Chapter Text
Hawkeye wakes to the phone ringing. His back hurts, as does his neck and head and just about every other part of him. It’s broad daylight and he’s looking at a sideways view of his living room. His hand hangs off the couch and a ratty old blanket is draped over him. Strange, he doesn’t remember putting it there.
He returns to his senses slowly and woefully. God, he’s hungover. It is a Wednesday, after all. The bottle and glass from the night before are stood on the coffee table away from him. The last dregs of whiskey cast a golden shadow on the wood. Hawkeye knows it must have been his dad who put them there after he passed out. The phone keeps ringing, clattering around his brain painfully. He pulls a cushion over his ears and tries to ignore it.
“Ben!” his father’s voice calls from somewhere else in the house. It rattles through the wood. “Will you get that?”
Hawkeye sits up and inhales deeply as he does. He gets up with a groan, yawning as he shuffles into the kitchen where the receiver is. He rubs his eyes and takes it off the hook, presses it to his ear.
“Pierce household,” he says. Even he’s surprised at how rough his voice sounds. “Pierce the younger speaking, how can I help you?” His mouth is dry and he feels himself pull a face. It tastes as if something died in there.
Whoever is on the other end is silent. Hawkeye wonders if there’s such a thing as going deaf as well as blind from drink.
He yawns again. “Have you made a phone call before? This is when you speak.”
“Hawkeye?” whoever says, tentatively.
He recognises their voice immediately. It’s been a couple of years since he heard it in person but he hears it every single night, in every dream and every memory he replays. He makes himself remember it – he never wants to forget his voice. He’s already forgotten his mother’s and he doesn’t want to lose something like that again. “BJ,” he answers weakly. His voice sounds far away.
“I-” BJ says – BJ, he thinks, repeats to himself – “Uh, how are you?”
It’s a big question to begin with. The short answer is, not great. The correct answer is, better, which invites the long answer. The long answer is that he’s a borderline alcoholic (if one is very generous with the parameters of ‘borderline’), lives for his work and his father, and hasn’t had a night’s sleep without a nightmare in at least six months, but at least that’s better than where he was almost a year ago. He checks the calendar. Eleven months to the day, coincidentally, since his dad had to bodily drag him into a car and drive him to the hospital to get his stomach pumped after he took all his sleeping pills and antidepressants at once. It’s all relative.
“Hawk, you there?” BJ prompts.
“I’m alright,” he says quickly, realising he had been standing at the phone with his mouth open. “How- how are you?”
“Okay,” he replies. Hawkeye is pretty sure he’s lying, but that’s hardly unusual for BJ. He sounds strange. “How’s your dad?”
Hawkeye clears his throat. “Yeah, he’s good. Better than me, probably.”
BJ makes a little noise of affirmation.
He feels like something is wrong. However much Hawkeye would like to believe BJ would call him out of the blue for a simple stilted catch-up, they haven’t spoken in a long time. Not since Hawkeye fell off the deep end and stopped writing back. BJ seemed to give up a little after that. “You sure you’re okay?”
BJ doesn’t reply. Something is definitely wrong. Worry, familiar, settles in his gut. He hasn’t felt it this strongly since Korea.
“Beej?” he gently prompts.
“Peg left,” BJ says simply.
Hawkeye is almost speechless. Enough has changed for himself since the war that it doesn’t seem so much an impossibility as it had years ago, but it surprises him nonetheless. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. There isn’t much else to say.
“I’ve been living in the beach house,” he says before he hesitates. “I’m sorry, Hawk, I don’t know why I called.” He sounds unsure, like he’s about to call the whole thing off. It’s the last thing Hawkeye wants.
“No, no- Beej, it’s alright,” he reassures. “How are you holding up?”
He hears BJ let out a shaky breath. Relief almost, or calming himself. His heart aches for him. He wishes he could see him. Hawkeye could always get more answers from the way BJ looked than from what he said. “I don’t know,” he replies. “I’m just- I guess it isn’t that I didn’t see it coming but…I thought this was something people like us just ignore.”
Hawkeye wants to ask. He wonders if he should – BJ sounds like he’ll hang up at any moment, and Hawkeye doesn’t want to push him over the edge. Still, he isn’t sure what else there is to do. “What was?”
“She had an affair while I was away,” BJ replies.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. He feels a little spark of anger, something Peg probably doesn’t deserve given what BJ had done with Carrie Donovan, but he can’t help it. He’s his best friend.
