FIC: Heaven from here, chapter eight
Dec. 27th, 2005 11:07 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
sharselune.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mash_slashFinally, this story is finished. I was having problems with a missing scene from a previous chapter, but now it is fixed. It's a very minor addition, but if you were wondering where Charlie came from in chapter six, you can check it out. Thank you for reading, and I hope this final chapter lives up to your expectations.
Title: Heaven from Here
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sharselune
Rating: PG for kissage
Warnings: None
Previously:
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
The room was yellow, lit by the bedside lamp, and Hawkeye looked like a wavery afterimage standing by the bed.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” Hawkeye said stupidly.
BJ stepped into the room and the door swung shut behind him. “I’m sorry.”
Hawkeye ran his hand through graying hair and abruptly gave BJ a tired smile. “So. Ah… it’s been awhile.”
“Yeah.” BJ could feel the raw tension of the moment receding under the fake cheer in Hawkeye’s voice. Grateful, he returned Hawkeye’s smile. “I hit traffic.”
“Must have been some hell of a traffic jam.”
“How’s the conference going?” BJ shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled around to the window, peering out the blinds to the dark parking lot below.
“It’s really great. I think they’re on to something here. A pacemaker that people can actually stand using permanently, so you don’t have to worry about having a heart attack outside of the one hour a day you’d be using the old pacemaker.”
“Is it that good?”
“I’m going to suggest it at Boston General.” Hawkeye laughed a little. “You know, we’re using that open heart massage at the hospital all the time. All because I saw you do it.”
“Really? All the time?”
“Did it to a guy just the other day. He thought he was coming in for us to fix his broken leg. Boy was he surprised.”
“You’re still at Boston Gen?”
“No. Well, I was, and I’ll be going back after this conference. I’ve been away for a while, though. I think I’ve forgotten how to do surgery.”
“It’s like riding a bicycle.”
“Everything’s like riding a bike.” Hawkeye sat down on the edge of the bed. “How’s your practice going?”
“Really well. Hey, if you have time sometime, you should tell me about these pacemakers.”
“I will.” Hawkeye glanced at the bedside table. “Would you, um, like a drink? I’ve got some left.”
BJ looked over his shoulder at the door. “Was that a friend of yours?”
“Ah. No. He, uh, was here for moral support.”
“Did it work?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m here now,” BJ said heartily. They fell silent.
“What did I do wrong?” Hawkeye asked suddenly. Uncomfortable, BJ shifted his weight.
“I’ll have that drink now,” he said with a nervous laugh.
“No, BJ, I’m serious. What did I do?”
“What makes you think you did something?” BJ avoided his gaze, hands still in his pockets, still with that ridiculously joking tone in his voice.
“Don’t play games with me. You’re avoiding me and I want to know what I did wrong.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” BJ said, softer now. He glanced at Hawkeye for a second, at the bottle, at the window, at Hawkeye again. “You didn’t do anything, Hawk.”
“Now you’re going to say it’s not me, it’s you, right?” Hawkeye said, voice heavy with sarcasm. He kept trying to catch BJ’s eyes.
“Right. Except it’s not me either, it’s neither of us. There’s nothing wrong.”
“Beej.” Hawkeye stood up and stepped around the bed to BJ. “Tell me you hate me and I’ll go away. Tell me something. Anything. But don’t leave me here wondering why. I’ll avoid you if you want, I’ll never talk to you again, but only if you give me a reason.” He reached out but didn’t touch BJ.
BJ looked up at him but didn’t respond, so Hawkeye continued. “Do you want me to leave and never speak to you again? Is that what you want?”
“No, I… Look, Hawk, you’re my friend.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. You’re my friend, and I don’t want to lose your friendship. But… oh, God, this is going to sound terrible. You’re going to hate me.”
“I won’t hate you,” Hawkeye said with a bit of a laugh. “Beej, just say it.”
“I know you’re a queer,” BJ blurted out. He could feel Hawkeye freeze next to him. He didn’t look up at Hawkeye. “Hawk, I was your roommate, of course I know.”
“You were afraid I was going to infect you?” Hawkeye asked in a low voice, derisive.
