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It’s a little nauseating what BJ has in his life because of Charles Emerson Winchester III. The thought jolts him out of the half-sleepy state he was in as he lounged on the couch, entranced by the steady beating of the waves just beyond the back porch and the moonlight filtering through the gauzy curtains. BJ had been right, all those years ago, when he’d made sweeping declarations about the stunning beauty of this property out in Stinson Beach, falling short of calling it Eden. Without Charles’ loan, he wouldn’t have been able to call this place his own. All those awful errands he had been forced to run, he hates to admit, had been worth it. If anything, BJ surely would have paid more than $200 on motel fees in the five months he’s been living here.
Moving out was a change, to be sure. For one, BJ has had to get better at a lot of different things. Cooking his own food, putting his socks in the laundry bin, making sure Erin’s playroom doesn’t always look like a disaster, all things that Peg had somehow managed on her own. (BJ, with a pang of guilt, realized not long after he’d taken residence in Stinson Beach just how many things he hadn’t known needed doing.) It helps that he’s not doing it entirely by himself, though.
Hawkeye moved out west four months ago. He had come to try and get BJ back on his feet in the wake of the separation. He’s only been back to Maine to help his father pack his things for shipping. The large leather armchair Hawkeye has perched himself on is neither a Crabapple Cove import nor a relic of a bygone marriage, like half the things in this house are. They’d picked it out together at this little secondhand store in the city, only a few weeks after Hawkeye decided to stay. The older clerk had asked, half-joking, which of their wives had sent them to pick out furniture. Hawkeye said something about a bachelor pad and, when her back was turned, had shared with BJ such a lascivious look along with a comment about breaking it in that BJ turned scarlet.
Even now, watching how Hawk has sunken into the plush, worn cushions stokes the slow-burning arousal that BJ has felt all day. He uses the wide arms of the chair as a makeshift desk, his papers stacked on top of at least four thick magazines to give him a stable base. The warm glow of the standing lamp casts long shadows of his face onto the paper. Hawk is in total ownership of this space, secure and comfortable.
There’s something else that BJ has been forced to improve in: asking for what he wants.
“Come to bed,” he says.
Hawk looks up. His gaze focuses on the clock over BJ’s shoulder, than back to him. “It’s barely nine-thirty, Beej. I know we’re getting old, but I’ve still got a couple of hours left in me.”
BJ feels the heat flare again at that “we.” The two of them growing old together was a far-flung fantasy not half a year ago; now, it’s an inevitability. He imagines, for a moment, a Hawkeye whose salt-and-pepper hair has turned white like his father’s, with deep laugh lines put there by BJ’s antics, still sitting in that armchair. He practically swoons. He gets up from the couch and walks to stand in front of Hawkeye. The pad of his index finger trails in lazy figure-eights around Hawk’s knuckles. “I’ll find a way to tire you out. Come to bed.”
“Oh, that sort of bed,” Hawkeye grins. “In a little bit, okay? I’ve gotta finish these write-ups.”
BJ glances down and sees the familiar scrawl filling in a typed sheet of questions. He peels up the first page, then the second to find duplicates of the same forms. Frustration tightens each sinew and tendon in BJ’s muscles. They’ve been working so many long hours lately that, for the first time since the dust of the move settled, neither of them have had any allowance for quality time. Couldn’t Hawk have done this earlier? He wants to spend hours entangling them together and not untwist himself until late tomorrow morning. Early tomorrow afternoon, if he can manage it. He wants to feel Hawkeye’s skin, his breath, his mouth, the weight of his eyes and his attention. He wants to start this minute, not when Hawkeye is done with his paperwork.
Softly, he lowers himself to his knees. His hand settles around Hawk’s thin ankle. Looking up through his lashes, he asks in his best Veronica Lake, “Are you sure I can’t persuade you?”
The shaky exhale through his nose betrays his arousal, but it’s mitigated by the pull of his faint eyebrows together. “You make a very tempting offer. But if I don’t get these evals in for the residents on time, it’ll be their grades that take the hit. Just give me thirty minutes.” BJ runs his tongue over his lips, then sticks the bottom one out in a pout. Hawk lets out another heavy breath. “Twenty. I promise. Will you wait for me?”
He hates when BJ starts on himself alone. Hawkeye is a man who makes love in its entirety. “I’m counting,” BJ warns.
