Archive of Our Own

BJ drives to San Francisco and from there takes a plane to Denver to Chicago to Boston to Portland, Maine, where he rents a car and drives the remaining 85 miles to Crabapple Cove.

He has Hawkeye's address from the letters they’ve been exchanging— casual letters that aren’t enough and can’t possibly say everything they want to say. Or at least BJ hasn’t been able to find the words, and he assumes (from Hawkeye’s airy and overly easygoing tone) that Hawkeye can’t find them either. Finally Peg pushes him out the door and wishes him luck and he goes— to San Francisco then Denver then Chicago then Boston then Portland then charming little Crabapple Cove where the houses all look alike and the ocean is crashing nearby.

He arrives late, way after sundown, and misses the house on the first go. He has to turn around twice before finally spotting the right house number. It’s a cozy little house, with a little porch and a tree out front and slatboard siding. It’s painted a color that maybe was once red but is something closer to salmon now. Cheery candy pink, with spots of cherry under awnings and around windowsills. No sign of coppery rust blood red anyplace. It’s just right. Just what BJ imagined. Planters on the step, overflowing with weeds. A bicycle leaning against the side of the house. A spigot with a coiled hose attached. A blue Pontiac convertible is parked in the driveway. The lights are on inside.

He sits in the car for a minute, breathing deeply. This is big. He came all this way without calling ahead. He knows Hawkeye will be glad to see him, of course he will, but what will happen after that is a mystery.

Finally he gets his nerves together and steps out of the car. He’s wearing jeans and a sweater and his old sneakers, still carrying flecks of Korean mud. It feels funny to be in civilian clothes. Funnier still to imagine Hawkeye in his own civilian clothes. But that’s what they are now. A couple of civilians.

He takes the steps up to the door. He knocks. There’s a low rumble of chatter from the other side—Who could that be? I dunno. You get it. Me? I don’t feel like getting up— and then the door swings open and—

It’s not Hawkeye.

But it’s not Hawkeye’s dad either. It can’t be. This guy is too young. This guy can’t be more than 35. This guy is handsome and blond and well built and tall and stacked, actually, in jeans and a pretty hideous flannel shirt that’s unbuttoned too low over a smooth tan chest, and he’s staring at BJ with a confused but friendly smile on his face.

BJ blinks. Looks at the house number again. Looks at the guy in front of him again. Blinks again. He thought he had the address memorized. He’d been looking at that return address for weeks. It’s burned into his mind. Could he really have gotten it wrong?

“Hello?” the guy says, still smiling. “You okay, buddy?”

“I must have the wrong house, I’m sorry, I… I thought that—“

Then a voice, a familiar, deeply loved voice, chimes in from inside the house. “BJ? Is that BJ?”

Something is wrong here, but it’s not the house number.

Hawkeye Pierce comes catapulting to the door, grinning. He nearly clobbers into the blond guy, who doesn’t seem to mind— just lets Hawkeye hang over him and peer at BJ with his chin on the guy’s shoulder.

Hawkeye looks good. Well fed and warm and glowing and… happy. He’s put on weight, gotten a haircut. His hair looks less gray, his face less lined. And the horrible pain that BJ had gotten so used to seeing has cleared out from behind Hawkeye’s eyes. He’s vibrant and alive and unburdened in a way BJ is just now realizing he’s never seen.

What the fuck.

“BJ!” Hawkeye exclaims, slipping past his companion and onto the stoop to wrap BJ in a crushing hug. “I can’t believe it! What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you,” BJ explains numbly. It should be obvious, shouldn’t it? He came to prove that Hawkeye would never have to be alone again, not as long as BJ was alive to do something about it. He came to sweep Hawkeye off his feet with his devotion. He came to be in Hawkeye’s company, to drown him in love and companionship. But he’s arrived and Hawkeye is not alone. Not only that, but he’s not lonely. He seems… good. He’s not sad, not crushed, not lost. Good. And there’s this guy— “Hawk, I—“

“Oh, BJ, jesus, this is great, this is so great. You gotta meet— wow, this is great— Trapper! You have to meet Trapper. BJ Hunnicutt, please meet John McIntyre.”

Hawkeye steps aside with a swanning wave of his arms and lets them size each other up. For BJ, it’s a bit like a slap in the face. Or a bucket of water thrown on him. He’s finally putting the face to the name, a voice to the stories. Hawk had shown him a snapshot once, but that had been like seeing a ghost. It had been totally unreal. The living man is something else entirely. Maybe he should have recognized Trapper right away, but how could he? They’d never met, and as far as he had always been concerned, Trapper John McIntyre was as good as dead. Now all the little details are filling in– his hazel eyes, his crooked smile, his shoulders, his hair, his drawling accent. After barely a split second, Trapper— The Trapper, the one, the only, the infamous, the shadow that haunted BJ for two years— grins big and warm and puts out his hand.

“Nice to meet ya, BJ Hunnicutt. You’re about all Hawk’s talked about for weeks. What’s the BJ stand for?”

So he’s been here for weeks? BJ almost feels like he’s going to puke. His head is spinning. It takes all his strength to meet Trapper’s hand with his own. Trapper shakes his hand vigorously and pats him on the arm. It rattles BJ to his bones.

Hawkeye huffs and rolls his eyes, “He’ll never tell you, Trap. He never told me. BJ stands for Big Jester, as far as I’m concerned. Big Jerk. It’s criminal. He’s a criminal.”

BJ stammers out, “Nice to meet you. And it’s just BJ, no…” Trapper is still shaking his hand. “It doesn’t… I, uh… wow, this is—“

This is a nightmare.

“Beej, come on in, come in,” Hawkeye grabs his arm and pulls him inside. “Boy, it’s good to see you. Peg let you keep the mustache, I see.” Trapper follows behind, ambling casually, still smiling. The house is cozy and cluttered. There’s sweaters and blankets draped over chairs, shoes piled by the door. A model ship on the mantle in the living room. Hawkeye leads him into a dining room where there’s a beat up table topped by a beat up scrabble set, a game half played. There are two cans of beer sitting next to two racks of tiles and a pad of paper. Hawkeye is winning by 34 points.

BJ keeps looking over his shoulder at Trapper.

Hawkeye ushers BJ into a chair and Trapper leans against the doorframe and watches. BJ can’t tell if he’s being measured or if Trapper is just giving them space. Either way, he feels Trapper’s eyes on him and it makes his skin crawl.

Hawkeye is babbling away, cheerily asking why BJ came and how did he get here and is he hungry and does he want to stay over or is he just passing through and how’s Peg and how’s Erin and is the weather good in Mill Valley or not. Midway through, without skipping a beat, he hands Trapper his beer almost without looking, and makes a gesture that BJ doesn’t know but Trapper seems to understand immediately because he goes into another room and comes back with two fresh beers, one of which is placed into BJ’s hands. Hawkeye makes a little joke, a smart little play on words at the expense of beautiful, sunny, doesn’t-rain-all-summer California, and it is funny and he laughs at his own cleverness and Trapper laughs too. A big, open mouthed laugh that fills the room. Hawkeye’s laugh brays in harmony.

They’re so easy together, BJ thinks. He can feel it in the air. Their comfortable intimacy. It puts his hackles even further up, which excludes him from their paired ease. He laughs too, unnatural, late, forcing it, and it doesn’t fit. He doesn’t fit.

Hawkeye, still laughing, swats at BJ’s arm and says, “Well, Beej, come on, spill. Tell me everything.”

“Yeah,” Trapper says. “Come on, BJ, spill.”

BJ thinks it sounds mean, teasing, dismissive. Who cares that Trapper is still smiling that warm and welcoming smile? Who cares that he finally comes to sit at the table and listen?

Haltingly, BJ spills. His flights, his rented car, his family, his house. He’s written about all these things. None of this information should be new to Hawkeye, and he finds himself telling anecdotes he knows he’s written, stories he knows Hawkeye knows. He goes at length about Erin– how she’s talking and walking and enjoying rolling around in the mud.

Trapper asks, “How old?”

“Almost three.”

Trapper nods thoughtfully. “Good age. You shoulda brought her along.”

The room falls into a comfortable silence, all three imagining little Erin along the rocky Maine beaches, playing with rocks and shells. “Look, Hawk… I came because I was worried about you, I guess. I missed you. I wanted to see you, so…”

“Aw, Beej,” Hawkeye sighs. “I missed you too.” He’s earnest. It’s like old times, hunched together in the mess in the dead of the night, whispering kindnesses over cold coffee. “I’m glad you came. You could’ve called first, of course, but…”

He reaches across the table and touches BJ’s wrist.

“Why were you worried?”

It’s a stupid question. Why wouldn’t he be worried? After Hawkeye’s breakdown, after their separation, after the way Hawkeye’s letters had been vague and non-specific for so long… how could he not be worried?

BJ glances at Trapper, then back to Hawkeye. “Your letters were so… light. I thought… you were unhappy. I thought you were keeping it from me.”

There’s more to it than that: BJ thought Hawkeye was being purposefully distant because he didn’t want to interrupt BJ’s marriage, his home. Didn’t want to drag him away from Peg and Erin and his whole, wholesome, domestic life, no matter how unhappy he was, no matter how much he needed BJ, which, of course, BJ had assumed he did. That idea had worried him more than the rest of it until it had eaten him up and gotten him on a plane. The idea that Hawkeye would choose to suffer alone just to not bother him. That somehow BJ had given the impression that that was okay by him.

Now it’s Hawkeye’s turn to glance at Trapper.

“Oh. No, I’m… I’m okay. I’m happy. I really am.”

But instead, apparently, Hawkeye has been living in his own wholesome domesticity, quite happily, not thinking about or needing BJ at all.

It had never occurred to him that Hawkeye might be just fine without him.

He chews it over, feeling his initial shock bleed away in the face of his rising annoyance, his confusion, his suspicion, his churning distaste. He can’t just be happy that Hawkeye is happy. It doesn’t sit right with him. And he doesn’t know how to start to talk about any of this– his assumptions which Hawkeye is now telling him were so wrong, his nebulous hopes which feel dashed against the rocks. His intense distrust of the stranger sitting at the table with them. Hawkeye watches him, maintaining an eye contact that BJ’s missed. Those piercing blue eyes, so serious, trying as ever to read him and interpret him.

After a long silent moment, Trapper stands up— slowly enough not to disrupt the mood, his expression totally neutral, pretending he can’t sense the tension in the room or the discomfort that’s radiating off BJ like a fever— and says, “How about I get us some more beers, huh?”

Hawkeye gives a minuscule nod and Trapper leaves the two of them alone. BJ hasn’t touched his first beer at all yet. He doesn’t want another one. It chafes that Trapper has decided he and Hawkeye clearly need a moment alone and has taken it upon himself to give them one. How dare he? He watches Trapper’s back as he goes and starts to feel himself fume.

Hawkeye jumps to speak before BJ can. “Beej, really, I’m good. Being home has been fantastic for me. I’m not working, not yet, that’s true, and it’s not like I don’t still have nightmares, but it’s getting better. Just being here has done wonders. Being back in the real world. My old friends, my old spots… And my dad, being here with my dad— he’s right down the road, you’ll have to meet him— it’s helped a lot being here with him.”

“And McIntyre.”

“Right,” Hawkeye says, looking BJ firmly in the eye. “And Trapper.”

“I don’t get it, Hawk.”

Hawkeye shakes his head. His expression goes very soft. “I was never mad at him, BJ. I couldn’t be mad. I… I love him too much. You understand, don’t you?”

It stings. BJ wants to lash out, wants to yell, wants to take Hawkeye by the arms and shake him. Instead he rubs his mustache and glowers.

“He left without saying goodbye,” he says in a harsh whisper. Trapper’s right in the next room after all. He’s probably listening in, the bastard. “He never even wrote to you.”

“He wrote to me,” Hawkeye says quickly, going a little cold. BJ has put him on the defensive. “He did.”

This is news to BJ.

“If I kept those letters to myself, it was because they were personal. They were for me and I couldn’t share them.” A pause. For a second it seems like he’s going to expand on that, but then he closes his mouth and shakes his head and changes direction. “And I know how he left, BJ. If anybody knows, I know.”

“I just don’t get it.” BJ knows he should be saying something else. What he wants to say is, does he really love you like I do? Is this just because he got here first? You don’t have to settle for him when I’m here now. The thoughts cross his head and feel like the pettiest thoughts he’s ever had. But that is how he feels. None of this is going like he expected.

Hawkeye continues: “I didn’t know what it’d be like when I got back. How I’d feel. Then he came up here and… it was like we’d never been apart. And it was better, because there was no war and no fleas and no Frank and no fourteen hour surgeries. The first night he got here we talked for twelve hours straight and it all felt… right. So he stayed. I’m glad to have him here. I’m glad you’re here too. It means a lot that you came.”

BJ finally drinks his beer. For the two years he’d spent with Hawkeye, he’d been sure that Trapper was a memory who would never come back. That what BJ had found with Hawkeye was special, was different, was better and more important than the one lousy year with Trapper. That they went through things and felt things that Hawkeye never experienced or felt with Trapper. Trapper who abandoned him, Trapper who never wrote, Trapper who left Korea and never looked back. Except apparently that isn’t true.

