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“I’m not leaving you till you smile, y’know?”
There’s a gentle squeeze of his hand and BJ looks up at Hawk through heavy eyelids, his eyes red. Hawkeye crouches down and pulls him into a hug before the movement even registers to BJ. It’s a soft, warm hug and BJ wants to bury himself in the steadiness that is Hawk’s body against his.
He almost starts crying again, but he feely silly about it – and the next second, silly about holding back the tears.
***
Yesterday evening, a little kid had stood at the entrance of the Swamp, one hand in Radar’s, one hand deeply buried in a brown dog’s fur. The dog hadn’t been alright; they had been able to tell so at a glance. Hawkeye had gone and asked Potter if anyone would be able to help the animal, but upon taking a look at the dog, Potter had only shaken his head sadly. “Nah, son. I may know little of animals that aren’t horses, but this one, we can’t help anymore except by giving him a nice last couple of hours.”
BJ had been devastated to hear that the colonel’s assessment was the same as their own assumption. He offered to run a few blood tests, mostly for the kid’s sake, but with none of them a veterinarian and no clues regarding what was wrong with the animals but its heavy, rattling breath they were at a loss of what to do.
They did run the blood tests (as painlessly and quickly as they could) but it was hard to give the young kid any real hope regarding the animal’s chance of survival. Radar stayed by the boy’s side the entire time, trying to calm him down. BJ felt like Radar was the only one accomplishing anything, whereas he and Hawk were grasping at straws.
It was a mere hour or two later that the dog – named Bomi as they had learned from Radar – passed away.
Hawkeye ushered BJ outside, when he saw that Radar was doing a good job at comforting the kid and Colonel Potter was coming to help him.
“You’ve been shaking for the past hour, Beej,” he stated matter-of-factly. It didn’t have the sound of a question but BJ knew that it was one.
“He.. The dog reminded me a lot of my own dog, from back when I was a kid,” BJ eventually replied. Then, suddenly unable to hold back tears: “He got hit by the neighbor’s car when I was nine.”
Hawkeye led him toward the Officer’s Club and ordered him a drink.
***
“Tell you what, you’ll crawl into my cot with me and I’ll read you some of that novel my dad sent to me last month.”
“You’ve already lent me that one twice.” BJ’s defeated voice makes Hawkeye pull him even closer to himself.
“Yes, but Charles is in post-OP all night and you need some snuggling and a terribly bad crime novel to keep your mind off things for a while.” He pushes himself up from where he is crouching, pulling BJ up with him.
“Alright?”
There’s a tear running down BJ’s cheek and Hawkeye carefully swipes it away before giving him a peck on his cheek.
“Come ‘ere,” he asks him as he gently pulls BJ toward his cot and down.
BJ snuggles up closer when Hawk places a hand on top of his head, fingers running calmingly through his hair as he begins reading the story, and the smallest of smiles finally starts forming on BJ’s lips as he allows his eyes to fall shut.