NEW FIC: "When the Wind Blows the Stars" 1/2 by BJ/Hawk Aura218 [R]

[aura218.livejournal.com]

Title: "When the Wind Blows the Stars"



Author: aura218



Pairing: Hawkeye/B.J., B.J./Peg



Genre: PG13, romance, coming out, 50s, postwar, San Francisco



Summary: Go back in time to the years right after the war, before B.J. and Hawkeye were Gentleman Doctors, when B.J. was very confused and looking to discover himself. Part 1 of a 4 part arc.

Timeline: 1954-55

Part of the Gentleman Doctors series

Part 1/4 of the How it Happened arc

Ch 1/2

"When the Wind Blows the Stars"

 

The Sutro Cliff House was a scar on a bluff overlooking the edge of the peninsula city of San Francisco. The Hunnicutts made a Sunday of walking through the park and showing Erin the flowers and the crumbled Diana sculpture. Some sixty years ago, an immigrant engineer  had built his house upon the sand and hired a team of gardeners to sculpt the land into swooping, curling patchwork carpet gardens. Thirty years after that, it all fell into the sea, save a faux Roman battle façade and the surf-swept foundations of the beachside bathhouses. Kids went there now to explore the ruins and smoke marijuana in the blasted-out supply tunnels, and occasionally be swept out to sea.

B.J. found the whole park perfectly symbolic of his mood.

He and Peggy had been snippy with each other again today. They didn't even fight, it was just this mature patience from her, all the time -- a unswerving, burdensome faith that B.J. "needed a little more time."

He'd been home four months and still felt an itch under his skin no one -- least of all Peggy -- could scratch.

In Korea, the movies in his mind had seemed oh, so do-able: a wife to love, a daughter to raise, a job where he helped people and felt proud doing it. More kids as soon as possible.

They weren't sleeping together. Well, they slept. Like cousins forced to share a bed at Grandma's. They kept to their corners, faced the wall, and pretended they weren't waiting for the other to fall asleep. Sex had always been something they could fall into, without thinking. Now it seemed to require a plan more complex than D-Day, and even when executed. . . B.J. couldn't. And then Peg wouldn't, out of loyalty. It was embarrassing.



B.J. had a few phrases in mind that he could say that would end their marriage right now. "Honey, sometimes I wish my life was as simple as dodge bullets, perform surgery, drink to forget." "Peg, you were easier to love when I missed you." "I love you more as the mother of my child than as my wife." "Peggy, I almost regret not sleeping with another woman when I had the chance because I think I'll  never enjoy having sex again."

She was patient,  he didn't trust that she was really as patient as she was pretending to be, but Peg was never the kind of girl to ask for more in bed than he gave. Then again, as far as he knew, she never had to; but he was starting to wonder if she had wanted to ask for more and had left him blissfully unaware. Maybe every woman he'd been with were just too damn polite to complain about his technique. He just loved walking around with a god-graced sense of fallibility these days.

And so he was meandering the ramparts of a foolish man's crumbled dreams, now two hundred feet above his family, who had abandoned him to chase seagulls on the beach. He could pick out Peg's blonde head and her green dress, and Erin in her blue sailor suit. Erin kept trying to put her sandy fist in her mouth. B.J. ached to be there, teaching that grubby kid to say "sea shore," holding Peg's hand.

He walked back to the car.



They would get back to normal. His analyst at the VA kept telling him to remember that he was a kind, loving man. He wasn't a soldier or a machine, he was a daddy and a husband and a doctor who had empathy for his patients. B.J. went every week because he was too ethical to get his Valium without the supervision of another doctor.

He'd been writing Hawkeye for months. Almost a year. They were friends, they relied on each other to stay alive for almost two years. It wasn't that Peg disliked Hawkeye -- after all, she never met him. It was always "you got another letter" in that tone, like, "you forgot to take out the  garbage (so I had to do it for you)." She never asked what Hawkeye said or what B.J. wrote back so B.J. stopped telling her about him.

And somehow, B.J. started telling Hawkeye things he withheld from his wife.

 

*

Dear Hawk,

How are you and Crabapple Cove? I miss you, pal.

