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perpetual_motionAuthor: Perpetual Motion
For disclaimers and other bits, see part one
BJ wants to call him back, call him a coward, but all he can do is put the phone in the cradle. He turns around and gives Erin a long look. “Go to bed.”
“Dad?” Her eyebrows scrunch together and she doesn’t remind BJ of anyone at all except herself. That expression is purely hers.
“Just go to bed.” BJ shoves off the wall and heads to his bedroom. He flops down next to Peg, not caring if his movements wake her and stares up at the ceiling until he falls asleep against his best efforts.
He wakes up at just barely dawn, Peg curled against his side, warming his arm and leg. BJ eases his way out of bed and makes his way to the kitchen. He stares into the refrigerator for minutes before pulling out eggs and milk and some leftover ham from dinner two nights before. A little more digging and he unearths a half a block of cheese and a lone onion that doesn’t look like it’s quite ready to give up on being used in a meal. BJ lines up everything on the counter and gets to work, chopping the onion and dicing the ham, grating the cheese and whipping the eggs in a bowl with the milk and a little bit of pepper. He keeps his head down, eyes on the knife as it breaks down the onion. He does not look at the phone.
Peg comes into the kitchen first, hair combed, robe cinched, and breath smelling of mint. She kisses him on the cheek, murmurs something about how nice everything smells, and retrieves coffee cups from the cabinet to the left of BJ’s shoulder. BJ knows without asking that she’s letting last night drop. She won’t bring it up again unless it becomes an absolute necessity. BJ isn’t certain if it needs to be one or not.
Erin comes into the kitchen with the same half-running footsteps she’s had all her life. She wishes Peg good morning, grabs her own coffee cup, and glances at BJ. “Morning, Dad.”
“Morning,” BJ says as he starts pouring eggs into the frying pan. “Sleep well?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Fine.” There’s a distinct, heavy clunk behind him, but BJ doesn’t turn to look. He can feel the two points in the back of his head where Erin is trying to drill holes. He wonders if she managed to crack the coffee cup with all the force she just laid into it. “Make toast, will you, kiddo?” He says instead of turning and snarling. The lack of noise in-between his request and Erin actually moving to fill it makes BJ’s shoulders tighten. Peg, setting the table, doesn’t seem to notice anything different between the two of them, and BJ feels his shoulders tighten further. How much of his marriage, he wonders, has been spent with Peg ignoring things? He shakes his head at himself a moment later, tasting hypocrisy at the back of his throat. It’s like dirt and cold, cold air. Like the first time he kissed Hawkeye, three days into his first winter in Korea.
“Honey?” Peg’s at his elbow, nudging him out the way with a press of her hip. “You’re burning the omlettes.” She gives him a smile, slightly reserved, and it tears at BJ’s insides. “Sit down and have your coffee. I’ll finish these.”
He wants to be a good husband; he’s always wanted to be a good husband. He sits and sips his coffee and ignores the look that Erin gives him across the table. She’s not nearly as much like Hawkeye in the daylight, he decides. Hawkeye would be dropping anvils with tiny scraps of hints attached to them. Hawkeye would be kicking him under the table. Hawkeye would be giving him a better glare than Erin’s aiming his way, and he’d be threatening to spit into BJ’s coffee to boot.
“You look tired, Dad,” there’s an underlying viciousness in Erin’s tone that plays as early-morning crankiness.
“Had a lot to think about last night, honey.”
Peg turns from the stove, eyes narrowed at BJ’s tone. “Honey, it’s early. Let’s not get into this now.” BJ stares at her, sees Erin doing the same in his side vision. He knows they’re both wondering which “this” thery’re not supposed to be getting into just yet. Peg seems to interpret their looks as a need for an explanation. “Honey,” and Peg’s tone makes it clear she’s talking to Erin. It’s a motherly tone, warm but slightly worried. “Your dad and I just need a little time to adjust. We’re glad you’re happy, but it’s an adjustment.”
BJ doesn’t have to look to know that Erin is glaring daggers at him. He wonders what she’ll say, if she’ll let loose with everything she knows. She sighs instead of saying anything and takes a drink of her coffee. “I’m going to get dressed,” she says rather than going for the kill. BJ thinks it hurts more than if she’d actually gone for a cheap shot.
“Oh, dear,” Peg mutters as she slides BJ’s omlette onto his plate with a spatula. “I think I handled that wrong.”
“No, you did fine.” BJ stands and kisses the top of her head, smells her shampoo and thinks of every morning they’ve had together. The kids they’ve raised, the life they’ve made. “She’s sensitive about it, Peg. It’s only to be expected.”
