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1955 was curling in on itself, desiccating like a pillbug. Summer had passed. Autumn was well underway, leaves browning and San Francisco fog creeping in denser all the time, when he’d got the call. Daniel Pierce, more perplexed than worried, asking if he’d spoken with Hawkeye lately, and if he had, did he know anything about—and BJ had asked him to repeat himself three times—about ghosts?
BJ hadn’t known anything about ghosts, and he hadn’t spoken to Hawkeye. They’d slipped out of touch. The call was the first he’d heard of Hawkeye in ten months, and it was to inform him the man had taken a month’s leave from his surgical post in Portland, bought several hundred dollars’ worth of defunct radiological equipment, and absconded to somewhere upstate.
It wasn’t the most promising news after so much silence, and so, after filing for leave and making a cursory call, BJ packed a suitcase and went to Maine.
Fall in San Francisco was a quiet shift, a slow slide into a greyer state of being. The bay moved with a sedate indifference. Mist lingered for weeks, a precipitant haze. Trees, if they changed at all, browned and then dropped their leaves into damply rotting piles.
But it was a different sort of autumn in Hawkeye’s world. There the sun rose reluctantly over the water, and only deigned to sweep across the southern sky in a low arc before returning below the horizon, sunset-clouds reflecting the full spectrum of warmth. Freezing Atlantic waves dashed themselves to pieces on the rocky shores with a fervent joy. The foliage was otherworldly, trees flaring out for the season’s end in explosions of color. Everything died more brilliantly in Maine.
He found Hawkeye at an inn, a white-washed colonial house on a hill deep in the wilds of the state. Heavy forestland. The road in was packed dirt, and frequently overgrown—Eisenhower’s promise of an interstate system had never seemed more impossibly distant. But the house was in fine condition, its foundations solid and window-shutters recently painted. Jack-o’-lanterns drooped on the stairs, sinking into themselves. Carved too soon. Already decaying.
“Pierce?” BJ asked the teenager behind a makeshift desk in the foyer. The kid hardly looked up from her novel. She pointed to her left, and the back of the house.
“Outside,” the kid said, and turned a page. It took her a second to manage. The air was dry.
BJ set his suitcase down, and made his way through the house. It was busily decorated, and over-furnished. Plush chairs vied for floorspace. Eclectic was probably the kindest word that applied. He didn’t mind it, he decided, picking his way past three jewel-toned couches and stacks of teetering books, shoes sinking into the high-pile carpet, which was an alive, emerald shade of green. It was strange and busy and vivid, comforting, cluttered, warm. Exactly the sort of place in which he used to imagine Hawkeye. He’d done that a lot overseas. Imagined Hawkeye elsewhere. It comforted him.
He found another door in the house’s kitchen, a room which smelled strongly of nutmeg, and passed through onto an exterior porch. The view was so breathtaking—the hill sloping down to a forest of hue-shifting foliage, a pond with violently red leaves spinning across its surface, the sky crisply blue—that he nearly overlooked Hawkeye.
Hawkeye overlooked him, anyway, as absorbed as he was in his work. He’d gutted a radio, and had its internal components spread out around him. He sat cross-legged within a spiral of loose screws, scraps of wire, resistors, transistors, capacitors, and more specialized objects BJ didn’t have a name for. He was holding the radio’s shell in his lap, trying to work something else out of it with a flathead screwdriver. He was unshaven.
BJ nodded to himself, and leaned forward onto the porch’s railing, taking in the view more determinedly. He crossed his ankles, braced his elbows, and waited to be noticed. He was calm. There was something in the air—sharp, dry, thick with the ferment of mass-scale biodegradation—that made it difficult to feel anything besides a sense of peace and ease. The sun was warm, staving off the early autumn chill even as the light’s angle with the ground turned steadily more acute. High above a vee of geese called to each other. Probably one of the last migrations of the season. And every time the wind blew, the trees in the valley below rolled. The world felt softer—slower. Time pulled out, lambent, honey-thick, moving like film projected at half-speed. Everything living was settling down for the year. He thought he understood why Hawkeye might have been drawn to this place.
“In my light,” Hawkeye complained as the sun approached the horizon, hard to hear around the screws he was holding in the corner of his mouth.
BJ shifted over a step. “Sorry, Hawk.”
A silver clatter. Screws hitting the deck. There was a long span of silence.
BJ focused on his hands as Hawkeye stood, the porch creaking under his weight. His knuckles were red. The night’s cold was coming on fast.
Hawkeye approached him slowly. Boards shifted under BJ’s feet as Hawkeye moved behind him without speaking. He settled just as silently against the porch rail, his back to the view, attention on BJ.
It had been a long ten months since they’d written. Longer since they’d seen each other. The first and latest time they’d met in the States had been September of 1954. Aspen, for a conference.
Hawkeye had seemed impossibly good then, against the snowy stark backdrop of the Elk Mountains. He’d been working for nearly a year, and was fine-tuning a new syllabus on emergent medicine. Even had a paper in publication review. He worked at a big hospital in Portland, Maine, and visited his father on the weekends. It was slower-paced than Boston or New York, Hawkeye had said, wryly resigned in a way BJ hadn’t been bold enough to question. Whatever compromises Hawkeye had made with himself had clearly been for the best. The silver in his hair had retreated to his temples. He hadn’t seemed unduly depressed. Nor had he been in one of his strange fey moods, irritated or elated, compelled to stand on tables or joke with a pressured desperation. He’d just been Hawkeye—charming, incisive, interesting, as brightly and wholly himself as he had ever been.
It had been impossible, all that considered, to admit to Hawkeye how completely BJ’s own life was dissolving. Peg was sick of him. He was sick of himself, so he couldn’t blame her. He was angry all of the time, except when he was sad. And when he wasn’t angry or sad he felt nothing. He’d sit around and stare blankly at the walls and feel hollow. Nothing held his attention anymore. He didn’t enjoy anything. He liked just about no one, which was just as well, because nobody liked him much, either. He’d spent so long picturing the family he’d come back to—the single perfect frame of it, Hunnicutts reunited—that he’d failed to imagine anything that came after.
He found he hated the suburbs. He hated the HOA and the PTA and all the goddamned MBAs with whom he bordered yards. He hated mowing the lawn and cleaning the gutters and fixing the sink. He hated making small talk about mowing the lawn and cleaning the gutters and fixing the sink. He hated Peg hating him. He loved Erin, but he hated how hard he found it to express when everything else was falling apart.
And he missed Hawkeye. He’d thought maybe Hawkeye missed him, too. Needed BJ the way BJ needed him. Some part of him had thought, when they met in Colorado, maybe Hawkeye would—he didn’t know what. But none of that mattered. Hawkeye had been phenomenally well, and BJ hadn’t wanted to ruin the mood, so they’d eaten bar peanuts and sipped unspiked lemonade and talked about medicine and looked out an immense set of observation windows at a September snow, the high-altitude wind whisking it away before it had the chance to collect, and at the mountain beyond, its peak purple-indigo, the sun setting palely behind it.
BJ couldn’t recall who had stopped writing first. It seemed like their letters had gone shorter and shorter after the conference, the salutations and signatures rushing to meet each other until they collided and annihilated correspondence entirely. Ten months had slipped by in the interim. Ten months, a trial separation, a new apartment—only a few of the changes BJ was inclined to track, among many. He was still raw in some ways, still lost, lonely, looking for something he couldn’t pin down. He felt a stranger to himself. There had never been a better time to drop everything and wander off.
And so, here he was, reunited with Hawkeye, who had the hollow-eyed look he used to get overseas when sleep was eluding him. But he didn’t seem distressed. He just went on leaning against the railing of the porch. He opened his mouth, half-pursed his lips, appeared to consider speaking, and then settled for a smile. He clipped BJ’s shoulder with his fist, tentative.
BJ returned his smile. Hawkeye’s grin intensified. He clipped BJ’s shoulder again.
“So,” Hawkeye said, wry and soft, the corners of his eyes crinkling, “what do you think? Yankees going to pull it off?”
October first, BJ remembered belatedly. The fourth game of the World Series. He checked his watch. The game was probably over already, or nearly. He’d forgotten.
“Well,” BJ said, and looked towards Hawkeye’s murdered radio, its chromic guts spread over the porch, “I had it on the Dodgers, but I’ve got a feeling we’re going to miss the broadcast.”
Hawkeye laughed. He grabbed BJ’s arm. BJ laughed, too, leaning into him, an ache in his chest already starting to ease. It was good to see Hawkeye again.
“What brings you east?” Hawkeye pushed repeatedly at his shirt cuffs. He’d rolled the sleeves of his flannel—green, brown, cream, overlarge—up to his elbows. It was evident from the darting of his gaze he wanted to go back to his radio, but was making an effort to be accommodating.
BJ ducked his head, trying to fight off a bloom of fondness. He failed. The wind rose. It cut through his suit jacket and pelted him with leaf fragments. “I took a few weeks off,” he said, which was true, and “I thought I’d visit,” which was true if also partially a lie by omission, and “I wanted to see the leaves,” which had only become true in the last half-hour.
Hawkeye made an expansive gesture out at the forest. Shadows were rising. The pond looked indigo.
BJ nodded.
Hawkeye bent sharply double and came back up with an oak leaf. He held it aloft, expectant.
BJ nodded again. He shifted to face Hawkeye instead of the view. Their knees knocked together. “That’s very good.”
Hawkeye released the leaf over the edge of the porch. They watched it drift away on the breeze together. “I’m on a vacation,” Hawkeye disclosed, secretive and delighted. “You couldn’t have picked a better time.” He pushed at his sleeves again, grinning full-force, expectant.
“What?” BJ asked, laughing. Hawkeye grabbed his elbow, released him, and arrowed back to his work.
“Getting dark.” Hawkeye stepped delicately into the spiral of radio components, and crouched over the disemboweled shell. BJ paused, waiting, wondering if Hawkeye was going to attempt to reassemble the radio before nightfall. Hawkeye surprised him by unceremoniously sweeping everything together into the radio’s shell.
“Giving up?” BJ asked, offering Hawkeye his hand. He was gratified when Hawkeye accepted it, and allowed BJ to pull him to his feet. Hawkeye swayed as he rose, so BJ steadied him, holding his elbows. His flannel was soft, the cuffs bulky. It was a challenge not to pull Hawkeye directly into a hug. He’d missed the man.
“What?” Hawkeye asked, blinking at him in the fast-falling dark. His eyes shone. The only remaining indication of the presence of the forest around them was the sound of the wind moving through its leaves.
“The radio.”
“No, no. I got what I needed.” Hawkeye grasped his shoulder, thumb playing over the line of his clavicle. His gaze drifted.
“And what is that?”
“What?” Hawkeye asked again, already distracted. He led BJ across the porch towards the house. His radio-components clinked.
BJ pulled Hawkeye to a stop just outside the inn’s back door, baffled, endeared, utterly lost. He felt they’d skipped something important. He felt he ought to have apologized. He felt he ought to be expressing his concern. And still they’d fallen into step as though they’d only been apart a day. It was easy, as it always had been, to be with Hawkeye. He held Hawkeye still, trying to see him. “What is it you need?”
Hawkeye laughed. He was doing that a lot. “I don’t know. I’m figuring it out.”
“Yeah?” BJ asked. Hawkeye was mostly in shadow. A small amount of light escaped from the house’s curtained windows, illuminating the line of Hawkeye’s jaw. “I guess that makes two of us.”
Hawkeye’s gaze snapped to meet BJ’s. Magnetic. He reached out, palm flat, and allowed his fingertips to rest lightly against BJ’s sternum. BJ held his breath. He wanted to press forward, or pull away—it was strange for Hawkeye to touch him like he thought he wasn’t allowed. Something was happening. His throat locked.
Hawkeye held his gaze. His fingertips slipped down, trailing over BJ’s stomach. The touch was so delicate it made BJ shiver, but he tried to stay relaxed, to let Hawkeye do whatever it was he thought he was doing as he played with the hem of BJ’s shirt.
“Well,” Hawkeye said, eyes bright with reflected light, “if you’re staying, I could use your help.”
His knuckle brushed the bare skin at BJ’s waist. BJ exhaled and moved against nothing. “Help with what?”
Hawkeye grinned and yanked him close by the belt loop. He breathed against BJ’s face, blinking rapidly. Up close he smelled of coffee. “BJ,” he asked, readjusting his hold on BJ’s clothes, radio components rattling in his other hand, “do you know anything about ghosts?”
“No,” BJ said honestly, still lost. There was a split-second’s temptation to ask Hawkeye to explain himself, to reveal the joke, to account for his dropping everything and disappearing into the great northern woods. But Hawkeye didn’t seem inclined to explain. He was only waiting, eyebrows raised, for BJ to catch up. For BJ to play along. One half of a two-man show—what’s an Abbott without his Costello? And so, well, what the hell: “But I’m willing to learn.”
Hawkeye crowed with delight and spun away into the dark. BJ allowed himself to be pulled along, holding Hawkeye’s elbow—he was solid, and warm, and real, and present. BJ was determined not to let him slip away again so easily.
///
The passenger window in Hawkeye’s car was loose. It rattled on every rough patch of road. There were very few patches of road that were not rough. The woods were dark and pressed in around them, irregularly illuminated by the car’s headlights. Leaves adhered themselves to the windshield and then fluttered away into the night.
The car hit another divot in the road. BJ pressed his fingertips to the window and held the pane steady.
“Sorry,” Hawkeye said, not sounding much like he meant it.
“When’d you buy this thing?” BJ asked, gripping the fabric of his slacks over his knee with his free hand. It might have been a good idea to change into jeans. Hawkeye hadn’t explained where they were headed, and BJ hadn’t asked. He’d just followed Hawkeye blindly. He was more than happy to. It beat doing nothing, which gave him too much time to think. He’d decided, from the moment he’d hung up on Daniel Pierce, that the month was to be one of instinctive action. No dwelling. He thought it might help him feel better. Falling headlong into chaos with Hawkeye typically did.
Hawkeye gunned the acceleration affectionately. The car stuttered and wheezed. “Nineteen forty-nine. Brand new.”