Listen, I don't want to lay down my burdens at your feet, but you offered an invitation 'anytime' and, well, how's your sooner rather than later look?

I'm kind of . . . I don't know. Hawk, things aren't working out for me, as in my marriage personal life. I want to tell you, but it's complicated. The past two nights I slept on my office couch because, well, it's hard to explain why.

Anyway. It happens to a lot of couples. The war . . . it's not just the war. I think I'm losing my mind, Hawk. The God's honest truth is, I don't think I'm normal and I don't think I'll ever be again. I haven't told anyone except you, but I have to tell someone and I don't think I could scare you off if I said I learned how to unzip my skin and walk around in my viscera. maybe You  When you told me about George

We'll talk when I come visit, if that's okay with you. The visit, not the talk. I figure the talk is still okay with you. I hope it is.

Love,

B

*

Hawkeye seemed to be adjusting well, as far as his letters went. His life seemed to progress pretty much as expected -- working at his dad's practice in Crabapple Cove with the intention to take it over in a few years. Living in the family home so his dad could move in with Hawk's cousin, who was more like a sister given how much time she spent at their house when they were kids.

B.J. needed that rock to send his letters to. He knew when he sent his problems out, they'd come back transformed, lesser or more organized, like shirts sent to the cleaner.



*

B.J. --

For the love of saints and sinners -- don't wait for an invitation. Whatever it is, it can't be as serious as you think. And even if it is, we'll work it out -- we always do. Get out here -- right now. Call me from the airport.

Love,

H

PS: Crabapple Cove is nothing without you in it -- HP

*

So on the day B.J. couldn't take it anymore -- the suburbs, his job, one more silent supper with Peggy -- he bought a ticket for a little dot on a different ocean, three thousand miles away.

As B.J.'s crossed the tarmac, he spotted Hawkeye at the edge of the blacktop, leaning up against a gorgeous, meticulously cared for two-tone coupe. Hawk didn't look much different in civvies, loud button-down shirt over too loose trousers, although he'd traded his knit cap for a hilariously tilted, pink-banded Panama. He looked good. Not so skinny, or maybe it was just that the air of desperation and alcoholism had dropped off him. B.J. dropped his bags and grabbed the man.

Hawkeye's laughter in his ear was an old song he'd forgotten how to dance to. He slapped B.J.'s back. "Hello, hello, I missed you too!"

B.J. fanned himself with his grey felt hat. "I thought Maine was supposed to be cold."

"Indian summer! Enjoy it while it lasts." Hawkeye kept a hand on him, as he snatched the suitcase from the tarmac. "What say we get off the frying pan."

Hawkeye had the hardtop down. The air as they drove the two lane highway from the airport was delicious. B.J. leaned his head back and looked up at the trees; some of them were turning already.

"This is beautiful countryside," he said over the wind.

Hawkeye grinned. "This is just the highway. Wait 'til you see the lake."

Conversation wasn't quick to flow in those first miles. Their letters had become midnight confessionals, overly intimate in the harsh dappled light of noon.

"So," Hawkeye said. "This is it. Crabapple Cove, famed in story and song."

The highway narrowed into a main street. Brick buildings flanked either side. It was the middle of the day, most people about were women and children greeting shopkeepers in front of their stores. Every vignette looked like a scene from the same movie, starring the same square-jawed husband and blonde wife, and little boy named Timmy. No one looked vagrant or outstanding, too fashionable or too ethnic. Cars lined the streets. There were a hundred towns just like this all across America; Life magazine probably kept towns like this in photo boxes labeled simply 'small town America, interchangeable.' 

"It's nice,"  B.J. said.

"You're thinking the whole thing could fit in a thimble," Hawkeye said without malice. He was sneaking knowing peeks at B.J. while he drove.

"Well . . . I'm sure everyone gets along," B.J. said because his mother told him never to insult his guest.

Hawkeye whooped. "You don't know the half of it. Come to a town meeting, find out what happens when Mr. Hooper the grocer paints his hitch-posts lime green."

B.J. looked at him sidelong. He wasn't kidding; he was in love. Crabapple Cove was Hawkeye's best girl.

