NEW FIC: "Maybe Baby" by Aura218 BJ/Hawk PG

[aura218.livejournal.com]

Title: "Maybe Baby

Author: aura218

Characters: Hawkeye/BJ

Summary: It's impossible, it's can't happen, why even talk about it? But we're talking about it. BJ wants another child.

Rating: PG

Many thanks to my beta reader Tania

Part of the Gentleman Doctors series.

Timeline: 1966

Read more from this series at my new fic journal ficbyaura218

"Maybe Baby"

 

When Hawkeye found B.J. to take him to dinner, he wasn't in the OR, but the NICU. Amid bays of preemies in oxygen tents hooked up to more tubes than could hardly find room on their tiny, thin bodies, B.J. was standing in full gown. He had one in his arms. When he looked up, perhaps sensing Hawkeye's presence, Hawkeye could see the smile behind his mask.

"That your patient?" Hawkeye took a mask from a nearby box and approached.

B.J. shook his head. He looked back down at the minute creature he held. Hawkeye approached, warily, sensing something important was going on in his lover's mind.

B.J. whispered, "The nurses need bodies to come hold them. Just being held helps them thrive. Lookit that little hand?"

Hawkeye reached into the bundle. The hand was as small as his fingertip, the skin paper thin and lined with spidery veins. The infant was so tiny, it could hardly hold its eyes open.

"So . . . you come here often?" Hawkeye said.

B.J. deeply inhaled the intoxicating baby fumes

A nurse floated by. "Dr. Pierce? Do you want to hold one of them? We could use all the help we can get."

Hawkeye blinked at her.

"Do you?" B.J. said.

Hawkeye stared at him, so tall and capable, as if that little baby with only a faint chance at life really could get better. The bus incident had happened almost fifteen years ago.

"I don't know," Hawkeye said.

*

"Hawk."

Silence. Hawkeye's book was resting on his nose, the lower rims of his reading glasses drooping over the cover.

"Hawk!" B.J. swatted him with his crossword puzzle.

"What! I'm awake!" He thrashed the covers off and was half out of bed before B.J. reflexively pulled him back in. "What do you want?"

"Nothing."

"The hell did you wake me for?" Hawkeye folded his glasses and set them on the nighttable.

"Nothing, I'm sorry, never mind."

Grumbling, Hawkeye soothed his ruffled fur back under his cocoon, propping his book on his nose. After a moment, he peeked one eye at B.J.

"It's something."

"I'm sorry I woke you, go back to sleep," B.J. said.

"Hunnicutt, tell me what it is. I'd rather not be woken four more times until you've worked whatever is on your mind into a problem of apocalyptic proportions."

B.J. looked up from his crossword. "I don't do that."

Hawkeye set his book aside. "Yes, you do. Viz, me, last week, listening to you turn the engine over -- and over, and over -- in the garage because you've convinced yourself I've worn out my break pads."

"You did!"

"No, I didn't!"

"Ridiculous!" B.J. gestured with his pencil.

"The guy at the shop said someone wore them out by testing them too much!" Hawkeye poked at B.J.'s chest through the mountain of comforter. "Now tell me what it is before I have to take the cable car to work for another week."

B.J. pointedly turned back to his crossword puzzle, tapping at a square with his pencil. "It's stupid."

Hawkeye sighed. It was always stupid when it was monumental. In recent years, B.J. had become a worrier. Hawkeye had learned that it didn't matter if it sounded stupid to him, if it was important to B.J., it was inexorable. Handling a worried B.J. who was working up to another nervous fit required the gentleness of Dr. Spock and the poise of Baryshnikov.

"Fine," Hawkeye said. "Don't tell me. I didn't want to know anyway."

"Oh, you're an ass," said the man who'd been sharing his bed for ten years. "I want another kid, okay? It's stupid and impossible so let's just drop it."

Hawkeye blinked. He skritched around in the bed and tried to find a comfortable position, because suddenly he was very, very uncomfortable. Beside him, B.J. was watching him out of the corner of his eye while he pretended to put letters in his puzzle.

"Well . . . " Hawkeye said. "I suppose the next time we make love, I could start leaving my diaphragm in the bedside table."

