Fic: Light Reading (13+)

[angryhaiku.livejournal.com]

Title: Light Reading (1 of 3)
Author: Chase, aka Angryhaiku
Pairing: BJ/Hawkeye. Er, more or less.
Rating: 13+, mostly for profanity.
Disclaimer: Everyone’s favorite exercise in futility! I do not own the characters or proprietary ideas depicted here, and any compensation I receive for this story will be strictly non-fungible and monetarily valueless.
Summary: BJ confronts Hawkeye about privacy and stolen mail.

This is the briefly awaited sequel to “These Letters,” posted in this very community not one week ago.



Doing a little light reading? BJ demanded.

My glance flickers to my bunk, to the novel that still lies open, facedown, on my pillow. “Oh, just the Case of the Two Steeples,” I answer, with my best attitude of nonchalance. “I’m starting to think the butler did it.”

“There’s no butler in that book,” he says. His tone is soft, dangerous; even quiet, it conveys all the anger he’s working so hard to keep out of his expression.

“Aren’t you on duty?” I ask.

“Colonel Potter took over. He said I looked tired.” He certainly doesn’t look tired now, with his jaw clenched and the muscles in his arms and shoulders rigid with anger. I wonder how long he’ll let me dodge the issue of the letter; maybe we can go on forever without a shouting match, with me walking on eggshells and him crackling with outrage. Obviously he wants me to own up to it, to confess my sin so he doesn’t have to dirty his hands accusing me of it. He’ll be a good father when he gets home.

I’m not sure why I’m so unwilling to oblige him, unless it’s just a childish fear of the that first outrage, or maybe an angry desire to force BJ to confront me and admit that what he’s got is beautiful.

“BJ,” I say, looking fully at the letter in his hand, and the guilt in my voice is evidently enough of an admission for him.

“God damn it, Hawkeye!” he shouts, then kicks his footlocker. His anger is almost tangible, almost sentient; I can feel his outrage looming large in the space between us, and abruptly I’m aware that he’s a bigger man than I am.

“I didn’t, that is, I –“ I take a step backward, towards the door. It’s never before crossed my mind that he might hit in anger – not affable, easygoing BJ! – but now it doesn’t seem impossible.

“You left a God damn thumb print on the envelope, Pierce,” he snarls, tossing the letter into his cigar box as though it were a baseball card. “You thought I wouldn’t know you’ve been rummaging through my footlocker?” There’s nothing I can say until he’s burned out some of his anger, so I keep silent and sit down on my cot while he paces back and forth, picks up a martini glass, then sets it down again, hard enough for the base to shatter and the stem to go sailing off into Frank’s side of the tent. When he speaks again, he’s back to the controlled fury that’s at once better and worse than the shouting. “How long?” he asks.

Whatever angry recriminations I’d expected, this wasn’t one. “How long what?” I ask.

“How long have you been stealing my mail?” If he weren’t so angry, I’d quibble over usage, the difference between “borrow” and “steal,” but I’m still not convinced he won’t hit me. “How long have you been reading my wife’s private…” he trails off, unable to put a name to the kind of things Peg writes him. “Is it a good show? Do you get off?”

“Jesus, Beej, it’s not like that!” I protest. “I just wanted to know…I thought I heard you crying last night, and I wanted to make sure you were all right, so I read one of the letters Peg wrote you. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a Dear John or that Erin was sick or something.”

He pauses, fakes a sick-looking smile. I can tell he’s embarrassed, bless his Presbyterian heart. “So you saw what it was and put it back,” he suggests, still dead-sounding.

“Would you believe me if I said I had?” I ask.

“No,” he spits.

Even though he’s biliously angry, and even though his certainty is a condemnation, it’s still something of a pleasure that he knows me so well. “Yeah. Yeah, I read it.”

“There was a reason I was hiding them, Hawk,” he says. Then all at once, his anger goes slack and runs out of him, like so much rainwater. He sits down – or rather, he lets all the strength out of his legs and collapses – on the edge of his bunk. In his hurt expression, I see what he was afraid of when he came home and found his private stash of letters disturbed (and how blind I am, not to realize it before!). He’s not angry at me on his own behalf, but because of what I think (or rather, what he thinks I think) about his wife, about poor defenseless Peg who wrote these letters at his impetus if not actually at his behest, and who now must surely seem to be a whore. He’s not mad about my betrayal, but what he sees as his own betrayal of Peg. Sadly, he closes the cigar box, puts it back in his footlocker, and rests his head on his hands.

“I know that’s not what your wife is like, BJ,” I say. His head snaps up.

“Oh, no?” he asks, his tone somewhere between desperate and mocking.

“Teach grandpa to suck eggs. I know a novice when I read one.”

He looks angry again, but at least this time it’s without the soulless quality of self-condemnation that he had before.

“So you’re saying, what, then? Someone else wrote this?”

“No, I’m…I mean that the woman who wrote the letter I just read isn’t the kind of woman who –“

“That’s right, you’re the expert, aren’t you?” BJ’s trying to hurt my feelings, now, but he doesn’t really have the heart for it. Vindictiveness doesn’t suit him.