They turned down a narrow, unpaved, maple-lined street. The houses were set far from the road, and the stone fence running past them looked like George Washington had once sat on it.

Hawkeye's house was an old, boxy brick structure set close to the street. B.J. was shocked by the age -- built in 1764, almost as old as the United States. The oak shading the house was "only" a hundred and fifty years old; Hawkeye had an antebellum living creature on his property. The root structure had rucked up the sidewalk, so someone had built a ramp over it. That was how they did it in a town a hundred-plus years older than the Revolutionary War: the present was more or less a speed bump on the long road of history.

Hawkeye bounded out of the car, eager and babbling, pointing out major features.

There was the garden and yard. Hawkeye passed an evening in the Adirondack chairs on the porch. Hawkeye kicked a lazy railroad-tie stacked flower bed back in place as he led B.J. from the riverstone paved drive to the kitchen door.

"Dad couldn’t keep up with all the gardening," Hawkeye said. "Things have gone a bit to seed."

"I love it," B.J. said. Hawkeye preened.

Just past the side of the house, a fit of tall grasses ran to a creek. Gardens were rare commodity in San Francisco, where the climate was just this side of too dry for anything to grow with abandon, and terraced spaces too constricting to give plants a chance to run free.

"Well, it's a jungle, but it's home." Pride popped off Hawkeye in little firework bursts. "I grew strawberries -- ykno." Groucho brows. "Strawberries."

"You don’t say."

B.J. toed off his shoes as Hawkeye did in the mud room, surprised by how dirty his pant cuffs had gotten in the walk from the garden. He was used to pavement. Hawkeye led him into the kitchen, with its wood floor and its icebox with the compressor on top. The oven was a great, steel, prewar, yellow enamel monstrosity that probably had originally taken wood as well as gas. It looked more like a Model T than the sleek, pastel box from Whirlpool Peg used at home.

"Kitchen is evident," Hawkeye said as they passed through.

"Right, the room with the stove," B.J. said.

"And the ice cream." Hawkeye indicated a door with a Ivory Soap Show girl flourish. "Das toilette. The one upstairs has the shower, extra towels in your room and the linen closet, don't be shy, my mason et tu mason. Anything else?"

"Telephone? I should tell Peggy I'm okay."

Hawkeye led him back to the kitchen and took his bags while B.J. rang long distance. Through the crackly, poppy connection, B.J. shouted that he was fine, Hawkeye would feed him, the flight was fine, everything was fine. Erin was okay. Peg was okay. He was relieved to hang up.

"Everything all right with the missus?" Hawkeye appeared in the door.

B.J. looked up. He didn't realize he'd been staring out the window. This place was so green.

"Yeah." He put on a smile. "She's great."



"Dad'll show up about six for dinner." Hawkeye ran his fingernail on the wood grain in the door frame. "We eat early here. Farmer's time."

"Six is fine."

B.J. poked his head in rooms. The wood floor went throughout, with a lot of those braided spiral rugs that reminded B.J. of his grandmother. The house smelled like old wood and of the breeze that blew through the trees. Hawkeye went through turning on lights at three in the afternoon because of the low branches. There was a Spinet piano against the inside wall, closed with a layer of dust on the lid. B.J. noticed a lot of the homey touches didn't really seem like Hawkeye, and had a touch of time to them. He grew up in this house, B.J. remembered.

They were hovering in the living room for no particular reason. B.J. groped for a conversation point. Hawkeye started to speak, but lost his focus.

"Yes?"  B.J. said, amused.

Hawkeye popped his fingers. "Ah, I wasn't sure where to put you. The guest room upstairs is bigger, but it's hot as blazes at night. I usually sleep on the couch in the summer, but the room off the kitchen is the most comfortable room in the house."

B.J. smiled. He got the sense Hawkeye was new at hospitality, which surprised him on a level. But then, girls overnight in your bed wasn't the same as a houseguest.

"I'll take the downstairs room," he said.

Hawkeye grinned, relieved. He showed off the room with jerky limbs and his typical babble, but did so with a silly pleased smile on his face.

"Y'know," B.J. interrupted.