BJ stared at him. Hawkeye watched the road. He was humming to himself, something jazzy and bright. “Nineteen forty-nine.”
“Uh-huh.”
“New.”
“Nyes.”
“But,” BJ said, trying to be tactful, not wanting to malign Hawkeye’s car, of which the man was clearly fond, “that was only six years ago. And you were on separate continents for three.”
“Good math,” Hawkeye approved.
BJ listened to the engine strain. The car ran like it was four times its age. “When was the last time you changed the oil?”
Hawkeye stopped humming.
“Hawk,” BJ said, and dropped back into his seat.
“No, no, I—it’s—I know all about that,” Hawkeye said, unconvincingly. “I just took it to the—the place where they do it the other day.”
BJ laughed, tossing his head back. “How much did it cost?”
Hawkeye bobbled his head. “Thirty dollars,” he tried.
“Thirty!” BJ laughed harder, pressing his hand to his forehead.
“I meant three,” Hawkeye said, and started to laugh, too. “Damn. I know it needs doing. I forget to remember, that’s the trouble. I know I’m supposed to, but I get busy and it doesn’t come to mind.”
BJ nodded, shifting to look at Hawkeye more directly, catching himself on a laugh. Hawkeye’s eyes were red-rimmed, and his face looked a little gaunt. The man had a bad habit of living somewhere beyond the physical. Car maintenance wasn’t all that he got too busy to look after. Though he thought all the surgeons he knew had the same problem, to a degree—even he was hit or miss on remembering to break for lunch. Hawkeye was right. He got busy. Things slipped his mind. Others fell by the wayside. And it was always easier to fall into work when life lost its shine.
“If—” BJ started, intending to propose some sort of dinner arrangement, but Hawkeye spoke over him.
“Here we are.” Hawkeye took the car through a sharp right turn and a patch of undergrowth, dry grass scraping the chassis. The trees went sparser and sparser until they were through and into a clearing. Ahead of them an enormous building crouched in the darkness, surrounded on all sides by forest. Its windows were boarded up. There was no light except what was provided by Hawkeye’s car. When he turned the engine off, parking them neatly in front of the entrance, the only illumination was that of the full moon.
BJ leaned against the loose window pane, eyeing the building. It seemed institutional in some way—like a school, or a hospital. Multiple floors, a central entrance, an unimaginative, rectangular structure. Dull grey brickwork. One of its front doors hung off the hinges. “Where’s here?”
“Field research.” Hawkeye moved out of the car and retrieved a large and apparently heavy bag from the backseat. BJ exited the car and followed along, curious, content to be close, until it became clear Hawkeye intended to enter the building.
BJ stopped. Hawkeye rebounded, as though they were leashed together, and circled back to him. “It won’t be long,” Hawkeye explained, rolling his sleeves up. “Just a test tonight. Just to see.”
“A test.” BJ leaned back, craning to look at all the empty, dark windows above them. He was uneasy under his amusement, but he wasn’t sure why. He felt watched.
Hawkeye moved incessantly. He tapped the pad of each finger of his right hand against his thumb in order, and then reversed, repeating the motion at an even speed. It sounded like a distant metronome. “Call it a sound check.”
“For the ghosts,” BJ said, with faux gravitas, wondering how far Hawkeye planned to take the joke—if it was, in fact, a joke. He didn’t want to break character first, but he was starting to wonder—they were awfully deep in the woods. They’d come a long way out. And it was no small risk to wander into a long-abandoned building by night.
And yet—whether it was stemming from Hawkeye’s confidence or somewhere more completely internal—it was difficult to ignore a thread of curiosity drawing him in. The idea of trespassing on condemned property was undeniably intriguing. Truth told, he got more than a little enjoyment out of being nosy. It would be terrifically interesting to get to pry through an old building together, Hawkeye’s uncertain motives and his own placeless unease aside.
Hawkeye nodded, and then shook his head, and then shrugged. He turned, elegant, pivoting on the ball of one foot, and set off towards the structure. BJ followed him close, not liking the look of Hawkeye disappearing into the building alone. It hunched like something alive.
Inside he could hardly see more than a foot in front of himself—Hawkeye’s flannel was a spectral flash of grey only visible in his periphery. The moon’s light puddled uselessly just inside the doorway, reluctant to intrude. The windows on the first floor were all boarded up. BJ tripped, footing uncertain in the dark, and caught himself against Hawkeye’s shoulder.
“Sorry,” Hawkeye murmured, his palm skimming across BJ’s hip. Something rustled. BJ tensed, thinking about rabid animals, and relaxed when Hawkeye clicked on a flashlight. He handed it to BJ, and retrieved a second for himself. The beams were bright, halogen-white, and cut circles of high-contrast visibility out of the void around them.
BJ tried to hold his hand steady as he took in the room. His and Hawkeye’s flashlight beams crossed each other and streaked across the walls—appearing and then receding instantly back into the black—with a vertiginous lack of coordination.
“Hold still,” Hawkeye said, abruptly testy. Probably he found it just as disorienting as BJ did, standing in complete darkness, the space around them only a series of contextless illuminated bursts.
BJ directed his flashlight at his feet. Hawkeye pressed his own beam to his chest. It filtered through his flannel at the edges, casting a diffuse glow that was almost enough to see by.
The main entrance was behind them, still stubbornly refusing the moonlight entry. The room they were in was large, its high ceiling lost in shadow. Broken tile and dust shifted underfoot. A void of a doorway loomed behind Hawkeye. Somewhere a window must have been left unboarded—wind moaned within the building, farther in and above them. The sound was muffled, and almost animal. And still BJ felt watched. It was a stronger sensation inside the building. He didn’t like the totality of the darkness—it was difficult, without being able to see all walls of the room at once, to be sure where the space was bounded. If he stood still, he was hit with the sensation of an immense expanse of nothingness stretching away behind him. He snuck a glance over his shoulder to confirm the presence of a wall, and instead realized with a nauseated shock that there was a doorway at his back. He shuffled closer to Hawkeye.
Hawkeye turned a quarter step, pressing their shoulders together. Slowly he pulled his flashlight away from his chest. He allowed the beam to trace out the borders of the room. Ahead of them was a grand staircase, which twisted into the shadows above. Cobwebs hung off its railing, fluttering in an unfelt breeze. The whole world was washed to greyscale in the flashlight’s narrow circle of illumination.
“I don’t know what you told the realtor,” BJ said, throat dry, “but I can’t imagine what we’d do with all this floorspace.”
Hawkeye laughed softly. “Who says we have the place to ourselves?”
BJ scoffed. The sound echoed. Hawkeye was drifting steadily closer to the staircase, moving like he wasn’t aware he was doing it. His gaze was fixed in the shadows above.
“Do you hear that?” Hawkeye asked, intrigued. He set one foot on the staircase.
BJ grabbed at him, and then blinked, shocked at himself. He released Hawkeye’s arm and stepped back. “Careful,” he found himself saying. “Wood might be rotten. You could fall through.”
Hawkeye moved closer to the wall, collecting a few cobwebs as he started up the stairs. “Seems stable to me.”
BJ sighed, and followed him. They both kept their flashlights aimed downwards, which created a strange and nauseating effect: It looked as though they were moving without moving. Every step upwards only brought another identical step into view, and disappeared another one into the shadows behind and below. It felt for a while as though they were stuck in a loop, climbing endlessly and achieving nothing—the world was reduced to a series of identical stairs, the mildly labored sound of Hawkeye’s breath, and whatever it was in Hawkeye’s bag that rattled every time it contacted his hip.
The stairs terminated eventually in a small landing, maybe a hundred feet square. It was hardwood, but the finish had long since rotted away. The railing was wooden, too, ornately carved where it remained—individual posts had broken off, leaving large gaps. The far side of the landing’s railing was missing entirely, nothing walling off the long drop. BJ peered, distrustful, over the sturdiest section of railing, and directed his beam downward. His light wasn’t powerful enough to reach the floor. All he saw were a few floating strands of cobweb, a grey haze of dust, and the staircase extending downwards into an abyssal blackness.
A metallic squeal behind him nearly caused him to lose his balance. He turned, flashlight beam dancing, and found Hawkeye struggling with the landing’s door.
“Heavy,” Hawkeye managed to complain, legs straining as he pitched his full weight against the door, his body describing a forty-five-degree angle. BJ had an uneasy image of the door giving way, sending Hawkeye stumbling over the unbounded drop at his back, and stepped in to help.
He realized, as he and Hawkeye leveraged their combined weight against the door, that it wasn’t actually heavy. There was some sort of air-pressure differential at play, trying to keep the second floor sealed. They weren’t fighting rusty hinges or a broken handle. They were fighting vacuum force.
The door opened a bare half-inch, and the distant animal-wail of rushing air abruptly rose in pitch, the door pulling hard against them. Disturbed dust dragged inward, sucked through the door’s widening aperture. BJ stumbled as the inward force on the door began to relent. Hawkeye slung an arm around his waist, holding him steady, maybe fearing the same scenario BJ had imagined with the drop-off in reverse. Finally the air-pressures equalized, and the door swung easily open.
Hawkeye was breathing heavily, leaning into his side, his arm still around BJ’s waist. BJ didn’t mind. He wasn’t scared, precisely. But he was unsettled. Knowing he was safe, other than the building’s ltieral structural instability, didn’t do much to calm his nerves. It was a confusing sensation. Exciting. Frightening. Scary—but fun. Thrilling, maybe.
“I’m not sure this place is up to code,” BJ observed, looking over their aligned shoulders at the drop. It was starting to give him vertigo, so he focused instead on the dark space beyond the newly-opened door.
“It’s a fixer-upper,” Hawkeye agreed. He moved into the doorway, his hand at BJ’s waist, hovering. “I guess you can’t always trust the catalogs they show you in the office.”
“It’s all photography tricks.” They stepped together into the second-floor hall. BJ gestured along it with his light, illuminating an overturned desk, piles of broken ceiling tiles, shattered plaster, thick ropes of cobwebs. And endless repeating doorways. Another excited, uneasy thrill ran through him. The place looked like it had been abandoned in a hurry. “You use one of those wide lenses and this all looks like a Better Homes and Gardens spread.”
Hawkeye threw him a grin with an edge. “Know a lot about those, do you?”
“It comes free with Popular Mechanics ,” BJ lied. He liked hosting events, when he had people he liked enough to want to host. And he liked the recipes.
“Dearie me,” Hawkeye said, hand over his heart. “Popular Mechanics and Better Homes. I didn’t know a fellow could do both.”
BJ grinned, tongued the inside of his cheek, and decided not to check himself. “You know more than me about splitting the difference.”
The joke didn’t faze—or, as he’d briefly worried, offend—Hawkeye for a second. He laughed, brightly surprised, and grasped BJ’s sleeve. He shook BJ’s elbow, a silent gesture of approval.
BJ put his head down and his hand in his pocket. It felt absurdly good to make Hawkeye laugh, and even better to be the object of Hawkeye’s appreciation. He wanted to crack another joke. Maybe Hawkeye would grab him again, or shake him, or fall into him as he used to when BJ’d got off a really good one-liner—Hawkeye would toss his head back and let himself go slack with laughter, tipping into BJ’s side.
“We’ll see if I can’t find a few subscriptions to recommend you,” Hawkeye said, pulling him with renewed determination down the hall. He swept his flashlight beam back and forth, restless.
“What are we looking for?” BJ asked, peering into every doorway they passed with interest. The rooms on the second floor were small, low-ceilinged, and appeared to iterate endlessly. They were by all appearances completely identical. BJ struggled to tell if the structure had been used as a hospital or a prison or an asylum or a school. His nerves were receding again, replaced by the delight of exploration. It was difficult to resist the urge to pull Hawkeye to a stop in order to conduct a thorough search of one of the little rooms. It was exciting to imagine the sort of things one might discover in an abandoned desk, or filing cabinet—tantalizing hints of the lives and work of people who had long since gone away.
Hawkeye tugged him along for a few more rooms, and then stopped sharply. “Here,” he said, and swung his bag off his shoulder, allowing the momentum to carry him through the doorway.
BJ followed him in. The room appeared to be identical to the rest they’d passed. Not a classroom—it was too small. An office, or maybe a hospital room, then. No cabinets to poke through, which privately disappointed him. There was a desk, though, which he wandered over to.
“Any idea who owns this place?” BJ asked, picking up a manila folder. There was a single page inside, but whatever had been written on it had smudged away. He held his flashlight along the flat of the paper to see if he could make out a past pencil’s indentation, and failed to find anything legible.
Hawkeye made a severely muffled noise. BJ turned to find him crouched over his bag, flashlight in his mouth.
“Here,” BJ said, and pulled the flashlight from between Hawkeye’s lips, turning both beams on Hawkeye’s bag.
“Thanks,” Hawkeye said, and squinted up at him. “Sorry about the spit.”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
Hawkeye brought a screwdriver out of his bag, held it for a second, and then stuck the handle in his mouth.
“Need me to hold something else?” BJ asked, amused.
“Ngh,” Hawkeye informed him. He went on rustling through the contents of his bag, and then brought out a portable tape recorder.
BJ tried to keep the flashlight beams steady, giving Hawkeye light to work by. It was becoming evident that Hawkeye was maybe entirely earnest about the idea of ghosts. That made their joint trespassing endeavor significantly less fun. It gave him cause to worry.
“Hawk,” he started, delicate.
“Beesh,” Hawkeye acknowledged around the handle of his screwdriver.
“Do you—when you say ghosts…” he trailed off, unsure of how to articulate himself without making an implicit accusation.
Hawkeye spat the screwdriver into his bag. He blinked up at BJ. “Like in Hamlet,” he explained, gesturing loosely—of course that was the first example he conjured. “Maybe like in Hamlet. I don’t know.”
“Maybe,” BJ repeated. “So you do—you believe they’re real, then.”
“Ghosts?” Hawkeye asked, finally pausing his search through his bag. His brow furrowed, expression offended. “No. Of course not.”
“Right,” BJ said, immediately relieved. “Of course not.”
“No empirical evidence,” Hawkeye continued. “People claim to have all sorts of proof, but it’s all—it’s all specious. Spurious. Easily fabricated.” He swept his hand to the side, dismissive.
