BJ is not, he tells himself, actually going to watch Hawkeye sleep.
He shifts around in the chair (as if there's such a thing as a comfortable position in Korea) and turns the page in his book, only to realize he can't remember anything that happened on the previous page. He flips back, and tries to focus, but his eyes keep straying to Hawkeye's cot.
The sutures had been confirmation enough - BJ knows Hawkeye's sewing better than his own. Still, there had been a moment this morning, the last hazy second between sleeping and waking, when he'd been terrifyingly certain that he'd dreamt Hawkeye staggering into the tent in the middle of the night, haggard and too pale even in the dim lamp light, but undeniably alive.
Which is absurd, obviously. When BJ had at last convinced himself to open his eyes for confirmation, Hawkeye had been sacked out in his bunk as expected. He hadn't bothered to shower or even undress, just kicked off his boots and his jacket and flopped down on top of the blankets. He's snoring faintly, and BJ can see the steady rise and fall of his breaths.
Even so, BJ can't quite make himself leave the Swamp just yet. There's time before he's expected in post-op, and breakfast is probably best avoided anyway. He's just about managed to convince himself that this is a deserved respite after a long night of surgery punctuated by bursts of guilt, panic, and a brief moment of elation (followed immediately by doubt and more panic) when Hawkeye mumbles in his sleep and rolls over.
Hawkeye rubs the heel of his hand across his eyes and then he looks up at BJ, still blinking away sleep. "You bring me breakfast?" he says around a yawn.
"Better," BJ says, a grin tugging at his mouth. "I didn't."
Hawkeye pushes himself upright and shoves a hand through his hair, which appears to be making a valiant attempt to escape his head. "That's too bad," he says. "I think I'm getting a wobble in my cot. Could have used something to stick under the short leg." He glances around for his robe and then back at BJ as if he's just registered his presence. "What are you still doing here?"
"Reading," BJ says, waggling his book. He'd read the same paragraph about eight times and retained absolutely nothing about it, but that definitely still counted.
Hawkeye locates his robe and pulls it on before casting about for some clean shorts. "Well I don't know about you, but I am in desperate need of some one on one time with a bar of soap."
"That sounds like a good idea," BJ says, setting his book aside. "I think I'll join you."
It just so happens that Hawkeye is full of good ideas.
They swing by the mess for breakfast ("Now that you mention it, I'm a bit peckish myself," BJ says, following Hawkeye back out of the Swamp). They check in with Colonel Potter ("I just remembered I wanted to ask him something," BJ says, conveniently forgetting the question when it comes up.) BJ's about to ask Hawkeye to join him on his post-op rounds (reasoning that there is probably just as much of Hawk's stitching in some of his patients as there is of his own) when Hawkeye suggests it himself.
It is, BJ knows, more than a little irrational. Hawkeye's not going to run off to Battalion Aid again the moment BJ's back is turned. He'd made it back hale and hearty (or as hale and hearty as it was possible to be in the middle of a war - pardon, police action), and the next time Battalion Aid required a surgeon, BJ would make the trip himself.
Now if only telling himself that could do something about the way his lungs don't fit in his chest when he thinks about Hawkeye going somewhere without him.
He picks up Private Singer's chart, still half listening to Hawkeye trying (and failing) to chat up Bigelow somewhere behind him. Singer was a belly wound; he's stable now but he needs another day before he's ready to make the trip to the 121st.
Singer tries to leverage himself up on one elbow, but he gasps in pain and flops back down. He settles for lifting up his head. "What's up, doc?" he says weakly.
BJ gives him a wry smile. "No carrots for a while, but you should be back to outsmarting Elmer Fudd in no time."
He checks on the rest of his patients, and the routine unknots some of the tension in his chest. A lot of these kids are alive because Hawkeye got to them first, and there's nothing but a blessing in that.
His last patient is Sergeant Wells, the kid with Hawkeye's signature stitching. He's still asleep, and his pressure's a little low, so BJ turns around to ask Bigelow to keep an eye on it. He expects to have to pry her out of Hawkeye's clutches, but she's chatting with one of Charles's patients, perched on the crate beside his bed, and Hawkeye is nowhere in sight.
