Preface

Aspirin or Sorrow (A Non-Comprehensive List of What the Dead Don't Need)
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/39481905.

Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

MASH (TV)

Relationship:

B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce

Characters:

Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, B. J. Hunnicutt

Additional Tags:

Vampires, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Biting, Blood and Violence, you know, vampire stuff, Hurt/Comfort, what if vampirism was both literal and a stand-in for the ways war changes you, Dr. Pierce or:, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Slightly Unsettling Bunkmate, redux. it seems I can't write anything that doesn't make Hawkeye a little strange and sad, technically this has a major character death but he gets better

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2022-06-06 Completed: 2022-07-08 Words: 76,069 Chapters: 15/15

Aspirin or Sorrow (A Non-Comprehensive List of What the Dead Don't Need)

by AMRV_5

Summary

There were universal truths. Slice a man open, he’ll bleed. Push him, he’ll fall. Stop his heart, he’ll die.

What did it make a man who broke the rules? More than human? Less?

///

Or: An operation gone wrong lands Hawkeye square in the middle of a medical mystery he'd rather not be participating in.
So it goes.

Notes

See the end of the work for notes

The Last Piece of Good News

Chapter Summary

A suture slip in surgery, a kid from Kansas, and a puzzling pain profile.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

It was only when he found himself sprawled out on the floor of the Swamp mere inches away from a fresh cadaver, licking blood off his hands like so much boysenberry syrup, that he realized he might have a serious problem. 

Stop the tape, swap the reels, roll it back—how did he get here? 

It started, as all the most salient moments of his life seemed to lately, with a shipment of wounded. 

In medias res : 

“I don’t know,” Hawkeye said, glancing up to catch BJ’s eye. They were both wrist-deep in the same abdominal cavity. 

“Not the oddest thing I’ve seen,” BJ said, his brows lowered, obviously lying. “But it’s up there.” 

Hawkeye gently traced up a ureter—intact—to a firm, fibrously elasticate pouch: kidney, also intact. He shot a concerned look towards the anesthetist. “And he’s…?” 

The anesthetist shook her head. “No pulse.” 

“Obviously,” Hawkeye said, watching the kid’s heart not beat. 

“But he’s breathing,” the anesthetist said. 

“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye said, also watching the kid’s lungs inflate. 

It was a bad injury. The kind most people didn’t see the other side of. The kid had been hit nearly head-on with a frag, and his abdominal cavity was full of twitching ground meat and blood and metal shards. His blood pressure was a flat zero. It had been for hours, ever since he’d allegedly died in battalion aid, then sat up with a peephole torn through his center and asked if anybody had any food, because frankly he was starving.

He looked up when BJ made a quiet, nauseated noise. 

“Okay?” he asked. 

BJ nodded. He looked pale, sweat shining on his forehead. “Think we’re about ready to close.” 

“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye said, focusing on checking over the bowel, making sure they’d caught every perforation. The temperature inside the body was noticeably cool, even through his gloves, and he frowned. Some sort of metabolic problem, maybe? Hypothermia? Something slowing down the kid’s internal workings so efficiently it looked, to an outside observer, like death?

“Closing,” BJ said, atypically flat. The kid had shaken everyone. There were certain things one expected from the human body, even in extremis. All the blood and viscera and biological gloop concomitant with life was, at least, conceptually consistent gloop. It was a gloop that was in many ways predictable. There were variations, every person a slight deviation from the mean, but they were identifiable to a mean. There were universal truths. Slice a man open, he’ll bleed. Push him, he’ll fall. Stop his heart, he’ll die. 

What did it make a man who broke the rules? More than human? Less? 

He accepted a suture needle from Margaret, her eyes huge and blue above her mask. He readjusted his grip, gloves slick with blood, and looped the suture through the dermis, leaving a few millimeters’ space from the wound margin. He shifted, moving to make the near loop, when—

Absolute apocalypse. The sound of the explosion was life-shattering, and horribly, immediately close. The lights snapped off, plunging them into darkness as the ground rocked, literally, physically, rolled under their feet, sending bottles of epinephrine sliding off of shelves, bundles of bandages raining down from on high. Hawkeye flinched minutely, a sharp sting registering in his palm as he moved to shield the body below him from falling dust. 

When the noise settled and the lights came back on, his stomach dropped. 

Carefully he pulled his hands away from the body, letting BJ finish closing. 

“Alright?” BJ asked, mattress-stitching like a champ. 

“Well,” he said, considering the needle hooked into his hand. “I’ve never claimed to be clairvoyant, but all of a sudden I’m seeing a lot of phlebotomy labs in my future.”

Margaret gasped, and then started crowding him towards the scrub room. “Running water. Quickly.” 

“Nurse Houlihan,” he said, planting his weight, “one moment, if you don’t mind.” 

He pulled the needle out, turning it along its hooked curve. The needle dragged backwards through the white rubber of his glove, pulling heterochthonous blood down with it through the punctured material. Maybe he should have washed the glove off first, before breaking the seal between the needle and the rubber. This was bad practice. Still, he turned the needle until he felt the tip recede beneath the skin of his palm, re-entering the exit wound. Another pull and it tugged out of his skin, and then glove, with a sick, frictioned feeling.

He dropped the needle into a waiting basin and let Margaret push him bodily out of the OR. She pulled his gloves off and shed her own, before she turned on the sink. 

“Keep it bleeding,” she told him, pulling on a fresh pair of gloves. 

“Yessir,” he said, and went for the soap. The needle-stick didn’t look so bad, really. Just a pair of puncture wounds where the needle bit into the fleshiest part of his palm. It wasn’t bleeding, though, which was making him nervous. He aggravated the wound, squeezing at it under the running water, breathing through the minor combination sting of the soap and the pressure. Nothing. 

He held his hand up to Margaret. “I don’t seem to be springing a leak.”

Margaret took his hand in her gloved ones. She shifted it back and forth, examining it under the light, before she stuck it back under the water and scrubbed. 

“Ow,” he said pointedly, and then, when she tugged at his arm to get a better angle, “Really, ow .”

“You’re fine,” she said sternly, though her eyes were worried. “You’re sure it hooked you?” 

“This Pierce was pierced,” he confirmed, drawing his hand back to look at it. The flesh of his palm appeared essentially unblemished, if not a little pink from thorough scrubbing. 

“It looks like you weren’t.” Margaret pulled off her mask.

Hawkeye flexed his hand. No pain. No puncture marks. Maybe it’d only stuck him through the stratum corneum. Hooked through harmlessly, the way he used to frighten the girls in his elementary class by sticking a needle through the thinnest layer of skin on a fingertip, crowing look what I can do, fascinated as he always had been and always would be by the functioning of the organic fragile thing that both carried and was him. “Might’ve just got me through the epidermis,” he told Margaret, dropping his hand in relief. 

Margaret nodded consideringly. “I still want to get a blood panel out of you.” 

“That makes two of us,” he said, and stretched, his shoulder popping.

He glanced through the window into the OR. BJ was manually checking the not-dead kid’s not-pulse, looking openly ill.

Margaret stepped between him and the door, forcing him to step back. “You know the rules. Scrub out and get some sleep.”

“Ugh,” Hawkeye said, hating the idea of ditching BJ in the OR with Frank, hating it viscerally. “Look, if it didn’t even stick me—” 

“No,” Margaret said firmly. “Go. Sleep. In the morning—” 

“It is the morning,” Hawkeye said, checking the clock. 

“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “In twelve hours, we’ll put another needle in you. Try not to die of a savior complex in the meantime.”

“Hep won’t show on a lab a day after a stick,” Hawkeye said, feeling suddenly tired. “Could be four weeks. Could be half a year.” 

“Would catch a hemorrhagic fever infection, most likely. And we’ll take a sample from the source patient, too. If he comes back clean you’re clear to operate. Pierce,” Margaret said, touching his shoulder, “you’re going to be okay.” 

“Okay,” he said mildly, and watched her head back into the OR, back to BJ and Frank and Potter, to the anesthetists and nurses, phlebotomists and enlisted men, and the kid with a frozen heart and a stranglehold on life. 

///

“Private John, 11213744,” Hawkeye read, glancing down the chart. Cardiac arrest  - nonfatal , somebody had penned in a barely-legible scrawl. Condition ongoing. Under that was the panel of tests Margaret had run a few days ago. Sure enough, the kid was clean as a whistle, and Hawkeye was cleared to go on doctoring. 

“Kai,” the kid said, sitting up in bed. 

“Hi, Kai,” Hawkeye said. “I’m Doctor Pierce. How’re you feeling?” 

“Bored,” Kai said. “When’re you folks gonna let me outta here?” 

“Well,” Hawkeye said, letting the chart fall back against the metal of the bed. “That depends on your definition of ‘out.’” 

“Back to the front?” the kid asked, wary. He had a distinct rural twang. “They can’t send me back. I just about was the Johnny that got his gun out there.” 

That surprised a laugh out of Hawkeye, and he looked the kid over again. He was young, that was a given, but he was also rangy, obviously relatively new to his height given the way he kept his elbows close. Probably the kid had spent the last few months accidentally clocking his trenchmates in the ribs and getting whacked for his trouble. He also looked a touch sallow, his skin pale, his under-eyes bruised, his red-brown hair curling limply over his forehead. 

“No, you’re not going back in,” Hawkeye said. “That’s the good news. You’re going to get an honorable discharge. Somebody’ll be around to pin some metal on you soon. The other good news is you’re recovering incredibly well.” 

“Yeah?” Kai said, not looking like he bought it too much. “You lying to me?” 

Hawkeye bit the inside of his cheek, feeling fonder of the kid by the minute. He looked around, and pulled up a chair. “No. That’s the truth. The sort of injury you had, most people don’t pull through from that. And if they do, it’s touch-and-go. But you? You’re just trucking along like it never happened at all.” 

“Yeah?” Kai asked again, more friendly. “It’s just that you folks keep coming in here every few hours takin’ my pulse and my blood and everything. Don’t say why or nothing.” 

“So, the blood,” Hawkeye said, leaning forward companionably. “There was an incident in the OR. I and my colleague Dr. Hunnicutt were stitching you up, a shell blew nearby, and I, fraidy-cat that I am, jumped. In the process I stuck myself with the needle I had been using on you.” He turned his hand, palm up, towards Kai. “When that happens, we have to test your blood to make sure I’m not going to get sick.” 

“And I’m alright?” 

“All your blood tests came back normal,” Hawkeye said. “Which means I can keep operating, and not worry that I might expose any patients to something that could make them sick.” 

Kai nodded. “And the rest of it?” 

Hawkeye sighed, and looked at the floor, rotating his right ankle as he tried to decide how to respond. “First,” he said slowly, “the last piece of good news. You’re alive.” 

Kai gave him a look, sharp and nearly annoyed. 

“Remember that,” Hawkeye told him seriously, and then held the chestpiece of his stethoscope between his hands to warm it. “May I?” 

“Guess so,” Kai said, scooting forward in his cot. He pushed his shirt up to his chin. 

Hawkeye glanced clinically over his torso, noting the nearly-perfectly healed shrapnel entry wounds, and the long, faded incision mark twisting across his belly. It looked like he’d been operated on a decade ago. Certainly not four days past. 

He shook his head and donned the stethoscope, placing the diaphragm over the kid’s chest. Medium-pitch bronchovesicular breath sounds, healthy lungs, even inspiratory and expiratory durations. And nothing else. 

“Okay,” Hawkeye said. “Could you breathe in, really deeply, and then breathe out as much as you can, and hold it there?” He closed his eyes, listened, and still came up with nothing, even absent breath sounds. “You can breathe again,” he said, pulling the stethoscope off. 

“So?” Kai asked.

Hawkeye looked around. Margaret was speaking quietly to a kid in the corner holding a paperback. The cot beside them was empty. 

“One second,” Hawkeye said, getting up to rifle through a drawer in the nurses’ station. He sterilized the stethoscope and wiped the earpieces dry, and then returned to Kai’s bedside. “Have a listen.” 

Kai obligingly donned the stethoscope, chrome framing his face.

Hawkeye positioned the diaphragm over the kid’s chest, watching his expression. 

After a few moments, Kai held his breath. Another moment went by, and he looked at Hawkeye. “Contraption’s busted.” 

Hawkeye shook his head, and then pressed the diaphragm to his own chest, the metal cold against his skin. It hadn’t picked up much heat from Kai. 

Kai frowned, and then pulled the stethoscope off. “I don’t get it.” 

“Neither do we,” Hawkeye said. “For whatever reason, when you got hit on the field, your heart stopped. But you didn’t.” 

“And that’s the bad news,” Kai surmised. 

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “That’s the bad news. They’re going to have you stop over at Tokyo for a more thorough looking-over than we can give you here. They’ll see if there’s something we missed, and they’ll make sure you’re okay to go home.” 

“Home,” Kai repeated. “Really? I’m really getting out of here? For sure?” 

“For sure,” Hawkeye said. “Look, you’re taking this really well. Are you sure you don’t have any questions for me? Anything you want to know?” 

Kai shrugged. “There anything I can ask you would know the answer to?” 

Hawkeye looked down at his own palm, and the unmarked skin there. 

“Didn’t think so. Anyway,” Kai said, grinning, “I know how it happened.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. See, I was up on that hill, an’ there were a hell of a lot of noise and shells comin’ down around me, an’ I says, I says out loud and all: ‘God, if you get me outta here, you let me live through this, I’m gonna go on home and never miss a day of church in my life.’” 

“Divine intervention?”

“Well,” Kai said, looking shifty. “Probably it was that. But right after I also clicked my heels three times an’ said there’s no place like home. So it’s God or Hollywood magic.” 

“Either or. And where’s home?” Hawkeye asked, settling in to listen. 

“Colby, Kansas,” Kai said. “Oh, Doc, you wouldn’t believe the view out there.” 

“In Kansas?”

“Flat as all get-out,” Kai said. “Flatter’n hell. You hold a level up at the horizon and it near sits perfect on the line. You can see forever, ‘til everything gets lost in the blue and the distance. Out on top a barn, warm September evening with fresh bread and butter and the smell of hay in the air, your best girl up there tellin’ a story, and you listenin’, well, that’s what I miss most of all. Silly, missing just a small thing like that.” 

“Big things are made up of lots of small things,” Hawkeye said. “And home’s a plenty big thing. You know what I miss?” 

“What?”

“Waking up early for school in late October. The crisp air, the dew on your windshield, maybe even an early frost coating every last blade of grass in diamond-glitter. Precocious jack-o-lanterns already starting to turn to mush on a neighbor’s porch. After school there’d be chocolate crinkle cookies fresh out of the oven, so heavy with powdered sugar if you weren’t careful you could aspirate it.”

“You miss school?” Kai asked. “Aren’t you too old for it?” 

“Plenty too old,” Hawkeye said, even though he didn’t feel it. “Not like you. You can go back home and get more school, if you want.” 

“And do what?” 

Hawkeye shrugged. “Whatever you want. What do you want to do?” 

Kai sat back, and then lowered himself onto one elbow. “You know I always assumed I’d go right back and farm. Not much else needs doing in Colby.” 

“You don’t have to stay in Colby, if you don’t want to,” Hawkeye said. “You could go somewhere else. You’ve already been in Korea. Anywhere closer than that’ll be no challenge at all.” 

“You know,” Kai said, tilting his head, “the WPA came on through Colby a few years back. We got a hospital. St. Thomas. Big old thing, right over where the high school used to be. Got a chapel, too, and an emergency place like this one. Lots of people working there. I never thought about it too much but I guess guys like you have to come from somewhere, huh?” 

“We do,” Hawkeye said. “We come from all sorts of places. Mill Valley, Crabapple Cove, Boston. Even Colby, Kansas.” 

“Uh-huh,” Kai said, laying down. “Maybe I go back and see if I can get me a white coat, too. Owe some folks in ‘em more than I can say.” 

“I’ll write you a letter of recommendation for a place in Boston, if you need one,” Hawkeye told him quietly, standing and pushing his chair away. He walked away feeling blurry and dislocated, more than half on the roof of a Kansas barn, shingles warm against his back, smelling bread and dirt and the sharply clean air, looking out to a horizon that didn’t end so much as fade away. 

///

“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye said, settling his weight on an elbow. “Well, no. I wasn’t aware of that. Might be new, I think we would’ve noticed.” 

BJ looked up, away from the papers he was filing. Hawkeye raised his eyebrows, and tilted his head. 

On the phone the fellow from Tokyo General was audibly rifling through a chart. “Hypothermic. Badly. But…” 

“Let me guess,” Hawkeye said. “He seems completely fine?” 

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the man said. “He’s sitting at eighty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. He shouldn’t even be conscious.” 

“And that’s in addition to the permanent state of cardiac arrest.” 

“Right.” 

Hawkeye sighed, and then winced, his side cramping. He’d been hunched over the desk too long. “Look, you’ve had him for almost a month. If you haven’t figured him out by now, can’t you just let him go home?” 

“But his condition is getting worse.” 

“Worse than a stopped heart,” Hawkeye said. 

Audible hesitation. “Well, no. But he won’t eat. And the hypothermia is new. And he’s been complaining of insomnia.” 

“Insomnia!” Hawkeye said, hitting the desk with the flat of his palm. BJ moved in, curious, and put his ear next to the phone. “Insomnia and no appetite. He’s stuck in a hospital a world away from home, after he took a load of shrapnel to the gut. He’s probably shell-shocked. Call a psychiatrist, why don’t you? Even better, make sure he’s not going to keel over on the first plane home, and get him set up with the VA in Colby, Kansas for a follow up. I’m telling you, if you haven’t figured it out yet, you can’t hold him until you do. He’s discharged.”

“But the hypothermia—” 

“Is concerning, yes. I don’t like it any more than you do. But you’ve had him for a month. A month. His condition is otherwise stable, correct?” 

“Correct,” the man said. 

“And his honorable discharge came through?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then why are you still holding him? If this were any other injury, he’d be back in the states receiving treatment two weeks ago. Why is this different? Because it’s new? It’s not contagious, it’s stable, we’ve thrown every test we can at him. Let the doctors at home do the same.” 

There was another long pause, and Hawkeye let out an aggrieved sigh, pressing down on the ache in his side. It only intensified in response, and he grit his teeth. He needed to sleep. Badly. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” the man said at last. “The kid wants to talk to you.” 

“Sure,” Hawkeye said. 

“Give it a minute, and we’ll put him on.” 

“Okay,” Hawkeye said, and glanced towards BJ. “He wants to talk to me.” 

“Got yourself a pal,” BJ said, coming around to sit on the edge of the desk. A stack of papers crinkled under the spread of his thigh. 

Hawkeye pushed at his leg, knuckles indenting into the slight give of the vastus lateralis. “Get off my paperwork.” 

BJ didn’t move, except to tap his knee with a dirty sneaker. “Tell him hello from me. And speedy travels.”

“If they ever let him out,” Hawkeye said, breathing out as a new, subtler pain took up residence behind his eyes. The line clicked, and somebody on the other side said, “Hello?” 

“Hey, Kai,” Hawkeye said. “How are you?” 

“Dr. Pierce?” Kai asked. 

“Hawkeye,” Hawkeye corrected. “How are you doing?” 

“Um,” the kid said. “Okay I guess. I told one of the nurses I was feeling really cold though and they took my temperature and apparently it wasn’t so good. And I’m still here, so not so good on that front, either.” 

“I know,” Hawkeye said, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ll give them the what-for. They shouldn’t be keeping you away from home. They shouldn’t have taken you in the first place, but they shouldn’t be keeping you, either.” 

“I know you’re trying,” Kai said, a verbal shrug.

Hawkeye rubbed at the bridge of his nose. He could feel BJ’s eyes on him. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” 

“How are you really?” he asked. “They told me you’re not eating.” 

“Or sleeping,” Kai said. “I don’t know. I try but everything makes me feel sort of sick. And I’m having these dreams. The kind that makes it so you don’t even want to go to bed.” 

Hawkeye settled a palm into his orbital socket, pressing lightly, watching green and purple flares flash in the dark. “I know. I get those sometimes, too. I’ll try to get them to let you out. And if they do, you can find somebody to talk to.” 

“A head doctor,” Kai said, unimpressed. “I guess if I keep on going on this way, I’ll end up with one. Anyway, I got to go.”

“Doctor Hunnicutt says hello,” Hawkeye said. “Our collective best to you. Shabby though it may be.” 

“Thanks, Doc-Hawk,” the kid said. “Maybe I can see you stateside after all this, huh?” 

“Sure,” Hawkeye said. “You have my address here. Send me a postcard from Colby.” 

“I’ll send a picture of the watertower,” Kai said. “Bye now.” 

“Bye,” Hawkeye said, and set the receiver down. He kept his eyes closed, and pushed a hand into his trapezius, trying to work out the tension there.

“Good kid,” BJ said, tapping his knee again. When Hawkeye opened his eyes, BJ was looking at him softly. 

“What?” he asked, feeling very tired. 

“Nothing. Long day. Let’s get some breakfast.” 

Hawkeye felt his expression twist in response. 

BJ’s brows drew together. “All good?”

As near as he could figure, it was seeming increasingly as though nothing was. But that wasn’t BJ’s fault. He inclined his head and pressed a hand to his middle, over the pain settling there. “I just can’t seem to find an appetite for stale toast and last year’s milk.” 

BJ nodded, and then gave him another quick glance, his gaze sharpening into what Hawkeye had internally started calling his Dr. Hunnicutt stare. There was diagnostic intent in those eyes. 

“What?” Hawkeye asked again. Thinking of trying to stomach breakfast was making him nauseous. 

“You look off,” BJ informed him, like somebody who wasn’t sporting bruised undereyes and a distinctly unshaven face. “Are you feeling alright?” 

Hawkeye tilted his head equivocatingly. “I’m starving, but not enough to risk my life on the eggs. I’ve got a cramp in my side, my head hurts a little, and, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a war on.” 

“Point taken,” BJ said, casting a despairing look in the direction of the mess. “I’m not looking forward to being sentenced to breakfast, either. Make sure you have something later, though. You’re looking a little wan lately.” 

“Wan?” Hawkeye said. “Wan? What am I, a pasty little street urchin you’re taking home for the holidays? Wan, BJ, really? You should see yourself.” 

BJ shrugged tiredly. “It’s been a bad few weeks for all of us. I haven’t seen the inside of my cot in two days. I’m just exercising all due professional and personal concern.” 

“Consider your concern exercised,” Hawkeye said, at the forkroads of peevish and touched. “Go drink some coffee, it’ll help you sleep.” 

“Whatever you say, Doctor,” BJ said, squinting at him in the low light of the office.

///

“Telegram for you, sir,” Radar said, coming into the OR. “You want I should read it?” 

“Depends,” Hawkeye said. “Who’s it from?” 

“Is it dirty?” BJ asked. “Read it loud if it is.” 

“Smut peddler,” Frank scoffed. “Dirt, that’s all you two care about.” 

“That’s not true,” Hawkeye said, wounded. “I care about filth, too.” 

Margret made a disgusted sound, and Hawkeye had the presence of mind to feel a little bit bad. 

“It’s from Tokyo,” Radar said, his glasses catching the fluorescence of the OR lights.

“Read on,” Hawkeye said. 

“Dear Doctor Pierce stop,” Radar read. 

“Stop what?” Hawkeye asked the room at large. “Clamp. Thanks.” 

“Writing to inform you Private John 11213744 has been sent stateside as of this morning stop. Incident lessened ward treatment capacity stop. His bed was needed stop. Regards stop.” 

“God forbid his regards continue,” Hawkeye said, pulling out a clump of bloody surgical gauze. It was a fairly straightforward gut injury, something he’d seen plenty of, but he was starting to sweat. He’d been having some stamina problems recently. He wondered if he was finally hitting his ignition point, if this was as hot as it could get before he’d burn out. “Wait. Incident?” he asked belatedly. 

“Something happen to him?” BJ asked, catching his eye. 

“It doesn’t say,” Radar said. “That’s all I got. Just ‘incident.’”

“I happen to know what incident they’re talking around,” Potter said. “First, how many have we got to go?” 

“That’s all the big ones,” Radar said. “There’s just one guy has a broken wrist left.” 

“I thought it was right,” BJ said. “Suture.” 

“He’s left with the right wrist,” Radar said. 

“Right,” Hawkeye said. He was becoming aware of an increasing pain in his stomach. It’d been coming and going for weeks, along with a series of unpredictable migraines. But as far as anybody could tell he was, physically, in great condition. All he was was overworked, and overstressed. Like that made it any better.

“I’ll take the wrist,” Frank said, pulling off his gloves. Klinger left and then came back, leading in the kid who was walking under his own power. They didn’t see too many of those. 

Hawkeye looked back down at his patient, and then up at the nurse. Nurse Kolach. Just like the cake. He was horribly hungry. He hadn’t been eating well, recently, finding it harder than ever to force down army rations; that and the stomach pain had been dragging him through the wringer. He was dropping weight faster than he had even his first few weeks in camp. He needed to put the brakes on that somehow. More likely he just needed a break.

“Incident?” he asked Potter, counting sponges. 

“Incident,” Potter confirmed. “Somebody broke in and robbed their blood bank.” 

“What?” Hawkeye asked, craning his neck briefly to look at Potter. “Robbed?” 

“Lots of missing units,” Potter said. “Whoever did it smashed the refrigeration unit, and the whole rest of the lot went off. Tanked their patient capacity, and now there’s a blood shortage. Better hope things stay tame while supply catches up, or we’ll be in dire straits.”

Hawkeye shook his head, and flattened his lips when the motion set a headache pulsing behind his eyes. For once he couldn’t think of anything clever to say. “That’s horrible,” he said, so quietly he figured maybe only Nurse Kolach heard him. 

“I’m finished,” BJ said, stepping back from his table. “Klinger, you want to take this guy to post-op?” 

Klinger came back with one of the enlisted men, his petticoat rustling. “Sure thing. Off we go.” 

“Silk. Who would do something like that?” Hawkeye asked, and then blinked, his vision going fuzzy. He wasn’t feeling well at all. His voice sounded distant and tinny. A sharp pain shot through his stomach and he gasped. 

Nurse Kolach gave him a worried look, but handed over a needle trailing silk.

“Terrible thing,” BJ said. “Robbing a hospital.”

“Uh-huh.” Hawkeye managed a few stitches, trying very hard to focus on anything but his increasing pain. It was quickly passing the threshold of what he would call normal, or managable. But he had a job to do. 

“BJ,” he said tightly, making his way through another stitch. His hands were perfectly steady, the stitch spacing flawlessly even. 

“Yeah?” BJ asked, and then looked over at him. “God. You look…”  

“So handsome you’re speechless?” Hawkeye asked, blinking sweat out of his eyes. 

“You’re pale as the backside of a DD214,” BJ said. “Need me to step in?” 

“I’m just about done,” Hawkeye said. “Last stitch.” 

“Pierce?” Potter asked. 

“I’m okay,” Hawkeye said, tying off the silk. “Done now.” 

He handed the needle back to nurse Kolach, and watched as Klinger came in and carted the guy away. He leaned down and balanced his weight on his elbows, rocking forward and backward. The pain slowly alleviated, edging off into manageable again. 

“What was that?” BJ asked, closer than he expected. 

“Oh, you know,” Hawkeye said, upbeat. 

“I don’t,” BJ said. “But if you say I do I’ll believe you.” 

“Just a little Monday misery,” Hawkeye said, and straightened up. Frank was putting the finishing touches on setting the guy’s wrist, and Potter had just closed his last patient. 

“Need any help, Frank?” Hawkeye asked. 

“Not from you,” Frank said. “Whatever happened to the doctor who worked through three shifts of nurses last year? You couldn’t even get through ten measly hours today.” 

“Thanks,” Hawkeye said, trying not to show that the hit had landed. “Exactly the sort of empathy I expected from you.” 

BJ pulled his gloves off, and then clapped Hawkeye on the shoulder, his hand big and warm over the jut of his scapula. “Let’s go scrub out.” 

“I’m finished here,” Frank said. “You’re set.” 

“And so’s the wrist,” Hawkeye told the kid, who smiled at him, looking relieved. “Out through those swinging doors and somebody will get you set up with a bed.” 

He stepped through into the scrub room, exhaustion pulling his shoulders low. He disposed of his gloves and scrubbed out. When he finished he moved out of the way to let BJ, Potter, and Frank wash up. 

“Good work in there, everybody,” Potter said, shaking his hands dry. 

Hawkeye sighed, pulling his cap off. He dipped his head and ran a hand through his hair, unsticking the sweaty strands that were clinging to his forehead. He could feel BJ watching him, so he looked up and smiled. 

“Time for breakfast and bed,” BJ said, pressing the top of his left foot into the ground, stretching his shin. 

Hawkeye pulled off his scrubs, tossing them into the laundry. He started to sit, and then gasped, stumbling hard into the scrub room wall. He stayed there for a long minute, his eyes closed, hand over his middle, breathing through another burst of sudden, inexplicable pain, more intense than before. He opened his eyes to find everybody staring at him.

“Alright, son?” Potter asked, his gaze shrewd.

“He’s lollygagging,” Frank said, pulling off his mask. “Pulling for a three-day leave. I can see right through you, Pierce.” 

“Hawk?” BJ asked. His hair was flattened all along the top from his surgical cap. “What’s up? Hungry?” 

Hawkeye winced as his stomach twisted. The thing about that question was that, objectively, the answer was yes. He was hungry. He had been hungry for weeks. Starving, really. But he couldn’t keep anything down. He wondered if this was shaping up to be a problem for Sidney, or if there really was something physically wrong that they’d all missed. Either way, though, the pain was really—it was just, really it was getting kind of—

“Pierce,” Potter said again, straightening up. 

I’m fine, Hawkeye wanted to say. Unfortunately the only thing that came out of his mouth was “Nnnnngh .” 

Every surgeon in the room, minus, of course, himself, immediately shot to attention. It was incredible, the way each of them had developed his own distinct doctor-isms, the nonverbal cues that signaled an internal shift into medical mode. Potter’s back went straighter, his shoulders dropping, a hand raised to adjust his glasses. Frank made himself broader, his arms crossed defensively, stance widening. BJ turned sharper, more attentive, his stare pinning a person flat as he looked them over for injury. 

Hawkeye cringed under the full attention of the room. “Easy, fellas, there’s enough of me to go arou uuuuuagghh .” He dropped fully against the wall, curling instinctively around the pain in his gut. 

BJ caught him around the waist, propping him up. “What’s going on? Where’s the pain?” he asked, beating Potter and Frank to the question by a millisecond. 

“Ugh,” Hawkeye said, cautiously standing under his own power as the pain edged off. “I don’t know. Sudden pain, uh, right above the navel. It’s backing off.” 

BJ frowned, looking to Potter and Frank. 

Potter walked over and gently settled Hawkeye against the wall. “Sorry about this, son,” he said, before pushing the flat of his palm into his stomach, low and on the right. The pain didn’t flare again when he released the pressure.

“It’s not appendicitis,” Hawkeye said, relieved. 

“Hmm,” Potter said, unconvinced. “If it is, we’ll take care of you.” 

“I know,” Hawkeye said, patting BJ’s shoulder. “It’s gone now. Random cramp. I think I’ll go catch some sleep.” 

Frank muttered “Lollygagger,” and then pulled his hat on. 

“You’ll tell us if you feel worse,” Potter checked, setting his hands on his hips. “We don’t need you suffering if there’s something we can do about it.” 

“I’ll be fine,” Hawkeye said, even as a subtle suggestion of pain brushed through him again. “I think I’m just dehydrated.” 

BJ shot Potter a lingering look, and then moved to follow Hawkeye out of the OR. “Why don’t I stay with you for an hour or two,” he said. “Just to make sure you’re really okay?” 

