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“Hah!”
Hawkeye always notices BJ’s laughter, but something about this particular hah feels like it is meant to be noticed. Also, BJ is holding his newest letter from Peg, which almost always contains something that he wants to talk about, in one way or another.
“What?” he says, looking up from the bit of the still he‘s tinkering with.
“Get this: Peg’s worried we’re too codependent on each other.”
“And?” Hawkeye pours himself two martinis and goes to sit down on his bed.
“And I’m just not sure where she got that impression!” BJ says, grinning and folding up the letter.
Hawkeye stares at him blankly. “You’re not?”
“Well, yeah,” BJ says, putting down the letter and sitting down next to Hawkeye.
“Beej, we spend every waking hour together.”
“Well, but it’s not like we’re codependent. We spend time together because we’ve got the same schedule. OR, Mess Tent, Officer’s Club — we even bunk together, in case you haven’t noticed.” Hawkeye rolls his eyes at him. “We spend time together because we’ve got no other option. And I care about you, sure, but do we care about each other in the same way? Does anyone?”
“Beej, what in the world are you talking about?”
BJ shrugs, taking a swig of his drink. “Well, only that — sometimes it feels like you’re gonna forget about me after all this, and sometimes it feels like I’m never gonna forget you,” he says, making a face that Hawkeye can’t quite read, “and now that I’m saying it all out loud, I have absolutely no idea when this all became a problem for me.”
“Jesus, Beej what do you want from me?”
“Nothing, I —“
“Codependent. Hah! Look, not to sound codependent,” Hawkeye says, handing BJ a glass, “but you’re the last thing I think about when I go to bed and the first thing I think about when I wake up and I don’t think that’s gonna end any time soon.” He chomps on an olive. “For better or for worse.”
“Well, obviously, same, stupid, but I’m not going around being obsessed with you all the time.”
“Well I’m not either, except that — except that I sort of am, aren’t I, but heaven forbid I think about you all the time on top of it all.” He wasn’t sure which side he was trying to prove, exactly, let alone which side he was actually proving, but he kept going anyway. “And — and you are too obsessed with me. Don’t even try to pretend you’re not,” he said, pointing a finger accusingly at BJ.
“Well, same goes for me, okay, with the thinking about you, which is, I will point out, all your fault. And maybe I am, a little, I guess, but not since —“ BJ sighed — “okay, yeah, I’ve been obsessed with you since I first saw you, but I don’t want you to think that I’m codependent on you, either. Because we aren’t —“
“—codependent. Right. Exactly. We’re just two men who are obsessed with each other but don’t rely on each other in an unnecessary manner.”
“Except when we do, and that’s perfectly normal, considering the circumstances, and I love you, but only the normal amount.”
“Right. Not like I’m in love with you or anything.”
“Exactly.”
a beat, Hawkeye would think, if he were a screenwriter in charge of this moment. a sudden shift in mood. a pause.
BJ’s not looking at him. BJ’s not looking at him, and his heart is beating fast enough that he thinks he hears a bomb ticking, if he listens hard enough, and his stomach is in shreds around his ankles.
He closes his eyes. Opens them
“BJ, I —“ Hawkeye says, voice low and serious and earnest in a way he can only manage when he can’t manage anything else.
“I know.”
“No, really, Beej, I —“
“I know, Hawk.”
Hawkeye doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to say it. Ever be able to do anything but talk in circles around the one thing he can barely admit to himself in the darkest corners of the night, when everything is still but his mind.
But god, he wants to say it.
Hawkeye wants to say it so, so badly, so much that he’s turned inside out by it in this moment. He feels at once too small and too big for his feelings.
Instead — instead, he swallows, once, nods. Feels BJ reach out, grab his hand. He allows himself one glance at BJ’s face, at his lips and cheeks and collarbone made practically bioluminescent in the moonlight, at this face made in what he can only assume to be god’s true image because it has always felt sacred to him. Feels that same tug he’s always felt when he looks at BJ, the one he assumes the tides feel when they look at the moon.
God, he’s getting sappy in his old age.
He looks back at their hands, tangled up in their strange pattern. Inseparable in their strange way.
For now — for now, it helps, he thinks. To know that BJ knows even a little of it. Even if he can’t really know. Even if he doesn’t want to know. Even if he only ever has this — it’s better, he thinks, as BJ squeezes his hand once and looks up at the moon — it’s better than not having any of it.
“So?” he says, breaking their silence.
“So, what?” BJ says, looking at Hawkeye in a way that tugs on the string that connects their hearts.
Or, the string that Hawkeye hopes connects their hearts. He doesn’t even — god, if it isn’t — “What’re you gonna tell her?”
“Tell who about what?”
“Tell Peg. About the codependency.”
BJ takes his hand away from Hawk’s, smiling a little as he does so. “I dunno. Lie, I guess.”
“And say?”
Hawkeye doesn’t know what a lie from BJ would be. He’s not even sure he knows what the truth would be enough to know what his lie would be.
BJ lets out a long breath. “That we’re as close as we are because the war forces us together. That I still care about her the most. I don’t know.” He runs one hand along his hair. What do you want me to say?”
Hawkeye thinks that if he were to look at BJ right now the way BJ is looking at him, something might — something might happen.
He doesn’t.
“That’s a lie, then?”
BJ sighs, again. Gets up. Puts his drink next to the still. “Guess not.”
Hawkeye’s insides all twist at once. He swallows. “Exactly.”
“So.”
Hawkeye gets up, puts his drink next to BJ’s.
“Look, if you’re feeling guilty — you know you love her. She knows you love her. The whole camp knows you love her.” He puts another olive in his martini. “I know you love her.”
Hawkeye can feel BJ looking up from his drink to look at him. “I —”
“It’ll be okay. Really, Beej, she — I don’t know why she’d worry too much, unless —“ he shakes his head. He focuses on putting as much warmth and finality and as little bitterness into his voices when he says, “she’s your one true love, and no one will ever come close, and we all know it.” He shrugs a little, puts his hand over BJ’s. “Really.”
“Thanks, Hawkeye,” BJ says, still looking at him like he’s trying to pour something out of himself. “I — thanks. Really.”
Hawkeye claps him on the shoulder. “And anyways, thank heaven someone does love you like that, because god knows what would happen to your psyche if no one needed you for three seconds. You might run off and do something stupid again.”
“Oh,” BJ says, grinning at him from above his mustache, eyes marginally closer to their usual twinkliness. “Like you also don’t have a complex about being wanted.”
“Better get Sidney in here before we start throwing around the word ‘complex’ unattached to the words ‘apartment’ and ‘atrial.’” Hawkeye takes another sip from his glass.
“Really? I think it’s a perfect diagnosis,” BJ says, following suit through his ever-widening grin.
“I know that you’re a doctor, but you’re not quite that kind of doctor,” says Hawkeye, just as the PA system goes off.
Attention! Wounded! All surgeons to medical compound. Time to get your groove on! it announces.
“Speaking of doctors,” BJ says, holding the door open for a groaning Hawkeye. “After you.”
“Oh, a gentleman and a doctor,” Hawkeye says, tipping an imaginary hat. “Why thank you.”
“Ladies first,” says BJ as he motions Hawkeye out the door. He pauses once they’re both out, grabbing Hawk’s arm for a second. “And thanks to you, too.” He grabs Hawk’s arm for a second, squeezes it as they walk out the door. “Really.”
Hawkeye takes a second to look at BJ. He smiles his best charming smile. Promises several things to himself in quick succession, squeezes BJ’s arm right back. Ignores the pounding in his chest.
“Yeah, right, of course,” he says. “Of course.”