Chapter Text
After three years of cursing the distance to the helipad, ever-worried about getting there fast enough to help torn-up kids off the medevac choppers, Hawkeye Pierce suddenly found himself wishing the journey was miles longer.
His time left at the 4077th was measured in minutes—time cut shorter by BJ’s offer of a ride. Hawkeye counted them with his hands on BJ’s sides, fingers curling into the olive drab fabric of his jacket, fighting the impulse to say fuck it and pull BJ tight to his chest. But he hadn’t spent ages toeing the line of how-much-is-too-much just to cross it now, just to have his last memory of Korea be BJ shrugging him off or pushing him away. So instead, he kept his hands where they were and his knees locked around BJ’s yellow deathtrap as their final moments together ticked down to nothing.
He was going home. Next stop: Crabapple Cove. And yet, he couldn’t drum up a scrap of the joy he’d expected. Everything was turned sideways—a surreal dream. The kind that wasn’t a nightmare, not quite, but stuck with him like the chill of October fog.
Tomorrow, he’d wake up in a bed instead of a cot. Three thousand miles would stretch between him and the man who’d been under his skin since “Rudyard Kipling.” The man who, like so many who’d drifted in and out of Hawkeye’s life before him, refused to give him a proper goodbye.
When the motorcycle rolled to a stop, Hawkeye swung off, but stayed close. The chopper’s whup-whup-whup kicked up a breeze that tugged at his fatigues.
“Look,” he said, pitching his voice over the rotors, “I know how tough it is for you to say goodbye, so I’ll say it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we will see each other again, but just in case we don’t . . .”
He took in the lines of BJ’s face. His hair, shaggier and greyer than the fresh-pressed Captain Hunnicut who’d shown up in Kimpo, so eager to help. He could hardly picture that version of BJ anymore. Would a day come when even this BJ would blur in his mind and he’d no longer remember the cornflower blue of his eyes? The slope of his nose? The timbre of his voice?
Impossible. It had to be.
“I want you to know how much you’ve meant to me. I’ll never be able to shake you.” Too close. Don’t let it slip now. “Whenever I see a pair of big feet or a cheesy mustache, I’ll think of you.”
BJ’s smile was tight. “Whenever I smell month-old socks, I’ll think of you.”
“Or the next time somebody nails my shoe to the floor . . .”
“Or when somebody gives me a martini that tastes like lighter fluid.”
“I’ll miss you,” Hawkeye said, and damn, wasn’t that an understatement?
BJ softened. “I’ll miss you. A lot. I can’t imagine what this place would’ve been like if I hadn’t found you here.”
He stepped forward, and their chests collided, and they hugged hard. Not the quick, shoulder-thumping sort, but the kind that left no space between them. The kind where a hand ran up the curve of his spine, and he cupped the back of BJ’s head, and if he tried hard enough, he could pretend that the warm press of BJ’s nose against his neck was a brush of lips, instead.
Hawkeye turned as they broke apart, but pulled up short when BJ caught his arm.
“Wait.” BJ rucked up his own sleeve and tugged at the buckle of his watch until it slipped from his wrist to dangle between his fingers.
“If you’re trying to tell me to get a move on, you’re not the only one. Pilot’s been drilling holes in the back of my head ever since we got up here.”
But BJ, in a move that left Hawkeye blinking dumbly at him, flipped open Hawkeye’s front pocket and dropped the watch inside.
“Something to help you keep track of time,” he said.
“Keep track of—Beej, what? You’re giving me your watch?”
“Loaning,” BJ corrected, a grin growing beneath that war crime of a mustache. “I’ll take it back a year from now, when you come find me in Mill Valley to return it. With interest, of course.” He patted the pocket, grin fading to something earnest. “That way you know I mean it when I say we’ll see one another again.”
Hawkeye tried to answer, but couldn’t push words past his tightening throat. He laid a hand over the pocket instead, and this time, when he turned for the chopper, BJ let him go.
The blades were deafening now, and he climbed in and gave the pilot a thumbs up before he lost the battle and turned right back around. As the chopper took off, Hawkeye twisted in his seat to watch BJ sling a leg over the motorcycle and loft the San Francisco sign high.
“With interest!” BJ shouted, inaudible beneath the roar, but easy enough to lipread.
Hawkeye laughed in spite of the weight in his chest and lifted a hand in return. And then he saw it. Down near the helipad, laid out in white stones.
GOODBYE.
Of course BJ hadn’t just come out and said it. Saying it would have been too easy.
Hawkeye pressed his hand harder into his pocket. The face of the watch dug into his palm, its bite helping him fight the sting in his eyes. The camp fell away beneath him, but BJ’s words kept him tethered.
One year.
With interest.
Notes:
Thanks for checking out the story! I look forward to hearing what you think :)
Chapter 2: BJ - July 1953
Chapter Text
BJ wrote his first letter to Hawkeye on the plane from Honolulu to San Francisco.
Hawk,
They put me on a civilian flight for my last leg from Hawaii to California. I almost missed the thing! Would you believe some piece of work surgeon made off with my watch? Turns out navigating flight schedules gets difficult when you don’t know what time it is. Or what time zone you’re in.
I don’t think it’s hit me that you won’t be there when I land.
He stared at the paper, sipped at the soda he’d ordered—not gin, not after trying a martini at the airport bar and nearly gagging it back up again—and debated saying something about Guam. Hawk’s voice echoed in his ears. “I didn’t even know you were gone; I thought you were in the bathroom.”
He’d left a lot of things unsaid with Hawkeye. Some of them, maybe, he should have made a better effort at putting into words.
I can’t tell you I’m sorry for trying to get out when I had the chance, but I’ve never stopped regretting how I left, and I didn’t apologize the way I should have. Never apologized for a lot of things. I think maybe it’s because I’ve always been worried that, once I started talking, I wouldn’t be able to stop.
I love you even though I shouldn’t.
He clutched the pen so hard his knuckles whitened.
I can’t have that, but I hope I can still have you as a friend, and if that means being better to you, I’ll do it. Starting with goodbye and continuing with hello.
Clearly, he was going to have to rewrite this letter. His father had taught him a fistful of lessons about how words could be used against him, and he’d learned not to show anyone his softest parts. Not even his family. Not even Hawkeye. Because if BJ wasn’t alone in this hugeness of feeling, then sending a letter like this was unfair to both of them.
Once, in the Swamp, they’d joked about what it’d have been like if they met at a conference, instead. If they’d never been drafted, or if Korea never happened. BJ spent weeks imagining it. An alternate timeline, like something out of those science fiction novels the nurses sometimes circulated around camp. Maybe there, he’d have said what he felt and acted on it.
But that was a world where he hadn’t met and married another great love, where he hadn’t started a family with her. A whole different lifetime. In this one, he and Peg held their vows sacred, even though they each had a bit of lavender in them. They’d chosen each other, and that would have to be enough.
My heart is a mess right now, but once I’m home with Peg, I’ll be able to put my feelings in the right boxes. I’ll honor the choices I’ve made, the vows I’ve taken, and the life I decided to live.
We’ll give it a year, won’t we? We’ll keep writing. Leaving Korea will take the edge off, and god willing, this will fade to something that feels more like brotherhood with time. I need it to. I can’t fathom what I’ll do if it doesn’t.
He reread the letter, then shredded it into tiny pieces and shoved it into the dregs of his soda.
#
BJ got two consecutive kicks in the chest after touching down in San Francisco.
The first came at the gate, where Peg greeted him with open arms. He lifted her up and swung her around to a peal of delighted laughter, but found himself crying into her hair before he could so much as kiss her. Laughing and crying. Crying and laughing. They’d gone hand-in-hand for him ever since he left.
“God, it’s good to see you,” he said, hoarse, into the top of her head.
She smelled of the citrusy perfume she sprayed onto her letters, but here and in person at last, the scent-memory of it was strong enough to send him scattering through time: holding hands in the theater. Wedging together in the back seat of her Chevrolet. Leaning in as she cradled their daughter in her arms.
Peg pulled back to get a look at him, hands curled into the front of his Class As. “I almost didn’t let myself believe you were really coming until the plane landed.”
“Erin?”
“At home with Viv. She’s a bit tender with crowds right now, and I figured . . .”
Her unspoken words rang clear. I figured it was better to leave her with a familiar friend than for her to pitch a fit in public if she sees you as a stranger.
“That’s good. Good thinking.”
“Maybe I should have—”
“No, no. You’re right.” He summoned a smile. “Really, I’m surprised you recognized me. It’s been two years since I’ve had a good night’s sleep, and I’m sure I look it.”
“Not to mention that atrocity on your upper lip,” she teased. “Hawkeye warned me about it in his letter, but nothing could prepare me to see it in person.”
The second kick in the chest landed as his heart wrenched in two directions: the pure, buoyant relief of Peg’s humor, of knowing that the war and time and distance hadn’t turned them into complete strangers, and the crushing misery of hearing Hawkeye’s name and realizing that he’d just traded one heartache for another.
Time. It’s going to take time. That’s why I gave us time.
“Oh, honey.” Peg reeled him back in for another hug. “I meant it as a quip, but if I struck a sore spot, I’m sorry for it.”
BJ bent to rest his cheek against hers. Unbidden, the memory of clutching Hawkeye close, of Hawkeye’s hand cupping the back of his head popped into mind.
I’ll never shake you.
“I’ll shave it if you want,” he said, not entirely sure he meant it.
Peg cocked her head. “We’ll negotiate. For now, let’s get you home.”
Home.
“Now that,” he said, smile softening, “sounds amazing.”
BJ pulled back and offered his elbow for Peg to take. After a stop at baggage claim, they got into the car and on the road, next stop Mill Valley.
#
Late that night, BJ trimmed—but didn’t shave—and wrote Hawkeye a letter he could actually send.
Chapter Text
Hawkeye’s bedroom smelled faintly of last night’s whiskey, owing, probably, to the haphazard pile of yesterday’s clothing draped over the foot of the bed. Curtains kept most of the late-morning light out, leaving the books and toys and other ephemera of a long-gone childhood cast in shades of grey. His head throbbed. He’d been half-awake for hours, drifting in and out of fractured dreams—the whir of choppers, steam rising off of bodies, the curve of BJ’s neck.
A clock chimed once from the living room. 11:30. He should get up.
He couldn’t. He buried his face in the pillow.
Minutes—or hours—later, the door creaked, just enough to let in a hovering mug of coffee before the hand, arm, and body attached to it stepped through.
“Second cup’s the charm,” his dad said lightly.
Hawkeye peered over his pillow and found the first cup, long-cold, resting beside BJ’s watch on his nightstand. “You keep this up, and I’m going to start expecting breakfast in bed.”
“You’d have to start eating breakfast for that to be a problem.” His dad set the mug beside its failed predecessor, then tugged gently at Hawkeye’s shoulder. “Come on, son. Let’s get you sitting.”
It was humiliating to need the help, but a relief to be steered. Sometimes sitting up was the hardest part, and once he was upright, he could summon the will to get dressed and feed himself and go about his day. Others, sitting was about as much as he could manage.
His dad braced him with a doctor’s practiced gentleness, rearranging the pillows until he could lean back without feeling like his skull might roll right off his neck.
Then the fresh mug reappeared, wafting beneath his nose. “Try that before it gets cold.”
Everything was a little easier once he was partially upright, headache notwithstanding, and he cradled the mug between his palms. Pleasant heat seeped through the cheerily painted ceramic monstrosity. As he sipped, his father settled on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees. Silence stretched between them. Sometimes, Hawkeye found, the absence of words carried their own kind of care.
Not that he’d ever been able to abide it for long, especially on the days when his mind chose to be an enemy.
Dad shouldn’t have to spend mornings like this. Shouldn’t have to scrape me off the mattress, coaxing me up like a patient in recovery. Shouldn’t have to tread so carefully around his own son.
But here they were.
“You’re too good to me,” he said.
“It’s okay to need help. The things you saw over there—most people can’t even imagine. You’re not supposed to be fine right now.”
Hawkeye pressed the mug to his lips and drank, and drank, because at least if he was swallowing, he wouldn’t have to muster a response.
But his dad always could read him. “You aren’t a burden. I hope you know that.”
“Oh, sure. Because this is a typical Sunday morning for you and your thirty-two-year-old, washed-up surgeon of a son—”
“Hawk.”
“—giving you a second career as a nursemaid—”
“You’d be surprised how little feels like an inconvenience after a clerical error kills someone you love, then brings him back to life.” He squeezed Hawkeye’s knee. “No matter how old you are or how much grey is in your hair, you will always be my boy, and I will always take care of you. I just wish you’d take care of yourself, too.”
Hawkeye rubbed at his eyes. If he got teary now, the headache would only worsen. “I don’t know how to start.”
“Something small today, then. You could try answering those.”
The watch and abandoned mug sat next to a small pile of letters in BJ’s hand. The one on top—because Hawkeye read them all, even if his attempts at returning the favor ended up balled in the trash—betrayed more than casual worry over Hawkeye’s silence.
He brushed his fingers across the cool metal of the watch, then over the slanted lines of BJ’s handwriting.
BJ had started the way he meant to go on, and Hawkeye was—well. Surprised by it, maybe. Watch or no, he’d expected BJ to return to Mill Valley and shrug off memories of the war along with his ratty fatigues. But he’d kept his promise, and he’d been persistent about it, writing once a week or more, obstinate even in the absence of a reply.
On nights when Hawkeye found himself keeping company with the bottom of a bottle, he tended to laugh at the delightful irony of it all. BJ couldn’t say goodbye. Hawkeye couldn’t say hello.
What a pair.
“I don’t know what to write.”
His dad leveled him with an unimpressed look. “From what I’ve gathered, there’s nothing you could put to paper that your BJ wouldn’t want to read.”
“He’s not my BJ.”
And there it was. Because each time he picked up a pen, the words came pouring out until he ran dry, until every trapped, feral part of him screamed its way onto paper. He’d kept that part quiet for years and couldn’t let it out, now. Not when, more than anything, he just wanted BJ to have his happy ending.
“Isn’t he?” His dad nodded at the letter. “He seems worried about you too, you know.”
Which made sense. BJ knew all about Hawkeye and silence. And based on the way BJ signed off most of his letters, he still expected Hawkeye to show up next summer, watch in hand, as proof they’d both made it through.
He let out a shaky breath. Christ, he was tired. And though the altruistic part of him was glad to know BJ was at home and well, the rest of him was just as certain that the little scrap of time they were allowed—one visit, a year away—would never be enough. He’d take all of BJ’s time if he could. But that wasn’t part of the agreement, was it?
Sometimes he wished he could just lie back down and . . . stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone (1).
“I’m trying, dad.”
But what good was trying when the furthest it got him was not-quite-upright in the not-quite-morning? How was he meant to climb out of here? Dry out? Find work? Live something even resembling a functional life when his best days post-war ended with him numbly staring at the living room wall?
He must have said at least some of it out loud, because his father’s expression went tender, and god, he hated that he’d become such a disappointment.
“This isn’t new, Hawk.”
“What, because I’m not the only guy to ever get shipped overseas by Uncle Sam? I know that.”
“This isn’t new for you. You’ve always felt things so strongly.” His dad gave his knee another squeeze. “You’re in a harder, deeper hole than I’ve seen, but this isn’t the first time life sent you for a tumble. It’s not even the first time I’ve been worried about you.”
Unfortunately, his father was right. Hawkeye did his best to put the lows out of his mind, and even now, could only remember some of them as a faint, forgotten echo, but he’d hit bottom before. After Carlye, for one. That liminal summer between high school and college. His first holiday season without his mother.
And Uijeongbu. The bus. Sidney.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Wasn’t it worse if Korea hadn’t cracked him, but had only widened a crack that’d been there the whole time?
“I’m not looking for an apology. I’m trying to remind you that you already know how to build a ladder to get yourself out of this.”
“Do I?”
His dad nodded at the watch on the nightstand. “Day by day, hour by hour. Try to keep yourself from galloping ahead, alright? Don’t overwhelm yourself with what comes next month, or next week, or even tomorrow. Think: what’s one thing you’ll do today?”
It was so, so tempting to brush him off. To say nothing, or I can’t. But his dad didn’t deserve that, so he started walking himself through it, picturing the rungs. He’d sat up. He had a coffee in hand. The mere thought of getting dressed made him despair, but when he looked over at the letters . . .
“I can write BJ. Something I’ll send, this time. And later, maybe I can make that soup you like with the last of our summer squashes, and—”
“One thing at a time.” His dad set a copy of Notes from the Underground on his lap along with a blank page and a pen, then stood. “I’ll give you some thinking room. How’s that sound?”
“Alright.”
Alright.
One thing at a time. Because Dad was right—if he started planning out his letters and the groceries and dinner all at once, the list would grow and nothing would get done.
The door shut behind his father with a thud.
Dear Beej, he wrote to the soft tick of the watch. One sentence at a time. One thought. One phrase. Slow, slow, slow, to keep it all from pouring out again.
Didn’t mean to worry you, but it’s been a tough adjustment. Maybe you know what I mean. I hope you don’t. But I’m alright. I’ll be alright. As Dad says, I just need to take it an hour at a time. Good thing I have this ugly watch I found in Korea to help with that.
Notes:
The footnotes begin!
(1)This line is a reference to the first stanza of W. H. Auden’s poem Funeral Blues. The stanza referenced above reads:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners comeIn other words, this is Hawkeye alluding to both his own grief (over his perceived loss of BJ—a loss that feels like death) and his own struggle with depression. At least that’s what I was trying to write. Jury’s out on whether it worked?
Chapter Text
BJ pulled into his driveway and rolled to a stop behind a red Buick, windshield wipers running against the afternoon’s persistent drizzle. The Buick meant Viv was here. He must have missed it when Peg told him she’d be over, which wasn’t much of a surprise. His thoughts had been . . . elsewhere, lately.
He shut off the wipers and killed the engine, but didn’t leave the car, fingers drumming on the wheel. The uncomfortable truth was, finding that Buick in the driveway after a long day of surgery relieved him more than it should. He’d spent the war pining for Peg and Mill Valley and would have, back then, laughed if anyone had told him he’d be happy they rarely got the house to themselves. But things had been all at angles since his return, and having someone else around helped smooth the edges.
It turned out that shoving feelings—people—into little mental boxes was harder than he’d expected.
When he let himself into the foyer, the first thing that hit him was the butter-sugar-nutmeg smell of Thanksgiving. Peg had started preparations earlier in the week, already planning for the smiling photos, the homemade dishes, the table set just so. All-American. All-pretend.
At least they’d have pie.
The day’s mail sat on a slender table behind the door. BJ needed only glance at it to determine the pile held nothing from Maine. He studiously boxed up the bone-aching disappointment and shoved it aside. It was ridiculous of him to search for a new one every single day; Hawk’s latest had arrived less than a week earlier, and besides, he’d promised—promised—that he wouldn’t leave letters unanswered ever again. Sometimes, he even sent two in a row without prompting. BJ memorized them all.
You’re not gonna believe this, but they’ve organized a damn Turkey Trot this year. Ever heard of one of those? I bet you have—you and your varsity letters. It’s hosted by the high school, with proceeds to raise money for new uniforms, come one and all and rouse yourself out of your self-induced food coma to voluntarily run a 5k on a freezing Maine morning!
Dad agreed to donate his time as their on-site doctor and is dragging me along. The traitor.
Are you celebrating Chez Hunnicutt? I can just imagine you carving up Mill Valley’s most picture-perfect turkey. If you’re going running for fun the next day, though, I don’t want to hear about it.
His fingers itched for more—for new words to add to the hundreds he’d already memorized. And to think, he’d been so sure his days of mooning over mail call would be through after Korea.
Peg’s voice drifted in from the kitchen. “Honey?”
“Be right there.”
He hung up his jacket and headed in.
Peg had chosen fashionable pastels for the kitchen while he was away, opting for pale green formica counters that now had a dusting of flour overtop. That same flour also whitened her hands to the forearm and painted a single stripe across her temple.
“Where’s Viv?” he asked.
“Putting Erin down for a nap.”
“What can I do to help?”
This was something he’d never have asked before, especially after a day of work. But in the weeks after he’d returned home, he was so desperate to be useful, to slot back into life in Mill Valley, that he’d gladly taken any task Peg would give him. It was only fair, he reasoned, since both of them were working.
And besides, it was one of the few times that working side-by-side felt easy, again.
Peg tossed him a rolling pin. “Scrub in and start the pie crust assembly line.”
He caught it and leaned in to kiss her cheek on the way to the sink. Her skin was warm, faintly scented with cinnamon, but the kiss itself landed like stage direction. Still, it came more naturally now than when he first returned. Back then, every interaction between them was a minefield: one step easy camaraderie, the next step disaster. Over the past months, he’d learned the hard way to tread lightly and look where he put his feet.
Everyone said it took time and effort to adjust, but the application of time and effort made it ever-clearer to BJ that his dream of walking back into place as though he’d never left was just that—a dream. They’d settled since the summertime, yes, but into a shape that didn’t resemble what he’d imagined during the war.
Everything in his life had moved an inch to the left; identical from the outside, but from within, just wrong enough to leave him feeling like he’d slipped through the wardrobe and into some other world (1). At one point, Peg had suggested he find an analyst, maybe write Sidney and see if he had any colleagues in the Bay Area. BJ had nodded agreeably and made no attempt at writing the letter.
What was he supposed to say? Can you help me, doc? I think I love my wife like a best friend, and I miss my best friend the way I used to miss my wife. That was absolutely not worth the risk.
Time. It’d take time. He just had to wait out the adjustment period, wait until his head was back on straight.
He rolled up his sleeves and brushed over the stiff band of his new watch. The second hand tick-tick-ticked. Beside him, Peg tossed a sizzling stick of butter into a pan on the stovetop, humming Doris Day under her breath.
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love-light gleams
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams
#
BJ was dusting flour off his hands when Viv appeared in the doorway.
“Erin’s out cold,” she said, stepping into the kitchen. “That kid could sleep through an earthquake.”
“She gets that from her father,” Peg said without looking up, then winced into her mixing bowl.
Found another mine. BJ studiously avoided eye contact. His sleeping habits were yet one more thing that hadn’t survived the war.
The silence that might have unfolded in the wake of Peg’s words was, instead, filled by Viv’s bright burst of laughter. “Good, because if she wakes early and demands another new fairy story, she’s going to discover that I’m fresh out.”
Erin had developed a habit of demanding “new-new” stories from them over the past weeks, likely BJ’s fault from all the time he spent soothing her while weaving kid-appropriate versions of Uncle Hawkeye’s antics or reading from those Lewis novels. “Start another unfinished series with her at your own peril,” Viv had warned him shortly thereafter. Attempts to return to her tried-and-true favorites were met with disappointment at best and full-blown tantrums at worst.
“Better think fast,” Peg said. “She’ll be back on you tomorrow, and it’ll be an all-out war to get her down without one.”
Yet again, he caught the guilty look she cast him for her phrasing, but at least this was a pitch he could hit.
“I think Korea was less frightening,” he said, and earned a wobbly smile in return.
Viv moved to the counter and reached for the butter without being told, cutting it into Peg’s mixing bowl. They made a picture like that, standing next to one another—Viv’s dark, short crop next to Peg’s flowing flaxen curls.
“Definitely less frightening than this. Peg, tell me you’re not still using that sacrilegious recipe.”
“Excuse me,” Peg said, mock-offended, “this crust wins the blue ribbon at the church fair every year.”
“And with what do you bribe the judges?”
BJ wiped down the counter while trying to ignore how much their easy volley reminded him of the back-and-forth of a good day in the OR, when he and Hawkeye’s banter could cast the illusion that they were in a hospital back home, that their patients weren’t full of shrapnel, that they were two old friends who’d met anywhere but a warfront.
Would they be like that in the kitchen, too? Could Hawkeye even cook? He certainly appreciated good food enough, and baking was just chemistry, of a sort. Something told him Hawkeye wouldn’t get through an afternoon of tag-team crust-rolling without throwing at least one handful of flour BJ’s way. The kitchen would be covered. BJ would make a big fuss and pretend to be annoyed by the mess just to goad him into throwing more of it—an indoor snowball fight.
He shut his eyes and tried to picture it, but it was hard to imagine Hawkeye in anything but fatigues or that red bathrobe, and both spoiled the fantasy of a post-war life. The laugh, though? That he could hear as if Hawkeye stood beside him, brilliant and wild enough that it always got BJ smiling along with him.
“BJ?”
The banter had stopped. Peg and Viv both regarded him from opposite ends of a turned-out pie crust, wearing matching expressions of pinched-brow concern. It was like seeing double.
BJ scrubbed a hand down his face. Was this how the 4077th had felt when he and Hawkeye were joined at the hip? He was terribly glad that Peg had found a friend while he was away—and he liked witty, irreverent Viv in her own right, too—but sometimes it felt like he was circling outside the pair of them rather than the other way around.
“I’m alright,” he said. “Just woolgathering.”
Peg’s expression did something complicated. “If you need a moment . . .”
A moment? No—but he didn’t want to be around when that expression settled on pity.
He brushed a speck of flour off his sleeve. “I could use a shower.”
Viv waved a whisk at him. “Wash off the day, Hunnicutt. We’ve got things well in hand.”
Upstairs, the house was quieter, the smell of butter and cinnamon muted. Peg and Viv’s laughter followed him into the hall. One of them put a record on, and the opening notes of that new Perry Como song—the one all over the radio that he couldn’t quite make it through without changing the station—drifted through the floor. (2)
He slipped into Erin’s room and shut the door behind him with a gentle click. She lay curled in her “big girl bed,” guard rails up to keep her from spilling on the floor, lashes casting tiny shadows on her cheeks. Watching her sleep was like watching his heart beat out of his chest.
BJ slid into a chair at Erin’s bedside and waited for her to wake.
#
The desk lamp in BJ’s office threw a warm cone of light over its contents: stationary, the stack of envelopes addressed in Hawkeye’s handwriting, and the single photograph he had of the 4077th, propped against an empty coffee cup.
There was Hawkeye, in all his slouching glory, one hand in his pocket, the other raised in a wave that might have been mocking or might have been genuine. God, what BJ wouldn’t do for another picture just of him, but it wasn’t as though he could send that request via letter without revealing far too much. Maybe he’d find a way to get one of the two of them when Hawkeye came to visit.
BJ turned the watch on his wrist, the leather strap still stiff. One year. With interest. That promise burned in him. On some level, he figured that pinning all of his hopes on one person, on one visit, was a bad idea. What if seeing Hawkeye brought it all back and tore his heart out a second time? Or, worse still, what if they came face-to-face and realized they had nothing to talk about? That their friendship was built on misery and ended with the armistice? They’d exhaust a month’s worth of letter-writing in a day and then what, spend the rest of the trip drinking and retelling the same old war stories? Hawkeye would go home, and BJ would have to accept that this thing between them that he’d been missing like a limb never really existed at all.
He wouldn’t survive that.
BJ leafed through the letters again, flipping them in quick succession, though he didn’t quite know what he was looking for. Assurance, maybe, that he couldn’t find between their lines. He thought about calling—just to hear Hawkeye’s voice—but the long-distance charges were astronomical, and he’d spent years on military pay. Even with his new income and Peg’s knack for real estate, they were only just starting to climb out of a financial hole. (3)
And if he did scrounge the money together, what would he say, knowing an operator could listen in on the line?
He was holding the last letter when a light knock came at the doorframe. Peg hovered there, hair down, pale pink nightgown brushing her ankles.
“Still up?”
“Can’t sleep.” Hadn’t tried.
A pause. That was another new thing: the pauses. The seconds of silence in which they chose their words when once, they always seemed to know the right thing to say.
But if Peg had thought of mentioning his disturbed sleep, the silent nightmares, or how often he’d wake wracked with shivers after sweat soaked through his shirt and sheets alike, she decided against it.
“Viv’s coming by tomorrow morning. We’re taking Erin to the park after you leave for work.”
“She’ll like that.”
Peg gave him a soft smile, then nodded at the letter. “New one from Hawkeye?”
“No, I—” Too late, he realized he’d given himself away by admitting he was rereading old ones.
A shadow crossed Peg’s face, there then gone. “I’m very glad you had him, you know. That you still have him. A—a friend like that.”
If he engaged, if he started talking about Hawkeye, he’d surely say something he’d regret, so he redirected. “I’m glad you have Viv. Hell, I’m glad we have Viv.”
And there it was: the smile that used to be for him bloomed across her lips, but she wasn’t looking at him at all. Peg wrapped her arms around her ribcage as an answering bolt of something landed in his gut, and his next words escaped without his say-so.
“Did you and Viv . . . while I was away?”
The second the words left his mouth, he wished he could swallow them back down. This—this—was why he didn’t let himself run his mouth. Accusing Peg of infidelity was hypocrisy of the highest order, and that said nothing of how often he used to rant about how, just because they were attracted to all kinds, didn’t mean they were incapable of having close platonic friendships.
When his feelings about his own closest friend were anything but platonic.
But Peg didn’t respond with the affront or irritation he might have expected. Instead, she went terribly still. “BJ, we made an agreement.”
“I know.”
But that was before the war, back when it felt like such choices were possible, like the two of them were enough to sustain one another. He and Peg weren’t so different, after all, and if he felt like everything was all at odds, he couldn’t be the only one. Hell, all they had to do was look at the facts. They’d made love twice since his return. Not through any discussion, or argument, or issue—but simply because neither of them tried. Neither of them pressed.
Perhaps because they both wanted to want one another more than they actually did.
“I wouldn’t go back on it,” she said.
“I know you wouldn’t. But—you’ve thought about it.”
“What are you really asking me, here?”
He couldn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Alright.” After a too-quiet moment, punctuated by the tick of the clock on the far wall, she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Once. Quick. Chaste. “Let me know when you figure it out.”
Notes:
(1) I promise this isn’t an anachronism; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was first published in 1950, and I’m choosing to believe that BJ might have read it aloud to Erin—whether or not she was old enough to understand it—upon returning home in 1953.
(2) The Perry Como song in question is “No Other Love,” which took the #9 spot on the Billboard Top 100 in 1953. I will cop to the fact that I didn’t look up its release date, but given its place on the charts, I’m assuming it came out before November.
(3) This is no joke; long-distance calling was wildly expensive. During the early 1950s, direct-calling wasn’t possible, so all calls had to go through an operator. Connection could take a while, and the caller was billed based on the duration of the call (distance being a factor as well, of course). At the time, a call from LA to Boston would have been $3.75 for connection and the first three minutes, then would have been charged per minute after that. I’m not sure what the per-minute charge would have been or if there’s a difference re: Hawkeye’s father’s house being serviced by a rural operator, but if that charge was in the vicinity of a dollar, we’re looking at over $50 for a five-minute phone call in today-money. Since I’m operating under the assumption that BJ was fresh out of residency when he was drafted—and that, though Peg enjoys her job, she started working out of necessity—I figure they don’t have all that much in the bank right now, even though BJ is finally bringing in an attending surgeon’s paycheck.
Chapter Text
There were two exam rooms in the homey building housing the Pierce practice, and Hawkeye had spent well more than an hour in one of them, putting in overtime as Mrs. Bennett’s listening ear after he’d finished being her doctor.
“The oldest, Eleanor, is learning the violin,” Mrs. Bennett said, rosy-cheeked and beaming, white hair tucked into a neat bun. “She can already play ‘Silent Night’ all the way through. She’s Mary’s third, and what a precocious girl!”
Hawkeye glanced down at his wrist. The silver bezel of BJ’s watch winked up at him, catching the warm glow of a street light through the frosted window. Half past five. No wonder his energy frayed like an old bandage.
“That’s wonderful,” he said. “I’m sure she’s the next, uh, what’s-his-name. Heifetz. The one from The Telephone Hour.” (1)
“She takes after her aunt Sarah, you know. Mary’s sister-in-law. I think you went to school with her.” Mrs. Bennett leaned in. “Such a lovely dear. Shame she’s still unmarried. I hear she makes a mean apple cobbler.”
Hawkeye lingered at the window and let Mrs. Bennet sing Sarah’s praises—though he knew exactly which Sarah she meant, and no, he wasn’t in the market for a spring wedding—because he’d learned it was easier to smile and nod than to justify his bachelorhood. It turned out that arguments like “Trust me, Sarah doesn’t want to be hitched to a guy who talks out loud to his absent bunkie and wakes up shouting every other night” didn’t inspire much faith in his medicinal abilities.
Christmas carols spilled faintly from the waiting room radio, soft and tinny. He brushed his cuff along the windowpane to melt a strip of frost. The storefronts along Main Street had dressed themselves up in lights and garlands, making a festive wonderland out of the snow banked along the sidewalks. Once upon a time, the sight would have warmed him from the inside. Now, it left him aching, like he was walking through someone else’s holiday.
During that last night in the mess tent, he’d told the 4077th that this was what he wanted: a cozy town, a small practice, and days without black-tagging a kid he could have saved if there weren’t a line of red-tagged kids behind him. But god, he was bored. Not just idle—bored like his bones were stiff with it. Bored and half-afraid that Korea had put him between the proverbial rock and a hard place. He’d spent his life training to become a surgeon, and maybe that meant he couldn’t hack it as a small-town doctor, couldn’t live without the rush of liquid gold focus he found in the middle of saving a life. But what if he tried to go back and his hands wouldn’t remember, or his head wouldn’t hold? Maybe it was better not to know.
“. . . and of course she’ll be at services on Sunday. I’m sure the family would be so happy to have you join us on the pew, Doctor,” Mrs. Bennett continued, oblivious to how far his mind had wandered. He’d been doing that a lot, lately—slipping out of his life in the middle of it. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen either you or your father down at the parish since—”
“Thanks for the invite, Mrs. Bennett,” Hawkeye interrupted, gentle but firm, easing her down from the table. “Why don’t we schedule you again in six months, keep that ticker happy?”
She took the redirection admirably and let him steer her through the door toward Hazel, the saint of a receptionist his father had hired while Hawkeye was overseas. He bid Mrs. Bennett a merry Christmas with a kiss on the cheek, which she tittered over, then went to find his dad in the tiny office behind the front desk.
“Mrs. Bennett talk your ear off?” his dad asked as Hawkeye shut the door behind him. He already wore his coat and scarf, though his hat hung from a hook behind the door.
“If I’d known taking her as a patient was repayment for all those coffees in bed, I’d have gotten my act together a lot sooner.”
His dad ignored the joke, eyes tracking instead to Hawkeye’s wrist. “You’re wearing it.”
“Yeah.” He snagged his coat, jamming his arm—the one with the watch—in straight away. “No surprises, but the battery died in the one I left here while I was off at MacArthur’s School for Wayward Surgeons, so I’m borrowing BJ’s for now.” And damn it, but his mouth just kept running. “Didn’t need one over there. Didn’t wear one over there, did you know that? They’d send orderlies or corpsmen to come wake us when it was time for our shifts, and the rest of the time we’d get woken up by the PA or choppers or by that goddamn bugle—”
“Seems sensible to wear one, now.”
Hawkeye tugged on his mittens and thanked a slew of deities that his dad had chosen not to dig into his thin excuses. After all, he could have fixed his own watch with a detour through town earlier in the day. But it felt good, the weight of this one, the scuff on the case where BJ had once dropped it in the scrub room. He wore it exactly as BJ had—face out on his left wrist. Without meaning to, his thumb drifted along the edge of the strap, right where it once touched BJ’s pulse point.
It was like wearing a plaster cast, Hawkeye reasoned. Someday soon, surely, the ache in his chest would fade, and he’d take the watch off. The break would be healed. They’d go back to being friends, an entire continent would remain between them, and everything would be fine.
It had to be.
“Ready to head home?” his father asked.
They bid Hazel goodnight together and slipped onto the street, shoulders hunched against the bite of the breeze. Their boots crunched on the salted walkway. Somewhere, faint and far, came the sound of carolers.
Hawkeye tugged at his mittens, traced the shape of the silver bezel beneath them, and kept walking.
#
The living room smelled faintly of pine and woodsmoke, owing to the modest tree in the corner and the fire snapping and hissing at Hawkeye’s back. He sat cross-legged on the rug with a glass of eggnog sweating beside him. His father, reclined in the beaten-up armchair closest to the fire, had his slippers kicked up on the coffee table.
“You’re gonna polish a hole right through that record, Hawk.”
“It’s called preservation,” Hawkeye said, squinting at the faintest smudge on the vinyl before brushing it with exquisite care. (2) “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since these things were cleaned? I don’t want Nat King Cole sounding like he’s gargling gravel.”
“And here I thought you were just inventing excuses to keep hopping up every ten minutes. You’re as jumpy as a dog waiting for the mailman.”
Hawkeye replaced the record, dropped the needle, and stood back with exaggerated reverence. “See? Pure velvet. Not a speck of dust in sight.” He took another sip of eggnog—better make it last, because it was the only glass he’d allow himself that evening—to avoid engaging his father’s other point. Because yes, he was about to crawl out of his skin. And yes, it was because of the damn mail. Again.
A letter from BJ sat unopened on the table, daring him.
He made himself finish three rows of the scarf he was knitting before he let himself at the envelope.
Dear Hawk,
Merry Christmas! Or if holiday mail delays mean this doesn’t reach you in time, Happy Boxing Day!
Though I can’t say we celebrate Boxing Day over here, I’ve still somehow managed to draw KP duty for the second year in a row. Our Thanksgiving dinner was enough of a success that we’ve been drafted into Peg’s sister’s Christmas production. If that sounds like fun and games, you should know that she runs a tighter ship than Margaret and is equally as terrifying. (Though I’ll say, I wouldn’t mind having Margaret on KP with me again this year. I hear she’s doing well in Boston, but it’d be good to see her.)
Did I mention that Peg’s sister lives in Utah? The whole Hayden family scattered around the Midwest, it seems, and Alice moved up to Salt Lake City with her husband a few years back. It’s a hell of a trip, but we’re taking the Zephyr—that’s the name of the train—and I’m looking forward to watching the scenery from the viewing car (3).
Did you know the Zephyr goes all the way to Chicago? I took a look at the schedule when I booked the tickets and realized it stops at Ottumwa. Maybe one of these years we can do a cross-country trip by train and visit all the 4077th on the way. Hopefully Klinger will be back in Toledo by then, and
Hawkeye turned the page, doing his level best to avoid thinking too much about the close quarters of a cross-country train ride with BJ. As he did, a photograph fell from between the pages and into his lap: one of BJ with Erin in his arms. His breath caught. Erin was so much bigger since he saw her in Peggy’s anniversary video. Her hair had grown out in soft, baby fine curls, and she tucked a chubby cheek into BJ’s shoulder.
And BJ. God, BJ. California sunshine agreed with him, the tan obvious even in black and white. He looked right into the camera and hit Hawkeye with the full force of that megawatt smile, and damn it, he made it all too easy for Hawkeye to imagine the smile was for him.
“Look at this, Dad,” he said through the sharp ache in his chest. “The mustache deserves its own caption. I can’t believe Peg let him keep the thing.”
“If he didn’t shave it after how much you razzed him, I can’t imagine he’d shave it for anyone.”
He didn’t fall into the trap of pointing out that Peg was BJ’s wife and that was different, because his dad had some very particular opinions on how important he was to BJ, and staring at that photograph left him far too tender to hear them.
Hawkeye set it down with aching care and returned to the letter, which turned first to the paper BJ had nagged him into coauthoring, then to reminiscing. It closed out the way so many of the others did:
We sure had some times, didn’t we? I don’t know if I miss them, but I sure miss you.
Merry Christmas, Hawk.
—BJ
“Miss you too, Beej,” he whispered, soft enough his father wouldn’t hear him over Nat King Cole.
This was fine. It would be fine. By next summer, he’d be steady enough to read a sign-off to one of BJ’s letters without feeling like he was being stabbed. He’d be able to look at a picture of BJ and his kid and not feel like his heart was going to climb out his throat and take a dive for the floor. He’d have to be.
He set the letter aside, along with a draft of BJ’s paper, and snatched up the next letter in the stack. This one was from Margaret, and it delivered the usual updates: news she’d heard from other members of the 4077th, rants about choice members of the surgical team at Mass General who didn’t appreciate the nurses’ value, and complaints about Charles, who she met for coffee once a week. Hawkeye cackled at the thought of the two of them working in the same hospital, stranded like mismatched castaways.
His reply to her would be filled with incredulity over the company she kept, these days, though he understood the pull of finding a familiar face in a sea of strangers. If he were being honest, he might admit to a smidge of envy.
Margaret’s letters also typically contained a rumor about at least one open surgical position in the northeast corridor. She’d been the most incredulous when she learned he really had made good on his promise to join his father’s practice and constantly offered to pass his name along to friends or former colleagues. The positions rarely appealed to him. Except—
Grace New Haven is a teaching hospital, Yale-affiliated, with a strong research mission. They’re looking for cardiothoracic surgeons, and between you and me, I’ve heard rumors that they’re getting involved with a Mayo Clinic trial, though I don’t have any more details.
Hawkeye drummed his fingers on his kneecap. A strong research mission. And a teaching hospital, too. The sort of department where innovation was rewarded and publication expected. Maybe that was the kind of place where he could put his name on something meaningful.
Think about it, Pierce. Planned surgeries. Patients with a fighting chance. I know the head of the CT team there, and I think you’d find you agree with his philosophy. Trust me, you’d be an instant hire.
“Can you picture the look on Charles’s face if I went to Yale’s hospital instead of Harvard? He’d never forgive me.”
His dad raised a brow. “Is Major Houlihan writing you about more openings?”
“Grace New Haven. (4) They’re hiring surgeons.”
“That’d keep you from climbing my walls.”
Hawkeye fiddled with the envelope. “A long way to go for entertainment.”
“Don’t tell me distance is what’s got you hesitating. It’s what, six hours from here? With the new highway they’re building, maybe less. (5) You could leave Friday after work and be here in time to enjoy a long weekend. And the train runs along the coast there, doesn’t it?”
“Hour and some change to New York, two and a half to Boston,” Hawkeye said.
“You’d be near your friends.”
Close enough to take the train in to go dancing with Margaret and Helen at the Punch Bowl (6), spend the night on their couch, and be home the following afternoon.
“I’ll think about it.”
He shuffled letters again and fished BJ’s back out of the pile, setting it across his lap. As if sensing the end of the conversation, his dad went back to his book.
Hawkeye pinched a pencil from the coffee table and threw himself into the draft of their paper on the artificial kidney machine they’d built out of, frankly, a whole lot of junk. They were on their second round of revisions, now, and the paper had started to resemble something the peer reviewers at JAMA might actually agree to publish.
He made margin notes while grinning at all the between-the-lines hints at how they’d obtained the parts for the machine: Sears and Roebuck, a restaurant in Toledo, scrounging on R&R in Tokyo. Those hints had him drifting, imagining the artificial fireplace they’d tried to enjoy in the August heat. The tub. The kid with renal failure they’d managed to stabilize and get sent home for the holidays.
Nat King Cole faded out as the record finished, leaving the needle to click-click-click just a shade faster than the ticking of the mantle clock.
He stood, flipped the record, and returned to the paper as the first notes began to play.
Pretend you're happy when you're blue
It isn't very hard to do
And you'll find happiness without an end
Whenever you pretend
#
It was pitch black when Hawkeye woke. He couldn’t quite grasp the edges of the nightmare that had ejected him into consciousness, but it lingered, leaving an unsettling pit in his stomach. A better night than most, though ‘better’ wasn’t quite good enough to slow the racing of his heart.
He curled up on his side and drew the quilt to his chin, then reconsidered his strategy and reached blindly for the nightstand, fingers closing around BJ’s watch. It joined his head on the pillow. Hawkeye shut his eyes and listened to it tick-tick-tick until sleep dragged him under.
The next morning, he wrote a letter.
You know what, Margaret? You win. Pass on my name.
Notes:
Batch of nerdery incoming:
(1) The Telephone Hour was an NBC radio broadcast featuring violin virtuoso Jacha Heifetz, in which he played accompanied by an orchestra, conducted by Donald Voorhees. An episode aired in October 1953, and I’m taking the liberty of assuming Hawkeye listened to it.
(2) As someone who has owned and listened to many a record in a dusty old New England house, I can confirm that brushing/cleaning is a necessary step in the music-listening process. Mine manage to attract dust and lint even inside protective sleeves—worse in the winter when it’s dry and the friction from playing them creates static cling. If you want a funny image, picture Hawkeye getting shocked all winter every time he goes to change a record, because I sure do.
(3) The California Zephyr is a train from the San Francisco area to Chicago, IL. Service began in 1949 and includes a dome-like observation car. Because construction of the I-80 didn’t begin until 1956, I suspect the Zephyr would be the most efficient method of travel for the Hunnicutts. It’d still have been a pretty intense trip, but this probably isn’t the first time they’ve taken the Zephyr to family Christmas, and I’m operating under the assumption that Peg pushed for it in hopes that a little family magic might make BJ’s first Christmas home from the war feel more special. And yes, the Zephyr actually does stop in Ottumwa—words cannot express how tickled I was to see it on the itinerary.
(4) Grace New Haven Hospital still exists, but is now known as Yale New Haven Hospital following a more formal agreement with the Yale School of Medicine in 1965.
(5) That “new highway they’re building” is the I-95.
(6) The Punch Bowl was a gay bar / dance club in Boston, and there was absolutely nothing subtle about it—from its signage to its reputation—even in the 1950s. I imagine Hawkeye would have danced a lot of lindies there during residency. I know we think of San Francisco as The Place for queer nightlife during the lavender scare, but New England had plenty of queer culture, especially near artistic communities, major urban areas, or centers of secondary education. (Also, yes, I’m heavily implying that Margaret and Helen Whitfield are together in this story, and that Hawkeye and Margaret know about one another. What fun is writing fanfic unless you can make everyone a little bit queer?)
Chapter Text
When the Morrises from three doors down fell ill with the flu after Christmas, BJ and Peg—with great hesitation and almost immediate regret—agreed to take on the responsibility for throwing the neighborhood New Year’s Eve party. Neither of them felt particularly festive. Christmas celebrations had been fun, but travelling to and from Utah left them bushed. Although BJ was pretty sure he’d rather chew through concrete than put on their third massive to-do of the season, he and Peg had come to the same conclusion: their family had cashed in heavily on neighborly goodwill while BJ was away, and they owed the neighborhood a return.
So now, instead of the quiet come-down they’d hoped for, their house buzzed with voices and laughter. Christmas lights twinkled on every surface, tinsel reflecting their glow from the mantel to the windows—decorations they’d opted to leave up to add to the festive feel. BJ drifted through the crowd, brandishing a half-empty glass of sparkling wine like a shield, unease coiling tighter around him with every step.
A familiar laugh drew his attention to the punch bowl where Susan Davis stood with Viv. Susan was a surgical nurse at SFG, and while it was nice to have someone nearby who worked in his department, he also wished he could separate work and home a bit more. Before leaving for the Christmas holiday, he’d spent an entire surgery listening to her dissect the entire cul-de-sac’s choice of lawn decorations.
Susan also came part-and-parcel with her husband Gary, a barrel-chested cop whose swagger and sneer never failed to set BJ’s teeth on edge. (1)
Alas, it was Gary who spotted him first.
“Hunnicutt! There you are,” he said, thumping his glass on the table.
BJ startled, earning a guffaw and a backslap.
“Jumpy tonight, are ya?” Gary asked, then swung back to the conversation with Susan and Viv, shouldering into it with the confidence of a man who’d always felt welcome where he traveled, whether or not he actually was. “Sue tells me you’re a good friend of the Hunnicutts,” he said to Viv. “She says she sees your car in the drive almost as much as she sees BJ’s.”
Viv offered up a tight smile. “Peg and BJ are very welcoming friends, yes.”
“Welcoming, is it?”
The crux of BJ’s problem was this: that everything about Gary, from his mannerisms to the tongue-in-cheek way he slipped accusations into small-talk, reminded BJ of the good ol’ boys whose company his father kept. And BJ had never been able to shape himself into what they wanted or expected, no matter how hard he tried.
“I’d hope so,” BJ said, summoning his best breezy smile. “Viv has been a lifesaver for Peg and I, what with Erin being so young and our schedules so unpredictable.”
Gary let out another one of those infuriating chuckles. “Sounds like she spends more time here than with her husband.”
“Gary,” Susan hissed.
BJ’s face went hot, and he retraced the conversation, scrambling to work out where Gary had picked up whateverthehell idea he meant to imply. Thankfully, Viv saved him from responding.
“I should think so,” she said lightly. “My husband died in combat. Korea.”
Gary flinched, but recovered quickly. “A war hero! God bless. They say those boys did their best over there. Shame it all ended the way it did.”
“I take it you never served, Mr. Davis?”
“I tried to join up during dubya-dubya-two, but they gave me the ol’ 4-F.” (2)
Viv put on her best pitying smile, the menace. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Didn’t stop me from serving in my own way, though.” Gary puffed out his chest. “Joined the force as soon as I finished school and haven’t looked back. Isn’t that right, Sue?”
“It’s how we met,” Susan said. “I was in the ER before I became a surgical nurse, you know.”
“Cops and nurses,” BJ completed. “Like peanut butter and jelly. You know, I worked with some damn fine nurses overseas, Susan. Have I ever told you about Major Houlihan?”
He trotted out an old story about Margaret while shooting Viv a look—the same kind of silent communication he often had with Peg—that said I’ve got this. Get out while you can.
She raised her drink and backed away from the punch table. Cheers. I owe you one.
Though he wasn’t nearly as good a storyteller as Hawkeye, BJ managed to slip in a few digressions and embellishments, keeping Susan entertained until Gary finished his whiskey and began casting anxious glances toward the bar cart. BJ intended to drag the story out just to torture him, but Mrs. Parker from up the street cut his plans short by tapping him on the shoulder.
“Doctor Hunnicutt, you’re being paged.” (3)
BJ turned to find Erin at the top of the stairs, hair in a sleep sculpture, clutching the moose stuffie Hawkeye had sent her for Christmas. How she’d escaped her bed was anyone’s guess; maybe someday she’d be a mountaineer.
“The rest of the story will have to wait,” BJ said, setting down his glass.
He escaped to the sound of Gary wondering why he wouldn’t “just call Peggy to take care of it” and avoided the impulse to spin back around and give the guy a piece of his mind. Nothing was worth getting into it with the husband of one of his coworkers. And besides, by the time he mounted the stairs and scooped Erin into his arms, earning a giggle and a “hi, daddy!” his anger had faded to nothing.
“Hey there, Er-Bear. What are you doing up?”
She mashed her face into his shoulder. “Moose-moose came to say hi.”
“You and Moose-moose are supposed to be in bed.”
“Not sleepy.”
“No? You look half asleep already. Come on, let’s tuck you in.”
He examined the guard rails of her “big girl bed” and determined that, however she’d managed to scale them, they remained structurally sound enough to prevent an accidental fall.
“You stay, Daddy?”
“Until you doze off, Bear,” he said and tucked her back beneath the rumpled covers. By the time he had Moose-moose arranged at her side, she was out.
Still, he lingered, unwilling to look a gift reprieve in the mouth. With a kiss to Erin’s soft, warm head, he retreated to the chair at her bedside. Amazing how, here, everything else seemed insignificant—the low-grade frustration of involuntary hosting, the persistent unease wearing away at him each time some neighbor set off a firecracker, Gary. He’d pay for it all tonight, of course. Stressful days meant restless dreams. But somehow, sitting at Erin’s bedside and stroking her downy soft hair made it all seem worth it.
Maybe the Greeks were right with how they thought of love and its many, varied kinds. It seemed like he found new ways to love Erin every day, yet they were so different from his steadfast care for Peg, or from how he felt about the 4077th, the feelings still tender, but tried under fire.
And then there was Hawkeye.
His eyes rested on Moose-moose, sent in a package that arrived after their return from Utah. If loving his family filled him, sometimes he wondered whether loving Hawkeye cored him out, whether a piece of his heart had been pulled from his chest to tick-tick-tick in Crabapple Cove alongside his watch.
Maybe the Greeks had a word for that, too. He should look it up.
#
BJ crept back downstairs a minute to midnight. Their guests had crowded around the television in the living room to join the countdown, so BJ hooked a left in hopes of slipping through the kitchen and into the back of the celebration unnoticed.
He paused when he saw who stood there.
Under the sprig of mistletoe Peg had jokingly hung beside the fridge—“think of the laughs we’ll get over leftovers”—she crowded close with Viv, holding her by the upper arms, a half-step away from an embrace. BJ knew that pose. He knew that expression on Viv’s face, too, and what it was like to stand in Peg’s place, so near his best friend in the world, desperate to sway in and close the last of the distance. He’d spent two years with his hands on Hawkeye, with Hawkeye’s all over him, stopping just short of a line that couldn’t be uncrossed.
Peg and Viv hovered on opposite sides of that line. They wouldn’t kiss. They weren’t that stupid. But they wanted to, and even though on some level he’d known it, a flash of something white-hot shook through him at having confirmation.
This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t part of the agreement.
I could have learned to love you again. I know I haven’t been the same, but with enough time, I’d have found my way back. You didn’t give me the chance.
As if sensing his arrival, Peg shifted, and their eyes met. She jolted away from Viv and yanked open the refrigerator. Viv stumbled back a step and—god, BJ hated that she looked at him the way the kids on his operating table used to before the pentathol kicked in, the ones who said, “I’m not gonna make it, Doc, am I?” as it dragged them under.
The countdown started before any of them could say a word. BJ turned on his heel and walked into the living room, raising his glass on autopilot as a new year began. He accepted Mrs. Parker’s kiss on the cheek, toasted with Susan and Gary, and sang Auld Lang Syne with the rest of them, but his mind drifted away to the night he’d met Peg. To the way his knees shook when he’d asked to take her on a date. To the blissful early days of marriage. Erin’s tiny hands. His draft notice. Years of meatball surgery. Coming back different, changed, with the life he’d once lived shifted out of place, like he’d stepped on a plane and ended up in another timeline, and now nothing could ever go back to the way it was.
Rewind the clock three years, and he’d be at the Morris’ place, kissing Peg at midnight. Two years, and he’d be in the mess tent with Hawkeye in Sears and Roebuck coats. One year, and he and Hawkeye would be walking back to the Swamp shoulder-to-shoulder, with snow falling around them.
What the fuck was wrong with him, that he stood here in his living room in Mill Valley and felt any kind of nostalgia for the misery of Korea?
BJ drifted through the living room as the night wound down and guests trickled out. If he carried on conversation, he didn’t register it, coming to only as he found that Gary had once again cornered Viv near the punch bowl, holding court with Joe and Lisa Simmons. Whatever he’d drank since BJ last saw him had left his speech fuzzy and his demeanor changed—contrite enough to deliver something that resembled an apology.
“I’m sorry your fella never came home. Didn’t mean to offend, earlier, but you gotta understand what it looks like from the outside, you coming around on your lonesome all the time.” He gestured with his glass, whiskey sloshing to the rim. “Don’t worry. We’ll tell the neighborhood gossips what the story is. Now, how’d you meet these Hunnicutts, anyway? Real peaches.”
Viv cast a pained glance toward the kitchen, where Peg and Susan boxed up leftovers. “Peg and I were in the same support group for military wives.”
“Group?” Gary squinted at her. “For the wives?”
“The base did a fine job of connecting us with other women in the area to prepare us for when our husbands returned.”
Gary nearly choked with laughter. “Can’t believe the army thought you’d need some program to tell you the first thing a man wants when he sees his wife.”
BJ stepped forward to intervene, because jesus christ, Gary, what the hell—but unflappable Viv only arched a brow and said,
“No, they assumed we had that well in hand.”
“She was a married woman, Gary,” Lisa added. “And you know that’s not what she meant.”
Viv quirked a smile at her. “We sure didn’t need the army to draw us a diagram.” She waited out another explosion of laughter, then added, softly, “But after reading Ron’s letters, I got a picture of the sort of things he saw over there, and I went to as many seminars as I could to be ready to help him with the readjustment.”
“They’re giving classes about guys who come home funny in the head, now?” Gary scoffed. “You didn’t have to worry about that. Sounds like your Ron was a real soldier, not one of those lily-livers who can’t take it when a baby cries or a kid lights off a firecracker.”
BJ froze, something in his chest stretching like a rubber band. The dim light of his living room shifted and muted until he was looking at the squalor of the Swamp superimposed over the detritus of the party, Hawkeye’s cot adjacent to the abandoned glasses on the coffee table. A memory surfaced of Hawkeye lying there in the hours after he forgave BJ for leaving without a note—forgiveness BJ hadn’t properly asked for and that he certainly didn’t deserve. Hawkeye’s features had crumbled as he whispered, “It was a baby, Beej. She smothered her own baby because of me.” And BJ gave him all the empty platitudes in the world, but hadn’t crossed that divide between them, because if he had, if he’d pulled Hawkeye into his arms, he’d have never let him go.
So he’d let him down, instead.
Gary’s voice cut through the memory. “Ah, here’s the man himself! You ever come across any of those types, Hunnicutt?”
“What types?”
Gary didn’t know him well enough to hear the lethal undertone in his voice, but oh, Peg did, and she came careening out of the kitchen with Susan on her heels.
“The ones who crack under pressure. You know,” Gary continued. “On second thought, can’t imagine you saw many. Don’t know what you’d do with them at a MASH unit.”
What he meant, of course, was I don’t know how you’d fix heads at a MASH, but all BJ could see was Hawkeye scrubbed up across the table from him, talking him through one of the worst days of his life. Hawkeye swinging up into a jeep to stabilize a dying soldier. Hawkeye with his hands around a kid’s heart.
“Give it a rest, Gary,” Joe said. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to rehash the war.”
“Come on, are you gonna deny a soldier his chance to tell a few stories? I bet he saw all kinds over there.”
BJ clenched his hand into a fist. Relaxed it. Tried to breathe. This wasn’t Korea. He couldn’t go for Gary’s throat and expect it to shake out in his favor.
“If you’d been there, you’d know everyone cracks a little.”
Gary had the gall to laugh. “I’ve seen fighting aplenty with the blue. Some boys just don’t get made of the same mettle as the rest of us. One of our detectives tried to get his son on the force last summer, but it turned out the kid had taken a vacation on the funny farm while he was overseas. Started sweating at target practice. I said, sir, I know he’s your son and all, but what am I supposed to do with a headcase like that? Seems to me a thing like that should put a mark on a soldier’s record. A way to separate out the fairies and flinchers from the rest of—”
“Get out.”
Gary pulled up short. “What?”
“Now BJ, let’s all take a breath,” Joe said, edging between them.
“Get out of my house, Gary.”
“You can’t be serious.”
BJ stepped forward, drawing up to his full height. Let Gary square up. Let him do it in the living room. It’d keep him from getting another word out, and that was just fine, because a too-long holiday season and hours of playing pretend and Gary’s remarks and mistletoe and the far-off pop of fireworks had filled him to the brim.
Gary’s features shifted as he looked BJ over—an expression only BJ’s father had ever directed his way. “Never thought you’d defend those kinds.”
He was going to clock the disdainful smile right off Gary’s face.
A hand landed on his shoulder, holding him still. “He doesn’t mean it like it sounds,” Joe said. “You know how he is.”
He knew how Gary was, yes, which was why he knew Gary meant every single word. And so did BJ. “Another peep, and you’ll see exactly what I’ll do when someone insults the men and women I served with.”
“Gary.” Susan locked her hands white-knuckled on his arm and tugged him toward the foyer. For the first time that night, Gary let her guide him away.
BJ held his eyes until the door shut behind them.
The silence that followed was total. Peg stared at him, openmouthed. It occurred to him that she’d never seen him like this, never met the beast that sometimes shifted and strained beneath his skin, never witnessed his still-smashing fury. No one over here ever had.
“Alright, BJ?” Joe asked. He’d dropped back beside Lisa, one shoulder in front of hers. Defensive posture.
“He doesn’t get to talk about me and mine like that,” BJ said. “Not under my roof.”
“Struck a nerve huh? Well, he’s good at that.” He slapped BJ on the back, and it took everything BJ had not to flinch. “I’ll have a chat with him about it, alright?”
BJ flexed his hands. He’d much prefer it if the ‘chat’ involved knocking Gary’s teeth into his tonsils, but this still wasn’t Korea, and Gary was his neighbor, and Gary was a cop, and BJ had to get a fucking grip.
“Sure, Joe. Thanks.”
The awkward pause that chased his words made it abundantly clear that the night was over. The Simmonses went for their coats and said their goodnights, leaving only BJ, Peg, and Viv behind.
At the punch bowl, Viv turned to face him like a soldier might a firing squad. It only fed he thrashing thing in his chest that howled don’t you see? I didn’t come back alright. None of us did. Everything is wrong, it’s all wrong, and I feel like I’m sinking every day while you two are fine, you two have one another, but the only one who still sees me, the one who got me through a war and who’s getting me through its aftermath is three thousand miles away, and that asshole just stood in the middle of my living room and dared insult him, and—
“I need some air,” he said, and bolted for his office.
The quiet there, measured by the ticking of the wall clock, was less suffocating. A hideous Hawaiian-style shirt covered in lobster print draped over the back of the chair. He held it to his face and inhaled, imagining he could smell Maine, imagining he could feel the press of Hawkeye’s palms, folding and tucking it into a package bound for Mill Valley.
“Happy New Year, Hawk,” he whispered. And with Gary’s words still echoing in his head, he added, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Downstairs, a muted conversation began, then cut off. The front door opened and shut. Footsteps creaked from the living room, through the hall, and up the stairs. When they stopped outside his door, BJ lifted his face from the shirt to find Peg there, her light blue party dress swishing at her knees.
Ah—so they were doing this right away, then.
“BJ . . .” She rubbed at her eyes. Only then did he register the dark circles beneath them. “I don’t even know where to start.”
He cleared his throat and lowered the shirt, but didn’t let go of it. “Last time, when we talked about Viv, you wanted to know what I was really trying to ask you.”
She winced, but said nothing.
“You were right. I never questioned what you did while I was away. Not really. But I think I’d like to know what you want to do now. Because this?” He gestured between them. “This isn’t working.”
Peg sagged against the doorframe. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve been putting off for too long.”
Jesus. He knew, knew, but saying it out loud and confronting all the ways he’d failed was harder than he’d expected. “Peg, I—I tried. You have to know I tried.”
“I swear, if you’re letting Gary Davis’ running mouth get to you—”
“He’s not wrong to say some of us came home different. It feels like I went over there and walked through a door, and the door locked behind me, and now I can’t get back to where I was.”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You’re not the only one. I walked through a different kind of door, but with a similar result.”
“What are you saying?”
“I love you, BJ, but I don’t think I’m capable of loving you the way I’m supposed to.” Her hands wrung the fabric of her skirt. “Do you remember that day in the park? The picnic?”
It wasn’t their first date by any stretch, but it was the one where he’d started imagining a future with her. She’d worn this yellow sundress that drove him wild and packed a picnic, and they’d driven out to the orange groves to watch the sun set. Alone but for the call of birds and the wide-open sky, she’d hinted—carefully, so carefully—that she knew more about BJ than he’d told her. That she knew he was different. That something was different about her, too.
She was the first person he’d told since he was twelve and had that disastrous afternoon with his father. It hadn’t felt safe, or right, to fess up to the few girlfriends he’d had before. And when he was with men, well, the shape of his desires was self-evident, and most of them didn’t much care if he went straight half the time. Talking to Peg was a weight off his shoulders. A different kind of intimacy and trust. Having a partner who not only understood, but shared the same experiences—it was too good to be true.
BJ had lived his whole life trying to cut off half of who he was to fit into the mold his father cast for him. To be seen for all his odds and edges was sudden and new, but vital as breathing.
No wonder he’d fallen so hard for her.
“You changed my life that day when you told me we were the same. That you liked both.”
“I know. But I was wrong.”
His knees weakened, and his desk chair rose up to meet him. “It’s Viv, isn’t it?”
She gave him a tight nod. Crazy how such a small gesture could feel so monumental, so final, and yet so terribly inevitable. So obvious, if he looked back at the last months—last few years—with a more objective eye. Peg wasn’t his. Not fully. In some ways, maybe she never was.
If he’d found out while he was over there, he’d have lost it. His brittle edges wouldn’t have survived a Dear John letter. But here, now, he was numbed out. Maybe there really was something wrong with him, cracked from the war, because all he could think was thank god it wasn’t just me, coming back with my heart bent into a shape she could no longer fill. Thank god I’m not the one breaking her hers.
Thank god I don’t have to pretend that she’s breaking mine.
The BJ in Korea would have met her confession with shouting, with pleading, with just give me one more chance, Peg, I can fix this, I can be better, I can be the rock you once relied on. He’d have lied, because the BJ in Korea lied—to her, to Hawkeye, and most of all, to himself. Peg was the honest one. The one who saw the writing on the wall long before he let himself acknowledge it.
The BJ here, now, clutched that ugly lobster shirt to his chest, shut his eyes, and tried not to cry. Because Peg might not have broken his heart in the typical sense, but mourning for what could-have-been in a different world, in a different life, felt just as rotten.
“BJ . . .” A hand rested on his shoulder, featherlight. “You’re still my husband, even if that means something different for us. You can tell me anything.”
“You already know, don’t you?”
“You’re not very subtle, darling. And I can’t help but think you aren’t angry with Gary on your own behalf.”
The story wasn’t his to tell, but he needed Peg to understand. “Hawkeye had a hard time at the end.”
“He’s still having a hard time, isn’t he?”
“We both are.” He forcibly relaxed his grip on the shirt, letting it slip into his lap. “He’s my best friend, but I wasn’t always there for him. I’m not there as much as I’d like now. And he’s not here, either, to help me make sense of this. To figure out what to say.”
“You miss him.”
“So fucking much.”
As if she could hear everything he swallowed back—he’s my Viv. He’s in my bones and I don’t know what to do about it, because I can’t lose him, and that might mean I never truly get to have him, and I’m not sure I can live with that—she closed the distance and hugged him tight. He lost his battle against the tears, but at least he wasn’t crying alone.
They held one another for a long time, rocking lightly back and forth, faces pressed into one another’s shoulders. When he finally regained the use of his voice, he cleared his throat and pulled back.
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Next time, you should kiss Viv under the mistletoe.”
Her jaw trembled. “You mean that.”
“I love you,” he said, voice cracking on the words. “And I don’t want you to keep feeling the way I’m feeling if we can fix it.”
“That’s not in the agreement. BJ. BJ, look at me.” She touched his cheek. “I don’t want you to make amendments on my behalf—not if you have it in your head that you don’t have a say. That this is your penance for the time you were gone.”
Was that what this was? Had he found a new and inventive way to punish himself? He fiddled with a button on the shirt. When he considered it, when he pictured what he’d seen in the kitchen and the hot pang of envy that had rushed through him, he had to admit it wasn’t Viv he envied. Maybe keeping to their old agreement out of a sense of obligation, no matter how much had changed in the intervening years, would be the real punishment.
“Maybe change isn’t such a bad thing.”
“BJ—”
“Just be careful, okay? Promise me you two will be very, very careful.” He let out a strangled laugh. “Something tells me Gary and Susan aren’t going to be our biggest fans after tonight, and we can’t afford the talk. I’m sorry I added to it.”
She stroked his cheek. “I’ll do my best. You and Erin mean the world to me.”
“And Viv.” At her wince, he clarified, “What kind of hypocrite would I be if I refused to acknowledge it? We’ll work it out, won’t we? Like we’ve always done.”
“Like we’ve always done,” she echoed, eyes watering, and pulled him in again.
He breathed into her embrace, letting her hold him like a tether to something solid. With eyes shut, and cheek pressed into Peg’s shoulder, he murmured,
“Happy New Year, darling.”
Notes:
(1) Remember kids: ACAB.
(2) A 4-F is the service classification for individuals who are medically unfit for military service. This would have disqualified Gary from the draft. The interesting thing is that he’s a cop, so whatever DQ’d him is either less of an issue in the states (ie: a latex or dietary allergy) . . . or he’s lying in this scene, never volunteered for service, and played up his medical issue to dodge the draft. BJ would have no way of knowing which of those options is true, so I’m not going to elaborate more, but let’s just say I headcanon Gary a very specific way.
(3) Paged isn’t an anachronism, here. The term ‘being paged’ isn’t derived from pager technology, but rather, pager technology was named after the term. The origins are old-old-old, dating back to when page or messenger boys were used to deliver physical messages.
Chapter Text
Two months after his arrival at Grace New Haven, Hawkeye finally began to feel like less of an interloper. He’d learned the quirks of the operating theaters, which scrub nurses to bribe with coffee, and which hallways could shave five minutes off the trek from one wing to another. He’d been relieved to find that his hands never shook in the OR and, no matter how bad the wound on an emergency consult, he never found himself seeing double and flashing back to Korea. All of that came afterward: in the scrub room, while charting, and alone at home in the evening. He paid for the bad cases with sleepless nights, but so long as he could stay in surgery, he was willing to sacrifice a few horrific dreams a week to whatever minor deity kept the balance sheet for such things.
It wasn’t all a struggle. Through trial-and-error, he discovered which anesthetists could match him quip-for-quip, which of his colleagues preferred quiet to his usual stream of chatter, and which nurses were amenable to a little outrageous flirting over a mitral stenosis repair. (1) He had also, of course, tried out his better lines on a few of the other surgeons for fun, and though no one could pick up the bit quite like BJ or Trapper, the chief of cardiothoracic surgery at least seemed to get a kick out of him.
Margaret had been right as always. Dr. John Michael Callahan was a good boss, a better surgeon, and that morning, had even made it through a full forty-five minutes of Hawkeye’s singing during a PDA correction before sighing and asking one of the orderlies to turn on the radio. (2)
It had been a good morning. Successful operation, decent company, uncommonly long lunch break. Alas, some of the shine wore off during an interdepartmental meeting that ate up the entirety of the afternoon, but with nothing else scheduled for his shift, he’d done handover with Dr. Schraeder and followed Callahan back to their offices.
“You’re settling in,” Callahan said as they turned into the long hallway behind the operating theaters. Though he had at least fifteen years on Hawkeye and stood a half-head shorter, he kept pace without issue. “It’s good to see. Not everyone lands on their feet the way you have.”
“My dad always said I was part cat.”
“Oh? Is that on his side, or your mother’s?”
Hawkeye made a show of pondering the question. “I did always wonder why they called Grandma Tabitha ‘Tabby’ for short.”
Callahan snorted as Hawkeye sifted through the inbox tacked to his office door. Two patient charts, a request for a recommendation from one of his residents, and—a pleasant shiver ran down his back—a thick envelope addressed in BJ’s slanted handwriting.
“Not to be a nosy nellie,” Callahan said, belying his words by leaning in and peeking at Hawkeye’s mail, “but is that the same BJ Hunnicutt who co-authored that defibrillation paper a year back?”
Hawkeye brandished the envelope the way a cat might present a successful catch. “The same. We served in the same MASH, though he’s out at San Francisco General, now. You should have heard the squabble between him and Charles—that’s Winchester, the head of CT at Mass General—over whose name would get listed first.”
“He one of those surgeons?”
“Only when Winchester is involved.” Hawkeye waggled the envelope. “We’re coauthoring another one on a kidney machine we built in camp, and he hasn’t yet tried to send me a sneaky draft changing Pierce and Hunnicutt to Hunnicutt and Pierce.”
Callahan’s smile sharpened. “If you ever want to collaborate formally with SFG, you tell me. I’ll grease the wheels. I want this department at the front edge of research and publication.”
