The first time Face saw him, he hadn't known that he was looking at one of the men who would shape his entire experience of the war – and many years beyond it – for better and worse. If he'd been aware that this was such a momentous meeting, Face might have been nervous, or (knowing his aversion to long-term commitments of any kind) even gone out of his way to avoid it.

At any rate, he probably would have remembered it.

As it was, his first glimpse of H M Murdock was nothing earth-shattering, and his brain dismissed it as inconsequential within moments. Face wouldn't remember scanning the officer's club, lukewarm beer in hand, searching for an easy mark to practice his poker cheats on with a casual, practiced gaze. He wouldn't remember catching the eye of a tall, skinny pilot and distractedly shaking his head in response to the man's inviting smile and gesture to the empty chair next to him.

The pilot seemed pleasant enough, but his eyes were too sharp, his grin a little too wide. The blond dismissed him on sight. He wasn't what Face was looking for.

Their first mission together, Face didn't know whether to be impressed or terrified.

Choppers shouldn't be able to swoop and swerve like that. Sturdy, squat CH-46s shouldn't have the manoeuvrability to weave between enemy bullets without suffering more than a few superficial nicks. The engines shouldn't be able to handle the rapid changes in altitude without stalling. BA's stomach certainly didn't have that much fortitude.

Most definitely, their pilot should not have been laughing the entire time, face split in a ridiculous grin, somehow intuiting and avoiding the barrage of enemy fire and screaming a wordless yodel of manic joy at the sky before him. This wasn't the angry, aggressive roar that some pilots used to mask their fear and rally themselves for a messy extraction. This was a whoop of adrenaline that gave the impression that he viewed this whole thing as one crazy, awesome roller-coaster.

That's what Face couldn't understand, later. What made him see why "Mad" was part of the howling man's nickname. They were being fired at from all sides, in the middle of a war, hundreds of feet off the ground, and their pilot was loving it.

Face didn't know if he could trust this man. Someone that crazy was either deluded or brilliant. Maybe these were Face's last few moments alive. If that was the case, he decided, he'd rather go down listening to a gleeful holler than screams of panic and pain. Face closed his eyes, held on tight and let his ears ring with the sounds of bullets, chopper blades and howls.

Face realised he'd made up his mind about the pilot when he stopped the first punch from landing.

It was nearly a month after his first flight with the eccentric Captain, and since then Hannibal's team had experienced Howling Mad Airways three more times. Face knew that when he saw Murdock behind the yoke, he was in for a ride that would test his equilibrium and send his C-rats up to tickle the back of his throat. He also knew that he could relax, as much as was possible anyway, because every lurch and swoop and dip and seemingly-impossible swerve of the chopper was a deft skip away from a potentially-deadly bullet.

The whoops and joyful cries from the cockpit weren't an indication of the pilot's distraction or suicidal impulses, as some grunts had suggested after shakily disembarking from a Murdock special. If anything, they were a beacon of clarity: A monk's ohm, a salute to the sun, Hannibal's cigars and Face's stream of barbless complaints. They all had their ways of centring themselves and dealing with the chaos. Who was Face to judge another man's method, especially when that method was clearly working?

By the end of their second flight together, Hannibal had been howling along. The unexpected second voice caused the pilot to falter, just slightly, and twist his head around to find the source of the noise. Seeing no mocking in the Colonel's expression, only a gleam of kindred mania, Murdock gave a grin fit to split his cheeks. On their third flight, Face joined in too. BA gave them a mean glare before throwing up. Ray just shook his head – they were all crazy, as far as he was concerned.

So now, in the dingy officer's club that smelt of beer, sweat and mud, it seemed only natural that Face would intercept when some hotheaded grunt took a swing at the man Face had unconsciously started thinking of as Their Pilot.

Later, Face would learn that the Sergeant had a bee in his brutish bonnet because Murdock had circled back to an extraction point against orders to pick up the last few stragglers from a failed recon mission. The Sergeant had already been on board and saw no reason to head back into the guts of the attack for five or six wounded soldiers. It rattled him badly, and like most people who lack the intelligence to understand their fear, it made him angry. And being angry made him want to punch things, preferably meaty, human-shaped things that he viewed as the source of his upsetting emotions.

