Chapter III

George, BJ thought five hands later as he pinched a two of diamonds between his thumb and forefinger. George, I want to ask you a question-- and his inner voice had a tone of almost savage serenity, which he'd only recently come to find at the hollow center of himself.

(A question. Questions. You can never ask just one, things pile up, one leads to another and another. Just like how one of these days there may be a drink, yeah you guys hit the sauce pretty heavy by the bye, and then he'll trail his slim fingers down the side of your face and maybe one night you just won't be thinking or it'll be just at that moment when you want it too much. It's sick-- now this, in Frank Burn's voice, high and edgy because people like him really do think they're right-- that you can go from imagining your wife's pale moon-peach curves to wondering, really wondering how Hawkeye's flesh would feel, warm with chill and rough-smooth against your own.
A second skin.)

So, yeah, BJ fought his way back to the harsh light of the Swamp and Hawkeye's clever attempts to make George feel more at home. Got to ask you something, George, ask you right now. Rapid-fire, like the sound of quick sapphire bullets in the darkness out past the compound, or that feeling that slides down BJ's spine when Hawkeye leans over just a little toward the end of those lapping-with-blood nights, close and Oh, God....

You know, George, said BJ as he lost to Hawkeye's royal flush, I just want to know-- the one before me, the guy before me, the married man before me, you were here. You saw. I want to know if he flipped back comments at Hawk just three seconds quicker, if his practical jokes were just a hint more perverse than mine, or if he ever found his hands resting on that curve of Hawkeye's just-a-little-too-thin hips, that shape of the bone I've, for some crazy reason, memorized.

(Stop it. Peg's voice, younger. She's crying, because her older brother took apart her bike and won't put it back together, and she loves to zip down the uneven sidewalk with her skirt bunched up around her knees. You're standing next to her, glaring at the brother and looking at the parts all on the lawn. Your hand is on her shoulder and she's saying, Stop it, you-- you-- awful, why do you have to break everything of mine?!)

"BJ, Beej--" and that's something no one else calls him, so it's Hawkeye. "You gonna play your hand or form a lasting relationship with it?"

"Well," he returned fondly, almost as quickly as he wanted to, "unlike you, I don't just pull whatever card I need out of my dirty bathrobe."

"You insult my glorious robes of state?" Hawkeye drew back, face contorted in mock affront while George held his laugh behind one fisted hand.

"I fold, anyway." The younger doctor flipped the cards facedown with ease. "All I seem to be pulling tonight is garbage." He glanced up without thinking-- it was hard to tell what George might take personally, back behind that smiling face. It was hard to blame him if he did.

"Well." Hawkeye spread his hands. "There are other card games." He began shuffling again, the red bicycle design flickering and winking at BJ like a single, penetrating eye. "There's gin, old maid, go fish, that weird thing gypsies do at fairs-- and I'm not talking about the wax fortune teller." Winking, the other captain began to toss down cards in an awkward sort of pattern. "I never have understood the point of that...."

"They use different cards, first off." George rested his chin in his hands, and there seemed to be just a change of light shifting over his boyish face. Not a real transformation, but the illusion of one. "You're missing twenty-one cards."

"Twenty-one, huh?" Hawkeye laughed. "I'd hate to try and play poker with them. What, they have an extra suit?" Now his smile was wider. "Squares? Circles? Double-breasted, pin-striped?"

"You kill me," George snorted, shaking his head.

"Don't let the AMA hear you say that," BJ cautioned, reaching to take the cards from Hawkeye. The older man held his hands away, grinning and trying to keep BJ at bay.

"They're mine and you can't have them." Hawkeye snickered childishly. "Gimme a second. I'm gonna tell our good buddy George's fortune here."

There was a faint splash of color in the boy-soldier's cheeks. "So long as there are no landmines or Chinese involved."

"No, no, my dear boy," Hawkeye fingered a card with flair, his voice dropping into thick play-Romanian. "Sit right there and I will tell you. The great Hawkeye knows all, sees all...."

"And the rest, he makes up," BJ put in, dodging a playful swatch from his friend.

Hawkeye 'hmm-ed' deep in his throat, gazing on the mix-matched diamonds, spades, and hearts with carefully solemn eyes. "I see," he intoned, "a tall, handsome stranger in your future."

"That's a nice change." George showed a row of even white teeth, pulling a little at his collar.

(There's a whole choir out tonight, dammit. Sid, he's hearing voices-- Tokyo Laughing Academy, here you come. But it's Hawkeye who you can hear the clearest saying, or singing, low and next to your ear. Does a lot of singing, Hawkeye, in the O.R. and in the shower, in chow line and moving through the post-op ward in a half-hearted shuffle-dance. And sometimes, when he doesn't think anyone is listening because it is dark and quiet and still (the moon, coming through the still) and he's drunk.
Yes, Hawkeye's voice, just those two feet away, slurred and soft and singing--
Beware the danger as you cross the great water,
Beware the strangers new to your eyes....