“He’s important to me, BJ. So are you. Him being here doesn’t make you any less welcome.”

BJ bites, “Don’t talk to me like I’m a kid.”

“Okay, okay, sorry.” Hawkeye puts his hands up and leans back. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“What kind of talk is that anyway? Mommy has someone else now but she still loves us very much,” he whines, teasing but also genuinely hurt and confused and frustrated. This isn’t how any of this was supposed to go. “I mean, jesus, Hawkeye, what are you playing at here?”

Hawkeye flinches. The unhappiness BJ is so familiar with crosses his face, and he did that. He caused that hurt. The last thing he meant to do, and he’s done it.

Very softly, very simply, very seriously, Hawkeye says, “I love him. I’m happy with him.”

BJ stares.

It’s not fair, but he really did expect to find Hawkeye miserable and alone and pining. He really thought Hawkeye needed him— him— and showing up would be like riding in on a white horse. Floundering badly, he gasps, “He’s married!”

Hawkeye flops back in his chair. “You’re married, BJ, jesus, give me a break. What do you want me to do? You want me to kick him out just because you showed up? You’ve been here for twenty minutes.”

“Hawk–”

“He’s here, he loves me, he’s staying—“

BJ opens his mouth to contest, not entirely sure what words he's about to say but ready to just spit something out— because Hawkeye never talked like this in Korea, about love, that he was in love with anybody, with either of them, ever, and to hear it now, so forward and open and easy, declared like it’s the easiest thing in the world, like it’s been said hundreds of times before—

This, of course, is the moment Trapper decides to come back in.

He reads the room immediately and a frown mars his bright and chipper countenance. For the first time BJ sees the man who almost killed a Chinese soldier. It chills him. But the dark shadow doesn’t last for long, and Trapper forces his smile back. Forcing a smile is something he’s clearly a pro at.

Trapper puts the three cans he’s carrying onto the table and drops a hand onto Haweye’s shoulder.

“All okay?”

“Fine, Trap, fine.” Hawkeye shrugs off the gloom and briefly presses his cheek to the back of Trapper’s hand. Maybe a stranger would think he was just turning his head, but BJ knows better. Trapper’s hand tightens on Hawkeye’s shoulder, then departs as Trapper goes to take his seat again.

“Why don’t we finish this game, huh? BJ, you play with me. Hawk’s thumping me, I need the help.”

He elbows BJ in the arm, his vapid friendliness firmly back in place, and BJ grimaces. He’s bitter. He doesn’t want to be friends with Trapper. He doesn’t want Trapper to pity him and play nice for Hawkeye’s sake. He wants Trapper to see that he doesn’t deserve to be here and to leave. It’s not kind but it’s what he wants.

He’s stubbornly not very helpful as they limp through the end of the scrabble game. No amount of Trapper whispering in his ear will win him over. Even when Trapper puts an arm over his shoulders, gives him a crooked, conspiratorial grin and suggests they use the word PERVERT for 12 points (on a double word score, which makes it 24 and puts them within throwing distance of Hawkeye’s score). Hawkeye plays TURF for 7 points. BJ suggests FINK (11 points) and Trapper enthusiastically lays it down. His arm stays draped over the back of BJ’s chair.

Trapper is trying to include him, which offends something right under BJ’s skin.

Hawkeye looks at his own tiles and makes a face. “I got all vowels here, you jerks.” He shakes his head and goes back to studying his options.

Trapper laughs and swallows down his beer. BJ does too, to show he’s not afraid to drink. He’s not some lightweight.

Finally Hawkeye lays down KOREA off the end of FINK, using an R that had been laid earlier in the game (in an impressive six letter RATCHET). He looks sheepish and unhappy about it. The three of them look at it, sitting there on the board. A reminder of what brought them all together— and a not unimpressive 22 points due to a double letter and double word.

“That’s a proper noun,” BJ declares flatly.

“Huh?”

Hawkeye looks at him with his jaw down.

“You can’t play that,” BJ clarifies. “It’s a proper noun. That’s against the rules.”

“Come on, BJ, I can’t have my lousy 22 points?”

“No, sir, I won’t allow it. That’s cheating.”

“I didn’t take you for a rules guy,” Trapper interjects, putting his chin in his hand.

BJ reels on him. “I thought you wanted to win—“

“Forget it, forget it.” Hawkeye reaches to collect the tiles back and Trapper stops him.

“Let’s all forget it, huh? It’s late, we oughta turn in. Hunnicutt, you gotta be tired from traveling.”

BJ stares, not willing to be the one to give in or give up. But Trapper’s already tidying up like it’s all been agreed upon and Hawkeye shrugs and before BJ knows it, the game has been swept back into the box and the scorecard torn up and disposed of.

“I’m claiming that as a win for me,” Hawkeye says to Trapper, jabbing him in the chest.

With a look as warm and affectionate as all hell, Trapper smiles at Hawkeye. He puts an arm over his shoulder and pulls him close, a casual and simple expression of intimacy. “You got it, honey,” Trapper drawls. “You won.”

Finally, they seem to remember that BJ’s in the room and stop staring moonily into each other’s eyes.

“Do you have a bag?” Hawkeye asks eagerly to BJ, his manic energy rising as he redirects the conversation. “You are staying, aren’t you? There’s room. You have to stay. Besides, there isn’t a hotel in town.”

Of course he’ll stay, but the expectation is overwhelming. He can’t leave, not after how far he’s come and after he’s built up hopes he didn’t even know he had. He’s rattled by how things have gone so far, by Trapper’s existence and presence, but he’ll stay. He nods vaguely and Hawkeye grins and sends Trapper out to get BJ’s bag, which Trapper does without protest.

It’s barely more than an overnight bag, BJ realizes, though he knows he could stretch the clothes in it for about a week. But it doesn’t look like he came to stay. He didn’t even know he wanted to stay or planned to stay before he realized Trapper had been staying. He supposes he had half-imagined what staying would be like— in Hawkeye’s bed, laying inches apart, face to face, whispering through the night. That’s off the table now. He’d half-imagined a lot of things that seem off the table now.

While Trapper is out at his rented car, Hawkeye turns his intense attention to BJ. He puts a hand in BJ’s arm and smiles. “I really am so glad you’re here, Beej.”

“I really thought…” He can’t finish the thought. “I missed you. I had to see you.”

“I appreciate that, BJ.”

“I care about you.”

“I know you do.”

“I want to say it.” He has to swallow before he can go on. “I love you, Hawk, I do, and being all the way across the country just wasn’t going to cut it anymore.”

“BJ, I…” Hawkeye trails off, which is unlike him. Here’s BJ trying to be completely honest for the first time in a long time— no jokes, no puns, no lies, no tricks, no withholding information— and Hawkeye is lost for words. Since when was Hawkeye ever unsure about what to say next?

His face is twisting up in clear conflict. He’s frowning hard, thinking it over.

“BJ, what are you saying here?”

BJ brings himself to his full height and lets the words tumble out of him. “I’m saying… I came all this way because I want to be with you. I want that.”

“What about Mill Valley?” Meaning Peg.

“We’ll make it work. I know we can make it work. You’ll come to California and—“

“BJ—“

“I’d take care of you. I love you, I do, I mean it, I’ve been thinking a lot about it, about us, and— Hawk, I don’t want you all the way across the country. I want you with me and he can’t—“ He’s about to say something awful, and catches himself just in time. Hawkeye is staring at him, his expression something between awe and horror.

Finally he says, soft and small and oh-so-quiet: “You want me to choose, is that it? Between him and you? You want me to throw him over, and my life here, my dad, and run away with you? That’s really what you want?”

It’s stark, hearing it said like that, in black and white. It sounds absurd. It sounds cruel.

BJ frowns, because that is what he wants. That’s exactly what he wants. He wants Hawkeye to choose him. He didn’t want it to be a choice at all, but here they are.

“Yeah,” he admits sadly. “I guess I do.”

“So it’s you or him?”

“I guess.”

“And that’s it?”

“Yeah.”

Hawkeye stares at him, face totally blank.

Trapper comes back in, again interrupting a perfectly horrible moment with perfect aplomb. He’s carrying BJ’s bag and talking about the car. “That’s one helluva machine, Hunnicutt, you oughta keep it. Drive that thing all the way back to Cali, whew— Aw hell, what happened here?”

Hawkeye shakes all over, startled back to life. “Oh, oh, nothing, just…”

“I can read a room, fellas, come on. The temperature’s dropped about ten degrees in here.”

BJ’s glowering, Hawkeye’s gaping, Trapper’s looking between them with a mix of worry and bemusement.

“Forget it, McIntyre.”

“I know when I’m being talked about,” Trapper says as he hands BJ’s bag to Hawkeye. “And I doubt it was all about my good looks.”

BJ grits, “Just admiring your impeccable timing.”

“I’m gonna get the room ready,” Hawkeye says vaguely and turns towards the stairs.

BJ goes to follow but Trapper catches his arm and holds him back for a second, letting Hawkeye float up the stairs and leave them a moment alone.

“I leave you two alone for two minutes and when I come back he looks like you shot his dog. Christ, Hunnicutt, take it easy on him, wouldya? ”

BJ wrenches his arm away. He’s about two inches from Trapper’s face and he hates it. Hates his easy going cadence, hates his big white teeth, hates that he got to Maine first, hates that he knows Hawkeye’s moods so well, hates that it takes him two seconds to figure out a room has gone sour.

“Me? I’m not the one who left without so much as a note.”

Trapper scoffs, but stays amiable. “I know what I did, buddy, okay? I don’t need a lecture on what I did or didn’t do two years ago.”

“It really hurt him! And now you swan back in—“

“I know I hurt him! I know! It made me sick to do it. But he’s not mad at me about it. Maybe you shouldn’t be either.”

BJ sets his jaw. “I reserve the right.”

Trapper laughs. Quiet, to not bring Hawkeye’s attention back on them, but it’s a laugh all the same. Not mean, only a little dismissive. A laugh that washes BJ in pity and forgiveness for being petty and silly and selfish. One of those great warm laughs Hawkeye used to talk about, only a little sour in the face of BJ’s attitude.

“Sure thing. You go ahead and be mad.” Trapper slings his arm over BJ’s shoulder and starts them toward the stairs. “Just don’t be mad at Hawkeye.”

“I’m not mad at him,” BJ grumbles, shaking off Trapper’s arm, though he supposes he sort of was. Sort of is. Mad that Hawkeye didn’t mention Trapper was here, mad that Hawkeye has settled into a domestic intimacy that preceded BJ and apparently will outlast him. Mad that Trapper beat him to Maine, and apparently that was all it took for Hawkeye to let go of their two years of deep, life changing intimacy. Or maybe that’s not what it was.

If he’s sort of mad about that, he’s definitely mad that Trapper is so casual with him. As if he doesn’t see BJ as any kind of a threat at all, when all BJ feels right now is his fiercely competitive side rearing its head.

“What are you mad for at all? It’s not a competition,” Trapper says, like he’s read BJ’s mind. “We’re both his friends, right? We both want him to be happy. Let’s get along, okay?” He squeezes BJ’s arm. “Give me a chance. I don’t have anything against you and I’m not gonna hold some grudge I made up outta nothing.”

It should offend him, but Trapper’s essentially right. He never did anything to BJ except color his relationship with Hawkeye. And that’s not his fault.

“What are you doing here?” BJ asks, feeling raw and artless.

“What are you doing here, huh? What did you think was gonna happen?” He puts a foot up on a stair and crosses his arms. He looks like goddamn Paul Bunyan.

“I—“ He can’t quite look Trapper in the face and say that he thought he was going to kiss all Hawkeye’s pain away. “I just—“

Trapper cuts him off: “I love him, okay? I love him. That’s why I’m here. It killed me to leave like I did, but we couldn’t find him and… I couldn’t just leave some casual note. See ya, buddy, it’s been fun. It wouldn’t’ve been right. It wouldn’t’ve been enough. I loved him too much and I couldn’t say it and I had to leave. I had to. He understands that. Now I’m here and I’m saying it as much as I can. I’m not gonna leave him again.”

BJ glowers. Really, how dare Trapper be so nice, so earnest, so genuine. So true and loving and open. How dare he make it all seem so reasonable. What a jerk.

Trapper puts his arm around BJ’s shoulders again and this time BJ lets him. His mind is turning it over and over— the idea he’d had of Trapper compared to the real man in front of him, the idea he’d built about Trapper’s motivations and intentions and behavior compared to what he’s seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears. Trapper’s not some scoundrel who hurt Hawkeye on purpose. He’s not an interloper or a schemer. He’s just a man. He’s just a man who loves Hawkeye too.

That same man takes him up the stairs. “Sleep on it,” he says calmly. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

Upstairs, Trapper points him down the hall to where Hawkeye is setting up a bed in a cozy room at the front of the house. He flutters a sheet and tucks it artfully under the corners of the mattress. It’s so domestic, it about punches BJ in the chest.

