NEW FIC: Big Bang Theory 3/4 by Aura218 BJ/Hawk [R]

[aura218.livejournal.com]

Title: "The Big Bang Theory" 3/4
Author: aura218
Pairing: Hawkeye/B.J.
Genre: PG13, romance, coming out, 50s, postwar, bad/real?sex
Timeline: March 1956
Part of the Gentleman Doctors series

Part 3/4

Sunlight streamed across B.J.'s eyes. Damn finches. The dawn chorus was out of tune. He reached his arm across the bed, but Peg was already up. Erin needed her bottle . . .

He opened his eyes. Blue walls. Open door, yellow hallway without. No Peg. No Erin, not today. He lived in town, not Mill Valley, and last night he had anal sex with Hawkeye Pierce.

B.J. turned over and pulled the blanket over his eyes, reveling in a few more minutes of night.

It had been . . . nice. Ridiculous at first. Hawkeye had lit candles and put on music. No one had ever done that for him. As he turned the evening over in his mind, he found himself caring less about the sex and more about how close he felt to Hawk. How much he had to have trusted him to do something that intimate, something guys aren't supposed to do at all, ever. But B.J. liked doing it to Hawkeye and Hawkeye liked having it done to him. What did that mean? What did he mean by 'what did it mean'?

He scrubbed his eyes and sat up in bed. This was too much for eight a.m.



Hawkeye had done it before, a lot. Or, had he? Hawkeye talked a big story, but a lot of his babbling was ego. Did Hawkeye care about the women he slept with? Sometimes. What about the men? B.J. couldn't imagine doing what they did last night and not caring about the guy. Everything felt different now. There was no going back. He and Hawk weren't roommates, they weren't playing at this homosexual thing. They were a couple ("couple of what?" rose up a careless voice that sounded like Leo Bardonaro). That was supposed to mean commitment.

Where was Hawkeye?

The house was silent; Piercian evidence was all over the bathroom. Is this what you're signing up for? he wondered. Towels on the floor, black stubble in the sink every morning? Who cleans? Who sees that Erin gets fed and dressed? B.J. rinsed out the sink and hung up the towels out of retroactive guilt for the messes he used to leave Peg every morning in his dash out the door. He was an adult, why couldn't he pick up his towels? Why couldn't Hawkeye now? How did lesbians work out who cleaned and who was a slob?

He didn't have time for sociological studies based on nothing but speculation.

Breakfast was on a warm plate in the oven, and a note was left on the back of an envelope propped on the spoon rest on the stove. B.J. read it over and over as he ate, as if Hawkeye's spiky doctor's scrawl would reorganize itself into more than simply: 'Had surgery scheduled this morning, didn't want to wake you, enjoy the eggs. Left you the car. Love, H.'

Irrationally, B.J. destroyed the note before dashing out the door.

*

B.J. went through work that day like butter on a hot skillet. Everyone seemed especially incompetent, from the secretary who lost a week's worth of lab reports to his boss' New Deal-era diagnostic procedures. B.J. had never noticed how slowly the department moved, how long he kept patients waiting, how many useless questions littered the intake forms. All morning, he wished for his squandered Valium prescription. Why hadn't he just kept up with his latest analyst? So what if the old man hadn't known the difference between bisexual and hermaphrodite, he wrote prescriptions all the same. . . .

The useful part about being B.J. Hunnicutt was that he'd banked a lot of perception as being polite and nonthreatening. He could side-step his coworkers without arousing ire. How little they knew about his new life. What would they do if he stood up in reception and said, "My tenant is my boyfriend and last night we had sex." Or if he told even one person -- his boss, or Nurse Delta, the twenty-eight year-old with three kids per husband? Talk about unconventional life-styles.

They'd never dream. He saw patients, he followed up with radiology, he did his job. But he felt like he was walking around wearing a Halloween mask, except only he could see that the clown-face was garish.

He felt like his skin was an ill-fitting suit. He didn't like the inhibition he felt from talking too freely with the orderlies or other doctors. Dear God, had he been flirting all this time with other men and never noticed it? Had Dr. Ingelstat patted him on the shoulder so frequently because he knew? Was Inglestat a homo too? Did people talk about them? As far as B.J. knew, there was no rumor about him having an affair with any of the nurses or secretaries. He used to take pride in that -- he was too noble to shake the grape vine. What shameful hubris, B.J. thought as he rounded a corner, feeling eyes from the nurses' station track him. Obviously, it's easy to be out of the standard hospital soap operas when there's better mud to be slung at you.

B.J. stood in the men's room, fists on the sink, and stared at himself in the mirror.