“No,” BJ whispered. “I was afraid that you already had.”
x.x.x.x.x.x
BJ sometimes dreamed of a long-fingered surgeon sewing him up from stem to stern, stitching, folding, stitching, stretching BJ’s skin tight as a drum as more and more of BJ—navel, chest hair, love handles, flat copper nipples—was folded over and sewn inside of him. Neatly and professionally the long-fingered, black-haired surgeon rolled up his penis like a sock and tucked it inside a pocket in his flesh. The scrotum twisted, folded and carefully stowed. The long-fingered black-haired blue-eyed surgeon closed the seams and BJ lay there, anesthetized but awake, a featureless, genderless doll and the doctor kept stitching, stitching.
Sometimes he dreamed that there was something in his brain and he had to get it out before Peg saw. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror and laid out the tools of surgery as his wife and children slept, marking on his face the dotted line where the bone-saw would split his skull.
Sometimes he dreamed that heaven was a place somewhere in a tent in Korea with a gin martini and a surgeon in khaki scrubs but he didn’t like to think about that one too much at all.
x.x.x.x.x.x
Hawkeye made a short sound of what could have been resignation, or annoyance. “You blame it on me?” He turned away from BJ and stalked back across the room to the bed, sitting down with his back to BJ.
“I did. I admit, I did.” BJ rubbed his face. “It wasn’t rational, it didn’t have anything to do with conscious thought, it was just that. I don’t know. I love Peg, I love my kids, but I feel the same thing for, well, you, as I do for Peg. And for a long time I was afraid that that meant that I didn’t love Peg enough. But now I realize that I do love her as much as I possibly can, more even, but it doesn’t change the fact that I… have feelings for you.”
Hawkeye glanced over his shoulder at BJ but didn’t say anything.
“I don’t understand how I can love a man and a woman the same way. I didn’t know it was possible. Some people say that it means I’m going to become a Communist.” BJ gave a short laugh and saw Hawkeye smile a little. “But then I think of you, and how I knew that you were queer and yet you were the most rational, caring, competent person in the entire U.S. Army and I had to think that maybe it wasn’t that bad.”
“I went crazy, you know,” Hawkeye reminded him.
“We all did,” BJ countered. “You were the most honest about it.” This time it was his turn to approach Hawkeye. He sat down on the edge of the bed next to the older man.
“So what does this mean, then?” Hawkeye asked. “Do you want me to avoid you?”
“I want…” BJ leaned over and rested his shoulder on Hawkeye’s shoulder. “I want a lot of things. But I don’t want you to avoid me.”
It felt weird to him. He flashed suddenly on Peggy’s stockings, on the line running up the backs of them and how the swell of Hawkeye’s thigh under his wrinkled pants could be just as sexy. “The problem is… Remember in Korea, when I was with that other woman?”
Hawkeye twitched the corner of his lip. “I asked you if you felt you had cheated on Peg, and you said no, because you hadn’t betrayed your love for Peg at all. It was just sex.”
“If I were with you, it wouldn’t be just sex. There would be love involved, and that would be cheating. I’m not going to cheat on Peg, Hawk.”
Hawkeye tilted his head to the side and laughed tiredly. “Damn you and your morals.”
“Hawkeye.”
Hawkeye turned his head towards BJ and BJ lifted his head to kiss the corner of Hawkeye’s mouth. It was awkward, not so much a kiss as an almost frantic pressing of flesh together, as if through that BJ could communicate how much he wished things were different. Hawkeye put his hand on BJ’s arm, on the sleeve of his scratchy wool sweater. BJ twisted his wrist and grabbed onto Hawkeye’s hand, pressing Hawkeye’s palm flat between his own fingers and palm, feeling the warm weathered flesh with the fine bones, long nails. Hawkeye grabbed BJ’s other wrist in his hand, pressing the tendons in his wrist with the pad of his thumb. After a minute, they broke apart. BJ could feel the hot tightness in his pants, the arousal that the kiss had given him. Hawkeye smelled like gin and vermouth and BJ wanted nothing more than to kiss him again, taste the alcohol on his lips. Instead he stood up.