B.J. made an irritated noise. "Just drop it, Hawk. I don't want to hear any jokes." He pitched his pencil and crossword puzzle together into his nighttable drawer and snapped his light off.

In the darkness, Hawkeye watched B.J. curl under the comforter and pull it up to his neck -- the international couples' signal of 'you've lost that loving feeling.' Hawkeye moved his book to his nightstand. Carefully, watching for any sign he was going to be snapped at, he spooned around B.J. and rested his chin on his arm. Reluctantly, B.J. squeezed his arm.

"Are you crying?" Hawkeye said.

"No." B.J. turned his face into his pillow to blot his cheeks.

"I didn't know you were so serious about another kid. When did this come on?"

B.J. shrugged, jostling Hawkeye. "Erin's getting older. Premies at work. We -- I never thought Erin would be my only. I never -- if it was you . . ."

"You never planned for me to show up and louse up your plans."

B.J. turned over. Hawkeye fell across his chest. "No," he said. "You didn't ruin anything, hon."

Hawkeye smiled. "That's sweet of you to say, but what you mean is that life would've been a lot easier if you'd stayed straight and married and had a normal, predictable life."

"Give or take a neurosis." The smile in B.J.'s voice was audible.

"Right. But I did wreck your comfy suburban dream house"

"Not my dream." B.J. cupped his chin. "Hawk, I would have been in a prison there and you know it. I wasn't the same man who went to war. You freed me."

Hawkeye went soft all over. He didn't know what to say, and he didn't have to. B.J. leaned up and kissed him. Hawkeye slid his whole body to cover B.J.'s, wrapped their legs together and his arms around B.J.'s middle. 'Octopus-Hawk', B.J. called this full court press, reserved for cold nights, reunifications, and intimate confessions. Hawkeye always felt you knew someone best when both your fleshes were one hundred per cent ameshed. Absently, he twirled a sprig of B.J.'s chest hair.

B.J. smacked his hand away. "That tickles."

"You know," Hawkeye pontificated, "there's more than one way to skin a fetus."

B.J. crossed his ankles around Hawkeye's under the covers. "You don't say."

"What about Margaret?"

"She selling pelts?" He tugged on Hawkeye's big toe with his own.

"No, dummy, remember what she said about Cambodian orphans?"

B.J.'s chest went in and out and his heart thudded against the side of Hawkeye's head. His whole body went thu-thud and woosh woosh, and it was Hawkeye's favorite sound to fall asleep to. Hawkeye considered that this was what a baby would listen to as it fell asleep, and he wondered if there was something wrong with him.

"I don't know," B.J. said. "I guess I didn't think about it seriously. I thought any kid I had would be my kid."

"It would be your kid. Our kid. If we got one."

"Hawkeye!" B.J. laughed. "Who would give us a kid? I bet they don't even give them to divorced people, let alone gay men."

"We can still try. Don't you think we should have a multi-pronged plan of attack? Considering we can't just assemble our own at home?"

B.J. reached out and clicked on his light. Hawkeye squinted and hid. The light, she burns. B.J. tugged the covers away from his face.

"Are we seriously talking about this?" B.J. said.

Hawkeye resigned himself to midnight light. "You started it."

"Hawkeye. Do you want a baby?"

Hawkeye moaned. He flipped over and pulled the covers over his head again.

"Hey!" B.J. sounded caught between laughter and dismay. "What's that?"

"I don't know! I don't know if I do! I'm forty-six, I thought I was done. I thought Father Time and Cousin Queer had answered the question for me."

B.J. laughed. "Charles was our age when Edward was born."

Hawkeye peeked out from his tomb, letting the pillow buffer his brain. "Charles was forty-four during the war and forty-four after and he's still forty-four now. It's all that cold air in Boston, it freezes people to the age their inner child is stuck at. But as for the other thing . . ."

"That's a toughie."

"Yeah."

Hawkeye sat up against the headboard, hip to hip with B.J. He flipped the covers over B.J.'s legs while he thought. B.J. caught his hand and traced the lines and bumps. They'd had their palms read for a lark in Venice Beach once: Hawk had a long life line, a short love line. They'd both had a good laugh over that.