“I just…I do want her to be happy.” She says it and looks BJ straight in the eyes. His gut twists, and he swallows carefully.
“She is, or at least she’s getting there.”
“And how long does that take?” There’s fire in her voice, fire in her eyes, but she’s got a poker face that BJ envies. He can’t read her face at all.
“It’s a matter of acceptance, Peg. She was expecting rejection, probably, and she didn’t get that. She’s got to realize that we really do mean it when we say we want her happy, whatever that means.” BJ waits for Peg to say something else, hopes against his better judgment that she presses the issue, that they have it out. He needs a good fight. He needs an honest fight. He needs honesty. He needs someone who will actually talk to him.
“It means she’s happy,” and Peg turns away from him, heading back to the stove and back to breakfast.
BJ opens his mouth to press forward, to make her talk, but nothing comes out. He’s empty. His gut twists further, but it doesn’t hurt this time. This is his life, he realizes in a burst. This is what he convinced himself was necessary to get over Korea. Peg and Erin and the boys, his practice, the mostly-new car. Hawkeye at arms length because it was as far as BJ could stand to push him away. But he hasn’t recovered. He’s never going to recover. What Korea did to him, what it made him, what he made of himself, there’s no changing it back. He’s stuck in a post-Korea world trying to live a Pre-Korea life.
We don’t talk about it, BJ.
Because there isn’t one goddamned thing to talk about. BJ’s legs go out, and he collapses into his chair, his breath coming in quick gasps. The coffee is lukewarm but helps center him, helps him breathe. He digs his way out of his head and looks around the kitchen. Peg is watching him from the stove, worry in her eyes, but she’s still keeping her distance. BJ tries to smile at her, but he can feel the shakiness. He takes another drink of his coffee and forces his hand steady to cut into his omlette. It tastes like absolutely nothing in his mouth. What the hell has he done to himself, to Peg, to the kids?
“BJ?” Peg’s coming towards him slowly, like he’ll jerk around and bite off her hand if she offers it. “BJ, honey, what is it? Are you feeling okay?”
He’s feeling nothing, but he can’t tell her that. He stands up and touches her face. “I’m fine, sweetheart. I’m going to lock myself away in the study for awhile, okay?” She’s confused, he can see, but she just nods and takes the kiss he busses on her cheek.
He calls Hawkeye’s house every twenty minutes for three hours and gets the machine over and over again. He can’t leave a message; he has no idea what to say.
Hey, Hawk, it’s Beej. I just wanted…
Hey, it’s me. I’m sorry for…
It’s Beej. Last night was…
Hawk, I’m a dick.
Hawk, I’m a terrible friend.
Hawk, sometimes I spend whole days remembering Korea.
Hawk, I’m sorry. I’m just sorry.
Finally, as the sun alters itself to slice through the blinds on the windows, BJ comes out of the study, tail between his legs, and makes his way to the bedroom, changing into his Saturday clothes and going through the motions of the weekend. He checks the shingles on the roof and clears the trash out of his car. There are no leaves to rake, but he picks up sticks out of the yard and untangles the wind chime. Peg sweeps the front porch while he checks the posts of the porch railing, but they don’t talk. She gives him one small smile, but BJ can’t bring himself to return it. Erin makes herself scarce for the day, yelling something about studying down the hall when Peg announces lunch, and BJ is grateful that at least one of them has figured out tact. He and Peg sit across from one another and make small talk over sandwiches and lemonade. BJ insists on washing the dishes, sending Peg to enjoy the breeze and sunshine on the porch while he wipes down knives and plates and glasses. He puts everything into the dish strainer methodically; plates stacking one behind the other, knives into the silverware section, and glasses behind the plates. He’s wiping down the edges of the sink with a dish towel when the front door slams open with a fierceness that’s not normal. BJ comes out of the kitchen, drying his hands on his jeans, and finds Hawkeye standing in the middle of the living room like he’s somehow gotten lost. Peg’s in the doorway behind him, looking confused but not terribly surprised. All BJ can do is blink.
“Beej.” It’s a full sentence, somehow, and BJ feels his throat close.
“Hawk.” BJ’s gaze bounces from Hawk to Peg. She stares back at him, her face flushed, before stepping forward and squaring her shoulders at Hawkeye.
“Benjamin,” she says with the barest slice of anger in her voice. “This is a surprise.”