Announcing himself, trying to be casual, BJ asks, “This is one cute house, Hawk. How many spare rooms have you got here?”

“A couple,” Hawkeye says, dodging the obvious question and focusing on spreading a blanket. “It’s not much but it’s home,” he adds with that good old jokey twinkle in his eye, twinged with only a little tightness. “Make yourself at.”

“At?”

“At home,” Trapper provides, suddenly at BJ’s elbow. It’s all BJ can do to not jump. Trapper hands over a stack of soft blue towels, pulled from a linen closet that he didn’t need to be directed to. BJ grits his teeth and takes them.

Hawkeye finishes with the bed, straightening a blanket and fluffing a pillow. “Well, there you have it. Bathroom’s down the hall. Help yourself to anything”

“Thanks, Hawk.”

“In the morning I’ll take you over to meet my dad, okay? I’ll show you the cove.”

“A genuine cove? You’ll spoil me.”

Hawkeye laughs and heads out of the room. Trapper has already stepped down the hall.

“Sleep tight, Beej.”

“You too, Hawk. It’s good to see you.”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye says, loosening a little. “It’s good to see you too. G’night.”

“Night.”

“Goodnight, BJ,” Trapper chimes, which tilts BJ’s stomach into misery again.

Hawkeye closes the door on him with a smile.

Their voices wander through the door, though BJ can’t hear exactly what they’re saying through the oak. He steams and stews his way through getting undressed, and all the way into bed.

The voices have quieted even more. Doors open and shut. Then the house is quiet.

Unsteady, unsettled, he tosses and turns. It’s not that the bed is uncomfortable. It’s that he’s uncomfortable. He’s grumpy and frustrated and off in another room Hawkeye and Trapper are talking, absolutely about him, with an intimacy and secrecy that BJ is not part of. He hates it.

Whipping off the sheet, he decides to go brush his teeth.

All the other doors in the hall are closed, except one: the bathroom. It’s almost unfair how little snooping he can do. He brushes his teeth and notices there isn’t a toothbrush on the counter. Does Trapper take his toothbrush with him? Or is his toothbrush in the master bathroom, next to Hawkeye’s?

He puts his ear to a door on the way back to his room, hears nothing, and feels sick about it. Geez, he thinks, what am I doing?

He stares at the ceiling for what feels like hours.

He sleeps badly and wakes up late.

The morning is bright and for a second BJ forgets where he is. He’s achey and groggy after a night spent tossing and turning in an unfamiliar bed, but now he’s up and the night before has come back to him. His wristwatch reports that it’s late, later than he usually gets up and too late to be polite.

Dragging himself up, he sits for a moment on the edge of the bed, listening. The house is quiet around him. He very well might be the first person awake. Creeping down the hall, BJ showers but doesn’t bother to shave. His mustache blends into the scruff on his jaw and relieves a little pressure. The mustache was always a gag for Hawkeye, something BJ thought was funny and thought Hawkeye thought would be funny too. Then he grew to like it and it stuck. But it was always about Hawkeye. Letting it fade into his five o’clock-plus-twelve shadow softens the association.

He dresses for the weather in the house. It’s cool, almost chilly. A shirt, a sweatshirt, jeans, his thickest socks. It’s enough for now but if it gets much colder he’ll have to borrow a coat or something. If he stays too long he’ll absolutely have to borrow something. Not only that, but he’ll have to borrow from Trapper. Same size, same shape after all. The idea of it drags an ice cold finger down his spine. He’d rather freeze.

When he emerges, all the doors along the hall are still closed. No easy snooping this morning either. He could open the doors, sure, but he’s too afraid of what he’ll find. Confirmation in any direction is too terrible to bear. He’ll just have to live in limbo a while longer. Schrodinger's Hawkeye.

Coming down the stairs, he stops dead at hearing voices. Hawkeye and Trapper, awake and up and talking in low voices. About him.

“I don’t know what to do,” Hawkeye is saying, sounding wrought and strung out. “He’s so… I mean, he wants me to—“

“I know. I’m sure he’ll soften up, Hawk. Just give him some time.”

“I always thought he’d like you, I don’t understand—“

“He’ll like me. For now he’s… you know. He didn’t expect me to be here. He’ll come around. We'll win him over.”

BJ stays on the stairs, craning his ears and feeling shamed. He’s behaved badly. He knows it. But knowing it doesn’t change how he feels. That everyone else knows it makes him want to dig his heels in.

After a long moment, Hawkeye says, “I would never choose him over you, Trap. But I can’t choose you over him either.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“But he really is! He really made it out to be you or him. I mean, I'll lose him, and... how am I supposed to…” His voice cracks off.

“You’re not and you don’t have to. It’s not fair of him to put this on you, and if he’s worth anything he’ll realize it and calm down. Because it’s a pretty fuckin’ horrible thing to do to you, I think.”

A pause.

Hawkeye’s voice is very small, so small BJ can barely hear him when he says, “You like him, don’t you?”

Trapper laughs. “Sure I do, Hawk. I’ll like him better when he isn’t trying to drive me out the door.”

“I’m sorry—“

“What’ve you got to be sorry for? Hey, hey, Hawkeye, come’ere.”

It’s quiet and BJ leans forward, trying to pick out any sounds. What’s happening in there? Is Trapper holding Hawkeye? Kissing him? Soothing his worries with a solid chest and strong hand and handsome face?

BJ slips back up to the top of the stairs and comes down again with heavier footsteps— announcing himself before he turns the corner into the kitchen and is forced to confront whatever Trapper’s come’ere led to. He wishes his sneakers made more noise. He wishes a lot of things.

In the kitchen, Hawkeye is standing by the stove, fussing with a coffee pot. He’s in a flannel bathrobe BJ has never seen before and his hair is ruffled. Trapper is sitting at a breakfast table crammed into a corner, one arm draped over the edge of the countertop, close enough to Hawkeye’s hip to touch. In fact, his fingers are trailing the tie of Hawkeye's robe. He’s in a robe himself, yellow and worn, and scrub pants and he’s not wearing a shirt. He’s barefoot. They both are. It makes BJ want to die. Walk out into the cove and submerge himself.

“Morning,” BJ says, forcing a chipperness that no one in the room buys. Trapper looks slowly from Hawkeye to BJ. “I see I jumped the gun in getting dressed.”

“We move a little slow around here,” Hawkeye says. The phrase produces unwelcome images in BJs head of lazy mornings and slow lovemaking and breakfasts at noon. “Coffee?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Hawkeye pours him a cup and adds milk and sugar and hands it over, and when BJ takes a sip he finds it’s exactly as he always liked it in Korea. Hawkeye remembered. The coffee is better than it ever was in Korea though— and so it tastes a little off. A little too rich, a little too flavorful, a little too much like coffee instead of mud. It’s dark and delicious and it tastes wrong.

“Good.”

“Yeah, it’s… it’s not bad, right?”

“You always knew how to serve it.”

Hawkeye shrugs a little bashfully. “Listen, Beej, let me get dressed and we’ll go over and see my dad, okay? Take that walk along the cove. I’ll take you through town and you can see everything.”

“The one store, the one stoplight,” Trapper provides. He’s not as friendly this morning. BJ can feel the ice in the room. Hawk told Trapper all about their heated conversation the night before, of course— why hadn’t he known that would happen?— and now Trapper has turned on him. Now Trapper is cold to him. Of course. Rightly. Well, he thinks, I guess I earned it.

“Yeah, Hawk, that’d be great.”

“Okay, great, great!” Hawkeye claps his hands together. “Boy, my dad’ll be glad to meet you.”

“I’ll be glad to meet him.” And he’ll be glad to be out of the house and away from Trapper for a while. Certainly, without that looming pressure, he’ll be able to talk to Hawkeye normally.

“Okay, great, I’ll just— Trapper, will you—“ He gestures around at the coffee mugs and Trapper nods. “I’ll be back.”

Hawkeye trots out of the room with only one worried backwards glance.

Trapper doesn’t move, just stays seated at the table with a mug in front of him and his chin in his hand. He watches BJ. Not smiling. Just waiting.

“I, uh…” BJ feels the pathetic itch to fill the silence. It’s so uncomfortable. He knows he should apologize. He should try and get along. He should be who he always thought he was— a friendly, get-along guy. “I guess we didn’t get off to a great start, you and me, huh?”

“Huh.”

“I just—”

“I heard all about it. You want me gone. You want me to bow out because I’m not good enough for Hawkeye, right? ‘Cause you love him best, right? You know he's a grownup? He gets to choose who he spends his time with.”

So much for getting along. He's seeing a new side of Trapper, snide and biting and harsh, and BJ’s hackles leap way up. “I know that!"

“Then what’re you doing to him?” Trapper snaps his hand down and pounds the table. “Making demands, being an asshole. I wanna be friendly with you, but christ, Hunnicutt, who do you think you are? How dare you?”

“I’m—“

“You know how banged up he is right now? You know what your big fuckin’ ultimatum is doing to him?”

BJ recoils, then snaps.

“What do you know about it? You weren’t there!” BJ’s trying to keep his voice down. This is not a fight he wanted to have first thing in the morning, but more than that he doesn’t want Hawkeye to hear it and have to come break it up. “For two years you weren’t there. You weren’t there for the worst of it with him. I was! I was and I know how goddamn fragile he is. That’s why I’m here! Because I was so goddamn worried he was going to break up again!”

“And you’re being real fucking helpful here, aren’t ya? Real supportive and gentle. Showing up and demanding all or nothing. Good job, Hunnicutt.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, sure.” Trapper stands and turns his back on BJ to start washing out the dishes in the sink. “You think I hurt him? What do you think you’re doing right now?” When BJ doesn’t answer, Trapper continues. “Look, you’re here because you love him, right? Why don’t you act like it?”

He wants to throw a punch. He wants to grind Trapper into the dirt. “I don’t have to love you, do I? Or whatever it is you’re doing here?”

Trapper turns around slowly and leans against the counter. He wipes his wet hands on his robe and his face slides into a crooked, leering kind of grin. BJ’s eyes flicker down to Trapper’s chest, then, angry at himself and at Trapper’s audacity to walk around shirtless and at Trapper's mostly smooth, lightly freckled chest, he sets his jaw and stares hard into Trapper’s eyes.

“Right,” Trapper drawls. “And what is it you think I’m doing here?”

BJ puts his hands on his hips and huffs.

Easy breezy, still smiling that smug smile, Trapper says, “Come on, tell me what you think. I wanna hear it.”

BJ’s trembling, which is so goddamn embarrassing it makes him shake more. He’s angry and upset and his eyes are burning, and finally he grits out, “Are you sleeping together? Are you fucking him?”

Trapper’s eyebrows go way up and his expression goes bewildered. Not offended, but shocked and wondrous, almost, that BJ would actually say it— and say it like that.

He blinks once, twice, then says, casual as can be, “Yeah. Absolutely.”

BJ’s jaw drops. “How— How could you—“

“It’s pretty easy,” Trapper says, dry as any martini BJ drank in Korea. “You see, when two people love each other very much—“

“Shut up.”

“I wouldn’t’a thought I’d have to explain it to you.”

“Stop.”

“You got a kid, don’t ya?”

BJ explodes, throwing his hands in the air and spinning off to storm away.

“Aw, come on, Hunnicutt, come back!” Trapper is laughing. Laughing at him, meanly, laughing like BJ’s the biggest idiot in the world, laughing like it’s all easy and obvious and nobody has anything to be pissed off about. Like BJ’s overreacting. Maybe like BJ is supposed to be in on the joke. Well, he’s not.

BJ storms out and finds himself pacing the front yard. What’s he supposed to do with that? How’s he supposed to feel about Trapper’s admission? And on top of that, Trapper’s cold and clear identification of his issue— that he’s jealous, that he’s mean, that he isn’t acting like someone in love or even someone who cares. He’s acting like a selfish, needy jerk.

Who knows how long later, Hawkeye comes bounding out of the house. He’s in trousers and duck boots and a big sweater and a coat with toggles.

“Ready?” He's smiling easily, so BJ figures Trapper didn’t mention their spat. Hawkeye was never that good of an actor. “Do you think you’ll be cold? We have coats—“

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” His tone is tight and Hawkeye makes a face, slightly confused, slightly affronted.

“If you’re sure.”

“Let’s go.”

So they do. Hawkeye takes his arm and walks him along the tree lined street— the house he lives in now used to belong to an old spinster, he reports, who was a witch when he was growing up and died when he was away at college. The house sat empty for years until he came back from medical school and took it over. He pays his mortgage to the local bank in town (the manager of which is a patient of his fathers and an old family acquaintance) and thankfully they’ve been very understanding about his general inability to deliver payment, especially given how long he’s been overseas. He used to do gratis house calls for the bank manager's children, sometimes. He’s not doing that so much now. Now he’s the witch in the house at the end of the lane who all the children avoid, he jokes with a sour chuckle. Glossing forward, he points out the other houses on the street. Houses that belonged to childhood friends. A yellow house with a widows walk where his first girlfriend lived. Six houses down and on the other side of the street is a light blue house with a narrow wrap-around porch and a very old tire hanging from the branch of a very big tree in the yard.