He considers, for a moment, getting back up, but he doesn’t know where he’d go. In the bedroom, he’d risk Hawkeye becoming too absorbed in his work. Even the couch feels too far away from his lover with the haze of want clouding his mind. The armchair is too small for two grown adults, even ones who sit as close as they do, and he knows that taking residence on Hawk’s lap would only delay the completion of his work further. Besides, he looks so handsome in his leather chair. The warm brown, unique to this piece in their house, offsets the blue of his eyes in such a lovely way. It’s almost regal in his stateliness. Twenty minutes isn’t so long, he reasons, and Hawk asked him to wait.
“You’re gonna keep me company down there?” Hawk asks when it’s clear BJ has settled, resting his ass on the tops of his heels.
He just shrugs. He doesn’t think Hawk will understand his thought process, and he doesn’t know if his body will allow an explanation to eke past his lips anyways. “Sure.”
“Alright,” he replies, with a smile that makes BJ feel like there’s a joke he isn’t in on. BJ doesn’t want to admit to himself that there’s something intoxicating in the way Hawkeye peers down his nose at him, an equal headiness when he focuses back on his papers without a second thought to the man at his feet. It’s hard to tell if it’s embarrassment or arousal that colors BJ’s face; maybe it’s both.
Patience is not a virtue that BJ often practices. There was nothing he wanted to do more in childhood than to grow up. Being a kid felt vulnerable, uncomfortably so, even when it was the only thing he had known; he was always waiting for the next responsibility thrust upon him, the next reprimand when he fell short, the next time he got dragged by his arm with a white-knuckle grip to the woodshed. Growing up meant getting out. Korea made him feel the same way as his father’s house. In the 4077th, there was nothing he wasn’t waiting for: good food, good medicine, more bodies, no bodies, that little creased letter that sent him home. Once home, he found that the life he had always thought wanted produced in him that same insatiable restlessness. He had been waiting, maybe, for the other shoe to drop.
It comes as a surprise to BJ that he doesn’t mind being patient here, at Hawk’s feet. But then, there isn’t any place to get to. He is perfectly content in this home, with this man. The only expectation Hawkeye has of him is that he stays. A rare blankness settles over his mind like radio fuzz. He begins to notice a scratchiness against the downturned tops of his feet. The braided jute rug—a remnant of the house’s designation as a “weekend home” they haven’t gotten around to replacing—will surely leave deep divots in his knees, even through his jeans. A not-unpleasant ache has begun to spread through his quadriceps and his core muscles. Has it been long enough for that to be revealing of his age, or is it a testament to the leg strength he’s built on his daily runs? BJ isn’t sure if it’s been two, five, ten minutes.
The only sound in the room is the scratch of Hawk’s pen against his paper, save for their breathing and the distant sound of waves crashing. BJ can tell he’s writing long paragraphs. His mind drifts, picturing Hawkeye as an instructor. BJ used to watch him, the few times they had inexperienced doctors younger than them in their meatball OR. He’s so dedicated, so caring. He probably directs his students in a tone that’s equal parts firm and gentle, standing close behind them, watching every precise cut of their scalpel and threading of their needle. Hawkeye can hear him, following each light admonishment with steady praise, though only when the fellow has earned it.
The whine that escapes his lips is involuntary.
Hawk’s hand finds BJ’s hair immediately, and he begins carding through the parts BJ has let get long on the side of his head. His blunt nails scrape the shell of BJ’s ear and draw another mewl. “I know, sweetheart,” he says. “Just a few more minutes.”
BJ feels himself nod more than by conscious decision. His eyes have, at some point, fluttered shut. He sways, and allows Hawk’s hand still tangled in his hair to nudge him to rest on his knee. Without thinking, he rubs his cheek into the twill of Hawkeye’s slacks. The rough, repetitive texture tickles his mustache. Hawkeye clicks his tongue in a tsk. BJ swears it echoes through the room. He doesn’t know if it’s in sympathy or in pity. Both make his ears burn with a shame that has him burying his nose further up Hawk’s thigh.