Hawkeye cracked his neck, riding out another minor pulse of pain. “I’ll be alright. Go. Get yourself some coffee. Knock the weevils out of your toast. When you’re done eating you can come watch me sleep, if it makes you feel better.” 

“If you’re sure,” BJ said, swaying slightly on his feet. It had been a long day for all of them. 

“Go,” Hawkeye shooed him. “If you need me, I’ll be napping.”

Chapter End Notes

And off we go.
Been kicking this around for a while, and I can't wait for folks to finally start reading it. Let me know if you like it so far!!

Title from Bukowski's "EVERYTHING."

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He Was Not Napping

Chapter Summary

Diagnoses are dispensed, Demerol is deployed, doctors do their doctoring.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

He was not napping. 

He rolled over, hissing as the pain edged up again, a twisting, sharp feeling striking though his gut. A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. He grit his teeth, his jaw clicking with the force of it. Very much not napping. In fact, it was possible he’d miscalculated. 

“Hey, BJ,” he tried, under his breath. “How would you feel if I kicked it because I was too stubborn to auuughhh .” A feeling like somebody ever-so-slowly forcing the blunt leg of a folding chair through his middle. Ovary torsion, if he had the equipment, which he didn’t, so, appendicitis? Perforated intestine? 

He rolled over again, onto his back, and tried to breathe deeply. Nothing happening here. No big deal. Just some guy laying on an army cot, breathing. There were plenty of guys all over the place doing the exact same thing. Totally normal. Fine. Maybe he had a kidney stone. Maybe he should walk to the OR. Just in case. That was also easy and normal. He did it every day. Step one, sit up.

“Nmff nnngggh ,” he said, when whatever invisible knight had an invisible mace lodged in his gut decided to rotate the invisible handle. His hands and face were bouncing confused radio-static signals at him, his eyesight greying out, all sensation and perception narrowing to the ragged sucking mess of agony torn through his center. He might have screamed. He wasn’t sure. He at least had the presence of mind to turn his head to the side when he started to retch. Not quite the recovery position, but better than drowning in his own vomit. 

“Jesus,” somebody said, and Hawkeye laughed, panicked. 

“If you’re not a doctor,” he said, and then retched again. “Find one. If you are—” 

“Hawk, it’s me,” BJ said, his gait familiar as he approached the cot. “Walk me through—” 

“Stabbing pain above my navel. Radiates through the rest of the abdomen. It’s—” He pounded a numb fist into the cot, driving the top of his head into the pillow, trying not to scream. He must look absurd. “It’s unbearable. Ten out of ten. I’m getting some nausea and some, some very interesting potentially neurological sequelae, but I’mmnngghhh fuck. I’m willing to lay those at the altar of the pain.”

“Jesus,” BJ said again. “Morphine. How are you even talking?” 

“Practice,” Hawkeye said. “Yes to painkillers, but later. I just want to know. Can you tell me. Oh, fuck. This is horrible. How bad.”

“Kidney stone?” BJ hazarded. “Appendicitis? Let me get something to knock the pain down to bearable and then we’ll do an exam.” 

“No,” Hawkeye said. “I’m not going under. Not without knowing I'll wake up again.”

“Jesus. Christ, okay, I don’t want to argue with you, not when you’re going to outstubborn me. Turn over, if we’re doing this.” 

Hawkeye blinked down at the bedspread. He was curled around his knees, forehead pressed to the mattress, his hands square on either side of his face, as if in supplication. When had he moved? He couldn’t remember. 

“Hawk,” BJ prompted, a big dark presence in his periphery. 

“Going,” Hawkeye said, and tried to make it true. He tipped, dropping his weight onto his flank, and let the motion carry him onto his back. He stretched out on the cot, fighting every spandrel of prey instinct he had that was begging him to tuck his knees to his chest to protect the soft wounded parts of him. You’re a human person, he told himself sternly. A stupid stick creature with a very complex blob of fat and water and electricity piloting it around. A better electric fat-water blob than the rest of the animal kingdom, in fact. Use it, why don’t you. 

“You look terrible,” he informed BJ when the labored process of turning over was complete. He did, too. BJ was pale, wide-eyed, sort of scared and sick-looking. Maybe whatever Hawkeye had was catching. 

BJ didn’t look him in the eye. “You’re going to be okay. Breathe normally, I’m going to touch your—” 

“BJ,” he interrupted. “You don’t have to bedside-manner me. Skip straight to the palpation, I won’t eve aaagghh .” He jerked forward involuntarily, his back coming off the cot. 

“Stop trying to make jokes,” BJ said, pressing his shoulder to the bed. 

Hawkeye bared his teeth. “I would if I could. Unfortunately I think pain disables my off switch.” 

BJ shot him a worried look. “I want to get you on morphine. We should be doing this in the OR at the very least. This is terrible methodology.” 

“Get on with it,” Hawkeye said, struggling to lift the hem of his standard-issue undershirt with numb hands. 

“Sorry,” BJ said, before pushing Hawkeye’s t-shirt up to his chest. 

“Hell,” Hawkeye said, flinching. 

BJ stilled. “Did that hurt?” 

“Not especially,” Hawkeye said. “It’s just that your hands aa uuugh . Are. Are freezing.” 

“No,” BJ said. “You’re hot.” 

“Well, the ladies do say I’ve got a hell of a xiphoid process. And don’t even get me started on my costal margin.” 

“I mean you feel feverish. Sorry again,” BJ said, before he positioned his hands approximately over where Hawkeye’s appendix was and pressed down. 

Hawkeye looked at him. BJ looked back. 

“Anything?” BJ asked. 

“Same level,” Hawkeye said. “No spike. Boy, you don’t mess around. Straight to the appendix palpation, huh? Not even going to consider my liv vrrggghhh . Oh, that does not feel good at all.”

“Worse?” BJ asked. 

“No. I’m just, at the moment I’m battling to keep the screaming inside, but the screaming keeps bringing reinforcements. Not appendicitis, though.” 

“Probably not,” BJ agreed, his brows furrowed, ghosting his ice-cold hands over Hawkeye’s stomach. 

Hawkeye closed his eyes, breathing through the pain, and tried to picture himself in cross-section: skin, subcutaneous fat, rectus abdominis, greater omentum coming down in a clean apron-like sweep from the stomach, intestines, kidneys, all of it in there trying so hard to keep him alive. Pain was just the body asking for help. 

“You weren’t joking about your costal margin. You look like you belong in a textbook. Don’t you ever eat?” BJ asked, apparently rhetorically, palpating a spot higher up, moving clockwise. 

“I do but it doesn’t agree with me,” Hawkeye said, keeping his eyes closed. Breathing. Ignoring the sickly feeling that if he looked down he’d see himself disemboweled. “I miss it,” he confessed. Talking was good. Talking meant he wasn’t thinking about the shrapnel bomb re-detonating every two seconds behind his navel.

“What, edible food?” BJ asked, checking his liver.

“No. Yes, that too. That and subcutaneous fat,” Hawkeye said. “I used to be lanky, you know. As opposed to. To. Ngghhhmmffuck. Skeletal. I resent that, I think. I didn’t want this place to change me but it did. It has.” He blinked, the room melting and blurring as his lacrimal glands, in their specially evolved fossa, kicked into overdrive and flooded his lacrimal ducts, which, unequipped to transfer the sudden excess of fluid into the puncta and down through his canaliculi as they were supposed to, resorted to sending a few stray drops of liquid trailing down his cheeks.

“I’m thinking kidney stone,” BJ said, sitting back and politely ignoring the fact that Hawkeye was crying a little. “Except—” 

“Pain profile’s all wrong,” Hawkeye said, willing the tears to stop. “It’s not colicky. The locus is too central. And too high.” 

“Exactly,” BJ said, troubled. “But not appendicitis. Not a perforation or a hernia, nothing that intensifies with pressure. So, working theory, maybe a food intolerance?”

“Not at this level of pain,” Hawkeye said, giving in to the urge to pillbug, drawing his knees towards his chest. 

“Back to kidney stone,” BJ said. “Whatever it is, it’s not going to kill you immediately. I think we go to the OR, get you something for pain, get an IV started, then we take a blood and urine sample, see what we see.”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “OR. Okay.” 

“Let me get a stretcher. And a Klinger,” BJ said, standing. “You going to be okay for that long?” 

Hawkeye cringed, imagining nurses and enlisted men watching him writhe in pain as he was carried through the camp. “I can walk,” he decided. 

“Can you? Or are you just embarrassed?” BJ asked. 

“What’s there to be embarrassed about?” Hawkeye asked, as he slowly levered himself off his cot. “Illness isn’t a character flaw.” 

“No it isn’t,” BJ agreed. “So why don’t you act like you believe that?” 

“Do as I say, et cetera,” Hawkeye said, brushing past him to unsteadily step through the Swamp’s door. The pain wasn’t fading, exactly, but it was easier to push aside now that he had a goal to work towards. 

“How is it,” BJ said, following, “you’re one of the best doctors I know, and one of the worst people I’ve met at accepting care?” 

“Doctors as patients, you know how it goes,” Hawkeye said, eyes fixed on the OR. “Besides. Taking exercise is good for kidney stone patients. Helps move things along.”

“Not when you’re in debilitating pain,” BJ said.  

“Do I look debilitated to you?” Hawkeye asked, trying to smile through another attack of cold sweat. His hands looked limestone white. Sort of chalky. They were still numb. “Look, if you played me a jig, I’d jig. A jive, I’d jive. Waltz, I’d waltz. Hell, I might even landler. I’m feeling fine.” 

BJ jogged a step ahead of him and held the OR door open. “You look dead on your feet.” 

“Well then maybe you’ll have to settle for a shuffle,” Hawkeye said, passing into the blessed dimness of the OR. He shouldered through the swinging doors and collapsed onto a table just as his vision started to grey again. 

“Should I get Potter?” BJ called from the scrub room. “I think I might want some help.” 

Hawkeye focused hard on the idea of not vomiting. “You’re the doctor,” he called back. 

“Okay,” BJ said. “Look, if you can move, do you think you can get a urine sample while I run for the colonel?” 

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “I can do that.” 

“Okay,” BJ said. “I’ll be back. I’ll take care of you.” The wooden door clattered shut.

Hawkeye took a second to breathe, trying to acclimate to the pain, focusing on the stabbed-through feeling that seemed to pulse in time with his heart. “Hello,” he said out loud. “Hi. Hello abdominal cavity. You seem a little upset at the moment. That’s alright. I know you’re just doing your job. That’s why we have people like me. And like BJ. We’re the car repairmen of the human transport. Organic mechanics. We’ll be okay.” 

The pain didn’t respond, but he felt a little better anyway. After another cycle of breaths he heaved himself off the table and dug a specimen cup and sterilizing wipes out of a drawer. After a furtive glance around he popped his fly and, well. Viva la ciencia medica.

When he capped the cup and held it up to the light, he could have cried from the relief. Blood. Lots of it. All signs pointing kidney stone-ward. Unpleasant, fucking agonizing in fact, but, importantly, manageable. Wouldn’t even need surgery. 

He set the cup on the counter and shuffled back towards the table, feeling only lightly embarrassed. Nothing the other doctors hadn’t seen before. You got good at compartmentalizing disgust in their business. At covering over the horror of viscera with a clear resin of scientific focus.

The sinks were running in the other room. Hawkeye pulled himself back onto the table as BJ came through the swinging door, Potter trailing behind as he shut off the water. Another pulse of pain sent him collapsing flat onto the table, choking off a hard, hurt noise as he wrapped his arms around his middle. Talk about timing.

“Well, son,” Potter said, coming up to stand by the table, “Hunnicutt tells me we’ve got ourselves a bit of a medical mystery.” 

Hawkeye glanced over, watching BJ prep an IV bag. The sweating was getting worse. He felt horribly humid. If it was really a kidney stone he was doing himself no favors, losing so much fluid to diaphoresis. “Kidney stone, I think. Got you a, agh . A nice cup of blood on the counter.”

Potter nodded. “How are you feeling now?”

“Well,” Hawkeye said, flexing a hand. It was still numb. “Stabbing pain above my navel, radiating out through the rest of the abdomen. Nausea, numbness in my hands and face. I’m chalking that up to the pain. I got over here alright. But now that I don’t have anything to focus on it’s— it’s really—” He caught a scream at the last second, shoving it back. A muted growl got away from him, though, and that probably didn’t sound too good either judging by the look on Potter’s face. 

“Morphine,” Potter called to BJ. “We can take a blood sample while he’s out.” 

“No,” Hawkeye managed, holding a hand out to BJ. “Demerol.” 

BJ and Potter looked at each other. 

“Demerol,” Hawkeye said again. “Injection. Not morphine. Please.”

Potter shrugged, and BJ went rifling through the drawers. 

“Sorry you’re feeling under the weather, Pierce,” Potter said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “I had a stone back on the tail end of World War the first. I cried every time my horse so much as thought about bucking. I can tell you I never let myself get dehydrated again after that. Hands-down the worst pain I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been through it all. You’re handling it real well.” 

“Well, you know me. I’m Dr. Stoic. Paragon of masculine stolidness.”

BJ stepped over with a syringe. “Okay, Dr. Stoic. Small injection now, and then we’ll set you up with an IV.” 

“And then you’ll steal my blood,” Hawkeye said, breathing through the needle’s minimal sting. “Hey, you’re pretty good at that.” 

“IV,” Potter said, waving BJ over. “Might have to do a little digging if you’re as dehydrated as I think you are.” 

“Dig away,” Hawkeye said, proffering his arm. BJ held his wrist and gently palpated the inside of his elbow. 

“You’re pale,” he said, his tone light as he gestured for a rubber tourniquet. “It should be easy enough to find a channel to tap.” 

“Good,” Hawkeye said, hissing. The tourniquet wasn’t so bad, really, but it was also, in another sense, utterly unbearable. He thought he might start crying again. “Wow. Boy. That’s, you don’t mess around with the tourniqueting. You’re not amputating, are you?”

“Sorry. Doing okay?” BJ asked, swabbing the puncture site. “Just a little longer and you’ll feel better. You want a countdown?” 

“Just do it,” Hawkeye said, looking down at his arm, watching as BJ carefully inserted the IV, then pulled the needle out, before untying the tourniquet. 

“Done,” BJ said, taping down the IV site. “Okay, Hawk? It’s been a few minutes. How’s that Demerol treating you?” 

“Um,” Hawkeye said, looking down at his IV. He never liked being on this side of the doctoring. BJ was good, though. Really he was very good.  

“I think he’s feeling it,” Potter said. “You alright, son?” 

The pain was unraveling, spooling out into nothingness, all the tension in his body lifting away. His brain felt—phenomenal. Like somebody had dumped a bucket full of chocolate valentine hearts directly into his synapses. He let his arms and legs relax, melting down against the cool metal of the surgical table. He flexed a hand experimentally, lolling his head to watch it move. It was thin and spidery, full of dexterity and bones. “Amazing thing, the human hand,” he mused aloud. The words didn’t come out quite clear but he wasn’t too bothered. BJ would understand. He always did. “Best pulley system around if you ask me.”

“Yeah, there it is,” BJ said, sounding relieved. “I’m gonna take some blood and then get your samples to the lab. Check your white count, make sure you don’t have an infection.” 

“Alright,” Hawkeye said agreeably. 

Potter came around to Hawkeye’s other arm and started prodding at the veins in his elbow, a lavender-topped Vacutainer tube in his hand. That was fine. He didn’t mind. They were going to make him feel better, and that was all that mattered. 

BJ came over and tapped his wrist reassuringly, smiling when Hawkeye grinned up at him. 

“You’re a good doctor,” Hawkeye told him. “Really top flight. I hardly felt that IV.” 

“Little pinch,” Potter said, and stuck his arm. 

“Everybody’s getting their phlebotomy practice in today,” Hawkeye said, wincing. The venipuncture on this side was really, just, really, it was feeling— it was— “ Aghhghh. Sorry, Colonel, but I think BJ’s needle work was nicer. That’s, you’re really, augh .”

“I aim to please,” BJ said, mouth twisting in sympathy. He glanced over at Potter, and then—

And then—

Hawkeye wasn’t quite sure what changed, exactly. Maybe something in BJ’s posture shifted, ossified, maybe his hand tensed, maybe it was a hitch in Potter’s breath. Whatever it was he knew, immediately, unbearably, that something had gone very, very wrong. 

“What?” he asked, too afraid to turn his head. “What’s the matter?” 

Potter pulled the needle out of him, taping a cotton swab to the inside of his elbow. He bent Hawkeye’s arm, wrist to shoulder, encouraging him to keep pressure on the puncture site. 

“BJ,” Hawkeye said. “Please.”

“It’s,” BJ said, and then said nothing else. 

“Son,” Potter said.

Hawkeye turned, slowly, to face him. He looked at Potter’s white coat, the blue pen in his pocket, the loose, crepe-textured skin at the base of his neck. He didn’t want to look at the vial. He didn’t want to know what had made BJ’s face drop like he’d just seen Hawkeye shot at point-blank range.

“It’s black,” Potter said, looking to BJ. “Pitch black. Tar black. Have you ever…?” 

“No,” BJ said, taking the vial and holding it up to the light. Hawkeye gave in to the urge to watch, morbidly curious. The liquid in the vial moved with a sick viscosity, nearly syrupy in consistency.

“Hawk,” BJ said, his voice kind, calm, and level. He really was a very good doctor. “How do you feel?” 

“Fine,” Hawkeye said. “Okay. Demerol’s Demerol. I’m feeling less good about,” he gestured to the vial. “You know. I’m feeling really bad about that.” 

“Hyperviscosity,” BJ said to Potter. “Said his hands and face were numb.” 

Potter looked down at him. “Uh-huh. Real pale. Been dropping weight.” 

They looked at each other in silent realization.

“No. It isn’t.” BJ protested after a moment, looking hurt as Potter took the vial back. “Can’t be. He’s, I mean, for God’s sake. He’s barely thirty.” 

Hawkeye frowned, wishing that he could strain the Demerol out of his system. He wasn’t in pain anymore, but he was fuzzy. His thoughts were moving too slow. He was missing something that BJ and Potter had already caught. Something bad. Something important.

“BJ,” he said, reaching up to touch his forearm. “I’m not all here. Whatever leap you made? I can’t follow. You have to tell me. What are you thinking?” 

BJ looked at Potter, and then looked down at him. He stooped, getting down to eye level, and took Hawkeye’s hand. “It’s only a hypothesis,” BJ said. “Only an idea. It might be nothing. It might be a fluke. I want to run a lab before we say anything about anything. Okay? It’s going to be alright.” 

Hawkeye squinted at him. It felt like he was trying to think through molasses. “Something’s really wrong. You’re scared. Bad enough you think I might not make it. Even back home?” 

“Look,” Potter said, dropping a hand to rest on Hawkeye’s ankle. It was warm through the worn material of his sock. “Hunnicutt. He’s a doctor, too. Better you keep him in the loop.”

BJ screwed his eyes shut, visibly regulating his expression. “Hawk,” he started, holding his hand more firmly. “Again. I wouldn’t typically tell you anything like this until I ran a lab. Frankly this is only a guess. It’s all bad practice. But there’s a… lymphoproliferative disorder. A plasma cell dyscrasia that, on the surface, seems to check a lot of boxes for some things we otherwise can’t explain.”

“Lymphoproliferative,” Hawkeye said flatly. 

“Lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma,” BJ said, squeezing his hand. “A common cause of hyperviscosity. IgM overcirculates—” 

“Blood cancer,” Hawkeye interrupted, still quick enough to cut through the jargon. 

BJ winced, stroking a thumb over the back of his hand. “Probably not. Probably it’s nothing. We’ll run a lab.” 

Hawkeye tipped his head to look at Potter. The vial in his hand really was frightening. “Better get to it,” he said. The Demerol was getting to him. He didn’t want to have blood cancer. He especially didn’t want to have blood cancer as an unwilling draftee at an understaffed military hospital in a war-ravaged country. He wanted to be home. He wanted to be eight years old, waking up on a brisk December morning to the smell of pancakes, a hot chocolate waiting on the kitchen table for him. It would have a candy cane in it. Marshmallows, too. School canceled for a snow day. Nothing to do but lay on the couch and read and nap. It would be nice to sleep. Maybe he’d wake up and BJ would have fixed him in the meantime. That’d be really nice.

“You’ll be okay,” BJ said, tapping his cheek. “Hawk? You’re going to be okay.” 

“Okay,” Hawkeye said, closing his eyes, letting the Demerol drag him under, where it was warm and dark and painless.

Chapter End Notes

Happy Thursday, folks! Slightly shorter chapter this time around, as things go crazy insane next chapter, and I had to cut it somewhere. See you then!

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Cardiac Arrest

Chapter Summary

Hawk is visited by the avenging angel of the autopsy.

Chapter Notes

CW for major character death.

Temporarily.

...He gets better.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When he woke up things were worse. The pain was back, intensified somehow, and the OR was doing something horrible. It was dark, but he could see everything, feel everything, hear everything. The clarity was overwhelming. Somewhere BJ was saying “these numbers are utterly incompatible with life.” Water moved through pipes underground. Insects crawled through the grass outside. Radar was scratching away at a notepad across the camp. His pencil was dull.

Uh-oh, Hawkeye thought, a millisecond before something deep inside him shifted, really, literally, physically shifted, and he screamed. 

“Hawkeye?” BJ yelled.

“ Aughhhhhhhnnnnnnfmmgh, ” Hawkeye said. It felt like his lungs were liquifying. He leaned over and heaved, once, twice, before he brought up a stream of metallic-tasting liquid the color of pitch. 

BJ burst through the door, slamming the lights on. “God,” he said. “Colonel!” 

“Hi,” Hawkeye said, feeling dizzy, feeling very young, feeling like he was seeing everything and nothing at the same time. He gagged, choked, and then leaned over the table, struggling to oust the thick black fluid crawling up his throat. When he looked up again, Potter was frozen behind BJ. “I’d say it looks worse than it feels, but,” his arm gave out, suddenly numb, dumping him face first onto the surgical table. “Then I guess I’d be lying.”

BJ bolted towards the table, bodily lifting him, shoving him over onto his side. Making sure his airway wouldn’t be obstructed if he passed out again. “Come on,” he said, “What’s wrong, can you tell me what’s wrong?” 

“Feels like everything in my ventral cavity just turned to hydrochloric acid,” Hawkeye said, digging his nails into BJ’s wrist. “I can’t see. I feel, it’s, ngghh. ” He jerked, pushing back into BJ’s solid weight as his chest seized. More liquid forced its way out of his throat, dripping glutinously over his chin and neck, soaking the front of his shirt.

“Hang on,” BJ said, gripping his hand. “You’ll be okay. You’re going to be okay.” 

Abruptly the sensation in his chest changed, a new, twisting sort of agony, followed by a series of irregular pulses, and then, horribly, nothing.

“Cardiac arrest,” Hawkeye said to himself, almost amused. It was textbook. His vision went, and then his hearing, ripping away in a feedback scream of tinnitus. 

He was aware, in an empirically detached sort of way, that somebody was hitting him. Hard. Rhythmic punches, directly to the sternum, a few inches above the xiphoid process. BJ, he figured. CPR. He smiled to himself. Dr. Hunnicutt: best care anywhere. 

His whole world was spiraling ever-smaller, his perception collapsing down within himself, until he was nothing but the feeling of somebody hitting him desperately, really just hammering, really, really, Christ, Martin Luther, find a better church door for your theses, this cathedral’s gone too ossified, and if he kept pressing down like that, then—yeah, there it was, the hard, sick crack of costal cartilage shattering away from its sternal moorings, the sharp pain of it melding with the agony of whatever had gone wrong inside of him, a pain so horrible, so all-consuming, so enormous he felt it supernova and tear him apart, scattering him across the universe until there was no him anymore, except there was, and he was experiencing everything it had ever meant to be Hawkeye Pierce, all at once, in one dying-star bright flash, and it looked like Maine, December and July, shivering in a fishing boat, dissections and sock hops, pet cats and college, places he remembered and the people that populated them, draft letters, diving, demimondeism, love, hate, and chocolate cake, lows more often than not with lilting highs following right behind, BJ throwing life-saving punches like some avenging angel of the autopsy, some benevolent boxer, even as his patient was dissolving into a galaxial mist of dopamine and faltering electricity, not glad to go but glad that he got to be in it at all, got to see the light of a sunrise on the Atlantic, Nor’easter snow drifting over his porch, a magnolia tree in full bloom, the Earth falling away beneath him as his plane rose far above Bangor, the fields running into the beach into the ocean on one beautiful polished blue marble, how incredible, how perfectly designed for his happiness this lonely little sphere—

And then something yanked him back. 

“Hmnnngwhhaa aat the fuck,” Hawkeye said, opening his eyes to complete darkness. 

He closed his eyes, and then opened them again. No change. Were the generators out? Something was touching his face.

He tried to sit up, and promptly slammed his forehead into a low, flat ceiling. “Ow fuck ,” he said, bringing a hand up instinctively. His elbow pressed against another wall to his left as his fist scraped the ceiling above him. 

“Uh,” he said, the sound echoing oddly. He tried to move his arms again. They were pinned to his body, his shoulders flush against narrow walls. He was wrapped in what felt like a sheet, the fabric tight around his ankles and loosely draped over his face. He flexed a foot—bare, where were his shoes?—and found another wall a few inches away. 

“Surely not,” he said, incredulous, and then, because he was only human, and humans are only animals, panicked. 

He thrashed until he managed to turn partially sideways, his lower back tight against one vertical wall, his hip wedged against the ceiling. He fought an arm out of the sheet and felt around the space above his head: cold. Metallic. Featureless. There was a seam in the metal by his feet, though, so he brought his leg up as well as he could in the narrow space and kicked out, slamming his heel against the wall. 

The impact echoed, the metal groaning. He kicked out again and the hatch gave way, swinging off its hinges and flooding the small space with light. 

He closed his eyes sharply, blinded, and reached up to push off the ceiling. The rack he was laying on rolled smoothly forward. 

“Hello?” he called, keeping his eyes closed. Nobody answered. 

He traced a hand over the low ceiling, finding the place where it gave way to empty space, and dragged himself past it, sitting up into open air. He swung his legs over the side of the rack, his feet dangling. He opened one eye, and then the other, cringing against the cruel fluorescence of the morgue. 

His sheet settled around his waist, and he held his hands out, inspecting his palms, before he patted his chest. The ever-present weight of his dog tags was wrong—there was only one hanging on the chain around his neck. 

“Hello?” he called again. “BJ? Potter?” 

He slid off the table and then grabbed his sheet, wrapping it around his waist. Somebody had taken all his clothes. 

“Margaret?” he called. 

No reply. He rolled the cadaver rack back and closed the body cooler door. There was a sheet of paper clipped to the front. 

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY 

REPORT OF DEATH

DATE

03/23/51

NAME

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PIERCE, MD

GRADE

CPT

ARM OR SERVICE

FIELD HOSPITAL

PLACE OF DEATH 

KOREA

CAUSE OF DEATH [  ] BATTLE  [X] NON-BATTLE D.O.D 

HEMORRHAGE PURSUANT TO UNDIAGNOSED LEUKEMIA 03/22/51

EMERGENCY ADDRESSEE 

DANIEL PIERCE 

RELATIONSHIP

FATHER

DATE NOTIFIED

Well, at least they hadn’t telegrammed his dad yet. 

He stuck the death report back on the door of the cooler, which didn’t seem so keen on staying closed. He’d somehow put a real dent in the metal just by kicking it a couple times. The closing mechanism was shattered, the hinges warped, the lock thoroughly busted. Army strong, he figured, and ran a hand over his jaw. He was clean, at least, no lingering blood on his face.

He ran his tongue over his teeth, and swallowed. No blood left over in his mouth, either. So somebody had brushed his teeth. Washed his face off, too, at the very least, and took his clothes, and—he ran a hand through his hair. That had been washed, too. And nobody had noticed he wasn’t dead? Not BJ, not Potter? Not Margaret? Or Frank?

His vision felt off. His head hurt. His stomach hurt, too, but in a familiar way; he was starving. 

“Hello?” he called again, drawing his sheet tighter. He didn’t see his clothes anywhere. There were no lab coats hanging in the morgue. He stepped up to the door, his bare feet cold against the wooden floor. Nobody was in the OR, either, and only a solitary light was on in the corner of the room. The camp was eerily quiet. Except—

Except—

He stood straighter, breathing in. Father Mulcahy was speaking, a full house gathered to hear him say a good man, only thirty but consistently displayed wisdom beyond his years, and there were people crying under the eulogy, and under that there were termites hatching in the wood of the pews. 

“Okay,” he said, and opened his eyes again. So he was having some auditory hallucinations. Not ideal, but if he’d just come out of a coma..?

He shivered. First step, clothes. There would be a laundry basket in the scrub room with fresh linen. Maybe an undershirt and some khaki pants, too.

He pulled his sheet up to keep it from catching on the rough wooden floors, and then moved through the doors into the OR. The lamp in the corner threw dramatic shadows across the walls, the theater only dimly lit. In the distance he thought he heard a machinic whir, and he shook his head, trying to ignore it. Just his brain doing its best to come to terms with a world full of stimuli after twenty-four hours locked in a cold, dark box. 

He hurried through into the scrub room, finding a clean pair of overlarge khaki pants to pull on. He couldn’t find a shirt, though, so he pulled on a set of scrubs, unenthused about the prospect of weathering a chilly early spring walk without any barrier between himself and the cold. 

And then across the camp Radar yelled Choppers, crystal clear as if he’d been standing right behind him , and the adrenaline-fear combination that shot through him kicked his muscle memory into overdrive and he found himself masked, hatted, scrubbed, and gloved when the rest of the doctors passed into the scrub room.

“Oh,” BJ said, catching sight of Hawkeye and then glancing quickly away. He looked terrible, his eyes red-rimmed, his knuckles a bruised purple. “I didn’t expect you’d be here so soon.” 

Hawkeye watched his face. He was taking the fact of Hawkeye’s aliveness extremely in stride.

“This is Colonel Potter,” BJ said, making intense eye contact with the sink. “Replacement surgeon, Colonel Potter. Colonel Potter, replacement surgeon. Enjoy him while he lasts.” He shut the sink off and shoved past Hawkeye into the OR. 

“Uh,” Hawkeye said, turning to watch the door swing behind him. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” 

At the same time, Potter shook his head and said, “Don’t worry about him, son. We lost a good doctor yesterday. We’re all taking it hard.”

In the next room, Radar was telling BJ only just the two casualties, sir. The colonel might let you leave it to him and Major Burns, if you asked. Probably Radar was saying that, if that wasn’t another hallucination. BJ wasn’t saying much of anything at all.

“About that,” Hawkeye said, and then Potter was through the doors and into the OR. Frank, who had been standing silently at the sink the whole time, gave him a long look.

“You look awfully familiar,” Frank said, walking past him to the doors. “Have we met before?” 

Hawkeye shrugged, and stepped into the OR. The opportunity to reveal himself had passed. The last thing he wanted to do was distract anybody from surgery. It was going to be awkward afterwards, though, that was a certainty. He should have just stayed in his box for another hour or two. 

At least it was only the two kids, Hawkeye figured. Frank and the Colonel were already at their tables, scalpels in hand. BJ was across from Frank, his back to Hawkeye. 

“Come on over and help me out,” Potter said, motioning him over. “Should be a nice slow introduction to the OR before we get a full house.” 

I’ve seen more full houses at this MASH than you , Hawkeye didn’t say. Instead he nodded and walked over to stand across from Potter. Nurse Dish stood at the foot of the table, holding a tray, looking weepy. 