“Well, this is it.” Hawkeye smiles. His childhood home. He jogs up the steps and knocks on the door before BJ can begin to take it all in.

The door opens and that’s how BJ meets Hawkeye’s dad, who laughingly introduces himself as “Daniel, please. Dr. Pierce is my son.” He looks so much like Hawkeye it’s like seeing the future. Same nose, same hairline, same honking laugh. Heavier Maine accent, though.

Hawkeye and his dad talk fast and easy and BJ feels comfortable. He’s happy enough to sit and listen and be handed a cup of coffee and wander to look at the pictures on the walls while Hawk and his father get distracted trading some town gossip.

He quietly takes in the pictures of Hawkeye’s whole life, right there hanging on the walls. The gangly creature he’s always been, all knees and elbows from childhood up. Kid pictures on the rocky beach, teenage prom pictures. Graduations and holidays. There’s even one picture up of the 4077th– the one they all sent home for the family reunion. It calms him even more to see himself hanging in the Pierce home, and no sign of Trapper.

“So, dad, I thought we’d take BJ through town, you know? Then down to the cove so he can– BJ, where’d you go?”

He pokes his head around the corner and BJ waves from where he’s eyeing a photo of Hawkeye in a football uniform.

“Oh yeah. Bet you didn’t believe I actually played, huh?”

“You’re a skeleton under padding.”

“Almost makes me look like a real boy, doesn’t it? Come on.”

He takes BJ back into the front hall, where his dad is putting on his coat and a pair of sturdy boots. Increasingly, BJ is feeling like his sneakers aren’t going to cut it on whatever hike Hawkeye has planned.

Mr. Pierce leads the way out of the house and down the lane. The heart of Crabapple Cove is four blocks of one street, reaching from the post office to the church. In between is a little of everything. BJ ambles along next to Hawkeye’s father and listens to the little history of the town. The fishing shop that used to be a grocery, the grocery that used to be a hardware store. The one restaurant (where they stop to have sandwiches and more coffee), the general store, the liquor store, the pharmacy, the library which is operated by community cooperative, meaning it’s selection reflects the donations of the town, and therefore is bizarre and very niche.

“Hawk keeps trying to donate his nudist magazines, despite my protestations. He’s scandalizing Mrs. Lord.”

“They’re educational!” Hawkeye chimes in. “The young men of this town can only benefit.”

“Hawk, you scoundrel.”

Hawkeye puts on a high-and-mighty air. “The world is wide, father. People in this small town deserve to know all it has to offer.”

“Like women playing volleyball without their clothes on,” BJ provides.

“Exactly! You don’t see that around here.” As an aside, nudging BJ in the ribs, he adds, “Too cold.”

“Oh, well then.” Daniel rolls his eyes, familiar with his son’s shenanigans. It’s warming. BJ can’t help but smile.

“See, Dad? BJ agrees with me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

They have a good laugh and before BJ knows it they’ve walked the length of town and are back into the soft wilderness of residential Crabapple Cove. It’s peaceful. Birds are chirping. The trees are still green and lush, despite the changing season. The ground slants downward and fog creeps at the edges of the road.

“The fog will burn off later in the day,” Mr. Pierce says. “It always lingers this time of year. You may not get the best view down on the water… But I suppose you understand fog, being in San Francisco.”

“We’re a little north,” BJ explains. “So it’s not as heavy. But yes, I’ve experienced my fair share of fog.”

“It’s nice you could come.” He turns them off the road and onto a pathway. The sound of the waves gets louder as they go. Hawkeye has gone a few feet ahead, leading at enough of a distance to let them talk without worrying about his listening in. “It’s been a hard adjustment for him.”

BJ puts his hands in his pockets and doesn’t respond right away. He doesn’t know how much Hawkeye’s father knows about him, or about how things were in Korea, or how things were between him and Hawkeye— or now, how things are with Hawkeye or between Hawkeye and Trapper. He doesn’t want to say the wrong thing.

“Your son means a lot to me,” he ends up saying. “He really helped me make it through the war. We became very good friends.”

“He’s that kind of person. Can’t help himself but make friends and help people.”

They walk in silence for a spell.

Quick enough, BJ can’t help himself and asks, “What do you think of McIntyre?”

Daniel Pierce looks at BJ out of the side of his face like he knows something BJ doesn’t.

“I like him. He’s good for Hawkeye. Keeps him upbeat.” BJ grunts. Everyone loves Trapper, it turns out. Annoying. “You don’t like him?”

“I don’t know him,” BJ hurries to say, feeling more than a little called out. He’s not a closed book, obviously. “I was his replacement over there. I only met him last night.”

“He came up about a month after Hawkeye got home.” They look ahead to where Hawkeye is cutting the path through the woods. BJ does the math— it’s not that Trapper has been here for weeks. He’s been here for months. He really is sticking around. “Got him back up on his feet. Got the house back in order. He was staying with me for a while, right after he got back. House was a mess. No one had lived in it for three years. I suppose I could have rented it out, but… well, John got the house livable again. Got Hawk living in it again.”

He goes quiet and BJ follows suit. He wants to know how Hawkeye was right after landing stateside, but he won’t ask. It’s sensitive. He knows what it was like for himself, and he’s not Hawkeye. And he knows how Hawkeye was during that last spell in Korea.

Eventually BJ finds a few words: “It’s good you were here for him. Are here for him.”

Daniel shrugs, smiling wryly. “Where else would I be?” They amble a bit more before either of them speak again. BJ takes deep breaths and turns his concept of Hawkeye-in-Maine around in his head. He folds the new information in. That Trapper’s been here for a while, that he’s made Hawkeye’s house the cozy home BJ walked into last night. That he’s been good for him.

The beach appears out of the tree line all of the sudden. They’ve been walking through heavy trees, then abruptly they’re standing on the rocky edge of the cove. Boulders reach out into the blue gray water. A few disappear into the fog. The waves are lapping softly at the rocks; the tide is out. It leaves eddies and pools in its wake, full of seaweed and little living things.

“Beej!” Hawkeye calls, waving him over to a crack in a rock he’s crouched over. “Come look!”

Daniel sends him on his way and BJ clambers awkwardly over to where Hawkeye is so effortlessly perched. He doesn’t feel stable on these rocks. They’re slightly damp and slightly slick and his sneakers aren’t giving him much traction. Images of smashing his head open after a wrong step rush through his brain. So he takes his time and Hawkeye hisses at him to hurry up already.

When he finally makes it, the ocean has made him damp and salty, and he’s sweating slightly despite the cool breeze.

“Okay, I’m here.”

“Look.” Hawkeye points. Down in the crevice of the rock, tucked away from the brunt of the waves, is a colony of crabs. Little pink, round crabs. There must be about fifty of them, tumbling over each other, tangling legs. “The crabapple crabs of Crabapple Cove.”

Hawkeye grins, proud. Showing off. Without hesitation, he reaches into the crab colony and grabs one up.

“Here,” he says, taking BJ’s hand and uncurling his fingers for him.

“Whoa!”

“Relax, relax. It barely hurts if they pinch.” Then the crab is in his hand, a tiny thing against the expanse of his palm. It wobbles around, trying out the new landscape. It’s feet prick at BJ’s skin. One claw opens and closes. Hawkeye is leaning very close, almost cheek to cheek with BJ as he watches the crab venture out towards BJ’s thumb. “There’s pockets of them all over. The seagulls eat them when they can, but they’re smart,” Hawkeye explains in a whisper. “They live mostly in these little tidal pools, under overhangs. Keeps them safe.”

“Oh.”

He wants to joke, to make a pun. To say something that would be normal between them. But everything feels different here. It’s quiet and calm and there’s no need to hurry. There’s no disaster waiting around the corner. Just tiny crabs and soft waves and bird song and the breeze rustling through the trees. And Hawkeye leaning against his arm, watching a little beast wave it’s claws and experimentally grab BJ’s finger with one.

“Ouch, little fella.” BJ gently extricates his skin from the claw, and the crab wriggles. He’s worried he’ll squeeze too hard and hurt it. It’s so little, after all. “Time to go back to mommy and daddy, I think.” He looks to Hawkeye, who is watching him with warm fondness. Softly, Hawkeye holds BJ’s hand steady, plucks up the little crab and sets it back among its peers. A few other crabs come over and investigate their returned friend, who waggles it’s claws before being ushered back into the depths of the group. Hawkeye hasn’t let go of BJ’s hand. He’s not exactly holding, just touching with a few fingertips to keep BJ’s hand where he wants it.

All it takes is a twist of the wrist to be holding hands.

“So this is the Crabapple Cove?”

Hawkeye looks at their hands. “Just an inlet. I’ll show you on a map back at the house.”

“Sure.”

Hawkeye stands and drags BJ with him. Hawkeye is confident on the rocks and leads the way, BJ following directly, stepping where Hawkeye steps. Having Hawkeye's hand in his makes it easier. A lifeline. A steady presence in a slippery world.

“Hawkeye, I want to say…”

“Yuh-huh.” He’s keeping an eye on his feet, watching where to go. Careful not to step on any adventurous crabs.

“You know, this is hard for me. It’s always been hard for me, hearing about Trapper. Knowing how much he meant to you and that I was just some… some replacement. And goddamnit, it’s hard now.” He plants his feet, forcing Hawkeye to stop too, holding him back by that tether of their still linked hands.

Hawkeye won’t look at him, but it’s clear he's listening seriously.

“I’m sorry, but I thought we had something special. Something different and big and… It took me a minute to figure it out, for myself, and come to terms with what it meant to me, and I should have said it in Korea, I know that. I should have come here sooner—“

There on a patch of rock, surrounded by salty low tide mud and rotting kelp that reminds BJ of the bay back home, Hawkeye listens to BJ ramble, trying to talk his way through his feelings, his thoughts, his furious anger and frustration that he’s handling so badly.

Hawkeye’s dad has gone on ahead and they’re alone. Just the two of them and the lap of the water. Hawkeye looks around, looks to BJ, looks at their hands. Finally he looks to BJ’s face.

BJ goes on, driving himself in circles with it. It takes no time at all to get frenzied. Just like how he would get in Korea over Peg, and yes, whenever Trapper was mentioned. “I never imagined he’d be here. Not for a second. And it makes me crazy that he is! That he’s here and you’re— together— and—“

“Hey, hey, Beej, come on—“ Hawkeye says, all gentle and calming, and traps BJ’s face between his hands. “Relax. You were never a replacement. You were you.”

And he leans in and kisses BJ. On the mouth. It’s not the best kiss he’s ever had, but then again, it is. It’s Hawkeye kissing him, so it’s like fireworks in his skull.

Hawk pulls back and grimaces. “I don’t know how Peg lets you get away with that,” he says. There’s a playful glimmer in his eyes. “It’s not exactly comfortable kissing that thing.”

The mustache.

Still stunned, BJ answers honestly: “She doesn’t like it much either.”

Hawkeye shrugs, makes a funny face that says What’re you gonna do about it? and it’s so Hawkeye, so wonderfully and perfectly Hawkeye, that BJ’s heart soars and his mind turns into a whirling roar of love. He sweeps Hawkeye up into his arms and kisses him, kisses him with everything he has, and Hawkeye puts his arms around BJ’s neck and kisses him back.

The waves are crashing and the sea smells like rot and Hawkeye is warm and solid in his arms.

“Hawk, Hawk,” BJ says between kisses, feeling desperate, thirsty, and Hawkeye’s kisses are his water, his lifeblood. He’s electric. He’s delirious. “Oh, thank God, Hawk—“

“Beej, BJ, listen—“

“God, I love you. I love you!” He wants to scream it to the mountaintops, to the wide ocean. He’s giddy with it. It’s happening, it’s all happening. This is what he wanted in coming to Maine. And he’s getting it. “I knew it, I knew it. I knew you’d–”

Hawkeye smiles, almost shyly. He’s gently petting BJ’s hair, running his hands over his ears and jaw.

“BJ, I love you too. I do. I want you here. I want…” He laughs. “I can’t believe it.”

“What?”

“I spent so much time in Korea dreaming about… about being home, about you, about— about what it could be like, and it was all so impossible. But now I have it. All of it. Too much of it. It’s unreal.”

“Oh, Hawkeye, whatever you want.” He nuzzles against Hawkeye’s throat, keeping him held close and tight.

“But BJ, listen, listen… will you do something for me?”

“Anything.”

“Will you try and make nice with Trapper?”

BJ stiffens but doesn’t retreat. He’s not giving up this moment and he won’t let Trapper intrude on it and ruin it. This is his moment. Hawkeye loves him, Hawkeye is holding him, Hawkeye has dreamt about him and loved him and kissed him. Not Trapper. He doesn’t want Trapper anywhere near this. But of course Trapper is lingering over it, just like how he lingered over everything in Korea. There’s no getting rid of him. For a moment he’d almost forgotten.

“BJ, please. For me. You’re both so important to me.” He pries BJ off him so he can look in his eyes. “It’s not a choice I can make, between the two of you. I can’t. You were never a replacement for him because… I never stopped loving him, you know? I came to love you too, so much, but… different. Side by side. Do you understand?”

