Fic revision

[smithy161.livejournal.com]

I recently posted a link to a fic on this site. I called it "Best Laid Plans", and it didn't get many reviews which, to be honest, is fine by me in this instance. I declared it to be a one-shot, but it turns out I was lying. The plot-ferrets (bunnies aren't a good metaphore for fic containing angst, are they?) have been breeding, and I've decided to continue this story, using the chapter previously titled "Best Laid Plans" as a prologue.

The entire fic has been renamed "I'll Tell You In The Morning, Hawkeye", and chapter one is behind the cut below.
Summary: It is the mid 1980s, and Hawkeye tries to justify some of her father's actions in a brutally frank letter to to Erin Hunnicut. This is a BJ/Hawkeye centric fic, with some mentions of BJ/Trapper.

For those of you who are interested and missed the prologue, please follow the ff.net link here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2785005/1/



I don’t remember seeing him pull up in the driveway, and I don’t remember answering the door. I have no idea what time of day it was – or even if it was the weekend or after weekday office hours. But what I do remember vividly was the expression on his face when he dropped the tape reel on my kitchen table. I stared at the sticker on the case, which read then exactly the same as it reads now:
“From the records of Dr S. Freedman, September 7th 1960, 3.45 p.m. As told by Dr B.F. Pierce.”
“I’m sorry, Hawkeye,” he said quietly. “Sidney was worried about you. We all are…”
I couldn’t take my eyes off that tape, no matter how much I wanted to look at BJ’s face again. I knew that expression would still be there. That pity. That guilt. Part of me wanted to shove him back out the door, throw his tape after him, and lock myself in the cellar until the rest of the world went away and I could carry on living my life in peace, away from BJ, away from Trapper, and away from back-stabbing psychiatrists. But most of me wanted him to touch me. Nothing much. Maybe he could tap my arm, or stroke my cheek. Wrapping me in his arms and kissing the life out of me wouldn’t have been entirely inappropriate either. But he didn’t touch me, and he didn’t speak again. He was waiting for me to yell at him.
“We all,” I repeated quietly, without shifting my gaze.
“Well, mostly me and Mulcahy. He’s … uh, actually he’s still in the car.”
Now I looked up and glanced out of the window. The small, mild-mannered priest was actually not in the car, but leaning against it, glancing about at his surroundings. I felt a little better knowing he was there. I wondered where on earth Sidney was…
“…And Trapper?”
BJ winced. “He had to go back to work. Told me to say goodbye.”
“Ha!” I said, then paused for thought. “Trapper’s gone back to Boston?”
“That’s what I said.”
“And you came out to Maine to see me?”
BJ offered the slightest glimmer of a smile. “You’ve not completely lost touch with reality, then.”
After that I invited the padre in, and we sat around the kitchen table feeling awkward. Once or twice Mulcahy tried to offer some words of advice.
“You know … Leviticus was speaking somewhat out of context on a number of issues …”
“Save it, Father,” I muttered.
“And if you read between the lines of 2 Samuel-“
“Padre,” said BJ softly. His tone was guarded and wary, and I knew he was still waiting for me to flip. He was right; I was angry at him. Furious. But I was more angry with the one person who deserved a chewing-out, and that was myself. When I first walked into that hotel room, saw my BJ asleep soundly next to Trapper, I blew a fuse. A decade of frustrations took the excuse to spill over, and my jealousy got mixed up with a whole lot of other stuff as I tried to blame it all on them. Looking back, I can see I acted like a child denied candy until after supper. Only, back then, I didn’t realise there was going to be a supper. I couldn’t see those nasty great sprouts or the chewable gravy or the rocks pretending to be potatoes looming on the metaphorical horizon.
And I certainly had no idea how good the candy was going to be when I finally got my hands on it. And, really, that’s what this is all about. You’re a big girl now, Erin. I don’t need to explain to you why your daddy couldn’t stay with your mummy any more. You were still growing up in the 70s, so you should be fully clued in with that malarkey, and besides, I don’t want to patronise you with this letter. I want to explain what was going on in our heads back then. I want you to know something of your father as the person he was rather than the parent he tried so hard to be. And I want you to stand out amongst other young people as someone who can, maybe, understand the kind of messed-up lives people live once they’ve tasted war.
Besides, it’s about time I answered some of those questions you used to ask your dad and me. He didn’t think many of the answers were appropriate. I don’t know much about appropriateness. All I know is, a kid asked me a bunch of stuff a couple of decades ago and I can’t live with myself until I tell her a few truths. I’m not kidding around here, and I’m not going to skimp on the details. You’re old enough to handle the things I want to describe.
So where to start? Or, more accurately, how to continue? That first day was slow and difficult. Mulcahy – bless his wrinkled old soul – got well and truly in our way. You’d like him, Erin. He and your dad were as close to selfless human beings as I’ve ever met. If he wasn’t a priest, he’d have been a doctor too, no doubt. He couldn’t stand there and watch other people suffer … so when I was suffering, he wasn’t going anywhere fast. BJ was a fool, didn’t know how to say the myriad things he wanted to say, and certainly didn’t know how to say them in front of a priest – and that, let me tell you, was your mother’s fault. Trust Peg to ruin a perfectly good atheist with morals and respect for the clergy.
