meeting his colonel's eyes. He sighed again when Hannibal just laughed, but he watched as the older man placed his book aside, sitting up.
Hannibal took up the tube of sunblock lotion and motioned for BA to hand him the bundled towel that held all of Face's belongings. BA did so, sure he was going to actually like where this plan was going.
After a little bit of discreet rummaging, Hannibal found the bottle of cocoa butter that he knew Face would come back to re-apply in the next ten minutes. He popped the cap open, lifting his brow as the strong chocolate scent spread in the ocean air. Without a second of hesitance, he squeezed out a nice amount of the sunblock into the bottle.
BA grinned as Hannibal replaced everything right as Face was coming out of the water. The colonel winked, settling back in his chair.
Childishly sticking his tongue out at BA as he reached their spot, Face, as predicted, went right for his stuff. The moment he opened his expensive, luxury suntanning cream, however, he turned a haughty glare on his teammates.
"You guys didn't... I got this stuff when we were in Cairo. Do you know how difficult that was?"
"What did we do, fool?" BA asked, doing a nice job of keeping an inconspicuous expression.
Face sneered. "I know the smell of chocolate from cheap sunblock," he snapped, abandoing the cocoa butter in the sand to dig through his things some more. He pulled out another tube of something, squeezing some into his hand and applying it over his arms, shoulders, and chest. "This will have to do until I can go down the boardwalk to buy some more," he grumbled, but he had a triumphant glint in his eye.
Murdock, who had been wading around in the shallow water with a snorkeling mask, started waving and shouting to Face, but gained the attention of half of the beach-goers around them as well as his team. They all turned to see their pilot pointing excitedly as a pair of stingrays shot from the waves, flying over them and back into the water.
The pure look of joy that came across Face wasn't lost to either Hannibal or BA as the conman raced back to the ocean.
BA turned to Hannibal, both of them sharing the equivalent of a silent 'awwww.' The dark man pushed Face's stuff to the side, rolling his eyes before sitting down. "You're still taking care of him when he turns into a lobster, Bossman."
Beside him, Hannibal grinned. "I don't think so. I mixed sunblock into that bottle this morning and put extra vanilla in it. I really love it when a plan comes together."
**********
The sun was at it's highest and that was the only reason that Hannibal (or so he said) allowed himself to be pulled from his chair and tugged down the beach and thrown into the ocean by his insane pilot and second in command, each of them overexcited. Murdock so much that's he'd gone from speaking Swahili to German to Spanish and back to German.
Face waded into the water until the waves weren't crashing against him enough to knock him on his ass if he were to just stand, which is what he does. He stood there, and Hannibal came up to stand beside him. He's glad he got to see the satisfied, content smile Face is wearing before Murdock started swimming circles around them like a shark. It had been a while since he'd seen that look on his lieutenant.
When Murdock actually decided to bite Face's leg is when their time playing in the ocean went a bit downhill. The conman shouted, turning at lightning speed to confront the pilot, who was already swimming away, cackling that crazy cackle. Face dove after him, covering Hannibal with a splash.
Hannibal smirked as he watched his boys. Face catches Murdock and grapples with him, threatening to pop the inflated octopus still around his friend's waist. Murdock lets out a howling protest, biting Face again, this time around his wrist. Face let him go on the spot.
"Fucking dick-kissing son-of-a-cunt, you're gonna cry when I get ahold of you," Face yelled. Hannibal arrupted in laughter as the blonde apologized promptly to a man who started yelling at him about his language, covering the ears of a little girl in a frilly swimsuit.
Face swam away hurriedly, not wanting a confrontation, especially on their down-time. A wave went over him, under which he disappeared and did not resurface. Murdock and Hannibal watched closely, trying to anticipate where Face may come up again. It wasn't really a surprise when arms encircled Murdock about a minute later, causing him to tense, but the conman didn't do anything dastardly, just leaned in to nip at the pilot's ear. Murdock quivered, sliding down dramatically as though he were a puddle, and Face laughed even as he went underwater again, starting his circling back up.
"Mother fuck-" Hannibal was silenced by Face splashing him in warning, but growled and reached to pull Murdock up. The brunette blinked at him in confusion, big eyes meeting blue ones. "Lay off the biting, Murdock. That's an order."
Murdock tilted his head like a lost puppy. "But I didn't bite you none, bossman."
"Like hell-"
"Boss," Face interjected, and Hannibal would have told him that he didn't give a shit about bad language, any kid would grow up to use enough of it no matter what their parents did to prevent it, but he instead followed the finger Face was pointing down to the water, where a blob was floating.
"Is that a jellyfish?"
"See. And you were blamin' me, Hannibal. Humf!" Murdock folded his arms.