Hawkeye cocked his head. "What?"

B.J. unpacked a few shirts so they wouldn't wrinkle. "This is funny. The first time Peg and I had real house guests, we had to go grocery shopping for food that didn't come out of cans."

Hawkeye folded his arms, defensive. "Okay, I'm a little house-proud. I've only had rooms and apartments before, I don't even know what to do with an entire house."

B.J. shrugged. "Get married. Let your mother-in-law tell your wife how she would do it if she was twenty-one."

"I guess she would let her mother tell her how to decorate."

"I guess she would." B.J. opened one desk drawer to unpack some necessities, and a Sparrow and the Hawk decoder ring rattled to the front. Of course. B.J. held it up as memory swelled to a physical thing. His older cousin had followed the radio shows. B.J. had preferred spy magazines, but he loved to play with the little doo-dads you could get in the back of comic books to translate the codes the characters gave in the program, like real spies. He clicked the ring, felt how incredibly small it was now, how tinny the clicks were to his grownup ears. He couldn't put it on past his first pinky knuckle.

"What is it?" Hawkeye said.

B.J. handed it to him.

Hawkeye grinned. "You found my secret spy tool. I was looking for that."

"This was your room," B.J. said.

"I moved down here when I was about ten." Hawkeye bent the adjustable ring and put it on his pinky. "It was easier to do my chores before school without waking Dad."

Hawkeye's mother died when he was about ten, B.J. remembered. As a kid, Hawk wanted to be farther away from his dad at night, not closer. If it were B.J., he'd want to keep Erin near; but on the other hand, his kid was still tiny. Maybe an older child would need his space.

Hawkeye clicked the ring, remembering. "Then when I got older I realized that ground floor window was indispensible for teenage comings and goings, if you know what I mean."

B.J. snapped the sheets open. "I sense the vicinity."  Outside that window was a convenient porch, a field, and then the highway. Or the woods. "If you were my kid, I'd have put a bear trap under your window."

Hawkeye grinned. "If Erin grows up to date guys like me, you'd better."

*

It was awkward -- for half an hour. B.J. hadn't realized how much of their conversation had been about work or the war or a common irritant like Burns or staphylococcus. For a moment, when the conversation stalled, he worried that their friendship was just combat fatigue and stress. But as they sat on the front porch with martinis strong enough to melt enamel, Hawkeye would pull out some joke and B.J. would remember that there was someone in the world who could make him laugh that hard, whose sense of humor was just like his. It felt so good for someone to get him again.

Hawkeye could always talk. It felt like the Swamp, a little, but without the tension of keeping an ear out for Radar scuffling by hearing choppers in his mind. Maybe, just a little, B.J. liked having that shadow of MASHesque tension. 

"Do you forget to go slow?" B.J. said.

"In the operating room?" Hawkeye said. B.J. nodded. "Are you kidding? They call me The Dash."

B.J. smiled.

"It's not so good, thought, is it?" Hawkeye said.

"Generally, middle aged women getting their de-gizzarding don't want a two inch thick scar from pubic bone to sternum."

Hawkeye snickered. "Whereas an infantryman would call it his treasure trail."

"Civilians can chose to go anywhere," B.J. said. "Ninety-eight percent survival rate isn't what they're looking for --"

"-- but how well we do it."

"Because we're not the only shop in town."

"And no one's forcing them to come to us," Hawkeye finished.

"Yeah." B.J. drained his glass. Hawkeye understood. They weren't complaining, or blaming. It was just a more complicated way to practice medicine than the way the Army had trained them.

The sun was behind the trees. Bees were in the grass. A rabbit was nosing in the weeds near the stream. Across the pond, in another yard, a woman shook out her linens and hung them on her porch rail. Hawkeye raised his arm and waved, and she waved back.

"I should start dinner." Hawkeye stretched. "Dad said he's bringing pasta dough, I'll put on some meat sauce. Won't take long."

B.J. followed him inside.

"Oh! I forgot." Hawkeye turned without warning. They collided. B.J. grabbed him by the elbows. Their chests thumped. Hawkeye was almost his height, his nose came to B.J.'s chin. They laughed, awkwardly.