“Yeah, I’m the expert,” I answer harshly. BJ looks at me through narrowed eyes, then walks to my footlocker – unlocked, as BJ is currently wearing my clean socks, which until he stole them were the only things in there worth stealing. He flips it open with a careless, practiced gesture, then takes a stack of letters out. I don’t save the envelopes the way BJ does – although maybe I should, as the envelope thumbprint security system seems pretty effective. He obviously knows what he’s looking for, as he skips past the thick pallet of letters from my father

He flips through them. “’Dear Hawkeye,’ from ‘Judy.’ ‘Dear Hawkeye’ from ‘Elizabeth.’ ‘My dear Ben,’ ‘Love, Vivian.’ ‘Dear Lord Archer,’ – she must be an interesting one. ‘Dear Hawkeye –‘”

“Those aren’t the same, BJ, and you know it!”

“Hawkeye, are you…jealous?”

“Yes, of course I’m jealous!” I answer angrily, and BJ frowns at me, surprised by my vehemence.

“Of what?” he asks, not affectedly, but honestly bewildered. “Girls write you letters like this all the time, these are just from –“

“Not like this! It’s never been…it’s easy to convince someone who’s already lusty to do something out of lust, Beej. This is…” I gesture ineffectually to his footlocker. “Peg’s letters are lust formed by love, a much rarer breed. She’d write you the same letter if you were a, a bad kisser, a leper, repulsive!”

“Hawkeye, I –“

“That wasn’t my point, BJ.” I get off the bed and take my letters out of his hand. “God, how…Of course I’m jealous of what you have with your wife. You don’t have to tell me that Peg is a nice girl, because ‘nice girl’ shines through every sentence of the letter I read. She wrote that letter, not because it’s in her nature to write that kind of letter, but because she thought it would make you happy!” My hands swing wildly, but I don’t have a sense of control over them, and the leaves of paper flapping together make a faint rustle. “These, these are for the women who wrote them, not for me. Peg writes for you, because she thinks the letters she writes will make you happy.” I put the letters back in my footlocker. “I know you know the difference.”

He laughs quietly at a private joke. “What?” I ask, a little defensive.

“No, nothing. It’s just…strange that you and Peg think so similarly.” His gaze is inward-turning, pensive, but evidently he comes to a decision, because he opens the cigar box again and roots through it before proffering a letter to me. “Read this.”

“Beej, I couldn’t…” I hope he thinks I’ve found a new respect for his privacy, but it’s actually just because I don’t think I can stomach more of the BJ-and-Peg Happy Families Hour.

He smiles, the same sickly embarrassed smile from before. “She wrote about you, you don’t want to read it?”

His anger is spent, so I’m sure he means well by this gesture; besides that, I can’t think of a graceful way to refuse. I open the letter (I hope it won’t be like the last one; a reaction to that is inevitable and I don’t want BJ thinking, on top of everything else, that I lust after his wife). This letter is dated July, a few months later than the other, but it seems more often read; the ink is slightly faded in places from frequent handling, and the corners and edges of the paper are soft and worn.

“My love,

“I had an odd conversation with your mother last week. (I know that’s not generally how these letters are supposed to begin, but please bear with me.) We were sitting in the dining room, drinking coffee and talking about you.

“’I was worried BJ wouldn’t be able to relate to anybody in the military,’ I said, ‘but he certainly seems to have found a kindred spirit in Hawkeye.’

“She laughed. ‘Yes, sometimes reading BJ’s letters I feel like I’m friends with Hawkeye myself.’

“’I know what you mean! I want to have him visit when they come home, he sounds like a wonderful person.’

Unless Peg and Mrs. Hunnicutt talk like they’re trapped in a VD-prevention instructional film, I suspect this is not a direct transcript. BJ sits down next to me, the bunk creaking with his weight in addition to mine. Perhaps because of my earlier concern about physical violence, I’m excruciatingly aware of his physical presence. He rests his knee against mine, and I can feel the heat of his skin radiating through two layers of fabric.

“’It’ll be soon, Peg. I’m just glad he’s found such a good friend over there. You know, sometimes the way BJ talks about Hawkeye, it reminds me of the way he talked about you in those first letters he sent me about you, dear, just before he proposed.’

“I’m sure Mother didn’t mean anything by it. (If she had, I’m sure it would’ve been a hysterical accusation over Thanksgiving dinner, not a quiet joke between the two of us in the kitchen.) She left, and I sat there at the table with nothing but tepid dregs in my cup, wondering. I’ve been wondering ever since.

“Why is it you’ve never described the way anyone looks – I mean besides ‘Lebanese’ or ‘ferret-faced’ – except for Hawkeye? Why is it you’re writing less and less about the good you’re doing in surgery, and more and more about the funny thing Hawkeye said during a bowel resection?

“Why is it your mother reads your letters and hears the way you sounded while in new love?

“BJ, I’ve been wondering for a week:

“Are you fucking Hawkeye?”