Face saw the thug heading their way with single-minded intent. He was tensed and out of his chair before he registered what was happening. It was instinct. The Sergeant drew a fist back, aimed at the side of Murdock's head as the oblivious pilot frowned in concern at Face's sudden change in demeanour and started to ask what was wrong. Ignoring him, Face reached out and caught the fist in mid-punch in a move worthy of any respectable action hero.

Unfortunately, most action movies aren't especially concerned with the notion of presenting realism, so rather than stopping the fist before it landed, Face's interception merely slowed its progress. There was too much force behind the blow and Face hadn't braced himself properly: His own knuckles slammed into Murdock's cheek, snapping the other man's head to the side. Oops. Well, at least it cushioned the full impact a little bit, Face rationalised with a wince.

After that, the grunt's friends and Murdock realised what was happening and there was too much yelling and punching to think too much. It wasn't Face's style to get into a brawl, but if he had to do it, at least it was for a good cause with a friend at his back.

The first thing about Murdock that Face fell in love with was his voice.

Calling the man's voice an instrument was too simple, too cliché. It didn't convey the truly amazing range and sometimes scary ability for mimicry that, irrationally and with no small amount of jealousy, Face often huffed should be beyond the abilities of human vocal chords. A one-man-band might be more appropriate, but its associations were too inelegant and cacophonic to truly fit.

On take-off and through the worst enemy fire, Murdock howled and whooped. In the Officer's Club, and during long flights where the atmosphere in the cramped helicopter was either tense with anticipation and fear or heavy with fatigue and loss, he sang. Ballads, rock songs, show tunes, golden oldies; he took any request. If he didn't know the words or the tune, he made them up without missing a beat. Murdock's lyrics were definitely nothing that Simon and Garfunkel would put their name to, but his sweeping narratives about dragon slayers, the love between a milkmaid and a farmhand, and even the proper pre-flight whatever chopper he was flying served their purpose and, for three and a half to five minutes, Face's head would be filled with something other than war.

Today, it didn't seem like anything could drown out the war. Face slumped into a small space between two hooches, the closest parody to real privacy that he could bring his shaking legs to carry him to. He crouched low in the mud, fisting his hands in his almost-non-regulation hair and trying not to let his heartbeat push his lunch up his throat.

How the hell had it come to this? Face was supposed to be smooth, articulate, well-presented. He was supposed to finish school, get a business degree and network his way to the top. CFO of some huge firm that would collapse in a heap if not for his financial acumen and personal connections. Generous paycheck, substantial bonuses to keep him interested, flexible schedule that would allow for plenty of long business lunches and interstate trips with charmed, attractive ingénues.

He never planned on being heartbroken, impulsive and immature. Forging his papers and enlisting after a breakup seemed so stupid now. So young. He'd brashly decided that he didn't care if he lived or died, but Face knew now that that was because he'd never seen death. He didn't know what he wanted now. He didn't think he wanted to die, but he didn't know how he would live a life with the memories of everything he'd seen and done in this war. How could he chat about superficial bullshit with some corporate bigwig over canapés now? How could his life ever be that shallow, that easy? What the fuck was he going to do?

Face was too busy having dual crises of faith and identity to notice the taller man peering around the corner to locate him. It wasn't until the newcomer was beside him, sitting right on the ground like it wasn't covered in mud and puddles of oily water, that Face realised he was there. The pilot stretched his legs out as far as they could go until they hit the wall opposite, causing his knees to bend. He pulled a squashed packet out of his pocket.

"Smoke?"

Face shook his head. He hadn't noticed his watery eyes and runny nose until Murdock sat down. How embarrassing. "No thanks. They make your teeth yellow." It was his automatic response.

Murdock shoved the cigs back in his pocket. Face could hear the grin in his voice when he said, "Can't damage that gorgeous smile of yours. That's my meal ticket."

From some people, that would have been an aggressive comment, or had some kind of derisive (if not outright lascivious) sting to it. Not from Murdock. One of the things Face found so mystifyingly appealing about the pilot was that he had absolutely no guile whatsoever. He wasn't a simpleton by any means and he could throw a punch with the best of them, but he wasn't false. If he'd wanted to insult Face, he would have done it outright and not with a snide, backhanded compliment.

So Face knew that if Murdock was going to mock him for being weak, he would have been straight about it instead of sitting in the muck beside him and offering him a cigarette. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, irritated with himself for the childishness of the gesture.

