Title: The Worst Part of It
Author: Chickadilly
Fandom: M*A*S*H
Characters: Peg, BJ, Hawkeye (Hawkeye/BJ slash implied)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 560
Warnings: Erm. Cheating? Slash If you don't like slash I suggest you don't read. If you still read and complain
Also, standard disclaimer: I don't own M*A*S*H - I believe 20th Century Fox and CBS does. This is just for fun so please don't sue. (Not that I have anything worth suing over!)
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
My husband doesn't know that I know he's in love with someone else.
He doesn't think I know that when the phone rings why he's so anxious and excited to be the first to answer. Or why he bounces to the mailbox on Saturdays with hopes that a letter addressed to him from his ... love ... will come in. The way his face lights up at the mere mention of the name of his love. Or the way, sometimes, in the midst of lovemaking he will catch himself as he's about to call out the name of another. Or the way his eyes will follow anyone who slightly resembles him coupled with a yearning I've never seen faced my way.
You heard that right. I said him. My husband is in love with a man.
You want to know what the worst of it is? The absolute gut wrenching worst part is?
I actually like the man. I've met him and he's quite charming, intelligent, has a great sense of humor and is rather handsome. He's held my daughter on his lap and played with my dog.
He's been in my house. More than that, he's made love to my husband in my house.
At least it wasn't in my bed. There is small comfort in that.
Very small.
No, the very worst is that I can't even properly hate him.
***
They came for a visit six months ago. He and his new wife, Annemarie. A beautiful woman with bright brown eyes and auburn hair. I was nervous as I've never met the man who had been so important to my husband during the worst years of his life. Years that I could not be there for him.
"We sort of lived in each other's back pockets. We had to - we were there for each other. It was the only way to survive, really." My husband often said and until that moment when I walked in on them it never even occurred to me just how much those words implied.
You must think I'm a terrible fool. It should have been obvious. I could sense there was a bit of awkwardness when they first arrived but I chalked it up to just a normal occurrence when two people who haven't seen each other in six years finally come together again.
What an ironic choice of words. Come together. Does it shock you that I realized my Freudian slip there? I may be a suburban housewife but that doesn't mean I'm not aware of matters of the flesh. I've read plenty and when we were first married we often joked about Dr. Kinsey's scale. Another irony. Who knew that one day I would discover my husband scored much higher on that scale than I had previously thought.
Or perhaps even he thought.
I've often wanted to ask him if he knew or if these feelings snuck up on him completely by surprise. But to do that I would have to acknowledge to him that I know and I'm not ready for whatever the fallout of that might be.
So for now I pretend I know nothing and that my heart doesn't ache each time his face lights up when the phone rings and it's him on the other end.
So, Doctor Freedman, you tell me. How do I deal with this?