“I have a sneaking suspicion that’s not true at all.” Hawkeye’s voice is all smarm and even though his eyes are flat, his spine is straight. BJ recognizes the set of his mouth and the tilt of his head and knows he has to speak up or Peg will get flayed.
“Peg,” he says quietly, “why don’t you grab Erin and go into the city tonight? She hasn’t been to that restaurant we found last month.” The look Peg gives him makes BJ hurt; it’s distrust and disbelief and no small amount of raw anger, but he stands firm and forces himself not to glance at Hawkeye. The trust she holds for him, if she holds any at all, will collapse if BJ looks away in this moment. Finally, after a small eternity, Peg nods and walks out of the living room and down the hall. BJ breathes out and lets his shoulders relax and makes his way into the kitchen.
“Drink?” It’s the only thing that seems right to say. There’s a pause, but BJ waits it out; he doesn’t want to start this conversation with Peg and Erin still in the house.
“Any cheap gin?” Hawkeye follows behind him, voice calm, but BJ can see his hands shaking. He doesn’t say anything about it, just reaches into the high cupboard behind all the good stuff for the lighter fluid disguising itself as actual liquor.
BJ mixes their drinks methodically, pours them into scotch glasses because he and Peg don’t own martini glasses, and sets them on the table before taking up position across from Hawkeye. He remembers extra-hot nights in the Swamp, when they would throw off the covers and sit facing each other on their beds, T-shirts and boxers sticking to their skin as they drank themselves into unconsciousness. He remembers the curve of Hawkeye’s knee and the way he’d slide out of his shirt after the third drink, leaving the shirt in a ball on the floor, and BJ’s heart in his throat at the sight of Hawkeye’s lean chest and small nipples. Some nights they’d end up sweaty against each other, breathing hard after an orgasm, splitting the final drink in the still. Most nights, though, it was just them, together, talking and laughing; complaining sometimes and crying others, the last only when they were really and truly alone. They’re memories BJ doesn’t remember very often. It’s too dangerous to remember those hot nights. Hot nights were the nights everyone slept alone, even Frank and Margaret. To have sex on those hot nights, it meant more than the other times, spoke of how far Hawk had gotten under his skin, how far he’d gotten under Hawk’s.
“Beej,” and Hawkeye’s voice is searching but in no way careful. He wants answers, BJ knows, and he’s ready to jab into the open wounds with whatever sharp object will work. “What the hell are you doing?”
Peg and Erin come down the hall before BJ can answer. Peg doesn’t bother to glance at Hawkeye, simply pecks BJ on the cheek and heads for the front door. Erin looks from BJ to Hawkeye and back, and BJ wonders what’s going on in her head, what conclusions she’s decided must be correct. He takes the hug she gives him and watches her walk out, not missing the way Hawkeye’s face pulls when Erin doesn’t bother to acknowledge him past her first glance. The door closes with a finality that makes BJ twitch. Hawkeye’s hands are still shaking.
“I don’t have any idea what I’m doing,” BJ says after the sound of the car has faded down the street. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” He watches Hawkeye stare into his glass and thinks about their first meeting, Hawkeye almost inconsolable because of Trapper, BJ almost inconsolable because of Peg and Erin. They’d gotten drunker than he’d ever been in his life, and it’s a memory that BJ wraps around himself on his worst days. No matter how bad Korea got, no matter how much of Korea followed him home, no matter the fact that he’s just now realized the last two decades have been a lie to everyone around him, Hawkeye is still here, and there’s still gin, and they’ll find a way to figure it out. Just like that first day, with those first drinks, and Hawkeye’s first smile for him.
“I never know what I’m doing, Beej, not with you.” Hawkeye plants his hands on the table and flexes his fingers. “I think I’m here to stop you from doing something stupid.”
That makes BJ laugh. “Need a change of pace, Hawk?” His voice is lighter than he expects, and he raises his glass in Hawkeye’s direction. “Stupidity?” He watches Hawkeye fight the grin that’s trying to take over his face, presses his knee against Hawk’s under the table. After an age, Hawkeye lifts his own glass.
“Stupidity.”
They drink quickly, and BJ stands, gathering the gin and vermouth, the cocktail olives from the fridge, and a bowl full of ice. He puts the gin and vermouth under the ice, passes the bowl to Hawkeye, and leads the way to the front porch, setting the glasses and olives on the porch railing and instructing Hawkeye to sit in one of the rocking chairs with a wave of his hand. Hawk sets the bowl between the chairs and rocks back and forth for a few minutes. BJ watches him from the corner of his eye, notices that his hands are still shaking and wonders how to start the conversation again. Hawkeye, being Hawkeye, handles that part for him.