“That’s mighty generous of you. I assume it has nothing at all to do with trying to poach more surgeons for your roster?”
“It absolutely does, and I’m not ashamed of it. Poach your buddy from SFG. Poach your other buddy from Mass General. Pierce, if they’re half as good as you are, I’ll take ‘em all and gloat about it at every conference from now until I retire.”
Another pleasant shiver traced down Hawkeye’s spine at the mere thought of BJ on this coast, of sharing a city, a hospital, an office with him. Dangerous territory.
“Winchester’s a Harvard man, you know. You’d be fighting uphill. Up Beacon Hill, specifically.”
“Well, I suppose you can’t win them all.” He rapped the doorframe with his knuckles. “I’ll leave you to it. But don’t get yourself stuck in paperwork all evening—we’ve got an early one tomorrow.”
After he left, Hawkeye stepped inside, tossed the charts on top of the growing pile on his desk, and went straight for BJ’s envelope. It contained yet another draft of their paper, clipped together with a short note asking for one more set of eyes before they sent it off for peer review. Tucked behind it, smaller, was a letter. He cracked his knuckles. He was hoping for an update on the Mill Valley Neighborhood Drama Saga. The last installment had involved some asshole cop from down the street—Garret? Gary?—trying to one-up the Hunnicutts’ Easter decorations in what Hawkeye could only assume was a bizarre attempt to assert neighborhood dominance over a returning war hero.
He loosened his tie, kicked his feet up on his desk, and went about savoring every word from Dear Hawk to news about Erin, to the meat of the letter, which answered one Hawkeye had sent less than a week earlier. BJ must have received it and had a response out the same day—something he’d done more and more often since the holidays. Those responses, too, were more honest than Hawkeye had ever heard him be. Lately, BJ was just as likely to open a vein on paper as he was to say “yes, and” to Hawkeye’s quips.
Hawkeye didn’t know what to make of it. Because sure enough, in addition to the usual complaints about Gary-not-Garret’s one-sided competitive streak, BJ poured out words that Hawkeye once wouldn’t have been able to get out of him even with a gallon of gin and a crowbar.
I get nightmares too, especially after emergency surgeries, but it doesn’t take all that much to set them off. I guess I should call myself lucky I didn’t come home with real shellshock. I’ve heard the VA won’t diagnose noncombatants with it, and then I’d really be up shit creek. As if what we saw over there was somehow less horrifying because we were holding scalpels instead of guns.
Mine aren’t loud like yours. I don’t know if that’s better or worse, because while I don’t wake the house with them, I also don’t wake myself. Feels like they go on forever, sometimes, and if it’s still dark out when I do finally escape them, I’ll spend a long time lying there thinking I’m back in Korea until my eyes adjust and the shapes in the room start to make sense. I sweat, too. Does that happen to you? Through my nightshirt, through the sheets. The only saving grace is that I’m getting better at knowing when I’ll have a night full of them. The feeling builds during the day, you know? So mostly I sleep in the guest room. Makes the disorientation worse, but at least I’m the only one suffering with it these days.
Hawkeye wiped at his eyes. Jesus, BJ. His nightmares weren’t much better, but at least it made sense that he had them. He was the one who’d cracked at the end. It seemed wrong that they’d followed Beej home, too. He was supposed to get his uncomplicated, happy ending.
And what was that about sleeping in the guest room? Must be hell on Peg, though BJ didn’t mention her often in his letters. Hawkeye hoped it wasn’t from embarrassment, or because Peg’s reaction to his nightmares left something to be desired.
“I’d double mine and take yours away if I could,” he murmured and kept reading.
Mostly I’m angry about it. I’m angry about a lot of things, lately. Angry at myself, too. I was so sure I’d be able to leave the war behind, but it got its hooks in me. The only good thing about it is that I don’t have to leave you behind, either.
Hawkeye rubbed his knuckles over his sternum. The problem with BJ finally letting honesty rip without jokes, gin, or rage as a shield—aside from how tempted Hawkeye was to write where was this when we were in each other’s faces all the time?—was how it made something warm fizz in his chest in a way BJ couldn’t possibly intend.
Summer is just around the corner, and I’m thinking about this July. I know I loaned you the watch at the end of the month, but I was hoping maybe you could come out for the July 4th holiday. I have a few days off, it’d be damn good to see you, and to be honest, having you out on a day like that would probably do me some good.
Let’s make plans. You’d better put some thought into your interest payment, because I’m going to collect.
Hawkeye huffed out a laugh. Interest. BJ was still on about that, was he? Well, he could take it literally and pick up one of those gaudy fake Rolexes the next time he visited the city. Or bigger still, and roll a grandfather clock into the Hunnicutt living room.
Or—did they make gag gifts like that? BJ’s undying love of snake-in-a-can flavored pranks would surely be tickled by a cuckoo clock that didn’t look like a cuckoo clock from the outside. Or maybe he’d go in for something silly and sentimental in equal parts: an hourglass filled with sand from one of California’s sunny beaches.
But then, what if all the clock-related gifts were too on-the-nose? He could smuggle some real maple syrup in his suitcase, maybe, and repay the Hunnicutts with a Pierce special French toast breakfast. He could plate it up like a real chef and bring them breakfast in bed. Though if BJ was having a rough night and spent it in the guest room—
Hawkeye’s thoughts slid sideways, imagination spinning the scene without his say-so. BJ in the guestroom, sheets rumpled, bunking with Hawkeye like they did on the coldest nights in Korea. They used to banter until their words slurred and their eyes shut, and they’d do it again, riffing back and forth as Hawkeye climbed in beside him and turned off the light. BJ would say something about interest owed, and Hawkeye would flutter his eyelashes and come back with something part silly and part salacious like, “oh Doctor Hunnicutt, what can I do to repay you?” and BJ, king of the callback, would say, “when we wake up, remind me to give you a kiss.”
The next image came fast: BJ’s hand on his jaw, tilting him in. The scrape of stubble. Shared breath. The first brush of lips.
And then it jumped forward, unstoppable: BJ kissing him deeper, broad and sure. The solid weight of BJ’s body pressing him into the mattress, thumbs sliding over his ribs, a laugh low and soft against his skin. BJ whispering things in his ear that he’d only let himself consider in the hush of night. Heat pooled in Hawkeye’s stomach as he imagined that mouth on his throat, then trailing down his chest, then lower.
The slam of a door down the hall wrenched Hawkeye out of the fantasy. For a moment he saw BJ there, kneeling in front of his desk chair, and—
“God, stop,” he hissed under his breath, jerking away from the thought as if anyone in the hall could pick up on what his mind had conjured.
His palms were slick. His chest rose and fell like he’d run a sprint. The letter crinkled in his grasp.
July was in three and a half months. He was supposed to be better, not losing control at the mere suggestion of their shared joke about interest. Forget ‘grandma tabby’; if he saw BJ now, he’d go after him like a starving dog with a bone.
Even the thought of giving back the watch made him vaguely nauseous.
Hawkeye stood, gathered the paperwork on his desk, and shoved it into his briefcase. The letter ended up in his coat, which he tugged on and buttoned. The length would hide the strain in his trousers, and hopefully, the icy temperature in the parking lot would do the rest.
And if it didn’t, well. He’d take care of it at home.
#
The apartment was nothing to write Maine about. Hawkeye had found the little studio walk-up during his second week in New Haven and immediately signed for it, even though it contained nothing more than a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a futon jammed against the far wall that sagged like his shoulders after a double.
Every week or so he promised himself he’d break the lease and start looking for somewhere better. But when his days off came, he was too wrung out to go apartment hunting. All he could do was sleep, eat, sleep, and drag himself back to the hospital to start the cycle over again.
Still, the work helped. The rhythm of surgery pulled him upright and reminded him who he was. It was engaging, it mattered, it gave him something to set his alarm for besides the vague promise of another gray morning.
And it had one other mercy: it gave him a reason to put the bottle down. Thus, it wasn’t a beer he grabbed out of the fridge that evening, but a Nehi he popped the top off of before trudging into the living room.
He stopped keeping booze in his apartment after one “welcome to New Haven” glass of wine over takeout turned to several bottles in a bender that had him showing up hungover for his first day at the hospital. Thank god Korea had taught him how to ignore his own wretched state and get the job done—and thank Callahan for sparing him from the operating theater until he’d finished his employment paperwork, downed a pot of coffee, and felt like something approaching human.
The experience scared him dry. Ish. While he didn’t plan on swearing off the bottle entirely, he kept his debauchery to public places. And given how little energy he had for socializing, he went without it more days than he hit the local watering hole.
His father had been so proud of him for cutting back. Every time they spoke, he told him so. Hawkeye nodded along, grateful, but stung with shame underneath. Shame for needing to cut back in the first place. Shame for being the sort of man who could never seem to find the middle ground—who either nursed one drink politely or emptied the whole damn bottle.
He dropped down to sit, elbows braced on his knees. The futon groaned in protest.
Pathetic. That’s what it was. He could stitch bodies together in the middle of a warzone, but he couldn’t trust himself with a liquor cabinet.
Maybe it’s because you’re an all-or-nothing kind of guy, BJ had written in a letter back in early February. He was still the only one Hawkeye had told about the bender, though he suspected Callahan knew. I’m trying to ease off, too, but it’s hard. Sometimes it’s the only thing that can get me to slow down. But Peg says the nights are worse after I’ve been drinking, and I guess she’s right. Besides, I can’t stomach gin, anymore, and what’s the fun of a big night if I don’t have my best friend there drinking paint thinner right along with me?
Hawkeye stared at the blank wall across from the futon while nursing his Nehi. Eight months since he’d come home. Two months since the move to New Haven. Life wouldn’t feel this fucking empty forever, right? That’s what everyone kept saying.
He rifled through his discarded coat and opened BJ’s letter again, reading over the words until they blurred. His selfish little heart wanted, and wanted, and wanted, but what if he got on a plane and showed up on California, only to bring himself right back to the crushing grief of the helipad and start the process all over again? He couldn’t take another year of this.
So he set the Nehi down, pulled a notepad from his briefcase, and wrote. He responded to BJ’s paragraphs on nightmares. Asked after Peg. Said hello to Viv. Wrote a short story about Moose-moose for Erin. Answered the questions BJ asked about his job, which came fast and frequent in every letter.
Connecticut is shaping up alright—different, but alright. There’s a joke in there about doing CT in CT, but I’m still workshopping it. Have to polish my tight fives.
And so do you, Bartholemew-James. Your demonym suggestions of Connecticooter and Connecticutie have been soundly rejected by the tourism board. I will personally accept Connecticutter as an ode to our work, though I believe the official spelling is Connecticuter. I’ve heard tell that people from Connecticut refer to themselves as Nutmeggers—this is, after all, the Nutmeg State as well as the Constitution State—and no, I will not be hearing any disparaging remarks you might have on the matter. (3) Is there a certain Scrabble salad effect when one introduces himself as “Hawkeye Pierce: Nutmegger”? Why yes, I suppose there is, but I’m writing to a guy named BJ “Whatever You Like” Hunnicutt who surely doesn’t have a leg to stand on in the name department.
If you’ve noticed by now that I’m dancing around the topic of the summer, well—
This one pains me to write, so I’m going to get it over with quickly. I can’t make it out this year. New job, no vacation built up yet, and I already promised Dad I’d go up to Crabapple Cove for the Fourth. If I try to take more time, I think Callahan will put me on the night shift for the rest of the year.
Rain check, though. Hold me to it. Don’t you dare let me off the hook in 1955.
And as for the watch, it looks like I’ll be racking up double interest for holding onto it. Maybe I’ll send you a sun dial for my first payment. Or a singing telegram. Or a crate of lobsters, if I can find someone who knows how to pack them without killing them. (Note: if you do get a box of smelly dead crustaceans in the mail, please take out your anger on the postal service, not on yours truly.)
I hate disappointing you. I hate writing this more than I can say. But if anyone can forgive me, it’s you.
Your devoted time-thief,
Hawk
Notes:
(1) Important caveat: I’m not a doctor, so if I get any medical tidbits or terms wrong, please correct me. That said, I’ve done a little cursory research to get an idea of what was happening in heart surgery in the early 1950s and hey, turns out the 50s were a really exciting time for advancements in technology and techniques. Medicine was literally on the cusp of figuring out a safe way to do open-heart surgery. This is part of the reason I wrote a Hawk who wanted to get back on the horse; historically, he’d get to be a part of some really cool stuff if he ended up at a research and teaching hospital. A mitral stenosis repair is a relatively new technique (developed in the late 1940s), but it’s a ‘closed’ one (ie: doesn’t require open-heart surgery), addressing a narrowing of the mitral valve by using a punch to remove part of it and thus improve blood flow.
(2) PDA stands for patent ductus arteriosus, ie: when the blood vessel that bypasses the lungs of a fetus fails to close after birth. This leads to extra blood flow to the lungs, which can strain the heart and cause a variety of associated symptoms. Because the blood vessel (the ductus arteriosus) is external to the heart, a corrective operation would have been possible before the development of open-heart surgical procedures. Surgery to close the ductus arteriosus was first performed in 1939.
(3) This is, unfortunately, not a joke; people from Connecticut are often (but not officially) referred to as Nutmeggers.
Chapter 8: BJ - May 1954
Notes:
Back with another chapter! A few notes:
- I cannot stress how much your feedback means; this is the first fic I've written in a very long time, and your kind words have been wonderful to find in my inbox.
- Sometimes I feel like I'm writing a very generous interpretation of BJ's capacity to Deal With His Own Shit, but I figure he's living and coparenting with two baddies, and surely that must have rubbed off on him somehow.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“If you want to make it work, we can try to find a way to get you tickets, but it’s going to be a stretch, honey,” Peg said, shading her eyes against the afternoon sun.
Across the playground, Viv supervised Erin’s attempts to build a misshapen sandcastle with several other toddlers. How she had any energy left after BJ ran her around the zoo that morning, he’d never understand. Technically, it was still his turn to take lead for the day and get sand in places he never knew sand could be, but Viv had taken one look at his face after he’d received Hawkeye’s latest letter and firmly yanked the responsibility out of his hands.
BJ sank onto the bench next to Peg, the worn wooden slats rough against his palms. His hand strayed to his breast pocket where the letter from Hawkeye sat. “I should face the facts. He doesn’t want to see me. Maybe, when he kept asking me to tell him goodbye, he was trying to say something that I just didn’t understand.”
“Oh, BJ,” Peg said softly, giving his hand a squeeze. “Why don’t you finish reading the rest of it before you decide he never wants to see you again?”
That would be the reasonable thing, sure, but it wouldn’t stop BJ from wondering whether Hawkeye’s constant demurrals came because he’d seen the future, intuited what BJ planned to tell him that summer, and decided to spare both of them the grief of a ruined friendship.
BJ ran a finger along the edge of the envelope. Every letter since that first, gut-wrenching reply in March had contained a lighthearted refusal. At first, he’d forged on undaunted and tried to bring Mill Valley to Hawkeye, instead. But BJ couldn’t get enough time off to drive, and he couldn’t justify the cost of plane tickets. (1)
The truth was, he’d looked forward to seeing Hawkeye the way he’d once looked forward to armistice. That hazy, warm vision of the future had sustained him through a long winter. It had fortified him as he and Peg worked out a new agreement. It helped him set aside his own complicated feelings about his role as a husband and a father when Viv’s lease ended and she moved in with them.
Things got easier as the weather warmed. Time had rewound, in a way, turning Peg once again into a dear friend. The four of them fit together around the dinner table without discomfort or lingering silences. And god, it was a relief to regain some sense of stability at last.
But Hawkeye’s absence lingered—a hollow place at the center of it all. BJ often imagined him in California: laughing with Peg over a board game, holding Erin on his lap as Viv read aloud from one of the new releases she brought home from work at the local library, cracking jokes while BJ threw burgers on the grill. And once Erin was tucked up with Moose-moose for the night, they could go out to the patio and play double cranko. The game would end with accusations of cheating, mostly aimed at Hawkeye, no doubt, and then BJ would stand, clean up the board, and lead Hawkeye upstairs . . .
But Hawk wasn’t coming. Maybe he never would.
Peg drew him out of his thoughts with a nudge to the ribs. “Talk to me, BJ.”
BJ opened his mouth, but before words could take shape, a shadow fell over the bench. He twisted around to find Susan approaching, her sons—both in middle school—tearing off towards the tire swing on the far end of the playground.
“Well, hello, BJ! Peg!” she called, waving. “I see the little one is just full of energy today, if it takes the three of you to wrangle her.”
Peg’s posture stiffened. “Hi, Susan.” She glanced at BJ. “We were just—”
“Oh, don’t tell me I’ve missed you. Surely with your friend here, you can afford a few minutes of neighborly chitchat?” Susan nodded toward the sandbox where Viv crouched next to Erin, digging at her direction. “You know, I heard the wildest rumor.”
“That so?”
“Mrs. Parker told me there’s a new resident in the Hunnicutt household! And I told her that just couldn’t be right. But she insisted, said that she’d watched BJ carry a carful of your friend Vivian’s boxes inside this past Sunday. I know she’s great with Erin, see, but if you were in the market for childcare”—her sharp-eyed stare landed directly on BJ—“surely you wouldn’t have a young widow move in, would you?”
BJ’s jaw tightened. He opened his mouth, but Peg placed a gentle hand on his arm. “BJ, why don’t you tell Viv and Erin it’s time to wrap up?”
All too glad to let Peg handle Susan, BJ hustled off for the sandbox.
“Friends help one another,” Peg said as he trotted off. “With Ron’s passing, Viv struggled to keep up the condo . . .”
The squeals of a pair of girls on the swing set swallowed up the rest of her words. BJ made a beeline for Erin and Viv, their heads bent together as they made shapes in the sand.
“Alright, architects,” he said, crouching down beside them. “Time to call it a night.”
Erin popped her head up, nose dusted with sand, eyes bright in the fading light. “But Daddy, it’s not done!”
Viv smoothed a hand over Erin’s hair. “We can finish it tomorrow, Bear.”
BJ held out his arms, and Erin tumbled into them, still clutching her little plastic shovel. “Tomorrow,” he promised, standing and settling her against his chest. “Right now, we’ve got a long walk home and a short bedtime waiting.”
And an unpleasant discussion to have sometime between now and then.
#
Erin’s chatter faded as she relaxed in BJ’s arms, drowsy from the sun. Once the park was at their back and they had the sidewalk to themselves, Peg rehashed her conversation with Susan, who had planted plenty of little barbs about his character.
“If she’s willing to say as much to my face, imagine what she’s saying behind our backs,” Peg said.
Beside her, Viv struck a pose. “They call me Vivian Miller: town librarian and local seductress.”
“All those books must have put cosmopolitan ideas in your head,” BJ teased.
“What a dangerous thing, giving a woman ideas.”
“It’s Susan’s ideas I’m more worried about,” Peg murmured. “She has the wrong ones, but they’re awfully close to the truth.”
They fell silent for the rest of the walk home.
Upon shouldering through the front door, Viv, perceptive as ever, pressed a kiss to Peg’s cheek and whisked Erin upstairs to get bathtime started.
BJ followed Peg into the living room. “I’d have tried harder to make amends with her at work if I thought she was going to run her mouth like this.”
Peg glanced up from the bar cart, where she’d poured herself a finger of scotch. “Has she been giving you trouble? You never said.”
“There wasn’t anything worth saying. She whispered out of the corner of her mouth now and again, but I didn’t think anything of it until today. I’d assumed it was more of the same—trying to get me to participate in some kind of neighborhood pecking order that put Gary at the top of an imaginary hierarchy.”
The rest of the neighborhood seemed content to fall in line beneath him and a few of the cul-de-sac’s other longest residents. BJ made a habit of ignoring such things, not only because he thought they were stupid, but because it clearly drove Gary nuts.
Peg cradled her glass between unsteady hands. “I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I hate thinking that moving Viv in might have put eyes on us. That’s the one thing I promised wouldn’t happen. I was so sure that the war widow story would keep suspicion off of me that I didn’t stop to think about what people might say about you.”
He crossed the living room to join her at the cart, but resisted the temptation to pour himself a measure. Liquor wouldn’t do him any good right now.
“If it weren’t Viv, it’d be something else.”
“But it is Viv.” Peg wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Maybe I moved too fast. Maybe it was naïve of me to think I could have this.”
How to explain to Peg that he needed her to have it, because witnessing her happiness gave him hope for his own? Moving Viv in wasn’t a permanent solution—they’d have to figure out something else by the time Erin reached schooling age, and it didn’t account for the unknown variable that was Hawkeye—but it was the first step in a new agreement. He had to believe they could make it work.
“You didn’t make the decision alone.” He steadied her hands. “Look. I’ll add a few more family photos to my desk and sing your praises in the OR even more than usual. If they listen to her chatter anyway, so what? I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first surgeon in my department to cheat on my wife. What is she going to do about it?”
“She could look closer. Gossip might encourage the others to, as well.”
Fair enough. Part of the challenge of hiding in plain sight lay in setting up a situation that seemed obvious at face value: a veteran and his wife, helping out the widow of a fellow veteran. The façade only held up if no one went digging. As for how they’d dig, well—
“It’s not like you’re inviting Susan into your bedroom to rifle through the drawers.”
Peg took a fortifying sip of her scotch. “Maybe we should think more seriously about Stinson Beach. Move up the timeline.”
BJ spared a wistful thought for the beach plot and the dreams he’d had for it when he first borrowed that money from Charles. They hadn’t even been able to start construction, yet. Even if they had, he suspected Peg wasn’t imagining sunny weekend getaways, but instead a more permanent move, and while he wished he could get on board with a solution rather than pointing out more problems . . .
“Honey, that would double my commute.”
“Then stay here. Stay here, and we separate, and I can go out to Stinson Beach.”
She had set down the glass and moved to the bookshelf, straightening its volumes with frenetic energy that reminded him so much of someone else he loved.
“Peg. Let’s think about this.”
Divorce was expensive and slow. Not only would it mean legal fees and finding a way to support two households instead of just one, but it’d require one or both of them to give the court cause—a move he didn’t want to make unless it for some reason became necessary for their safety. (2)
“It’s an option, isn’t it?”
“If it’s what you really want, we can talk about it, but we agreed to avoid it for a reason.”
“Erin.”
BJ had spent too long away from her to give her up every other week. More than that, since Viv moved in, he found he enjoyed raising her as part of a team. All three of them were better off for having each other to lean on. He didn’t quite have Hawkeye’s knack for words, but sometimes imagined what Hawk might say about it—about how he would have described it, had the 4077th been able to keep that baby girl. Something about it taking a village and how love, when allowed to grow, didn’t divide, but multiplied.
BJ didn’t feel the same kind of love for Peg he once did, but love was love was love, and their house was full of it.
“She’s thriving, and she’s not the only one. I don’t . . .” He sifted through the mess in his chest for the right words. “Selfishly, I don’t know how well I’d be doing if I were alone. And you don’t seem like you’re doing so bad yourself, these days.”
Peg’s hands stilled. “We have a good thing going.”
“We do. And I meant what I said. I’m going to do what I have to do to keep it.”
She finally abandoned the bookshelf. Her lips curved, and she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered, her forehead briefly touching his temple.
Then BJ straightened. “I’d better relieve Viv from bath duty.”
Hopefully, a half-hour of playing make-believe games with Erin’s fleet of rubber duckies would keep him from stewing in his thoughts.
#
BJ was steam-warm and relaxed by the time he had Erin dressed in jammies. They headed downstairs in anticipation of dinner, where they found Peg and Viv sprawled on the living room couch—Peg with her legs draped across Viv’s lap, Viv with a novel cracked open atop her shins. BJ dropped onto the far end of the couch with Erin, but soon, she squirmed out of his lap to attack the pile of wooden blocks sitting in front of the record stand, where a jazz record spun an upbeat tune.
By the time the record needed flipping, Viv gave up on her novel and tapped at the envelope in BJ’s pocket. “You ever going to finish that?”
He extracted it with an exaggerated grumble. Though Peg was more circumspect, Viv had spent all spring calling them his “love letters.” The teasing wore him down until eventually, he started reading their contents aloud to prove her wrong. Viv had yet to be convinced, and he suspected he’d only played into her hand.
Still, it did him some good to laugh with them over Hawkeye’s jokes and stories, to share Hawkeye the way he wished he could in person.
“Alright, alright,” he said and unfolded the letter, skipping past the jokey demurral that set him off earlier.
“You have to hear this, Beej. Remember that paper in JAMA about the cardiopulmonary bypass machine? The atrial septal defect repair Gibbon did with it in Philadelphia last year? (3) It turns out my boss put in for a grant, and it just got approved. We’re getting one. Grace New Haven is going to be part of the research team. There’s training to do—Gibbon is coming up from TJU to give a lecture and go through his process—but it’s sounding like our first surgery will be sometime this summer. Callahan said he wants me in there with him, and I gotta tell you, it’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited for something. Really makes spring feel like spring, you know?
With it getting warm out, sometimes I head down to the water at this little spot I like a twenty-minute drive out of the city. I watch all the sailboats go out on the water, though I’m still trying to get up the guts to get in one of them. I told you about that, didn’t I? My cousin Billy? I keep reminding myself it wasn’t a sailboat, but that doesn’t seem to help, so I end up sitting on this rocky jetty where the road ends next to a little muddy beach where kids drag their canoes in. My problems with boats might not be getting better, but it’s easier to be around kids these days. You’ll never catch me in peds, though.
Sometimes I bring a book with me. Thank Viv for that last recommendation, would you? I gobbled it up, and damn, isn’t it good to be able to go to the library and pick something out instead of waiting ages for new entertainment to come in the mail? Or, worse, trying to track down a story chapter-by-chapter because some fink ripped a book apart and distributed it around camp? Oh, but you wouldn’t know anything about that.
Most of the time, though, I just sit there and watch the water. There’s nothing like spring in new England, you know (all the merry little birds are flying in the floating in the very spirits singing in are winging in the blossoming)” (4)
“He loves his ee cummings,” Viv said, tracing shapes on Peg’s ankle. “It sounds beautiful up near him.”
Peg made a sleepy noise of agreement. “A little sailboat in springtime. I wonder if Erin might like that, when she’s old enough. Send her to sailing school on the weekends.” She nudged BJ with her stockinged foot. “Keep reading.”
BJ grumbled again, but obliged.
“I’m writing from the jetty now, thinking about an article I read in Scientific American this morning. You know, they think that our oceans turn themselves over like a conveyor belt? The writer really drove the image home by saying that, because of it, carbon from the air we’ve exhaled will travel everywhere: once it gets into the water, it’ll cycle all around the world. In a thousand years, a small bit of that one breath can travel to the abyss and back, then pop out in a wholly different ocean and end up in a tree on the other side of the planet. Maybe that’s the kind of afterlife I can buy into. When I sit here on a day like this, I think it might not be so bad to become part of a tree. We spent so much time breathing next to one another in the Swamp, you know, that I figure some of our atoms will end up side-by-side. What kind of tree do you think we’d be, Beej?” (5)
“BJ, that’s so—”
“Maybe something that blooms early and makes everyone sneeze,” he continued, cutting Peg off. His heart pounded, and his face ran hot. “An April Fool’s type of tree, right? I don’t know much about trees, but I know about pranks, and springtime makes me think about the ones we used to pull. Do you remember the time you got Charles to open up that snake-in-a-can, thinking it was pralines? And the minnows he put in Margaret’s pocket? Where the hell did he get minnows from? I’d ask him in my next letter, but I just know he’d say something infuriating like “a Winchester never tells.”
“No more Hawk-story, Daddy,” Erin said, using her name for Hawkeye’s letters. She held up a yellow wooden block. “Play kitchen.”
Peg sat up. “Erin, sweetie, Daddy is—”
“Daddy would be happy to play kitchen with you,” BJ interrupted, all too glad to avoid reading the rest of Hawkeye’s letter out loud.
How could he explain to Peg and Viv that yes, he knew exactly what that tree metaphor sounded like, and no, he still couldn’t quite work out where Hawkeye stood, because Hawkeye just said things sometimes—joking, serious, profound, irreverent, and everything in between. He might mean I want to be with you forever, but I genuinely can’t make it out to California this year, I’m sorry. He might mean wouldn’t it be funny to end up as a tree? What a gag. Without a clear look at his face, it was impossible to tell.
“Daddy?”
BJ leaned in to press a kiss to Erin’s curls, inhaling the faint scent of tear-free shampoo. “I’m paying attention, sweetheart. What are we cooking today?”
Erin, with the kind of unflinching seriousness only a three-year-old could muster, launched into the rules of her latest enterprise: today they were running a restaurant. The menu, she explained, was to consist of dishes prepared primarily from wooden blocks, stubby crayons, and an empty spool of thread that had been repurposed into a particularly fine roast.
Peg laughed and pushed herself to her feet. “That’s my cue. If I don’t check on that casserole, we’ll be eating blocks for dinner.” She leaned down to give Viv a quick kiss, then pressed one to BJ’s cheek and padded toward the kitchen.
Left with Erin’s exacting standards, BJ gamely accepted each dish she plated with great ceremony. He sampled the green block soup, smacked his lips over the pencil-stick pasta, and pronounced the crayon pie “divine.” Erin squealed with delight and rushed back to prepare the next course. Cute as a button, she was, and he considered getting up to grab the Leica. This would make a great picture to send Hawkeye. Maybe it’d finally coax Hawkeye into sending one back.
“I hope we get to meet him soon,” Viv said, like a damn mind reader. “He’s a real riot.”
“You two would get on like a house on fire.” A moment’s consideration had him retracting the thought. “Then again, maybe it’s better you don’t meet. I can only imagine what you’d get up to if you put your heads together.”
“Is this about how I unscrewed the top of the salt shaker this morning?”
“Hawk used to get me with that one about once a week.”
“If you left your dirty socks all around the Swamp the way you do the bathroom, I can understand his logic for stooping to petty revenge.”
BJ snorted and elbowed her in the side, then made a show of seriously considering the flavor of a number two pencil beneath Erin’s watchful eye.
A moment later, Peg exited the kitchen, brandishing a spoonful of sauce for Viv to taste test, wearing an expression so similar to Erin’s that it took Viv and BJ a good minute to stop laughing enough for her to oblige.
“Like mother, like daughter,” she teased, tugging at Peg’s apron strings when she turned to retreat into the kitchen.
The record finished. BJ stood to flip it again, figuring jazz was the sort of thing that wouldn’t play out with a little repetition. His back was still to the couch—he hadn’t yet dropped the needle—when Viv spoke.
“I know we haven’t talked much about what happened on New Year’s Eve, but BJ, I’ve been carrying around an albatross of guilt over what happened with Gary.”
He set the needle on the lead-in groove. “Not you, too.”
“You’re only saying that because you didn’t see how much time I spent winding him up after you went upstairs with Erin.” Viv gave him a tight smile. “I lit that fuse, and I did it out of spite, but I hadn’t meant it to blow up on you. It was just a way to push back. I was . . . hurting, then. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for the part I played in it.”
BJ was fairly certain he’d rather run his feet over with a lawnmower than rehash that night. “I also could have let him say his bit, run out of words, and leave. But I didn’t.”
“He said some horrible things,” she whispered. “I know you took them like they were about you, but I felt them just the same. Ron had a real hard time of it over there.”
BJ wondered whether Ron ever ended up at a MASH. Whether he, like so many of the soldiers who’d come through the 4077th, begged his doctors to sign off on a discharge, only to be told his injuries were severe enough to land him in a hospital, but light enough that he’d be going back to the front. Whether he saw the kids in his unit leave with a belly full of shrapnel and come back quieter, or come back not-all-there and past the point of help. Whether he made it to battalion aid at the end, or died in the field.
“Can I ask you something? You and Ron . . .”
“Are you asking whether I’m more like Peg, or whether I’m more like you?”
“I suppose so.”
Viv dogeared the book—villainous behavior from a librarian—and set it down in her lap. “I’m not really sure. I did love Ron. I still miss him like hell. But he was already in the reserves when we met. Most of our engagement, he was here and gone. He shipped out three months after we married. Sometimes I wonder if I loved a fantasy instead of a real man.”
BJ swallowed hard. “That, I understand.”
“I suppose it’d have been a bit like this—like you and Peg. Maybe I’d have worked it out when he got home. The more I think about it, the more I realize how unfair that would have been to him. How unfair we were to you.”
“Don’t.” He reached out, laying a hand over her forearm. “Those years would have changed Peg and I no matter what, and I think without you, we’d have tried so hard to go back to what we were that we’d only have hurt one another more.”
The pause stretched long enough for a trumpet solo to start and finish while Erin presented them with blue block macaroni and cheese. After tasting to Erin’s satisfaction, Viv stood.
“You’re a good egg, BJ,” she said. “I’m happy to have you in my life, even if you leave your damn dirty socks everywhere.”
She bent to kiss him on the cheek before heading to the kitchen, ostensibly to help Peg with dinner. BJ stayed where he was. He was on dinner duty tomorrow, and besides, he suspected he’d be melancholy company.
Maybe some of our atoms will end up side-by-side. What kind of tree do you think we’d be, Beej?
Any kind, he wanted to write. I don’t care, as long as I’m right there next to you.
Notes:
(1) I sourced a picture of a TWA brochure from 1954 that had a round-trip flight from San Francisco to New York listed at $212. That’s around $2500 in today-money, so it’s safe to say that this wouldn’t be a sane expenditure for BJ at this point in time. Theoretically possible, perhaps, but certainly not something he’d choose to do with so little guarantee of a happy reception from Hawkeye.
(2) No-fault divorce wasn’t yet possible in the state of California, which meant BJ and Peg would either need to move to a state where it was possible, or they’d need to litigate against one another. BJ wouldn’t want this for obvious reasons.
(3) The cardiopulmonary bypass machine was first used to successfully facilitate open heart surgery in 1953 at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. The surgery was performed on an eighteen-year-old patient named Cecelia Bavolek, and it successfully repaired a hole in her heart (atrial septal defect). John H. Gibbon, Jr. was the lead surgeon. There were other surgeries performed with the machine in 1951 and 1952, but the patient either didn’t survive because of the severity of their condition, or the machine was used as support for a surgery that wasn’t a full open-heart operation. By the mid-1950s, a Mayo Clinic team, led by John W. Kirklin, had developed the machine into a more reliable instrument. This is where I start to fudge history: I’m hand waving and pretending that several other research institutions would have then built and trained on machines of their own in order to support the Mayo Clinic research mission, including Grace New Haven, though there’s no evidence that anything like this actually took place. I just want Hawkeye to be at the forefront of cardiothoracic surgery research, guys.
(4) This is another stanza of cummings’ sweet spring is your.
(5) Hawkeye is waxing poetic about thermohaline circulation. He’s also absolutely giving himself away right now, but I figure he’s probably so excited about the bypass machine that he’s vibrating out of his skin and watching his words even less than usual. On a related-unrelated note, if you're looking for another reason to freak out about climate change, the interruption of deep-ocean circulation is a fun place to start. We're already starting to see changes in the 'conveyor belt'; the expected summertime upwelling in the Gulf of Panama didn't happen this year.
Chapter 9: Hawkeye - June 1954
Notes:
Content warning! The fic earns its rating for the first time in this chapter. If a (short) hookup with a random OC isn't your thing, skip the middle section, offset by scene break marks (#). It *is* relevant to the plot in the sense that something happens during that scene that encourages Hawkeye to make a very big decision, but I suspect you can probably work out what happened via context if you'd prefer.
(And fwiw, I promise the rating will get earned in a much more satisfying way a few chapters from now.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Though rumor had it that Nick’s Café (1) opened only a few years earlier, it was already legendary amongst certain clientele. Hawkeye had driven a little under an hour to Hartford for the visit, headlights cutting through the long back roads until the glow of the city finally bled up around him. He parked two blocks away and hustled through the drizzle to the door.
Inside was a different world. A narrow, warm room overflowed with smoke and laughter. The piano player in the corner spun a tune that had a crowd out on the floor. Men danced with men, women with women, and a few fashionable sorts who Klinger would have loved to trade notes with showed off their silks and heels.
Hawkeye could find this back in New Haven, of course. He’d kept his ears open and knew the spots. But he was on a mission that night and didn’t particularly want to go for a roll with someone he could bump into at the corner store on the way to work. Going for a roll, he figured, would help him stop fantasizing about all the possible, lecherous interpretations of “with interest.”
BJ’s last letter had only hammered home how important it was for him to get his shit together.
I’ll stop pushing, though I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed I can’t convince you to come out. If you’re set on going to Maine, I’ll respect that. Whatever you need, Hawk. I know this is a tough time of year for you. I understand that you might prefer to spend the Fourth with your father. But if something’s going on in your head right now—and I get the feeling something is—just know you can tell me about it. I miss my best friend, alright? Miss you every day. I don’t want to have to wait a thousand years for us to end up in a tree together to see you in person, though after some consideration, I’m thinking maybe we should aim for one of those sugar maples you keep going on about. You always were a bit of a sap.
He still couldn’t believe he wrote that insane line about trees while waxing maudlin. And of course, BJ picked it up, turned it into a bit, and had mentioned it in three letters straight.
BJ also, unfortunately, intuited that Hawkeye was starting to unravel as the anniversary of The Bus drew closer.
By next week, he’d be up in Crabapple Cove with his dad, smothering lobster in an unconscionable amount of butter. It’d help. He was looking forward to the trip, and having something to look forward to outside of work was a nice change. Even if he suspected he’d spend the days after the Fourth on and off the phone with Sidney, trying to screw his head back on straight.
If it’s the interest you’re worried about, we can always strike a deal. I’ll waive it if you give me an address to write to that isn’t a hospital inbox. I’ve got some news that I’m struggling to keep quiet about, but it doesn’t feel right to know it’s passing through your office, first. Maybe that’s paranoid of me, having spent too long writing around army censors. I don’t know.
What was going on in BJ’s life that demanded secrecy? Personal stuff, presumably. Maybe Peg was pregnant again, though he couldn’t figure why BJ would hesitate to share the good news in a letter.
Hawkeye’s gut squirmed. He could call. He should call. But hearing BJ’s voice would absolutely not help him in his quest to turn his unspoken, gnawing obsession into something a bit more casually friendly.
That brought him back to step one: get over it by getting under someone else. It had always worked for him in the past, though he’d put off trying for a shockingly long time. This was, in fact, the longest he’d gone without sex since he was in high school. He had a terrible suspicion that his feelings for BJ hung around his shoulders like a shroud, which didn’t do much for attracting anyone with a pulse.
Especially women. God, women could smell desperation.
So, Nick’s it was.
Hawkeye wove his way to a quieter side of the bar and flagged down the bartender for a beer. It wasn’t, however, until he took a seat on the barstool that he got a good look at the salt-and-pepper type sitting next to him, and oh, shit, that was John Michael Callahan.
“Cal—” he cut himself off in time, stupid, Pierce, because it wasn’t up to him whether Callahan used his government name at Nick’s.
Callahan, at least, seemed amused by his floundering. “I go by Michael here, though some of the younger ones call me Doc.”
“I—alright. Doc.” He shut his flapping jaw with significant effort. How the hell hadn’t he known? His ability to pick up on a fellow traveler was usually much better—more proof that he’d been out of it, lately.
“Buy you a drink?”
As if he needed to add that kind of complication to his life. He’d come to Nick’s looking for a stranger and somehow managed to grab a seat next to his goddamn boss—the guy who held the keys to the one good thing Hawkeye had found since returning home from Korea.
“Look, that’s a nice offer, but I’m currently getting over something with a-a-a former coworker, right?” Ah yes, an awkward surfeit of honesty: the Hawkeye Pierce special. Maybe Callahan would get a whiff of the same desperation that chased nurses away and decide he wasn’t insulted by the rejection. “Turns out coworkers make for complicated bedfellows, and I need to never do that to myself again.”
Callahan cringed. “Not that kind of drink. Think of it as a friendly offer now that I’ve had my suspicions confirmed.”
“Suspicions?”
“Please—you know exactly what you sound like.” They exchanged a brief grin, and Hawkeye’s panic eased. “I’m surprised this is the first we’ve run into one another. There are more of us than you might think in the city. We do salons occasionally. I can let you know where and when the next one happens, if you’re interested.”
Huh. “I’d like that.”
The bartender returned with his beer, which Hawkeye exchanged for payment and a tip, but he didn’t hustle away from his seat. He raised his bottle and clinked it against Callahan’s glass.
“Cheers,” Callahan said and took a sip. “If I haven’t scared you off, mind if I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How are you settling in, really?” As if he could read Hawkeye’s expression—you want to talk about work here? Now?—he sighed and said, “You’re always the first one in the room to crack a joke, but don’t think I can’t see the weight on your shoulders, and I’m wondering whether this”—he gestured broadly at the room—“might have something to do with it. It’s not often that I manage to lure a cutter as good as you away from New York or Boston. If there’s something I can do to keep you at Grace, I want to hear about it.”
Apparently, Callahan had been aware of Hawkeye’s state when he first showed up. Fantastic.
“You’re doing plenty. Work is one of the things that’s keeping me going right now. Not sure what to say about the rest.”
Callahan regarded him for a long moment, expression unreadable. “Look. I never served, but I know plenty who did. If you need support, there are a few of our kind in psych. You won’t have to watch your words around them. I can give you a referral.”
“Am I that much of a mess?”
“Not to the casual observer. But you say things in surgery, sometimes, that make me think you’ve gotten very good at hiding it.”
“It won’t affect my performance. If it didn’t over there, it won’t over here,” Hawkeye promised. His chest had gotten tight, and his words sped without his say-so, as if galloping through a denial would do anything but convince Callahan he was brushing the truth under the rug. He took a deep breath like Sidney taught him, in and out. “Being here really is a good thing. It’s helping me sort myself out, I think, knowing that I can bring what I learned in some of the worst circumstances back and save lives with it.”
“With any luck, you’ll be part of a team develops techniques and technology to save thousands more.”
That did matter—to think that someday, a terminal condition would stop being terminal because of something he worked on. It made getting out of bed in the morning worth it.
Hawkeye raised his bottle in a salute. “A ripple effect. I’ll take that. It’ll help with the guilt.”
“For the kids you couldn’t save over there?”
“For being on the army’s balance sheet—a pair of hands that let them crunch numbers and say that’s alright, we’ll send these boys up to get shelled on that hill because we can put most of ‘em back together again.”
Callahan considered his words, sipping at his drink. “Your reasons are yours, P—” He stopped short of using Hawkeye’s name, and they shared an ironic smile. “I can imagine that being over there, sewing those boys up when the army kept taking them apart . . . that’ll leave its marks. But does it help at all to know that there are some kids out there who wouldn’t have made it home if another pair of hands were in your place? At least, that’s the impression I got after reading about the kidney machine you built out of garbage and prayers.”
Hawkeye cackled. “Are you on peer review for that paper? Because let me tell you, the story behind that is one of my best ones.”
Just like that, he was back in his element, regaling Callahan with a year’s worth of buying, bartering, and requisitioning supplies: sausage casings from Toledo, odd purchases from the Sears and Roebuck catalog, even Margaret’s blanket which, while not a contributor to the machine, gave a sense of just how damn long it took to build the thing. And of course, talking about the machine gave him an excuse to talk about BJ.
Callahan took it in stride, laughing in all the right places, but watched Hawkeye thoughtfully once the story finished. “When you say you’re getting over something with a former coworker . . .”
So much for casting off the shroud of desperation.
“I had a CO once who told me not to fall in love in the middle of a war. Turns out he was right.”
“Would it be better if I stopped talking about headhunting him?”
Hawkeye scrubbed a hand down his face. If he was this transparent, it was a damn good thing he’d decided not to go out to California where everyone would see it written on his face. Everyone but BJ, apparently, who was immune—or oblivious—to what Hawkeye threw at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “It would.”
“Then I apologize for hitting a sore spot.” Callahan gestured at Hawkeye’s mostly empty beer. “Another?”
“Nah, trying to cut back. And, if I’m being honest, trying to . . .” He made a vague gesture out at the other end of the bar where the more social, younger patrons had congregated.
A sly smile spread across Callahan’s face. “By all means, don’t let me hold you up. I’ll see you on Monday.”
Hawkeye left him with a jokey, finger-waggling salute and drifted down the length of the room, weaving amongst chatting couples to scan the crowd. Distraction. He needed a distraction. Something to shock him out of his head and put him wholly back in his body, again.
There. Leaning an elbow against the far end of the bar.
The man was tall, late thirties, with dark hair that curled at the temples and a frame that filled out his jacket. He took up space like it belonged to him, easy confidence in the way his hand cupped his glass. And he was aware enough of his surroundings to feel Hawkeye’s eyes on him—and to let his gaze linger right back.
Nice eyes, Hawkeye decided. Dark. Different.
Hawkeye slid into the space beside him and chose a fitting line from his repertoire. “You’ve got the kind of look that makes a guy want to ask for trouble.” He leaned in close enough to get a whiff of woodsy cologne. “Do you take requests?”
A laugh rumbled between them, and those dark eyes studied his face. “Depends what you’re asking for.”
“Start with a drink.” Hawkeye signaled the bartender. “Work up to something more aspirational.”
His words won him a smile—quick, sharp, and promising. “What are you having?”
“I’m a cheap date, sweetheart. I’ll take a soda.”
“I thought you said trouble.”
Hawkeye gave him a once-over that lingered a fraction too long on his belt. “Maybe a different kind.”
Dry-spell notwithstanding, he hadn’t lost his touch, because the man shifted, sliding their ankles together. “You’re not from around here, are you? I think I’d remember if I’d seen you before.”
“I’m that memorable? It’s the nose, isn’t it?” He struck a pose. “Come on, you can tell me.”
“The eyes, more like. You’re looking at me like you’re already thinking three steps ahead.”
“That’s because I’m trying to guess whether you’re the kind of man who talks all night”—Hawkeye let the pause stretch, his voice dipping lower—“or the kind who prefers action.”
That earned him a slow grin, one corner of the man’s mouth tipping up in invitation. “If I said I knew a quieter place,” he murmured, “would you come with me?”
Perfect. No strings, no names, no time wasted. Hawkeye abandoned his quest to get the bartender’s attention and pushed away from the counter with a sway of his hips. “By all means, lead the way.”
#
They slipped through a side door into the alley. Mist clung to the air, but the drizzle had stopped, so Hawkeye didn’t bother aiming for an awning, crowding his quarry into the shadows, instead. Not the most romantic place a guy had ever brought him, but it’d get the job done.
When the man’s shoulders hit brick, Hawkeye slipped down to his knees, hands already working the brass belt buckle and fly beneath. Damp seeped from the concrete beneath him, but the dry-cleaning bill would be worth it. He’d always loved the intimacy of using his mouth and hands to bring partners to the edge. There was something exquisite about being an instrument of pleasure, of being useful and used up but also possessed of the power to take a man—or a woman—apart at the seams.
Though the shadows they’d chosen were too dark for him to appreciate the view, he’d had plenty of cocks in hand in his life and could tell this was a fine specimen: proportionate, uncut, and most importantly, already hard. The first slide of his tongue along the head earned him a low groan, and his handsome stranger braced a hand on the brick wall behind him. The other sank into Hawkeye’s hair.
Yes, yes, yes, it’d been so long since anyone had touched him. The fingers knotted in his hair were magnificent, firing off nerve endings, deepening the mind-blanking heat of a full mouth. They sent shivers skittering through him, chasing away that insistent buzz that had built up beneath his skin.
Hawkeye moaned as the man rocked into him, as his grip tightened. God, yes. This was exactly what he needed.
He got a hand on the man’s hip, a safeguard to control the pace—he liked to save some tricks for repeat performances, after all—and slid the other down the front of his own shirt, damp palm chasing a trail of heat over his stomach. He skipped over his belt and squeezed himself through his trousers, and shit that was good, oh, maybe he could get off from this, save them both some time and effort.
The thought drew a groan out of his throat, one that earned him a sharp snap of hips in response. He braced against it, pinning the guy to the brick behind him.
A glance upward confirmed that he wasn’t watching Hawkeye, but instead had his face tipped up to the narrow strip of sky overhead. Shame, because those dark eyes would have felt so good on him, and so Hawkeye doubled his efforts, hollowing his cheeks, finding a rhythm that, if the tremor in those long legs was any indication, would get him what he wanted just fine.
His sleeve rucked with the motion, and then a glint caught his attention. There, tucked up against the wool covering the man’s hip, was BJ’s watch, its bezel facing toward him, dark leather encircling his wrist.
BJ, inescapable, even with another man doing his level best to fuck the thoughts right out of his head.
A tap landed on his shoulder. Hawkeye shut his eyes and bobbed down, and the hand tightened in his hair, just to the edge of pain, an edge that would be so, so good if he didn’t feel like he’d just been doused with ice water.
“Fuck,” the man groaned, drawing out the vowel, and finished in Hawkeye’s mouth.
Yeah. Fuck, indeed.
When it was over—evidence swallowed, softening cock tucked away—the guy extended a hand to help Hawkeye to his feet. “You want . . . ?”
Hawkeye pushed his hand away. “I’m alright.”
His words snapped whatever lingering camaraderie hung between them.
“If you say so.” The guy pulled back and turned for the door, then hesitated. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah. Maybe,” Hawkeye echoed.
The guy huffed a joyless laugh, then disappeared back into the bar.
Hawkeye slumped back against the brick, still warm from the man’s shoulders, and wiped at his lips with the back of his hand. Great. Fantastic. He’d gotten under someone else—successfully! In record time!—and yet somehow managed to make himself feel infinitely worse in the process.
He cursed, kicked an empty can at a nearby dumpster, and stalked out of the alleyway.
#
Hawkeye woke the next morning to his back screaming, an incessant pounding between his eyes, and a sense of genuine amazement that he’d managed to sleep in the backseat of his car. What the hell? Where had he driven to, and why hadn’t he—
Fuck. He was in Hartford. He’d gone to another bar after Nick’s, hadn’t he? A vague image of a piano lounge flitted through his mind—a cocktail waitress with ringlet curls and a laugh like bells. The bartender cutting him off. A bouncer ejecting him while letting him know how lucky he was they weren’t calling the cops.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He raised an arm and squinted to check the time on BJ Hunnicutt’s goddamn watch. He’d been fine—fine—until he caught sight of it in the alley, and then remembrance took the shine off the first dalliance he’d allowed himself in ages. “I’ll never shake you,” he’d said, but he meant it more in the metaphorical sense. It wasn’t supposed to be prophecy.
Somewhere in the distance, church bells rang, calling the faithful to service.
Hawkeye spun the watch around his wrist, fiddling with the strap. Maybe the appeal of believing in a higher power lay in having somewhere to direct this achy hugeness of feeling. A god wouldn’t shun nor reject it, even if he didn’t reciprocate it, and those who loved could do so loudly without fear of losing him. Hawkeye supposed there was comfort in that, even if he didn't buy into it.
With a groan, he dragged himself up to sit and smoothed his hair in the rearview mirror. Lucky, that he wasn’t in so much of a state that he couldn’t be seen in public, because his head was pounding, and he needed a cup of coffee and food to fortify him for the drive back to New Haven, where he’d crawl into bed and sleep until Monday.
He’d passed a diner on the way to Nick’s the night before and retraced his steps there, squinting against an offensively cloudless sky in search of the familiar sign. Before he reached it, however, he caught sight of a post office tucked between a haberdashery and a bookshop.
Hawkeye paused, staring at a window display of stamps. The newest booklet pictured landmarks from around the country: the Empire State Building, the Liberty Bell, the Grand Canyon.
The Golden Gate Bridge.
Hawkeye tugged at the buckle of BJ’s wristwatch until it came off, pocketed it, and walked inside.
Notes:
(1) This is indeed a real place! Nick’s Café in Hartford opened in 1951 and became a well-known gay bar and community institution. Though it was frequently raided during the lavender scare, the FBI sure didn’t manage to get it to shut its doors; it remained a Hartford mainstay for decades.
Chapter 10: BJ - July 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
On the first night of BJ’s most and least favorite month, BJ sat on his front porch with a cold beer at his elbow. Beer, not liquor. He’d had a rough few days and couldn’t afford any more whiskey dreams.
A week ago, he’d been playing in the sprinklers with Erin on the front lawn when a car backfired down the street. His reaction was automatic, immediate, and he’d jerked her into his arms and thrown them both to the ground. Neither of them were hurt, but it shocked her to wailing. She wouldn’t let him touch her for the rest of the day.
He’d gotten so worked up about it that, by the evening, Viv pushed him out the front door to take a lap around the neighborhood and burn off his agitation.
BJ chewed on his pen cap, reading back through the last lines of his letter describing the day.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since, he wrote. Viv was right, though, and the running helped, even if I still feel like shit about the whole thing. It’s like I have this beast inside of me, but putting it through its paces exhausts it, lets it simmer down and rest.
Erin forgave me. It’s been hard to believe I deserve it.
The second-worst part of the week was that Susan Davis was out walking the dog when it happened. I don’t know exactly what she said to who or when, but she’s been gossiping with the other nurses. They keep going silent every time I walk up to the station or into the break room. Is it curiosity that gets them talking? Pity? Malice? I’m not sure which I’d hate the most.
I do know that it might kill me if this is the thing that wins Gary and Susan their neighborhood crusade. Or if, after all the successful surgeries I’ve done in the last year, this calls my ability to practice into question. Not that I think things are so dire, but it’s been hard to keep a cool head this week. Hopefully we’ll all be able to decompress over the holiday.
Maybe I should take up running. Maybe it’d help.
He stared at the words. His letters to Hawkeye were like mirrors of his brain, in some ways, but with very particular holes, because he couldn’t say everything he wanted.
If things were different, maybe he’d write that Peg and Viv are out on a date tonight. There’s a little club she and I found before the war for people like us, though we didn’t go very much. Back then, it was easier to pretend we were just like everyone else. Or maybe I should say it was enough? It’s not, anymore, and Peg goes more often. I join her, sometimes. Mostly I’m glad to stay home and give Peg and Viv a fun night together. Maybe, when you come out, I’ll take you there.
The club has dancing, and I remember how much you love a lindy. I wonder what it’d be like to dance with you. To hold you in my arms. To kiss you. God, Hawk, sometimes I lie awake at night for hours imagining it. What it’d have been like if I hadn’t chickened out after you came back from battalion aid and gave you that kiss the next morning. If I’d kissed you goodbye on the helipad the way I wanted to. We used to tell each other fantasies all the time, but I never told you my favorite one, where you’d come to visit after the war when the beach house was done. We’d go out swimming late at night. Skinny-dipping, maybe. I did it with friends when I was younger, and it meant nothing, but it’d be different with you. It’s colder than you’d think, given the temperature of the air. You can blame all that thermohaline circulation for it. (1) But your skin would be warm, and we’d hold onto one another, and I’d kiss you just like that. I’d kiss you everywhere.
A dog barked down the street, jolting BJ out of the fantasy. He took a deep breath to calm his blood, followed by a swig of his beer, and evaluated the last line he’d actually written before his mind went galloping away on him.
Maybe I should take up running.
Funny, that.
He didn’t want to keep running from this. Not really. But he also didn’t know how he’d begin to broach this topic in a letter, even if honesty came easier with practice. Ever since he and Peg started telling it how it was, he’d been able to write to Hawkeye about the difficult surgeries, the rough nights, the terrible dreams. He complained about how Gary got the town to demand that BJ cut his hedges back in a move that made him abundantly glad the neighborhood didn’t have an HOA—and nervous that Gary would flex his position to have the same result. He wrote about jokes he overheard and copied lines from books he thought Hawk would enjoy, enough of them to make it clear he thought about Hawkeye more or less constantly. But the rest felt like something he ought to say in person.
I should write Father Mulcahy about it, he wrote instead. I lettered in track in high school, but that feels like a lifetime ago, now. Hopefully Mulcahy will have some pointers about getting back in shape. Old dog, new tricks and all that.
Then he set the letter aside, turned the porch light off, and called it an early night.
#
The following morning, BJ had just finished flipping the last of the pancakes when Peg swung through the kitchen door.
“Mail call!” she sing-songed, shaking a small package at him.
Which meant mail from Hawkeye. BJ darted across the kitchen fast enough to set Viv, at the table reading the paper, off into a peal of laughter.
“Boy, you’d think it was Christmas,” she said, causing Erin to perk up from her high chair.
“Presents?” Her sweet little face, cheeks smeared with maple syrup, pulled into an anticipatory grin. “Uncle Hawk presents?”
Ever since Moose-moose, “Uncle Hawk Presents” were legendary in the Hunnicutt household.
“I don’t know, Er-Bear,” BJ said, and tore into the package.
What he found inside nearly stopped his heart.
“BJ? What is it?”
He stared at the watch like it might explain itself, a tremor running through him as he pulled it from a bed of newspaper to rest in his palm. It was the only thing in the box: no note, no explanation.
“He sent it back,” he said, holding it out for them to see.
Viv set the paper down. “What?”
“Oh,” Peg whispered.
“Something’s wrong. He wouldn’t just—” BJ scrambled for the phone and yanked it off its hook. Fuck whatever the call cost. He’d find the money.
Please tell me it’s not a goodbye. Please, please, please.
The operator patched through to Boston, then Portland, then a local switchboard. But no one picked up at Hawkeye’s father’s house.
“Would you like me to try again at another time?” the operator asked. “I could also take a message.”
“Can you connect me to the Pierce family practice in town? The doctor’s office?” BJ tugged the cord, pacing in a tight circle near the kitchen door.
More clicks. Then at last, the operator dropped off the call, and a voice with a thick Maine accent picked up. “Dr. Pierce’s office, Hazel speaking.”
BJ gripped the receiver. “Hazel, hi, uh, I’m looking for Dr. Pierce. The younger. Ben. Is he in town?”
“Oh, sure,” Hazel said with a smile in her tone. “I saw him myself just yesterday, down at Milligans. But he’s not taking patients, you know. Not since he moved downcoast. If you’re looking to schedule, you’re going to have to wait to see the other Dr. Pierce.”
BJ sagged against the counter. “That’s—that’s fine. That’s fine.”
“Can I get your name for the schedule? Returning patient?”
“Oh—no. I was just having some trouble getting in touch with Ben, is all.”
“You a friend of his, then? Would you like to leave a message?”
His throat worked. What was he supposed to say? Tell him his best friend is calling in a panic because he mailed back a watch?
“No, that’s alright,” he managed. “Thank you for your help.”
He hung up too fast, the clatter of the phone loud in the airless kitchen. Peg and Viv looked at him expectantly. Erin, recently escaped from her high chair, tugged at Viv’s shirt, muttering about wanting to go play, but even she seemed subdued by the tension.
“He’s in town,” BJ said, running a hand through his hair. “He made it home for the holiday. So he’s . . . he’s okay.”
But if he really was okay, why would he send the watch? Something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right, and the last time he’d had that thought and brushed it under the rug, Hawkeye drove a jeep into the O Club.
Without another word, BJ bolted for his office and attacked the drawer in his desk where he and Peg kept their finances. He thumbed through check books and bank slips, calculating in his head. Checking barely covered both mortgages and utilities. So, savings. It would have to be savings. A plane ticket would cut into them too much—he already knew that—but what choice did he have? If Hawkeye was cracking again, if he was spiraling into the same dark place he’d fallen into before, BJ wasn’t going to make the same mistake. He needed to be there.
Downstairs, Erin’s protests floated up.
“I don’t wanna go to my room!”
“Just for a little bit, Bear. Let Daddy think, and then I promise we’ll go to the park.”
“Promise?”
Viv’s voice, now. “Of course, sweet girl.”
A trio of footsteps climbed the stairs, underscored with Erin’s chatter about her favored sandbox. The chatter dimmed as Peg escorted her into her room and shut the door, where they began a negotiation about Erin’s repayment for the inconvenience of getting hustled away from the breakfast table so quickly.
A moment later, Viv swept into his office, clutching a checkbook of her own. She bent over his desk and wrote one out, then handed it to him.
BJ blinked. “What’s this?”
“It’s a gift. Or a loan. Whatever you have to tell yourself to accept it.”
His eyes focused on the elegant sweep of her hand writing. One Hundred Dollars and 00/100, made out to BJ Hunnicutt. (2)
His jaw dropped. “Viv, I can’t.”
“You can, and you will,” she said in the same tone of voice she used when high schoolers made trouble in the reading room. “It’d kill you if something happened to him, and that’d kill Peg, and that’d kill me, you hear? You’re my family, now. Take it.”
His hands shook. The paper blurred, and he pulled her into a hug. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I’ll repay it—”
“Hunnicutt, if you tell me ‘with interest,’ I’m going to smack you.”
He huffed an almost-laugh, then stepped back and wiped his eyes. As he did, Peg appeared in the doorway.
Spotting her, Viv said, “I’ll get on the horn with the airline and see what we can scare up for tickets. Boston? Portland? Leaving as soon as possible, I assume?” At Peg’s nod, she disappeared into the hall.
Once the door shut behind her, BJ brandished the check Peg’s way. “Can you believe she—”
“Obviously,” Peg said, though not unkindly.
“It’s too much.”
“Do you think she’d take it back if you tried to return it?”
“I think she’d throw me in the Pacific.”
“Well, there you have it.”
“She’s”—BJ fought against the tightness of his throat—“she’s a good friend to me. A good partner to you.”
Peg patted his cheek. “I know how to pick ‘em, don’t I?”
They smiled at one another, but their quiet moment was interrupted by Viv, shouting from the kitchen,
“Shake a leg, Hunnicutt! You’re on a 10pm flight!” (3)
Before he could scramble for the bedroom to pack, however, Peg stopped him with an outstretched arm. “Wait. BJ, listen. When you get to Maine, if he’s in any condition to hear you, you have to tell him.”
That was, without a doubt, the last thing he wanted to think about.
“He sent back my watch. If he’s in any condition to hear me say it, then he’s well enough to have mailed it on purpose. What if that was his way of telling me he wants nothing to do with me?”
She reached over the desk, snatched up the most recent letter, and flipped it open. “‘I miss you something awful, Beej. Wish you were here.’ Does that sound like a man who wants nothing to do with you? What about ‘What kind of tree do you think we’d be?’ Because he reminds me of someone I know and love very well, who’s struggling day-by-day and trying to figure out how to live with it.” She poked him in the shoulder. “And sometimes, in the process, he doesn’t make the best decisions. Sound familiar?”
He swallowed hard.
“Go,” she urged. “This whole time you’ve said you couldn’t put it in a letter, that it had to be in person. Now’s your chance. Yes, you’re afraid. So was I. But you’ll regret it forever if you let it slip by.”
For a moment, all BJ could do was nod. Then he grabbed his checkbook, a billfold, and that hideous lobster shirt from the back of his chair.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll try.”
#
The bus came to a stop in Damariscotta, hissing like an old man easing into a rocking chair. (4) BJ stood and stretched his legs, stiff from hours folded into a seat too narrow from him, and stepped down onto the sidewalk outside a long-closed pharmacy. It was still miles to Crabapple Cove, but at least the summer crowd made public transportation possible. As for where he’d go from here, well—
“You waiting on someone?”
A woman in a floral dress stood behind him, her own duffel slung over a shoulder. He put her at around his age—perhaps a year or two older—tall and curly, with a high bun that reminded him immediately of Margaret.
“Not exactly,” he said, then gave another cursory glance around as the bus pulled away. The sun had long since set, leaving the street deserted except for an idling car in front of a brick building across the way.
“Tourist?”
“How’d you guess?”
She snorted, then thumbed at the car. “Come on. If you’re looking around for cabs or a payphone, you’re a few hours out from the kind of bus stop that’d have either, and the bar shut a half hour ago.”
“That’s kind of you, but—”
“Where you headed? Dad and I can take you there or get you close, depending.”
Something about the directness of it was refreshing. And the immediate desire to extend—to help a stranger who’d haplessly popped off the bus with no clear plan—reminded him immediately of Hawkeye.
“Visiting a friend in Crabapple Cove.” At her unimpressed look, he added, lamely, “It was meant to be a surprise.”
“Sure.”
He tailed her across the lot and waited a polite distance back while she bent at the driver’s side window, having a rapid-fire conversation with, presumably, her father. Finally, she yanked open the back door.
“We can drop you in town. Figure it’ll still be a walk from there, but better than the seven-mile trek you’d have otherwise.”
Vinyl creaked as BJ settled in behind the driver’s seat with his duffel draped over his knees. He met the father’s eyes in the mirror.
“Lucky we’re going to Eugley, so we’ll be passing right through,” the man said, starting the engine.
“Just up the road, isn’t it?” BJ asked.
“Oh, so he does know how to read a map.”
“Dad.”
BJ grinned as the car pulled out of the lot, gravel crunching under tire. “And here I was told that New Englanders were unfriendly.”
“Unfriendly doesn’t mean unkind,” the man said. “You’ll get to know the difference. Who you visiting?”
“Do you know the Pierces?”
The man gave an incredulous laugh. “Doc Pierce? Who doesn’t?” His eyes flicked back to the mirror. “You here for him or for Benjy?”
Benjy? Oh, the second he determined Hawk was in good enough shape to tease, he’d bust that nickname out and never let him live it down.
“Ben and I served together overseas.”
This earned him the first hint of a smile in the mirror. “Good of you to come out for a buddy, then . . .”
“BJ.”
“Well BJ, I’m Jack. You’ve already met Meredith. And for a friend of the Pierces, I think I can arrange for a little door-to-door service.”
He fought down the instinct to demure, instead thanking them and letting the ride lapse into silence.
The car’s headlights carved out a narrow path through the dark, pines flashing by like silent sentinels. Every so often, moonlight caught the sweep of water beyond the trees—long, silver glimpses of what looked like lakes, but were surely too close to the ocean to be. BJ leaned toward the cracked window to breathe it in.
Hawkeye’s out there. Right now. And I’m—
Close. So close. BJ tightened a hand around the strap on his duffel. The other strayed to his jacket pocket, where he’d tucked his most important piece of luggage.
The drive didn’t take long—fifteen minutes, maybe less—before Jack slowed and pointed with one hand on the wheel. “That’s the place. Big old house, can’t miss it.”
BJ’s throat went dry. Even from the car, the Pierce house looked like something out of another era—shingle siding weathered by the sea air, wide front porch sagging a little with age, shutters painted a robin’s egg blue. There was a low stone wall along the front yard, uneven from years of frost heave, and beyond it, the dark shapes of lilac bushes crowded near the steps.
The car idled at the edge of the drive. BJ fumbled for words. “Thank you. Really. Saved me a long walk.”
“Not at all,” Meredith said warmly. “Happy Fourth, and thank you for your service.”
BJ’s neck prickled, but he shoved down the flash of irritation—and the snide remark—that rose up whenever anyone thanked him for getting shipped off to hell. They didn’t know. They were being kind. And a thank you, certainly, was better than the alternative.
“Enjoy your visit, BJ. Say ‘hi’ to the doc for us,” Jack said after BJ shut the door. He tipped his cap in farewell and the car rumbled off, leaving BJ alone on the quiet lane, suitcase in hand, next to a mailbox that bore the same number as the address he’d written on countless envelopes last fall.
Hawkeye was here. Hawkeye was right here.
Being so close after so long was suddenly unbearable. He stood staring at the house’s darkened windows, his mind replaying snippets from nearly a year of letters, but kept coming back to the prior morning, to the package he’d opened in his kitchen, to the bolt of unadultered horror that struck him when he saw the watch inside.
Hawkeye was right here, but what if he’d rather BJ were elsewhere? Maybe he should have left a message with Hazel or tried calling again later. What was he thinking?
Minutes ticked by. It started to drizzle, because of course it did—just enough for his shirt to cling to his back. The discomfort pushed past his paralysis. He hefted his duffel, mounted the stairs, and raised his fist to knock.
For a moment there was only silence. Then a shuffle, the creak of floorboards, a bump against furniture upstairs. A light blinked to life in a window above, casting a weak glow into the mist.
“Coming, coming!” a voice floated down, achingly familiar.
Another light flared on the first floor, illuminating the painted wood of the porch. The latch rattled, the door swung open—
And there he was.
Hawkeye blinked into the darkness, nose scrunched, dark hair falling into his eyes. His shoulders filled the doorframe. He’d come down in a green bathrobe—emerald, not olive drab—and held a doctor’s bag in one hand. Lines from the pillow crisscrossed his cheek, tracing through stubble grown from missing a shave or two. He’d lost some of the gauntness BJ remembered from the end of the war, but it was still him, unmistakably him, and BJ shook with how badly he wanted to wrap him in a hug.
He restrained himself and instead dug in his pocket for the watch, which he held up pinched between thumb and forefinger, just as he had on the helipad.
Hawkeye’s eyes were the size of silver dollars. His mouth fell open.
“You,” BJ said, “stiffed me on interest.”
Notes:
REUNION TIME!
I am, as always, grateful for all the comments, and tremendously appreciate everyone who has dropped me a line so far. Thank you!
Chapter Notes:
(1) You can, indeed, blame thermohaline circulation for the water temperature on the west coast! There’s a big upwelling zone near California, which brings cold, deep water up to the surface. This is partly why CA fisheries are so productive—and why so many megafauna are sighted near shore.
(2) This is the equivalent of a check for a little over $1000, so Viv is being an epic wingwoman, here.
(3) Because I have no chill whatsoever, I looked up an American Airlines flight schedule from spring-summer 1954 to figure out what kind of travel would be plausible and worked the timing in this chapter around it. If you’ve been keeping track, you’d have noticed that this chapter began on July 1st, which means the breakfast/watch scene would take place on the morning of July 2nd. BJ would have already missed most of the flights of the day, which left super early in the morning in order to get into Boston at a decent hour. While there are other evening flights, I’ve chosen to put him on what would have been the cheapest redeye: a ~10pm flight with stops in LA, Dallas, and Washington. His anticipated arrival would be around 7:30pm on July 3rd. Given the modern drive time between Boston and Damariscotta (~2.5hrs)—and the fact that the I-95 didn’t yet exist—I’m guessing he’d have a 4-ish hour drive time via to get anywhere near Hawkeye (given that a bus would also make stops).
(4) It’s commonly theorized that the fictional Crabapple Cove is actually based off of / located near Bremen, Maine. I’m running with that theory and putting BJ at what would have been the closest big-ish bus stop in Damariscotta. From there, especially at this time of night, he’s pretty SOL, so it’s a good thing he met a friendly fellow passenger. To be clear, I’m still imagining Crabapple Cove as its own separate entity (ie: this isn’t Bremen with the serial numbers filed off, it’s just . . . more or less where Bremen is IRL). Is it likely that a bus would be running this late? Maybe not, but I’m pretending there’s expanded service for the holiday weekend, so bear with me.
Chapter 11: Hawkeye - July 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Hawkeye dropped his bag with a thud. BJ Hunnicutt was here. He was here, standing on his father’s porch, holding out that damn watch and complaining about interest.
“You rat,” Hawkeye said, lunging for him.
BJ was here, on his father’s porch, in his arms, hugging him like they were back on the helipad. Hawkeye buried his face in BJ’s collar, rubbing his cheek against damp fabric, inhaling the scent of real shampoo and a long day of travel. An involuntary shudder shook him, and one of BJ’s hands traced the length of his spine before settling in a comforting weight at the small of his back. The other tangled in the hair at his nape.
Without a pilot left waiting, the hug went on far longer than their last one. BJ’s nose pressed into his hair, and when he spoke, his lips moved against the skin below Hawkeye’s ear.
“Missed you.”