"Beg pardon," B.J. said.

Hawkeye laughed and patted his shoulder. "Sorry. 'Scuse me. Forgot the herbs. They're, um -- " he gestured. "Back porch. I mean, back yard." He slithered past B.J. through the narrow gap in the door frame. B.J. watched him pick his way barefooted to a kitchen garden around the side of the porch. He should move, make room in the doorframe, but he stood and watched Hawkeye pinch off the greens with quick, fragrant snaps. 

Hawkeye returned, holding out his palmful herbs.

"Basil," he said. "Oregano, thyme. It grows over there. Always need thyme -- there's so little and so much. Ha ha."

Heart pounding, B.J. followed him inside.

I've got to tell him eventually, he thought.

*

When Hawkeye said his father was living with his niece Dottie, B.J. was expecting an enfeebled man who needed support. But Daniel Pierce appeared at Hawkeye's back kitchen door in hiking boots, having walked along the creek for over a mile, he said.

"We almost had a freshwater lobster supper," the old man said, "but she got away."

"There's no such thing as freshwater lobster, Dad," Hawkeye said as he stowed his dad's walking stick in the closet. "They're just crawfish."

"Tastes the same," Dr. Pierce muttered.

Hawkeye was a copy of his father -- same black hair, same bright blue eyes, even the same curious urban accent and twisted humor. But where Hawkeye was confident, his father was impatient; where Hawkeye was a quick study, his father seemed quick to judge. B.J. found himself intimidated by this seemingly distilled, high power version of Hawkeye. Even Dr. Pierce's physique was broader, bear-like; Hawkeye's narrow frame must have come from his mother.

"I met your wife at the party in New York," Dr. Pierce said as they sat down to eat. "Clever girl you've got there."

"She certainly is, sir," B.J. said.

"'Sir?' What's that? I'm not your C.O." Dr. Pierce gave him a gimlet eye over the potatoes.

B.J. accepted the bowl with a half-frozen response in his throat, not knowing if the older man was kidding or serious.

Hawkeye laughed. "Dad, don't give BJ a hard time. He's terminally polite, it's a bad habit of which I tried to break him."

"I'm sure you did," Dr. Pierce said.

Hawkeye took a sip of wine. B.J. laughed, not because Hawkeye's slow boil was funny, but because Dr. Pierce thought it was.

"Do you know," Dr. Pierce said, "my boy here was the champ Halloween prankster on our block?"

B.J. wanted to reach across the table and smack the scowl off Hawkeye. "Was he now?"

Hawkeye looked like he was trying to pull off embarrassment. "I told him about the methods by which we survived our long incarceration with Frank Burns."

B.J. laughed genuinely. "I see my reputation precedes me."

Dr. Pierce pointed with a fork. "I just want B.J. here to know that he's not the only practical joker in this house! In fact, when I was a student at Hopkins . . ."

And Dr. Pierce took the conversation away. Hawkeye seemed relieved to let his father take over, which was a side of his friend B.J. hadn't seen before. But wasn't that fathers and sons? Hamlet proved his independence in battle; in the Pierce household, there could only be one chief court jester. As much as Hawkeye clearly adored his father, the younger man was clearly twitching by as he passed out the ice cream plates.

It came down to more drinks on the back porch. Apparently Hawkeye didn't get his epic hollow leg all on his own, and his father was in a philosophical mood as he took his brandy and insisted Hawkeye leave the dishes for later. Hawkeye doubled the speed of his intake the faster his father jumped from one subject to the next.

"Children are a gift of life," Mr Pierce said.

B.J. eagerly jumped into a subject he could handle. "My little girl is three, did Hawkeye tell you? Sweetest little girl in the world."

"Well, sure, they start out that way." Dr. Pierced waved his drink as his own progeny. "You know they're going to grow up, get married, have kids of their own."

Hawkeye got up. "Why don't I get to those dishes."

B.J. and Dr. Pierce watched Hawkeye disappear into the house.

"Is he ill?" Dr. Pierce said.

"I, ah, think I heard him coughing earlier," B.J. said.