“Nice porch.”
“Thanks.”
“Good way to keep your hands to yourself.”
BJ says nothing to that, just tips back his head and thinks of the afternoons outside the Swamp, camp chairs protecting their jar of gin, vermouth portioned out like the last of the blood supply. There weren’t usually olives then, but sometimes they could sneak bits of onion from the mess and leave them to soak in the bottom of their glasses. He remembers Frank yelling about “reprobates” and Charles sniffing about “crudeness”, about the way Margaret would teetotal on the slow days but gratefully accept whatever they had left in the still after three straight days in surgery. He remembers the look on Radar’s face when they spiked his Ne-hi and the way Father Mulcahy somehow knew how to twist the valve on the still. Poker nights blur together in his memories. He sees Klinger in a dress, a new pair of heels, a stole ordered from Sears and Roebuck. Klinger in proper army clothes, a nearly-tattered pair of pants and a threadbare long-sleeve shirt, the holes in the elbows sewed with the precision of a man who knows his way around a needle and thread. Colonel Potter on Sophie, riding through the camp on his way to see the orphans, to give them a chance to ride.
But mostly he sees Hawkeye, all arms and legs and determined anger. He remembers the way he sang off-key in the shower but hummed in perfect pitch when they lay together and BJ couldn’t sleep. Soap on Hawkeye’s shoulders and half-hearted grumbling at Radar when he had to be woken for wounded. He remembers passion and vigor, forty seconds of word play about why Hawkeye wouldn’t carry a gun. Hawk listening to his letters from Peg, staying quiet until the end on the days when all BJ wanted was a reminder that there was more to the world than Korea. Throwing out smart remarks every two sentences when they both needed a fight.
“I’ve missed you,” BJ mumbles. He looks over at Hawkeye. “I really have.”
“I’ve been here, Beej.”
“Yeah.” BJ reaches for the glasses, and he hears Hawkeye reach for the ice. “I thought I could pick up where I left off. I had a family started when I went to Korea, it was here when I got back. My daughter was walking and talking and spent the first few weeks shy around me, but I figured it was a small price to pay. I’d come back. They were still here. Everything else could fade into the background, just be the occasional funny story.”
“The time you filled Frank’s air raid hole with water.”
“Collecting all those pictures for that poor kid whose girlfriend dumped him.”
“That bonfire we built from all the furniture in camp.”
“Tokyo.”
“Klinger.”
BJ smiles at Hawkeye. “Hot Lips.” Hawkeye returns the smile.
“Charles Emerson Winchester, the third.” Hawkeye affects a terrible Boston accent, “However do you two drink that battery acid with which you stink up this already deplorable tent?”
And that makes BJ laugh, a deep-down belly laugh that he hasn’t used in months. He laughs while Hawkeye fills the drinks and laughs after Hawkeye fits the drink into his hand and laughs as Hawkeye takes the first few sips from his drink.
“And that’s not even my best Charles impression,” Hawkeye says instead of digging in about BJ’s overabundant, desperate mirth.
BJ sips his drink and stares out at his lawn, at the neighbors across the street who are obviously wondering when the upstanding Dr. Honnicutt started drinking on his front porch with that odd little friend of his who they still don’t honestly believe is another doctor. “What have I done, Hawk?” he finally asks.
“Hell if I know, Beej.” Hawk knocks back the rest of his drink and waves his glass in the direction of the curious neighbors. They get up and walk into their house, and BJ doesn’t miss the triumphant smile that hangs on the corner of Hawkeye’s mouth. “I don’t even know how I got here. I hung up on you, and then I was on a plane, and then I was in a rental car and then I was here. Everything else is just kind of…fuzzy.”
My whole life’s been fuzzy, BJ thinks but doesn’t say. It’s not entirely true. He remembers his first day home in enormous detail; Peg with her pearls, Erin’s tiny feet in her tiny shoes. He remembers the births of his boys. He remembers Erin’s first day of school and all her graduations, the smiles from the boys when he taught them about cars and bike chains and how to shave, and he’s certain that he’ll never forget last night, when his baby girl proved she was grown up, and BJ realized he wasn’t at all. And he’ll never forget earlier in the day, the fire in Peg’s eyes and the blankness of her face, a woman who was already certain she’d lost. But there’s so much of his life, post-Korea, that he can’t really recall. His work at the practice isn’t boring, but the memories of Korea are stronger. The years have slid through his fingers and now his bones are creaking and his eyes are slowly going and he’s here on the front porch of his house thinking of twenty years past and Hawkeye, as he was and as he is and how they could be together, if only BJ could stretch himself that far.