Soon, Hawk’s hand leaves, tracing the line of his jaw as it retreats. BJ holds back a noise at the loss, though his breath audibly quivers. The rhythmic scoring of the ballpoint resumes. All BJ can think of now is how thankful he is to be pressed closer. He inhales and smells faint traces of their detergent on the fabric of Hawk’s pants. It’s a little dizzying, that reminder of their shared lives, but it’s not enough. He digs in closer and breathes in deeper. The warm, animalic musk of the leather chair mingles with Hawk’s own scent, like skin and sweat and something else that makes BJ salivate where he’s pressed close. He wants, desperately, to be even closer, to taste and smell and appreciate Hawkeye unimpeded by fabric. The supple leather, warm from Hawk’s body heat, has to serve as a facsimile for the skin that is just beyond his reach.
He pushes closer still, stretching his aching muscles as he extends himself toward the back of the couch. His back hurts, in a way that he knows won’t go away overnight. BJ is embarrassed at the idea of a lingering physical memory of tonight. This whole thing is embarrassing. It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t know why he stayed on the floor in the first place. No one asked him to. This is why he defers to Hawkeye start in these things. Most of the time, they end up featuring BJ as the stricter figure, and Hawk as the supplicant, or the seductress, or the waif. He feels all of a sudden silly and foolish. He shifts slightly, in a vague unease, and finds his cock hard where it presses against the flat plane of the chair’s base. It startles a puff of air from his lungs and a “hah” from his throat.
His jeans, he realizes for the first time, strain uncomfortably. He pushes himself against the chair, an attempt to both readjust and to find friction. His hands stay at his side. As he moves forward, his nose brushes where Hawkeye is undeniably just as hard in his slacks. BJ forgets his own body immediately. He nuzzles at Hawk’s arousal, annoyed again by the layers between them. The soft cartilage tip of his nose meets his mustache as he shoves himself closer. Hawkeye murmurs a curse somewhere above him. BJ uses all of his height to get a better angle. His forehead bumps against the lowest part of Hawk’s stomach when he begins to mouth at Hawk’s clothed cock. The thick fabric doesn’t dampen quickly, but with the work BJ is putting in, it gets there eventually. It feels, somehow, like testing a boundary that hasn’t been established. This isn’t sex, not really, but it lies just at the border. BJ was supposed to wait.
“Fuck,” Hawk breathes out, “Beej.”
It pulls BJ back into his original kneeling position. He’s more keenly aware, this time, of how it tightens his own jeans, how the denim pulls at the hair on his legs. His eyes blink open slowly. He doesn’t know what expression he wears, doesn’t think he could control it if he tried. Wetness—his own saliva, he realizes, transferred from where he soaked Hawk’s slacks—cools on his cheek, his chin.
Hawk looks incredible. His blown pupils almost swallow the stormy blue irises entirely. He must’ve run his hand through his own hair with how wildly it lays.
“You did good,” Hawk says, bringing his hand back to cup BJ’s cheek. BJ preens, ignoring how the praise quickens his pulse. “Very patient,” he adds, with two quick, patronizing pats. “I suppose you’ll want a treat now?”
It’s a joke. BJ’s fairly certain it’s a joke. He knows the way Hawkeye quirks the side of his mouth with just the barest hint of teeth means it’s a joke. That doesn’t stop a loud moan from ripping its way from his throat, almost canine in its howling ferocity.
Oh. He doesn’t want to—can’t—think about what that switch that just flicked on in his head means. Hawk realizes it, too. If it’s at all possible, his eyes get even bigger. Just as his lips part, BJ intercedes.
“Don’t.” His voice is scratchy from disuse. How long has it been, really? “Please. Just – let me.”
Hawkeye assesses him from his lofty position. BJ feels properly probed, though the only hand on him still rests gently on the side of his face. “Okay, BJ,” he says eventually. “I’ll let you.”
BJ can’t suppress the shiver that runs down his back. Hawkeye quickly takes off his belt, undoes his pants. BJ, who typically relishes in disrobing, keeps his hands at his side again. If Hawkeye needs help, he’ll ask. BJ thinks dimly that he wants him to ask. He wants to wait until he’s given the direction, the privilege of stripping Hawkeye bare. Hawk awkwardly raises his ass and shimmies out of both pants and underwear. He’s flushed a beautiful pink, just like the one that graces his cheekbones. Precome beads at his slit. BJ wants to devour him.