"When I was seven," said Murdock casually, apropos of nothing, "I had a horse named Reggie."

Face couldn't help it. "Why did you have a horse?" He couldn't tell if this was true or the set up to one of Murdock's long, elaborate anecdotes.

"Lived on a farm with my Gran and Gramps," was the easy answer. "They had cows for milking, not eating thankyouverymuch, chickens for eggs and eats, pigs, goats and a couple of horses. When I was seven, our mare Bessie had a foal and I got to name him."

"Why Reggie?"

"He was too little to be Reginald."

"Ah." Face wondered if there would be a moral to this story that would tie into his situation and shine light on an unseen perspective that would make everything feel okay again.

"Reggie was a palomino," Murdock continued. "That means tan with white hair."

"I know what palomino means."

"Sorry. Had you pegged for a city boy."

Face grunted a sound that was neither assent nor dissent. He didn't speak about his life before the war if he could help it. Murdock didn't seem to mind.

"When he was about a year old, Reggie got out of his corral…"

For five minutes, Face waited for the moral. The bit where Murdock link it all to their situation with a "get back on the horse" metaphor or something equally well-meaning but cheesy. When Murdock left the subject of Reggie and started talking about the time he was convinced that the chickens were flying around the property when no one was looking, Face realised that this wasn't meant to be a lesson. Murdock wasn't presuming greater insight into Face's experiences or trying to impart any nuggets of wisdom earned in the few extra years he'd been strolling the planet.

Murdock was just talking so Face could have something to listen to. Face felt a rush of gratitude that momentarily overwhelmed his shame at needing comfort while crouched in the mud. He closed his eyes and let Murdock's easy drawl drown out his own roaring throughs, the residual tinnitus in his ears from the gunshots, and the unexpected ache that had come with the realisation that he was so damn young.

When they finally stood to leave, Face's legs were numb. He told himself that was why he slumped forwards, leaning into Murdock's chest briefly, before heading for the showers.

Their first kiss wasn't romantic. It wasn't even really a kiss. Face was helping Murdock into his cot after shouldering the stubborn bastard across camp because he refused to stay another minute in the Infirmary, healing stitches or not, and threatened to drag himself across camp on his belly if someone didn't help him leave. Knowing full well that Murdock didn't make idle threats and not wanting to lose the man to sepsis, Face had put an arm around his friend and they'd limped out to a soundtrack of outraged nurses.

Face eased Murdock onto the thin mattress, holding him tightly around the shoulders to reduce pressure on the pilot's bruised ribs. Murdock hissed as he lay back and Face stilled, arms still underneath Murdock's back, nose almost touching the other man's ear.

"You okay?" he asked softly.

"Yeah."

For some reason, Face didn't pull back right away. It was a strange position: half-crouched over the bed, awkwardly supporting half the weight of Murdock's torso. It couldn't be comfortable to be lying on Face's arms like that.

The blond slowly withdrew his hands, careful not to jar Murdock's injuries. He pulled away, feeling Murdock's stubble rasp against his own cheek as he moved. At the same time, Murdock turned – Face would never know why – and their lips brushed together.

There was a moment where they could have laughed it off. It was obviously an accident, no big deal, a little weird but ha ha, gross, I hope I don't catch anything from you, and then move on. Face and Murdock overshot that moment impressively, freezing and staring at each other like two mentally-deficient deer mistaking each other for semitrailers.

When Face didn't laugh, neither did Murdock. When Murdock didn't make a joke, Face swallowed. When Murdock saw Face's gaze flit to his lips, he parted them slightly. When Face leaned in again, Murdock met him halfway.

It wasn't the pilot's brightest move, considering his abdominal stitches and tender ribs. The groan he made into Face's mouth was equal parts surprise, passion and pain. Face didn't stop. Murdock had the fleeting thought of, "Oh, this is why he's so popular with the ladies," before his higher brain functions shut down and all he could process was the warmth of soft lips on his own, the smell of Face's sweat and cologne, and the tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with any injury.

Face didn't believe it when they first heard that Murdock had been committed.

He didn't think Ray was lying – the other man wasn't cruel – but there had to be some mistake. Maybe it was another Captain Murdock. It wasn't an uncommon name. Maybe he'd been injured and sent stateside and Ray got the details wrong. Maybe it was a set-up by the CIA: Face always had his suspicions that Murdock had done work for them and it wouldn't surprise him if they'd stamped "CRAZY" on Murdock's file to discredit anything he might say about his now-fugitive ex-teammates.