“Right,” BJ agreed again. “Double film exposures. Manipulated recordings. Dust on a lens.”
“Carbon monoxide for the experiential accounts,” Hawkeye added, grinning. “No. I don’t believe in ghosts.”
BJ looked around the room, its close walls, its dusty floor, the low desk with its single manila envelope. “Then why are we here?” Why are you here, he didn’t ask. That seemed a step too far. And he didn’t want to invite the question in reverse.
“I don’t believe,” Hawkeye said, and pulled something metallic and unidentifiable out of his bag, “but I also don’t know.”
“Ah,” BJ said. “You’re after a basis for disbelief.” He figured that made as much sense as anything else in life, which, he was discovering, made no sense at all. He thought Hawkeye had figured that out a long time ago. Maybe he was waiting for everybody to catch up.
Hawkeye bobbed his head, noncommittal. “I’d just like to see for myself, that’s all. Of course it’s not real. It couldn’t possibly be real. It goes against all established science. Moreover it goes beyond the bounds of logic—I mean that formally, positive burdens of proof and all.” Hawkeye eyed him. The flashlights’ glare washed the color of his irises a pale grey. He smiled, self conscious, and said, “It’s not real. But, uh—well. Nevertheless.”
BJ left that alone. He gestured towards the strange metal object Hawkeye had brought out of his bag with a flashlight. It looked like it had once been a radio. Its shell had been cracked open, and entrail-like wire tangles spilled from its center. Small, colored-glass bulbs had been wired intermittently into the mess. Hawkeye reached down, twisted something on the machine’s interior, and then pulled a pair of telescoping antennas out to full extension. “So what’s this?”
“Ah,” Hawkeye said, pleased. He prodded for a moment at the back of the machine, and then swept his hand through the space between the antennas. The colored-glass bulbs lit in concert, a red-green-blue glow establishing itself—and, to his surprise, the machine began to generate a steady, high-pitched whine. When Hawkeye pulled his hand away, the bulbs extinguished and the sound pitched down into nothing. “Neat, right? Body capacitance. Anything with a charge passes through that field, we’ll know.”
We, BJ noted silently. He couldn’t help it. He grinned. “And what else do you have in there?”
Hawkeye brought out another strange ex-radio, and then another. “This one—well, the first, think of that like an alarm bell. A proximity alert. This one’s more complicated. Sort of like a one-way phone.”
“Why all the electromagneticism?”
Hawkeye shrugged. “Makes sense, doesn’t it? If it makes any sense at all. We’re all just temporary lightning in organic bottles.”
BJ crouched. His knees popped. Hawkeye shifted obligingly, letting him get a better look at the radio-machine. He was doing some sort of complex wire-patching, circuits carefully clipped, rerouted, and connected again. Hawkeye was doing his best to explain as he worked, saying something about noise-gates and frequency banks, gesturing with enthusiastic precision towards sets of wires that were impossible to distinguish from each other. It seemed a miracle he hadn’t electrocuted himself.
“I never knew you were interested in radios.” BJ considered the other little machines Hawkeye had hauled out, their strange and somehow nearly perversely compromised shapes—intentional designs shattered and warped to serve a new purpose. He thought without much direction about Hawkeye’s tongue-depressor tower.
“Needs must,” Hawkeye said, wire-weaving.
BJ watched him work. He kept quiet, and his questions to himself. There was something to it, Hawkeye’s silent confidence, that compelled him to try his hardest to reserve judgement. It would be easy to cross his arms and detach from the moment, to diagnose or dismiss. Easy to say something sharp about radio-wave interference existing nearly everywhere around them—broadcast towers, faulty wiring, sun-storms, atmospheric vacillations, even spandrels of signals from the rest of Hawkeye’s equipment—though he was certain Hawkeye already knew. Easier still to take Hawkeye by the wrist and ask him a series of pointedly empathetic questions about sleep schedules and the pace of his speech.
But with Hawkeye crouching in the dark, fiddling with the guts of a radio, eyes alight with frenetic intensity, it seemed the wrong thing to do. It wasn’t as though he’d completely broken from rational thought—and, BJ thought to himself, watching Hawkeye carefully reconnect a pair of wires, surgeon’s deftness intact, well, weren’t there millions and millions of people who uncritically and truly believed in the existence of an afterlife, or ghosts, or spirits? People who genuinely believed in the existence of an intervening divinity? And they were nearly never carted away to be tranquilized and analyzed and worked over for saying so. Delusion was only a question of context.
Anyway, it wasn’t as though Hawkeye was insisting on the existence of the supernatural. That would defeat the purpose of his strange machines, his intently analytic approach, his bare skepticism. No, he wasn’t irrational. And, kneeling there in the dark beside him, BJ could for the first time in his life sense—some sort of opening. Not the supernatural, but the potential for it. He decided he was open to being proven wrong.
“Okay,” BJ said, and leaned against Hawkeye. “What now?”
Hawkeye took his flashlight back. He leaned into BJ’s side. “Sorry in advance.”
He depressed something on the radio-machine’s interior. Static roared. Fragmented, eerie syllables burbled out of its speakers, the machine running through ten frequencies to a second—it was an uncomfortably unfamiliar sound, somehow both organic and unmistakably machinic.
“What’s that supposed to do?” BJ asked, speaking directly against Hawkeye’s ear in order to make himself heard. The radio’s jagged interference pattern jumped sharply, startling him.
“Right. Well, you and me,” Hawkeye said, tossing a companionable arm around his shoulders, “we need air.”
BJ jostled him. “I learned that in medical school.”
Hawkeye flicked the side of his head in remonstration. “I mean it’s the medium of communication. We vibrate our vocal cords, aim the resulting soundwaves at each other, and call it talking. Now what if we didn’t have any vocal cords? What if we couldn’t come up with any soundwaves at all? What’s the medium of communication if all we are is a little bit of electricity?”
“Countrymen, lend me your voices,” BJ said, suitably impressed. Hawkeye had put an awful lot of thought and effort into his experiment. Not to mention time and money. It seemed a shame not to see it through. “Don’t forget your tape recorder.”
Hawkeye patted his knee in thanks, and started the recorder running. He leaned back into BJ’s space, so close BJ could feel every breath Hawkeye took as a waxing and waning pressure against his own ribcage. BJ leaned closer still. He didn’t have an excuse, really, except that it felt good to do, and the air was chill, and he’d decided to try to stop thinking so much about everything.
“Well,” Hawkeye said, hand on BJ’s knee, BJ’s hand coming to rest on Hawkeye’s spine, their hips and ribcages aligned, “I guess we’d better start. BJ, would you like to introduce yourself?”
“Sure,” BJ said, and addressed the empty air, the sharp static fuzz of the radio, the antenna-machine lurking behind it, feeling only a little ridiculous. “My name is BJ. Hunnicutt.”
Hawkeye nodded at him, apparently waiting for more.
“My name is BJ,” BJ repeated, trying to think of anything more to add. “I’m from California. Way out west. I’m—I’m here on a vacation. Visiting my best friend Hawkeye.” He furrowed his brow, and then let it go. It had felt adolescent and silly to say ‘best friend,’ but he figured it was true. And it had made Hawkeye smile, so he didn’t mind.
“Hawkeye being me,” Hawkeye said into the dark, patting BJ’s knee. “That’s us. Hawkeye and BJ. BJ and Hawkeye. That’s us, and we’re here. We know that much. Now, is there anybody here with us?”
BJ held still, and listened to the static, and settled into wait. There were worse places to be than pressed against Hawkeye, feeling the low vibrations of his voice resonate in his chest, sharing body heat, cracking jokes or complaining or just trading yawns back and forth while they waited for anything to happen.
///
Of course nothing did. They stumbled into the house hours later, laughingly disappointed. Hawkeye tried to shush him, and only made himself laugh harder. The lights were low, casting the first floor in a heavy shadow that spooked BJ pleasantly, despite the fact that they’d collected a sum total of zero evidence. He was still in an anything-could-happen sort of mindset, and felt lighter than he had in months. A happy nervous shiver rolled through him, so he leaned into Hawkeye’s side.
Hawkeye leaned against him just as determinedly. BJ inhaled, and laughed again, caught in a loop—every time he trailed off, Hawkeye would laugh and set him off. His ribs were starting to ache. He was exhausted. It felt good to toss his arm around Hawkeye’s shoulders. They’d spent too long apart.
“Let’s,” Hawkeye said, through another fit of laughter, the corners of his eyes crinkling, “—Christ, it’s late. Let’s get to bed.”
“Bold proposition,” BJ said, realizing as he spoke that he was draped halfway over Hawkeye’s shoulder. If he shifted his weight, he could press his nose to Hawkeye’s hair.
“I slept with you for years. It’s nothing new.”
BJ jostled him. It really was late, he was exhausted, and he knew now they were going to have weeks to spend together. But he didn’t want to stop talking to Hawkeye. He was still making up for lost time. “In a minute. Let’s—I don’t know. I could use a glass of water.”
Hawkeye blinked at him. Something within him seemed to come into focus. “You must be hungry,” Hawkeye said, like he was testing the concept out. Like the idea was revolutionary, in some way. His brows came together as he considered BJ at close range.
“I am,” BJ admitted. “Aren’t you?”
Hawkeye breathed deeply. He wound the fabric of BJ’s shirt around his hand.
“Do you usually eat with the owner? The innkeep?” BJ asked, uncertain—there wasn’t likely to be anything nearby open so late at night. It’d be a significant drive to find a twenty-four-hour diner.
“With the owner…” Hawkeye repeated. His head moved minutely, a shallow turn in response to some internal stimulus. He looked into empty air. Eventually he grinned, embarrassed. “You understand I’ve been very busy.”
BJ decided not to comment. Instead he allowed Hawkeye, who was newly alight with determination, to drag him into the kitchen. They stumbled over furniture in the near-dark, and shushed each other, and tried to stifle their laughter. Hawkeye felt his way to the oven, and turned on the stove-light, which was a burnished, coppery color and cast the whole room in shades of orange. It was deep night. BJ covered a yawn and leaned over the counter on his elbows, content to watch Hawkeye pad around the kitchen.
“Candle,” Hawkeye said needlessly, as he set a small candle down in front of BJ. He lit a match against the counter’s edge and held the flame to the wick. A long span of seconds passed before it took. Hawkeye shook the match out, then, and then ran it under the sink.
“Just to be safe,” Hawkeye said, dousing the match thoroughly before tossing it out. He opened the fridge, the door light a different, brighter shade of yellow, his profile brilliantly visible. He grinned. “Ah. Well, would you look at that?”
“What?” BJ asked, yawning again.
Hawkeye shut the fridge, and padded back over to the counter. He had a covered plate in hand. PIERCE, read an affixed notecard. “I guess I’ve been paying for board all this time.”
They peeled the foil off of the plate together and considered its contents.
“Hm,” Hawkeye said. He crossed his arms and looked to BJ.
“Hm,” BJ agreed, and covered the plate again. Hawkeye took it away and returned it to the fridge, from which, God willing, it’d be disposed of in the morning.
“Sorry,” Hawkeye said, head in the fridge, apparently looking for something else to forage. “If I’d known you were coming, I could’ve had something on hand.”
“Sorry for turning up unannounced.”
Hawkeye’s head was still in the fridge. “Don’t be. I’m glad to see you.”
“Likewise.”
“Always glad to see you,” Hawkeye said, more quietly, clearly distracted.
BJ considered the rest of the kitchen, giving himself something to focus on that wasn’t the turn of Hawkeye’s hips, or the way the waistband of his jeans gapped, loose, at the base of his spine.
“There any butter?” BJ asked, rising from his place at the counter. There was a loaf of some sort of French bread by the sink, hard-crusted with a little bit of give inside its paper bag.
“Yeah. Why?”
BJ opened a few drawers, hunting for a knife, finding first a number of wine corks, measuring cups, whisks, and a prescription bottle—he squinted—for somebody with a kidney infection. Empty.
“Butter?” Hawkeye prompted him, from the fridge.
BJ thwacked him gently with the loaf of bread.
Hawkeye looked at him, a wrapped stick of butter in his hand. “You can’t just take bread from an inn,” he said, doubtful.
“Good point,” BJ agreed. He held the bread under his arm and got his wallet out. He left a bill on the counter where the bread had been. When he looked up, Hawkeye was watching him, still holding a stick of butter, expression transparently fond.
“C’mon,” BJ prompted, not thinking about how much he’d missed Hawkeye’s approval. It felt right, so it was right, and he’d behave accordingly. He picked up the candle Hawkeye had lit. Hawkeye nodded once, and led him upstairs.
Hawkeye’s rented room was charming, and very cozy. The bed was large and covered over in heavy blankets, which were rumpled where Hawkeye had been sleeping. Hawkeye’s duffel bag drooped in an orange wingback chair. There was a pair of windows at the far side of the room facing the pond. The floor was hardwood, but was mostly obscured by a thick, and very soft, throw rug. BJ liked the thought of Hawkeye here, sprawled across the bed with a book or dozing in the chair. He seemed a natural fit.
They settled together on the floor to eat, trying their mutual best at first to saw off even portions of bread before giving up and settling for pulling the loaf apart with their hands. It was more satisfying that way, somehow, at the end of a long night. They leaned against the side of the bed, legs aligned, and got crumbs everywhere, and mostly failed to spread the still-cold butter on anything until BJ was struggling to keep his eyes open. Every few seconds his head dipped involuntarily. It was hard to keep himself from dozing. He must have failed at some point without realizing it—Hawkeye nudged his elbow into BJ’s side, and startled him awake.
“‘M up,” BJ said, prying his eyes open. His neck ached. He checked his watch and found he’d lost ten minutes.
“Take the bed,” Hawkeye suggested.
“Your bed,” BJ agreed, or maybe protested. He wasn’t sure what he’d meant. He couldn’t quite bring his vision into focus. The whole word had condensed into blurry warm colors and the length of Hawkeye’s legs. His eyes hurt, so he closed them.
Another elbow in his side. “Don’t fall asleep again.”
