If you think I own anything to do with MASH go and have a lie down and I'll get Sidney to have a look at you.
The dress was magenta pink, composed of multiple layers of taffeta and lace that bled into the inky darkness. But that was all right; at that moment in time it wasn't the colour that concerned him.
Goaded by the feel of her fingers tangling through his hair, BJ slid his fingers down her sides, smiling when she arched away from him, giggling when he tickled her. However, Peggy couldn't move far before her hip hit the handbrake and they both stopped their fevered groping.
"Maybe we should continue this inside," Peggy breathed, coy smile inviting.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" BJ asked.
"Mum and daddy are out at the yacht club meeting. They won't be back till late." Without waiting for an answer, Peggy smoothed her dress down and opened the door of the car, extending a hand. "Come on, BJ! It'll be awfully lonely up there alone."
Closing his eyes for a minute, BJ weighed up his options. He could go up with Peggy and have a great time, or he could be a wet blanket and take the safe option and leave. Was there really a choice?
BJ stepped out of the car and followed his girlfriend, pretending to cover his eyes with a hand as she reached under the flowerpot for the hidden front door key. The dark made it difficult for Peggy to get the key in the lock, but after what seemed like an eternity she swung the door open, motioning for BJ to follow.
He realised that this would be his last opportunity to leave. The logical part of his brain, the part that was telling him Peggy's dad would hunt him down and shoot him if he found them together, was instructing him to leave, but certain other parts of his body, that were decidedly less logical, urged him forward.
"One question," BJ said. "What are we going to do if your parents come home early?"
Peggy sighed in indulgent annoyance. "I'm sure that we can think of something." She comically pushed a hip out and rested her hand on it. "Coming?"
What kind of guy was going to refuse an offer like that? He followed her, reaching out and latching on to her wrist. He'd been in Peggy's house often, but usually with the light on, and the darkness made him prone to running into foreign objects but also increased the feeling that that they were engaging in a clandestine meeting.
Rather that turning and continuing up the stairs to her bedroom, Peggy took a sharp left and crouched down beside a small cabinet. BJ, running his hand up and down the wall, finally felt a light switch under his fingertips and turned the light on. Peggy was suddenly illuminated pouring a quantity of bourbon into the bottom of two glasses.
Without speaking she resumed their previous path, climbing the stairs until she came to a door with a colourful plaque on it, proclaiming "Peggy's Room."
"My parents still treat me as though I'm five," she explained in exasperation, shutting the door behind them both and turning the light on. "Do you like it? I did some redecorating a while ago- got rid of all that pink stuff that Mum thought was so cute."
BJ nodded in agreement. The room was decked out in various shades of blue: a baby blue on the walls, blending into the sky blue of the carpet and contrasting with the indigo coverlet on the bed. While he was looking, he felt her come up behind him and slowly kiss him on the neck.
He twirled around quickly in response, kissing her on the lips. She moaned, tightening her hands around his neck. Reaching for her glass, she took a sip of her alcohol and kissed him again, giggling as he chocked slightly, before pushing her down on to the bed. He drew his hands up and down her legs before resting them on her hips.
"Am I squashing you?" he asked, head centimetres away for hers. "I think I'm too heavy."
"No way," Peggy replied. "It'd be a good way to go, anyway. Dying happy, and all."
"Yeah," BJ agreed. "I can just see it in the morning papers. Respectable girl suffocated by groping boyfriend. It'd go down really well."
"Don't you know by now," Peggy whispered, "that I'm not nearly respectable as everyone thinks I am?"
BJ closed his eyes and breathed deeply, smelling the bourbon she had skulled earlier. It's not an unpleasant smell, just an unexpected one: Peggy was the girl that usually came up smelling of talcum powder and roses. Perhaps that's what attracted to him to her in the first place; to everyone else, Peggy was the perfect, all-American girl, baking biscuits and doing the top button up on her shirts.
But that was just the surface veneer; below was someone mischievous, desperately lonely, and completely and utterly in love with BJ Hunnicutt.
"I love you so much," Peggy whispered, "So much."
"I - love - you – too," BJ replied, punctuating each word with a kiss, as if kissing her would make her less lonely. Because, for as much as he loved her, BJ knew that Peggy didn't have many friends. She was too quiet to ever talk to strangers and too proud to acknowledge that she hated sitting by herself while a swirling social sphere carried on without her.
