Chapter Text
BJ stands on a rickety front porch in a rickety town in rural Maine, trying to catch his breath. It’s not like he walked very far—the bus from the Bangor airport dropped him off conveniently at the end of the lane, the driver, a local, pointing him in the right direction for Dr. Pierce’s place—but he’s sweating through his clothes. He smoothes a hand down his chest and glances down at himself. His shirt’s wrinkled, as are his trousers and the suit coat draped over his arm; his tie’s long been discarded, rolled up in his duffle bag. BJ considers retrieving it, putting it and his suit coat on again.
Who’s he trying to fool? No one expects him to look fresh as a daisy after traveling twelve hours straight.
Actually, no one’s expecting him at all. Hence the symptoms: elevated heart rate, damp palms, bitten lip. He should have called from the airport—one of the airports, at least. Too late now.
BJ takes a deep inhale. No sense putting it off any longer. He raises his fist and knocks on the door. It’s whitewashed, flaking in charming curls.
A man opens it. He doesn’t look anything like Hawkeye, which is a shock. BJ had assumed that Hawk’s oversized physical presence was an inherited trait, but Dr. Daniel Pierce—if that is indeed who he is—is barely five-eight with light-colored hair tipping into white. He blinks owlishly at BJ from behind thick glasses.
“Mn’yes?” he says.
BJ relaxes a fraction. He’s at the right house after all. The vaudeville affectation, that’s Hawkeye through and through. (Maybe Hawk got his looks from his mother. The thought makes BJ feel soft deep in his chest.)
A broad smile comes like second nature. “Hi, Dr. Pierce,” BJ says. “I know it’s late, but can Hawkeye come out and play?”
It’s a line he’d practiced in his head on the plane, one of a few options, depending on the circumstances of his arrival. If Hawk had been the one to answer the door, BJ might have said, “I waited for you at Grand Central. Did your watch stop?” He might have said, “Hello, sailor.” He might have said anything but the truth, which was something along the lines of: “I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but—Hawk, I had to see you.”
He’d nixed that line before take-off. Same problem with “Missing you hurts like dying,” which is what he would say if he could manage to get the words out without pitching forward into Hawk’s arms.
But it’s not Hawkeye standing in the doorway. It’s his father, who is staring at BJ with what appears to be growing horror. His eyes—Hawk’s shade of blue, how had he missed that?—get impossibly wide.
“BJ?” he asks. “BJ Hunnicutt?”
BJ fights to keep his smile in place. “Yes, sir.” Suddenly the naughty-boy schtick feels ill-conceived. Like he’s set himself up for a well-deserved dressing-down.
“Well, what—? What the hell are you doing here?” The confusion—the panic—in Hawkeye’s father’s voice is unexpected.
BJ’s grin slips. He really should have called ahead. “I came to see Hawkeye,” he says. It sounds like such a small thing, said that simply.
“You’re supposed to be in California!” Daniel says. Explodes, really.
BJ flinches. “I know. Please, if I could just talk to Hawkeye—”
“You can’t,” says Daniel. Not in a combative way, just a fact. “He’s not here.”
“Okay.” BJ breaks eye contact. His duffle is heavier than he thought, so he puts it down on the weathered porch and props his hands on his hips. “Do you mind if I wait for him to come back?” He came all this way. Whatever errand Hawkeye is out running, BJ can wait.
“No, you don’t understand, he’s—” Daniel Pierce rubs at his forehead with his palm. “Oh my god.”
BJ’s heart stops. His hands fall to his sides. “Has something happened?”
Images of Hawk in another facility flash through his mind. A ward, a hospital. His last letter had sounded so—like himself, in a good way. Not great, but good. Wry and entertaining, but also talking about the future in a way that bodes well. I might go back to New York; I’m thinking of heading down to Boston. Providence always needs good surgeons. Still, BJ worries the black dog of melancholy is back, sniffing around Hawkeye’s ankles, sinking its teeth into his most tender parts. He should have come sooner, he should have been more forceful in his letters, he should have demanded to know what was going on in Hawkeye's head.