"Is everything alright, doctor?" Bigelow's head is tilted in concern, and she's already getting to her feet.
BJ forces himself to take a deep breath. He's got a lot of very good reasons to spend the whole war in a gibbering panic, but Hawkeye's absence from his field of vision for five minutes is not one of them, especially after he'd spent the whole morning experiencing Hawkeye being just fine, thank you in stunning technicolor.
"No - I mean, yes, everything's fine," BJ says. He tries the deep breath again. "Uh, keep an eye on Wells's pressure for me, okay? Let me know if it doesn't improve." He hangs up Wells's chart on the end of the bed again and adopts what he hopes is fairly convincing nonchalance. "You see where Hawkeye went?"
Bigelow shrugs. The arch in her eyebrow says she isn't buying his performance but is magnanimously not going to press, and BJ is once again deeply, eternally grateful for the 4077th's incredibly sensitive and capable nursing staff. "Maybe he thought he'd have more luck with someone else," she says, her gaze flicking over him. There's a knowing twist in her lip, but she doesn't say anything else.
BJ tosses her an absent, "Thanks," and then heads for the door at a pace that could probably be defined as "quickened" but is still fully within the realm of "walking". He just needs to lay eyes on Hawkeye again, he thinks. Just to remind himself. How long had he spent last night absolutely certain that Hawkeye had been-
Well, it isn't something you could get over with a few hours' sleep anyway.
He checks the mess tent (empty) and the supply shed (not empty, but not Hawkeye's coat hanger) and then heads for the Swamp, reasoning that evidence of Hawkeye's continued presence should be good enough to soothe his unreasonably jumpy nerves.
He's just reaching for the door when it suddenly swings open, nearly catching him in the face. Hawkeye spills out behind it and stops just short of crashing into him, one hand still on the door.
BJ can't help reaching for him. He settles his hands on Hawkeye's biceps, warm and solid and definitely not killed at Battalion Aid in BJ's place. Hawkeye blinks at him for a long second and then says, "Is this gonna be a Lindy or strictly a stand and sway affair?"
BJ's face flushes warm and he steps back, releasing Hawkeye. "Wrong music for a Lindy," he says. He's aiming for playful, but the words come out strained. He coughs and then angles himself so Hawkeye can pass.
"No such thing," Hawkeye says absently. He remains where he is, an odd look on his face. "So uh… do you want to explain why I've suddenly gained another shadow?"
"Korea picked up another sun?" BJ tries.
Hawkeye arches an eyebrow at him, still deciding whether or not to play along. The joke wins out in the end, as it always does: "I'd hate to find out who the father is. BJ -"
"It's nothing," BJ says, just a little too quickly. "I mean there is nothing." Hawkeye opens his mouth, presumably to make a crack about nihilism, and BJ flashes him an entirely unconvincing version of his most disarming smile. "I'm fine. And you're fine. We're all fine." Maybe if he says it enough times it will start to ring true, erasing all those hours of knowing the worst had come to pass.
"Okay…" Hawkeye says in a tone that suggests BJ could maybe do with a visit from good old Doc Freedman. He hooks his fingers around BJ's elbow and tows him into the tent. "Why don't you come in and we'll talk about how fine everyone is?"
Hawkeye deposits him on the nearest cot and then drops into the chair beside him, twisting around to pour himself a drink. "You know," Hawkeye says conversationally, eyes carefully on his glass, "I wouldn't generally consider someone with your pulse to be 'fine'." He settles back into the chair and lifts his eyebrows at BJ.
"Fine is kind of a moving target in a war zone," BJ says, shrugging. "Besides, what about you? I've just been here, same as always. You were the one up at the front." He crosses his arms over his chest.
"Ah, so this is about that," Hawkeye says, giving BJ an infuriatingly smug look over the rim of his martini glass.
"There is no this," BJ protests. There is something oddly unsettling about this turn in conversation, like a chess gambit he should have seen coming. "We're all fine, remember?"
"I think you might be using a different definition of 'fine' than the rest of us," Hawkeye says. He turns to set his glass on the table behind him, and then he leans forward to peer at BJ, bracing his elbows on his knees. "Your poker face is the same as your regular face, Hunnicutt. Come on, what's eating you?"