Hawkeye clutched him closer. His whole body tingled with pins and needles, all the parts that had gone numb from separation lighting up at once. It was ‘Rudyard Kipling’ all over again, three years later and halfway across the world, here on a misty night where one joke about interest disarmed any defense he could have mustered.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
BJ’s arms tightened, and neither of them let go.
He’d spent a week and a half between home and his father’s house thinking he’d ruined this, worrying what BJ would think when he got the watch—worried enough he’d sent an apology by mail shortly thereafter. Every day, he’d cursed his impulsive tendency to cut off his nose to spite his face. Every day, he’d missed the weight on his wrist.
It had occurred to him that BJ might panic when he saw the package. That this latest fit of pique would be the thing that made BJ decide their friendship wasn’t worth it. But here he was, and though part of Hawkeye was mortified that he’d dropped everything in California—his wife, his daughter, his work—to come, the selfish animal in him luxuriated in it, and he melted further into the circle of BJ’s arms.
They’d begun to sway together, a facsimile of a slow dance with only the whir of crickets to keep time, when the thud of footsteps jerked Hawkeye back.
“Everything alright out there?” his dad called.
Hawkeye took another look at BJ—even better than pictures in his pink button-down and jeans, oh god he wasn’t prepared for the jeans—snatched up the medical bag, and dragged him inside.
They converged in the foyer. His dad stood at the foot of the stairs, a dressing gown over his pajamas, and Hawkeye eagerly tugged BJ forward, presenting him like a cat bringing a prize through the front door, look at what I’ve found, look at this mess I’ve made, look at this man who’s breaking my heart and ruining my life. Isn’t he fantastic?
“Beej, this is my dad, Dr. Daniel Pierce,” he said instead. “Dad, you remember BJ Hunnicutt? Former bunkie and letter-writing afficionado? It seems he’s decided to pay us a midnight house call.”
“Of course I remember.” His dad’s eyes twinkled like he’d caught Hawkeye in a fib. “Hard to forget a name that popped up in three letters a week for well over a year.” He clasped BJ’s hand firmly. “Welcome to Crabapple Cove, son.”
BJ shook, then pulled back, drifting towards Hawkeye’s side. “Thank you, sir. Sorry for the short notice. I should have—”
“Nonsense. You helped bring my boy home in one piece. For you, my door is always open.” His dad turned, slipping into the kitchen and flicking on the light. “Come on. You’ve been rattling around on a bus for hours, haven’t you? Let’s get you something to wash the road away.”
Hawkeye shut the front door and herded BJ into the kitchen. He lingered at the counter while his dad cajoled BJ into having a seat at the table and accepting a glass of water, rubbing his eyes as if, once they focused, the chair would be empty and BJ would disappear.
But no, there he was: travel-worn, rain-damp, and smiling sheepishly in the heart of Hawkeye’s childhood home.
His father lingered just long enough for them to settle, then headed for the hall. “I’ll see what bedding I can dig up. Couch isn’t half bad if you angle the cushions right.”
And then they were alone. Hawkeye-and-BJ. BJ-and-Hawkeye.
“Am I dreaming?”
BJ’s smile flashed all his teeth, but didn’t reach his eyes. “Are you saying you dream about me?”
If only you knew.
“A product of my guilty conscience.” His eyes fell to the table, where BJ had set the watch down next to his glass of water. “You didn’t have to come all this way.”
The smile sharpened into a challenge. “Sure I did.”
His stomach flipped. God, BJ looked good—hair and mustache trimmed up, well-rested in spite of a day or more of travel, shirt filled out at the shoulders. Hawkeye fixed on his forearms, where rolled cuffs stretched over tanned skin. A new watch sat on his left wrist. His hands, broad and talented, rested on the table. Hawkeye suppressed the sudden temptation to take one of those hands between his own, to kiss his knuckles, to draw those fingers into his mouth.
This is a disaster.
“No, I—look. I’m fine. I’m sorry. It’s a rough time of year, and I had a bad night. Didn’t think about what conclusion you might draw from opening that box until it was a little too late to take it back.” He paced to the refrigerator. “I-I sent a letter afterward, you know. Guess I should have air mailed it.”
“You scared me out of my mind, Hawk. I thought you were saying goodbye.”
“Jesus.”
“I did try to call. When no one picked up here, I tried the clinic. Thank god Crabapple Cove is the size of a thimble and Hazel ran into you at the market yesterday.”
Hawkeye pulled up short on his second circuit from the counter to the refrigerator. “So you knew I’d made it to Dad’s. Why—”
“Because I knew you were here, but I didn’t know if you were alright, and I needed to see for myself.”
“Beej, I’m . . .” He fidgeted with a refrigerator magnet, stomach souring. One particularly shitty night, and now BJ was here in Maine instead of home with his wife and kid. What the hell was wrong with him? “I won’t pretend everything is hunky dory, but I’m fine. Really. You shouldn’t have.”
“Right.” BJ stared morosely at his glass. “If this is an imposition, I’ll head out tomorrow.”
Hawkeye reared back. “What?”
“Ever since March, you’ve made it clear you weren’t welcoming a visit. I should have taken the hint.”
Shit, shit, shit. “That’s—no. You’ve got it all twisted.”
“Do I? You sent back my watch.” BJ’s hands tightened around the edge of the table. “You sent it back, and I thought to myself—he’s telling me to shove off. But if he’s going to do that, I’m going to make him say it to my face.”
God, how was he going to wriggle out of this without getting honest enough to make everything so, so much worse?
“I’d never tell you to shove off,” he said, words catching in his throat. “You’re my best friend, you moron.”
BJ’s shoulders tightened, then relaxed, and at last, he turned to Hawkeye with the ghost of a smile on his lips. “That goes double for me, stupid.”
No matter what mess was cycling in his head, he couldn’t give BJ reason to doubt it ever again. They’d have their visit, and he’d put on a damn good showing, and BJ would go home to California knowing he’d always have Hawkeye in his corner.
Not that it’d be easy. No, Hawkeye suspected it’d be a bit like performing a thoracotomy on himself without anesthetic. But the alternative, clearly, was worse. Because he was an absolute heel for scaring BJ badly enough that he felt like he had to drop everything to hop on a cross-country flight. For making him think that he could ever, in any world, be unwanted. Hawkeye Pierce, cracked bunkie, strikes again.
“Look,” he said, “I’m really glad you’re here. Don’t let my ill-advised delivery fool you, alright?”
BJ thumbed the bezel of the watch, then palmed and pocketed it. “Are you going to tell me what was going through your head that night? Or, really, all spring? Because if things have been hard, you can say so. You know that, don’t you? I want to be here for you.”
The thump of footsteps coming down the stairs spared Hawkeye the need to reply, and honestly, bless Dad for his timing.
“Hawk, come give me a hand with this, will you?”
He appeared in the doorway with an armful of bedding, a pillow tucked under his chin. Hawkeye jumped up with BJ on his heels, and between the three of them they shook out sheets and blankets, spreading them across the couch in a sad display that was, to Hawkeye’s chagrin, only marginally cozier than an army cot.
“Sorry about the accommodations. I’d say you could bunk with me if you wanted, but you’ve probably had enough of that for a lifetime.”
BJ shrugged. “Four walls, a real floor, and no rats? This is practically the Ritz.” He shifted his weight, surveying the couch. “I’m the one who should apologize for camping out in your living room. If there’s a motel nearby—”
“Not on short notice over a holiday,” Hawkeye replied as his dad said,
“Try it, and I suspect Hawk will drag you back here by your shoelaces.”
Hawkeye pretended not to notice his dad’s unrepentant grin, but had less luck ignoring the jaw-cracking yawn that followed. It was contagious, and soon, he and BJ both fell victim to it. Over the mantel, the clock chimed one.
“Well,” his dad said, stretching, “that’s me done for.” He gave BJ’s shoulder a warm squeeze. “Goodnight, son. Glad you’re here.”
Hawkeye took the opportunity to lock up and shut off the kitchen lights, but circled back to the living room where BJ sat on the couch-bed, unlacing his converse and looking like he was gearing up for a conversation Hawkeye absolutely didn’t have the wherewithal to approach that night, if ever.
“Look, it’s late,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow, alright? Besides, I still owe you interest. I’ll start with breakfast.”
BJ relented. “That famous Pierce family French toast recipe?”
“The one and only,” Hawkeye said, raising a hand like he was taking an oath. “Beej, it’ll knock your socks off. Shoes, too. A real risk I’m taking on your behalf. If those size thirteens come flying off at any speed, they’ll punch a hole clean through our drywall.”
That earned him BJ’s first genuine laugh of the night, warm and tired all at once. They smiled at each other across the half-darkened room, and for a moment the air between them thickened like it used to in the Swamp, when they sat too close and a joke had played itself out.
He desperately wanted to duck in for another hug. He didn’t.
“Goodnight, Beej.”
BJ’s answering smile was so tender, Hawkeye could barely stand it, so he retreated before the dim light and the rush of BJ being here, here, here encouraged him to do or say something he’d later regret.
“Night, Hawk.”
#
Hawkeye was halfway through a rendition of Oh What a Beautiful Morning, cracking an egg into the mixing bowl on every downbeat and planning his segue from Oklahoma! to Carousel, when BJ appeared in the doorway.
“I should have known the revue stage wasn’t limited to the shower tent,” he said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
He was pajama clad in a white tee shirt, and the sight of him in something so domestic, so mundane, lit Hawkeye up enough that he was ready to run laps.
“Sorry, did I wake you?”
“There had better be coffee.”
Hawkeye cocked a thumb at the percolator. “Fresh-brewed by the time you’re showered and ready to go. And you’ll need it! Plenty on the agenda today.” He tap-danced his way to the dish rack. “We’ll have the big tour, then lunch at the diner—the one I told you about, remember? Best fries in town? Sure, maybe they’re the only fries in town, but the shakes, now the shakes—”
“Hawk.”
“Gonna have to come back here to help dad with the chowder afterward, maybe catch a little nap, because tonight’s the potluck and lobster bake down at the beach.”
“Hawk.”
“Nyeees?” He spun away from the dish rack, whisk in hand.
BJ leaned against the doorway, now, something terribly fond in his smile. “Can you save the presentation of the itinerary until after I’ve showed? I’m as stale as Igor’s toast.”
“Get on with it, then! What’s holding you up?” He shooed BJ out of the kitchen, belting out a reprise of “oh what a beautiful feeling, everything’s going my way!” to retreating laughter.
Fifteen minutes later, his dad filtered in from morning rounds in the garden and parked at the table with the Courier. He read while sipping coffee and listening to Hawkeye’s increasingly jittery singing—interspersed with commentary about French toast and bacon—with a knowing smile.
That smile was calculated to get to Hawkeye, which it finally did halfway through June is Bustin’ Out All Over.
“What?” he hissed. “You’re giving me the look again.”
His dad flipped a page. “It’s good to see you so happy.”
Hawkeye didn’t correct him. Happy, sure, might be what it looked like from the outside, but this wasn’t quite that. This was the itchy buzz of energy beneath his skin that he needed to get out before he exploded. Sure, yes, he was thrilled—ecstatic, over the moon—that BJ had come. He couldn’t quite believe, it, yet, and couldn’t wait to spend the day together. But on the other end of the scale, it was the Fourth, and the beach, and the bus, and a night of fireworks, and days of however long BJ decided to stay, through which he’d have to keep bottling up feelings that proved the old adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Happy was a lot closer to contentment than what coursed through Hawkeye’s veins.
“Dad, I’m—”
“Something smells incredible in here!”
Hawkeye’s head whipped up in time for BJ to walk into the kitchen, freshly showered, hair damp, looking good enough to eat with a side of bacon and—
“What the hell are you wearing?”
BJ struck a pose in the doorway, ugly lobster shirt, cheesy mustache and all.
“Oh no, no, no.” Hawkeye shook a spatula at him. “You are absolutely not wearing that around town. I forbid it.”
“You gave it to me!”
The infuriating little grin BJ attempted to stifle made it clear he knew exactly what he was doing.
“It was a gag gift.” Hawkeye said. “I am not going to be seen next to such a-a-a—”
“A what?”
“A tourist.”
“Oh, come on, Hawk,” BJ said, fixing himself a coffee. “Don’t worry about it! If anyone asks, I’ll tell them how much I’ve cherished such a thoughtful present from Crabapple Cove’s own Ben Franklin Pierce.”
That absolute fink. Hawkeye spluttered out a noise of affront while scooping the last of the bacon out of its pan. “Bad enough they think I associate with someone wearing it—to tell them I was the one who bought it?”
“So, you’re saying I shouldn’t wear my party hat to go with?”
He shoveled the bacon onto the tray of French toast and dropped it on the table. “Just eat your damn breakfast, Beelzebub-Jabberwocky. (1) You’re lucky I still feel guilty about making you also eat the cost of a ticket to come out this far.”
An expedition into the refrigerator secured both the milk and a bowl of fruit left over from breakfast the day before. He handed them to BJ before going back for cutlery, but it wasn’t until he returned to the table that he remembered what the fruit bowl was mostly composed of, because BJ looked positively green.
“Everything alright, son?” his dad asked, and Hawkeye couldn’t help the cackle that escaped.
“Dad, you’re going to love this one. Just about two years ago now, we got our hands on a real, honest-to-god fresh watermelon.”
BJ, for his part, pushed the fruit bowl to the other side of the table and went about loading up his plate with toast, making his best attempt at pretending the conversation wasn’t happening.
“Watermelon?”
“It grows there, but you gotta understand, finding fresh produce, even local produce? Not easy where we were.” Hawkeye slid into the chair nearest BJ, knee kicked up to rest against the table’s edge. “Klinger came back from R&R in Seoul with two of them and said he’d give us one if we’d use it for a very specific purpose: fill it with gin from the still and share it with him. Who were we to say no?”
His dad laughed. “We did that with white rum. Harry, Ed, and I used to load one in a cooler, then drag it down to the lake for a day of fishing. We called it ‘rummermelon.’ Those were lethal.” (2)
“Sure, I know that, but it turns out Captain Dr. Hunnicutt was blissfully unaware. He sat out in the sun, played at least one game of pickup basketball with the guys from the motor pool, ate half the watermelon, and got absolutely blotto.”
BJ groaned around a mouthful of French toast. “I was hungover for almost two days.”
“I warned you, didn’t I?”
“Sure, just like you to rub it in my face.”
“It was glorious,” Hawkeye said, turning to his dad. “I got to say ‘I told you so’ and spend time with Sidney’s second-favorite colleague, all in the same day.”
“Second favorite?”
“Schadenfreude.”
BJ pushed back from the table. “Dr. Pierce, I’m afraid I’m going to need a ride to the airport. Immediately.” He held the straight face for an admirable beat, but lost it as soon as Hawkeye started laughing, swaying in until their arms pressed against one another.
He didn’t move away even as Hawkeye’s dad insisted that “it’s Daniel, please, we’re both doctors” and prodded them into recounting more stories Hawkeye hadn’t included in his letters. Heart singing, Hawkeye finished breakfast the way he used to in the mess tent, jostling BJ and running over the ends of his sentences, until it became difficult to tell where one of them ended and the next began.
“I missed this,” BJ murmured during a lull, reaching out to refill his plate.
“Yeah, Beej.” Hawkeye scooted even closer, until BJ’s body heat bled through his tee shirt to warm his flank. “I really am glad you came.”
Notes:
I've been so excited to post the reunion scene for you -- I hope I did it justice!
As always, folks, thank you thank you for all of the kind feedback. Your comments always get me jazzed up to keep plugging away at the story.
Footnotes and fun facts:
(1) Lewis Carroll wrote Jabberwocky in 1871 for Through the Looking Glass. I can’t help but think Hawkeye would absolutely adore a poem that was made up entirely of nonsense words and vibes.
(2) This sacrilegious (but delicious) use of watermelon is inspired by 1) my father, who used to do this with white rum while playing games of pickup softball with his buddies, though I imagine Hawk and BJ’s version was a bit more like drinking Everclear, which, yikes and 2) a recent Tumblr post I found—but can no longer attribute because I’ve since misplaced the source, sorry!—from a user who wrote about how their grandfather told stories about doing this during the Korean War.
Chapter 12: BJ - July 4th, 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
On the excruciatingly long trip to Maine, BJ had imagined a thousand different scenarios: Hawkeye the way he’d been last July, talking himself in circles of nonsense. Hawkeye cagey and standoffish, sending BJ to stay in a motel. Hawkeye welcoming but distant, unwilling to sit down for a heart-to-heart, a shadow of the friend he’d known overseas.
During the layover in Dallas, BJ let himself consider—for a brief moment—a Hawkeye who was thrilled to see him, who’d mailed the watch as part of a joke that didn’t land. That version of Hawkeye let him say his piece straight away and rewarded his confession with a kiss.
Trust reality to be more complicated than anything BJ cooked up. Because the clutching hug with which Hawkeye welcomed him resembled his fantasy from Dallas, but everything that came thereafter was a mishmash of his other hopes and fears. While it was abundantly clear that BJ wasn’t the only one who’d missed the closeness of their friendship, every time he tried to get Hawkeye to settle down long enough to have a serious conversation, Hawkeye rebuffed him with another song-and-dance routine—sometimes literally.
It wasn’t that BJ disliked being the center of Hawkeye’s attempts at entertainment. He got a selfish, unadultered thrill every time Hawkeye did or said something with the express intent of making him laugh. But he sensed the edge of raw desperation beneath each joke, and it both worried him and made it increasingly difficult to approach the questions he wanted to ask.
Are you happy I’m here, Hawk? Are you happy the way I’m happy? Does it feel like you can breathe again? Does everything feel a little brighter, more exciting, the way it does for me?
Does your heart beat hard the way mine does whenever we’re close?
As each hour passes, are you reckoning with the fact that no visit could ever be long enough? Because it’s killing me, Hawk. I want to keep you.
The grand tour, which began shortly after breakfast, took them down to the shore, along the docks, and back on a loop through town. Hawkeye narrated all the while, painting a vision of an idyllic, small-town childhood. Were he with anyone else, BJ’s attention would have wandered from the outset. But he craved any fact, any detail, any hint that’d help him get to the bottom of Hawkeye.
He did, however, still struggle with distraction. Civilian Hawk looked damn good in a rich blue, summery polo. He wore it untucked, of course, over a pair of light slacks that had to be new, because they fit perfectly and gave BJ a much better view of Hawkeye’s ass than he’d ever had in fatigues. It took a tremendous exercise of willpower not to wrestle him to the ground in the green at the center of town and get grass stains all over them. Maybe that, at least, would give Hawkeye an outlet for his nervous energy.
“You gotta forgive me, Beej. I’m like a kid at Christmas right now. Feels like I’ve been waiting a hundred years to show all of this to you,” Hawkeye said as he dragged them from the school, to the clinic, to the library.
The words reminded him of the Swamp, where he’d once sat at Hawkeye’s side and spent over an hour looking at pictures of Muscongus Bay, savoring them like a delicacy from another life.
“Feels like I’ve been waiting a hundred years, too.”
Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who wanted to be the recipient of Hawkeye’s attention. The Pierces were local celebrities, and every other person they passed on the street stopped them, pulling the golden shine of Hawkeye’s focus away until an introduction tumbled into the predictable ritual of thanking BJ for his service. The questions about Korea that followed left Hawkeye agitated and snappish.
So, by the fifth time someone stopped them on the street, BJ beat Hawkeye to the answer.
“I’m just up here for the holiday,” he said. “Benjy’s a friend from work, you see, and since most of my family is on the other coast, he was kind enough to invite me up.”
The lie was worth it for the look on Hawkeye’s face—a look that grew still more incredulous when BJ did a passable job of convincing Mrs. Bennett that he worked with Hawk in New Haven. It took everything in BJ to hold it together until the conversation finished and they’d moved far enough down the street to be out of ear shot.
“You fink!” Hawkeye exclaimed between cackles. “Lying to a little old lady like that. How could you?”
“So you’re saying I should have let her pepper us with questions about Korea, or . . .?”
Hawkeye swayed into him, eyes slitted with mirth. “Oh no, by all means, let her think you live downcoast with me. By tomorrow, she’ll be at our door trying to marry you off to her nieces.”
“Lucky I have you to defend my honor.”
“What makes you think I won’t throw you to the wolves after you busted out that nickname? Where did you even hear that?”
“Your reputation precedes you, Benjy.”
Lunch at the diner followed a similar pattern. Hawkeye still sniffed his food, though not as thoroughly as he had in the mess tent, but the true impediment to a pleasant meal came in the steady stream of visitors at their table. He stole bites of his burger while assuring several former patients that yes, of course he was going to the bake that night, and sure, he could spare a minute to chat with them about their knees or backs or that year’s immunizations.
It wasn’t until their milkshakes arrived that BJ finally got Hawk to himself, but all the talk about the bake had Hawkeye distracted enough to make broaching any other subject difficult.
“I should have asked about the fireworks before assuring everyone you’d be there,” Hawkeye said, dipping a fry into his shake in a move that had BJ pulling a face. “I’m not trying to say you’re, you know.”
“Know what?”
“I mean, how typical, right? Vets and fireworks? But if it’s no good, we can take the car, go for a drive—”
Ah. “It’s fine. At least I know they’re coming.”
Hawkeye sniffed the fry, then abandoned it on his plate. “They make me twitchy. I don’t have trouble like some do, finding myself here-and-there at the same time.” He made a gesture as if to say that’s in the past. “But the sound of shelling always meant choppers, and fireworks are similar enough that when the show starts, it’s like some clock starts ticking in me. It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself I’m back home and wounded aren’t coming. I go into waiting mode.”
That was it. That was exactly it, and the knot between BJ’s shoulder blades unwound at having it spelled out so clearly. “I guess that’s why I always have dreams afterward. My head’s all confused that the choppers haven’t come, so it invents them for me.”
As if sensing the dive in BJ’s mood, Hawkeye squirmed in his seat, kicking a knee up to pretzel himself on his side of the booth the way he used to in the chair in Potter’s office. Something about it reminded BJ of the last letter he’d written about taking up running. He knew better than to think Hawkeye would submit to any kind of intentional physical exertion, but figured he might be able to run some of that energy out, anyway.
“Come on,” he said, standing. “You haven’t finished my tour.”
That, at least, seemed to work. Hawkeye’s words about waiting mode had inadvertently given BJ the clue he needed, because while the rumble of not-quite-mortar-fire wouldn’t start up until after nightfall, the anticipation of it—of the day itself—had already started Hawkeye’s countdown clock. He didn’t need to be told to settle because he couldn’t settle. The best BJ could do was lean in: to play into his jokes, to keep him moving. The more he did, the more he seemed to scratch an itch Hawkeye couldn’t reach on his own.
The same could be said in reverse. Moving together, being together, falling into the rhythm of their easy humor was a balm—an answer to a question BJ had silently shouted into the night for a year. The fact was, Hawkeye Pierce got him, knew him, fit him on some fundamental level that made it possible to pick up again a world away like no time had passed at all.
Or even, that the passage of time was for the better. Not all of their jokes had roots in Korea. Plenty additions to their repertoire stemmed from the thousands of words they’d written since returning home, and each laugh BJ drew from Hawkeye with those callbacks belonged only to him.
Hawkeye’s tour ended at Milligans, an old, two-story general store which doubled as the nearest grocer. They strolled through the aisles together, hunting a for gift for Erin while arguing about nonsense—BJ’s shirt, the best ice cream flavor, whether a gallon of maple syrup would put his suitcase over the weight limit. They’d only just decided on maple sugar candy as an ideal souvenir when the sharp peal of a baby’s cry rang out through the store.
BJ jolted. Fatherhood had rewired his limbic system, and children in distress would always send him scrambling, but that had nothing on what it did to Hawkeye, who’d gone preternaturally still.
“Do you need some air?”
Hawkeye wouldn’t look at him. “Did you know I work in a hospital? That’s where babies come from. Forget the stork, right? This is the modern world! Imagine if I couldn’t go through a-a-a day after hearing a kid cry, I mean, what kind of doctor—”
“You don’t have to pretend to be unaffected for my sake, okay?” He steadied Hawkeye by the elbow and turned him, meeting eyes blown wide. “Let’s get some air. We can come back and keep browsing later.”
He nudged Hawkeye down the street and to the green on impulse, where an open, cloudless sky stretched above them. Once there, it seemed like Hawkeye could breathe again, and when they took a seat together on the edge of an old fieldstone wall, he leaned against BJ’s side. It took every ounce of will in BJ’s body not to wrap Hawkeye up in his arms. To pull Hawkeye back against his chest, to kiss the nape of his neck, to hold tight for as long as Hawkeye needed, until Hawkeye was able to hold his own pieces together again.
They sat in silence, listening to the occasional rumble of passing cars, the call of birds, the chatter of townsfolk going about their days. Across the street, Mrs. Bennett exited the bakery with a woman BJ didn’t recognize.
“—friend of Benjy’s,” she was saying. “A doctor from Yale, with no family nearby. I’ll have to tell my Sarah. She can whip up one of her apple cobblers, and—”
Hawkeye’s laughter swallowed the rest of her words. “That’s what you get for telling baldfaced lies to good ol’ Mrs. Bennett.”
“Free cobbler?” BJ knocked their knees together. “Is that supposed to disincentivize me?”
“Wait until she finds out you’re married. It’ll break her heart.”
There was something in the way Hawkeye delivered the joke, something lurking beneath his words, that tempted BJ to spill it all—right there, right then. But the middle of the day in the village green was neither the time, nor the place for confessions, even if he recognized that flicker of hurt in Hawk’s eyes.
He’d seen it in Korea when Hawkeye let his guard down. They leaned into one another, and fed off one another, and constantly toed the line—words just a little too pointed, jokes too intimate, fingertips stealing touches of skin. Toeing the line teased BJ with what he wanted but couldn’t let himself have, and he often wondered if Hawkeye felt the same. Sometimes he worried that he saw only what he wanted to see and imagined the longing in his chest mirrored on Hawkeye’s face. Other times, like his anniversary dance with Margaret, he caught a glimpse of devastation so acute, he couldn’t imagine another explanation. He’d wanted so badly to soothe it, but what could he have said or done back then that wouldn’t have made it worse?
No wonder he’d gotten home and fizzed over. He’d have self-destructed if he tried to hold it in forever. Hell, seeing that look back on Hawkeye’s face had him about ready to go to pieces now. And what line had he toed this time? Telling Mrs. Bennet that they lived and worked together in New Haven? BJ hoped—prayed—that he wasn’t reading too far into Hawkeye’s reaction.
Tonight. He’d find out tonight, and he’d cross that line once and for all. If Peg was brave enough to do it with Viv, he’d find a way to do the same.
Hawkeye shifted to put a hand’s width of space between them. “How is Peg, anyway?” he asked, eyes on the green instead of on BJ.
“She wrote a paragraph or two to you in my last letter, didn’t she?”
“And I love hearing from her, don’t get me wrong, but”—he cast BJ a sideways glance—“she used to be half of what you talked about over there. I don’t think you’ve said her name once since you showed up.”
“Peg and Viv are great.” God, he really didn’t want to lie again, even if by omission, but this really wasn’t the place. “They’re looking forward to meeting you, but I think I can curb their disappointment if I bring back another souvenir like those trivets you sent last Christmas. She loves them. Was that a local woodworker?”
Hawkeye regarded him for a long moment, clearly not fooled by the change in subject, but nevertheless let it go. “Old man Horace. Milligans carries some of his things, but if none of them pique your fancy, we can head out to his place. He’s just at the edge of town.”
“Sounds like a plan. You alright to head back inside?”
“Right as rain.” He knocked their knees together again, then stood. “Thanks, Beej.”
“Anytime,” he said, and followed Hawkeye back across the street.
Notes:
Thanks for sticking with the fic! As always, feedback is appreciated and adored.
(Are you as excited for BJ's confession as I am?)
Chapter 13: Hawkeye - July 4th, 1954
Notes:
This chapter isn't solely responsible for giving the story its content warning, but it's the first chapter where the story *definitively* earns it. So. Heads up?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sam Corrigan and a couple of his buddies from the fire department put on a fireworks display that Hawkeye once would have loved, but now found a little too extensive for comfort. They were pretty, sure—all reds and blues and golds, big blooming things that lit up the lapping waters of the cove with each bang and whizz. But they were also very bang and whizz, leaving Hawkeye uneasy enough to wonder whether he’d been cavalier in his decision to go to the bake.
Between the two of them, BJ was worse off. His shoulders jerked with each pop, as though he actively fought the temptation to throw himself over a patient that wasn’t there.
“We could go for a walk,” Hawkeye offered, leaning into his side. If they were still in Korea, he could put an arm around BJ’s back and no one would think twice about it. That wasn’t the case here. “Might be nice to get some space.”
BJ shook his head. “It’s just loud, that’s all.” He hesitated, as if debating how much he wanted to say. “It’s not a Korea-specific problem.”
Huh. He studied BJ’s profile. Come to think of it, BJ did always startle easily. Hawkeye had written it off as a product of the war.
“You wanna talk about it?”
A silly question. Whatever rules governed BJ’s letter-writing didn’t likely apply here. Something had his goat, but he’d stuff it down along with a few more beers once the show was over. A few beers would turn into a few more once it was just adults around the bonfire, and he’d end the evening simmering with things unsaid until Hawkeye talked him off the ledge. Later, they’d bring the house down with screaming nightmares—or a screaming match, if either of them got loaded enough—and spend tomorrow morning pretending it never happened. Maybe BJ would say something barbed enough to counterbalance the Watch Incident, and they’d agree to forget the whole thing to level the playing field. Hawkeye would gladly endure an awkward morning of hungover apologies to avoid explaining the thought process that’d possessed him to mail BJ’s watch back the last time he’d had too much to drink.
Another firework popped off in a stream of blue and white, illuminating the expression of pure, distilled fear on BJ’s face. But when he answered Hawkeye at last, his voice was steady.
“Yeah. I do.”
Hawkeye blinked. Who was this guy, and what had he done with the BJ he’d bunked with for what felt like a hundred years?
“I know a place,” he said when he found his voice again.
He led BJ down the beach and through the dunes to the spot where he and Bettie Earley escaped during the bake after junior year. Before sitting, he checked the surrounding vantage points to ensure there weren’t any teenagers who, following in his footsteps, would be within prime eavesdropping distance. Either the youth of Crabapple Cove were significantly less precocious than he’d been, or they’d found newer haunts, because the spot was deserted.
It was quieter there, too. The dunes muffled the sharp edge of each round and left Hawkeye markedly less itchy. They claimed a spot in the sand together, closer to one another than strictly necessary, as was their wont.
In yet another surprise move, BJ launched into his story without prompting.
“I’ve had a hard time with stuff like this since I was a kid,” he said, then segued into a description of his father that put a pit of dread in Hawkeye’s stomach.
Jay Hunnicutt—because apparently, BJ wasn’t always a lying liar who lied, and had indeed been named after his parents—wasn’t a bruiser per se, but that didn’t stop him from using his violent temper to intimidate his wife and children.
“He only hit me once, and I learned my lesson after that,” BJ said, staring out past the reeds to the ocean. “But he used to slam things when he was angry. Doors, mostly, but sometimes his fist on the table, or he’d crack a glass onto a coaster so hard I’m amazed they never shattered. Sets your teeth on edge after a while.”
Purposefully, Hawkeye bet. Hunnicutt-the-senior sounded like the kind of guy who wanted his son to know he could and would use his fists if provoked. Hawkeye considered the innumerable times he’d seen BJ flinch and decided that his oath to do no harm might be open to interpretation, after all.
“Sounds like a tough bastard to live with. I’m sorry, Beej.”
“You know, it’s odd,” BJ continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “He made so much noise, but all he ever wanted from me was silence.”
The new interpretation of do no harm was becoming increasingly appealing. “Was he one of those ‘children should be seen and not heard’ types? I had an uncle like that. Real piece of work. Makes me rethink why Billy was the way he was, y’know?”
“Yeah. Turned me into a real asshole for a while. Like I needed to make sure no one saw what he saw in me.”
“What he saw?”
“I was an odd kid.” BJ’s throat bobbed. “Or maybe I should say I was a queer one.”
Hawkeye stilled. “I think I’m gonna need you to elaborate on that, because I’m picking up something you’re definitely not trying to put down.”
“My father figured out I was one, and he made it clear he wished I wasn’t.”
“One what?” Hawkeye’s voice climbed in register as he spoke. “A good one? A real one? A—”
BJ gave him a withering look. “You know what I mean. Can you stop the standup routine?”
“Then can you knock it off with the euphemisms? As far as I know, you’re the happiest family man from coast to coast. What are you saying, BJ?”
“Just that.” BJ scrubbed his fingers through the sand. “My old man caught me looking, once, at my friend’s older brother. We were at the beach for some holiday. Maybe it was the Fourth. I don’t know. Later that night, he asked me about it. I was twelve and an idiot, and when I answered him, he backhanded me so hard I landed on my ass. It didn’t stop me from noticing guys, but I’d always noticed women, too, so I just worked harder to make one more obvious than the other.”
Klaxons sounded in Hawkeye’s head—a refrain of what the fuck, what the fuck blaring loud enough to drown out the far-off pop of fireworks.
“So you’re . . .”
“Yeah.”
Jesus, if BJ knew what to look for, how did he fail to see what was right in front of his face? How could he have thought he was alone over there?
“Two years. We lived together for almost two years, and now you’re telling me?” (1) Something sharp twisted through Hawkeye’s chest. “What, did you think I’d come after you like your father?”
BJ had the grace to look offended by the suggestion. “Of course not.” And then his shoulders slumped. “Between the two of us, I’m not the one who has cause to be worried.”
“Don’t. That’s done.” It wasn’t, but he also wasn’t sure he could handle trotting all of it out again, reexamining what, exactly, had set BJ off enough to wreck the still and take a swing at him. “You were blackout.”
“Not an excuse.”
“No, it’s not. Though I assume you don’t have plans for a repeat performance, because I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t come back for a third showing.”
“Never,” BJ said, quietly, like a vow. “I swore I’d never be like him, would never turn into him and—” He couldn’t even finish the sentence. “Never again, Hawk.”
Hawkeye believed him. If he didn’t, they wouldn’t be sitting here.
They fell quiet, and Hawkeye held back the desperate joke that fought to escape about Hunnicutt men being one-hit-wonders, because that wasn’t going to go over well. Instead, he considered what they were doing here, letting old wounds bleed out onto the sand between them.
Minutes ago, he’d assumed BJ would brush off an attempt to talk. That fit with the BJ he knew in Korea, who bottled everything up and let the world keep shaking and shaking until he burst. All this? What he’d just admitted? That was a hell of a lot to bottle up. But apparently, Hawkeye wasn’t dealing with that version of BJ, anymore. And while he didn’t want to throw a moment of honesty back in BJ’s face, the questions tickling at the back of his throat just wouldn’t let go. Why couldn’t you have done this over there? Why did you have to wait until it all came bursting out and let me get caught in the crossfire?
“You could have told me.”
BJ dug his fingers into the sand. “I know. I’ve been thinking for a long time about the apology I should have made. Tried to put it in a letter once or twice, but couldn’t figure out how.”
“Not about the punch. About you. What, did you think you were the only one in camp?”
“I couldn’t, Hawk, even if I was pretty sure I had company.”
“You did, you idiot. You had me.”
A small smile tugged at BJ’s lips, and he finally abandoned his sand sculpting to meet Hawkeye’s eyes. “I said I was pretty sure, didn’t I?”
“Then what is this? Another apology? An explanation?” Torture? Dangling what I want in front of my face and telling me that, in another world, I could have had it, but no, not in this one, eat your heart out Hawkeye Pierce? “You were a damn steel trap in Korea, you know.”
The smile faded. “You have to understand: it wasn’t just about me. If I’d been wrong, or if someone overheard us talking about it, or if word got out for any other reason, the blue slip wouldn’t have taken just my career. It’d have ruined my ability to support my family. Worst case scenario, it’d have taken me away from Erin.”
The wind left Hawkeye’s sails. Because on at least one occasion, he’d given BJ reason to question whether he understood the weight that parenthood put on BJ’s shoulders.
“Oh.”
“For what it’s worth, I hated it.” BJ nudged their arms together, a gentle bid to get Hawkeye to look at him again. “I figured you were going through it, same as I was. Always watching your back, even if your way was different than mine, hiding in plain sight. I felt like a heel for making you hide it from me, too. But I’d already left Erin once. I wasn’t going to leave her again because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.”
It stung. Of course it did. The selfish part of Hawkeye’s heart insisted you could have told me, I knew the stakes, I’d have looked after you. But the kinder part of him, the part that knew better than anyone the lengths to which they all went to get home safe and mostly sane, understood. BJ made a choice, and he chose his daughter, and he wouldn’t be the man Hawkeye loved if he hadn’t. As for the rest, Hawkeye would learn to ignore the voice in the back of his head saying all those touches, all those long looks, all those letters. What else might they mean, if you’re bent like me?
Because those thoughts were a one-way ticket back to a room with chain-link for a window screen.
“BJ, not to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth, but—why now? Did something happen? Did Peg find out?”
“Not exactly.” In the distance, the fireworks finished to applause. “She’s always known. For a long time, she and I thought we were the same.”
Hawkeye had to sit back to absorb that revelation, massaging ineffectively at his temples. “Am I hallucinating?”
“Hawk.”
“You’re telling me Peg Hunnicutt—nee Hayden—is a switch hitter? That both of you are?” (2)
BJ pulled a face, but didn’t protest the term. “She was. Then she met Viv. And Viv’s great, don’t get me wrong. I’m really glad Peg had someone—what are you giving me that look for?”
The laugh burst from his chest as if he’d hit a pressure-release valve, half manic, until he collapsed against BJ’s side, tears in his eyes. Because sincerely, what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck.
“And to think,” he said between cackles, “you got so heated over some guy cleaning her gutters.”
BJ elbowed him in the ribs. “It wasn’t about the gutters and you know it. Besides, she wouldn’t have been all that interested in Carl, anyway.”
“If this was one big lead-up to telling me your marriage is on the rocks because your wife bats for the home team, you really buried the lede, there.”
“What is it with the baseball terms? You don’t even like baseball!”
“We both know that’s not true.” Hawkeye waggled his brows. “I’m a champion at rounding the bases. I can hit a home run in any—”
“And I’m not burying any ledes. I’m building to something here, if you’d just listen to me.”
“Oh, I’m listening alright, to something that sounds like the pilot for a new daytime radio—” He broke off mid-thought when he caught the look on BJ’s face. “Shit, I’m sorry. Forget I said that. How are you doing with all this?”
BJ’s laughter gave him honest-to-god whiplash. “I’m fine, Hawk. It’s really for the best.”
Somehow that, more than any of the other revelations of the evening, threw him for the biggest loop. The BJ he knew in Korea would most certainly not have had that reaction to having a sham made of his marriage.
Hawkeye walked backwards through their conversation. Even if BJ was trying to turn over a new leaf, old habits died hard, and BJ had decades of practice talking around and around the things that mattered most, because those were the things that could be used to hurt him. So what lurked between the lines of what BJ had said—not just here tonight, but ever since he set foot in Crabapple Cove?
I thought you were done with me, and I traveled across the country instead of writing another letter. Once I got here, I could have explained my failing marriage by telling you Peg had an affair without telling you who with. Instead, I made a point of speaking the truth: that I’m one, and you’re one, and together we make—
No. He was missing something. He had to be. Because the implication that all of it led here, sitting shoulder to hip to knee with BJ on the beach in the dark, far-off sounds of merriment drifting their way on the breeze, opened up a yawning hunger inside his chest that’d consume their friendship and leave nothing in its wake.
“Do you need . . . help? Jeez, I don’t even know how you get a divorce in California. Do you have to go to Reno for it? Hire a PI? Get caught in flagrante delicto with a circus performer? Learn to juggle? I could teach you."
“Hawk.”
“You’d be a great juggler, Beej. Surgeon’s hands and all.”
“Hawkeye.”
“Hell, you already have those clown feet. You’re a shoe-in.” When BJ showed no indication of giving Hawkeye his sought-after laugh, he pressed, “Oh come on, you could have at least given me a smile for that one. That was a good one.”
“We’re not getting a divorce.”
Okay, another bizarre curveball, but Hawkeye could hit junk pitches. “Wait, wait, you dog—are the three of you—”
“No.” This, bitten through a tight jaw that indicated Hawkeye was starting to try his patience.
“Then?”
“I figure as long as Peg and I are married, she and Viv will have protection. And Erin will have even more people who love her.”
It was both unbelievable and yet somehow incredibly typical. Because BJ had his hot buttons and his foibles, but when it came down to it, he’d go to extremes to give his loved ones what they needed.
But someone had to be Team BJ in all of this, even if BJ wouldn’t do it for himself.
“What about you? Where do you factor in?” Hawkeye couldn’t get a read on that pleasantly passive expression, but he was going to crack it and get BJ’s real thoughts out of this, so help him. Drinking until they brought down the house was, it seemed, back on the table. Hawkeye figured he was owed a night of excess for his troubles. “I can’t imagine Peg and Viv are asking you to go solo for their sake, and it’ll be hard to find a woman who’s alright with that arrangement. Or”—his mouth went dry—“or a man.”
BJ reached for him. His fingers closed around Hawkeye’s wrist, forming a circle right where the watch strap used to sit and wiping whatever Hawkeye had planned to say next right out of his head. Could BJ feel his radial pulse rabbiting? Could he hear the hum of bees beneath his skin?
No sense waiting around until he gave himself away. He pushed up in an attempt to stand, to pace, to something, but BJ yanked him back and he ended up sprawled on his ass in the sand, legs akimbo.
“Please listen.” BJ’s eyes were silver by moonlight, wide and fixed on his face. “I know you love nothing more than getting words in edgewise, but this is hard for me.”
Hawkeye swallowed against the lump in his throat and nodded.
“The only opinion I care about in all of this is yours,” BJ said, and Hawkeye immediately lost the battle against holding his tongue.
“Mine? What does mine matter? Seems like you’ve got it all sorted out. It’s unconventional, I’ll give you that, but maybe we’ve all just about had it with convention after years of yes sir, no sir, and if it’s working for the three of you, who cares what I think?”
BJ’s exasperated sigh landed just this side of fond. “I care because I love you, even if you never shut up.” His hand tightened, thumb sliding over the skin on the inside of Hawkeye’s wrist. “I’m in love with you, Hawk.”
No. No, no, no. Not possible.
“You don’t. You can’t.”
“I can. I am. If you don’t feel the same, I’ll understand. I won’t let it wreck our friendship. I’m sorry if this strains it, but I had to say something, because it was eating me alive.” BJ huffed out a mirthless laugh. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
Hawkeye’s head spun. This was it, was confirmation: he was dreaming. Or hallucinating. Or dreaming about hallucinating. “See? I tried to tell Sidney it was catching.”
“Please be straight with me. I don’t think I can take a joke right now.”
“Not sure there’s going to be anything ‘straight’ about—mmph!” (3)
BJ kissed him.
Hard at first, all agitation and angles. A desperate sound escaped Hawkeye’s throat, and a hand fell to his waist to tug him closer, the other cupping his jaw. BJ’s hands were gentle, and the kiss softened, slow and lush, one sliding into another, and another. Hawkeye leaned into it, tilting his head for a better angle. He could stay like this forever, could let BJ take him apart piece-by-piece until he scattered like so many grains of sand.
Because oh god, this was happening. This was actually happening.
BJ pulled back and pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips. Their noses brushed in a shadow of a caress, and Hawkeye rested their foreheads together, feeling flashing through him like sunlight shimmering on water, so intense he couldn’t open his eyes, could do nothing but hold on and breathe.
He’d had two years of living in BJ’s pocket and still not being close enough, of wanting to crawl inside BJ’s body, of watching him sleep and knocking ankles beneath the mess table and waiting until the Swamp was empty to scream into his pillow because god, it was so good, but it hurt so badly. Three years of needing, of tracing the shape of BJ’s smile from one bunk over and in photographs, of getting torn open by grand gestures and red dye and the tick-tick-tick of that watch, of getting ruined by smaller ones like a coffee brought to post op or a line of poetry in a letter or a here, this made me think of you.
“Hawk,” BJ murmured. “You’re shaking.”
“I love you so much it makes me rattle right out of my skin. I don’t think I have words for it.”
He felt BJ’s smile more than he saw it, mustache tickling at his nose.
“That’s really saying something. Should I be flattered that I rendered Benjamin Franklin Hawkeye Pierce speechless?”
“I’ll show you speechless.”
He surged forward to straddle BJ’s thighs, tangling fingers in his hair, and when their lips came together this time it was openmouthed, incandescent. BJ moaned like Hawkeye dragged it out of him, clutching and tugging until they were chest-to-chest, wrapped around one another, until it became impossible to mistake how much BJ wanted him.
BJ wanted him.
He was going to burn up like one of those damn fireworks: a flash, a shower of sparks, and then a fade into nothing.
“God, Beej,” he whispered against parted lips, then nosed his way to the bolt of BJ’s jaw.
When BJ bared his neck, it let loose something animal in him, and he kissed BJ’s pulse point, worried it with his teeth, kissed his way down the column of BJ’s throat until they panted together, until BJ gripped his hips hard enough to bruise.
It threw one thing, at least, into sharp relief. He was achingly, blisteringly hard, here in the shadows of a public beach, with most of the town of Crabapple Cove only a few hundred feet away.
“We really shouldn’t do this here.”
BJ blinked. “Right.”
As much as Hawkeye wanted to luxuriate in the satisfaction of knowing he’d driven enough blood out of BJ’s brain to render him dumb, such satisfaction didn’t lend itself to finding a more suitable venue for the evening’s revelations.
He needed a minute to think.
Hawkeye pushed up to stand and rearranged himself so the tent in his trousers wasn’t quite so obvious, then grinned down at BJ, who appeared to be in a similar predicament. He held out a hand to help lever BJ to his feet. The rat used the opportunity to reel him in again, fingers tangling in his belt loops.
“I think I’ve had enough of the beach,” BJ said, mouth brushing his, then his cheekbone, then the shell of his ear.
Fast. This was happening very fast, and part of him suspected that hurtling head-first over this cliff would, sure, feel like flying for a few glorious moments until reality broke him into pieces. They should slow down, iron out a few more things. But then, if BJ was implying what he thought BJ was implying, he needed to get them somewhere with a mattress and a door that shut pronto, because he’d never forgive himself for missing this opportunity.
He’d already planned on having an uncomfortable conversation in the morning, hadn’t he? Might as well let a dream come true, first.
“Come on,” he said and hustled BJ back up the beach to the bonfire, where his dad stood with one of Hawkeye’s cousins thrice removed.
“Everything alright?” his dad asked, wearing what Hawkeye recognized as his auscultation face—the one he used whenever he woke Hawkeye from a nightmare.
“Fine, yeah, sorry for disappearing. We were just having a chat. I don’t think either of us are up for much socializing right now.”
The face changed, then, to an arch expression that assumed way more than Hawkeye was willing to admit, the wily old fox.
“Here,” his dad said, fishing car keys out of his pocket. “Why don’t you take the Studebaker? I’ll get a ride home with Paul and Hazel.”
And if that wasn’t tacit approval, Hawkeye didn’t know what was, because Hazel and her circle were notorious for burning the midnight oil after town events. It’d leave the house to him and BJ for at least a few hours.
He certainly wasn’t going to complain about it. “Thanks, dad. We’ll see you in the morning.”
“Home safe, boys,” his dad said, waving them off, and he and BJ retreated into the night.
#
The drive home was a five-minute affair on the coastal road. BJ spent it fiddling with the radio, and Hawkeye was glad for the distraction. They hadn’t touched since leaving the dunes. Hell, they couldn’t even look at one another. A line of tension stretched between them, leaving Hawkeye fidgeting and, as his dad would call it, catastrophizing.
BJ loved him. Was in love with him. BJ was also married, even if his nuptials had a lavender tinge to them. He had a daughter, two mortgages, and lived three thousand miles away in California. Feelings were one thing. Hawkeye understood feelings; he’d made plenty of amorous declarations in his life.
But feelings were never enough to make anyone stay.
They pulled up to the house and exited the car in silence, hurrying to the door by mutual agreement, but Hawkeye stopped BJ when they got to the porch. Light from the hall cast them in warm silhouettes. BJ’s hands flexed at his sides, as if it took everything he had not to burst into motion. And though Hawkeye wanted nothing more than to give in and grab him by the collar of that stupid lobster shirt, he couldn’t charge ahead all-systems-go. Not yet.
He’d spent years wanting BJ with a desperate ache, and it’d nearly unraveled him, but there was safety in staying on the near side of an uncrossable line. If they stepped over it and he learned what it was like to have BJ, there was no taking it back, no rewinding time. And if I love you meant something different to each of them, Hawkeye wouldn’t survive losing this.
“Beej, why’d you give me your watch?”
BJ stilled at the door, clearly caught off-guard. “I thought that was obvious. It was insurance.”
“Against?”
“You kept talking about how we’d never see one another again. I know you were mourning, in a way. That you wanted me to mourn with you. But I couldn’t.”
Hawkeye stepped closer, reveling in how BJ’s hands stuttered towards him. “There were other ways to ensure it wasn’t goodbye-forever, you know. The letters did more than the watch ever could.”
“Maybe I hoped it’d convince you that I meant what I said. Did you wear it?”
“All the time.”
“Good.” BJ closed the gap and drew him in, resting hands on his waist, palms smoothing up and down his flank.
“So what was all that chatter about interest?”
“If I hadn’t made a joke, I’d have lost it. I kept the joke going afterward, sure, but not because I wanted the watch back. I wanted you back.” BJ reached up to brush Hawkeye’s fringe from his forehead, fingertips lingering in a caress. “When I saw what Peg and Viv had, what they got to have, it made me realize how badly I wanted to be by your side. How much I wanted you to be a part of my family, too.”
The words struck him like a gong, vibrating down to his bones. Part of my family. As if BJ had snooped inside his mind, rifled through his thoughts, and picked out the one thing that would make it impossible to walk away. Sure, maybe this was new for BJ. Maybe it took seeing Peg and Viv together to recalibrate something in that big, stupid head of his. Fine. Part of my family meant that BJ wouldn’t get spooked and go running in the morning, and for now, that would have to be enough.
“Hawk, if—”
Hawkeye got a hand around BJ’s nape and tugged him in. “I want that too,” he said against BJ’s lips, even if he had no idea what it would look like or how they’d make it work. “I’ve wanted you for so damn long.”
“You have me.”
He pushed BJ back until his shoulders connected with the door, then dove in for a kiss, eager and fierce. Heat zipped through his blood as BJ met him with the same single-minded focus he usually reserved for surgery. The comparison felt apt, because Hawkeye was coming apart at the seams.
“Let me touch you,” he panted into BJ’s neck. “I need to touch you.”
“What do you call this?” A hand slipped up the back of his shirt, dragging over the bare skin of his waist.
He fumbled for the doorknob. The latch gave, and they tumbled inside, shucking shoes in the foyer while trying to stay as close as possible, tripping over each other’s feet and trading kisses between giggles. Hawkeye complained about BJ’s clown-sized converse while kicking them into the corner, then made it as far as the foot of the stairs before BJ was on him, pinning him back against the banister.
God, he needed this. The car ride had dampened his desperation, but now it returned full force, and he strained in his trousers, finding relief only by grinding against BJ’s thigh.
“If I’d known this was what you meant by collecting interest, I’d have borrowed a lot more than just your watch,” he said.
“I can always write up the invoice for all the—oh—all the socks you made off with.”
“Put me on a payment plan.”
BJ laughed into his mouth, then rutted against him, a slow drag of a rhythm that was somehow good even through two sets of shorts and trousers with—Hawkeye huffed—zippers down the front. He tangled his hands in BJ’s hair and pulled him in for an openmouthed kiss, messy and consuming.
“You,” he said when they came up for air, “have about five seconds before I start stripping clothes off and my dad comes home to find us on the stairs.”
BJ jolted, and shit, that was an objectively stupid thing to say, wasn’t it? Hawkeye laced their fingers together and kissed the knuckles, drawing BJ in so he couldn’t escape.
“It’s alright. My dad knows me, and we weren’t subtle.” When BJ stiffened further—and not in the way Hawkeye was looking forward to—he clarified, “How many times have I told you I’m a lucky bastard to have a dad like him? He knows me, Beej. The only thing you have to worry about is what an insufferable meddler he can be.”
“He knows?”
“He’s been watching me pine over you since I got home. I think he’s sick of me. At this point, he’ll probably send you a fruit basket for putting me out of my misery.” Hawkeye cocked his head. “Well, maybe not a fruit basket. That’d be a little obvious, even for him.”
BJ’s laugh had an edge of mania to it, but at least he wasn’t pulling away anymore.
“What I’m saying is, we’re safe as houses here,” Hawkeye continued. “But I’m sure he’d appreciate it if we kept it to the bedroom, capiche?”
He proceeded to undermine his own words by going in for another kiss.
“Unbelievable,” BJ muttered, dodging the kiss to clamp a hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder and drag him up the stairs.
Once the door shut behind them, they made short work of their clothing, and Hawkeye gave into the impulse to stare. BJ was long-limbed and golden, all rangy muscle with an appealing softness overtop. Hair, much thicker than the sparse patch on his own chest, tempted Hawkeye to bite, to use his mouth to get blood rising to the surface of BJ’s skin, to mark him with tangible proof that this was happening.
It didn’t matter that he’d seen BJ in every state of dress and undress imaginable. He’d never before been able to look his fill, had never experienced the compelling vulnerability of BJ’s arousal, of his cock thick and flushed, an unmistakable declaration of I want you, I need you that was better than any high.
“Do I pass muster?” BJ asked with a shit-eating, apple-pie grin.
He wanted to wipe that grin right off BJ’s face and make him beg, to roll over and offer BJ his neck, to take everything BJ had to give and to then give everything in return.
“You’ll do,” he said and dropped to his knees.
Hawkeye didn’t believe in a higher power, but he was still capable of worship. He kissed the bony jut of BJ’s ankle, the furred ridge of his shin, the tense muscle just inside his knee. BJ’s thighs were a lean expanse made for nibbling. He nipped his way from quadricep to adductor, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him before he reached his prize.
“You’re so—how are you so—” BJ stammered, then dragged him back to his feet for a kiss.
Not a terrible punishment, really. He could spend a lifetime getting to know the shift and press of BJ’s lips, learning all the ways he liked to be kissed, cataloging each and every sound he made. But that kind of careful study was for a future-Hawkeye who wasn’t already well past the point of impatience.
He walked BJ back until they reached the bed. Better. BJ took the hint and sat, tipping his head up to avoid breaking the kiss, and Hawkeye budged between his thighs. Much better. He raked fingers through the hair on BJ’s chest, kneaded handfuls of his pecs, and followed the path his hands laid with his lips. Acres of warm skin, all for him, and he kissed from collarbone, to nipple, to sternum, where he tugged BJ’s chest hair between his teeth and won a sharp gasp for his efforts.
Even better still. BJ petted at his shoulders as he sank down again, lipping at the darkening trail of hair below BJ’s navel. He bypassed the jut of BJ’s cock to bury his face there and inhale. BJ smelled like a night at the beach and like BJ, like something Hawkeye knew in his marrow but had only gotten hints of before. Here, with it fully concentrated, his head spun like he was six martinis deep.
“Fuck, Hawkeye,” BJ said, voice full of gravel, nails scratching a delicious pattern over Hawkeye’s scalp.
The sound of his name buzzed through him, a shiver echoed by the tremor in BJ’s thighs. I’m not alone in this. I’m not the only one. And unlike the last time he’d slid to his knees, this wasn’t about settling the buzz but about giving into it, feeding it, letting it have, at last, what it was asking for.
BJ Hunnicutt, I’m going to devour you.
He settled his hands on BJ’s hips, thumbs resting at the beat-beat-beat of BJ’s pulse through his femoral arteries. With a shift, he rubbed his cheek over BJ’s cock, nosed along its length, ghosted his lips over the head and earned a punched-out groan for it.
When he looked up, he found BJ staring at him, openmouthed, expression slack with disbelief. Something about it lit up the prey drive in him, made him want to poke and prod and tease.
“Remind me again,” he said, lips moving against velveteen skin. “What does BJ stand for?”
BJ’s chest hitched with an attempt at a laugh. “Oh, you jerk.”
“No, no, what was it? Anything I . . .”
Fingers carded through Hawkeye’s hair. “Anything you want.”
“That’s right,” he said, and swallowed BJ down.
BJ tipped his head back with a breathless sound, and Hawkeye caught the buck of his hips, steadying him. He pulled back to lave at the head of BJ’s cock, then sank into a rhythm that had BJ’s toes curling in the bedside carpet. He leaned into the fullness of it, the weight on his tongue, the bliss of dragging BJ’s pleasure out inch-by-inch. A thousand fantasies, come to life.
“Fuck,” BJ said between gasps. “Fuck, you’re incredible.”
He ate up the praise. Call him a showman, call him a slut, but he wasn’t above letting out a little bit of a theatrical moan if it had BJ sounding like that. His eyelashes fluttered as he worked his way down, until BJ cursed again and bunched fists in the sheets.
How unfair, for the sheets to claim a touch he coveted. He tugged one of those hands off the bedding and brought it to the back of his head. But BJ had his own ideas, because he moved it to rest instead against the side of Hawkeye’s neck, thumb on his jaw, cradling him.
He’d had every intention of letting BJ tangle fingers in his hair and yank him forward to fuck his throat, but this was something else—something languid and tender. Not a flash of heat, but a slow, rolling boil that worked him up to a fever pitch.
“That’s it,” BJ murmured, rocking into his mouth.
Hawkeye dropped a hand to his own cock and ground against the heel of his palm, letting out a shuddery groan. When he opened his eyes again, he found BJ watching him with naked adoration. The intimacy of it shook him. He responded the only way he could, sliding a hand over BJ’s belly, caressing his flank, thumbing the ridge of his hip. BJ’s muscles jumped beneath his touch.
Soft little sounds escaped BJ with every breath, straight out of Hawkeye’s late-night fantasies, when he’d hear BJ’s stifled noises from across the Swamp and imagine crossing it to kneel in front of BJ’s cot, giving BJ whatever he wanted.
He was close. Fuck, they were both so close, and Hawkeye wanted so terribly he reeled with the force of it. I’m yours, he vowed, frantic, getting a fist around the base of BJ’s cock, curling his tongue, trying to make it that much sweeter. You can have me. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get BJ to hear it, with or without words. Please, please, please.
BJ thumbed his cheek, fingertips tracing the stretched line of his lips.
“Oh, Hawk,” he said, voice a choked whisper, and came.
Something heady pooled at the base of Hawkeye’s spine as BJ filled his mouth, a yes, give it to me, let me feel what I did to you, a thrill made all the better by BJ’s chanted litany of “good, so good, so good, Hawk.” A gorgeous flush spread from BJ’s cheeks down his chest, and his words devolved into panting gasps. Hawkeye admired it while licking BJ clean, reveling in each aftershock, stopping only when the sounds BJ made indicated he’d gone from so good to too much.
Only then did he bury his nose back in the crease of BJ’s thigh and start jerking himself in earnest, so far past turned on that he thrummed with it. This wouldn’t take long. Not with the vision he had of himself in his mind’s eye, kneeling at BJ’s feet.
But then a pair of hands landed on his shoulders. The room spun. His back hit the mattress, startling a laugh out of him as he bounced.
“Warn a gal,” he said, the last vowels coming out strangled as BJ ran a huge hand up the inside of his thigh.
The other circled his wrist, bringing his pace to a halt. “Since when do you get to have all the fun?” BJ asked, zeroing in on him like some wild, debauched predator.
Hawkeye’s hips bucked, hand falling away even as every nerve in his body screamed for relief. “Beej, touch me, god, please—”
A moan swallowed the last of his words, because BJ’s hand replaced his. He had only a moment to appreciate the devastating drag of BJ’s fist over his cock before BJ’s mouth followed, setting him adrift on a wave of heat that washed all the way down to his toes. Hawkeye’s knee kicked up, and he clutched at BJ’s shoulders.
“Where,” he asked between sounds he could no longer control, “did you learn to do this?”
The low hum of BJ’s laugh pulsed through him, and he turned his head, muffling his ragged gasp in the pillow. He wasn’t shy, not by any stretch, but the sight of BJ settled between his legs was so staggeringly good that his body rebelled and suddenly, he couldn’t bear to meet BJ’s eyes. He’d wanted this so damn badly, but never dreamed he’d get to have it, and how was he meant to cope with a love returned?
BJ pulled off, but kept working him with that glorious, tight grip. “Hawk, look at me.”
He did, and fuck he could hardly stand it, those Pacific eyes watching him, that hand twisting just right on each upstroke, slick from BJ’s mouth, oh god.
“Beej,” he said, reaching for him, not sure what he was asking for until BJ tangled their fingers together and squeezed tight.
“I’ve got you.”
BJ pressed an openmouthed kiss to the head of his cock, then replaced lips with tongue, then enveloped him in heat once more.
A tether snapped as though he’d been slingshot off a cliff. He arched, and BJ held him down as he came with a cry that hardly sounded like it belonged to him. He hung there for what felt like hours, wracked with it, but when he fell at last, BJ was there to catch him, peppering kisses on his mouth, his cheeks, his eyelids.
He sank into the mattress with BJ as his blanket and held tight.
Notes:
Well that was. Definitely the most elaborate blowjob I’ve ever written.
Today I discovered that posting sex scenes to the internet is terrifying? So there's that. I don't know how you guys do it without having a small heart-attack every time.
(1) Timelines in MASH are kind of bananas, but I’m basing mine on GFA, during which BJ is trying to get home for Erin’s second birthday, plus other episodes in the series which point to the fact that she was very young / Peg was pregnant when he got his draft notice. Since there are so many contradictory / retconned timelines, I figure I can just full-send and put him in Korea from September 1951 to July 1953, ie: just shy of two years. I know this isn’t the most common interpretation, but look, it’s fanfic, and tbh I think it makes sense to have him there for significantly longer than Trapper, given the respective proportion of episodes they were featured in.
(2) “Switch hitter” as a term for bisexuality was first recorded (ie: written) in 1956, but given the fact that Hawkeye in particular lived in cities like Boston and New York in the mid to late 1940s—cities with both notable gay culture and baseball culture—I’m positing that he’d have heard it used colloquially before then. I’m also presuming that he’s self-aware enough to know that it applies to him.
(3) Straight was an even older term, though still relatively new in the grand scheme of things. It showed up in print / was documented as known gay slang as early as the 1940s, usually expressed as “going straight,” ie: returning to heterosexual relationships after having homosexual ones. I’m taking a few liberties with usage, here, but I figure that Hawkeye takes enough liberties with wordplay that this is at least a plausible joke for him to crack.
(4) Bonus footnote: I know there's irony in researching slang terms for period accuracy and then letting an anachronistic blowjob joke fly, but I couldn't resist, alright?
Chapter 14: BJ - July 5th, 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
BJ woke struggling to breathe, his whole body pitched forward as though he’d been yanked to sitting by the scruff of the neck. He was in the OR. At least, he had been, standing at a table in the center of the room during one of those endless days of shelling. The boys Klinger brought to him all wore the same face, one after another. They came back with the same wounds. With dawning horror, he’d realized that Klinger kept giving him the same soldier over and over again. No matter how well BJ sewed him up, the soldier returned to the table as if nothing BJ did made a difference.
But this wasn’t the OR. The room was too blue, for one, and soft-lit, its trappings familiar even though they didn’t belong to him.
Maine. He was in Maine, and he was sitting up in Hawkeye’s childhood bed.
“Beej?”
And there was Hawkeye, propped against the headboard, chest bare and sheet pooled around his waist. The bedside lamp turned his skin golden. He held a copy of a yellowed, pulpy western in one hand, over which he watched BJ with open concern.
“Sorry,” BJ said, voice scratchy. Had he shouted, or was he just thirsty? “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. Been up for a while,” Hawkeye said, setting the book face-down on the nightstand. “Good morning. Or, I guess, good four am.”
He’d made similar jokes when they were woken at all hours by Radar or choppers or a summons from post-op, and the familiarity of it made the newness of the situation all the more apparent: holy hell, he was naked in bed with Hawkeye Pierce.
Somehow, he’d gotten up the gumption to confess everything, and instead of meeting him with scorn or pity, Hawkeye had climbed into his lap, kissed him within an inch of his life, and taken him to bed. Flashes of memory from the prior night teased through his mind’s eye: Hawkeye pushing him up against the door. The slick heat of his mouth. The shuddery sounds he’d made when BJ took him apart. They’d fallen asleep wrapped around one another in the afterglow.
But images of the wounded soldier from his dream superimposed themselves on that sweetness. He reached out on instinct, laying a palm against Hawkeye’s chest. Hawkeye was warm where the soldier hadn’t been, breaths slow and even, and BJ counted them until the phantom weight of the dream eased.
“A bad one?”
“Yeah, but I’m alright.”
He trailed his hand over the small pouch of Hawkeye’s stomach, and Hawkeye pushed into the touch, all lazy pleasure.
“Come here, then,” Hawkeye said, reaching for him.
But when BJ went to lie down, his shoulder dropped into damp cotton, and he jerked upright again. With sudden dismay, he realized the sheets beneath him clung to his legs, wet with sweat.
“Why didn’t you say something?” he asked, already patting around where his back had been to assess the damage.
“I didn’t realize.” At BJ’s scoff, Hawkeye put his hand over his heart. “Honest! You were so still until you sat up, I thought you were out cold. Your dreams really are a lot quieter than mine.”
And, propped up to read as he had been, Hawkeye likely wouldn’t have realized how profusely BJ was sweating until he scooted back under the covers.
“I’m sorry.”
Hawkeye waved a hand. “Please. We’ve shared much closer quarters in much sweatier circumstances.”
And much less humiliating ones. “I can—”
“If you’re about to say you can go back down to the couch, absolutely not. Now that I’ve got you in my bed, I’ll be damned if I let you out of it.”
“At least let me change the sheets.”
Hawkeye walked fingers up BJ’s arm, regarding him from beneath lowered lashes. “Why bother, if we’re only going to get them sweaty again?”
“Hawkeye.”
“Alright, alright.”
Hawkeye climbed over BJ’s legs, and, without an ounce of shyness, crossed to his dresser, where he bent to rifle through a drawer. The sight momentarily pushed BJ’s embarrassment out of mind, because how could he have room for anything but Hawkeye in his thoughts with those mile-long legs on display? Every line of him was made to be touched: the lean span of his thighs, the curve of his ass, the width of his hips. BJ fought the temptation to press up behind him and kiss each and every vertebra, climbing his back like a ladder to the sensitive skin of his neck.
With a triumphant noise, Hawkeye wrestled a striped bathrobe out of the drawer and spun to toss it BJ’s way. The new angle gave him a fine view of Hawkeye’s soft chest, of the tempting strip of dark hair below his navel, leading to a cock which, now soft, rested against his thigh. Forget the robe; he was an idiot for balking when he could have pushed Hawkeye down to the mattress and rolled atop him. But the itch beneath his skin persisted—the same one they’d spoken about in the diner over lunch—and now, so newly awoken, it wouldn’t quiet down enough for him to give Hawkeye the attention he deserved.
Besides, Hawkeye had already pulled on his own robe. “Come on. I’m pretty sure I can find us a glass of something refreshing to drink before we get new bedding.”
“You can just stay here and rest while I—”
“Rest? Who’s resting?” Hawkeye gave him an ironic smile. “I’d have thought you blew my brains out well enough to keep the day from catching up to me, but I guess the cobwebs up here are persistent, and they rewarded me with a few ghoulish dreams before I gave up on sleep. I’m amazed I didn’t wake you. But if you’re up now, I could use the company.”
BJ shrugged on the robe and reached for him, tucking him close and pressing a kiss to his temple. Amazing how easy it was to incorporate these little intimacies. They were still Pierce-and-Hunnicutt, but the thing that had always stretched taut between them felt different, now. Sturdier. Like he could pull on it, or lean on it, and no matter how much he needed, it wouldn’t snap.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
Hawkeye shook his head. “Not now. C’mon.”
BJ threw open the window to give the room some air, then followed Hawkeye down to the kitchen, where they poured two tall glasses of lemonade. Rather than posting up at the dark kitchen table, they went out to the porch and settled in the wide, wooden swing at the far end, nestled behind overgrown lilacs. BJ sipped his lemonade and sat happily shoulder-to-hip-to-knee with Hawkeye, even though the swing was wide enough to give them more space.
Crickets and tree frogs formed the backing track for Hawkeye’s humming. He linked their fingers together, thumb bumping back and forth across BJ’s knuckles in time with Teresa Brewer’s melody. (1) BJ was struck, suddenly, by the thought that he didn’t understand how it was possible to feel this much and not combust with the force of it. The touches they shared had always, always meant I love you. How had he made it through years of this without giving himself away? Or was it only impossible to put a lid on because he’d finally acknowledged it?
When Hawkeye finished his lemonade, he slithered down to pillow his head in BJ’s lap, folding his legs up so his knobby knees and bare feet dangled off the sides. BJ threaded his fingers through his hair. It was softer now than it had been. Darker, too: tangible proof that Hawkeye was doing better than he had been at the end. BJ’s heart twisted with a desperate need to do more, to wash Hawkeye’s hair with the kind of soap that’d leave it silky-smooth, to work the knots out of his back after a long day at work.
He scratched over Hawkeye’s scalp, then dug his thumbs into the tight muscles of Hawkeye’s neck, soaking up every happy groan.
“S’good, Beej.” Hawkeye nuzzled into his thigh. “Where’d you learn that?”
The words called back to what he’d asked the night before when BJ had a mouth full of him, and a pleasant shiver traced its way from his back down to his toes. “Just doing what I think might feel nice.”
“You always feel nice.” A pause. “You’d feel nicer in a warm bed than on this bench, I think.”
“Come on, then,” BJ said and nudged Hawkeye to standing.
They returned upstairs, hand-in-hand, just as the sky in the east began to lighten.
#
BJ woke again to sunlight creeping through the thin curtains, casting diffuse shapes across the room. A glance at the clock confirmed that it was just past eight. Hawkeye slumbered on beside him, face down, cheek mashed against the pillow. His lips formed a lazy pout that BJ wanted to kiss and kiss. Instead, he turned his focus to the warm skin of Hawkeye’s broad back, mouthing along Hawkeye’s crooked spine. The path he took was the inverse of the one he’d imagined the night before, leading down to Hawkeye’s lumbar vertebrae, where he deviated to nip along one iliac crest, then the other.
Hawkeye stirred. He rolled his hips into the mattress with a contented sigh, and one blue eye cracked open. “Y’know,” he murmured, voice rough from sleep, “if you’d woken me up like this over there, I might have been able to shine, not just rise.”
BJ smiled against his skin. “I hope something’s rising.”
Hawkeye’s laugh melted into a low hum, and he wriggled beneath BJ’s mouth, shifting in a way that indicated he was pleased with the manner of his wakeup. It was all the encouragement BJ needed. He worked his way back up again, and his hands bumped over Hawkeye’s ribs, where they traced shapes before flattening against the curve of his waist.
“Feels like you’ve got a plan,” Hawkeye said into the pillow.
“Not much of one. Just thought I’d see where this takes me.” He pressed a kiss to Hawkeye’s nape, then another, letting them pile up until Hawkeye’s shoulders twitched with impatient pleasure.