BJ just stares dolefully. He’s disappointed. He’s the happiest he’s ever been and nearly as miserable as he’s ever been too. He has Hawkeye, has him in his arms, can still feel his kiss. Hawkeye loves him. That should be enough. Hawkeye has a heart big enough for two, that’s all it is. It still feels crummy.

“You know when I first realized I loved you?”

BJ shakes his head, and Hawkeye pulls him close again, back into his embrace. They’re nearly forehead to forehead.

“Remember all those orphans who stayed with us? When you were still new? Before this.” He strokes BJ’s mustache. “You told them bedtime stories? The lion and the mouse?”

“Yeah.”

“That was it. I fell in love with you right then.”

Hawkeye holds him and they stand on the rocks in each other’s arms until a strong, cold wind almost topples them over. BJ shivers.

“Time to head back,” Hawkeye says into his hair, rubbing BJ’s arms up and down to warm him.

BJ nods and they break apart. It feels like it’s been hours, but by BJ’s watch it’s only been twenty minutes since they came to the shore. Hawkeye’s dad is probably no further ahead than around the next bend.

In fact, they catch up to him quickly. He’s sitting on a log near the edge of the tree line, watching some birds loop and lope over the water.

“There you boys are,” he says as they round the bend. If he notices anything different between them, he doesn’t say anything. This next inlet is wider than the first, the rocks are bigger and flatter. It’s easy walking from here. The inlet curves in a crescent and Hawkeye leads them across the point through the trees. The next inlet is actually beachy— in that it’s flat, not a series of boulders to clamber over. It’s not sandy though, that’s for sure. All rocks.

“Closest to a beach it gets around here,” Hawkeye says with a heavy sigh. “I hate sand anyway.”

BJ doesn’t say anything. Hawkeye elbows him in the ribs, a friendly touch. Then he turns the conversation.

“We should do lobster for dinner. You can’t come all the way to Maine and not eat a lobster.”

The rest of the walk is done in quiet, easy chatter. Lobster recipes are bandied about, Hawkeye points out various tree and fern species, BJ makes a few obvious jokes about stamens. Hawkeye’s father keeps an easy pace with them, though they’re clearly slowing him down.

By the time they’re back on the Pierce’s tree lined street, it’s afternoon and the sky is bright blue. No gray fog in sight.

“Look, you head home,” Hawkeye says, patting BJ on the arm. “I’ll go buy some crustaceans. Dad, you’ll come with?”

Mr. Pierce nods and shakes BJ’s hand and says, “See you around, BJ. It’s been wonderful meeting you.”

“Okay, see ya, Beej. Don’t get lost. It’s the house with your car out front.”

“Yeah, yeah.” BJ waves them off and starts his lonesome amble back to Hawkeye’s house.

The day is clear and crisp and BJ takes his time.

It’s been a good morning. Or, well, it ended up good. He’s still tangled up and flustered and though he knows what he’s supposed to do he isn’t sure he can do it. Every time his thoughts touch back on Trapper, on Hawkeye and Trapper, it chews at another little bit of him. He never expected to be faced with Trapper, or the reality of what he walked into. It’s been a roller coaster and it’s dizzying. Hawkeye wants him. Hawkeye kissed him and held him and loves him. Hawkeye wants him to make nice with Trapper. Find a way to co-exist. The very thought gnaws. He doesn’t want to share.

When he makes it back to the house, Trapper, the man himself, is sitting on the top step outside the front door, wearing a turtleneck and jeans and toodling around on a little guitar, or maybe a dulcimer for all BJ knows. It’s got less than six strings anyway and Trapper is making idle, tuneless music on it.

“Oh,” he says, noticing BJ coming up the walkway. “Heya pal. Feeling better?” BJ grimaces. “Where’s Hawk?”

“Out with his dad,” he says stiffly, pointing his chin across the street. “Doing some shopping, I think.”

Trapper nods thoughtfully and BJ digs his hands into his pockets. He thinks he should go inside maybe. Or go for a walk. Anything to not have to stand here and try and make small talk with McIntyre. He’s not really ready for it. His head is still spinning from kissing Hawkeye. Maybe he should shove it in Trapper’s face. That would make him feel better, he thinks.

“How was the cove?”

“Good.”

“Romantic, huh?”

BJ scoffs because he can’t help himself, even though in his mind it’s about the most romantic place he’s ever been, now. “It’s not exactly Fiji.”

This makes Trapper laugh. “No, it is not. It’s not even Atlantic City. Something special about it though.” He trills on the little instrument, making a bad chord then correcting it. Barely interested in talking to BJ, it seems. Just killing time. But BJ hears him, hears every word. And he wonders. Did Hawkeye take Trapper to the cove too? Kiss him at the cove? Is there nothing BJ’s shared with Hawkeye that Hawkeye hasn’t shared with Trapper first? It stings.

“Yeah,” BJ admits, though the sting has dimmed the specialness a little. Only a little. “Something special.”

“It’s Hawkeye, don’t’cha think? It’s Hawk all over. Everything about him is that cove. The wildness, the waves, those goofy little pink crabs— did you see those?”

Trapper looks up smiling and for the first time, against his instincts, BJ likes him. He’s right, of course. Hawkeye’s cove is his, it’s him. He shared it with BJ. This private, intimate place that represents so much of who he is. His home, his heart. He shared it with Trapper, sure, but he shared it with BJ too.

“Hawk’s something else, huh?” Trapper’s gone back to looking at his little guitar, but his tone has shifted. Heavy. Serious. He’s saying a lot with that innocuous little comment.

BJ nods. He settles to sit on a step below Trapper, and Trapper moves his foot to make room. The foot is encased in a military issue boot. For a second BJ can’t look away from it. Trapper’s combats, BJ’s ratty sneakers. They’re both carrying Korea with every step.

From under his eyebrows, Trapper makes furtive eye contact. Something passes between them that wasn’t there before. Understanding. Comradeship. BJ doesn’t look away. Trapper twists up his mouth. It’s not a smile. Too heavy to be a smile.

“He’s like nobody I’ve ever known.”

“For me too.” A long pause passes between them. Trapper picks at a string. BJ kicks at the dirt. The wind blows. It’s November in Maine and while the sun is still warm, the air is cold.

“You were right.” It comes out nearly under his breath. Trapper barely moves to acknowledge he heard, but he definitely heard it. “About me. I’m… jealous. I love him, so much, and it’s hard for me that… that he doesn’t need me like I thought he did. I want to be part of his life. I have to be. And you’re part of that. I’m still wrapping my head around it. Not doing a very good job, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Trapper stares at his boots. “You know… you really are all he talked about. He couldn’t shut up about you. Everything came back to you. I’d ask about anybody, anything, and he had a story about you. It was BJ, BJ, BJ all the time. You can’t imagine…” He shakes his head, half laughs. “I dunno, maybe you can.”

BJ gives a noncommittal shrug. Hawkeye didn’t talk about Trapper much, but when he did… It ate him up every time. It’s eating him up right now. Unless he can get over it, it’ll eat him up for the rest of his life.

“We gotta figure out a way to be pals,” Trapper sighs. “For his sake.”

Does it help that Trapper doesn’t seem exactly keen on the idea either? That he’s having a hard time with it too? Not really. But Trapper is right, of course. They have to figure it out. And Trapper is willing to try. BJ gives in. “Don’t I know it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

With that, the air starts to clear. Trapper leans back against the rail that lines the steps. A bright smile forms. God, BJ thinks, he’s good at those.

“I’m glad to hear that. Hey, you want a drink? Let’s have a drink.”

BJ checks his watch. “Isn’t it too early?”

“Where you gotta be? If we start now we can really get roaring by the time Hawk makes it home.” He waggles his eyebrows and BJ laughs and that’s it, it’s decided. He agrees to a drink or seven and Trapper knocks him on the arm and bounces up. He holds the door for BJ as they go in, waving him past with a low bow.

And they do get roaring.

Hawkeye's liquor cabinet is understocked, consisting only of two bottles of scotch, one rye whiskey, one Irish whiskey, three varied aperitifs, a little brandy bottle, an even smaller vodka, and a very cute bottle of peppermint schnapps.

BJ looks at the selection with a frown.

Apologetically, Trapper moseys up to his side carrying a bucket of ice and two glasses. “Lost the taste for gin.”

BJ understands. That there’s vodka is a surprise, honestly. The spirits the still in Korea produced weren’t exactly gin or vodka, but they called it gin and the sharp burn of it still sits on the back of his tongue. Vodka, he’s sure, would produce the same result.

“Whiskey it is.”

“Grab the Irish,” Trapper advises. “Smoother.”

To get even further away from the memory of undiluted homemade Korean booze, Trapper provides cranberry juice (“local,” he says, pulling a whaddya-know sort of face) and they mix up strong but very palatable cocktails.

“To Hawk,” BJ presents as the first toast.

“What else? You know all the old folks in town call him Benjy.”

“Really?”

Trapper clacks their glasses together. “Really.”

From there they toast everything from their kids to warm sweaters, from lost loved ones to found loved ones, from yesterday to tomorrow.

“What are you gonna do up here?” BJ asks after a toast to surgical clamps. “You’re a hotshot surgeon and this is a small town.”

“We’re… gonna open a clinic,” Trapper says with a bashful shrug. “There isn’t a great hospital around here, just the university hospital which is pretty backwater, so… That’s the plan. When Hawk’s up to it.”

“That’s great. That’s a great thing to do.”

“Yeah. My girls’ll come up for the summers and… It’ll be good.”

“It sounds good. And your wife…?” He doesn’t want to ruin their miraculously chummy mood, but he is curious. It doesn’t phase Trapper at all, apparently, because he takes it in stride and goes to mix up another set of drinks.

“We split,” he says, flat as a tabletop. “So that’s done.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. I wasn’t fair to her. Cheated a lot, even before Hawkeye. So it’s for the best all around. She’s okay.”

Okay. What does that mean, BJ wonders. She’s okay with the split? She’s okay on her own? She’s okay with Trapper moving to Maine to live with another man? She’s okay with her daughters spending summers here?

“Does she know about…?”

“Sort of. I wasn’t the same after Korea. He’s part of that.” He shrugs again, like that covers it, and BJ decides it’s time to stop pressing. He doesn’t want to talk about Korea. All the awful things, all the choices and surgeries and kids they put together and tore apart. But it’s a comfort to know the basic fact that choosing Hawkeye hasn’t taken his career from him, or his kids. It’s not that BJ is worried about Peg, or what Peg would do in the same situation, because Peg’s the one who sent him here in the first place. She was so tired of him pacing around the house. Go figure it out, she’d said. Then come home and we’ll figure it out. They don’t make ‘em like Peg very often. Trapper pulls him out of his thoughts: “How about yours?”

“My wife?”

Trapper nods and BJ tells him about Peg. How independent she is, how understanding she is. How patient she’s been with him, how much allowance she’s given for his new tics and bad habits. How he loves her completely and loves Hawkeye completely at the same time. Trapper keeps nodding.

“I came home different, too. I guess we all did. She’s been great.”

“That’s great.”

The conversation lulls and Trapper pours another round of drinks.

Before he knows it, BJ’s drunk. Drunk in a way he hasn’t been since, oh, Korea. So drunk he’s loopy, laughing at everything, his anger and sadness transmuted into wild, reckless abandon. He could turn on a dime and he knows it way back in the sober part of his brain. This chummy energy they’ve created could snap away in a second and BJ could turn nasty. Don’t, he tells himself over and over and over. Trapper’s funny, he decides firmly. Trapper’s ooookay.

Trapper’s laughing a lot too, putting a hand over his eyes and howling at nothing and everything and BJ’s mustache. He sits in the corner of the sofa, one leg up and pretty well in BJ’s lap. He doesn’t seem to notice or mind so BJ decides not to notice or mind either.

Hawkeye comes in just as the sun is starting to set, carrying a big paper bag. He stops in the doorway at the sight of BJ and Trapper sprawled together on the sofa. His face cracks into a smile.

“Hey, Hawkeye, baby!” Trapper crows at him, waving him into the room. “Whaddya got?”

Hawkeye reaches into the bag and pulls out a lobster. It’s brown and wet and very alive, BJ is dismayed to see. It’s legs are wiggling. He buries his face in the arm of the sofa. “Oh god.”

Trapper wobbles to his feet and takes the lobster out of Hawkeye's hands. He cradles it in his arms like a pet, or a baby.

“Let’s put ‘em in some water for the night. Let ‘em live.” He coos at the lobster’s black eyes and takes it into the kitchen.

“Trapper! They’re for dinner!” Hawkeye runs after him, leaving BJ alone in the living room, very drunk.

There’s the sound of running water for a long time, and voices that waver in and out of clarity.

He hears: “Trap, BJ has got to eat a lobster. He came all the way here!”

“Not this one! Come on, honey, not this one. Not tonight.”

“You’re gonna throw them back in the ocean again!”

“I won’t! I might. Look at his eyes.”

“John McIntyre, those cost me two bucks each. Hey, come on, you’re drunk.”

