#3: "G.M.T.A."
"Good Lord, what time is it?"
"My name's not 'Lord'. And I'm not that good."
Hawkeye's eyes itched, the room had grown almost too dark to read. A pizza box sat open on his bureau, plates and beer bottles were dead soldiers on the desk. They'd festooned the floor with crumpled notebook pages, napkins, books with same as bookmarks, tossed pencils from the frustration phase of the operation. Erin had been put to bed hours ago.
Hawkeye, unable to stand the silence, had put on his radio after their late dinner. B.J. sent a Glare at the distracting plastic box but didn't say anything, knowing a Hawkeye didn't abide silence for long. It was still the jazz show - hesitant baritone sax and picked guitar, like long strokes with an oil brush. B.J. had introduced jazz to Hawkeye and he'd immediately absolved himself of Doris Day.
"I still think we should call it 'The Children's Crusade,'" Hawkeye said. He was propped against the footboard, his long legs almost in B.J.'s lap.
"Still taken," B.J. said from the depths of his diaphragm.
His long form was draped across the width of the double bed while he stared at the ceiling and, occasionally, made circles at it with his pencil when he got an idea. His bare feet were in the window, plucking at the catch as he thought. The noise was starting to tug at Hawkeye's train of thought, but just about anything was more distracting than figures and funding sources.
"Are you done?" Hawkeye toed his gallbladder.
B.J. laughed and tried to swat the offending digit away. "Just looking for ideas inside my eyelids."
Hawkeye lurched, crunched across their data, false starts, and grant proposals to the military and Stanford University. He propped himself over B.J.'s middle, half splayed across his hip, and leaned his legal pad upright against B.J.'s stomach. The recumbent one grunted and opened his eyes.
"See, this is the guys who reported long term pain after amputations, with the numbers of that ones who saw a psychiatrist after." Hawkeye flipped a page. "And here's the same numbers, the guys who saw civilian psychiatrists. This proves that the army is shit for taking care of their own boys. But that's not a publication. Next we need to show why."
B.J. turned around rightways, shoved Hawkeye's pillows against the headboard, and attempted to stay awake while he flipped the charts. They had passed the witching hour and were approaching milkman's hours. The bar graphs looked like shoots and ladders. He cut energy to his useless, limp body and propped his semifunctional brain on his hand, holding the chart side-ways. Hawkeye crept up to the head of the bed and looked over his shoulder, nudging like a cat that wants out.
"Are you reading?" Hawkeye said.
"Mmhmm," came the reply from the pillow embankment. "Makes more sense if you cut off the parts of your body that're asleep."
Hawkeye yawned enormously. He slid down next to B.J., leaned his knees against B.J.'s thighs, and flipped the duvet over their legs. It was so comfy here, warm and sleepy with another person, the music so soft and hypnotic. He shoved his palms into his eye sockets. Too much reading, sore eyes. When he opened them, B.J. was staring at him.
"What?" Hawkeye said. "You're smiling."
B.J. hid behind the graphs. "Nothing. I think we need to do some interviews. Find out what these kids didn't get to talk about. Maybe they have some thoughts about why their treatment didn't help."
"Can we really expect nineteen, twenty-one year old kids to come up with their own cure after the doctors failed to provide it?" Hawkeye tugged on one of B.J.'s pillows - his pillow - but he wasn't moving. So he rested his head on B.J.'s arm instead.
B.J. set down the pad. "I guess not." He reached around and turned off the light.
Hawkeye protested in noises nonsensical even to himself, but with perfect clarity - no light, no reading.
"Too bright. Scorching my brain," B.J. said.
They lay there in the near-darkness, the hurricane lantern flickering golden light and long shadows from the dresser. Hawkeye felt fingers in his hair, skritching, soothing. It hit him like a shot of phenobarb. The deejay signed off and put on a long playing record - Debussy, his stroll through the city from midnight to dawn.
"Lemme see." Hawkeye reached for the notebook of charts and flipped it open against B.J.'s chest. As he ran his fingers over the data, the tips of his fingers slipped beyond the lines and numbers, brushed against the soft cotton of B.J.'s t-shirt. "I agree with your point about interviewing -"
"-but we need a methodology." B.J. covered Hawkeye's hand with his own.
