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mash_slashTitle: Other Years Gone
Author: Perpetual Motion
Fandom: MASH
Pairing: BJ/Hawkeye
Rating: G
Summary: After they drive away.
Disclaimer: Everything you read here is a bald-faced lie.
Author's Notes: Upon closer inspection [and the word of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amazonqueenkate] it has been decided that the epilogue to "Twenty Years Gone" should see the light of day. So here you go.
To read the first 14,000 words
Other Years Gone [Epilogue to "Twenty Years Gone"]
By Perpetual Motion
Over the years, they become old brittle man. After the necessary stopping in the city, after three weeks in the hotel as BJ figured finances and put in his final weeks at the practice, he moves out to Crabapple Cove, to a two bedroom wood house with a small yard and Hawkeye in the kitchen every morning, humming under his breath and making scalding strong coffee.
The boys take it in stages, mumbling and looking away at first, distantly polite at second. When they come to visit, they sit awkwardly in Hawkeye’s dining room chairs, sip tensely at their beers, and try to make conversation without making eye contact. Erin rolls her eyes, calls them idiots, hugs Hawkeye like there’s nothing different in the world and moves out herself after finishing her masters and PHD.
“Honey-“
“I didn’t do it for you, Dad,” Erin says in that quick, dissertation-defense way she never loses. “I did it for me. I love Mom, but I think we broke her brain when we both decided to come out in the same twenty-four hours.”
BJ’s ready to defend his “coming out”, as she puts it, ready to explain, but Hawkeye’s next to him, arm over his shoulder, laughing uproariously, and BJ thinks it’s cheating; Hawkeye’s laugh makes it impossible for BJ to stay on point.
When Erin brings Mona over for dinner, BJ feels his heart swell. Erin’s halfway into a heated argument with Hawkeye when Mona laughs, and BJ watches Erin forget her topic the same way he always does.
It’s not always easy; there are questions and looks, the occasional patient who mysteriously changes doctors without lodging a complaint, the way the boys don’t bring their wives the first few times they visit after the weddings where Hawkeye doesn’t receive an invitation. It takes Peg years to stop calling every week, asking innocuous questions in a tense, hard voice before hanging up abruptly and starting over the next Saturday. Hawkeye swears he’ll answer the phone one day and tell her off, but he never does. Just glares when it rings late in the day every week and walks into the backyard.
At one point, the boys try to sit down and say what’s on their mind, but Jack slips up and says the word, “queer”, and Hawkeye has him hefted by the collar and thrown out of the house before he gets any further. Richard is smart enough to just get up and leave. BJ doesn’t see his grandchildren for the first six years of their lives, except in pictures that Erin brings back from her visits to California, always without Mona, who stays over with BJ and Hawkeye and tries not to look sad. BJ tries to explain that it’s not her, that she’s lovely, that she and Erin are wonderful. Mona just shakes her head.
“I know it’s you,” she says with a smile that’s almost a grimace. “Erin told me a long time ago, and I don’t mind staying here, actually. Peg, well, the proper term is passive-aggressive, but I have a few more colorful descriptors.” And the smile turns into a grimace as she takes a long swallow of her drink. “She’s a very nice woman in a lot of ways, but the 1950s had a way of really ruining women.”
“The 1950s made them just fine,” Hawkeye says as he swirls his martini glass. “Time moving forward is what ruined them. It’s a hard adjustment.” BJ, without looking, thwaps him on the back of the head. Hawkeye just grins, and Mona smiles around another sip of her drink.
“Whatever the cause, she’s never forgiven you.”
BJ shrugs, sips his own drink, grimaces at the watered-down taste. “I’ve never expected her to. It’s not part of the deal.”
“There’s a deal?”
Hawkeye scoffs. “The Magna Carta had less clauses and rules.”
Mona laughs, toasts Peg with pure irony and finishes her drink.
So they live in Crabapple Cove and see patients and have dinner with Erin and occasionally see the grandchildren after the six-year freeze out, and their bones get creaky and their eyes start to go and every night they fall asleep, Hawkeye’s arm around BJ’s stomach, and every morning they wake up and every day they talk and laugh and move forward through everything they didn’t say and didn’t do for years upon years. And every day, BJ feels a little lighter and brighter and better about everything. The calls from Peg dry up, the visits with the grandchildren increase, and no matter what, every time she goes home just down the road, Erin kisses his cheek, gives him a hug, and says goodnight. And then she does the same to Hawkeye. And BJ knows that no matter the state of the world, no matter the mixed feelings from his sons, Erin understands and accepts and loves, and it brings back his return from Korea, and the way Erin, even while shy, still allowed him to hold her, allowed him to smell her hair and touch her tiny hands, allowed him to fumble and fall and learn to be a parent two years too late, allowed him, all those years later, to fumble and fall and learn to be himself twenty-odd years after, and he hugs her tight and kisses her cheek, and tells her to sleep well, and the world is as it should be. The world is the best BJ’s ever had it.
Seriously people, be brutal.
