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Hawkeye can’t sleep. Not that he’s physically unable to, not in general, but tonight (more accurately, this morning) Hawkeye is awake. Wide awake. Buzzing. He’s exhausted (ha! exhausted ) all his standard tips and tricks for lulling his body into a false sense of security, not that they ever work anyway since his brain is actually connected to the rest of his body and is too acutely aware of the falseness of that sense of security to let him rest.
His cot is shaking. Yes, he’s terrified but mostly he feels… caffeinated. Or maybe it’s just coffee that he wants.
“Hrmph?” a noise comes from across the tent. BJ sleep talking, bless him.
“Sweet dreams, lover,” Hawkeye mutters.
“Hawk, you good?”
If it were light, all color would have drained from Hawkeye’s face. As it is, he thinks he feels his heart stop since BJ is awake and heard him say that.
“Can’t sleep,” Hawkeye tries to say casually.
“Want to talk about it?” BJ shifts so he’s lying on his side facing Hawkeye who only sees this out of his periphery since he’s staring at the flimsy canvas ceiling.
“No, no,” Hawkeye says. “You go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” BJ sighs contentedly, never one to argue with a prescription like that. “Whatever you say.” He rolls back onto his other side and pulls his blanket tighter over him.
Hawkeye lets one minute pass. Then another. Then another. He listens to BJ’s breathing, trying to find a way for it to steady him. People use him to steady themselves, don’t they? People lean on Hawkeye even though he’s precarious, they count on him though he’s a flake. BJ’s the one they should rely on, the one who doesn’t break promises, the one whose mind doesn’t disagree with his body about right and wrong.
“You know what I want?” Hawkeye says to the darkness of the tent. He can tell from BJ’s breathing that he’s awake listening to Hawkeye’s, waiting for him to fall asleep.
“Tell me,” BJ says, proving him right.
“You know what I want to do right now? What I would be doing right now if I were home?”
“What, Hawk?”
“What’s the one place that’s open this late, huh? Where we could go?”
“I don’t know, where?”
“No, no, no, come on, guess!” Hawkeye’s voice is quiet but it’s more like a stage whisper. Never mind that, though; Charles sleeps with earplugs in.
“What? Hawkeye… I don’t know. A club or something? A bar?” He thinks for a second more. “A gas station, what?”
“Beej!” Hawkeye sits bolt upright. “The diner! I want to go to the diner!”
BJ is silent for so long that Hawkeye is worried he just spilled some horrible secret, or that BJ's parents were killed in some kind of diner-related grease fire, or that maybe diners don’t even exist and Joe’s in Lee was a mass hallucination. After fifteen years BJ sits up in bed.
“I think that can be arranged,” he says.
“What?”
“Let’s go to the diner. Come on.”
Hawkeye watches with rapt attention as BJ slips on a pair of trousers, loses his t-shirt, and dons the pink henley instead. He yawns and sits down to start lacing his sneakers.
“You coming?” BJ says.
“What… is happening?”
BJ grins. “We’re going to the diner!”
He sits on Hawkeye’s bunk next to him and hands him some pants that are presumably his. Hawkeye takes them and dresses under the covers.
“Uh-huh.”
“All right. After you,” BJ says, gesturing toward the door. Hawkeye nods skeptically and leaves with BJ just behind him.
“I still don’t know where we’re going,” Hawkeye says in answer to BJ’s prying stare as he stops only a few paces in front of their tent.
“Okay,” BJ says. “So maybe the diner looks a tiny bit exactly like the O-Club. Who am I to judge them for their decor?”
Hawkeye rolls his eyes while BJ takes him by the hand and starts leading him to the Officers Club which by some miracle is unlocked.
“What a… coincidence?” Hawkeye says, taking a seat at the bar while BJ fiddles with the radio.
“No exactly,” BJ says. “It’s Tuesday, right?”
“Right.”
“Right. Igor thinks Klinger has the closing shift on Tuesdays but Klinger thinks Igor does, so nobody closes up.”
“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye says, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. “And you know this because…?”
BJ shrugs. “I may have misremembered some things when conveying the duty roster. Nobody’s perfect.”
“No, but you’re coming close.”
“Ha ha, thanks,” BJ says absently, having finally zeroed in on a radio station. He’s struck Billie.
“ Embraceable You ?” Hawkeye says. “Isn’t that a little mushy?”
“It’s to go with the peas.”
“Huh?”
“I’m trying to give you a normal night at home, remember? It’s late, we just got off a ten hour shift–”
“I did two appendectomies,” Hawkeye mock-laments. “It was brutal .”
“Tell me about it,” BJ says, sidling up to Hawkeye at the bar. “I had to give a kid seven stitches. Fell off his motorcycle.”