“Peg made meatballs,” he said awkwardly. “There’s still some left over for you, if you want. She really wants to meet you. The kids do too.”
Hawkeye smiled a little and turned his head. “I’ve always wanted to meet your family.”
“Come on then. The couch is all set up.”
“It’ll be okay?” Hawkeye sounded tentative. “I mean, me meeting your family?”
“The only way Peg will ever let me off the couch is if I show up with you. She was furious that I was. Uh.” BJ caught himself. “Stuck in traffic.”
“Right.” Hawkeye stood up as well. “I guess I’m kind of hungry.”
BJ gathered up his coat and watched Hawkeye toss a few things into his bag to take with him. There was something that was not entirely sexual but nice nonetheless that coiled in the pit of his stomach when he watched Hawkeye, and he thought that it would be okay to have all the parts of himself in one place for once.
x.x.x.x.x.x
In the car, not yet to BJ’s house, they touched briefly, a touch of elbow to elbow, shoulder to arm, thigh to thigh, not-quite-accidental touches, the sort of not-touches that new lovers did. When BJ reached for the gearshift, Hawk reached out in a way that was not at all an accident and they touched thumb hooked around thumb, wrist to wrist, pulse to pulse. BJ rested his hand on the gearshift and glanced sideways at Hawkeye before looking back at the road.
“I wish it was different,” BJ said after a silence.
Hawkeye watched him for a minute, then shook his head. “We’re not in Korea, Beej.”
“If I didn’t love Peg—”
“It doesn’t matter that you love Peg.”
Bj’s eyes slid along the road lines. He disentangled his fingers with Hawkeye and put both his hands on the steering wheel. The car wheels turned, bumped up a curb into a driveway. BJ pulled the car neatly up to the end of the driveway and shut it off, dropping them into darkness. The house ahead of them was dark. He reached out a hand behind Hawkeye’s neck and then leaned over the gearshift, lips against lips again. They kissed more thoroughly this time. BJ pressed his forehead against Hawkeye’s, breathing in Hawkeye’s gin vermouth breath. Hawkeye slung an arm over BJ’s shoulder, pulling the two of them closer for a quick warm kiss.
“Love you,” BJ said, and it wasn’t Korea but with the smell of gin and the taste of Hawkeye he thought that he could almost see heaven from here.
Title: Heaven from Here
Author:
sharseluneRating: PG for kissage
Warnings: None
Previously:
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
The room was yellow, lit by the bedside lamp, and Hawkeye looked like a wavery afterimage standing by the bed.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” Hawkeye said stupidly.
BJ stepped into the room and the door swung shut behind him. “I’m sorry.”
Hawkeye ran his hand through graying hair and abruptly gave BJ a tired smile. “So. Ah… it’s been awhile.”
“Yeah.” BJ could feel the raw tension of the moment receding under the fake cheer in Hawkeye’s voice. Grateful, he returned Hawkeye’s smile. “I hit traffic.”
“Must have been some hell of a traffic jam.”
“How’s the conference going?” BJ shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled around to the window, peering out the blinds to the dark parking lot below.
“It’s really great. I think they’re on to something here. A pacemaker that people can actually stand using permanently, so you don’t have to worry about having a heart attack outside of the one hour a day you’d be using the old pacemaker.”
“Is it that good?”
“I’m going to suggest it at Boston General.” Hawkeye laughed a little. “You know, we’re using that open heart massage at the hospital all the time. All because I saw you do it.”
“Really? All the time?”
“Did it to a guy just the other day. He thought he was coming in for us to fix his broken leg. Boy was he surprised.”
“You’re still at Boston Gen?”
“No. Well, I was, and I’ll be going back after this conference. I’ve been away for a while, though. I think I’ve forgotten how to do surgery.”
“It’s like riding a bicycle.”
“Everything’s like riding a bike.” Hawkeye sat down on the edge of the bed. “How’s your practice going?”
“Really well. Hey, if you have time sometime, you should tell me about these pacemakers.”
“I will.” Hawkeye glanced at the bedside table. “Would you, um, like a drink? I’ve got some left.”
BJ looked over his shoulder at the door. “Was that a friend of yours?”