“I’m attuned to the gentle souls of all things. I can’t help it.”

BJ sinks off the couch cushions and onto the floor.

“Trap…” There’s a pause, a giggle. The sternness melts out of the conversation. “Okay, okay, fine. Then what’re we gonna eat?”

The voices slip beneath his hearing. It’s quiet.

For a moment all BJ can hear is water still running in the kitchen and wind outside and nothing else. Cocooned in Hawkeyes house, sitting on the ground, BJ feels wonderfully warm and at home. He almost doesn’t even care what’s happening in the kitchen. It’s not his business.

Hawkeye stomps back into the living room frowning. His hair is a little messier than it was when he got home. He pours himself a very strong drink and settles easily on the carpet next to BJ, leaning his back against the sofa.

“I’m sorry, BJ, but you will not be having lobster for dinner tonight.”

“That’s okay.”

“That bastard,” Hawkeye grumbles, only half seriously annoyed. “I can’t believe he’s pulling this. He’s got no problem eating lobster at a restaurant, but try and cook it at home and he has a moral crisis.”

“There’ll be other chances.”

“And now I have pet lobsters! Good for me.”

He stews over it quietly, his arm pressed against BJs. With a huff, he drops his head onto BJ’s shoulder.

When Trapper comes back into the room, he’s looking a little sheepish, carrying a bottle of scotch and six slices of toast stacked on a plate as a peace offering.

“BJ,” he says, handing over the toast. BJ takes a slice and puts it in his mouth. It’s perfectly buttered. The scotch is splashed into Hawkeye's glass. “You have some catching up to do, my darling.”

Hawkeye snorts but downs his drink and gestures for another right away.

Trapper sits on the floor on the other side of Hawkeye and reaches across his lap to nab a slice of toast for himself. He leans back on one arm, stretching his legs out, lounging loosely. A spark of jealousy streaks through BJ— everything Trapper does is so easy, so effortless.

The three of them drink quietly, Hawkeye sloshing scotch into his glass at regular intervals.

Trapper breaks the silence with a tug at Hawkeye’s sleeve and an exaggerated southern drawl: “Miss Hawkeye, don’t tell me you’re apt to be mad all night.”

“I’ll be mad as long as I want to,” Hawkeye says, turning up his nose.

Trapper pouts. “Miss Hunnicutt,” he says, dragging the S’s into Z’s. “Would you please–?”

“I really don’t need lobster, Hawk, I don’t—“

“It’s the principle! You come to Maine, you eat lobster! It’s our cultural food.”

“I’m sure I’ll have some before I go. Or, you know—“

“It’s basically butter anyway,” Trapper hisses to BJ across Hawkeye's nose. “If you want butter, I’ll melt you butter.”

“It is not just butter!” Hawkeye throws his hands up and splashes a light rain of liquor down on all their heads. Trapper laughs, BJ cringes. “Butter is part of the meal, of course, but the lobster itself! BJ, it’s silk! It’s smooth, it’s sweet, it’s rich—“ He kisses his fingertips and shakes them in BJ’s direction. Trapper refills his glass and Hawkeye downs it without thinking.

“I’ve had lobster before, Hawkeye.”

“But have you had Maine lobster? Fresh from the ocean? Cooked in Maine sea water? I don’t think so!”

“Keep drinking, honey,” Trapper murmurs.

Hawkeye whirls on him. “You’re depriving my dear BJ one of life’s truly exquisite pleasures.”

“I don’t like butchering in my own home,” Trapper explains to BJ, even as he refills Hawkeye's glass and takes a swig directly from the bottle for himself. “I’ll take you out for lobster tomorrow. They serve it all over. Since somebody feels so strongly about it.”

“Doesn’t like butchering… there’s no butchering involved.”

“There’s plenty. Boiling alive, cracking shells, removing claws and legs… No thank you.” Trapper shivers, only a little exaggerated. His smile wavers, but sticks. “I’ve had my fill of that for one lifetime.”

That puts a light damper on proceedings.

There’s no escaping Korea, as it turns out. It’ll cling to them forever, in everything they do, coloring every experience from here on out. BJ looks at his sneakers and his stomach wobbles.

Hawkeye frowns like he’s never thought of it that way before. BJ’s never had occasion to cook a lobster himself— and now he thinks he’s not likely to. One of many things he won’t mind ordering off a menu moving forward, once the meat has been completely divorced from the animal.

“Forget about it,” Trapper chimes, all bright smiles and cheery attitude once more. Boy, BJ thinks, he really can put it on. It’s impressive. He’s halfway to his feet in an instant. “I’ll whip something up, okay? No one goes hungry in this house.”

BJ looks at the plate of toast still in his lap. His head is swimming pleasantly with alcohol, and he doesn’t really want to come back to earth. They brushed too close to the surface a minute ago. Too hearty a meal and he’ll crash.

“Trapper, don’t go. I don’t need anything.”

Hawkeye paws at Trappers arm, pulling him back down. “Yeah, Trap, it’s fine, forget about it.”

“I’m sorry, Hawk. I know you bought those things special.” Trapper settles back down to sit, putting both his hands on Hawkeye’s knee.

“We can return them to the sea tomorrow, if you want.”

“Roll out a red carpet.”

“They’ll have a story to tell their kids.”

“Three lobsters walk into a bar…”

“A toast,” BJ proposes, filling glasses all around and offering up the plate of sliced bread. “To toast.”

“To free crustaceans.” Hawkeye agrees, clinking his glass.

“To brotherly love among crabs.”

“And the crabby.”

It’s not BJ’s finest joke but it sends Trapper into genuine peals of laughter. Three glasses clatter against each other and are emptied.

The room is clear and friendly again. The lobsters are forgotten, and conversation slides along a natural track from toast to breakfasts to night befores. Hawkeye shares a saucy story of a local girl he wooed in high school. BJ tells of an early date with Peg, where they got caught in the backseat of his car. Trapper, with much reluctance and only after much goading from Hawkeye, recounts the story that got him his nickname.

“Terrible!” BJ exclaims, slapping his thigh.

“That story went all up and down the east coast,” Hawkeye explains, his voice carrying a tinge of pride. “Trapper John McIntyre’s fantastic football arm and grabby hands.”

“It’s a good arm. I throw a mean ball, still.”

“That’s what all guys past their prime say. Look at how skinny you are.” Hawkeye pinches Trapper’s arm. Skinny is not how BJ would describe him. Compared to Hawkeye, who is a twig that somehow played football, Trapper is All-American, easily. He’s strapping, if svelte. “You couldn’t throw a ball ten yards.”

“I could! I have! Oliver took ten yards right in the teeth once, remember?” Trapper says defending himself even as Hawkeye tickles his ribs.

“Oh god!” Hawkeye crows at the memory and falls over onto the floor. “He was so mad! He chased you all over camp!”

“Caught me too!”

Hawkeye and Trapper laugh so hard they’re crying, and BJ, slightly lost, has to raise his voice to ask, “Sorry, who?”

“Oh right,” Trapper says, gulping to get his breath back. “Before your time.”

And between them, they tell BJ about it:

Lots of people came and went in that first year, before the army upped the number of required points and never stopped upping them. BJ hears about Painless, who had big depressions and big talent and who bequeathed upon the swamp his dental chair when he left. The never-ending poker game he ran died when he helicoptered out, and while Hawkeye's wallet was thankful the rest of him missed the constant promise of something distracting— and his friend. Duke, who made the Swamp what it was and then flew home to Georgia and never looked back. His chummy letters petered out PDQ, though Hawkeye still thinks fondly of him. Ugly John, the best gas man either of them had ever met (so good he was really an anesthesiologist), with a great brain for schemes. And Oliver, of course, who was Trapper’s buddy first and foremost, and went home without fuss one warm spring afternoon. He’s in San Diego these days, Trapper says, fixing brain injuries and making them all look like amateurs.

“I should write him,” Trapper muses. “Been too long.”

“Good friends, huh?” BJ sips his whiskey and is selfishly grateful so few friends were discharged while he was at the 4077th. Frank, who was not a friend. Radar, who was.

“Yeah. It was a small place over there, and they made me almost love it. Hawkeye most of all.”

Hawkeye looks over, fluttering his eyelashes.

“Thank you, dearest. I’ll grant your arm is still pretty good. Hands, too.”

Trapper laughs and swarms forward to kiss Hawkeye, who giggles against it, then melts and kisses him back. They’re kissing in earnest, grinning into each other’s mouths, and it’s the first time BJ has seen it. They look so pleased, giddy and pink with drink and fumbling all over each other. Hawkeye tips backwards and slips against the sofa, sliding to crash into BJ’s shoulder. Trapper breaks away, laughing like a madman, and presses his forehead to Hawkeye's collar bone.

BJ stays very still. He wouldn’t mind blending into the sofa completely and disappearing. His throat has closed up.

Hawkeye sighs contentedly and puts his hand into Trapper’s hair.

“BJ,” Hawkeye sighs, turning to look at him. “BJ, hey.”

He croaks: “Hi.”

Maybe he'd be angry, instead of dazed, if he wasn’t drunk. Maybe he’d be upset if he hadn’t spent all afternoon getting to know Trapper. His guts are churning, but that could be anything. He’s feeling a little hot under the collar.

Hawkeye puts his free hand on BJ’s thigh.

“Come here.”

BJ thoughtlessly leans in and finds himself too close, too warm, too engulfed in Hawkeye too fast. Hawkeye tilts his head, just a little, just enough, and kisses BJ in a soft and sensual way, totally different from the giddy way he’d kissed Trapper. The initial shock of it passes into the sensation of BJ’s hands in Hawkeye's hair and Hawkeye’s hand digging into BJ’s leg. Hawkeye is craning his neck to kiss and be kissed and BJ shifts, turning his body, lifting up onto a knee to have a better angle, to kiss Hawkeye more thoroughly.

They part softly, with a whisper, and out of the corner of his eye BJ sees Trapper’s keen eyes watching. He’s still got his head against Hawkeye’s chest, and he’s looking up at BJ from under his eyebrows. He’s appraising. He’s thoughtful. He doesn’t look mad.

Hawkeye still has his eyes closed, one hand in Trapper’s hair, one on BJ’s thigh. Still precariously wedged against the sofa.

For a second the three of them hover in this limbo, then Trapper shifts and Hawkeye shifts and BJ shifts and they find a more comfortable way to tangle together. Hawkeye's hand slips out of Trapper’s hair as he sits up, settling like a bird onto his shoulder.

There’s friction in the air, static electricity between BJ and Trapper. The lubricant of alcohol has saved them from sparks, together with Hawkeye’s buffering presence. Hawkeye holds them like a conduit, and the electricity hums through him.

Eyes still closed, casual as can be, Hawkeye calmly declares: “Now you two kiss and be friends.”

BJ finds himself frozen, at an impasse. Not even the fuzzy comradery of being drunk could make this an amiable, ha-ha suggestion. He’s still wound up about the very concept of being friendly with Trapper, let alone being in physical contact with him, let alone— anything more than a handshake or the already present contact kiss off Hawkeye’s lips. If there was ever a suggestion to make BJ spin out and overthink, or plunge his drunk brain into a panic, here it is. It’s Hawkeye rubbing little circles in his thigh while suggesting he kiss a phantasm made real.

Good god, what does Hawkeye want from him?

Trapper sits forward, wobbling only a little before finding solid ground— BJ’s knee. His hazy, warm expression carries a challenge in it that BJ doesn’t quite like the look of. He’s smiling, still smiling, always goddamn smiling.

“Come’ere, hunk.” Smooth and easy, Trapper hooks BJ around the back of the neck, hauls him in, and plants one on him. It’s not romantic and it’s not sexy, but it is funny and thank god for that. BJ pulls away laughing in spite of himself. It’s the best possible outcome. “There. Friends.”

“Sure,” BJ allows, slightly bamboozled but still chuckling. “Friends.”

Trapper rubs at his mouth. “Geez, that mustache is no joke!”

“That’s what I said,” Hawkeye laughs, throwing his head back.

“Jokes are funny,” BJ jabs. He smooths his mustache with put-on pride. “Nothing funny here.”

“You know, Hunnicutt, you’re alright.” Trapper flops down onto the carpet with a sigh.

Hawkeye looks between them, his expression warm. He says, “Thank you.”

Trapper smiles and brushes against Hawkeye's leg with a fingertip.

All of the sudden, it’s too much— the easy intimacy. The warmth of the room. Trapper’s crooked smile. Hawkeye’s genuine happiness. BJ flusters and aches and decides he has to leave the room. Right now. What he needs is air, but he’ll settle for any other room in the house.

“I, uh, I’ll wash up, for a sec.” He struggles to his feet— causing his head to slosh dangerously— and careens out of the room. He’s still holding his own glass, by some miracle, which covers his poor excuse to flee. The house spins around him and it’s not just the drink. It’s Hawkeye and Trapper and watching them kiss and the feel of Hawkeye’s hand in his hair and Trapper’s hand on his knee and their eyes on him still as he wobbles out of the room. Too many drinks and he stood up too fast and had too many mouths in too quick succession, and the sun isn’t even down yet.

