Author's Note:
This fic is totally Face's fault! He said in "Always" that he wasn't sure why Murdock had cared so much about becoming his friend—whereupon Murdock promptly raised his hand, beckoned me close, and said, "Lemme explain…"
The first time Murdock sees Lieutenant Templeton Peck, he knows he's looking at a young man who came to Vietnam to die.
It's strange how certain he is. How immediately he just knows. It's like the truth has been stamped across the kid's chest in neon. It makes him wonder why no one else can see it. When he asks the other greenhorns who came in with Peck what name they call him, he gets his first clue.
They don't call him anything.
Some of them had tried, of course, or so they say. Personally, Murdock doesn't think catcalling a broken teenager 'Pretty Boy' and 'Ken Doll' should count. But he holds his tongue and tells himself not to punch anything when they say Peck had never seemed to care anyway.
Until they'd called him 'Daddy's Boy'.
Given Peck's expensive tastes, soft hands, and untouchable manner, they say it had seemed obvious. Who but a spoiled, rich kid would act that way, right?
Oh, how wrong they had been.
Murdock bites his cheek almost raw as they describe how Peck had laughed. How the sound of it had been so hollow, even they had known they'd made a mistake. But Peck had never explained why he'd laughed at them. He'd simply waved it off and gone back to not caring.
Thus how Lieutenant Peck came to arrive in Vietnam without a single friend and without a proper name—two things Murdock intends to change.
He knows it may take the kid a while to accept he's not alone anymore. Probably even longer for him to truly trust it—trust him. But that's okay. Murdock can keep the faith for both of them until Peck figures it out.
Which leads him to the next order of business: that proper name. Templeton has flair, but it's too long. Temp sounds far too fleeting, Tem doesn't suit him at all, and Peck is out of the question. What the kid really needs is a nickname. An extra good one, with a touch of mystery and plenty of panache. Something that makes people sit up and take notice. The kind of name that will build him up, not tear him down.
In short, a name worth growing into.
And for that, only one name will do... "Hey, Faceman!"
THE END
Ending Notes:
Years ago, I saw an interview with Stephen J. Cannell where he talked about how he came up with the name "Faceman". He said it was a nickname the girls in his high school would give to a boy who was all the things this character was meant to be: handsome, charming, irresistible, and just a bit of a rogue. Somehow, through the years, I have ended up creating a head canon that Murdock was the one who gave Face his nickname and for the same reasons. I referenced this head canon in passing during my story, "Light in the Dark", but it wasn't until Murdock gave me the first line of this fic that the significance of it really took shape.
Also, just to clarify, I think if you had asked Face when he arrived in Vietnam if he came there to die, he would have said, "No, of course not"—and he would've even convinced himself that he meant it. In part because of his beliefs as a Catholic, but also because I don't think death was something he was truly, consciously seeking. He had simply been hurt to the point he no longer believed it mattered whether he made it back or not. No one had ever truly wanted him anyway, so what difference did it make? A mindset like that in a war zone where you have to fight every minute to stay alive, feels like a death sentence to me. And I think that's what Murdock saw. He could tell Face had already given up in spirit and, unless someone stepped in, it would only be a matter of time before death caught up with him. And there was no way Murdock was going to let that happen!