The kid on the table wasn’t too bad. He’d taken a bullet to the shoulder, clean entry, no exit wound, very little blood—sitting a little close to the clavicle, though. If they could dig it out without causing too much extra trauma they might give it a shot, but either way he’d keep the arm, and probably even have full use within a couple of months. Potter didn’t even need the help. Going by the lack of any urgent noises behind him, he figured the second kid was in similar shape. All in all an okay day to be a draftee with a new drain plug. 

He watched as Potter leaned in and prodded the wound. A fresh push of blood welled up out of it, beading down the kid’s shoulder. It was dark and thick. Like boysenberry syrup. The kind he’d always wanted to drink straight out of the jar as a kid. Homemade with berries picked out of the backyard bubbling viscous and so red it was nearly purple on the stovetop, sweet smelling, but a little metallic, too, what with the heating element being so old… or cranberry sauce. A nice sugary reduction, deep red, tangy, poured over a thick slice of turkey…

“Son,” Potter said, breaking him out of his daydreaming. “What exactly are you doing?” 

Hawkeye looked down. He’d collected a generous swipe of blood on two gloved fingers, bold and red. He’d had it halfway to his mouth. 

“I,” he said, and left it at that. The blood was, objectively speaking, kind of disgusting. Full of somebody else’s antibodies and cholesterol and potential bloodborne illnesses and who knew what other sorts of organic blech. A biohazard.

And yet. Under all the conscious intellectualizing he was doing, under the years of germ theory and pathology he’d had drilled deep into his brain, something else was happening. Something far more basal.

He braced himself on the edge of the table with one hand, fighting the bewildering urge to sink his gloved fingers into his own mouth. More than that he wanted to rip his mask off, fix his lips around the open wound and suck , pulling deeply from the bullet hole, filling his mouth with the thick iron tang of fresh blood—

He retched, horror with himself only just edging out the monstrous need to—to eat the kid laid out on the table, the seductive knowledge of how easy it would be to take a scalpel and sink it delicately into the left external carotid artery, just under the soft hook of the ramus, how fast the blood would spill, it was really very highly pressurized in the neck, maybe it would be better to make a small incision in the forearm, near the median vein, still a high blood supply area, but less mess, less wasted—

“I can’t be here,” he said, throwing himself backwards. 

Potter’s head snapped up, eyes sharp above his mask. After a moment they widened in disbelief. “Pierce?” 

“What?” BJ asked, turning around. 

Hawkeye shook his head, unable to drag himself more than ten feet from the body on the table. The person on the table. Not a body. A living, breathing human kid. Probably only barely over twenty. 

“Get me out of here,” he said, even as he took an unwilling step back towards the table. 

“What?!” BJ asked again. “Hawkeye—how? You—” 

“Hunnicutt,” Potter barked, tossing a bloody sponge into a bucket. “Take him out. We’ll deal with it later.” 

BJ hooked Hawkeye around the elbow, dragging him, literally pulling him, out of the OR and into the scrub room. 

Hawkeye went unwillingly, his feet trying to plant until the OR door swung shut and separated him from the sight of the body. Of the person.

BJ slipped his mask off, staring at Hawkeye in shock. He raised his hands, hovering them over Hawkeye’s shoulders, as though he might bring him into a hug, or check to see if he was corporeal, before he artlessly shoved him backwards. “Explain.” 

“Well, first, hello,” Hawkeye said. He could still smell iron in the air, could still feel the lingering, perhaps at this point only imagined, warmth of blood on his fingertips. 

“I said explain,” BJ said, his voice wavering with suppressed emotion. “You died. I know you did.” 

“I’m just as confused as you are,” Hawkeye said, raising his hands. A red blur in his left periphery, shocking against the white of his glove. “I woke up in a body cooler half an hour ago. Not my weirdest morning, mind you, but—” 

BJ shoved him again, harder. “Forty-eight minutes of CPR. Your ribs shattered. They had to pull me off your body and sedate me. You were dead.”

Hawkeye let himself be pushed. “I can’t explain it,” he said, pulling off his mask one-handed. The metallic tang in the air was sharper, then, more alluring. In the OR one of the kids was getting a unit of whole blood. He could taste it. His vision went funny, somehow blurry and deeply focused all at once. “Hey, BJ?” 

BJ was shaking. “What?” 

“Turn around?” Hawkeye asked, his own voice sounding distant and unimportant. 

“Why?” BJ asked, brows lowering, his shoulders squaring.

Why indeed? His head was fuzzy, the whole of his attention narrowing in on his left hand. The blood was still a little warm, it wasn’t his imagination. Not body temperature, but not fully cool, either. Not yet. “Just do it,” somebody said. 

A BJ shaped blur in the background of his perception stood still, and then slowly turned his back, hands going to his hips. 

Hawkeye’s hand was in his mouth faster than he could process his own movement. His perception sharpened again, returning to the unbearable acuteness of moments before his alleged death: he could hear the steady IV drip of their dysentery patient in post-OP, the click of a bullet landing in a sterile tray, a coffee percolator running in the mess tent, though all of it was secondary to the attention he was paying to the hot-sweet-metallic blood he was swallowing as fast as he could lap it off his glove. There was a dark savory note to it, metallically piquant, with a gloss of fattiness, a depth of richness and flavor that kept unfolding the harder he focused, finding a hint of sweetness under the salt and fat and iron, just like a pan-seared steak, nearly fried with a thick melted pat of butter sizzling under it, seasoned with brown sugar, dangerously rare, the juices still running red on the plate when he sliced into the flesh with a scalpel…

He gagged, pulling his hand out of his mouth, caught between disgust and desire. The latex glove was clean. He stared at it, horrified, even as his salivary glands snapped to attention, submaxillary glands abruptly overproducing with such fervidity his jaw ached. He was starving. 

“Can I turn around now?” BJ asked, papering over his obvious worry with irritation. 

Hawkeye pulled his gloves off, slinging them away. “Sorry,” he said. “I think,” he started, and then stopped, swallowing harshly, wincing at the lingering taste of iron. 

“Are you okay?” BJ asked, turning around. Whatever anger had overcome him initially was wearing thin. “What happened in there?”

“I don’t know,” Hawkeye said. “I think I’m still a little mixed up.” 

“After rising from the dead?” BJ asked. “Surprise, surprise. I want to get you on a table, give you a onceover to make sure everything’s back to baseline. There was some sort of… error with the blood test. I’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve still got to rule out a leukemia. And at the very least I want to check on your ribs.” 

“Can I get something to eat first?” Hawkeye asked, even as the thought of trying to stomach powdered eggs or hash or decade-old baked beans induced a wave of nausea.

BJ pulled his own gloves off, and tossed his scrubs into the laundry. “I think Frank and the colonel have this handled. We can grab a midnight breakfast and you can tell me everything you remember.” 

“Sure,” Hawkeye said, pulling his own scrubs off. It was only when the cool air of the room hit him that he remembered he didn’t have a shirt. 

BJ looked at him oddly. 

“What?” Hawkeye asked, raising his chin. “What’s that look for?” 

“Nothing,” BJ said, looking away, visibly unsettled. “Just thought almost an hour of CPR would have left some bruising.” 

Hawkeye looked down at his chest. Unblemished. Nearly translucently pale. Business as usual. “Huh.” 

“Yeah,” BJ agreed, voice wavering again. He pulled his henley off the hanger on the wall and tossed it at Hawkeye. “Put that on, I don’t want to lose you to hypothermia after I just got you back.”

“Hey,” Hawkeye said, catching BJ’s arm. 

BJ looked down at his hand. “What?”

“Look at me,” Hawkeye said, tightening his grip mildly. 

BJ shook his head, and then made reluctant eye contact, obviously trying to appear more exasperated than overwrought. 

Hawkeye stared him down, making him wait. Finally he said, “Forty-eight minutes of CPR. That’s a lot. It sounds like a lot and it feels like even more. People generally consider the wall to be twenty minutes. The point of no return. But you kept going.” 

BJ, absurdly, flushed. 

“Thank you,” Hawkeye said. “Really, thank you.” 

BJ nodded silently, minutely, glancing away. 

“Didn’t want to be left alone with Frank?” Hawkeye asked casually, trying to lighten the oppressive mood he’d created. “I don’t blame you.” 

“Hawk,” BJ said, grabbing his wrist when he dropped his hand. “You can’t joke about this.” 

“Watch me,” Hawkeye said, uncomfortable. He could feel BJ’s pulse through his thumb, his princeps pollicis artery pounding away against his wrist. How tightly was BJ holding onto him? Why did he bring the topic up at all?

“I’m serious,” BJ said, moving in until they were eye to eye. “I thought you had gone without knowing because I never told you, so I’m telling you now.” He let out a harsh breath, though his eyes never left Hawkeye’s face. “You’re my best friend. Not just here, not just now. I’m talking all-time best. For all your dark turns and your, your neuroticism, you have to know that you make this place… more than it is. Or less, sometimes, whatever direction it needs. You’re absurdly well-read. You care more about other people than anyone I’ve ever met, and you’re braver, too, even though you’re obsessed with pretending at selfishness. At cowardice. You never shut up, and you think you’re funnier than you are, which is only fine because you are, somehow, hilarious. You always ask about my family, and read your newspaper at me, and drink the vilest gin, and put me off my breakfast, and sing your way through surgery, and you care. You’re a good person, and you’re my best friend, and I’m glad you’re not dead.” 

Hawkeye grinned, raising an eyebrow, up to his neck in discomfort. “Oh. Well, you know, right back at you with the being a good person, and making it all bearable, and being glad about not being dead.”

“So there,” BJ said, looking about as uncomfortable as Hawkeye felt. He dropped Hawkeye’s wrist, and pulled on his jacket. “Put your shirt on.”

“Yes, Captain, my Captain,” Hawkeye said, just because he knew it’d make BJ give him that fond, exasperated smile he got when Hawkeye was being trite in his direction. 

And right on time BJ rolled his eyes and failed to tamp down on a small but genuine grin. 

Chapter End Notes

Now we're getting somewhere. Let me know if you're enjoying so far!! I can't wait to get the rest of the story posted!!

Nervous Lechery

Chapter Summary

Faulty fuses, crummy coffee, BJ's bedside manner, and more medical mysteries.

Chapter Notes

CW for some vampirism-related food issues that might, at the outset, feel disorder-y, and a brief discussion of weight; it's handled tactfully as BJ is, after all, really a very good doctor.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

So, food was hard. 

Not surprising, as it had been difficult for the last few weeks, but somehow he’d thought nearly dying might have flipped some faulty fuse in his head. No such luck. The after-hours fare of coffee, toast, and reheated hash looked entirely inedible.

Word had got around that he was alive, at least, so the few people they bumped into on the way to the mess were only staring and whispering instead of staring and shouting. It didn’t help that he was wearing BJ’s pink henley, a sartorial choice that certainly would have engendered gossip even before his twenty-four hour stay in an icebox. 

He turned, considering half-heartedly ribbing BJ about stealing the shirt right off his back, but stopped when he found BJ already looking at him. 

“You keep staring,” Hawkeye said, wrapping his hands around his coffee mug, grateful for the warmth. “Do I have something on my recently-revived face?” 

“No,” BJ said. “It’s just odd. You being back. I’m half worried to take my eyes off you, in case it turns out I’m dreaming.” 

“Are you saying I’m a dream come true?” Hawkeye asked, pushing at his ankle under the table. 

“Are you going to eat anything?” BJ non-answered. 

Hawkeye sighed, avoiding his eyes. It was just that the food looked so unappealing. The hash was swimming in a stagnant puddle of its own oil. The toast looked brittle and dry, like it’d shatter in his mouth. The coffee smelled of mud. And his eyes kept sliding to the sad pat of butter sitting, unmelted, on top of the bread. Salt, fat, rich with a hint of sweetness… maybe he could stomach that. 

“What?” he asked himself out loud, taken aback. He wasn’t about to start eating plain butter. Then again, he’d already crossed a worse line, hadn’t he? What would a shaving of butter do that’d be more detrimental to his health than—

He cut off his own train of thought, retching in self-disgust as he fought against a fresh pang of hunger. 

“Okay,” BJ said slowly, too incisive by half. “Maybe you’d like to walk me through what just happened?” 

“Nothing happened,” Hawkeye said reflexively. “I’m fine.” 

“Right. Totally fine.”

Hawkeye curled his lip. “I just got the urge to go after a barrel of butter with a spoon,” he half-lied. 

“Okay,” BJ said again. He sat back, scratching at his stubble. “Do you want to raid the larder?” 

“No,” Hawkeye said, aghast. “BJ. No. You are being a horrible enabler. You’d let me eat butter? Straight butter? Hand over your medical degree. I’m contacting the board.” 

BJ shrugged, unbothered. “You could use the calories.” 

“From butter.” 

“Better than from nothing. We have to start somewhere.” 

“‘We’?” he asked. “‘’We’? This is a joint effort, now?” He knocked his boot against BJ’s ankles. 

BJ toyed with a piece of toast, not meeting his eyes. “Eat your butter.”

“Aww,” Hawkeye said, shifting his tray closer. He glanced at BJ, and then glanced away, a subtle warmth blooming in his chest. “Is that what this is? You want to feed me up? I can see right through you.” 

“You need someone to,” BJ said. “You’re not managing it on your own.” 

Hawkeye picked up his toast, sniffing it suspiciously. He took a small bite, and immediately gagged. The bread tasted like dust, dry and stale, and he spit it back into a napkin. He tried to wash it down with coffee on instinct, and immediately regretted it. It was worse than swill, thoroughly offensive, like reheated slime off of months-rancid vegetable matter. He spit that back out, too, coughing. “Hell, I think the kitchen has graduated to attempting actual murder. That’s foul.” 

“Bad batch?” BJ asked, peering into his own mug. He took a tentative sip, and then shrugged. “This one’s okay.” 

“Ugh,” Hawkeye said. “I think there might be a dead mouse in my cup. Something rotten in the state of coffee, that’s for sure.” 

“You can have mine,” BJ said, and passed him the mug. He stole Hawkeye’s mug and swirled it, looking into it like he might actually spot a dead mouse. 

Hawkeye eyed his new mug. It didn’t smell much better than his first cup, but BJ had tried it, and said it was fine, so he took another experimental taste. 

“Christ!” Hawkeye said, turning his head to spit coffee onto the floor. “That’s vile. You son of a bitch. How’d you keep a straight face?” 

BJ stared at him. “I wasn’t joking. My mug was fine.” 

“Sure,” Hawkeye said. “Fink. Good prank. What’d you do to the toast?” 

BJ looked down at the mug of coffee in his hands. After a moment of consideration, he took a drink. 

“Gross,” Hawkeye said. “That’s got my spit in there, you know that?” 

“It’s fine,” BJ said. “It’s normal coffee. It tastes okay.” 

“Quit it. It was funny at first and now I’m just tired and caffeineless.” 

“I wouldn’t mess with your food,” BJ said. “I’ve been trying to get you to eat for weeks. Why would I mess with your food now?” He didn’t wait for an answer before he reached across and grabbed Hawkeye’s toast, taking a small bite. “That’s fine, too,” he said, holding a hand in front of his lips, eternally polite.

“So, what, my tongue’s come back from the dead all wrong?” Hawkeye said, his stomach dropping even as he voiced the thought. Maybe that was exactly what had happened.  

BJ reached out and held his wrist, looking so concerned it just about killed him again. “Look, we’ll figure this out. You’ll be okay. So you can’t stomach the food here. That’s practically a certifiable self-preservation instinct.” 

“You’re saying I’m more highly evolved than you?” Hawkeye said, flicking his eyebrows up. 

“Once you start photosynthesizing, maybe,” BJ said. He watched Hawkeye for a long moment in silence. “Hey. Even if it doesn’t resolve… Maybe this is your ticket home.” 

“Maybe,” Hawkeye said, remembering ulcers and missing medical passes. “And then again maybe not.” 

“Are you going to be able to eat anything?” BJ asked, his hand intensely warm. 

Hawkeye shivered, realizing from the contrast how cold he felt. “No,” he said eventually, not looking forward to trying to force down the hash any more than the toast and coffee. 

“Okay,” BJ said. “That’s alright. We can try again later. But I think we do that exam now.” 

“Yeah,” Hawkeye agreed, and stood, slipping his hand out of BJ’s grasp. The heat of it lingered, even as they walked through the March chill into the exam room.

///

“Shirt off,” BJ told him, when they walked through the door. “I’m checking your ribs. Or take your weight first, if you want.” 

“D’you want to?” Hawkeye asked, feeling abruptly vulnerable. He was just plain sick of being sick. 

“I can if you don’t mind,” BJ said. “Up.” 

Hawkeye stepped up on the scale, watching the balance tilt. BJ went about pushing the riders back and forth, honing in on the balance point. Hawkeye looked at the ceiling, listening to the quiet hum of the electricity pulsing through the lights. He’d never noticed it before. 

“Okay,” BJ said, sweeping the indicators away from the balance point before writing something down. “Now shirt off.” 

“What’s the damage?” Hawkeye asked, stepping off the scale and shedding his shirt. 

“Doesn’t matter,” BJ said smoothly. “Just for if we need to calculate any dosages for you later. How’re your ribs feeling?” 

“Fine,” Hawkeye said, and hopped easily onto the exam table. He watched BJ flip through his standard check-up forms, and smiled, enjoying the brief insight into BJ’s professional demeanor. 

“You and I,” BJ said, draping a stethoscope around his shoulders, “have been in this position far too often recently.” 

“Tell me about it,” Hawkeye said. 

“Maybe I will,” BJ said, distracted, looking at his face intently. He stepped in, settling between Hawkeye’s open thighs, and pressed his fingertips into the soft place beneath his jaw, palpating the jugulodigastric nodes, and then the mandibular and submandibular, right in a row under his chin. Up close Hawkeye could hear his breathing, soft and regular, the loudest sound in the near-silence. BJ’s gaze was focused on his hands as they trailed down Hawkeye’s neck, digging in to feel the deep cervical lymph nodes, so Hawkeye watched his face openly, noting the start of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, the two-days’ stubble he was sporting, the kind and intent focus tightening his lips. 

BJ moved his hands back up and cupped Hawkeye’s cheeks, the tips of his fingers settling on his temporomandibular joint. “Open and close.” 

Hawkeye complied. 

BJ looked at him oddly. He dragged his thumb upwards, pulling his upper lip away from his teeth. 

“Hey,” Hawkeye said. “You can just ask me to smile, Doctor Handsy.” 

“Smile,” BJ said, doing nothing of the sort. 

Hawkeye grinned, big and exaggerated. 

“You’ve got something funky happening with your canines,” BJ said, leaning in and squinting. “I’m seeing things, maybe.”

“Funky?” Hawkeye asked. He ran his tongue across his teeth, surprised to note a changed topography. His canines were sharper, projecting farther into his mouth than they should’ve. “What the hell?” 

BJ looked troubled. “We’ll come back to that. Let’s find out if I really shattered your ribs. Cough?” 

Hawkeye coughed. “No pain.” 

“No discoloration, either,” BJ said, looking him up and down. He stepped forward, his hands raised. “Okay if I do a tenderness check?” 

“I’m plenty tender,” Hawkeye said, and then nodded his assent. “I could’ve been a lounge singer if the MD fell through.” 

BJ smiled, stepping between his legs again. “What’d your act be?” His hands were warm and careful as he pressed down on each rib in turn, gauging the solidity of their sternal moorings. 

“I think I’d open with ‘Prisoner of Love,’” Hawkeye said. “And then I’d end with ‘Prisoner of the U.S. Army.’”

“Ribs look okay to me,” BJ said, openly relieved. “Nothing broken.”

“Better broken than dead. I’m lucky enough to be neither.”

“Lucky, lucky,” BJ said. “Want to take your pulse. And then your pressure.” 

Hawkeye offered up his wrist.

BJ took it, and looked down at his watch. After a second he looked up, and reached for Hawkeye’s other wrist. And then dropped that one, too, and went straight for his jugular. 

“Ah,” BJ said, looking faintly lost. He moved his hand up, pressing his fingers into Hawkeye’s jaw, right over the place where his maxillary artery ought to have been. Then he extended Hawkeye’s right arm, feeling for the brachial pulse. 

“Give me your leg,” BJ said. When Hawkeye complied, he pressed his fingers into the tender back of his knee—popliteal artery—and then pushed his sock down, touching the skin above the posterior tibial artery. 

“You going to go for the femoral next?” Hawkeye leched, nervous. 

BJ breathed, quiet and steady, and then touched his face, fingertips apposed over the thin skin at the edge of his hairline, feeling for the gentle flutter of a pulse in his temporal artery.

Hawkeye watched him as they slowly came to the same conclusion. 

“No,” Hawkeye said, despite his own growing certainty. “No. No way. BJ. No. Come on. No.” 

BJ stayed silent, fumbling for his stethoscope. He pressed it to Hawkeye’s chest. His eyes closed and his mouth flattened as he let the chestpiece fall. 

“No,” Hawkeye said again, hardly more than a whisper. He reached up and pressed his fingers to his own carotid. There was no steady thrum, there, no rush of blood carrying oxygen to his brain and back down to his lungs, no nothing. Silence. Stillness. Heartless. How had he missed it?

“The kid,” BJ said, horrified and exasperated in equal measure, leaning on the exam table like his legs couldn’t take his weight. “Just like the kid. You died and kept on going.” 

“No,” Hawkeye said, touching his own chest, realizing for the first time he could feel the absence of movement within it. “Oh god. I’m dead.” 

“No. No, I was wrong. About him and you. You’re alive.” BJ shook his head, standing again. “You’re okay. You’re here. You’re with me. You’re not dead.” 

Hawkeye thought, if he had anything in him besides maybe five milliliters of blood, he’d be throwing up. 

BJ cupped the back of his neck, abruptly pressing their foreheads together. “Hawk.” 

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said, suddenly realizing he was starting to lose control of his breathing, his chest constricting. 

“You’re okay. It’s okay. I’m here and so are you. I’ll take care of you. I’ve got you. I won’t let you be a casualty.” 

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said again, taking big, gasping breaths, wondering if he even needed to breathe at all. How far did his unhumanity go? How divorced was he from the rules governing life?

BJ was petting his hair like he was a big, panicked cat, his eyes closed, one hand tight against the nape of his neck. Their noses bumped, and Hawkeye breathed out steadily, trying to absorb his warmth, trying to still his own trembling, trying to choke back frightened tears. He didn’t want to be dead. 

Then again, so did thousands of kids on both sides of the war. Or they would have wanted that, if there had been anything left of them to articulate things like want. So if he was going to be dead, maybe he ought to be grateful he was the kind that let him think and feel anything at all. 

The thought calmed him slightly, and he stopped choking on his sobs. His eyes were still leaking, so he dropped his head to BJ’s shoulder, pressing his face into the crook of his neck.

BJ kept petting his hair, less frantically than he had been. Eventually he sunk his hand into it and left it there, cupping the back of his head. They stayed like that for a long time, Hawkeye leeching off BJ’s heat, pressed against him, letting the thrum of his steady heartbeat echo through his own still chest cavity, filling him with life-by-proxy. 

“Okay, Hawk?” BJ asked him, unbearably soft, when he’d cried himself out. 

Hawkeye took a sharp, deep breath, trying to steady himself. 

“It’s okay not to be,” BJ said. “I’m here either way.” 

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said, trying not to let the despair of the moment pull him under. In an effort to pull himself together, to distance himself from the Hawkeye of two minutes ago, he said, “You put on cologne just for little old me?” 

“Cologne?” BJ asked. “That’s eau d’army soap and sweat.” 

“Huh.” Hawkeye nosed at his neck briefly, before he realized that might be a little weird. But what were the two of them, if not a little weird? “You smell good.” 

“Well, thanks,” BJ said, squeezing him tighter for a beat. 

“Really good,” Hawkeye said, feeling his mouth start to water. He was hungry again. Go figure.

“Okay,” BJ said, patting his back. 

Hawkeye pulled away before he could do something patently insane, like lick BJ’s neck. “Sorry.” 

BJ resettled his weight, visibly disappointed in him. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Sure,” Hawkeye said, looking away. His eyes stung. He was exhausted. He wondered how he was crying if he was dead, if he had a working lacrimal system, if he would someday run out of tears. 

“Going to try and hit the hay?” BJ asked.

“Try,” Hawkeye said. “We’ll see how it goes. Sometimes the hay hits back.” 

BJ patted his shoulder, and then left his hand there, rubbing a thumb across the skin above his coracoid process. “Tomorrow we’ll call Tokyo and ask for Kai’s full chart.” 

“Hypothermia,” Hawkeye said glumly. “Insomnia. No appetite.” 

“Maybe,” BJ said. “And maybe not. We’ll take it one day at a time.” 

“One day at a time,” Hawkeye said. He wondered if he’d ever have a normal day again. How many times had he sat somewhere, not doing much of anything, taking the simple regular functionality of his body for granted? 

“Hawk,” BJ said, touching his jaw, and then dropping his hand back to his shoulder. “It’s dark now. But in the morning everything will look brighter.” 

“Cause the sun will be up,” Hawkeye said. 

“Right.” BJ’s thumb kept up its regular passes across his shoulder. “Every day the sun comes up. Every day it does. No matter what changes. The sun comes up, and it goes down, and it comes up again.” 

“Promise?” Hawkeye asked, hating the way his voice cracked in the middle. 

“Promise,” BJ said, and helped him off the table, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll all be here tomorrow to see it.” 

///

He slept poorly. He was starving, his stomach apparently one of the few organs he had that was still working. Every few minutes it’d cramp, trying to get him to get up and feed it. Feed himself. 

“I tried that,” he told it in an undertone. “You didn’t like anything I put in you.” 

That’s not true , a traitorous, no-good voice in the back of his head said. He quickly shoved the thought away. Instead he focused on the ache in his mouth, the sore roots of his canine teeth, the way the pain ticked up when he thought about trying to eat. 

Outside the wind was gusting, bringing in a cold front. Hawkeye shivered, burrowing deeper into his cot. He wasn’t putting off much heat. And now he knew he wouldn’t start any time soon, if Kai was anything to go by. If he had been thinking ahead he could’ve picked up a hot water bottle. 

He curled up tighter, rubbing his legs together, trying to generate some heat through friction. “Miserable.”

“Hmmngh?” BJ said muzzily, sitting up slightly. 

Hawkeye waited with bated breath, hoping he’d just fall back asleep. 

“Hawkeye?” BJ asked, sitting up further. No such luck. 

“Sorry, Beej,” Hawkeye said. “Go back to bed.” 

“Can’t sleep?” BJ asked, blinking tiredly. Hawkeye’s eyes were well adjusted to the low light, and he could see BJ valiantly struggling to parse him out through the dark. 

“No,” Hawkeye admitted, when BJ didn’t seem like he was going back to bed any time soon. “Cold. Hungry.” 

BJ hummed, his voice rough with sleep. “C’mere.” 

“What?” Hawkeye rolled over to face him more fully. “Why?” 

“You’re cold,” BJ said. “Come on.” 

Hawkeye looked him over in the dark, wondering if BJ’s eyes had adjusted enough to see him blush. Wondered if he could even blush anymore, with no heart. 

No need to be medically inaccurate. He still had a heart. It was just sitting in his chest, inert, a cold and unmoving lump of useless flesh. 

BJ sighed. “C’mere so I can go back to sleep.” 

Hawkeye sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of his cot. BJ held up the edge of his blankets, so Hawkeye hurried over, slipping into his bed as quickly as possible, before the warm air escaped into the cold of the tent. His arm brushed BJ’s, and BJ swore, flinching. 

“Sorry,” Hawkeye said. 

“Don’t be sorry,” BJ said, sounding cross. “You’re freezing.” 

Hawkeye curled up, his back to BJ’s warmth, feeling only marginally less of a miserable bastard. He laid there for a few long minutes, drifting between sleep and waking, despair and neutrality. He missed the days his cot would shake with the beating of his own terrified heart. Now the cot was still, as though he wasn’t there at all. 

He shut his eyes tightly, trying not to start crying again. On the off chance he couldn’t drink water, he should probably try not to dehydrate himself in stupid ways. 

“Okay?” BJ asked him quietly. “You’re shivering.” 

Hawkeye shrugged, turning his face into BJ’s pillow. It smelled like him. Musky, a little sweaty, army soap and something indefinably sunny. 

“I just keep thinking,” Hawkeye said, trying to sound casual. “You know, what if this is it? What if I’m really dead? What if this is all a dream? A last, confused hallucination, the product of a final electric storm in my brain as my fuses blow, one after the other, and any moment it’ll all fade away, and I’ll be gone. I’ll never see you again. Or my dad. I’ll never see a water fountain again, or drive a Chevy along the coast. I’ll never taste ice cream, or get sunburnt at the beach. I won’t see a jellyfish under the fishing dock, or tap a tree for sap, or sit on the roof and look out to the horizon as the sun sets gold and crimson, the ocean blazing as the waves roll in. It’ll all end on an exam table in Korea. And there’s me, cold and alone.” 

BJ shifted behind him. He laid a tentative hand on Hawkeye’s ribcage, and then pulled him in, settling his forehead against the nape of Hawkeye’s neck. “You’re not alone.” 

“Okay,” Hawkeye said. 

“You’re going to go home. You will. I’ll visit you. You can show me all the places you used to cause chaos. Show me the best places for lobster, and the worst ones. Let me meet your dad, so I can see what kind of person makes a you kind of person. Show me your childhood room, and your high school diploma, and pictures of you at teenage birthday parties. And when we’ve gone over it all and I know it like it was my own, you can come to California and we’ll start all over again with mine.” 

Hawkeye kept his eyes closed, stopped heart aching terribly. “Okay.” 

“Okay?” 

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said, choking up. “Hell. We’ll see it. Together we will.” 

“Just make it to the morning,” BJ said, into the collar of his shirt. “Everything will be okay in the morning.” 

Hawkeye nodded, trying to relax into BJ’s warmth, borrowed heat sinking into his bones. 

Taking and taking. That was all he was good for, these days. 

Chapter End Notes

Switched the update schedule to every M/W/F!

Day of the Living Doctor

Chapter Summary

Poetic priests, dis-dishonorable discharges, and atheism-adjacency.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

“Uh-huh,” Potter said, staring down the both of them. Hawkeye was slumped in a chair, a leg tucked up to his chest. BJ was standing beside him, practically vibrating with the desperate need to help. 

Hawkeye looked away, dully endeared even through his exhaustion. Potter was looking him over carefully. 

“How are you taking it?” Potter asked, tone so dangerously close to paternal Hawkeye might have been devastated if he was in the business of feeling anything other than a low, flat blankness.

“Oh, you know,” Hawkeye said. “I’m living the good life. Well, figuratively. Since I’m dead.” 

“You’re not dead,” BJ said, firm. “You’re not.” 

“Sure,” Hawkeye said. “Not very vital, though. Given my lack of vitals.” 

“May I?” Potter asked, extending his hand. 

Hawkeye offered up his wrist, and watched as Potter tried and failed to find a pulse. 

“I’ll be,” Potter said, more resigned than shocked. “From a needlestick?” 

“Most likely,” Hawkeye said. “BJ operated, too, and he’s just fine. Only difference in exposure between the two of us was the stick.”

Potter nodded. “Then you probably already know what I’m going to say.” 

“I’m benched.”

“You got it.”

Hawkeye sat back, working to regulate his expression. He knew it was coming. He was Khosrow, standing on a rampart in Dastagird, watching a Byzantine horde darken the horizon, flags high, numbers insurmountable; he’d have been stupid not to see it miles off. But it still knocked the wind out of him. 

“It’s not personal,” Potter said, looking at him over his glasses. “Don’t take it as a blow to your reputation. It’s not your cutting on trial here.” 

Hawkeye nodded, trying to smile politely, probably only hitting an expression somewhere in the vicinity of bitter. He’d never been benched before. Not this seriously. 