This, he could get used to: slow mornings in with Hawkeye. Maybe next time, he’d try to wake early and slip off to bring Hawkeye breakfast in bed. They’d have real eggs, freshly squeezed orange juice, coffee just the way Hawkeye liked it. And what luxury would it be if a breakfast like that was so commonplace, so plentiful, that Hawkeye would push the tray aside to grab a hold of BJ instead, to let the eggs grow cold and choose first the pleasure BJ could give him—whatever he asked for, anything he wanted? In the aftermath, BJ would warm the plates again and bring them back, feeding them to a languid, rumpled Hawkeye, kissing him in between bites.
That, that was what he wanted.
Hawkeye turned his head, and BJ caught the corner of his mouth, a gentle brush that made it impossible to resist the temptation to kiss him properly, slow and coaxing. It made sense to lower himself down onto Hawkeye, then, thighs bracketing Hawkeye’s, hips flush against the curve of his ass. He swallowed the sweet sound Hawkeye made in response, and the kiss deepened. Lips parted beneath his. A brush of tongue invited him in, and their breaths quickened, noses bumping, until BJ pulled back just far enough to look at him.
Hawkeye’s eyes were hooded but alert, the sleepy pout long gone. “Good morning to you, too,” he said, arching back against him in a delicious grind.
A true understatement. BJ was hard already—had been since he woke—and the drag of friction had him burying a sigh in Hawkeye’s shoulder. “Hell of a way to start the day.”
“I can think of a few other ways. Lemme try something.”
Hawkeye shimmied out from underneath him, heedless of his wordless protest. As he rifled through the drawer of the nightstand, BJ looped an arm around his waist and continued his exploration, mouthing the ridge of a shoulder blade.
The prize Hawkeye sought was a bottle of Jergens. (2) He brandished it with a cheeky grin while flopping onto his back, a flush traveling from his face down to his abdomen. BJ followed Hawkeye’s hand lower, past his cock, which arced hard against his belly, to his spread thighs, where he smoothed a palmful of lotion.
It was suddenly quite difficult to breathe. BJ moved on instinct, hand joining Hawkeye’s, tracing the line of each gracilis up and down.
Hawkeye’s hips jerked. “Yeah?” he asked, tongue darting out to wet his lips.
“God, yeah. How do you want it?”
“Like this.” He rolled to his side and cast an over-the-shoulder glance BJ’s way, one brow arched in invitation, hand tracing a theatrical come-hither gesture through the air. “All aboard for a good ol’ time,” he sing-songed. (3)
BJ let out a peal of helpless laughter that did nothing to take the edge off arousal so intense he could barely see straight. “What am I in this scenario, then? Conductor? Engineer? Caboose?”
“I’ll show you a caboose.” Hawkeye squirmed against him. “C’mon, Beej. Wanna feel you.”
BJ gentled him with a kiss to the slope of his shoulder, then guided himself between the cradle of Hawkeye’s thighs. The slick pressure was good enough to set lights off at the edges of his vision.
“Alright?” Hawkeye asked.
He exhaled a shaky breath against Hawkeye’s skin, fighting the impulse to roll Hawkeye back under him and take, and take, and take. “An understatement.”
“Further proof that what’s good for the caboose is good for the gander.” Hawkeye crossed his shins to tighten up snug as he spoke, and BJ’s answering huff of laughter was lost to a groan.
“God, Hawk.” He abandoned the thread of the joke, wit evaporating as he thrust between Hawkeye’s thighs.
It was maddening. He’d imagined this a hundred times, had thought about it whenever he and Hawkeye shared blankets for warmth or caught fifteen minutes on the only spare cot in post op during those interminable stints in surgery. But this wasn’t a daydream. He was allowed to have this.
His lips moved restlessly over the side of Hawkeye’s neck, catching the flutter of his pulse, reveling in the hungry, needy noise he earned when he looped an arm over Hawkeye’s waist to palm his cock. The sense memory of Hawkeye coming apart in his mouth wound him even tighter. He wanted that. He wanted Hawkeye to feel every bit of delight he was capable of giving and then some, so he angled his hips and moved in time with each stroke, twisting his fist at the top once, then again, until Hawkeye was wracked by a full-body shiver.
“That good, sweetheart?”
He didn’t know where the term of endearment came from, but it felt right leaving his mouth, and was clearly well-received.
“Uh huh.” Hawkeye slurred the words into the pillow, then turned his head for a long, heated kiss. The slow roll of his hips was a provocation, and BJ couldn’t help but think of his hiding-in-plain sight remarks, his lascivious hints, his someone will have to get me pregnant jokes, all of it taking on a new edge, a new angle with how he’d positioned them.
And BJ wasn’t the only one whose thoughts strayed there. When the kiss broke, Hawkeye’s eyes were on his, heavy-lidded.
“Ever have a guy let you fuck him?”
The words alone sent a shock straight through him, and he had to hold Hawkeye still for a moment while he caught his breath. “Yeah. Been a while, though.”
“I would.”
Fuck, they were so close to it. He was right there. A different angle, and he’d be inside Hawkeye, and he couldn’t help but imagine what it’d feel like, the tight heat of him, what filthy things Hawkeye might say, whether he liked it on his back or on his hands and knees or—with a jolt of heat—whether he’d want to take it astride BJ’s lap, working himself down with the same debauched little noises he was making now.
Suddenly, as close as they were, it wasn’t enough. BJ snaked an arm beneath Hawkeye’s ribs to wrap around his chest. He pulled Hawkeye in tight and anchored him in place, setting a new rhythm, short and sharp, drawing little oh-oh-ohs from Hawkeye that hardwired themselves right into BJ’s brain.
“You want that?” he panted, mouthing along the underside of Hawkeye’s jaw. “Want me to fuck you?”
Hawkeye’s head tipped back, and he let out a moan that he muffled by biting the heel of his own hand. “I want it. I want you every way, want to do everything with you, to be yours, to have you be mine, god.”
That was it—BJ tipped over the edge, hips jerking, riding the whitewater of pleasure while blood rushed in his ears.
He clutched Hawkeye tight in the aftermath, chest heaving as it took what felt like an eternity to catch his breath. “So good for me, sweetheart,” he murmured, leaving kiss after kiss on every bit of skin he could reach until his limbs stopped feeling like lead.
When he at last slumped into the mattress, Hawkeye uncrossed his legs and used the leverage to push against him.
“Beej, Beej.”
“Whatever you need,” he said and molded himself to Hawkeye’s back, as if it were possible to fuse them together.
From this vantage point, he could watch the flushed head of Hawkeye’s cock emerge from his fist on each stroke. He thumbed the tip in a messy caress, pulling a shaky groan from Hawkeye’s throat, then started a slow rhythm that had his legs jolting.
“Yeah,” Hawkeye said, breath ragged. “A little faster on the—oh, oh, just like that.”
BJ wanted to burn this image into memory: Hawkeye, fitted in his arms and into his hand, undone for him, every tremor, every shudder, every flicker of want written across his face.
Hawkeye’s fingers dug into his hip. His back bowed tight. He began to say BJ’s name like a mantra, increasing in volume as he drew closer to the edge. Now that BJ had more capacity for conscious thought, he both unraveled at the sound of it and remained acutely aware that Daniel was somewhere in the house, presumably within earshot. And because he’d rather die than hush Hawkeye in a moment of abandon, he went with his gut and covered that slack mouth with his palm. Hawkeye jerked like he’d touched a live wire, and BJ’s hand swallowed a high, keening sound as Hawkeye spilled over his fist.
BJ worked him through it until Hawkeye tapped at his wrist, and he let go, loosening the circle of his arms so Hawkeye could turn over. A dark swoop of hair fell across his eyes, occasional strands of grey lit silver in the morning light. He was a work of art like this, all soft and sated, and on a perverse whim, BJ ran a hand up the inside of Hawkeye’s thigh. It was delightfully obscene, wet with come and lotion. He rubbed it into Hawkeye’s skin, and his own cock twitched in sympathy, unable to even consider getting hard again, but still making its general interest known.
“Made a mess of me,” Hawkeye said, eyes slitting open. A smirk curled in the corner of his lips like he knew exactly what he did to BJ, like he had BJ right where he wanted him.
“Give me a half hour, and I’ll do it again.”
Hawkeye rolled, nuzzling into his collarbone. “Sounds promising. But first: breakfast.”
Only then did BJ register the savory scent of eggs and bacon, accompanied by the distant clang of pots and pans. Hopefully they’d helped with volume control. Either way, he didn’t plan to show up at the table looking like he’d just been rolling around in the sheets.
“Shower first,” he countered, dropping a kiss to Hawkeye’s shoulder. “Then breakfast.”
“Better use that time to work up an appetite. My dad makes enough scramble to feed the entire neighborhood.”
“What do you call what we just did, if not working up an appetite?”
Hawkeye trailed a suggestive hand up his flank. “Mmm, I don’t know. I’m feeling paradoxically sated.”
Despite their chatter about breakfast, neither of them appeared to be in a hurry to go anywhere—least of all Hawkeye, who poked and prodded until BJ turned onto his back, then wrapped around him like an overgrown limpet, occasionally rubbing his stubbled cheek through BJ’s chest hair.
Fine by him. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get over the luxury of being able to touch to his heart’s content. Hawkeye’s welcome clinging gave him the chance to trace shapes along his spine, writing I love you in cursive from trapezius to deltoid. “I think,” he murmured, “I could do this every morning.”
Pressed so close, he sensed the moment Hawkeye’s thoughts strayed in an unpleasant direction, because the lax softness of his back began to firm.
“Hawk?”
A sigh gusted over his collarbone. “How long are you here for?”
The words doused the cozy warmth of BJ’s afterglow. “I did open return, but I can’t stay for much longer.”
“Me neither. I’m back to New Haven tomorrow.” Hawkeye lifted his head and regarded him for a long moment, eyes flicking as if searching for something. He must have found it, because his expression softened. “Come with me? Stay another day or two. I can show you the sights. Not that there are many exciting sights in New Haven, or in most of Connecticut in general, but the state really is prettier than you’d think from how the rest of New England makes it the butt of our jokes. I’ll give you another grand tour: the hospital, my sad little apartment, the post office where I dropped off your watch.” He grimaced. “Alright, maybe not that last one. It’s up in Hartford.”
BJ picked his way through the ramble, starting and discarding a few responses while Hawkeye fidgeted. “I can stay until Wednesday.”
“Great! Beej, we’ll—”
“What were you doing in Hartford?”
What he meant was, why did you really send it back? As always, Hawkeye heard what he didn’t say aloud, and launched into the story of his trip to Nick’s—his plans for a night on the town, the awkward experience of running into Callahan, the stranger he’d met at the bar.
BJ stiffened.
“I’m not apologizing for that,” Hawkeye said. “I thought the watch was some, some gesture of brotherhood, and I’d been indulging in distinctly unbrotherly fantasies. Time was supposed to make it better, but it didn’t. I couldn’t stop. So I thought I’d force myself past it, you know? Find a distraction, get back on the horse. But your damn watch was looking me in the eye the whole time, and I just . . .”
When BJ received the watch in the mail, he’d known on some level that Hawkeye was hurting. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might have been the cause.
“Hawk—”
“I regretted it immediately.” Hawkeye pushed up onto his elbows, near-frantic in his intensity. “I didn’t want to let it go—to let you go. But I thought I had to, or I’d end up losing you completely, and it’d be no one’s fault but my own.”
“You weren’t alone. You aren’t.”
Hawkeye’s throat bobbed, and he looked away, facing towards the window. “It might take me a little while before I can really believe that.”
BJ deserved as much. Hawkeye had a way of making a scalpel of his words, sometimes intentionally, but more often because he found a way of speaking a truth that BJ didn’t want to hear. This was no more than that: Hawkeye couldn’t yet believe that BJ wouldn’t leave him alone with this, and god knew he had ample evidence for his doubts.
There was some consolation in knowing that all he had to do to fix it was to continue what he’d started, to keep showing up on Hawkeye’s doorstep, literal and metaphorical, even and especially when doing so felt impossible.
He rolled, stretching over Hawkeye’s legs and digging around on the floor until he found last night’s jeans. The watch sat in the front pocket. He pulled it out and rearranged himself on the bed, kneeling next to Hawkeye’s hip.
Hawkeye remained blank-faced as BJ tugged at his left wrist. “Insurance for July 1955?”
“No insurance. No loan.” BJ pressed his lips to Hawkeye’s radial pulse, then strapped the watch back on and admired how it sat along the bones of his wrist. “This is a gift. Though I won’t pretend there isn’t intent behind it.”
“First step a watch, next step a letterman jacket.”
“I want you to have it. I want you to wear it.”
“In a distinctly unbrotherly way?”
“I sure hope so.” He paused, then, reconsidering. Was it ridiculous of him to try again with a gesture that had already cause Hawkeye pain, even though it meant something different, now? “If you don’t want it, if it reminds you too much of—”
“It reminds me of you, Beej.” A small, almost shy smile pulled at his lips. “I’ll take it on one condition.”
“Oh?”
Hawkeye waggled his brows. “That you demand at least one unbrotherly gesture in return. Call it a ‘thank you,’ if you will, payable sometime between now and Wednesday.”
BJ leaned in, but any half-formed plan of requesting payment on delivery was interrupted by a series of thumps against the floorboards beneath them.
“That’s Dad’s broomstick summoning us to breakfast,” Hawkeye said, rolling out of bed.
“For the best.” BJ leaned over the side of the mattress and give Hawkeye’s ass a playful swat. “Something tells me I’m going to need all the energy I can get when that payment comes due.”
#
Breakfast was as advertised. Daniel made a scramble big enough to feed a small village, served with both bacon and sausage in an indulgence BJ suspected, but couldn’t confirm, had its roots in Hawkeye’s complaints about Igor’s mystery breakfast meat. With the sun shining through the kitchen window and the radio playing swing jazz in the background, it’d have been positively idyllic had BJ been able to relax enough to enjoy it. But all his daydreams of what the morning after with Hawkeye might look like hadn’t factored Hawkeye’s father into the equation.
He was under Daniel’s roof, at Daniel’s table, sitting one floor below the bed where he’d spent the night wrapped around Daniel’s son. Given that the living room couch was still made up from the day before, there wasn’t a way Daniel didn’t know what they’d been up to. Had Hawkeye told him they were “safe as houses?” Yes. Did that keep his heart from racing while choking down sausage links? Absolutely not.
He kept telling himself he was being ridiculous. Hawkeye was a bundle of happy energy beside him, chatting about the prep he and Dr. Callahan were doing for the open-heart surgery later that month. Daniel listened attentively while working his way through a mountain of eggs, interjecting with questions and quips at intervals. Nothing in his bearing suggested the tension BJ associated with his own father. And yet he jolted each time Daniel set his mug down with a clack on the wooden tabletop. His knee bounced until Hawkeye’s hand fell on it with a welcome squeeze that nevertheless didn’t quite settle him. He couldn’t, for the life of him, keep up his end of the conversation.
The itch from the night before had returned. Only, this time it wasn’t choppers he waited for.
Daniel noticed—he was sure of it. But instead of making the kind of remark BJ would have expected of his own father, the ones that cut too close to BJ’s tender parts, he steered the conversation to their plans for the day.
“We’ll head to the lake,” Hawkeye said, swirling his coffee. To BJ, he added, “For most of the town, it’s another beach day: prizes for the best chowder from last night’s bake, rowing races, kids’ games, that sort of thing. The lake’ll be deserted. Perfect for bringing the cooler and setting up a couple of rods. I don’t know about you, but I could do without the crowd.”
BJ suspected fishing was a ruse, but found himself too off-balance to compose a quip. “Sounds good, Hawk.”
The stiffness in his tone gave him away, but Hawkeye only scrutinized him for a moment before launching into gossip about how some committee wanted to stock the local lakes for tourist season—a subject BJ knew better than to voice an opinion on. The good-natured complaints of both Pierces kept the air buoyant, but did nothing to stop him from jumping each time Hawkeye’s ankle nudged against his under the table.
They made it until cleanup before Daniel noticed the watch.
“You’re wearing it again, I see.”
BJ froze. Hawkeye, halfway through drying a dish, turned his wrist this way and that, letting sunlight from the window catch the bezel.
“Suits me, don’t you think?” he asked, batting his eyelashes at BJ.
“It’s a nice one. This’ll give you a laugh, though, here.” Daniel crossed the kitchen and pulled open a junk drawer, rummaging past rubber bands and spare pens to pull out a different watch. “I had batteries put in your old one last week.”
For a terrible second, BJ thought Hawkeye would make the swap—that maybe he hadn’t been clear when he put it on Hawkeye’s wrist, that the jokes about payment hinted at something more temporary and transactional than BJ had intended.
But Hawkeye only smiled, took the watch from his father’s outstretched hand, and slipped it onto his pocket. “I’m sure I’ll find something to do with it, Dad. Thanks.”
“It seemed wrong that a guy who works on tickers wouldn’t have a ticker of his own.” Daniel tapped Hawkeye’s wrist. “Though I see that’s not a problem, now.”
BJ stilled halfway through spooning leftovers into a Pyrex dish. He knew the smile on Daniel’s face. He’d seen it on Hawkeye a thousand times—a sly curve that meant you heard what I really said, didn’t you? Any other time, and he’d be smiling back, in on the joke. Now, all he could hear was the implication, echoing inside his head as though Daniel had said it aloud: what’s that on your wrist, son? Oh, I see BJ gave you his ticker.
Daniel knew. Obviously, Daniel knew. But holding that theoretical knowledge in the back of his head wasn’t the same as standing in the middle of Daniel’s kitchen with that slyness aimed at him.
When Daniel’s hand landed on his shoulder, he couldn’t stop the flinch.
Hawkeye materialized beside them, dishrag abandoned, and leaned into BJ’s side. “Give us a minute, Dad?”
Before BJ could protest, Hawkeye snaked an arm around his waist and led him out of the kitchen to the foyer. Once there, BJ all but propped himself against the banister—a near-recreation of the exact position he’d been in the night before.
And as he had then, Hawkeye gentled him, a hand rubbing up and down his back. “My dad isn’t your dad, Beej.”
“I know. I know. It’s just—he—”
“Was it the joke?” Hawkeye budged closer, until they were practically fused at the hip. “Because it wasn’t aimed at you. That was as close to the Daniel Pierce Seal of Approval as anyone can get. If he’s poking fun, he likes you.”
BJ shut his eyes. “That’s good to hear. But no, it’s not. It’s”—damn, this was frustrating—“it’s fireworks.”
And thank god Hawkeye had the preternatural ability to get what he was saying even when he did a hack job of it. “Oh. Oh. You’re waiting for the choppers. Or, well, not the choppers, but . . .”
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t a perfect analogy, because what he felt was exposed, like he’d been caught on the road in a jeep with a sniper in the woods, and all he could do was keep driving and hope the next bullet didn’t have his name on it.
Hawkeye shifted, slipping up behind him and wrapping arms around his waist. BJ let himself relax against the solid breadth of Hawkeye’s chest. This, this, was exactly what he’d wanted to do for Hawkeye at Milligans yesterday, and so rather than hating himself for needing it, he shut his eyes and let Hawkeye hold his pieces together until he was able to do it for himself.
In the kitchen, the faucet ran, followed by the clink of cutlery landing in the bottom of the sink. BJ tried to let the familiar, innocuous sounds shed the itch from beneath his skin.
“Thank you,” he said.
“No, thank you.”
“For what? I’ve made things uncomfortable.”
“Not as much as you think. And after what you’ve told me, I can’t imagine this is easy for you. But it really matters to me that you’ve met each other. That you’re here.”
BJ turned his head, not for a kiss, but to brush his nose against Hawkeye’s. A caress. A gentle bump of their foreheads.
“Boys, coffee’s up,” Daniel called.
Hawkeye lipped a kiss to his brow. “You alright?”
“Better, now.” He pulled free from Hawkeye’s arms, but didn’t let go completely, lacing fingers with Hawkeye’s left hand to admire the watch on his wrist. “Come on. Let’s not keep your dad waiting.”
He tugged on their joined hands and led Hawkeye back into the kitchen, ignoring the hammering in his chest that suggested he was on the cusp of a cardiac event.
It was worth it to see the size of Hawkeye’s smile.
#
After breakfast, Hawkeye took the Studebaker to town on a brief errand, and BJ used the opportunity to call first the airline, then Mill Valley—both of which Daniel refused to let him pay for. He also thoughtfully vacated the kitchen so BJ could have a little privacy. Such privacy ended up being welcome, because Peg, when she heard his voice, was near-breathless with unsubtle excitement.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Don’t give me that, mister—Viv! Viv, it’s BJ! Hold on, she and Erin are coming.”
A scuffle on the other line, during which BJ clearly heard Erin exclaim “Daddy!” in an absolute arrow to his heart, ended with all of them on the line together.
“Is he alright?” Viv asked with no preamble.
“He’s alright.” He let silence hang for as long as he could, then added, “More than alright.”
His cheeks hurt with the force of his grin. He suspected they could tell, because both of them whooped so loud he had to pull the phone away from his ear.
“Did you hear that, Viv?” Peg asked.
“Sure did. Sounded like he said ‘yes, my gorgeous, intelligent, highly perceptive wife—it turns out you were right all along!’”
“We should have taken wagers.”
“Rub it in all you want,” BJ said. “Even if I owed you a bet, I’d still say I’m coming out of this one on top.”
Viv cackled. “Who’s gloating now?” Then more seriously, “I’m going to hop off so Peg and Erin get their fill, but I’m so glad for you, BJ. Give Hawkeye our regards.”
A conversation with Erin followed, during which BJ treaded carefully around admitting he hadn’t yet visited Moose-moose’s home forest and made a quiet note to bring back some kind of pinecone or something for her. She was also disappointed that Uncle Hawk couldn’t come to the phone.
“You’ll get to talk to him soon, Bear.”
“Promise, Daddy?”
“I promise,” he said, though he didn’t know which relative version of ‘soon,’ was closest to the truth. The very thought of the two of them in the same room made his heart twist so hard it hurt. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand having the two people who owned his heart on opposite coasts.
Erin wandered away from the phone shortly thereafter, presumably lured by Viv, and he and Peg made quick work of logistics.
“I’ve booked my return flight for Wednesday. Can you call the hospital and let them know? If they question you, tell them it’s a family emergency.”
Peg hesitated. “I can, but . . . well. I spoke to Susan at the Morris’ Fourth of July barbeque. She seemed to think you were taking sick days—that you were too unwell to come to the party.”
Not this shit, again. “They thought I was, what, hiding under the bed?”
“They’re asses, BJ, forget it, I shouldn’t have—”
“What did you tell them?”
“The truth. That you took some time off to go out of town and visit someone you served with.”
BJ wound the phone cord around his pointer finger. “Might as well play it up. Tell the hospital my flight had issues, and my return was delayed a few days.”
“Will do, honey. We’ll see you in three days, then?”
“Three days,” he echoed, and a shadow of Hawkeye’s melancholy from earlier hit him. Three days, and then he’d be back on the other side of the country, and who knew when they’d see one another next?
“It won’t be goodbye, BJ. And this time around, the two of you will even be on the same page.”
“Yeah, we’ll—we’ll figure something out,” he said with far more surety than he felt.
They hung up shortly thereafter. BJ stayed at the kitchen table for a while, sitting with the quiet ache that came from being away from home—and Erin—for the first time since Korea. Taking out his wallet to look at the pictures he kept in there didn’t quite soothe it, but made it somewhat more bearable.
“Is that your girl?”
BJ startled, spinning in his chair to find Daniel in the doorway. When Daniel reached for the percolator to pour them each another cup of coffee, though, he spread the pictures across the placemat between them.
“Erin,” he said. “That’s her with Moose-moose—has Hawk told you about that? And her dressed as a bear last Halloween. And her Easter dress, though wrestling her into it was a feat.”
Daniel examined each of them. “She has your smile.” He tapped the picture of Erin cuddling Moose-moose on the couch. “Hawk agonized over that. He was thrilled when she liked it.”
“Liked it? It was the gift of the year.”
As BJ tucked his photos back into his wallet, Daniel pulled out his own. He carried a handful more than BJ and slid them across the table for him to inspect. The oldest showed Hawkeye at Erin’s age, perhaps, holding a ball with a big, gap-toothed grin, nose wrinkled and eyes disappearing into little half-moons. Next, a Hawkeye of about eight in a team uniform, picking dandelions in the outfield while a glove hung listlessly from his hand.
“Well doesn’t that make sense,” BJ said through a grin.
“He played for two summers because some of his friends were on the team, but gave up long before junior high.”
“They didn’t keep him on as a groundskeeper?”
Daniel snorted, then pushed the other photos his way. The next was of a much younger Daniel sitting on the porch swing with a curly-haired woman who must have been Hawkeye’s mother, Hawkeye wedged between them. Though Hawkeye had his father’s grin, he had his mother’s eyes.
The final two photos skipped quickly in time. A high school graduation picture had Hawkeye in a cap and gown, giving the camera a crooked smile that BJ immediately recognized. The last Hawkeye was an adult, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with ink-dark hair and a touch more fullness to his cheeks than he had now. BJ imagined meeting that version of Hawkeye in New York or Boston: the hotshot surgical resident with brilliant hands and a cackling laugh. He ran a fingertip along the edge of the photo. If he had, he suspected his life trajectory would have looked somewhat different.
“You never stop wanting to wave them around at the grocery store,” Daniel said, gathering the photos up and tucking them into his wallet.
BJ would still be showing photos of Erin to strangers when she was in her forties. That said, he understood Daniel’s impulses on multiple levels, because he wanted nothing more than a photo of Hawkeye to show off at home, too. “He was a cute kid.”
“A saving grace on more than one occasion, because he was also precocious and inquisitive, and he knew just how to push my buttons.”
“I see some things never change.”
Daniel’s grin was a mirror of the one from Hawkeye’s graduation photo. “Wouldn’t change him for the world.”
BJ wondered what it would be like to grow up with a father who said that and meant it—who took him for who he was, all of him, and loved him completely and sincerely.
“Neither would I,” he said. “Button-pushing and all.”
Daniel’s smile softened. “You’ll take care of him, will you?”
Somehow, even though he’d been jumping out of his skin only a half hour earlier, it was remarkably easy to be candid about this. “I can’t pretend I know exactly how we’ll figure this out, but I can tell you that he’d have a hell of a hard time getting rid of me.”
“Good.” Daniel cocked his head. “I like you, BJ. I’d hate to have to get out the shovel.”
There was something comforting about getting the exact same talk that he’d once gotten from Floyd Hayden. Hawkeye deserved a father who’d bury a body for him. Because when he considered what Hawkeye might have been like if he’d grown up in the Hunnicutt household, if he’d had that light, that spark dimmed—well. It was unthinkable.
God willing, Erin would grow up in a house that felt more like the Pierce residence, where she’d never learn to stifle her giggles or cower after spilling a cup of juice. She’d keep playing her imaginative games and coloring outside the lines, and no matter who she grew up to be, he could be sure she was entirely Erin, inside and out.
His thoughts turned, then, to Viv and her clever humor. To Peg and her ambition, the admirable kind, the kind that never required others to be less in order for her to be more. Peg, Viv, Erin, Hawkeye: four people he loved, even if the shades of love were different. If he became the kind of man he wanted to be, it’d be because he found a way to give them the love they deserved—the only kind of love that Daniel Pierce seemed to understand. The kind that saw people for who they were and let them be.
“Thank you,” he said, a touch hoarse.
Daniel arched a brow. “For threatening you with a shovel?”
“For being his dad.”
They shared a watery look over their cooling coffees, and BJ suspected that, though he hadn’t delivered the message as clearly as he could, here, it was nevertheless received.
Notes:
(1) I’m imagining Hawk humming Teresa Brewer’s “Till I Waltz Again With You,” which would have been hugely popular around this time. I’m not a huge early 1950s music buff, so I’ve been cross-checking release dates, lyrics, melody etc. on YouTube whenever I go to include a song in the story. Two of the first comments that popped up under the video of Till I Waltz Again With You I used for reference were from Korean War vets who mentioned loving this song, so I took it as a sign.
(2) Jergens was, indeed, a popular lotion brand in the 1950s. You know Hawk keeps this in his nightstand for one reason and one reason only. (And since that ‘one reason’ is solo activity of the external variety, I’m choosing lotion over any other kind of lubricant: welcome to the Thinking Too Much About Everything club, friends.) Why did I research this particular fact? Because that paragraph is three sentences long and the original version ended 2/3 sentences with the word “lotion,” and I couldn’t figure out a way to rephrase it to keep the rhythm, and it drove me so nuts I started doing historical brand research to get around the problem. I *know* I’m not the only one who’s done something like this XD.
(3) This Hawk-esque bit of absurd singing during sex is from a 1908 song called “All Aboard for a Good Old Time,” written by Jos McKeon and Raymond Walker. The title line starts the chorus and is shortly followed by “enjoy yourselves / let’s all be gay / have lots of fun / in the old-fashioned way,” which I was sorely tempted to shoehorn in, but ended up swapping for caboose jokes, instead.
Chapter 15: Hawkeye - July 5-6th 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Hawkeye was, of course, aware that BJ thought the fishing trip was some kind of ruse. BJ didn’t know that all Pierce fishing trips were ruses at heart—an excuse to lay down worries and sit outside in silence or, better still, in one another’s company.
Some of Hawkeye’s favorite memories with his dad were from days at the lake. He didn’t have the attention span for fishing, but his dad never seemed to mind, content to let him fill the silence with chatter and wander off to explore the shoreline or go for a splash when the heat set in. Dad would bag a trout or two for dinner, and they’d leave their cares aside for the day. In the gold-limned memories of Hawkeye’s childhood, those days at the lake held a special place.
Now, maybe, he’d make some new memories there. What better way to get BJ out of the house and alone?
This particular elbow of the lake wasn’t popular with the town’s anglers, but it had everything he and BJ needed: a small dock with a ladder, sky-high pines shading the snug cove on all sides, and just enough trout to give their bait the occasional nibble.
Late morning sunlight glinted off the water and cast the surrounding woods in shades of emerald. They unpacked on the dock to the chirp of crickets and the occasional low loon’s call, setting a pair of camping chairs on either side of a cooler. Hawkeye commandeered a bright yellow ring float he found at the end of the dock—a near-twin of one he’d once bought from Milligans with money from his paper route—as a foot rest.
“Beautiful system you’ve got,” BJ said, half-lidded eyes fixed on the lake. “Throw a line in, watch if float, call it fishing.”
“Is that mockery I sense in your tone?”
“You ever actually catch anything out here?”
Their lines cut lazy arcs into glassy water. Nothing tugged. Nothing even dreamed of tugging, which suited Hawkeye just fine.
“Plenty of things,” he said. “A sunburn. A splinter. One spring, I hooked my own shoe. The rare Maine freshwater bootfish. Highly endangered. Only two in the whole state.”
BJ chuckled again, head falling back, and for a moment the sound filled the dock. It mingled with the low lap of the lake against the pilings, the caw of a crow in the pines.
They fell into companionable quiet, the kind Hawkeye would usually interrupt with a monologue, but now found himself caught up in admiring BJ, instead. He didn’t look much different from how he had on summer days in Korea. A white undershirt peeked through an unbuttoned top, his khakis were cut off at the knee to make shorts, and a truly hideous straw hat shaded his eyes. He was still, somehow, a vision. Hawkeye would have given anything for a day like this over there.
If only me from 1952 could see me now.
Hawkeye sank lower in his chair, rearranging his feet on the float. The past day had been a dream. BJ loved him, desired him with an enthusiasm Hawkeye had never let himself imagine. BJ had kissed him awake that morning. Given him the watch, again. Threaded their fingers together in front of Dad despite his nerves. Said things like I want you and family and god, Hawk, you’re so good.
So why the hell was he still itchy?
Maybe because of the flight BJ had booked to return to his work, his wife, his daughter in California. Something about it reminded Hawkeye unerringly of those last days at the 4077th, when BJ insisted they’d see one another again. They had, but Hawkeye couldn’t let go of the same question he’d asked back then: to what end? Because they were here, now, playing out the dreamy bliss of a day at the lake with no cares in the world, but the world was right outside their door. Three days until the next goodbye, and then what?
We’ll figure it out, BJ said. But Hawkeye couldn’t yet see the solution.
In school, Hawkeye was the kind of child who got sent to the headmaster for talking back when all he’d wanted to understand was why. He’d never had a lot of faith in ‘because I said so’ or ‘trust me’ or ‘that’s the way things are.’ He needed to know, and to understand, and until he could see the what and the how and the why beneath it all, he couldn’t harness his hopes and hitch them to whatever new dimension had opened up between the two of them. Sure, they could want all kinds of things and make all kinds of promises. That didn’t change reality. Hawkeye wasn’t sure he could survive on a handful of visits a year, though he’d still try.
But would BJ resent being divided between coasts? What if BJ’s current spate of optimism was only possible because of how new all of this was for him? Hawkeye had been examining this problem since Kimpo. How would BJ feel about it three years down the line, when he realized that Carlye was right and Hawkeye couldn’t help but put the work and the patients first? Would he wise up and leave? Everyone else did.
A nudge of toes to his ankle brought his attention back BJ’s way.
“Alright, out with it,” BJ said. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you this quiet for this long. You’re plotting something.”
“Reminiscing.” It wasn’t a total lie, but he could spin truth from it easily enough. “You know, I used to own this lake.”
“Is that so?”
“Three summers running. By the end of July, everyone gave up trying to beat me. Fastest swim to the bank and back. They practically renamed it Pierce Pond.”
BJ gave him that infuriating gosh-you’re-so-amusing smirk. “I’m sure the Chamber of Commerce jumped right on that.”
“You doubt me.”
“You’re all wingspan. You’d flap a lot, make a nice splash, but speed?”
“Wingspan is exactly what you need! Leverage, Beej. A natural oar system.” Hawkeye stretched both arms out dramatically, nearly smacking BJ in the face.
“Great. You’ll row yourself in a circle.”
“That’s rich coming from you, Mr. Track Star. What good’s running when there’s no road under your feet?”
“I’ve got endurance,” BJ countered. “Stamina. Discipline. I’d glide right past you.”
There was a beat of silence during which they stared each other down, grins tugging at the corners of their mouths. Goddamn, but BJ looked good. Maybe a little friendly competition was just what they needed to get warmed up, so to speak, for an encore of their morning performance.
Wouldn’t that be just the thing to get out from inside his head? To stop grieving in advance and enjoy BJ for the time he was allowed?
Hawkeye pushed out of his camping chair. “Race you.”
“You’re serious?”
“Deadly. To the bank and back.”
BJ raised a brow, gesturing down at himself. “You notice anything missing?”
As if Hawkeye’s failure to suggest they pack swim trunks would ever be unintentional. He made a show of stumped consternation, then snapped his fingers. “Guess that leaves us with the ol’ birthday suits, so long as you’re not worried about someone seeing the goods.” Because, of course, the best way to get BJ to agree to anything was a dare, either explicit or implied.
The return of that guileless grin meant BJ knew exactly what he was after. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Who’s going to complain, the fish?”
“Well, I certainly won’t,” Hawkeye said with a leer. “It’s settled, then. One dash across the lake. Loser has to clean whatever we catch.”
“You think we’re actually going to catch anything?”
“Fine. Loser tells my dad we didn’t catch any fish and explains why.”
BJ unzipped his fly, drawing Hawkeye’s eyes like a damn magnet. “You’re on. Just don’t get upset when I lap you, Crabapple Comet.”
They kicked off a rush, clothing hitting the dock in a scattered pile. Hawkeye nestled his new watch in a pocket. With BJ still occupied by his shorts, he took the opportunity to massage the odds in his favor and raced for the water.
“The clock starts now! Better get in and start swimming.”
BJ nearly tripped over the float ring in his haste to catch up. “Cheating already? That’s how I know you’re toast.”
Hawkeye beat him to the edge, diving in and slicing toward the far bank like an osprey going after its catch. BJ followed immediately. Though he was a chronic bullshitter, he hadn’t been kidding about his swimming ability, and caught up before the halfway mark. That alone was a dirty trick. The moment they pulled level, Hawkeye couldn’t help but get distracted by how each powerful stroke showed off the musculature of his back. He was like a damn painting.
As BJ passed him, he switched to backstroke to gloat, giving Hawkeye an even better view. “Looks like the Chamber of Commerce will be renaming it to Hunnicutt Pond soon enough.”
“Oh yeah?” He lunged, grabbing BJ by the ankle and yanking him backward.
“Hey! That’s—hey!”
BJ tried to twist away, only for Hawkeye to duck under and drag him down. They tumbled into a chaotic tangle, dunking and splashing, laughing so hard that their voices carried over the lake. Each accusation—cheater, trick!—was met with a counter, a new splash, another arm across the shoulders or a leg hooked behind the knees.
Soon enough, the race was forgotten. This hadn’t been part of his plan, per se, since he’d only thought far enough ahead to get BJ naked, get BJ in the water, but Hawkeye hadn’t lost his touch for thinking on the spot, because this was the best kind of fun. A little boyish grappling, an excuse to test his strength against BJ’s for reasons that weren’t boyish at all, and sure, maybe he’d be the one telling his dad why they hadn’t caught any fish, but it was well worth it.
They cavorted until they laughed so hard Hawkeye worried he’d inhale lake water, then turned for the dock by mutual agreement, where BJ grabbed the floatie and flopped atop it. Partially deflated, it was just buoyant enough to keep his head and chest above water while he lazed on his back. He paddled around that way for a while. When Hawkeye caught his breath enough to risk drawing near, BJ locked his legs around Hawkeye’s waist and drew him in.
“Need a ride, sailor?”
Hawkeye slid up to kiss the ridge of his sternum, then rolled to lie back against him, warm in the circle of his arms. “If they sold floaties like this at Milligans, I’d singlehandedly keep them in business.”
He felt more than heard BJ’s answering chuckle and tipped his head to rest on BJ’s shoulder. Sunshine filtering through the trees overhead. Above them, a pair of his namesakes circled, silhouetted against the clouds. BJ traced more of those looping shapes over his ribs, a little ticklish, but not so much that he’d ask him to stop.
“You know, I’ve imagined something a lot like this,” BJ murmured.
“Are you saying you used to fantasize about me?”
Another series of loops traced across his waist. “I thought about you all the time.”
It was too vulnerable, too frightening to ask what does all the time mean? How new is this for you? Am I just the next best option after your marriage went kaput? Because I’ve loved you since day one.
He went an easier route.
“Oh yeah? Where are we in this fantasy?”
“California. You come out to visit, and we go swimming one night. Though the way I imagined it might have gotten a little more . . . vivid in the past few months.” BJ hesitated, then busied himself with kissing up Hawkeye’s neck to his ear.
Ah—a proper fantasy, then. He could work with that. “Picture this, if you will. A summer day in California. I arrive in the late afternoon and bring back your watch.”
“You never mailed it?”
“Never did. I’m a bit quicker on the uptake in this fantasy.” He rolled in BJ’s arms until their legs tangled together and his chin rested on BJ’s chest. “I can’t wait to see you. Haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
“Me neither.” The expression on BJ’s face was a bit more focused, a bit more intense than Hawkeye had anticipated. “But I’m guessing we don’t go out to the beach that first night, do we?”
Hawkeye huffed. He’d forgive BJ the bad improv etiquette—this was his fantasy, after all—and made a conscious choice not to mention Peg in retaliation. “We spend it drinking beer on your porch and reminiscing.”
“It gets late. We’ve been talking for a long time. It’s dark on the street, no cars going by. I’ve spent seven months thinking nonstop of how I’m going to tell you what I need to tell you, and I’m terrified.”
Oh. This wasn’t just some sexy fantasy—this was what BJ planned when he wrote that invitation back in March. They were recreating some kind of alternate timeline with this, spinning a dream that was almost reality.
Hawkeye did some quick recalibrating. “So we’re on the porch, and I’m sitting close to you, and you’re gulping down a beer and trying to figure out what to say, huh?”
“More like getting up the guts.” BJ’s expression was near-inscrutable. “I’ve said something like it before. Or, well, I’ve written it. Never sent the letter.”
Would there ever come a time when a single sentence from BJ couldn’t make him spin out?
“What? When?”
“On the plane from Hawaii. But it wouldn’t have been fair to lay all of that at your feet then, so I ripped it up.”
Hawkeye stilled, fingertips digging into air-filled plastic behind BJ’s back. His timeline shifted. If BJ knew on the plane, that meant BJ knew in Korea.
“You said seeing Peg and Viv together changed things. I thought you didn’t, you know, until—”
“What? Hawk, no.” His hands came up to frame Hawkeye’s face. “Back there, I’d have done anything to be near you, to get you to look at me, to laugh at my jokes, to keep putting your hands on me. I tore myself up over it, because I made Peg a promise, but that didn’t change how I felt, and how I felt would have always landed me here in the end. You’re not some backup option. Do you understand? I’d have walked to Maine from California for you. I love you. I love you.”
The words burst over Hawkeye’s skin, and he wobbled, trying to speak through a closing throat. He had to get them back to the fantasy, where a layer of distance between here and there would hopefully make his eyes stop stinging. It was possible that he’d underestimated BJ Hunnicutt.
“Is that what you’re going to tell me on the porch?”
A pause. BJ’s mouth did something complicated, but he let Hawkeye get away with the diversion. “I’m going to tell you everything I wanted to. Everything I said last night.”
“I’m, ah, guessing that, given how close the porch is to an actual bed, that’s why we’re not getting out to Stinson Beach.”
BJ laughed, shifting to tug Hawkeye closer, wiggling until they floated nearly chest-to-chest. “You’ve got me. But I’d take you to the beach plot the next day. There isn’t much construction out there yet, so it’d be just you and me.”
That was an impulse Hawkeye could understand. “We spend the day fishing, then, and grill our catch on the beach at sunset.”
“You’re developing a real track record for overselling our angling abilities.”
“So we grill burgers, and afterward, we decide to wash off the day by going swimming.”
The first sign of a telltale flush spread along BJ’s neck and chest, and he regarded Hawkeye with wide, dark eyes. “Well, what do you know? I don’t have my swimming trunks with me.” His smile turned wicked. “There’s a chance I forgot them on purpose.”
“Beej, you devil, are you trying to get me to suggest we skinny-dip?”
A little buck of BJ’s hips followed his words. Clearly, BJ had been gunning for this the whole time, the fink. That thought keyed Hawkeye up, too, getting him back on board with the kind of fantasy he’d assumed this would be when they started. He smoothed his palms across BJ’s chest, thumbed a nipple, wrapped arms around his waist.
“So we’re in the water,” Hawkeye said and kissed along BJ’s collarbone. “We’ve had a beer or two, and I’m a little floaty, and all I can think about is how badly I want to touch you.”
BJ rocked against him. “Yeah, sweetheart? How do you touch me?”
The endearment washed through him, golden like sunshine, and he stopped himself just short of begging BJ to say it again.
“Like this,” Hawkeye said, shoving the floatie away and dunking him.
BJ spluttered as he surfaced, shaking off like a dog. “Dirty pool!”
“I thought we were supposed to be in the ocean?”
He cackled as BJ lunged for him, and he let himself get caught, snaking arms around BJ to get a handful of his ass. But if BJ meant to grapple, the slide of skin on skin derailed his plans, and he wrapped a leg around Hawkeye’s thighs, instead.
“That’s a bold move, Hawk.” BJ’s breath was hot against his neck, and he nipped along the muscle there. “How sure are you that you have the upper hand?”
It took every ounce of Hawkeye’s focus not to turn into a shivering wreck, but he persevered, stagger-stepping them towards the dock. “Because I’m slippery and clever.” He put BJ’s back to the ladder, ass resting on a rung. Water lapped at their waists. When BJ’s legs spread open, he slotted his hips in, grinding forward with all his weight. “Or maybe I just get lucky when I pin you down in the sand.”
BJ made a sound like he’d been shot. He panted against Hawkeye’s throat, hips moving in little involuntary thrusts, sending heat pulsing up Hawkeye’s spine. “So you’ve got me. What do you do with me?”
Hawkeye answered by wrapping a fist around both of them and pulling BJ into a scorching kiss. The way they fit together was incredible, and from how BJ’s legs locked around his waist, he figured he wasn’t the only one who thought so. They’d finish fast. That was fine—they had tonight, and tomorrow, and right now, he wasn’t capable of thinking past the slick warmth of BJ against him to worry about the rest.
When BJ’s hand came up to wrap around his, he started a quick, jolting rhythm, pushing into the tight circle of their grip, rubbing against BJ’s cock on each thrust.
“That’s right,” BJ murmured, getting a hand into his hair, fingers twisting tight. “Give it to me, Hawk.”
The pull sent a shower of tingles all down his back. Hawkeye made a desperate noise, and though he tried to hold off, to make it last, the swelling tide of pleasure swept him over the edge. Ecstasy and relief washed through him in equal measure, and he slumped into BJ, who thrashed against the ladder as he followed close behind.
He came to when BJ’s hand went from pulling to stroking his hair, brushing the wet sweep of it off his forehead.
“That was something,” BJ said. His legs had slid down from Hawkeye’s waist, but they stayed wrapped together, BJ’s heels resting against his calves.
“Was it like you imagined?”
“Sure. A real wet dream.”
Hawkeye huffed into his shoulder. “Oh, that was bad.”
He felt more than heard the rumble of BJ’s answering laughter. “Really? I thought it went great.”
“BJ, I swear to god.”
“Did you ever have one like that?” A kiss brushed against his temple, followed by the slow drag of BJ’s smile growing against his skin. “A fantasy, I mean. I think I played it and its variations in my head so many times I wore them out.”
No, because I tried not to let myself imagine this in detail. He didn’t want to wreck the mood with a truth so maudlin, even if BJ’s recent admission left him wondering just how long they’d each been quietly wanting. He wasn’t yet sure he wanted to know.
“A lot of them started with me waking you up after I got back from battalion aid,” he said instead. It wasn’t untrue, even if he usually cut himself off before the fantasy went much further.
The slow, sweet kiss BJ gave him for the admission was interrupted by the sudden whoosh of one of their reels going off. Hawkeye jerked back, flailing to get his legs under him. They looked at one another, wide-eyed, then at the rod, then back at one another, and burst out laughing.
“Go, go!” Hawkeye said between cackles, pushing BJ up the ladder. “If some fish drags it into the water, we’ll have a hell of an explanation on our hands.”
“On our hands? You’re the one who lost the race.”
“It was a tie!”
“Because you cheated!”
The line caught, pulling tight and straining like a drawn bow.
“Hurry, hurry!”
They scrambled up to the dock, naked as jaybirds, just as the first trout Hawkeye had ever enticed to biting ripped his dad’s fishing rod clean into the lake.
#
“What I’m saying, son, is: why bring the fishing gear if that’s not the bait and tackle you’re going to be paying attention to?”
“Ugh, Dad.” Hawkeye thunked his head against the enamel lip of the sink, a half-peeled potato dangling from one hand. He wasn’t prone to blushing, but jesus, his face was on fire. Thank god BJ was showering, or he’d have combusted already. “I got you a new rod from the shop outside town, you know.”
“I liked the old one.”
“You like being a menace, is what you like.”
His dad had a great poker face, but not where Hawkeye’s flustered misery was concerned, and a sly grin accompanied his next words. “Well, I suppose I’ll get used to it.” He took a peeled potato from the colander in the sink and went about dicing it. “Seems foolish to look a gift horse in the mouth after all the time I’ve spent hoping your BJ was as crazy about you as you are about him.”
“Dad.”
“Is he, Hawk?”
That sly smile had turned to something more genuine—a look Hawkeye could never say no to. They hadn’t had a moment alone since before the fireworks, and so Hawkeye took the opportunity to tell him everything. Well. Not quite everything, because he’d rather die than give his dad the ammo for another bait-and-tackle joke.
“And then today,” he finished, hardly able to believe the words coming out of his own mouth, “he told me it’s been like this for him since Korea. That I’m not just something he turned to because things with Peg didn’t work out.”
His dad nodded, eyes on the cutting board. “So you have what you wanted, but wouldn’t ever dare ask him for. It’s breathing life back into you—don’t think I haven’t noticed—and yet . . .”
“Yet?”
“You’ve been telling the story like you’re getting ready to face a firing squad. What’s going on?”
Hawkeye went at another potato with a vengeance. (1) “I know he and Peg aren’t together-together anymore, but they’re together in the ways that matter. Legally. Loyally. As a family. I don’t know how I fit into that, but I know he can’t stay here.”
“And you don’t want to leave New Haven.”
It sounded so silly when said aloud. “It’s not New Haven. I’ve barely been there half a year. It’s—”
“The work.”
“Yeah.” Hawkeye dropped another potato in the colander. “It feels like I’ve found my feet, again. A place that’s good for me. I’m afraid of upsetting that balance.” He hesitated, eyes burning, voice dropping to a near-whisper. “If I go out there, I’ll have BJ, but I’ll have nothing but BJ. And the part of me that loves him to pieces keeps saying it’ll be enough, but.”
“You need more than just BJ.”
“I hate hearing you put it like that, like, like—”
“You know your mother moved up here for me, don’t you?” his dad set his knife down and met Hawk’s eyes. “It was very hard on her. She built a community here eventually, but it took time. Enough time that I think I’d approach the move differently if I had the chance to do it all again.” He sighed, hand straying to his wallet, where Hawkeye knew a picture of his mother sat. “The thing is, when we’re in love, we feel like we can live off just one person. But no one can. It’s not fair on us, and it’s not fair to them when we put everything we are and everything we need on their shoulders.”
Hawkeye braced himself against the sink. “It sounds like you’re saying love isn’t enough.”
“Sometimes it’s not.”
“But if Mom did it—”
“Love is like a tree. It needs to be planted in soil where it can thrive. When your mother moved here, she wasn’t coming off of three years doing surgery in a war zone.”
Hawkeye reared back, then paced the few short steps to the refrigerator and back. “So you’re saying what, what, that I shouldn’t go out there? That I should live off a visit or two and a stack of letters a year?”
His father gentled him with a hand on his shoulder. “If you know that leaving Grace won’t work for you, and I can tell you know it or you wouldn’t be so upset right now, then it’s my job to remind you that you matter, and what you need matters, and if that man loves you half as much as I think he does, he will find another way.”
“How?” For once, Hawkeye didn’t care that the anguish in his voice was a dead giveaway. “How? His family is there.”
“Listen to me, Hawk. Your fears are never unfounded. We both know you aren’t the type to see problems where none exist. But sometimes I think you jump ahead and assume that, just because the worst can come to pass, that it therefore certainly will.”
Not this, again.
“Maybe I’m just not willing to lie to myself when, after weighing the odds, the worst option seems the most likely.”
His father arched a brow—a judgmental one that Hawkeye had never quite been able to master despite years of practicing in the mirror. “How long has it been since you both candidly told one another how you felt?”
“Uh. About twenty-four hours?”
“Give yourselves time. Your bypass machine wasn’t built overnight, was it?” He reached over and tapped Hawkeye’s watch. “Remember what we always say: you have to take it hour by hour, day by day. Just because it’s not easy, just because you don’t see the solution right now, doesn’t mean the solution isn’t out there.”
His dad was right, but Hawkeye couldn’t help but keep pushing. “What if we try, and we can’t figure it out?”
Upstairs, the shower shut off. His dad glanced upward, then pitched his voice low. “Then at least you’ll know, won’t you? And you’ll still have your work in New Haven, and your friends both there and in Boston, and I’ll still be here.” He took Hawkeye’s hands. “If you can’t find a way, Hawk, it will hurt. I know. It will take you time to grieve. But there’s no sense mourning what you haven’t yet lost. Especially because I know what happens when you do. There’s no surer way to guarantee an outcome you don’t want than to act as if it’s already come to pass.”
A lump sat in his throat, far too big to force words past, so he nodded, squeezing his dad’s hands.
“Enjoy the time you have with him,” his dad said, returning to the potatoes. “And then start making plans for next time.”
#
Late the following evening, Hawkeye sat up in his hovel of an apartment in New Haven, unable to sleep as always, counting the rise and fall of BJ’s breaths.
The futon was too small for the two of them. In BJ’s words, it’s still better than an army cot. Hawkeye tended to agree, mostly because BJ was in it, stretched out like an adonis, one arm tucked behind his head. Tempted as Hawkeye was to kiss him awake and demand attention, he found other means of entertainment.
A kerchief over the bedside lamp prevented the glare from interrupting BJ’s sleep, but provided enough light by which to start a letter to his dad. Had they just seen one another? Sure. Would they chat on the phone later in the week? Definitely. Did writing help him get some of his thoughts out in a way phone calls just couldn’t replicate? Yes, and maybe if he did, he’d finally be able to head off to the land of nod.
He threw on a pair of shorts so the pages wouldn’t stick to his legs, tucked himself up on the floor beside the bedside table, and got to writing.
Thanks to the returning holiday traffic, I won’t claim we beat any records for drive time, but it was probably the most fun I’ve had coming downcoast since I moved. We stopped three times on the way into New Haven. They went as follows:
- A mid-morning driving break at Angie’s diner in Kennebunk, where we drank a pot of coffee and BJ sweettalked the waitress into giving us a half-slice of every flavor of pie they had. It’s not the first time I’ve had to unbuckle my belt to sit comfortably in the car, and I’m not saying I regret it—the cherry, especially, practically sent me into orbit—but all we did for the next hour of the drive was bemoan our choices.
- An unexpected stop on the roadside in northern Mass when the coffee finally worked its way through our systems, which led to an impromptu misadventure in the woods. It turns out that BJ promised Erin he’d visit the forest Moose-moose was from, and decided he needed to find and fetch the most perfect pinecone as proof. He blamed me for the whole thing, but it’s not my fault I’m such a good gift-giver, is it? I better not get poison ivy rash as a thanks.
- A quick pop into a grocer up in Wallingford when it occurred to me that I didn’t have a single thing to eat in the apartment. We got the usual produce, et cetera, as well as supplies for a picnic. Of course, it started pouring right as we found street parking, so we hustled into the building and ended up stripping down to our shorts and enjoying our goods on the floor instead of the park like we’d planned. So much for romance, eh?
He wouldn’t tell his dad about how, buttoned up to keep the rain out, the apartment was a sweaty nightmare. They’d cooled off after dinner by cramming into the shower together. Or, well, they eventually cooled off. It turned out that the past several days had conditioned him to have some kind of Pavlovian arousal response to being in close quarters with BJ—and thank god they hadn’t started this in Korea, because wouldn’t that have been a nightmare to navigate—which meant they got much dirtier in the shower before getting clean.
Nor would he tell his dad that, despite months of unsubtle hints about how Hawkeye deserved a nicer place than a studio the size of a postage stamp, all it took was seeing BJ in the sad backdrop of his rental for him to immediately make up his mind to move. The tight quarters didn’t bother them so much, since they spent most of their time glommed onto one another, anyway, with no regard for the heat. But god, what he wouldn’t give to be able to push BJ down into high thread count sheets on a king-sized bed.
Even now, BJ’s toes dangled off the end of the futon. Hawkeye leaned up and kissed the bony arch of his instep as if in apology for not being able to offer him something nicer, earning a muzzy sleep-sound for his efforts.
I’ve been thinking about our conversation in the kitchen. I promise I do take your advice sometimes, Dad, and I did my best to act on it, but I haven’t gotten very far. We had heaps of time in the car to chat uninterrupted—the hour spent moaning about pie aside—and I kept trying to get there, but came up short each time.
When I told BJ about how there really wasn’t anything quite like the colors of New England in the fall, or the hush after a snowfall, or the first blooms of spring, it was all a way to get him out here again. Incentive to bring Erin, even, since she’s never seen seasons like what we have up here. But I never managed to make it to a concrete request. BJ said ‘yes,’ but he said it the way he says yes to just about everything: in the abstract. Yes, he’ll see the leaves and the snow and the spring someday, and maybe Peg and Viv and Erin will join him when he does, but I don’t know which season or even which year, and if he didn’t offer, I wasn’t going to push him, because I don’t think I can take “I don’t know” for an answer right now. So I’ve derailed my own best laid plans to make plans.
“Hawk?”
“I’ll shut the light,” Hawkeye said, already reaching for the lamp.
BJ’s hand caught his wrist halfway there, thumbing the edge of the watch band. “Can’t sleep?” His eyes were heavy-lidded but aware, and he drew Hawkeye in to place a kiss against his knuckles, then yawned against them, jaw popping with the force. “Sorry.”
“No. I’m sorry for waking you.” The yawn spread to him, then, accompanied by a full-body shudder in spite of the heat. “Tried writing to Dad to settle the itch.”
“Did it work?”
“Dunno. Can I try something else? Budge over.”
Hot though it was, the temptation of a sleepy, lax BJ was too great to ignore. Hawkeye crawled onto the futon and draped himself over BJ’s chest, tucking his face into the crook of his neck. One of BJ’s hands traced featherlight up and down his back.
Hawkeye pressed in, nosing his way from BJ’s shoulder to his jaw. The woodsy scent of soap had faded, or perhaps been overcome, and Hawkeye breathed the comforting smell of him. A knot between his shoulder blades unwound. This was home. This was safe. A second yawn overtook him, tempting him to make another attempt at sleep. He settled in and sniffed at the spot beneath BJ’s ear.
“If you’re planning on eating me, can you start with a less essential part?”
He harumphed.
BJ nudged him. “What do I smell like?”
“Like you.”
“Is that a good thing?”
Hawkeye took another long sniff, nuzzling until BJ squirmed, ticklish. “A very good thing. It’s why I used to try to swap our shirts when they came back from laundry.”
“Socks, too.” BJ’s arm wrapped around his waist, now, tucking them tight together.
“Trust me, those smelled anything but good.”
“Only because you kept stealing them.”
This was another opening. They’d joked about interest and borrowed socks aplenty. Hawkeye could roll it right back around to the watch he wore, the declarations they made, and try to turn their abstract desire to “figure something out” into the kind of concrete assurance he needed. But when he lifted his head, BJ looked so damn content he couldn’t get the words out. How could he make an ask now, in the middle of the night, and ruin this moment of peace? There’d be time tomorrow.
Hawkeye reached up to shut off the light, successfully this time, then returned to BJ’s arms.
“Think you’ll sleep, now?” BJ murmured, fingers carding through his hair.
“Mmm. Hope so.”
“Can’t wait to wake up to you.”
I don’t know how I’m going to handle waking up on my own the day after you fly away, not knowing when I’ll get to wake up next to you again. But I don’t know how to ask for an answer. Even if I did, I’m not sure you’d be able to give me one.
“Me too, Beej.”
He shut his eyes and waited for the ache in his chest to fade, then let the slow stroke of BJ’s fingers through his hair carry him to sleep.
Notes:
Dunno if anyone else has ever experienced the agony of negotiating an extreme long-distance relationship that had no foreseeable end date, but lemme tell you, it's *not* fun.
(1) This is a wild one, but did you know that the two most standard, movable-blade vegetable peelers (the Rex and Jonas peelers, of Swiss and Swedish design, respectively) weren’t invented until 1947 and 1953? That means it’s highly unlikely Hawk is using a peeler, here; he’s probably using a paring knife. Anyway, my head exploded when I learned that fun fact, so now it’s your turn.
Chapter 16: BJ - July 7-8th 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
BJ passed through the front entrance of Grace New Haven fifteen minutes after the end of Hawkeye’s shift and found Hawkeye already loitering in the lobby, leaning over the counter and flirting outrageously with a woman behind the visitor’s desk. He’d swapped scrubs for slacks, a button-down, and a white coat, and his stethoscope swung with each gesture—the very picture of a doctor at the end of a successful day if it weren’t for how his hair was a sopping wet mess.
“Take a tour through the decontamination shower?” BJ asked.
“Beej!” Hawkeye whirled, then sheepishly pushed the hair from his forehead. “My last patient had a bad reaction to an analgesic in post-op. I was close enough to catch the fallout. Lucky thing I was still in scrubs.”
“Ugh.” One of the attendings BJ worked under during residency had a saying: “everyone has their fluid.” BJ’s was, unfortunately, vomit. He’d rather change a colostomy bag or take arterial spray down the front of his gown than get puked on. “You good?”
“What’s a little secondhand breakfast? Or should I say, secondhand non-breakfast. Thank god he fasted.” Hawkeye gave him a lopsided grin. “And now I get to show you around, which is the best part of my day. You ready for the grand tour?”
“Lead the way, Maestro.”
The next half hour was a whirlwind. Hawkeye steered him from one corner of the department to the next with the pride of a man showing off his favorite toys. They paused in an operating theater to talk workflow setups, then passed through central supply, where a new system had instruments “autoclaved and back in your hands before you can blink, Beej, you can’t imagine how fast they are.” Everywhere they went, Hawkeye introduced him to a deluge of colleagues as “Dr. BJ Hunnicutt. We worked together overseas.” A handful recognized his name from the reanimation paper and asked after it. No one mentioned Korea. BJ wondered whether working with Hawkeye had primed them to know better.
BJ found himself paying more attention to Hawkeye than the tour, trying to pinpoint what had changed since the last time he’d seen Hawkeye in a white coat. There were more similarities than differences, after all. Hawkeye had brought that energetic, joking showmanship home. His effortless charm made him a clear favorite amongst the surgical staff. Yet some of the frantic energy BJ remembered from the 4077th had eased.
Hawkeye was, finally, in his element—at home doing the work he loved.
The tour saved the best for last. After leaving the OR, Hawkeye brought him down a long corridor and ushered him through a door at the end. Though the small lab on the other side was nothing special, in the center of it sat a large, gleaming apparatus, with gauges set into steel flanks and what seemed like miles of coiled tubing hanging on its sides.
Hawkeye rested a hand on its frame. “Dr. Hunnicutt, may I present the cardiopulmonary bypass machine?”
“This is the real deal?”
“It sure is. Or at least, we’re going to find out whether it is in two weeks’ time. Our patient is a seventeen-year-old female with several small atrial septal defects. A trial by fire, so to speak.”
BJ’s eyes never left the machine. “I understand how it works in principle, but . . .”
Hawkeye walked around the pump, pointing out features as he spoke. “We cannulate the vena cava, shunt blood into the oxygenator, and return it via the ascending aorta. That gives us fifty, maybe sixty minutes to work.” (1)
“Long enough to open the atrium, patch the septum.” BJ murmured it as much to himself as to Hawkeye, mind’s eye tracing the incision. An incredibly risky operation, no matter the technology they had on hand, but if anyone could stitch up a heart from the inside out, it was Hawkeye. “You’re following in Gibbon’s footsteps, right? What was it like working with him?”
Hawkeye’s face did something complicated. “Humbling. He lost two patients after his initial success. A five-year-old who developed v-fib and crashed coming off the pump, then another patient who was misdiagnosed. Brought in for ASD, but had both ventricular defects and PDA, neither of which were caught beforehand.”
“Jeeesus.”
“Gibbon stopped operations on his end until he could find a methodology for better diagnoses. He’s kind of a quiet guy, but you can tell it got to him. I think he was relieved to learn that all the attendings on our case are specialists.” (2)
“Who confirmed ASD for your patient?”
“Callahan. He did the catheterization himself.” Hawkeye fluttered around the machine. “I wouldn’t second-guess his eye, but it’s still . . .”
“Nerve-wracking.”
“Yeah. And there’s irony in having a kid the same age as the ones we saw over there on the table here in a situation that feels equally uncertain. Sometimes it gets to me.”
“And then you remember the holes in her heart aren’t from artillery?”
Hawkeye let out a long breath. “I’m trading my constant fear of missing a piece of shrapnel for the brand-new fear of getting the ratio of heparin wrong, or the oxygenator failing, or, or, or.” (3)
“Big risks.” Terrifying ones, really.
“Sure. But the reward for this is she gets to live a normal life.” The reward back there was that a kid would get sewn up and sharpened back into a weapon. “We’re walking a tightrope, though, and we know it. Callahan and I have rehearsed everything from cannulation to closing so many times that I’m starting to dream about it.”
BJ nodded, transfixed. He’d known Hawkeye was brilliant. But hearing the scope of what he was about to attempt hit him like a wave.
“And if it works,” he said, tracing the path of the gleaming tubing, “this doesn’t stop with ASD.”
Hawkeye gave him a small, achy smile. “Maybe one day, we can do a total repair of tetralogy of Fallot.”
No doubt there was a connection for Hawkeye between cardiac defects in blue babies and what happened on the bus. If BJ knew him at all, then there was a balance sheet somewhere in the back of Hawkeye’s mind measuring one against the other. Pioneer a way to save the kids whose bodies starve them of oxygen and wipe the sheet clean. (4)
And yet, though Hawkeye stared at the machine with an intensity BJ remembered from those thirty-hour sessions in the OR, when his hands flew faster than anyone’s and he refused to lose a patient without a fight, his expression held none of the desperation BJ might have expected. No, the look on his face was a lot closer to hope.
Hawkeye wasn’t just patching bodies back together anymore. He was at the edge of medicine’s future, and BJ was suddenly, fiercely proud to be here to see it.
What I wouldn’t give to stand across an operating room from him again.
“This is—” BJ cleared his throat. Incredible or groundbreaking felt too thin. “You’re going to save so many lives.”
The words hung in the air for a single, quiet moment before an insistent growl from Hawkeye’s stomach undercut it. They made eye contact and dissolved into laughter. Hawkeye swayed into him, an arm snaking around his back.
“C’mon, Beej. I have to swing by my office, but then we’ll get pizza. Best pies outside New York City, I swear. Feel like I could eat a whole one myself, takeout box and all.”
BJ obligingly followed him into a stairwell, but his head remained back in the lab with the bypass machine. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen this kind of joy for the work in Hawk’s eyes. Hawkeye was, above all else, a surgeon. A doctor.
He’d needed this. New Haven was good for him.
Which meant, of course, that he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon, and if he ever did go, it couldn’t be for anything less than a career-making opportunity. There were research and teaching positions everywhere, but few of them were so close to the cutting edge of open-heart procedures. Even those were significantly harder to come by than general surgery positions. And that, BJ realized with a sinking stone in his gut, was what he’d imagined when he let himself fantasize: Hawkeye coming out to start a life in California. How quickly SFG would snap him up. The five of them together in Mill Valley. Stinson Beach.
But that fantasy relied on Hawkeye narrowing the scope of his career, something BJ could never, ever ask him to do.
“What’s got your tongue?” Hawkeye asked as they emerged from the stairwell and into a corridor lined with offices.
“Just thinking about how much the work suits you.”
“I’m going to owe Margaret drinks for the rest of our lives for helping me end up here.” He sighed. “I should be better about visiting her. I’ve only been up once since moving, but maybe when the operation is done, things will be easier.”
“Is it easy to get to Boston from here?”
“Straight shot by train. Maybe I’ll go the weekend after next and chip away at the tab.”
The concrete ease of Hawkeye’s suggestion gave BJ pause. “Do you, ah, stay with her when you go?”
“Who else would I stay with?” The look on Hawk’s face made it clear he knew BJ wasn’t thinking about Charles. “Margaret has a spare room—big enough for two. Next time you’re out, you’ll have to come with me. We’ll visit the Punch Bowl. We’ll go dancing!”
Hawkeye’s enthusiasm soothed him, some. “Will I have to put a limit on how many lindies you can play on the juke?”
“The juke!” Hawkeye gasped in mock-horror. “Beej, what do you take me for? It’s a live band every Saturday.”
He couldn’t help but picture it: Hawkeye in a dance club, tie loosened, hair flopping across his forehead, out for a good time the way he’d been that night in Hartford. Who did he dance with? Surely there were guys lined up around the bar looking to take him for a turn around the floor. And if Trapper knew Hawkeye was in the city, if he’d reached out after the end of the war . . .
They’d never talked about the finer details of Hawkeye’s relationship with Trapper, of course, but BJ had read between the lines. Was he the type to meet up somewhere like the Punch Bowl? Wouldn’t it be easier for Hawk to have someone close by, someone whose family didn’t keep him on the other side of the country? Someone who made it easier for him to put his work first? The questions sat at the tip of his tongue, but if the mere act of contemplating them soured his stomach, he had little confidence in his ability to voice them without saying something stupid.
“What did the desk ever do to you?”
They’d reached Hawkeye’s office. How long he’d been scowling through the door at a desk overflowing with paperwork, BJ had no idea. Thankfully, he was saved by someone calling Hawkeye’s name.
“Pierce! Have a moment?”
The speaker was a salt-and pepper Eddie Albert type with a wide smile and a brisk stride, white coat flapping as he approached. Hawkeye introduced him with aplomb, ushering them into his office, though BJ figured out who he was looking before Hawkeye spoke.
“Your old war buddy, right?” Callahan asked as they shuffled in, but his eyes stayed on BJ, intent.
Hawkeye grinned. “Well, something like that.”
They exchanged a look that BJ couldn’t read.
“Dr. Callahan?” A nurse stuck her head through Hawkeye’s door. “Sorry to interrupt, doctors, but could I get your sign-off on this?”
When Callahan excused himself and stepped into the hall, Hawkeye grabbed BJ by the elbow and dragged him around the desk, bending their heads close together. “I didn’t think we’d run into him, so you’ll have to forgive me for springing this on you.” He craned his neck, checking the hall. “Have to make this quick: Callahan is one of us. I might have chatted with him once about the 4077th and let on that I carried a torch for a guy I knew over there. I made the, the mistake of doing so in the same breath as I talked about you and the kidney machine. He put two and two together and came up with something between three and five.”
BJ blinked. “You told him—”
“As far as he knows, you’re a happily married man, though your surprise arrival might throw some hints. I won’t say anything more unless you give me the go-ahead. I mean it.”
He fought the impulse to duck and cover behind Hawkeye’s desk. “You trust him?”
“I’m about to stake my career on doing open-heart surgery with him, Beej. Yeah, I trust him.”
That should have eased the ripple of discomfort between his shoulder blades, but it didn’t. He flexed his fists and tried to find words, but before he could, Callahan bid goodbye to the nurse and reentered the office. Something about the way he moved—and the way Hawkeye moved around him—reminded him of Potter’s no-nonsense leadership, though, and it helped him get his heartrate under control.
“Sorry about that.” Callahan offered up a disarming smile. “It’s a pleasure, Dr. Hunnicutt. Hope you’re enjoying your sojourn to the east coast.”
He couldn’t help his answering grin. “Sure am. Vacation aside, it was a treat to get a look at the bypass machine. Sounds like your team is ready to go.”
“Hope so. I’m lucky to have a talent like Pierce at the table with me for the surgery.”
It was a completely normal, perfunctory compliment to pay to a colleague—especially a subordinate. And yet it hit that same sour note in BJ’s stomach, because here was a chief surgeon of Hawkeye’s caliber, one he trusted, handsome as hell to boot, and—
No, no, not this again. He didn’t need another Trapper John haunting his thoughts, and he wouldn’t make a fool of himself by snapping like a territorial dog when it wasn’t warranted.
“Hawk’s the best I’ve ever worked with,” he said, ignoring the exasperated sound Hawkeye made in response. “I’m excited to hear how it goes. What you’ve got going here is a lot more impressive than what we built over in Korea.”
Callahan brightened. “Right—the kidney machine. You’re Pierce’s cowriter, aren’t you?”
Alright, maybe he’d make a little bit of a fool of himself, because no part of him could handle getting reduced to cowriter.
BJ squared his shoulders. He could do this. He could do this.
“I’m his fella,” he corrected.