A number by Cole Porter, whom Hawkeye was still mourning, whispered from the white and gold clock radio on Hawk's nighttable. The thing buzzed like the 4077th generator shed if the music wasn't playing; on nights Hawk couldn't sleep, he put it on the other side of the room rather than listen to the night pass to the sound of a bionic hornet's nest next to his ear. In the morning, B.J. learned of his sleepless night when Hawkeye slapped the table for five minutes before he tripped across the mess he perpetually left on the floor and then smashed the snooze button. One day he'd do that clock a real injury, and enjoy it.

"What about a surrogacy?" Hawkeye said.

B.J.'s eyes flicked up. "I wasn't sure you'd go for that."

Hawkeye smiled. "Great minds?"

"Do you want to talk to Peg, or shall I?"

Hawkeye felt real fear. "Why does it have to be her?"

B.J. shrugged, his 'isn't that what normal people do?' shrug of uncreative resignation. It drove Hawkeye mad. "Because then my kids would have the same parents?"

"Yeah, sure, your kids. You'd have another kid, I'd have another niece."

B.J.'s expression changed in a second. "Hawk, that's not what I meant --"

"I know that's not what you meant, but that's how it would work out. Think about it, Beej. Who does the school call when Erin's sick? It's not like two men can go on the birth certificate, and if anything happens, the court will say that she's your ex wife and it's your kid so she gets full custody."

"Peg wouldn't do that."

"Peg hates me." Ten years of bitterness went into that statement.

"She doesn't hate you," B.J. said. "She doesn't understand you, mostly because you're deliberately difficult around her. She appreciates how you encourage Erin, more or less"

"C'mon, I stole her husband." Hawkeye ignored the bit about baiting Peg. He didn't. Much. It wasn't his fault if Peg sometimes reminded him of Margaret and women like that tripped his sarcasm machine. She should take it as a compliment.

B.J. squeezed his hand as if to physically force the logic into his body. "Hawkeye, one day you're going to realize that Peggy could be your best friend if you let her. But --" he put his hands up before an argument ensued. "I see your point."

"Thank you."

"What about Jo?" B.J. suggested.

Hawkeye snickered. "Can you see Jo displaying telling traces of womanhood? I bet she's packing heat most days, if you know what I mean."

"Hawkeye, dogs know what you mean when you say 'do you know what I mean?' Maybe Bette . . . no, that's a stupid idea."

Hawkeye touched his arm. "No, it's not. Her mom died of -- of some gyno thing."

"And that's your vote of confidence?"

"Yes. The hormones produced during pregnancy are somehow correlated to reduced chances of ovarian cancer. Don't you read your journals anymore?"

B.J. paused. "Even if that's true, and she buys it, do you seriously think she'd go for it?"

"Jo and Bette told me they don't want kids."

"All women want kids," B.J. said.

"Just like all men want women? We can at least ask them."

Hawkeye felt that old black magic coming over him again. The bombs were falling, wounded in the compound, and the adrenaline was racing.

"You think we can raise a kid?" B.J. persisted. He wasn't asking, Hawkeye knew, he was testing what kind of response he'd get.

"Why not? Erin's a paramount of brains, elegance, and wit, all thanks to us."

B.J. smiled. Hawkeye's adoration of Erin was wholehearted, uncensored, and the only thing in the world he kept uncorrupted from cynicism or doubt. Sometimes B.J. worried if Erin could keep up the ideal plane image of herself Hawkeye carried around in his head.

"You sound like you're all for this," B.J. said.

Hawkeye stared off into the distance. "I don't know. . . ."

B.J. flumped back onto his pillow. "Hawk, c'mon, do you think this is a dumb idea or not?"

Hawkeye waved his hand in the air. "Well, that's just it, it's a great idea. Ideas are great things. Flying to the moon, that's a great idea. But what if it's all just cheese and the astronauts sink through to the middle?"

"I'm going to sleep."