Author: Perpetual Motion
Fandom: MASH
Pairing: BJ/Hawkeye
Rating: G
Summary: After they drive away.
Disclaimer: Everything you read here is a bald-faced lie.
Author's Notes: Upon closer inspection [and the word of
amazonqueenkate] it has been decided that the epilogue to "Twenty Years Gone" should see the light of day. So here you go.To read the first 14,000 words
Other Years Gone [Epilogue to "Twenty Years Gone"]
By Perpetual Motion
Over the years, they become old brittle man. After the necessary stopping in the city, after three weeks in the hotel as BJ figured finances and put in his final weeks at the practice, he moves out to Crabapple Cove, to a two bedroom wood house with a small yard and Hawkeye in the kitchen every morning, humming under his breath and making scalding strong coffee.
The boys take it in stages, mumbling and looking away at first, distantly polite at second. When they come to visit, they sit awkwardly in Hawkeye’s dining room chairs, sip tensely at their beers, and try to make conversation without making eye contact. Erin rolls her eyes, calls them idiots, hugs Hawkeye like there’s nothing different in the world and moves out herself after finishing her masters and PHD.
“Honey-“
“I didn’t do it for you, Dad,” Erin says in that quick, dissertation-defense way she never loses. “I did it for me. I love Mom, but I think we broke her brain when we both decided to come out in the same twenty-four hours.”
BJ’s ready to defend his “coming out”, as she puts it, ready to explain, but Hawkeye’s next to him, arm over his shoulder, laughing uproariously, and BJ thinks it’s cheating; Hawkeye’s laugh makes it impossible for BJ to stay on point.
When Erin brings Mona over for dinner, BJ feels his heart swell. Erin’s halfway into a heated argument with Hawkeye when Mona laughs, and BJ watches Erin forget her topic the same way he always does.
It’s not always easy; there are questions and looks, the occasional patient who mysteriously changes doctors without lodging a complaint, the way the boys don’t bring their wives the first few times they visit after the weddings where Hawkeye doesn’t receive an invitation. It takes Peg years to stop calling every week, asking innocuous questions in a tense, hard voice before hanging up abruptly and starting over the next Saturday. Hawkeye swears he’ll answer the phone one day and tell her off, but he never does. Just glares when it rings late in the day every week and walks into the backyard.
At one point, the boys try to sit down and say what’s on their mind, but Jack slips up and says the word, “queer”, and Hawkeye has him hefted by the collar and thrown out of the house before he gets any further. Richard is smart enough to just get up and leave. BJ doesn’t see his grandchildren for the first six years of their lives, except in pictures that Erin brings back from her visits to California, always without Mona, who stays over with BJ and Hawkeye and tries not to look sad. BJ tries to explain that it’s not her, that she’s lovely, that she and Erin are wonderful. Mona just shakes her head.
“I know it’s you,” she says with a smile that’s almost a grimace. “Erin told me a long time ago, and I don’t mind staying here, actually. Peg, well, the proper term is passive-aggressive, but I have a few more colorful descriptors.” And the smile turns into a grimace as she takes a long swallow of her drink. “She’s a very nice woman in a lot of ways, but the 1950s had a way of really ruining women.”
“The 1950s made them just fine,” Hawkeye says as he swirls his martini glass. “Time moving forward is what ruined them. It’s a hard adjustment.” BJ, without looking, thwaps him on the back of the head. Hawkeye just grins, and Mona smiles around another sip of her drink.
“Whatever the cause, she’s never forgiven you.”
BJ shrugs, sips his own drink, grimaces at the watered-down taste. “I’ve never expected her to. It’s not part of the deal.”
“There’s a deal?”
Hawkeye scoffs. “The Magna Carta had less clauses and rules.”
Mona laughs, toasts Peg with pure irony and finishes her drink.
So they live in Crabapple Cove and see patients and have dinner with Erin and occasionally see the grandchildren after the six-year freeze out, and their bones get creaky and their eyes start to go and every night they fall asleep, Hawkeye’s arm around BJ’s stomach, and every morning they wake up and every day they talk and laugh and move forward through everything they didn’t say and didn’t do for years upon years. And every day, BJ feels a little lighter and brighter and better about everything. The calls from Peg dry up, the visits with the grandchildren increase, and no matter what, every time she goes home just down the road, Erin kisses his cheek, gives him a hug, and says goodnight. And then she does the same to Hawkeye. And BJ knows that no matter the state of the world, no matter the mixed feelings from his sons, Erin understands and accepts and loves, and it brings back his return from Korea, and the way Erin, even while shy, still allowed him to hold her, allowed him to smell her hair and touch her tiny hands, allowed him to fumble and fall and learn to be a parent two years too late, allowed him, all those years later, to fumble and fall and learn to be himself twenty-odd years after, and he hugs her tight and kisses her cheek, and tells her to sleep well, and the world is as it should be. The world is the best BJ’s ever had it.
Seriously people, be brutal.
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Date: 2007-12-29 03:23 am (UTC)Very well done! :)
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