Despite all her efforts not to care, Peggy knew that loneliness cut more deeply and accurately than a scalpel. Sometimes, lying awake in the dark, she realised that she loved BJ so much because he was a substitute for a whole group of girlfriends as well as a boyfriend.
She sat up unexpectedly and so forcefully that BJ almost fell off the bed. "You don't understand. I love you."
His brow knitted in confusion. "I know. I love you too."
She sighed, kissing him on the temple, hating that he didn't understand what she was trying to say. At that moment, she realised that actions would speak louder that words. Reaching behind her she undid the large bow of her dress, reaching up to the zipper. She undid the fastener slowly, before slipping the bodice of her shoulders, so that she was sitting in her petticoat. She reached up and touched him on the chin, kissing him gently, the lace on the shoulders betraying her quick breathing.
"No," she replied. "I love you."
"Oh," BJ said, ever so eloquently. "Oh." At that moment he lost his faculties of speech and sat there incoherently. "Oh." And then. "Are you sure?"
"What a stupid question!" Peggy laughed musically, breaking the tension that had surrounded them. "Do you think I would be sitting here, almost in the nude mind you, if I wasn't sure? Sometimes I wonder why they accepted you into med school."
"I don't want you to feel pressured in to anything. I mean have you got anything? Have you thought about this? What I mean is--."
Peggy cut his off by reaching over and lying on top of him, kissing him fiercely. BJ was positive that his lips would be bruised the next day. Not wasting any time, she began unbuttoning BJ' shirt, while he attempted to kick off his shoes. He began to suck on her neck, hoping to leave a red mark, when Peggy suddenly stopped.
"What's wrong?" BJ asked, kissing her on the cheek.
"They're home early!" she replied, listening to the creaks from downstairs. "They said they wouldn't be home for another--," she looked at the clock on the wall, before adding in astonishment "is it two o'clock already? I really loose track of the time when you feel me up."
"What are we going to do?" BJ whispered urgently. "I doubt your parents are going to say hello and offer me a coffee."
"Put your clothes back on and turn off the light. They'll probably think that I'm already in bed. Poor little darling being tired after the dance and all that stuff," Peggy replied, just as urgently. "Then go."
They worked furiously, but as quietly as possibly, attempting not to alert the adults below that a randy teenage boy was currently in their daughter's room. BJ chucked his shoes back on and buttoned his shirt, while Peggy, took her hair out and pulled on a nightgown. Suddenly they heard a voice that was coming closer and closer. "I'm just going to put my head in and check on her. Just make sure that she got home safely," rumbled the deep baritone of Peggy's father.
"Oh no," Peggy breathed, "Daddy."
"What am I supposed to do?" BJ mouthed urgently, seeing little way of getting out of such a sticky situation.
"Just go!" Peggy replied, sitting on the bed and drawing the covers over her legs. She suddenly saw the two bourbon glasses and hid them under the bed, praying that her father wouldn't be able to smell the alcohol. She could always say that someone tipsy had spilled their drink on her, but that would be contradicting the fact the dance had been strictly alcohol free, and that the principle had been policed as closely as the Russian arms stores.
"Where?" BJ asked, again. There were few hiding spots in Peggy's room, and even fewer that would fit a man as tall as BJ. There was always under the bed, he mused, feeling as though he had stepped onto the set of a bad movie.
"Just go!" Peggy replied, lying down.
Which was why BJ found himself shinning down the drainpipe at two in the morning.
BJ tried to balance himself on the windowsill, halfway down the face of the house, praying that he wouldn't fall and break his leg. Falling would also involve trampling Peggy's mother's award winning pansies, which would result in decapitation if he were discovered as the culprit.
Suddenly a window opened and Peggy's figure leant out. Whispering loudly, she giggled and said in her deep voice:
"Don't wake him Radar. I'm fine if it's just a broken leg."
BJ moaned, rolling over and sitting up. "What is it? Casualties?"
Hawkeye shook his head, picking his socks off the floor and smelling them. Deciding they were too dirty he threw them away, asking Radar to pass him another pair.
"How much did I drink?" BJ asked. "I feel as though the Red Sox used my head for batting practice."
"Actually they did," Hawkeye replied, smiling. "We packaged you up and sent you over so they could all have a whack."
"Then why the hell did they send me back? Even staying with the Red Sox would be better then being here."
"Said that your head was no use. Too hollow," Hawkeye laughed, filling up a mug with coffee. "You want one?"