“I’m telling you, Beej, those things are death traps.”
“I like to live on the edge.”
“I’m sure you do.”
BJ looks him up and down. Hawkeye tries to do the same but he’s not sure it has the same arresting effect.
“Hey,” BJ says.
“Hey.”
“Wanna dance?”
“With you?”
“No, with General MacArthur. Come on.” BJ holds out his hand. “You can pretend I’m anybody you want. Your best girl from back home.” His fingers twitch slightly, still waiting for Hawkeye’s grip against theirs. “You can even imagine I’m Trapper if you like.”
“Very funny.” And it only stings slightly that BJ assumes Hawkeye will be imagining he’s someone else, stings because Hawkeye knows that’s what BJ will be doing.
Still, Hawkeye takes BJ’s hand or lets him take his and lead him to the center of the floor where they can actually just do this because it’s like they’re the only two people on the planet. BJ holds him so close that Hawkeye is just sure he is somehow rationalizing this into heterosexuality because if he were experiencing the same reality as Hawkeye right now he would be running for the hills.
BJ has a hand on the small of Hawkeye’s back and guides him to lay his head on his shoulder. Hawkeye thinks his kidneys are going to give out.
“Shh, Hawk,” BJ says during a soft instrumental interlude. “You’re okay.”
He’s not, though, is he. When the song ends and something Hawkeye doesn’t recognize comes on, he peels himself from BJ’s chest and rests his hand on his arm instead of his back. He searches BJ’s face, examines it, scrutinizes it for just a hint, and inkling of what he thinks is going on.
“What do you want, Hawkeye?” BJ says, not stopping the calm undulations of his slow dancing.
“What do I want? From you?”
“In general. You look like you want something. I’ve never seen you look so… desirous.”
Hawkeye swallows.
“What do I want?” he repeats again, just to confirm he’s hearing him right.
“In all the world, Hawkeye. What do you really want?”
He can’t bring himself to say it. He can’t actually bring himself to say anything, truth or lie, fact or fiction.
“Or just in this moment,” BJ says. “Start small.”
Nothing small about it , Hawkeye thinks. Then again, two people are the smallest things in the world. And the only things in the world.
They’re already standing so close. Their bodies are already swaying together to the finicky radio. BJ’s hand is already on his waist, his fingers already intertwined with Hawkeye’s. He wants…
He wants to lay his head back on BJ’s shoulder. He wants to know would you hold me for real? If I asked you, would you hold me, and hold me, and hold me, and keep holding me until they had to pry me out of your arms like they must have done you and Peg– and who’s they anyway? He wants love, though he thinks he already has it. He wants it said out loud, though he’s not sure he needs it. But BJ hasn’t asked him what he needs; he’s asked him what he wants.
BJ’s look is full of concern, of curiosity, of the innocent longing that comes over his face when he’s picturing himself anywhere but here, imagining that Hawkeye is anyone but himself. Hawkeye must really be a masochist, must really get off on cruelty to love loving BJ as much as he does.
BJ squeezes his hip gently.
“It’s okay,” BJ whispers. “It’s okay.”
Hawkeye nods. “I want…” he finally says, “you… to– to see me.” BJ’s brow furrows slightly. “I want you to see me when I’m standing in front of you.”
BJ has flipped a goddamn switch in his mind. Hawkeye doesn’t shy away from asking for what he wants, never has. It’s the dumbest, most ridiculous, most asinine form of self-sacrifice that Hawkeye undergoes every day, not telling BJ what he wants, and for what? For that idly smiling, too-damn-cute-for-this-world, apple pie and hot dog face? War is war and hell is hell and of the two, war is a lot worse. Hawkeye’s yet to determine where exactly love falls on that sliding scale.
“I see you, Hawkeye,” BJ says, but he’s not looking at him, not really. He’s not looking into his eyes, anyway, but somewhere between his collarbones where the fabric of his shirt is stained with sweat or booze.
“You don’t,” Hawkeye says. He swallows. “It’s okay.” He’s used to baring his soul. He has to be used to not minding if it goes south.
BJ looks at him. He smiles.
“Make me?” he says so neutrally that it’s almost not incredibly sexy.
“What?”
“See you,” BJ explains. “Or at least try.”
Hawkeye clenches his jaw. He doesn’t get it. Whatever it is, he doesn’t get it.
“I feel like I see you,” BJ says, seamlessly drawing their bodies closer. It feels like the first time Hawkeye ever danced without leading, like floating. Like being carried away, like being held. One of BJ’s hands finds its way to the back of Hawkeye’s head, into his hair. Their cheeks are close enough to touch.
“Yeah,” Hawkeye says.