In the kitchen, he leans against the counter and counts out ten long, slow, deep breaths. He wants to dunk his head in ice water, just to find some semblance of his humanity again. He feels like an animal. Like a hurricane.

Water. He needs water.

Turning to the sink with his entire body, BJ’s big plan crashes to a halt when he sees the sink is already full. Three lobsters are using it as a motel.

It’s all he can do to laugh and sit down on the floor, his knees up and his head against the cabinets. For a while he laughs— the lobsters, the Crabapple crabs, the insanity of being here at all, three thousand miles away from his wife and darling daughter and the house he and Peg designed and built to be just right for them, just perfect, just exactly what they wanted. It’s funny. It has to be funny. It’s funny or it’s the worst thing he’s ever heard.

He tips over the line and his laughter turns to weeping. The lobsters, the drinks, coming all this way, all three thousand miles away from wife and daughter and home, only to find a man already in Hawkeye’s heart and house and bed. A great man, too. A dreamy, kind, caring, smart, sharp man. Not a schmuck, not a cad. A good guy who’ll stick with him, help him, defend him, love him. The kind of guy Hawkeye deserves. Divorced. Available.

He’s still on the floor when Trapper comes in ten minutes later. Hawkeye is two steps behind him, looking concerned.

“Whoa, buddy, you okay?” Trapper sweeps in to crouch at BJ’s side.

BJ puts his forehead against a drawer. He’s stopped crying, but he’s worn out now. Crying does that. He groans. “It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah. Let’s get you in a chair. Get some food in ya.”

Hands under BJ’s arms, Trapper hauls him up to sit at the cramped breakfast table. A glass of water appears before him. Trapper ruffles his hair.

The evening proceeds. Hawkeye turns on the radio. They nibble what’s in the icebox. Hawkeye makes sandwiches with cold chicken while Trapper sprinkles bits of lettuce into the sink for the lobsters to eat.

It starts to rain.

Hawkeye and Trapper make a lingering eye contact that BJ thinks is related to the rain but can’t begin to interpret. He rankles, then smooths himself out. He’s too worn out to get worked up, which is good. So they have their own secrets, their own language. So what?

BJ pulls on Hawkeye’s sleeve. “Can I call Peg?”

“What? Of course.”

“I’ll pay for the long distance.”

“Don’t worry about it. Use the phone in the living room.”

BJ nods weakly and sees himself out. The day feels like it’s been a thousand hours long. He’s exhausted and wrung out and off-kilter. He needs grounding. He needs Peg.

The phone is black and sitting on an end table by a window. BJ dials and waits with his head against the window glass while the operator connects him. It rings once, twice. Scratchy across three thousand miles. He glances at his watch— it feels like midnight but it’s only just dinner time. It’s late afternoon at home. Peg should be home. His head throbs.

The line connects.

“Hello,” the sweet voice chimes, “Hunnicutt home.”

“Hi Peg.”

“BJ! You were supposed to call when you arrived, you know.” She’s teasing more than mad. He can hear it in her voice. Hear her smile, hear her playful needling that he loves. “I assumed you’d died on the road. I’m already remarried.”

He huffs a laugh but says, “Don’t say that.”

“Sorry. How is it? You made it okay?”

“I did. It’s… good. It’s not what I… I miss you. I love you.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Yuh-huh. Maine is pretty. You’d like it.”

“Are we moving?” Her tone is light, but the question isn’t a joke.

He doesn’t know how to answer. He doesn’t think he would, but maybe. If he was asked… if Hawkeye really wanted him here… if there was space in Crabapple Cove for another doctor and his family. He doesn’t know how to answer, so he doesn’t answer.

In his weighty silence, Peg asks, “How is it, BJ? Really?” He can just picture her. Cradling the phone with both hands, her blonde hair just brushing her shoulders.

“Trapper’s here. He’s been here. With Hawkeye.”

“Ah. So…?”

“So it’s… not what I expected.”

There’s a long pause.

“Are you coming home?” Is he coming home right now? Is he coming home ever?

“Of course, Peg, of course. In a couple days.”

“I love you, BJ Hunnicutt.” It’s not quite a plea, but it works like that on him. He loves her so much, and right now he misses her so much it hurts. He could never leave her. Not even for Hawkeye Pierce.

It’s not exactly a revelation, but it’s a reminder he needed. The world feels a little lighter after that.

“I love you too, dear. Kiss Erin for me.”

“Do you want to talk to her? She’s right here.”

And he does— So Peg puts Erin on the phone and the three of them babble together until Erin gets bored. Peg ekes a g’bye daddy out of her then lets her go.

“She likes the phone,” Peg says. “You just made her night.”

“I’m glad. I’ll see you both soon.”

“Take your time, darling. I know how important this is to you.”

BJ’s heart swells in his chest. “Peg…”

“BJ.”

He could listen to her breathe over the line for hours. He allows himself twenty seconds then repeats his love and says he’ll call when he knows when he’ll be flying back. Peg promises to pick him up at the airport.

When he got home four months ago, tired and sticky from a cross-oceanic flight and anxious and lonely, seeing Peg at the airport with Erin in her arms had knocked his head back on straight. Seeing her in person, pink and blonde and smiling so wide, had been a wonderful, ecstatic punch in the guts. No one had ever been more beautiful to him than his two girls in that moment. It had taken two months for him to feel the pang of missing Hawkeye. He missed him immediately, of course, but it wasn’t painful at first. It was almost joyous to be missing Hawkeye and to know that they were both, finally, home. On opposite coasts, but home. Barely talking due to the distance, but home. And besides, he was keeping busy— reacclimating to California, to regular work, to being a present husband to a wife who had gotten used to being without him. It took work. It took energy. It kept him too occupied to worry about Hawkeye.

But it did, eventually, start to eat at him and he did start to worry. Then it started to make him irritable and restless. He convinced himself Hawkeye was miserable, hurting, in need of his help. He talked to Peg about it at night, every night, for weeks. She was patient, beyond patient, and understanding. Curious, thoughtful, always nodding, never bored of his stories and concerns. Learning this new part of her husband and making sense of it. Missing Hawkeye became an itch he couldn’t scratch— at which point he left for Maine.

He feels better for having talked to her. Calmer. She wants him to come home. She needs him still, despite all her new independence and the strength she’s always had. More than that, she wants him. She loves him. He loves her. He’s in shambles but their life is secure. It’s what he needs. It’s who he is.

He goes back into the kitchen only a little less wobbly than he was when he left it. Standing in the middle of the room are Hawkeye and Trapper, leaning against each other, swaying together to the radio in almost a dance. Technically Hawkeye is leading, but he has his head resting against Trapper’s shoulder.

Seeing them like this… it’s clear as glass, now, that BJ belongs at home, with Peg and Erin, and Hawkeye belongs here. With Trapper. He doesn’t regret coming, but he knows now he isn’t staying forever. He can’t intrude on this. He can’t break it up. He has to go home and dance in the kitchen with Peg.

Hawkeye sees him first. The slow dance slows to a stop. “Beej. You okay?”

BJ nods and finds his way back into his seat at the table, dropping into his seat without any grace or elegance at all. Hawkeye and Trapper break apart, though Trapper’s hand lingers on the small of Hawkeye's back.

Hawkeye slips into the chair across from him. “How’s Peg?”

“Good. Thanks. She says hello.”

“Oh! Hello.”

“She asked if we were moving.”

Trapper raises his eyebrows, but it’s Hawkeye who asks, “Moving? Moving where? Moving who?”

“Here. Us.”

“Here?”

BJ shrugs. It sounds stupid now that he’s saying it.

“Are you? Would you?”

He shrugs again and folds his arms on the table before pointedly laying his head down. Whatever he says from here on out should not be taken for truth, he wants the gesture to say. Anything else he says has come from an unconscious mouth and unthinking mind.

“I would if you wanted me to,” he says to the tabletop.

A hand covers his. It’s Hawkeye’s. He can tell by touch. His bones, his skin. Those familiar long fingers that he came to know so well in Korea. Those hands that shook his hands and touched his arms and changed his life.

“That can’t be up to me, you know.”

BJ nods blindly. He doesn’t want to look at Hawkeye’s expression. He knows it, sure, that he has to make up his own mind, but he’d rather someone just tell him what to do. Leave your wife, BJ. Move to Maine, BJ. Throw it all away to be second fiddle behind some other guy who left his wife and moved to Maine. Better yet, uproot not only your own life, but your wife and daughters. Move everybody to Maine. Maybe you really can have it all. Funny thought, that.

“I think I should lie down,” BJ groans softly. It’s not late enough to go to bed, it can’t be, but he’s tired and at this point his head is spinning. What’s the point in pretending anymore? It’s either go to bed or eventually embarrass himself beyond recovery.

“You got it, buddy,” Trapper says, sweeping in to help BJ to his feet again. It’s not that BJ needs it, but the support is kindly meant and appreciatively accepted. “You’ve had a pretty heavy day.”

Together, each with a friendly arm around his back, Hawkeye and Trapper get him upstairs and help him into bed. Hawkeye gently pulls his sweater off him, ruffling his hair as it goes over his head.

“Thanks,” BJ says as his head hits the pillow. Trapper unties his sneakers for him and gently pats his ankles once they’re off. “You’re nice. You’re being so nice.”

“I am nice,” Trapper responds gently. “We’re all nice here.”

“Yeah. Except me.” The ceiling is too white so BJ closes his eyes. He can feel a spiral incoming, rushing towards him at full speed. He was already halfway there when he cried in the kitchen. Talking to Peg relieved a little of the spin but the best thing would be to pass out before it gets really bad and he starts lashing out.

“You’re nice,” Hawkeye says, leaning in to kiss BJ on the cheek. It brings a wash of peace over BJ’s roiling mind. Everything is okay. It’ll all be okay. “Now get some sleep.”

“Are you gonna sleep in those jeans?” Trapper asks, and BJ nods and shrugs because he’s too tired to bother taking them off. “Okay, BJ, sleep tight.”

Lips touch his forehead, and this time BJ knows it’s Trapper tucking him into bed like a kid. He doesn’t mind like he would have just last night. Trapper’s a dad, just like he is, and he cares. He’s being kind. Tonight it leaves BJ feeling cozy and cared for, instead of condescended to. Call that improvement, BJ thinks vaguely. Call that growth.

There are low murmurs as Hawkeye and Trapper leave the room, closing the door behind them.

BJ drifts off, swirling thoughts of parenthood and commitment and partnership around in his head.

In the morning, BJ finds himself the first one awake. The house is dead quiet. He can’t remember what day of the week it is. At some point in the night he peeled off his jeans, and thank god for it. He knows if he’d slept all night in them, he’d be stiff and miserable now. As it is, he’s only a little stiff and a little miserable.

When he eases himself out of his room– thinking he’ll shower and freshen up and feel human again– there is another door open besides the bathroom door, one that wasn’t open the morning before, and he can’t help himself but to peek his head in. It’s the master bedroom, which is as cluttered and homey as the rest of the house. Maybe more so, with clothes strewn about and piles of books on tables and knick-knacks busying the top of the dresser. Hawkeye is still in bed, and, yes, Trapper is there too. They’re spooned together, Hawkeye mostly on his stomach, his arms twisted up around himself in the familiar way, wearing his boxers and a t-shirt. He sleeps the same in a bed as he did in a cot, the same way BJ has seen a thousand times in Korea. Except this time Trapper is there too, bare-chested, tucked behind, with one arm tossed over Hawkeye’s ribs, his forehead pressed to Hawkeye’s spine. Their fingers are loosely, oh so loosely, intertwined.

BJ stands in the doorway for a long time. Too long, probably. But he can’t stop staring.

It’s terribly intimate and terribly domestic and terribly wonderful to see. It also feels like someone shoved a hand through his ribs and is squeezing his heart.

Trapper wakes first, shifting under BJ’s gaze and slowly coming to life. He spots BJ in the doorway and waves him in, easy and casual, letting Hawkeye’s hand slip from his hold.

“Morning,” he whispers. “Sleep okay?”

BJ nods. He doesn’t want to wake Hawkeye, knowing how light a sleeper he could be in Korea, how much he needed every second of sleep he could get. Things are different here, he supposes, but even so. Besides that, he feels like he’s intruding. So he stays quietly where he is.

Trapper props himself up on an elbow. He’s smiling and pink with sleep. “We’re okay, huh? Everything okay?”

“Yeah. All okay.”

“Good.” He shifts a bit more, extricating himself from the bed, stretching his arms and back and scrunching up his face. Hawkeye remains dead to the world. “I’ll make some coffee, if you want.”

Out of bed, Trapper tosses on Hawkeye’s flannel robe and saunters over to BJ still standing on the threshold.

“Come on,” he hooks BJ around the neck and walks him out into the hallway. They talk vaguely about if Bj wants eggs for breakfast, before BJ excuses himself to take a shower and Trapper goes trotting down the stairs to start cooking.

In the bathroom, BJ turns on the water and stares at himself in the mirror until it steams over.