Whatever the real situation was, they had to check on him at least. Make sure he was okay and wasn't in fact being kept there against his will. Face was relieved when Hannibal agreed to the road trip without a pause. The blond was at the end of his rope. He couldn't fathom an argument with Hannibal about the risks of interstate travel now.

Breaking into the VA two days later was surprisingly easy. A generic white coat, a little flirtation with the receptionist and a strategically-fumbled request to borrow a pen and Face ensured that she didn't even notice the white-haired man in overalls surreptitiously flipping through files in the cabinet behind them. Hannibal hadn't even needed that janitor's costume, let alone the mop and bucket. Oh well. Better to be over-prepared than caught with your overalls down.

After accepting the receptionist's phone number with the appropriate amount of blushing and endearing stammering, Face made his way out of the building. He forced himself to move at a normal, inconspicuous stroll despite the adrenaline flooding his veins.

When he finally met with Hannibal and BA in their new van around the side of the hospital, Face didn't waste time with pleasantries. "Well?"

Hannibal didn't mince words either. "Well, he's there alright. They have Captain H M Murdock listed as a patient in the psychiatric ward, Class B, whatever that means. I couldn't read the whole file but his date of admission was December 17th."

"That's ten days after he dropped us off in Hanoi," calculated BA.

Face's heart sank, but he refused to give up. "Are we sure it's him? I mean, was there a photo?"

Hannibal frowned at his ex-Lieutenant. "What are you saying, Face? You think this is some kind of conspiracy?"

"Well, it makes sense, doesn't it?" Even though Face knew it didn't. He was grasping at straws. He'd lost everything since that job in Hanoi. He couldn't stand it if Murdock was lost too. "I mean, maybe he's doing a job for the Feds and they need a false record of where he is. Or maybe it IS him, but it's a cover-up. What better way to discredit the best witness in our trial than by labelling him loony tunes?"

BA scoffed, by Hannibal took in Face's pleading expression and allowed it. "Okay. We can't get any more information from his file. If this is a set-up, his papers won't tell us anything. We need to get inside the psych ward and talk to him."

Face could have melted with relief. Then Hannibal told him that they should wait a day or two before approaching the hospital again, just to be on the safe side, and he wanted to punch the Colonel in the mouth.

Finally, three long days later, Face donned his white coat once again and slipped into the VA Psychiatric Ward. It was embarrassingly easy – embarrassing from the hospital's perspective, of course. Face was quite proud of himself.

He found Room 104 without looking like he didn't know where he was going, which was another win. After slipping inside, though, all smug thoughts vanished.

It was Murdock. Their Murdock. He was strapped to the bed with insultingly-harmless looking padded cuffs. His head had been shaved and he was wearing a thin hospital gown. His bare feet stuck out from under a pale blue blanket that was too short for him.

He was awake, but his eyes were glazed. He was drugged. Face fought a rising panic.

"Hey Murdock," he said quietly, making his way to the chair beside the bed. "It's me. How are you doing?"

Murdock blinked. It was too slow and his eyelids seemed to operate independent of each other. "You," he said, raising a hand as far as the cuffs would allow to point loosely in Face's direction. "I know you. You were in my cereal this morning."

Face tasted bile. "Murdock, it's me. Faceman. Your old buddy. You don't have to do that crazy bit with me. I'm one of the good guys, remember?"

"No, I know you," insisted Murdock, sneering as much as his lax facial muscles would allow. His voice was slow, his normal drawl exaggerated. "Creeping 'round here, getting in my cupboards at night, I see you, you aren't that smart. Coming in now, wearing his Face. He wouldn't like that, you know. I'll tell him, next time. You'll see. He'll know you were wearing his Face, and he'll be mad. You wouldn't like him, when he's mad."

"What are you talking about?" Face fought to keep his voice low as hysteria bubbled in his stomach. "It's Face. Come on, Murdock, talk to me." He put a hand on Murdock's arm in the hopes that physical contact might snap his friend back to reality.

"You're not my leader," asserted Murdock in that wrong, slow voice. "I don't have to answer your questions even if you weren't speaking Pig Latin. My colours don't run. You're just a tiny little bug in a big pond. Bugging out, bugging. I asked Shirley Bassey to the ball, do you think she'll go? My feet are full of maggots."