Hawkeye looked him over for some telling trace of what was going on here, but B.J. looked as serene as he felt. Better than that, B.J. smelled like aftershave and their laundry soap, which always smelled better on B.J.'s clothes than his own. He laced their fingers together.
This felt normal. It felt right. During the day, Hawkeye second-guessed the wisdom of insinuating himself in B.J.'s life and when he laid awake nights, he worried about ruining their friendship. When he saw a woman chatting up his tall, handsome friend in the park or grocery store, he thought about the easier life they both could live if never spoke to one another again. But here, in this bed, their bed, there was no other life he saw for himself. To touch him, to share breath, was only an extension of their day-to-day life.
B.J. was right there and Hawkeye wanted to kiss him. So he did.
It was a light touch of lips, like a handshake. Long ago, enemies away from battle shook hands to show they carried no weapons. B.J. and Hawkeye's first kiss was to show that they were both in it, wholly, without agenda or fear.
Hawkeye swallowed and whispered, "We should, um - for more data. Call Sydney."
"Freedman."
"At the V.A."
Susurration of cloth. The warmth of another body dipping the bed beside him. There were papery thumps as B.J. toed their research and Life magazines onto the floor. And then Hawkeye was warm down his whole side, B.J.'s arm across his middle, hands clasped between them. B.J. kissed him. This second engagement said, come over to my house and we'll play.
Hawkeye opened his eyes ever so slightly to catch B.J. staring at him, wide eyed, a little nervous and unmistakably interested. He'd never noticed how very expressive B.J.'s lips were, for a man. Hawkeye traced the cupid's bow with his fingertip (B.J. kissed his finger). His lower lip was sprung from a sculptor's dream - lush, dipped in the middle, elegantly architected. Hawkeye bit it. B.J. kissed him back, hard.
And they kissed, and kissed. Long, indulgent kisses while they caressed and explored with hands. B.J. worked Hawkeye's shirt tail out from his trousers and slid his hand up his smooth, hot spine. Hawkeye eagerly responded in kind.
The fire burned too hot, too quick. B.J. was still nervous, Hawkeye still scared. A handshake doesn't seal the deal.
Exhausted, Hawkeye ended up tucked under B.J.'s chin, wrapped around him, toying with the hem of his shirt and the skin just beneath. B.J.'s fingers idling up under his shirt was like a spell. Hawkeye's legs went limp, knee wedged between B.J.'s, bare feet and spindly hands unconsciously falling any warm place they may.
"If I knew a backrub turned you into a lump of mashed potatoes, I would have tried this years ago." B.J.'s breath was soft puffs against his ear.
Hawkeye was nearly purring. "Do your nails like spiders."
B.J. chuckled.
Hawkeye's faith in this thing between them - whatever it was - kicked up a notch when B.J. knew exactly what 'spiders fingers' meant. Dad used to scratch his back after football practice when his right infraspinatus spasmed so badly he couldn't sleep.
"You fallin' asleep on me?"
Hawkeye wriggled across B.J.'s body, making space for himself in B.J.'s arms like a cat. For a slender man, B.J. was supremely comfortable to sleep on.
"I didn't rent just any room in San Francisco, you know."
"And I didn't take in just any tenant."
"I din't show up with intentions," Hawkeye yawned. "Well . . . maybe a few. Don't forget the nape."
B.J.'s fingernails skritched up his spine. "You're going to owe me, you know. Keeping me awake to scratch your neck like a pup."
"I just thought, if I'm here, and if the thing I think I'm feeling is for real . . . I don't know . . . maybe you'll start to feel something again . . ."
B.J. smoothed Hawkeye's hair away from his eyes. Hawkeye looked up, all open-faced bad boy.
"Hawkeye, have you been pining?"
"Ridiculous. I never pine, sir. I am deciduous."
"Right, you turn green with envy every Spring. And a few months later you drop everything."
Hawkeye pushed up off of him, leveraging himself on B.J.'s lower belly. "I won't."
"Really? Because that's the report I've always gotten."
Hawkeye rested his head on B.J.'s shoulder again. B.J. didn't believe in him. What a coincidence, he didn't believe in him, either.
Hawkeye closed his eyes. Enjoyed the skritching. He was here. B.J. wasn't kicking him out.
Let tomorrow come.