Title: We'll Go Dancing
Author: Anney
Spoilers: General spoilers for the whole series, specific ones for Goodbye, Farewell & Amen
Rating: T for vague descriptions of war and sex
Word Count: 2574
Disclaimer: The television series M*A*S*H and its characters are not mine. Italicized sentences are quotes from the show.
Summary: One year after the end of the war, Hawkeye and B.J. meet up in New York City. Slash.
If the war's over, meet me under the clock at Grand Central in ten years. We'll go dancing.
But they couldn't wait ten years.
Sure, it had been a joke. Those kind of cracks were a dime a dozen coming from Hawkeye Pierce. Yet B.J. sat in the window seat, gazing out at the white wisps of clouds that he was so sure he could reach out and clutch in his hands. A surgical convention, that was his reasoning for the cross-country flight. Can you picture either of us at a convention? Hawkeye had questioned a year ago. No, of course he couldn't. But it was just an excuse. B.J.'s heart beat rapidly in his throat and his stomach ached. It felt like a secret rendezvous. It felt like an affair.
Two years in Korea stretched out like a decade, a century, eclipsed eternity. One year at home moved at that normal pace where some days flew by and others dragged unceremoniously. He spent two years in Korea and it felt like a lifetime. Sometimes, it felt like he was still there. Part of him was. And part of him was in Crabapple Cove, Maine and two parts in Mill Valley. Little pieces of B.J. Hunnicutt broken off and scattered around the globe.
Despite his best efforts, he'd come home from the war a different man. He hoped that Peg would still recognize him and that Erin, by some instinct, would know who he was. He wasn't the bright-eyed, hopeful man Peg had married. He was jaded, battered, world-wearied, with a gin-filled center. He was part Hawkeye Pierce because they seemed to break off into one another, personalities and senses of humor and ways with words entangled until there was no differentiating them. And Hawkeye was a little bit B.J. and all the better for it, because it kept him grounded and took the edge off.
Staring out the window, watching the world below where miniscule cars crept along like a child's play set, B.J. recalled when he tried to explain their relationship to Peg. He didn't intend to tell her what had happened between him and Hawkeye, no matter how much the guilt ate away at him, but the way B.J. talked about him made it obvious.
"I don't know what I would've done without him," he'd said and "He kept me sane, kept me going when nothing else could." Nothing in Korea anyway. Peg and Erin kept him going, but they were just sad memories of what he was forced to leave behind. Hawkeye was tangible. He could touch, hold, kiss, push, breathe, taste Hawkeye. He felt alive with him. Hawkeye was an oasis in a desert of insanity and B.J. clung to that despite his best efforts not to. The same comfort and escape he found in drinking he'd found in Hawkeye. He needed it, needed him. He tried to explain this to Peg.
She withdrew from him for a couple of weeks.
She didn't really understand, he thought. How could she? It was impossible to truly comprehend the horrors of a war without having been in one. He hadn't sought comfort in Hawkeye because he was unhappy in his marriage, but because he was coming apart at that seams and he needed someone to stitch him back together.
Peg probably still didn't understand, but she pretended like the conversation never happened, like she didn't know, couldn't see, couldn't feel that piece of Hawkeye Pierce that lingered beneath the surface of B.J. Hunnicutt.
B.J. weaved his way through the thick crowd of people. Bodies collided and shouts of 'watch it!' were exchanged seemingly more often than 'I'm sorry.' He stared up at the white face of the Grand Central Station clock, the black hands spread across like a cartoon villain's mustache. His own body collided with another and "Watch it! You break it, you bought it" snapped his attention away from the clock.
"Hawkeye?" He looked at the slightly smaller man who turned on a heel and gazed at him with bright blue eyes.
The shout of "Beej!" was punctuated not with an exclamation mark, but with a toothy grin.
His body moved with instinct, or that's how it seemed, as before B.J. knew it, his arms were wrapped tightly around Hawkeye, crushing him close to his own body. Hawk's arms found their way around his waist and B.J. smiled into black hair that was grayer than he remembered it.
