This next chapter is really just a bunch of fluff. Murdock and Karina getting to know each other and all that. I'm sorry for anything that doesn't make sense or is boring...

Disclaimer: As usual, I receive nothing from the writing of this story and own nothing to do with the A-Team.

"You may have noticed I'm not all there myself."

"How do you do that?" Karina asked Murdock as he pulled a particular shuffling move that she herself had never been able to perfect, no matter how much she had tried.

"You can't do this? It ain't that difficult."

Karina rolled her eyes. "It's not difficult to you because you can do it. Everyone who says 'it's not hard' says that because they can do it. If the people asking to do it could do it, of course it wouldn't be difficult and therefore they wouldn't have needed to ask the question in the first place."

Murdock stared at Karina, mouth slightly agape in surprise. After a minute he said, "You have a good point."

"Of course I do. I always do." Karina's eyes darted from side-to-side. "I think, anyway."

"What's your poison?" Murdock asked, continuing to shuffle the cards.

Karina shrugged. "Whatever you want to play so long as I know how to play and you don't have to explain anything to me."

Murdock chuckled and began to deal out the cards for a game of five-card draw.

"We should make the game interesting," Karina suggested, drinking down the last dregs of her soda.

Murdock quirked his left brow into the air. "You mean like strip poker?"

"No. At least not tonight. Don't know you well enough." She winked at him playfully and Murdock blushed.

Dirty thoughts immediately began to infiltrate Murdock's mind and he missed the next few sentences out of Karina's mouth. Embarrassed, he asked her to repeat herself.

"I was just going to say whenever we lose a hand, we should reveal something about ourselves." There was amusement dancing in her pretty blue eyes and Murdock found he couldn't look away.

"But...don't you have amnesia?"

"Well, I'll share whatever I can remember. Which is probably only up until last year or something. My memory was never that great to begin with and now this." Karina dramatically huffed out a breath of annoyance, making Murdock laugh.

"I'm sure you exaggerate."

"I wish I was. I'm not a great exaggerator and my terrible memory is not one of the things I would exaggerate." Karina scooted closer to the small table that sat at the end of Murdock's cot and pulled up her hand of cards. Her eyes ran over the individual cards and she grinned.

"You know, I can already tell that you don't have a great poker face," Murdock murmured with a small quirky grin.

"Oh; sorry." Karina forced the smile away and slid two cards forward to Murdock, the dealer. "I'll take two cards."

Murdock took the two cards she'd discarded, removed one card from the top of the deck to set it off to the side, and dealt Karina two more cards. Murdock then glanced at his own hand and opted not to change any out.

"All right." Murdock glanced up into Karina's eyes. "The ante is one embarrassing childhood story. The bet is...revealing a secret fantasy."

"A secret fantasy? You don't even know me and you want to hear about my fantasies?"

Murdock lifted his left eyebrow into the air once more. "This is a poker game, baby. If we ain't gonna play for clothes or money, we gotta be creative."

"All right. I call. You go first with the ante."

"No, no. I'm a gentleman. Ladies first."

"Fine." Karina tapped her fingers against the bottom of her chin thoughtfully. "When I was about...fourteen, I think, my family and I were coming back from kneeboarding..."

Murdock's eyes lit up. "Oh, I love kneeboarding! It's just the kicks, ain't it?"

Kim smiled at Murdock's enthusiasm. "Definitely. Well, on the way back, we stopped off at a Sonic to get some lunch. We were all still in our bathing suits and everything. Well, I still don't know why it was in there, but I found an old...50s beehive wig that belonged to my grandmother, so I decided to put it on."

"Oh god; in public?"

"Yes, and that's not the worst part. As I walking to the bathroom to go, you know, check myself out-"

Murdock grinned affectionately.

"-I, for some reason or other, decided to turn and smile or wink or...something at my family. Thus I didn't exactly see the ordering sign in front of me and..."

"You ran into it?"

Karina nodded wordlessly and hung her head.

Murdock couldn't help laughing loudly. "You ran into a Sonic sign...wearing a beehive wig that belonged to your grandmother." He laughed again. "That's beautiful, baby."

Karina scowled playfully. "All right, all right. What about you? What's something embarrassing that happened to you as a child? Or even as an adult."

"Nah, the adult stories come later." He waggled his eyebrows at her and was pleased at the blush that spread into her cheeks. "But there was this one time, I was about nine or ten years old, and I had a crush on this girl in my class. My best friend liked her too, but he didn't tell me. One day-I think it was about two days before Valentine's Day-he told me he was gonna go talk to her for me. Gonna find out what kinda candy she liked and all that."

"Uh-oh; I think I kind of see where this is going."

"He came back and told me she loved anything with nuts and her favorite cartoon character was Betty Boop. Well, Valentine's Day rolled around and I showed up at school with... I think I should interrupt myself for a moment. See, I'm a little... I don't do things the way normal boys would. Never have, never will."

"Makes you special and makes things much more interesting."

Murdock grinned charmingly at her, unaware of the effect it had on her, and continued on. "So I showed up bearing the chocolates and wearing a ton of Betty Boop souvenirs that I was going to give her, including some underwear that I wore on the outside of my shorts."

"Oh no."

"The girl pointed me out straightaway and then told me she hated Betty Boop more than anyone else in the world. And then it got worse when I gave her the candy."

