Nighttime Reflections
B.J.'s still getting used to lying naked with a man.
The roughness instead of smoothness, the angles instead of curves, the solid strength instead of yielding softness. All the new sensations that go with this decidedly new experience of going to bed with a member of his own sex.
Not that he has any regrets, and not that he plans to stop anytime soon. It's only a couple of weeks into this relationship and already B.J. is unabashedly addicted. Hooked on Hawkeye. He won't deny it. Love and lust and just plain need. Gimme my fix, doc, I can't live without it. He gave up trying to decide if it's right or wrong, because he realized he didn't care either way. He's not going to end it.
Hawkeye's asleep now, and B.J. runs his hand over his nearly hairless chest. To be able to touch him, every inch of him, is a luxury he's grateful for. He'll never take it for granted. His mind drifts to their earlier lovemaking, their heated coupling, how their bodies and minds always seem to become one. Hawkeye against B.J.'s back, thrusting and moaning, and with each thrust, his tongue licks at B.J.'s right shoulder blade. B.J. shudders just remembering it. He pulls Hawkeye even closer to him, hooking a leg across his lover's, wanting nothing more than to fuse their bodies together.
Hawkeye doesn't stir. Of course his eyes are closed, but B.J. thinks of them now, of their blueness and gentleness and depth. When they have sex facing each other, B.J. always stares into his eyes. Having been in Korea for so long, Hawkeye has seen so much that nobody should ever have to see, and his eyes would have every right to be dim and distant. But they never are, and when the two of them are making love, those eyes are bright and intense, and B.J. can't look away. Not that he'd want to. He gets so drawn in that his entire universe narrows to the point where he's only aware of the feeling of Hawkeye moving inside him and the eyes that get bluer and bluer the closer Hawkeye gets to climax. He could get lost in those eyes. He often has.
Now Hawkeye does stir the slightest bit, shifting a little in his sleep, and subconsciously he places a hand on B.J.'s hip.
They're in Tokyo on R&R, and they have two more days here… undoubtedly there will be more time spent in this bed than out on the Ginza, or anywhere else for that matter. There will be little that's restful about this R&R, and so B.J. lets Hawkeye sleep, though he himself cannot. There's too much running around in his brain, and while his thoughts should be along the lines of: what am I doing to my marriage, why am I risking so much?... what he's actually thinking is: who knew I could be this head-over-heels in love, how is it possible my heart isn't bursting?
He finds he can't stop touching Hawkeye, and he reaches up to stroke his cheek. It's actually smooth, stubble-free, and B.J. smiles. Last week after he'd suffered a bad case of whisker burn, he'd asked Hawkeye to please shave more often and spare him from having to explain the patches of red on his face. At the time, Hawkeye had only laughed, but ever since, he's been shaving daily, sometimes twice a day, and B.J. knows it's just another small gesture that demonstrates his love. Hawkeye will probably never say, "I'll do anything for you," but it's there between them all the same.
B.J. sighs, his appreciative eyes roaming Hawkeye's thin but enticing body. He focuses on a small scar just below Hawkeye's right knee, and he remembers Hawkeye telling him the story behind it one night after sex, in a voice still raspy with passion but growing sleepier by the second. "I was delivering prescriptions on my bike," he'd said, and B.J. had instantly conjured up a picture in his mind of Hawkeye as a boy… a raven-haired preteen with an impish grin and a self-assured swagger. Hawkeye would've been quite a force at 12, he's sure of it. "And I was going too fast because I wanted to get this last delivery done before 4 and knock off early. And too late, I saw this turtle in the road and I swerved…"
And B.J. smiles, because of course Hawkeye would swerve to miss a turtle and end up injuring himself in a spectacular fall. It's just so Hawkeye, and it's a comfort to know that adult Hawkeye is really no different from 12-year-old Hawkeye, when you come right down to it.
He's a child and a man, and B.J. loves the contradiction.
He can be so silly sometimes, playful to the point of immaturity. "I'll show you mine, Beej, if you show me yours," with the Groucho eyebrow action. But then only minutes later, so tender and sweet it could almost make B.J. weep. "There's nobody on this earth who understands me like you do. You're part of me, B.J. Hunnicutt. I can't imagine who I'd be without you."
And I don't exist at all without you, B.J. thinks now. It should probably be a frightening thought, but for some reason that he can't articulate, it only makes him feel content.
B.J. closes his eyes, sleep finally coming to claim him. He's sated and happy and, most of all, at peace. He understands that his life changed irrevocably the day he stood at Kimpo Airport shaking Hawkeye Pierce's hand. There might not have been any trumpets sounding or sirens blaring, he might not have had any particular epiphany at that moment, but he's come to learn the truth over time. The fact that eventually he would end up lying naked with this man, spent after a night of incredible sex, his soul singing and his heart overwhelmed with the power of his love… it was all fated.
And you can't control fate. You just surrender to it, and if you're lucky, it leaves you happy. B.J. figures he must be the luckiest man in the world.