BJ set a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “You’ll be back in the saddle in no time.” 

“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye said, doubtful. 

“The kid’s full chart came in this morning,” Potter said, rearranging some papers on his desk. “Took a frag to the belly, declared dead on arrival at battalion aid. A few hours post that, he scares the living hell out of their surgeons by sitting up in his body bag. They shipped him up to us, at which point we took vitals; no blood pressure, no pulse. You boys put him back together—” 

“Procedure accompanied by a sharps incident,” Hawkeye said.

“Right. He recovered very well, very quickly. We ran a blood panel, which came back clean. Vitals remained nonexistent. Honorably discharged, but held in Tokyo while their doctors tried to figure out the aforementioned absent vitals, at which point he took a turn for the worse.” 

“Hypothermia,” BJ intercut. “Low appetite.” 

“No appetite,” Potter corrected, turning a paper over. “Refused to eat anything. Or drink.” 

“Flat out?” Hawkeye asked. “They have to put an IV in?”

“Looks like it. Complained of sleep interruptions. Nightmares, and then full-blown insomnia. Photosensitivity, too; said he was getting headaches.” 

“Beautiful,” Hawkeye muttered, rubbing at the thin skin under his eye. 

“That’s all we have before Tokyo had their break-in, and he got shipped stateside.” Potter took his glasses off, looking up. “Now you.” 

“Me?” Hawkeye asked, ignoring a sharp pang of hunger. “What about me? I’m an open book.” 

“Make it a radio play,” Potter said, gesturing for him to speak as BJ dropped into the chair to his right.

Hawkeye slouched farther into his own chair. “Sharps incident. Everything was, you know. Just fine. We had that two-day stint of patients right after I got cleared to operate again.” He paused, something in the memory of that uneasy span of days pulling his focus. 

“Hawkeye,” BJ said, touching his shoulder again. 

“Or. Maybe no. No,” Hawkeye said slowly. “That’s not true. I started getting some nausea. Stomach pain. Minor, though, very minor. I put it up to, I don’t know. Something psychosomatic, stress about having to sit out, worrying about ending up with hep or hemorrhagic fever.” 

Potter had put his glasses back on. He was writing quickly, taking detailed notes on a clean sheet of paper. 

“That’s around when you started having trouble eating,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye turned to stare at him. 

BJ blinked, and then looked away, focusing on his hands, which he was folding and unfolding in his lap. 

Potter kept writing, his pen making textured, grating noises. Scalpels on a chalkboard. Hawkeye shifted again, rolling his neck, feeling a headache coming on. The light in the room was too bright by half. 

“Apparently my colleague has been keeping tabs on me,” Hawkeye said. “Yes. Appetitive dulling—unrelated to the rot they’re trying to pass off as food—started around then. Occasional stomach and head pain I was attributing variably to stress and the, uh,” he stopped, flattening his lips, waiting for the past to unhook its claws. “The drinking.” 

“Uh-huh,” Potter said, unreadable. “At which point we checked you over—” 

“And found nothing,” Hawkeye finished. “Diagnosed with overwork. And that was it until the kidney stone that wasn’t.” 

Everyone in the room paused in discomfort. Hawkeye closed his eyes against the remembered horror of bringing up a throatful of blood the color and consistency of tar. 

Potter cleared his throat, sitting forward. “And what now?” 

“Besides the fact of my pulse being MIA?” Hawkeye straightened in his chair, catching BJ’s eye. “Hey, do you think they’d give me a Purple Heart? God knows I could use a replacement. My current one’s a dud.” 

“Focus,” Potter reprimanded gently. “Anything new, besides the missing ticker?” 

“Think I got some wires crossed,” Hawkeye admitted. “Everything tastes all wrong. Things that should be at least, you know, palatable? Pure poison. On the other hand, things I shouldn’t—’” he cut off suddenly, unwilling to show his hand. “And I’m cold,” he began again. “As in, I feel cold. I’d bet my core temperature is tanking.” 

Potter nodded, making another note. “Looks like you’re keeping pace with the kid so far.” 

Beside him, BJ passed a hand over his face.

“Anything else?” Potter asked, his pen poised. “Anything you’re feeling outside of the ordinary? Physical or mental?” 

Hawkeye ran a thumb along the edge of his jaw. 

“Pierce?” Potter prompted him. 

“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye answered. “Uh. Well.” He touched the fingers of his left hand to his mouth, overwhelmed by a brief, involuntary sense-memory: lapping at the sharp, metallic tint of heterochthonous blood, warm on the fingertips of a latex glove.

“Son,” Potter asked again, narrowing his eyes. 

“No,” Hawkeye said, swallowing and sitting up straighter. “Nothing. That’s everything.” 

BJ glanced at him, and then looked back at Potter. 

Potter looked back, his gaze intent. 

“He said he wanted to eat butter,” BJ said in a rush, giving Hawkeye an apologetic look. “Sorry, Hawkeye. But it can’t hurt to tell.”

Hawkeye relaxed into his chair minutely, and then stiffened, feigning offense. “Tattle. Fink. Whistleblower, even.” 

“Butter,” Potter mused. “Well, that’d be the malnourishment talking. Nothing to be embarrassed about, Pierce.”

“If you say so,” Hawkeye said. “So. So, so, so, and so and so and so. What now? I’m ambulatory. It’s the day of the living doctor. I can’t imagine you’re going to stick me in post-op.” 

“Like you wouldn’t welcome the chance to laze around in bed all day,” BJ said, elbowing him. 

Hawkeye elbowed him back. “You just want to give me a sponge bath.” 

“We’d have to burn the sponge after.” 

“You calling me dirty?” 

BJ scoffed, their gazes catching with a brief, electric start. Hawkeye looked away first.

“We’re not,” Potter said, leveling an exasperated look over the desk, “putting you in post-op. The Swamp should do you fine.” 

“I don’t know,” Hawkeye said, shaking his head. “In my fragile state, exposure to Frank Burns could be lethal twice over.”

“It won’t be long,” Potter said, stacking his paper. 

“Hmm?” Hawkeye asked. “You have a cure in your saddlebag?” 

“Honorable discharge,” Potter said. “You’re going home.” 

Hawkeye froze. 

BJ was stock-still beside him. 

“Home?” Hawkeye asked, through a hard ringing in his ears. 

“Crabapple Cove, Maine, or so I’ve been told.” 

“No. Well, yes. That’s home. But no. No, I mean… you’re discharging me?” 

“I can’t,” Potter said. “But I can get the ball rolling. We’ll get another colonel down here to check you over and sign off on your packing slip.” 

BJ shot to his feet, jumping like something had bitten his ankles. He dragged Hawkeye out of his chair, pulling him up into a hug that lifted him an inch off the ground. “Hawk! You’re going home!” 

Hawkeye pulled away, keeping a hand on BJ’s arm to steady himself. “Home,” he repeated. “Honorable discharge for what?” 

“You can’t operate,” Potter said. “Needlestick, unidentified bloodborne condition; until somebody back home rules you safe to work, you’re no use as a surgeon here.” 

Hawkeye sat down, dazed. Something dark and angry was crawling up his spine where there ought to have been relief, and he flexed his hands against the arms of his chair. 

“So,” he said, working through it. “That would go in my file, right? The reason for my discharge?”

Potter frowned, evidently not expecting the question. “Yes, that’s right.”

“And military discharge records are public.”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“Right,” Hawkeye said. He crossed his legs, and then uncrossed them. “So. I’d never work again.” 

Potter sent BJ a look over his head. 

“No, really,” Hawkeye said, laughing in absurd horror. “That would be that for my career. It’d be deader than me.” 

He’d never meant for it to happen, but somewhere along the way Dr. Pierce had come to mean him as surely as it had once meant his father. The title felt right, and familiar, very nearly dynastic, and then… nothing. Almost a decade of school and residency, endless training, sleepless nights, a singlemindedness of purpose he’d harnessed and pointed dead ahead at the only dream he’d ever had, and it’d all come to an unceremonious stall in the middle of a war. 

“Not necessarily,” Potter said. “I won’t lie. You might have a little trouble getting placement your first job back. But until you have it ruled out that you’re contagious, it—” 

“What are the statistics on surgeon to patient infection?” Hawkeye asked sharply. “Do you know the numbers?” 

“Well—” 

“I do,” Hawkeye said, standing again. “The incident rate is miniscule. Vanishingly small. So rare it might as well never happen. A hundred times as many patients get infections, and, and die, from surgical error than are even exposed to a surgeon’s blood; a thousand times as many as are even at risk from infection from exposure. A hundred times as many die because they waited too long for a lifesaving operation due to unavailability of doctors. Reverse needlestick transmission—it doesn’t happen. I’m already sitting out operating in a damn war zone, where you need me more than you’ll admit, out of an abundance of frankly misplaced caution. You’d ruin my career? Over something that simply doesn’t happen?”

“Hawk,” BJ said, touching his shoulder. 

Hawkeye shrugged him off, staring Potter down. He was breathing hard, and his jaw ached. “Are you putting it in my file or not?” Hawkeye asked. “If you are, you may as well just leave me here to catch a stray grenade. I’d be better off.” 

BJ took a sharp breath in. 

Hawkeye ignored him, like he was ignoring the impossibly clear sound of Radar pressing a glass to the wall, of Father Mulcahy flipping through a book in his tent, of Margaret making her post-op rounds.

“Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system,” Potter said, dangerously quiet, “would you like to have a civil discussion?” 

“No,” Hawkeye said, feeling incredibly off-kilter as rage started to blur his vision. His teeth ached. His knuckles popped with the force of his clenched fists. Something in him was snapping, dog-like, at the edge of his restraint; it wanted to dive across the desk, it wanted to sink its teeth into an exposed neck, it wanted to fight and rip and tear and come out on top through sheer physical supremacy. No word games, anymore. No more witticisms, no doublespeak and clever silver tonguery. Only unmitigated domination. 

Potter shook his head, still seated calmly at his desk. “Pierce. You’re going through something here. I hope you know I won’t hold this against you.” 

Hawkeye felt himself bare his teeth, an involuntary expression of nearly animalistic malice crossing his face. 

At the same moment Radar burst through the doors. “Telephone for you, sir. It’s Colonel Bailey about the discharge.” 

Potter gave Hawkeye a long look as he picked up the phone. “Hello?” 

Hawkeye watched him, feeling BJ’s gaze flick between them. 

“Uh-huh,” Potter said. “Yes. As soon as you can manage.” 

Hawkeye looked over to Radar, who was politely avoiding his gaze by staring at a spot on the ceiling. 

“What for?” Potter met Hawkeye’s gaze. “Well, he was injured.” 

BJ stepped up abruptly, as though he thought he might need to restrain Hawkeye. Absurd. Hawkeye had never been violent a day in his life. 

“Injured, I said.” Potter dropped a hand to the surface of the desk. He made fleeting eye contact with Hawkeye, and then BJ. He quirked an eyebrow, and then said, “Hemorrhagic fever. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, I’ll tell him that. Uh-huh. You too.” 

“So?” BJ asked, sidling forward so his shoulder was between Hawkeye and the desk. Like a lineman, queuing up for the snap. 

“They’re sending somebody up as soon as they can. In a week or so. At which point you’ll be discharged for contracting a life-threatening illness.” Potter gave Hawkeye a meaningful look. “Life threatening, you notice. Not career-threatening.” 

“Same difference,” Hawkeye said, but he relaxed, rage abruptly dissipating. He settled back into a comfortable slouch. 

“Okay?” BJ asked him.

“Okay,” Hawkeye confirmed. He looked at Radar, who nodded none-too-subtly towards the colonel. Right. 

“Colonel,” Hawkeye said, trying for tact. “I guess I owe you.” 

“Buy me a dinner back in the States,” Potter said, wry. “With your big Boston chestcutter salary.” 

“I’ll be sure to,” Hawkeye said, shifting into belated embarrassment because it was less wrenching than self-hatred. He shook Potter’s hand, and then turned to leave, BJ trailing close behind.

///

“So,” BJ said once they’d made it outside, jogging forward a step to catch up to Hawkeye.

“So what,” Hawkeye said, squinting. The light was harsh, cranking up the gain on his headache. “Ugh. If you’re still taking notes on me, write down photosensitivity. It’s a real shame. I used to be so photogenic.” 

“More like photophilic,” BJ said, following him as he wove between a pair of parked jeeps. “I’ve seen your storage trunk.” 

“Like hell you have. You’d have to marry me first.” 

“Hawk,” BJ said, stopping him before he could duck into the mess tent. 

“Beej,” Hawkeye acknowledged, shading his eyes. 

BJ ducked slightly, stepping close. “How are you? Really?”

“Grand.” 

“Really?” BJ raised his eyebrows, getting even closer, close enough Hawkeye was in his shadow.

Hawkeye’s jaw ached sharply, and he winced. He pushed BJ back lightly, three fingertips pressed into the center of his sternum. 

“You can tell me,” BJ said. “You can tell me anything.” 

Hawkeye shrugged, and then checked his watch. “You’re on post-op duty five minutes ago.” 

BJ checked his own watch. “Damn.” He started to leave, before he turned around and clapped Hawkeye on the shoulder, letting his hand linger. 

“Go,” Hawkeye said, not letting himself lean into the warmth of the touch. “Come on.” 

BJ patted his shoulder once more. After a beat he clapped him on the cheek, too, looking into his eyes, before he turned and headed off to post-op at a jog. 

Hawkeye watched him go. Something about it—a figure bolting away from him, its back turned—was holding his attention intensely. 

Also, he was starving. Again. 

Aggrieved, he pushed through the doors to the mess, only to draw up short. 

“Ah, Hawkeye,” Father Mulcahy said warmly. “Welcome. You’ve just caught the end of mass.” 

Hawkeye glanced around, taking in the empty tent and Mulcahy’s relaxed posture, reclining with a cup of coffee. “Sorry for interrupting.”

“I’ve got plenty of room on my dance card,” Mulcahy said, an elusive smile playing briefly across his lips. “Would you like to join me?” 

“Well, if your boyfriend won’t be too jealous,” Hawkeye said, dropping down into the seat across from Mulcahy. He eyed him over, eyes lingering on the twin sets of chains that disappeared beneath his collar—dog tags and his cross. “How are you this morning, Father? Try out any new material, or just stick to the crowd-pleasers?” 

“Well, I’d considered the tale of Lazarus,” Mulcahy said into his coffee cup. “But then I figured it’d be preaching to the choir.” 

“Ah,” Hawkeye said. He folded his hands on the table. “So it’s that kind of meeting.” 

“No,” Mulcahy said. “Not unless you want it to be.” 

“Hmm.” 

“To answer your question,” Mulcahy said, setting his mug down, “I’m doing very well this morning. I’m feeling very grateful.” 

“Blessed?” 

“If you like,” Mulcahy said. “Then yes. I’m feeling blessed to have you back, Hawkeye.”

Hawkeye looked away abruptly. 

“And how are you?” Mulcahy’s voice was gentle as ever. 

“Oh, you know.” 

“You’re being very laconic,” Mulcahy informed him. “Am I making you nervous?” 

“Nervous?” Hawkeye laughed, uncomfortable. “No. Of course not.” 

“Right,” Mulcahy said. “Well, you do know, if you ever need to talk through anything, you can come to me.” 

“Right.” 

“Right.” 

“Right,” Hawkeye said. He stood and moved to inspect the tent’s center pole, putting his back to Mulcahy. His neck prickled, and he rolled his shoulders. 

Mulcahy stayed comfortably silent, willing to wait him out. 

“The thing is,” Hawkeye started, surprising himself, “that none of this squares.” 

He turned back to find Mulcahy watching him politely, his hands loose around his coffee cup. 

“It doesn’t track,” he explained, splaying his hand and then ducking, self conscious at the volume of his voice. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said, quieter. “There are certain things that I can’t believe in. As a doctor. As a man of science. As a human being with the capacity for critical thought.”

Father Mulcahy’s face remained impassive, but Hawkeye sighed, feeling a pang of guilt regardless. “Sorry, Father.” 

“No need to apologize.” 

“But you have to understand that, to me, the story of Lazarus? It’s just that. A story. There’s no scientific basis for this sort of thing. My father was a doctor. Is. Is a doctor. From the time I was old enough to sit up, I was paging through his anatomy books. I knew my sagittal suture from my coronal before they’d even fused. There are certain things that are true in every place, for every person, at every time.” Hawkeye turned, slouching, starting to pace. 

“One of those universal truths: if your heart stops, you die. Now, I know what you’re going to say,” he said, turning back to pace the other way. “Why, Doctor Pierce, you restart hearts all the time. Those patients aren’t dead, even when their hearts give out. Their brains keep on going. And that’s true, I’ll give you that. And I’ll even give you the reverse example: there are plenty of people whose hearts keep on going long past when their brains give out, and those people are just as alive.” 

He slowed, tracking to a stop in front of Mulcahy. He stared at his shoes, polished black against the dirt floor. “So then I have to wonder: what is death, exactly? Where’s the line?” 

Mulcahy raised his eyebrows, expression neutral. 

“It’s irreversibility,” Hawkeye said. “That’s the only way we can define it. We don’t know where the line is, really, or when to call it. All we know about death is that you can’t undo it. That’s the only universal truth, Father. When people go, they don’t come back.” 

“Present company excepted,” Mulcahy said quietly. 

“And that’s what I can’t understand. Why I can’t accept it. I should be dead. No way around it. I’m just a person. People die. They get shot full of lead and they fall down the stairs. They crash their cars and drown in pools. They get trapped in caves and stabbed in the face. They pass in their sleep and they go awake and screaming. They die of heart attacks and stress and boredom and hospital-acquired infections, from bad blood donations and sepsis. They die on operating tables. They die in planes over the Sea of Japan. They die of cancer, in hospital rooms, with nobody around to watch them go, not even their sons. And they never, ever come back.” 

Hawkeye turned again, raising his gaze to the canvas ceiling of the tent. “They never come back. That’s the only way we can accept death. It’s coming for us all, for all of us, every last moment we’re alive. It’s the last and only great inevitability. We have to keep going when people are gone, because when they go, they don’t come back.” 

“But you did,” Mulcahy said. 

Hawkeye ground the heels of his palms into his eyesockets, pressing until he saw flashes of luminescent green. “Why me,” he said. “If none of them ever came back. If people leave, and they leave forever. Why can’t I go, too?” 

“Do you want to die?” Mulcahy asked him, voice soft, tone unreadable. 

“No,” Hawkeye said, defensive. “Of course not. I don’t actively want to die. Sometimes I think I might like to, because what I really want is a break, but those aren’t the same. In the worst of it I wonder why I bother, why I’m hanging on, but the fact of the matter is I love life, and I love people, and I love our little planet. I love everything about it. I love the way unbaked pie crust tastes. The smell of cut grass on a dewy Monday morning. Pencil shavings. The way cats will try anything to stand on your table. Jazz on the radio, tiled kitchen floors, peanut butter sandwiches. All of it. Everything is everything, and I have to love it because there isn’t anything else.” 

Mulcahy tilted his head. “You’re a very natural poet.” 

Hawkeye waved him off.

“‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame,’” Mulcahy recited, watching him carefully. “‘As tumbled over rim in roundy wells / Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's / Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; / Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: / Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; / Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, / Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.’” 

“Tricksy,” Hawkeye said, unexpectedly moved, “but true. Who is that? Everything out of everything. What did you say, ‘each does one thing’? ‘Myself it speaks and spells.’ Who is that?” 

“Gerard Manley Hopkins,” Mulcahy said. “He was a priest. ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; / It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil / Crushed.’” 

Hawkeye crossed his arms. “God. Is that what the kids are calling transcendentalism these days?” 

“It was what he called God,” Mulcahy said. “It doesn’t have to be what you do.” 

“I don’t call anything God.” 

“You don’t have to,” Mulcahy said again. “I have a book of his poetry, if you’d like to borrow it. I think you might get something out of The Wreck of the Deutschland .” 

“Yeah? Why’s that?” 

Mulcahy shrugged. “‘We lash with the best or worst / Word last.’” 

“Well, it turns out my last words weren’t anything of the sort.” Hawkeye eyed him. “You aren’t trying to convert me, are you?” 

“No,” Mulcahy said, finally smiling fully. “You don’t need me for that. Hawkeye, believe it or not, you’re one of the most spiritual people I know. And, between you and me, well. A close reading of a poem is as good as mass.”

Chapter End Notes

>[David Lynch voice] Believe it or not, this atheist surgeon is one of my most spiritual characters.
>Elaborate on that.
>No.

Also, I know it's been a world and character-build-y couple of chapters recently, so just a heads-up for next week: it's The Chapter. You know, The Chapter? The Chapter that I assume you clicked on a vampire story for. It's, like, 8K, hence why this one was on the shorter end. Keep an eye on the tags. I'm so excited to post it.
See you Monday!!!

An Excellent Chest Cutter

Chapter Summary

Poetic promises, chromic caresses, and, somewhere, the brakes of a car parked at the top of a hill finally disengage. Nothing to do now but watch.

Chapter Notes

CW for more food issues. Also: tags.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“Listen to this,” Hawkeye said, reaching out to paw at BJ’s arm as he passed. He was laid out on his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows, enjoying the early evening light.

“I don’t think I have a choice,” BJ said, scrounging around for something under his cot. “I left my earplugs in Mill Valley.” 

Hawkeye arranged his eyebrows lasciviously, pitching his voice to a stage whisper. “‘Dost thou touch me afresh? / Over again I feel thy finger and find thee’… uh, ‘The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat; / Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be…” 

“Smut!” Frank said. “Where’d you get a filthy novel like that?” 

“Why? Are you gift shopping for Margaret?” Hawkeye asked.

BJ looked up, quirking a grin at Hawkeye’s delighted expression. “I’ll second his question. Where’d you find it?” 

“Father Mulcahy lent it to me,” Hawkeye said, grinning back at him.

“Slander,” Frank grumbled. “He’s a man of God.”

“Frank, this is religious poetry,” Hawkeye said. “It’s all very above board.” 

“Religious, huh?” BJ said, looking over his shoulder to read. “‘The midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire’?” 

“Haven’t you heard of the passion of Christ?” Hawkeye asked. “Well, they never said which kind of passion. This version has a lot of, of…” He flipped the page, searching out a line. “A lot of this, listen, ‘a lush-kept plush-capped sloe / Will, mouthed to flesh-burst, / Gush!—flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet, / Brim, in a flash, full!’” 

“Flesh-burst,” BJ repeated, his grin sharp. He was flushed. “Father Mulcahy gave you a book about being ‘mouthed to flesh-burst.’” 

“He’s talking about death, obviously. How are you reading that line?” Hawkeye asked, leering theatrically, enjoying BJ’s pink face and Frank’s scandalized noises. “Anyway, yes. The man has a very refined taste. I didn’t think he had it in him.” 

He handed the book over, and watched BJ turn it this way and that, cupping the leather spine of it in his hands, broad enough to span a cover and change. There was a slight skin discoloration on the third finger of his right hand: scalpel callus. Hawkeye had one, too, in the same spot. He rubbed a thumb over it absently. 

“‘Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome / Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it,’” BJ read, settling back onto an elbow. He kept his feet planted firmly on the ground, knees spread casually, the span of his thighs tapering to the flat shear of his hips and waist, his khaki shirt hanging loose around his neck, baring the edge of a clavicle. “‘My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears.’ He certainly had a way with a certain kind of imagery.”

Hawkeye looked up belatedly, tearing his gaze away from the artful angle of BJ’s elbow against the slight but visible curve of his iliac crest. “For a man of God, he sure had an eye for the flesh.” 

“Complete disrespect for the religious,” Frank said, shaking his head. 

“On the contrary. It’s sort of a square-rectangle thing, Frank. I respect the religious. I just don’t respect you. It’s only that you happen to be a member of the religious.” 

“I don’t just have to lay here and take that sort of talk,” Frank said, doing exactly that.

Hawkeye rolled his eyes. When he looked back, BJ’s expression had fallen slightly. “Alright?” he asked. 

BJ glanced up at him, and then back down to the book. “How much of this have you read?” he asked, measured.

“Not much,” Hawkeye said. “So far mostly the filthy stuff. I go for dessert first.” 

BJ turned a page in silence.

“Why?” Hawkeye asked. “Does it get filthier? More religious? Both, somehow?” 

“Nevermind.” BJ stuck an envelope in the book, and tossed it aside. “Come on. Let’s go to the mess.” 

Hawkeye fell back onto his cot fully, staring up at the canvas ceiling.

“Come on, give it a shot.” BJ reached out and touched the inside of his knee, the brief pressure setting his whole leg tingling with a dangerous warmth. 

“It’s not going to do any good.” Hawkeye sat up and batted his hand away, walling off a series of traitorous poetic images, lush-kept sloes and mouthy flesh-bursts. “I’m IV only.” 

BJ sighed, dropping his hand, at the same time moving his leg so his ankle pressed into Hawkeye’s calf. “Please. Just give it a try. You’ve got to eat something. It’s been almost a week. You can’t keep going like this.” 

Hawkeye kept staring at the ceiling. BJ was, objectively, correct. He was starving. Literally. When he wasn’t talking at somebody, keeping his mind busy and active, he faded off somewhere hypoglycemic and fuzzy, his brain deprived of energy, unable to focus on anything for long. He was constantly freezing, and was finding it hard to function through random bouts of dizziness. He was both nauseated and constantly hungry, unable to keep anything at all down, if he managed to fight past the horrible taste. He knew he was looking gaunter with every passing day, frightening the nurses and the patients and anybody with eyes, knew he was getting a sharp, animalistic shine in his stare, the sort of gleam that said he wasn’t above biting at any hand that tried to feed him. 

And people tried, that was the worst of it. While he was forced off surgery, waiting to be discharged, pacing himself into bored insanity, clearly and obviously sliding down an invisible but terribly steep slope, people tried. BJ shared an envelope full of crushed cookie crumbs, which tasted like rotted wheat cooked with rancid milk. Potter offered him brandy, which tasted like burned-through motor oil. Klinger scrounged up brie from somewhere, real, miraculous brie, which of course tasted musky, hairily mammalian, like he was licking on the slimy eye discharge of a cow with conjunctivitis. 

All his life he’d been cautiously sniffing his food, cracking jokes about the smell, what he expected to taste, coming out with the most offensive imagery he could dream up to put everybody else off their dinners. Now he wondered if he’d somehow known all along that this was what it was leading up to. His greatest fear: at last, everything tasted how he’d joked it had all along. 

What he wouldn’t give to go home and fall face first into a cherry pie. He wouldn’t sniff a single bite. He wouldn’t take a single second of it for granted, either. He’d let the crust, soft and flaky with shortening, melt in his mouth, just this side of too salty, tangy with egg wash. And the filling he’d savor even more, whole and ripe cherries sweet and perfectly red against the white crust, spilling out across his plate, melting into a dollop of vanilla soft-serve, hand churned, creamy and saccharine, shockingly cold against his teeth. He’d peel the lattice-work top crust off strip by strip, licking the cherry syrup off each piece before popping it whole into his mouth, chewing, swallowing—hell, how he missed eating. The simple act of taking something into his mouth, and sending it down to his stomach, using it or storing it for energy, no fuss, no difficulty, everything working just how it was meant to. 

He missed it. He really, really did. 

“Come on. Just one more try. Let me buy you dinner, sailor,” BJ said, trapping his calf between his own.  

Hawkeye nodded silently, and pushed himself to stand. He blinked through a brief darkening of his vision, steadying himself against BJ’s shoulder. “You know,” he joked, waiting for his vision to return, “I’m starting to feel like an ascetic.” 

BJ led him out of the Swamp, a hand firm between his shoulder blades, as though he could, with just a little more hope, reach through flesh and bone and restart Hawkeye’s heart himself. “How’s that?” 

“Well, here I am, isolated, far away from home. I don’t eat, I can barely sleep, and I’m certainly not having any sex.” 

“I think to be an ascetic you have to be doing all that for a reason.” 

Hawkeye shrugged. “Guess I’m a pointless martyr. I’m doing it all in the name of unreasonableness.” 

“Ask Mulcahy to make you a saint,” BJ said, pausing outside the door to the mess. The tent flaps were all down, despite the relative warmth of the evening. The sun was just about to set, and the camp was oddly quiet, though Hawkeye could hear the minute rustlings of a great number of people all trying, very hard, to be silent.

“Hang on,” Hawkeye said, narrowing his eyes. “Is this—” 

BJ flung the door open, shoving him through bodily to a cacophonous chorus of “Surprise!” and various less-specific cheers. 

Hawkeye regained his footing and looked around, finding himself the center of attention of the majority of the camp, all decked out in their best party gear. Somebody threw confetti onto him, the pieces rough, glowing where they passed in front of a lamp. He grabbed one and glanced down at it. Shredded duplicate patient documentation.

“Do you like it?” Margaret asked him, from the edge of the crowd. 

For He’s A Jolly Live Fellow, read a banner hanging lopsidedly from the rafters. There was a low, flat sheet cake, too, frosted with the words He Bought The Farm… And Then Sold It.  

BJ looked at his face, and then turned to the rest of the company, waving his hands, cueing something. And, ridiculously, they all began to sing. 

“For he’s been six feet over, and six feet the other way

I thought that this time around, the elevation would stay 

But he unkicked the bucket and resold the farm 

Woke up from his dirt nap and fell out of God’s arms 

He’s pulled down his daisies and took back his ghost 

Shuffled on the mortal coil and unburnt his toast

Yes he’s been six feet over, and six feet below the shore 

So if you average it out 

He stands about 

Halfway through the floor!”

The song ended in another round of cheering, and somebody clapped him on the back. He shook his head, rubbed at the bridge of his nose, and then, helpless, finally started to laugh. 

The cheering increased in fervor, and he closed his eyes, leaning into BJ’s side, shaking with laughter. BJ put an arm around him, pulling him close, his hand tight around Hawkeye’s deltoid. Hawkeye threw an arm around his waist, jarring their shoulders together. 

“I’m six-two,” Hawkeye informed him, when he was capable of speaking through his own laughter. “You better check your math.” 

“I said about halfway through the floor,” BJ defended. “About. There’s room for error in there.” 

“How many significant figures are in an ‘about’?” Hawkeye asked. 

“I always felt bad for the insignificant figures,” BJ non-answered. “What’d they ever do besides be statistically irrelevant?” 

“We’re all statistically irrelevant.”

BJ let him go, turning to look at him more fully. “What do you mean?” 

“Pierce,” Margaret said, accidentally interrupting, flagging him down as she moved through the crowd. “Here.” 

Hawkeye looked down at the plate she was holding out to him. There sat an overgenerous slice of cake, a corner piece with extra frosting on the side—scraped off the knife, most likely. It looked delicious, tooth-achingly sweet, beatifically high in calories that would like nothing more than to jumpstart his brain, flick on his metabolism, warm him up and let him sleep well for once.

He could feel BJ watching him, along with half the party. His stomach twisted, a hard hunger pang that sent him nearly doubling over before he decisively took the plate and a fork from Margaret. 

“Thanks,” he told her, grinning when she gave him a rare, real smile, wide enough to show her uncannily perfect teeth. Before he could doubt himself, he speared his fork through the icing, watching it drag in four identical channels down through the cake. He held it to his nose, briefly, scientifically: sugar, flour, the slight tint of food dye. Cake. Normal cake. He’d eaten cake just like it probably hundreds of times before.

He sighed, and stuck the bite in his mouth, fast, like it might try to get away from him. 

“Good man,” BJ said, pleased. He reached over and stole a dab of frosting off Hawkeye’s plate, licking the sugar off his fingertip. 

