#1: "I'd love to see you sing "You're The Tops" without your bottoms. " --Hawkeye, to BJ
*
"I'm not going to--"
"Aw, come on, Beej!" Hawkeye jumped on his bed, laying down on both elbows. "You know you want to!" he said with a winning smile.
BJ eyed him. There were things he didn't do. "There are things I don't do."
"Like?" Hawkeye raised an eyebrow.
"Like." BJ started pacing. "Like sing in public."
"Oh, come on!" Hawkeye dismissed that concern with a wave of his hands, like magic. "I'm not public."
BJ came over to Hawkeye's bunk, grinning quietly when he shoved the other man over on the itchy blanket. "No," he muttered, hands already undoing Hawkeye's robe, "You're not public."
It kind of stung, but Hawkeye ignored it and kissed him instead.
#2: >> See? Too much anger. Not enough lust.<<
That is one fucking amazing line, girl.
~
BJ calls it love. Hawkeye calls it fucking.
"You're not going to kiss me good night?" BJ jokes with him as they're falling into cold bunks after another twenty hour day of surgery.
Hawkeye supresses the little shudder in his limbs, and kicks his boots off. Almost misses their crummy fireplace. "Sure, if you come over here. I think my butt froze to the blanket already."
"The morning, maybe," BJ answers, with a little sigh. Hawkeye is unwilling to do anything first. In the showers, BJ has to lean over and leer, actually put his hand between them before Hawkeye will respond. At night, while Frank is with Margaret, he has to practically jump on Hawkeye before he gets the man to co-operate. Some might see Hawkeye as unwilling.
"Only if we see morning." Hawk's already got his eyes closed, blissfully close to sleep. "I'm hoping to sleep until tomorrow night."
"Tomorrow night then," BJ says, and smiles. After a minute of heart-pounding fear, he adds, ""Hawk--" and then thinks better of it. This is not something that needs to be said, tonight. "No, forget it."
"No, what! Now you have to tell me." Hawk rolls over on his bunk, onto his side, and looks at BJ.
BJ's reluctance soars. He remembers Hawkeye, hot and flushed and sweaty, murmuring, 'I'm going to fuck you now', and doing it. There's maybe not enough tenderness in him. "No, it's stupid."
"Lots of things are stupid. War's stupid, Frank's stupid." For a second, Hawkeye looks thoughtful, totally on another train of thought. "Is Frank even stupider than war? There's something to consider."
"I love you." BJ blurts it out quietly, and wants to take it back right away. He never says it when they have sex. He never says it casually. Hawkeye says it casually all the time. It's the only way he can.
"See," Hawkeye says, swallowing, desperately trying to remain in a joking mood, "that's not stupid. Because I love you too."
A lot of people would call Hawkeye unwilling. BJ knows he's terrified -- and yet he wants it anyway. And that's why BJ calls it love.
"Have you heard about Klinger?"
"No, god! Where is he?"
Charles laughs, and BJ grins to hear it. So few times did Charles ever laugh, that the sound has a Pavlovian grin attached to it. Charles in a good mood means entertainment, and amusement, and good cheer. He says, "Expecting a baby in March. He's getting to like the wretched country, even."
"Really? I would never have guessed."
"Neither would he."
BJ didn't really expect this call, all the way from Boston, but Charles is good at surprising people in small ways. He asks, breathless, "And you, working away on that career?"
"Ah, no, actually," and there's a hint of ruefulness. "I decided to put it on hold for a few years, and travel, actually."
"Really."
"Yes." BJ can hear the smile. "It's a wonder what things will be put in perspective."
"Yeah."
There's a pause. "--and?..."
BJ coughs, and Charles waits politely to not hear anything about Hawkeye.
~*~
It was always agreed-- you get the chance to leave, you just don't look back. That's the rule in war, and in prison too. Any place where they trap you, lock you up with disgusting food, and throw away the key.
Like summer camp. If you got to go home early, you never questioned why.
But even Sydney's called BJ at least once. More than once, actually, since he's living near by, relatively. Portland's a stones throw away. Talked about a visit.