Hawkeye’s jaw outright dropped. Callahan’s smile grew, and BJ had a terrible suspicion that he saw straight through him.
“Pierce, when I joked about headhunting all of your former colleagues, I didn’t mean you had to put your back into the work like that.” He held out his hand again, as if meeting ‘Pierce’s fella’ was a bigger matter than meeting Dr. Hunnicutt, and shook with a sure grip while Hawkeye honked out a laugh. “Will you still be around on Sunday? There’s a salon for types like us that afternoon, and I’d love to pick your brain about your reanimation work.”
“Afraid not. I fly home tomorrow.”
“Shame! Well, enjoy your time here. And if Pierce’s persuasive tactics fail, well, maybe I’ll see you at the next conference.” Callahan headed for the door. “Pierce, we’re meeting on Thursday morning for a full walkthrough. Don’t forget!”
With that, he slipped through the door and shut it behind him.
BJ blinked. Goddamn, but his head was starting to hurt. “Persuasive tactics?”
“He’s like the general manager of the Yankees. Always trying to scoop up the best and the brightest.”
“Baseball again?”
Hawkeye had approached as he spoke, drawing into BJ’s space, eyes trained on his as though he could peek beneath his skin to figure out exactly what made him tick. The look was dearly familiar. Fantastic, terrible things had happened to BJ after being on its receiving end.
“So,” Hawkeye murmured, running a hand up BJ’s arm, “when I told you he was one, I’ll say, I wasn’t expecting that reaction.”
“What? Aren’t I your fella?”
Hawkeye backed him slowly towards the desk. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Did I jump the gun?” He tapped the watch on Hawk’s wrist. “I thought I was clear enough, but if you’re still waiting for the letterman jacket, you’ll have to give me time to go through some boxes in the attic.”
The smile Hawkeye gave him made it abundantly clear that he knew BJ was full of shit—jealous, staking claims. He softened it by caging BJ in against the desk and kissing him, slow, sweet, teeth dragging along BJ’s lower lip as he pulled away.
“C’mon,” he said, “before you make me hungry for more than pizza.”
Hawkeye busied about his office, then, exchanging his white coat for a sport jacket, tidying the papers on his desk into piles, shoving a handful into his valise. This was what it looked like when Hawk got ready to go home for the day, BJ realized—a routine he could picture, now, whenever he wondered what Hawkeye was up to. Did Hawk always go straight to the apartment from here, or did he head out for drinks with friends? Were there meetings like the one Callahan mentioned on weeknights, too, where he spent time with other likeminded types?
“So. These salons.”
“Been to a few so far.” Hawkeye frowned, distracted, at a stack of charts perched on his desk chair. “Cal’s circle has all kinds: doctors, of course, but also lawyers, artists, professors from Yale and Southern Connecticut State. Fridays and Saturdays you’ll find them at the bars and clubs, but Sundays are more like an academic society. Networking, talks, discussions. Only everyone’s, y’know.”
BJ catalogued the weight in his stomach as though, by recording his symptoms, he could make sense of them. Here was the unpleasant vulnerability of exposure he’d felt earlier, mixed with new nerves on Hawkeye’s behalf. He wished, fervently, that he could materialize in New Haven each Sunday to accompany him, to protect him, to let all the salon’s attendees know he was taken and taken care of. That wasn’t all, though. There was also the desire to go out with Hawkeye. To see and be seen with Hawkeye’s arm around him, to show him off, to be in a crowd of people who’d know, at first look, what they were to one another, and who wouldn’t think twice about it. To have an evening with neighbors and colleagues where he could say whatever came to mind without constantly watching his words and worrying whether he blended in well enough. It wouldn’t matter if they saw through him. On the inside, they were just like him, anyway.
He pictured it: a parlor room like ones he’d seen in movies, lined with bookcases. He’d sit on one of those fancy, Victorian-style couches with Hawkeye leaning into his side, the two of them listening to a lecture together, his hand on Hawkeye’s knee. Easy company.
This time, the acrid sting of envy directed itself Hawkeye’s way for getting to have it—a place where he could just be. The irony wasn’t lost on him. He lived outside San Francisco, for Christ’s sake. But the past years had taught him that there was more to community than buying property. Up until the spring, he and Peg hadn’t put much effort into anything but fitting in on their little cul-de-sac.
“You’re being careful, right?” BJ asked, gravel in his voice.
Thankfully, Hawkeye didn’t seem to take offense. “Been hiding in plain sight my whole life, Beej.” He squeezed BJ’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get some pizza and go for a drive.”
#
Hawkeye tugged open the lid of the pizza box the moment they shut the car doors, snatching a slice with a triumphant noise. Unable to resist the mouthwatering smell of bread and char and cheese, BJ followed suit, taking a bite and immediately burning the roof of his mouth. He yelped, but kept chewing anyway, puffing out breaths to try to cool it while eating.
“What did I tell you?” Hawkeye asked through a mouthful. “Pepe’s is the best.” (5)
He made an approving sound and, like a dog running into a fence twice in a row and expecting a different result, nearly inhaled another scorching glob of cheese. Truth be told, the pizza tasted like other wood-fired slices he’d had in the past, but he suspected Hawkeye might actually bite him if he voiced the thought aloud. At least the too-hot cheese gave him a reason to follow Hawkeye down a quiet neighborhood street to the shore in silence.
The warm, weighty light of golden hour painted the cedar-shingled buildings lining the road. Shadows stretched long over the sidewalk. They had to step aside, at one point, to let a gaggle of elementary school kids tear by on their bicycles. The familiarity of the sight struck him, because this neighborhood looked and felt nothing like the cul-de-sac.
When he voiced the thought aloud, Hawkeye hummed in agreement. “Well, yeah. Your suburbs were designed that way from the ground up. Ours are all old fishing and boat-building towns.”
“I don’t know if I’d even call this a suburb.”
“Zoning might disagree.” With his hands full of pizza and his tie pulled loose from his shirt collar, Hawkeye nodded toward a corner house with two bright red front doors as they passed. “But I hear what you’re saying. Originally, these were vacation homes for New York and Boston types with money to burn. Then New Haven grew, the summer crowd moved elsewhere, and poof—everything turned into duplexes.”
BJ eyed the wide porches and broad staircases, some of which had distinctively Victorian detailing. “Pretty sure some of these are the same age as the oldest houses in San Francisco.”
“Pretty, aren’t they? Couple of folks from the hospital live out here. There’s a decent bookshop owned by one of Callahan’s friends around the corner. I think she’s hosting a salon there in a few weeks’ time.”
They walked the block or two down to the water, eating as they went, grease pooling in the bottom of the open box that Hawkeye carried one-handed. Here, the houses thinned, the street sloped down toward the shore, and the sound of water on rock and reed drifted closer. Eventually, pavement turned to a boat ramp beside a long jetty. Its dark stone stretched into a shallow-water harbor.
Along the shoreline, fishing dories with chipped paint nestled amongst the tall grasses, leaned up against one another in rest. A handful of fishermen plied the water in spite of the advancing hour, bobbing beyond the sand bar caging in the harbor. Tiny sailboats—some kind of sailing school or summer camp—flitted around them in a chaotic tangle, rounded up by a teenager in a Boston whaler who called instructions to them through a bullhorn.
BJ followed Hawkeye past the reeds and out onto the jetty. They picked their way over rocks to the very end, where Hawkeye took a seat, pizza box balanced across his knees. He polished off the last slice while looking out over the water. The whole bay was caught in that molten light of late afternoon, every edge burnished, the water glassy and bright.
“It reminds me of Maine,” BJ said.
Hawkeye, still licking sauce off his thumb, lit up. “That’s why I keep coming back.”
All at once, BJ recognized where they were. He’d never seen it before, but he’d constructed pictures of it in his mind’s eye from descriptions in Hawkeye’s letters.
Hawkeye had brought him to his spot.
“All the merry little birds are flying in the floating in the very spirits singing . . .” He scooted closer, leaning up against Hawkeye’s side. “This is where you wrote that letter, isn’t it? About the trees.”
Hawkeye groaned. “The damn trees. My metaphors getting away from me again.”
“I don’t—I thought—” BJ didn’t have the words for the mess in his chest, for what that one line about trees meant to him. “Between that and the cummings poem, you did my head in. I must have read that one a hundred times trying to figure out what you were really trying to tell me. If you were saying what I hoped you were saying.”
Though Hawk’s eyes darkened, his response was flip. “Just trying to broaden your general education, Beej. Oceanography, poetry, what’s next?”
“I’m not sure I passed the poetry section yet. I find cummings pretty opaque.”
“I think half the battle lies in trusting yourself as a reader. In, in trusting that the feeling you feel while reading is the one he wanted you to have.”
BJ nudged their knees together. “What were you trying to get me to feel, then?”
“Believe it or not, I was doing my best to behave myself.”
“With love poetry?”
“I only wrote down the verse about spring and birds and flowers! I could have gotten far more explicit.”
This was a dangerous ask for a public place, but he could never resist the temptation to prod Hawkeye into something risky. “Explicit, huh? I guess you’ll have to keep broadening my education.”
Hawkeye’s smile grew an edge. “Oh yeah? How about this one: i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows.” Clever fingers slipped beneath the box to trace the inside of BJ’s wrist, drawing a full-body shudder along with his next words. “i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling-firm-smooth ness and which i will again and again and again kiss.”
BJ’s heart beat as though he’d run all the miles from the hospital. He couldn’t turn, couldn’t look at Hawkeye, because no matter how much the jetty felt like a private world, they were still sitting out in the open.
But two could play at this game, and BJ was always up for a challenge, even though his inferior command of poetry—let alone dirty poetry—meant he was sure to lose.
“Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip.”
“Whitman, right? Hmm.” Hawkeye’s voice had softened into something that drove BJ absolutely wild with the need to move, to grab him by the shoulders, to get his back to the flat surface of the rock they sat on and crawl all over him. “How about this one: we entwined. All act was clutch, all fact, contact, the attack and the interlock of tongues, the charms of arms. I shook at the touch of his fresh flesh, I rocked at the shock of his cock.” (6)
Heat flooded BJ’s cheeks. “What is that?”
“Auden.”
“No way is it Auden.” Auden had never made BJ’s face feel like it was about to melt off, for one thing.
“I’m serious! It’s unpublished, but circulated amongst friends and admirers. Cal’s bookseller friend had a copy. I don’t have the whole thing memorized, but I can read you the rest when we get back.”
BJ made the mistake of meeting his eyes. He knew that look. The full force of it could only be described as a leer, though it only superficially resembled the one he wore when joking. This was different. This was Hawkeye in pursuit, and it was enough to make BJ’s head spin.
“Let’s do that,” he said once he remembered how to breathe. “You can read it to me, and then we can test the structural integrity of your futon.”
A cat-with-the-cream grin spread across Hawkeye’s face. “Darling, I thought you’d never ask.”
#
They did not, as it turned out, have patience for the reading.
The moment the car started, Hawkeye began reciting all the snippets of the Auden he remembered. BJ spent most of the drive stock still, hands clutched tight around his knees, doing his level best not to react to the teasing. How Hawkeye had the capacity to let absolute filth spill from his lips without running them off the road was beyond him.
By the time they reached the streets behind Hawkeye’s apartment, BJ’s mouth was dry, his breath labored, his hands cramping with how tight he held them. And Hawkeye hadn’t. Stopped. Talking.
Enough.
When they turned onto Hawkeye’s street, BJ shifted, reaching across the bench seat and sliding a hand up the inside of Hawk’s thigh. At last, the steady stream of suggestive recitations stuttered. Hawkeye drew in a long, shaky breath, hips canting up and catching against the seatbelt.
“Promises, promises,” he said.
BJ toyed with his inseam as he lined up to parallel park. “I thought we established that I deliver on mine.”
“If I scrape paint, I’m giving them the name of your insurance.”
He waited until the wheels straightened and the engine shut to slide his hand farther. Hawkeye was already hard, which, good, because BJ had been aching in his jeans ever since the jetty. Since turnabout was fair play and all, he pressed the heel of his hand into Hawkeye’s cock. It was just enough friction to tease, and Hawk tipped his head to the side, eyes on BJ’s, and let out a showy, breathy moan that broke a sweat out beneath BJ’s collar.
“Christ, Hawkeye.”
Getting out of the car meant a fight between the door handle and his shaky hands, but he made it to the sidewalk and fell into step at Hawkeye’s side, nearly vibrating with how badly he needed to get hands on skin. When had it ever been like this for him? Sure, some of the intensity was due to the newness of it all, but BJ had never before struggled to stop himself from pulling a guy into the backseat of a car in broad daylight.
He wasn’t alone in his urgency. No sooner did the door to Hawkeye’s apartment shut behind him than BJ found his back to the wall.
Hawkeye kissed a searing line up BJ’s neck, filth pouring from his mouth. “Wanted you in my office. On the jetty. God, Beej, wanted you to suck me off in the car. Gonna make every last second count.”
“C’mere,” he said, fingers scrabbling with the knot of Hawkeye’s tie. He needed, needed, because Hawkeye’s words made him suddenly, excruciatingly aware that he was bound for the airport in the morning—a morning that was less than twelve hours away.
Hawkeye let out a whine, head tipped back as BJ stripped him of jacket and tie, then set to work on his shirt. He smelled like surgical soap and some kind of generic, locker room body wash, and it reminded BJ of Korea, of all the times he’d wanted to do this but couldn’t. Of Hawkeye loose-limbed after a night at Rosie’s, spread out on his bunk in nothing but his shorts. Of shared showers and how water had traced rivers over Hawkeye’s skin. Memories of almost-but-not-quite superimposed themselves over the here-and-now, where Hawkeye gasped, openmouthed, as BJ sucked at a spot beneath his jaw.
“That’s right, baby, just like that,” Hawk said, fisting his hands in BJ’s collar.
The endearment wasn’t one BJ had ever heard directed at him before, and his own reaction surprised him. Baby. He liked that. Wanted it. Wished he had more time to figure out why.
“Please,” he murmured into Hawkeye’s neck as he stripped the rest of their clothing. But he couldn’t put words to the rest: wait for me. Don’t leave me.
Forgive me for leaving you. Again.
Skin-to-skin at last, BJ got his arms full of Hawkeye and navigated the handful of steps from the door, past the kitchenette, and onto the unmade futon. Hawk laughed as he fell back against their rumpled sheets, all bedroom eyes. He beckoned BJ with a come-hither gesture and a lascivious grin.
And, well, far be it from him to waste the opportunity a willing and freshly showered Hawkeye provided.
“Beej, wha—”
The pillow swallowed the rest as BJ flipped him, then kissed up his neck to his ear. “Let me,” he murmured and reversed course to trail his lips down Hawk’s spine. “Let me.” Let me show you how much I need you.
By the time his kisses reached Hawkeye’s sacrum, Hawk had cottoned on to his intentions, hips rocking into the mattress. “Let you? Are you kidding? God, yes.”
BJ nudged Hawkeye’s thighs apart and slipped between them. With hands full of Hawk’s ass, he couldn’t resist the temptation to nip a cheek, drawing a laugh in response—one that turned to a deep, guttural groan as BJ spread him open and ran his tongue over the soft skin there, once, then again, then again.
Yeah. Yeah, that’s what he wanted to hear. He squeezed Hawkeye’s ass, dragging out more of those sounds, smiling into it as Hawkeye’s hips rocked helplessly back at him.
This wasn’t something he’d done often—a handful of times in med school, really—but it wasn’t hard to figure out what Hawkeye wanted when those thready moans grew higher and less coherent with each touch. He wanted to take Hawkeye apart and fill him at the seams, stitch them together as one.
Hawkeye was panting by the time he pressed his tongue in, and god, god, he was inside Hawkeye, who made no attempt to disguise how much he loved it, thighs quaking, praise babbling from his lips. He wasn’t the only one burning up, either. BJ rubbed himself against the sheets, trying to stay focused, trying to take the edge off, because he’d never enjoyed this as much as he did now. Somehow, Hawkeye activated every frequency of feeling, from achy tenderness to blistering want, and he prayed Hawk felt it too, that each I love you flowed through his skin and into muscle and blood and bone.
“Beej,” Hawk said between gasps, voice wrecked. “Hang on, I gotta . . .” He pushed up to his forearms, trembling as he shifted to get his knees under him.
The pillow muffled the keening sound he made when he wrapped a hand around his own cock, louder when BJ licked in again. It made BJ want to devour him. He hummed into it, ignoring the ache in his jaw and redoubling his efforts to drag Hawkeye, shaking and swearing, right to the edge.
“Oh fuck, I’m so—Beej, Beej, I’m gonna—”
BJ pressed in as far as he could go, and Hawkeye howled into the pillow, banging a fist against the wall as he came.
He didn’t stop until Hawkeye slumped face-first into the sheets, tension leaving his frame in a full-body shudder. Only then did he clamber up to straddle Hawk’s thighs, shaking with arousal, so hard it left him dizzy. He spat into his hand, and Hawkeye turned his head to watch him through heavy-lidded eyes while sinking further into the futon with a satisfied shimmy. How was that hot? How was it that everything Hawkeye did got to him? He was addicted. Hopeless. Never getting enough of this.
BJ started a frenetic pace, bowing over Hawkeye’s back with how good it was, how immediately it sent him straight to the brink. Hawk shifted, arching into him. His lips tipped into a lazy smile.
“C’mon, baby. Do it. Make a mess of me.”
That was it. BJ palmed Hawkeye’s ass as he shot over the edge, coming on Hawkeye’s back and then lower, to where Hawkeye was still open and spit-slick. Fuck. Fuck, it was the hottest thing he’d ever seen, Hawkeye covered in him, and he trembled through aftershocks while rubbing the head of his cock right through it, right where his mouth had been, right where he’d pushed inside Hawk’s body.
“Oh my god,” Hawkeye said with what sounded like the last air in his lungs, hips giving a fruitless little jerk against the sheets.
Oh my god was right. BJ’s knees gave out and he collapsed onto the futon, rolling to press tight against Hawkeye’s side.
“Not bad, huh?” he asked, slurring, tongue numb with how good he felt.
Hawkeye laughed into the pillow. One blue eye peeked out BJ’s way, crinkled at the edges. “We’re very good at this.”
They twined together, trading slow, affectionate kisses. BJ luxuriated in them instead of mustering a response. He ought not make comparisons, but couldn’t help himself. Sure, he’d had sex before. He’d had very good sex, too. But the difference between that and how he felt with Hawkeye was multivariate and hard to define.
First, there was the safety of it, of knowing he didn’t have to be anyone or anything but Beej when they were together. It wasn’t just a matter of self-acceptance, either. He no longer felt the same seismic shift that he used to after going with men, when he’d stare at himself in the mirror afterward and wonder whether something fundamental about him had changed, whether other people could see it, too. He’d gotten past that by the time he was in residency. This safety was a different kind. It was about how, for once, sex didn’t feel like performing surgery. With Hawk, he didn’t have to be hyper-aware of the road map ahead of him and every part of his body unless he wanted to be.
Then, there was the connection. For BJ, sex had always been better when he played close to the heart. There was another element, though—something physical, something they’d always had, ever since they fell all over one another getting into the jeep outside Rosie’s. Something about BJ-and-Hawkeye or Hawkeye-and-BJ just fit.
He'd heard people say “it’s never been like that before” when talking about a new lover, but had always dismissed it as romanticism. Everyone went into overdrive during those first few weeks together. That was the nature of the blush of new love. Yet when he thought back to his early days with Peg, the comparison didn’t work. He’d been head-over-heels for her, too, but had never quite felt relaxed in his own skin when they were in bed together. Maybe he’d known on some level that something wasn’t quite right. Maybe Peg had felt it, too.
It made his chest ache for both their sakes, so he pushed it down and hoped that being with Viv left her floating the way he did, now.
He desperately wanted to ask Hawkeye if it was that good for him, too, but had enough self-awareness to stop himself before putting the impulse into words. No matter how he phrased it, Hawkeye would hear “am I the best you’ve ever had?” which was, to be fair, exactly how he meant it, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to get an honest answer.
So he tried a different approach, instead.
“Hawk?”
“Hnnn?”
“You’d uh. You’d tell me if there were anything else you wanted me to do, right? Anything different?”
That blue eye peered over the pillow again, assessing. “Where’s this coming from?”
“I just—I want to make sure it’s . . .”
“Beej, I’m still trying to scoop my brain back into my skull. If you blew my mind any harder, I’d be comatose. So whatever’s going on up there in that massive head of yours, tell it to take a long walk off a short pier.” Hawkeye rolled to his side. “C’mere.” He dragged BJ backward, spooned up behind him, and wrapped an arm tight around BJ’s waist.
BJ had been held like this before, but it was so long ago that it might as well have been a memory from another lifetime. Back then—was it residency? Before that?—he also hadn’t melted into the mattress with how good it felt.
He shouldn’t get so comfortable. They were both a mess, for one, and he didn’t want to fall asleep and miss a moment of the scant time they had left together. But Hawkeye kissed the nape of his neck, snuffled along his hairline, and let out a happy sigh, and BJ gave in. Alright. He’d rest here for a little while. They could shower later.
For now, he was in Hawk’s arms, and he had no intention of letting go.
#
The sun rose on the drive to the airport, taking the world out the window from ink-blue to pale grey beneath an overcast sky. Hawkeye stopped for gas and two large coffees before they left New Haven, the latter of which gave BJ the jitters, overwriting the grogginess of a scant hour or two of sleep with something far tenser. The only thing keeping him grounded was the warm press of Hawk’s hand in his. He’d threaded their fingers together somewhere around the Rhode Island border, tracing the lines of Hawkeye’s palm, lingering over his scalpel calluses. Hawkeye only pulled away when he needed to change gears, but returned to where BJ’s lay on the bench seat with a squeeze each time. He had gorgeous hands. BJ wished they’d never let go.
They had joked on the ride—Hawkeye quipping about traffic, BJ firing back with commentary about the drivers around them—but less for the sake of laughing and more the way they once did in the Swamp, talking for talking’s sake. Even the jokes petered out as the time they had left together ticked down.
Now, Boston slid past in a blur. The first sign for the airport sank a weight in BJ’s chest, and he spent the final minutes of the drive looking not out the window, but at Hawkeye: the mussed sweep of the bedhead he hadn’t neatened in the rush to get out the door on time, the wobble of his smile, the curl of his fingers around the steering wheel. BJ wanted to memorize it all, to hold snapshots in his head that he could take out and look at whenever missing him became too much.
The thought had him patting at his pocket where his wallet—and a different set of snapshots—sat, because his departure wasn’t an uncomplicated thing. He missed Erin with a fathomless ferocity, and guilt ate at him for being away from her for another whole day. He missed Peg, too, and Viv, and the little domestic rhythms of their life. Soon, he’d scratch the anxious itch to tug them down to the couch and tell them everything about his trip to Maine. But then, once he did, he’d be three thousand miles away from the man he was so eager to talk about. It was an unwieldy paradox. As much as he wanted to stay beside Hawkeye forever, the ache to be with the rest of his family was like a tug-o-war in his chest.
By the time they pulled up at Departures, BJ was in knots. They sat at the curb for a moment, engine idling, neither speaking as goodbye thickened the air between them.
“So,” Hawkeye said, eyes forward, throat bobbing beneath his collar.
“So.”
“What do you think about Sundays?”
BJ blinked at him. “As in the day, or the dessert?”
“For a weekly call. I’ll ring when I get home from the salon, so, late afternoon-ish your time.”
“Hawk, the cost—”
“Hang the cost. You just fronted for a plane ticket I know you stretched to afford, so let me get this one.” He turned BJ’s way at last, something devastating in the set of his mouth. “I can’t go another year without hearing your voice.”
BJ’s hand tightened around Hawkeye’s. “It won’t be a year.”
“Right, that’s what I said. I’m calling you on Sunday.”
“Alright. Sunday. But it won’t be a year until you hear it in person, either. How could it? Can you imagine the interest you’ll owe on those socks by then?” He couldn’t pull Hawkeye in to hold him, not here, but he could rub his thumb over Hawkeye’s knuckles, a back-and-forth caress. “Have faith in me. Please. I don’t intend to see 1955 before I see you.”
“Yeah?” The way he said it—soft, with none of his habitual challenging sarcasm—twisted a knife between BJ’s ribs.
“If I thought it would be even remotely fair, I’d beg you to get on the plane with me. I’d fold you up in my suitcase and bring you home.”
Hawkeye gave him a heartache of a smile. “That’d be hell on my back.”
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, fervent and shaky, eyes stinging. “One day soon, I’ll wake up in your arms, and we’ll stumble downstairs together to join Peg and Viv and Erin around the breakfast table. If I’m lucky, they’ll extort you for another batch of that Pierce family French toast. We’ll do the crossword on the couch, and you and Viv will argue about poetry, and Erin will run you around the yard like her new favorite toy. Do you understand? Are you hearing me?”
“I’m trying.”
He was. Because Hawkeye could be impossible to talk down, sometimes, and the fact that he wasn’t arguing his way into a tizzy meant something.
“I love you, Hawk. And I’ll see you soon.”
“Wait.” Hawkeye stopped him with an outstretched hand, then reached into his trouser pocket. He pulled out the watch Daniel had repaired and held it out between them. “Maybe this is silly. I know you already have one, but I, I’d hoped . . .”
BJ didn’t let him get any further. He tugged off his own watch and shoved it into his duffel, then held out his hand. Hawkeye fit the strap and buckled it face-out, one notch looser than the worn groove in the leather, thumb brushing over the bone of BJ’s wrist in little swipes. Dual memories flickered through his mind’s eye, playing out like a double-exposed film reel: first there was Hawkeye, cradling his hand after the autoclave blew. Beneath it was Peg, white veil pinned over her curls, sliding a gold band onto his finger.
“Now I’ve got your ticker, too,” he said, voice hoarse.
“Yeah, Beej.” Hawkeye’s smile was dazzling, and he pulled BJ in for a tight, too-brief hug. “You’ve got my ticker. You always did.”
Notes:
Welcome to the story’s most bonkers medical footnotes! If you’re a doctor cringing your way through this, I’m sorry—I tried!
(1) Hawkeye is showing BJ a machine that allows surgeons to bypass the patient’s heart and lungs in order to operate more effectively on the heart itself. They do this by sewing cannulas (ie: tubes) into a major vein and a major artery, which allows the machine to pump and oxygenate the blood instead of the heart / lungs. The blood still runs through the patient’s body, it just takes an external detour along the way. One of the major issues of early surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass machines was that they hadn’t yet figured out how to keep oxygen going to the heart itself, which often resulted in post-surgical complications. By the 1960s, surgeons started using ice slurry to decrease the temperature of the heart, thus reducing oxygen demands. Today, a solution called cardioplegic solution is used to cool the heart to a temperature of around 15-20C or 60-68F for the operation.
(2) Gibbon also lost a patient prior to his 1953 success, but that patient was misdiagnosed even more substantially than patient #4. My portrayal of the medical community’s excitement over Gibbon’s operation is skewed; his 1:4 success ratio wasn’t considered impressive at the time. His visit to Grace is fictionalized—so much so that it stands in pretty stark contrast to what actually happened. After patient #4, Gibbon ended all open heart operations for a year and used the time to obtain a trained cardiologist and a cardiac catheterization lab for future diagnostics. He also put his colleague, John Templeton, in charge of the actual surgeries when they resumed clinical activity. Gibbon thought of himself as more of an academic and a researcher than a rockstar surgeon and had the attitude to match; he published and gave talks, but not extensively, and is credited as one of the fathers of open heart surgery retrospectively.
(3) Heparin is an anticoagulant used to prevent blood from clotting when coming into contact with the surfaces of the bypass machine. Luckily for Hawkeye, the GNHH team would have a little insider info on heparin ratios, since Gibbon got the heparin ratio wrong, too, but was still able to finish fast enough that the patient suffered no adverse effects. It did, however, mean he had to close the defects using a method he hadn’t initially planned. Afterward, he noted that each 500mL of blood should have received 25mg of heparin instead of the 10mg he gave. Here, Hawkeye also references something called a bubble oxygenator, which was invented in 1950 by Leland Clark, Gollan, and Gupta. This device adds oxygen back into the blood, ie: the ‘lung’ component of the machine. Fwiw, Leland Clark is considered the grandaddy of biosensors. He’s the inventor of the Clark electrode—developed to measure oxygen partial pressure (ie: the concentration of O2) in a liquid. Why? He was unable to publish his results after his bubble oxygenator was first used in surgery because the oxygen in the blood coming out of the device couldn’t be measured. Talk about sticking it to your editor! Either way, it’s worth noting that the Clark electrode formed the basis for glucometers and blood gas analysis, so this was a big deal in medical history.
(4) Tetralogy of Fallot is a congenital heart defect made up of four different heart problems: pulmonary valve stenosis (narrowing of the valve between the heart and lungs), a ventricular septal defect (hole between bottom heart chambers), shifting of the aorta (which changes how blood flows from the aorta to the lungs), ventricular hypertrophy (thickening of the right lower chamber of the heart). Some children born with tetralogy also have atrial septal defects. The colloquial term for tetralogy is “blue baby” due to low oxygen levels. I think it’s probably self-explanatory why Hawkeye would pick this condition specifically as something he’d want to work on. I’d like to think that, in the fic universe, Hawkeye would be a major contributor; the first total repair of tetralogy of Fallot was done by a team led by C. Walton Lillehei in 1954 on an eleven-year-old boy, so Hawkeye is in the right field at the right time.
(5) This pizzeria exists IRL, and yes, it’s pretty damn good.
(6) This is The Platonic Blow by Auden, a poem thought to have been written in 1948 and circulated amongst Auden’s admirers for years until its unauthorized 1965 publication. Auden denied writing it, but it sounds like Everyone Knows It Was Him. If you haven’t read it, well. This is like, the tamest line of the whole thing, so. (The two poems which preceded it are i like my body when it is with your body by cummings and Whoever You Are Holding Me Now In Hand by Whitman.) Ngl the idea of Hawkeye and BJ playing their usual game of ‘yes-and’ one-upmanship with dirty poems is one of my darlings, so I shoehorned it into this story like it was my damn job.
Chapter 17: Hawkeye - Late July 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Hawkeye ran the next weeks on full throttle.
The surgical team ground through extra hours practicing, anticipating complications, and placing last-minute calls to other research teams to talk through contingencies. A handful of top surgeons from Boston and New York negotiated to observe the surgery from the viewing room, putting even more pressure on their team’s shoulders. If they pulled it off, they’d do so in front of top minds from Mass General and Langone. If not, they’d have the field’s sharpest minds dissecting every wrong move.
Charles, thank god, had an obligation that prevented him from coming and was sending a colleague in his stead. When Hawkeye considered what it’d be like to look up in the middle of the operation and see a familiar face, however, even if it was Winchester’s snooty one, he conceded that maybe Charles’ absence wasn’t good news. Not that he’d ever admit it.
In the week leading to the surgery, they met again with the patient, a high-school girl named Dina, for a second catheterization and confirmation of Callahan’s diagnosis. While she chatted with the nurses afterward, Hawkeye and Callahan walked her parents through the procedure for the final time. This wouldn’t be a marathon surgery by any stretch—Callahan planned to be in and out in two hours tops—but every second carried weight. Hawkeye’s nights grew shorter as he sacrificed sleep to work, to study, to pacing the footprint of his apartment while fighting to keep his head on straight.
Each Sunday, Hawkeye called Mill Valley just to hear the familiar cadence of BJ’s voice, though the brutal price tag on long-distance calls meant he could never get his fill. They’d taken to setting an egg timer the moment the operator dropped off and rushed through their news, dancing around the edges of the things they couldn’t say on the line.
Letters took care of the rest. He penned a new one to BJ almost every night between his nervous circuits of the apartment, words pouring out in the small hours when he couldn’t get to sleep. Ink on paper was a paltry replacement for the rumble of BJ’s voice in his ear, for the brush of BJ’s hands on his skin, for the solid weight of BJ’s body pressing him down into the mattress. The Fourth had turned his life upside-down in the best possible way, but now, a part of him was across the country in California, and he didn’t know how long it’d be until he got it back.
If he got it back. Every time Hawkeye rang through to Mill Valley or tore open an envelope with that postmark, he worried it would be the last one. That soon, BJ would wake up and realize how impossible this all was.
Hawkeye tried to keep his promise, to trust that BJ meant what he said, to believe that they’d figure something out. But BJ’s reassurances remained more theoretical than concrete, and with each passing week, the pit of dread in Hawkeye’s stomach grew.
As the day of the procedure approached, sleep became a thin, elusive thing. It had to go flawlessly. Hawkeye couldn’t bear to think what might happen if it didn’t.
#
The first hour of the surgery followed each of their carefully choreographed steps to the minute. A textbook transverse incision separated the sternum. Hawkeye and Callahan performed cannulation without incident, and the patient’s vitals remained stable as they put her on bypass. Their team dialed in. Hawkeye’s focus narrowed to the whir of the machine, the tools in his hands, the precise movement of Callahan’s instruments as he opened the atrium and began to close the largest of the defects.
For a long few minutes, the operating room hummed with the focused surety of a well-rehearsed dance. But no good plan ever survived first contact with reality.
Callahan had just secured the larger of two pericardial patches when Nurse Jansen took a sharp breath from her post at the bypass machine.
“Oxygen saturation dropped. I think we might have a clot—yes, confirmed, minor clotting visible on the oxygenator screens.”
Hawkeye met Callahan’s eyes over the blur of his bifocals. Clotting meant they had to get the patient off bypass yesterday, which meant—
“We’ll have to swap to sutures,” Callahan said. “Pierce, you’re the faster between us. Can you take the remaining defects?”
There were two small ones, both of which would have been covered by the second patch. No time for that, now, nor was there time for second-guessing or hesitation. “I’ve got it. Barb, I need 4-0 gut and as much moral support as you can muster.” (1)
“You got it, Doc,” Barb said, and they shuffled around the table in an urgent game of musical chairs, Callahan taking over retraction and Hawkeye slipping into his place.
He secured the needle driver and forceps from Barb and dove in, no time to waste, narrating the whole while as Jansen called out machine and vitals readings. Even when Hawkeye ran out of relevant back-chatter, he kept talking, because anything was better than silence, and oh, it wasn’t the first time an acute longing to have BJ in the room hit him, but it hadn’t been this intense in months. Callahan did his best to riff along, but it wasn’t quite the same.
Still, it was enough. A continuous suture took care of both defects, smooth and fast, and Hawkeye hummed a nervous spate of showtunes while turning his attention to closing the atrium. His hands were alive with the muscle memory of years in the OR in far worse circumstances, body humming with focus.
Callahan jumped in once it was time to assist with decannulation. The room held its collective breath as they took the patient off bypass. Tentative, sweet hope formed when her vitals stabilized.
“Let’s get a count,” Hawkeye said, and once Barb gave the word and Callahan confirmed, they fell right back on their original plan.
Hawkeye stayed in the driver’s seat. They’d agreed that he’d close, a decision made purely by virtue of how many chests he’d cut open in the last few years—“a career’s worth of chests,” Callahan had called it when they planned the operation—and as the team fell into a rhythm once more, Hawkeye allowed himself a moment of pride. Their patient didn’t need all the king’s horses and all the king’s men; she had a cracked, former-army surgeon putting her back together again. And Hawkeye could cerclage in his sleep.
The patient remained stable as the parasternal sutures went in, and at last, he and Callahan stepped away from the table, hands up. Barb called out another round of vitals, and they exhaled as a single, wrung-out organism.
“Get her to post op,” Callahan said. “We’ll be in shortly.”
They practically stumbled into the scrub room, peeling off gowns and gloves like they’d been in the OR for a thirty-hour stint instead of just under two. Hawkeye sped through the motions and burst into post op minutes later, startling Barb, who’d already taken up her spot at the patient’s—no, Dina’s—side.
He could call her Dina, now. It was something he tried not to do when the drape was up, so his focus stayed where it belonged for the patient’s sake as much for his. He’d made the mistake of doing otherwise with Tommy and swore to never get caught out like that again. Now that Dina was off anesthesia and lying in a cordoned-off corner of their high-risk recovery ward, he could remember who she was beyond the details of her condition: that she played piano, that she loved Peggy Lee, that sure, she knew the operation might be lifesaving, but she was most excited to be able to sing Watermelon Weather without getting short of breath.
Hawkeye dragged a chair over and posted up next to Barb. “Still holding steady?”
“She is. If you need to take time in the on-call room, you should. I can send for you if something changes.”
“You think I’ll be able to sleep after that?”
They exchanged a strained smile. Barb was a solid nurse—reminded him of an older version of Kellye—who’d perfected the sort of no-nonsense compassion Hawkeye admired. He suspected she was another friend of Dorothy, too, because Callahan’s bookshop-owning friend had a girl who met Barb’s description, though Hawkeye never had the occasion to ask. He figured they’d either run into one another out and about one day, or they wouldn’t.
Certainly, now wasn’t the time. Within another few minutes, the entirety of the surgical team had assembled to pace in and out of post op, gathering every quarter hour when Hawkeye or Barb took Dina’s vitals. Each reading was a small victory: blood pressure stable, pulse strong, respiratory rate steady. Slowly, the cautious optimism in the room began to grow.
At the hour mark, Hawkeye ducked out for a cup of coffee. He returned with an armful of charts and retook his seat at Dina’s side, hacking his way through a mountain of paperwork in between readings.
Two hours in, Dina finally stirred. “Dr. Pierce?” she murmured.
Hawkeye lurched to her side while Barb shot him a look that roughly translated to what am I, chopped liver?
“How are you feeling?” he asked, measuring the strength of her radial pulse.
She gave him a weak smile. “Ow.”
“General soreness? Or is the pain localized?”
“Feels like someone cut me open.”
He bit back a laugh. “I’ll bet. We can get you something better for that now that you’re awake.”
“So I’m guessing the surgery went well? Or did it go so bad that you’re up in the afterlife with me?”
This time, he lost the battle against the laugh, head falling back with the force of it. “No one-way trips upstairs, I promise. We patched the defects. If all goes well from here on out, you’ll be right as rain.”
“Thanks, Doctor,” she said, and then Barb took over at her bedside, shooing him away.
That was alright. He headed out towards the waiting room, feeling like liquid sunshine, incandescent relief pouring through him. They’d done it. He’d done it.
He ran into Callahan in the hall outside the waiting room. “She’s awake,” he said, and it all hit him at once: the weeks of strain, the rush of operating, the last-minute complication, taking over from and finishing for Callahan because somehow, his hands were the ones Dina had needed. Another laugh bubbled out of him, one which turned, somehow, into tears.
Callahan, thank god, got it, because he tugged Hawkeye into a back-slapping hug. “We did it,” he said, voice rough with unshed tears of his own.
“You’ve got to tell the family,” Hawkeye said, pulling back and wiping at his eyes.
“Are you coming with?”
“I need to sit down, I think.”
He made it into his office before sliding to the ground with his back to the door, a wrung-out dishrag of a man, and yet somehow, miracle of all miracles, blessedly and utterly at peace.
#
Hawkeye, Callahan, and the rest of the surgical team spent the next full day at the hospital, catching the occasional wink in the on-call room while waiting for Dina to at last put those tense, risky first hours behind her. A great deal of that time was dedicated to reviewing every move they’d made during the surgery, including the last-minute complication with the bypass machine. Though some reviews were held in closed-door meetings, others invited the visiting surgeons from Mass General and Langone, all of whom were cowed enough by the Grace team’s success to offer too much by the way of unsolicited criticism. The Langone folks even seemed keen to issue referrals to Grace until they were able to get their own team on board with bypass technology. Mass General made no such overtures, though Hawkeye figured that a Harvard-affiliated hospital would rather burn itself to the ground than send patients to their Yale-affiliated neighbors.
It was, all told, an overwhelming success, even if the endless meetings and surgical politicking wedged between anxiously checking on Dina served to wring him out further.
By noon on the day following the operation, Dina was officially past the twenty-four hour mark, and the cautious optimism they’d clung to upon leaving the OR morphed into something a lot more like unfettered relief. Word of the operation had also begun to spread. That afternoon, a courier delivered a large box of fancy French pastries from a nearby bakery. Callahan laughed aloud when he opened the card and handed it to Hawkeye to read to the rest of the team.
As much as it pains me to reach across the aisle, please allow me to, on behalf of the Mass General cardiothoracic department, offer my most sincere congratulations to Dr. Callahan and the Grace New Haven team. From what I’ve heard, you performed admirably, complications and all, in part owing to the quick work of Dr. Pierce. How that hooligan made it out of the OR without sewing his glove to the patient, we’ll never know.
Ah, well. I suppose a win is a win.
Regards from Boston,
Dr. Charles Emerson Winchester III
“Chuckles, you bastard,” Hawkeye said with a laugh, pinning the card to the board at the nurse’s station and going in for a pastry.
“Hooligan?” Barb asked.
“We were at the same MASH.” Hawkeye selected a macaron the size of his fist and took a blissful bite. Whatever there was to say about Charles, the man had taste. “He, Dr. Hunnicutt—you met him the other week—and I shared a squalid little tent together. Spent more time operating with the two of them than I did with anyone I knew during residency, hour-by-hour. BJ and I drove him nuts.”
Callahan snorted. “I’ll bet.” He reached for a cookie. “Though, from what I’ve heard about Dr. Winchester, that note almost sounds like a friendly overture.”
“Sure. He’s a regular Tin Man.” Hawkeye rubbed his hands together. “Oh Chuckles, I’m going to send you such a nice little treat from the great state of Connecticut.”
“Pierce, we are not sending a snake-in-a-can to Mass General.”
“But—”
“Especially not after we’ve had such a genial visit from some of Dr. Winchester’s colleagues.”
“Alright, alright!”
As Hawkeye made short work of the rest of his macaron, he figured he’d make it up to Charles by visiting in person. After all, he still owed Margaret that trip to Boston. What was a little detour on the way to the Punch Bowl if it meant annoying his second-least-favorite bunkie of all time?
#
That night, with Dina stable and moved into low-risk recovery, the surgical team went out to celebrate.
Though a few of their residents and nurses had begged off early, Callahan rounded most of them up for dinner and drinks in the Tap Room of the Hotel Taft. Styled as a speakeasy, it was a popular social spot for local academic types, and since most of the visiting surgeons had rooms there, it was also a logical first stop.
Hawkeye found himself on a bar stool next to Nurse Jansen, the perfusionist, who had the biggest, doe-eyed stare he’d ever seen. On any other occasion, he’d have taken her interest as license to flirt with her. But Jansen was young and sincere enough that he worried she’d take his come-ons seriously, and Korea had taught him a bounty of difficult lessons about how harmless flirtation wasn’t so harmless when the recipient heard a promise in it that he didn’t intend to keep.
Barb, on the other hand, made a great target for meaningless chatter, and he doubled down as soon as she started rolling her eyes and smacking him on the shoulder for his efforts. He’d never been able to resist a woman who could rough him up a little.
By their second round of drinks, Callahan’s bookshop-owning friend Jo joined them at the bar. When Jo—of sensible shoes, a pinstriped suit, and a penchant for peddling Auden’s illicit poetry—introduced herself as Barb’s “roommate,” Hawkeye let the flirtation rip in earnest. There was nothing more fun than a no-stakes bet, and as Barb clocked him clocking her, she stopping smacking him on the shoulder and instead started giving it right back.
Enough so that Kurtz, the anesthesiologist, cornered Hawkeye outside the men’s room and asked earnestly whether Callahan would let an intra-team workplace relationship fly. Hawkeye laughed so hard, he snorted his beer.
Then he told Kurtz to go for it. He’d watched Kurtz watching Jansen throughout plenty of their meetings. The two of them would be good for one another.
Callahan, alas, spent the early evening occupied with their visiting surgeons. Though Hawkeye did his rounds with them, he found that he much preferred the company of the team—of, he realized, the little Grace family they’d become over the long hours and teeth-gnashing stress of the summer months. It made him miss Margaret, Potter, and even Charles with a bittersweet ache, but he couldn’t deny how good it was to find camaraderie in an OR where bombs weren’t falling around them.
They switched venues when their visiting surgeons headed out for the night, hitting a jazz bar where Hawkeye spun Jo around in a messy lindy. When it was at last his turn to buy a round, though, Callahan gave him a contemplative look and made the switch from scotch to club soda.
“I hope that’s not on my behalf,” Hawkeye said.
Callahan was a terrible liar, especially after a few drinks, and the mild look he affected told Hawkeye it most certainly was. “Pierce, you’re not the only one with an early day tomorrow.”
“You shouldn’t—”
“Just trying to set a good example for those heathens,” he said, gesturing to Kurtz, who kept tripping over his feet trying to lead Jansen in a foxtrot.
“Cal.”
“It’s no skin off my back to take care of my team.”
Unable to answer through the lump in his throat, he gave Callahan a grateful nod and headed to the bar, where he ordered two whiskeys, one scotch, one gin, and two club sodas. And as Callahan predicted, no one looked askance at them for making the switch together.
“To us!” Barb called, hoisting her scotch.
“To Dina,” Hawkeye added.
Callahan clinked their glasses together. “To a safe and successful surgery—and many more.”
Despite the early morning most of them had, the night ran long. Hawkeye kept up with club sodas and went from pleasantly tipsy to mostly sober, and though he itched for another drink, he let himself sink into the fuzzy contentment brought by good company, instead.
The bartender announced last call just shy of midnight. They took it as their cue to settle up and pile into cars and cabs. Callahan drove Hawkeye home, ignoring his protests over how it wasn’t that far of a walk, then proceeded to tut when he got a look at the building Hawkeye had been living in since January.
“I know, I know. BJ and my dad have already given me the what-for.” Hawkeye gathering up his valise from the footwell. “I have another place lined up. Lease starts the first of August.”
“If you need help moving, put word out to the guys at the salon.”
“You have an optimistic opinion of how much furniture I have,” he said with a dark chuckle. “I’ll be sure to holler if I need it, though, so you can stop giving me that look.”
Callahan blinked. “What look?”
“A look my dad perfected when I was a teenager. I’m a big boy, Cal. Don’t put yourself out on my account.” He got out of the car, but paused before shutting the door. “Thank you, though. For the ride.”
“Like I said, I take care of my team, Pierce. It’s that simple. See you in the AM.”
Hawkeye gave him a tired, lazy salute and shut the door with a thud. Callahan waved back through the passenger-side window, then eased away from the curb, headlights sweeping down the block. The rumble of the engine faded as he hooked a right at the end of the street, leaving only the hum of the city at night: the notes of an all-night jazz station coming from a distant radio, the whisper of the breeze, a streetlight buzzing somewhere overhead.
He turned toward his building and let himself in. The lobby was dim and quiet, and he paused in the vestibule. His building didn’t offer phone lines in individual apartments, but had a shared payphone on this level, which was almost always occupied during daytime hours. Now, the little stool perched beside it sat empty.
BJ’s watch—his watch—read just past midnight. Hawkeye thumbed the bezel. That meant nine on the west coast, which was a reasonable hour to call, even if Erin was already abed. He patted down his pockets, fingers brushing over his keys, his wallet, some coins. Not much, but enough for a few minutes.
The thought of being able to tell BJ everything, from the surgery to the congratulatory pastries Charles had sent, hit him like a jolt, taking him from half-asleep on his feet to stunningly awake.
Hawkeye dialed the operator, put in his first few dollars’ worth of coins, made his request, and waited for the connection to go through. When at last the operator dropped off, however, it wasn’t BJ who picked up.
“Hawkeye?” asked a woman’s voice, one he recognized almost as well as BJ’s. “Is everything alright?”
“Peg! Hi, it’s, yes, it’s fine, everything’s fine, but I’ll admit I’m in a bit of a hurry, and—” He stopped rambling when she called for BJ. “Thanks, Peg. Sorry, it’s not that I don’t want to chat.”
Her laugh went a bit tinny thanks to a mediocre connection. “BJ will catch me up, I’m sure. And Viv and I will steal a minute or two on Sunday. Hugs and kisses. Here’s BJ.”
“You’re an angel,” Hawkeye said.
“Am I?” BJ’s smile was audible, and damn, it was good to hear his voice. “Hawk, not that this isn’t a happy surprise, but it’s Thursday, and the cost—”
“Don’t worry about the cost. I’ve got about”—he counted the change in his palm—“seven minutes and a whole lot of news that won’t keep, and I’m not going to spend a second of it arguing about money.” (2)
He could practically hear BJ’s gears turning. “Wait, the surgery!”
Hawkeye shifted the receiver between his shoulder and cheek, the phone cord coiling around his wrist as he launched into a recount of the surgery, tumbling over himself in an attempt to fit the last forty-eight hours into the small window of time he’d bought them.
“So we’re midway through the repair and everything’s smooth, right? Bypass is humming along, the first patch is on, and then Jansen tells us the machine is throwing clots. Small ones, but enough to make your stomach drop out your asshole.”
“Christ,” BJ murmured, voice soft and low, the way he sounded when he was leaning in close. “What did you do?”
“Cal asked me to take it, and I did. Went straight in and resolved the last two defects with a continuous suture. Everything after that was muscle memory. I barely breathed until decannulation.”
“You closed?”
“Yeah, no complications. The patient was awake and chatting two hours later.”
BJ let out a breath, a crackling whoosh over three thousand miles of cable. “Oh, Hawk. I’m so damn proud of you.” His voice roughened. “Wish I could’ve seen it.”
“Me too.” Hawkeye leaned his forehead against the wall. “I’ll tell you, when shit started going sideways in there, I missed you and your puns something fierce. Could have used your hands. Though I’m sure you’re being kept plenty busy out at SFG.”
“Three ruptured appendixes in a single shift, can you believe it?”
“What, are you running a clearance sale on peritonitis over there?”
“A late-summer special at BJ’s Abdominal Emporium. We take walk-ins and blow-outs.”
Hawkeye snickered, grinning sleepily just as the operator broke in, reminding them that they’d only have another minute unless he threw in more change to extend the call. With the pile in his palm fresh out, that was all they’d get for the day.
“Wish it wasn’t the case, but I have to go. Tell me the rest of your news on Sunday?”
“Of course. And you’ll write about the operation in more detail in your next letter, won’t you?”
“Planned on it.” The call was an indulgence. An excess. Hopefully BJ didn’t mind the impromptu interruption to his evening. “This is just—well. I had to tell you first thing, you know?”
“I know. You’re still the first person I want to share my news with, too.”
There were a hundred things he could say in response to that. None of them were possible with an operator listening in. “Night, Beej.”
“Night, Hawk. Say—you’re still taking good care of that ticker, right?”
Hawkeye thumbed the bezel of his watch. “Better than I take care of my own.”
The line went dead. As if the operator had taken the last fight from his body along with the connection, his shoulders slumped, and the phone felt like it weighed about a thousand pounds as he lifted it to hang up. The mere thought of making it up several flights of stairs seemed impossible. Nevertheless, he dragged himself off the stool beside the payphone and started climbing, tracing the face of BJ’s watch the whole while.
Notes:
"I'm definitely not going to write a surgery scene," they said. "That'd be way too much research," they said.
Something something, no good plan survives first contact with reality.
(1) Yes, yes, I know Hawkeye’s signature is “vertical mattress stitches with white cotton sutures,” but in the 1950s, gut would have been the common choice in heart surgery, since absorbable synthetic sutures were juuust being invented, and I believe the suture material used in modern ASD repair wasn’t around until the late 1960s. Defects were typically closed with 3-0 or 4-0. Here, Hawkeye uses a continuous suture to close the wound, which is what Gibbon did when his patient threw (much more severe) clots during surgery. Yes, I’ve officially read journal articles to write fanfic and I’m feeling sorry for myself over it. Am I cherry-picking what I get accurate about? Yes, but lookkkkk, I’m having fun and I hope you are, too. If you're a healthcare professional and I butchered any of this, please forgive me!
(2) I actually looked this up, and though I couldn’t find great data, I did find a 1949 paper by William Weinfeld that gave me some concrete numbers. In 1949, the mean net income of a fully-specialized cardiologist was around $15k. It was $17k for a surgeon. Given Hawkeye’s resume, his age, and his location, I’d assume he’d make a little more than average, but let’s put his income at $16k just to be safe. Adjusted for inflation, that’s the equivalent of $192k in 2025, so needless to say, he’s absolutely raking it in. By this point in the story, Hawkeye quite literally has money to burn.
Chapter 18: BJ - August 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Late on a balmy Sunday afternoon, BJ stripped down to his undershirt and set about mowing the lawn. He kept an eye on the back patio while working his way to and fro in neat little lines of cut grass. Erin played behind a safety gate there, deep in an elaborate storyline involving Moose-moose and a doll he’d sent home from Tokyo, both caught in what appeared to be a daring rescue of a crayon from an overturned plastic bucket.
Peg, meanwhile, had pulled out the pole saw she’d rented from the hardware store and took to the lemon tree like a woman possessed. The saw’s growl harmonized with the mower—enough of a cacophony that BJ imagined he could feel their neighbors’ collective disapproval radiating over the fences. Whether they were more offended by the noise, by Peg continuing to take on the brunt of the yardwork, or by the fact that she did so in cutoff jeans and a blindingly pink Hawaiian shirt was hard to say. If it weren’t so damn hot, he’d have pulled out the lobster monstrosity to seal the deal.
He cut the mower for a water break at the halfway mark. After checking on Erin, he filled his canteen, took a swig, and poured the rest down his back in a futile attempt to break the heat. Across the lawn, Peg assessed her pruning angles. Her expression was a near spitting image of Erin’s concentration-face. The resemblance swamped BJ with a sudden wave of warmth, because damn, he loved her to pieces. So what if it was a different kind of love these days? He wouldn’t mow the lawn for just anyone.
Mowing sat at the bottom of the domestic barrel, though between the two of them, BJ suspected he tolerated it better. He put it off until the neighbors started dropping polite hints, but once he got going, it wasn’t so bad—an hour of white noise and uninterrupted thought, the smell of fresh-cut grass filling the air. Better than power-washing the driveway, certainly, which Peg had claimed as her domain, or wedding the little garden Viv planted along the back fence.
The mailman pulled up just as BJ finished his water break. As he started for the curb, Peg’s laughter sounded over the whir of the saw.
“Any more eager, and you’d be chasing him down the street like the neighborhood mutts.”
“Can you blame me?” BJ called back. “He keeps bringing me treats.”
An understatement. Hawkeye had been writing like a madman lately, a letter nearly every day, turning BJ jittery with anticipation. It didn’t matter how many he’d already received; each new one felt like a miracle. Especially now that both of them were more forthcoming in their writing.
By the time he made it to the box, the mailman had already hopped back into his truck. He gave BJ a wave, then pulled away from the curb, revealing the fearsome twosome headed his way from across the street: Susan Davis was out walking her dog with Lisa Simpson at her side. BJ let out a long sigh. So much for a quick mail pickup.
Susan called his name with a wave before he had time to make a strategic retreat to the mower. “Good to see you, BJ.” She rarely called him ‘Doctor’ outside of the hospital, which would suit him fine if it weren’t for the way she wielded his name like a weapon. “I was hoping to speak with Peg, but since she’s so . . . hard at work, I wouldn’t want to interrupt.”
He forced a smile, ignoring the undercurrent beneath Susan’s words, and gave her poodle a scratch behind the ears. “Sure thing.”
“I’m helping the Morrises spread the word about their annual Labor Day barbecue.”
“Ah. That’s nice of you.”
Whether they’d solicited her help was another matter. BJ had been surprised to learn that the Davises didn’t throw any of the neighborhood’s big holiday events at first, but after putting on the New Year’s Eve celebration in the Morrises’ stead, he suspected it was a matter of finances. Tom Morris was a partner at a firm in San Francisco and could certainly afford to front the cost of a big bash every season.
Gary and Susan’s rather predictable way of coping was, it seemed, to insert themselves into the administration of the Morrises’ events in whatever way possible. He’d expect no less from the self-proclaimed king and queen of the cul-de-sac.
“Are you planning to attend this year?” Susan asked. “Or will you be visiting somewhere else for the long weekend?”
Given the rumors she’d been spreading ever since the Fourth, he knew exactly what she was after. “Can’t say another trip east is in the cards so soon, no.”
“Maine, was it?” she cast a significant glance at Lisa.
“That’s right. A guy I served with grew up about an hour north of Portland.”
He tugged open the mailbox. Sure enough, amongst the bills and advertisements was a letter from Hawkeye, thick, as if Hawk had tucked something extra into the envelope. BJ held it up to the sun and could just make out the silhouette of a photograph. This would be the first one Hawkeye had ever sent him, arriving after no small amount of pleading. He didn’t see why it was so unreasonable to want to carry a picture of his fella around in his wallet.
The wave of giddiness that hit him meant it hardly registered when Susan asked,
“Is it ‘Hawkeye’ up in ‘Maine,’ then?”
Clearly, she assumed Peg had made Hawkeye up as some wild little cover story for the mental break he’d supposedly had over the holiday. Jesus. Threaten to hit a guy for being an asshole once, spend a lifetime fighting off accusations of insanity from the neighbors. And while he could always flip the letter around and show them the return address, he really, really didn’t want to incentivize Susan to snoop through his mailbox.
“That’s him, though he’s down in Connecticut, now.” He patted his stack of mail. “Well, guess I better deal with this. Nice seeing you, Susan. Lisa. I’ll swing by the Morrises’ sometime during the week and let them know we plan to accept their invitation.”
He didn’t wait for pleasantries, electing instead to escape to the patio where Erin remained engrossed in her bucket rescue game. Posting up on the patio sofa, he dropped the mail on the coffee table, then tore into the letter from Hawkeye.
Sure enough, a small stack of photographs nestled in the fold. He didn’t have the willpower to do more than skim the first paragraphs of the letter before diving in.
It was an impulse purchase, read a line halfway down the page. Call it a treat in celebration of a successful surgery, if you will, but if I’m being honest, I saw it in the window of a shop down the street from my new place, and it lured me in like a siren song. Self-developing, Beej! You know I don’t have nearly enough patience to wait for film to come back. And this way, I can make sure the shot turns out exactly how I want it to. No surprises. (1)
A Land camera. And it seemed he was the recipient of Hawkeye’s first experiment in photography. BJ set the letter down, spreading it on the coffee table so he could read the descriptions Hawkeye had included for each photo in the stack, then went about savoring his bounty.
He recognized the setting of the first picture even before reading the description: Hawkeye’s office. A handful of familiar faces gathered around Hawkeye’s desk, which was covered in pizza boxes. Callahan had a slice halfway to his mouth. Two nurses, which BJ identified from the description as Jansen and Barb—though what put Hawkeye on a first-name-basis with one and not the other, he wasn’t sure—flanked a pair of residents and an anesthetist named Kurtz.
A little lunchtime celebration in honor of our patient’s discharge.
Hawkeye was in the second photograph. BJ traced the outline of his profile, caught mid-laugh, with a fingertip. He sat on a back deck around a crowded table, though Barb was the only face he recognized.
This week’s salon was all about the whaling industry and the history of shipbuilding in Eastern Connecticut. Did you know they’re called ‘right whales’ because they were the ‘right’ whale to chase? (2) Apparently, they kept close to shore and floated after death, which made them easier to hunt. A sad twist of fate for such a majestic creature, no?
Anyway, from left to right, there’s yours truly, Barb, her gal Jo, Henry, and Pete.
That answered his question about Barb, at least.
BJ brought the photo closer to his face, studying Henry and Pete, both of whom had received mentions in some of Hawkeye’s previous letters. Henry’s features were all a bit too big for his face, but Pete was a looker, and BJ—
No. BJ was not going to go green over a snapshot and an offhand mention. A handsome guy like Pete might be there in New Haven, and he might be available, but he wasn’t the one Hawkeye wrote letter after letter to, was he? He certainly wasn’t the one wearing Hawkeye’s watch.
“God, listen to me,” BJ muttered. Get it together, Hunnicutt.
The third photograph was posed at the beach in what was certainly an attempt at raising his blood pressure, because Hawkeye lounged shirtless on a towel, leaning back on his elbows, squinting and smiling up at the camera. Sure enough, BJ’s face heated the way it once did when Hawkeye handed him a racy magazine, even though there was nothing untoward about the picture.
His teeth worried at his lower lip as he drank in the long lines of Hawkeye’s bare torso, warmed by the sun. The softness of his chest. The dark line of hair trailing down from his navel. It was a shame the photo stopped just below the waist, because he ached to get a look at Hawkeye’s long, long legs.
Only then did he, to his chagrin, notice the second figure in the background of the photograph: Margaret, who aimed a wry smile at the camera.
Margaret and Helen came out for a long weekend to help me move into my new place. I had a splendid time showing them around and made a dent in the lifetime of drinks I owe the two of them. We managed to get most of the moving done on Saturday morning and, as you can see, spent the rest of the day at the beach. I didn’t manage to convince them to stay late and come to the salon on Sunday, but they promised they’d think about it the next time they’re out here. I’m headed to Boston soon for a visit and a night of dancing. Hopefully I’ll be able to say hi to Charles, too.
Sure enough, the next photograph was a picture of a mostly empty living room with high ceilings and sunlight streaming through the window. A single houseplant sat atop Hawkeye’s coffee table which, along with the futon, was dwarfed by the space.
You’ll be pleased to hear that I have two whole bedrooms in this place. The larger is big enough for a king-sized bed, though I can’t say I have any bed as yet. I’ll be sleeping on the futon until I can get to the store and pick one out. This isn’t the kind of thing I’d just order out of a catalog, you know. After all those years sleeping on army cots, I’m dead serious about mattresses, and besides, it needs to be sturdy enough for two. Maybe sooner rather than later, you’ll be back in this neck of the woods to test its—how did you put it?—“structural integrity.”
As pleased as he was to hear that Hawkeye had finally found a comfortable living space, he was even happier to see a new address jotted down in the letter. No more writing Hawk’s inbox at Grace.
He was doing his level best not to think too hard about futons and mattresses, because now wasn’t the time. He’d take the letter—and the beach photo—up to his room later that night when he had some privacy.
The fifth photo was of Hawkeye alone, a candid shot somewhere outdoors. He was mid-sentence, or mid-laugh, perhaps, reaching towards the camera as if he’d just noticed his photo being taken and moved to interrupt it. BJ had seen that look a thousand times, whenever he teased Hawkeye, whenever he had something Hawkeye wanted, right before Hawkeye lunged his way. It was all too easy to imagine that smile was directed at him.
You’ll have to thank Margaret for this one. She said you’d like it.
He sure did. It looked like he’d be groveling in his next letter to Boston, because this was just the sort of picture he’d hoped to keep in the back of his wallet—one he could take out and look at in the middle of a long day and imagine Hawk was there, close enough to touch.
The next one was taken after they headed home. Consider it an experiment in self-portraiture.
BJ shuffled to the final photograph in the stack and promptly choked on his own tongue. He dropped the photographs and, flailing to catch them and missing, wound up on his hands and knees. The culprit landed facedown. He reached for it slowly, as if it’d burn with a touch. When he flipped it over, heat shocked through him, and he couldn’t look away.
Here, again, was that broad, bare chest. But this time, the photograph was taken from Hawkeye’s perspective, shot down his body, one knee tipped up, and somehow, Hawkeye had reached through time and space and found a way to squeeze the air from BJ’s lungs, because he’d sent a photograph of his cock, hard and flushed and arcing up onto his belly, hand wrapped around the base, and—
“Honey, are you alright?”
BJ slammed his head on the table in his scramble to hide what he was looking at. The other photographs surrounded him, littered across the patio like confetti, and Peg bent to examine one.
“Oh, is this Margaret?” she asked. “No wonder the two of you pestered her so much. She’s lovely.”
“Uh huh.”
Peg examined him over the top edge of the photo. “Hawkeye got an instant camera, I see.”
“It’s. Um.”
“BJ, I’ve known you too long not to recognize that face. I know exactly what you’re holding.”
With what little blood remained in his brain, he managed to scrape together enough conscious thought to muster a reply.
“He has. So much nerve. I can’t believe . . .”
He then, of course, made the fatal error of glancing back down at the photograph. His face heated to a truly dangerous temperature, and Peg burst out laughing. An answering giggle escaped him like a bubble popping, and he giddily cleaned up the contents of Hawkeye’s letter, tucking them back into their envelope.
“I’ll just. Save these for later.”
Peg threw a grin over her shoulder as she headed back to the lemon tree. “Think of it as a reward for finishing the mowing.”
#
BJ couldn’t send photographs of quite the same sort back—one of the perils of owning a camera of the traditional variety—but did his best to include an entertaining spread in his next letter, anyway.
The first was a picture of Peg posing next to him on their front steps, each in their respective Hawaiian shirts. On the back, he wrote, “Who wore it better? To offset Peg’s natural advantage, I’m representing Maine’s finest tourist-kitsch-chique.” Hawkeye would hate it in the same way he loudly complained about all things he secretly loved.
Erin featured in the next one. The two of them were at the beach, and she was a blur in his arms, mid-squirm, clearly kicking him in the stomach while attempting to dive to the sand. “Is this the first time you’ve seen the look of mild panic I’m wearing directed at someone besides you?”
He sat on the couch with Viv in the final photo. They had their respective books open on their laps and Erin wedged between them, fast asleep with her cheek smooshed into BJ’s stomach. Though Viv was engrossed in her story, BJ had drifted from his to look instead at his watch. “Counting the minutes until I see you again, sweetheart.”
In that letter and the ones that followed, Peg and Hawkeye struck up a back-and-forth correspondence about furniture for his new apartment. Peg clipped pictures of sofas and credenzas and kitchen tables out of catalogues and mailed them along with suggestions for furniture arrangements, many of which Erin colored in with her crayons. Hawk’s effusive appreciation for her expert eye came through in the letters they received the following week.
I went with that deep blue velvet sofa you suggested. It’s just as comfortable as you said it’d be, and I’ve already received several compliments from friends who’ve stopped by. They’d never know I was also responsible for the décor in the Swamp, which consisted largely of miscellaneous trash and dirty laundry (or dirty magazines, take your pick). If anyone asks, I tell them I consult with an interior designer from California. I’m told it sounds very impressive!
Now Miss Peg, let’s talk armchairs.
Peg sent along fabric samples in the next letter. With them, BJ included a picture Erin drew of some kind of bird. Possibly. He also included a photo Viv had taken of him mowing the lawn shirtless, on the back of which he scrawled, “Viv says I should give as good as I get.”
Hawkeye didn’t respond in kind straight away, but informed BJ that the photo now has a place of honor on my nightstand. It took the spot of the latest edition of my coed volleyball magazine, which might have more nudity, sure, but now seems a bit bloodless next to that snapshot. His quips were interspersed with answers to BJ’s endless follow-up questions about the surgery, theories about ways to extend time on bypass without dealing damage to cardiac tissue, and new facts he’d acquired during his weekly salons.
He also wrote to Viv. From what BJ could gather, they were elbow-deep in an ongoing argument about something called a hobbit and a shared mutual appreciation for Tolkien, who had a new release coming that summer. Jo, our local bookseller, managed to secure a copy for us. She has first dibs, so I’m waiting eagerly for her to finish it. Don’t you dare breathe a word of the plot in one of your letters until I give you the say-so! (3)
By the middle of the month, BJ was able to come through with interesting news of his own.
Word’s going around that there’s a proposition on the ballot this fall—something about increasing the slice of the city budget that goes toward public health. Everyone at the hospital is buzzing. You can hear the administrators salivating from three floors up.
You’d have a better sense than I do of what that could actually mean in numbers, since you’re hooked into the whole money-and-grants world. At least, you know the people over at Grace who are. I’ve enclosed the latest memo I received on it. What do you think? If this thing passes, what kind of difference are we really talking about? Could we actually do something with it, or is it another one of those nice-sounding gestures that gets eaten by bureaucracy before it ever touches a patient?
I put together a proposal to speak at the forum they’re planning. Now that our paper finally made it through peer review, I figured I might as well use it as an opportunity. Maybe a good performance at a podium will make me sound respectable enough that whatever Gary and Susan say out of the sides of their mouths won’t stick.
As the summer waned through August’s hottest days, Hawkeye’s letters began to thin, coming less frequently and with less frenetic energy. BJ felt it before he could name it—a quiet unease, the kind that tugged just beneath the ribs. He had the sense that Hawkeye was beginning to hit a crash, though he tried to tell himself he was imagining things.
A few more photographs had come through, but they were different from the ones before. Beautiful, yes, but not of Hawkeye or friends. One showed an empty street corner at dusk, the lamplight blurred as though through glass. Another depicted a lone sailboat out on the bay. Each one made BJ feel the way certain poems sometimes did—a pressure-pain in his chest that wasn’t quite sorrow. He’d never thought of himself as someone who “got” visual art, but still recognized that Hawkeye was sending him feelings, clear as if he’d written them out. It was up to him to trust, just like Hawk said of cummings, that the feelings he received were the intended ones.
The trust was hard to maintain when he really, really hoped he was wrong.
BJ resolved to take the camera out that weekend, see if he could learn to answer in kind. Though he wasn’t much of a photographer, he had a few ideas for how he might try to speak the language Hawkeye had chosen—a cousin, he worried, of the one Hawkeye had used when he boxed up a watch and mailed it cross-country.
In the meantime, BJ wrote as often as he could: news, shower thoughts, stories about Erin and his residents, half-finished jokes he’d made up while driving that wouldn’t keep until Sunday’s call. Fantasies, sometimes, about seeing Hawkeye again, spending time with him, lying beside him. As he worked on one about Maine in the spring time, he glanced at the calendar—August 23rd—and did a quick mental calculation. It had been weeks since Hawkeye sent him one of those bright, expansive letters about next time and someday. He’d been remiss not to notice it sooner.
I keep picturing us at the dunes near your father’s place, not in the heat of summer, but early spring, just after the first big thaw. You have your sleeves rolled up, squinting into the wind, pretending not to notice how cold it is. When I complain about it, you say something snarky about my thin Californian blood. But you take my hands between yours to warm them, anyway.
Maybe we’d head back just before the fog rolls in, get a fire started, and sit by the window watching the streetlights come on one by one. I don’t even need the scenery, if I’m honest. It’s just you I keep seeing.
I miss you so fiercely. It’s what your photos make me feel—that missing, multiplied. Please tell me you’re doing well? And if not, I hope you’d tell me about that, too.
Take care of my ticker, Hawk. It’s still yours.
BJ
Notes:
(1) This would be among the first self-developing Polaroid cameras, named after its inventor, Edwin Land. They worked differently than today’s Polaroids, using two rolls of film—one negative, one positive with developing agent, both loaded into the camera at the same time—which, pressed together, would instantly develop the image. The result would have looked more like ‘normal’ pictures with none of the telltale shape and sheen we associate with more modern Polaroids. Integral film, which is what most of us think of when we think of ‘shaking it like a Polaroid picture,’ didn’t show up until the 1970s. Tldr: I think we all know why Hawkeye went with the self-developing model rather than a standard 35mm.
(2) Never let it be said that sea-goers are creative with their naming practices. Right whales were considered easy targets because they stayed close to shore, moved slowly, and tended to float after death, making it much easier to get them back to the boat to process without worrying about losing the carcass. They also provided a lot of bang for the buck re: oil and baleen. As an easy and profitable species to hunt, they were therefore named the “right” one. Messed up, huh?
(3) This is, of course, The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring they’re talking about, published in 1937 and 1954, respectively. There were 1500 copies in the first US print run in July 1954; given New Haven’s proximity to NYC and the likelihood that Jo would have a literary ‘in’ there, I’m guessing she’d be able to get her hands on one of the initial copies.