Face, with a grin and a wink, leaned over and whispered into Murdock's ear that he should know that Hannibal's 'no biting' rule didn't apply to him. It put a wicked smile back on Murdock's face.
**********
The opportune moment came when the sun was just about to begin sinking in the sky, but it wasn't quite a sunset yet, merely casting a marvelous golden glow onto everything and everyone on the beach. Some families were packing up, calling their children out of the water that was sparkling now. Some people were just getting there, mostly couples holding hands.
Murdock kept glancing up at Face, watching how his blonde hair shone, and feeling his stomach do a barrel-roll. The conman looked genuinely happy. The pilot could tell by the light in his eyes, realizing that since they'd been on the run it hadn't been there as often.
But it was there now, accompanied by a mischievous grin that said plainly, 'I'm getting away with something that I shouldn't be.'
They were kneeling opposite each other, BA snoozing between them, and they were burying the dark man up to his neck. They were almost done, just having a hand left to cover.
Hannibal had gone to get them food from the pier, after a beach patrol had been called on them over Murdock making his gunpowder steaks. Face had managed to get the officers to believe they'd just set off a few fireworks and wouldn't do it again.
"Can we make BA's legs a mermaid tail, Facey?" Murdock asked with a crazy devilish grin of his own. Face looked up at him, eyebrows shot up in amusement at the idea, and both of them scooted down toward BA's legs, shaping the sand this way and that.
"You're making the fin lopsided, Murdock," Face commented. He reached over, placing his hands on top of the pilot's, guiding them over the sand so the right shape could be formed. When he was done, he pulled their hands up, arms outstretched and linked over the mermaid that was now BA. "See?"
Murdock hummed, nodding thoughtfully, the same time he was lacing their fingers together.
They left BA like that, finding the volleyball Face had conned off some girls earlier and hitting it back and forth to each other, running about near their spot on the beach. About the time Face fell as he attempted a dive for the ball, laughing and half-covering himself in sand, Hannibal came back with the food.
The colonel took one look at his sergent and turned to his pilot and second as they jogged toward him, shaking his head, but entertained all the same. He let Murdock ransack the bag of food for his order of chili-cheese fries, and started to pass Face a smoothie, but in the process, as Face was reaching to take it, the conman seemed to come to an epiphany, eyes lighting up with the plan in his head as he bolted to kneel again in the sand by BA.
Hannibal and Murdock watched as Face piled sand in two places over the big guy's chest, Hannibal snorting, knowing immediately what Face was doing. When the blonde stood and stepped back, BA was fully equipped with a large pair of breasts.
“Now that’s a mermaid,” Murdock said approvingly.
Face winked.
"Give me the camera.”
**********
Murdock couldn't quit looking at Face if he tried.
The wavering golden light from the sunset was casting itself directly upon the conman, his blonde hair, the flecks of water on his skin, his laughing face, and it all made the pilot close to being unable to breathe.
Especially when Face reached and took his hand, and Murdock's stomach did barrel rolls.
They started walking, talking about the day, Murdock jumping excitedly when the stingrays were brought up again, ("They flew, Facey! Just like me!"), and Face putting on a huge grin when he was praised for the prank he pulled on Hannibal with the ketchup and the shark inflatable.
Face didn't lose that grin. Murdock noticed each time the other man's grip on his hand tightened comfortably, each time they burst into laughter together, each time Face glanced over at him, eyes sparkling.
He blinked when Face noticed him noticing.
"Murdock, you've sort of been staring at me, honey."
The brunette glanced down at his sand-covered feet. He wasn't sure if the pink-ish glow from the sunset would hide the heat rising to his face.
"Just lookin', Faceman."
The hand clutching his own unexpectedly pulled Murdock over. He yelped, rolling into the sand, only realizing that Face was rolling with him when they both came to a stop, and Murdock found himself pinned underneath. He gave a shy smile, sighing happily when Face leaned down to kiss him.
Face's mouth against his was Murdock's favourite thing in the world. It was the only time when Murdock wasn't in a plane or a helicopter that he felt like he was soaring anyway.
After a few long moments of being lost in the sensation of Face’s tongue against his own, Murdock arched his back upwards, shifting, and he gave a small grunt. It made Face pull away, confused, and the pilot gave a little grumble.
“There’s somethin’ jabbing into my back,” he explained, and reached underneath himself to find whatever it was. He pulled out two seashells.
Face started laughing and took them from him, and he examined them, while Murdock examined his lover, how content he looked.
“Murdock, look.”
The pilot blinked as a kiss was dropped onto his forehead, then focused on the shells that Face was holding right in front of his face. One shell was held up to the other, and they made a the shape of a heart.
And Murdock’s heart had never soared higher.
*End*