“I’m awake,” BJ defended. He yawned and allowed his head to rest on Hawkeye’s shoulder. Just for a moment. Just until he felt awake enough to stand.
Hawkeye didn’t say anything. He didn’t elbow BJ again, either, or push him away, so BJ rested and focused on the warmth of Hawkeye’s body, the bony jut of Hawkeye’s clavicle against his cheek, the familiar scent of his skin—more noticeable now that he didn’t smell, as he had in war, so strongly of hospital disinfectant.
I missed you, somebody said. BJ failed to open his eyes. They weren’t taking his orders anymore. He’d had that problem a few times overseas. Always with Hawkeye. They’d be dressing together, or stepping into the shower, and suddenly he’d lose all control. His gaze would slide from Hawkeye’s face to the sparse patch of hair on his chest, or linger over the breadth of his shoulders, or catch, with concerning frequency, on the pair of dimples at Hawkeye’s lower back. At the time he’d thought he’d been jealous of Hawkeye’s frame.
He wondered if Hawkeye had changed much in the intervening two years. If, under his soft flannel shirt and his oversized jeans, he looked the same as he had underneath army fatigues.
I missed you, somebody said again, or was still saying—time was strange, stretched out, running in reverse. Hawkeye turned, passing a palm trailing soap bubbles from his neck to his chest. He cupped his pectorals, and caught BJ looking. They were in the showers together, but the showers were in BJ’s apartment’s bathroom—he could tell because the tile was the same shade of orange. Hawkeye was in BJ’s shower soaping his chest. They were in his shower together. Hawkeye’s hair was slipping into his eyes. He was singing something familiar, jazzy and sweet. He wanted BJ to sing along, but BJ didn’t know the words. Hawkeye frowned and drew the shower curtain around himself, disappearing in a metallic shimmer of noise. BJ tried to follow him, tried to disappear, vanish, too, and only succeeded in running headlong into the shower wall.
Hawkeye’s face was half an inch from his. BJ grinned, tilted his head, and waited to be kissed. Hawkeye didn’t lean in. The room stayed itself. He was awake.
BJ blinked, disoriented. “I thought you left,” he slurred, wondering when he’d fallen asleep again. He pressed his nose to Hawkeye’s neck.
“Hard to leave with you sleeping on me.” Hawkeye pulled at his arm. “Come on. Bed. I mean it this time.”
“What time is it?” BJ asked, letting Hawkeye drag him to his feet. He fell backwards onto the bed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Hawkeye said. BJ closed his eyes again, so exhausted he felt almost ill. Hawkeye was touching him again, which made him feel better. He was holding onto BJ’s ankle, which confused him until Hawkeye removed his shoes.
“Thanks,” he said, craning up half an inch to smile at Hawkeye, who patted his ankle and tossed his shoes across the room. A thought occurred to him, and he grabbed for Hawkeye’s wrist.
“Something you need?” Hawkeye asked, blinking down at him. He’d pushed his hair behind his ears. It was starting to curl against his neck. He needed a shave very badly, unless he intended to grow a beard. BJ pictured it, heat gathering in his chest—Hawkeye with a scruffy dark beard, softening the angle of his jaw, speckled with silver. He wondered what it’d feel like.
BJ loosened his hold on Hawkeye’s wrist, feeling suddenly very exposed. He bit the inside of his cheek. “Where will you sleep?”
“Don’t worry about me.” Hawkeye tossed a blanket over him, and moved away. The lights turned off. There was a stretch of silence in which BJ found himself counterintuitively intensely awake before the need to sleep returned full force. He settled into bed more comfortably. He blinked, blinked again, and caught a frame of a silhouette in movement: Hawkeye standing guard at the window, staring into the night, arms crossed, watching something BJ couldn’t see. He’d ask Hawkeye what he was looking at in the morning. He’d ask Hawkeye a lot in the morning, if his bravery didn’t fail him—it had in the past. Still, he had questions. More every hour. He ought to start keeping a list.
///
Hawkeye was having trouble sleeping.
An understatement. He was mostly going without. It had started in late September with an unlucky confluence of events. Small things—the one-year mark of the last time he’d seen BJ hitting amidst a ten-month stretch of silence, a tough string of cases, an overambitious publishing schedule, an unfulfilling fling—and big things, too, global ones with consequences so steep he was trying not to picture them too directly because they had the tendency to sweep his feet right out from under him.
Anyway, it had been a tough stretch of weeks. He’d been walking somewhere, to lunch maybe, humming absentmindedly the same song he’d had stuck in his head all day, stress bearing down hard, and then realized, disgusted, the song he’d been humming on a loop was “Duck and Cover.” At which point an internal switch had thrown, and he’d found himself working with an unsustainable intensity, sleep escaping him, breaks and mealtimes slipping by unobserved. There had been a span of a week when he thought he ought to work through it, where it had felt as though he could work through anything. But he’d caught himself, remembering with a nervous spark the same problem manifesting overseas, the sleepless confusion of the work, somebody drugging his drink—he had decided it would be better to look after himself before it was no longer within his control to do so.
Hence the vacation. And the hobby. Something intriguing and largely inconsequential towards which he could direct his attention until he felt his feet firmly back on the ground.
And they were, he thought, pacing quietly in front of the window, BJ asleep in his rented bed. He was okay, now, or mostly. Back to himself. He didn’t feel the need to poke BJ to test his tangibility. He was seeing the world as it was. Sleep was the major trouble. Nobody wanted to be operated on by a surgeon who wasn’t sleeping.
BJ made a small sound to himself. Hawkeye paused, waiting for him to roll over, the way he always did when he’d half-woken in the middle of the night.
A rustle of blankets in the dark—BJ doing as predicted—and then silence again. Hawkeye checked his watch, squinting by moonlight. Past four a.m. If he were alone, he’d turn on the lights. He’d flip on one of his intact radios and listen to a rebroadcast of the Yankee-Dodgers game. He’d start tinkering again, or find something to read, and abandon the night’s attempt to sleep as a total loss. But he couldn’t, or else he’d risk waking BJ.
Hawkeye sighed. He didn’t particularly want to wander back outside, or try to work by a flashlight’s beam. He didn’t want to sit on the porch in the cold and listen to the radio. There wasn’t much else to do besides pace, or sit quietly. And he’d been on his feet for hours.
He considered the space beside BJ, the unoccupied span of mattress, and then rejected the idea. He sank onto the carpet instead, which was thick enough to rest on comfortably. He curled onto his side, closed his eyes, and tried to rest. Managed it, to a degree—he drifted, half-aware of the passing of time, of the hazy movement of his own thoughts, and then blinked to find himself in a puddle of sunlight with a hell of a neck-ache, despite the fact that BJ had at some point apparently stuck a pillow under his head.
Hawkeye lay in place for a while, disoriented and ill-feeling from another night’s bad sleep. He curled up tighter underneath the quilt BJ must have tossed over him. He was worried, suddenly, about sitting up. He couldn’t hear BJ, not his movement nor his breath. Hawkeye was good at listening for him, after two years living in the same tent. He was undeniably alone.
He closed his eyes and decided to enjoy the patch of sun he’d woke up in, BJ or no BJ. He’d been left in silence before. He could manage it again.
Even as he thought it, and resolved to be alright, the door to his room opened. Hawkeye kept still, eyes closed, face pressed into his pillow.
Footsteps, and then their absence. “Hawk,” BJ said, almost inaudible.
“I’m awake,” Hawkeye said, ignoring his own quiet relief. He opened an eye and tried to blink his watch face into clarity. All of eight a.m.
“Breakfast,” BJ said. He sounded inexplicably embarrassed.
“I’m okay.” Hawkeye closed his eye. “I’ll just stay here.”
“I mean I brought it up for you. At knifepoint, really. The innkeep is—well, she seems to feel a little proprietary over you.”
“Really?” Hawkeye asked. He opened his eyes again. All he could see of BJ was the polished tip of his shoe. He hadn’t realized anybody was aware of him as anything other than a paying tenant.
“Getting cold,” BJ noted, maybe towards breakfast and maybe towards the weather. “Fried eggs,” he added, and clarified the issue neatly.
Hawkeye sat up, quilt settling into his lap, and cringed. The pain in his neck had only intensified with verticality.
“Next time just take the bed,” BJ said, wincing sympathetically. He knelt, a plate in each hand. He’d brought up toast, and two fried eggs apiece. “You wouldn’t believe the angle you were sleeping at.”
“Next time?” Hawkeye asked, accepting a plate. There wasn’t any silverware, so he constructed an egg sandwich for himself, not particularly enthused about eating it.
“Next time,” BJ repeated. He smiled, tentative. “I’ve got a month off. There’s nowhere else to be. Or are you done proving your negatives?”
Hawkeye laughed, immediately cheered. He’d missed BJ a lot—their ease together, and the rhythm of their conversation. He took a bite of egg sandwich, and managed, for the first time in a while, to taste something. “Alright, next time,” he agreed, glad to no longer be alone. “I’m thinking—well, I have a list of places I’d like to look. But not every night. There’s going to be a lot of free time,” he warned. “Unoccupied afternoons. Late nights. I don’t want to bore you. Or waste your vacation.”
“I’m sure we can find something to do,” BJ said, light.
Hawkeye took another bite of egg sandwich, and tried not to stare at BJ. He was certain he was imagining the innuendo. And still—
“I’m sure,” Hawkeye said, not above perturbing things that maybe were better left unperturbed. “Listen, did you ask for a room of your own, or—”
“I took on half your rent,” BJ said easily. He grinned, impossible to read. “The innkeep was delighted. She thinks I’m a catch.”
Hawkeye stared openly. BJ’s expression closed off into embarrassment, and then blankness.
“They’ve got full tenancy,” BJ explained, no longer joking. “It was that or nothing. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I don’t mind,” Hawkeye reassured him. BJ’s smile came back. Hawkeye returned it. He focused on eating, then, so he wouldn’t open his mouth and ask outright if BJ had meant to imply they’d be sharing a bed—and, if he had, well, well—well, what had he meant?
“So,” BJ said, after a few moments of charged silence. He hesitated.
“What?” Hawkeye asked, feeling like something was happening he couldn’t understand, feeling uneasy and unsettled in somehow a very exciting way—it felt like something was changing just under his feet, behind him, above him, somewhere just out of sight, shifting as surely as the season. He didn’t want to interfere. He decided to settle for observing.
“So,” BJ repeated. “What do you have planned for our free time today?”
Hawkeye extended his leg, and shoved at BJ’s thigh. “I guess you’ll just have to stick around and see.”
“Guess I will,” BJ said, and leaned back against the wall, biting into a piece of toast, never once looking away from Hawkeye’s face.
///
The drive into the nearest town was long, but beautiful—the foliage, still in the process of turning, made every day-trip uniquely stunning. The weather was lovely, only a hint of chill in the air, perfect enough Hawkeye felt guilty doing anything besides dragging BJ into the woods for a hike. But he had higher priorities.
“What about this?” BJ asked him, from across the shop. The place felt smaller than it was, with its low ceilings and dusty windows—it was some sort of combination antique-dealer and thrift, its organization as uncertain as its designation. Its heavy clutter was difficult to navigate without elbowing over stacks of antediluvian dross, which Hawkeye had already managed twice.
“What about what?” Hawkeye asked, sifting through a bin full of empty ballpoint pens. “Don’t make me walk over, it’ll take the rest of the afternoon. And probably cost me a limb.”
BJ held up a slim book. Its slipcover was missing. “Five cents.”
“If it doesn’t take pictures, I’ll keep my nickel.”
“Doesn’t take pictures. Doesn’t even have ‘em.” BJ let the pages flare through his hands.
“What is it?” Hawkeye asked.
“I don’t know. No title.”
Hawkeye looked at him again, attention engaged. He left the bin of pens alone. “Really? No title? None?”
BJ shrugged.
“What’s it about?”
“Can’t tell.”
“You can’t tell?” Hawkeye asked. He wandered closer. “Too dense?”
“Too French,” BJ said, stopping on a page at random. He cleared his throat. “‘De qu—quoi,’” he tried, looking to Hawkeye for approval. Hawkeye grinned at his accent, leaned on a table, and upset a pile of loose spoons.
“Te m—mel—I don’t know what the accent means. Anyway, ‘m—melays-tu?’ Something like that. ‘Dit le derviche, est—est kay—’”
“Ce,” Hawkeye corrected gently.
“‘Là ton affaire?’” BJ continued, with a nod of thanks. “And then there’s a paragraph break. ‘Mais, mon—’ ah ha, he’s confessing. ‘Mais, mon Révérend Père, dit C—Candid? Candiday?”
“Candide,” Hawkeye corrected, less gently. He picked up a spoon, and set it down again. “That’s enough French, I think.”
“I think I was getting somewhere good. Something gets called ‘horriblement’ right after.”
“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye said, and went back to looking for a camera, firmly avoiding BJ’s stare. “Buy it if you want. But I think you’re going to need a dictionary, too.”
“I might,” BJ said. He paused for a strange amount of time, before adding, “I was always very impressed that you knew—that you could speak—I took a semester of German. I was awful at it.”
Hawkeye eyed him. BJ was still holding the book, flipping idly through it.
“Very impressive,” BJ said, slower, brow furrowed at the book.
“Thanks,” Hawkeye said. He picked through a bucket of wrenches.
“I bet it was a hit with the nurses,” BJ added, in a strangled sort of tone.
Hawkeye fumbled a wrench. It fell into the bucket with a horrific clang. “What?” he asked, incredulous.
“Forget it,” BJ said. He laughed, which eased the strange tension between them appreciably. “Sorry.”
Hawkeye nodded, and moved onto a new table, uncertain on how to respond to BJ’s abrupt experimentation with what had seemed like outright flirtation. It both endeared and alarmed him, and made him worried on BJ’s behalf. It wasn’t that BJ never said those kinds of things—he said them often. They flirted all the time. It was only that BJ had never sounded so aware of what he was doing.
He was relieved to find a camera behind a stack of suitcases—small, boxy, and heavier than it looked. It had a fold-out lens. And it was a good excuse to change the subject. “How about this?”
BJ turned to him, a magnifying glass at his eye. His mouth opened reflexively as he squinted through the glass. “What is it?”
