Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Written a long time ago, uncovered in a database raid. Enjoy!

Hawkeye: If the war's over, meet me under the clock at Grand Central Station in ten years. We'll go dancing.

B.J: I lead.

Hawkeye: Then you buy.

Season 5, Episode 4: "Lt. Radar O'Reilly"

A Night at Grand Central

It was a hollow moment, like the split-second before the sky shatters and the storm punches through the clouds to strike at the ground in an orgy of thunder and lightening. He prided himself on being a dramatist. It helped cope with the hollow moment.

On the other hand, he considered it somewhat shameful to compare mere waiting to a veritable holocaust of a storm. But then, it wasn't mere waiting, was it? The past ten years had been mere waiting. This was... this was no storm. This was the second of silence between the whistle of a shell and -- did it pass you by? The doctors huddle over their patients, lying across them to shield them from dust and debris if the window implodes. When they straighten up, the gaping wounds sometimes leave obscene-looking blood patterns on the white of the aprons, and they play Rorschach Test to relieve the tension, but they never tell each other what they see. Analysis is a terrifying prospect.

B.J. probably wouldn't have appreciated being likened to an explosive, but Hawkeye was an impatient man. He was nearly alone in the expansive cavern of the Main Concourse. A few late-night travelers, a vagrant hunting through refuse for nourishment... everywhere Hawkeye looked, he saw himself. A wave of people occasionally seeped from the various passageways. Hawkeye always scanned them for that face, sifting through the refuse for his nourishment, his heart ticking off the seconds after that dreaded whistle, wondering if This was It.

tic.

He leaned casually on the other side of the great clock, away from the flood of human bodies, fancying himself as protecting himself from the flak in case, just in case, the bomb happened to hit home. He fancied that he had always been his own savior, for he'd meant the world to no one else but himself. He did not pride himself on his capacity for self-pity, but it passed the time.

Hawkeye glared at the clock with it's sallow complexion and four-faced precision, each tick a snicker aimed directly at him.

tic-tic.

He wondered: how long was considered fashionably late, really? How much time ought to elapse before the wait-er ceases his wait-ing. How long is one allowed to linger before it becomes pathetic? Is half a war too long? How about another ten years?

The influx of people had stopped and the crowd had once again dissipated. And so the process had repeated itself. And so, no B.J. Hawkeye pressed into the cool metal of the information booth, tilting his head back to see the upside down clock face lit yellow in the dimly lit nighttime gloom. He felt silly in his tuxedo. It was new. Not a rental. It rode up his back as he slid down to a crouch. He counted his heartbeats.

"Hey there, beautiful stranger."

Jolted from his slumber, Hawkeye shot to his feet. How desperately he longed to launch himself into B.J.'s arms. He brushed himself off instead and shrugged, shaking his head.

"I know, I know, I get it all the time. 'What's a nice gal like me doing in a place like this...'" His arms flapped, hands fluttering like birds beating themselves against the bars of a cage.

"Maybe she's waiting for her Prince Charming." He grinned, so many teeth glinting like bone in the midnight murkiness of the station. B.J., forever solid. Hawkeye beamed. "She did promise him a dance, after all," said Hawkeye. He started, suddenly taking notice of B.J.'s suitcases. "What's all this? Why'd you decide to bring your entire practice with you?" He stalked along the perimeter of the raft of luggage.

"Hawk, I'd rather not-"

TIC-TIC.

"You figured that since you'd be crossing some mountains, you ought to bring Hannibal and his elephants?" He was counting them in his head, pointing at each one as it was tallied.

"Hawk, I'm glad to see you too, now shut up." B.J. looked to the side and tightened his jaw, breathing heavily. "I'm staying for a while." His voice cracked on the last syllable, and Hawkeye's head snapped round at the sound.

"Oh."

"Yeah." B.J. took another deep breath. Squaring his shoulders, he stood straight.

silence.

"So, ten years, huh... you're lucky I didn't think you were kidding."

Hawkeye shrugged and smiled in assent and they shook it off together.

But this, too, was a hollow moment, a different kind of hollow moment. This was the adrenaline evaporating, the shell passing them by, the sigh of relief, and the vacuum moment when, amidst the quiet celebratory murmur, they all stand up straight and realize that there are still hours and days and weeks and months and, God help them, maybe even years before they can stop throwing themselves prostrate across victims of circumstance to keep out the grit that works its way in either way.

So B.J. and Hawkeye laughed together, as in old times, and B.J. slapped his buddy on the back and Hawkeye ran his finger across B.J.'s smooth-shaven upper lip, trembling in relief when B.J. just shook his head with a wry grin and plucked one of Hawkeye's gray hairs in what he believed to be an act of retaliation. There it was, the unexploded bomb. Hawkeye stared at it as he chuckled, as he felt the softness so close to B.J.'s lips, as B.J. joked about it with what Hawkeye interpreted as uncomprehending joviality. There it was. The unexploded bomb leering at him from the shadows of Grand Central Station, from the small mountain of B.J.'s luggage, from B.J.'s only-slightly-strained but beautifully open smile.

So Hawkeye did just about the only thing he could do. When B.J. offered him a crooked elbow, weighted down by suitcases, -

"Princess?" B.J. bent in an elegant half-bow.

- he smiled, slipped his arm past the proffered limb and snaked it around B.J.'s waist, holding him close and as they walked away side by side, hips bumping and luggage hanging off them like bulbs off a Christmas tree, Hawkeye craned his neck upward and half-whispered in B.J.'s ear: "So, how are you at the fox-trot?"

Hawkeye knew just the place for them to go dancing, and B.J. had brought a top-hat.

tic... tic...