A slightly hysterical laugh, so similar to Hawkeye’s, bubbles out of Daniel. “Yeah, you could say that. Something definitely happened.” He removes his glasses and rubs at his eyes. “Ben is on a plane right now. To California.”
BJ waits for the punchline, but it doesn’t come. He crosses his arms over his chest, his creased coat flopping over his ulna. “What do you mean, he’s—? Why’s he going to California?”
Daniel replaces his glasses and gives BJ a pitying look.
Oh, no.
BJ’s stomach sinks through the porch and into the little coastal house’s foundations.
Dr. Pierce holds the door open wider. “You’d better come in,” he says.
— — —
Korea. A hundred years ago.
“You what?” Hawkeye stands blinking at him in the dust-colored light of midday. There’s blood on his scrub shirt and bags under his eyes. He’s been on his feet for the last thirty-six hours, thirty-five of which had been spent complaining about how his feet are killing him, what with how the insoles of his boots are worn to nothing. BJ knows because he heard every minute of it.
“Fixed these up for you,” BJ repeats. He holds up a pair of handmade insoles in the vague shape of a boot. They’re not perfect—BJ’s used to working with other materials, not leather—but they’re Hawk’s size. And— “Cut up an old pilot seat, tried to make them a little cushy. Should be better than those pancakes you’ve got strapped to your feet, at least.”
Hawkeye grabs the insoles, his tired mouth suddenly alive, stretched into a grin. “When did you find the time? We’ve been in surgery for—I don’t know, forever.” He sits down right there in the middle of the dirt, on the footpath between the O.R. and the swamp. Like a kid in a yard, he kicks out his long, gangly legs. Tears off his boots, and then carefully inserts the insoles like he’s doing more surgery.
“I started tinkering with them last week. When you first mentioned your feet hurt?” BJ says it casually. The most normal thing in the world to tell your friend. “Thought I’d give them to you now so you could quit your moaning.” He stuffs his hands in the pockets of his robe. First thing he’d done once the surgery marathon was over was to take off his scrubs and put on his robe. Second thing: finished gluing the homemade insoles together.
Hawkeye’s socked feet—darned patches on the toes—get shoved into one boot, then the other. His laugh is quicksilver, shiny and maddening. He pops upright without tying the laces and bounces on his toes the way a boxer does.
“I don’t even remember moaning about this last week,” he says. “Do you keep track of all my moans?” There it is, that glint in his eye as he catches BJ’s gaze. BJ wants to bottle that glint, drink it down in private like it’s the good stuff. It’s a glint that says, in Hawkeye’s own vernacular, Aren’t I naughty?
BJ licks his dry lips. Tastes the dust. Pulls his mouth into an easy smile. “I do, actually. The real keepers, I jot down in my diary.” He meets Hawk’s eye again. Aren’t we both?
It’s not even a fraction as provocative as some of the stuff Hawk has said—to him, to Margaret, to Frank, when he was still here, to any woman who wanders within flirting distance—but for some reason BJ has the distinct sensation of walking on a tightrope. Gut swooping, heart hammering. Maybe it’s the look Hawkeye gives him in return: a little surprised, a little pleased. His eyes dart between BJ and his newly cushioned boots. He can’t seem to muster a response, which makes BJ feel like he’s won something.
“Come on,” BJ says, taking pity on him. “Let’s take them for a test drive back to the swamp, see how they handle.”
Hawkeye laces up and falls into step beside him as they walk. “This is like a miracle. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to replace the last pair that wore out on me?” He launches into a long, meandering story that BJ has heard before. But he loves hearing Hawk’s stories, so he listens like it’s the first time, laughing at every punchline, reacting at every obstacle. Hawkeye beams. The wind is making a mess of his shaggy hair, and his feet are tripping contentedly along in his new-to-him boots, and BJ can’t look away.
— — —
B.F. Pierce, Hawkeye to his friends, feels like a real putz standing on the Hunnicutt’s perfect doorstep against the backdrop of their perfect lawn. The sun is so bright—isn’t San Francisco supposed to be moody and foggy? Where’s the damn fog?—he can hardly see. He’s squinting hard at Peg Hunnicutt, who is taller than he expected, especially in her white heels. (BJ apparently was joking about her petiteness.) Her dress, he notices vaguely, is orange with white dots. It’s making Hawk hungry for a creamsicle.