“Kodak,” Hawkeye answered, self-conscious under BJ’s magnified stare. He held the camera up, aligned the viewfinder, and looked back at BJ from behind the comfortable anonymity of the lens.
BJ looked very good. Hawkeye could take his time acknowledging that, with the directionality of his gaze obscured. BJ was relaxed, and carried himself with an unwound ease he’d lacked overseas. At least at the end. Hawkeye had a hard time remembering, sometimes, how BJ had been when he’d first arrived. Now, though, he seemed okay. Happy, or at least happier than he’d been the last time they’d seen each other, when he’d been attempting to obscure his sadness with so much desperation Hawkeye hadn’t had the heart to try to prod him into admitting something was wrong.
He wondered what had happened to upset BJ so significantly, why he’d been so silently distressed at the conference in Aspen. His letters afterwards had been taciturn, and so clearly edited of all genuine sentiment they had embarrassed Hawkeye out of saying anything real in response. Their exchanges became increasingly clipped, and then stopped altogether. It had broken Hawkeye’s heart.
And now, nearly a year later, just when he was starting to think he’d gotten over it, BJ had turned up in Maine to flirt inexpertly over French books he couldn’t read.
Hawkeye turned the camera vertically, trying to fit all of BJ in frame at once. He was well-dressed. He had on a heavy sweater, which softened his angles everywhere except along the line of his shoulders. His mustache was streaked with grey. He still had the magnifying glass at his eye.
Looking at BJ in the frame of his camera, focusing on his sweater’s detailing, the crooked angle of his mouth, Hawkeye was tempted to ask BJ what he was doing in Maine. Why he’d followed Hawkeye upstate, why he’d offered to share a bed, why he’d said absolutely nothing to explain his presence a whole country away from where he was supposed to be. Why he’d not yet mentioned his family. Why he’d taken a month of vacation in October, of all months. Why he looked so lost.
He held himself back. He didn’t want to pry. And he didn’t want to be disappointed—brushed off, or ignored. Or worse, interrogated reciprocally. It was very good to be together. It was easy. It was familiar. And it made him happy. He didn’t want to ask any questions that might upset their balance.
“Smile,” Hawkeye suggested, and depressed the camera’s button. He wished for a moment that it was his camera, with film loaded and everything in working order. BJ, in his soft sweater, comfortable among tables full of clutter, was worth immortalizing.
BJ lowered his magnifying glass as Hawkeye lowered the camera. They were done scrutinizing each other, then. At least for the moment.
“What do you think?” BJ asked.
“Of what?” Hawkeye asked. “Of the camera?”
BJ looked away. “Yeah. You going to buy it?”
“I think so,” Hawkeye decided. “God knows where we’re going to find film at noon on a Sunday.”
“It can wait.” BJ set his magnifying glass down. “I wanted to catch the game, anyway.”
“Yankees,” Hawkeye said immediately. “Bet you anything.”
“Anything.” BJ caught his gaze, and held it a moment too long. “Careful. I’ll hold you to it.”
“I—” Hawkeye started, but BJ was already walking away, book tucked under his arm, like he hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary. And, really, Hawkeye thought, reflecting on two years of shared showers and shoulder-to-shoulder surgeries, word games and locked gazes, mutual care and recurring jokes—all considered, it hadn’t been all that unusual after all.
///
October unfurled quietly, settling over Maine with the chill autumn air. The sun set a violent, impossible red, and the moon rose a lurid orange. Field fires, Hawkeye explained, when BJ questioned the red-gold haze, the constant smell of campfire. Controlled burns. Intentional arson. From a high place late at night it was possible to see them: patches of red luminosity along the horizon.
Leaves finished turning, and started to fall. Sunlight was scarcer every day. The World Series came and went. The Yankees lost—just another era’s end. Hawkeye tracked everything that changed, and tried not to be too melancholy.
It was easier with BJ around. And he thought BJ did better for his presence. They had fun together—always had. October together was better than October apart. The month passed in a blur of conviviality. They settled into an easy rhythm. Their days were unscheduled, and undirected. Sometimes they hiked through the forest, bundled in heavy flannels, enjoying the season, the foliage, the last of the temperate weather. Other times they wandered into nearby towns. Pastimes mattered less than the company. And the company was very good.
They kept late nights. When the sun went down, Hawkeye gathered his bag of radio-machines, his camera, a notebook, flashlights, and drove them to abandoned places: A crumbling hospital, a school, empty cabins, rotting mines, caves so dark and out of the way BJ occasionally vetoed them outright, making only half-joking allusions to Tom Sawyer and the inedibility of electric flashlights.
Hawkeye made careful note of all the evidence they gathered—and the lack of it. Sometimes his radio-contraptions would light up, or hum, or arrange a legible series of syllables, but never in such a way as to satisfy his skepticism. There was always a reasonable explanation—radio interference, or random, unreplicable chance. Dust on a lens, atmospheric vicissitudes, loose wiring. Sometimes, nervously spooked, waiting silently in darkness with BJ, despite the full force of his rational mind and not insignificant intellect, he convinced himself that he could feel or see or sense something watching them, sometimes to such a degree of intensity he genuinely frightened himself. At which point BJ would laugh at him, or elbow him, or say something so patently ridiculous it brought Hawkeye back to himself and let him laugh, too, and feel ready to face the dark again.
Evidence or not, it was doing something to them, spending so much time wandering around in the dark together, clinging to each other’s elbows, unable to see each other’s faces. In that kind of situation, a fellow tended to say things he’d be better off keeping down. And when they stumbled back into the light afterwards, meeting each other’s gazes felt electric and dangerous. The car ride after was always fluttery and nervous.
They’d started sleeping together—in a literal sense. Deceptively passive phrasing. BJ had insisted Hawkeye stop sleeping on the floor, and Hawkeye, uninterested in developing a spinal misalignment, had shrugged and taken half the mattress. The first night had been awkward. BJ had placed a pillow between their backs, a ridiculous and performative concession to propriety. The next night they’d been too exhausted to bother, and had crashed into bed still dressed, and woke up so entangled it had been impossible for Hawkeye to move without waking BJ. So he hadn’t. He’d lain still, BJ’s thigh tucked between his own, their noses touching, and enjoyed being close.
BJ hadn’t mentioned it. So Hawkeye hadn’t, either. It became another unspoken part of their routine. Work late, sleep later, and wake draped across each other. More changes for Hawkeye to note, and then let slip away, carefully uncolored by an encroaching sadness, as regular, warm, and familiar as the shifting season. All things ended. Only some came back around. October was forever—October 1955, though, was nearly in its grave.
///
Light through the trees—dappled sun-spots moved over the lawn’s leaf-blanket. Hawkeye stepped out of the car and stretched into the light, weightless and thrilled with warmth. He was compelled to turn a cartwheel. The world revolved accordingly, bringing the leaves under his hands. They were red and thick on the grass and smelled beautifully of decay, so he shifted his weight on his wrists and allowed himself to collapse.
He lay there, eyes closed, breathing in the scent of decomposing leaves, sun patches warming his jeans. He still had a few days before he was scheduled to return to work, to responsibilities and the life he’d suspended. And BJ, despite everything, was still with him, sharing lunches, splitting caramel-coated apples, reading badly aloud in a language he didn’t speak every time he wanted to annoy Hawkeye to distraction.
An osseous pop—BJ’s knees as he crouched at Hawkeye’s side—and then a softer crackle as BJ settled into the leaves. His hand came to rest on Hawkeye’s chest, his hip against Hawkeye’s ribs.
“Hawk,” BJ said, very softly.
Hawkeye grasped his wrist, craning his face into the sun. “Mm?”
BJ rubbed his chest. Back and forth, slow, soothing movements. “What’s going on?”
Hawkeye fought off a yawn. That was unusual, and fazed him for a moment. He hadn’t been tired in a long time. His insomnia had been unbearable for weeks. But lying in the sun, BJ’s hand heavy on his chest, leaves cushioning every hollow of his body—he felt strikingly balanced. The agitated sadness that had been dogging him for weeks was on a reprieve.
“What’s going on,” Hawkeye repeated, drifting, half-awake. “Well, we’re going to go into that house—abandoned in the twenties, or so I’ve heard—set up our equipment, and observe. Run our tests. One last experiment.”
BJ didn’t respond, so Hawkeye kept talking to fill the quiet. “I’ve missed doing this kind of thing. You know I always sort of felt drawn to pathology. It feels like a real bastion of—of empiricism, in the practice. Scientific methodology and all it entails. Experimentalism. Deduction. Hypothesizing. It’s a nice return to form, this, isn’t it? Or is it? You ever feel that—that pull when you’re working? Science?”
BJ laughed. “A little. Maybe not the way you do.”
“It’s all still mostly about helping,” Hawkeye acknowledged, though he thought BJ was more of a scientist than he let on—clamp designs on front lines, kidney-machine heuristics. “Always. People are important. You have to take care of them.”
“Yeah,” BJ agreed. He rubbed Hawkeye’s chest, easing some tension out of his body with every pass. Hawkeye reached out blindly and managed to grab BJ’s shoulder. He patted him appreciatively.
“Something else?” Hawkeye asked, giving in to the urge to yawn. BJ was tense under his hand.
“I don’t know,” BJ said. He sighed. “I know what we’re doing now. I think I meant—I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. I really don’t.”
Hawkeye forced an eye open. “In what way?”
BJ inhaled, shoulders shifting. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what you don’t know?” Hawkeye asked. He was too confusedly sleepless to make sense of the conversation they were having. BJ took his hand away, which struck Hawkeye badly. He tried not to feel hurt, or worried.
BJ’s jaw worked. He looked at his hands, and shifted so his hip was no longer in contact with Hawkeye’s side. “I was wondering if everything was okay. With you. You dropped everything to—”
“I know what I did,” Hawkeye said, stung, unpleasantly surprised. He rolled onto his side, and then pushed himself to his feet. He considered the house in front of him, hands on his hips. Decades abandoned. The wooden porch steps were rotting. The foundation was slipping. BJ was uncomfortably quiet, so he added, “I’m alright. I just needed a vacation.”
Another uncomfortable pause. “You took a formal leave of absence.”
Hawkeye turned sharply, heart sinking. “Is that why you’re here? To check on me?” he asked, ill with dread. The past month’s simple fun and companionship seemed suddenly suspect. “What is this?”
“No,” BJ said, holding his hands up. “Yes. At first. At least that’s what I thought I was doing.”
“I’m fine,” Hawkeye snapped. He was humiliated. “I can take care of myself. I can’t even go on a break—completely within the terms of my employment, by the way, I didn’t just—drop—I can’t go upstate without somebody thinking I’m actually going upstate? I can’t do something for fun—If I needed somebody to—to nanny me, I—”
“That’s not why I’m here,” BJ said, speaking over him. “I just…”
“What?” Hawkeye asked, feeling confrontational. He ground his heel into the lawn, leaves crumbling underfoot. “You know, I could say a few things myself.”
BJ’s hapless expression closed off. “And what does that mean?”
Hawkeye stared at him. He clenched a fist, firmly decided to say nothing, and then pointed out, “You know, as I count it, there are two out-of-work surgeons standing here. I can admit I needed a break. I can even admit I was feeling off. And so I looked after myself. I decided to do something unusual. I wanted to have fun. But you just—you have a wife. A kid. You just picked up and ran to Maine to—what? Why are you here?”
“Forget about it,” BJ said, showing his teeth. “Sorry for expressing my concern.”
Hawkeye dragged a hand through his hair. He didn’t know how to express the fact that he was maybe more rightfully worried for BJ than the reverse. He was okay—genuinely alright. He wasn’t particularly normal, knew he wasn’t the most balanced person in the world, but he had been himself for more than three decades. He was practiced at it. Even when he felt down or off or strange, he knew that he could trust himself to pull through.
BJ, though, didn’t have the same level of experience. He wasn’t used to managing internal disaster the way Hawkeye was. That was a dangerous place to be. It was important to understand, Hawkeye thought, that a person could live through anything. Until, of course, he couldn’t.
But he couldn’t force BJ to admit that he was struggling. And he wasn’t particularly inclined at the moment to try, still stung and embarrassed by the idea that BJ had visited, not out of a genuine desire to see him, but over some miscommunication of the direness of Hawkeye’s situation. That he had possibly been seen as a problem needing solved, or an inconvenience—or, worse, somebody incapable of looking after himself. He did his best to temper the real edge of anger that rose in him at the tacit suggestion he was in any way helpless.
“Fine,” Hawkeye said, flat, through with the conversation. “Everything’s fine with you. Your life is perfect, which is why you’re in Maine declining calls from your wife—yes, I know about that, you’re not the only person who talks to the innkeep. Alright, BJ. Okay. You’re doing great. I am, too, so if that’s all you’re here for, why don’t you pack up and go home.”
“Home,” BJ repeated, scoffing. And how was Hawkeye supposed to take that, if not a halfway admission? Something was wrong. He was certain of it. Aspen, BJ’s strange, nearly manic attempts to avoid discussing his personal life, and now their long month of companionable avoidance of the subject—BJ was doing badly.
Hawkeye shoved his hands in his pockets to deter his first impulse, which was to touch BJ. He wasn’t sure it would be welcome anymore. He gave in to his second impulse, which was to needle BJ and make a general annoyance of himself. “Yeah. Home. Where you’re supposed to be. California. Suburbia. Golf at the country club. HOA measuring your lawn depth and chastising you for painting your siding the wrong shade of beige. We can even write each other for a few months, and then stop again when you decide you don’t have anything to say to me.”
“That’s not what happened,” BJ said, stricken. “We fell out of touch.”
“Sure,” Hawkeye said. He didn’t want to fight anymore. He didn’t even want to argue.
BJ stood, and trailed him to the car. He hovered, silent, while Hawkeye pulled his bag from the back seat.
“I do have things to say to you,” BJ said, behind him, as Hawkeye approached the house.