Face automatically looked to the end of the bed, but Murdock's feet were fine. Probably a little cold sticking out of the blanket like that, but pink and healthy.

Murdock carried on. "I was playing baseball and I got a slam dunk. They said it was against the rules so they took my grenade away." He slow-blinked at Face again. It was no less horrifying the second time. "Hey, I know you. You shook my hand and gave me plastic cups. Now my hands are all itchy. Can't stand it when it rains like this."

The sky outside was cloudless, but there were also no maggots, no rashes on Murdock's hands and Face wasn't making appearances in anyone's breakfast cereal. The younger man couldn't respond to this tidal wave of slow, strange ramblings. He'd only seen Murdock a couple of months ago. What the hell had happened? Face swallowed hard and stood up. It was a mistake to come here.

Murdock didn't acknowledge him as Face headed for the door, head swimming with black spots. His voice droned steadily on, talking about things that Face couldn't understand and wished Murdock couldn't either.

Face didn't know how he got out of the hospital and was later glad that no one had stopped him. It was blind luck that nobody noticed the blond doctor walking unsteadily down the halls and out of the building, making a beeline for the dark van parked at the end of the street.

Once inside, Face didn't hear Hannibal and BA's questions over the ringing in his own ears. He answered them anyway though, when he put his head in his hands and sobbed.

Face and Murdock never had a last kiss. At least, not as far as Face was concerned.

They didn't kiss that first horrible time Face visited Murdock in the VA hospital. They didn't kiss, or even touch, for months after that as Face, Hannibal and BA continued to visit their pilot in secret, hoping to get him used to their presence even if he couldn't remember who they were. Face embraced Murdock tightly the day that he finally said Face's name, focusing on him with a glimmer of recognition in his eyes. But they didn't kiss.

Fifteen years passed. Murdock grew stronger, more stable in his own way, a little more like his old self – albeit a cartoonish, easily-distracted version. His intelligence was still there but it was less consistent in its applications: You could never tell if he would use his wits to formulate a brilliant escape plan at gunpoint, or choose to recite every Winston Churchill speech verbatim in the same situation. When crunch time came, he was usually with them. Anything less and he was impossible to pin down.

Face grew different as well. Older, obviously, though no less handsome. Still shamelessly exploitative but more sentimental, at least as far as his friends were concerned, as the years passed. Easily captivated by beautiful things and lamenting for the easy life of canapés he'd wept over in the mud of Vietnam. His good humour was still there, though his wit was more sarcastic, his complaints less frivolous. This fugitive lifestyle frayed Face at the edges and he prided himself on being smooth. He wasn't unhappy, but he wasn't quiet about his opinions about the hand he'd been dealt.

Among the endless list of things Face wished were different, or at least wondered about on long nights when the curvy body beside him wasn't comfort enough, was his relationship with Murdock. They'd never had a romantic relationship, not in the strictest sense. A bit of stress-relief during the war, that's how he'd thought of it back then. He and Murdock never talked about it. When the need was there, they'd find themselves in an empty hooch or a storage shed together. It was never planned or spoken about afterwards. Their friendship remained easy and there was no embarrassment, awkwardness or forced machismo as a result of the other layer to their relationship. If Hannibal, BA and Ray knew what they were doing, no one ever mentioned it.

Face couldn't help but wonder if maybe it should have been more. Murdock was such an intrinsic, vital part of his life. He loved the man even though he'd never say the words. Forever torturing himself with the "what if"s of life, Face wondered if it was supposed to be a different kind of love. Would they have been together? Grown old together, bound by something other than fugitive status and necessity? Would they have found each other after the war, if Face wasn't on the run and Murdock's mind hadn't fractured itself beyond repair? Would they have been happy?

It was a cruel and futile exercise to ask himself these questions, Face knew. He didn't do it often. This was their life. He'd love a white picket fence, a wife and a dog too, but it wasn't going to happen. Maybe things only seemed tempting because they were impossible. Maybe he and Murdock were, and had been, everything they were supposed to be for each other.

Still, Face couldn't help the tiny part of himself that wondered. He'd grown to accept that. As long as he and Murdock were still breathing, a part of Face would always hope for one more kiss. Even if it was their last.