“That’s not why she left. I would have forgiven her for that,” he continues. “But this – I don’t feel like there’s anything to forgive in the first place.”
Hawkeye isn’t following. “BJ, you still haven’t told me anything.”
He hears BJ shuffle a little on the other end. He pictures him leant against the wall. “She had an affair with…with another woman.”
He hadn’t expected that. Huh. It immediately douses his anger. He understands her pain all too intimately to be angry.
“It ended while we were still in Korea,” BJ continues. “But she said that she felt like she was living a lie. That she couldn’t do it anymore. Pretend.”
“I’m sorry, BJ,” he says again. He feels like a broken record.
BJ sighs. “I just- we have a daughter, Hawkeye, isn’t that supposed to be enough?”
Hawkeye shifts his weight on his feet. “Would it be enough for you?”
“It was,” BJ says vaguely and before Hawkeye can dwell on what that could mean, he moves on. “She’s taken Erin, for now, but she wants to work out how we can still raise her between us. Joint custody, I guess, but she doesn’t even want a divorce, at least on paper.”
“Is that what you want?” he asks.
“I mean, I get it. It’s safer for her to not,” he replies. “Plus it’s easier with Erin, I think. No lawyers.” He pauses again and Hawkeye can picture him biting his cheek. “Besides, it’s not like I’ll be held back by still being married. I always thought Peg was the only girl for me.”
“Yeah,” Hawkeye says, unsure of what to tell BJ.
There’s a beat of silence, something unspoken in the air between them. “I don’t know why I’m calling you, Hawkeye, I’m sorry. I just-” he cuts himself off. “She’s been gone a week and I just feel so useless. Jesus, I don’t even know how to use our washer.”
“Don’t apologise,” he replies quickly, reassuring. A beat. He’s suddenly hit by how much he misses him. “I’m glad you called,” he says earnestly.
“Really?” BJ sounds surprised. It hurts to think BJ could ever think he wouldn’t be.
“Of course, you moron.” A slight smile pulls at his lips.
“I’m sorry I’m not on better form,” he says, voice a little lighter than it has been. “Seems Peg took my sense of humour when she packed.”
It isn’t all that funny, but Hawkeye laughs because it’s BJ. “Beej,” he says. “I’ve missed you,” he adds, simply because he feels he owes it to BJ.
BJ hesitates. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“Like a limb.” He knows BJ is referring to his radio silence. “I’m sorry I stopped writing. I wasn’t really rowing with both oars at the time, if you catch my drift.”
“You okay?” he asks. He sounds so gentle as he does that Hawkeye’s heart clenches at it.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah,” he replies. It could be worse. “Look, I’ll tell you about it another time.” It isn’t really fair on BJ to put it all on him now.
“Another time,” BJ echoes, agreeing, like he’ll hold him to it. The promise of reconnection. “I miss you too, by the way,” he adds.
Hawkeye nods to himself. It’s good to hear. Sometimes he had wondered, and from the way BJ reacted to him saying it, he supposes BJ must have doubted it too. He swallows thickly. “Listen, I have work soon,” he lies.
“Oh,” BJ says, sounding disappointed, and Hawkeye immediately feels a little guilty for lying and almost giddy that BJ wants to talk to him more.
“Call me if you need anything,” he adds, sincerely. “I mean it, BJ.”
“Got it.”
He clenches his hand around the phone. “See ya, Beej.”
“Bye, Hawk,” BJ says softly.
Hawkeye hangs up. He leans against the wall, drops his head back to rest against it. He remembers his hangover and winces.
Although Hawkeye is prone to ignoring his emotions or expressing them poorly, he does see himself as relatively self-aware – which is why he has known about how he feels about BJ for years. He knows that he’s been bound to BJ since they first met at that ramshackle airport. He knows that he’s never had a better friend in all his life. He knows – unequivocally, absolutely, more than he knows anything else – that he loves him.
If he ever grows up, ever finds someone new to adore, they’ll have to carve out a new space within him. Everything he already has belongs to BJ. BJ is it for Hawkeye. He wonders if Peg was it for BJ. The thought is distressing, to say the least.
He has never felt the distance between them so keenly.
“Who was it?” his dad asks as he enters the room.
Hawkeye jumps out of his thoughts. “Huh?”
“Phone,” Daniel says, making a little phone gesture with his hand. “Who?”