"You still gave her the candy even though she made fun of you and humiliated you?"

Murdock shrugged nonchalantly. "What can I say? I was a young boy besotted by love."

Karina silently wondered what Murdock would look like or do as a man besotted by love.

"How did it get worse when you gave her the candy?"

"She was allergic to peanuts. Had to be taken to the hospital."

"Wow. What happened to your 'best friend?'"

"He moved away. Never spoke to him again. Now, let's see your hand."

Karina mockingly waved her left hand through the air.

"Your card hand, silly goose."

Laughing, Karina laid her hand down on the table, revealing a pair of Jacks and a pair of twos.

"Nice," Murdock commented. "But not as nice as a Full House." Murdock spread his cards out on the table, revealing two Kings and three fives.

"Damn," Karina cursed.

Murdock smirked and leaned forward on the table. "Now, fantasy time."

Karina grinned and shook some wayward hair out of her eyes. "Okay. I've always wanted-" She paused emphatically and Murdock waited with bated breath. "-to learn how to play the piano," she finished, laughing at the stupefied expression on his face.

Instead of being disappointed by her answer, however, he leaned forward eagerly. "Really?"

"Yeah. My grandmother has a nice old piano in Louisiana, that I must admit I hope to inherit one day, but all I ever learned to play was 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.'"

"There's nothing wrong with that. That's a classic."

The smile that Karina gave him nearly sent Murdock over the edge in the sense that he was having trouble restraining himself from leaning forward to kiss her. It had been a long time since he had kissed anyone, man or woman. (Although with the men he never truly enjoyed it and never really put any of himself into it. He wasn't gay, but sometimes he had to pretend to be for the sake of the team. Why not Face? Who the hell knew.)

Karina gathered up the cards, unaware of the mental dilemma traveling through Murdock's brain at that very moment, and began to shuffle them. "Same stakes?" she asked once she'd started dealing out the cards.

"Let's change it up a little. The ante is naming a favorite toy and the bet will be revealing something dirty you've done that you'd be ashamed to admit to."

Heat spread into Karina's cheeks and Murdock was surprised he didn't feel the same at his blatant suggestion. "Dirty like...sex-wise?"

"It doesn't necessarily have to involve sex, but if that's what comes to mind... Besides, you won't have to worry about it if you get a better hand than I do.

"My favorite toy was the Etch-A-Sketch," Murdock said. "I loved drawing whatever I wanted, however I wanted. Made me feel like a real artist even though I can't draw worth a damn."

"I don't know what my favorite toy was. I really loved my Giga pets, though, and my Stretch Armstrong."

"I had a Stretch Armstrong. I loved that toy. But what's a giga pet?"

"It was an electronic animal that I carried around on a chain."

"Oh yeah. I remember those. Course, I was too old by normal standards to have one of those. Didn't stop me from putting my name on a waiting list, though."

"Did you never get it?"

"No. I was enlisted in the army by the time they were available. I was very upset."

"Well, I have three at home, wherever that is. If I ever get back there, you're welcome to one of them."

An emotion Murdock couldn't identify shot through him and his eyes briefly darted down to her full plump lips. "That's very kind of you."

Heart pounding from the expression on Murdock's face as he stared at her, Karina nervously picked up her cards and glanced down. She twisted her lips and bit down into her bottom lip as she studied them. Across from her, Murdock slid four cards towards her, holding up the Ace he held.

Karina passed him his four cards and then took three for herself. She examined them studiously and then looked up at Murdock. "What do you have?"

Murdock huffed and laid down his hand. "Ace high."

Karina laughed at the sullen expression on his face and he scowled in response. "That's almost as bad as my pair of twos, but not quite." She slammed her cards on the table emphatically.

Murdock cursed and tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Let's see; something dirty... Oh! I once-" Murdock paused and leaned forward, lowering his voice slightly. "I must swear you to secrecy because Face would kill me if he ever found this out."

"Ooh, dirt! I promise."

"Well, one time I borrowed Face's boxers-his favorite pair, actually; 'his lucky draws,' he likes to say-and I, uh, I might have, uh, you know, enjoyed the feeling of them a bit too much." He flushed and stared down at the ground in mortification.

Karina's brows furrowed in confusion. "You enjoyed them too..." Her eyes widened comically. "You mean you came in his boxers?!"

Murdock shifted awkwardly. Why was he revealing this particular information to her again? It certainly wouldn't make him look admirable in her eyes. "Well... It was his fault! He had the girl-on-girl porn playing in the background and it's not like I didn't wash them afterwards!"

Karina leaned back and started laughing. "Wow. That is really bad."

"Yeah, well... I learned my lesson. I'm never going to borrow any of his things again. I felt so bad about it I made his favorite dinners for two weeks. He knew something was up, but never asked."

"If he knew what you were hiding, I'm sure he'd be glad he never knew."

They played a few more hands of poker, learning a bit more about each other with each passing second, and then switched to some other interactive games that Murdock kept lying about the tent, playing until the first rays of dawn crept beneath the flaps of the tent.

That whole little Murdock boxer incident, sorry about it. I couldn't really come up with any other dirty secrets off the top of my head for him, so that's what I ended up with. If it disgusts some of you or offends, I sincerely apologize.