Hawkeye nodded politely, trying to look upbeat through the chemical warfare that was being waged inside his mouth. It was like something had fundamentally been miswired in his brain. The cake was, objectively, probably pretty good. Sugar and butter and flour and chocolate, all things he liked, especially in combination. But instead of triggering reward pathways in his brain, the ones that right about now ought to have been congratulating him for obtaining sustenance with a high energy density, his tongue had turned on him, telling him what he was putting into his mouth was somewhere between dead useless and actively harmful. 

BJ was still watching him, though, and he intellectually knew he was tempting a stroke or worse with his little involuntary hunger strike, so he shoveled another bite into his mouth and swallowed, wincing. 

“How are you?” Margaret asked him, leaning in to be heard over the general din of the party. 

Hawkeye took another bite, swallowing as quickly as he could without risking choking. “Everyone keeps asking me that.” 

“Because you look terrible,” Margaret informed him.

He huffed a laugh. “It’s this diet,” he told her. “I’m trying to fit back into my high school jeans.” 

“Don’t do that,” Margaret snapped, suddenly cross. “Don’t make this a joke. You’re sick. And everybody’s worried about you. Shut up. Eat your cake.” She turned and vanished into the crowd. 

Hawkeye turned to BJ, his eyebrows raised. 

BJ didn’t make eye contact with him. 

“Come on,” Hawkeye said, trying to cajole a little sympathy. “I didn’t deserve that.” 

BJ shrugged. “I think the Major ordered you to eat your cake.” 

Hawkeye scoffed, disbelieving. “I’m just trying to lighten the mood.” 

“I know,” BJ said. “You can do that, and we can still be worried. It’s not an either-or situation.” 

Hawkeye felt his hand tense involuntarily around his fork. He forced himself to relax, and then sighed, deciding to let the whole thing go. He took another bite of cake instead, consciously ignoring the desire to imagine what it was it actually tasted like. If he put words to it he wouldn’t keep any of it down. 

“How is it?” BJ asked him, swiping another dollop of frosting. His tongue was very pink. Lips, too. Coloration through hemoglobin. Amazing how many uses the human body had for blood. 

“Hawk?” BJ asked again, leaning in to look at him. 

Hawkeye took a breath, leaning in, too. BJ smelled incredibly good, for some reason. Delectable, almost, metallic and warm, a hint of sunny citrus. He could just about bite him.

He was not unaware that BJ was an attractive guy. In fact, he was very aware of BJ’s attractiveness. He was nice to look at. Nicer to touch—elbowing his ribs, throwing an arm around his shoulder, kicking at each other’s ankles over breakfast. But BJ was married, and, though he seemed perfectly content to play into Hawkeye’s jokes, his flirtations, probably straight as an arrow. He’d tried not to lean into it, tried not to think too long about what exactly it was the guy smelled like underneath the army soap, the strong planes of his back, the way he was an inch taller than Hawkeye. And if he did, well. Those things he could sublimate down into the genuine affection he had for the guy, his care and regard, his well-wishing and worrying. 

But now, with BJ’s face inches away, his blue eyes wide and searching, he thought he might—

He might just—

“Choppers!” Radar called, standing on top of a table. “Here any minute!” 

BJ pulled away, turning to catch Potter’s eye, before he looked back to Hawkeye. 

“Your table, sir,” Hawkeye said, gesturing towards the OR. “I think they called your number.” 

“You’re going to be okay?” BJ asked. He stumbled, jostled by the flux of people moving out of the tent.

“Well, I’ll mourn my mourning party,” Hawkeye said, looking up at the sagging banner, the toilet-paper streamers, the rapidly emptying room. “But I think I’ll live. More cake for me.” 

“Eat all of it,” BJ told him seriously. “Or as much as you want. It’s for you.” 

“Sure,” Hawkeye said, and stuck the last of the cake into his mouth pointedly. “I’ll see you later.” 

BJ nodded, and then turned, dashing away towards the OR, fading quickly into the dark. The sun had fully set. 

Hawkeye watched him go impassively, alone in the doorway of the mess. After a beat he turned and bent double, slowly, clinically, feeling mostly detached as he emptied his stomach into the grass. So much for the cake. 

He straightened up, wiping the corner of his mouth with the inside of his wrist. His vision fuzzed, and he stood still, waiting for the headrush to pass. When it did, he headed back to the Swamp, flopping down onto his cot. 

The motion jostled his borrowed poetry book, BJ’s envelope still inside. 

“Hi,” he told it, wishing he could drink some water to clean the taste of moldering cake out of his mouth. Unfortunately water made him just as ill. “How are you?” 

The book didn’t say anything. He looked at it, content in his fuzzy, hypoglycemic state to do nothing but float vaguely in the awareness he was awake. He wondered how long he had before death by starvation started to become a real and timely concern. His thoughts were moving slower, less insistently, ideas coming fragmented and going untouched. He thought he ought to be unsettled. Maybe even scared. But he was too weak to bother.

His arms were horribly heavy, but he managed to open the book to BJ’s envelope. 

“What say you?” he asked the book. 

The ink of the book loomed up at him, somehow still legible despite the fast-falling night. 

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

   With witness I speak this. But where I say

Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament

Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent

To dearest him that lives alas! away.

   I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;

Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

   Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see

The lost are like this, and their scourge to be

As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

“Hmm,” Hawkeye said, and let the book fall shut. He was too tired to interpret anything. His head was killing him. He was so hungry he thought he might actually be able to feel his body ripping away at his fat and muscle stores for fuel. 

He closed his eyes, or else his vision went black, and he drifted, falling into and out of awareness, sounds hyperimmediate and shocking. Worse, the smell of blood from the OR was stifling, tangible even across the camp, fading into and out of the black void of his perception. He turned his head, trying to clear the fog from his thoughts, and found himself inside some massive structure. Larger than the Hagia Sophia. Larger than the Empire State Building laid flat. The dark was cavernous, but enclosed. He knew, with the kind of inexplicable certainty only possible in dreams, that he was in a military aircraft hangar. The floor was packed dirt, and the walls and ceiling, if he could only see them in the vast and vaulted darkness surrounding him, were corrugated metal. But there were no planes. Instead there were immense, twisted sculptures, corrugated metal like the walls. They jutted, spire-like, to impossible heights, and lost themselves in the blackness. Their shapes were uncomfortably organic.

He patrolled this alien, military landscape in predatory silence, moving on all fours, stalking, hand-foot-hand-foot, through the spires. He was hunting something. Or being hunted. Perhaps both. 

At the base of a structure, he looked around, listening. Something was coming. He gripped the metal of the structure and scaled it easily, fluidly, natural as breathing. He crouched in the high branches of the metallic thing, certain he was invisible in the night. Far below him something stumbled through the dark, waving a flashlight. The beam reflected, in shattered flashes, off all the twisted metal around it. It sounded scared. It was breathing loudly, in harsh gasps. 

“Hawkeye,” it called, stopping at the base of his twisted metal tree, tall as any mountain. 

He shifted forward, positioning himself precisely. 

The creature with the flashlight turned its back, looking at the base of another tree. “Hawkeye?”

Hawkeye let himself fall. 

Just as he’d planned, he landed on the thing’s back, perfectly centered, its tibias snapping under the force of breaking his fall. The smell of fresh blood pierced the air sure as the thing’s shins pierced its skin, nasty compound fractures, slick, purple-red membranes coating the osseous white of the bones’ ragged edges. Amputation-worthy.

The thing whined, weak, pain-filled noises, as he pressed its shoulders flat to the ground, crumpling its shattered legs the wrong way around, folding the tibias like he’d surgically inserted a pair of second, false knees. Blood spilled out across the packed dirt floor as the thing’s snapped stalks of bone scraped through new mud.

“Shh,” Hawkeye told it, wrenching its neck around until he felt the vertebrae grind in protest. He retrieved a scalpel—he wasn’t sure where he’d got it from, only that it felt like it had always felt, an extension of his hand—and poised it above the thing’s chest. 

He was in full surgical garb, mask tight across his face, head to toe in angelic white.

“You’re going to be okay,” he told the creature. “I’m a doctor.” 

It whined, its eyes huge and blue, but his glove was pressed over its mouth, forcing its cheek flat against the ground. 

He slit the skin over the sternum, dragging the perfect edge of the blade through the opening layers of flesh under his hand. A common misconception about vivisection was that it involved pain. Really, if your scalpel was as sharp as it ought to be, you wouldn’t feel too much of anything until the sternectomy. 

And just like that the scalpel morphed into a bonesaw, until he looked down and realized his hand was the bonesaw. That suited him fine. He petted the thing’s sternum, up and down, in a straight line, watching intently as the bone gave way along the line of incision. And just like that his hand was a retractor, and when it turned back into a scalpel the ribcage stayed retracted, just because he wanted it to. 

The thing had gone silent, its eyes wide and shocked, looking down at its chest, flayed open and full of organic movement, too horrified to scream. 

“It’s an easy surgery,” he told it comfortingly. “I’ve done it a thousand times before.” 

He touched the thing’s heart, soft and loving, watching as its chambers fell open under his chromic caress. 

He was nothing if not an excellent chest cutter. 

Blood was pooling in the open chest cavity, slowly obscuring the shredded heart, the struggling lungs. Soon it resembled a brimming chalice of wine, sweet and inviting, the promise of happiness and oblivion and satiation in its polished dark surface. 

He saw himself reflected in it; his mask was gone, his lips flushed, overgrown canine teeth stark against their pink. He blinked, and dropped slowly to press his lips against his own reflection. The blood was hot and perfect in his mouth. He couldn’t drink it fast enough. He shoved his face into the steaming body cavity, closing his eyes like he was bobbing for apples, feeling a floating strip of ligament skim over his cheek as he drank. 

Something touched the back of his head, so he raised his face, feeling blood slide viscously down the slope of his brow. He opened his eyes to find the creature was stroking him. Its face was frozen in a death-mask of horror, eyes unmoving in their sockets, mouth open in a silent scream of agony, by all appearances dead. But its hand was soothing him, running its fingers through his silvering hair. 

He looked at its face again. His left hand was still pinning it flat by the jaw, so he raised it, looking closer, staring, wiping hot blood out of his eyes, until with a sickening snap he recognized the far-away death-stare of Tommy Gillis, slipping away under his scalpel even as he did everything he could to pull him back from the edge, and he sat up gasping into wakefulness, the Swamp quiet and dark. 

“Nghh,” he said, covered in sweat, struggling to catch his breath. As if he was alive. His chest ached, his stomach felt like it was actually trying to cave in, and he fell, literally fell, out of bed, dazed. BJ and Frank were both asleep as he tripped through the door of the Swamp. He wandered the camp, barefoot and bare-chested, in miserable pain, hungrier than he’d ever been in his life. Something was drawing him to the storeroom, so he went, barely able to see through his vision fading in and out, long stretches of blackness forcing him to stop entirely as he teetered on the brink of unconsciousness. 

He slipped silently into the storeroom, foregoing the lights. He didn’t need them. He could see very well in the dark. Well enough he could read the labels on boxes in what ought to have been pitch black. 

His feet were cold against the dirt floor. He trailed his hand across the boxes on the shelves, stumbling along, wondering where he was going. He could hear Klinger on night patrol, his rifle brushing against the satin of his dress with every other step. Colonel Potter was awake, too, writing a letter. Farther out, a rat was sifting through the garbage dump, orange peels and rotten greenery shifting minutely. 

“Hi,” he whispered, finding himself face to face with the white storage cooler. It seemed to glow, putting off a biological light all its own. He pressed his hands flat to its polished surface, petting it, wanting it to like him. “Don’t be scared,” he told it, delirious, finding himself murderously funny. 

He swept his hands over its surface one more time, and then took hold of its handles, wrenching it open, vivisecting it, pulling it apart in two clean halves like a ribcage in retraction. The pilot light snapped on, cutting a swath out of the dark with its cool blue fluorescence. 

Inside rows and rows of collection bottles hung like heavy ripe apples. 

Or was it pomegranates he was thinking of? 

He watched from outside himself as his hand, blue-shadowed and skinny, reached into the cooler. It took hold of a hanging bottle of blood labeled O-negative. Slowly it broke the sterile vacuum seal, easy as sticking a thumbnail through the skin of a clementine. 

Lit by cold blue, he stared down into the bottle. 

Am I really doing this? something in him thought, even as he raised the bottle to his lips. This was perverted. A horrific twist on a familiar image: Hawkeye, age twenty-five, standing in front of the fridge in his boxers at two AM, his hand lax on the door handle as he pulled deeply from a nearly-empty gallon of milk. 

Carlye had always hated when he’d done that. She probably wouldn’t have liked what he was about to do, either. 

He took his first gulp of blood, cold and nowhere near as appealing as the fresh stuff he’d tasted days ago. But it’d do. Oh, it would do. 

He made a sharp, involuntary keening noise, pure desperation, tilting the bottle up, taking the blood as fast as he could swallow. His teeth ached, the upper canines so sharp and prominent in his mouth they nearly nicked the soft inside of his lower lip. He tipped the bottle too far and the remaining blood spilled over his face, trickling down his neck, trailing over his bare chest. He licked at the interior of the newly empty bottle, trying to clean the last gloss of liquid out of it, before his eyes pulled back to the fridge. He discarded the bottle and grabbed another at random, wrenching the seal open. That one he killed faster than the first, not caring when more blood went pouring down his face, down his abdomen, soaking into his waistband, a few stray drops falling around his feet. There was plenty more in front of him. 

The starving feeling he’d been nursing for weeks started to dull, and he moaned in relief, the sound echoing tinnily in the collection bottle. He tossed that one to the ground, too, and grabbed a third, which he took more slowly, trying to savor it. He wished it was warmer, body temperature, steaming hot, warming him up from the inside out. But it was still pretty damn good cold, filling and sweet and rich, like cheesecake, like heavy cream, like chocolate ganache, like the chilled O-positive blood it was.

He felt hazy and distant and altogether not much like a person at all, while at the same time hyper-present in his body, proprioceptively alight. The only thing that mattered anymore was the blood. He wondered if that was how most animals felt all the time—embodied. Concerned only with the physical. Hunting. Eating. Sleeping. Sex. 

He dropped the bottle, breathing hard. Already he felt warmer, less frail, the weight of a full stomach making him sleepy. His foot bumped against the empty bottles, and they clinked. 

“Ha,” he said, and panted. He touched his stomach, his hand coming away slick with blood. Something deep within him was terrified at the line he’d crossed. But the part of him that was screaming in relief, reveling in bodily satisfaction, thrilled at a successful hunt, was much louder. It wanted to sleep. It wanted to slink through the forest and stalk something. It wanted sex, and violence, and blood, maybe all at once.

And then the lights snapped on. 

He whipped around, baring his teeth, crouching slightly. A territorial hiss escaped him before he locked eyes with BJ, who was standing, stock-still, in the doorway. 

“Jesus Christ,” BJ said, small and frightened. 

That was all it took for Hawkeye’s humanity to come flooding back, a heady, headache-inducing rush of reason reasserting itself to find an image that made no sense. He blinked down at himself, confused, covered in blood, his preternaturally sharp canine teeth forcing their way out of his mouth, over his bottom lip. Three empty bottles of blood at his feet. No shoes, no shirt, but he obviously hadn’t denied himself service.

“Hell,” he said, swaying as he tried to straighten up. “BJ?” 

“Hawk,” BJ said, quickly closing the door behind himself. “Jesus, Hawk. What did you do?” 

He turned his hand back and forth, looking at the slick crimson shine of blood covering it. What had he done?

“I was hungry,” he mumbled, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. That didn’t do much besides spread more blood around. He tried to lean an elbow on the shelf behind him, and then found his legs didn’t want to hold him up, so he went obligingly to the floor. He was warm, for once. Warm and sleepy and he felt uncomplicatedly good. Why couldn’t BJ just be happy for him? 

“Jesus,” BJ whispered, looking around. He walked out of Hawkeye’s line of sight, before he heard the unmistakable snap of rubber gloves. BJ came back, then, and carefully gathered up the empty collection bottles. “I’ll be back,” he said, terse, and swung the cooler door shut before leaving the room. 

Hawkeye listened carefully, only lightly surprised to find he could track BJ to the OR sink, and then to the autoclave, by sound alone. While he waited for BJ to come back he looked at his hands, at the red prints they were leaving on his bare thighs. He felt curiously disconnected from his body, from the events of the last half hour. It wasn’t him who’d done this. He was just Hawkeye. Just having a midnight snack. Just trying not to starve to death. 

He looked up as BJ reentered the room, pulling on new gloves as he went, decked out in a fresh set of scrubs. 

“Hi,” Hawkeye said, squinting. The light was hurting his eyes. He really wanted to go to bed. He felt, for the first time in weeks, that he might get a good night’s sleep. “Is there surgery?”

BJ moved in stiff silence, hauling him up by the arms. His white gloves went red on contact. 

“Beej?” he asked, muzzy. Something was happening here and he wasn’t quite sure what it was. “What’s going on?” 

“I’m taking care of you,” BJ said, his tone brittle. “Come on.” 

Hawkeye slung an arm around BJ’s shoulders, watching his scrubs stain red everywhere they touched. This wasn’t a very nice dream. 

Then again—

BJ’s hand was tight against his bare waist, warm even through his gloves, the tip of a finger just slipping past the loose waistband of his shorts to rest against the osseous peak of the iliac crest. His arm ran a diagonal length across Hawkeye’s back, strong and sure as he half-led, half-lifted him towards the door. Perhaps it wasn’t only a nightmare. Who ever said a dream could only have one genre?

“You’re heavy,” BJ said, sounding surprised as he tried to drag Hawkeye out of the store room. 

“Hmm?” Hawkeye tried to hit the lights, but BJ grabbed his wrist tightly. 

“Don’t touch that.” 

“Okay,” Hawkeye said. BJ was a good guy. A good doctor. His very good friend. If he didn’t want Hawkeye to touch light switches, then he wouldn’t. Simple as. 

BJ half-dragged, half-carried him through the dark of the camp, watching anxiously for Klinger on patrol. Not that he had anything to worry about. Hawkeye could hear Klinger snoring, laid out across the back seat of a jeep behind the colonel’s office.

Eventually they made it to the showers, where BJ bundled him into a stall, propping him against the wall like a load of firewood. Hawkeye went along with it, too sleepy and warm to hold himself upright. He was really very fond of BJ. 

The blood on his chest was getting tacky, and the stuff on his face was making his stubble itch. He licked his lips absently, chasing the savory flavor, but stopped when BJ gave him a flat and horrified stare. 

BJ stood outside the stall and pulled the shower chain, starting the water pouring over him. “Clean up,” he said, curt. “I’ll be back.” 

Hawkeye nodded, starting to scrub at the blood on his stomach. The soap did a good job of cleaning it off, and he watched rust-tinted water saturate his shorts. After a moment he shoved them down and off, letting them slap wetly to the floor of the shower. He took some water into his mouth and swished it around, and then spat it out, repeating until it came out clear. He felt even better than he had, clean on top of warm and tired and sated. 

When BJ came back, sans scrubs, he was blood-free and lightly dozing against the stall door. 

BJ held a towel out, and Hawkeye stared at it blankly. He was having a hard time connecting intent and action in his head. 

BJ sighed, and then started to towel his hair, terse but gentle. Once that was dry enough not to drip down the rest of him, BJ patted his face with the corner of the towel, and then dried his neck and shoulders. 

“Come here,” he said, pulling the stall open. He wrapped Hawkeye’s red robe around him, tying it around his waist. He knelt and patted his legs dry, and then settled his sandals on his feet, one after the other. 

“Hey,” Hawkeye said, leaning on BJ as they made their way back to the Swamp. “Thank you. I don’t really know…” he let the sentence trail off, not sure what he was going to say. His head was empty, his thoughts pleasantly simple. It was possible he was experiencing inner peace.

BJ didn’t say anything. He swung the door open and pulled him over the threshold, and then herded him towards his cot. 

Hawkeye looked at it, struck at the last moment by doubt. 

“Lay down,” BJ said, firm and quiet. 

“Okay,” Hawkeye said, tipping into his cot, happy for once to have somebody else making decisions for him. He tried to arrange the covers over himself, struggling against exhaustion and a curious, leaden warmth settling in his limbs. 

BJ lifted his legs up, and then set them back down, pulling his blankets up to his chin. Father Mulcahy’s poetry book tumbled to the floor.

Hawkeye blinked up at him, and BJ stared down at him, and they stayed that way for a few moments, just looking at each other, not saying anything. BJ’s expression was new to him, his eyes wide, his lips flat, something in the set of his jaw betraying massive conflict, rage and fear and, somehow, grief passing over his face as he looked down at Hawkeye, who was feeling far too blank to really puzzle together exactly what he’d done to earn a look like that.

Finally Hawkeye broke the staring contest by yawning, his eyes squinting shut as he curled into the blankets. 

“Oh, Christ,” BJ muttered, shattered. He dropped his gaze, and then climbed into the cot, tucking himself up along Hawkeye’s back. His arms tightened around Hawkeye’s middle, his whole body trembling. 

“You okay?” Hawkeye asked, fighting off sleep. 

“What’s wrong with you?” BJ asked, not angry or accusative, or curious either. Concerned. Frightened, maybe. 

Hawkeye considered it, even as his thoughts started to turn to static, feeling more relaxed than he had in months. In years. What was wrong with him? How was he wrong? Let him count the ways. There were his neuroticisms, his deep and intense lows, the way he couldn’t help but love people even when they so rarely loved him back. He was cowardly and found it all too easy to be bitter. He was mean, a little, and pretended all the time to be kinder than he was. He was too flexible in some ways, and too rigid in others. 

And then there was the simple fact he was dead. Or something like it.

“You want the list alphabetically or chronologically?” Hawkeye asked through another yawn. “I can start with A for a real son of a bitch. B is for bitch, comma, a real son of a. C is for—”

BJ cut him off with a frightened, pained laugh. “God,” he said, despairing. “It’s really you. Only you. I wish it weren’t, God knows that would make this easier. I would know what to do. How to feel. But I can’t. Because it’s you.”

“Just me,” Hawkeye agreed, patting BJ’s hand absently where it rested over his middle, not really getting what they were talking about anymore. He closed his eyes and started to drift off, lulled by the weight of a full stomach and BJ’s comforting presence at his back, warm and protective, curled around him like a jealous dragon.

Chapter End Notes

Oh my God! Okay, it's happening! Everybody stay calm. Everybody stay calm! STAY F***ING CALM!

Except for BJ. BJ can have a little panic. As a treat.

In this chapter the Hopkins poems are (in order): "The Wreck of the Deutschland," "Felix Randal," and "I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day." I can't recommend him enough.

Several Slips of the Hand

Chapter Summary

Food and love which is, of course, the same thing.
Even in a vampire story.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

As far as mornings go, he’d had worse. But not by much. 

“Degenerates! Deviants! Reprobates!” somebody was shouting.

“Present,” Hawkeye mumbled, prying his eyes open. He didn’t want to wake up. He felt like he could close his eyes and sleep for another twelve hours. He was warm for the first time in recent memory. Partially he was chalking that up to the pleasant weight of somebody draped more than halfway over him, but he also felt generally better, warmed from the inside, like some dormant metabolic processes had at long last returned to functionality. He’d needed to eat more than he’d realized.

That thought turned his brain on all the way and he bolted upright, throwing himself out of his cot and instantly overbalancing into BJ’s, before he managed to right himself. He cast around for some sort of container, anything concave, and grabbed a flak helmet two seconds before he started to retch. 

“Hungover, of course,” Frank said, crossing his arms. He was standing over the end of Hawkeye’s cot, looking disgusted. 

Hawkeye squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to retch harder. No use. The nausea passed as quickly as it’d come, and he hadn’t managed to bring anything up. It was too late. Far too late.

When he opened his eyes again, BJ was looking at him, his gaze flat and piercing. Accusative. 

“Morning,” Hawkeye said, setting the helmet aside. He felt half-insane, hopeless, and, worst of all, hungry. He wanted more than anything to have dreamt his time in the storeroom. The memory was oddly hazy, disconnected in the way his dreams frequently felt. But the stare BJ was aiming at him made it hard to believe the last night was anything other than real. “And to you, Frank.” 

“Creep,” Frank said. “Pervert.” 

“It’s a thankless job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

“At least you’re leaving,” Frank said, shaking his head. “Hunnicutt, you’ll fall in line as soon as he’s gone. He’s a corrupting influence.” 

BJ sat up slowly, leveling an exhausted stare at Frank. He looked like he’d hardly slept. 

“Sure, gang up on me,” Frank said, tossing his hands up. “You people always stick together. Well, good luck sticking together from all the way across the globe.” 

“Why don’t you go commit some malpractice, Frank, that always cheers you up,” Hawkeye said, not liking the tension building in the air. 

“Maybe I will!” Frank snapped, before turning sharply to march out of the Swamp. 

The second he was gone Hawkeye turned to BJ, who was looking at him blankly. When their eyes met, BJ smiled briefly, and then his expression twisted, like he hadn’t consciously meant to smile—it was just a habit for him, when looking at Hawkeye. 

“Beej,” he said, and left it at that. 

BJ kept looking at him, his expression back to blank. 

“BJ,” he said, hearing his voice take a hard turn towards pleading. 

When BJ didn’t respond in any way, didn’t look over at him or get up and leave, Hawkeye took a seat on the edge of BJ’s cot. He looked down at his hands, and then back up to BJ. He felt ill, but only psychologically; physically he felt, unfortunately, incredibly good. It was making it difficult to be as miserable as he figured he should be. 

He wasn’t having any problem feeling guilty, though. That had always come as natural as breathing. 

Outside the watery light of dawn was trying valiantly to brighten into definitive day. He could hear the showers running, and the quiet hiss of a stove’s heating element in the kitchen, and Father Mulcahy taking a confession in post-op. He looked back down at his hands. They were the same ones he’d always had. Thin, prominent vasculature, the fingertips blunt and square. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he confessed to them, folding and unfolding them in his lap. 

“At least you’re consistent,” BJ said, his voice soft and exhausted. 

Hawkeye looked up at him cautiously, gauging the solidity of the olive branch. “So I am,” he said at last. “Death, taxes, and me.” 

They regarded each other in the dim and quiet. 

“Listen, last night,” Hawkeye started. 

“No,” BJ said, cutting him off. He stood up and took a small step towards Hawkeye, but made no move to come closer than that. 

Hawkeye fiddled with his robe’s tie. BJ was giving him an out. Why, he couldn’t say, but there it was. An exit. A turnoff. No questions asked. 

“Last night,” Hawkeye started again, stronger. Let it never be said he knew what was good for him. 

“No,” BJ said again, smiling, clicking over into amiability. 

“We have to talk about it,” Hawkeye said. “I don’t want to. But we have to.” 

BJ’s expression flickered. He sat down on Hawkeye’s cot again. 

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Hawkeye said, clinical and straightforward, as though he were reading off somebody else’s chart. “I don’t know how to explain it. I’m horrified. I’m scared of myself. I don’t know what any of it means, and I wish it wasn’t happening. But the shape of it is this: for whatever reason, I can’t seem to… It seems, to avoid starving, I… It looks like the only thing I can eat is… Well.” He stopped, and scratched the back of his neck, suddenly incapable of speech. “We were both there. After a fashion.”  

BJ nodded along. 

“So?” Hawkeye asked him, not sure what it was he wanted. 

BJ stood. “Get dressed.” 

Hawkeye stood, too, and then bent to retrieve a pair of his shorts off the floor. BJ looked away while he changed into a new set of fatigues. 

“There,” Hawkeye said, holding his arms wide. “Can you please talk to me?” 

“Come with me,” BJ said. 

“Where?” 

BJ turned and walked out of the Swamp. 

“BJ!” Hawkeye scrambled to follow, letting the door clatter shut behind him. 

BJ didn’t turn, and he didn’t slow. He didn’t even look around. 

“BJ!” Hawkeye hissed, jogging to catch him before he entered the storeroom. 

BJ hardly glanced at him before he opened the door and stepped inside. 

Hawkeye followed, casting a furtive glance around the empty compound before he let the door shut quietly. The room was dim, lit in cool blues, silent, redolent of early Sunday mornings. BJ was stopped in front of the cooler, looking down at the spot he’d found Hawkeye only last night. 

“BJ,” Hawkeye said again, cautious. Third time’s the charm.

BJ took a deep, sudden breath, and then let it out just as fast, not turning to look at him, or moving in any way at all. “I’ve got a tricky case in post-op,” he said finally. 

“Is that so?” Hawkeye asked. 

“Yup. It’s a real puzzle,” BJ said, his tone torquing oddly until it settled into an approximation of normal. “Nobody knows quite what’s going on. It’s the funniest thing.”

“A laugh riot,” Hawkeye said, stepping closer, his hackles raised. Something was happening. Something he didn’t understand. BJ still wouldn’t look at him. 

“Ha. Sure. It’s a real tough problem.” 

Hawkeye took another step forward, slinking halfway into a square of pale blue light. “What’s so tricky about it?”

“Well,” BJ said, his shoulders squaring. “There was a mix-up on the paperwork.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“The papers I filed last night said the guy died en route to the MASH. That he was dead when he got here.” 

Hawkeye moved forward again, out of the light, until he was close enough he could’ve reached out and touched BJ. But he wouldn’t. Whatever was happening here wasn’t something he felt he could bridge. Not something he should interrupt. 

“They notified his family, of course,” BJ continued. “They know, by now. The family was notified, and he’s—his body has been shipped home.” 

Hawkeye stared at the back of his head. “I thought you said this was about post-op.” 

“That’s the funny thing,” BJ said. “I filed those papers, and we notified the family, and his body’s been sent off. But last night, after you fell asleep, I got to thinking.” 

“About what?” 

“I thought maybe I ought to have another look over his file. Just to make sure everything was square.” BJ pivoted a quarter-turn to face the cooler, the motion uncharacteristically military. “And I think my hand slipped while I was checking over the paperwork. Or my pen broke. There was a lot of ink. I had to toss the whole file and start the report all over again.” 

Hawkeye watched BJ breathe, even and regular. 

“And, it’s the funniest thing, Hawkeye,” BJ said. “I guess I must have made a mistake.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. I guess my hand slipped again.” 

“You’re awfully clumsy for a surgeon,” Hawkeye said, feeling so tense he thought his bones might up and snap in protest. 

“My hand slipped,” BJ repeated firmly. “And, wouldn’t you know, it just kept going. It slipped and it slipped and it slipped. And when it got traction again, well, wasn’t I surprised?” 

“What for?” 

“It turns out that boy didn’t die en route. Sure, off in the real world his parents have been notified, and the kid’s body’s been sent home. But, right there in our paperwork, it says that kid made it through OR. He’s sitting in post-op right now. And so far he’s taken a transfusion of four units of O-positive.”

Hawkeye’s brows ticked up, and he ran a hand across his face, reigning in his expression. The only thing he could think to say was, “Four?” 

“Four,” BJ said. He reached forward and pulled open the cooler, the light turning him into a silhouette, limned in blue. 

Hawkeye closed his eyes. When he opened them again, BJ was looking right at him, holding a pint of whole blood out, the top tilted invitingly like the world’s most warped bouquet. 

“Oh, God,” Hawkeye said under his breath. He was revolted. Horrified. Hungry.

“Not here,” BJ said. 

“What are we doing?” Hawkeye asked him. His stomach twinged insistently, as though it’d been weeks since he’d last eaten, instead of a span of several hours. “What are you doing?” 

“I’m keeping a promise.” 

“May you always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of your calling? May you long experience the joy of healing those who seek your help?” 

“Sure. That. And I also promised that I would take care of you.” BJ knocked his knuckles gently against Hawkeye’s sternum, a ghost of CPR past, the collection bottle still in his hands. 