BJ smiled bitter, and asked if it was a professional visit. Sydney didn't smile back.
~*~
"And Margaret? I assume you've talked to her once or twice."
BJ relaxes, seeing that Charles isn't going to press the issue. "Oh, she's stationed, last I heard, somewhere in Europe for a while. Going for a promotion. Dating a general. The same old hot-lips."
Kindly, "I wouldn't say the same, BJ."
His breath catches. "No."
They both know that Hawk's name just can't come up, that it's a taboo so large and so endless that the skies will close in on themselves before BJ admits that he's hurt Hawk hasn't called, and before Charles forces him to.
Nevertheless, in a gentle tone, Charles asks, "Have you not thought of calling him just once?"
"I'm not sure of the number."
Gentle still, insistent. "Directory assistance may be of some use to you."
"He's. It's not. Peg. --it's not fair."
The sentences, stilted, halting, --angry, but BJ doesn't want to get angry just because Hawkeye got free of hell. Charles, voice slow and easy, answers, "She'll understand."
"No she won't."
"And it's not about her."
He doesn't add, 'it's about you two'. BJ sighs. "I know."
"I sat," Charles says, with hard honesty, "in that germ ridden filthy hellhole with you two. I shared the same tent with the two class clowns for longer than I'd care to admit. I know you two, I wasn't blind. I feel that I know some things. About these things." He pauses, for effect, for BJ to absorb what he's said and what he's going to say. "Just call the man."
"But I--"
And then Charles says the magic words. "He wants you to."
You don't think that Charles really wants to be found, rereading a letter from his 'friend' back in Boston.
You don't think that Charles wants to be found, swearing quietly at the bastard and burning it either like some 'dear john'.
Klinger finds him, too, and Klinger sits down in army camo, and Klinger doesn't say anything except "nice night for a fire." And you see the two of them, quietly smoking as Charles watches the heater and the flames.
Also, Klinger says, "where's Hawkeye and Captain Hunnicutt?" You don't miss the way he doesn't use your nickname, or the way he adds quickly, "Not that it matters."
Charles makes a pathetic attempt at laughing, that comes out as "heh." And he stares some more. And he says, "I'm sure they're sitting drinking swill out of plastic martini glasses right now."
Either Klinger already knows what was in the letter, that's now ashes in pre-op's heater, or didn't want to know, or didn't ask, or something. It doesn't come up. You're supposed to be checking the supply room right off pre-op for penecillin, but it can wait until tomorrow because that face on Charles is so disturbing, you don't really want to know what caused it.
Klinger hits it when he comments softly, "it looks like your puppy just died, Major."
Charles says that little "heh" again. You creep out of earshot and away. Whatever was in that letter it wrote loss all over Charles's face, and the emotion seemed so alien, so raw in the darkish room, that you want to find something familiar and comforting to erase it. Mail from Peg. Agame with Hawk. Something that distracts from what couldn't have been tears on Charles' cheeks, since Charles would hate it if anyone found him like that.
So no one does, and you go back to the Swamp.
So it was Klinger who found them.
"Jesus!" and BJ pulled his pants up, wiped his mouth quick and jumped a mile. Klinger's eyes went wide, hand flew to his face and he grimaced behind it.
Hawkeye flopped back on the bale of linen. He said, "you couldn't have left the inventory until tomorrow?"
Klinger, who was studiously looking out the door instead of in, gulped. "Potter got on my ass, and then, y'know, and why am I still even talking when there's a whole other supply tent to inventory! All night! So yeah!"
BJ's shoulders slumped as Klinger let the door swing closed with a bang, and Hawkeye draped an arm over his eyes. BJ started, "I'm sorry--"
"Oh, oh no." Hawkeye didn't move. "The Mexican jumping bean imitation was very impressive."
"It's not that." BJ rubbed his mouth again, all trace of kissing Hawkeye long gone. "It's not that I didn't want him to--"
"You know what's great about this supply closet?" Hawkeye, pants still half-undone and hard underneath them, sounded tired and long gone.
BJ sighed. "No."
Hawkeye sat up, did his pants up. "Me neither."