It was just after 1:00 in the morning, and they were still both awake, still entangled. Both were acutely aware that B.J.'s flight back home was less than 12 hours away.
The room was enveloped in darkness. B.J. shifted, rolled onto his stomach, and Hawkeye draped himself halfway across B.J.'s back. The contact was essential. He wasn't even sure he could survive without B.J.'s touch. That was something he was going to have to find out once they finally left this bed.
He licked at the dip of B.J.'s lower back.
Lazily, B.J. said into his pillow, "When I left home on Friday, I knew I was coming out here to tell you everything. But I had no idea how you were going to react to it all. There were so many ways this could have gone. This…" he faltered, struggling for words, and Hawkeye waited. "The fact that we're here, together, in love… Hawk, I've never been happier. I mean that."
"Same here, Beej," Hawkeye murmured. "There were a lot of ifs with you and me, but we finally got here."
"Ifs?"
"If you weren't married… if this, if that."
"Did you feel… something… in Korea?"
Hawkeye thought about that. "I think maybe I did, now that I look back. But there were roadblocks in my head, not letting me get there. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah," B.J. said softly. "I do."
Hawkeye listened to and felt B.J. breathing. "I heard the 'click,'" he said, "when we met at Kimpo. I just didn't know what it was at the time."
But there was no reply to that because B.J. had apparently fallen asleep. Hawkeye smiled, kissed his back. "Rudyard Kipling was our unwitting matchmaker," he continued. "It started with a poem, as all great love stories do."
In the midst of his own semi-coherent rambling, just as he was reminding himself that he'd need to repeat all of this to B.J. sometime when he was conscious, Hawkeye fell asleep too.