Chapter 19: Hawkeye - August 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Hawkeye woke during his first full weekend off since the Fourth feeling like he’d been run over by a train. His dreams had left him groggy and disoriented, and he stared at the unfamiliar shape of a new chest of drawers on the far wall. The mere idea of getting up filled him with unshakable dread.
He had to. He couldn’t. He didn’t know why. It was as if his muscles had been liquefied, or maybe sucked out and replaced with lead. His head was muzzy. Everything hurt. For a brief moment, he wondered whether his body had finally broken down after a season of relentless go-go-go and succumbed to one of those insulting summer flus that only ever seemed to target infants and the elderly. But no. His sinuses were clear. He just felt like—like—
“Fuck,” he whispered into his pillow.
It was happening again. (1)
Sure, he’d been low lately, but he’d hoped it was just the exhaustion catching up to him. That, once he wasn’t hemorrhaging days off in an attempt to repay Schraeder for covering him over the holiday, he’d be able to rest up and find himself on an even keel again.
He should know better by now. There didn’t need to be a pinpoint reason, a single moment where everything went wrong. Sure, the big things, like The Bus, would knock him to his knees, but other times, his world tipped sideways without reason, or maybe because the lows waited in the wings until he no longer had the energy to hold them at bay.
Was he destined to keep repeating these cycles, over and over, for the rest of his life? Was he rolling boulders up hills forever? Why keep rolling if nothing ever really got better? He kept chasing new work, new inventions, new operations, but Tommy Gillis didn’t care if he could resolve ASD. And what would it matter to woman on The Bus if some other mother’s child, halfway across the world, could breathe after an experimental heart surgery done by the man who ensured hers never would, never again?
Some things were unfixable. Maybe he was one of them. How long until BJ saw him like this and realized he was chronic—that whatever this was, it might go into remission, but it couldn’t be cured? Who would willingly bring a cancer into their family? Sure, he’d change it if he could, but he didn’t know how.
The tears came before he could stop them—hot, humiliating, pooling in the hollows of his temples and running down onto his pillow. His nose clogged, and his chest ached so much he worried for a second that he might actually be having a cardiac episode.
But no, it turned out he was holding his breath, because when he rolled, it wheezed out of him, and he sobbed until he couldn’t, anymore.
When the wave passed, he opened his eyes and stared at the nightstand—at the lamp he’d acquired from a consignment shop a week prior. At the book, the envelope, the photographs that sat beneath it. The half-empty glass of water. The phone he’d dragged from the kitchen via a cable one of Jo’s friends, an electrician, had recommended. He paced when he talked, and when he kept it on the kitchen countertop, he always ended up tangled in the line. Besides, the only person besides his dad he called with any regularity was BJ. He liked lying down and shutting his eyes while they talked, because he could imagine BJ beside him.
BJ, who was three thousand miles away and probably spending a peaceful morning with his family.
Hawkeye stared at the phone for a long time, fighting the weight that pressed on his limbs, until finally he gave in and dialed. His hands trembled as he asked the operator to connect him through to Crabapple Cove. His dad didn’t answer.
Fuck. Well, he tried, right?
He’d just sunk down into the pillow and shut his eyes when it rang back.
The operator’s voice was cheery enough to worsen his headache. “Good afternoon, Dr. Pierce. You have a call from—”
“Put him through.”
“Hawkeye?”
At the sound of his dad’s voice, he pushed his face into the pillow. “It’s back,” he said, not caring a whit whether the operator was listening in.
A long sigh. “I’m sorry, kid.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Hawkeye’s voice cracked. “I had—I had the best month of my life, didn’t I? BJ, and then the operation, and—what’s wrong with me?”
“It’s a big comedown after something like that. Maybe you spent more gas than you had in the tank, and now you’re just starting to realize it.”
Yeah. That made sense, and he hated it.
“I’m sputtering on empty.” He rolled to his back, tugging the phone with him. “Sometimes I look forward and it feels like I have nothing, even if I know that’s not true, because I do have things, but then none of it really matters, does it? None of it means anything. It should, but it doesn’t. I’m so tired, Dad.”
“Would talking about the things help?”
“I don’t know, I-I-I—”
“Give it a try? For me?”
Hawkeye scrubbed at his eyes. Goddamn but his dad could play him like a fiddle. “Alright. Fine. I think we could cure tetralogy of Fallot, but it’d mean keeping a patient on bypass longer than we currently can. I have some ideas for how we could extend the time without tissue damage, and Callahan says he’s willing to give it a go if I develop a methodology both of us can get on board with.”
“That’s something, isn’t it?” His dad said it gently. Too gently. Hawkeye recognized the voice he sometimes used with patients’ families in uncertain situations.
“It is. But days like today, I tell myself about it and the place in my chest that it should hit just isn’t there. It lands somewhere hollow and empty, and all I can think about is how it’s not enough. It’ll never be enough. And maybe it’s a good thing that I recognize that, because who am I to, to try to fix what I’ve done? I don’t deserve absolution.”
“Do you really believe that nothing you do from now on can ever matter because it’ll always be weighed against what you had to do over there?”
“Yes! No. I don’t know.” His eyes itched. The shadows on the ceiling blurred. “I don’t know why I’m like this.”
A pause. “When you go to this place—for whatever reason, and however you get there—it changes your perspective.”
“I don’t think it’s wrong to remember what I did. What I was a part of.”
“It’s not. But from where you’re standing now, it feels like it’s the only thing that matters, and Hawk, it’s not. I promise.”
He fought against the impulse to insist that yes, it was, and rubbed the frustrated tears from his eyes. “My head skews time on me, too. I feel like it’s always been this way and it always will be. But even if it won’t, it will be again, and”—his chest heaved—“and I can’t control it, and I don’t know how to climb out of it, and I’m just—I’m sick of myself.”
“Breathe, Hawk. If I count, will you breathe with me? The way Sidney taught you?”
“Yeah.”
They went through the rhythm a few times—his dad’s voice calm and patient, counting slowly—until Hawkeye could get through a cycle without hitching. He reached blindly for the tissues on his nightstand and blew his nose, and his dad’s chuckle brought the barest hint of an answering smile to his face.
“Sounds like you got enough air for a good one. Better?”
“A little.”
“Got anything to drink sitting on your nightstand? How about something to read?”
Hawkeye sipped at the water without needing to be told. He longed, for a fervent moment, for one of his dad’s gasoline-strength cups of coffee. “There’s a letter from BJ.”
“Why don’t you read it to me?”
“Dad, I’m sure you have better things to do than listen to me—”
“Never. You’re my son, Hawkeye. I always want to listen to you.”
And there were the tears, again.
His dad must have heard his sniffling over the line, because his next ask was tentative, plaintive. “Just read to me a little, will you?”
Hawkeye reached for the letter on the nightstand, paper already creased soft from rereading, and traced the edge of BJ’s spiky signature. His voice came out hoarse at first, but steadied as he recounted BJ’s anecdotes about the fight to win a spot at the podium for the upcoming forum, Erin’s latest antics at preschool, and that meddling neighbor with the poodle. He read until the ache in his chest eased to something more bearable. On the other end of the line, his father listened without interrupting, his occasional quiet laugh proof that he was still there. By the time Hawkeye reached the part about Maine in the springtime, the tightness behind his ribs had loosened enough that he could almost picture it: sunlight on the water, BJ beside him, and the possibility—fragile but real—that maybe they’d get to act it out, someday.
#
After hanging up, Hawkeye was able to get out of bed and shrug on his bathrobe, though the thought of rustling up food left him so paralyzed he avoided the kitchen altogether. Instead, he took another one of his dad’s suggestions and put a record on, then huddled on the couch with an old blanket he’d taken from Maine. It wasn’t cold in the apartment, but curling up atop it still brought him some comfort. Hour by hour, day by day. He could read for a little while. He’d see how he felt afterward.
A recommendation from Viv lay facedown on his coffee table—Salinger—and he tucked in to pick up from where he’d left off. “Recommendation” was perhaps a strong description considering she’d hated the book, but Viv had told him that he was “more fun to debate than BJ. He takes it too seriously, and I think I keep hurting his feelings.” So far, his opinion of the protagonist was mixed, so he figured they’d have plenty to discuss in their next series of letters.
He’d just gotten invested in the story again when a knock sounded at his door.
Odd.
Hawkeye retied his robe and headed up the foyer, then pulled the door open just wide enough to see Callahan standing on his welcome mat with a briefcase and a large paper bag.
“Please don’t get upset with either your father or me for this,” he said without preamble.
“My—what did my dad do?”
“He said you were feeling a little low today, and I figured—hey, you could probably use a meal.”
Hawkeye rubbed his temples. “My dad called you. He called my boss to come and what, what, check on me?”
“He called your friend,” Callahan corrected, then jiggled the paper bag. “Hope you like pork lo mein.”
“You bought me—”
“To be honest, I’m glad to have the chance to pin you down. If we want to fast-track our way into the major medical journals before the year is out, we need to get writing. At least, I assume you want to author the paper about the surgery with me.”
Hawkeye didn’t want anything, but he intellectually understood that, when he finally dug himself out of whatever mire he was stuck in, he’d kick himself for saying no.
One day at a time. “Yeah. I do.”
Callahan jiggled the other hand, then, which held his briefcase. “Do you have time to go over some notes?”
“Right now?”
“Will it help?”
Hawkeye gawped at him for a too-long minute, but Callahan kept the same cheery, unbothered smile pasted to his face. Fine, dad and work-dad. You win. “Leave your shoes in the foyer.”
“Oh,” Callahan added as Hawkeye shut the door behind them, “I also grabbed your mail on the way up. Hope you don’t mind.”
He passed along a handful of envelopes while toeing off his shoes. A letter from BJ was on top. Hawkeye traced the shape of his own name, scrawled in BJ’s hand.
“Go on, open it,” Callahan said, then headed straight for the living room to unpack. He paused a stride in. “Nice couch. That new?”
“Relatively.”
“Trendy! I like it.”
“I hope so. My interior decorator is a fancy Californian.”
“BJ?”
“His wife.”
Callahan clearly didn’t know what to say to that, and Hawkeye didn’t elaborate, slipping his finger beneath the envelope’s seal to pry it open. Inside wasn’t the expected letter, but a few photographs bound together by a note written on scratch paper.
Hawk,
I’ll write more tomorrow, but for now, we just got these developed, and I couldn’t wait to send them to you. What can I say? You gave me some inspiration.
SWAK. SW2K. SW3—you get the point.
BJ
The photographs weren’t quite the usual family portraits, but instead, a clear answer to the pictures Hawkeye had been sending lately. How very BJ, to hear what he said and volley it right back. Hawkeye rubbed his knuckles over his sternum and studied the photos one by one.
First came a shot of the tree in BJ’s yard, taken from beneath and into soft light. Rays snuck through its branches to flare white like a halo. BJ had jotted an inscription on the back.
How about a lemon tree? We could take turns being sweet and sour.
Hawkeye huffed a laugh. BJ really wouldn’t let him forget that letter, would he?
The next two photos were uninscribed. Erin colored at the kitchen table, silhouetted by morning light. A pair of slender hands—Viv’s?—harvested tomatoes from the vine. Without asking, it wasn’t entirely possible to know what BJ meant to say, but Hawkeye figured it was something about love and family, mailed cross-country so he could feel its warmth.
Behind the tomato photo was one of a bare arm, BJ’s, stretched across empty, rumpled sheets. Hawkeye’s breath caught. He flipped it over to an inscription that read missing you.
“Yeah, Beej,” he said with a sigh, then shuffled to the last photo in the stack.
This one depicted a sunny day in a park with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Up front were the Hunnicutts: Viv to the right, then Peg, then BJ on the left. He held Erin in one arm and Moose-moose in the other. Clearly, Hawkeye was going to have to put some effort into topping last year’s Christmas gift.
He turned the photo over. Erin suggested we put Moose-moose where “Uncle Hawk” would stand next time.
Hawkeye blinked back the sudden sting in his eyes. He told the constant, whispering voice in his head that said it can’t work, it won’t work, it’ll never work to quiet down, and he shut his eyes and pictured a breezy lookout in the sunshine, a set of rumpled sheets, a shady patch of grass beneath a lemon tree.
BJ was trying, even if Hawkeye still wasn’t sure he could trust what would come of it.
“Alright, Pierce?”
Hawkeye wiped at his eyes and headed for the coffee table, where Callahan had laid out a far larger spread than “I hope you like pork lo mein” had indicated. A shame, because Hawkeye didn’t have anything approaching an appetite. He plopped onto the floor beside the coffee table and passed Callahan the photograph of the Golden Gate, inscription-first, then stabbed a forkful of noodles. They smelled great. He wanted nothing to do with them.
He ate them, anyway. If Dad and Callahan both went to all that trouble, the least he could do was shove some lo mein down his gullet.
“You have a beautiful family,” Callahan said softly. He propped the photograph against a takeout container.
Hawkeye imagined himself in Moose-moose’s spot, leaning against BJ’s side, a breeze ruffling his hair.
He took another bite.
#
That night, Callahan made him shower and dress, then dragged him out to a gathering at the Taft.
Hawkeye hadn’t wanted to go, but it turned out that Callahan took the duty he’d been charged with seriously. “As your doctor for the day, I’m prescribing a little social time,” he’d said, and though Hawkeye had grumbled about getting a second opinion, he’d dutifully dogged Callahan from the apartment, to the parking lot, to the Tap Room.
That wasn’t to say socializing was easy. For every small stretch of time he engaged with the others, he found himself wandering outside to get some air and stand in silence. Faking it never came naturally to him. He’d always told people exactly what he meant; it wasn’t his fault so many of them were unwilling to take him literally. Still, that was better than when they were willing and ended up horrified by whatever he said. Going outside kept him from compulsively dropping lead balloons on the conversation, and though he could tell Callahan was tracking his comings and goings, he suspected that no one would grudge him his outside-time so long as he didn’t pull an Irish exit.
It'd be easier if he was drinking, and god, he’d about kill for a martini, but booze was a recipe for a disaster. He’d told Callahan not to let him stray from soda. Admittedly, it was nice to have friends who didn’t look at him sideways when he made requests like that, and since he let the bartender charge him for scotch, he figured he wasn’t making any enemies, either.
As the night drew to a close, he wound up in a small circle with Jo, Barb, Cal, Pete, and a few others. Though he longed for the quiet dark of his bedroom, this was medicine, and not as bitter going down as some of the other ‘treatments’ he’d been subjected to.
An elbow against his drew him out of his wandering thoughts.
“Been awfully quiet tonight, Hawk,” Barb said. “Everything alright? No problems with the fella, are there?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.”
Pete perked up across the table. “You’ve got a fella?”
“He sure does,” Barb said. “A dreamboat of a doctor from California.”
Jo raised a glass in commiseration. “Distance is a bitch.”
“You can say that again. Miss him like I’m being split in two.” Hawkeye balled up a napkin and threw it at Pete’s smirking face. “Not like that. Although . . .”
The table dissolved in laughter, and Hawkeye took out his wallet to show off the picture of BJ and Erin he’d tucked behind his billfold last Christmas. It was well-received, and shyly, he pulled out a few of the more recent ones. When Pete got his hands on the one of BJ mowing the lawn, he let out a wolf whistle.
“Hot damn, Hawk.”
“I know, right?”
“So, he got a name? How’d you meet?”
“BJ, and we were stationed together in Korea.”
Pete, to his credit, chose to ignore the Korea part and fix on what Hawkeye agreed was the most salient detail. “His name’s BJ?”
“I know, I know, the jokes just write themselves.” (2)
The photo of BJ and Erin had made its way around the table to Callahan, who studied it with a smile curling the corner of his mouth. “When you first told me about him, it sounded like a hopeless thing. I was pretty surprised when he turned up at Grace. Care to indulge an old romantic and tell us how it happened?”
Did he, Hawkeye Pierce, want to tell a story to a captive audience? Please. “If you get me started on this one, it’s going to take all night,” he warned.
Pete leaned in, brandishing the lawnmower photo. “For this? We’ve got time.”
Notes:
I promise they'll spend a significant amount of screen-time together again before the end. They just gotta work some stuff out first.
(1) If you’re wondering about the rapidity of the swing—or how quickly it worsened—I’m giving some credence to Hawkeye’s joking about how the MD stands for manic-depressive and working off of an assumption that Hawkeye has cyclothymia ie: a chronic mood disorder that’s kinda like the little cousin of bipolar disorder. We didn’t see his hypomanic episode in real-time, but I’m putting it at right around the time he moved and then immediately threw himself into buying furniture and decorating his apartment. Like, where did that burst of energy come from after the most intense month of all time, especially given how he’s canonically Not A Decorator? Nowhere good. Anyway, my thesis statement for Hawkeye’s mental health is three-part: 1) the war took him to the darkest possible place, yes, and 2) it exacerbated an existing problem rather than creating an entirely new one, which means that 3) after a year of recovery and the acquisition of a stable support network, Hawkeye will be doing much better than he was, but there’s no cure for what he’s got going on—only mitigation strategies. He will continue to experience these cycles, but the change in circumstances will mean that the cycles are much less severe than they were in Korea. This is a pronounced swing into depression, but it’s nowhere near what he experienced in chapter three, and I’m writing it that way very intentionally, because now Hawkeye has several people in his life who fall into the two most important supportive categories: “I see you and I love you” and “let’s do what we need to do to make sure this doesn’t get worse.” Maybe that’s subjective, but look, all I really want in life is for someone to go “you’re not crazy. I love you. also, here’s some takeout,” so I’m writing it into a fic. The hardest thing, sometimes, is talking about it / asking for help, and I liked the idea of showing Hawkeye's progression that way. He might not be able to ask for it directly, but he's gotten better at reaching out and say “hey, I'm not okay right now” to his loved ones without couching it in a joke.
(2) Yes, yes, this is an AU where ‘blow job’ entered the vernacular approximately 6-10 years early, but I’m twelve at heart and can’t resist.
Chapter 20: BJ - Labor Day 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The Labor Day barbeque at the Morrises was about as awkward as BJ had expected it to be.
Denizens of the cul-de-sac fell into one of three categories. First, those who bought into Susan’s quiet whispers that BJ was off his rocker. Next, a far larger group of neighbors who were friendly enough, but a shade too cautious with their overtures to feel genuine, as if they hadn’t yet made up their minds about the Hunnicutt vs. Davis neighborhood showdown. Finally, there were the blissfully oblivious types like Mrs. Parker, who called him ‘dear’ and lived under the mistaken assumption that everyone on their street got along just swimmingly—the very picture of a suburban ideal.
“Is this excruciating, or is it just me?” Viv asked, sidling up next to him and, like a ventriloquist, talking without moving her lips.
It shouldn’t have been. When BJ was in Korea, this was the exact sort of scene he used to picture: a lazy sunset at the end of a well-spent holiday, kids darting across the lawn, adults clustered in loose circles of lawn chairs, chatting over the hum of crickets. Tom Morris was still nursing the grill, turning over the last few hot dogs, and smoke hung soft in the air—just enough to sting the eyes and make everything smell like summer.
BJ sighed into his beer. “I’m keeping a weather eye on the table. Once dessert comes out, I say we head home.”
“Has Gary cornered you yet?”
“No, and frankly, it’s making me wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.”
“Maybe he expects you to come to him.”
That’d fit with what guys like Joe and Tom had been hinting at all day, but he’d ship himself back to Uijeongbu in his footlocker before he ‘made nice and kept the peace.’
“If that’s what Gary wants, he’ll be waiting a long time.”
Viv raised her glass. “Lucky you. He and Susan won’t leave me alone.” She took a drink. “You know, for as much as they move through the neighborhood like a unit, I have no idea how they manage it. The two of them hardly speak to one another.”
“Oh?”
“I was desperate to get Gary off the subject of our living arrangements, so I asked him about the proposition, you know, for increased public health funding. I figured Susan would be excited about how it’d offer her more opportunities at the hospital—she’s a surgical nurse, right?—but he didn’t know a thing about it.”
“Maybe she doesn’t bring her work home.”
Viv gave him a mild look. “Or maybe he turns his ears off when she talks about anything he isn’t immediately interested in. He seems the type.”
If only he were equally disinterested other things that didn’t concern him.
They fell quiet as twilight descended, watching Tom circle the yard lighting tiki torches and plugging in string lights. Suburban utopia. At least the kids were having fun chasing fireflies with ball jars, Erin among them, running on the heels of the younger Simpson siblings.
“Where’s Peg?” he asked.
“I thought I saw her get hustled into dessert prep with the other women.” When BJ arched a brow at her, she gave an ironic twirl. “Viv Miller, jezebel and seductress, remember? Pretty sure the chickens who get an invite to the ladies-only chitchat are the respectably married ones.”
“Are we making things worse right now?”
“BJ, if it ever gets to the point where I can’t be seen speaking to you in public without the Davises firing their mouths off, I promise you, I will set their lawn ornaments on fire.”
He huffed a laugh into the dregs of his beer. “The flamingoes? For shame. Aren’t they a protected species?” (1)
“Not the plastic ones.”
Their patter was interrupted when Gary and a few of his cohort—Joe Simmons and Bill O’Malley among them—trundled in from around the side of the house with a heavy-looking cardboard box cradled between them.
Viv stilled. “That’s not hot dog buns.”
Based on how they were yammering and preparing to set up on the far edge of Tom’s yard nearest an empty lot, BJ could hazard a guess as to what they were: leftover fireworks from the Fourth.
The door to the kitchen swung open, and the first plates of dessert came out along with a handful of the wives, Peg among them. She caught BJ’s eye over a tray of cookies. Lisa Simmons, who walked with her, called out to Joe to ask what they were up to.
“Thought we’d liven things up a little,” Gary said, raising his voice to be heard across the yard. “No sense letting these beauties collect dust in the garage. What do you say?”
There were a few cheers from some of the older kids and a good-natured laugh or two from the lawn chairs, but it was BJ who Gary watched for a reaction. Of course he did. And if he wanted one, he’d get one. BJ had no interest in being the muse behind a mean-tempered choice when that choice could get someone hurt.
He finished off his beer and tossed the empty in the trash hard enough to clack against the other bottles at the bottom. “This isn’t your best idea, Gary.”
“Relax,” Gary said in the same tone of voice BJ had once heard his father use to call his mother ‘hysterical.’ “You’re telling me you served in Korea, but you can’t handle a couple sparklers with a kick?”
“It’s not me I’m worried about. We’ve got a lot of kids running around.”
Joe, ever the shoddy diplomat, gave BJ a placating smile. “I know you weren’t here on the Fourth, but we set some off then, too. The kids love ‘em. No harm, no foul.”
“Tell you what,” Gary said. “If it makes you nervous, just keep your distance. The rest of us’ll have our fun.”
Face flaming, BJ had taken his first step off the patio when Tom appeared at his side, sweaty from his laps of the yard. He patted BJ lightly on the shoulder, lowering his voice so it wouldn’t carry. “It’s probably best if you let it go.”
“Seriously?” At Tom’s shrug, he pressed, “Do you have any idea the kind of injuries we see in the OR from backyard fireworks?”
He’d left his poker face in Korea, it seemed, because tension bled into his voice. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and an itch appeared between his shoulder blades, a product, maybe, of knowing that Gary would get the satisfaction of watching him flinch. Of realizing that, even though he was right—because setting off fireworks in the middle of a suburban neighborhood was an idiotic risk—it wouldn’t matter if even the host didn’t listen to him.
And why would Tom listen? BJ was at the bottom of the pecking order, the periphery of the neighborhood’s social circle after months of discrediting rumors. The BJ who’d moved to Mill Valley would have done anything to fix it. He wasn’t sure he could ever go back to being that guy.
Tom sighed, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper curls. “Look. I know there’s some tension between you and Gary. Something that happened over New Year’s. Everyone’s heard some version of Gary complaining about it by now. Whatever it is, maybe it’s best if we put it behind us. A show of goodwill, alright? Let them set a few off. They’ll get their jollies and be done with it in ten minutes tops.”
BJ managed a smile that felt more like a snarl, but it must have been convincing enough, because Tom patted him on the arm again and headed for the desserts.
If nothing else, keep your head down. Let Gary move onto another target. Too late for that, perhaps.
“Funny,” Viv murmured at his back. “Seems like those shows of goodwill only ever seem to need to run in one direction.”
BJ grunted, bent to fish another beer out of the cooler, and headed out onto the lawn to find Erin.
He’d met enough guys like Gary overseas to track his twisted logic: you’d better respect me, bud, or I’ll show you what we do to the guys who won’t fall in line. If Gary couldn’t bully him into submission, he’d do whatever it took to take him down a peg in front of the whole neighborhood, just the way Flagg always seemed to want to do to Hawkeye. Perish the thought of leaving a guy alone and letting him be, especially if that guy expressed a difference of opinion. Doubly so if that opinion involved calling someone like Gary out on his bullshit.
He hadn’t let Gary get away with running his mouth, and now Gary was on a mission to humiliate him. To teach him his place, just the way his father used to do. The worst part was, the particular method Gary had chosen would work. BJ’s unconscious mind would hand the keys over the moment he fell asleep.
God dammit.
BJ found Erin playing with a group of kids at the edge of the yard. “Hey, Bear. Want to head back to the patio with Daddy to get some dessert?”
Predictably, she hid her face in her hands and squealed, “No!”
“I saw chocolate chip cookies.”
She peered at him between grass-stained fingers. “Cookies?” Then her whole body straightened, curls bouncing. “Moose-moose!”
“That’s right, baby,” Peg said, appearing beside BJ with Moose-moose in hand. “I bet if you asked nicely, Mrs. Morris would give you an extra cookie for him.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “But since we know Moose-moose doesn’t eat dessert, you’d get two whole cookies to yourself.”
“Genius,” BJ muttered as Peg shot him a knowing grin.
She scooped Erin up, and together, they headed away from Gary’s setup and toward the house.
“I know it’s not much consolation,” she said as they walked, “but he’ll get an earful about it tonight. Susan was livid when she saw him come out with that box.”
“I should hope so. The last time I had to operate on a kid who lost a hand because of a firework, she was scrubbed in with me. You’d think she’d say something to him about it.”
“You’re assuming he’d listen to her if she did.” Peg nudged him with a shoulder. “Do you need some air? A walk around the block?”
“I’m fine.”
She gave him a long look—knowing, but unwilling to press—and carried Erin toward the safety of the dessert table just as the first firework screamed into the sky. The neighborhood crowd cheered. Kids squealed.
BJ couldn’t stop he shoulders from jerking. He purposefully kept his back to Gary, because he didn’t need to turn to know that he was being watched. Another firework popped off, and he controlled the flinch this time, dampening it to a twitch that’d only be noticeable to someone standing side-by-side with him. Breathe. He was in California. It was Labor Day. These were fireworks, not shells. No choppers tonight. No choppers ever again.
Peg had taken Erin past the dessert table and found a lawn chair for them to sit in, Erin straddling Peg’s thigh like a cowgirl in the saddle, bouncing up and down with glee. The sparkle of the fireworks reflected in her eyes and cast colored light across her little, awed face.
“At least they seem like they know what they’re doing,” Viv said, settling onto the lawn at Peg’s side. “Pretty, aren’t they, Bear?”
Erin was too enraptured—and her mouth too full of cookie—to respond.
Maybe he could learn to see fireworks through her eyes, again. To somehow put the harbinger of a thirty-hour OR stint into a box in his memory and experience holiday celebrations with Erin’s innocence, to make new memories with her that weren’t tainted by war. To remember not the heat of a dying soldier’s body on a cold winter’s night, but instead, the warmth that flooded him with each of her delighted giggles.
He turned to watch the next firework go off in a perfect spray of gold. Or maybe he could return to Crabapple Cove, instead. He’d wander in memory and sit among the dunes with Hawkeye in his lap, or stumble through the front door of Hawkeye’s father’s house, or hold Hawkeye close while he said, “I love you so much it makes me rattle out of my skin.” Where would he be the next time he had to endure a firework show? Would he find a way to have Hawkeye there with him? BJ shut his eyes and imagined it: Hawk leaned against the dessert table, alight with mischief, making cracks about Gary behind his back. Or, better yet, to his face.
Then, at once, the tone of the crowd’s ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ changed. BJ’s eyes snapped open in time to watch a firework arc low, sizzling dangerously close to the branches of a tree near the Morrises’ property line.
“Careful, Gary, or you’ll get us a visit from your friends over at the fire department,” Tom called.
“I keep telling you to prune that thing, don’t I? If I take a branch off for you, I’ll slip a bill in your mailbox.”
The crowd laughed, and BJ’s gut sank. This wasn’t a damn joke. Nothing about it was. He set his beer down next to the cookies and stepped off the patio before he could talk himself out of it, but hadn’t taken two steps when Gary lit another fuse.
This firework tracked even lower, cutting a scythe of red light across the grass. An ear-piercing, child’s scream ripped through the yard. BJ lurched into motion, sprinting to the far end of the lawn, leaping over a chair to get to the crumpled boy in front of the tree line. Once there, he hit the grass hard, skidding the last few feet on his knees. The kid was curled tight, face buried in his arms, wracked with sobs.
“Hey—hey, buddy, you with me?” BJ’s voice came out rougher than he meant it to, but he gentled it fast, hands running over the boy’s arms, shoulders, back, checking for burns or lacerations. Mud beneath his knees. Hawkeye and Radar next to him. A boy with no face. “You hurt anywhere? Can you look at me?”
The boy shook his head against his sleeve, then peeked up, eyes wide and wet. Shit, this was one of the Morris kids, only a few years older than Erin. “It w-w-went right by me.”
“I saw,” BJ said, the words tight in his throat. He pressed a steady hand to the kid’s trembling shoulder. “You’re okay.”
Smoke still hung in the air, sharp and acrid. BJ glanced up and saw Ellen Morris hustling across the lawn in his direction. Behind her, Tom strode for Gary and his crew.
“He’s alright,” BJ called. “A little rattled, but—”
“Stop babying the kid, Hunnicutt,” Gary interrupted. “It was nowhere near him. Maybe you’d have seen it if you weren’t on the patio next to the ladies with your eyes shut.”
BJ went utterly still.
“That was a lot closer than ‘nowhere near him,’” Tom said reaching Gary. Whatever he said next was lost to distance, because the tenor of their conversation went low, furious.
“Come here, sweetie,” Ellen said, gathering her son up with a tight smile. She retreated to the patio without a word for BJ.
“An accident. Right, Gary,” Tom was saying, now, voice pitched louder.
BJ’s hands shook. He pressed them to his knees and tried to feel the ground beneath him, the slight breeze on his neck, the rise and fall of his chest. Screams echoed in his ears—the Morris kid. The soldiers on his operating table. Hawkeye, blinded by an exploding stove.
“C’mon, Tom,” Gary said. “Light one off with us. We’ll show you how.”
In a blink, BJ found himself across the yard. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
Gary turned to face him with a smug, shitty little grin. “Is that any way to talk to a neighbor?”
BJ turned Tom’s way. Surely, he’d take the opportunity BJ had given him to say his piece as intended, stronger for having backup. Even if Joe played the part of a mediator and O’Malley continued to be a useless goon, the balance had tipped and for once, at last, Gary wouldn’t get off easy.
But though Tom’s jaw worked, no sound came out. He glanced back and forth between Gary and Joe as if BJ wasn’t even there.
Oh. Of course. If Tom had the guts, he’d have used them to say his piece long before now. BJ trembled with the barely leashed impulse to reach out, to lash out, to lunge at Gary, to grab Tom by the shoulders and shake him, to shout that was your fucking kid who could have been hit—what the hell is wrong with you?
If only Hawkeye were here. Hawkeye would never, ever stand for something like this.
“Enough,” BJ said, voice hitting its bottom register. “This is ridiculous.”
Gary’s smug grin broadened. “There are only two people here crying about the fireworks, you know, and one of them’s a kid.”
“You got something to say to me?” BJ snarled. “Go right ahead, but you’d better do it plain and to my face.”
“Look, why don’t we have a beer,” Tom broke in, shoulders rounded, arms folded tight across his chest. “I could throw another couple dogs on the grill, and we’ll come back out and finish off the box later, once all the kids are in bed and tempers have cooled.”
BJ ground his teeth. “You’re going to take that chance, Tom? Really?”
“Let’s not argue, fellas.” Tom wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Wouldn’t be a very neighborly thing to do over a holiday, would it?” Gary clapped a hand right on BJ’s shoulder, nearly on the nape of his neck, and chuckled when he jolted. “Whaddaya say, Hunnicutt? Let’s have a drink. It’ll give you a little time to straighten your head out.”
BJ jerked out of his grip. “Fuck you, Gary.”
Gasps came from the patio as BJ stalked back across the lawn, adrenaline surging through him so hard his hands shook. Peg and Viv were already up and moving, gathering Erin, making quick work of scooping up the odds and ends they’d brought with them. There was no salvaging the evening. No smoothing anything over. Just the walk up the street with the neighborhood’s eyes on their backs.
He’d lost it again, let himself get pulled into Gary’s games, and now he was turning tail. But what else could he do? Take a stand and make an even bigger scene? He wasn’t Hawkeye. He’d never been strong enough to tilt at windmills alone. The only kind of tilting he’d ever been good at was the kind that came with fists, and he’d sworn—sworn—he wouldn’t turn into his father.
So when Erin reached for him, he scooped her up and gave her a gentle kiss on the brow. He nudged Viv’s shoulder, and he took Peg’s hand, and they turned away from the muttering crowd to head home.
#
Once the door shut behind them, Peg hustled Erin upstairs to get her in bed, and so it was Viv who found BJ huddled over the kitchen sink, holding its edges for support, arms shaking with the effort of keeping himself upright.
“BJ?”
“I’m . . .” What was he meant to say, fine? Viv would see right through him.
“Come here, you stubborn idiot.”
She wrapped her arms around him, trapping his elbows at his sides, and squeezed so tight he struggled to get in a full breath. He gave back as best as he could, fingers digging into the light cotton of her striped blouse. She was tall enough that the top of her head propped up his chin. He rested it atop her dark waves, a few flyaways of which drifted up to tickle at his mustache.
By the time Peg returned to the kitchen, he’d stopped shaking and no longer sucked in breaths like he’d run laps around the block. Still, she joined them, hugging BJ from the other side. He tipped his head, resting his cheek atop her hair and breathing in the familiar sweet-citrus scent of her perfume.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Viv pulled back just far enough to scowl at him. “For what?”
“I really threw gasoline on that.”
“If you’d hit him, maybe, sure. But alas, you didn’t, and between the two of you, he was the only one lighting fuses. You hear?”
BJ sagged back against the sink. “Something tells me the others won’t see it that way.”
Viv opened her mouth, but clearly thought better of whatever she’d planned to say, then closed it. She and Peg exchanged a long look.
“Maybe it’s time to put less stock into what they think. We’ve been talking about spending more time in the city,” Peg said. “We can try to find more friends like us. It’s hard out here.”
From his vantage point against the sink, he could see out the kitchen window to their patio and the lemon tree beyond, illuminated by moonlight. When they’d first put the deposit down on the house, he and Peg had fantasized about the backyard parties they’d throw—the neighbors they’d befriend, the community they’d find, the home they’d build. If they just played by the rules and did what everyone else was doing, then they’d get to have the safe, cozy life they’d imagined. How ironic that now, their best hope at finding it meant looking back at the city they’d moved away from.
And now, spending more time in the city would mean starting over, in a sense. Most of their collegiate friend group had scattered. Between Erin, the war, and their work, they’d both lost touch with just about anyone who wasn’t a part of their day-to-day life.
“I’m not opposed,” he said, then hesitated, because he wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with it. But it’ll be hard? But I’m not so great at making friends, Hawkeye being a particular and notable exception? But there’s still a part of me that’s afraid to live outside the boundaries of that white picket fence I was supposed to want so badly? “It might be a challenge to find the time.”
“You know, if we left the neighborhood, that’d make it easier.” She twisted around to stand side-by-side with him. “The house would sell quickly.”
BJ froze. How they’d jumped from making new friends to selling the house, he couldn’t quite figure. “Where would we go? You can’t mean we’d buy in the city. Even if we sold both properties, we couldn’t cover the down payment on what we’d need.”
“Then we can rent while figuring out what comes next. BJ, this is—” She ran a hand down her face. “We’re miserable here.”
Peg was right, but he wished he could ignore it.
When he was a kid, his grandparents gave him a pair of Red Wing boots one Christmas. He’d loved them so much he wore them until they cramped his toes and gave him blisters, because god, he couldn’t bear to give them up. His mother had called him sentimental for it, but a new pair just wasn’t the same. Maybe his attachment to the house was a bit like that. Leaving would mean admitting that an era had ended, that he was holding onto a life that no longer fit.
He and Peg had worked so hard for this house, for this life. And BJ had never been good at saying goodbye.
“You know,” Viv said, slowly, “just because we leave Mill Valley doesn’t mean we have to end up in San Francisco. Not permanently, at least.”
BJ froze.
“Where do you have in mind?” Peg asked.
Viv slipped out from under his arm to head for the kitchen table. “Maybe a different kind of climate. A fresh start.” She dropped into a chair to stretch her legs, trousers riding up past her ankles, and toed off her shoes. “Somewhere with seasons.”
“Leave California? I—well. I suppose I’d considered it, but never beyond the abstract.”
“It’d be a big move, I know, but think about it. A big city like New York or Boston, or”—her eyes met BJ’s again—“maybe a smaller city on the same stretch of coastline. There’d be plenty of work for me in university libraries, a booming real estate market for you, and endless jobs for BJ. Not to mention great schools for Erin.”
She couldn’t possibly mean what he thought she meant.
“You’d come with us?” Peg asked, joining her at the table, sundress swishing around her calves.
“I’m already here, aren’t I?” Viv laced her fingers with Peg’s. “Look, when Ron and I left Texas, I burned every last bridge with my family, so I’m sure as hell not headed back south. He shipped out only a few months after we moved onto base here, and you know the rest. Most of my life here is wrapped up in you, Peg. You’re my home, now. Of course I’d come with you, if I’m welcome.”
Peg kissed her knuckles. “Oh, darling. Always. Never doubt that.”
At the sink, BJ once again found his arms shaking with the strain of supporting his weight. “Are you two saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Leaving Mill Valley and moving to the east coast? Perhaps even to Connecticut?” Viv flashed him a grin. “Why, d’you know someone out there?”
“Would you want that?” Peg asked.
He could picture it with absolute clarity: Hawkeye on the jetty, doing a terrible job of teaching Erin how to fish, both of them getting distracted and leaving the work to BJ while traipsing down the shoreline picking up seashells. Hawk’s eyes disappearing into a smile shared over a cup of break room coffee, or peering over a surgical mask in the OR. Two desks pushed against one another in a small office with their names on the door. A library’s worth of articles in JAMA with their names side-by-side. A mailbox outside a cedar shingle house with Pierce & Hunnicutt stenciled in white.
“Yeah,” he said, voice rough. “Of course I want that.”
“Would he?”
“I . . .” He thought so. He hoped so. “You can’t be serious about doing that for me. For him.”
Peg traced the patterns on the tablecloth with a fingertip. “Not just for you, honey. I’ve been looking to the city more and more, daydreaming about a fresh start and what that’d be like. Maybe this is a sign. Viv?”
“I’d want to meet him first,” she said.
“Of course. Have him out for a visit, see how things go.”
BJ scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands, as if, when he pulled them away, the kitchen would dissolve into one of his wild dreamscapes. But when his vision cleared, Peg and Viv were still at the table. Their hands were joined. Viv wore a smile that was almost giddy.
“A cross-country move,” BJ repeated.
“Imagine it,” Viv said, as if that was any trouble for him. “A train ride to New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia. All those museums, theaters, concert halls. The libraries. Our city is wonderful, don’t misunderstand me, but everything out there is so close, isn’t it?”
“You’d go three thousand miles to be closer to a wider variety of museums? Viv—”
“Au contraire; I’m being much more practical than that.” She thumbed the ring on Peg’s left hand, something shrewd in her stare. “If we’re going to continue on as we are, I want the same protection you two have, and finding a way to bring Hawkeye into the equation could give it to me.”
Ah. Would Hawkeye go for that? He wasn’t sure. “Have you written to him about this?”
“No. We’re arguing about Catcher in the Rye right now because he refuses to let me spoil The Fellowship of the Ring for him. I can’t say I’ve managed to squeeze any thoughts about a lavender marriage in edgewise. But if you tell me he’s trustworthy, that he’s decent, that he’s kind—then yes, I’d like to meet him and see if we want the same things.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
“Since I had to ask you to sign as a guarantor for me when I took out that Sears charge card.” (2) She and Peg shared a look of deep commiseration. “But beyond the practicality, tell me it doesn’t sound nice to have that kind of support. We’ve been a team of three since you came home. Why couldn’t we expand that for one more?”
BJ flexed his hands around the lip of the sink, holding on as if it’d keep his head from spinning. What would Hawkeye say to all of this? He claimed he was a forever-bachelor, but then, this wasn’t a standard proposal. And sometimes, BJ wondered whether his claims of inveterate bachelorhood were less about what he wanted and more about what he thought he deserved. Because the way he reacted whenever BJ called him family indicated that he might be more interested in Viv’s idea of partnership than his jokes about marriage let on.
It occurred to him then that if Hawkeye went to the county clerk and put his name on paper next to Viv’s, he’d be tying himself to her legally, yes, but he’d be marrying BJ in a sense, too. The thought shook him with such an intense rush of longing that it weakened his knees.
“We’d be a fearsome foursome,” he said, hoping the quip would distract them from his watering eyes.
Peg grinned at him. “We should take up golf.”
“It’d be a lot more fun to do it here than in a minefield.” At their twin winces, he decided maybe that was a Hawkeye-joke, not a Peg-and-Viv-joke.
Smoothing down the skirt of her sundress, Peg stood, then crossed the kitchen to pry his hands from the lip of the sink and take them between her own. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
It did. He’d known, on some level, that their time in the house was limited from the moment they’d decided to have Viv move in with them. In another year or two at most, Erin would be in school full-time, and they’d have struggled to explain why they needed Peg’s ‘friend’ to help with childcare—especially with the Davises breathing down their necks. He’d given the matter little thought beyond that. But the timeline had moved up, and he wouldn’t do them any favors by refusing to acknowledge it.
“Then let’s rip the bandage off,” he said. Peg’s brow arched. “We’ll sell the house, like you said. Find a place to rent in the city, big enough for all of us while we tie up loose ends and figure out where we want to land.”
She bounced up to her toes. “You mean that? No sleeping on it?”
“You’re right, both of you. I mean it.”
They moved all at once, reaching out as Viv skipped across the kitchen to take their hands. BJ shut his eyes and imagined what it might be like with Hawkeye there, too: a different kind of life. One built from the ground up for them, not something they’d outgrown, that they tried to retrofit to make the day-to-day survivable.
A life where they’d be allowed to love, and grow, and be.
“I can start looking at places in the morning, but only if you’re sure,” Peg said, then nudged Viv with her shoulder. “If you’re both sure.”
Viv gave her a radiant smile. “Darling, wherever you are, I’m there, too.”
Notes:
I've dipped my toe into the world of mashblr. You can find me @dioxazinepurple.
If you've been wondering whether I was going anywhere with this whole Mill Valley neighborhood drama subplot . . . we are now There. Going to try to start posting updates 2x/wk from here on out.
(1) This is an anachronism; apparently lawn flamingoes weren’t a thing until 1957. The original was designed by artist Don Featherstone and named Diego. Lawn flamingoes went into mass production shortly thereafter. I feel like I’m allowed to keep the flamingo joke in the story now that I’ve paid the cosmic tithe of researching lawn ornaments. They’ll hit the market 2.5 years from Labor Day 1954. Let me have this.
(2) Lest we forget, single women weren’t able to take out a line of credit on their own without a male co-signer until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. It wasn’t until 1988 that women could take out business loans without being asked for a co-signer following the Women’s Business Ownership Act. Women who didn’t have a male relative available to sign could ask a friend or employer, but you can imagine why that could land Viv in a difficult position. For her, a lavender marriage to someone like Hawkeye—who BJ trusts with his life—is a guarantee of financial safety and stability. Let’s also not forget about things like pensions, retirement benefits, life insurance, etc.—all of which are available to the spouse of the primary income earner. This is likely the difference between being able to live out her golden years comfortably vs. relying on Peg and BJ. She has other reasons for wanting a domestic partnership (some of which she names in this chapter, some of which she’ll bring up in a future chapter), but the historical context hopefully makes it clear that this isn’t just a decision made on BJ’s behalf so BJ can be happy with Hawkeye.
Chapter 21: Hawkeye - Early September 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Hawkeye had meant to take the train into Boston that week to meet Margaret and Helen at the Punch Bowl and spin them around the dance floor until his feet ached. But as the date penciled onto the calendar hanging in his kitchen drew nearer, he had to admit that the ambition of his plans outstripped his capacity. Though he’d pushed through the worst of the low, he still cycled between not being able to sleep and sleeping so hard he spent the next day groggy and disoriented. To take his dad’s metaphor about gas in the tank a step further, he wasn’t drained dry anymore, but it felt like he couldn’t get very far without his gas light flicking on. (1)
When he called Margaret to cancel, he told her the truth: he hadn’t felt up for much lately. Hawkeye “the MD stands for manic-depressive” Pierce couldn’t seem to get out of his own way.
Once upon a time in Uijeongbu, Major Houlihan might have told him to suck it up and get his ass on a train. But the Margaret who’d become his friend by the end of the war, who’d watched him crack under its strain, took a different tack. She informed him in that no-nonsense way of hers that she and Helen would be coming out to New Haven instead, end of discussion. Upon discovering they all had the same two midweek days off, she called it fate. “Don’t bother arguing with me, Pierce. We both know you’ll lose,” she said before hanging up. Five days later, he picked them up at Union Station.
Margaret had forced him out for the afternoon—“Sunlight is good for you, you know. Now can it and get walking”—but relented to his request for a quiet night in. They rolled homemade meatballs from his mother’s cookbook and ate until they’d need a crane to get off the couch. After several rounds of Scrabble—“Whoever spells ‘depression’ wins the game.” “That’s far too many letters, Hawkeye.” “Right, which is why they should win by default!”—they abandoned any attempt at competition for chitchat.
Full-bellied and content, Helen lay on the couch with her legs draped across Margaret’s lap. She’d started to doze once the last game ended. That was around when Margaret had discovered the notes for Hawkeye and Callahan’s paper sitting on a side table. After combing through them, she peppered him with better questions about bypass than he got from most residents.
He answered them from his sprawl in his newly delivered armchair, then went on a tangent about how a few doctors out of the Midwest were inducing hypothermia in order to stop circulation and prolong operating time. “Imagine if we combined techniques,” he said. “Localize the cooling to the heart, lessen its oxygen needs. It’d significantly reduce post-surgical complications.”
“And extend time on bypass,” Margaret noted. “Sounds like you’re already eyeballing more complicated procedures.”
“You know me. Always rushing ahead to the next thing.”
“If you get another win under your belt this year, you’ll turn Charles positively green with it.” They shared a smile. “He’s happy for you, you know. Hell, so am I. You’re doing great work.”
He batted his eyelashes at her. “Does that mean I can entice you to swap sides? Leave Boston and join team Yale?”
“And listen to your yammering in the OR again? Not on your life.”
“Margaret, I’m wounded!”
“A head wound would explain a lot about you.” She neatened the notes in her lap, then paused, extracting the photograph of Family Hunnicutt that had worked its way between the pages. When she read the writing on the back, a gentle smile tugged at her lips. “You two.”
When he first told Margaret about the Fourth, she’d been over the moon for him. “I knew it!” she’d crowed, so excited she’d spun Helen in a triumphant circle. “What did I tell you? No one looks at their friends like that, Pierce.” She understood the pain of distance, too—to a point. But the distance she’d endured always had an end date. Like BJ, she’d always known she’d reunite with her loved ones at the war’s end. There was a particular kind of torture that came from what he and BJ had done instead, starting this thing without answers, without knowing how they’d find their way back to one another again.
It was a feeling Hawkeye knew well: a tunnel with no light at the end, just the vague, toilsome hope that somehow, some day, a light would materialize. In the meantime, he missed BJ with a wretched ache. No letter, no photograph, no phone call ever seemed to be enough. Sure, they kept him going the same way C-rations kept a man alive—something to chew on, something to fool him into staying upright. He clung to every word BJ sent, reread the letters until the paper went soft, replayed every scrap of laughter that made it through the crackle of the phone line. But none of it fed him the way he needed. That kind of nourishment couldn’t be folded into an envelope or carried across a wire. The real thing—the weight of BJ’s shoulder against his own, BJ’s irrepressible wit, his steady devotion—that was three thousand miles away. And as much as Hawkeye told himself they’d lived on rations before and could do it again, there were nights he wasn’t so sure.
His eyes itched, and predictably, his mouth started moving shortly thereafter. “Have you heard Beej’s recent news?”
“I got a letter from him two weeks ago—something about Erin starting preschool and how Peg is thinking about taking night classes in interior design.”
Hawkeye gestured around his apartment. “I don’t think she needs classes.”
“Let’s be fair. The bar for decor in a space you occupy is pretty low to begin with.”
“Another shot to the heart!”
She rolled her eyes at him. “I told him I was glad for her.” Her gaze slid down, then, to the notes in her lap. “I’ve thought about it too, you know.”
“Interior design?”
The look she gave him could freeze a Korean summer’s day. “Going back to school. Charles told me Harvard is thinking about continuing to admit women even after the trial expires.” (2)
“Medical school?” Hawkeye sat bolt upright in his armchair. “Oh Margaret, that’s fantastic!”
“Isn’t it?” Helen murmured, roused by the increasing volume of their chatter.
“You too? Will I have to address my correspondence to Drs. Houlihan and Whitfield from now on?”
Helen made a sleepy, scrunch-nosed face at him. “Only one future doctor in our house. I like nursing too much.”
Fair enough. Nursing was an entity unto itself. He’d spent too long relying on the competence of the nurses on his staff to think otherwise.
“Listen,” he said, turning back to Margaret, “if you need a recommendation or help browbeating Charles into giving you one—”
“Charles has offered a recommendation on my own merit.”
These days, Hawkeye was a smidge better about stopping himself before he shoved a boot all the way into his mouth, and, replaying his last words, he figured he was one wrong move away from gagging on his laces.
“As he should. Well, if you ask me, I think it’s a great idea.” He fished his glass of soda off the coffee table. “A toast to the future Dr. Houlihan!”
She clinked their glasses together, flushing, but quickly demurred. “Alright, you. Let’s save the cheers for when we have more to celebrate than a lark. I still don’t know if I’m going to apply.” She eyed the photograph in her lap again. “And anyway, you were saying something about BJ before I completely derailed us.”
“For good cause. I’m glad you told me.” He slouched back into his armchair. “As far as BJ’s news goes, he’s speaking at a town hall event put on by the mayor’s office in conjunction with SFG. There’s a proposition on the ballot this year to increase spending on public health, including medical research, and I guess the mayor is throwing his weight behind it as part of his reelection campaign, because the town hall is going to be locally televised.”
Margaret let out an excited gasp, jostling a groggy, protesting Helen, who dug her cheek further into the couch cushion. “He told me he was getting ready to do a talk on reanimation, but didn’t tell me it was for that. What an amazing opportunity for him to get his name out there!”
A huge opportunity. BJ was terribly nervous about appearing on camera again—certainly, the last time they’d all done so wasn’t the best memory for any of them—but Hawkeye had read a draft of his speech notes already, and they looked fantastic. BJ would knock it out of the park. He wished he could be in the audience for it.
So, too, did he wish he could ignore the little voice in the back of his head that twittered about how BJ’s career might take off after this. If you won’t leave your work in New Haven, how could you ever ask BJ to do the same?
“When is it?” Margaret asked.
“October 2nd, I think. I’ve got the date marked somewhere.”
“Are you going out there for it?”
Hawkeye blinked. “I—no. I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Why the hell not? Don’t tell me you’re waiting for an invitation.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Is it?” She fixed him with that patented you’re begging for a browbeating look she’d perfected in the OR. “And here I was thinking it had gotten less complicated now that the two of you finally stopped dancing around one another.”
“Hard to dance around someone who’s on the other side of the country.”
“The solution to that is to buy plane tickets.”
“And see him for what, what, a week before coming back? I can’t . . .” His words sped as he spoke, growing in volume, breaths coming heavier and eyes stinging. Damn it. “Sure, yeah, I can visit, but I’m not moving to Mill Valley. So where does that leave him and I? Same place we were, still in the tunnel, still no light at the end.”
As Hawkeye played back the flood that had spilled from his mouth, he belatedly realized he’d shown his hand by making this about much more than a single visit. Based on Margaret’s entire lack of reaction, though, he suspected she’d pushed that button on purpose.
“Where would you go, if not California?” she asked. “Maybe he’d want to go there, too.”
“And leave his lemon tree, his picket fence, his family?” He gestured at the photo in Margaret’s lap.
“Seems like the four of them are less invested in the picket fence life than he once led us to believe. You’ll never know what he’s thinking until you ask him. Why haven’t you asked?”
“Because I—” Because if I ask and he says no, it’ll crush me. Because I’m needy. Demanding. Too much. Always too much. “I can’t.”
Besides, asking in a letter was impossible. Too indirect, too impersonal. Asking over the phone was worse. They had a mere sliver of time together each week, and thoroughly ruining a call by demanding answers and assurances that BJ didn’t have was an impossibility. Better to spend those precious few minutes basking in BJ’s laughter than hanging up on a tense note and spending the whole next week panicking and worrying he’d ruined it.
If he went all-in and got fumbled again, abandoned again, he wouldn’t walk away from it like he had before.
As if she could his mind, Margaret jiggled her own wrist, pointing to her watch. “Do you think he doesn’t want to have that conversation? He practically put a ring on you.”
Hawkeye stared down at his watch, at the divot in the strap where BJ used to buckle it, at the ding in the bezel from the floor in the scrub room. The first time BJ slipped it into his pocket, it had been insurance against a permanent goodbye—a lure to get Hawkeye out to Mill Valley for a visit, even if that wasn’t how it panned out in the end.
From his vantage point, he could see the photograph in Margaret’s lap: BJ and his family standing in front of the Golden Gate, Moose-moose in his arms. Erin suggested we put Moose-moose where “Uncle Hawk” would stand next time.
What if he was thinking about it all backwards? He didn’t need to wait on BJ to make a move or give him an answer—even if the thought of laying it on the line any more than he already had sent his heart sprinting in his chest. Maybe, if he could trust that BJ wouldn’t tire of him, ‘next time’ didn’t need to be so far away.
“Tell you what,” he said. “If I get out to San Francisco for the 2nd, you have to fill out an application for Harvard Medical.”
She softened, then held out a hand to shake. “Pierce, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Notes:
Gonna try this whole posting-twice-a-week thing to see if I can kick myself into high gear.
(1) This isn’t technically an anachronism—low fuel indicators went into production in the 1950s and 1960s—though it’s a bit of a stretch for a few reasons. First, the language I’m using is probably inaccurate; these were likely mechanical indicators driven by float switches. They’d show up once the gas in the tank reached a certain level and the float switch dropped. Second, they were uncommon until the 1970s. Low fuel light indicators as we know them weren’t patented until the 1980s. I decided to use this particular term because it’s more legible for a modern audience and because ‘indicator’ made the rhythm of the sentence wonky, haha. The tldr is that there’s an in-between time that no one really talks about when you’re coming out of a depressive dip and you’re . . . okay? But everything still takes about 7000x more effort than it should. Hence the metaphor: Hawk isn’t running on empty anymore, but it doesn’t take much for him to start drawing on his reserves.
(2) Harvard Medical School began accepting women in 1945 to make up for a diminished number of applicants during WWII. Acceptance started on a ten-year trial basis, but wound up continuing past 1955. Several other institutions also began accepting women between 1940-1960, though the percentage of women admitted remained low until 1972, when Title IX made discriminatory practices more difficult to uphold. Margaret’s ambitions in this regard aren’t meant to position nursing in opposition to (and beneath) a career as a doctor, but based on Margaret’s character and ambition, I suspect she’d be interested in going in this direction, especially after getting a taste for expanded responsibility in Korea. The same impulse that made her want to join the military and climb the ranks would drive her into medical school, I think—especially now that she’s made the connections to find employment afterward. And man, she’d be an amazing doctor.
Chapter 22: BJ - Early September 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
BJ had been meaning to clean out the attic for weeks. Now, home alone with Erin asleep and the house sunk into the quiet of night, he finally forced himself to do it.
The only light up there came from a single bulb strung low from the rafters, forcing him to duck every time he crossed from one side of the house to the other. It threw uneven shadows across boxes, lighting dust motes in a hazy halo. He worked methodically, stacking flattened cardboard beside his old footlocker, trying not to get sentimental about all the memories he was sorting through and packing away.
Near the bottom of a crate full of winter clothes, he found his old letterman jacket, faintly musty with disuse. He went to place it with a stack of similar items he never used but couldn’t bring himself toss, then paused as another impulse crept in. What if I gave it to Hawk? They’d joked about it enough times that he could picture the grin Hawkeye would give him—the way he’d wear it around the house, the poses he’d strike in it. How maybe, he’d put it back on later that night with nothing on beneath, arms overhead, stretched out across the sheets—ok-ay, time for a break.
BJ dropped the jacket into its pile and shut the lid, tugging at the neck of his tee shirt to get air moving over his suddenly sweaty skin. He shut the light and crept down the narrow ladder, then across the hall, peeking into Erin’s room. She slumbered peacefully. Moose-moose had escaped her tight hug to sit upside-down beside her pillow, over which her fine blonde curls spread in a frizzy mess.
Watching her sleep always undid him a little. He leaned against the doorframe and cleared his mind of thoughts about packing, finances, the move, the neighbors, the upcoming town hall. What would it be like when Hawkeye met her? Surely, she’d be dazzled by him, too.
BJ’s fantasies merged. Hawk, jokingly wearing the letterman jacket around the living room—never mind the fact that he’d never get to see the house, now. He’d budge up next to BJ on the couch, a steadying weight at his side, and get invested in one of Erin’s imaginative games. A perfect match, really. Erin loved silly voices and songs and was rarely shy around adults, following around anyone who piqued her interest with worshipful intensity.
She’d get the two of them down onto the floor eventually, the chosen location for her favorite games. He shut his eyes, imagining the scene. Maybe Hawkeye would take his hand while they crawled around the carpet. Eventually, when she was a little older, they’d play boardgames together. Better still, they’d teach her how to swim and buy her first bike with training wheels. He pictured the tree-dappled road near Hawkeye’s favorite spot and the herd of elementary-aged kids who’d torn through with their bikes and wagons. For a peaceful moment, all was quiet.
Then Peg and Viv tumbled through the front door in a cacophony of laughter.
“BJ! Oh my god,” Peg called.
He shut Erin’s door to keep her from stirring and made quick of the stairs, meeting the two of them in the living room, where they haphazardly shucked their coats onto the furniture. “What happened to you two? You sound like you just robbed a bank.”
Viv’s cheeks were pink, her hair windblown. “No robberies, but we did make use of a getaway car.”
“From a comedy club?” Granted, the one they’d chosen for their evening out had a reputation for being a bit transgressive, but that didn’t help him connect any dots. “What, did you try to steal the performer’s jokes?”
Peg snorted, leaning on the bar cart as she caught her breath. “We’re not you, BJ. We can come up with our own material.”
“Betrayed by my own wife!”
“No, listen to this: we were having a grand old time, and between performances, I went to the restroom. Viv stayed at the bar, and then—”
“And then I went to order us another round of drinks,” Viv said, hands flying. “When I looked across the bar, who did I see on the other side, all by his lonesome and pretending to blend in? Gary.”
BJ’s stomach dropped. “Gary? That doesn’t sound like his scene.”
“That’s what I thought! But I wouldn’t put it past him to be a giant hypocrite, right? So I figured I’d keep an eye on him, and sure enough, watched him move around like he was casing the place. I probably waited a little too long, because I know for a fact he saw me across the bar. That’s when he looked over his shoulder and made some kind of hand signal, and I realized—oh, we’re about to get raided.”
Peg jumped back in, talking fast. “She comes barreling into the restroom, practically rips the door off the hinges, and says, ‘We need to get out. Now.’”
Viv’s laugh went high with leftover nerves. “I told the bartender on my way, just in case, but there wasn’t time to wait. So we—”
“—climbed out the window into the little alley behind the club,” Peg finished. “Viv nearly fell into a dumpster.”
“Would have, if not for my knight in shining armor.” Viv slung an arm around Peg’s waist, tugging her in close. “We ran out the alley and hightailed it right back here.”
“Hence the getaway car,” he said, earning another peal of giggles from both of them—adrenaline, probably. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. As amusing as the image of Viv nearly toppling into a dumpster was, he couldn’t help but run an unpleasant series of calculations in his head. Gary was, after all, the kind of guy who’d see this as leverage. “What the hell would he have booked you for?”
Peg shrugged. “He could have been there for the comic. She was something, wasn’t she?”
“Oh, salacious. You’d have loved her, BJ.”
“Great crowd, too. Maybe they were checking IDs, putting names on a watch list.”
“Helping McCarthy find out who’s naughty and nice,” Viv said. “Gary’s a regular, all-American Santa Claus.”
That, unfortunately, seemed more likely. “Good on you for getting out when you did,” he said, though the back of his neck still itched.
He strode to the windows on autopilot and twitched the curtains back just in time to see a car without headlights turn onto the block. It slowed as it passed their house, and even though the night was dark and the windows rolled up, BJ knew it on sight.
“Did he follow you?” he asked through gritted teeth, spinning back in time to catch the worried glance they exchanged.
Viv joined him at the window. “Maybe he’s headed home.”
“With his headlights out? You said he saw you, didn’t he? He’s checking up on you, but doesn’t want us to know it.” BJ dropped the curtain and paced to the bar cart, itching for a drink, but discarded the idea as an ill-conceived one and about-faced to the bookshelves. “Was it even a coincidence that he showed up in plainclothes at the club you were at?”
“You think he tailed us there?”
“I think it’s hard to swallow that all this is random happenstance.”
Viv’s laugh, this time, had a dark edge to it. “What an absolute weasel.”
BJ paced another circuit of the room, turning sharply on his heel at each end, trying to work the itch out from beneath his skin. He had a target on his back. It had been there ever since the new year, but after the firework incident, he wouldn’t put it past Gary to redouble his efforts to rattle their cage—to get him to back down, to fall in line, to kowtow.
This was a threat. An explicit one, just like the ones Flagg and Frank used to make.
“How aren’t you more upset?” he asked, whirling on them.
“Honey.” Peg laid a hand on his arm, stilling him. “I put the house on the market this morning. If he wants to be the king of the cul-de-sac, he’ll get what he wants in a month or two, and he’ll have no reason to keep us in his sights. We can lay low until then. Once we’re out of here, this will be just another funny story.”
He rubbed at the back of his neck, the spot where his hair stood on end, waiting for a sniper’s bullet. “I hope for all our sakes that you’re right.”
#
The next morning, BJ woke at dawn and went for a run, crisscrossing through the neighborhoods surrounding the cul-de-sac until his lungs burned and his thighs ached. Early fog blurred the streets into a soft, grey haze. By the time he returned to his driveway, his shirt clung to him, heavy with dew and sweat.
He was deep in a hip flexor stretch when he spotted Tom Morris out for a morning stroll, cup of coffee in hand. Not exactly who he wanted to see in the few hours he had to himself before heading in for work, but never let it be said he couldn’t be neighborly.
“Morning, Tom,” he called, still catching his breath.
“Hey there.” Tom gave him an easy smile. “You’re out early. Training for the marathon?”
BJ huffed a laugh. “I’m not that ambitious. Just trying to oil the joins so I don’t start creaking when I bend over.”
“Brave man! If I went running before work, I wouldn’t be able to get out of my chair at the end of the day. Ellen would have to wheel me home.”
They fell quiet for a moment—the sort of neighborly pause that usually ended in talk about the weather or trash pickup—but BJ didn’t have it in him. Not after how the prior night had ended.
“Look, Tom,” he said, voice lowering, “I’ve got to tell you something.”
He started carefully, easing into it the way he might when delivering bad news to a patient’s family. Evidence first, then the conclusion. Gary in the comedy club, signaling for the raid after seeing Viv at the bar, driving past their house with the lights off. As he spoke, he watched Tom’s face shift from open curiosity to something guarded. A wall went up behind his eyes, polite but impenetrable—the kind that said I don’t want to hear this.
“I was over his place for the game the other day,” Tom said once BJ finished. “I apologized to him and Susan for what happened over Labor Day. It was clear to me that tensions were . . . high everywhere. Maybe you should think about doing the same.”
BJ’s pulse, still elevated from the run, kicked up. “Are you serious? You apologized to him after he set off a firework that nearly hit your kid?”
“No sense in crying over milk that wasn’t spilled, right?” Tom shifted, looking past him to the end of the driveway. “We just need to keep things neighborly. Make nice, as Ellen says.”
Make nice.
“What am I supposed to be sorry for?”
Tom gave him a tight smile. “I think you know what I’m trying to say.”
“No, tell me. Am I meant to be sorry that he and Susan have been telling the neighbors that I’m unstable? Sorry that half the nurses in my department think I’m unfaithful to my wife because of some vendetta Gary has against Viv? Sorry that he’s following my wife to the city and staking out the clubs she goes to in plainclothes—”
“You know I think you’re a great guy, BJ, but you have to understand how you sound right now.”
BJ pulled up short, swallowing the rest of his tirade and deepening the stretch, hoping it’d hide the tremor in his frame. He’ll get what he wants in another month or two, and he’ll have no reason to keep us in his sights. But Tom was stuck here. Committed. For him, survival looked a lot more like surrender.
“Alright, BJ said, dragging up that old mask of agreeable guilelessness he once wore as a shield, even though it chafed. “I appreciate you having a chat with me. I’ll have a think about it.”
Tom clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit.” He turned to continue his stroll, but hesitated before reaching the sidewalk. “Once you and Gary sort things out, let me know. Now that summer’s done, I’m thinking about starting up poker nights again. It’d sure be nice to have you there with the other guys from the neighborhood.”
Once upon a time, BJ would have done just about anything for an invitation like that. What was it if not a stamp of approval, definitive proof that he had played by the rules and received his reward and could finally, finally rest on his laurels as ‘one of the guys?’
He couldn’t think of anything he wanted less.
“That’d be great, Tom. I’ll keep in touch.”
Notes:
Holding myself to my promises and trying to post 2x/week until we're done! You might also notice that the overall expected length of the story has changed from 27 to 29 chapters; the tldr is that the two climactic chapters ended up being so long that I split them for my sanity. I know there are no cosmic rules about chapter length, but once I get over 10k, I start to twitch, so. Here we are.
Wanna talk MASH / writing stuff with me? I'm on tumblr @dioxazinepurple.
Chapter 23: Hawkeye - Late September 1954
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
For three Sundays running, BJ seemed distracted during their weekly call. He talked, sure, but it was the kind of talking that didn’t quite connect—the same sort Hawkeye did around the coffee maker in the last hours of a double, when he kept his mouth moving because it stopped him from falling asleep on his feet.
At first, Hawkeye had done his best to brush off his unease. Everyone had rough days, and BJ chatted about town hall preparations gamely enough, even if he kept turning questions back Hawkeye’s way—“how’s work? How’s Callahan? How’s the paper coming?” Once they hung up, however, the memory of the conversation ate at him, and Hawkeye spent the next week picking at it from every angle, hunting for a satisfactory explanation for the sudden change. If he could just come up with a reason, he figured, he’d be able to stop himself from catastrophizing.
He tried to distract himself by looking at plane tickets, but by the time he was ready to book, another Sunday call had passed, and the wrongness failed to right itself. Whatever was going on in California, it clammed BJ up the way he used to in Korea when things went sideways.
Unable to shake the sinking feeling in his gut, Hawkeye put the plane tickets on hold, and another week passed. When the following Sunday rolled around, he once again found himself mid-ramble with nothing but a backing track of unconvincing uh-huhs and mmms for encouragement.
Maybe he’d been naïve to think he could hold onto BJ’s attention with an entire continent between them. Because surely, this was a sign that BJ had started to drift. He’d finally realized how impossible this was. Love wasn’t enough, and a handful of calls a month weren’t worth it, and he was trying to get up the gumption to let Hawkeye down easy.
In his agitation, Hawkeye found himself pacing the apartment while he talked. The long cord of his phone snaked behind him, and he came to rest by the living room windows, forehead pressed against cool glass. Streetlights had just come on outside, their warm glow fighting back the encroaching twilight.
“Listen,” he said, changing tracks mid-sentence. “I get it if you’re, y’know, busy. Work sounds like it’s a lot right now. If you need to—”
“What?”
Hawkeye rubbed at his eyes. “You sound distracted. We can take a rain check for next week, and you can tell me all about the town hall. Or. Anything else you need to say.”
“No, Hawk, wait.” BJ sucked in a long breath. “Things have been kind of going to shit over here lately. I didn’t want to throw it all on your plate.”
“On my plate? What happened to ‘please tell me you’re doing well, and if not, I hope you’d tell me about that too?’”
A long beat of silence passed, filled by the soft tick-tick-tick of his watch.
“I’m sorry,” BJ said at last. “You’re right. I’ll try to get it all in my next letter.”
Fuck, this was it, wasn’t it? But the thought of waiting a week or more to get his goodbye via the postal service was intolerable. “What do you mean, letter? We’re talking to one another right now, aren’t we?”
“We have less than ten minutes. I don’t want to—”
“Tell me.”
BJ heaved a sigh, and Hawkeye’s hand tightened on the phone. Then, against all odds and every assumption he’d built up, BJ launched into a story about a Labor Day barbeque gone wrong. It left Hawkeye pacing agitated circles as three consecutive realizations dawned: somehow, by some miracle, BJ wasn’t sick of him yet, which meant he’d misread BJ’s distraction so severely that Sidney would have a field day dissecting how he’d worked himself into a tizzy over it, and wow, BJ’s neighbors were even bigger assholes than his previous letters had let on.
“—so I told him to get fucked, packed up, and headed home,” BJ finished, startling Hawkeye into a fit of laughter.
“Bravo, Beej!”
“No, not ‘bravo.’ I walked away. I couldn’t—there was nothing I could do, and I turned tail, and I retreated. Just like that, I was twelve again.”
Hawkeye made a face at the phone. “But you said something. You didn’t just roll over for him. That’s not nothing.”
“And accomplished what? He’s not going to change, and I’ve officially turned the neighborhood against us. Susan is spreading another round of rumors. You’d think we were plague rats with how fast the park clears out when we show up with Erin.”
“What the hell’s she trying to do?”
“I don’t know.” BJ sounded, frankly, exhausted. “But that’s not all of it.” He continued with another anecdote, this time about a comedy club Peg and Viv attended—and a surprise raid carried out by Gutless Gary—that left Hawkeye itching for retaliation. “And each time he goes a step further, it knocks me for one. The neighbors keep telling me that he’s not serious, that he’d never abuse his authority. But it feels serious. Or, if not serious, targeted.”
Right. Because this was more than an argument about lawn ornaments or hedge lengths or whispers of infidelity or any of the hundred other things that had dogged BJ throughout the year. If Gary was willing to push that far, he was more than an idle nuisance.
