When you hear the tone, the time will be eight forty-five and one quarter.

He remembered seeing that on an old movie one night at the VA.  A guy picked up a phone and dialed a number, reaching an office where a woman sat, announcing the time in a chirpy voice and ringing a bell every fifteen seconds.  Ringing that bell, four times a minute, two hundred and forty times an hour, one thousand, nine hundred and twenty times a shift, until she probably went crazy from it.

He knew how she felt.  That same fucking bell was ringing in his head.

He's got half an hour left.  Twenty minutes.  Fifteen minutes.

He'd sensed rather than seen Face raise his hand to touch him as he stood to go back into the dining room.  The hand never reached its target, even though Murdock felt its warmth as surely as if it had.  He'd wanted to wrap his arms around him and hold him and not let him go, damn Frankie and everyone.  He'd wanted to pick him up and carry him the hell out of there, even though they'd both be dead before they reached the door.

At least Face would have had someone to go with him.

No.  Don't.

He's not going to.  He can't have survived the orphanage and Nam and fifteen years of fighting for lost causes to eat it on the floor of an Italian restaurant, at the hands of some two-bit punk.

Hands.  He wanted to wrap his hands around those guys' necks and twist.  He'd never killed anyone with his bare hands, though he knew the rest of the Team had.  Never thought he could do it.

He knew he could, now.

The pig-eyed one who shot Face stared him down, and he remembered his dumb waiter act at the last second, but not before the bastard knew how much Murdock wanted to kill him.  He forced down the rage that turned everything knife-sharp, brought all the details into painful focus.  He had to wait, bide his time.  He had to stay alert, watch for any moment of weakness.

Concentrate on doin' something.

He concentrated so hard on that, he didn't realize Face was in the van headed to the hospital until he and Frankie had taken out the cop, and Stockwell's spooks had descended on the Villa Cuchina like a swarm of locusts, hustling a confused Lieberman out the door as if his life depended on it.  It was when he started laughing hysterically at the irony, right there in the middle of the restaurant, the shadow of Face's blood still clinging to his hands, the feeling finally returning to them after hitting that fat son of a bitch over and over and over, that he came back to his own cramped head.  Frankie was standing in front of him, made a move to take him by the arms to steady him, but something in Murdock's eyes must've scared the shit out of him, because he froze like a statue.  That's right, pretty boy.  You keep wondering.

"We're takin' Face's car.  I'm drivin'."

"Sure.  Sure.  Whatever you want."
 

Fifteen minutes.  Twenty.  Thirty.

"I'm gonna--"

"You ain't gonna do nothin'.  Siddown."  The huge brown hand rested on his forearm for a second longer than necessary.  An offer of an anchor, as if B.A. knew how close he was to drifting out on the tide.

He breathed.  In.  Out.

When you hear the tone, the time will be...

His eyes scanned the corridor for Hannibal, who had insisted on going in with the doctors.  Nobody was allowed to do that.  Nobody.  He remembered when he'd gotten it in the leg, shrapnel ripping through his flight suit, flying them all back anyway and getting carried between Face and B.A., arms around their shoulders.  Hannibal strapping on a mask and the doctor trying to tell him, you're not going, and the ice blue gaze spearing the guy like a bug.

He went.

That flight had been the longest twenty minutes of his life.  Until now.

Forty minutes.  Fifty.  One hundred.  Two hundred.

Hell.

Should've touched him.  Should've held him.  Should've told him.

--Never told you I loved you, even last week when you were layin' in my arms and we were lookin' up at the ceiling of my shitty little apartment, counting stars.  You'd bought me one of those glow-in- the-dark sets, because we'd made plans to go to the Planetarium the next day, only Stockwell was sending us on another mission instead, and you wanted me to have stars.  You spent hours with me arranging the constellations, after we argued on whether it should be a winter or summer sky.  You wanted winter, I still don't know why.

But I got summer.  You gave me that too.

And later on I lay under the Big Dipper with my arms full of you and thought, this is the time.  Now or never.

And now it is never.--

The doors at the end of the hall opened, and Hannibal walked out.

Murdock couldn't remember how to breathe.
 
 
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
 

Hannibal didn't smile, but he nodded.  Once.

Oh Christ oh Christ ohChrist--

"He made it through."

Murdock's jaw was so tight he thought his teeth would crack.  He stood up, strode down the hall to the bathroom, and threw up in the toilet.
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Fifteen hours.  Twenty.  Thirty.

Hannibal and B.A. had gone back to Langley when they were sure Face was stabilized and they knew they wouldn't be able to pry Murdock loose.

Once he was finally alone, a nurse approached him.  Murdock looked up at her. He noticed that her eyes were blue.  Not the same blue.

"He wants to see you."

He shot to his feet.  "Is he--"

"No.  He's not awake yet.  But he called for you, just before he went under."  She darted a glance toward the nurses' station.  "Technically, he's not supposed to have any visitors for another few hours.  But..."  She trailed off, met his gaze, smiled at what she found there.

She knows, he thought.  Is it so easy to see?

God, he hoped it was.  ‘Cuz then maybe Face knew, too.

"Come on," she told him, decision made, white sneakers squeaking faintly on linoleum as she turned.  He started to follow her, then stopped.