Half an hour later, BJ feels nearly human again. In fact, he feels like someone he recognizes for the first time in a long while. He feels like the person he’s supposed to be– the kind, understanding guy he always thought he was. Not the jealous, petty jerk he’s been.

Trapper looks up when he comes into the kitchen and does a double take.

“That’s a change.”

Trapper gestures to his own upper lip, and BJ blushes. He shaved the mustache. It’s not just a change, it’s a big change. A big choice. He’d found a pair of scissors in the bathroom cabinets and before he knew it he had been trimming down and down and down, and then shaving the whole thing off. It was a strange weight lifted off him. Without the mustache, suddenly he looked in the mirror and he was the man Peg married again. Suddenly his face looked five years younger. Lighter, happier. A big change, but a good change.

“It was time. No one liked it but me, anyway.”

Trapper makes a win-some-lose-some gesture and pours BJ a cup of coffee.

Hawkeye comes down half an hour after that and still half asleep. It takes him ten minutes to realize BJ’s mustache is gone, and when he does he dramatically and playfully collapses onto the floor in a faint.

The three of them have a good laugh about it.

“Maybe I’ll grow one,” Trapper tosses off, still laughing as he tries to haul Hawkeye up from the ground.

“No!” Hawkeye howls, going limp in his arms. “No, no, please god, don’t!”

“Don’t think I could pull it off?”

“Absolutely not.” Hawkeye kisses him on his clean shaven lip. “BJ’s the only person who could pull off a cheesy mustache like that–”

“Oh, why thank you.” BJ bows his head with regal dignity.

“-- And even he killed it eventually, may it rest in peace.”

The morning passes easily. At noon, Trapper hustles them into his blue Pontiac and they take a drive over to Spruce Harbor, the next town over. There’s a brief tour of the hospital facilities, which Hawkeye tsks at and shakes his head.

“Ours will be much better,” he says as he leans over BJ’s shoulder and points. “Trap’s doing all the planning. It’ll be the best thoracic surgery center in the state when he’s done with it.”

Then it’s lunch, which does consist of lobster as promised. They sit at picnic tables just off a pier and eat, and BJ admits that Maine lobster really is that good. It’s silky, like Hawk said, and buttery and beautiful. It helps that there’s no shell cracking involved. Just hunks of soft white meat that BJ eats with his fingers and moans over. Hawkeye beams and Trapper shrugs.

“Speaking of,” Trapper says as he picks at his own meal, “we’ve still got three of these suckers in the sink at home.”

“Oh right. Gotta set ‘em loose, I guess.”

“You don’t want a pet?” BJ can imagine it– Hawkeye sauntering around with a lobster on his shoulder like a parrot. A Maine pirate.

“I’d rather get a dog,” Hawkeye pouts, but only a little.

“We can get a dog.”

The conversation rattles on and BJ basks in it. It’s a nice day– warm and sunny, with a cool breeze off the water. Hawkeye and Trapper banter easily together, never falling into a dull moment. When Hawk goes off on a tangent about what he imagines underwater lobster society to be like, Trapper listens and nods and smiles. He likes listening to Hawkeye talk, that’s easy to see. BJ does too.

More than twice during their lunch, various locals come over to talk to Doctor Pierce, who tells them he’s not working, no, sorry, not at the moment, not yet, and to go see Doctor Holcombe or Doctor Moore (“Great guys,” adds as an aside to BJ, “but not, you know, you or me”), and that they’d know when Doctor Pierce was back in business because he’d be back to placing big bets on rounds of golf.

Hawkeye talks to his hometown friends and neighbors, and in the meantime Trapper and BJ listen idly and occasionally exchange knowing, sympathetic looks. Of course Hawkeye introduces everyone every time and there are handshakes all around, but Hawkeye gets caught up chatting and neither BJ nor Trapper really know enough about the local social ecosystem to have anything to add. Being here for months on end has not gotten Trapper up to date on the apparently fifty years of local history one would need to know in order to fully participate in conversations.

It’s really something else to hear Hawkeye gabbing away with his fellow Mainers, BJ finds. His accent slips and slides, his gestures stiffen and tighten. He’s still himself, just a little different.

“Buncha characters up here, aren’t there?” BJ says, leaning across the table to whisper to Trapper.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“And you’re gonna live in a small town even smaller than this? After Boston?”

Trapper shrugs like, well sure. If this is where Hawkeye wants to be, this is where Trapper will be too. Sure.

The rest of the day proceeds in the same easy way. Hawkeye is waylaid by neighbors constantly, leaving BJ and Trapper to chat among themselves. If they aren’t buddies, which they aren’t quite yet, they have reached a kind of comfortable truce. They can be friendly. After all– BJ’s only visiting; Trapper’s here for good. Now that that’s established, it clarifies how to behave, how to engage. When Trapper puts his arm over Hawkeye’s shoulder and drags him away from another housewife with a pain, BJ doesn’t feel the sharp, painful jealousy he felt even yesterday. It’s more of a low ache, and very tolerable.

They amble through Spruce Harbor, which is much more of a town than Crabapple Cove. BJ finds a stuffed lobster in a shop and Hawkeye buys it for Erin.

Trapper drives them back home, where Hawkeye plucks the lobsters out of the sink and the three of them walk down to the water, each holding one. BJ finds the experience pretty unpleasant, given how they wiggle and are wet, but Hawkeye insists on his participation in the ritual of lobster relocation. Hawkeye has gotten swept up in the idea of a lobster parade that leads back to the sea, and Trapper is equally enamored with it, once Hawkeye really explains it.

“We should have made paper hats,” Hawk muses as they turn off the main street and venture into the woods. “Or been like lost boys, in pajamas and furs.”

“Maybe next time,” Trapper allows.

“Next time don’t buy the lobsters at all.” It’s silly, the whole thing is silly, and while BJ is charmed and having fun, he can’t imagine coming up with the idea himself, let alone committing to it like this.

But down at the shore, watching Hawkeye crouch to gently lay his lobster back into the water with a few whispered, fond farewells, BJ has to admit he’s glad they did this. Trapper gets down on his knees, almost onto his belly, at the edge of a jutting rock to plop his lobster back to it’s watery home. It makes a splash and he laughs, and Hawkeye turns to see why and falls back onto his butt.

BJ’s still holding his when Hawkeye and Trapper come back from the edge, both of them still giggling, Hawkeye’s hand draped over Trapper’s shoulder.

“You gonna drop yours in?”

“I am,” BJ says vaguely. “I am.”

“Better do it soon before the other two get too far. I’m sure they’re worried about their pal.”

“Yeah, Beej, toss him in. But gently, you know, gently.”

“Yeah, I–” BJ shakes his head clear. “I’m doing it.”

At the edge of the water, he says to the lobster, “Well, little guy, off you go. Adventure’s over. Back to wife and kid and white picket fence. See ya.”

He doesn’t have it in him to really give the thing a toss, so he puts it at the edge of where the tide crashes in and gives it an encouraging tap on the tail. With the next wave, the lobster is back where it belongs. It’s a little melancholy. Putting his hands in his pockets, BJ walks back up to where Hawkeye and Trapper are waiting.

“Au revior, lobster,” he says once he’s within earshot.

Hawkeye and Trapper cheer and pull him in close to shake his shoulders and ruffle his hair. Any moodiness BJ was feeling disappears. From there it’s a playful parade back to Hawkeye’s house, stopping only to pick up supplies for dinner. No animals are injured or even threatened along the way.

BJ stays for another three easy, restful days. Hawkeye takes him along when he goes to the library, introduces him to the ladies who comprise the knitting club (which meets Thursday at four and of which Hawkeye is the only male member). Trapper enlists his help to chop up some logs he’s been putting off quartering, before it gets too cold to want to do it. Hawkeye wolf-whistles at them. They drink in the evenings and play cards.

Hawkeye kisses BJ goodnight, on the cheek. Trapper kisses him too– wherever he can get his lips on, which means BJ gets it on his neck, his ear, his nose. It’s always accompanied by a laugh and playful chuck on the arm and it all feels pretty alright.

It’s good, really. It’s comfortable and friendly and light and fun. BJ’s fears, which were so palpable when he arrived, have been dissuaded. Hawkeye is alright. He’s not miserable, or destructive, or lonely. He’s happy in his small town life, which is calm and familiar, with Trapper and his dad just down the street and the rest of the weird small town folks who make up his community. He talks eagerly about the clinic they’re planning to open, expounding on how glad he is to be able to bring real medical care to his beloved neighbors and to greater Maine.

“You know to get a good surgery before, you had to go down to Boston? Sometimes even to New York City? Can you imagine how many people died for want of care, just because they couldn’t manage a trip down the coast? Not anymore, BJ, not if I have anything to say about it.” A bright gleam comes into his eyes when he talks like that. He really means it. He doesn’t want to be anywhere else but here. BJ patiently listens to him rant and ramble, go on and on about everything he’s going to do with his clinic, and smiles. It’s wonderful to hear Hawkeye so hopeful, so energetic. It’s everything BJ loves about him.

And eventually, it’s time to go home. BJ knows he can’t afford to keep the rental car forever, or stay forever. His life is waiting in Mill Valley with Peg and Erin and their house by the water. And he misses them. It’s been a good week, but it’s time to head back to his life, back to the real world.

It takes half a day to get his flights arranged, and when he’s finally got it all booked and his itinerary penciled out on the back of an envelope Hawkeye provided, he’s exhausted.

“I should’ve just driven,” he sighs.

“Take about the same amount of time,” Trapper says, leaning over his shoulder to read the various flight numbers and connection times BJ’s written down. “Might as well stay.”

He pats BJ on the arm and saunters off as BJ picks up the phone again, this time to call Peg so she knows to expect him.

When it’s time to actually leave, he finds himself standing around on the lawn with Hawkeye and Trapper for half an hour longer than he should. It’s hard to pry himself away. Hawk and Trap aren’t exactly pushing him down the road either.

Checking his watch for the thousandth time, BJ says, “That’s it, guys, I really have to get going… I’ll miss my flight if I don’t.”

Trapper nods seriously, screwing his mouth up into something close to a frown. But he takes BJ’s bag and puts it into the car for him.

“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Hawkeye asks. He’s serious, he’s earnest.

“Yeah. Of course. Whenever you want.”

“How’s next thursday?”

They laugh. When it settles, Trapper reaches out to shake BJ’s hand.

“We’ll come to you next time. I’ll put Hawk on a plane.”

“Both of you. And your girls, if you want.”

Trapper glows at the mention of his girls and at BJ’s inclusion of them.

“They’d love that.” Meaning, BJ thinks, I’d love that.

“Hey,” Hawkeye says, taking BJ’s hand. “Come join the clinic. Move here and help us build something. Bring Peg and Erin. We’ll find you a house. We could use your good hands.”

BJ flushes. Without thinking, he snaps to look at Trapper– who shrugs and smiles and nods his agreement to the suggestion.

It’s not that BJ hasn’t been thinking about it. It’s up to Peg, of course. But… he can imagine it, and it’s not half bad.

“I’ll… we’ll think about it. I’ll talk to Peg and… we’ll think about it.”

“I’ll get everybody before you know it. It’ll be great. You and me and Trap—“ he reaches blindly and catches Trapper’s hand in his—“ and Margaret and everybody. I bet I can even get Father Mulcahy up here. There’s a Catholic church only three towns over.”

“Not Charles?”

“Can you imagine Charles in this backwater dump?” They laugh. “Besides, one Bostonian is more than enough to start.”

“I’m familiar with Winchester,” Trapper drones. “He can wait.”

Easy laughter settles into quiet reticence.

“Well.”

“Well.”

Hawkeye pulls BJ into a big hug, holding him firm and tight like he did when they said goodbye in Korea. That wasn’t forever. This isn’t either.

“See you, Beej.” He says it into BJ’s ear, so quietly BJ can barely hear him. “Thanks for coming.”

“I love you, Hawk.”

“Love you too.”

When they part, Hawkeye has tears in his eyes.

BJ gets into his rental car scrubbing his face with the back of his sleeve.

“Drive safe, now. Call us when you make it home. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Hawkeye waves, and Trapper waves and adds, “So do whatever you want.”

“Except grow the mustache back!”

BJ laughs to keep his tears from falling, backs out of the driveway and pulls out, waving and calling his goodbyes until it’s reckless to keep his head out the window.

Hawk and Trapper stay in his sight until he has to face front. Hawkeye even steps out into the road to keep eyes on him a little longer.

So BJ leaves Crabapple Cove and drives the 85 miles down to Portland, Maine, where he flies to Boston, then Chicago, then Denver, then San Francisco.

Peg is waiting for him at the airport with Erin in her arms. She shrieks in surprised delight at the sight of his clean-shaven face.

“I missed that lip!” She says, kissing him on it and sighing happily at the smoothness.

He embraces them and kisses them both on both their cheeks. Erin squirms and coos.

“How did it go?” Peg asks, slipping an arm around his waist to lead him back to their car, back to home and life and Mill Valley.

“How would you feel about moving to Maine?”

She laughs lightly, a little twinkle, and leans her head on his shoulder. “I think I’d have to visit first.”