"Don't know what's wrong with that boy. Been so short-tempered lately. The war." Dr. Pierce shook his head. "He's not himself. But he's a good boy. My niece, now, she's a mess. Keeps having babies, year after year, with that no good Merchant Marine husband of hers. Her idea I move in to help her out -- but Ben practically pushed me out my own door, told me I needed someone who was home more than four hours a day. Won't be forever. When Hawkeye settles down, I know it'll be with the right person."

*

B.J. found Hawkeye hunched over the sink, scrubbing the life out of a pan. He hesitated in the doorway. Hawkeye didn't look up. The Tiffany lamp over his head shone down a harsh light, showing up the silver shocks in his black hair, casting out the dark circles under his eyes.

"Your dad went home." B.J. said.

Hawkeye looked up from the pan, surprised. "Will he be okay?"

"I convinced him to walk back over the road," B.J. said.

Hawkeye nodded. "Good. It'll take twice as long, but he needs the exercise. He's going to break a hip on that creek path in the dark. Or blow out his heart. He drinks too much, my sister makes him steak every week, his patients give him cigars -- and he conveniently forgets I went to medical school too whenever I tell him to cut back." Pans clunked in the sink. "Really, he forgets I'm a grown man whenever it's convenient for him -- like, for instance, when the booze is flowing and Dr. Pierce has fresh blood to show off his greatest accomplishments to."

"You're Dr. Pierce too."

Hawkeye rinsed a handful of silverware and dropped it into the strainer. B.J. jumped. "Isn't he cute? Asking about your kids, like little Erin isn't good enough."

"What? She is."

"Of course she is. She's perfect, she's a dream, he was being a jerk."

B.J. leaned his hip against the counter, arms crossed. "I didn't know you were evesdropping."

Hawkeye plunged his hands into the dish water. "His voice carries."

"Especially when you've spent your life listening for it."

"And then going on about me 'settling down.'" Hawkeye pointed a longhandled spoon at B.J. "I'll have you know, I'm as settled as I'm ever gonna get."

The frying pan slammed into the strainer after the spoon, rattled everything else. B.J. jumped again. This whole night had worn on B.J.'s nerves. He went through a whole war ignoring bullets and invading enemies. He came home and nearly had a heart attack every time someone raised their voice. And this time he wasn't the one who deserved to be shouted at.

B.J. took a step back. "Hawk, I think you're a little --" Hawkeye gave him a warning glare -- "okay, understandably upset. Your dad is -- he's clearly got a really strong opinion about you. He's a big personality, and so are you, and sometimes people like that clash. But he just told me how proud he is of you --"

Monotone into the bubbles: "Did he now."

"Hawk, he loves the dickens out of you. That's the important thing -- I hope that no matter how much I screw up with my kid, it'll mean something that I love her. He just wants to encourage you to be more than . . . I don't know." B.J. knocked his knuckles on the molding, trying to rapp out some sense.

"More than what?" Hawkeye worked at a scorch spot with his nails.

B.J. could feel his nerves bubbling up. "I don't know. Whatever he thinks you want to be."

"What do I want to be?"

B.J. was trying, really, but he didn't want to further alienate Hawkeye. He wanted to smooth things over. And he couldn't remember anything useful his psychiatrist had told him about feeling nervous with friends or people or . . . hadn't they discussed this? B.J. was too nervous to remember what they discussed about being nervous.

Hawkeye stared down into the washwater's iridescent skim. "You know what kills me? That he does love me. And I love him. So why do I put up with this -- this adolescent ballet we have. I try to impress him, he doesn't care. I'm just a stand-in in this town, you know. They'll never really accept me as their doctor. I'm just second-fiddle to a man who's been delivering their babies since they were grandmothers!"

Hawkeye clunked the pan in the water, splashing a tidal wave onto the floor. B.J. jumped back. Hawkeye pushed past him. His heart was pounding. Hating his weakness, loathe to have to resort to drugs, pushing away his thoughts and just doing it, he fished his pillbox out of his pocket and downed half a valium. Knowing he'd need another half. It was never enough.

B.J. looked at the sudsy mounds of steel and crockery in the sink. Fuck the goddamn dishes. He went into the hot guest room, laid down in his shorts, and closed his eyes.