“Ah. No. He, uh, was here for moral support.”
“Did it work?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m here now,” BJ said heartily. They fell silent.
“What did I do wrong?” Hawkeye asked suddenly. Uncomfortable, BJ shifted his weight.
“I’ll have that drink now,” he said with a nervous laugh.
“No, BJ, I’m serious. What did I do?”
“What makes you think you did something?” BJ avoided his gaze, hands still in his pockets, still with that ridiculously joking tone in his voice.
“Don’t play games with me. You’re avoiding me and I want to know what I did wrong.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” BJ said, softer now. He glanced at Hawkeye for a second, at the bottle, at the window, at Hawkeye again. “You didn’t do anything, Hawk.”
“Now you’re going to say it’s not me, it’s you, right?” Hawkeye said, voice heavy with sarcasm. He kept trying to catch BJ’s eyes.
“Right. Except it’s not me either, it’s neither of us. There’s nothing wrong.”
“Beej.” Hawkeye stood up and stepped around the bed to BJ. “Tell me you hate me and I’ll go away. Tell me something. Anything. But don’t leave me here wondering why. I’ll avoid you if you want, I’ll never talk to you again, but only if you give me a reason.” He reached out but didn’t touch BJ.
BJ looked up at him but didn’t respond, so Hawkeye continued. “Do you want me to leave and never speak to you again? Is that what you want?”
“No, I… Look, Hawk, you’re my friend.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. You’re my friend, and I don’t want to lose your friendship. But… oh, God, this is going to sound terrible. You’re going to hate me.”
“I won’t hate you,” Hawkeye said with a bit of a laugh. “Beej, just say it.”
“I know you’re a queer,” BJ blurted out. He could feel Hawkeye freeze next to him. He didn’t look up at Hawkeye. “Hawk, I was your roommate, of course I know.”
“You were afraid I was going to infect you?” Hawkeye asked in a low voice, derisive.
“No,” BJ whispered. “I was afraid that you already had.”
x.x.x.x.x.x
BJ sometimes dreamed of a long-fingered surgeon sewing him up from stem to stern, stitching, folding, stitching, stretching BJ’s skin tight as a drum as more and more of BJ—navel, chest hair, love handles, flat copper nipples—was folded over and sewn inside of him. Neatly and professionally the long-fingered, black-haired surgeon rolled up his penis like a sock and tucked it inside a pocket in his flesh. The scrotum twisted, folded and carefully stowed. The long-fingered black-haired blue-eyed surgeon closed the seams and BJ lay there, anesthetized but awake, a featureless, genderless doll and the doctor kept stitching, stitching.
Sometimes he dreamed that there was something in his brain and he had to get it out before Peg saw. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror and laid out the tools of surgery as his wife and children slept, marking on his face the dotted line where the bone-saw would split his skull.
Sometimes he dreamed that heaven was a place somewhere in a tent in Korea with a gin martini and a surgeon in khaki scrubs but he didn’t like to think about that one too much at all.
x.x.x.x.x.x
Hawkeye made a short sound of what could have been resignation, or annoyance. “You blame it on me?” He turned away from BJ and stalked back across the room to the bed, sitting down with his back to BJ.
“I did. I admit, I did.” BJ rubbed his face. “It wasn’t rational, it didn’t have anything to do with conscious thought, it was just that. I don’t know. I love Peg, I love my kids, but I feel the same thing for, well, you, as I do for Peg. And for a long time I was afraid that that meant that I didn’t love Peg enough. But now I realize that I do love her as much as I possibly can, more even, but it doesn’t change the fact that I… have feelings for you.”
Hawkeye glanced over his shoulder at BJ but didn’t say anything.
“I don’t understand how I can love a man and a woman the same way. I didn’t know it was possible. Some people say that it means I’m going to become a Communist.” BJ gave a short laugh and saw Hawkeye smile a little. “But then I think of you, and how I knew that you were queer and yet you were the most rational, caring, competent person in the entire U.S. Army and I had to think that maybe it wasn’t that bad.”
“I went crazy, you know,” Hawkeye reminded him.
“We all did,” BJ countered. “You were the most honest about it.” This time it was his turn to approach Hawkeye. He sat down on the edge of the bed next to the older man.