“He sounds like Frank. Or Flagg.”
“That’s what I said to myself, too. He spends half his life polishing boots with his tongue and expects to get a pat on the head for it, and when he doesn’t, he wants to punish anyone who isn’t licking dirt right alongside him.”
Hawkeye snorted. “Sure. But every once in a while, even Frank got lucky, and when he did, he became dangerous. I’ll never forget the time he shot you in the ass.”
“Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of. That Gary will get off a lucky shot.”
“Then maybe you need to get right back after him the way we did with Frank.”
“Wish I knew how.” BJ paused again. “You know, it’s funny. Part of what made Frank so unbearable was that we were stuck with him. Now I’m starting to feel the same way about Mill Valley.”
Hawkeye wrapped the cord around his finger, then unwrapped it, grasping for a response that wasn’t what the hell, Beej? “I find that hard to believe. Mill Valley was all you talked about when we were over there.”
“And I think we’ve established that the Mill Valley I talked about was a fairytale I used to get through the war, even if I didn’t know it at the time. Home isn’t just a house on a cul-de-sac. Or at least, that’s what I’m starting to realize.”
“What do Peg and Viv have to say about all of this?”
“They saw the writing on the wall before I did. We’re listing the house.”
Hawkeye got a hand on the window sill to steady himself. “Holy shit.”
“End of an era, right? But it’s for the best, even if it’s bittersweet.”
“Where are you—I mean, if you’re selling, are you—”
“We’ll rent in the city for a while. Then I guess once we’re all settled up . . . we could go anywhere.”
“See? I knew you’d come around. Doesn’t ‘Nutmegger Peg’ have a nice ring to it?” His stomach dropped the moment the words left his stupid motormouth. What an unfair joke to crack to a guy who had a life and a family in California, who—
“Do you mean it?”
“Forget it,” Hawkeye said, cord tangling around his ankles as he paced. “You know me. Foot in mouth, off-color humor—”
“I hope that’s not all it was. We’ve talked about it, Hawk.”
He paused halfway between the couch and window. “You. You’re serious. You can’t be serious.”
“We are. I think . . . well. It’s a big decision.”
“Astronomical. Insane.”
“Sure. But we’re ready for a change, and I don’t want to be three thousand miles away anymore.”
The warmth in BJ’s voice put a lump the size of a fist in Hawkeye’s throat. This was a complete about face from what he’d thought was going on in BJ’s head at the beginning of their call, and he struggled to process the self-inflicted emotional whiplash.
Hawkeye pinched himself, and—ow, okay. He was awake. He was on the phone with BJ. And BJ was seriously considering a move to Connecticut.
“You’re talking about quitting your job. Leaving your home. Don’t, don’t tease me with this. This is . . .” He was starting to get choked up. “I should find a way to come out west.”
“You just performed open-heart surgery.”
“And, and what? The work you’re doing isn’t worth a damn? You’re still, you’re still—”
“A good surgeon, too. I know. But don’t tell me you can’t see the difference. My work doesn’t mean the same thing to me as yours means to you.”
It took a significant application of will to stop himself from arguing for arguing’s sake. He sucked a breath in through his nose and thought over what BJ had said. Yes, BJ was an excellent doctor. He had a cool head and talented hands and a warm bedside manner. But if BJ left his current position, then what? He’d still be BJ, wouldn’t he? He’d excel wherever he went.
With a flush of guilt, Hawkeye admitted it wasn’t the same for him. His stomach churned when he thought about leaving Grace to hunt for a similar position on the west coast. Dad was right. He’d found meaningful work and a team that fit, and if he gave it up for anything less, he’d start eating parts of himself until there was nothing left. But so what? He was needy, he was unstable, and now BJ had to sacrifice on his behalf?
“It’s not fair to you.”
“Listen to me, Hawk.” BJ’s voice went low the way it did when he was dead-serious, every syllable enunciated. “When I think about who and what I want to be, yes, I want to take care of people, but being a doctor is only one part of that. I want to be the kind of person who builds a family and a community around me. That means more to me than anything. And while I know I can be that person here, the truth is, I don’t want to.”
“But you’d be leaving your—”
An exasperated sigh crackled over the line. “My what, my shitty neighbors? I’d be bringing everything I care about with me. From the moment my feet land, I’ll have Peg, Viv, Erin—and you, too. My family. The rest, I can build with time.”
Hawkeye started pacing again, tight little circuits from the window to the couch and back. “And, and what happens when I have another couple of weeks like I did in August? That’s not going to go away. I’m not the kind of guy who’s ever going to be on an even keel. It’s a lot, BJ. I’m a lot.”
“You think I don’t know that after living with you for two years? Sure, you’re a lot, and you need a lot, and I wouldn’t want anything less.”
Jesus. Jesus. Hawkeye scrubbed at his eyes and fought to keep his voice even, because god knew they were already skirting the edge of plausible denial if a curious operator had decided to listen in. “And what do your three lovely ladies think about this?”
“It was Viv’s suggestion.”
“It was what?” Their literary letters had grown to a point where they were almost as long as the ones he wrote to BJ, but still, this was something else.
“We’ve backburnered the conversation for now. The hope is that you’ll all meet soon, and when you do, we’ll set down concrete plans.”
Hawkeye returned to the window, dragging the cable with him, and set the phone on the ledge. Were those tickets still on hold with the airline? And what if he bought them, if he flew out to California, if he reached for this—and it evaporated the moment he closed his fists around it?
What if Erin hated him? Or Peg resented him? Or he and Viv got on like two cats in a paper bag? Worse still, what if they all came out east and, after he invariably swung down again, and decided he was too much of a mess? Maybe BJ didn’t think so, but BJ wasn’t the only one who’d have to put up with him. This was a fantasy. A dream. It had to be. Taking it seriously meant opening himself up for unbearable heartbreak.
From this vantage point, he could see exactly where Margaret had sat when they made their deal. She would kill him if he fumbled his end. He scrubbed a hand down his face. Unfortunately, she’d be right to. Again. Still. Because sure, the worst might come to pass, but it wouldn’t hurt any less if he was the one who threw in the towel first.
And besides, he was genuinely terrified of calling Maragret up and telling her he’d chickened out.
“Maybe it’s time for me to see sunny California firsthand,” he said.
BJ’s excitement was palpable. “We’d love that. Can you—Thanksgiving? You can’t imagine how much pie we make. It puts what we did at that diner in Kennebunk to shame.”
He opened his mouth to tell BJ that actually, he had his eye on a flight much closer than the holidays, but thought better of it. Why spoil the surprise? Or, alternatively, why open BJ up for disappointment if his now-very-last-minute plans fell through?
“I probably won’t get the holiday itself off, but I’ll talk to Callahan.”
“When you do, would you ask him if he was serious about headhunting?”
Hawkeye leaned against the window frame, eyes shut. Unbelievable. This was unbelievable. For a heartbeat, he let himself imagine looking up during another complex surgery and seeing BJ scrubbed up across from him.
“Cal wasn’t blowing smoke. It’s—Jesus, Beej, if that’s a serious ask, I’ll have him put it in writing.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
On the sill, Hawkeye’s egg timer went off in an obnoxious trill of bells. He slapped it off. Whatever this call cost, he’d pay it. If they hung up now, he’d about peel off his skin with nerves.
“I should let you go,” BJ said.
“Wait, wait.” But what was he meant to say? As much as he wanted to ask for reassurance, he hesitated, because god, he was trying to make this work, not scare BJ off by being much-too-much at every available opportunity. His attempt to weed the thorny tangle constricting his rib cage made him reach for an old standard, one he’d fallen back on a hundred times before when the strength of what he felt far outpaced what he was allowed to say. “Let me tell you a story, Beej.”
“You’re going to get charged an arm and a leg for this. It’s fine if—”
“Once Peg gets her Connecticut license, she finds a neighborhood near the shore. There’s parks and trees and greenery nearby, and an old fishing town with shops and restaurants. If you go inland just a little farther, you’re in the city. But down by the shore, you see, there’s a duplex. Call it the Pierce-Hunnicutt duplex. And it’s you and Peg and me and Viv, with a door passing through from one side to the other. Miss Erin has free reign over all of us, the queen of our little castle.”
The other end of the line went quiet for long enough that Hawkeye began to panic, fidgeting with the strap of his watch. Maybe he’d made a mistake by coming ten-toes-in with his deepest-held fantasy.
Then BJ cleared his throat. “We’ll get home from work and try out new dishes every time it’s our turn to cook,” he said, voice rough. “No repeats, even when Peg and Viv get tired of listening to us argue over the recipes.”
Hawkeye grinned. “After dinner, you’ll go out to the garage and tinker on your motorbike, and Peg, Viv, and I will read dime novels together on the couch.”
“I’ll come back in and fix us a nightcap, which we’ll drink over a game of scrabble. You’ll cheat, and Viv will call you on it every time.”
“I don’t cheat!”
“Of course not, Hawk,” BJ said, trotting out that light, flip tone that made Hawkeye want to bite him and kiss him all at once. “Do you still knit?”
“Sure. Not as much as I did over there. More in the winter.”
“We’ll put on a record. I’ll hold your yarn for you.”
Hawkeye shut his eyes to keep them from watering. “I’ll knit you a sweater.”
Even thinking about it invited bad luck, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted.
“And on our days off, we’ll go for walks along the water with Erin to collect seashells, even when it’s cold out. We’ll just wrap her up in her coat and mittens—a regular little New Englander.”
He pictured her all bundled up like a snowman and huffed out a laugh. “We’ll have a yard where she can build snow forts. I’ll teach her how to make maple syrup candy on the snow, and we’ll eat it until we glue our teeth together.”
“We’ll have a fire in a real fireplace.”
“We’ll get matching smoking jackets. Viv in an angora sweater, Peg in a dress with a zipper down the back—”
“You know, I don’t mind so much anymore that those zippers didn’t catch on.”
Hawkeye cackled, the force of it throwing his head back to connect with the window frame. “God, I miss you.”
“Hawk, I would give anything to be there right now.”
He bit back his first instinct of a reply, because they were already tap dancing along the line of what they could say over the phone, and the reel of images playing behind his eyes would send them well across it. That didn’t stop him from picturing it so vividly it sent a pulse of heat straight through him: a winter’s night, a blanket in front of a hearth. Slowly unwrapping BJ’s layers, like a present, his skin warm and golden by firelight. Kissing him until he made those little growly noises, until he called Hawk his sweetheart, until he rolled Hawkeye beneath him and—
Okay, okay, wow, he needed to take this elsewhere or the next words out of his mouth would be explicit.
“Y’know, I might finally be able to answer the ridiculous prompt you gave us when we got lost after that medical conference.”
BJ’s hum of recognition sounded through the line. “The first time love conquered all.” He paused. “I might have to change mine.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. This story starts with a cookie I met at the airport.”
“BJ, I swear to god.”
“It was the worst day of my life. I’d just been drafted, left my wife and baby girl, and flew across the world to a war zone. And then I met this . . . cookie in Kimpo.”
Hawkeye rubbed his temples. “Beej, when you made that joke, were you seriously—”
“Shh, this is my story, now. No interrupting.” BJ recounted a series of very familiar events—ones Hawkeye had turned over and over in his thoughts like a worry stone for years, though BJ’s version was slightly different. His was all about a “cookie” who’d welcomed him, pulled him into a day’s worth of misadventures, and got him back to camp safely. “That day was a blur. Hell, between acclimating to camp, getting a new commanding officer, and operating on my first batch of wounded, that whole week was a blur. During my second day of surgery, I ended up with a really tough chest case. It wasn’t a procedure I’d ever taken lead on, but every other table was occupied, so it had to be me. I don’t think I’d have managed it if my cookie hadn’t talked me through it while finishing up with a patient on the other side of the OR.”
“Sounds like this cookie really knew their stuff.”
He could practically hear BJ’s shit-eating grin through the line. “You don’t know the half of it. Sure, there’s all the things that caught my notice initially—dark hair, tall, great legs, the most gorgeous eyes you’ve ever seen—but it turns out my cookie was a fantastic doctor. A great teacher. Funny as hell, too. I swear my sides were in stitches half the time.” BJ dropped some of his jokey affect. “I was in awe. And when I finished closing, do you know what they said?”
“What, Beej?”
“That I was a good surgeon. That I had damn fine hands. Hit me like a punch to the ribs, you know? I realized I’d do anything to get another compliment like that. To be noticed again. Seen again. So I spent years trying.” His voice quieted to something tender. “I fell in love hard and fast, even if I couldn’t let myself act on it.”
Hawkeye rubbed his palm over his sternum, trying to soothe the confusing contradiction of a heart breaking and mending at the same time. Among the thousands of operations he’d seen and done, he remembered that chest case, too, mostly because of the absolute relief that’d swamped him when he realized that BJ would be able to carry his weight in the OR despite being fresh out of residency. And hell, practicalities aside, Hawkeye had a thing for competence.
“That was”—Hawkeye swallowed hard—“what, five days after your arrival? Six?”
“If that.”
“God, Beej.” Years. They’d been like this since the very beginning. Both of them. “I didn’t realize it had been that long. For you and your ‘cookie.’”
“Don’t you remember what I said at the lake? About how this isn’t some fallback? I meant it.”
Hawkeye nodded at his empty apartment. Right. Right. BJ wouldn’t, then, shy away from a little reciprocal honesty. “Rudyard Kipling. Or, if we’re being conservative, Coleman Hawkins.”
“Huh?”
“That’s when I knew I was in trouble.”
“Oh, Hawk. Sounds like you were kept waiting a long time.”
Hawkeye toyed with the band of BJ’s watch. “Maybe. But I think I’m making up for it.”
They fell quiet for a moment, the full weight of the past few minutes of conversation settling. Then, on the other end of the line, another timer went off—one BJ must have set when Hawkeye turned off the first one.
“I’ve kept you for far too long,” BJ said.
“Don’t worry about it.” For a moment, Hawkeye debated eating the cost of another fifteen minutes, but let go of the temptation when he considered that he likely wasn’t the only one eager to share a quiet Sunday afternoon with BJ. “Listen, take care of yourself, alright?”
“I’ll do my best. Same time, same place next week?”
Hawkeye grinned. If his plans panned out, by next week, they’d be in the same time and the same place. “Sure. ‘Night, Beej.”
He hung up and side-stepped the tangled nest of cord he’d tracked around his living room. That was tomorrow’s problem. A glance at the clock confirmed it was far too late to phone the airline—that would also be tomorrow’s problem, though he had some ideas for how he might avoid ticketing issues. With any luck, those ideas would help him plan an entrance to rival how BJ had turned up on the porch of his father’s house. A grand gesture, even—in keeping with a long line of grand gestures BJ had made for him.
If he was committing to the gesture, though, he couldn’t show up empty-handed. Hawkeye paced the length of his living room. He’d already given BJ his watch, so another clock-themed gift would be a little on the nose. Besides, this gesture wasn’t just for BJ, but for Peg, Viv, and Erin, too. Something that’d say I want to be here. Or maybe something that said I’m not taking BJ away from you again. Or, better still, BJ promised me a family, and I said yes, and I’m here to make good on that. The three of them were more than just extensions of BJ and had mattered to him in their own right for a long time.
His pacing took him into the apartment’s second bedroom which, of late, doubled as a makeshift office. In the bottom drawer of the small secretary desk, he found a battered manilla envelope. He hadn’t looked at the papers inside in well over a year.
I, Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce, being of sound mind and body, though perhaps slightly less so of the former, do hereby make my last will and testament, intending to leave all my possessions to my dad with a few exceptions:
Hawkeye skipped the rest of the will and instead shuffled through the pages that followed it, eyes catching on name after name after name—some of which came with memories of faces, others meaningless except in aggregate. He’d kept up with them after his return from Battalion Aid, a ritual of sort, all the while telling himself that he’d eventually deliver it in person. In the back of his mind, he’d imagined bringing it to a tween Erin, perhaps—an answer to a precocious kid’s questions about her dad’s time in Korea. Erin was too young to understand now, but this was about the gesture more than the substance. A way of saying even then, I knew that loving BJ meant loving his family.
He did, however, suspect that giving the will in its original form might prove a little too macabre for the occasion. So with a sigh, Hawkeye took a seat and started copying over names.
#
Hawkeye rapped lightly on the doorframe before stepping into Callahan’s office. Late morning light slanted through the blinds. It striped the floor and cut across stacks of paper and framed photographs on the desk: an old one of Callahan with his parents and sister beside a more recent snapshot of his niece in full confirmation garb.
“Pierce,” he said, glancing up from a chart, glasses perched low on his nose. “If this is another attempt to get me to send a gag gift to Winchester . . .”
“Not this time.” He hopped up on the edge of Cal’s desk. “I wanted to talk about something you’ve mentioned before—collaborating with hospitals on the West Coast.”
That earned a lift of Callahan’s eyebrows. “Go on.”
“Remember the proposition I mentioned while picking your brain about grant funding a few weeks back?”
“Helping BJ prep for his talk at the town hall, sure.”
Hawkeye resisted the urge to fidget with Callahan’s paperweights. “Right. And you’ve been saying for months you want us more connected, haven’t you? What better time to head out there and talk shop about research opportunities than when they’re pushing for expanded public health funding? I’m sure they’d be interested in what we’re doing here.”
Callahan pulled his glasses from his nose and set them down atop a chart. “What brought this on?”
“Can’t a guy want to spread the word about his team?”
“Sure. But I know that’s not why you’re asking.”
Hawkeye hesitated. “BJ’s been having a rough time,” he said, giving up on his quest to avoid fidgeting. He picked up a paperweight shaped like the Eiffel Tower and rolled it between his palms while summarizing the bulk of the conflict with Gary.
“I’m sympathetic to his plight,” Callahan said once he finished, “but I’m not quite seeing your angle.”
Any other time, he’d have thrown in a joke about poaching or recruitment, something easy to deflect attention from the raw, terrifying hope that hid underneath. This was too important.
“I want to go over there for his talk, and I’d like to bring a formal job offer with me, providing you’re actually willing to write him one.”
Callahan blinked. “Really? He’d move the whole clan out east?”
“I cannot stress to you how much this scares me,” Hawkeye said, voice low. “But yes. He needs a lifeline out, and I want to give it to him. And in the meantime, if I can be there for him? I will kiss as much tuchus as you need me to kiss to make it happen.”
Callahan studied him for a long moment, eyes sharp but not unkind. “Give me the morning to make some calls. I’ll see what I can do.”
“You’re a saint, Cal.”
“I’m a pragmatist,” Callahan said, picking up his pen again. “Now get out of here before I make you repay me by finishing my paperwork.”
#
Hawkeye was halfway through a pointed story about a series of snafus that had gotten his ass tanned during med school when his resident finally admitted—grudgingly—that maybe he should have listened to Barb’s recommendation in the OR that morning. Alas, the admission was so faint Hawkeye needed to lean in to get the whole of it.
“Maybe?” Hawkeye repeated, one brow arched. “That’s the word you want to go with?”
The resident fidgeted with his stethoscope. “Fine. I should’ve listened to her.”
Hawkeye tipped his head toward Barb, whose expression hovered somewhere between smug and eternally, unbelievably patient. “I think Dr. Nelson has something to say to you.”
“Is that so?”
Nelson exhaled through his nose. “I’m sorry, Nurse Tanaka. You were right.”
“Just listen next time, hon. Save us both the time and the trouble.”
“Good,” Hawkeye said, satisfied. “Apologies tendered, honor restored, lesson learned.” He clapped his hands. “Now get out of here before I assign you to clean suction traps for penance.”
Nelson blinked, startled, then laughed, shaking his head as he backed toward the door. “You can’t actually do that.”
“Wanna bet?” Hawkeye called as Nelson retreated into the hall.
Barb snorted. “You just like throwing your weight around.”
“Only when I’m right. Which, as you know, is almost always.”
Callahan appeared in the doorway, and Barb’s chuckle died down. He crossed the room, cleared the stack of paperwork from Hawkeye’s desk chair, and helped himself to a seat. “Good news, Pierce,” he said, giving Barb a genial wave as she chose that moment to make her exit. “Dr. Wright at SFG is very interested in our recent work in heart surgery.”
“Oh?” Wright was BJ’s boss, so that sounded promising. “How interested is ‘very?’”
“Enough that I’m willing to admit, to my chagrin, that you’ve inadvertently helped me save face. It turns out Wright contacted me in July, but I was distracted—as were we all—and never got back to him. I think he forgave me about halfway through our call.”
“Did you start the tuchus-kissing on my behalf?” Hawkeye batted his eyes. “Cal, you shouldn’t have.”
Callahan’s lips quirked. “Not quite. I promised I’d put my best tuchus-kisser on loan. They want a demo of some of the closed-heart procedures we’ve been working on, and the chest team is practically salivating over the possibility of a talk on the bypass machine. He was so excited by Dina’s case study that he suggested you might want to deliver Saturday’s keynote address.”
That was a little more than he’d bargained for, but well. Gift horses and mouths and all that. “They didn’t have a keynote speaker yet?”
“Wright was planning to do it himself, but sounded delighted at the possibility of having it taken off his hands by someone with your credentials.”
“If it gets me out to San Francisco, I’ll deliver whatever he wants me to deliver.”
Callahan cocked a brow. “Good, because I’m given to understand that our mutual friend at Mass General also got a nudge from Wright—one extended after I failed to respond in a timely manner. I’m not letting Winchester get the upper hand on cross-coast networking.”
“I’m jumping in to close for you again, is what you’re saying.”
The tease won him a smile. “So to speak. But this isn’t just about the rivalry. Wright confirmed that the town hall will be telecast locally, but with additional regional radio coverage because the mayor will be in attendance and speaking in support of the proposition. It’s likely the AP will pick up the story, which would be great press for our work.”
“My dad did always say I had a face for radio.” He winked. “I’ll be sure to get my beauty rest the night before.”
Callahan snorted. “We both know that’s absolutely not what you’ll be doing.” He craned his neck, checking the hall, then added, “Might as well take advantage of the hospital sending you out there on the company dime and spend some quality time with your fella.”
“I’ll put the candlelit dinner in my expense report.”
“And I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Though I expect the guys will line up for a debriefing when you’re back. Pete especially.”
Hawkeye huffed a laugh. Ever since seeing the photo of BJ mowing the lawn, Pete hadn’t let a salon go by without asking after that knockout from California. “Pete is a lech.”
“Pot, meet kettle.” Callahan dropped a folder on his desk. “Those are some notes I took on the phone call—more forthcoming when Wright gets back in touch later today. Plan for a quick turnaround. You’ll fly out Wednesday, return on Monday, and yes, you’ll have to bribe Schraeder to cover your shifts again.”
“Jesus,” Hawkeye muttered. “At this point I’m going to owe him a kidney.”
Callahan’s smile broadened. “Good thing you have two of them then, isn’t it?”
Notes:
If you ever want to have a good laugh, just imagine me proofreading this while trying to do my best Alan Alda impression to test whether or not heavy dialogue scenes sound 'right' in my mangled version of Hawkeye's voice.
Also: if you're wondering how much that call cost, the answer is: several hundred dollars' worth of Hawkeye's money and a decent chunk of my sanity.
Come say hi on tumblr @dioxazinepurple! I love talking about writing and MASH and all things beejhawk.
Chapter 24: BJ - September 30th 1954 - AM
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
After crawling his way through two night shifts early in the week, BJ had the misfortune of drawing a scheduled appendectomy first thing Thursday morning—a punishment when he was already so worn down. He hit snooze upwards of three times before Viv’s threat of “BJ Hunnicutt, don’t make me come in there” shot him through with enough adrenaline to send him out of bed and halfway across the room in a single bound. Viv’s beauty rest wasn’t the only collateral damage from his ‘snooze’ habit. By the time he finished with his ablutions, he no longer had time for a sit-down breakfast, though thankfully, he still managed to make it into work on time.
The surgery itself should have been uneventful. Cooper, his diligent third-year resident, had handled plenty by now, and BJ trusted him to lead it without trouble. But from the first incision, something was off. Cooper’s movements were stiff, overcautious, and every time BJ offered a note—a gentle “watch your depth” here or an “ease your angle” there—Cooper’s jaw tightened like he was being scolded.
BJ cast an inquiring glance at the scrub nurse, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Was it him? He hadn’t been so run down since Korea. If stress was turning him back into an approximation of who he’d been over there, there was a strong likelihood he owed Cooper an apology for some sin he’d committed and promptly forgotten. His frustration too often found the wrong target.
And he had plenty of reasons for it. Things in the cul-de-sac had been fraught: icy stares from the Davises and Simpsons, awkward silences from the rest, polite hellos that faded to whispers as soon as he turned his back. He hadn’t taken Tom up on his offer to join poker night and likely wouldn’t have been welcome, anyway, given how he’d yet to extend an apology to Gary. Peg insisted that none of them were worth his energy, but that didn’t make the street feel any less hostile. After the near-miss at the comedy club, BJ paid more attention whenever he went out for errands or took an evening drive. He was certain that Gary was keeping tabs on them. It made him feel more justified—and less paranoid—for insisting that they lay low and spend their evenings at home for the foreseeable future, but being so cooped up also made them stir crazy.
Only a few more weeks until the lease on the apartment Peg had found began. He could hang in until then. And after that, only another two months until the holidays. Until Hawkeye was in his arms again, if he managed to get the time off. Far less, all told, than the year they’d spent apart after armistice, but still enough to leave him aching. There were days when he fought the temptation to call in sick just to sleep in and try to see Hawkeye in his dreams.
BJ let out a long sigh. Cooper, now in the middle of closing, flinched at the sound, eyes darting his way.
Jesus, what the hell had he done? Clearly it was something, though combing through the last meeting he’d had with Cooper left him empty-handed. He’d been so sure his misdirected anger hadn’t come to work with him.
Cooper fled for the scrub room the moment they handed off their patient to recovery, and BJ fought the unwise temptation to rub his eyes. Damn, he was too tired for this, but he ran his quarry to ground at the sinks, anyway, where Cooper had his back to BJ and his curly head bent to the task of scrubbing off an hour and a half in surgery.
“You want to tell me what that was about?” BJ asked, stripping his gloves and gown. “You’ve never looked like that in the OR before.”
Cooper’s shoulders climbed up to sit level with his ears, but he didn’t respond.
“If there’s a problem, I’d rather we talk about it before it becomes a habit.”
“No, Doctor.” Cooper kept his eyes fixed on the drain. “No problem.”
“I don’t bite, you know.” Not unless I’m asked nicely, added the Hawkeye who lived perpetually in his head.
That got him a visible flinch.
Huh.
“If you’re struggling with something outside of work, the details are none of my business.” He watched Cooper carefully, but the kid gave nothing away. “If it’s work-related, though, as your attending, I hope you know you can tell me. Either way, I think we can agree—whatever that was, it can’t happen again.”
Cooper shut the tap. The room fell quiet. For a moment, BJ thought that’d be it, but then Cooper cut him a quick, nervous glance.
“It’s just—there’s been talk.”
“Talk.”
Cooper scratched the back of his neck, unseating his surgical cap. With it askew, his round cheeks and wheaten hair gave him an even more youthful appearance. Or, perhaps that was because everyone, even residents a handful of years younger than BJ, seemed like kids after he’d returned from Korea.
“Some of the staff . . . well, the rumor’s been going around that you, uh . . . lost your temper.”
A cold thread snaked through BJ’s gut. “Lost my temper how?”
“In an altercation.” Cooper looked like he wanted to sink through the tile. “That you threw a punch, and someone—one of the nurses told me it was a neighbor of yours—ended up in ortho.”
The words hit like a slap. For a moment, BJ couldn’t find the air to respond. He set his towel down on the counter, fighting to keep his voice steady. “And you believed that?”
“I didn’t—well, I didn’t want to. But people were saying it like—like it was common knowledge. I kept thinking . . .”
Kept thinking that his attending was a big, fat hypocrite. Kept thinking that the guy who was supposed to be his mentor and advocate had such a hair-trigger temper that he rearranged a guy’s jaw.
God dammit.
The wretched irony was how he could feel that temper now, heating his face, tempting his hands to ball at his sides, jaw tightening hard enough to make his teeth ache. He was the kind of guy who’d throw a punch. He’d thrown one at a man he loved more than anything. Hell, he’d nearly strangled a patient for the man he loved more than anything.
Too often, the gnawing, thrashing thing inside of him reared up and threatened to take control. BJ hated that it drifted so close to the surface that everyone could see him wrestling with it. More than that, he hated the look on Cooper’s face, because he’d had a hand in putting it there.
God, he didn’t want to bring this east with him. He was standing at the cusp of a fresh start, a better life—so why couldn’t he leave this wounded, animal part of himself behind?
BJ took a slow breath, then another. He intentionally relaxed his hands, his jaw. He’d need to do something about this soon—to find a way to stop reacting to every threat with rage. But that was a conversation for Sunday, and for Hawkeye, who’d been trying to get him to talk to Sidney for years. As for what he could do here and now . . .
“I appreciate your honesty, Cooper, but I’m afraid you’ve been taken in by gossip.”
Cooper nodded miserably. “Yes, Doctor. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry for telling me,” BJ said, softer, in control of his voice once more. “You’re the one who’s owed an apology. I hate to think that a rumor about me impacted your performance or our working relationship. If it kept you—or anyone—from coming to me for help this week, that’s on me to fix. But I need you to know it didn’t happen.”
That was, thank god, the right thing to say, because Cooper’s posture relaxed. “I should have come to you first,” he said.
“You should have, but I’m not surprised you didn’t.” BJ gave him a wry look. “Now go grab something to eat before our next case. You look like you need it.”
“What about you, Doc?”
BJ had long since metabolized the stale donut he’d fished out of the break room, but there were more important matters at hand than feeding himself. “I suspect you know exactly what I’m about to go do.”
“Doc, I—”
“I’m not asking you to snitch. I already know who’s behind this, and the last thing I want is for you to feel like you need to pick sides or get in between us.”
Cooper managed a weak smile, nodded, and ducked out.
When the door swung closed behind him, BJ swayed and gripped the edge of the sink so hard his knuckles went white. He'd dismissed Susan’s gossiping earlier in the year, but back then, it resulted in nothing more than a few judgmental glances. Now, his relationship with at least one resident had been affected. And there was a terrible possibility that Susan’s influence could spread.
If Wright caught wind of this, or if, god forbid, it started dogging him in broader professional circles, it’d get him blacklisted from conferences and publishing opportunities. No one wanted the liability of an unhinged veteran with a violent temper in their department. And why would Callahan want to take a risk on a guy with professional baggage attached to his name?
BJ took a shaky breath and weighed his options. An apology to Gary would stop the rumors at the source, but maybe, just maybe, he could appeal to Susan’s better angels first. She was a good nurse at the end of the day, and one who prided herself on her work. He could get her to see she’d gone too far over a neighborhood squabble. Or, failing that, he might at least negotiate to keep their work and home lives separate.
If not, their scheduled ten o’ clock gall bladder removal would be significantly more awkward than he’d expected.
After stripping down to his scrubs, BJ took a turn past the nurse’s station. No sign of Susan, but on the far side of the floor, Wright was chatting with a man partially obscured by a doorway—admin, probably, based on the suit. BJ ducked away before he could be pulled into conversation. The man’s height and dark hair made him think of Hawkeye, but then, so did everything. Hawkeye was a constant specter, worse than he’d been during their year of letter writing, and BJ took a moment to pause outside the break room, imagining Hawkeye at his side, their shoulders brushing, the constant stream of chatter Hawk would keep up in his ear. Three days and—he checked Hawk’s watch, lump in his throat—four hours until he could hear that voice again on their weekly call.
The fantasy shifted, briefly, to involve a stolen moment in an empty break room. Nothing salacious. Just his arms around Hawkeye’s waist, his cheek pressed against Hawkeye’s collar. If he concentrated, he could feel the phantom pressure of their hug from the helipad.
What he wanted, more than anything, was to be held.
“Doctor?”
BJ opened his eyes to find himself in front of the break room door, body-blocking a nurse from entering.
“Sorry,” he said. “Asleep on my feet for a moment, there.”
She gave him an awkward smile as he held the door open for her.
Dammit, Susan.
The object of his ire sat near the break room windows at a table with a med student and a handful of other nurses. They cleared out with alacrity as BJ approached the table. Susan, however, didn’t look up from her breakfast, lips a moue of displeasure.
“I heard an interesting rumor this morning,” he said, hanging onto his placid demeanor by a thread.
She didn’t acknowledge him.
“Can we talk about this like adults?” He pulled out a chair and dropped to sit across from her, voice pitched low, but likely not low enough to prevent the entire break room from listening in. “Your husband and I might not see eye-to-eye, but we both know it’s never come to blows, so you’ll have to forgive me for wondering what the hell you’re after. This is my career you’re playing with, Susan. My life. And for what?”
Susan softened as he spoke, but the door to the break room burst open before he could press her for a reply.
“Dr. Hunnicutt!” Cooper winced when he saw who BJ was sitting with. “Nurse Davis.”
“Cooper, can you give us a—”
“What is it?” Susan asked, ignoring BJ’s pointed look.
Cooper brightened. “The new keynote speaker just arrived. Did you hear who Dr. Wright managed to get? Some bigshot thoracic surgeon from out east. He’ll be doing demonstrations today and tomorrow, I heard—a mitral valve repair and a few others. Wright is showing him around and making introductions. He asked me to come and find you.”
Susan took that opportunity to pop up and escape the break room with a herd of curious staff, leaving BJ no choice but to follow her into the hall. Cooper led the pack back to the nurse’s station. He wasn’t the type to get bouncy when excited, but BJ had spent a year working with the kid and knew his emotional state was best measured by how quickly he talked. Apparently, he’d already received an invitation to watch the valve repair—a development that had him nearly eating his words with anticipation. That, and BJ’s attempt to catch Susan through the fast-moving crowd, meant he didn’t register the substance of Cooper’s patter until they pushed through the double doors at the end of the hall.
“He’s from the Grace New Haven team,” Cooper said as they reached the nurse’s station, then added, sotto voce, “that’s Yale, you know.”
And sure enough, standing next to Dr. Wright in the heart of their wing was the tall, dark-haired man from earlier, no longer hidden by a doorway.
“Hawk,” BJ whispered, a single syllable that escaped along with all the air from his lungs.
Hawkeye was here, looking right at BJ, eyes sparkling in that gotcha way, crooked grin growing to take up half his face. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but then again, nothing did, because BJ’s higher function skipped like a scratched record at the juxtaposition of Hawkeye against the mundane backdrop of his day-to-day life.
And what a contrast it made. Hawkeye wore a charcoal suit—a much nicer one than BJ had seen him wear back in Connecticut—with a tie a shade closer to purple than his old bathrobe. If the Class As were good, this was another universe of handsome. Another plane. The tailoring emphasized the length of Hawkeye’s legs, the breadth of his shoulders. BJ wondered, somewhat desperately, what the wool would feel like under his palms, warmed from beneath by Hawkeye’s skin.
He floated through the growing cluster of staff to the front of the crowd as if in a trance, heart beating so hard he felt faint with it.
“Ah, good, Hunnicutt!” Wright beckoned him closer. “This is—”
“Of all the gin joints in all the world,” Hawkeye said, and the distance between them collapsed.
BJ pulled Hawkeye into a back-slapping hug, chests colliding. He sucked in a shuddery breath, trying to regain his composure, because they had an audience, and that audience wasn’t the 4077th, and he couldn’t let himself forget it. Talk about a challenge. Hawkeye was a warm weight in his arms, and he wore cologne BJ didn’t recognize but liked regardless, and wasn’t that a revelation, suddenly understanding Hawkeye’s impulse to bury his nose into something and breathe? Because this little bit of contact, more than he’d had in months, was enough to leave him weak-kneed.
A hazy memory of the O-Club sprang up. He’d catapulted out of his seat and grabbed Hawk around the shoulders after spending a day without him, drunk and ecstatic, chanting Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawkeye. A mirror of his current inner monologue.
He pulled back. The hug was too-short, too-platonic, and to ease the sting of separation, he grabbed Hawkeye by the elbows, holding him like an anchor.
“What are you doing here?” he asked through a bubble of incredulous laughter.
“Callahan sent me out. I thought about calling, but it was much more fun this way.” Hawkeye scooted to sling an arm around his shoulders. “Dr. Wright, I apologize for making you an unwitting actor in a little deception, but you’ll have to forgive a guy for wanting to surprise an old war buddy. Especially after this joker gave me the shock of my life by making a cross-country house call this summer!”
BJ didn’t bristle at “old war buddy,” even though he was already tired of how they had to trot it out for just about every introduction, because his new vantage point had him facing the crowd, and the look on Susan’s face was priceless. It got even better when Wright gestured for BJ to do the honors. He made the introduction gladly.
“Our keynote speaker and the best surgeon I know, visiting from Grace New Haven: Dr. Hawkeye Pierce.”
If her jaw dropped any lower, they’d need to page custodial services to help her scrape it off the tile.
Hawkeye’s arm slipped from his shoulders as he shook hands all around, eschewing Wright’s attempt to direct him to the surgeons and taking time with each nurse, resident, and med student. During introductions, BJ learned that Hawkeye would scrub in the with the chest team that morning and fought to smother his ravenous envy, because his next surgery would almost certainly conflict with the demonstration. The sting of it didn’t ease until Hawkeye returned to his side, butting their shoulders together companionably.
Susan took that opportunity to approach. “You said you were part of the team that performed open-heart surgery, Dr. Pierce? I heard a rumor that one of your nurses operated the bypass machine.”
Perhaps BJ’s hope that she’d come around wasn’t so misguided, if she was willing to admit professional interest even after months of implying that Hawkeye was a figment of his imagination.
Maybe she was under Gary’s thumb the same way the rest of them were.
“Anita Jansen,” Hawkeye said. “She and Barbara Tanaka were the backbone of the operation, if you ask me. Are you coming to the talk on Saturday? I’ll say more about the team then.”
Her eyes flicked BJ’s way. “I’m scheduled in the OR that afternoon, unfortunately.”
“That’s a shame. Well, I’ll be here all day today and tomorrow. If you have questions about our nursing staff, I’ll do my best to answer them or put you in touch with someone who can do a better job.”
Susan thanked him and ducked off to the nurse’s station. A few hangers-on still hovered at the periphery, hoping to get another word in, but Hawkeye had finished his rounds and didn’t pay them mind. He threw his arm back across BJ’s shoulder, and god, he’d forgotten what it was like to stand in a room of people all in Hawkeye’s orbit and be the one he chose.
“Are you scrubbing in with me?” Hawkeye asked.
BJ fought the temptation to turn his head the few inches it’d take to brush his nose against Hawkeye’s cheek. “I wish I could, but I have surgery in a half an hour.”
“Anything interesting?”
“A cholecystectomy.” (1)
“Scheduled, I take it. That typical?”
“Not necessarily.” He nudged them away from the nurse’s station in hopes of making it at least a little less likely that whatever they said would be repeated by the grapevine. “The trauma team pages me first whenever an emergent resection needs doing.”
“After all the guts we trimmed over there, I bet they’re thrilled to have you in their back pocket.”
“Apparently my performance bowelled them right over.”
Hawkeye let out a honk of laughter that drew the attention of almost the entire floor. It rushed through BJ like gold, and he stood a little taller, because yes, that’s right, he was the one who could get Hawkeye Pierce to laugh like that.
“You on day or swing?” Hawkeye asked once he got his breath back.
“Swing.”
“Dinner Chez Hunnicutt, I presume? I’ll come by once I’m done with the presentation.”
“Can’t wait.” He squeezed Hawkeye’s shoulder and pulled away, doing his best to set his anticipation aside, because if he let himself dwell, he’d stitch his patient’s guts into little bows. With his professional mask back on, he turned to Susan at the nurse’s station. “Ready, Nurse Davis? We have a gallbladder to get after.”
He cast a glance over his shoulder as they headed for the double doors at the end of the hall, just in time to catch Hawkeye’s wink.
Susan was predictably quiet as the team scrubbed in together, unlike Cooper, who peppered BJ with questions from the moment he swung through the door.
“You’ve worked with Dr. Pierce? In the OR?”
BJ spun the tap. “Did hundreds of surgeries in the same room as him. Maybe thousands. I wish I was exaggerating.” (2)
“But that’s—”
He could almost hear Cooper’s mental gears turning and gave a quick glance around the room while reaching for the scrub brush. As he suspected, the rest of the team was watching him while doing their darnedest to pretend they weren’t. For good reason, perhaps. They all knew about Korea in the way that coworkers often knew relevant bits of one another’s business, but BJ hadn’t spoken about it at work. Ever.
Maybe that was a mistake.
“Sometimes our MASH unit would get over three hundred wounded in a day,” he said, pitching his voice low. Background chatter ceased, the room going silent beneath the patter of water in the sink drain. “We’d operate twenty, thirty hours straight. Not everyday—god, no, sometimes we were so bored we started racing cockroaches, and that’s not hyperbole—but when the wounded came, they came in a flood. It was brutal. You’d clear a patient from your table, re-glove, and another would be lying there by the time you turned back.”
Cooper stared at him, brush dangling from a limp hand. “How?”
“Well, corpsmen would bring them in on stretchers, and—”
“No, I mean, how did you keep going for so long? I’m spent after a few hours at the table.”
The question was heartbreaking, in a way. Cooper was only a year or two younger than BJ had been when he was drafted, but in moments like this, BJ felt like they were decades apart.
“The human body can put up with an awful lot when it doesn’t have any other choices,” he said at last.
“I can’t imagine.”
He gave Cooper a wan smile and shut the tap with an elbow. “It was an adjustment, and I’m sure it would have been a rockier one if it weren’t for Hawkeye. He was our chief surgeon, and he’d already been there a year by the time I showed up. Trust me, he’s just as good as his resume makes him sound. I’m glad you’re getting to see that valve repair later today. If he does anything with arterial grafts, make sure you’re the first one in the room. Boy, do I have some stories I can tell you about those.”
Cooper rocked up onto his toes the way he did when particularly enthusiastic about a suggestion, but thankfully saved his curiosity for a later date. He did, however, give Susan a long look before turning for the OR, pausing with his back to the door, hands propped up in front of his chest.
“So, when you were gone this summer, it’s because you went out to New Haven to see Dr. Pierce? That’s a long way to travel.”
Ah. Evidently, Susan’s rumors about the Fourth had made it here, too.
“Wouldn’t you fly cross-country for your best friend?”
“Well, sure.”
BJ shrugged. “There’s your answer.”
They swung through the doors to the OR together. Once inside, Susan appeared at his side with a set of sterile gloves. With the rest of the room still bustling in preparation, he didn’t have enough privacy to return to their previous conversation, but couldn’t resist the temptation to rub a little salt in.
“So,” he said, catching her eye while speaking loud enough for Cooper to hear. “Got any more questions about my friend Hawkeye?”
Her jaw went tight, and she turned away, balling up the packaging for the gloves and tossing it in the trash.
Fine. Let her be like that. Hawkeye was here—here—and BJ suddenly found it hard to care about much else, Susan and her rumors included.
“Not right now, Dr. Hunnicutt,” Cooper said, approaching the patient’s bedside. “But I’d love to pick your brain about those arterial grafts later, if you don’t mind.”
Showtime. “Alright, Dr. Cooper. Let’s get started.”
#
BJ’s shift took approximately a decade to pass. To his eminent frustration, by the time he and Cooper finished the gallbladder removal, Hawk was already scrubbing in for his demonstration. BJ had half a mind to sneak into the viewing gallery, but his hopes were waylaid by an incoming car crash victim with major abdominal trauma.
From there, he barely had time to stuff a questionable cafeteria sandwich in his mouth before diving into a herniorrhaphy. (3) His shift had minutes left by the time he closed, and he hid in the office he shared with two other surgeons to finish his chartwork, not daring to show his face anywhere he could be waylaid. He didn’t even risk cutting through the main corridor on his way out. If admin attempted to tap him to cover a shift, his response would make Susan’s rumors look like sugarcoating.
The house was quiet when he arrived. Peg had taped a note in the entryway—At the park. Home by five—which was probably for the best, but left nothing to distract him. He showered and changed into jeans and a henley, then wandered the length of the living room three times before deciding the coffee table needed straightening. After that, the couch cushions. Then the bookshelves.
Jesus, he was nervous. It hit him all at once that he and Hawkeye had spent, what, five days together since Korea? Those five days had rewritten the shape of what they were, not into anything unrecognizable, but enough that this ‘hello’ would look a lot different than their last one. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? Hawkeye’s visit, surprise though it was, meant they were both on the same page. Hawkeye wasn’t brushing him off until next season or next year. So why the hell did his stomach feel like it was trying to eat itself?
The clock in the kitchen ticked toward half past four. BJ was midway through another restless lap through the house when tires crunched in the drive. His pulse jumped, and he made it up the hall to yank open the door just as Hawkeye stepped onto the porch. For a long moment, they just stood there, looking at each other—an inverse of that misty night in Maine.
“Hi,” Hawkeye said, a little breathless. “Learned a funny thing today. Turns out you’re a lot more distracting when you aren’t in surgery with me than when you are.”
“I can’t believe you’re really here.”
“On your porch, in the flesh, waiting for you to—”
BJ grabbed him by the arm and tugged him forward. “Get in here.”
The door shut and Hawkeye was in his arms, clutching him like Crabapple Cove, like the helipad. A hand came up to cradle the back of his head, and BJ melted into it. He tucked his face into Hawkeye’s shoulder. All at once, it dawned on him that this particular brand of Hawk-hug, one he associated with longing and uncertainty, was different now. He was allowed to have it. Holding tighter, he nosed his way to the soft skin above Hawkeye’s collar and kissed him there, again and again.
“I missed you,” he murmured, breathing him in. The cologne really was nice. “I missed you so damn much.”
Hawkeye nuzzled the spot beneath his ear. “Tell me about it.”
Eventually, he pulled back far enough to get a proper look at Hawkeye, one where he could take his time without an audience. Hawkeye seemed well, he thought. He hoped.
“How”—he cleared his throat, suddenly choked up—“how are you?” It came out like inane small talk, but he hadn’t meant it that way, and as always, Hawkeye understood.
“Better than I was. Much better.”
BJ drank him in, watching his lips move, just a little chapped from the dry air on the plane. “You look it.” A self-deprecating laugh bubbled out of him. “That suit, Hawk. I hope the tailor wrapped it up with a warning label.”
“Flatterer.” His hands came up to frame BJ’s face. “Now, not to imply that you don’t knock me for six, but I’ve gotta say, you look like you’re having a rough one.”
“Not anymore,” BJ said, reeling him in by the tie and kissing him.
Their restraint unraveled at once. They tugged desperately at one another, as if pulling hard enough would erase the ache of months without. BJ’s head spun like he’d drained the still. He relearned the solid shape of Hawkeye beneath his hands, the dizzy rhythm of his kisses, the pleased little sounds he made, like BJ was something to be savored.
I missed you. I love you. I can’t believe you’re here.
BJ dragged his lips up Hawkeye’s jaw. “Peg will be home in a half an hour.”
“Well, then.” Hawkeye stepped back to strip off his jacket and tie. “What are we waiting for?”
They ended up tangled on the couch together, Hawk with his shirt unbuttoned and slacks dangling from one ankle, BJ stripped from the waist down. He slotted in between Hawk’s thighs and kissed every inch of skin he could reach: the broad expanse of Hawkeye’s chest with its scattered hair, slightly thicker on one side. The bump of his Adam’s apple, nestled beneath the soft line of his jaw. The tiny scar scoring his upper lip, tempting BJ to nip at his cupid’s bow, to then deepen the kiss to something sweeter while pressing Hawkeye back into the cushions.
BJ laughed into the kiss, overcome. They were on his couch, in his house—the one he now felt at home in for the first time since he was drafted, because finally, finally, Hawkeye was here, too.
And Hawkeye wasn’t unaffected, either, though BJ allowed it likely had more to do with how they rocked together, each press of hips drawing a low moan from Hawkeye’s throat. He’d never get tired of that sound, of knowing he could get Hawkeye to make it, and shifted up to wrap a hand tight around Hawkeye’s cock, just the way he liked, thumb swiping beneath the head on each stroke. The touch took Hawkeye from a languid, debauched creature to one right on the edge.
“Oh god,” Hawk said, then profaned an impressive list of deities. “Don’t stop, Beej, don’t stop, don’t—” He bucked into BJ’s hand, head hinging over the arm of the couch as he came all over his stomach, the very picture of rumpled abandon. He was so lovely like this, so very dear, that it brought tears to the corners of BJ’s eyes.
Now it was Hawkeye’s turn to laugh, thighs shaking, as he reeled BJ back in to press a chain of kisses to his mouth, his cheek, his temple. “God, I needed that.”
“Me too.” His hips hitched against Hawkeye’s, heedless of the mess. He was wound tight, caught halfway to the edge with no relief.
“Yeah? You needed to jerk me off?”
“As if you didn’t know exactly what you were doing when you sent me that photograph. Turned me back into a teenager for a few weeks, there. Couldn’t get it out of my head.”
With a cocky grin, Hawkeye yanked BJ forward to straddle his shoulders. “I’ll give you something else to think about.”
He must have meant retroactively, BJ decided, because when Hawkeye swallowed him down, he found himself incapable of summoning any thought at all.
BJ switched back on again some time later, slumped sideways against the back of the couch. Hawkeye’s cheek rested against his thigh, and he had a hand in Hawkeye’s sweaty hair, toying with the ends, fingertips tracing the curve of his ear.
“You with us, Beej?”
Hawk’s voice was raspy, which made sense, because he’d just—well. He’d given BJ something to think about, for sure. Jesus, he was going to need to practice his technique. And wasn’t that an appealing thought? If Hawkeye even hinted at an interest or a desire, he’d trip over himself figuring out how to fulfill it.
“Holy shit, Hawkeye.” He reached out and ran a finger down Hawk’s throat, bumping over his adam’s apple. “That was . . .”
“C’mere.”
BJ went, feeling quite tender, shuffling down to press his face into the crook of Hawkeye’s neck and kiss him there. What a wonderful thing, to consider all they’d yet to learn about one another—and all the time they’d have to do so.
That line of thought sometimes came with a touch of melancholy. A part of him would always wonder what it’d have been like if this dimension between them had developed in Korea. In an alternate timeline where they fell together as an outlet and a source of support, what would have changed? A thought experiment for late nights, perhaps, but not an entirely useful one. There was no sense wondering what if. The fantasies with which he rewrote his loneliest and most painful memories were far different than what reality would have been like had he and Hawkeye acted on their impulses, and he’d never regret waiting until they were able to love one another without the desperation Korea would have engendered in them.
“You’re thinking too hard for what I just did to you,” Hawkeye murmured, fingers scratching a pattern along BJ’s spine and leaving a shower of tingles in their wake.
“Thinking hard about how lucky I am.”
Stretching like a contented cat, Hawkeye dropped his hand atop BJ’s and squeezed, which gave BJ a look at his watch. Five to five.
“Shit!” He sprang up and over the coffee table, landing in the middle of the living room on shaky legs. “Peg’ll be home with Erin any minute.”
Hawkeye flailed off the couch and tripped over his trousers, still stuck on one ankle, and collided with BJ, nearly taking both of them to the floor. They caught one another around the shoulders, laughing breathlessly. The scramble to the kitchen resembled a three-legged race. Shirts and shorts and jeans were reclaimed along the way, and they set one another to rights in front of the sink, where Hawkeye splashed water on his face and managed to tame his impressive bed head.
“This is all your fault, you know,” Hawkeye said, ducking this way and that to get a look at his reflection in the window. His lips quirked at the corner. “Never should have let you get your hands in my hair.”
“Let me? You were the one who—”
He patted his cowlick in place. “That should make a decent impression though, right? Where’s my tie? Or should I do without? No, no, with. Wouldn’t want to show up in anything less than my best for the ladies Hunnicutt.”
“Hawk.”
“Should I have brought a bottle of wine? Or uh, a cake? I’m realizing now that I invited myself over for dinner, and all I have is a little something for Erin, who I’m sure will be very appreciative, but it’s Peg I should be—”
“Easy, sweetheart.” The endearment brought Hawkeye up short, and BJ took advantage of the stillness by slinging Hawkeye’s tie around his collar and using it to tug him in for a kiss while getting started on a Windsor knot.
Hawkeye made a pained sound against his lips.
“You alright, Hawk?”
“Say it again.”
“It.”
Hawkeye pressed a hand over his eyes, as if he couldn’t bear to show his face. “You know what I mean, you rat fink.”
It took a moment’s calculation to solve for ‘it,’ but BJ managed while finishing the knot. Call me sweetheart again, Hawk meant. Or maybe I like it, with a side of I’m trying to ask for things I need.
Knot tied, he pulled Hawkeye’s hand away from his face and kissed each knuckle, then straightened his collar. “All set, sweetheart.”
Hawkeye faceplanted into BJ’s shoulder. A gentle stroke of that curved spine answered his question from earlier in the morning: the wool did, indeed, feel nice and warm beneath his palm.
“They’re going to adore you,” he said. “I promise.”
As if summoned by intent, the scrape of a key in the door alerted them of Peg and Erin’s arrival. It was time. It was happening. After months of daydreams, Hawkeye was here, and BJ’s halves were about to meet.
Beside him, Hawkeye visibly steeled himself. “Well, too late to run now.”
“I think it’s been too late for both of us since Kimpo.”
He took Hawkeye’s hand and met his watery smile with one of his own, then led them into the hall.
Notes:
We're getting into the part of the story that is Pure Fun For Me To Write and I'm very excited about it. Would love to shout about all things MASH on tumblr!
(1) This is a gall bladder removal, likely done for a patient suffering from chronic gall stones.
(2) I’m not sure whether this is mentioned in any way on the show, but the fictional 4077th was about half the size of a (real) MASH like the 8076th, which, at its height, had ten medical officers and, on one occasion, handled over 600 casualties in a 24-hr period. The 4077th we see in the show is apparently a little different from the book, which I believe put its capacity at around 300 wounded in a 24-hr period with four general surgeons and one neurosurgeon. Those wounded wouldn’t have been split amongst the surgeons (the nurses would have carried a heavy load, and many of the enlisted soldiers had medical specialties, too). But that is still, pardon my French, an astronomical fuck ton of wounded to get through. After two years of that, the names in Hawkeye’s will could probably fill a book.
(3) A hernia repair surgery.
Chapter 25: BJ - September 30th 1954 - PM
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Peg, as she often did, called out when she opened the door. “We’re home, honey! Whose car is that in the drive?” She froze when she found BJ and Hawkeye standing together in the hall, doorknob slipping from her hand to let the whole thing swing open, revealing Erin at her side.
“Daddy!”
Erin bolted headlong over the threshold and into BJ’s legs, all gingham and bouncing curls. He caught her under the arms and wrestled her up, kissing her cheeks until she broke into delighted, feet-kicking giggles. Her excitement melted him every time. It also meant she didn’t register the stranger at his side—unlike Peg, who rubbed at her eyes as if doubting them.
When her hands dropped, though, she broke into a brilliant grin. “Oh my goodness, Hawkeye!”
She made it up the hall in two strides and, when he offered her his hand, used it to pull him into a hug. Hawkeye bent for it, chin tucked into her shoulder. His face tipped BJ’s way, eyes shut, brow pinched. But the hint of vulnerability only lasted a moment before he tightened his arms around Peg’s waist to whirl her around in a messy spin.
“You’re even lovelier in person,” he said, stepping back to get a good look at her.
“And you’re even more of a charmer.” She turned to Erin, still perched in BJ’s arms, who’d finally noticed the new addition to their afternoon routine. “Do you see who it is, Bear? It’s Uncle Hawkeye!”
Erin pushed at BJ’s shoulder, and he helped her slide down to the ground, where she held onto his pant leg and regarded Hawkeye with sudden shyness. And Hawk—oh, there was so much written in the wavering line of his lips.
BJ reached for him. “You alright?”
“Yeah.” Hawkeye’s throat worked. “Yeah, just give me a minute.”
He watched Hawk disappear into the living room, ignoring Peg’s arched brow. It’d be fine, wouldn’t it? It had to be fine. Hawkeye wouldn’t have come if he wasn’t ready. And surely, the world wasn’t so cruel that he’d get the people he loved most in the world together only for everything to fall apart in the eleventh hour.
Hawkeye returned before BJ gave into the temptation to check on him. One pocket of his slacks bulged with a conspicuously toy-shaped object, made more obvious when he crouched to get on Erin’s level. With a hand braced against BJ’s leg, he extended the other her way, same as he’d done with Peg.
“How do you do, Miss Erin?”
She didn’t take it, electing instead to hide her face and peek around BJ’s leg with one wary eye. He’d find it a lot cuter if the situation weren’t so loaded.
“Bear, when someone tells us hello, we—”
“Easy, Beej. It’s totally understandable,” Hawkeye said. “I’m a strange man in her house, after all. But listen. I’m here on behalf of a mutual friend of ours—a certain four-legged denizen of the forest—called Moose-moose. I believe you’ve heard of him?”
Erin perked up, though she kept her grip on BJ’s leg.
“See, Moose-moose comes from the forest near where I grew up.”
“Pinecone Forest,” Erin said.
“That’s right. Now, I know our friend Moose-moose has relocated all the way out here to sunny California to live with you, but he had a buddy back home who missed him very much, so I brought him out for a visit.” Hawkeye dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “And if you ask me, I think his little buddy might want to stick around.”
Just like that, another Hunnicutt fell under Hawkeye’s spell. BJ had watched Hawkeye work his effortless charm on patients, on new draftees, on kids from the orphanage. It made him melt back then, but struck with a thousand times the force now that Hawk was charming his little girl.
Erin’s eyes lit up. “Friend for Moose-moose?”
“Here.” Hawkeye extracted the lump from his pocket, which turned out to be a second stuffie—a dog significantly smaller than Moose-moose. “I don’t even want to talk about what it took to get him on the plane. Turns out airlines are touchy about animal passengers.”
BJ squeezed his shoulder. “I still can’t believe we got you on a plane.”
“Sedatives, my dear Beej. The joy of the surprise wasn’t the only reason you didn’t see me until this morning. I hardly remember getting to my hotel.”
At last, Erin relinquished her grip on BJ’s leg. “Doggie for me? Uncle Hawk present?”
When she took a stagger-step towards him, Hawkeye broke into a huge grin, eyes swallowed by laugh-lines. “That’s right, Miss Erin.” He handed her the stuffie. “But this isn’t exactly a dog. He’s a coyote, another resident of Pinecone Forest. What do you suppose his name is?”
“Teetee,” she declared with a toddler’s surety, clutching it to her chest.
“What do we say, Erin?” Peg prompted.
Bashful again, Erin hugged Teetee while rocking side-to-side, regarding him over two plush ears. “Tank you.” Then she bounced up to her toes. “Come see?”
“She wants to show you her toys,” BJ translated.
“A quid pro quo arrangement,” Hawkeye said. “I’m ready for the grand tour.”
“Show you my restaurant,” Erin agreed, tugging on his sleeve and dragging him into the living room.
Hawkeye followed, casting a sweet, helpless smile at BJ over his shoulder. He was all knees and elbows as he got down onto the carpet. It put the two of them nearly eye-level, and Erin took advantage, attempting to shove a wooden block of “pasta” into his mouth.
“What, no appetizer course? Miss Erin, I’m aghast! At least start me off with a bread basket.”
That jogged an immediate segue into a game of make-believe, in which Erin decided that Moose-moose and Teetee would go on a mission to find bread for Hawkeye in Pinecone Forest. She was a bit young to keep the thread of a story straight for too long, but Hawkeye played along even as the bread quest turned into an off-kilter approximation of Hansel and Gretel, scattering blocks of “breadcrumbs” across the floor. BJ lost track of the narrative when the three little pigs and Minnie Mouse made a joint appearance, but Hawkeye kept going with “yes, ands” that had Erin squeaking with laughter.
Peg tucked up against his side in the doorway. “This was unplanned, I take it.” Her smile grew Cheshire-cat-wide when he told her how Hawkeye had surprised him at the hospital. “He came to see your talk, didn’t he?”
“Not only mine anymore. He’s our keynote speaker. I don’t know how—” He broke off as it occurred to him exactly how. Wright had mentioned reaching out to several colleagues at their last staff meeting, which meant he’d still been on the hunt for a keynote speaker as late as last weekend. What had happened between then and now? Their Sunday phone call. If Hawkeye prodded Callahan into making an offer in order to get out here, to meet BJ halfway, Wright would have jumped at it.
On the carpet, Erin diligently stirred blocks in a Pyrex dish Viv had found for her at a yard sale. She held it up for Hawkeye to sniff.
“Mmm.” His theatrical noise of enjoyment was a shade too close to one he’d made on the couch a half-hour earlier for BJ’s comfort. “What is this?”
“Soup.”
“Is that butternut I taste? With hints of nutmeg and clove? Beej, I think she’s going to be a chef.”
“I am chef, Uncle Hawk.”
Hawkeye’s face twisted with the pinched effort of stifled laughter. “My mistake, Chef Erin. Next course, please!”
Christ, the two of them were something—Hawk still in that heart-attack of a suit, tie already askew and legs bent beneath him in a complicated pretzel, Erin bustling around him with a line of concentration between her brows. Her focus broke each time she turned her attention Hawk’s way and he busted out yet another sample from his large repertoire of silly faces.
BJ had nearly given in and tackled both of them to the carpet to smother them in affection when the jiggling door handle heralded Viv’s arrival.
“Hunnicutts, I’m home! Whose car is that in the drive?”
The near-verbatim echo of Peg’s entrance gave BJ a chuckle. Viv swept into the living room, jacket already half-off and soon flung across the back of the chair, purse landing beside it with a bounce. Typically, Erin would jump up and sprint to meet Viv in the doorway, but her squeal of delight was instead directed at Hawkeye, who now had a purple crayon dangling from his mouth like a cigarette.
“I see we have a guest,” Viv said, smile growing on her lips—a bold red to match her blouse.
Hawkeye let the crayon fall. “I’d love to shake your hand, but I’m under strict orders to stay on the floor for the duration of the taste-test.”
“Aunt Viv!” Erin finally clocked her appearance and spun around to face her, wobbling a little with the force of it. She thrust the Pyrex Viv’s way. “Making restaurant.”
It hit BJ all at once that the five of them were whole and together, all in the same room at the same time after months of waiting. Though he attempted an introduction, he couldn’t get the words out, and instead watched through blurred eyes as Viv crossed the carpet and knelt beside Erin to buss her on the forehead.
“You’ve built another restaurant, huh? Ambitious.”
“She’s a tough boss,” Hawkeye said. “I might have to start filing for overtime.”
“I’m sure. And is your new employee cooperating, Bear?”
Erin made a non-committal noise, but giggled when Hawkeye scrunched his face at her.
BJ felt Peg’s hand slip into his. Clearly, he wasn’t the only one affected by the cozy scene on their living room carpet. He squeezed back when Viv scooted to sit cross-legged between Hawkeye and Erin. Should he join them, or was it better to stand back and leave them to it? They’d written one another plenty, even exchanged a few words over the phone, so they weren’t strangers in the strictest sense, but—
“It’s a pleasure to meet the infamous Vivian Miller face-to-face,” Hawkeye said, finally extending his hand for that promised shake.
“Infamous? That’s the reputation I’ve earned after months of sparkling literary correspondence?”
“Sure, and for the rumors of your copyeditor’s pen, which have reached the east coast.”
That was BJ’s fault. He cringed every time he handed a draft of one of his papers to her.
Viv’s smile was a knockout—the kind Hawk would have made a fool of himself over when he was still chasing nurses. “Sue me for trying to help BJ put his best foot forward. You’re the primary recipient of his writing, so I figured you’d appreciate my efforts.” The smile shifted into a sly look that typically preceded a tease. “Though I figure a guy who writes his letters on the back of questionable stationary probably isn’t scrutinizing the consistency of Oxford comma usage.”
Peg tugged on BJ’s hand in a request for context, but he had nothing for her, because he hadn’t been privy to any letter-related debates. “Was that an inside joke?” she whispered, then tugged on his hand again. “Since when do they have inside jokes?”
Meanwhile, Hawkeye had started grousing over it. “This again? I’d just moved, and all my letterhead was in boxes. I wrote on what I had at hand!”
“What was it? A Bell Telephone ad flier?”
“And here I’d thought you’d appreciate how I recorded my thoughts about Holden Caulfield on phony stationary.”
BJ couldn’t stifle his laugh, and Hawkeye preened. Viv, however, was significantly less impressed.
“You did not make a pun about one of the most irritating protagonists I’ve suffered through all year.”
“Honestly, I think Salinger himself would approve.”
Their back-and-forth continued, trading references too quickly for BJ to parse. Erin, though not nearly literate enough to have the foggiest idea what they were talking about, giggled along regardless, likely recognizing the same tone of playful sniping Viv used with her parents. Meanwhile, BJ weathered the storm in his chest at the first wave of evidence that this could work. That this would work.
He could picture it: picking Erin up from daycare and walking hand-in-hand with her down a tree-lined street, the brine of sea air on the breeze. They’d push through the front door of their side of a little duplex to find Peg at the kitchen table with a glass of wine and a ream of graph paper, working on designs for her newest client. Hawk would be at the stove—he always claimed he loved to cook when he had someone to do it for—with Viv perched on the counter, feet swinging, badgering him about the thematic content in their latest read. Maybe Hawkeye would be too distracted by the debate to turn and give him a proper hello, but that wouldn’t deter BJ one bit. He’d wrap his arms around Hawkeye from behind and kiss that tempting strip of skin just inside his collar. Then Hawk would twist around and offer up his serving spoon with a bite of whatever soup or sauce he had on the burner, getting a taste-test of his own after chasing it with a proper kiss.
On the carpet, the literary debate came to a close as Viv tossed a block Hawkeye’s way in playful defeat.
“Am I to infer that I’ve won this round?” Hawkeye asked. “First victory of many, I can only assume.”
“Of many?!” Viv’s voice jumped a half-octave. “Of—”
BJ didn’t catch the rest, because Peg yanked him into the kitchen by his elbow.
Thursdays weren’t a cooking day for him, and he opened his mouth to protest before cottoning onto her scheme. It’d be difficult for Hawk and Viv to get a feel for one another if BJ kept hovering around like a moth slamming its head into a porch light.
He wandered to the sink instead, washing his hands mechanically, staring out the window at the lemon tree. Citrus didn’t grow in the northeast, did it? Maybe they’d have apples, instead. Or pears.
“Sounds promising in there,” Peg whispered, joining him at the basin and bumping their hips together. “Look at us, hm? You found yourself a tall, dark, and handsome doctor, and I found myself a sexy librarian. It’s like a romance novel.”
He snorted and reached for her hand, threading their soapy fingers together as laughter trickled in from the other room. “Are you saying we’re going to get our happy ending after all?”
“To have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer . . .”
Who could have predicted what their vows would end up meaning when they first made them those years ago? Not he.
“I’m feeling pretty damn rich today,” he said, then rinsed his hands and set about making dinner for the four people he loved most.
#
Dinner was a joyful affair. Hawkeye had relaxed in increments as they sat around the table together, knee coming to rest against BJ’s, contributions growing in volume until one of Viv’s stories drew out his hyena laugh in all its high-decibel glory. It broke whatever ice remained, and they fell into a rhythm without trying, conversation meandering, jokes tripping over one another. By the time their plates were empty, BJ felt deliciously overloaded with good food and better company.
“Sit, Hawkeye,” Peg insisted in a vain attempt to deter him from helping with the dishes.
BJ watched with quiet, greedy affection as Hawkeye shrugged out of his jacket and flung it across the back of his chair, then rolled his sleeves to the elbow like he was scrubbing in for surgery. The tie went next. Hawkeye tugged it loose and popped the buttons at his throat, which would have been distraction enough even if it didn’t show off the fresh bruise marking his skin where neck met shoulder.
“BJ Hunnicutt, you animal,” Viv said with a delighted grin. “Is that a hickey? I didn’t know you had it in you!”
Peg snorted into her wine glass. “I did.”
The smart remark caught him off-guard, and he inhaled his next sip of wine, dissolving into an immediate coughing fit. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said once he could get words out. “Looks like a bug bite to me.”
“Sure, from the chief insect officer, playing it straight like he always does,” Hawkeye said.
“Sweetheart, I haven’t played ‘straight’ since Korea.”
They stared at one another for a heartbeat before Hawkeye broke, his cackling an irresistible charm that had the rest of them laughing until they wheezed. He collapsed into BJ’s side, cheeks pinked up with it, hand clapped over the spot BJ had given just a smidge too much attention to that afternoon. Even Erin joined in, banging the table with glee.
By the time they got a hold of themselves, tears had tracked down Viv’s face. She wiped them away while encouraging Erin to hop down from her seat. “Alright, Bear. Time to get you ready for bed.”
Erin’s laugher cut short. “Don’t wanna go to sleep.”
“I know, honey, but it’s late.” Viv stroked her hair. “Uncle Hawkeye will be here tomorrow, won’t he?”
Even Hawkeye’s quick assurances—spoken over the shoulder as he ferried plates to the sink—weren’t enough to stop an overtired toddler’s impending bedtime meltdown. Erin’s lip wobbled, and when Viv nudged her toward the hall, she let out a watery cry.
BJ pushed back from the table. Shit.
He wasn’t fast enough. Hawkeye jerked away from the sink and froze with his back to the stove. Silverware clattered into the drain. In the center of the kitchen, Viv crouched, reaching for Erin and hushing her, a sibilant sound that Hawkeye reacted to with a full-body flinch.
“Don’t.” The word snapped from somewhere deep in Hawkeye’s chest, a sharp command so unexpected, it sucked the air out of the room. The resulting silence hung heavy, dense enough that even Erin went quiet. “I’m sorry, I—” Hawkeye drew a ragged breath and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
Shit, shit, shit.
BJ moved first, scrabbling around the table, unsure whether he was going to reach for Erin or Hawkeye until she made the choice for all of them. Face crumpling, she threw herself face-down on the tile with a wail. But before BJ could scoop her up, Hawkeye unstuck himself. He sank to his knees at Erin’s side and, though his hands shook, ran a comforting stroke down her back.
“What if I told you a bedtime story, Miss Erin? Does that seem like a fair compromise?”
As his words sank in, her cries cut short, and she lifted her head to regard him, chin quivering.
Hawkeye glanced Peg’s way. “That is, if”—his voice cracked—“if that’s alright with your mom and dad.”
“Of course,” Peg said, beating BJ to it, far calmer than he could have managed. “She’s drained us dry. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled with fresh material.”
Erin hiccupped and pushed herself up to stand. She regarded Hawkeye through drying tears, grief’s hangover dissipating as a new, intriguing possibility emerged. “Uncle Hawk story?”
“From the source.”
Navigating around the table at last, BJ finally got a hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder to give it a squeeze. “Hawk—”
“I’m fine. It’s fine.”
BJ wasn’t, for a second, fooled by the easy breezy smile Hawkeye pulled out, the same one he used in Korea to mislead others into thinking his erratic behavior was part of some quirky joke. But Hawkeye seemed present, if rattled, and BJ trusted him without question. He let out a long breath to calm his racing heartbeat.
“Alright. If you two head up, I’ll join you in a minute and help you find her PJs.”
Hawkeye gave BJ a hesitant smile and let Erin lead him out of the kitchen by the hand, gathering Moose-moose and Teetee on their way to her room. If her chatter was any indication, she’d traded bedtime dread for the fresh excitement of getting to show her “big girl bed” to Uncle Hawk.
