Work Text:
"Can I ask you something?"
The two surgeons were reclining in their tent, slipping in and out of different states of consciousness. The camp was silent now. The hospital staff just came off of hours of surgery, and the last thing anyone wanted to do was walk outside. Or think. Or even be awake. During nights like these you could almost hear Father Mulcahy praying across the compound, an apparently never-ending conversation that only falling asleep seemed to stop, or at least quiet down.
B.J. Hunnicutt has been in Korea for three days now, but he wouldn't know that if you asked him. Time has a peculiar way of stopping and speeding up during a war, all at the same time. Now he's lying on the cot that's been assigned to him, that he can't call his own yet, and the only thing on his mind is the blood spatter coloring the cuffs of his pants. He's convinced himself that the red came from his body, that he cut himself somehow and didn't notice, because allowing any other version of events to be true would have him face a reality he doesn't want to exist in.
Searching for something, anything else to occupy his mind with, B.J's thoughts land on the bed he's laying in, and the person who was here before him.
"Hawk, you awake?" the grunt from the other side of the tent was confirmation enough. "Can I ask you something?"
Hawkeye slowly turned to face B.J. from his bed, bundled up in so many blankets you could hardly see him. "Well, if you must, but I'm gonna charge you per word. Thinking at this hour isn't cheap, you know."
B.J. exhaled slowly. "This guy who was here before... Trapper. He didn't die, did he?" he wondered if he really wanted to know the answer, if it was any indication of what could happen to him.
"What?" Hawkeye didn't expect to be brought back to Earth with that question, somehow burying himself even deeper in his bed. "No, he just... got out. Back to the States, away from all the bad. The war, this camp, away from…” he paused to rub his eyes, “You know, everything.”
“Right.”
B.J. imagined a sense of relief would wash over him once he heard Trapper is alive, that him being sent here might not be a death sentence after all. But what came instead were more questions, about the way Hawkeye acted, how uncomfortable it got when he asked.
“You don’t have to be insecure about that,” the sound of Hawkeye’s voice broke the growing uneasy silence in the tent. “That you’re replacing him, or... I’m pretty sure that whatever I had for him left with him, too. So, you know, don’t worry.” His speech got progressively more mumbled as he went on, practically talking into the pillow.
“Well, you don’t have to feel so miserable around me, Hawk. I can be fun too, despite...” he hesitated for a moment “Well, despite the war, I guess.” His thoughts went back to life in Mill Valley and the experiences that felt so recent but so far away. He did have friends, and hobbies, and interests, and dreams, and regrets. He wasn’t just a pair of hands a brain that knows how to operate, no matter how convincing this place made it seem. So when he offered himself up as a friend to Hawkeye, a replacement, he wasn’t sure if he was doing it for the other surgeon’s sanity or his own. Or both. “Maybe I could do with you... what you and Trapper did. I could try.”
A sheepish smile crept across Hawkeye’s face, the comment waking him up a little, despite his brain’s wishes. “I doubt it.”
“Oh, come on! Why?”, B.J. wasn’t sure why this was so important to him, but it was.
Hawkeye sighed. “You’re married, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Faithful?”
B.J. didn’t know where this conversation was going anymore. “Of course, wh-...”
“Well, there you go,” Hawkeye rolled over in bed, hugging his blankets close and desperately trying to fall asleep. “You should really get some rest, you know. Running on empty seems fun until it isn’t,” he couldn’t stop yawning, no matter how hard he tried. “One time I pushed it too far and saw Abe Lincoln in the mess tent. Even he couldn’t stomach the food, go figure.”
B.J. was starting at the ceiling, stuck with Hawkeye’s words and wondering how they connected to what he asked. What his being married had to do with anything. “Look, Hawk, if this is about being your wingman, I’m-…"
“Oh my god, B.J.!” Hawkeye sat up and turned around to face him. “If you don’t go to sleep right this minute, I’m gonna smack you with my shoe until you do!”
He opened his mouth to say something but Hawkeye kept going.
“You’re married, Trapper’s gone, and I’m so tired my brain hurts! So unless you want to leave you wife and get with me, then go to sleep, for God’s sakes!” Hawkeye flopped down on his pillow, making the whole bed shake, and hoped for the blissful release of sleep.
And B.J. had a lot to think about.