Hawkeye looked down. He took the bottle gingerly, more than half convinced he was stuck in somebody else’s nightmare. “I wish I knew why this was happening to me.” 

BJ nodded empathetically. His bedside manner was really impeccable. 

“This doesn’t feel real,” he said, rolling the bottle of blood back and forth in his hands. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe myself.” 

BJ shrugged, his head tilting laconically. 

“Give a guy a minute, would you?” Hawkeye said, hands itching to break the sterile seal, his teeth aching with sheer overwhelming need. He felt dangerous. Barely controlled. Like a badly trained dog on an overlong leash. “You don’t want to see this.” 

BJ crossed his arms. 

“I don’t want you to see this,” Hawkeye tried, feeling his last thread of restraint fraying with every millisecond that flowed by.

BJ leveled a flat and empirical stare at him in silence. 

“Your funeral,” Hawkeye shrugged, his embarrassment steadily being overwhelmed by a flood of pure desire. “Or mine.” And just like that somehow he’d already broken the sterile seal and taken a deep pull from the collection bottle. 

It was just as good as it was the night before. The pure satisfaction of it felt like getting smacked with every perfect steak dinner he’d ever had all at once. He sighed, startling himself when the sound bent into a needy moan. He tried to control himself, tried to take small sips like he was drinking coffee or something equally innocuous, still dimly aware of BJ’s watchful presence, but lost the plot by the third mouthful of blood. It was torturous to deprive himself when what he wanted—or needed—was right there, so he threw his head back and drank deeply, quickly, panting around each swallow. He drained the bottle completely, tapping the bottom of it to try and cajole a few final drops to collect at the lip of the container. When he managed that he doubled over, and then knelt, breathing hard, letting his hair hang into his face. He was barely holding on to the collection bottle, his fingers suddenly lax and uncooperative, so he dropped it. 

The bottle landed near BJ’s feet, his Chucks dusty and utterly still. 

Hawkeye heard himself make an involuntary satisfied noise. He felt even warmer than before, and full again, bodily pleased, good all over. Incredibly good, in fact. Warmth was gathering in his belly, his nerves all lighting up in tingling waves, every physical sensation amplified. Out of nowhere there was a hand on his shoulder, and he breathed in deeply, the warmth of the touch searing through him like a signal flare. 

“Okay?” BJ asked him, unbearably gentle. 

Hawkeye reached up and held his wrist, thrilling at the obviousness of BJ’s pulse, the heat he was putting off like a veritable bonfire.

BJ knelt, too, bringing them face to face. His eyes were wide, his lips slightly parted, pink and flush with blood. Slowly he extracted his hand from Hawkeye’s grasp, and brought it to his face instead. 

Hawkeye leaned into the touch, pressing his cheek into BJ’s palm. 

BJ’s gaze flicked across his face, lingering on his mouth. After a moment he cleared his throat. “You missed a drop.”

There were timbres and resonances in his voice Hawkeye had never noticed before, harmonics and overtones he’d never consciously tuned into. He could practically picture the complementary wave-patterns overlapping in the space between them, the air compressing as sound traveled to him at three hundred meters a second. All that became abruptly unimportant when BJ’s thumb swept across the curve of his lower lip. 

Hawkeye tried to catch his eye, uncertain, but BJ’s full attention was trained on Hawkeye’s mouth.

Slowly BJ shifted his hand up, the pad of his thumb pressing softly but insistently against Hawkeye’s lips. Hawkeye parted them obediently, not quite sure what was happening until BJ pressed his thumb against his tongue and he tasted iron. A single drop of blood, warmed to a palatable temperature by BJ’s ambient heat. 

Hawkeye swallowed, tongue lathing delicately over the pad of BJ’s thumb. He was careful to keep his teeth away from the fragile skin, even as he became aggressively aware of the princeps pollicis artery beating away against his median sulcus. It would be easy to sink a canine into the soft flesh over BJ’s distal phalanx. The blood would come quickly, and clot quickly, too, unless he agitated the wound a little: sucked it, maybe, or just kept running his tongue over it how he was now. He’d only take a little. He wasn’t very hungry, now, anyway. It’d just be a mouthful or two. It wouldn’t hurt BJ. Hawkeye would never hurt him.

The rest of BJ’s hand tightened minutely against his jaw, guiding his chin up as Hawkeye opened his mouth again. BJ shivered and resettled his hand, placing the spit-slick pad of his thumb against Hawkeye’s lower lip. 

Hawkeye looked at him, listened to his pulse pound, watched his eyes dilate, his breathing quicken. 

BJ blinked, and then pressed his thumb against the corner of Hawkeye’s upper lip, dragging it up and away from his teeth. “You have fangs,” he said, his voice low and rough.

Hawkeye bared his teeth. Or smiled. Whichever. 

“Hawk,” BJ said, barely above a whisper, speaking his name like an apology. 

Hawkeye pulled away, sitting down. Whatever bloodlust boldness had briefly possessed him was fading away, and he dropped his gaze, ashamed. 

“Hey,” BJ said, dropping his hand to cup his neck, kneeling over him. “Hey, hey, hey. Where’d you go?” 

“I’m a monster,” Hawkeye informed him, his eyes stinging. “I mean, what—? There’s something wrong with me. There’s always been but this is… This can’t be me. I can’t do this. I can’t keep doing this.” He laughed, disbelieving. “Hell, I’ve robbed a hospital. Twice.”

“No,” BJ said, his left hand hovering all over him, pausing above the turn of his knee, the crook of his shoulder, the angle of his elbow, before finally landing on the exposed skin of his ankle. His thumbnail traced the osseous jut of the lateral malleolus. “You’re sick. Hurt, like lots of people all over. In the war and out of it. And they need blood to live. Just about every boy who comes through here takes north of three pints just to get stable. Plenty take far more. And we don’t call them monsters.” 

“It’s different,” Hawkeye said. “You have to see how it’s different. They’re not drinking it. It’s not cannibalistic! They take a transfusion once, maybe twice, and that’s it. Sure, they need it to live, but it’s a temporary state of affairs.” 

“You don’t know that yours is permanent,” BJ said, apparently resolutely ignoring the cannibalism aspect. “It might not be. Maybe it’ll taper off. Maybe you’ll heal, and not need it anymore, same as the rest.” 

“And if it doesn’t?” Hawkeye asked him. “If I’m like this forever? If I’m a permanent strain on the system? If I’m going to be taking away resources from people who need them for the rest of my life?” 

BJ made a face Hawkeye had previously only seen directed at men who outranked him: a certain disbelief tinged with moral disapproval. “You need the resources. You’re not taking them away from anybody if you need them. Besides, would you say that about a dialysis patient? A cancer patient? A diabetic? Anybody who happens to have a body that needs frequent medical care?” 

“It’s different,” Hawkeye defended. 

“God’s sake. How?” 

“It is, don’t ask me how but it is—” 

“You’re just stubborn, you don’t—” 

“—I mean really different, it’s not like—” 

“—ever let yourself be less than fine, and—” 

“—I’m ill, and need treatment, it’s—” 

“—frankly you could do with letting someone—” 

“—It’s different!” Hawkeye finally cut BJ off, loud. “It’s different because a dialysis patient doesn’t like the process. A cancer patient isn’t thrilled about undergoing chemotherapy. Diabetics don’t have to be restrained from jumping at insulin.” 

BJ looked at him, and then turned to look at the empty collection bottle. 

“Exactly,” Hawkeye said, tired. “Exactly.” 

“No,” BJ said, and then paused. 

Hawkeye watched him, tracked the microexpressions passing over his face as he worked through internal justifications, excuses for Hawkeye’s behavior. BJ had always been far more lenient with him than he deserved. 

“It’s like this,” BJ said, seemingly having come to a set of internally consistent beliefs. “People like to eat. That’s animal fact. We’ve all got built-in reward pathways that incentivize obtaining nutrients. Eating is, by nature, pleasurable. But not everybody likes to eat the same things. If I were a vegetarian, I might be disgusted by a slab of rare steak. Some vegetarians might not understand how anybody could find it appealing at all. They might even find a person eating a steak horrific, or morally unconscionable. But that won’t stop somebody else from enjoying the hell out of that steak. Because it’s something that will keep them from starving, and it tastes good, and on a physical level they need it.” 

“Human blood,” Hawkeye said, staring BJ down, “is not a rare steak.” 

BJ shrugged, and looked away. 

“Why are you enabling this?” Hawkeye asked him. “Why aren’t you scared? Why aren’t you calling somebody in here to put me down? They do the same for dogs, when they get a taste for flesh.” 

BJ flinched. “I wouldn’t do that to you. I could never.” 

“Why?” Hawkeye prodded. “I don’t know if I can go on like this. I don’t want to, I mean. It’s unnatural. You have to see how this is wrong.” 

BJ’s hand tightened around his ankle, before he dropped it and stood. “Don’t do that,” he snapped, backing away. 

“What?” 

“I’m not a pistol for you to point at your own head.” 

Hawkeye recoiled, viscerally horrified, too shocked to speak. 

BJ retrieved the empty collection bottle in silence, turning to leave. At the door he stopped and said, “I’ll take care of you. I will. We’re going to figure out what’s wrong, and we’re going to fix it, and if we can’t fix it then we’ll manage it, and you’ll be okay. You’re going to be okay.” 

Hawkeye let his head rest on the metal shelf at his back, and watched BJ leave the storeroom, into the newly bright day. He was really a very good doctor.

Chapter End Notes

[slaps roof of BJ] this bad boy can fit so much fucking justification of his friend's frightening actions in him

Nobody's Soldier

Chapter Summary

Power plays, medicinal masks, and a literal hand-to-heart.

Chapter Notes

CW for a brief moment of nonconsensual touching.

Edit, 10:22 AM, 6/24/22: I can't help but want to say something, anything, about the disastrous US Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that was released a few minutes ago, and the concomitant overruling of Roe v. Wade. At the same time, there's nothing I could say that would add anything but white noise to the conversation, and this certainly wouldn't be the place to do it, anyway. So, then, this: All my love and care to anybody impacted, and I hope this ridiculous little story, and the community we've all built together around a fifty year old sitcom, can lighten the load of it all, if only for a few minutes. Take care.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The second he saw the colonel, he knew he wouldn’t like him. 

The pronoun referents in that sentence were incredibly unclear, entirely interchangeable, and thus uniquely useful: Hawkeye disliked the colonel from the second he saw him. And the colonel disliked him. And they both knew it.

“You don’t look sick,” the colonel said, eyeing him over thoroughly. His gaze lingered somewhere south of his face, so Hawkeye crossed his arms. “What is this, some sort of scam for a discharge? You too much of a coward to put a bullet in your foot?”

BJ’s eyebrows made a valiant bid for his hairline. Hawkeye’s expression probably wasn’t particularly unreadable, either. It’d been a little over a week since his storeroom incident. He’d managed asceticism since then, riding on the promise of a discharge close at hand, and certainly looked nearly as sick and starving as he felt. 

“Nice to meet you, too,” Hawkeye said, extending a hand. “Doctor Pierce.” 

“Colonel Bailey, M.D.,” the colonel said, gripping his hand hard enough to shift his metacarpals closer together than they really ought to go. At the same time Bailey kept well back, practically leaning away like he was afraid Hawkeye’s general demeanor might be catching. 

“Yeah? You pick up those letters at the thrift shop?” 

“Easy,” BJ said, quickly slotting himself into the role of mediator when Potter didn’t seem overly inclined. 

“And who is that?” Bailey asked Potter, gesturing to BJ like he wasn’t even in the room. 

“Doctor Hunnicutt,” Potter explained. “He witnessed the—” 

“Get out,” Bailey said, not even looking up. “I want the suspect alone.” 

Hawkeye made bewildered eye contact with BJ, and then Potter. “The suspect?” 

“Suspect,” Bailey confirmed. “At best, you’re trying to shirk responsibility, and falsify a discharge. At worst, you’re a communist infiltrator set on damaging the integrity of this man’s army.” 

“Which man’s army? I’d like a word with him,” Hawkeye said. 

Bailey stared him down, drawing himself up. He was only an inch or two shorter than Hawkeye, and was broad and thickly built, with an athletic bearing. He was starkly handsome, his face angular and intent, with heavy, dark brows. He stood with his chest thrown forward, like he was trying to hold a basketball between his shoulder blades. And he was younger than Hawkeye had expected, forty or forty-five, maybe. “Hunnicutt. Leave.” 

BJ glanced at Potter. 

“Best go, son,” Potter said, his tone conciliatory. “I’ll handle things here.”

BJ left, patting Hawkeye on the shoulder as he went. The door closed behind him. He didn’t leave entirely, though; Hawkeye could hear him breathing quietly by the far wall, listening in with Radar.

“Listen here, soldier,” Bailey started. 

Hawkeye bared his teeth in response, caught between a snarl and a smirk.

Bailey stopped, squinting at him. “What’s wrong with your mouth?” 

“Depends on who you ask,” Hawkeye said. “I’ve had complaints about it being filthy, but that never seemed to bother the nurses.” 

Potter lowered his head, leaning his weight on his elbows.

Bailey drew himself up further, practically vibrating with indignation. “You simply cannot speak to your superior in this manner.” 

“You’re right,” Hawkeye said, leaving Bailey to work out the insult on his own. To Potter, he said, “What’s going on here?” 

“What’s going on here,” Potter said, “is the colonel is going to discharge you. You’re unfit to operate, as your hemorrhagic fever might still be contagious should there be some sort of accident in the OR.” He gave Hawkeye a significant look.

“I don’t think so,” Bailey said, looking apoplectic, and somehow, at the same time, incredibly eager. Apparently he’d puzzled out Hawkeye’s joke, and was just the kind of sadist who looked forward to punishing wayward pacifists. “You’re a detriment to the system. A chaos-inducer. I’d bet you’re even against the war.” 

“Against the war?” Hawkeye asked. “I’m against war, capital W. This one just happens to fit into the broader category.” 

“Agitator,” Bailey hissed. “I’ve seen enough of your sort to know exactly what’s happening here. You’re a dissident. You’re positively anti-American.” 

“Negatively,” Hawkeye said. “I’d like to be pro-American, believe me I would, but it doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. I mean, who decided what is and isn’t American? People just went around drawing imaginary lines and we’re all expected to believe things on the outside are un-American, and ones on the inside aren’t? What makes me American, anyway? I’m just a person. I didn’t particularly ask for any labels.” 

“You’re a communist sympathizer, then,” Bailey said, his face going red as his accusation. 

“This is going poorly,” Hawkeye realized belatedly. He looked to Potter for guidance. 

“Colonel,” Potter said. “Doctor Pierce is one of the finest surgeons I’ve had the chance to work with. He’s an excellent doctor, and cares more about other people than maybe anybody I’ve ever seen. And that’s precisely why he can’t continue to operate here. Doing so would put the patients at risk—” 

“Do you know the incident rate of doctor-to-patient needlestick infection?” Bailey asked. 

Hawkeye grit his teeth, weathering the deja-vu of the moment as well as he could manage. Usually he liked it when doctors were competent, when they knew their statistics. He liked it less when competence was weaponized against him. So this is what it felt like to have a conversation with himself. 

“He’s fit to operate,” Bailey was continuing. “He’s on his feet. He doesn’t even look sick. He’s here until his points are up. That’s that.” 

“Now, hang on a minute,” Potter said. “As far as I’m concerned this is a straightforward case.” 

“As far as I’m concerned, this decision is mine and not yours,” Bailey snapped. “If your geriatric brain is too addled to put two and two together to get one communist agitator, that’s your own personal problem. My prerogative is to disincentivize deserters. To sniff out the rats. Like this one.” 

“And if I refuse to operate?” Hawkeye asked. 

Bailey grinned, like he’d love nothing more than for Hawkeye to try. “Then I’ll have you court martialed. I’d like to see you hanged. But I’d settle for jailed.” 

“Right,” Hawkeye said. He tuned in briefly to BJ, on the other side of the wall: his breathing was shallow and overly controlled. He wasn’t scared. Just angry. And then, pulling his attention from the other direction: the squeal of worn brakes. An ambulance. 

“Wounded in the compound,” Radar called over the intercom, half a second after Hawkeye heard it arrive. If Hawkeye was something, he figured Radar might be, too, but he had no idea in which direction. 

“Perfect,” Bailey said, as Hawkeye’s useless heart dropped. “You can decide eminently, Captain Pierce. What’ll it be? The noose? Or selfless service to your country?”

“Selfless,” Hawkeye said, barely restraining an incredulous grin. He gripped the top of the wooden chair in front of him, feeling his knuckles pop with the force of it. “Is that what we’re going to call the other end of that ultimatum?” 

“Is there a problem, Captain?” Bailey asked, dark eyes burning with a twisted combination of rage and amusement. “Would it help if I spelled out the options for you in simpler words? Perhaps your reticence comes from a lack of comprehension.” He turned briefly to a manila folder on the table, flipping to its front page. “It says here you were educated in… Crabapple Cove, Maine. No surprise you’re a bit behind on language proficiency, then; these backwoodsy places turn out more ambitious bumpkins than institutions of higher learning know what to do with. A few of you slip through the cracks every year, I suppose; rarely do you fail your way up to the rank of Captain. Congratulations are in order.” 

The chair let out an ear-splitting crack, and Hawkeye slowly raised his hand, glancing down. He’d squeezed the wood so hard it’d splintered. 

“Pierce,” Potter warned. “Now, Colonel, there’s no call for that sort of talk.” 

Bailey’s hand dropped to his belt. He was grinning. “What’ll it be, Captain?” 

Hawkeye felt himself begin, involuntarily, to drop into a confrontational stance. Not a fighting stance, really, or a defensive one. Instead he went very, very still, coiling slightly, prepared to launch himself over the oak desk, or else stalk Bailey through the camp and out through the wooded countryside. A hunter’s stance.

As soon as the thought hit him he could picture it with perfect clarity. An hours-long endurance hunt, running the colonel ragged as the sun set, biding his time, stalking him silently, keeping him scared and lost until he was ready to strike. He would track him through the pitch black night, making an occasional, obvious noise to keep the prey off balance. He’d herd it in circles, make it think it was outrunning him, make it think it had a chance of escape, convince it that it was nearly free of him. And when they’d circled back to the place it all began, and the thing realized the utter hopelessness of its situation, realized it’d been playing into his hands the entire time, then, well. It’d be easy.

“Doctor Pierce,” BJ said, sticking his head into the room. He gave Hawkeye a nervous once-over, and then looked back at Bailey. “Colonels. The OR. Margaret—Major Houlihan requested Doctor Pierce, and I think he’d better—” 

“Go,” Potter said, gesturing to Hawkeye. “We’ll meet you in surgery.” 

Hawkeye nodded, feeling nauseated, unable to look Bailey in the eye. What was wrong with him? He’d never hunted so much as a rabbit before. Where’d he come up with an image like that? He was hungry, sure, but not that hungry. Starved but not that starved.

BJ held out a hand to him, and then quickly pulled him out into the compound, and into a whipping, bitterly cold wind. There was a storm brewing. The air was humid and electric, the sky an unsettled shade of nearly green. The light was tinting everything khaki. 

“Doctors, we need you for triage,” Margaret called from the door of the ambulance, her voice nearly snatched away by the wind. 

Hawkeye started over at a half-jog, and then stopped. 

“Come on,” BJ said, a hand on his shoulder. “It’s a rough one.” 

“I can’t,” Hawkeye said, backing away. Thunder roared.

BJ looked between him and the colonel’s office. “You’re going to take the court martial?” 

“I knew you were listening,” Hawkeye said. “No. I don’t care about that. It’s, I can’t.” 

“Worried about the needlestick?” BJ asked, raising his voice to be heard over the gale.

Hawkeye shook his head, trying not to breathe deeply. He took another step back. 

“No? Then what?” BJ followed him as he backed himself up against a tent. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t think,” Hawkeye said, before pausing to swallow as his mouth started to water. “I don’t think I should be around that much blood.” He cut a desperate glance towards BJ, willing him to understand. 

And, because BJ was BJ, he did.

“There in a minute,” he called to Margaret, pushing Hawkeye back towards the medical building. Instead of aiming towards the OR or the colonel’s office, he bundled Hawkeye bodily into the lab. 

“Stay there,” BJ said, and half-jogged to the wall of cabinets above the counter. No need to rifle through to find what he was looking for: they were too well-organized for that. 

He gestured Hawkeye over to the lab table with a tilt of his head. His arms were full. He emptied his haul onto the table one after the other: fresh masks, a menthol jelly, Euthymol toothpaste, and a box of gloves. 

Hawkeye nodded, starting to grin. “Have I ever told you you’re one of the cleverest people I know?” 

“It’s an old trick I stole off the Stanford nurses,” BJ said, spreading a mask flat on the table. He pulled on a pair of gloves and squeezed a thick dollop of Euthymol into the mask’s center. The medicinal scent was offensive and immediate; wintergreen, thyme, eucalyptus, and menthol all at once. He spread the toothpaste across the center of the mask, his gloves picking up the pink dye. He grabbed a second mask and spread the menthol jelly across its face, and then stuck the two masks together, the toothpaste and jelly adhering admirably. 

“That’s going to slide once I tie it on,” Hawkeye said, experimentally holding the mask-sandwich up by one end. 

“I’ll throw a few stitches in,” BJ said, and tossed him the menthol jelly. “Put as much of that as you can stand around your nose.” 

Hawkeye dabbed a thick layer of jelly under his nose, eyes already stinging, while BJ put a few stitches into his makeshift mask. “That’s strong.” 

“Good,” BJ said, and held the mask back out to him. “This’ll be stronger.” 

“You tie it on,” Hawkeye said, affixing the mask over his nose and mouth. It was heavy, and damp, and smelled incredibly strongly of every mucous membrane irritant known to man. “I don’t want to be able to take it off myself.” 

“Sure,” BJ said, breezy despite the obvious hurt in his expression. “One muzzle, coming right up.” 

Hawkeye didn’t laugh. He bowed his head, letting BJ weave a complex series of knots, pulling the mask strings tight enough the bridge of his nose went a little sore. It was difficult to breathe through the damp and double-layered masks, and the smell was caustic enough he hardly wanted to. When BJ patted the back of his neck to indicate he’d finished with his tying, he had the distinct impression of wearing a jellyfish on his face: soggy, gelatinous, many-tentacled, and stinging. 

“It’s perfect,” Hawkeye said, blinking away a few reactive tears. “I feel like I just rubbed a habanero pepper into my eyes.” 

“Can you breathe?” BJ asked, running his fingers across the edges of Hawkeye’s mask, repositioning the fabric across the bridge of his nose. His gaze was sharp, his concern obvious. 

“What, are you worried I’m going to die again?” Hawkeye asked. BJ frowned, so he added, “I’m okay. It’s not pleasant, but it’ll get me through.”

“If it gets bad, tap out,” BJ said seriously, dropping his hands. His eyes stayed locked on Hawkeye’s. “I’ll cover for you.” 

“Thanks,” Hawkeye said, running his hands down his scrubs. “Listen. Uh…” 

“What?” BJ asked, still very much in his personal space. His eyes were very blue. 

“If it gets bad,” Hawkeye said. “If something happens, and I don’t seem myself.” 

BJ inclined his head briefly. 

“You do whatever you need to to protect the patients,” Hawkeye said, looking away, finding it unbearable to look BJ in the eye and admit to that of which he’d never been guilty before: a potential for unprovoked physical violence. 

“It won’t come to that,” BJ reassured him. His voice was steady as his hands in the OR. “I know you, Hawkeye. You’re a lot of things. But a danger to your patients isn’t one of them. Besides, we leave the malpractice to Frank.” 

Outside the wind rose, and the ambulance’s engine started up. Farther out, the first and worst patients were being wheeled into the OR. Colonel Bailey was scrubbing in, Frank at the sink beside him, practically biting at his silver eagle. Margaret was frantically whispering to Colonel Potter; he caught his own name, and he shook his head, refocusing on BJ. 

“In?” he asked, tilting his head in the direction of the OR. 

“In,” BJ confirmed, giving his shoulders a quick squeeze. “And on.” 

///

Hawkeye blinked hard. He was soaked head to toe in sweat. Poor Nurse Abel had gone through three sponges just wiping his forehead, and he thought he could feel the soles of his shoes flooding as he shifted his weight, like he’d stepped in a puddle. His vision was fuzzy. His hands were running largely on autopilot, his sense of self fading in and out under the constant and horrifying visual barrage of gore turned gourmet.

Outside the storm had broken, and rain was hammering hard against the windows. The damp was creeping in steadily, the distant sound of thunder keeping them all on edge. 

“Clamp,” he said, flicking his wrist to work out a cramp. He’d lost count of the hours he’d worked, the number of bodies that had passed in front of him. He used to think of surgery, back in his civilian life, as an intensely personal endeavor. It was an incredible responsibility, and a deeply intimate one: to allow another person to cut you open, to touch the parts of you that were never designed to see the hard shine of a fluorescent lamp, and to put you back together again, better than you’d been? It was unbearably human—hand to heart, literalized. 

He’d tried not to lose that awe, that sense of duty, the love for people that had driven him to want to fix them, to keep them going as long as possible, but now something in him had metamorphosed, or perhaps metastasized. Somehow the part of him that fell in love with everyone and everything, that loved, despite all sorts of misfortune, the simple, wonderful fact of life, had gone too far. He wanted to heal the people passing under his scalpel, yes, and he wanted to know them, and talk to them, and carry them with him the way he carried everyone with him; but he also wanted to incorporate them, to have them, to—to claim them, somehow. He couldn’t understand what was happening in his brain, couldn’t assign words to it. All he knew was that his appetites were colliding, their unique shapes and vectors warping horribly, combining the way he yearned for the rich, salted yolk of a fried egg with the way he felt looking at a set of broad shoulders, the need to help, to cure, to fix, all blurred with a larger, simpler, baser and all-encompassing need. It seemed the only thing he knew for certain anymore was the fact that he wanted.

He tasted ammonia, and frowned, before he realized he’d been biting the inside of his cheek. A canine had driven deep into his flesh, and he carefully flexed his jaw, unhooking it. By the time he’d prodded the wound with his tongue, it’d healed over. His head hurt, and his jaw ached, and his stomach felt like it was trying to claw its way out of his throat. He didn’t think he could hang on even a minute longer; then again, he’d been saying that to himself every minute for hours. 

“Doctor Pierce,” Colonel Bailey said, appearing at his elbow out of the haze of the OR. 

Hawkeye couldn’t look at him. He didn’t know what would happen if he did. He could hear the man’s pulse, could smell his aftershave even through his makeshift menthol mask. The colonel hovered over his shoulder, looking down into the body cavity he was currently wrist-deep in. The feeling of hot blood on his hands, the organic, living slide of flesh against his gloves, was unbearably acute. He executed a lightning-fast resection, whipping through the procedure quicker and cleaner than he’d ever managed before. Something was happening to him. His hunger was driving him to new levels of performance, higher modes of awareness, pushing him steadily into an ability verging on the inhuman.

“My God,” Bailey said, leaning in to watch. “Good boy.” 

Hawkeye risked a glance at his face, eyes narrowing. He took in the deep, chestnut color of the man’s irises, his long, dark eyelashes, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, the sharp turn of his nose. Bailey had a powerful looking body, the sort that spoke to a true, non-superficial kind of strength; the thickness of his waist was deceptive, hiding well-developed musculature under an appealing layer of softness. It’d be nice to bite him there, to sink his teeth into the plush swell of a love handle. Would the wound bleed much? Did it matter?

“Last one,” Radar called, leading a stretcher over to Potter’s table. Hawkeye looked back down at his work, trying not to let relief drag his guard down. He felt more than half-feral.

“See what you can do with the right motivation?” Bailey asked, his voice pitched low, for Hawkeye’s ears only. “All you needed was a little straight talk to put you back in your place. Somebody to discipline you. I know your sort. You act out. Run wild. But really what you’re looking for is somebody who will break you in and make you behave. I’m a master at training men like you. One conversation and look at yourself.” 

Hawkeye looked around, confused, trying to catch BJ’s eye. He didn’t understand what was happening, couldn’t trace the dynamics of the conversation under the bloodlust and regular lust and confused, blurring vision and the ringing in his ears and the feeling of sweat siding down his spine. 

Bailey leaned impossibly closer, his face inches from Hawkeye’s. “You were such a brat. Disrespectful. Rude. Completely impudent. But I can control you. You’re mine, aren’t you?” 

Hawkeye flicked his gaze up to Bailey, their eyes meeting with a brief, electric jolt. Thunder rolled outside. He growled, low and warning, like a vexed panther, and then looked back to the body under his hands to find he’d already begun closing. His stitches were perfect. The kid probably wouldn’t even scar.

“Good boy,” Bailey whispered as he tied off the last stitch. His breath was hot against Hawkeye’s neck, his hand even hotter where it had come to rest against his upper thigh. The back of his knuckles grazed his crotch deliberately. “My perfect little soldier.” 

Hawkeye snapped, fisting his hand in the front of Bailey’s scrubs, lifting him half a foot off the floor. 

The OR went silent, all eyes trained on the pair of them. 

Bailey grabbed desperately at his wrist, kicking his feet, making frightened prey noises. Weak. Pathetic. 

“I’m nobody’s soldier,” Hawkeye snarled, at the absolute limit of his restraint, utterly starving and angry and hurt and confused, holding hard against the urge to rip out the colonel’s throat. 

“Son,” Potter said, a white-coated blur in the background of his focus. “Easy.” 

“Hawk,” BJ said, from somewhere behind him. 

He breathed hard, catching the scent of blood from behind his mask. He also caught the scent of Bailey’s fear, acrid and addictive. 

His salivary glands kicked into production, his stomach panging. He was starving.

Bailey kicked uselessly, swinging from his grasp. His blood pressure was high, his pulse rapid, his eyes dilated in fear. He smelled, inexplicably, of arousal. 

Hawkeye set him down slowly, uncurling his fist from the colonel’s lapel. He smoothed the fabric carefully, and then stepped back. He looked to the OR at large, dizzy, his vision swimming. “Apologies, everyone,” he said, genuine. “I don’t know what possessed me.” 

Bailey took a careful set of steps outside of his reach.

Hawkeye flexed his hand, and rotated his wrist, and thought of the warped metal of a body cooler two weeks past, and wondered what else he’d missed.

“Is everybody alright now?” Potter asked. “Silk.” 

“Colonel, he just assaulted an officer!” Frank cried, finding his voice. “A direct attack on a man of a superior rank!” 

Klinger retrieved the kid he’d been working on. He gave Hawkeye a subtle nod of approval, and patted his bicep as he passed. 

Without a person opened directly beneath him, the intensity of his need edged off the barest amount. 

“I didn’t see anything,” BJ said quietly. What Hawkeye did to earn his loyalty he’d never really understood. He thought it had something to do with Rudyard Kipling, but it just as well could have been any one of a thousand other little joint rebellions.

“And here’s Tweedle-Dee riding in on his high horse,” Frank said, dropping a clamp to the floor with a clatter. “Always ready to save his damsel in distress.” 

“You’ve combined at least three separate character archetypes, there, Frank,” BJ said. “That’s a hat trick.” 

“I’ll show you a hat trick!” 

“Boys, please,” Potter said. “Let cooler heads prevail. Nobody’s hurt. I figure the worst injuries in here are still in the people on your tables. Let’s keep it that way.” 

Bailey was looking at Hawkeye. He’d regained his perfect posture, his veneer of composure nearly complete. But something in his eyes remained just as predatory as Hawkeye felt. 

“I’ll have you locked up for that,” Bailey said, obviously thrilled. “I’ll have you in the stockade. And from there I’ll have you tried for treason. This time tomorrow I’ll have half the bureaucrats in the theater down here to stand on your throat. You’re going home, alright, and you’re doing it in cuffs.”