I'm a homo, he said to the face that used to be familiar. I had anal sex with a man last night and I liked it. I'm a big liar and a fake, I like men, I have a boyfriend, I like fucking men I suck dick I want to be fucked I'm a homo queer sissy fairy bent homosexual I had sex with my boyfriend last night I'm going home to my boyfriend my boyfriend my boyfriend my lover

His hand itched, tched, a sick stretching feeling. B.J. stared, fascinated, as deep maroon blood oozed up between the white knuckles. He looked in the mirror. A starshot pattern of a hundred of himself, repeated, stared back at him in astonishment. Oh. He watched his lips in the mirror saying the words. He stopped, horrified. Looked. The bathroom was empty. He stared at himself. Was that strand always so grey? Were his cheeks always so sunken? His expression looked so blank for the hurricane of filthy thoughts battering his mind.

He had to get out of there.

*

Hawkeye whistled his way to work, a bounce in his step, and spent the morning carving through Mrs. Frettbaur's gallbladder like an artist. He almost knitted his initials in her viscera, he was so proud, but the AMA looked down upon that sort of thing these days. Old Doc Stroehmann, head of surgery, took him to lunch for the opportunity of praising his work after only three weeks at the hospital. Hawk had a new relationship with the love of his life, he lived in a beautiful city, and his boss was eating out of the palm of his hand.

If only he hadn't picked up the phone when his secretary announced the call.

"Dr. Pierce." He flipped his legs up on the wide cherry desk. His window looked out on the sunny patio hundreds of feet below; on a clear day he could see the park.

"Hawk."

Hawkeye sat back in his desk chair. "Beej! To what do I owe this midafternoon pleasure?"

The line was quiet for a moment. Hawkeye leaned forward, pressing the receiver to his ear.

"Hey, Hawk." B.J. sounded . . . off. Drunk? He wasn't slooping his words to the heavens as he did when he got grandiose. "I, um, was just calling about dinner. Just wondered what you thought . . . if you thought. You know. What should we have."

Yeah, sure. Hawkeye gripped the phone cord. "I don't know, I hadn't thought about it. Are you all right?"

A dry chuckle. Where was B.J. calling from? He didn't sound like he was at work. "Yeah. I'm fine."

Hawkeye turned his chair away from the door. "Listen, Beej, I'm really sorry I had to dart out on you this morning, but I had this patient laid out for me at seven-thirty --"

"No, it's fine, I understand."

Hawkeye smiled into the line. "Honestly, I was disappointed I didn't get to see you wake up --"

"Listen, don't cook anything too, y'know, fancy, okay? I mean, if you want to do dinner. I'm gonna see if Peg will release Erin a few days early."

Hawkeye ground the phone into his fist. "Beej, where the hell are you?"

"Miller's Drugs. In, um, Mill Valley."

The sound of the town made his Reuben turn over in his stomach. One night of magic and Beej was running home to mommy. Outside his window, down in the sunny brick patio, shiny dots of humans went about their lunchtime business.

"All right." Hawkeye wasn't about to fight over the phone like a jealous kid. "Guess I'll see you tonight."

They hung up. Hawkeye rapped a pen on his desk. What the hell was going on? They had a great night. He had to go to work this morning.

They shouldn't have done it on a school night. This wouldn't be happening if he'd picked a whole weekend to stay in bed together. Maybe he could have snuggled away B.J.'s nerves and thirty-odd years of conditioning.

God, last night . . . B.J. had read a damn pamphlet to learn how to make love to a man. A guy didn't get told one thing his entire sexual life and then turn on a dime when he tried doing the thing he always wanted to do but was too scared. Right now, somewhere in the suburbs, was an on-the-fence homo who believed that what he did last night had changed him. It's what everyone thought after his first time: He thought people would be able to read on his face what he got up to at night, that he was less of a man. Well, it wasn't Hawkeye's fault. B.J. knew what he was getting into when they started. ("You're subtle as a croquet mallet.")

There was one man in Hawkeye's life who hadn't been scandalized that he'd gleefully waved goodbye to his homo virginity at age fourteen. Trapper John McIntyre chugged back his martini, looked Hawkeye up and down, and said: "At least you got it over with when you were young and stupid." And then took Hawkeye up against the generator shed. Hawkeye didn't know Trapper's history, but he guessed that he was the first man Trapper had gone hot and heavy with for seven straight months, someone he liked and still had to say good morning to. Hawkeye felt a twinge of guilt -- had Trapper been going through something and played it cool? Did Hawkeye habitually send off his lovers confused and anxious? What kind of power was he wielding?

If he couldn't do right by Trapper, and indeed had never done a relationship right, how was he supposed to reach B.J.? Was this how he ruined relationships, with his damn self involvement?

If that phone rang right now, who did he want to hear on the other end?

*