“He’s what?” he repeats. It feels like the fifth time he’s said it. Must be time zone syndrome.
“Not here,” Peg says, clipped. “I’m trying to explain, if you’ll just listen: BJ is in Maine. He called from your father’s house and told me to expect you.”
“Oh. Huh.” Hawk looks off to the right at the house next door. It looks exactly like the Hunnicutt house, except it’s painted a pale shade of blue instead of white. That weird vertigo-like feeling threatens to overtake him again; it had started the minute the taxi brought him into this cookie-cutter suburban landscape. He’s having a hard time imagining BJ here, which makes sense because—he’s finally understanding—BJ is not here. BJ is in Maine. Hawk realizes his mouth is hanging open, and he shuts it, then opens it again only to add, “So we both—?”
“Neither of you told the other one about your plans.” Peg crosses her arms and cocks her head, glaring up at him. “You two just simultaneously decided to, what? Surprise each other with an unannounced visit?” She clicks her tongue. “Like ships.”
“Ships?” Hawkeye is so very lost—in this conversation and on this unfamiliar coast.
“Passing in the night,” Peg clarifies.
Hawkeye hadn’t considered that. He hadn’t had much time to consider anything. But Peg could be right. They might have actually passed each other. It’s kind of funny to think about: sitting in his window seat on the plane while BJ glides by in another going the opposite direction. He cracks a smile at the absurdity of it.
“You find this funny?” Peg asks. Her eyebrows arch high, perfect, thin, upside-down U’s.
Hawk sobers, tucking his smile away. His hand tightens on the handle of his father’s borrowed suitcase. He tries to see this from her perspective: a hard-working woman with a small child—Erin turned three last month; Hawk had ordered her a hobbyhorse through the Sears catalog—receiving an unexpected visitor. He’s a stranger to her, and without her husband as the social lubricant, it’s all very awkward.
“Sorry,” he says, flapping his free hand in the air. “I’m sorry. I can—I’ll go find a motel.” He cranes his neck to look over his shoulder as if he’ll be able to flag down the taxi, but it’s long gone. He turns back to her, cringing apologetically. “If I can use your phone—”
“Never mind that. BJ asked me to put you in the guest room,” Peg says, “so I’ll put you in the guest room.” The way she phrases it makes Hawk uneasy. She’d always sounded so warm and loving in her letters, the ones BJ had read aloud to Hawk back in the Swamp, but this Peg—she’s scalpel-sharp, hard-edged for reasons Hawk doesn’t understand.
It's got him on edge, wrong-footed. Normally he'd fall back on what little charm he has, crack a few jokes, but Peg…doesn't seem to be in a laughing mood.
“You don't have to put me up,” he says, because she really doesn’t. The only thing he wanted was—the only thing he needed was to see BJ again. Just for an hour, or a long weekend, or maybe a month. Letters weren’t enough, a phone call once in a blue moon wasn’t enough. It was stupid and selfish but he’d gotten it into his head that if he could just watch BJ’s eyes light up the way they always did when he told a bad joke, he could survive another year. He could do what he should have done months ago and start looking into joining an actual surgical team in an actual city instead of helping his dad with the occasional twisted ankle. He didn’t mean to step on anyone’s toes, least of all those of BJ’s beloved wife. “I really don’t want to be any trouble.”
Peg looks at him for a long moment. “I think that ship has sailed, Dr. Pierce,” she says. Before Hawkeye can ask what she means, she disappears into the house, leaving the door wide open. “You should call your father,” her voice echoes down the hall. “The phone is in the kitchen.”
Hawkeye blinks at the void in front of him. It doesn’t feel like an invitation so much as a trap, but that’s, again, probably the time zone syndrome talking.
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Hunnicutt,” he mutters to himself as he steps inside. Then he adds, in a warm falsetto: “My pleasure, Dr. Pierce.”