All right, okay. Nothing's making sense, and under that too-yellow bulb and across the table from a young man who... who is and who does, next to a man whose voice you know and whose hip you've brushed, you've got a headache and another ache that don't seem like they'll ever go away.

Cards on the table, faces you know. Beware, Mr. Hunnicutt, I predict-- says the wax gypsy near the pier in old San Fran, where you and Peg used to walk barefoot-- I predict you'll meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger in a foreign land.)

"Damn it." It came out through BJ's thin lips, reverberating in Hawkeye's body as it quieted beside him. He felt those two pairs of eyes-- brownish-hazel, quick, cautious, but also that separate blue, flash in deep water and quicksilver. "Uh. Right. Let's play a different game." BJ rubbed his temples. Dart again, like a quick tail of a star-- concern in Hawkeye's gaze and a hand on BJ's shoulder. Nothing else; open to interpretation, just like the gypsy cards.

"Well, we already suggested go fish," Hawkeye began with amiable care.

"And old maid," BJ pointed out.

A smirk from the other doctor. "Nah, that's Margaret."

Volley back. "Don't let her hear you say that. You won't live through the night."

"I may not as it is," Hawkeye lamented. "My kingdom for a nurse! How about gin?"

"I'd love some." And he reached for the pitcher of moonshine.

(Nice spike back from the all-American boy.)

"Very nice." The other captain raised an eyebrow. "We could try pin-the-tail on Frank."

"Over the one that's already there?" They had that rhythm going again, a careful dance or making love with words. George merely watched, eyes cast somewhere else but still watching.

"The horns are only there to hold up his halo." Hawkeye accepted his glass and poured another for George. "I've got it!" Slapping his knee, the dark-haired man grinned full and cheshire, "Strip Hearts. First time I played, I shot the moon and got Sally Merriman to take off the sundress she was already barely wearing."

(There is no return pitch from the other side-- such a silly thing to stop over, too. Someone, a nurse, once made a comment that Trapper and Hawkeye played strip poker on occasion, and then she shifted her gaze back to the miniature city of pill bottles, as if she'd broken some silent law.
While we're on horns and halos and the Good Book--
Thou shalt not mention the Original to his Replacement.
And BJ, oh, BJ, can't you just see those clothes piled and abandoned on the floor?)

"I don't know how to play Hearts," George said apologetically, "I--"

By some unspoken cue, they stopped, listened to the footsteps navigating through the chill Korean night. Stop, a knock at the door, and BJ looked on Radar's round face with some measure of relief.

"Um, sir?" The clerk flashed a smile-glance at George, before his eyes and his two glass lenses were all on Hawkeye, reflecting Hawkeye. "It's that bowel-resection, Hawkeye, sir-- the nurse says she needs help."

BJ saw something pass swiftly over Hawkeye's face, bitterness and weariness and pained irony, things BJ had come to recognize in his tentmate, if not yet in himself. Then Hawkeye let the cards splay out between his fingers and put them down. When he looked at BJ, his expression was a study in nonchalance.

"I believe I'm being paged," he said, uncoiling from his position beside BJ and sliding out between the small table and the cot. "I've told them never to call me in the middle of important business, but we all know how crass the Army is."

BJ followed him up with legs that didn't feel like his own.

"How about some help?" At first, there was only that smooth taste of relief, and yet he was on his feet, muscles trembling before he trembled himself.

Hawkeye gave him a genuinely startled smile.

"Are you insinuating that I need it?" He waved a hand, let it fall like an afterthought onto BJ's shoulder. "Nah, don't worry about it. It's nothing serious - I'm sure the nurse's already done all of the complicated things. I'm just the token pretty face at the bedside. Comforts the patients." He looked at George, who grinned appreciatively.

"Well - " BJ hesitated. "I-"

"You're too decent for your own good," said Hawkeye with dismissive affection, but his eyes had gone hard and flat, like chipped flint, under the blue. "I'll be fine. You can stay and keep George company until I'm done. It won't take very long."

"Okay," agreed BJ, sighing and attempting to look reassuringly at George. Not your fault, kid, not your fault I can't - we can't - and God, it's so bright in here-

Hawkeye gently removed his hand from where it had slipped to BJ's arm, up close against his greens and the warm, firm angle of his hip.

"I shall return," he proclaimed, dipping into an elaborate bow. BJ, averting his eyes, reached out for the deck and began massing it together in his hands.


To be continued