BJ nodded, picking up the mug near his cot and passing it to his bunkmate. Hawkeye passed the full mug back and BJ downed the drink in several gulps. The door banged open and Frank entered, obviously back from a late night rendezvous with Margaret.
"How are you going, Frank? Nice night?" Hawkeye asked, lifting his eyebrows suggestively. Frank turned quickly, sneering at the smirking doctor.
"I don't have to put up with your sass, Pierce. Need I remind you that I am your superior officer?" Frank snapped, sitting down on his bunk.
"Yeah, it only took a war to make you superior, too," Hawkeye replied, rolling his eyes at BJ, who missed the action, having turned his back when Frank snapped the light on. "Have a bit of respect, would you Frank? BJ here just drunk the still dry, and he's feeling especially sorry for himself. Some compassion maybe?"
"Compassion?" Frank laughed, unbuttoning his shirt and reaching for his pajamas. "That'll get you nowhere when dealing with the Reds." Waving his hands left and right to illustrate the gravity of being sympathetic, Frank knocked over the glass that he kept next to his bed. BJ sat up when it shattered.
"Do you mind Frank? Only it feels like a rhinoceros wearing roller skates is doing the samba in my head," BJ moaned, throwing an arm over his eyes.
"If you were a real American, someone that fully understood the work we were doing here, you would appreciate how important it is to always be alert. You wouldn't waste your time drinking that stuff you brew, pretending that it's high class," Frank rejoined.
"Sorry about him," Hawkeye interrupted, "we tried to redecorate, but he got stuck in preaching white. God mode, you know."
"White? Ha!" Frank replied. "Me, I'm red, white and blue all over."
"So you're a cockade. If I had a lapel I'd stick you through my buttonhole. I've got to go. See you at breakfast folks," Hawkeye finished, dragging on a thick woolen beanie.
"He's not a cockade," BJ replied, "just a coc-."
"Tut tut, you shouldn't use such vulgar language so early in the morning, you know," Hawkeye chastised, disregarding the fact he used worse language more frequently than anyone else in camp.
"Wait up," BJ said, sitting up. "I'll come with you. The smell of purity's too strong for me to sleep in here."
"Then shake a leg. The patient's been waiting a while," Hawkeye replied, stamping his feet on the ground in an attempt to warm up.
"Ta da!" BJ said, throwing the blankets off his legs and standing up, showing that he had fallen asleep in his crumpled fatigues, so there was no need to get dressed. "Let's go."
They crossed the compound quickly, and BJ told himself that he was walking slightly closer to his companion for the warmth. Besides, as long as no one mentioned anything then there was no need to question his actions or feelings; they could be shoved away into a dark recess of his mind where they couldn't be analysed. Rather than move away, Hawkeye also leaned closer, so they finished their walk hip to hip.
"Who's assisting?" BJ asked, once they entered the OR.
"I was going to wake Margaret, but since you're here, you can be the nurse for the evening," Hawkeye smiled, walking over to where a young man was lying on a narrow trolley, while BJ tried to ignore the innuendo that could be read into that simple statement.
"How are you feeling? We always like to get our patients to sit for a while before we operate. Gives them a chance to adjust to the ambiance of the place. It's called the Ritz on a budget," Hawkeye chatted, obviously trying to get the young man at ease. "The budget was non-existent."
Hawkeye asked for the x-rays and BJ handed them over, and they looked over them together. "It looks pretty simple to me," BJ said.
They worked quickly, wetting the plaster and wrapping it tightly, moving the broken limb as little as possible. The white dust settled in Hawkeye's hair, and BJ thought that it made him look senile.
"That should stay pretty straight," BJ said as they washed their hands, making no attempt to stay quiet. From his reactions during the setting the doctors could see that the young man was still numb from the anesthetic that had been administered.
"We'll take him into post-op and x-ray him in the morning," Hawkeye yawned.
"I'll buy you a drink in the Swamp if there's anything wrong with that leg," BJ said.
"Mmm," Hawkeye replied, absentmindedly, and BJ could see that there was something weighing on his mind. Hawkeye shook his head and smiled at BJ. "Well, there's nothing that we can do at the moment anyway, and there's a beautiful young nurse that's just waiting for a physical."
Hawkeye waved and turned, exiting post-op in a flurry of olive fatigues, leaving BJ bereft and adrift, a piece of flotsam in the quiet ward.
Thank you to everyone that reviewed chapter one, it was appreciated.
Cockade: bundle of red, white and blue ribbons used as a revolutionary symbol during the French revolution.