"What is it?"

"It's my fault," he blurted, the guilt suddenly slamming into him now that the danger was passing and he was going to see him and see what he'd done, oh Jesus, what had he done, it was all--

She touched his hand, and he jumped.  "He doesn't need to hear that.  Keep it together."

Her voice was harsh, and his eyes narrowed.  "Sorry," she breathed.  "It's just that--I saw a hundred like you.  That guilt at not being the one--"

He stared at her.

"Sorry," she said again, actually embarrassed.  What had the years done to her to make her embarrassed to speak about it?

"Where?"  he asked.

She took a deep breath.  "Long Binh, then Pleiku.  ‘72 and ‘73."

He reached for her hand, gripped it in his, then released it.  "Thank you," he murmured.  "Thank you."

She blinked rapidly, then turned again.  This time, he followed.
 
 
 

Pale.  He was so pale.

He'd taken up running, serious running, in the last few months at Langley, and had acquired the slim, stringy build of a marathoner.  Murdock worried he looked too thin, but Face assured him that was normal.

--"But I can see your ribs now," he persisted.

A shadow crossed Face's features, though his tone was light.  "Not pretty enough for you anymore, huh?"

Murdock shook his head vehemently.  "That's not it.  You know that's not it.  Don't you?"

Face reached up to trace his lips, quieting him.--

Now he was thin and pale.  He didn't care what Face said, when he got out of here Murdock was going to feed him until he filled out again.  Pasta, that was the answer; he'd have to keep that job at the restaurant...

Shut up.  Touch him.

His hand rose, one finger gliding over the skin of Face's hand, taking care to avoid the IV.  Up over knuckles and short, soft blond hairs to the nails, blunt and strong.  He saw a faint tinge of blue under them, like the other man had been swimming too long in a cold stream.

He had wanted to tell him he was beautiful, but he couldn't.  Face'd heard that a million times before, and he hadn't ever believed it.  Murdock didn't know how to communicate the feeling he had whenever he looked at him; it was so much more than a simple response to beauty.  The only time he felt the same way was when he was in the middle of the sky.  Nothing else the earth could offer held such power over him.

He stayed like that for long minutes, watching Face breathe, fingertip stroking his hand until it tingled.
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Hey, sleepyhead."

Murdock returned to himself slowly, awareness coming in stages.  The smell of clean, bleached linen, pressing against his nose.  The harshness of morning sunlight slicing through his eyelids.  The pain shooting through his neck and back as he tried to unbend from his awkward position, slumped forward like a rag doll onto the hospital bed.  The feel of a feathery touch on the top of his head.

He jerked upright, muscles screaming in protest.

Face was looking at him.

At him.

Face.

"Face."  It was no more than a whisper.

The other man smiled back, weak but still putting out enough raw charm to power DC for a day.  "This has got to be the only time your snoring didn't wake me up."

"What did?" he asked.

Face's hand stroked Murdock's hair.  "Wanting to see you."

"Face, I--"

What?

I'm sorry?

He doesn't need to hear that.

I love you?

It's the wrong time.  Wrong reason.

"Face, why did you want the winter sky?"

The other man frowned for a moment, then his expression cleared.   He shook his head.  "It was stupid."

He debated with himself about pushing, then pushed anyway.  "Why?"

Blue eyes were distant, then focused.  "Well, I, ah, you had said a few months ago that you wanted to get a dog, and I offered to take you to the pound, but eventually you decided it'd be cruel to get one when you didn't know where we'd be from one week to the next, and that you'd better settle for something easy, like a hamster."

"Yeah.  I remember that."  It was before the Bancroft case, before that night when they'd found each other again, after eighteen years of living on memories.

"Well," Face continued, and Murdock was amazed to hear him stammering, "I--I, you see, the summer sky doesn't have those constellations, and I thought--"

"Which constellations?"

Face didn't respond right away, and Murdock frantically dusted off his mental star charts, trying to compare them in his sleep-scattered brain.

"The dogs," he murmured, answering his own question.  "Canis Major and Canis Minor."

"Yeah," Face sighed, relieved of the burden.  He huffed out a breath.  "Is that the corniest thing you ever heard, or what?"

"You wanted me to have the dogs."

"Yeah."

Breathe.  In.  Out.

"Listen, muchacho.  You must be tired as hell."

"It does kind of hurt to talk, yeah."

"I'm just gonna go over there and close the curtains, alright?  I'm not goin' anywhere."

"OK.  Good."

"Get some more rest."  Murdock rose on stiff legs and leaned in to kiss Face on the forehead.  By the time he returned, Face was asleep again.

And Murdock stood there, staring down at him, while his heart threatened to pound out of his chest and silent tears tracked their way down his cheeks.

When you hear the tone, the time will be...

When would be the right time?  Tomorrow, next week, next year?

Maybe it had already come and gone, in the thousand big and little things done for one another over nearly half a lifetime.

The words weren't important.

Making every second on the clock count. That was important.

Ignoring the pain, he sat down and rested his head on the mattress, near Face's side.
 
 
 
 
 

End
 
 
 

This one is for Lark, who created such a great image of the fellas stargazing in "Heart of the Matter" that I had to shamelessly borrow the idea for this one...albeit a low-rent version!

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