"Nothing!"
Hawkeye gives him a gimlet look, and BJ's resolve cracks just a little. He'd thought he'd already experienced the worst the war had to offer about six times over, but it just keeps coming, aftershocks that keep the ground rumbling so long you forget what solid ground is. And this isn't even close - Hawkeye had made it back just fine, same as he always did. BJ had been wrong.
Is he supposed to be grateful that the war hasn't yet taken this too?
Because California is so, so far away, and Hawkeye is just in the next bunk. At the next table. They need each other, the way the tides need the moon, and BJ knows - knows - he wouldn't have made it this far without Hawkeye.
BJ clears his throat, but his voice still comes out too rough. "I thought you -" He can't make himself say it, like hearing it aloud now will bring it closer to being true. "One of the kids from Battalion Aid," he says instead. "He said a doctor had been killed. And you'd gone instead of me, and I thought -"
"You thought it was me," Hawkeye finishes. He gets up from the chair and sits next to BJ on the cot, slipping his arm around BJ's waist. "But it wasn't, Beej. It wasn't me, okay?"
"I know that," BJ says. And he does, but he also knows what it's like to look down at an open chest cavity and see Hawkeye's face on the other side of the surgical screen. "But it was you," he finds himself saying. "We couldn't reach Battalion Aid - Everyone kept telling me not to assume the worst, but I just knew -" He clasps Hawkeye's knee with white knuckles, and there's an ache in his chest that's all too familiar. "Until I saw your sutures, it was you."
"You recognized my sutures?" Hawkeye says. There's faint surprise in his voice, like he can't believe that anyone should know him so well by something so small.
"Of course," BJ says, because it should be obvious. He's been memorizing Hawkeye since the moment they met, cataloging every smirk and every stitch so he has something solid to hold onto when the whole world shrinks to a scalpel and a piece of shrapnel. When he can't remember if Korea is just a nightmare or if Mill Valley is just a dream.
Hawkeye is quiet for a long moment, his brows knit together. There's an inscrutable twist in his mouth, and BJ doesn't move, afraid any sudden motion will shatter them both. Finally Hawkeye says, very softly, "It almost was, you know."
Silence doesn't terrify BJ the way it does Hawkeye, so he just waits.
"I wrote my will," Hawkeye says, meeting BJ's gaze. The corner of his mouth twitches up but it doesn't reach his eyes. "I couldn't figure out what to leave you."
"Don't leave me anything," BJ says, except what he means is don't leave .
Somehow Hawkeye understands, sees right through to the heart of him when no one else looks past the easy-going smile. He reaches for BJ's hand and laces their fingers together, heedless of anything outside of the two of them pressed together on an army-issue cot.
"There's too much -" Hawkeye says, and BJ knows he means between us and out there and in me. "Anyway, I left it to Erin."
BJ almost asks. He decides instead that this is enough, Hawkeye's hand in his like an anchor, keeping them both tethered to what's real. He'll keep whatever Hawkeye chooses to give him, fleeting kisses in the scrub room, knees pressed together under the mess hall tables, long nights spent curled up in a too-small bed, and it will be enough.
"Now come on," Hawkeye says, and his tone is lighter now, without the weight of almost. He angles himself to face BJ and tugs on his hand. "You owe me a kiss, remember?"
"Did I say that?" BJ says, teasing tone to match..
"You did," Hawkeye confirms. He leans in a little and flutters his eyelashes. "Pucker up or I'll get it from someone else."
"No you won't," BJ says, unable to keep the fondness out of his voice. "Who else would have you?"
Hawkeye jerks back, mock affront on his face. "Hey, I was doing pretty well with Bigelow earlier! I'd almost talked her into a little one-on-one nursing in the supply shed. You'd be surprised how well 'I could have died' works as a pick-up line."
Affection blooms warm in BJ's chest. It fills him up, a whole ocean of feeling that's too big to be contained, and it leaks out of him through a laugh. He grasps the lapel of Hawkeye's jacket, grinning so broadly it makes his cheeks ache, and reels him in.
Hawkeye melts against him, soft lips and wandering hands, and even though Korea waits for them just outside the tent flaps, it's more than enough.