Hawkeye stopped. He readjusted his hold on his bag and waited patiently. Up close it was clear the house’s door had once been red. The paint was mostly worn away. All the wood on the house’s exterior was heavily damaged, swollen and warped with repeated exposure to the variable Maine weather. The porch sagged under his weight. The stone foundation was more visibly damaged up close—repeated thawing and freezing had started to erode its stability. A crack ran through the lower edge of the nearest window pane. It spiderwebbed outward, reaching tentatively across the glass.
BJ didn’t speak. Hawkeye nodded to himself, hefted his bag onto his shoulder, and opened the door.
The interior of the house was well-kept, a two-story affair with a spacious ground floor and a steep set of stairs reaching up to a second floor. The place looked as though it had only been abandoned for an afternoon. It was eerily undisturbed, frozen in a scene of hollow domesticity: A blanket on the back of a rocking chair, a child’s shoe by the entryway, logs beside the fireplace. But a heavy layer of undisturbed dust lay over all. There were piles of dead insects along all the windowsills. Wind wailed in the chimney.
Hawkeye froze. An immediate feeling of wrongness settled over him, thick as the house’s dust. He wanted to reach for BJ, to reassure and be reassured, and then remembered he was supposed to be in a snit. He stuck his hands in his pockets.
BJ stepped around him, making his way towards a doorway at the far end of the living room. He left footprints in the dust.
“Left in the middle of a meal,” BJ said from the other room. His tone was hard to read.
Hawkeye shook off his discomfort. Lingering tension from their argument, from BJ abruptly shattering their comfortable mutual silence on issues better left alone. Not what he wanted to be feeling as he prepared to spend a long stretch of evening painfully attuned to his own fear.
The feeling returned, though, as he followed BJ into the next room. It was a small kitchen. Windows looked out onto a thicket of trees, shadows gathering amidst their trunks as the sun began to slip below the horizon. The kitchen table was set—three plates, each with silverware and a cup, and two serving dishes. Knives and forks were propped against the sides of plates, as though they had only momentarily been set down. The plates were empty, though, except for dark stains and a few more insect corpses. A thick black crust coated the insides of a pair of mugs—coffee left to cool for years. One of the cabinets hung open, neat stacks of plates undisturbed.
Hawkeye ducked his head and tried not to imagine how a kitchen ended up that way. Every possible answer seemed worse than the last. For the first time he had the sensation of trespassing—no, of being a trespasser. His presence felt wrong. Unwelcome. Insensitive. Something had happened in this house.
His breath hitched as he caught sight of a newspaper folded over on itself, open to a sports column, at the edge of one of the plates. A pair of glasses rested on top of the paper. The juxtaposition of it all—glasses casually laid down on an open paper, forks and knives clearly in positions of use, the evaporated dregs of coffee—combined into an image as horrific as a corpse, so clear was the implication of complete catastrophe.
He caught BJ’s gaze despite himself, and saw for a half-second his own sadness and worry reflected, before BJ looked sharply away.
I think we should leave, Hawkeye thought, and failed to say. His throat locked. It was impossible to express anything real in the tense silence of BJ’s avoidance. The sun was setting, and visibility was fading fast, shadows deepening in every corner of the house. Only a few hours, Hawkeye told himself, peering nervously into the ground floor’s third and final room—a bedroom, the duvet turned down, closet open, shirts and jackets and dresses in outdated styles hanging in a row. Moth-eaten. A delicate pair of heeled shoes rested by the doorway, one tipped onto its side, the other upright. They seemed terribly small.
“I’ll stake out upstairs.” BJ’s voice was gruff, and already distant. He was gone by the time Hawkeye looked over his shoulder. The staircase creaked as he ascended.
Hawkeye kept his voice level and unemotive. “You’re going to want a flashlight.”
“Leave it on the stairs,” BJ called from above.
Hawkeye shook his head. He left a flashlight high on the stairs, balanced on its lens, and moved back into the living room. He didn’t want to stay in the kitchen or the bedroom. The evidence of suspended life and order was too immediate, and too distressing. But then, he thought, taking in the living room again, no room was really devoid of the reminder. His gaze drifted towards the child’s shoe by the door. It looked an awful lot like the ones he’d worn as a little boy. If the house really had been abandoned just shy of three decades ago, it was possible the child—if they were still—
He cut the thought off. Not the kind of image he ought to invoke, not now, not with the sunlight’s angle increasingly low, the shadows rising up the walls. He twitched uncertainly, and then called up the stairs, “One hour. Set your watch.”
BJ didn’t say anything at all. Hawkeye eyed the front door, not liking the shivering way the trees outside moved. It seemed unnatural in a way he was having a difficult time describing to himself. Like there was something—
No, he told himself firmly. He refused to allow the image to take root and transmute into fear. Instead he hurried towards the back of the house, to the kitchen. He hesitated, looking out at the forest again from a new angle, and started to pull the curtains shut. He stopped just as quickly, reluctant to in any way disturb the scene they’d found. He felt watched. He couldn’t help it. The proof of a human presence was all around him, in empty shoes and dirty mugs and blanket-covered rocking chairs.
He sang to himself for a few bars, gentle, under his breath, and then trailed off. His voice was too loud, and seemed to make the silence of the house adversarial. Every few moments he felt he had to redirect his gaze—if he looked anywhere for too long, he got the uncomfortable sensation he was making direct eye contact with something invisible. The plates, the cabinets, the sink all seemed to radiate a tangible—and somehow accusatory—awareness.
A flare of light off the flat of a knife announced the death of daylight. The house succumbed to shadow. Hawkeye turned his flashlight on. He couldn’t hear anything, no birds, no breeze, not even BJ upstairs. The silence was too much to take.
Hawkeye knelt, biting down on the handle of his flashlight to illuminate his work. He pulled his proximity meter from his bag, turned it on, and, when it began to hum, affirming his existence, moved to set it in the center of the living room. It went silent as he backed out of range, and remained inert as he watched it from the doorway to the kitchen, framed in his flashlight’s beam. After a moment he turned and retrieved his radio-machine, the one with a constant frequency sweep for quarter-second bursts of static and disjointed voices. He turned it on, and startled at its volume. It was one of the eeriest sounds he could imagine. Nobody would ever build a radio it was impossible to listen to—it was such a violation of sense and purpose the sound jacked straight into a deep wariness of the uncanny.
The uncanny—das unheimliche, he remembered, arms crossed, listening to a jittering manic stream of radio static. The Germans were right. Uncanny—unhomelike.
The walls contracted around him, and he opened the top button of his collar to compensate. He didn’t like not being able to see the entirety of the space he was in. Sometimes he got the sensation the walls had abruptly shoved inwards, holding him fast. Like a body cooler. Or a straitjacket.
The thought unsettled him enough he threw an elbow behind him, assuring himself there was open space at his back and nothing constraining his arms. The radio went on producing angular static sounds.
Usually this was the point at which he would lean into BJ and start to crack jokes, pestering the empty air, goading the ether towards an attempt at contact. Making each other braver even as they actively worked to create the conditions of fear and uncertainty—darkness, strange noises, eerie places, relative isolation. Now, though, he wasn’t feeling much like goading anybody or anything. It felt, disturbingly, like he might for the first time get an answer. He shivered, and started to pace.
The problem with having a nearly unlimited intellectual capacity, a highly capable imagination, and an edge of instability, Hawkeye reflected, was that a man’s brain got awfully good at tricking itself. He could think himself into all sorts of interesting corners.
From the moment the sun had set, for instance, he’d felt a presence. Something watching. Following. No shadows lingering at the edge of his vision, no intangible figures flitting across dimly lit halls—too easy. Too storybookish. He hadn’t seen anything. But he was feeling something. It intensified every moment, stronger with the falling dark.
If he focused, he could nearly track it. The presence felt like a—a psychic weight, that was the best way he could think to describe it. An ambulatory density. A patch of reality heavier than empty air, something invisible, maybe intangible, but extant all the same. And intelligent, Hawkeye thought. Probably intelligent. Whatever it was insisted on staying outside his line of sight. It lingered in doorways behind him. When he was still or quiet for too long it seemed to loom larger and closer everywhere he couldn’t see, spreading with a sick malignancy outside his field of vision until his flesh crawled and he spun around to find entirely empty space.
The worst of it was that he knew, insofar as it was possible to know, that it wasn’t real. Some combination trick of his mind, of the darkness, of an overactive adrenal gland, of a depressingly empty house, of his missing BJ, of a month of insomnia, was convincing him of an experience not consistent with an objective reality. Inasmuch as any objective reality existed. The jury was out on that—the past was the past, he thought, moving with a dreamy, detached sort of fear through the rooms of the house, crawling darkness all around him. Individual instants passed and vanished into nonbeing. Memory was imperfect. Photos unreliable. History only imperfectly documented. Reality was a collective agreement on the unverifiable. Everything he was, everything they all were, everything itself—all nothing but sand on sand.
“BJ,” he called softly, frightened, unhappy. He didn’t like the direction of his thoughts. He was unnerving himself. Though it ought to have been obvious he’d end up exactly where he was. It seemed, now, the only sensible outcome to the sorts of questions he’d been asking himself in the course of his ridiculous and ill-advised experiment. Knowledge and belief—was it possible, really, to know anything? It wasn’t that a question of epistemic skepticism had shaken the foundations of his life. He wasn’t that ridiculous. It was just that he’d found himself less anchored with every passing night to the belief that anything mattered. He didn’t feel all that real. Neither, then, did anything else.
He’d stopped moving for too long, standing in the bedroom, his back to the doorway, the maw of the closet at his front. The presence-that-wasn’t was at his heels. His spine prickled with an animal fear. He was certain that there was someone or something standing with its face inches from the back of his head. Its eyes, he decided, were hollow, inhuman, locked horribly open, its mouth gaping as it leaned in, in, pressing close, holding itself millimeters from his body, matching his posture, arms, or whatever it had to approximate them, spread, elbows bent behind his own, somehow more horrible for not touching him, for only waiting interminably at his back.
It was too late to call for help. If he spoke, moved, made any indication at all that he was aware of the unknowable horror at his back, he was certain it would—he didn’t know what. Touch him, maybe. The idea horrified him viscerally, so he held intensely, tetanically still, staring into the black of the closet, pulse rabbiting. He tried to listen for BJ and heard nothing. He felt absurd for being frightened. He knew he was being irrational. And still the certainty of imminent danger remained.
BJ, he thought, hating himself for his abrupt helplessness, the strange paralytic fear he’d never before experienced—BJ, he thought, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d appreciate having you back.
Of course nobody came. That was something he thought he ought to be used to. People always seemed to be around when a fellow needed them least—when he was feeling up and bright and pleasant, at ease with himself and settled in the world. It always seemed to be the moments a man ought the least to be alone he found himself without a friend.
Well, then. There was only one thing for it. He’d have to turn around. He had faced worse in his life, after all. The thing behind him, with its hollow piercing white animal eyes, its lustful duplication of his posture, its shivering barely restrained eagerness to touch him, wasn’t even real. He’d seen real. He’d seen hyper-real. He’d seen things so real he’d had to break away from reality entirely to survive them. What was this, then, a little trick of his brain, compared to that?
Hawkeye breathed deeply, tightened his grip on his flashlight, and snapped around on his heel. Whatever had been behind him jerked into the blackness with a preternatural speed—and then the presence rose, seeming to spread into the darkness around him, everywhere and nowhere at once, densest in the starkest shadows his flashlight threw, the warped silhouette of a chair sliding across a wall, every black corner his light failed to illuminate. He wished he could sense some sort of—of malice, or anger, or intent of any kind. That might have made it easier to take. Instead there was only the inescapable certainty that he was not alone in the dark, while knowing, unbearably, that he was.
“I see you,” Hawkeye said, though he didn’t. He started to laugh, knowing, angry so he wouldn’t be afraid. He shook his finger at the darkness around him, the flickering inconstant shadows, the strange shapes in the dim. He shook his head, too, and grinned. He adjusted his grip on his flashlight, holding it in both hands like a sword or maybe a baseball bat. “Just try it,” he told the thing that wasn’t, slashing through all the darkness he couldn’t keep at bay with his band of illumination. “Goddamnit. I’ve seen too much. I’m no victim.”
He sensed something behind him, reaching towards him from the void of a doorway, so he spun again and slashed with his light, reclaiming a wall and a pair of heels and a distant window-reflection for himself. But it was hard—no matter how quickly he turned, there would always be somewhere beyond the reach of the light. Shadow pressed itself to his back, everywhere he wasn’t capable of watching. He flicked his light towards the ceiling at irregular intervals, abstractly frightened of something coming from above or behind, more concretely frightened of the fact he hadn’t heard anything from BJ in minutes. Maybe BJ needed him—needed his help. Maybe Hawkeye wasn’t the only one lost.
“BJ,” he called, turning again on his heel. A chair rested on its side. He couldn’t recall if it had been upright the last time the light had fallen on it. “BJ! Where—”
A figure in the doorway, visible for a millisecond as Hawkeye’s flashlight beam passed across it. He jumped, slamming his elbow into a wall.
“Sorry,” BJ said, stepping towards him. He still sounded angry. But he’d come to find Hawkeye anyway.
Hawkeye breathed, hunched defensively, sweeping his light around the room, trying to keep the darkness back. BJ’s light was helping.
“Hawk?” BJ asked, his tone thawing. He looked behind himself, moving his beam across the wall. “What’re you doing?”
Hawkeye laughed, and tried to sound sane. “It may not look it, but I’m being very brave.”
BJ turned to face him. His posture seemed entirely relaxed. It was like he couldn’t even sense the thing in the dark, the intensity of the presence, the fact they weren’t alone.
Of course he couldn’t. There was nothing there. Hawkeye was making it up, externalizing an internally-derived fear. And yet, and yet. It seemed miraculous that BJ couldn't feel something which seemed, from Hawkeye’s perspective, to be a force of complete, sensate reality. Fear was difficult to argue down.
“Everything okay?” BJ asked, shifting his weight. He put a hand casually on his hip, not even minding that the kitchen was black and unilluminated at his back.
Hawkeye grabbed suddenly for him, worried, wanting to keep him safe. “Can we get out of here?”
“Done already?” There was an edge to BJ’s voice, a tease with too much force.
Hawkeye breathed deeply, and tried again. “I need you to get me out of here.”