“So what does this mean, then?” Hawkeye asked. “Do you want me to avoid you?”
“I want…” BJ leaned over and rested his shoulder on Hawkeye’s shoulder. “I want a lot of things. But I don’t want you to avoid me.”
It felt weird to him. He flashed suddenly on Peggy’s stockings, on the line running up the backs of them and how the swell of Hawkeye’s thigh under his wrinkled pants could be just as sexy. “The problem is… Remember in Korea, when I was with that other woman?”
Hawkeye twitched the corner of his lip. “I asked you if you felt you had cheated on Peg, and you said no, because you hadn’t betrayed your love for Peg at all. It was just sex.”
“If I were with you, it wouldn’t be just sex. There would be love involved, and that would be cheating. I’m not going to cheat on Peg, Hawk.”
Hawkeye tilted his head to the side and laughed tiredly. “Damn you and your morals.”
“Hawkeye.”
Hawkeye turned his head towards BJ and BJ lifted his head to kiss the corner of Hawkeye’s mouth. It was awkward, not so much a kiss as an almost frantic pressing of flesh together, as if through that BJ could communicate how much he wished things were different. Hawkeye put his hand on BJ’s arm, on the sleeve of his scratchy wool sweater. BJ twisted his wrist and grabbed onto Hawkeye’s hand, pressing Hawkeye’s palm flat between his own fingers and palm, feeling the warm weathered flesh with the fine bones, long nails. Hawkeye grabbed BJ’s other wrist in his hand, pressing the tendons in his wrist with the pad of his thumb. After a minute, they broke apart. BJ could feel the hot tightness in his pants, the arousal that the kiss had given him. Hawkeye smelled like gin and vermouth and BJ wanted nothing more than to kiss him again, taste the alcohol on his lips. Instead he stood up.
“Peg made meatballs,” he said awkwardly. “There’s still some left over for you, if you want. She really wants to meet you. The kids do too.”
Hawkeye smiled a little and turned his head. “I’ve always wanted to meet your family.”
“Come on then. The couch is all set up.”
“It’ll be okay?” Hawkeye sounded tentative. “I mean, me meeting your family?”
“The only way Peg will ever let me off the couch is if I show up with you. She was furious that I was. Uh.” BJ caught himself. “Stuck in traffic.”
“Right.” Hawkeye stood up as well. “I guess I’m kind of hungry.”
BJ gathered up his coat and watched Hawkeye toss a few things into his bag to take with him. There was something that was not entirely sexual but nice nonetheless that coiled in the pit of his stomach when he watched Hawkeye, and he thought that it would be okay to have all the parts of himself in one place for once.
x.x.x.x.x.x
In the car, not yet to BJ’s house, they touched briefly, a touch of elbow to elbow, shoulder to arm, thigh to thigh, not-quite-accidental touches, the sort of not-touches that new lovers did. When BJ reached for the gearshift, Hawk reached out in a way that was not at all an accident and they touched thumb hooked around thumb, wrist to wrist, pulse to pulse. BJ rested his hand on the gearshift and glanced sideways at Hawkeye before looking back at the road.
“I wish it was different,” BJ said after a silence.
Hawkeye watched him for a minute, then shook his head. “We’re not in Korea, Beej.”
“If I didn’t love Peg—”
“It doesn’t matter that you love Peg.”
Bj’s eyes slid along the road lines. He disentangled his fingers with Hawkeye and put both his hands on the steering wheel. The car wheels turned, bumped up a curb into a driveway. BJ pulled the car neatly up to the end of the driveway and shut it off, dropping them into darkness. The house ahead of them was dark. He reached out a hand behind Hawkeye’s neck and then leaned over the gearshift, lips against lips again. They kissed more thoroughly this time. BJ pressed his forehead against Hawkeye’s, breathing in Hawkeye’s gin vermouth breath. Hawkeye slung an arm over BJ’s shoulder, pulling the two of them closer for a quick warm kiss.
“Love you,” BJ said, and it wasn’t Korea but with the smell of gin and the taste of Hawkeye he thought that he could almost see heaven from here.
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