#kinda i guess it's pre-beejhawk

[majortuttle]

i don't know whether you're still taking beejhawk prompts but if so, i'd love to see something that takes place after the bus s4e6. they're all describing their first crushes and hawkeye never does and i think it would be fun for hawk to come out to bj with a little pronoun slip and if you don't do it, i will :) thank you for your service.

First off, I'll always take prompts and asks so we're golden! Second, I hope this scratches a small itch — I'm a little tired so I hope it tracks alright!

“The first time love conquered all,” BJ says, echoing the topic of their earlier conversation. “While Radar may have needed finding, you, sir, got skittish.”

“Skittish? What am I, a crab?”

BJ chuckles and leans back, resting his has against the window while keeping Hawkeye in sight, legs extended across the width of the bus to almost brush Hawkeye’s fatigue pants with his boot.

“C’mon, I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“I feel like this is an elaborate ruse meant to give you another opportunity to gush about your beautiful wife.”

“I don’t need a ruse to sing Peg’s praises, you know that. C’mon. Spill. I want to know more about my favorite bunkmate.”

“Alright, first time love conquered all,” Hawkeye says, keeping his voice low for the benefit of their sleeping comrades. “Well, I was fifteen; young, gangly, and stupid. You know the type.”

“That I do.”

Hawkeye tongues a tender spot on the inside of his cheek as he rewrites the story in his mind — swapping names and locations on the fly because he can’t admit the truth, not here.

“She was a good friend of mine,” Hawkeye starts, before immediately having to clear his throat. “Best friend. We grew up together and I’d had feelings for some time, not that I knew how to go about expressing them, refer back to young and stupid.”

“Noted.”

“I thought I’d take her skating. Confess my love on the ice and if things went south, I’d skate to a thin patch and do myself in.”

"Naturally."

“We got out on the ice, and before I could get my bearings, I hear this cracking — you know, when a large enough sheet of ice starts to break, it almost sounds like a gunshot, it startles you so badly you forget to be scared — but when I figured out what was happening, I panicked, started rushing back to shore and s-she was right behind me, and then she was ahead of me, and my skate caught in this crack and I fell.”

Hawkeye stops himself, thinking back on the number of times he’s told this story in its entirety, not edited for the sake of concerned parents.

“Didn’t fall through the ice,” Hawkeye clarifies, meeting BJ’s worried face. “But the whole sheet buckled, and I was on my stomach just waiting for the water to take me when I looked up and . . .”

He closes his eyes, and he can still see Tommy, flushed and panting in that patchwork red coat of his, easing onto his belly like a seal, reaching out with one gloved hand, telling Hawkeye not to panic, that everything would be okay if Hawkeye could just slide a little further.

Just a little further, Hawk! You can do it!

“She saved me,” Hawkeye takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly in time with BJ’s own sigh of relief. “Smacked me upside the head when we got to shore for being so stupid and scaring her half to death, and then she kissed me. Wasn’t my first kiss, but it was the one that counted.”

“Sounds like a hell of a gal.” BJ praises, shoulders drooping like he's just escaped the gallows himself. “I'd love to meet her some day. She waiting for you back home?”

“Well, you can't, he actually died quite recently.”

The words practically fall out of Hawkeye’s mouth, unbidden and unwanted; and when Hawkeye realizes what he’s done, he doesn’t look to the gently surprised expression on BJ’s face, he turns to Potter and Burns resting behind them. Searching for any hint that the men might have heard him.

“. . . I’m sorry to hear that.”

Hawkeye whips his attention back to BJ so quickly he feels a vertebrae pop in his neck. BJ casts a look to their sleeping compatriots before he lifts up and shifts across the aisle onto the seat beside Hawkeye — or what little remains of it — before slowly, carefully, pulling Hawkeye’s hand into his own.

It takes far too long for Hawkeye to realize he’s being comforted.

“What was his name?” BJ asks.

“Tommy,” Hawkeye whispers, swallowing hard against the fear threatening to consume him, against the earnest sympathy plastered over BJ’s face. “Tommy Gillis. He died here. In Korea.”

BJ tightens his grip around Hawkeye’s hand, closes his eyes, and bows his head. Hawkeye can’t bring himself to do the same, consumed in the moment by this new Captain, Trapper’s replacement, fresh off the boat, commiserating over the loss of someone who’s mere memory is dangerous to Hawkeye.

“Are you praying?”

“Something like that.” BJ answers somberly. “The least I can do.”

“He died on my table,” Hawkeye admits, wincing at the tremor in his voice as he tries to shake some inhumanity out of Hunnicutt. “I couldn’t save him. I let him die.”

“I’m sure you did what you could.”

“You don’t know that. You weren’t there —”

Hawkeye’s lips are cracked and now they’re burning, a roundabout way to realize he’s crying.

“I wasn’t, but I know you.” BJ insists, not letting go even as Hawkeye tugs his hand away. “You’re a good man. A better surgeon. It couldn’t have been your fault. Tommy, would he have blamed you? Would he want you beating yourself up like this?”

Hawkeye turns his blurry gaze to their clasped hands and stifles a sob, only to immediately find himself in BJ’s arms; the larger man holding him tightly.

“When we get out of this,” BJ whispers, running his hand over Hawkeye’s back in soothing circles, “I’ll tell you a story of my own, okay? It’s a good one. I promise you’ll like it.”

“Yeah? Is it about Peg?” Hawkeye sniffs, wiping his face on BJ’s shoulder. “There’s only so much Peg my heart can handle —”

BJ chuckles dryly, giving Hawkeye a reassuring squeeze. “Peg's not in this one," he swears, resting his cheek against the crown of Hawkeye's head. "In fact, you could say there aren't any women at all."