“BJ,” he replies. Now he says it out loud, he almost can’t believe it.
Daniel freezes – Hawkeye recognises the move from the past few years when he thinks one wrong move could push Hawkeye in the wrong direction. “Oh?” he asks, very carefully.
“He’s, um,” he considers his words. “He’s not doing so good. Peg left him.”
“Oh dear,” Daniel replies. He is obviously unsure of how to react.
Hawkeye makes a noise of agreement. He also feels a little thrown off.
“When are you going, then?” he asks.
“What?” The question surprises him.
“To California,” Daniel elaborates, like that was what Hawkeye was stuck on.
“Who said I was?”
Daniel tsks. “Do you want to?”
More than anything, Hawkeye thinks. “Yes.”
His dad gives him a look of well, there you go.
“I haven’t seen him in six years,” Hawkeye says. “What right do I have to show up out of nowhere?”
“You’re his best friend,” he reasons. “He’s not going to kick you out, from what you’ve said about him.”
That’s true, he supposes. BJ is loyal and Hawkeye thinks he cares deeper than he realises. He’d be sporting, at least. “I guess.”
Daniel nods. He grins. “Besides, if you’re not going to spontaneously fly three-thousand miles for the person you love, then when are you?”
Hawkeye feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. He thought he’d been so careful over the years.
Daniel rolls his eyes at his reaction but looks at him compassionately. “Ben,” he says. “I know you.” It’s kind. God, it’s so kind and Hawkeye feels – for the first time – seen, and – not for the first time – deeply loved by his father. “Nothing’s ever going to change the way I feel about you.”
“Thank you, dad,” he says hoarsely, looking to his feet. He picks at the pills on his knitted sweater. It’s probably older than him – his mom had made it for his dad, years ago.
“So when are you going?” Daniel asks again.
“You trying to get rid of me?”
Daniel smiles. “Never.”
Hawkeye smiles back, briefly before it falls back off his face. “I don’t know. What about work?”
He waves him off. “This has only been a family affair for a few months, Ben,” he says. “While I’ll miss you, I can manage.”
Any other occasion, Hawkeye thinks that would make him feel inadequate, almost. This time it’s a reassurance.
“For however long you need,” Daniel adds.
Hawkeye can tell he’s implying that this trip will be more than just a long weekend. Hawkeye knows he’ll stay for months if BJ wants him to. The big question is if BJ wants him to. He hopes, more than anything, that he does. He nods.
Daniel claps his hands together – a man with the intent of getting something done. “Come on, I’ve got all morning. Let’s get you a flight.”
*
A month or so before Peg left – or he supposes, more accurately, he left, seeing as he left the family home to head to the beach house – she bought him the husk of a motorcycle to restore. It’s the same model his uncle used to drive, an old green Triumph. It still feels familiar underneath his hands.
His dad hated that uncle, but BJ used to sneak out to visit. He used to catch the bus into the city and waste all his pocket money in seeing him. He had this nice little apartment in San Francisco which he shared with an artist friend of his. BJ often felt more at home there than he did in his house.
After he had grown up, BJ knew why his father hated him. That the man his uncle shared that apartment with wasn’t only a friend. He’d worked that one out when he was 16 and that uncle died. His family barred his friend from the funeral.
BJ wonders if his uncle is one of the reasons he reacted so well to Peg. Because he did, he thinks – he played the good guy, didn’t fight with her and comforted her. His subsequent upset is more his mourning the loss of his family and the life he knew than any anger or hurt over Peg herself.
Still, it threw him off, he thinks as he investigates the greased and oily engine underside. He grew up being told that he was so much like his father. Things like this don’t happen to men like his father.
BJ remembers Sidney once mentioning something about defence mechanisms, about how understanding thoughts and feelings leads to contentment. He thinks that it might be a load of shit because he’s felt far better since he’s decided not to deconstruct everything. Most of it is obvious – he knows he’s sad about Peg leaving, misses her presence, but not quite in the way a husband should probably miss his wife. He’s more saddened by the idea of no longer living in the same house as Erin.
There’s also some part of him that’s confused. He thought, perhaps, that family is supposed to come first. That it can stay together, no matter what. If Peg can just leave that, simply cannot keep pretending, then he’s wrong, then-
He stops thinking about it.
A part of him always thought that if Peg left it would be his fault. BJ thinks she knew that his heart wasn’t ever really at home anymore. It was in Korea, perhaps, or maybe scattered throughout the country – in Missouri, in Boston, in Maine. Maine most of all. BJ used to feel guilty about it. He still does. The crux of it was that he missed Hawkeye from California more than he missed Peg from Korea. What kind of husband does that make him?
BJ sighs as he finds the culprit, wipes oil from his fingers on his pink Henley and rummages for a new O ring for the strainer in his box of spare parts. He finds it and fits it.
He isn’t too sure why he called Hawkeye. He just seemed like the only one he could talk to. Everyone he knows in California is his and Peg’s friend, not just his. He doesn’t want to begrudge her for that, but it’s difficult to talk about when he can’t say why she left. Hawkeye feels safe. For some reason, he feels like he can tell Hawkeye about Peg and it not matter. Hawkeye wouldn’t look down on it.
He had regretted calling him right away. As soon as he heard his voice he’d blanched. Then he’d spoken, and they talked, and while it felt like so much was unsaid between them all the regret he had dissipated. He’s thought about the conversation ever since, every hour of each day that has passed. BJ is unsure if it would be too soon to call him again.
BJ wonders how he is – how he really is, how he’d hinted. He wonders if a better friend would have pushed him, made him answer. Maybe a better friend would have kept writing, no matter what, would have called sooner or even crossed the country to visit him.
No use feeling bad about something he can’t change, he tells himself. He feels bad anyway. He rewires the spark plug.
BJ’s taken a few days off work. He has the vacation time saved up and it’s not like he doesn’t plan to go into practice soon enough anyway. He had already been cutting back days a little while he started getting paperwork in order.
Maybe Peg bought him the bike because she knew he’d need a project. She always did know him so well. He’s been in the garage all day, disassembling and reassembling the engine with new, unworn parts. Soon enough it’ll be a completely new bike, like some motorised ship of Theseus. BJ thinks there’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but there’s a reason he’s a doctor and not a writer.
The evening has drawn in, slightly cooler in the air with the garage door open. It’s quiet – it always seems quiet these days – and the lights in there make it difficult to see outside into the dark. BJ waves off a moth and realises it may be a bit later than he had previously thought.
He is loosely aware of an engine running, but it’s hardly unusual. It gets closer and closer until it sputters to a stop. BJ realises it sounds almost like it’s outside but he still can’t really see out. He wonders if it’s Peg, come to collect a couple more things. Maybe Erin left a toy the last time she was here. He doesn’t move – she still has a key, she can let herself in.
BJ continues tweaking the engine. He hears footsteps and doesn’t even look up.
“Hey, stranger,” a voice that is decidedly not Peg says and God.
He jumps to attention. There, lit by the yellowing light of his garage against the dark of the night like some American realism painting that BJ never got the hype about, is Hawkeye. A bag sits at his feet. Suddenly, he understands it.
Despite being the apparition on his doorstep, Hawkeye looks like he’s seen a ghost. BJ thinks he must look much the same. He almost expects Hawkeye to dissipate in front of him. He wonders if he’s finally cracked, if he’s imagining it.
He’s on his feet before he even realises he’s doing it. He feels heavy on them like the concrete floor is harder than usual. Hawkeye is moving too, and they meet halfway.
BJ wraps his arms around him like the tighter he holds him the more likely he is to finally believe that he’s there. Hawkeye is much the same; the press of his arms and his body against BJ’s engulfs him. He pulls him in, holds him tight like he needs every fibre, every atom of his being to know he’s there. An intense feeling of relief and weakness washes over him and for a brief, wonderful moment BJ isn’t sure where he ends and Hawkeye begins.
Hawkeye pulls back and holds him at arms-length to look at him. BJ almost blushes under his gaze. He’s happy, BJ can see it plainly. He was worried that, if he ever went to see Hawkeye or invited him over, he wouldn’t be. BJ finds himself grinning right back.
“You kept the moustache,” Hawkeye comments.
“Souvenir,” he replies. It’s not quite true. “My one rebellion,” he says, which is closer to the truth, much like it had been in Korea. Rebelling against what, this time, he isn’t so sure. He’d even shaved it off when he first got back.
Hawkeye keeps watching him. BJ feels almost laid bare under his regard.
He clears his throat. “Come on,” BJ says, nodding towards the door that leads into the house. “I’ll get you a beer. Or a gin, for old time’s sake.”
“Homemade?” Hawkeye asks, smiling, and takes a few steps back to go collect his bag.
“Never.” BJ rushes past him to pick it up for him. “I’ve got it,” he says. One of the things he already misses about Peg is doing things for her.
Hawkeye laughs at him but doesn’t stop him. “You’ve never been so gracious,” he says.
“Don’t worry,” he replies, “as soon as I wake up I’ll be back to my usual unaccommodating self.”
Hawkeye looks at him warmly. The bag is heavy. Enough for a stay longer than just the weekend, and it makes BJ’s heart sing. “How long are you staying?”
He shrugs. “I hadn’t got that far.”
BJ smiles at him and takes him inside. He watches Hawkeye look around as he leads him in and suddenly, for the first time, feels somewhat houseproud. He sees him look over the walls that he painted, the doors he put on. Hawkeye looks like he belongs there.
“I’m afraid I haven’t gotten a hotel room or anything,” he says. “Don’t suppose you could put up with me for a few days?”
“I’m sure I’ll manage,” BJ replies. “You can sleep in Erin’s room if you don’t mind the twin bed.”
Hawkeye leans back against the wall. “I’ve been sleeping on a twin bed since I got back,” he says. “I was expecting a couch, so it’s a step up. If that’s alright with you.”
BJ is touched that Hawkeye thinks it’ll bother him. “I offered, didn’t I?” he says. “If Erin stays over while you’re here you might have to ship out.”
“Of course.” Hawkeye agrees.
They take Hawk’s stuff upstairs. BJ changes the sheets and fiddles with Erin’s room a little before they head back down to the kitchen. The radio crackles quietly in the background as he pours two generous measures of gin. He has plenty, anyway. BJ never used to spend this much on booze.
They toast and drink. Their conversation is light and easy, talking excessively about nothing at all and some great weight lifts off BJ’s shoulders. He feels himself opening up. Hawkeye hasn’t changed, really. BJ wonders if he has. He certainly feels like it, but then again, maybe Hawkeye thinks the same about him. Regardless, he’s glad to see him, glad that they fit together like they always had.
BJ watches him speak, how animated he is. He feels more at home than he has in nearly five years and he realises just how much he missed him. He knew, of course, that he did. Like a limb, he remembers Hawkeye saying on the phone. Now that it’s gone, he realises just how much weight he was carrying.
He keeps looking at him. Even when Hawkeye notices, he doesn’t look away.
Hawkeye stops rambling. “You okay?” he asks gently.
BJ nods. He’s more okay than he’s been in a long time. “I used to worry that if I were to see you again, it’d be like meeting a stranger.”
“Come on,” Hawkeye says, smiling. “We were never strangers.”
*
Erin’s room reminds Hawkeye a lot of his own in his father’s house. It’s quaint, the walls painted a light blue and the furniture a little on the small side. Unless Erin is truly her father’s daughter, he imagines that the bed might be slightly too large for her at the moment.
Hawkeye switches Erin’s nightlight on. It would be unfair, he thinks, to wake up in the night screaming as a guest in BJ’s house. He doesn’t want to do it. Not that he ever does, but this night especially.
Of course, his subconscious has other ideas.
It’s something vague and non-descript, like it usually is nowadays, like his imagination has gotten bored of him going out of his mind over it but still wants to scare him. There’s blood – there always is – and faceless soldiers and BJ and the taste of gunpowder on his lips even if he’s never tasted it-
“Hawk,” BJ’s voice interrupts firmly, loud but not a shout.
He startles up. BJ has his hands on his shoulders, gripping, anchoring him to reality. He missed this, he thinks for a moment before he dismisses it – what an awful thing to long for. BJ keeps holding him until his breathing evens out. He tries not to cry. He’s gotten good at that.
“Okay?” BJ prompts gently.
He nods. “Sorry I woke you.”
“It’s fine,” he replies. “God knows I’ve had my fair share of bad dreams.”
Hawkeye imagines BJ waking up alone to an empty house, having to lie there quietly and calm himself down. At least Hawk had his dad to wake him, hold him still and reassure him until he came back to himself. His heart clenches.
“You need anything?” BJ asks gently. “Water?”
BJ looks at him with so much care, even after all this time, that Hawkeye feels his heart skip. He almost wishes he could ask BJ to stay. He can’t, though, knows it would be overstepping. He shakes his head. “I’m alright,” he says. “Go back to bed.”
BJ nods but he hesitates for a moment. Then he stands, squeezes Hawk’s shoulder as he leaves and closes the door gently behind him. Hawkeye tries to go back to sleep. Eventually, he manages it, listening to the sound of waves crashing in the distance.
*
Hawkeye settles more easily into BJ’s little wooden house near the ocean than he did into Crabapple Cove when he came back. It’s an odd thought.
Crabapple Cove is supposed to be home. It still is, to the Hawkeye who existed a few years ago, to the one at medical school, to the one in Korea who needed something to think about other than the war.
Seeing BJ again was like coming home, the way it was actually supposed to feel. It felt more like coming home than actually going home did. As he lies in Erin’s bed the next morning, staring up at the little painted stars on her ceiling, he almost feels bad for his father. He had been so glad to have his son home, but Hawkeye never felt like he came home at all.
Hawkeye feels like he could, if he lets himself, mope around BJ’s house as well as he does his own. But he cannot – like his work, other people rely on him. Here, BJ could rely on him, he wants BJ to rely on him. He wants to help him keep the house in order, learn how to use the washer, make him breakfast so he doesn’t have to go to work running on just a slice of toast.
Hawkeye never thought he’d be a homebody. Maybe he isn’t, but for a little while, it might be nice.
He gets up. He pulls on his old red robe, one of the only things he didn’t discard after Korea, and heads downstairs. BJ isn’t there. Hawkeye always felt an odd sense of disconnect standing in another person’s kitchen on his own, like it was an intimacy that hadn’t quite been granted. He doesn’t feel it here.
Fumbling around through the drawers and cupboards to find pans and food, he eventually finds some eggs and a loaf of sliced bread that is likely on its way out. Hawkeye takes out four slices, inspects them for mould before he places them in the toaster and begins frying the eggs.
He hums under his breath as he does it.
“If I knew you’d cook for me, I’d have called you sooner,” BJ says from behind him.
Hawkeye looks over his shoulder. BJ stands in the doorway, smiling, in that familiar blue robe that was always just slightly too short. It’s open and under it he wears a pale t-shirt and boxers. Hawkeye turns back to the eggs quickly before he gets a chance to stare. That might be a low point for him – why would he stare at that? “It’s no powdered eggs.”
“More’s the pity,” BJ says, coming up behind him to look in the pan. “I didn’t know I had eggs.”
Hawkeye nudges him away with his elbow. “No backseat frying,” he says. “You don’t have much in. What have you been eating?”
BJ shrugs. “Erin’s cereal, mostly.” He holds up a box – Sugar Rice Crinkles. There’s this awful image of a clown on the front.
He pulls a face. “No wonder you’re miserable, that’s hideous,” he says.
BJ laughs and puts it down.
Hawkeye leans over to turn the clown against the wall. BJ stays standing, watching him cook. He’s hovering. “If you want to help, you could put some plates out.”
BJ does, and they settle down for breakfast. Hawkeye gives BJ the least burnt pieces of toast and puts the eggs on top of them. Hawkeye sits opposite BJ and they start to eat together, just like old times.
“Thanks, Hawk,” BJ says. “I appreciate it.”
“You better,” he replies, but smiles at BJ’s words. “I don’t cook for just anyone.”
“Do you cook often?” BJ asks, a little abruptly.
“I don’t think eggs and toast counts as cooking,” he replies.
BJ rolls his eyes. “Seriously,” he says, and sounds it. It almost takes Hawkeye by surprise, but he gets it – the want to know things, little things, everyday things, about BJ is so great. The things that he’s missed the last few years.
He shrugs. “Sometimes,” he replies. “I never used to when I was a kid. I only really cared about helping with food at all when mom was getting us ready for Passover. I think I just liked eating bread.” Hawkeye takes a bite of his toast as if to demonstrate. “I don’t really remember it all that well, though. After she died, my dad didn’t really know what to do, so we kind of broke the tradition.”
Hawkeye can see BJ listening intently. It makes him feel a little soft.
“I only really started after I got back,” he says. “Quite often I…” Didn’t have the energy to, or the appetite, he thinks, but he isn’t ready to lump that on BJ yet. “I didn’t have the time,” he says instead. “But I thought – I never want to eat anything as bad as the dreck they served in the Mess Tent again.”
“Nothing could be as bad as that,” BJ comments wryly.
He smiles. “You haven’t tried my meatloaf.”
BJ grins back. “Oh yeah?”
“It’ll really put hair on your chest. And just about anywhere else,” he jokes. “Anyway, I started after that. Just the basics, I’m not thinking of a change in career.”
BJ polishes up his food. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think you could open a diner.”
“Only if you waitress,” Hawkeye replies.
BJ seems to weigh this up. “I don’t know, I don’t think I’d suit the uniform.”
“I’m not so sure,” he says, not thinking about it too much. He doesn’t need that.
“I’d scare off the customers.”
“Not if my food did it first.”
BJ clears up after them. Hawkeye isn’t too used to an automatic, give-and-take relationship. At home, because Hawkeye tends to get up so much later than his father, they tend to be out of sync for most of the day and each take care of themselves. He likes it but tries not to consider it for too long – he reminds himself he’s not here to pretend there’s something more going on. He’s here to help BJ.
“We’re going grocery shopping,” he decides, heading over to lean against the counter near BJ.
BJ looks up from the dishes he’s washing. “Are we?”
He puts his hands on his hips. “You haven’t got any food.”
“Peg used to do the shopping,” he replies. It doesn’t seem unhappy, just a statement of fact.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t do it,” Hawkeye comments logically.
BJ scrubs at a knife with slightly too much vigour. “I don’t know what to get.”
“So you’re just going to live off cereal?” he asks. “I thought you said you and Peg had an equal relationship.”
BJ shoots him a look.
He smiles. “I’m just teasing,” he replies. “We’ll go today. You’re not working, right?”
“Right,” BJ says as he puts everything to dry on the rack.
“Okay, then,” Hawkeye says. “Get dressed and then we’ll go.” He puts his hands on BJ to usher him out the room, the touch familiar and friendly. “Yip yip.”
They head up the stairs, brush their teeth next to each other, just like how they used to when they were saving water in camp. There’s no water to save this time.
“You still brush your teeth the same way,” BJ comments.
Hawkeye tries not to smile at how BJ remembers that, nor at the small flare of familiar, warm and well-worn annoyance at the dig. They each head back to different rooms as they get dressed before heading back out again. Hawkeye feels like it’s the morning after a slumber party – he doesn’t feel quite rested and he buzzes with a sort of excited energy as he waits for BJ by the door.
He’s excited to go grocery shopping. The idea almost disgusts him. The novelty of grocery shopping had worn off about two weeks after he got back from Korea.
BJ brushes past him, unlocking the door and walking to the car. Hawkeye follows. He watches BJ hesitate on the passenger side of the car for a second, like he’s about to open it for him, but he doesn’t. Hawkeye almost wishes he did if just to make fun of him for it.
In the car, BJ hums along to the radio as they drive. Hawkeye thinks it’s Elvis Presley playing, but he’s been fairly out of the loop on popular culture lately. He taps the rhythm on his thigh and listens to BJ’s humming.
Hawkeye knew how much he missed BJ, but he’s still a little surprised at all the small things he hadn’t even thought of before.
The drive isn’t long. He thinks they probably could have walked.
As they head out of the car and into the store, he grabs a cart and, pushing it inside, steps up and leans over it so he glides on it a little.
BJ grabs him before he goes far, this scolding look on his face. “You’re as bad as Erin.”
Hawkeye grins.
They traipse around the store, Hawkeye chucking in things like pasta and rice and onions and BJ dropping in cereal and cookies. He almost rolls his eyes – even if Hawkeye behaves like a child, BJ seems to eat like one. They reach the canned goods aisle. “Do you like soup?” he asks.
“Do I like soup?” BJ repeats like he can’t quite believe what he’s asking. “Who doesn’t like soup? All soup?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t when I was a kid,” he says, putting a few different cans into the cart.
“I’m not a kid,” BJ says.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Hawkeye replies.
BJ shoves him playfully with his shoulder.
Hawkeye stumbles but still laughs. “Careful!” he cries as he almost collides with the shelving. He rolls the cart’s wheel over BJ’s foot.
He pulls his foot back quickly and stomps, mock-glaring. “Now who’s being childish?”
Hawkeye feigns innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. That was an accident.”
The rest of the trip goes much like that. It’s a wonder they don’t break anything. Hawkeye feels lighter than he has in years and whenever BJ smiles he feels like he glows.