Crossposted from AO3; I am not currently taking prompts.
Prompt: forehead or cheek kisses.
A mission gone wrong. No, not wrong-poorly. The mission objective had been met, but not without a price.
Kinch finished sending the Morse code message of their success over the wire and pushed himself away from the radio. He swiped a hand over his face and climbed the stairs back into barracks two, where he was greeted with three familiar figures, each staring morosely into a mug of hot liquid that was pretending to be coffee. LeBeau stood to pour him a cup, but Kinch waved him off.
"How's he doing?" he said, pointing a thumb towards Col. Hogan's room.
"Pretty good, all things considered," Newkirk said, though his tone didn't seem to match his words.
Kinch nodded. "Mind the store, will ya?" he said and, without waiting for an answer, he went over to the colonel's room and pushed open the door.
Wilson, the closest thing they had to a medical man at Stalag 13 (which, seeing he was a full medic, was nothing to sneeze at), was in there, organizing his medical kit. Kinch spotted the colonel's limited supply of sulfa on the table.
"How is he?" Kinch asked.
"The bullet's out and the bleeding's stopped. He'll be fine if we can prevent it from becoming infected."
Kinch looked at his colonel, looking oddly small and vulnerable with his thin blanket (and Carter's, and Newkirk's, and LeBeau's, and his) pulled up to his neck.
"I can watch his for a while," Kinch said.
Wilson nodded. "Get me if anything changes," he said.
"Will do," Kinch said. He sat down in the chair Wilson had pulled up to the colonel's bedside as Wilson quietly slipped out of the room.
Colonel Hogan was fast asleep, which was a blessing, considering the state they'd brought him in in earlier. He'd been trying to keep it together then, and he'd done a pretty good job of it, but Kinch could see how much pain he was in.
But the colonel was free of it, for now, at least. Tomorrow, though-tomorrow would be another story.
On impulse, Kinch bent down a pressed a chaste kiss to the colonel's forehead. For now, the world was quiet, and Colonel Hogan was at peace. And Kinch would give anything if he could make it stay that way.