*

When B.J. had enough of pretending to sleep, his internal timer said it was around dinnertime, but of course that was California time. His room was still too hot to breathe in, even over the sheets. He smelled the damp wood swelling in the humidity. Outside his window, the sky was inky, the stars were out, and bugs were singing. In the hall, soft music strolled from beyond the living room. B.J. got dressed and followed it.

Hawkeye was outside, sipping from a glass and staring at a transistor radio balanced on the porch rail. He looked up when B.J. opened the door.

"You know that's not a television, right?" B.J. said.

Hawkeye smiled. "This is my favorite Saturday night jazz show. Come sit, listen."

B.J. sat.

"Want a --"

"I don't want a drink," B.J. said.

"Ah."

B.J. liked jazz. There were a few little places in North Beach that had been taken over by the straight-haired 'Beat' kids. He went alone, sometimes, for a coffee or for the music. He worked a crossword and listened to the university kids talk about Socialism and postmodern everything. He didn't believe in their dreams, but in the ambition of their courage and creativity. He thought of telling Hawkeye this but didn't want Hawkeye to know what he got up to at night. Out loud, in person, it sounded like he was sneaking out to cheat on his radio at home.

"I'm sorry about that outburst," Hawkeye said. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

"I understand," B.J. said. "It's hard, coming home.'

"Hard to relate to people."

"Yeah."

It was dark. They couldn't see each other, just like the miles between them when they wrote letters. The solo saxophone filled the night.

"I don't admire my dad like I used to," Hawkeye said.

"I'm not in love with my wife," B.J. said.

A car crunched past on the road. Headlights cut through the yard, making slats of the kitchen garden.

"What a mess," Hawkeye said.

"Yeah."

The low, funereal voice of the deejay. B.J. poured himself a drink after all. Hawkeye had brought out a glass, as if having had foreknowledge of what his guest would need. Or just had plain better manners than to drink alone. B.J. hitched himself onto the railing and looked into the dark yard. Fireflies were in the trees. It took him a moment to identify a funny noise as a frog who was making himself known down at the creek.

"It's not working with me and Peg," seemed the easiest way to start.

"Oh?" Noncommittal, prompting more.

"I -- Don't know how to begin." Where has my life gone, how I miss it. "Do you still have dreams?"

"I don't remember them." Hawkeye swizzled his olive. B.J. realized Hawk could be withholding a whole life from his letters.

B.J. sat on the swing. His hand was empty for the touch of another person, but he held back. Instead, he put his feet up on the railing and rocked the swing. Hawkeye reached his bare toes up to the rail, but he could just barely touch and shove off. They laughed. B.J. held the swing back so far that Hawkeye couldn't reach the railing at all. Hawkeye hooked his heels on the edge of the swing seat and allowed B.J. to control the swinging.

"I used to climb down that trellis." Hawkeye pointed to the left edge of the porch. "Broke my arm in two places."

B.J. smiled. "Climbing out to see a girl?"

Hawkeye looked younger when he was remembering his past. "My best friends and I were running a radio line from his house across the stream to my window."

"Did it work?"

"Nah. We ran out of wire halfway across the yard. Not one of our better planned inventions."

B.J. smiled. "Why do you think you don't get along with your dad?"

Hawkeye sighed and sipped his drink. "I wish I knew. He's getting older. He wants me to be normal, you know? Like I was before the war, I guess?"

"The same person," B.J. said.

"Like we were working on scarecrows over there."

"Away at sleepover camp."

Hawkeye ran his fingers through his hair. "His war was different. Everyone was proud to do their bit against the Germans. Did he think I was writing him charming fables about lice and the amputated limb hell-pits?"

Hawkeye's face was in shadow, but B.J. could read the frustration coming off him in waves.

"Do you still have the dreams?" B.J. said again.

Hawkeye shrugged. "Some nights. Every night. The nights I don't wake up screaming, I count it as an advancement."

B.J. stretched his arm across the back of the swing. "There's a lot I don't tell Peg. My dreams are just the beginning."

"What else?" Hawkeye turned.