‘I’m sorry,” BJ says and downs his second drink. He stares at the dregs, the lone olive jammed between the ice cubes. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” The scoff from Hawkeye soothes something in BJ.
“Hell, Beej, I’m not even sure if my head’s stitched back together some days. There are days I can’t leave the house because I think I’m going to walk outside and be back in Korea. I’ll have nightmares for weeks, and then they’ll just disappear. I heard people speaking Korean in the store last week and felt like the walls were going to close in. Sidney says it’s the long-term effects of shell-shock, that sometimes your brain stays a little bit crazy.”
“Your brain was already a little bit crazy,” BJ says without thinking. In the nanosecond before Hawkeye laughs, BJ worries that the careful truth they’re building is going to tumble into dust.
“You’d know,” Hawk retorts, “Mr. ‘Buttoned-up-buttoned-down-can’t-unbutton-the-button-press-the-button-sew-the-button-or-button-my-lip.”
BJ chuckles and refills their drinks, and they rock on the porch as the sun goes down. When it finally goes dark and the stars start to show, BJ reaches across the space of their chairs and curls his fingers around Hawkeye’s hand. “You’ve been shaking since you got here,” he says.
“Lack of booze.”
“You have booze.”
“Well, shit,” Hawk says quietly, “I suppose I do.” He shifts his hand and intertwines his fingers with BJ’s fingers. BJ closes his eyes to remember the feeling of Hawk’s hand, slightly cool and damp from his glass, wrapped up in his own, the way Hawk’s thumb brushes his wrist, the low hum from Hawk of some Sinatra fragment. Twenty years between then and now and here they sit, half-drunk on cheap gin, holding hands on his front porch.
“Step one,” Hawkeye says as he stands and pulls BJ up along with him. “Or step two, if the drinking was a necessity before you could touch me.”
“No,” BJ murmurs, leaning against Hawkeye and carefully backing him against one of the support posts, “the gin wasn’t necessary. Getting around the rocks in my head was necessary.”
“You should lose a few of those. Does wonders.”
“Maybe,” and BJ goes in for the kiss, dipping his head to meet Hawkeye halfway. It’s a quick kiss, a reacquainting, and Hawkeye’s the one to pull away.
“You have a wife and three kids,” Hawkeye says clearly, enunciating every word carefully, as if BJ has suddenly lost his hearing.
“I know.”
“You have a career and a car and a house.”
“I know.” BJ is close enough to see the pain that crosses Hawkeye’s face, even in the mostly-dark of the porch. He clutches Hawkeye’s hand. “Hawk?”
“I lost a lot of my life to Korea, Beej. I lost the two years I was there, and I’m still losing bits and pieces depending on the day. I don’t want-“
“This isn’t about Korea, Hawk.”
“Everything we are is because of Korea, Beej.” Hawkeye slides away from the porch post and sits back in the rocking chair. The street lamp hits him starkly, and BJ sees every year that’s passed Hawkeye in his life. The lines around his eyes are deeper than BJ’s ever seen them, and his hair has more white than gray now. “It got under my skin, into my veins, and it runs around in my blood. Everything goes back to Korea, especially you.”
BJ leans against the post that Hawk’s abandoned and wonders how he looks in the light, if the thin spot on the top of his head shines through and what his laugh lines must look like to Hawk. “There’s more than Korea, Hawk. There’s the here and now. There’s Sausalito and Crabapple Cove. We’ve had lives since then. We’ve become different men.”
“Except we’re sitting on your front porch half a drink from drunk and picking up where we left off in Korea.”
BJ almost argues, almost says they’re doing no such thing, except that Hawkeye is completely right, and he’s trying to make a real effort to stop kidding himself. “We can’t get around it, huh?”
“Doesn’t seem to have worked for you.”
And that stings, but BJ smiles, because that’s a Hawkeye he recognizes. He grabs the front of Hawk’s shirt and yanks him to his feet, pulls his close so that their chests are touching. “The kids are grown and even if we’d only sat here drinking, Peg would never trust me again.”
“Terrible thing to say about your wife.”
“I’m making an effort to be more truthful.” BJ watches Hawkeye look at him and feels like he’s being dissected. He wonders what Hawk’s seeing, what he’s weighing, what’s going to happen to him if Hawk decides he won’t be part of this and storms away, grief making his shoulders slump, because he can’t realign himself after twenty years of BJ being an obtuse ass.
