Archive of Our Own ^beta

The star-soaked sky stretched all around as the GMC van hummed along on the rural highway. The only lights around for miles were the van’s headlights and the soft glow from its dashboard. This late at night, other traffic was scarce.

They’d meant to get back to LA already, but a couple construction detours onto roads that weren’t in their Road Atlas had gotten them turned around for a while, and then the crazy fool’s antics at Captain Bellybuster’s on top of that put them well behind schedule. Then they’d meant to stop at a hotel for the night, but there weren’t any along this endless stretch of nothing. BA wasn’t looking forward to sleeping in the van, so he would just drive as long as he could in the hopes of eventually finding civilization. At least they had a couple hours’ worth of gas left.

Everyone had been in a pretty good mood as they collected their payment and headed home, but it had been a long job and the nonstop close quarters had been starting to get to BA. Thankfully Face had kept Murdock occupied for most of the drive so the fool wasn’t bothering the sergeant with his Cat’s Cradle finger string games or whatever nonsense he’d been on about these past days.

Riding shotgun, Hannibal had started out reading the paper while smoking his cigar before pulling out his script to practice for Dawn of the Aquamaniac with the others. BA had just rolled his eyes and tried to tune them out. Murdock and Face read all the lines-- with the fool doing annoying, crazy voices for different characters–- while every so often Hannibal would make sounds like a garbage disposal. Somehow Face would critique them, leading to more garbage disposal sounds from the colonel.

How had this become BA’s life?

Finally it had gotten late enough that both Murdock and Hannibal had drifted off, granting the van its first peace in hours. BA noticed that Face was still awake, and at last the lieutenant breathed a relaxed sigh into the companionable silence.

BA never knew how Face could mentally keep up with Murdock and Hannibal all the time with their crazy talk and insane plans. It had to be exhausting. Maybe that was one of the reasons BA liked to see Face relax when it was just the two of them... at least the times Face wasn’t worried BA was going to punch him into next week for some reason.

And that wasn’t tonight. Tonight, BA could tell Face felt safe enough with him to drop his guard, even his subconscious one. With a soft grunt of approval, BA returned his attention to the road.

More miles sped by underneath the van’s tires. The monotonous view of the dark, lonely road was getting hypnotic, and while BA welcomed the quiet in the van, the lack of any external stimulation was lulling his mind into complacency and tiredness. He needed something to focus on, but BA had learned long ago that making small talk with Face was difficult as their general interests outside the Team diverged quite a bit.

Though maybe...

When BA glanced at Face in the rearview mirror, Face was already looking there and waiting to catch BA’s eye. Face leaned forward, grinned, and softly said, “I got a new one.”

BA smiled and kept his voice quiet as well to not wake the others, especially Murdock. “Yeah, man. Sounds good.”

Face scrounged through a bag at his feet and soon pulled out a small flashlight, a pencil, and a softbound book. He flipped to a page at the beginning, switched on the flashlight, and again leaned forward to the gap between the front seats. “All right, let’s see here... first one. Five-letter word for ‘confess.’”

BA smirked. “That’s what you need to do in church ‘cause ‘a all your cons.”

He didn’t look over to see Face’s expression, but he heard the wry tone in the reply. “I’m banking on the hope that God thinks I’m too entertaining to smite. Now, any guesses?”

BA absently tapped a finger against the steering wheel as he thought and counted letters in his head. “Admit,” he said at last.

Face’s pencil scratched on the paper as he wrote the answer into the crossword puzzle, then he said, “Okay, next, six-letter word for ‘wiped clean.’”

“Like the fool’s brain,” BA mumbled while he pondered the answer. “How ‘bout ‘erased’?”

Face nodded while writing. “What’s a four-letter word for ‘infield feature’?”

BA snorted. “That’s a easy one. ‘Base.’ Gimme something harder, man.”

“I’m sure the clues will get harder. Just don’t run us off the road thinking, okay?”

BA threw a scowl his way for questioning his driving skills but waited for the next clue.