A strange beat. BJ shifted his flashlight beam with intolerable slowness. Hawkeye blinked, squinting as BJ shone the light directly into his face.
BJ directed his beam back to the floor. His expression had changed in the overexposed interval in a way Hawkeye couldn’t place. He grasped Hawkeye’s elbow, and then took his hand. He laced their fingers together and squeezed. When he spoke, his voice was entirely different. “Yeah. Of course.”
Hawkeye stuck close to his side, feeling ridiculous and afraid and more ridiculous for his fear. “It’s funny,” he tried to joke, “how knowing something doesn’t always change a person’s mind.”
BJ squeezed his hand again and led him through the doorway into the kitchen. Hawkeye wielded his light like a weapon and tried to keep them safe. If BJ could feel what he felt, he was certain he’d understand exactly how brave Hawkeye was being, and how carefully he was working to protect BJ. Unfortunately he couldn’t, because Hawkeye’s feelings were irrational. He probably just looked like he was having a hand spasm. Still, it made him feel better to beat back the dark.
The floorboards were impossibly loud. Clutter, abandoned furniture, empty cabinets—everything seemed to collect shadow. The air was blurred with dust. The presence tracked them through the house, lingering in ceiling-shadows, stalking them in the darknesses that hid in the backs of bookshelves and the slats of vents. He directed his light everywhere he could think of, illuminating a path through each room with an unerring determination. His proximity-meter hummed as they approached, and went quiet as they moved beyond its range. In only a moment they were at the front door.
BJ kept a tight hold on his hand. He tucked his flashlight under his arm in order to pull the door open, and then they were through it into the night air, which was crisp and cold enough Hawkeye’s breath fogged in front of him.
He stumbled and then let himself fall, dropping to his knees on the lawn. BJ knelt with him, their hands tightly linked.
Hawkeye laughed. He still felt watched. The windows, the half-open door—the presence, whatever it was, seemed to press up against the house’s boundaries. It wanted them back.
BJ leaned in, trying to make eye contact. He was transparently worried. “Something happen?” he asked, setting his free hand on Hawkeye’s arm.
“No,” Hawkeye managed. He was having a hard time regulating his breathing.
BJ started to rub his arm, like he thought Hawkeye might be cold. Really he was overwarm. He’d frightened himself straight into better circulation. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Hawkeye asked. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at the house.
BJ paused. “For startling you.”
Hawkeye leaned into BJ’s hand. He didn’t need warming up, but he wasn’t above enjoying the gentle way BJ was touching him. Their argument had sublimated into nothing. “I’m buying you a bell.”
“A bell?”
“For your collar,” Hawkeye elaborated. His breathing started to slow. “That, or I guess I’m going to have to leash you.”
A brief pause. “Leash me,” BJ repeated, low and amused. His hand slowed on Hawkeye’s arm. It wouldn’t be unreasonable, Hawkeye thought, to term it a caress.
“Whatever it takes to keep you close,” Hawkeye joked, and then immediately wished he hadn’t, in their tentative peace. “Kidding,” he clarified. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”
BJ kept stroking his arm. His palm was warm through the fabric of Hawkeye’s shirt. He didn’t speak for a long moment. “You don’t need a leash to keep me around.”
“Mm,” Hawkeye said, because he wasn’t sure he believed it. He wasn’t sure he believed anything as it stood. For instance he thought it was possible BJ was flirting with him. He thought it was possible BJ had been flirting with him for a month. Maybe even longer. It was hard to tell because their typical state of being was one so tightly and intimately aligned it seemed to make any definition at all reductive and inaccurate. He’d never been so close to anyone. Romance was an afterthought—the only question, really, was one of sex. And now was the wrong time to go looking for definitive answers. He was adrift.
BJ shifted his hand from Hawkeye’s arm to his shoulder, and then to the side of his neck. He stroked his thumb across Hawkeye’s pulse point. “You and me,” he started, carefully cupping Hawkeye’s neck, his other hand still intertwined with Hawkeye’s.
“Always,” Hawkeye interrupted. He opened his eyes, and smiled at BJ to take some of the strange tension out of the air.
BJ smiled back, easy, friendly, familiar as ever. Slowly his smile shifted. He looked at the ground. “Maybe this is a bad time.”
“Maybe,” Hawkeye agreed. He squeezed BJ’s hand. “But—you know, you and me.”
“Pierce and Hunnicutt.”
“Hunnicutt and Pierce.”
“The two of us,” BJ said, touching him softly, and with intentionality, “we’ve always made a good pair.”
“A great pair.” Hawkeye resettled his weight, effecting a more comfortable sprawl on the lawn.
“Well, then,” BJ said, and nodded once.
Hawkeye drew BJ’s hand to his face. He was exhausted, careening towards an adrenaline crash, past caring about much of anything. Nothing was too big a risk. He pressed a kiss to BJ’s knuckles. BJ laughed at him, not offended or startled or confused, so he pressed another, longer kiss to the prominent jut of BJ’s ulna, and then, with a nervous catch of breath he tried to hide, to the tender underside of BJ’s wrist. Even he wasn’t sure if he was seducing, or comforting, or seeking reassurance. All at once, maybe.
“Never thought of you as particularly chivalrous.” BJ turned his hand in Hawkeye’s grasp, cupping his chin.
“I’m not. I’m a lech.” Hawkeye held still, more aware than he’d been in days of how badly he needed a shave. BJ didn’t seem to care, though. He trailed his fingertips over the underside of Hawkeye’s jaw. His thumb rested against the corner of Hawkeye’s mouth. Hawkeye had the strange urge to nip at it—a joke, maybe, or a stranger manifestation of the desire that was starting to gather within him, warming his stomach, sending tentative electric pulses fizzling along his spine. The feeling was muted, hard to maintain, but it was present for the first time in a while. That felt like a good sign. BJ was waking him up.
He gave in only partly. He kissed the pad of BJ’s thumb, maintaining eye contact. He wasn’t afraid anymore—not of the house, or of BJ’s reaction. He thought they had an understanding.
BJ tilted his head. He smiled the way he always smiled around Hawkeye, when things were easy and right and uncomplicated—his mustache twitched, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. He leaned close the way he did when he returned repartee. And when he kissed Hawkeye, he moved with so much familiarity it felt as though it was something they’d always done together.
Hawkeye pulled back, already grinning. Nothing had changed in the way BJ looked at him. Nothing at all. That relieved him beyond measure. He laughed and reeled BJ in again by the front of his shirt.
The kiss was slow, gentle, almost elegant—BJ’s face was warm against his, his lips soft. Hawkeye pressed against him, relaxing into the contact. He made a small noise of appreciation.
A rough tremor ran through BJ in response. The tenor of the kiss shifted instantly—BJ wrapped an arm around his back, cradled his head, and shoved into him, kissing him desperately. They fell onto the lawn, Hawkeye’s head cushioned by BJ’s palm, leaves spiralling up in a paff of confused movement—Hawkeye smiled against BJ’s mouth, shut his eyes, and rolled them over, determined to give as well as he got.
BJ stilled under him, tensing oddly. Hawkeye pulled back, and rose over him, giving him space. “Okay?”
BJ stared up at him, mostly in Hawkeye’s shadow. “Nobody’s ever—” he cut off, and closed his eyes, bringing his hands down to rest, uncertain, on his chest.
Hawkeye nodded. He knew, or thought he knew. BJ could tell him later, if he wanted. Or not. He didn’t particularly care. He was operating under a degree of nihilistic recklessness he thought he might regret later. But he was tired of silence, and tired of pretending, and tired of working around everything they weren’t saying, everything he didn’t know. He didn’t know what had happened to send BJ to Maine. He didn’t know why BJ wasn’t taking his wife’s calls. He didn’t know why he spent so much time looking at Hawkeye, when his expression always seemed more pained after the fact. For once he gave himself permission not to care.
“I’ve always wanted you,” Hawkeye confessed, unadorned, crouched over BJ in the anonymizing dark of an abandoned house’s lawn. His knee was planted firmly between BJ’s legs, his hands on either side of BJ’s head.
BJ bucked underneath him, slapping his hands over his face. Hawkeye watched him at close range. He’d waited years. A few more minutes wouldn’t kill him.
“You’re my best friend. Nothing’s going to change that,” Hawkeye said eventually, when it seemed BJ was going to leave him in silence again. He dropped his weight to the side, and sprawled out on the lawn, looking at the sky. It was clear. A full moon again—exactly as it had been a month before. Permanent changes and endless cycles. Hard to tell which was which, sometimes, until a fellow saw something through to the end.
BJ growled, frustrated. “I feel the same way about you.”
“That’s nice,” Hawkeye said, letting the blow land, the absence, again, of something important. “I’m happy being friends.”
A sharp intake of breath. Hawkeye watched a narrow cloud cut across the moon, fast and lateral, like a razorblade over an eye. The thought made him flinch.
“I meant,” BJ said, taking his hand, “I feel the same way about you. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m—I’m done pretending I don’t know what I want.”
Hawkeye tilted his head and found BJ already watching him. Somehow it didn’t feel like the massive revelation it was, BJ wanting him in return. It seemed almost obvious. But it was nice to hear. “Oh. That’s good. Makes it easy.”
BJ laughed, startled. “Easy?”
Hawkeye nodded. “You don’t have to figure everything out on your own.”
BJ squeezed his hand. Hawkeye squeezed back. BJ released him, then, and stood. “I’ll get your radios,” he murmured, blocking out the moon.
“Damn the radios.” Hawkeye rubbed the heel of his palm into his forehead. He was overtired. He hoped that was it. A month of exhaustion coming to a close. That accounted for the subtle sadness settling into him. Tired. That was all. “Let’s just go.”
“If you’re sure,” BJ said, by all appearances reduced to a two-dimensional silhouette in front of the full moon. And still, when he pulled Hawkeye to his feet, he was solid and warm and real.
“I don’t care anymore,” Hawkeye said, really and truly exhausted. “I’m done looking. I’m not going to close my eyes. If something changes my mind, it changes my mind. But I’m done looking. It’s going to have to meet me halfway.”
BJ caught him by the shoulder before he could turn towards the car. He kneaded into Hawkeye’s shoulder. “I know you mean—” he gestured back at the deteriorating house. “But I can’t help—I’m aware—” he sighed. “Can I kiss you?”
Hawkeye shrugged, and then nodded. BJ kissed him just once, soft, and then pressed a kiss to his temple. Hawkeye pulled BJ close, hand in his shirt, and bumped their noses together, trying to silently express a fondness he was too exhausted to explicate.
“You mind driving home?” he asked.
“Home?”
Hawkeye winced, weathering a strange pang of disconnect from the world, drifting in an increasing haze, his mood slipping. He needed to sleep. Had needed it for weeks. “Hotel, I mean. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” BJ kneaded into his shoulder again. “I can drive.”
Hawkeye stuck his hands in his pockets as BJ started the car, the headlights warmly yellow and shockingly bright. His fingers tingled, stiff with cold. He inhaled, and then exhaled a cloud of condensation. It eddied and dissipated. The leaves beneath him were dew-damp. The car’s engine wheezed. The moon shone down on everything. The world was real, and he was in it.
///
The car ride was quiet. BJ kept his mind as blank as possible as he drove. At random intervals a thought broke through—Hawkeye pushing him onto his back, Hawkeye humming into a kiss—and he tightened his hands on the steering wheel.
They arrived at the inn, and kept mostly to themselves. BJ was trying to delay complex thought until the morning, and Hawkeye was impossible to read. He sat in silence as Hawkeye cycled, unsinging, through his shower and nightly routines. BJ went through after him, resolutely not recalling the rasp of Hawkeye’s stubble against his cheek, or Hawkeye pressed against him chest to thigh on a bed of leaves. There would be time for that, he thought, later—and the thought shot through him like autumn lightning. Hawkeye wanted him. It felt righter than he’d ever allowed himself to imagine. Hearing it had shaken him to the foundation.
By the time he emerged from the shower, in better, lighter spirits, Hawkeye seemed to have taken a trip in the opposite direction. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, and seemed vacant, or like he was lost far inside himself. His gaze was unfocused, and unmoving, and his wrists dangled limply between his knees. The line of his back was sharply curved. Whatever he’d seen, or believed he’d seen, had obviously upset him. BJ couldn’t blame him. It had been an objectively upsetting scenario, the abandoned house, its dirty dishes, the child’s bedroom upstairs with toys strewn across the carpet. What had to happen for a family to abandon a house in the middle of dinner, leaving a child’s dolls and shoes and even clothes behind?
BJ stuck his hands in his pockets. He wanted to reach out and stroke Hawkeye’s hair. He wanted to pull him close and soothe him, comfort him, let him rest. It wasn’t that he thought Hawkeye was delicate—a belief like that defied Hawkeye in every facet, from his broad frame and coarsely-stubbled jaw to his confidence and competence and ease, his ebullience of personality and his unbreakable internal drive. Hawkeye had been battered and half-drowned and hurt and scared and concussed and shot at and bloodied and punched-out and knocked straight into despair, and every time he’d picked himself back up and went on loving the world. Hawkeye wasn’t delicate. Not in the least. But BJ thought he deserved to be handled gently anyway.
“Okay?” BJ asked him. He felt ineffectual, embarrassingly useless in the face of Hawkeye’s exhaustion. There wasn’t much he could do without a prescription pad to help the man sleep. Hawkeye had been keeping bizarre hours all month.
Hawkeye squinted at him. “What?”
“Are you okay?” BJ said, enunciating clearly. Asking outright felt good. It turned attention away from himself.
Hawkeye nodded silently. He dropped onto his side, and struggled under the blankets, on the side of the mattress BJ had silently designated as Hawkeye’s from their first night sleeping in it together. He got himself partially situated, and then rolled onto his back. “I—I think I’m coming down with something. Maybe I’m sick.” Hawkeye kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling. He didn’t sound like he believed what he’d said.