“Goddamn you,” Hawkeye finally says, and his hands settle at BJ’s waist. “You and your kicked puppy face. Damn you straight to hell.” But it’s said without malice and the barest hint of a wan smile at the edges of Hawkeye’s mouth, and BJ grins, feels light and ridiculous because of Hawk’s acceptance.
“Straight to hell? I’m ashamed, Hawk. Such an obvious joke, isn’t it?”
“Shut up,” Hawkeye says, and then they’re kissing a little harder than necessary, BJ twists when Hawkeye’s fingers dig in, but he gives back by pushing his palms against the muscles of Hawkeye’s lower back. They stay like that, pressing back and forth, until BJ pulls away and tips back his head to breathe.
“Goddamn, Hawk.”
“Already said that.”
Headlights sweep down the street, and Hawkeye pulls away, settling into his rocking chair like he’s never been on his feet in the first place. BJ watches the lights grow into the shape of a car he somewhat recognizes as belonging down the street. He crosses his arms and drops his head and waits for the lights to fade. Hawkeye rocks back and forth, empty glass dangling from his hand, and BJ gives him a smile that feels crooked but honest. “Here we stand.”
“I’m sitting.”
“Here we stand and sit,” BJ says, his smile growing wider, a bit more even. “Two men growing old and just figuring out-“
“I’ve always known, Beej,” Hawkeye says, his voice calm but definitive. “From that first time, I knew.”
BJ feels himself gaping, feels like the world is shifting around under him. “But-“
“Because you have a wife and a baby, and while I was a drunk and a cad, I wasn’t a bastard.” Hawkeye runs a hand through his hair in a gesture so familiar it makes BJ ache a little. “I’ve obviously taken a left turn into Bastard Town.”
“No, you haven’t.” BJ squints into the darkness, looking for more signs of cars, listening for his particular car, the warning sign that this moment is about to end abruptly. “I’ve been there for years, Beej. You’re nowhere close. You didn’t string along a family.”
“You’re speaking in past tense.” Hawkeye grabs the glasses and mixes two more drinks. BJ watches his hands and thinks about their first handshake, their first hug, the first time Hawk’s hands slid down his chest and dipped below his waistband, the first time they stroked his back while he cried after surgery. The way they used to run through his hair and over his leg and now they were dropping two olives into his glass. He has never looked at Peg’s hands and remembered any particular instance. He’s not even sure he could reliably describe Peg’s hands, but he’s never forgotten anything about Hawk, no matter how hard he’s tried.
“It’s becoming past tense.”
“Beej-“
“Hawk,” BJ interrupts as he takes his drink, swirls it around as Hawk stirs his with a finger. “Have you been waiting this whole time?”
“Waiting?” Hawk sucks his finger into his mouth; BJ tries not to lean forward to offer to help.
“Waiting for me.”
Hawkeye’s laugh makes BJ flinch a little. It’s bitter in the middle and cold around the edges. “Oh, god, Beej, you-“ Hawkeye laughs again, and there’s a slight bit of warmth this time. “I didn’t wait, Beej. I couldn’t. I pushed myself forward with every last hope I had, and I had plenty of last hopes.” Hawkeye takes a drink from his glass that’s marred with so much desperation BJ almost checks to see if they’ve managed to somehow end up back in Korea. “I knew where I stood, Beej. I knew how far things would go after we both made it home. I knew you’d go home to Peg and Erin. I didn’t have any hope beyond having you while I could.”
BJ breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth and takes his own desperate draw from his drink. “God, Hawk, I-“
“No apologies, Beej.” BJ bites his lip when Hawkeye suddenly crowds into his space, hand up under his shirt, fingernails scratching over his ribs. “There’s too many of those. Everyone’s given them to me because I went nuts, and I swear, if you start apologizing, I’ll pop you one, take your gin, and leave.”
“That’s barely gin,” BJ says as dry as he can. “It’s a step up from basic fire accelerant.”
“Still gets you drunk.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Yet.”
BJ presses his glass against the back of Hawk’s neck, grins at the way he jumps and twists. “Then back away and get the booze.”
“Booze makes you do things, Beej. Don’t think I don’t know.”
“The booze never made me do a damned thing.” BJ settles into his rocking chair and drops more ice cubes into his glass. “I did everything I wanted to do.” And then I came home, he thinks but doesn’t say, just smiles at Hawk and raises his glass for a silent toast.