“Hmm.” Face hesitated. “All right, five-letter word for ‘meager.’”

“Little?” BA guessed. “Wait, that’s six.”

“Small?” Face suggested, then shook his head. “Nah. Scarce? No, too many letters. Few, couple, some, minimal... none of those work. What else is there?”

BA’s fingers again tapped a rhythm on the wheel. Nothing good was springing to mind. “Get us a letter in it,” BA said.

“Um... got it, seven letters, ‘ore refinery.’”

“Well, ya gotta extract the ore first. Extract? Nah, that ain’t a place. Need a place...” He fell silent, thinking hard.

After a long pause, Face piped up. “C’mon, BA,” he said, grinning. “I don’t have a good guess, but between your gold and machinery affinity, I figured you’d know all the metal-related ones.”

BA growled, but before it got too lengthy the reminder of his gold gave him an idea. When gold was mined, it needed high heat to refine it, and that meant a–-

“Smelter,” BA said victoriously.

Face nodded and scribbled it in. “Good, that fits. First letters match, so our ‘meager’ word starts with an S.”

They both mulled it over but had no better ideas. “Another letter,” BA urged.

“Five-letter word for ‘top storage area.’”

“Attic,” they both said at once. Face copied it down.

“The attic C is our second letter,” Face said. “SC, five letters, meager.”

They thought a bit more. “Scant?” Face offered tentatively.

BA considered, then nodded. “Yeah, let’s use that.”

With every passing mile, more and more crossword boxes got filled in. There had been so many boxes over the years, all the way back to Vietnam. Some of those early ones in-country had even been BA and Face making up random clues for each other when an actual puzzle or even paper weren’t available. BA couldn’t remember how the whole thing started, but it had been a safe icebreaker for them when the two disparate teammates were still getting to know each other, and it had just never stopped.

A half hour of crosswords later, they finally entered a little town with a sketchy-looking motel, but it was enough-– even with the mental activity of the puzzles, BA was getting drowsy. He pulled into the pothole-riddled parking lot and waited while Face put the crossword book away, hopped out of the van, and walked to the lobby. Hannibal and Murdock began to stir.

“We home yet, Big Guy?” Murdock asked through a yawn and a stretch that seemed to take up the entire back of the van.

“Nah. Too far still. Face’s gettin’ us a room.”

Hannibal peered skeptically at the motel. “You’ve certainly picked a place with... ambiance.”

“Best I could do–- ain’t nothin’ out this way.”

Murdock frowned, sleepily scanning the parts of the small town he could see through the windshield. “It don’t look like there’s even a Captain Bellybuster’s around for when we leave tomorrow. I promised Billy I’d get him one of their chili dogs.”

BA growled. They could have gotten a lot farther that night if they hadn’t stopped at the aforementioned burger chain already. “Ain’t no dog, and especially ain’t no dog that wants chili. Now shut up, fool, ‘fore I smelt your brain and find there’s nothin’ worth keepin’.”

Hannibal glanced at BA curiously out of the corner of his eye, and Murdock cocked his head in puzzlement. BA scowled fiercely. That had probably sounded crazy enough to have come out of Murdock’s mouth. Usually BA’s creative threats would match the situation, and to Hannibal and Murdock, the smelting reference would have come out of nowhere and it certainly had nothing to do with chili dogs.

Maybe he was more tired than he’d thought.

A minute later, Face walked out of the lobby, twirling two room keys around his finger. He climbed through the open side door to his usual seat and slid the door closed. “Pull around back, BA. Our rooms are on the far corner.” Before BA could face forward again, though, he caught a quick little smirk that flashed across Face’s features when they made eye contact, and Face continued, “They had a scant two rooms left. We got them both.”

Hiding his own grin, BA put the van in gear and slowly headed toward the back of the motel, dodging potholes.

There was a long moment of silence, and then Murdock said, “Face?”

“Yeah, Murdock?”

BA stifled another grin when Murdock asked, “Do you know why BA would be talking about smelting?”