As they hugged, B.J. was in Korea, chopper blades slicing the air overhead, wind whipping around them. I'll never be able to shake you and I can't imagine what this place would've been like if I hadn't found you here. The embrace, the exchange of words conveyed the one thing he couldn't force his tongue to say, but which was spelled out with dusty rocks behind them. They joked about shoes nailed to the floor because they would truly miss each other in a deeper way than either had missed their families. They joked about lighter-fluid martinis because in some small way, they almost didn't want the war to end. But it had and they could go home and mend their broken minds and busted souls.
(Usually, when B.J. flashed back to Korea, he swore he felt the earth shake as bomb shells exploded. He could hear the crack of gun fire. He could smell, see, feel the blood of young boys just barely weaned from their mothers before guns were thrust into their hands and they marched to the front lines, to their deaths.)
"You promised me a dance," he said, returning to the here and now.
"You're still buying." Hawkeye smiled and they ascended into the open air of New York City.
They remained silent as they walked the street, shoulder to shoulder. Somehow a dingy bar didn't seem like the right place for catching up. Wordlessly, they found their way to Hawkeye's hotel room. B.J. swallowed around his heart as he followed Hawkeye into the room and let the door close behind.
"I wasn't sure you'd really show," Hawkeye said and watched as B.J. sat cautiously on the bed.
"How could I not?"
"I figured you'd be busy playing family man, bringing home the bacon, you know." Hawkeye sank onto the bed a foot away.
B.J. sighed heavily. Here he was, devout husband and father, sitting on the other side of the country in a hotel room with a former lover. The man he'd been unfaithful with in Korea, no matter how many ways he tried to justify it to himself, to Hawk, to Peg, to God. He hadn't just cheated physically, but emotionally, and that was perhaps the greater sin.
Hawkeye smiled and he looked tired and older than he was. "Hard to believe it's been a whole year."
B.J. couldn't have anticipated what would happen when he met up with Hawkeye. He played out several different scenarios in his head on the flight and even for a week beforehand. He wondered if they'd pick up where they left off or if things would be different without the war. He knew the perilous circumstances of Korea had greatly shaped their relationship and without that...where would they be? They likely never would have met, let alone become whatever it was they were. He was B.J.'s best friend, a brother, a lover, everything. Whatever B.J. needed in Korea, Hawkeye seemed to fill that role and he (hoped he) had done the same for Hawk.
"You'd think we'd have more to say," Hawkeye spoke quietly, staring at the ugly floral print of the well-worn comforter.
"Well, it's not like we haven't written."
"I know. But..."
"I know. I thought it'd be like old times too."
"Yeah."
"It's been a year, Hawk. You know?"
"No, I don't know. What does that mean?"
"I don't know. Two years in Korea changed me. Maybe a year at home did too."
"Maybe. I mean, I guess." Hawkeye glanced at B.J. and his eyes didn't seem as bright as they had under the white face of the villainous clock.
Silence hung heavy between them and then Hawkeye said, "You shaved."
"Peg hated the mustache."
"She's a woman of fine taste." There was a sadness to Hawkeye's tight-lipped smile.
"Erin kept pulling on it anyway. It was for the best."
Hawkeye laughed and B.J. wondered if it was more to relieve the tension than as an actual response to his words. He smiled at the way Hawkeye's eyes and nose crinkled. That had been his favorite sound the whole time he was in Korea. There was something infectious about the boisterous way that Hawkeye laughed.
"She's starting school soon. Did I tell you that?" Without realizing it, B.J. had stretched himself out on his back, a hand tucked under his head, eyes cast up at the ceiling as he spoke. He caught a peripheral glimpse of Hawkeye who seemed much closer now.
"Yeah, you did. It's hard to believe. I remember like yesterday watching that movie of Peg blowing bubbles off her tiny hand. After so many days hearing about every little minute detail of her life to the point of wanting to strangle you...I feel like they're my family too, somehow." The bed seemed smaller when Hawkeye lay down beside him. Elbows, pinkies, and feet touched and B.J. once again became all too aware of his own heartbeat.
They were silent again and B.J. concentrated on slowing his heart. He squeezed his eyes shut at the familiar sensation of fingertips brushing against his skin. B.J. didn't realize he had been holding his breath until long, thin fingers entangled with his and he let out a heavy sigh. He tightened his grip on Hawkeye's hand when their eyes met -- blue reflecting blue. His heart beat louder, louder, louder and he swore he could hear Hawkeye's as well. When he had hoped that they would pick up where they left off, he had meant the wisecracks and the practical jokes.