As soon as they made it upstairs, BJ whipped around to face Viv. “I know how that sounded, but I hope you don’t think he was bossing you. It’s just—”
“Korea?” she asked, wryly. “You get the same look on your face when, for a moment, you’re there and here at the same time. Is he really okay?”
“I think so.” God, he hoped so.
“Was it something I said?”
The last thing he wanted was for Viv to blame herself, but he also didn’t feel right talking about The Bus without Hawk there to guide him—or why trying to quiet Erin was a dead-ringer way to set off a whole slew of memories he’d rather not revisit.
“He didn’t mean to snap at you. The shushing just . . . reminded him of something that happened over there. Something he blames himself for.” He hesitated. “I guess you should know that, when I talk about the ‘kids’ we lost, I’m not only referring to eighteen-year-old draftees.”
Viv reached for his hand, then used it as leverage to haul herself to her feet. “I was afraid you’d say something like that.”
“Hawk’s not . . .” He didn’t know what he meant to say. Hawk wasn’t crazy? Wasn’t dangerous? No more than BJ was, himself? Only a few months ago, he’d grabbed Erin and thrown both of them onto the lawn over a backfiring car. “I trust him.”
The rest—don’t let Korea be the thing that gives you doubts, because as hard as we try, we can’t erase it, and if you punished him for it, it’d kill me—wouldn’t push past the knot in his throat.
Peg’s hand landed on Viv’s and squeezed all three of theirs together. “We know, honey.”
“Take a breath, BJ.” Viv wiggled her fingers. “I’m sure I’ll get the chance to talk it through with him tomorrow.”
He tried to swallow past a too-dry throat and reached for Erin’s sippy cup, popping the lid and draining her water in a gulp. How could he explain it to them? There was so much riding on this, on the four of them finding a rapport and a rhythm with one another, and ever since they said they would try, he felt like he was in freefall without a parachute.
“We have time,” Peg echoed. “But right now, I expect he’s stumbling around Erin’s room trying to find her pajamas, and could probably use some help.”
“Right,” he said and offered no resistance when they shooed him into the hall.
By the time he made it upstairs, however, he discovered that Hawkeye hadn’t needed his help. He’d already gotten Erin changed and tucked into bed, and BJ paused in the dim hall to avoid interrupting the story—an “Uncle Hawk” original, indeed, about Moose-moose and Teetee building a little log cabin in Pinecone Forest with their friends. He did funny voices for all the characters, eyes disappearing into a smile each time Erin giggled.
BJ rubbed his knuckles over his sternum in a futile attempt to dispel the pressure in his chest. Had Hawkeye experienced anything like this in the Swamp when BJ told the story of Androcles and the Lion to those orphans? Surely that couldn’t hold a candle to how Hawkeye perched along the edge of Erin’s bed, one knee tucked up beneath his chin, the other leg dangling long, profile cast in warm light by the bedside lamp. BJ had to rest a hand on the doorway to keep himself upright through the exquisite agony of watching two halves of his heart stitch themselves together. His girl was the best thing in his world, the best thing he’d ever done. To share her with Hawkeye, to watch him dote on her, to see her light up around him—there weren’t words for it.
Erin was half asleep when the story came to a close and thus miraculously let Hawkeye go without protest. He unfolded himself from his spot on the edge of her bed and tucked her in carefully, placing a kiss atop her brow before lifting the safety gate.
Only after clicking off the lamp did he turn and find BJ watching him from the doorway. He held a finger to his lips, eyes twinkling, and snuck past, then shut the door with a gentle snick.
“Should we rejoin the—oh.” Hawkeye stiffened for a heartbeat when BJ’s arms wrapped around him, then relaxed into the embrace.
They were both quite tender, it seemed. BJ pressed his face against Hawkeye’s open collar. As Hawk leaned in, the barest tremor ran through his frame, and one of his hands came up to cup the back of BJ’s head.
“Thank you.” BJ placed a kiss to the hollow of his throat. “You and your Uncle Hawk stories will be the talk of the town at breakfast tomorrow, I’m sure. She’s taken with you already.”
“I was worried there for a moment. Caught me off-guard in the kitchen.” Then, in a small voice, he added, “It shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you dare apologize.”
“Viv and Peg must think—”
“They’ll understand. I’m sure of it.”
Hawk heaved a sigh. Though he’d let BJ take his weight, his back remained tight, tense, and all BJ knew how to do was hold him harder. Something about the pressure must have worked, because Hawkeye eased in intervals, unknotting and unwinding until his cheek rested on BJ’s shoulder and they swayed back and forth to whatever soundtrack played in his head.
“Alright?” BJ murmured.
“You asked me that already. I am. Really.” He nuzzled into BJ’s neck and breathed deep. “It wasn’t as bad as it would have been, once. Mostly I’m beating myself up for scaring her.”
“Her daddy has startled her plenty over the past few months. She’s already forgiven you.”
“Seemed that way, didn’t it? You’ve got yourself some kid, there, you know. Cute as a button and smart as a whip. I’m already smitten.”
BJ let out a watery laugh, wiping at his eyes. “You two got on like a house on fire. Better watch out, though. She’s good at shaking us down for extra bedtime stories. One night, she kept me in there for so long I fell asleep draped across the foot of her bed. My back wasn’t right for a week.”
“A smile price to pay,” Hawkeye said, solemnly.
“Next thing you know, you’ll be promising her the moon.”
“And why wouldn’t I, Beej?” Hawkeye pulled back to regard him with a fond smile, hand coming up to cup BJ’s cheek, thumb brushing along his damp cheekbone. “She’s your daughter.”
Notes:
Whew, sorry for the delay on this one! Turns out large coffees + laptops don't mix. All is well, but everything is sticky. It's a work in progress.
The blocking for Erin and Hawkeye’s first meeting was heavily, heavily inspired by this beautiful piece of art by loopnoid on tumblr. I was getting ready to outline this scene the day loopnoid posted their work, and I immediately couldn’t picture it any other way, so thank you thank you for the inspiration.
In other news, if you've noticed that we just had two BJ chapters in a row . . . yes. There’s a compulsive part of me that is genuinely Torn Up™ over breaking the alternating POV chapters, and while I *could* have lumped all of BJ’s into a single one—had originally planned to, in fact—I realized things were starting to grow unwieldy. The scenes in this part of the book just get really long, I guess, because we’re right at the climax (literally, figuratively, etc. etc. XD). Hawk gets two back-to-back chapters after this, never fear.
And yes, I’m blabbing about things that don’t matter, but look, I know I’m not the only one whose eyelid twitched because of the pattern break. No one’s is twitching more than mine, friends. Trust me.
Chapter 26: Hawkeye - October 1st 1954 - AM
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Hawkeye slipped through the hospital’s lobby just after noon, zipping out the door and onto the street before anyone recognized and, invariably, stopped him to chat. He’d made plenty good on his promise of tuchus-kissing. Now, he had an errand to run.
To be fair to Callahan, the tuchus-kissing wasn’t all bad. Wright and his colleagues ran a tight department, and the morning’s demonstrations had gone off without a hitch. Nurses, residents, and attendings alike all asked engaging questions and appreciated the relative novelty of transcontinental knowledge exchange. Besides, the promise of increased funding had them particularly excited about Hawkeye’s passion projects, and he’d managed to swap ideas with a cardiologist who supported his theory on induced hypothermia during bypass.
Even if the visit yielded nothing more productive than back-scratching and good will, it was worth it to get inside an OR with BJ again. Beej came in on his day off to watch the midmorning vascular demonstration, and Hawkeye hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to pull him in as an assisting surgeon. They’d entertained the room with their patter, and by the end of it, Wright was openly pleased with both the tuchus-kissing and BJ’s seamless performance. That took care of two birds with one graft, so to speak.
The demonstration ran overtime, which meant they only managed to sneak ten rushed minutes together in BJ’s office. Hawkeye used the opportunity to deliver Callahan’s formal offer by hand, after which they celebrated with a brief but satisfying bit of canoodling up against the back of BJ’s shut door. Then they were off again—BJ to pick up Erin from preschool, Hawk on his lunchtime errand.
He dodged Wright’s invitation to the hospital cafeteria with the same alacrity he’d once used to avoid OD and set a course for the nearby public library. So long as librarians took lunch breaks like the rest of the working world, Hawkeye figured this would be his best chance to get Viv alone. An apology for snapping at her the previous night was only the first of his aims. They’d exchanged letters aplenty, sure, but he hoped to take advantage of the opportunity to get a feel for what mattered to her outside her literary pursuits.
The library’s vestibule was cool and quiet compared with the bustle of the sidewalk, framed by heavy glass doors and papered with fliers for book clubs, piano lessons, and blood drives. It opened into a large, vaulted main room, permeated by the aged-parchment smell of libraries everywhere. Tall shelves hemmed in the circulation desk. That’s where he found Viv, bent over a stack of returned books while an older man hovered at the counter. Her fingers tapped impatiently atop a jacketed hardcover. When she glanced up and caught sight of him, something like relief flickered across her face.
Now close enough to confirm that the man at the desk was griping—a tirade about modern indexing, god, what some guys wouldn’t do with a captive audience—Hawkeye did what he did best and cut in to steal a lady’s attention away.
“Excuse me, are the bound medical journals still in the back archive? Someone sent me to the wrong floor.”
Viv’s lips twitched. “Oh, sure. I’m happy to show you, Doctor . . .?”
“Pierce. I’m in a bit of a hurry, if you wouldn’t mind.”
He wore no outward indicators of his profession, but Viv had thrown the title in for good enough reason, because while the man at the desk made that sputtery, affronted noise of self-important generals, he gave Hawkeye an appraising look and conceded defeat to an imaginary pecking order, tipping his hat on the way out.
As he shuffled away, Hawkeye leaned over the desk. “If you really do have a minute, I was hoping we could talk.”
“I’ve got more than a minute for the guy who got Mr. Edelbarre out of my library in record time.”
She propped a Back Soon sign on the counter and beckoned him through rows of shelves to a section at the far end of the library. When she sank down to sit on the ground between the end of an aisle and the wall, he joined her, flattening his palms against the scratchy paisley print of industrial carpet.
“Does the city’s budget not allow for chairs?” he griped.
“Sitting makes it harder for any more Mr. Edelbarres to find me mid-conversation. Sometimes I eat my lunch back here if I’m worried about Cheryl cornering me in the break room and trying to set me up with her grandson.”
Hawkeye huffed a laugh, more nerves than genuine amusement. “Yeah? I left Crabapple Cove to avoid a few Cheryls of my own.”
“Mmm. But something tells me you didn’t come here to chat about meddling old biddies.”
Right. Time to rip the bandage off.
“Last night,” he began, throat tight. “I wanted to apologize. You’ve been with Erin almost since she was born, and I didn’t mean to overstep.”
Viv fussed with the pleats on her sunny yellow slacks as if, like him, she sought something to do with her hands. “I didn’t appreciate being scolded in my own kitchen, but I’m given to understand you weren’t talking to me.”
“Did BJ say something?”
“No specifics. I’m not sure whether I need them. The way I see it is, you were over there for three very, very hard years. I can’t expect that not to show, even if sometimes I won’t like it when it does. I’m sure it’s not fun on your end, either.”
“You can say that again.” He scrubbed his palms against the carpet—a grounding scratch. It helped ease the frantic hammering of his pulse, slowing somewhat now that it looked like he wouldn’t need to talk about The Bus just yet. “Still, I was short with you when I didn’t mean to be. Wasn’t a thing you did.”
She flashed him a smile. “Oh, I’m aware. I do appreciate the apology, though. The fact that both you and BJ are able to give them and mean them is good enough for me. God knows I haven’t had too many men like that in my life.”
That sounded like a rotten hand, but the segue gave him an opportunity to move towards the things he really wanted to ask.
Hey Viv, who are you underneath all of this?
What made you wake up one day and want a life completely unlike the one most folks live?
BJ said you were the one who suggested moving east, and I’m dying to know what the hell possessed you to push for it.
“I was luckier than you, I think,” he said. “My dad is . . . well, maybe I’m biased, but he’s the best dad in the world. Was your husband . . .?”
“Oh, no. Ron was a gem, but I’ll admit, half the reason I married him was to get out from under my old man’s roof.” Her smile dimmed, then, expression turning pensive. “Wild how one choice cascades into another and another. My father was a bastard, so I married the first guy who came along and showed me kindness. Better still that Ron was in the military—a way out of my hometown. The next thing I knew, we moved to California, he shipped out, and I was alone in a new city.”
Hawkeye couldn’t help but remember his dad’s words about how his mother’s first years in Maine were hard on her. “Then you met Peg, right? That must have helped.”
“More than I can say.” She ducked her head as she almost shyly recounted how she’d glommed onto her new best friend. Most of the other librarians were much older, so meeting Peg was a godsend. Viv hadn’t suspected a thing about how fast they grew close, and in the months that followed, they started doing everything together. When she received notice that Ron was killed in action, Peg held her together in the aftermath. “How, I’ll never know,” Viv murmured, utterly besotted. “She was alone raising a baby, but kept me from falling apart. And as I got through the worst of the grief, I started to understand the true depth of my feelings for her, and oh, I was terrified.”
“Did you know?”
Viv shook her head. “About myself? No. Thank god she understood what was happening, because I was lost. And when BJ came home . . .”
Hawkeye winced. “Must have been tough.”
“Tougher because I liked him. He reminded me of Ron in so many ways, and he was hurting, and I was hurting, and I could see that he and Peg weren’t reconnecting and felt like the world’s worst friend for being relieved over it. For a while, I thought I was going to be the reason for a messy divorce. This? What we have now? I can hardly believe it.” She lifted her head at last, then nudged him with an elbow. “How’d we get so lucky, hm?”
“I don’t know about you, but I made a deal with a crossroads devil.”
The elbow dug in with more intent, this time, and he couldn’t help but grin in response. Call him a nuisance, but he already got a kick out of riling her up with his one-off remarks.
With mention of her gratitude, though, came an opening for more than just teasing.
“So if you consider yourself lucky, I’m guessing it doesn’t bother you that Peg stayed married.”
“Not at all.” She tucked up a knee and rested her arm on it, chin in palm. “Besides, it means I get to have BJ as a husband of a sort, too, though I’m not sure that’s the right word for it. Peg and I are better off for the fact that we aren’t each other’s whole worlds.”
Interesting. “Very modern of you.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s the opposite of that. If the last few months have taught me anything, it’s that maybe these isolated, suburban islands aren’t any way to live.”
Her words made him think of Korea, of how the only good thing to come out of that damn war was the family he’d found over there. Not the same kind that Viv spoke about, of course. Her, BJ, and Peg were a family of choice. The 4077th was one of necessity and proximity, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t room for appreciation and admiration. It didn’t make the love any less, either.
Back near the vestibule, a quiet bell tinkled, announcing the arrival of another patron. Viv craned her neck to watch a mother-daughter duo enter, but relaxed, satisfied, when they passed the circulation desk and made a beeline towards the children’s section.
“What about you?” she asked, sinking back into the shelf and pinning him with that perceptive stare. “Does it bother you that they’re staying married?”
Hawkeye scratched at his chin. “If they say this is what marriage is for them, who am I to throw stones? As long as there’s room for me, as long as he—” loves me, he wanted to say. Doesn’t leave me. But that was too much for the floor of the library, even given the tenor of their discussion. “As long as he’s happy,” he finished, swallowing hard. He meant it. He’d always mean it. “I’d do anything to see BJ happy.”
They fell quiet. Viv gave him a long look, and he resisted the urge to puff up and preen under the scrutiny. Even he knew when to resist the temptation to cut the tension with a joke.
“Would you be interested in an agreement of your own?” she finally asked.
The implication stopped him short. “Are you—with me? You and me?”
“I want to be able to own a house, Hawkeye. If something happens to me, I want to know that my family can’t keep Peg away from me. I don’t think I’m crazy for thinking like this, either. Not when the worst has already come to pass for me once. What’ll stop it from happening again?”
He'd never once considered what it’d be like if BJ and Peg weren’t married, if it fell to BJ’s next of kin—his parents, his asshole of a father—to decide who’d be allowed in a hospital room. In his house. Trusted with his things. God, he couldn’t even imagine it without his eyes stinging.
“No, you’re not crazy. I’m lucky I haven’t had to frolic down that thorny path of what-ifs just yet.”
“I’m not asking for an answer today,” she said, dark eyes intent. “But if it’s something you’re opposed to on principle, I’d like to know that.”
What a wild conversation to have in the back of a public library. When he’d dodged his way out of the hospital for a lunch-break jaunt, he hadn’t envisioned she’d turn the interrogatory tables on him so thoroughly.
“You know, I thought I was going to be a bachelor forever and now look at me. Talking marriage with a beautiful woman, surrounded by romance novels.”
Viv thwacked him in the shoulder. “Alright, Cassanova. Peggy’s it for me, understand?”
In a different time and different circumstances, he’d have chased her, anyway. But Peg was a doll, BJ had a jealous streak the size of the Mississippi, and even if neither were the case, he already suspected that he and Viv were a smidge too alike for romance.
For the best, truly. Though that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun.
“I’ll have you know, I’ve been called an incorrigible flirt, and I don’t intend to stop just because BJ has made an honest woman of me.” He paused as the reality of their conversation sank in and found himself unable to meet her eyes, turning his attention instead to fiddling with a loose string of carpet. “Though ah, one thing I will say is that you should maybe wait a bit before you hitch your horse to this wagon. I’m not always the easiest guy to live with, as you saw last night.”
She cocked her head. “Is that your way of telling me that children would be off the table?”
He’d once considered himself an excellent hitter of metaphorical curveballs, but that was, apparently, before he let Viv Miller take the mound.
“I’d never thought—” He broke off when it became abundantly clear to both of them that he’d started talking before his mind had time to catch up to his mouth. Because really, he’d never had to give it thought. He’d written off ever getting an opportunity to have a family. “I don’t know,” he finished, lamely.
Even trying to put it into words left him jittery. Between the clinic, the hospital, and time at the shoreline, kids were no longer a hardwired trigger for his limbic system quite like they’d been a year earlier. Now, they were fireworks. Their distress was a bang-and-whizz that filled him with a sense of impending doom.
Crying would be an issue. An infant’s screams went right through him, and he’d done very little to work on that, because, well. He’d been busy trying not to melt down over a hundred other things, and kids sat understandably low on the priority list. Now, though, he wondered. What would ‘working on it’ look like? Would he ever get to a point where he could be woken up by a baby in the middle of the night, the poor thing crying just because it was hungry, and not end up back there? Sidney would know.
“I’ll level with you, Hawkeye,” Viv murmured, eyes fixed on some indeterminate spot on the wall. “In a perfect world, I’d want to give Erin a little sibling. I’ve always wanted children. Ron and I tried before he left, but it didn’t take. And there are options. I know with you and BJ as doctors, there are ways we could do it that wouldn’t . . .”
“We wouldn’t have to sleep together, you mean.” Holding back the joke he wanted to make was physically painful, but he persevered.
“Right. I know this is a lot to spring on a guy, but you have to understand: I didn’t think I’d get a second chance at something like this, and, forgive my language, but you’ll find I’m the type to grab opportunities by the balls.”
He laughed in spite of himself and the weight of their discussion, because damn, she was a pistol. “Well hopefully any grabbing-by-the-balls won’t prove necessary—for BJ’s sake if not for mine.”
Viv snorted into the crook of her arm. “Hopefully not.” After a beat, she stiffened. “I hope you’re not getting the impression that is coming out to Connecticut is entirely contingent on this.”
“You’re being upfront. I appreciate that. And I wish I could give you a better answer. There’s just this . . . let’s call it a block in my head.”
“Hm.” She rested her chin back in her palm in a gesture that reminded him of Erin. “If you could get rid of it, would you want to?”
Would he?
Hawkeye shut his eyes. If he focused, he could almost feel the weight of the orphaned baby he’d held in the Swamp, could picture the sweet look on Erin’s face as she said his name or stretched up and called BJ “Daddy.” After Korea, he assumed he’d never get well enough to have it. But maybe that was—how did his dad put it?—his flaw in perspective talking. If it were just him and Viv living that picket-fence American dream, sure, that’d be hard. His low patches would be too much for her to manage alone. But with BJ and Peg, too, with all of them leaning on one another . . . could he?
Trusting that thought was terrifying. Could he put weight on it? Could he let it bear his load? Could he dare to think that maybe they’ll care for me or maybe I deserve that love or maybe I’m not a burden or maybe I can give to them as much as they give to me in return?
Maybe, with them, he could have the family he never let himself dream of. It hurt, like some long-frozen hope thawing, like holding his hands under hot water after hours spent shoveling snow.
“I always wanted kids, yeah.”
Viv nodded, lip caught between her teeth. “Would you see someone about it? An analyst?”
Up until then, there hadn’t been much point other than some nebulous promise of alleviating his misery by wading through yet more misery. Viv’s offer gave him something to do it for. Something to lose if he turned away.
“I’ll level with you,” he said, slowly. “I’ve seen one before. I was sent to see one over there at the end. It’s not like taking penicillin for an infection. They don’t just . . . resolve the issue, take two with breakfast, call me if the crazy doesn’t break in forty-eight hours. This might never go away.”
“If it doesn’t, we’ll always have Erin.” Viv said it so matter-of-factly, so much so it made his head spin. “Or—there are children without homes, too. Older children. Ones who don’t sound quite like that when they cry.”
He flinched away from how well she’d clocked him, but there wasn’t any judgment in her eyes. All the times he’d imagined discussing marriage with someone else, with whoever might come after Carlye, there had been far more intensity and sweeping declarations in the picture. This wasn’t that. But he studied Viv—Viv, with her love of literature, her quick humor, her willingness to fiercely fight for more from her life, even if it meant exposing herself to vulnerability. He could stand to learn from someone who didn’t hide from a happy ending.
While there wasn’t room for romance and flowers and the whole nine, that didn’t mean there couldn’t be love there, too. And now that the idea had been broached, he wasn’t going to be able stop thinking about it: cradling a baby in the crook of an arm. BJ meeting that child—his child—for the first time.
He wanted. That was the problem. When he let himself want things, he wanted them with a ravenous hunger that terrified him, because what if he didn’t get them? He was far too familiar with what it felt like to starve.
“If it ends up not working out, do you think you can live with that?” he asked.
“All we can do is try, same as I’d have done with Ron. For a different value of ‘try,’ granted.” She smirked at her own joke, and he had to bite down on the impulse to let out a non-library-friendly laugh. “Look, I can’t ask you to have all the answers when I don’t have them, either. I just wanted to see where your thoughts were. It seems like we want similar things, though I know we don’t always get the things we want. And maybe that’s alright. Maybe the best we can ever really do is slow down and take it a day at a time.”
The words stopped Hawkeye halfway to a reply, mouth hanging open on whatever he’d meant to say next, instantly forgotten. A day at a time.
Or, as his dad said, “Hour by hour. Day by day.”
He let himself picture it, lapsing back into fantasy: a duplex like the ones he walked by on the way to his spot. Erin, older, long-limbed like BJ, running around the yard, holding the hand of a toddler with black hair and blue eyes. Peg and Viv would lay out sunbathing while Hawkeye and BJ nestled together on one of those outdoor sofas he’d seen in the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Or, no—the four of them would sit around a little conversational area on a back deck. Margaret and Helen, would be there too, crowded together with Cal, Barb, and Jo. They’d play charades, though he and BJ would split up to make it even remotely fair for everyone else, so he’d pair with Viv, instead. Viv, with her sly grins and her willingness to make a horrifyingly vulgar gesture in front of company if it’d help them win.
And Dad, his dad could drive down, couldn’t he? He’d be out on the lawn, bending over and listening to the rules of whatever game his grandchildren had come up with for the afternoon, doting on them with his time and his attention the way he did when Hawkeye was younger, the way he still did now.
It was absurd to get his hopes up. The odds of something going wrong, of it all coming crashing down around him, of him ending up alone at the end was still so high—a risk that’d never go away.
But if it went right? God, if it went right, it wouldn’t just mean going to the clerk’s office and signing a marriage license with Viv. It’d mean swearing to protect Peg and Viv and what they had with one another. It’d mean letting Viv do the same for him and BJ. It’d mean the four of them would make a family together, and wouldn’t that be something?
Hawkeye took a deep breath and held his hand out for Viv to shake. “Let’s give it a trial run. We’ll take it day by day.”
“Day by day,” she echoed, and pulled him in for a hug.
Notes:
This is my thesis statement on the joy of nontraditional family structures disguised as BeejHawk fanfic XD. It’s also my ragescream about how some folks who choose to be childfree because of mental health or economic reasons aren’t able to just “make it work” the way people “always have,” because the American nuclear family model is intensely isolating and has also only been around for like, 80 years. I’ll get off my soapbox, but tldr my deepest-held MASH belief is that Hawkeye could recover enough to have kids if he wanted them, but that he’d really, really struggle if he didn’t have a village to lean on.
There won't be kiddos besides Erin in this story, though, so I'll leave it up to you all to decide whether or not Hawk & fam end up making that decision.
Chapter 27: Hawkeye - October 1st 1954 - PM
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Following an afternoon of schmoozing, Hawkeye pulled up outside the Hunnicutt residence and found BJ already out waiting for him on the front porch, feet kicked up on the rail, wearing that megawatt-grin. He’d changed after the morning’s demo and now sported the same pair of jeans that once looked fantastic decorating the floor of Hawkeye’s bedroom. The Madras plaid shirt he’d paired it with was among the ugliest Hawkeye had ever seen. There was something oddly comforting about how BJ had found a way to incorporate his questionable fashion sense into everyday life.
Hawkeye hadn’t made it halfway up the driveway, however, when a voice from the sidewalk stopped him.
“More visitors, Hunnicutt?”
The man’s drawling cadence and barrel-chested frame had featured heavily in BJ’s stories. He’d stopped beside the mailbox, fists on his hips in the universal pose of a man surveying his territory, and had a face that made Hawkeye consider writing Sargeant Rizzo to ask whether he had a smarmy busybody for an evil twin. Needless to say, Hawkeye didn’t require an introduction to work out who’d interrupted their hello, but he got one, anyway.
“Afternoon, Gary,” BJ said, joining them. “This is a friend of mine from overseas—Dr. Hawkeye Pierce.”
If the name rang any bells, Gary didn’t let it show, holding out a hand for a knuckle crunching shake. “Gary Davis. I’m down the street with the blue shutters.”
“Nice hedges.”
Gary, meanwhile, looked him over. “You’ve got to forgive the intrusion. We’re a tight-knit neighborhood, you see, so it’s in our nature to investigate when we see a new set of wheels pull up. Especially when it’s from out of state.”
“Oh, sure. A man’s got to take care of his neighborhood.”
BJ’s jaw ticked with telltale suppressed laughter, but Gary didn’t read the sarcasm. “Too true. Isn’t that right, Hunnicutt?” He clapped BJ on the shoulder, drawing a flinch that had Hawkeye contemplating the binding nature of the Hippocratic oath. “So Doc, what brings you south?”
It took Hawkeye a moment to remember that his rental had Washington plates. “East, actually. I flew in from Connecticut on Wednesday.”
Gary let out a whistle. “Long way to come for a social call.”
Interesting. Either Gary was far better at playing dumb than BJ’s description of him implied, or he truly hadn’t absorbed a single word his wife would have let slip about the goings-on at the hospital over the past few days. Or, better still, Susan might have kept mum on the matter of his arrival. She’d taken a strong interest in the bypass machine, and surely, she was aware that any chance of leveraging Hawkeye’s visit for career advancement would evaporate if her husband started hassling him. And how could a guy like Gary resist a target like BJ’s old “war buddy?”
The schemer in him—an instinct that had lain dormant since Korea—perked up. If Gary didn’t know why he was in California, that presented a hell of an opportunity.
“Oh, just a work trip,” Hawkeye said. “Making nice on my boss’ behalf, demonstrating some surgical techniques for the chest guys at SFG.”
He threw in a few more details about valve repairs and vascular grafts. Even though he’d name-dropped Susan’s place of work, Gary’s eyes took on the inward focus of someone who’d stopped listening in favor of waiting for their turn to speak. When he replied, he failed to mention any of the salient, missing details about the town hall, the proposition, or keynote speaking, all of which Susan would have mentioned if she’d apprised him of the situation.
Very interesting. Hawkeye could work with this.
Step one: keep agreeing with everything Gary said and blow as much smoke up his ass as possible. When the conversation turned to HOAs, Hawkeye made a point of mentioning how Gary, with his perfectly manicured lawn, would be a natural candidate for neighborhood leadership. From there, he only needed to smile and nod until Gary ran out of steam for his tirade on lawn care, appropriate exterior paint colors, and ordnances that would limit “riff raff.” Hawkeye wasn’t surprised to learn that “riff raff” referred to anyone who didn’t look like Gary, vote for the same party, or otherwise live a life that met his approval. He’d have done well in the army if it weren’t for that 4-F.
Treating a guy he’d only just met as a stand-in for Frank Burns was a risk, but the possibility of payoff was too good to resist. If Gary was looking for dirt on BJ, Hawkeye was more than happy to give it to him—for a given value of “dirt,” of course. With Susan in the OR working a double, Gary would be unable to cross-check information he learned before tomorrow afternoon. Perfect. All Hawkeye needed to do now was massage the conversation in a very particular direction.
“Say Beej, didn’t you say you were about to get the grill going?”
Bless BJ’s propensity for saying “yes, and” even when he couldn’t yet see the endgame, because only a moment’s confusion swept across his face before the genial smile returned. “Sure was. Excuse me for a minute, boys.”
Clearly Gary was waiting for just such an opportunity, because as soon as BJ disappeared around the side of the house, he leaned in and dropped his voice as if the two of them were already fast friends. “Staying long?” he asked, giving the house a pointed once-over. “Can’t imagine there’s much room, what with their living arrangement.”
Bingo.
“Ah, because of the librarian?” Hawkeye waggled his brows. “Tell me about it. But well, what do I know? I’ve always been more of a traditional sort.”
“You uh. You have any idea what they . . .?”
“Can’t say I’ve asked, but I’m glad as anything the hospital put me up in a hotel. Just because BJ and I were bunkies doesn’t mean we always see eye-to-eye, if you catch my meaning.”
It was almost impossible to get the words out with a straight face, but his attempt at sounding like one of the boys passed muster, because Gary gave him a considering look. “Sharing a tent must have made for some friction.”
“Sure, but when you go over to serve, the work is really all that matters. BJ’s a good doctor. He kept our boys healthy enough to continue the fight, and past that, I tried not to split hairs.”
“You enlisted, did you?”
“Got deferred from the big one because I was in medical school, so it only seemed right to sign up and do my part.”
If that didn’t convince the asshole that they were cut from the same cloth, nothing would.
“Say, I’d never cast stones at a veteran, but . . .” Gary inched another step closer. “Since you seem like an upstanding sort, I ought to warn you that the Hunnicutts are known around these parts for spending time with some unsavory sorts. Wouldn’t want to see a guy like you tarred with the same brush.”
Jesus, this was going to give him an ulcer.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got plenty of practice handling myself.” Hawkeye affected a heartfelt sigh. “And besides, after you serve with a guy, you feel like you owe it to him to look the other way. What else am I supposed to do? Ring up some number and say ‘hey, heads up, my former bunkie is headed to a meeting of like minds tomorrow afternoon?’ I know, I know, it’s only right, but it still feels like a betrayal. The guy saved my life over there, and he’s got a kid and a family. It’s not my place to get involved. Besides, if you ask me, he’s harmless.”
“Harmless,” Gary scoffed. But the hook had been baited, and the idiot clearly couldn’t resist a nibble. “A meeting, though. You’d uh. You’d think he’d wait until you weren’t visiting to take a risk like that.”
Hawkeye flashed his best, carefree smile. “It’s no skin off mine. Sounds like he’ll be on the UCSF campus, so I’ll keep my nose clean as can be, and we’ll meet up afterward.”
“Right, right.” The little hamster powering the wheel between Gary’s ears was surely getting the workout of its life. Hawkeye could swear he’d started drooling. “Tomorrow afternoon, you said? UCSF?”
“Uh huh.”
The front door swung open before Hawkeye could jam any more bait on the hook.
“Grill’s on,” BJ said, stepping out onto the porch.
“Well, that’s my cue.” He held out his hand for a shake, which Gary did—vigorously. “Nice chatting with a guy like you out here after all I’ve heard about San Francisco.”
“Likewise. Real great meeting you, Doc. Real great. You’re welcome over anytime. The missus is a nurse, you know, so I’m sure the two of you would get on just fine.”
That dispelled any lingering doubts over whether Gary had heard a thing about his arrival from Susan. “Thanks for the offer,” he said, offering up a mock-salute and heading for the house.
The door had barely shut before BJ rounded on him, stopping them short in the hall. “Alright, you’ve got me. What the hell was that?”
Hawkeye summarized the bulk of the conversation, paying particular attention to the clues he’d thrown beneath Gary’s nose, each one shifted a few feet to the left of the truth. “So if you asked him, he’d likely say he thought you were headed to some sort of, I don’t know, meeting of subversives tomorrow at UCSF.”
“But that’s where the—”
“Town hall is, televised and all, with the mayor in attendance? I’m aware. And wouldn’t it be funny if he called it in, only for his boss to realize he’s full of shit? What a shame, for him to make an ass of himself like that. Imagine what it’d do to his credibility if his boss thought he was prone to crying wolf.”
BJ’s jaw dropped open, a startled laugh tumbling out. “You—you are—”
“Handsome? Charming?”
“Ridiculous,” BJ corrected and laid a palm on his chest, backing him into the wall. “Brilliant.”
It was dangerous of BJ to give up such tangible proof that clever antics got him going, but Hawkeye sure as hell wasn’t going to gripe about it. “Flattery will get you everywhere,” he said, hooking a finger in BJ’s collar and tugging him in.
The kiss landed firm and eager, all heat with no hesitation. BJ’s hands curled in Hawkeye’s lapels to tug him closer even though there was nowhere left to go, and god, how he loved it when BJ got like this. He kissed back with the satisfaction of a man who knew exactly what he’d done and why it had worked. The playfulness tipped into something deeper as BJ’s thumb swept along his jaw, and a familiar, warm surge—triumph, desire, the pure thrill of being wanted like this—had him answering the kiss with a low sound he couldn’t hold in. What a rush, to know he riled BJ up so easily.
He’d only just moved to get a thigh between BJ’s when a high-pitched giggle from the next room over reminded him that they weren’t alone in the house.
BJ huffed a small laugh against his lips, sealing it with a parting kiss, and the world snapped back into place.
“Guess we ought to be more concerned with staying decent,” he said, but belied his words by keeping a hold of BJ’s collar.
“For now, at least.” BJ’s thumb gave another soft stroke along Hawkeye’s jaw. “Stay the night?”
He hadn’t the prior evening, electing instead to go back to the hotel on the assumption that Gary or one of his cronies would have an eye on the rental car. “Didn’t we just get confirmation that I’m being watched?”
“And so what if he tails us? All roads lead to the town hall.”
It took most of his willpower to keep his wits about him as BJ’s hands slid down his back, then beneath his jacket to cup his ass. “Don’t you think he’ll get the wrong sort of suspicious if he tails me to the very meeting I mentioned?”
“You’re in surgery tomorrow morning. Worst case scenario, he pops out of the bushes when you leave, and you tell him we tied one on reminiscing, so you slept on the couch. Worst-worst case scenario, he follows you all the way to the SFG parking lot, decides you were being honest, and doubles back to tail me to UCSF.”
“This is a lot of work, you know, misleading a cop on your behalf. However will you repay me for my troubles?”
BJ’s smile turned wicked. “Name your price.”
“Hmm.” He trailed kisses up BJ’s neck to nip at his earlobe. “A bed to sleep in?”
“How about a handsome fella to sleep with?”
Hawkeye swatted his shoulder. “You surgeons always expect a gal to put out on the first date.”
“And what if I make an honest woman out of you? Move across the country for you afterward?”
Hawkeye swooned, forcing BJ to catch him in order to keep both of them from toppling to the floor.
“Take me doctor,” he said, arching into a low dip. “I’m yours!”
That was how Peg found them when she appeared at the doorway to the living room, startling them nearly out of their skin.
“Well,” she said, lips twitching with suppressed mirth, “I guess that answers my question about whether you’re planning on doing anything with the grill.”
#
Predictably, they gave up on grilling and ordered takeout, crowding around the kitchen table and perusing the trifold menu for a local Chinese joint that delivered. After calling it in, they waited in the living room, where Erin discovered a brand-new game: climbing into Hawkeye’s lap and declaring that he was her new horsie. He bounced her on his knee and hummed the soundtracks to every Western he could remember, and she squealed each time he switched rhythms.
After his fifth rendition of the song from the Lone Ranger (1), she spun around in his lap, grabbed him by the ears, and shoved their noses together.
Though the gesture was oddly charming, he winced with the force of it. “And what do face smooshes mean, Miss Erin?”
She giggled, but rather than answering him, chose to mash her cheek into his shoulder. Her curls stuck up from their bow to tickle the underside of his jaw.
“It means she likes you more than she can say,” BJ answered, looking every bit like he thought Hawkeye had hung the moon.
“She has a big heart,” Peg said from where she and Viv had arranged themselves in a pair of armchairs catty corner to the couch. “Too big, sometimes. She feels everything with her whole being.”
Viv cast a sideways glance at BJ. “Something tells me she’ll always be like that.”
“World can be a tough place for the big hearted.” Hawkeye stroked her back, and she snuggled in closer. What he’d done to deserve this level of trust was beyond him.
“That’s what people keep telling me,” BJ murmured. “You know, I think some parents see that big heart and know the world will step on it, so they feel like they need to be the one to teach their kid to harden up. But I don’t think so. She’ll learn soon enough, and when she does, I hope she knows she has a soft place here with us.”
He wasn’t only talking about Erin. Hawkeye sensed the edges of something older in his voice—things he’d survived, things his parents hadn’t understood, a childhood that hadn’t come with the kind of safety he sought to carve out for his own kid. Hell, maybe he was talking about Hawkeye’s dad, too, in a way, for whom BJ had expressed admiration on more than one occasion. There wasn’t an upper limit on needing a place like that, was there?
The doorbell rang. After BJ paid the delivery boy, they began the process of spreading their bounty across the coffee table in an informal picnic. At first, Erin couldn’t be convinced to leave her spot snuggled beneath Hawkeye’s chin, and BJ gave up on cajoling her, electing instead to feed Hawkeye bits of boneless spare ribs with expertly handled chopsticks.
“I don’t mind, really,” Hawkeye said after Peg attempted to bribe her out of his lap for the third time, not only because of the heart-melting sweetness of how tightly she held to his shirt, but because he’d never say no to being doted on by BJ.
Eventually, however, the lure of dinner was too much for her to resist, and she slithered out of his lap to attack a plate of orange chicken. BJ chased her with a napkin when more sauce ended up on her face than in her belly and helped her out of the world’s tiniest, most precious little sweater, fearing it wouldn’t survive its next culinary encounter.
The gentle care reminded Hawkeye of how BJ used to unlace his boots for him after a hellish stint in surgery, when he was so exhausted he collapsed facedown on his cot, unable to wrangle them himself.
Back then, he wrestled with plenty of guilt for how hard he leaned on BJ. But maybe that was another example of how he saw things from a skewed perspective. BJ needed to be needed, didn’t he? Needing and being needed was part and parcel of building a soft place, so maybe it was alright if Hawkeye needed, too. It wouldn’t take anything away from Erin, or Peg, or Viv if he rested there, sometimes. Especially if he could be a soft place for them in return.
“You alright?” BJ asked when he stood.
“Yeah, Beej. Just getting a glass of water.”
It wasn’t strictly a lie, though he made a detour into the entryway before heading to the kitchen. His valise sat propped on the entryway table where he’d left it after going toe-to-toe with Gary. He extracted the stack of papers that’d been burning a hole through it since New Haven, hid them behind his back while skirting into the kitchen, and left them on the table. As for how and when he’d use them to say what he wanted to say, well, that was a problem for after pork lo mein.
Any such grand after-dinner plans, however, were delayed by Erin’s insistence on getting another “Uncle Hawk bedtime story.”
“I could have told you that’d happen,” BJ said, wrestling her into a set of pink floral pajamas, features cast in warm light from Erin’s bedside lamp. “Bear, if you keep wiggling like that, you’re going to end up upside down and backwards and wrapped like a mummy.”
“A mummy?”
BJ and Hawkeye exchanged a look. Erin probably wasn’t ready for a lecture on Egyptian funerary customs, but—
“You know Beej, I hear mummies don’t like bedtime stories very much.”
Naturally, the wiggling stopped after that. “Not a mummy,” she said, suddenly serious. “I’m Erin.”
“Of course. And from what I remember, Miss Erin loves a good Uncle Hawk story.”
She wanted Hawkeye to tuck her in, which left him feeling awfully tender. After he spun another tale of Pinecone Forest, she insisted, in that sweet way kids sometimes had of giving as much as they received, on ‘reading’ to him. It turned out she could recite most of Cinderella from her children’s book of fairy tales—a fact Hawkeye gleaned when she ‘read’ it upside down. He suspected she did it just to get a reaction out of him, because she could recognize her letters well enough, and besides, the book had pictures. Just like her father, she did a terrible job of keeping a straight face when Hawkeye laughed at her jokes.
“That’s your kid, alright,” he said, casting a glance at BJ, who’d draped himself across the foot of her bed.
When Cinderella was through, Erin cast those big eyes at BJ and asked for “another story, Daddy? Please?”
BJ had no capacity to resist a request like that, so Hawkeye traded places with him, figuring that if he made and early exit, it’d help her wind down a little.
“Any chance I can grab a shower?” he asked after giving Erin her goodnight kiss.
“Towels are at the end of the hall. Borrow anything you like from the dresser in the guest room.”
Hawkeye took his time in the shower, getting “aspirationally clean,” or so he used to call in back before the war on nights when he had a promising date. Afterward, he borrowed a set of collegiate sweats from BJ’s drawers. The irony of sporting a Stanford crew neck was too much to resist. It’d be worth BJ’s griping to nick it, even, not only because it smelled like him, but because if he showed up to a Sunday forum sporting enemy colors, Cal’s face would be priceless.
After dressing, he headed downstairs with some vague notion of helping with the washing up, but alas, found Peg already finished by the time he made it to the kitchen.
“You have a great kid there, you know,” he said. “She’ll be a comedian someday. A chef and a comedian. A culinary comic? Either way, it’ll be dinner and a show.”
Peg turned away from the kitchen table, holding a stack of—
Ah. So she’d beaten him to it.
“What is this, Hawkeye?” Her voice wobbled on the question.
“It used to come with an explanation,” he said, jitters speeding his words. “Turns out the explanation got a little morbid, so I took it out, but never wrote you a new one. Figured I’d do it in person, and well, you know what they say about the best laid plans.” He was rambling. Okay, to task. “About a year in, I started keeping a list of all the lives he saved over there. I know I can’t give Erin back the time he was over there with me, but I’d hoped that maybe it’d help her understand.”
Peg set the stack on the table and paged through it slowly, one hand over her mouth, the other tracing hundreds and hundreds of names.
He was suddenly far less confident that the gesture would come across even remotely as intended. “If it’s too much . . .”
“Look at how many other little girls still have their daddies because of what he did.”
A hell of a thought.
She left the list on the table and narrowed the gap between them, arms winding around his waist in a tight hug. Her head barely reached the underside of his chin. A visceral scent memory hit him of sitting next to BJ on his bunk in the Swamp and reading Peg’s letters. Citrus sunshine. It must have been her shampoo, not her perfume.
“I hope you know this isn’t some kind of plot to convince you,” he said. “It’s not an ‘oh, Hawkeye, what a nice guy, keeping this list for BJ.’ I know I’m not exactly prize goods, and this isn’t going to change that.”
Peg pulled back to hold him at arm’s length. “Hawkeye Pierce, if you think I’d look at work you did over months for a girl you’d never met because you love her father and call it an elaborate manipulation, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“That’s not—” He slipped out of her grasp to take an agitated turn around the kitchen. “Listen, listen. You have to understand how good he was. How much he did and how much he cared. Not just about his patients, but all of us. I, for one, wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.” On his second circuit, he barely restrained the impulse to hop up on one of the chairs. “Even so, he’d have traded all of it to be home with you. He weighed these names against his love for you and Erin, and he’d have chosen you if he could have. I understand that. So no matter what happens, no matter what you decide, I need you to know that I would never give him an ultimatum. If you said you wanted to stay here, I’d find a way to come. I would. Because I know what family means to him. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
“Then you understand how much it means when he tells you that you’re a part of his family, both to him and to me.”
Would he ever be able to hear those words without feeling like someone had just performed a sternotomy on him?
“I spent two years by myself,” she continued. “During those years, I had to make very big, very fast judgments about who would be good for me and mine. Who’d help me take care of Erin. Who was safe and honorable and who wasn’t.”
“You’re no one’s fool.”
“I’m aware. So trust me when I say the reason we’re talking about coming east is because we think it’s the right thing for us. For all of us.”
Somehow, hearing those words from Peg was as revelatory as Viv’s proposition. “That sounds like an awfully final statement.”
“Says the guy who was talking marriage on the floor of the library this morning.” She linked their arms at the elbow to guide him into the living room where Viv had flopped on the couch. “Viv, darling, do you remember what we were chatting about while the boys were upstairs?”
“About how it’s possible to rent a U-Haul trailer one-way across the country?” (2)
“That’s right. And they have a branch in the city that I visited last week.”
Hawkeye blinked. “Huh?”
“You can rent a—”
“I heard her the first time, I just—what?”
Peg squeezed his arm. “I think you should look into taking some time extra time off next spring. Because I’m not driving cross-country with a toddler, and BJ is going to need help getting all of our worldly possessions from coast to coast.”
“Honey, are you volunteering Hawkeye for manual labor?”
Hawk turned to find BJ leaning up against the doorway to the living room, grin making it abundantly clear that he didn’t mind the thought of trailering a house’s worth of furniture cross-country one whit.
Hell, Hawkeye understood the sentiment. He’d pull it all on a red flyer wagon if that’s what it took.
“The lease we have in the city is for six months,” Peg explained. “And from everything I’ve heard about the northeast, May is a lovely time to come.”
Viv clapped her hands. “Delightfully alliterative, too. A May move!”
Spring. Peg wanted to be on the east coast by the spring. Any second now, he’d wake up to the whirr of incoming choppers, because surely, this was too good to be anything but a gin-infused dream.
“I’ll be here,” he said, “even if it means promising my coworker a second kidney for covering yet another week’s worth of shifts.”
“We can always build you a dialysis machine.”
Viv pushed herself up from the couch and bounded over to the bar cart. “This sounds like the occasion for a toast, doesn’t it?”
“Beer, Hawk?” BJ offered. It was thoughtful of him to come up with an alternative to scotch on the fly, because as much as Hawk wished he could trust himself with the stuff, the day had been enough of a rollercoaster that he didn’t want to chance it.
“Sure. Have to have something in hand for a little cin cin.”
Viv and Peg were already clinking glasses and making eyes at one another by the time he registered that BJ had gone silent in the kitchen.
“Did the fridge swallow you?” he called.
No response. Hawkeye shuffled to get a clear view of the doorway and—right. They’d left the list on the kitchen table, where it had snared its second Hunnicutt of the evening.
BJ looked up as he approached, a sheen in his eyes. “Hawk. Did you—these are—when did you—”
“On second thought,” Peg said, slipping into the entryway, “it’s been ages since I sat out on the front porch with a nightcap. Viv, darling, care to join?”
They vanished faster than a pair of navy corpsmen on shore leave, slipping through the front door in a whirl of coats and shawls.
“Subtle,” he said as the door shut behind them.
BJ set the papers on the kitchen table and crossed the room in two strides. “Come here.”
He grabbed hold of Hawkeye’s hand and determinedly lead them upstairs in an echo of that first night in Maine. Only this time, he didn’t start shucking clothing the moment the door was shut, but instead caught Hawkeye in an octopus’ hug, enveloping him, butting their foreheads together.
Like father like daughter, indeed.
“How did you get those names? When did you even find the time?”
“It started the day I went to battalion aid in your place,” Hawkeye said. He admitted that, at the time, nothing he thought to leave in his will felt like it got the point across. Nothing, that was, until he realized he had something offer not to BJ, but to the little girl BJ loved best in the world. “I kept updating it after that night. Figured if I made it out, I could wait until she was older to give it to her, but then all this happened, and well, it seemed like the time.”
The fire they’d banked that afternoon flared to life when BJ tackled Hawkeye to the bed, showering him with kisses. He bared his neck, sighing as BJ trailed featherlight kisses beneath his jaw, palms smoothing down the warm linen stretched tight across BJ’s shoulders.
“All this for a little clerical work?”
BJ watched him through wet lashes. “That’s more than a little clerical work and you know it. Besides, I did tell you I’d give you that kiss when I woke up.”
“Haven’t you paid your dues by now?”
“Don’t forget about compound interest.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Plant one on me, mister.”
He didn’t need to tell BJ twice.
BJ pushed him back into the mattress, arms caging him in, weight a warm, deliberate trap. His mustache ruffled with a smile, and he bumped their noses together, lips just shy of Hawkeye’s, a drawn-out tease. But before Hawkeye could complain, BJ’s mouth found his. Everything tightened: his arms squeezed BJ’s ribs, his knees cradled BJ’s flank, his hands found purchase in the linen stretched across BJ’s back. They rocked together in an unhurried rhythm. BJ kissed him like they had years to spend in one another’s company, because hell, they did. They weren’t racing a clock. And though a separation still loomed, this one came with a promise: that they’d be together again on the other side. That this was the last of their goodbyes.
That BJ, the fink, had been right all along. This time, it really was “see you later.”
BJ deepened the kiss and Hawkeye relished in it, framing that dear face in his hands, tracing its contours with his fingertips until stubble gave way to the smooth line of his neck. He followed his fancy further and thumbed over BJ’s collarbones, then into the unbuttoned vee of his shirt.
“God, you’re like catnip,” he murmured against BJ’s lips.
“Here, kitty kitty.”
He gave BJ’s chest hair a gentle tug in retaliation and BJ pushed closer, flashing one of those knockout smiles, metaphorical tail wagging from the attention. That much, Hawkeye could give in spades. He kept up his exploration, tracing the breadth of BJ’s shoulders and the lean muscles of his biceps, the trim line of his waist and the curve of his phenomenal ass.
His Beej. Soon enough, he’d get to have this man all the time.
He grinned into another kiss. “You’re coming to Connecticut.”
“To one of those duplexes by the sea.”
“It’s a sound, technically.”
“Sea, sound, lake, or ocean—doesn’t matter as long as you’re there.”
“Oh, I’ll be there. In a king-sized bed with bells on.” His laugh turned to a groan as BJ shifted his weight, lining their hips up so heat sparked deep in his belly each time they moved.
BJ pressed into him with a shiver. “I don’t think I have the patience to wait for the king-sized one.”
“That so?”
“God, Hawk,” he murmured, dragging his lips down Hawkeye’s throat. “I need you.”
The bed they lay in wasn’t as large as the one in his fantasies, but it was big enough for both of them, and the room had a door with a lock, and they had time.
“Yeah? How do you need me?”
BJ’s pupils dilated. “Do you want me to make a list?”
“A list, he says! Beej, I have a whole rolodex full of things I want to do to you.” He dragged BJ in by the collar, until BJ’s lips just barely brushed his own. “Let’s keep it simple for now though, hm? I want you inside me.”
His words pulled an incredulous groan from deep inside BJ’s chest, and he buried his face in Hawkeye’s neck. “How do you do that? You just—I swear, you could read a phone book and it’d get me going.”
“Jeez, what kind of phone books are you reading, and where can I find one?” (3)
“You know what I mean.”
Hawkeye got two palmfuls of that fantastic backside and bucked up to relieve the pressure, the heat of contact so good he tipped his head back with it, a breathy sound escaping from him unbidden. “I regret to inform you,” he said between kisses, “that you might be particularly susceptible to my charms.”
As if the same wasn’t true in reverse. The firm line of BJ’s arousal pressed against his own took him from I want you now to I need you yesterday.
BJ landed a teasing swat to his thigh. “Get these off.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
They stripped out of their clothing in a rush. Granted, BJ moved much faster, mostly because Hawkeye got caught up giving him a soundtrack worthy of a burlesque dancer, jazz trumpet noises and all. His reward was the fine sight of BJ’s abdominals flexing with helpless laughter—very nice—and an undershirt thwapping him in the face before an armful of naked BJ wrestled him back down to the bed.
BJ kissed down the line of his stomach to his obscenely tented shorts, grinning at the lightheaded moan he earned in response. Goddamn BJ looked good perched between his spread thighs. The fink got hands on his hips to hold him still, eyes twinkling, and trailed hot, openmouthed kisses up his cock, mind-meltingly good even through a layer of cotton. When he fastened his lips over the head, the pressure and heat startled a shameless sound out of Hawkeye that could only be categorized as a whimper.
“This sure beats jacking off alone in a hotel room.”
The vibration of BJ’s answering laugh sent his leg spasming, knee nearly catching BJ in the shoulder.
“Watch it with those weapons.”
“Then hurry up and fuck me, what, do you need a handwritten invitation?”
BJ kept his lubricant in the night stand next to a familiar-looking envelope, so clearly he hadn’t exaggerated about time spent with those photographs. Hawkeye resisted the temptation to tease him over it, instead turning his attention to peeling off his shorts, then flopping back to the mattress and arranging himself in a pose he hoped looked as enticing as it felt—hip cocked, legs parted.
His best come-hither stare won him a laugh and a flush that went from the roots of BJ’s hair all the way down his chest.
“Invitation received,” BJ said and finally, finally gave Hawkeye what he asked for.
Though he’d devoted plenty of recreational hours to building up that aforementioned mental rolodex every which way, BJ was exactly what he’d expected this first time, working him open with slow, focused reverence. The stretch wasn’t any more than what Hawkeye did to himself, often, but BJ’s touch had him feeling brand new. That, and the sight of BJ between his legs sure was something: forearm flexing, mouth parted, eyes darting from his face to where those thick fingers slipped inside his body.
“You’re so good to me, Beej,” he said, reaching up to cup his cheek.
BJ’s eyes screwed shut, brow twisted like the words hurt, and he turned to kiss Hawkeye’s palm. Then he ducked his head and pressed his unfair advantage by leaving a trail of teasing kisses down the length of Hawkeye’s cock, ignoring the garbled sound Hawkeye made in response. So good to me. Too good. The press of fingers inside him sweetened with each accompanying brush of BJ’s lips, and BJ soon left his cock to move further, mouthing at his balls, dipping to lap at where he had Hawkeye spread open, hot and wet around his own knuckles.
Hawkeye’s legs shook, and he hauled BJ away by the hair. “Careful there,” he said, shaky with effort. “Any more of that and we’ll be ending the evening prematurely.”
“Can’t blame me for my enthusiasm. I’ve had a long time to think about this.”
“Oh yeah? How long?”
BJ let out a low groan, cheek flushed hot against where it rested against Hawk’s leg. He spread his fingers and Hawkeye bucked, sensitive, resisting the temptation to wrap a hand around his cock only through sheer force of will.
“I—Hawk. It was . . .” Clearly, BJ had lost his train of thought.
At least Hawkeye wasn’t the only one so turned on he ached with it. “Dream-me was that good, huh?”
“It wasn’t a dream. One time, Frank and I were in post-op together and he was driving me nuts, so I pretended I needed something from supply just to get away from him.”
“On company time? Beej!”
BJ nipped at the inside of his thigh. “I was headed back there for some peace and quiet. Either I didn’t see the hanger or you forgot to put it up. I don’t know who you were in there with, but . . .”
The thought of BJ peeking through the supply shelves and watching him with a nurse sent tingles racing through him, made better by BJ sinking in with a third finger, now, deeper, and fuck his hands were so much bigger than Hawkeye’s own.
“Did you take a peek?” Hawkeye asked, words pushed out between stuttering breaths.
“I wish I had. I didn’t dare. But you’re not quiet, and my feet were rooted to the ground.”
God. “Oh yeah? Did you stand there and listen to me finish? Go back to post-up all hard in your fatigues for me?”
“Kept thinking about what you’d sound like if it were me, if I were in her place with my hands on you, or my mouth, or”—BJ groaned—“if I were under you, or inside you, just like this. Couldn’t think about anything else. Couldn’t focus. Had to excuse myself to take care of it.”
Hawkeye jerked like he’d been hit by BJ’s reanimation machine, because the mere thought that BJ had wanted him enough, even back then, that he couldn’t make it through the rest of his shift, was mind-melting. He could too easily imagine a fresh-pressed BJ somewhere in the shadows behind the OR, biting his collar, hand moving in his fatigues. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Letting himself imagine it added a whole new dimension to his arousal. “Wish you’d waited until you were back in the Swamp that night. Did it in your cot, let me listen.” That image opened the floodgates. “I heard you sometimes, you know. I’d lie there and pretend to be asleep, but it’d get me so worked up.”
BJ’s hips twitched against the sheets. “When?”
“Plenty. You want to hear a fantasy? I used to imagine you’d realize I was awake, and you’d come over to my bunk and let me take care of you, whatever you needed, fuck.” He ground back against BJ’s hand. “Couldn’t stay away from you. Couldn’t keep my hands off of you. I’d have taken anything you gave me, god, I wanted you so badly, I—”
BJ lunged forward and shut him up with an absolutely filthy kiss. When he withdrew his fingers, Hawkeye keened.
“Rubber?” BJ asked against his lips, chest heaving as though he’d run laps.
“Not unless you want one.” He hadn’t taken that extra time in the shower for nothing, and besides—“Wanna feel you, Beej.”
“Jesus,” BJ whispered, head dropping to rest against Hawkeye’s shoulder.
His ego probably didn’t need to know that he could drive BJ to near incoherence just thinking about fucking him, and he’d be gleefully reminding BJ of this as soon as he was capable of reasoned speech and complex thought again. For now, he was too lost in anticipation to do more than bracket BJ’s body with his legs, shivering as BJ hovered over him.
BJ slicked himself and canted forward to rub against where Hawkeye lay open and aching—a delicious tease.
“Yeah?” BJ pulled back to regard him, irises a mere ring of blue around blow pupils.
A predator’s stare. He was about to be devoured.
Hawkeye dug a heel into BJ’s thigh. “Do it.”
The first push was so intense that Hawkeye had to fight not to roll his head back, to instead stay there with BJ, shuddering and overwhelmed. His hand hooked around BJ’s nape to draw him closer, and he shut his eyes as BJ lipped soft little kisses against his panting mouth. The inexorable pressure was all Hawkeye could focus on—it was BJ, BJ inside him—and that thought alone sent a frisson of delight through him as his body remembered its lines.
When at last their hips met flush, they rested together, trembling, submersed in one another.
“Oh, god, Beej,” he whispered.
“Will you look at me?”
He wasn’t the only one overcome. BJ’s expression—wide-eyed, a tender crease between his brows—mirrored the tight knot in Hawkeye’s chest. God, it was a lot. The vulnerability, the exposure. A lot, and exactly what he needed, made all the better when BJ reached up to brush the hair from his eyes and thumb the ridge of his cheekbone, gentle touches BJ couldn’t seem to help whenever they were together.
Hawkeye arched into him, and BJ dropped his head, groaning into Hawkeye’s neck and starting a slow, rocking rhythm. It didn’t take long for the stretch to go from fullness to sweetness, for the feeling to broaden and deepen like some kind of harmonic resonance singing through his body on every stroke.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” BJ said, shaky. His breath puffed against Hawkeye’s throat, and Hawkeye shuddered, an attempt at a reply turning into a long, low moan.
He’d always liked getting fucked, but this was more than physical enjoyment. This was stripping him bare, all of his soft parts exposed, and if he were with anyone else, any time else, he’d make a quip to take the edge off and regain some control. Now, he didn’t need to. This was BJ, and BJ could see all of him because BJ had all of him, just as he had all of BJ. A matched set.
“Hawk,” BJ whispered, then said it again and again, a quiet hymn. His arms shook, and he mouthed along the side of Hawkeye’s neck. “You feel incredible. Is it—”
“Yeah.” He rolled his hips and won a gasp for it, then tugged BJ in by the hair at his nape, letting BJ draw a high, pleading noise from him when teeth grazed the spot beneath his jaw. “C’mon, c’mon.”
BJ needed no further encouragement to pick up the pace, and at once Hawkeye was kindling in a breeze, catching, heating up all over. It shouldn’t surprise him that BJ had run some kind of calculation and worked out what he needed, how to fuck him just right, but it was so good he could hardly stand it.
He let out a quiet whine when BJ found his hand and laced their fingers together, pinning it to the mattress beside his ear, close enough that he could hear his watch ticking over the pounding of blood in his ears. When BJ kissed him again, it was slow, soft—on his lips, his cheek, the bridge of his nose, his temple—each in time as they rocked together.
“BJ—” An attempt to get more words out failed. He could do this forever. He was a wreck. He wanted to bottle and keep each devastating sound BJ made for him, that BJ made because of him.
The shower of kisses didn’t let up. BJ moved first to his shoulder, then trailed across his chest. How BJ managed to pour that sweetness over him without taking the edge off, he didn’t know, but he was on fire with it. He reached between their bodies, sweat-slick, and wrapped his hand around his cock. In an instant, he was right there, throat unstuck, talking nonsense. The only thing that mattered, that registered, was BJ—atop him, around him, inside of him.
BJ pushed back on his thigh, a change in angle that made them both groan. “I’m close, Hawk.”
The mere thought of it had Hawkeye tightening, trembling, his whole body lighting up.
“Oh god, BJ, please.”
“Anything.”
The agony in BJ’s voice burned the constant spinning thoughts in Hawkeye’s head down to a single strand of clarity: that BJ meant it. That he’d always mean it.
Hawkeye squeezed his hand. “I’ll never shake you.”
The last time he said it, he meant I’ll never get over you, because he was mourning and wanted BJ to mourn with him. But there was no grief in this moment, no anticipation of future loss. This was an affirmation—an anything of his own, because he knew all the way down to the pieces of himself that he guarded so fiercely that there was nothing here to mourn.
He’d never get over this. He’d never have to.
“Beej,” he said, alight, breath hitching with every thrust, “I’ll never shake you. I’ll—”
“Can’t shake you either.” BJ bowed over him with a ragged gasp. “You’re in my bones, fuck, fuck I’m gonna come.”
Hawkeye jerked himself through the faltering rhythm of BJ’s orgasm, basking in the obscene sound BJ made into his neck. At once the slide grew slicker, wetter, and the incandescent hotness of it had him reeling. BJ clutched him close and buried himself deep, hips keeping up a sharp rhythm that gave Hawkeye everything he had left.
Then his fist closed tight around Hawkeye’s, and that was it, goodnight, they called it a little death for a reason, because it obliterated him, scattering him down to his atoms.
Maybe this was how they’d end up in a tree together, after all.
The thought had him laughing through his peak, euphoric, back arching and thighs tensing and eyes fixed on nothing but BJ’s dopey smile.
When at last the shivers eased, he turned to pudding, and BJ slumped into him, driving a startled whuff of air out of his chest. He kissed BJ’s sweaty hairline. Their legs tangled together, mimicking their fingers, which were still interlaced beside his head. He squeezed BJ’s hand, winning a muffled murmur of approval from the pillow next to his ear.
Eventually, it would grow uncomfortable to have a BJ-shaped blanket bearing him down into the mattress. But for now, the soporific effect of a well-earned afterglow made the weight feel grounding, content. He hadn’t felt simple contentment in a long time.
Hawkeye dozed, coming to when BJ slipped out of him and shifted to the side, cheek resting on his shoulder, giving him a reprieve from bearing their weight. BJ started tracing patterns, though this time, the angle let Hawkeye see the loops drawn over ribs and up towards his pectorals. With a jolt, he realized that BJ wasn’t making idle shapes. He was writing something in cursive.
I love you.
He needed to get BJ’s mouth on his immediately.
The kiss was a lazy affirmation. “When we get our little duplex,” he murmured against BJ’s lips, “I’m not going to let you out of bed for a week.”
“A captain’s bed.”
“Hnn?”
“You know, the ones with built-in bookshelves that go around the headboard?”
How unbearably charming. “Decorating our house already, are you?”
BJ tucked into his side, hiding his face. “I saw one in a Sears once and liked it, but Peg wasn’t fond of—oh, it doesn’t matter. Ignore me.”
“Not a chance. If you want one, we’ll have one, regardless of what our favorite interior designer has to say.”
At this, BJ went unusually still. Hawkeye itched to fill the resulting silence with words, but instead forced himself to comb back through what he’d just said. Had he teased too hard? Cut too close to the bone?
“Beej, if—”
“I know I’m not an easy choice,” BJ interrupted. “I come with three other people, one of whom is my wife, another a child who will require a lot of time, care, and guidance. And sometimes, she’ll take priority over—”
“I know. It was one of the first things I loved about you—that devotion to the people you care about. And the fact that you’re willing to share them with me, that I get to have them, too? Don’t take this the wrong way, but it only makes me love you more.”
BJ traced a thumb along one of his scalpel calluses. “Can’t blame you. They’re much nicer to look at.”
“Well, sure. None of our girls have a caterpillar growing beneath their noses, do they?” He huffed when BJ rubbed said caterpillar against his chest. “I mean it, Beej. That a guy like me could have a family like this? A lover, two partners, and a kid as part of a package deal? It’s a dream come true.”
He felt more than saw BJ’s sleepy smile grow against his skin, right over his heart. “It sure is.”
Somewhere below them a door shut, heralding Peg and Viv’s reentry to the house. Hawkeye pressed deeper into the pillow. The soft tick-tick-tick of his watch beat a soothing rhythm as he drifted towards sleep. His thoughts had just begun to take shape and morph into moving pictures when BJ dragged him back, nudging at his shoulder.
“Hey, Hawk?”
“Nnyeees?”
“Do you get anything like a press pass for the town hall, or VIP seats in the audience, since you’re a keynote speaker?”
“Mmm, I think so. Four of them? Or maybe it’s six.”
“You planning on using them? Got anyone you want to invite?”
“No, why?”
BJ smiled that guileless little smile—the one Hawkeye saw for the first time when he claimed, at the O Club in Kimpo, that he wasn’t very good at poker. “Oh, no reason.”
Notes:
Hihi sorry for the delay! This chapter grew an extra 2k I wasn't expecting. Current goal is to have the final two chapters up before Christmas. After this, it's one final chapter (I bet you can guess what it's going to be about) followed by an epilogue.
Thank you for all of your wonderful comments; sharing this story with you all has been a delight.
(1) This would be the William Tell Overture by Rossini, which was used both on the radio show (which began in the 1930s) and in the tv show from the 1950s.
(2) It actually would have been possible to do this! I was wildly stoked when I realized I could make a U-Haul reference (no veggie peelers, but U-Haul trailers are a go—I’m still trying to wrap my head around the mid-1950s). Tldr, U- was founded in 1945. The founder franchised gas station owners as agents and quickly developed both return and one-way rentals. By 1955, which is when Hawkeye and BJ would be trailering cross-country, there were more than 10,000 trailers on the road, the brand was nationally known, and it had a major location in San Francisco. Will I one day write a one-shot about Hawk and BJ trailering a house full of furniture cross-country? I don’t know, but I laugh every time I think about it.
(3) Even though direct dialing wasn’t yet common for long-distance calls, automatic switching was more common at the local level, and phone books were a known entity. In fact, the very first phone directory was issued in good ol New Haven, CT in 1878. By 1910, the US’ phone books were collectively keeping track of over seven million phone numbers. In 1954, the Post printed an article describing how complex (and, sometimes, expensive) the task of producing phone books was because each number had to be checked by hand!
Pages Navigation
Amiandivh on Chapter 1 Sun 31 Aug 2025 08:42PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 1 Sun 31 Aug 2025 09:53PM UTC
Comment Actions
MissAllyNess on Chapter 1 Mon 01 Sep 2025 11:17PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 1 Tue 02 Sep 2025 03:15AM UTC
Comment Actions
nephilaclavipes on Chapter 1 Fri 26 Sep 2025 07:47PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 1 Sat 27 Sep 2025 01:21AM UTC
Comment Actions
Polyhorde on Chapter 1 Sat 27 Sep 2025 07:36AM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 1 Sun 28 Sep 2025 09:07PM UTC
Comment Actions
Polyhorde on Chapter 1 Sat 08 Nov 2025 12:04AM UTC
Comment Actions
BeautifulAviator on Chapter 1 Fri 21 Nov 2025 08:04PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 1 Sat 22 Nov 2025 05:51PM UTC
Comment Actions
grossferatu on Chapter 2 Thu 28 Aug 2025 10:38PM UTC
Comment Actions
MissAllyNess on Chapter 2 Mon 01 Sep 2025 11:24PM UTC
Comment Actions
Xaif on Chapter 3 Sun 28 Sep 2025 06:09PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 3 Sun 28 Sep 2025 09:11PM UTC
Comment Actions
anniehow on Chapter 5 Thu 28 Aug 2025 03:33PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 5 Thu 28 Aug 2025 05:31PM UTC
Comment Actions
grossferatu on Chapter 5 Fri 29 Aug 2025 12:56AM UTC
Last Edited Fri 29 Aug 2025 12:57AM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 5 Fri 29 Aug 2025 02:18AM UTC
Comment Actions
grossferatu on Chapter 5 Fri 29 Aug 2025 01:46PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 5 Sun 31 Aug 2025 12:09AM UTC
Comment Actions
Digsciple on Chapter 6 Sat 30 Aug 2025 10:39PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 6 Sun 31 Aug 2025 12:11AM UTC
Comment Actions
nephilaclavipes on Chapter 6 Fri 26 Sep 2025 08:44PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 6 Sat 27 Sep 2025 01:21AM UTC
Comment Actions
anniehow on Chapter 7 Sun 31 Aug 2025 09:19PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 7 Sun 31 Aug 2025 09:54PM UTC
Comment Actions
Bebopand (VivaRocksteady) on Chapter 7 Tue 02 Sep 2025 12:04AM UTC
Comment Actions
grossferatu on Chapter 7 Sun 14 Sep 2025 08:27PM UTC
Comment Actions
hadesfirst on Chapter 8 Fri 05 Sep 2025 03:57AM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 8 Fri 05 Sep 2025 04:56AM UTC
Comment Actions
a_gay_inthelife on Chapter 8 Mon 08 Sep 2025 02:55AM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 8 Tue 09 Sep 2025 01:09AM UTC
Comment Actions
grossferatu on Chapter 8 Sun 14 Sep 2025 08:50PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 8 Sun 14 Sep 2025 11:06PM UTC
Comment Actions
grossferatu on Chapter 8 Sun 14 Sep 2025 11:10PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 8 Sun 14 Sep 2025 11:25PM UTC
Last Edited Sun 14 Sep 2025 11:25PM UTC
Comment Actions
grossferatu on Chapter 8 Sun 14 Sep 2025 11:32PM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 8 Mon 15 Sep 2025 04:43AM UTC
Comment Actions
lighthouse_at_sea on Chapter 9 Wed 10 Sep 2025 04:32AM UTC
Comment Actions
dioxazinepurple on Chapter 9 Wed 10 Sep 2025 03:04PM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation