Fic: Light Reading (2 of 3)
Aug. 26th, 2006 09:53 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
angryhaiku.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mash_slashTitle: Light Reading (2 of 3)
Author: Chase, aka Angryhaiku
Pairing: BJ/Hawkeye. Er, more or less.
Rating: 13+ (some smut, but mostly oblique)
Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I extracting income from, the characters or proprietary ideas herein.
Summary: Although pleased with the outcome of his letter theft, Hawkeye gets nervous when he gets a summons from Colonel Potter. (Wow, I suck at summaries.)
Previous segments: You can find Part 1 of Light Reading here, and the previous story, These Letters, here.
Here’s Part 2! I apologize for the long wait and for neglecting any comments you may have left on one of the previous stories or elsewhere. I’ve just moved (…into the BEST APARTMENT EVER!) and gone out of town for a couple of days, so the wait time shouldn’t be typical for the rest of the story. Thanks to Aalais, who beta'd this for me against her better judgement. Hope you enjoy it!
“Hawk. Oh, God, Hawkeye,” BJ whimpers, threading his hands through my hair. He’s trying to hold himself still, but his hips buck involuntarily, and I soothe the strong line of his right iliac crest with gentle strokes until his hands loosen a little and he’s not quite so close.
If Korea seemed before to be a kind of purgatory, now it’s a strange oscillation between heaven and hell. For the past six days – a tiny fraction of my time in Korea, but so much of that time has been so joyously spent it seems much longer – we have gone back and forth between the OR and the supply room, or the mess tent and the Swamp; between war, I suppose, and contentment.
He makes a tiny sound in his throat as I pull back and breathe hotly down the length of him. I love the sounds he makes – the need for silence muffles, but does not mute him in moments of passion, and it’s easy and edifying to catalogue them: BJ always makes that throaty grunt when he’s about to push me down and take control, or long sibilant nonsense means he’s about to come. It’s the former sound that he makes now, and as previously documented, he slides down the mountain of blankets to hook his elbow under my arm and turn me onto my back. He’s startlingly strong; he has no trouble at all lifting me.
Previously mundane activities, like simply eating in the mess tent or showering, have become so infused with lust and partnership as to be almost unrecognizable. We did everything together before, but now it’s easy to predict his thoughts before he can act on them. With anyone else, I think it would be stifling; with BJ, it’s a pleasure, albeit a dangerous-seeming one. I’m trying not to think about what happens when the war is over, when he goes back to California and I go to Maine and we see each other once a year, and then just send Christmas cards, and then he’s content with three kids and a thousand grandchildren, and I’m a crazy old recluse –
But I don’t really want to think about that while BJ is kissing me. He’s got the knack of being perfectly distracting with his lips, so it’s pleasantly startling to find his hand drifting low across my belly or up a thigh.
The supply tent is pretty safe for this kind of thing. We’ve got a system – I put a hanger on the door, and when we’re finished, I leave first and take the hangar with me. BJ comes out a couple of minutes later, with a box of morphine or penicillin or whatever there’s lots of, so someone would have had to watch the supply tent continuously to know that we were inside at the same time while the hanger was on the door, and there’re enough nurses in camp that it’s unlikely anyone will realize that none of them are actually in the supply tent. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared. The last thing we need is for Frank or Margaret to have a fit of unprecedented cleverness and jump to conclusions; I hear that kind of thing can get you into all sorts of trouble with the Army.
But it’s impossible to concentrate on such things while he’s nipping at my earlobe with all the generous, blushing clumsiness of a novice. I close my eyes to concentrate on the pleasure of sensation and the pleasure of his company.
---
“Captain Pierce?”
It’s later now, but still evening; on a normal night, Beej and I would still be up, swilling gin and laughing, which is I guess why Klinger hesitates at the door instead of tiptoeing into the Swamp and shaking my shoulder. Most of the other lights in the camp are still on, and a few minutes ago the gun of the mail truck rumbled through the compound. Frank’s not here; maybe he and Margaret have made up, or maybe he’s drowning his sorrows someplace.
BJ’s returned to his own bunk and we were both drowsing, before Klinger’s call rent the night. I’m so happy I don’t even mind Klinger waking me up; I have this warm glow where my rib cage meets my stomach and I think I’ve been smiling in my sleep. Everything reminds me of my new good fortune, from the chortle of the still to faint glint of ambient light reflecting off of BJ’s open eye. Looking at him, I feel a momentary pang of nervousness, but he grins when he sees me looking, and I’m as perfectly content as a person can be in Korea.
“Come in, you beautiful nightingale,” I answer, grinning at Klinger in the dark. He opens the door to the Swamp.
“You guys sleeping already? There’s a hot poker game down at Rosie’s; Major Houlihan’s down almost a hundred bucks to Radar and that fink Zale.”
“What do you want, Klinger?” BJ asks. He sounds irritated, but I can hear that it’s feigned.
“Colonel Potter wants to see Captain Pierce. He said it was urgent, I don’t know why.”
The command makes me nervous; I can see the smile slide off BJ’s face, too. I fumble the light on, then wait for a moment while my eyes adjust.
“Is it a patient? The Greek kid with the collapsed lung?”
“He didn’t say; just to have you come to his office as quick as you could. I don’t know, he seemed…a little strange.”
“Strange how?” BJ asks.
“Who can say with that guy?” Klinger says with an elaborate shrug. “Strange is relative; he acts like Zane Gray and nobody bats an eye.” Perhaps unconsciously, he steps farther into the light so the red sequins he’s sewn on his evening gown shine in the overhead light.
“I’m on my way. Thanks, Klinger.” I say, pulling on my bathrobe. I hesitate for half a second, then splash on a little of the eau de toilette Margaret, in a fit of alcoholic generosity, brought for me from Seoul.
It’s not because I’m particularly concerned about smelling nice for the Colonel, but Radar and Klinger both have exceptionally sharp noses and I don’t want them noticing that I smell like BJ any more than usual.
I’m starting to think like that nutcase Flagg.
Regardless, the walk to Colonel Potter’s office is pleasant enough; to amuse myself I shout a series of incorrect passwords at the poor private on guard duty. He neither laughs nor stops me.
Walking into Potter’s office startling, though; the office is in something of a disarray and he sits in the middle of it, absently twisting and untwisting the cap on the bottle of whisky in his hand. His expression is neutral, the G. I. look that he wears when he doesn’t want us to know what he’s thinking about.
Radar’s standing there too, looking not unlike someone’s punched him in the throat. His eyes glitter and he seems to be having some trouble moving air properly, but his mouth is twisted in a pained smile.
“Sit down, Hawkeye,” Colonel Potter says, already pouring whisky into three glasses. That’s hard to read. It’s his good hooch – not the top shelf stuff he saves for visits from generals, or the Kentucky special bourbon he saves for himself, but the nice stuff he normally won’t let Beej or me near. There’s a glass for Radar, too, is the tough part of the equation; he doesn’t usually drink with the colonel unless it’s a celebration or something really dire.
If somebody finked on BJ and I –
A dishonorable discharge wouldn’t be so bad for me, but it would be catastrophic for BJ –
It doesn’t bear thinking about.
“What’s the occasion, Colonel?” I ask, trying to sound flip, but I think there’s a hard edge to my voice that betrays concern.
“Radar was going through the mail just now,” Potter answers, picking up his own glass and indicating that Radar and I should do the same. He doesn’t drink so I don’t either.
“Radar goes through everybody’s mail, but we’ve never held it against him before,” I joke out of habit. He couldn’t possibly know about BJ and me and our extracurricular – he would’ve come out and said it by now.
“Hey!” says Radar.
And even if he did, he’d have hauled us both in here to account for it. He’s Regular Army enough that I doubt he’d be lenient about that kind of thing, but he’s a fair-minded man, and he’d give us both a chance to account for ourselves before making any rash decisions.
I’m so busy worrying that line of thought that the Colonel’s announcement blindsides me. He takes a familiar-looking yellow letter out of his desk drawer. “You’ve got your orders, son. You’re going home.”
It doesn’t make any sense to me. “I’m – I what?”
“You’ve got all your points, Hawkeye,” Radar says, his voice high and tight with conflicting emotions. “You’re getting discharged!” He lifts his glass in a clumsy little salute, and Potter matches the gesture. I do the same from long practice, and drink the whisky from long practice, but the terrible simultaneous elation and loss forming a tight little knot in my chest keep me from knowing what my own reaction should be. Home! But I don’t know if home will mean anything if BJ is still trapped here in hell, and I can’t even make him laugh anymore.
I know what they expect from me, though, so I do it. I throw back the rest of the liquor and stand jubilantly. “I’m going home!” I shout, then kiss Radar on the cheek, above his vocal protestations. “I’m going home!” I laugh madly. For a moment of exceptional clarity, I’m genuinely delighted about it; Colonel Potter’s expression of unadulterated pleasure on my behalf reminds me that this is what I’ve wanted – virtually all I’ve wanted, in fact – for the last two years.
“Thank you, sir,” I say, shaking his hand. I giggle. “Sherman!”
He tries to look stern at that, but I think he’s as pleased for me as I am. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Pierce; you’re here four more days yet.”
I just laugh. “Do you mind if I…?” I gesture vaguely at the door, trusting the colonel to understand that I mean that I want to go shout my news from the rooftops.
“No, no. And while you’re at it, I do think this calls for a bit of a wing ding, if you and BJ care to organize one,” he suggests. He pours himself another glass, and I notice his hand trembles a little as he holds the bottle: He must have been halfway to soused before he summoned me in here. I wonder what that means. “Oh, and Hawkeye?”
“Yo-oh,” I answer.
“You be careful how you tell Hunnicutt. I know you’re pleased as punch about this, and I’m sure he’ll be happy for you too, but it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to hear that your friend is going home and leaving you behind. I remember back in the Great War, the last member of my original regiment left for Dayton – but you wanted to go share your news.”
Potter couldn’t have shattered my elation more effectively if he’d pricked it with a pin. Of course I can’t go to BJ crowing like I’ve won the lottery; but I can hardly go to him like this is the worst thing ever to happen to me, either.
“You be sure to let me know when you and BJ plan to celebrate,” he says with a grin, not noticing my desperation. “I wouldn’t want to miss that party, not for anything. Oh, and Radar –“
“I’ll get on the phone with I-Corps to make sure Hawkeye’s travel orders get cut on time,” says Radar, just as Potter tells him “You get on the horn and make sure there’s no damnfool hold-up with his travel orders.”
“Yes, sir,” Radar says.
“That’s a good boy.”
I back out of the tent, my trepidation increasing with every step. BJ. What am I going to tell BJ?
I can’t stall. I would love, more than anything, not to announce that I’m going home but slink away in the night while BJ is otherwise occupied (I know – just like Trapper did to me, and I’ve still not forgiven him, but now I can see why he chose that strategy) but the thought that he would hate me for it is too, too crushing. Not to mention that it wouldn’t work; somebody would start trying to organize a surprise party and that would be the end of that.
So it’s quite the surprise when I open the door to the Swamp and find BJ holding a bottle of champagne – where, in God’s name, did he get a bottle of champagne in this forsaken camp? – in one hand and trying use Frank’s Swiss Army knife to pry the cork out of the bottle with the other. He’s beaming, grinning absolutely ear to ear.
“Klinger told me,” BJ says, and with a wrench half the cork comes out. “He didn’t know exactly, but he saw the mail truck and the orders packet Colonel Potter got and that he sent for you, and put two and two together, and came up with a trip to Maine.”
“Hey, Beej, I’m –“ I start out soberly, but BJ isn’t having any of it.
“You lucky dog! Don’t you start in on any of that sorry-eyed ‘If only I’d known’ line, because I’m not going to buy it.” He takes a length of glass pipette left over from building the still and uses it to cram what the remainder of the cork past the neck of the bottle, leading to a champagne fizz onto the floor. “When are you leaving?”
“The orders say four days.”
“You have to stop in San Francisco and see Peg,” he says, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. He pours more than a sip of champagne into the two surviving martini glasses and hands me one.
I want to kiss him for his generosity of spirit, but Frank, looking more surly than usual, stomps in and surveys the scene: BJ with a bottle in his hand, a stack of medical journals and nudist magazines spilling from the end of my footlocker onto the floor, the still all but empty. “Well!” he announces.
“Colonel Potter’s got some good news for you, Frank,” I say.
“Says you,” he answers.
“Hawkeye’s getting transferred out of here, Frank,” BJ adds, using the same sing-song tone I did.
“Aww, and we were all just getting to be such pals,” Frank complains.
“I’ll write you every night, Frank,” I say. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Frank’s making fun of us with his idiot routine.
Too bad I know better
“Such pals,” he croons, and I realize he’s drunk as a skunk. Colonel Potter and now Frank, plus the poker game at Rosie’s – God help us if we get any wounded in the middle of the night. He’s rummaging in the bottom of his footlocker for something. “I want to give you something to remember me by, Pierce,” he mumbles. He takes out an alarm clock, considers it, then puts it back in his footlocker. He blows dust out of the bottom of an old tumbler on the still table and pours a little champagne in it, then hands it to Frank with an expression that isn’t quite gracious.
“For free? You must be drunk.”
Frank rummages into the very bottom. “Ow! Ow, ow, ow!” says Frank.
“Snake in your locker, Frank?” BJ asks.
Frank holds aloft the stem of the martini glass that, six days ago, BJ sent sailing off into the darkened far side of the Swamp. “Now what’s that?” I laugh hysterically as Frank hands me the glass tube.
“Come on,” BJ says. “Let’s get Radar to call Peggy.”
I’m about to suggest that we wait for morning to do it, and head for the O-Club so I can buy a round of drinks but BJ winks at me almost imperceptibly. I plop my propeller beanie on and open the door. “After you.”
“Oh, no, please, after you,” he genuflects.
“Oh, well, if you insist,” I say, tipping my hat politely.
I walk towards the supply tent, but BJ turns toward the CO’s office. “Where’re you going?” he asks.
“Where are you going?” I counter.
“To call my wife?”
“Oh. I thought you meant…oh.”
He grins slowly. “I do mean that, just in a minute.”
I grin back, then take the champagne bottle out of BJ’s hand and take a swift swig of it. Radar is quietly helpful in placing the call, once we explain my plan to meet Peg in San Francisco, with no complaints about our disturbing his evening. I’m not sure if that means he’s sorry about my rapidly impending departure, or if he suspects something with that eerie ability of his.
Paranoia has swiftly become a way of life for me.
Certainly he leaves as soon as BJ greets his wife, and for once it seems he’s not eavesdropping behind a door.
“Peg? Honey, it’s me. It’s good to hear your voice, too.”
Watching BJ talk to his wife, I should be jealous. If I hadn’t read the sweetly explicit letters she sent BJ, I would be, but now it’s an odd, hazy middle ground: I’m jealous of how much she can delight BJ, and that she, through marriage and through Erin, has the kind of claim on him that I can never hope to have. I am grateful to her for giving BJ permission to – well, to do whatever this is. At the same time, I also adore her in her own right for being the kind of person who would craft letters of such perfect devotion.
I’m happy that she makes him so happy, for whatever that’s worth.
Maybe it’s just a perverse form of narcissism: I recognize in Peg my own love of BJ.
“She did? That’s wonderful! Hawkeye, Erin drew a picture that looks just like a dog today.”
“Well, maybe I can draw it a picture of a parvo vaccination while I’m there.” BJ motions for me to shut up so he can hear his wife.
“Yeah, Hawkeye’s here, too. Ha ha, yeah. Well, that’s the thing: He’s on his way home, and I thought maybe he could come and visit you for a couple of days on his way to –“
Peg’s voice is so loud and excited that I can hear all the way from sitting on the edge of Radar’s bunk. “She likes the idea,” he murmurs to me, holding the mouthpiece away from his face.
“Peg – Peg, honey, that’s great, I’m sure Hawkeye will – yes, I think he would like some of your fruitcake.” He’s beautifully patient with her, pleased by her exuberance rather than frustrated that she isn’t listening to him. Having tasted Peg’s fruitcake, I’m not as thrilled. “About Saturday, although it could be a little earlier or later depending on – I don’t know, darling, you’ll have to ask him!”
“Listen, listen, Peg, I need to tell you...” he smiles wistfully at the phone. “Yes. I need to tell you that Hawkeye and I – “ BJ glances furtively about, but there’s no security in that; there’re a dozen invisible places along the line where someone could be listening in, beginning with the extension in Colonel Potter’s office. “We read your letters together, Peggy,” he says, not smiling.
She’s silent for a long moment, and then I hear her say something soft and brief. “Yes,” BJ answers.
She says something else, and then he smiles so enormously that it’s like watching the sunrise. “Well, I’ll tell him you said that, darling.”
Radar puts his head back in his office. “Your time’s up, BJ,” he says softly.
He nods, holds up a finger for a little more time. “Listen, I’ve got – yeah. I love you, Peg. Tell Erin I love her, too.” He grins again. “I will. I love you. Bye, Peg,” he says, putting down the receiver with the same wistful expression as before.
BJ shares a splash of champagne with Radar, who complains that it tastes like spoiled Grape Nehi, and we walk back out into the night.
“Have you inventoried the penicillin lately?” BJ asks. He doesn’t wink.
“No, no. Margaret said that she was going to have someone do it, but…”
“You can’t be too careful, can you?”
“Careful, no. Maybe we’d better…”
“Yes, certainly, I think we had,” BJ says, and together we find our way to the supply tent, where we kill the bottle of champagne and find a few other ways to amuse ourselves.
Author: Chase, aka Angryhaiku
Pairing: BJ/Hawkeye. Er, more or less.
Rating: 13+ (some smut, but mostly oblique)
Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I extracting income from, the characters or proprietary ideas herein.
Summary: Although pleased with the outcome of his letter theft, Hawkeye gets nervous when he gets a summons from Colonel Potter. (Wow, I suck at summaries.)
Previous segments: You can find Part 1 of Light Reading here, and the previous story, These Letters, here.
Here’s Part 2! I apologize for the long wait and for neglecting any comments you may have left on one of the previous stories or elsewhere. I’ve just moved (…into the BEST APARTMENT EVER!) and gone out of town for a couple of days, so the wait time shouldn’t be typical for the rest of the story. Thanks to Aalais, who beta'd this for me against her better judgement. Hope you enjoy it!
“Hawk. Oh, God, Hawkeye,” BJ whimpers, threading his hands through my hair. He’s trying to hold himself still, but his hips buck involuntarily, and I soothe the strong line of his right iliac crest with gentle strokes until his hands loosen a little and he’s not quite so close.
If Korea seemed before to be a kind of purgatory, now it’s a strange oscillation between heaven and hell. For the past six days – a tiny fraction of my time in Korea, but so much of that time has been so joyously spent it seems much longer – we have gone back and forth between the OR and the supply room, or the mess tent and the Swamp; between war, I suppose, and contentment.
He makes a tiny sound in his throat as I pull back and breathe hotly down the length of him. I love the sounds he makes – the need for silence muffles, but does not mute him in moments of passion, and it’s easy and edifying to catalogue them: BJ always makes that throaty grunt when he’s about to push me down and take control, or long sibilant nonsense means he’s about to come. It’s the former sound that he makes now, and as previously documented, he slides down the mountain of blankets to hook his elbow under my arm and turn me onto my back. He’s startlingly strong; he has no trouble at all lifting me.
Previously mundane activities, like simply eating in the mess tent or showering, have become so infused with lust and partnership as to be almost unrecognizable. We did everything together before, but now it’s easy to predict his thoughts before he can act on them. With anyone else, I think it would be stifling; with BJ, it’s a pleasure, albeit a dangerous-seeming one. I’m trying not to think about what happens when the war is over, when he goes back to California and I go to Maine and we see each other once a year, and then just send Christmas cards, and then he’s content with three kids and a thousand grandchildren, and I’m a crazy old recluse –
But I don’t really want to think about that while BJ is kissing me. He’s got the knack of being perfectly distracting with his lips, so it’s pleasantly startling to find his hand drifting low across my belly or up a thigh.
The supply tent is pretty safe for this kind of thing. We’ve got a system – I put a hanger on the door, and when we’re finished, I leave first and take the hangar with me. BJ comes out a couple of minutes later, with a box of morphine or penicillin or whatever there’s lots of, so someone would have had to watch the supply tent continuously to know that we were inside at the same time while the hanger was on the door, and there’re enough nurses in camp that it’s unlikely anyone will realize that none of them are actually in the supply tent. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared. The last thing we need is for Frank or Margaret to have a fit of unprecedented cleverness and jump to conclusions; I hear that kind of thing can get you into all sorts of trouble with the Army.
But it’s impossible to concentrate on such things while he’s nipping at my earlobe with all the generous, blushing clumsiness of a novice. I close my eyes to concentrate on the pleasure of sensation and the pleasure of his company.
---
“Captain Pierce?”
It’s later now, but still evening; on a normal night, Beej and I would still be up, swilling gin and laughing, which is I guess why Klinger hesitates at the door instead of tiptoeing into the Swamp and shaking my shoulder. Most of the other lights in the camp are still on, and a few minutes ago the gun of the mail truck rumbled through the compound. Frank’s not here; maybe he and Margaret have made up, or maybe he’s drowning his sorrows someplace.
BJ’s returned to his own bunk and we were both drowsing, before Klinger’s call rent the night. I’m so happy I don’t even mind Klinger waking me up; I have this warm glow where my rib cage meets my stomach and I think I’ve been smiling in my sleep. Everything reminds me of my new good fortune, from the chortle of the still to faint glint of ambient light reflecting off of BJ’s open eye. Looking at him, I feel a momentary pang of nervousness, but he grins when he sees me looking, and I’m as perfectly content as a person can be in Korea.
“Come in, you beautiful nightingale,” I answer, grinning at Klinger in the dark. He opens the door to the Swamp.
“You guys sleeping already? There’s a hot poker game down at Rosie’s; Major Houlihan’s down almost a hundred bucks to Radar and that fink Zale.”
“What do you want, Klinger?” BJ asks. He sounds irritated, but I can hear that it’s feigned.
“Colonel Potter wants to see Captain Pierce. He said it was urgent, I don’t know why.”
The command makes me nervous; I can see the smile slide off BJ’s face, too. I fumble the light on, then wait for a moment while my eyes adjust.
“Is it a patient? The Greek kid with the collapsed lung?”
“He didn’t say; just to have you come to his office as quick as you could. I don’t know, he seemed…a little strange.”
“Strange how?” BJ asks.
“Who can say with that guy?” Klinger says with an elaborate shrug. “Strange is relative; he acts like Zane Gray and nobody bats an eye.” Perhaps unconsciously, he steps farther into the light so the red sequins he’s sewn on his evening gown shine in the overhead light.
“I’m on my way. Thanks, Klinger.” I say, pulling on my bathrobe. I hesitate for half a second, then splash on a little of the eau de toilette Margaret, in a fit of alcoholic generosity, brought for me from Seoul.
It’s not because I’m particularly concerned about smelling nice for the Colonel, but Radar and Klinger both have exceptionally sharp noses and I don’t want them noticing that I smell like BJ any more than usual.
I’m starting to think like that nutcase Flagg.
Regardless, the walk to Colonel Potter’s office is pleasant enough; to amuse myself I shout a series of incorrect passwords at the poor private on guard duty. He neither laughs nor stops me.
Walking into Potter’s office startling, though; the office is in something of a disarray and he sits in the middle of it, absently twisting and untwisting the cap on the bottle of whisky in his hand. His expression is neutral, the G. I. look that he wears when he doesn’t want us to know what he’s thinking about.
Radar’s standing there too, looking not unlike someone’s punched him in the throat. His eyes glitter and he seems to be having some trouble moving air properly, but his mouth is twisted in a pained smile.
“Sit down, Hawkeye,” Colonel Potter says, already pouring whisky into three glasses. That’s hard to read. It’s his good hooch – not the top shelf stuff he saves for visits from generals, or the Kentucky special bourbon he saves for himself, but the nice stuff he normally won’t let Beej or me near. There’s a glass for Radar, too, is the tough part of the equation; he doesn’t usually drink with the colonel unless it’s a celebration or something really dire.
If somebody finked on BJ and I –
A dishonorable discharge wouldn’t be so bad for me, but it would be catastrophic for BJ –
It doesn’t bear thinking about.
“What’s the occasion, Colonel?” I ask, trying to sound flip, but I think there’s a hard edge to my voice that betrays concern.
“Radar was going through the mail just now,” Potter answers, picking up his own glass and indicating that Radar and I should do the same. He doesn’t drink so I don’t either.
“Radar goes through everybody’s mail, but we’ve never held it against him before,” I joke out of habit. He couldn’t possibly know about BJ and me and our extracurricular – he would’ve come out and said it by now.
“Hey!” says Radar.
And even if he did, he’d have hauled us both in here to account for it. He’s Regular Army enough that I doubt he’d be lenient about that kind of thing, but he’s a fair-minded man, and he’d give us both a chance to account for ourselves before making any rash decisions.
I’m so busy worrying that line of thought that the Colonel’s announcement blindsides me. He takes a familiar-looking yellow letter out of his desk drawer. “You’ve got your orders, son. You’re going home.”
It doesn’t make any sense to me. “I’m – I what?”
“You’ve got all your points, Hawkeye,” Radar says, his voice high and tight with conflicting emotions. “You’re getting discharged!” He lifts his glass in a clumsy little salute, and Potter matches the gesture. I do the same from long practice, and drink the whisky from long practice, but the terrible simultaneous elation and loss forming a tight little knot in my chest keep me from knowing what my own reaction should be. Home! But I don’t know if home will mean anything if BJ is still trapped here in hell, and I can’t even make him laugh anymore.
I know what they expect from me, though, so I do it. I throw back the rest of the liquor and stand jubilantly. “I’m going home!” I shout, then kiss Radar on the cheek, above his vocal protestations. “I’m going home!” I laugh madly. For a moment of exceptional clarity, I’m genuinely delighted about it; Colonel Potter’s expression of unadulterated pleasure on my behalf reminds me that this is what I’ve wanted – virtually all I’ve wanted, in fact – for the last two years.
“Thank you, sir,” I say, shaking his hand. I giggle. “Sherman!”
He tries to look stern at that, but I think he’s as pleased for me as I am. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Pierce; you’re here four more days yet.”
I just laugh. “Do you mind if I…?” I gesture vaguely at the door, trusting the colonel to understand that I mean that I want to go shout my news from the rooftops.
“No, no. And while you’re at it, I do think this calls for a bit of a wing ding, if you and BJ care to organize one,” he suggests. He pours himself another glass, and I notice his hand trembles a little as he holds the bottle: He must have been halfway to soused before he summoned me in here. I wonder what that means. “Oh, and Hawkeye?”
“Yo-oh,” I answer.
“You be careful how you tell Hunnicutt. I know you’re pleased as punch about this, and I’m sure he’ll be happy for you too, but it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to hear that your friend is going home and leaving you behind. I remember back in the Great War, the last member of my original regiment left for Dayton – but you wanted to go share your news.”
Potter couldn’t have shattered my elation more effectively if he’d pricked it with a pin. Of course I can’t go to BJ crowing like I’ve won the lottery; but I can hardly go to him like this is the worst thing ever to happen to me, either.
“You be sure to let me know when you and BJ plan to celebrate,” he says with a grin, not noticing my desperation. “I wouldn’t want to miss that party, not for anything. Oh, and Radar –“
“I’ll get on the phone with I-Corps to make sure Hawkeye’s travel orders get cut on time,” says Radar, just as Potter tells him “You get on the horn and make sure there’s no damnfool hold-up with his travel orders.”
“Yes, sir,” Radar says.
“That’s a good boy.”
I back out of the tent, my trepidation increasing with every step. BJ. What am I going to tell BJ?
I can’t stall. I would love, more than anything, not to announce that I’m going home but slink away in the night while BJ is otherwise occupied (I know – just like Trapper did to me, and I’ve still not forgiven him, but now I can see why he chose that strategy) but the thought that he would hate me for it is too, too crushing. Not to mention that it wouldn’t work; somebody would start trying to organize a surprise party and that would be the end of that.
So it’s quite the surprise when I open the door to the Swamp and find BJ holding a bottle of champagne – where, in God’s name, did he get a bottle of champagne in this forsaken camp? – in one hand and trying use Frank’s Swiss Army knife to pry the cork out of the bottle with the other. He’s beaming, grinning absolutely ear to ear.
“Klinger told me,” BJ says, and with a wrench half the cork comes out. “He didn’t know exactly, but he saw the mail truck and the orders packet Colonel Potter got and that he sent for you, and put two and two together, and came up with a trip to Maine.”
“Hey, Beej, I’m –“ I start out soberly, but BJ isn’t having any of it.
“You lucky dog! Don’t you start in on any of that sorry-eyed ‘If only I’d known’ line, because I’m not going to buy it.” He takes a length of glass pipette left over from building the still and uses it to cram what the remainder of the cork past the neck of the bottle, leading to a champagne fizz onto the floor. “When are you leaving?”
“The orders say four days.”
“You have to stop in San Francisco and see Peg,” he says, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. He pours more than a sip of champagne into the two surviving martini glasses and hands me one.
I want to kiss him for his generosity of spirit, but Frank, looking more surly than usual, stomps in and surveys the scene: BJ with a bottle in his hand, a stack of medical journals and nudist magazines spilling from the end of my footlocker onto the floor, the still all but empty. “Well!” he announces.
“Colonel Potter’s got some good news for you, Frank,” I say.
“Says you,” he answers.
“Hawkeye’s getting transferred out of here, Frank,” BJ adds, using the same sing-song tone I did.
“Aww, and we were all just getting to be such pals,” Frank complains.
“I’ll write you every night, Frank,” I say. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Frank’s making fun of us with his idiot routine.
Too bad I know better
“Such pals,” he croons, and I realize he’s drunk as a skunk. Colonel Potter and now Frank, plus the poker game at Rosie’s – God help us if we get any wounded in the middle of the night. He’s rummaging in the bottom of his footlocker for something. “I want to give you something to remember me by, Pierce,” he mumbles. He takes out an alarm clock, considers it, then puts it back in his footlocker. He blows dust out of the bottom of an old tumbler on the still table and pours a little champagne in it, then hands it to Frank with an expression that isn’t quite gracious.
“For free? You must be drunk.”
Frank rummages into the very bottom. “Ow! Ow, ow, ow!” says Frank.
“Snake in your locker, Frank?” BJ asks.
Frank holds aloft the stem of the martini glass that, six days ago, BJ sent sailing off into the darkened far side of the Swamp. “Now what’s that?” I laugh hysterically as Frank hands me the glass tube.
“Come on,” BJ says. “Let’s get Radar to call Peggy.”
I’m about to suggest that we wait for morning to do it, and head for the O-Club so I can buy a round of drinks but BJ winks at me almost imperceptibly. I plop my propeller beanie on and open the door. “After you.”
“Oh, no, please, after you,” he genuflects.
“Oh, well, if you insist,” I say, tipping my hat politely.
I walk towards the supply tent, but BJ turns toward the CO’s office. “Where’re you going?” he asks.
“Where are you going?” I counter.
“To call my wife?”
“Oh. I thought you meant…oh.”
He grins slowly. “I do mean that, just in a minute.”
I grin back, then take the champagne bottle out of BJ’s hand and take a swift swig of it. Radar is quietly helpful in placing the call, once we explain my plan to meet Peg in San Francisco, with no complaints about our disturbing his evening. I’m not sure if that means he’s sorry about my rapidly impending departure, or if he suspects something with that eerie ability of his.
Paranoia has swiftly become a way of life for me.
Certainly he leaves as soon as BJ greets his wife, and for once it seems he’s not eavesdropping behind a door.
“Peg? Honey, it’s me. It’s good to hear your voice, too.”
Watching BJ talk to his wife, I should be jealous. If I hadn’t read the sweetly explicit letters she sent BJ, I would be, but now it’s an odd, hazy middle ground: I’m jealous of how much she can delight BJ, and that she, through marriage and through Erin, has the kind of claim on him that I can never hope to have. I am grateful to her for giving BJ permission to – well, to do whatever this is. At the same time, I also adore her in her own right for being the kind of person who would craft letters of such perfect devotion.
I’m happy that she makes him so happy, for whatever that’s worth.
Maybe it’s just a perverse form of narcissism: I recognize in Peg my own love of BJ.
“She did? That’s wonderful! Hawkeye, Erin drew a picture that looks just like a dog today.”
“Well, maybe I can draw it a picture of a parvo vaccination while I’m there.” BJ motions for me to shut up so he can hear his wife.
“Yeah, Hawkeye’s here, too. Ha ha, yeah. Well, that’s the thing: He’s on his way home, and I thought maybe he could come and visit you for a couple of days on his way to –“
Peg’s voice is so loud and excited that I can hear all the way from sitting on the edge of Radar’s bunk. “She likes the idea,” he murmurs to me, holding the mouthpiece away from his face.
“Peg – Peg, honey, that’s great, I’m sure Hawkeye will – yes, I think he would like some of your fruitcake.” He’s beautifully patient with her, pleased by her exuberance rather than frustrated that she isn’t listening to him. Having tasted Peg’s fruitcake, I’m not as thrilled. “About Saturday, although it could be a little earlier or later depending on – I don’t know, darling, you’ll have to ask him!”
“Listen, listen, Peg, I need to tell you...” he smiles wistfully at the phone. “Yes. I need to tell you that Hawkeye and I – “ BJ glances furtively about, but there’s no security in that; there’re a dozen invisible places along the line where someone could be listening in, beginning with the extension in Colonel Potter’s office. “We read your letters together, Peggy,” he says, not smiling.
She’s silent for a long moment, and then I hear her say something soft and brief. “Yes,” BJ answers.
She says something else, and then he smiles so enormously that it’s like watching the sunrise. “Well, I’ll tell him you said that, darling.”
Radar puts his head back in his office. “Your time’s up, BJ,” he says softly.
He nods, holds up a finger for a little more time. “Listen, I’ve got – yeah. I love you, Peg. Tell Erin I love her, too.” He grins again. “I will. I love you. Bye, Peg,” he says, putting down the receiver with the same wistful expression as before.
BJ shares a splash of champagne with Radar, who complains that it tastes like spoiled Grape Nehi, and we walk back out into the night.
“Have you inventoried the penicillin lately?” BJ asks. He doesn’t wink.
“No, no. Margaret said that she was going to have someone do it, but…”
“You can’t be too careful, can you?”
“Careful, no. Maybe we’d better…”
“Yes, certainly, I think we had,” BJ says, and together we find our way to the supply tent, where we kill the bottle of champagne and find a few other ways to amuse ourselves.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-27 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-27 03:03 pm (UTC)Well, I have *a* plan, which, frankly, is good enough for me.