But Hawkeye had his number, now. He rolled his eyes, raising his hands, acutely aware of the warmth of the lingering blood. “Okay. Sure. You go ahead and try. I figure just the image of me getting dragged off somewhere, gagged and bound, is enough to sustain you for weeks. If you’d like to wax equally perverted about how vulnerable I look asleep, I’ll be trying to make it with Morpheus.”

“Pierce,” Potter warned. 

“Look at him,” Hawkeye said, inhaling a lungful of blood, mint, and arousal. “He has no intention of following through on a single threat. He’s going to leave here tomorrow happy as a clam. Really I’ve done him a favor.” 

Bailey’s face darkened, expression going stormy even as he visibly tried to restrain a giddy, deranged grin that told Hawkeye instantly he was right. What wouldn’t drive some people to grab at power.

“We’ll see about that,” Bailey said, the emptiest threat Hawkeye had ever heard. 

“Goodnight,” Hawkeye said, pulling off his gloves. “I’m scrubbing out, unless anybody needs, wants, or desires me eminently.” 

“Pervert,” Frank said. 

“And baby makes three,” Hawkeye said, batting his eyelashes at Bailey. 

“Pierce, hit the sack,” Potter said. “Clamp. I’ll deal with you in the morning.” 

“Sir, yes, sir!” Hawkeye said, waving a terribly corrupted imitation of a salute. He turned and walked out of the OR and into the scrub room, nodding at BJ as he passed. “See you at home, dear.” 

“Right behind you, honey,” BJ said, still visibly a ways from closing. He had a half hour left, at least. Quieter, he said, “Sleep tight. Don’t let the colonels bite.”

Chapter End Notes

[audrey II voice] there must be SOMEONE you can 86, real quiet-like, and get me some lunch...

Next up: BJ clerks his very own little shop of horror.

The Most Dangerous Game

Chapter Summary

BJ takes a page out of Seymour Krelborn's book, Hawkeye takes a page out of Audrey II's, and somebody drops a bowling ball off of a cliff. They drop a feather, too, but these things have a way of falling at different rates, underlying principles be damned.

Chapter Notes

CW in the end notes.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“So,” BJ said, finding him in the Swamp, where he’d been trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep. 

“I prefer knitting,” Hawkeye said into his pillow. 

“Very good,” BJ said, even though it wasn’t, really. 

The silence stretched long. Hawkeye kept his eyes closed, listening to BJ settle in for the night. The jingle of dog tags. A shirt coming off, and then on. The rustle of shifted papers. His bravado had worn off some since he’d left the OR, and he’d settled into a shaky sort of discomfort, angry at himself for the way he’d responded to Bailey, angrier at what Bailey had tried, and, absurdly, somewhat ashamed. For what, he didn’t know. But there it was: guilt all the same.

“D’you want to talk about it?” BJ asked. 

Hawkeye made an ambivalent noise, muffled by his pillow. 

“Okay,” BJ said. The silence stretched out again, punctuated by the soft creak of weight settling on a cot. Eventually BJ asked, “Have you eaten?” 

Hawkeye opened his eyes. Between his pillow and the blanket pulled up to his chin he only saw a narrow slice of the tent. The light was low, cast from a single lamp over BJ’s cot. BJ was watching him carefully, his hands laxly folded in the space between his open thighs. 

“Have I…?” 

“Eaten,” BJ repeated. “Have you?” 

Hawkeye closed his eyes again. He wanted to sleep. His head hurt. Lately he was finding it increasingly difficult to stave off despair. Every once in a while, he figured he’d earned a break. The dark could take him for the night. He was sick of fighting it.

“You’ll feel better on a full stomach,” BJ said, intuiting his mood. 

“I can’t,” Hawkeye said. The dark behind his eyelids pulsed in green-purple fractal patterns. He was light-headed and increasingly nauseated. 

“You can’t eat? Physically?” 

“Morally,” Hawkeye said. He shifted, trapping his hands between his thighs, searching for an utterly absent body heat. 

“We’ve been through this,” BJ said, exasperated. 

“Mm,” Hawkeye said, noncommittal. BJ had been through it. BJ would justify his behavior to the ends of the Earth and back. Hawkeye was still largely unconvinced. 

“It’s been almost a week,” BJ said softly. He left the again unsaid, its implication clear enough to the both of them. Like Hawkeye needed the reminder of what he’d done the last time he’d starved for a week. Like he was capable of forgetting. 

“I’m just not feeling very capable of maintenance today,” Hawkeye said. 

“Maintenance?” 

“Maintenance.” He pulled his blankets closer, unable to warm himself. His eyesight was starting to lose its saturation, and he was having a hard time hanging onto thoughts long enough to finish thinking them. Blood loss? Starvation? Was there a meaningful difference for him anymore? 

“I take it you’re not getting discharged anytime soon.” 

Hawkeye shook his head, pillow soft against his cheek. He listened absently to the quiet skritch-skritch-skritch of some sort of beetle nesting in the Swamp’s support beams. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?” BJ asked. His cot creaked again, and then Hawkeye’s cot dipped slightly. He opened his eyes to find BJ kneeling beside him, his elbow on the edge of his bed. “Bailey really upset you in there.”

Hawkeye shrugged, tired. He tried a couple sentences in his head— he wanted to play ball before we agreed on the rules; I’m an eligible young doctor, figures I’d run into a scrub-chaser at some point; He’s a libertine who certainly took liberties with me —but discarded them all one after the other. He settled on: “He made a pass at me.” 

“He what?” BJ went tense, his posture straightening, his shoulders squaring. Whatever he’d been expecting, it obviously wasn’t that. 

“Made a pass at me,” Hawkeye explained patiently. “Or, well,” he revised, “maybe pass is the wrong word.”

BJ sat back, and then leaned forward again, his hand hovering over Hawkeye’s shoulder, like he wasn’t sure he’d welcome the touch. “And what’s the right word?” 

“Ugh,” Hawkeye said, hating the moment viscerally, embarrassed and angry at his own embarrassment. “Does it matter? He got a little fresh with me. If I were Margaret I would’ve slapped him. I don’t think it matters.”

“Fresh?” BJ was openly baffled. 

“He groped me,” Hawkeye clarified, shoving all sorts of ironic devil-may-care into his voice to keep it from shaking. Stupid. What did he have to be embarrassed about? Why did he feel guilty? “He has a thing for power games. It didn’t matter to him that I didn’t want to play.”

“Oh,” BJ said. He dropped his hand to the cot. “God. I—I’m sorry. Are you alright?” 

“Fine,” Hawkeye said.

“I can’t believe he…” BJ shook his head. He breathed out once, sharp. His expression was quickly becoming apoplectic. “The son of a bitch. The next time I see him, I swear to God, I’ll level him.” 

“Easy,” Hawkeye said. “I don’t want to make a big deal about it.” 

“It is a big deal. He—he took liberties.” BJ shook his head again. “If it had been somebody else. If he’d done that to Peg…” 

Hawkeye raised an eyebrow. Did BJ always think of Hawkeye and his wife in the same breath? “Much as I appreciate you raring to defend my honor, I’m okay.”

BJ didn’t look convinced. “D’you want to tell Potter?” 

“No,” Hawkeye said. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it. It’s… I don’t want people to know. Alright?”

“Sure,” BJ said, still visibly angry. “Of course. I know.” 

Hawkeye held out a hand. 

BJ took it, and then winced. “You’re freezing.” 

“I know.” 

“I think you should eat.” 

Hawkeye growled in frustration, startling himself when the sound came out more animalistic than he’d expected. “I told you I can’t.” 

BJ passed a hand across his mouth. “I can’t just sit here and watch you starve.” 

Hawkeye shrugged. He was feeling fuzzier by the second. His head hurt. He’d never felt so cold. 

“Let me get you something.” 

“I don’t want it,” Hawkeye said. He blinked, vision starting to strobe. 

“You will once I hand it to you.” 

“I said I don’t want it,” Hawkeye said slowly. His stomach growled piteously. “I don’t.” 

“You look terrible,” BJ said. “As a doctor—as your friend—I have a duty of care.” 

“No,” Hawkeye said, closing his eyes. “Can’t. They need it more.”

“Stubborn,” BJ said. “Look. If it’s a resource problem. If it’s a question of availability. Then…” 

A rustle as BJ retrieved something from underneath his cot. The click of a shaving case, and then a sharp hiss of breath. The heady copper scent of blood filled the air. 

Hawkeye’s eyes snapped open. His vision sharpened, zoning in on BJ’s hands: he was holding a straight razor. Its edge glinted red. He’d nicked his own wrist shallowly, and blood was seeping out of the wound in a thick, crimson rivulet.

“Christ,” Hawkeye said, appalled, his mouth watering desperately.

“If it’s a supply problem,” BJ said, just shy of smug, “then you can’t object to this. It doesn’t come from the storeroom. It’s not coming out of a collection bottle. It’s just me.”

“BJ,” Hawkeye said, and then stopped talking, overwhelmed by the need to launch himself off his cot and tackle BJ to the ground. 

“Come here,” BJ said, moving closer to him. He turned his wrist, trying to redirect an errant drop of blood rolling down his arm. 

Hawkeye raised himself onto an elbow almost against his will. His body was moving without his conscious input, drawn too powerfully to the scent of fresh blood to control. 

A drop of BJ’s blood slipped off the end of his forearm, landing on the back of Hawkeye’s hand. It glistened there, bright and vivid against his corpse-pale skin. He inhaled, his jaw aching. 

“Go ahead,” BJ said. 

Hawkeye held his hand up, watching the drop roll towards his knuckles. 

“It’s okay,” BJ said. 

“It isn’t,” Hawkeye said. “This is monstrous.” 

“It isn’t,” BJ said. “It’s you.” He brought Hawkeye’s hand up to his mouth, tilting it forward so the drop of blood flowed onto his lips. “And this is me.”

Hawkeye, powerless to stop himself, swept his tongue across his lips. The taste of fresh blood was unspeakably enticing, incredibly savory, and he moaned, overcome.

“Okay?” BJ asked, like he wasn’t aware his blood was ambrosial. 

Hawkeye reached out and grasped BJ’s hand, his control eroding, so much soft sift in an hourglass. He tilted his head, catching and holding BJ’s gaze, and dragged his tongue up BJ’s forearm. His skin tasted of salt and soap under the metallic tang of his blood. When Hawkeye reached the wound, he paused, and then kissed it delicately, at a loss for how else to express his gratitude, what to do with the mass of emotion and desire building every second in his chest.

“Hawk,” BJ breathed, his face going pink. 

Hawkeye hummed against his skin, nosing at his wrist. He licked his lips, chasing the taste of copper, and then sealed his mouth around the cut, sucking lightly. He lathed his tongue across the wound, turning his head to get a deeper angle, his lower lip dragging across the inside of BJ’s wrist. Hot, fresh blood came as a revelation. The cold stuff, from sterile, unreactive collection bottles, was a cheap imitation of this: rich, sweet, and perfectly warmed, flowing into his mouth, the pace deliciously slow, setting him shivering with the anticipation of more. And he wanted more.

BJ took a shaky breath, his composure breaking. He cupped Hawkeye’s cheek with the hand he wasn’t bleeding from, running his thumb across the thin skin under his eye.

Hawkeye tightened his grip on BJ’s forearm incrementally, worrying the skin around the cut with the edge of a canine. Not hard enough to hurt. He’d never hurt BJ. Just a little agitation to keep the blood flowing. Gentle pressure. A love bite. That was all. 

“There you go. You’re okay,” BJ said, stroking his face. “I’ve got you.”

Hawkeye swallowed, barely coming up for air before he caught BJ’s wrist a second time, his appetite whetted. He could feel himself warming and relaxing as he drank, his hands less icy, his headache fading. He felt less dead already. 

“I’m here,” BJ said, his palm hot against Hawkeye’s face. “I’ll take care of you.” 

Hawkeye pulled back, dropping his head. BJ tried to raise his wrist back to his mouth, encouraging him to keep eating, and Hawkeye shook his head, holding BJ’s arm fast. “Enough.” 

“You can take as much as you want,” BJ said, once again trying to guide his wrist back to Hawkeye’s lips. “I’ve got you. I can handle more than, what, ten milliliters? That can’t have been enough.” 

“If I take any more,” Hawkeye said, articulating carefully around his oversharp canines, “I won’t be able to stop.” 

“That so?”

“Yes,” Hawkeye replied, catching his eye, trying to communicate exactly how serious he was with a hard, flat look. With a monumental personal effort he released BJ’s arm, and laid back on his cot, ignoring the parts of himself screaming to keep taking, to drink his fill, to not let his prey escape. Prey—what the hell was wrong with him?

“Are you sure?” BJ asked, not moving away, not doing anything about the open wound on his wrist. 

“Go wash that out,” Hawkeye said, so he didn’t do something insane like sink his teeth into BJ’s shoulder. “That was the least sanitary way we could’ve possibly done that. You’re basically asking for an infection.” 

“Don’t worry,” BJ said, standing up, trailing his hand down and then off Hawkeye’s face. “It just so happens I’m a doctor.” 

“Happy coincidence,” Hawkeye said, clenching his jaw against a new and sharper hunger. A more confusing one, too; it was resonating with the closeness of BJ, the remembered warmth of his hand on Hawkeye’s face, the promise of being taken care of, and the iron taste of blood still lingering in his mouth. 

“I'll throw on a bandage. You try and sleep,” BJ said, moving towards the door. “In the morning things will be better.” 

Hawkeye rolled over, burrowing deeper into his bed, caught between the mild pleasure of having taken in at least a few milliliters of palatable blood, and the raging desire for more. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to sleep. He had all sorts of confused signals sluicing through his body, frustrated hunger warping into something like stymied arousal, a new, oddly physical desire to run or move overlaying a desire to conserve energy, the meager warmth in his stomach making his limbs colder by comparison. 

He twitched, a hypnic jerk shaking his cot, before he faded back down into semi-wakefulness. He thought he could hear Bailey talking on the phone, imagined he could hear the tacky slide of a bandage’s adhesive being smoothed down against a patch of skin, dreamed he could hear the pulse of every last person in camp: tens of warm bodies practically within arms’ reach. 

Hawkeye’s dreams had become odd since his undeath, their familiar qualities warped, the light of them shattered away through layered refracting prisms. He’d always dreamt with a hyperimmediacy of sound, the jukebox of his subconscious spinning 45s of bygone hits from his adolescence, Frank Sinatra crooning— don’t laugh at my jokes too much, people will say we’re in love —and a heady focus on his hands. Those always felt real as waking.  

This time around he dreamed his hands were planted in cold dirt, the soil musty and damp, muddy like a storm had just rolled through, caking under his nails. His feet were bare. He was crouched low in the shadows of a forest, the moon high above, lost in the vaulted dark of the trees. 

He rocked back on his haunches, listening. His hearing was exquisitely sensitive. He could get everything for miles, the smallest shiftings of branches, an owl sweeping through the humid night, a water deer shaking off a fly. Above it all something larger was moving through the dense greenery on the forest floor, clumsy and loud, not adapted to move in silence through the foliage. Not like him. 

His shoulders rolled, his weight shifting with perfect fluid ease to raise him onto all fours. He moved forward like that, stalking the sound of footsteps, until his hand pressed a brittle stick into the mud and it snapped under his weight. 

The footsteps paused. 

He paused, too, going predator-tense, coiling power into his knees and ankles, ready to leap forward. When the creature took off, sprinting through the forest, he was only a moment behind, eating up the terrain in immense four-legged bounds, throwing himself forward, keeping low to the ground, invisible in the night. 

The creature was getting tired, breathing hard and sweating. He could smell the acrid tang of fear, could nearly taste the epinephrine leaking out of its pores, could sense the electric impulses triggering the fast-twitch muscle fibers in its legs as it continued its pointless running. It clipped a tree with its shoulder, sending it stumbling sideways into another tree. He had it now. 

With a final propulsive shove off the forest floor he connected with the creature, wrapping himself around it and dragging it down into a bed of peat and moss. 

It writhed under him, making distressed noises, its flesh warm and pliable. It wrestled a limb free and he snarled, pinning it harder. He could feel its heart beating, could track the flow of blood through each of its veins and arteries and capillaries, full and flush. He could sense a minor bottleneck deep in its chest, an arterial narrowing that would be a problem a few decades down the line, and the thought resonated with him for some reason, flashed with an inexplicable urgency, trying to remind him of something, but he ignored the feeling and caught the creature by the jaw, twisting it up to bare its neck. 

It whimpered, struggling harder, its hips rolling against his weight, trying to displace him. Uselessly, of course. He was stronger. 

He laid himself out over it bodily, licking along its neck, tasting salt, stubble rasping against his tongue. The carotid artery thrummed against his lips, and he held his face there, breathing deeply, almost able to taste the iron just under its skin. 

The creature said something, bucking up, trying to push him off, pressing them together chest to chest, thigh to thigh, scrabbling desperately at the ground. 

He nosed at its neck, feeling its heart pulsing against his own empty chest, the sound-pressure filling him with life-by-proxy. He ghosted his lips over the hollow at the base of its throat, a parody of a kiss, before he sank his teeth delicately into its neck. Not into the carotid, not directly, the blood would be too pressurized and he’d waste more than he got. Instead he nicked a spot a little over the clavicle, and sealed his mouth around the wound. 

The blood flowed into his mouth quickly, its texture thick and velvet-soft, coating his teeth and tongue. It was cloying and raw-meat sweet. He swallowed and made a quiet noise of pleasure. He was starving. He’d been starving for so long. And all the time this was all he’d needed. 

He drew more deeply, digging his teeth in, starting a gentle side-to-side shake of his head, the same sort of instinctual motion he’d seen mountain lions use to tear out the throats of deer. The blood came harder and faster, and the creature under him made a wet, pained sound, rolling against him again. He readjusted his grip on its jaw, his hand big enough to wrap from temporomandibular joint to the tender place underneath its chin. 

Every mouthful was better than the last, the blood hot and new, flowing into him, not quenching his hunger but stoking it, until he was powerless to stop, nothing left of him anymore except the need to keep eating, no intellect, no conscience, no philosophy, just a machine of pure appetite. 

He was only partially aware he was vocalizing, letting out breathy moans of relief in between each rich swallow of blood. The flow was slowing, though, not spilling as freely as it had, and the creature was going still. 

He dug his teeth in harder, one hand still clamped around the thing’s jaw, the other forearm planted firmly in the dirt, keeping himself upright. He shifted his weight forward, adding pressure to the creature’s chest, and the blood flow increased, and then ebbed. He growled in annoyance, catching the fibrous gristle of a tendon with a canine tooth. When he thrust his weight down again, he got another fresh pulse of blood, so he set up a slow, easy rhythm, dragging his body against the thing bleeding out below him. 

The creature took a last, weak swing at him which he caught easily, not even bothering to raise his head. 

He stayed like that for some indeterminate length of time, lost to the simple animal pleasure of taking another creature’s vitality into his mouth, swallowing it, letting it fill him and warm him, rutting against a cooling body, taking until it had nothing left to give. 

When the blood ran out, he flexed his jaw, pulling his teeth from the body, and let himself fall to the forest floor. The ground was soft, the peat cradling his head, the night dark and cool and quiet. Eyes closed, he skated a hand down his chest, settling it on the shallow curve of his stomach. For the first time in months he wasn’t burning with hunger. He was full up to the edge of discomfort, almost sensuously glutted, flushed and hot and heavy, deliciously overindulged, a liquid warmth curling through him, and when he opened his eyes again he was in his cot, achingly aroused.

“Where were you?” BJ was asking, paused in the doorway of the Swamp. “You weren’t in when I came to bed. Frank beat us both to the showers.” 

Hawkeye stretched languorously, feeling the perfect fluid twist of his glenohumeral joints, the ease with which his hips arched off the bed, the comfortable, satisfied warmth of a full stomach. He sat up, letting his blankets pool in his lap.

“What happened?” BJ asked, taking a step closer. “You’ve got some mud—” he gestured to his own chin. 

Hawkeye swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. The motion left a rusty streak across his skin. 

“Got it,” BJ said. “How are you feeling?” 

Hawkeye flexed his hands. He curled his toes and touched his stomach. “I feel,” he said, his voice rough and low, shockingly dark, “good.” 

BJ flushed, his eyes dropping to Hawkeye’s mouth as he licked his lips. “That’s good. I mean, you’re certainly looking… you’re looking…” 

Hawkeye tilted his head, considering him, amused by how flustered he seemed. “Come here,” he decided. His voice sounded strange, richer, deeper, full of layered seduction and the suggestion to obey. He hadn’t done that intentionally. Had he? 

He watched BJ move closer, drawn in, hypnotized. There was something wrong with that. He didn’t know what, but he made an effort to stop it.

BJ paused at the foot of his cot. His eyes were wide, his cheeks pink. “Sleep well?” 

“I had an incredible dream,” Hawkeye said, grinning up at him even as the details of the dream slipped away. Whatever it was, it had left him overheated, exquisitely sensitive to the drag of his sheets across his body. Apparently he’d decided to sleep naked. He didn’t remember choosing to do so, but he must have. 

He flexed an ankle, rolling it to the end of his range of motion. BJ was, as always, gorgeous. Broad and narrow in turn, his legs long and lean, about a mile of ankle sticking out from the bottom of his khakis. Hawkeye stretched again, and leaned back on his elbows.

BJ nodded, raising a hand and then dropping it, an uncertain, directionless movement. He didn’t seem to know where to direct his gaze, how to parse the building tension in the air.

Hawkeye blinked slowly, watching him through heavy-lidded eyes. He could hear BJ’s pulse, steadily ticking up in pace. He wasn’t tired, exactly, but he wasn’t feeling very awake, either. He was sinking into the sort of lazy, sated warmth he associated with the hours after a heavy meal, or else big cat documentaries; an apex predator doziness. He wanted to fall back asleep. He wanted to sink his teeth into somebody. He wanted a slow, heated fuck, wanted the weight of another body pressing down on him, surrounding him, filling up his senses from every angle.

“You look really,” BJ said, taking a slow breath in, “really good, Hawk.” 

“Show me,” Hawkeye said, his voice still rough, still low, but otherwise normal, no suggestion behind it other than the literal. 

BJ licked his lips again.

Hawkeye let his legs fall open, the flat of one thigh coming to rest against the cot. He kept his eyes on BJ, watching as his gaze flicked from Hawkeye’s lips to the obvious tent in his blankets, and then back to somewhere around the vicinity of his shoulders. 

BJ took a hesitant step forward, and then another, more confident one. He was standing directly above Hawkeye, his thighs at the level of Hawkeye’s face. His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides, his expression obviously conflicted. 

Hawkeye tilted his head, ghosting a hand over his own chest. “You’re upset.” 

“No,” BJ said, sounding overwrought. “No. Not upset.” 

Hawkeye watched him quietly. He could be patient. The dark, sensuously heady warmth gathering in his lower belly wasn’t going anywhere fast. He took the time to really look BJ over, appreciating anew the strength of his build, his tanned arms, the musculature of his thighs.

Abruptly BJ grasped the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, tossing it somewhere behind him. 

Hawkeye smiled, the heat in his gut flaring. He trailed his hand down his chest, down the subtle curve of his stomach, letting it rest on the crease of his thigh, just above the edge of the sheets.

They were playing a delicate game. Any one move could send the pieces tumbling to the floor. 

“You look so good,” BJ said again, hushed. “You don’t even look real.”

“Show me,” Hawkeye said again. He held BJ’s gaze, unblinking. “And I’ll show you.” 

BJ leaned in by millimeters, like the movement was incidental, like if he moved slowly enough it might not be him that was doing this, like it might be attributable to the minute gravitational force that existed between any two masses: he wasn’t doing anything intentionally, really, all he was doing was giving up on fighting the inevitable. Giving into the unbiased pull of basic physics.

Hawkeye didn’t move. He’d waited this long. He could wait however long BJ needed. 

BJ touched his bare shoulder. It was a familiar gesture, one he’d been afforded plenty of times before: a clap on the deltoid to signal an operation well done, a touch to express his subtle concern, a playful push to take the sting out of a joke. But now the touch burned with building heat, incandescent. 

Hawkeye let his eyes flutter closed, tilting his head to press his cheek against the back of BJ’s hand. 

BJ made a quiet, almost hurt noise, and then groaned and fell into him, thunking their foreheads together, their teeth clicking with the force of a kiss a year in the making. He held Hawkeye’s face in his hands, kneeling over him in the bed, chest bare. 

Hawkeye turned his head, deepening the kiss, and reached up to grab a handful of BJ’s chest, kneading at the flesh, letting his other hand settle against his ribs. His neck was starting to hurt, so he laid back, pulling BJ over to straddle his waist. 

BJ broke the kiss to adjust his position, and paused there, his hands on either side of Hawkeye’s head, carefully not touching anywhere except the khaki-covered insides of his thighs against Hawkeye’s bare waist. The fabric was rough, and chafed a little. “God,” he said, staring down at Hawkeye, his expression terribly tender. His lips were kiss-pink and slick, a high blush on his cheeks. Slowly he moved to touch Hawkeye’s hair, letting the strands fall through his fingers. “Silver beau.” 

“You can touch me,” Hawkeye said, and dropped his hands to BJ’s thighs, rubbing his thumbs across the material of his pants.

“Your eyes,” BJ said, stroking his cheek with his knuckles. “You’re so expressive.” 

Hawkeye cupped BJ’s neck, and trailed his hand down his chest, stopping his touch over BJ’s stomach, pressing lightly, watching the soft flesh slightly indent. He wanted BJ to cover him bodily, wanted his full weight, warm and heavy, to press him into his cot. 

Instead, BJ pressed a chaste kiss to his lips, and then to his temple.

“Come here,” Hawkeye said, getting impatient, pulling him down, settling them chest to chest, BJ fitting into the vee of his open legs.

“You’re warm,” BJ said, surprised. 

“Mmhmm,” Hawkeye agreed, not really paying attention. He bucked his hips lightly, drawing a quiet gasp out of BJ. This close he could catch the scent of his skin: army soap, a sort of ambiguously clean, alkaline scent from last night’s shower, the mammalian, almost floral warmth of arousal, and under it all something very fundamentally BJ—beachy, salt-blown and sunny. Hawkeye reached down and tugged lightly on his waistband, asking tacit permission. 

BJ raised up on one elbow, undoing the button on his fly, and then paused. “God,” BJ said, looking down at him. He dropped his hand from his waistband. He closed his eyes and leaned forward again, pressing their foreheads together. “God. Is this really happening? What am I doing? This isn’t… I’m not…” 

Hawkeye settled his hands on the back of BJ’s neck. He pressed in lightly with his palms, gentle enough for BJ to mistake the gesture for a firm caress, and felt for the powerful rush of blood being ferried through his carotid arteries. He closed his eyes, swallowing against triggered submaxillary glands. 

They stayed that way, foreheads pressed together, breathing together, sharing humid, heated air, lips hardly a centimeter apart. 

“Please,” BJ whispered finally, the word barely more than a brush of breath across Hawkeye’s cheek. “I don’t know what I’m doing. This isn’t… but I want to take care of you. Show me how I can…” 

“What?” Hawkeye whispered back, stroking the pulse point under his jaw. BJ hadn’t shaved yet; his stubble was coarse against the pad of his thumb. “Show you what?”

BJ shook his head, the tip of his nose bumping slightly into Hawkeye’s. He pressed a lingering kiss to Hawkeye’s lips, one hand coming up to cup the back of his neck. The other hand he trailed, glacially slowly, the touch infuriatingly light, down his body. He mapped out a line of longitude over his side, fingertips ghosting over the slight prominence of his ribs, over the vulnerable soft of the lumbar region, down to the iliac crest. He paused there for a long moment, knuckles pressing lightly into the divot of the bone, before the touch trailed further down. BJ swept his thumb across the thin skin in the crease of his thigh, his hand spanning far enough to get a solid grasp on the back of his leg, before he shifted and moved the flat of his hand up the back of his thigh, fingernails dragging through sparse hair. He stopped the touch there, delicately grasping his knee, his palm hot against the thin skin over his popliteal artery, his thumb brushing across the bony jut of his distal femoral epiphysis. 

Across the side of his knee. 

No need for shop-talk; they weren’t exactly playing doctor.

“Show me,” BJ said, draped over him, eyes shut, face tightened by an earnestness so intense it bordered on pain, “how to make you feel good.” 

Hawkeye took in his expression, his heart panging. For some reason he’d always pictured the scene in reverse: he’d be the one taking care of BJ, asking how to make him feel good, leading the way. He’d wanted to be good to him. Wanted to be good for him. He’d never pictured it this seriously, either. He’d pictured it—and he reluctantly had to admit that he had pictured it—as an extension of everything else they’d ever done together. More than half full of jokes. He’d wanted to make BJ laugh, and then make him gasp, and then laugh all over again. The two of them had always treated laughter as a second language. But nobody’d laughed in minutes. 

Hawkeye shook his head, trying to draw himself slightly out of the haze of his own arousal. He pushed BJ back slightly, a hand on his shoulder, and sat up. 

BJ made a confused noise, his eyebrows raising, like he couldn’t decide between being nervous and being hurt. 

Hawkeye reached out to hold BJ’s face in both hands, smiling when his expression settled, the momentary fear of rejection dissipating. Ridiculous. As if Hawkeye could ever reject him. 

Slowly, deliberately, Hawkeye leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of BJ’s mouth. BJ’s lips twitched, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to smile. Insupportable. 

Hawkeye shifted, pressing another, quicker kiss to the other corner of his mouth. And then to the tip of his nose, and his forehead, and the edge of his jaw, and his chin, and then all over his face, over and over in a random-walk pattern, speeding up, making silly little mwah! sounds, until BJ finally laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, throwing his head back, the sound of his laughter bright, the perfect garnish on a lovely spring morning.

“There you are,” Hawkeye said warmly. 

BJ dove forward, wrapping Hawkeye up in his arms, throwing him to the bed, pinning him and kissing him soundly. 

Hawkeye yelped, and then laughed, and laughed harder when that meant BJ was kissing his teeth. 

And then somebody knocked on the door of the Swamp. 

In half a second flat BJ had thrown himself off Hawkeye’s cot. He was standing, pants buttoned, affecting casualness, by the time the door swung open.

Hawkeye pulled a pillow down onto his lap, and crossed his arms. 

Radar stepped partially into the tent, tactfully absorbed in his clipboard. “You sirs are wanted in the OR, sirs.”

Hawkeye sighed, disappointed but not too upset. Recently he’d been coming to appreciate the art of delayed gratification. 

“Wounded?” BJ asked, reaching for a shirt. He struggled briefly with it, his arm caught, before he managed to pull it on straight. 

Radar’s gaze ping-ponged between the two of them. “In a way,” he decided on eventually. 

“In a way?” BJ asked. “In what way?” 

“Well, it’s Colonel Bailey, sirs,” Radar said reluctantly. “Or at least most of him.” 

Chapter End Notes

Things get mildly NSFW this chapter; if you're not into that, feel free to skip from “...he let himself fall to the forest floor” to “And then somebody knocked on the door," and you'll miss it. Also, there's a mildly gnarly scene re: blood, etc., but no worse than Hawk's dream a few chapters ago.

That said: OUGH HERE WE ARE. Things are taking off, we're 2/3 through by chapter count (but not word count...the last few consistently fall between 7-10K), and Plot Is Happening In Earnest. Are we feeling the Croneninfluence yet?
I am sorry to Hawkeye, who is now definitely Going Through Some Stuff, and also to BJ, who is About To Be. I love BJ, by the way. He's an insane little enigma.

[BJ Hunnicutt watching his bestie drink his literal blood, and then also kissing him voice] what's better than this. guys bein' dudes

Blood Typed Portentous

Chapter Summary

An interlude for a series of self-discoveries. Take a look inside yourself; you might be surprised at what you find!