BJ moved in and leaned over him, bracing himself against the bed. His hand sank into the pillow. Hawkeye’s cheek was warm against the inside of his wrist. “You’re not sick. You’re just tired,” BJ promised. He wanted to smooth Hawkeye’s hair back from his forehead. He wanted to bring him a cold compress. He wanted to fix things, really and permanently, instead of only patching them over. But he didn’t know where to start. He was struggling, too. And the timing was wrong. Hawkeye deserved warmth and spring rain and the promise of brighter days. But the nights were cold and dark and only getting longer. October was collapsing into itself. It was a season of dying.
Hawkeye didn’t seem to believe him. He smiled anyway, though, and held BJ’s wrist.
“Can I get you anything?” BJ asked, thinking again of a cold compress. Maybe hot tea. Something to eat. An extra pillow, or a softer blanket.
Hawkeye tightened his hold on BJ’s wrist. His brow creased. “What’s wrong?”
BJ laughed, rearranging blankets with his free hand. He tugged the duvet up to Hawkeye’s chin so he would be warm. “Nothing’s wrong. I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”
“Oh,” Hawkeye said. He shifted, nestling deeper into the blankets. His gaze stayed locked on BJ’s face.
“Why?” BJ asked, doing more unnecessary blanket-arranging so he wouldn’t have to meet Hawkeye’s stare. Hawkeye had a way of making him feel like a field mouse far from cover. Uncomfortably exposed. “What makes you think there’s something wrong?”
“I worry about you.”
BJ laughed, mortified, and pulled his wrist from Hawkeye’s grasp. Hawkeye let him go easily. His gaze was inescapable.
“I’m just fine.” BJ turned his back on the bed and, after a moment of undirected motion, decided to fiddle with his suitcase. He hadn’t realized Hawkeye was asking him about more than the immediate moment. He felt badly about having dodged the question by accident, and then worse when he realized he couldn’t see a way into answering it genuinely. It was too much. Humiliating, and thoroughly ridiculous. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Mm,” Hawkeye said, noncommittal. “I always worry about you.”
BJ shook his head at his suitcase. He unfolded a button-up to have something to do with his hands. “Well, I’m okay. Thanks.”
“Okay,” Hawkeye said.
A long moment of silence.
“You’re sure you’re alright?” Hawkeye asked.
BJ re-folded his button up, and placed it neatly into the suitcase. “What could be wrong?”
“Oh,” Hawkeye said, sounding thoughtful. The bed creaked. “Well, plenty. You could be feeling under the weather.”
“Not so. Early Doppler reports locate me firmly in the stratosphere,” BJ said, straightening the seams on another folded shirt. His pulse rose. He felt ill. Maybe he was the sick one after all.
“Uh-huh.” The bed creaked again. “You could have trouble at work. Maybe you don’t like your job, but think you can’t quit until you’ve stayed five years. That’s how they get you.”
“Work’s fine,” BJ said, because it was. He was good at his job, and liked it. He missed working with Hawkeye, but he’d never wish them back to where they had been.
Hawkeye sighed. “I get worried you don’t have anybody to talk to.”
“What?” BJ asked, startled into turning around. Hawkeye wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was curled up on his side, eyes closed, facing the lamp.
“I always thought you were like me, in that,” Hawkeye said, softer with every syllable. He looked to be talking himself into a doze. “We’re both a little lonely. But now you think you can’t tell anybody.”
“What good would that do?” BJ said, and shook his head again. Hawkeye had a way of making him admit things he didn’t even know he was hiding.
“Ah,” Hawkeye said, managing to be smug despite his obvious exhaustion. “So you are lonely.”
BJ looked up at the ceiling.
“You can tell me,” Hawkeye murmured into his pillow. “I’ll listen.”
BJ tossed his hands up. “I—” he started, and grinned, because he wasn’t sure what else to do. “I don’t know what to say.” Help me, he thought, willing Hawkeye to hear him. Somehow he always gave BJ what he needed to allow himself to speak. He thought nobody had ever known him the way Hawkeye did.
Hawkeye kept his eyes closed. His breathing was softly audible. BJ waited, nervous, silent, for Hawkeye to effect the necessary transformation, for him to arrange his words in precisely the right order. He always managed it. Hawkeye had a way with language.
“Lie down,” Hawkeye said, surprising him.
BJ obeyed, settling onto the bed. He folded his hands across his chest. Hawkeye was a warm presence at his side.
“What now?” BJ tried to joke. It fell flat, and Hawkeye didn’t acknowledge that he’d spoken. BJ looked at the ceiling for a while. The paint was uneven. It looked like a desert landscape, gentle swells and valleys, uneven ridges, all an unchanging beige. He was exhausted. Lying down had only made him more aware of the late hours he’d grown used to keeping. The adjustment back to a regular work schedule was going to be unpleasant. At least the time zones would work in his favor.
His chest ached as he realized, again, how soon he’d have to part with Hawkeye. It had been a very good month. It’d be for the best, he thought, if he could honestly say he’d forgotten how easy it was to be with Hawkeye, how fun and right and good, but he hadn’t. For the last two years he’d been painfully aware of the void Hawkeye had left in his life. Having Hawkeye back again, with him every hour of the day, falling asleep listening to Hawkeye breathe in the dark, had only reinforced his sense of loss.
They’d have to part, but—he tensed his jaw. It wouldn’t be permanent. He’d do almost anything to jolt their lives back into alignment. He’d decided that much from the moment Hawkeye had said he’d wanted him for years. Maybe even earlier. Damn the complications, damn the distance. He wanted something real.
The bed shifted. Hawkeye turned over and curled up on his side, facing BJ. The duvet was settled high enough to brush his cheek. His eyes were still closed.
“What’s wrong?” Hawkeye asked him again. His lips barely moved.
BJ laughed to himself. He put his palm over his eyes. It was possible he was going to cry. He breathed deeply, and admitted to the darkness behind his hand, “It’s been a hard year.”
Hawkeye said nothing. BJ swallowed sharply, and continued: “You’re right. I’ve been lonely.” It felt good to admit, in a complicated way. Relief, tinged with a sharp humiliation, rose in him, alongside a sudden desperation to express himself. Somebody was listening—he was real, he existed, somebody cared. “I ruined my marriage,” he continued, fast, like Hawkeye might cut him off, though he knew he wouldn’t. Hawkeye was an attentive listener. All good doctors were.
“All I do is work,” he said, still covering his eyes. “Peg wanted to try a separation. I moved into this shoebox apartment. Barely. Everything I own is in boxes. Sometimes Erin visits for a weekend. I don’t think she understands why. I don’t talk to anyone. That sounds bad. I try, but I think I’m—I’m jaded, I don’t know. I get annoyed when people can’t keep up with me. Nobody’s ever kept up with me but you. And I’m just—” he sighed sharply. “I don’t know. Everything’s going wrong. I don’t know that they’re ever going to get better. I think I ruin things. Sometimes I think everybody can look at me and tell there’s something wrong with me. I feel like I’m wearing a mask I don’t know how to take off, and even if I did there’d be nothing underneath. It’s horrible to say, but sometimes I even think I miss the war, because at least then I wanted what I was supposed to want. But then I—I’m confused. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t know what to do. And I miss you. I’ve missed you. Every minute of it I wished you were there. And I’m—” he coughed on a laugh, feeling ridiculous and childish and also absurdly relieved. “I’m sad. That’s all. I’m sad.”
He breathed, hand over his eyes, feeling the full weight of his misery sink down onto him. He’d been holding onto more than he’d realized. It had been a bad year. And lonely.
Blankets shifted. BJ tensed, confused and then embarrassed as Hawkeye curled up against him, arm across BJ’s chest. He dropped his hand from his eyes.
“Oh, Beej.” Hawkeye’s hair brushed the underside of his chin. He rubbed BJ’s sternum with the heel of his hand. “I’m sorry. That is a hard year.”
BJ waited for more. Hawkeye stayed quiet, rubbing sleepy circles into his chest. For some reason that was what brought BJ to the edge of tears. The simple, untempered acknowledgement of it—Hawkeye had heard him, and cared. He grasped Hawkeye’s upper arm. He wished he was under the duvet.
Hawkeye yawned against him. “You don’t ruin things.”
BJ exhaled sharply. It was almost a laugh.
“Well, everyone ruins things sometimes. But you’re no worse than the rest of us. It’s just close in the rear-view mirror, that’s all. You’ll feel better with distance.”
“Okay,” BJ said.
Hawkeye shifted against him. His leg was pressed to BJ’s through the minor barrier of the blankets. “And I think things can always get better. That’s why it’s so frustrating when they don’t.”
“Okay,” BJ repeated, leaning against him.
“And,” Hawkeye said, “I’m sorry. I really am. It’s not a good way to feel, is it? But you can get out of it. Might take some work, exactly when you don’t feel like doing it. Concerted effort, even. But it isn’t forever. You’ll feel okay again.”
BJ tilted his head so he could press his face to Hawkeye’s hair. He wasn’t sure he believed Hawkeye, really, but he did feel reassured. And Hawkeye was right. It helped to have somebody to talk to. It seemed desperately stupid to have gone a full month avoiding it.
He thought again of the odd phone call he’d received from Daniel, and everything they weren’t speaking about: Hawkeye’s strange mood, the pace of his work, the pain that haunted his expression in unoccupied moments. He thought it was possible Hawkeye was sad, too.
“What about you?” BJ held Hawkeye tighter. After a moment he decided to rub Hawkeye’s back, the fabric of his shirt shifting under BJ’s hand. “Are you alright?”
Hawkeye nosed at his chest, curling more tightly against him. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
BJ flattened his lips. It injured him to think Hawkeye didn’t trust him enough to confide in him. He could already feel himself starting to close off reactively, embarrassed at having said anything at all.
“That’s not a deflection,” Hawkeye said, somehow sensing his state of mind. He propped himself up on BJ’s chest, squinting with exhaustion. “I mean that. I’m okay. It might not look like it, but I’m really alright.”
BJ softened. He went on rubbing Hawkeye’s back. “I worry, too, you know.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Hawkeye was having a tough time keeping his eyes open. That was probably a good sign. Maybe it meant his sleeplessness had started to ease.
BJ pushed him gently onto his side. He slipped beneath the duvet, and settled in close, sharing a pillow with Hawkeye. Their noses were only a few inches apart.
“It’s temporary,” Hawkeye elaborated, surprising him. BJ had thought he had drifted off.
“What’s that?” BJ asked. He admired, at close range, the silver strands in Hawkeye’s hair.
Hawkeye shifted closer. He insinuated an arm around BJ’s waist. BJ pulled him in. He tangled their legs together and aligned their torsos and held on.
“How I feel,” Hawkeye said against his shoulder, his tone light. “What I think. It’s all transient. Knowing that makes it alright. I’m ridiculous. Everything is. That makes it okay.”
“Good,” BJ said, though he wasn’t sure he really thought so. He thought it was important to care about things, and believe in them. He was sure Hawkeye did, too, even if he had to pretend he didn’t to get himself through his deepest sadnesses. Hawkeye was a doctor, after all, and a determined idealist, for all he told himself that nothing mattered. It all mattered to Hawkeye. Maybe that was the problem. But it was a conversation for another time.
“Nothing lasts,” Hawkeye said, barely audible.
“No,” BJ agreed carefully. He exhaled, comforted by Hawkeye relaxing against him.
“I’m glad we tried. It’s good to know.”
BJ frowned. He’d lost the thread of the conversation. “To know?”
“Nothing’s forever,” Hawkeye said. His breath was warm against BJ’s neck. “Nothing’s permanent. This is it. And this is all. I always thought that was the case. It’s good to know. As much as we can know.”
“I’m sorry,” BJ said, thinking of everyone Hawkeye had lost, patients and a parent and everyone who hadn’t died but who had walked out of his life just as permanently.
Hawkeye laughed. “I’m okay. There’s nothing to be sorry about. Now keep it down, I’m trying to sleep.”
BJ laughed, too, and buried his hand in Hawkeye’s hair. He was overwhelmed by a bittersweet ache, the intensity of his love and care and sadness making it impossible to keep from pressing a soft kiss to the corner of Hawkeye’s mouth.
Hawkeye kept his eyes closed, but his mouth twitched into a small, crooked smile.
In the morning, BJ thought, closing his eyes, things would be better. He’d wake to find Hawkeye soundly asleep in his arms. Maybe they’d kiss again. Maybe Hawkeye would want more, even, than that—whatever happened, though, he hoped they’d be in it together. He was tired of being apart. The weather was changing. Leaves were turning from red to brown. Autumn was giving way to winter. Soon the trees would be bare, and brackish sea-ice would drift down the Maine coast in a rolling white-green tide. The ground would freeze.
It was better to be with somebody in the winter, BJ thought, on the knife’s edge of sleep. Hawkeye breathed evenly against him. The wind rose outside, and leaves fluttered against the window. If Hawkeye would have him, they could see each other through the end of the year, and come through it whole and happy into the next—1956, he realized, too sleepy to be shocked. He wanted to see the new year together. He wanted Hawkeye to meet Erin. He wanted to keep Hawkeye’s bed warm. He wanted to bring him coffee. He wanted to cook together, and come home to find Hawkeye reading on the couch. He wanted somebody to cry on, and somebody to cry on him. He wanted Hawkeye to warm his cold feet under BJ’s thigh. He wanted to hold Hawkeye close as snow fell outside. He wanted to wear a scarf Hawkeye knitted, one that wouldn’t have to be unravelled to conserve yarn. He wanted to read over Hawkeye’s shoulder, and stick his cold hands up Hawkeye’s sweater, and let Hawkeye do the same in retaliation. He wanted a lot. He wanted to give even more.
He wasn’t sure what he could have. How much was even possible. But then, if he’d learned anything from the last month, late nights watching Hawkeye fiddle with capacitors, his hair in disarray, his smile as disarming as ever, it was that it was always worth it to try. For the impossible, and the improbable, and the wholly attainable—all a person could do was try. And the life he thought he wanted was worth every effort he could give.
He’d start in the morning. For the moment, it was enough to lie still and let himself be held. Sleep descended—Hawkeye first, and then himself—and so they jointly missed the moment October lifted from the world with the wind off the Atlantic and drifted away west, relegated into the past, its passing observed by only emergency dispatchers and deep-sea fishermen and a few unlucky insomniacs, among whose ranks, happily, neither he nor Hawkeye were numbered.