Can't Make It, Hawkeye/BJ

[dancinguniverse.livejournal.com]

Title: Can't Make It
Author: dancinguniverse
Pairing: Hawkeye/BJ if you squint. Otherwise, just friendship.
Rating: PG
Summary: If war is hell, no one expects you to go through it unscathed.
Disclaimer: None of the boys are mine. I make no money, and my muse takes all the credit anyway.



From his first day, BJ Hunnicutt knew Hawkeye Pierce was going to be important here in the middle of what he quickly identified as Hell, give or take a few pits of flame.

First impressions were colorful, but failed to give BJ any assurance that the man he had just met was in any way an effective and competant surgeon.

It wasn't until he saw Hawk's easy, absolute control when the bombshells started exploding that he thought Hawkeye had the right attitude after all.

It wasn't until he was retching at his first sight of gruesome war death and felt Hawkeye's hands, steady and solid, on his forehead and back that he thought maybe Hawkeye's disposition was well nigh perfect.

The first night in the Swamp was a quiet one, and Hawkeye warned him it wouldn't happen often. BJ was introduced to the still, and even though the cot he was given held an unfamilair shape, and sometimes, for a second, Hawkeye's glances held a ghost of something uglier than his laughter and his warm welcome, BJ thought that this could maybe work. At least until he could go home again.

He thought his first time in surgery would be horrific, and it was, but it wasn't a milestone he could wrap his head around. He thought it would be something meaningful, something that would change his life, and perhaps it did, but at the same time...

It was just past dawn on his first full day at the 4077 when BJ saw the choppers came in for the first time, delivering body after body until he lost count. He would have been quickly sick again were it not for Hawkeye's calming presence. Margaret stayed with him most of the morning, afternoon, and evening, another piece of solid ground to lean on, and whenever he flagged, Hawkeye was there to call some ridiculous comment or tell him to take a breather. Hawkeye was there afterward, to drag him to the messhall and crack jokes about what passed for food at the M*A*S*H, at the same time that he was forcing food into BJ's somewhat queasy but mostly starving stomach.

That night, BJ fell into bed, and found Hawkeye's snores an effective cover for the gruesome soundtrack his brain had wanted to play. It didn't stop his dreams from being an endless repeat of blood, shrapnel, and stitches, but it made it bearable.

So BJ's first time was by and large unremarkable, and it wasn't flagged, in his mind, as a "First Time" event. The second and third times were all right, as well. It wasn't until the middle of his second week that it all hit him. The choppers, the bodies, they weren't going to stop coming.

He got his first letter from Peg that day, and had the alarming feeling that she was writing to a stranger. Everything from his life back home suddenly felt like it belonged to someone else, someone not drenched in blood, someone who could smile and laugh and not feel like it was, at least in some part, always a cover-up to hide the elephant in the room, the thing Hawkeye was always trying to pretend didn't exist, until he had to flail against it once again with a grim face and deft hands: Death.

In true war fashion, however, there was no time for a convenient emotional breakdown, because the choppers came in again, bringing more wounded, more people who would live or die, depending on whether BJ was as good a surgeon as he'd always thought he was.

BJ walked out of nineteen hours of surgery like a dead man, and when he walked into his tent and saw Peg's letter still sitting on his bunk, something brittle and scared inside of him whispered that he might never see her again, that he might never go home again.

He was seated on his bunk crying, head in his hands, when Hawkeye came in a few minutes later.

"I can't do this," he told Hawkeye, who hadn't stared at him like he'd gone off his rocker, much to BJ's surprise.

Hawkeye instead sat down next to BJ, wrapping one arm around his shoulders.

"I can't - how do you take all this? How do you go through this, every day, and not just - ?" He gestured helplessly, and wiped his face on his sleeve.

"What makes you think we don't?" Hawkeye's voice was more quiet than usual, but its brassy tone was no gentler, still matter-of-fact and frank, and this was somehow more comforting than if he'd tried to soften it for BJ.

He looked up, and Hawkeye laughed, tightening his arm for a second.

"It's called being human, it means you're still sane. Geez, if you didn't break soon I was going to get scared. I was going nuts my second day in."

"So I'm not..." BJ trailed off, not sure what he meant.

"Weak? A baby? Threatening your own manhood?" Hawkeye's voice held its usual tease. "Listen, Beej, you see the stuff we do, day in, day out, you're gonna break sooner or later. You just have to pull yourself back together afterwards."

"That's it?" BJ asked, sniffing.

Hawkeye smiled and stood, patting his shoulder. "Well," he answered, walking over to the still. "Sometimes liquor helps."

BJ laughed and accepted the glass Hawkeye offered, but he wondered for the first time if Hawkeye wasn't really joking.


~Fin~