Wild-eyed, I look up at BJ, but he inclines his chin back to the letter. His face is impassive.

“Of course you aren’t. You’re a better man than that. But you’re thinking about it, aren’t you? Late at night, maybe after a drink or two or six, when the luster of letters from home you’ve already read a dozen times wears off…you think about Hawkeye, don’t you? And what you’d do with him if you weren’t married to me?

“I’m sure this sounds like an accusation, but I don’t precisely mean it as one. Forgive me, love, I don’t know precisely what I mean. Please understand, even if you are thinking of Hawkeye, I’m not angry.

After this strange assertion, there’re a long series of sentences begun and then crossed out, as though Peg was not entirely sure what she was trying to say. Unlike with mistakes of grammar or slips of the pen, which were corrected with a neat pair of lines through the offending words, Peg had used her pen to heavily black out these errors so that they were completely illegible. Eventually she just scratched out the rest of the page, and I have to turn to the next to continue reading.

“I want you to take comfort where you can. I don’t just mean it in a ‘Gather ye rosebuds’ way (although I suspect you will have a great many regrets if you don’t confront what it is that you think and feel about Hawkeye), but I think he’s good for you. There are things I can’t be for you, right now or maybe ever, but I believe that Hawkeye can, and maybe some of them are more physical than friendly, and I don’t mind that. I want you to be as happy as you can possibly be, and honestly, the idea that you’re happy with someone else doesn’t even stir the faintest jealousy in me, because I know that you’ll come home to me, more fascinating and wonderful and happy for the experiences.

“I’ve embarrassed you. I can imagine the uncomfortable way you’re smiling” – I can imagine it too, now; I’ve seen it more than once today – “as vividly as though you’re sitting next to me. Here, I’ll tell you something embarrassing about me to balance the scales: The thought of you and Hawkeye together, and – if I’m not overstepping, and if Hawkeye feels the same way about you, and if he’s as lovely and promiscuous as you’ve described him as being – and the thought of you and me and him all together makes me more aroused than anything, save your actual presence, ever has before. The thought of it has me shifting in my chair and pulling at my locket, which you know as well as anyone is a sign that I’m (ahem) distracted.

“Perhaps I’ve made a horrible mistake. Perhaps I’ve completely misinterpreted things, and perhaps you’re on your way to the C.O.’s office to get a hardship discharge, as your wife has gone completely insane. If I’m wrong, I’m sorry, BJ.

“Oh, God! Imagine if I’m wrong. Imagine if I’ve embarrassed myself so catastrophically! Write me back soon, love, to reassure me that you don’t want to divorce your insane, homosexuality-encouraging wife.

“I’m not wrong, though, am I?”

She signed it, and included a postscript on another topic which I don’t bother to read. I look up from the letter. BJ’s staring at me, trying – and failing – to keep from looking anxious. He obviously wants me to speak first, so he can have some cue about where we go from here, but I’m too shellshocked by the paper in my hands. I know if I were to say something about Peg being crazy with loneliness, he would laugh and pretend that this encounter never happened, but I can’t do that just at the moment. Neither can I ask BJ what he thinks of it all, or leap joyously into his arms; I still need more information, some comfort, something.

The water’s awfully deep here; I’d feel better if I could see bottom. I can’t even tell if Peg really means what she says, or if she’s telling BJ what she thinks he wants to hear.

BJ, courageous soul, takes the initiative again. “I was worried…that you’d read this, and you hadn’t talked to me about it. That’s why – that’s partly why – I was so angry at you.”

“No, I, uh, I didn’t.”

“Or there were some, uh, afterward. That could have been…off-putting.”

It occurs to me what he means, that Peg has mentioned me – and maybe BJ has, too – in their secret letters. I’m aroused again, and I pray that BJ looks anywhere, at anything, but down.

“BJ,” I breathe, but he’s already leaning forward. He kisses me with infinite sweetness, an uncertain brushing of unfamiliar lips, and I close my eyes automatically. As Peg promised, he smells like clean water and unperfumed soap, and also faintly of gin and sweat and me. I can almost even smell the faint echo of her on his skin, but before I have time to muse on the impossibility of that, he’s pulling away. He coughs embarrassedly.

“Hawk, I don’t want to pressure – “ he starts, but I press my lips against his again and whatever he had been going to say is lost.

It’s not that I’m not interested in whatever he was going to say, so much as I have other, more pressing concerns. Like how much time we have before Frank gets back, or whether putting a hangar on the door will be worth the effort.

-- End Part One! --

A/N: Thanks for reading! This story should be a two- or three-parter, and then I anticipate a third story in the series, assuming I can tame the bunnies and teach them to run linearly. Please be advised that part two might be a while in coming, as I'm moving this weekend and Heaven knows how long it'll take to get the internets set up in my new apartment.
Oh! Also, I need a beta, if anyone’s so inclined. I used to be a copy editor, so I don’t need much in the way of line edits, but I’m concerned about the sentence-by-sentence comprehensibility and flow of my stories, as well as anachronisms. I’d be happy to trade services, or send pies* of gratitude!

*Metaphorical pie only.