But I promised I’d never say a word against Peg. It was difficult in the end, but I’ve managed it, and your dad knew I managed it.
Back to BJ and his morals. He kept apologising to me in a number of creative ways. That was one of his many talents, and he made full use of it so long as Mulcahy was in the room. As soon as the priest made his excuses and retired to the guest room I’d prepared for him, BJ opened up. A lot.
As honest as he was, BJ tended to be conservative with his opinions. He didn’t throw his passions around like I do. I’ll get angry with anything, hit anyone, chase any ambition, romance, notion, ideal … you name it. But BJ was quiet, thoughtful and, when he finally got round to having his say on a matter, he made sure it was said properly and stayed said.
The evening was slow in coming, I seem to recall. I had a large tree outside the kitchen window, but it didn’t block the light enough to dim the room until very late. BJ seemed to like it, but I hated it. Hated that tree like I’ve hated many people, but while I can give a man a good seeing to with my metaphorical chainsaw of wit, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of that tree for a long time. In autumn, I got apples off it in some kind of peace-offering, so it lived another twenty five years. BJ used to sit under it in summer and work, or whatever it was he did. I never asked. He’d sit in the garden until it got too dark to see the books he was reading or the paper he was writing on, and sometimes he’d even go out in the rain with the big parasol we never took to the beach like we said we would. I think he did it because I hated that tree so much, and he figured I’d leave him alone for a couple of hours a day if he sat by it. Peg actually laughed when I told her about that. Said it was because I didn’t give him his own study. BJ always needed his space, but once he was gone, the tree had to go too. It eventually got too painful to see it sitting out there in the rain on its own without the parasol and inevitable empty beer can … without BJ.
It did rain that night, I think. Or maybe that’s just my memory playing tricks. I doubt I would have noticed if a comet plummeted from the sky and destroyed half the house that night, never mind a spot of rain. That was the night I really heard what I had wanted to hear since I met him.
BJ started off with the words I’d wanted to hear for at least a week: “I don’t feel anything for Trapper. I hardly know him. I have no idea what made me sleep with him, Hawk, honest. Except perhaps that I hardly know him.” He paused to assemble his thoughts, and finally admitted, “you’d already got me hot under the collar, but you were too important. It’s stunning how sex can ruin a perfectly good friendship. Trapper, I didn’t know, so I figured it wouldn’t do any harm.”
“You were wrong,” I said, needlessly.
“Only because you happened to walk in.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault?”
BJ, as ever, tried to calm me down. For the first time that day he touched me. Reached out and gripped my hand in a brief, reassuring grasp. “This is all my fault. All of it. I should have talked to you, and I intended to. I just … slept with Trapper first. It shouldn’t have happened.”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure I’m playing with a full deck of cards here, Beej. My head hurts, and I don’t understand. You’ve always known how I felt about you.”
“No, Hawk, I’ve merely suspected. I didn’t know anything until Sidney gave me that tape.”
“Nothing occurred to you when we had our tongues down each other’s throats?” I said.
He shrugged. “We were both a little giddy. A couple of drinks, a long journey …”
“So you didn’t mean it.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“So you did mean it?”
“…” said BJ. He stared out of the window at that damned tree, already captivated by the curious twists of its old branches. I shut my eyes, screwed them as tight shut as I could against the mounting exhaustion. I wanted nothing more than for BJ to give me some opening, some hint that it was time to forgive him everything and invite him into my arms.
Cheesy, isn’t it? I said I’d be honest, and I am. I was thinking nothing of shagging him for once, and it’s so significant a moment in our relationship it needs mentioning. I wanted to hold him, nothing more. I just wanted to know he belonged to me as I’d always belonged to him. I don’t think there ever was a moment before or since that I managed to look at him without some degree of lust, but that one time I managed it. I was tired, it’s true, but I still did it and I hold it up as proof that I have some level of depth to my personality. The only time I mentioned the significance of this to BJ he laughed, so we can’t really say the same of him.
But he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t move towards me or touch me or anything. He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the door. He wanted out of that conversation, but I wasn’t going to let him escape so easily.
He made a feeble excuse and got up to go to bed. I stood up and tried to bar his way to the door, but built of stuff far more solid than me, so I knew I couldn’t really stop him going anywhere.
“Beej, one last question,” I said.
“What is it?”
“Do you love me?”
He rubbed at his bleary eyes again and finally offered me a genuine smile. “I’ll tell you in the morning, Hawkeye.”

To be continued...?