B.J. met his gaze. He could tell him, probably. There was so much he wanted to get off his chest, things he didn't even trust his analyst with.

B.J. sipped his drink. "Mostly the war. The kids we patched up; the waste. All the old clichés. She understands. I mean, she's an intelligent woman. She understands as much as anyone who was never there could."

"Which isn't so much."

"Yeah. . . . And I guess I'm tired of her trying so hard to understand when she can't." B.J. dropped his feet to the floor.

Hawkeye turned sideways and drew his knees to his chin. "I'm sorry. I really thought you two would be Mr. and Mrs. happy family by now."

"I want more kids, Hawk," B.J. said. "But . . ."

Hawkeye touched his arm."Talk, Beej."

B.J. closed his eyes, propped his forehead in his palm. "I'm a horrible person."

Hawkeye laid his arm over B.J.'s on the swingback. "No, you're a good person. It was a horrible war."

B.J. rested his head on Hawkeye's shoulder. He didn't mean to get Hawkeye's shirt all teary, but Hawk's fingers in his hair was so nice. It was like home -- the home he was writing to when the only home he had was a sock-smelling tent and a droopy cot.

"It's me, Hawk," B.J. said. "I'm different. I don't know who I'm supposed to be anymore."

"Just you. All she wants is her husband back."

B.J. shoved off of him. Hawkeye's hand remained on his elbow, tethering him to this moment.

"I'm having these insane thoughts, I can't begin to explain it to you."

Hawkeye reached across the back of the seat and squeezed B.J.'s shoulder at the spot where it curved to his neck. "Are you seeing someone?"

B.J. shook his head. "Just once. Nothing happened."

Hawkeye furrowed his brow. "I meant a psychiatrist."

B.J. stared at him. "Hawkeye . . ."

Hawkeye looked away, set his drink on a table. B.J. felt guilty; he was pushing his friend into an awkward conversation.

"Beej, it's okay, you're talking to a man who knows from life inside the funny farm. We all need a little couch time --"

"Hawkeye, listen to me. There's thoughts I've been having that I can't tell anyone, not a psychiatrist, no one, except maybe my best friend in the world. And that's you and it's Peggy, and I can't tell Peggy because it'll kill her. It'll maybe kill me!" He gripped his heart.

The moonlight cut across Hawkeye's face, concern etched on every line."Beej, spill. Whatever it is, it can't be as scary as you're acting."

"I still love Peg," B.J. heard himself say in the darkness. "But not . . . like that. Not like a man is supposed to."

Hawkeye drew back and looked at him. He wasn't horrified or disgusted or looking to throw B.J. out of his house. B.J. wondered if he understood.

"Just because you lost your magic with one woman doesn't mean you're permanently off girls forever," Hawkeye said.

He understood. B.J. almost felt dizzy with relief, but saying the words was just the first step. True terror of having an actual conversation about . . . about that was . . . he'd faced less scary gunman.

"I -- I was having thoughts," B.J. said. And once he got started, he couldn't stop. "Dreams. Fantasies, really. Before we left Korea. Before the war even. There was a man, the summer between sophomore and junior year in college -- I worked on a boat. Nothing happened, but it could have, if I'd been a little more, what's the word? Cosmopolitan?"

(Please classify me.)

Hawkeye expression didn't match his tone. "These things always happen at sea."

"What's that supposed to mean?" B.J.'s stomach was doing a tarantella.

"I -- I don't know. Beej, look, I don't know how easily this sort of thing can just come on, but --"

"I'm not confused, Hawkeye, and I'm not traumatized. It would be less terrifying if I was. And I'm starting to grasp the notion that this isn't new, just repressed."

Hawkeye sighed. He stood and paced the porch. B.J. knew he'd been compassionate to other men in his condition, but those men hadn't shared a bunk with him for years. 

Hawkeye leaned back against the rail. "How tired are you? I mean, you've had a long flight, but do you want to get out of here for a while? Go somewhere with people, music, that sort of thing?"

B.J. blinked. Thought. The alternative was staying in this hot house with a hot topic. "What should I wear?"

~*~

Continued in: Chapter 2

Read more of my MASH fic at ficbyaura218