He takes Hawkeye’s slim, curved cock into his mouth and moans. This is what he had been craving. Everything else falls away; only Hawkeye surrounds him. Each sense is overtaken: he smells only skin and sweat; he hears only soft groans and shaky breaths; he finally, finally tastes Hawkeye. He allows that lovely radio fuzz to come back and lets his basest instincts take over. Hawkeye tangles his fingers in the longest part of BJ’s hair, just above his ears. He holds tightly, just on the lovely side of a pull.
“That’s it. Shit. That’s good. You’re so good.”
It forces another desperate, muffled groan from BJ. The vibration makes Hawk’s hands tighten. With each grunt of his name, BJ hardens further. He loves how badly Hawkeye wants him, needs him. He’d wait patiently all day if Hawkeye let him take him apart under his hands and his mouth and his cock at night.
He can tell Hawkeye is close. The weight of Hawkeye in his mouth is addictive, the taste even more so. He pulls off, just far enough to run the head along his lips. Hawk, always far too perceptive, lightly holds his cock steady at the base with another curse so BJ can have his way. BJ flattens his tongue and laps at the precome spilling down the head, the veins that he has memorized, his own drool that has run down to Hawk’s balls.
“Beej,” Hawk whines. “I’m -”
BJ takes the cock back between his lips, runs his tongue under the head, and Hawkeye comes. BJ pulls back quick, and watches Hawkeye watch it land on his waiting tongue. A spurt catches the bottom of his mustache. He licks it off, closes his mouth, and swallows the bitter taste down.
He’s being hauled into a ravenous kiss before he can breathe. It feels like a reward. Someone’s hand—it’s hard to tell where he ends and Hawkeye begins—finds its way down the front of his jeans. BJ stutters out something like a growl into Hawk’s mouth. He nips at Hawk’s perfect lips, right where he has a faint childhood scar. Hawkeye pulls away, just a little. His thumb swipes just under BJ’s cheekbone, and comes back white.
“Lick,” he orders.
BJ takes the finger into his mouth without thinking. The pad of the thumb presses gently on his tongue.
A vicious smile crosses Hawk’s lips. “Good boy.”
BJ’s whole body tenses. He thinks he might whimper when he comes, or something equally mortifying. He returns to himself with his head on Hawk’s shoulder and his nose buried in the juncture of his neck. It seems two people can fit on this chair, if they’ve both gone boneless.
“You still with me, Beej?”
BJ scoffs. He wishes, sometimes, that Hawkeye couldn’t read him as well as he can. It makes him too easy to tease. “You’re a real jerk sometimes.”
“Aw, come on.” Hawk wraps his arms around BJ’s midriff. “I liked it. You – you didn’t like it?”
BJ nips at the underside of Hawkeye’s jaw by way of an answer. He can’t explain what came over him. How is he supposed to talk about the fact that he had enjoyed the painful ache in his muscles as he watched Hawk sink deeper into the plush chair they’d bought together, that he had liked keeping watch at Hawk’s side, that he would fetch Hawk’s newspaper or his slippers or sleep at the foot of the bed if it kept him happy and sated? He doesn’t even know, really, how got there himself. He remembers, in the back of his mind, that he’s supposed to be getting better at talking about this sort of thing. “You’re not a jerk,” he grumbles. He wishes he could offer more.
“Why do I feel damned with faint praise?” Hawkeye asks. It’s a generous detour, one that BJ takes.
“You just got off, and now your ego needs to be stroked to completion, too?”
“What can I say? I have incredible stamina.”
The apples of his cheeks swell as he smiles. BJ peppers his whole face with kisses. He hopes, for now, they’ll be enough to hold the place of the gratefulness he can’t articulate. Hawk presses their lips together in a languid kiss.
“I don’t want to move,” Hawkeye murmurs into BJ’s mouth.
“We can’t sleep here. Your back,” BJ reminds him, though he’s also thinking of his own posture.
“I have a beautiful, doting man in my lap. That’s the cure for anything that ails me.”
BJ shies at the compliment. “I think I read that in ‘JAMA.’”
“I just had it peer-reviewed. You wanna see my data points?”
Hawk’s hand finds its way to the sensitive part of BJ’s stomach, just under his belly button, and runs through the dark trail of hair. BJ has never been more sure that tomorrow’s shopping list will include a second heating pad and two more bottles of aspirin.