“Mm-hmm.” Hawkeye feels more than hears BJ says it, the syllables little more than a low hum. “I’d love to know for sure.”
The slightest hint of BJ’s breath hits Hawkeye’s face. It’s warm, if he isn’t just imagining it. If he isn’t imagining it, he can smell BJ’s shampoo in his hair behind his ear, and the underlying sensation of sandalwood and linen and warm afternoons on bike rides along the coast that’s just BJ, all BJ.
“You smell like the theater just before the curtains go up,” BJ says. “Like anticipation. I’m trying– I want– I can’t fucking anticipate you, Hawkeye.”
They breathe. They sway. Hawkeye’s heart pounds. With each beat he changes what he’s about to say until he does it, he just makes himself do it.
“Anticipate this,” Hawkeye says softly.
He tilts his head ever so slightly and leans up ever so slightly and places his lips against BJ’s and lets himself love it for one glorious second, telling himself to take a mental snapshot of this moment as it’s the last one he’s ever going to have before his life comes crumbling down around him, as if it hasn’t already. As if he’s not already standing amongst the ruins.
Except when he steels himself and pulls away, BJ chases after him.
“Oh, no, no, no, no,” Hawkeye says. “You don’t want this.”
“How do you know what I want?”
He makes a good point.
“Then let me rephrase. You can’t want this.”
“So?”
“So, it’s gonna tear you up inside.”
“Let it.”
“ I’m gonna tear you up inside.”
“No,” BJ says.
“No?”
“You couldn’t. It’s not possible.”
“‘Not Possible’ is my middle name. Nothing is not– nothing is impossible.”
BJ combs a lock of hair behind Hawkeye’s ear and holds his cheek in his hand.
“Can’t you forget about back home for a minute?”
“I–? Can you forget about it?”
“I–” BJ finally seems to realize how ridiculous he’s being. His shoulders tighten where before he’d been so relaxed it was almost unnatural. “I’m not myself when I’m here. Or I’m more myself than I ever was. Hawkeye,” he says, and stares him right in the eye.
“BJ.”
“Ask me what I want.”
“Beej–”
“Please,” BJ implores him. He begs. He pleads. Hawkeye gives in because more than anything in the world he loves giving in to BJ.
“What do you want?”
“From you?”
“In all the world. Or just in this moment, I can’t remember.”
“You,” BJ says.
Hawkeye’s heart stops, or accelerates, or leaps out of his chest. Even though he knew BJ was going to say that he still feels like he’s been hit by a freight train.
“Oh.”
BJ is wearing too serious of an expression now. It makes Hawkeye wary.
BJ says, “I feel like I’ve known you for a million years. I want to know you for a million more. But also every day is like the first day of my life. When you touch me I feel alive.”
“Well,” Hawkeye says. “They do tell me I’m a life-giver.”
Now half of BJ’s mouth turns up in a smile and he looks just like himself again. It’s blinding; it’s Hawkeye’s favorite type of blindness.
“Do it, then,” BJ says. “Save a little life.”
You can be blind drunk, in a blind rage, blind panic, snow blind, color blind, or blinded by the light, but Hawkeye is staring straight into the center of the sun and he is in love with it.
When BJ kisses him, for the first time in his life Hawkeye doesn’t know who he is, he’s nowhere besides in the kiss. BJ tastes like nothing besides BJ, besides trying so hard to be perfect that you don’t even notice when you’ve overshot and besides loving people so completely that whole parts of you come detached when they’re not around. Hawkeye can’t get enough of it, enough of him.
Both their lips are parted, both their hands are in the other’s hair, Hawkeye’s taking in big breaths of BJ’s breath and tasting his soft moans and feeling alive and awake and in a trance and in a dream and swimming in a giant cup of coffee at Tom’s on 112th and it’s BJ and it’s him and it’s him and it’s BJ and it’s them.
Eventually they have to pause, take a breath, regroup. BJ’s lips are beautiful like that, pink and soft with the evidence that they just had Hawkeye all over them, and his irises have all but disappeared into the dilated black of his pupils. Still got it, Hawkeye thinks in the back of his mind while he plans all the places he can leave a mark.
When Hawkeye has returned to his senses, the radio comes back into focus like it had been tuned to static all this time. He and BJ are swaying again while Dick Powell croons that they only have eyes for each other. Maybe they do and maybe they don’t. But BJ does have eyes for him, even if not for him alone, and either way Hawkeye has what he wants, his arms around BJ as they move in the quiet, in the night, in the all-night diner. Into BJ’s shoulder Hawkeye can dream of corned-beef hash and hot coffee with cream and against BJ’s shoulder all the world is this moment.
“I love you, Hawkeye.”
BJ kisses into his hair. He doesn’t say anything. If that’s the last word, BJ can have it.