"I told Carlye that I'd never loved anyone else since her, the way I loved her. I lied. Not to her so much as to myself. I actually thought trying to win back a married woman would be easier than allowing myself to love...to love you."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I love you, you ninny."
"I know," the words were just barely a whisper and his eyes were tightly shut once more as he tried to drown out every sight, sound, smell, and touch that reminded him of where he was, who he was with. Hawkeye had been his life preserver in the squall of war. Now his family was the wall of defense he surrounded himself with to keep Hawkeye out. But those three little words wrapped on the wall, tried to tear it down.
Of course he loved Hawkeye.
While B.J. kept his eyes closed, he was in Korea again. There was a distant boom of shellfire, but the world had already crumbled away and he was in a vacuum. Everything was dark and blurred around the edges. But he could feel and smell and taste Hawkeye. Hawkeye was a heavy weight on top of him. He was rhythmic, but clumsy, arching and aching into B.J., throwing an 'Oh, God' to the ceiling and B.J. thought he may have actually been praying because in those moments they were certain they would die. The bombs weren't really as distant as they sounded when the world had closed in on just the two of them. He was sure he could still smell the sweat and desperation.
"Beej." It echoed over the breathless way Hawkeye had said it then.
"Beej." Earnest now, but not filled with need and desperation. B.J. opened his eyes.
"I need that hand in one piece, I'm still a surgeon you know." And B.J. looked down at their clasped hands and saw Hawkeye's squeezed tightly in his own. He let go.
"Sorry," he sighed and stared at the inert ceiling fan.
"Where were you?"
"Korea."
"I know. Where in Korea?"
"What was left of the bugged out 8-0-double-nickel. The tent they had to leave behind, the Chinese were so close."
Hawkeye was silent, but B.J. was sure that he remembered the moment all too well. He had probably relived it as many times as B.J. had, even before the peace declaration and his return home when shell shock or whatever they were calling it these days finally settled deep into his bones and his brain. He remembered Hawkeye telling him of a similar experience in a shabby hut with Margaret. The difference was that this experience really did seem to change everything between B.J. and Hawkeye. Before then, they stole a few gin-soaked kisses through the fog of inebriation. But each one was always forgotten before the first pains of a hangover. But what happened in that tent couldn't be swept away so neatly. B.J. had been physically unfaithful once with a nurse and emotionally unfaithful another time with a war correspondent, but it was only with Hawkeye that he'd done both at once. And more than once.
In Korea, B.J. always had that damn war to blame. He could shake a fist at nobody and declare himself a prisoner of that dreadful place and that all his actions were the result of being there, of feeling like he was living in another world, with another life. A life where Peg was just a flat, black-and-white image watching over him from his nightstand. A life where the warmth and comfort he needed every day slept in an army issue cot four feet away.
But in a hotel in New York, he only had himself to blame.
Perhaps that wavelength they shared in Korea still lingered as, simultaneously, they turned onto their sides to face one another, faces and bodies precariously close. B.J. sucked in a breath when a skilled hand (in more areas than one) traced its way from the base of his ribcage to his hip and stayed there. In Korea, that weight would remind him that he was still alive. In New York, it reminded him of every terrible thing he let happen, of every time he had found himself trapped under the heat and eager mouth of Benjamin Franklin Pierce.
"Ben," the word was quiet and foreign on B.J.'s tongue.
"If you had a first name, I'd call you by it." Hawkeye smiled sleepily.
"I have a first name." He lightly swatted Hawkeye in the stomach.
"You have consonants. Names need vowels!"
"And what about the names in languages where there aren't any vowels?"
"They can borrow some of ours. That's what spreading democracy is all about, isn't it?"
B.J. just smiled and pressed his body closer to Hawkeye's, winding an arm around his waist. It seemed like no time had passed at all between their farewell and their rendezvous in New York. They were the same old B.J. and Hawkeye: gin-swilling Swamp Rats, top notch doctors, and everything else the other needed. In the morning, B.J. would go back to trying to fight the war he waged against these feelings. But in that moment, he breathed a quiet sigh of relief and found peace in the lost pieces of himself that had stuck in Hawkeye. In the man that he too would never be able to shake. And some small part of him didn't want to.