"Or, what if we procure this infant and suddenly realize that we lack the necessity most couples had, namely the thing you had the last time you did this -- a wife. Who's going to watch it for the five or so years before it's in school while we're at work?"

B.J. put his hands behind his head and searched the ceiling for answers. In ten years, every question Hawkeye had posed him was up there in the constellation of divots on the stupid stucco ceiling. If only he could stare down the stars into answers.

"I guess one of us would go part-time. Or take a leave of absence." B.J. sighed. "I guess that's me. This was my idea, you make more than I do. You boss doesn't know you're gay."

"I'm not g--" "Yes you are."

"Several score of nurse beg to differ," Hawkeye said succinctly.

"As far as they are concerned --" B.J. jabbed his finger at the wall -- the outside world, them, the ones who could fire him, beat him, take Erin away, the house, arrest him, "-- you are 'one of them'."

"Look, we could work this out, stagger shifts or something."

"We'd never see each other, and someone would only be around when the kid is asleep."

"Yeah, you're right. Someone has to stay home." Hawkeye said. "Oh God!" He clapped his hand over his forehead and lurched into the duvet.

"What!"

Hawkeye grabbed onto B.J.'s arm, panicked. "Do you realize what that will make me?"

"No! What? What's the matter with you?"

Hawkeye clung to B.J. "I'd be supporting a family. I'd, oh God, I'd have to stop goofing off at work! I'd have to be on time! I'd have to do my charts! Every day."

"Hawk--"

"Oh no." Hawkeye climbed astride B.J.'s legs and clapped his hands over his shoulders. "Beej. What if I have to play golf with the boys. At The Club. They don't know that they don't let me into the Club."

B.J. held him. "Hawkeye, relax, Peterman loves you."

"No, no, you don't understand, I'd have to be respectable and get promoted and make more money! Kids need money!"

"You make an obscene amount of money right now! You don't know what to do with it, except buy comic books and records. You're like a teenager. We could've bought and sold this place twice on what you're hoarding in the bank like a dragon in a storybook."

Hawkeye splayed his fingers over his breast, offended. "Sell our love nest, the Yellow Monstrosity? What would we do without our chorus of spiders?"

"Watch television at night instead of the wallpaper wiggle?"

Hawkeye sat back on B.J.'s thighs. "I hate television. It takes everything that matters and makes it two dimensional and plastic, and it puts a white coat of paint over everything that's left."

B.J. didn't bother to broach that argument. He would watch his I Love Lucy and Hawkeye would retreat to his den on those nights and they would speak not of it in the morning, because a successful relationship is built on a certain level of willful illusion.

"I thought," Hawkeye started. "We were in a good rut, weren't we? We have a good pattern, I thought."

"I'm not declaiming our rut."

Hawkeye smiled at him. "It works, doesn't it? We go to work about twenty minutes apart, so we don't fight over the bathroom in the morning. We come home about the same time, have sex on any of a dozen horizontal surfaces --"

"-- or up against three or four vertical ones." B.J. grinned.

"We argue over who makes dinner."

B.J. linked his hands behind Hawkeye's waist. "And then order out."

"Of an evening, we either go to our corners or not, and there's no pressure either way. I mean, I feel completely comfortable sitting in a room saying nothing with you. Or talking to you for hours -- we can still do that after ten years. C'mon, Beej, how many married couples still have that much to say to each other?"

"I get it." B.J. smoothed Hawkeye's hair away from his forehead. It was shorter now, receding at the temples, and almost gone completely grey or white. B.J. found it terribly distinguished. "You're scared."

"Damn right I'm scared. You really think we can do this?"

B.J.'s eyes were bright. "There's a lot of things to consider. A lot that can test our relationship, you're right about that. The money? Yeah. Whether or not we can procure a kid, well, I think we can find a way."

"You're optimistic."

B.J. smiled that smile Hawk used to called 'cheesy.' "I am. And the last question, can we be dads?"

Hawkeye leaned in and kissed his smile. "We can be dads."

B.J. hugged him close. Hawkeye was becoming a wet noodle in his arms.

"So," B.J. said. "You want to have a baby?"

~*~

Read more from the Gentleman Doctors series at my fic journal, ficbyaura218