Chapter Notes

Untagged CW in end notes.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Potter was waiting for them in the scrub room. 

BJ didn’t say anything as they started to scrub in. He’d gone pensive on the short walk over, quietly and quickly withdrawn, and was now staring down into the basin of the sink, brows furrowed.

Hawkeye hummed a Sinatra tune under his breath, soaping his hands. His good mood was irrepressible. 

“Listen to me,” Potter said, looking solemn. “This isn’t your standard meatball surgery.” 

Hawkeye crooked a silent grin to himself, rinsing his arms. Funny name for the sort of work they did out here. Particularly predictive, too. Who knew food imagery would fit so well? 

“I know,” BJ said. “Radar told us it was the colonel. What happened? Car crash on the way out of town?” 

“He’s dead,” Potter said bluntly. 

Hawkeye stopped humming, an odd, indefinably liquid feeling seeping down his back. 

BJ stopped moving, too, his hands dripping water into the sink basin. 

“It’s a post mortem,” Potter continued. “A little forensics, a lot of reconstructive work. We want to send him home in fit enough shape his family can look at him.” 

“What happened?” BJ asked again, the words the same but the tone all twisted. “Car crash?”

“I wish,” Potter said, bordering on wistful. “Come on and let’s get it through with.”

Together they moved into the OR, and towards the body laid out on an operating table. There was a sheet covering it. 

“Ready?” Potter asked, taking hold of one end of the sheet. At Hawkeye and BJ’s nodded assent, he swept the sheet aside.

“Oh, God,” BJ said, appalled. 

It had certainly not been a car crash.

“He was supposed to report back by oh-seven hundred hours this morning,” Potter said, bundling the sheet into the laundry bin. “Reported missing by oh-eight hundred, after which an MP convoy found him off the road between here and Kimpo and brought him in.” 

Hawkeye stood over the table, looking down at Bailey’s death-mask of horror. Some indescribable feeling was simmering just below the level of his consciousness, where he couldn’t get at it or name it. It was the same sort of feeling he had when he thought too long about fishing boats and the fact he was the only person apparently holding half the camp together. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. 

“What happened?” BJ asked, like the third time would summon an answer from the ether. “God. The expression…”

“Best guess?” Potter asked, eyebrows raised. “Mauled by a tiger.” 

“No kidding,” BJ said, gingerly prodding at the most obvious wound: a massive, ragged chunk had been torn out of the throat, baring the pale, ridged edge of the trachea. The carotid arteries, interior and exterior, had both been severed. He turned Bailey’s dog-tags with a finger. “AB negative. Some good that’ll do him. Tiger, you said—but here? Biggest thing they have is a leopard cat, and they’re twelve pounds soaking wet.” 

“Moon bear, maybe,” Potter said. He leaned in, pointing. “Though maybe not, going by the scoring.” 

“Uh-huh,” BJ said, his mouth slightly open as he examined the wound. “That’s no omnivore’s dental print. Look here, on the upper margin. Those deep troughs? That’s an immobilizing bite. Classic big cat.” 

“How do you know?” Hawkeye asked suddenly. He couldn’t drag his eyes off the body. He’d noticed something. Something very, very bad. And BJ was good. And so was Potter. If he’d noticed it they were only a minute or two behind. 

BJ traced a gloved finger over the wound margin. “During my rotation in emergency medicine, a fellow fell into the panther pit at the local zoo. And then two more guys went in to drag him out. And four more went in to drag them out.” 

“Lucky kitties,” Potter said. 

Hawkeye eyed the body. They were both too distracted by the obvious wound to catch what he’d noticed. But they’d get there. Soon enough they’d get there. He figured if he had a heart it’d be beating pretty fast. 

What was it he had been dreaming about? It seemed extremely important that he remember.

“I saw a lot of cat bites that day,” BJ continued. “And this—the shape, at least—is pretty textbook. You can practically reconstruct the attack from the injuries.” He shifted, pointing out a long, diffuse bruise over the body’s abdomen. “That’s from getting pounced and thrown to the ground. He probably cracked a couple of ribs in the process.” 

Hawkeye crossed his arms, and then uncrossed them, something rising, leviathan-like, from the watery depths of his subconscious. He remembered a flash of sensation—the smell of blood and damp earth, slamming bodily into something soft and warm. 

“Once a cat gets you on the ground, it’ll sink its teeth into your neck to keep you still. You can see the initial bite pretty clear on him,” BJ was saying, using his fourth finger to indicate a set of deep, narrow channels in the wound. “Two score marks up at the top, and two shallower ones at the bottom. Those’re from the canines. They’re made to sink in and stay there. And then the tearing,” BJ said, indicating a ragged patch of flesh just under the puncture wound, “is pretty standard with a bite. They keep their teeth sunk in and shake their heads back and forth to get a chunk of flesh out.” 

Hawkeye winced through another sense-memory—a tendon catching against his teeth, bared muscle tissue writhing against his face, gnawing at an artery which burst in his mouth. A dream. A nightmare.

Potter put his hands on his hips. His brows were lowered, and his lips were pressed together tightly. “Just the one bite?”

“That’s one oddity,” BJ said. He paused, spanning the wound with his hand, measuring it against his palm. “The other is the size. An animal big enough to do this sort of damage ought to have a larger bite radius. Much larger. It should rightfully span nearly the entire neck, but this one’s barely managed to rip out maybe six, seven square inches of surface area?” 

“If that,” Potter said. He shook his head. “Why didn’t it keep eating him? It took one bite and left the rest of the body?” 

Hawkeye pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. He thought he ought to have been horrified, but the emotion seemed unavailable to him, locked away behind the slow unfolding of a series of dream-memories he thought he’d lost with the dawn. Staking out the VIP tent. Luring Bailey into the woods, and disappearing into the trees’ vaulted dark. Dropping to all fours, all the better to creep unheard through the rain-damp foliage, following the scent of terror. He’d been dreaming. He must have been dreaming. He had to have been dreaming. 

“I don’t know,” BJ said. He crouched, looking over Bailey’s abdomen closely, and then went very, very still. So he’d noticed what Hawkeye had picked up a few minutes ago. 

“What is it, son?” Potter asked, noting his stillness. 

BJ wet his lips, and then cleared his throat, his gaze fixed. Carefully, subtly, he glanced at Hawkeye. 

Potter looked between the two of them. “Something you’d like to share with the class?” 

BJ cleared his throat again, and looked back down at the body. “Livor mortis.”

“What about it?” 

“There is none,” BJ said. “Absolutely none.” 

Potter frowned. “Help me turn him over.” 

BJ obligingly heaved the body onto its side. They all considered the span of unmarked flesh across its back, the lack of blood pooling in the interstitial tissue. 

“You’re right,” Potter said. “No lividity at all.” He pushed the body back down. “You know, I thought maybe they cleaned him up a little before they sent him our way. There’s hardly a drop of spilled blood on him. So if the blood’s not in him, or on him, then…?”

“Maybe there hasn’t been enough time for lividity to set in,” BJ reasoned, though he was fixing Hawkeye with an intense stare that said he knew better. 

“Body’s cold. There’s been plenty of time for it. You want to get in on this, Pierce?” Potter asked. “You’re awfully quiet.” 

Hawkeye shook his head, not sure he could open his mouth without running the risk of vomiting. And he didn’t want to see what would come up if he did. Dreaming. He was dreaming. He’d dreamed the last two weeks. He’d dreamed the last two years. He was in a little loft in central Harlem, sleeping off a thirty-hour shift. He had to wake up, now, and catch the C train up to 168th street. He was going to be late. He needed to wake up. 

Potter sighed, shaking his head. After a long beat of consideration, he laughed, soft, and to himself. 

“What?” BJ asked. 

“Nothing,” Potter said, shaking his head again. “Silliness. Between the blood and the neck, I was only thinking it reminded me of an old book. Dracula .”

Hawkeye’s eyes snapped to BJ’s, and their gazes met with an electric jolt. 

“Hawk,” BJ said, sharp, evidently clocking something worrying in his expression, but Hawkeye barely heard him over the hard rush of adrenaline and disbelief flooding his system. 

“Hawk,” BJ said again. 

Hawkeye fled. 

He wasn’t proud of it, but it was the truth. He turned a sharp hundred-and-eighty degrees on the dot and bolted out of the OR, through the scrub room and into the harsh light of day. He threw up a hand to shield his eyes, wincing as the bright light agitated his photosensitivity, sapping him briefly of some earlier feeling of vitality, of possibility. 

Photosensitivity. 

Ridiculous. 

Hawkeye dropped his hand, forcing himself to acclimate to the sun’s glare. He stripped off his scrubs, dropping them absently onto the ground. He had bigger problems than misplaced laundry. He turned once, and then twice, trying hard to recall an undergraduate elective course he’d taken. In the literature department. It was on epistolary—greatest of, Behn’s Love-Letters, Richardson’s Clarissa, and, of course, Dracula . He could vividly picture his sophomore dorm room, the late evening light coming in a slant through the south-facing windows, a hardy philodendron climbing a knitted lattice bridging his desk to the windowsill. The book he could recall just as vividly: it was weighty in his palms, dusty-smelling, a used copy with the unfamiliar marginalia to prove it.

He inhaled, lost briefly in the bittersweet pain of recollection, the wrench of an easier, softer time, and then pushed past it to recall—

Right.

He turned again, setting his sights on a jeep. He could still, through a haze of the interim weeks, feel the metal of a body cooler crumpling like wet cardboard against his heel. Dracula —a beast with the strength of twenty men? Or simply flawed metallurgy, courtesy of the U.S. Army? And there was Bailey. He glanced around quickly, ensuring he was unobserved, and then stooped to hook a hand under the car’s bumper. 

“This is insane,” he muttered to himself. What did he have to prove? What was he doing? He was going to wreck his hands. 

But then the dream—God forbid, memory?—returned to him, replete with the hot iron stench of a flayed-open human body, and the taboo hunger it awoke, and he knew that he would never stop wondering until he put the idea to rest. 

He rolled his eyes at himself, feeling half-ridiculous and more than a little embarrassed at the credulous direction of his thoughts. Regardless, he got into a better lifting position, reluctant to risk throwing out his back, and then straightened up. 

And lifted the jeep clear of the ground, easily, effortlessly in fact, until the nose of the car tipped hard into the mud. 

“Ah,” he said. “Huh.” 

///

Hawkeye sequestered himself in the lab. He settled at a bench with a notepad and a pen, clicking it anxiously. On one side of the paper, he wrote Bram Stoker . On the other, he wrote me, thought for a second, scribbled it out, and replaced it with subject . 

Under Bram Stoker, he wrote feeds on blood, inhuman strength, shapeshifting, hypnosis, teleportation, weakened by the sun/stronger at night, repulsed by the cross, invulnerable . And then, with a sense of weighty and implacable dread, he wrote immortal.  

Under subject, he put down feeds on blood, inhuman strength, and then, skipping down a couple lines, photosensitivity (?). A few more down, and he wrote heightened senses .

He chewed on the end of his pen, metal grinding against his molars, and then stood to look for a hand mirror in one of the drawers. He managed it quickly, and turned it on himself, noting with relief he still had a reflection. 

“Hell,” he said quietly. “You’ve been through it, haven’t you?” 

His reflection looked back at him, baleful, salt-and-pepper haired, jaw discomfitingly sharp with a lack of facial fat padding. He hesitated, and then bared his teeth. 

“Ugh,” he said, finding the sound of his own voice a reflexive comfort. His maxillary cuspids were subtly but undeniably overlong, their points extending in twin hooks towards his similarly pointed mandibular cuspids. His canines. Whatever you called them, they weren’t nearly as human-typical as they ought to have been. As he focused in on them, they seemed to elongate, the upper pair extending until they reached easily a half-inch beyond the bottom edge of his incisors. A cautious tongue-test proved the tips to be razor sharp. 

He set the mirror down, clicked his pen again, and dispassionately added fangs to both lists. He could feel himself slipping into the well-tailored persona of Dr. Pierce, fear and confusion slowly but surely receding under the unremitting press of well-trained empiricism. It was, after the initial bout of panic, simple to forget the list of symptoms in front of him were his own. He could separate himself from the flesh, for a moment; he seemed to hover outside and somewhat above himself, disembodied consciousness, a machine of pure analysis blessedly exempt from the slimy and visceral needs and desires of an organic being. 

Then again, that being was all he was. It wouldn’t do to perpetuate any fallacious belief in a separation between mind and body, no matter how reassuring he might find it. He was limited in his perception by the confines of that which allowed him to perceive—there was no way, really, to study his own mind objectively. 

Still, there were some things he could observe with some degree of certainty. Looking down at his lists, he ran his fingers over repulsed by the cross . It’d be easy enough to test. The Father was guaranteed to have a spare crucifix lying around somewhere. He didn’t particularly want to seek out Mulcahy, though. The man had a knack for drawing a certain degree of emotionality out of him, and he was feeling raw enough already.

Setting the idea aside for later, he traced down the rest of the list. He was unsure of how to test something so patently fictitious as shapeshifting or teleportation, and had a sneaking suspicion that it’d be a dead end anyway, and so settled on invulnerable . 

A quick auditory scan of the camp—BJ and Potter were in his office finishing up paperwork on Bailey’s post-mortem, nobody in the OR or the scrub room—reassured him he could scrub up again and grab a scalpel without running into anybody. 

With newly sterilized hands, arms, and scalpel, he returned to the lab, before grabbing a surgical tray as an afterthought. He gloved his right hand, and settled his left arm in the tray, wrist upturned. 

“This is going to be a little nontraditional,” he told himself, as though he wasn’t already aware. Nobody else was there to bedside-manner him, though, so he might as well take up the job. “But it’ll be fine. Just a small incision. You’ll hardly feel it.” 

He considered his arm. Despite his alleged undeath, it still looked normal: the thin skin over the volar wrist was translucently pale, the perforating veins there a healthy purple-blue. He wiggled his fingers and watched the subsurface tendons undulate.

Hands steady, he lowered the scalpel to the tender flesh on his inner forearm. With a barely-there application of pressure, the razor tip of the blade slipped into his skin, the edge so perfectly honed he didn’t even feel the pain until he really looked at the way the tip disappeared into his arm. He drew the blade carefully through the flesh, breathing steadily through the white-hot sting of metal parting the dermis. To his mild surprise, blood welled up out of the cut. He set the scalpel aside and mopped the wound with sterile gauze, before pressing down to stem the bleeding. 

For some reason he hadn’t expected the scalpel to pierce him. Much less for its wound to bleed. He raised the gauze to check the wound, and found—

Nothing. 

He raised his arm, tilting it back and forth in the lab’s fluorescent lighting. The skin was unmarked, except for a minute, rusty smear of blood left over from the dampened gauze. 

He picked his scalpel up again, and brought it to his wrist. He created another incision, slightly longer and deeper than the first. Like the first, blood welled quickly out of the wound, and, like the first, it vanished sometime after he pressed the gauze to it. 

Brow furrowed, he created a third incision. He didn’t wipe the blood flowing out of it, though, or attempt to apply pressure. He just watched. The blood flow stemmed, and then stopped abruptly, as though it had been cauterized. Through the remaining red-wet shine he could make out the shape of the cut shrink and then disappear, flesh knitting together as seamlessly as though it’d never been split. There was no scabbing process or scarring; just a perfect rejoining of skin. Like two slip-scored slabs of clay. 

“Huh,” he said, wishing he’d brought a voice recorder. Through his focus he could hear footsteps approaching the lab; somebody tall and relatively weighty, moving fast but quiet. BJ. 

“Hello?” BJ called from outside the lab. “Anybody in here?” 

“Beej, come look at this,” Hawkeye called. 

BJ came through the door immediately as Hawkeye, feeling reckless with discovery and scientific intent, scored a deep and messy wound through his forearm with the scalpel, the blade digging hard and deep into the soft skin of his wrist. 

“Christ!” BJ made a beeline for the cabinets. “What the hell, why would you—?” 

“It’s alright,” Hawkeye said, not taking his eyes off his wrist. “Come here. It’s alright. Look at this.” 

“Silk, where do we keep the—? Alright? You’re going to—” 

“Come here,” Hawkeye said again, projecting as much calm and reassurance into his voice as he could manage. “It’s alright.” 

BJ slowed, turning to look at him. 

“I’m okay,” Hawkeye repeated. “But come see.” 

BJ approached, his affect totally neutral. His lip curled slightly at the sight of the not insignificant amount of blood pooling in the surgical tray, and he hissed when he surveyed the wound. Hawkeye’d been less precise than he could have been, and had left a somewhat ragged gouge in his forearm. It was ugly and wide and very well ought to have left him bleeding to death on the bench. But the bleeding had stopped, and, steadily, the two margins of the wound were knitting together, flesh joining and seaming until the only sign he’d ever been hurt was the blood coating his arm. 

Hawkeye flexed his hand. “Good as new.” 

“What?” BJ shook his head once. “You—? What?” 

“Glove up,” Hawkeye told him. 

BJ obeyed, visibly discomfited. 

“Your turn,” Hawkeye said, holding out the scalpel. 

BJ shook his head. 

“On me,” Hawkeye clarified. “Come on.” 

“I don’t like this.” 

“For science,” Hawkeye said. “For the advancement of our noble profession. To prove to myself I’m not going insane.” 

BJ accepted the scalpel. 

After a moment of deliberation, Hawkeye shifted and offered the pliant skin of his inner elbow. 

“This’ll hurt,” BJ warned him. At Hawkeye’s expression, he let out a frustrated breath. He grasped Hawkeye’s wrist and repositioned his arm, grip firm, before he pressed the scalpel to his inner elbow. He pulled back just as quickly, imparting barely more than a paper cut. 

“I can take more than that,” Hawkeye said, as they both watched the cut close over. 

BJ tugged at his skin, passing his thumb over the place the wound ought to have been. “Nothing.” 

“Right?” Hawkeye eyed the scalpel. BJ didn’t seem too intent on handing it back to him. “What do we make of that?” 

BJ touched the back of a gloved hand to his forehead, leaning over, obviously exhausted. He shrugged. 

“Because I don’t think I like it.” Hawkeye stood up, taking his surgical tray full of blood with him. 

“What are you doing?” BJ asked. 

“Blood typing,” Hawkeye said, flat. He didn’t want to explain why. He had a hypothesis. One he didn’t want to think about more than he had to. If he thought about it, really let himself explicate why he was doing what he was doing, well. He might tackle BJ and have a real go at himself with the scalpel. 

BJ maintained a sullen silence while the centrifuge ran. Hawkeye frowned, uncertain of how to draw him out of it. They’d been out of sync since that morning. He’d carefully avoided thinking of it, too distracted by the spectre of Bailey’s death. By the spectre of his own. 

The centrifuge reached the end of its cycle, and he turned his attention to the vials. He agitated each gently, resuspending the cells, watching for agglutination. 

“Bram Stoker?” BJ said, abruptly breaking the tense silence. So he’d noticed the notepad. “Is this some sort of joke?” 

Hawkeye squinted at the vials of reagent. A and B, none in Rh—AB negative. “No.”

“Then what?” BJ slapped the notepad down with a sharp thwack. “This isn’t remotely funny.”

“Isn’t it?” Hawkeye said, not paying attention. He tapped his fingers, a quick thrum-thrum-thrum of agitated motion. 

“The blood, that could be anything. An off presentation of anemia. An iron deficiency. But this stuff, this is…” BJ wouldn’t look at him. “It’s pure fantasy.” 

“I’m inclined to agree,” Hawkeye said. “Except for how observable it’s been.” 

“Vampirism is the stuff of folklore,” BJ snapped. “Be rational.” 

“I’m not saying that’s what it is,” Hawkeye said. “I’m just saying I have some consistent… symptoms. I’m not saying I’m something, or something else. I’m just looking at what’s objectively happening to me.” 

“Such as?” 

“Well, drinking blood, for one,” Hawkeye admitted. “For two, it seems I heal extremely well. Inhumanly well. Three, it takes me three times as long as usual to adjust to the sunlight. Four, I’ve got these,” he pointed to his teeth—fangs, really, “and five, my blood type is AB negative.” 

BJ frowned at the non sequitur. “So?” 

Hawkeye fished out his dog tags, flashing them at BJ. “So it used to be O positive.” 

“What are you talking about?” BJ, in the face of conviction-shaking phenomena, was defaulting to anger. “Blood types don’t change overnight. You mislabeled the reagents.” 

“No,” Hawkeye said. “I don’t think so.” 

“Then you were mislabeled. You must have been AB negative the whole time.” 

“No,” Hawkeye said again. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, it has to be one of the two,” BJ said stubbornly. “Think! Use your head! It’s got to be good for something, hasn’t it?” 

“AB negative,” Hawkeye said patiently. “Where’ve you heard that recently?” 

“Shut up,” BJ said, standing. He was breathing hard. “I don’t want to hear this.” 

“I think you have to. Bailey’s tags—” 

“Stop,” BJ said. “This isn’t funny, this is a bridge too far. First, in the tent, and now you’re—I’m tired of it. I don’t want to play your games anymore, Pierce.” 

Hawkeye took the hit in stride, accepting the depersonalization of his last name stoically. So BJ wasn’t mad about the blood. Or he was, but he was madder about something else. “Somebody has to say it. Bailey’s missing blood. I think I found it.”

“I said shut up,” BJ said. He paced away, shoulders tense. “Shut up. There’s something wrong with you, you know that? Seriously wrong. I’m sick of—” he threw his hands up, and shouldered through the lab’s doors. 

“I know,” Hawkeye said quietly, to nobody, long after he’d gone.

Chapter End Notes

CW: self-injury. It's not for suicidal or self-harm purposes, and is treated as an experiment, but the visuals might be rough if this is a hard one for you. Feel free to skip from "A quick auditory scan of the camp" to "BJ maintained a sullen silence" and that should do you.

///

Presidential Alert:
THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTINGGGG
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Up next: An unlikely friendship forms, a sermon for the unseen is given, and somebody gets straight-up shot.

The Enormous Nothingburger at the Center of All Human Philosophical Efforts

Chapter Summary

Pointed poetry, friendly Ferret Faces, advancements in autosurgery, the spectres of spectral spectators, and somebody gets straight-up shot.

Chapter Notes

Untagged CW in end notes, for spoiler purposes. It has to do with surgery; check if you think it might be an issue.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“Ah. Hello, Hawkeye.” Mulcahy paused at the door of the mess tent, for once wearing his clerical collar. “I hadn’t expected you.”

“That’s me. A happy little surprise.” Hawkeye smiled winningly from the gallery, empty except for himself. 

“You’re always welcome here,” Mulcahy said, stepping in and letting the door clatter shut behind himself, “but I hope you won’t find it too offensive if I assume you aren’t here for the Sunday service?”

“You could, but then you’d’ve made an ass out of you and me,” Hawkeye said.

Mulcahy quirked a brow. 

“Alright, you got me,” Hawkeye relented. “I’m not here for the service. But if you’d like to run a sermon by me, I’m happy to workshop.” 

“I appreciate the offer,” Mulcahy said graciously. He leaned against a table, smiling genially. 

Hawkeye nodded, and looked down at the wood of the table in front of him. Truth told, he wasn’t exactly sure why he’d sought Mulcahy out. Maybe because he hadn’t wanted to call Sidney. There was a quiet thump, and he looked up to see Mulcahy setting a leatherbound bible on the table behind him. 

“I still owe you your book back,” Hawkeye remembered aloud. 

“You’ve finished with it, then?” 

“Yeah. Turn me upside down and shake me and I think the first five things to fall out would be copied poems.” He patted the chest of his jacket, demonstrating the crinkle of the papers in his pocket. 

Mulcahy smiled again, adjusting his glasses. “I’m glad to have converted you. To Hopkins,” he clarified, at Hawkeye’s expression. “Did you have a favorite?”

“Impossible question,” Hawkeye dismissed. 

“A very difficult one, certainly.” 

“I guess I liked ‘The Windhover,’” Hawkeye said, opting for a safe choice, resolutely not touching on any of the despairing pieces he carried on papers, in pockets, close to his skin. 

Mulcahy nodded, pleased. “It’s a favorite of mine as well. ‘I caught this morning morning's minion, king- / dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding / Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding / High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing / In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, / As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding / Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding / Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!’” 

“Very nice,” Hawkeye said. “You recite poetry to all the girls at your Sunday services?” 

“If the Psalms count,” Mulcahy said, a twinkle in his eye. 

Hawkeye tried to twinkle back, tired as he’d been feeling lately. Mulcahy was always good for a taboo sort of flirt, the man’s sense of humor far wider ranging and more permissible than he ever knew to expect. 

“An interesting choice,” Mulcahy said, looking away to trace the edge of the table. “If I’m permitted to say so.” 

“Who am I to tell you what you and can’t say?” Hawkeye asked. “God? The U.S. government?” 

“‘My heart in hiding / Stirred for a bird,’” Mulcahy repeated, quieter. “I admit I’ve felt that way quite frequently. Spotting a petrel over the camp, riding the wind… watching it soar until it disappears into the distance… sometimes I have to stop myself from asking God why He didn’t make me a bird.” 

“D’you feel trapped, Father?” Hawkeye asked. 

Mulcahy gave him a nonplussed look, and gestured at the canvas walls surrounding them. 

“You weren’t drafted,” Hawkeye said, trying not to let any disdain color his voice. 

“No,” Mulcahy said. “Not drafted. That doesn’t mean I’d make the same choice now as I did at the beginning of all this.” 

“Buyer’s remorse?” 

“I didn’t buy anything,” Mulcahy said, a canny twist to his voice. “Even if you think I did.”

“You volunteered for the sheer pleasure of residing in an active war zone?” 

“No,” Mulcahy said. “I volunteered because there were so many who were ordered. A terrible thing, to have your freedom taken like that. Your wings clipped. You more than anyone should know. They say a caged bird never sings.”

“And you’re here to help me get my voice back?” Hawkeye asked. “Noble, Father, very noble. But I was hoarse before I ever got to Korea.” 

“‘When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut, / Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs? / When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite / To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but / That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows / Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?’” Mulcahy recited, an understanding slant to his posture. “Hawkeye, I hope someday the dove of peace comes to roost in your boughs.” 

“I hope it roosts in every bough,” Hawkeye said. “Every bough across the whole world. Or else it’s like he said. Only piecemeal.” 

They both looked away from each other, towards nothing in particular, letting the silence settle. Finally Mulcahy sat down, pulling his bible into his lap. “Enough of poetry. Is there a particular reason I’ve been blessed with your company this morning?” 

“Blessed,” Hawkeye repeated, lightly amused. “No. I don’t know. I guess I just wanted somebody to talk to.” 

“You’ll always have my ear.” 

“Sure.” 

Mulcahy glanced him over, obviously considering something. After a moment he said, “Can I make an observation?” 

“I expect you’ve already made one.” 

Mulcahy nodded in acknowledgement of the half-baked witticism, and then said, “You and BJ have been rather distant the last few weeks.” 

An understatement. He and BJ may as well have been magnetically repelled with how little contact they’d had. He’d tried to corner him once, after a shift in the OR, but had been thoroughly ignored. By mutual silent assent, Hawkeye’d begun sleeping in the lab, only venturing into the Swamp when he knew for certain BJ wouldn’t be there. The camp was small, but, with vigilance, they more or less ensured they never saw each other, except in the OR. The time that had passed after the fight was far too long for Hawkeye to attempt to offer an apology; and, moreover, he was unclear on what it was he ought to be apologizing for. 

Not that there was a dearth of options. There were plenty of those. 

Killing Bailey, for one. The guilt of it weighed him down every waking moment, even worse for its uncertain place in his memory. If he’d truly killed someone—intentionally, maliciously, murdered someone—shouldn’t he have remembered it? He couldn’t live with himself for only being marginally certain of his actions. The shattering of his truest, most genuinely held moral imperative—the sanctity of every human life—should have left an indelible print on his memory. And yet he could recall the moment only in hazy combinations of sound and taste, dreamlike images and uncertain sensations. 

Then there was kissing BJ. That, too, was hazy. He’d been sleepy, and, if he had to interpret retrospectively, was still running off the high of, well. Satiation, and had been craving satiation of a different sort. If he’d’ve been in his right mind, he would never have risked it, could scarcely conceptualize what had driven him to put it all on the line, to so boldly breach the unnamed tension that ran hot and high between the two of them. 

The problem wasn’t that BJ had rejected him. The problem, he figured, was that BJ hadn’t. BJ—straitlaced, straight-and-narrow, straight BJ, family man of Mill Valley, loving heterosexual husband to a wife so perfectly blonde and coiffed she could’ve fallen straight out of the collective American Dream—had kissed him back. Had touched him, had pressed him into his cot, had trailed his fingertips over his body. Had asked to make him feel good. Whatever lies or half-truths BJ had been perpetuating, whatever it was he’d been hiding from himself, he couldn’t look away from. Not after he’d kissed his male bunkmate, stone cold sober, in the sharp light of day. 

Or, more likely, BJ was horrified at the fact Hawkeye had killed someone. Had killed and eaten them, more or less, even if he hadn’t meant to. As if something like that could be an accident. Either way, BJ hadn’t turned him in, or sought him out. They were locked in a stalemate.

“Hawkeye?” Mulcahy asked, breaking into his distracted silence. “I hope I haven’t upset you.” 

“No,” Hawkeye said. “Sorry. Took the wrong exit. Lost in my thoughts.” 

“Sounds like they’d cost more than a penny.” 

“Friends and family discount,” Hawkeye said, not quite sure where he was going with this. “The truth is, Father, lately I’ve been wrestling with sort of a… moral quandary.” 

“Oh?” Mulcahy straightened in his seat. The Father did like to feel useful. 

“Yeah. Kind of a thought experiment.” 

“Right.” The Father’s eyes narrowed slightly, either in doubt or focus. 

“Right,” Hawkeye said, hoping for the latter. “It’s a tough one. Medical ethics, you know how it goes. Anyway, it’s like this. Say you have a patient in post-op who, for some reason or other, needs a new infusion of whole blood… let’s say the rate averages out to one every other day. He needs a new pint of blood every other day, indefinitely, or he’ll die.”

“Oh my,” Mulcahy said, inflecting down. 

“So this patient, he’s taking in a pint every other day. But the catch is, that’s the bare minimum. That’s the lowest amount he can have without dying. But he won’t be healthy. It’ll make him feel miserable, and awful, and just about wish he was dead. Ideally he’d be taking somewhere like two pints a day.”

Mulcahy frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t see the problem,” he said. “It sounds to me like the real minimum, then, is two a day.” 

“No, you don’t understand,” Hawkeye said, but Mulcahy cut him off. 

“I think I do. Survival is not the same as life. If the minimum this patient needs to be healthy is two pints a day, then that is the true minimum. Not the minimum he needs to avoid dying. What would any justification be for withholding what he needs?” 

“Others need it more,” Hawkeye said. “This kid, he’s taking two pints a day, indefinitely. He may never stop needing it. He’s going to put a strain on the hospital as long as he’s here. That’s a lot of resources going to keep just one person alive.” 

“Forgive me, but isn’t that what we do here?” Mulcahy looked uncomfortable, like he was reevaluating Hawkeye somehow. “Aren’t you meant to be healers? It isn’t the boy’s fault he’s ill. Who is to say that he needs help any less, or deserves it less, simply because he needs more? And for longer? What would the alternative be? To stop treating him entirely?” 

Hawkeye frowned. The answer seemed obvious the way Mulcahy had framed it. But there were certain nuances he couldn’t rightfully add to the Father’s understanding of the situation without also having to explain some things he’d much rather keep hidden. “It’s not quite that simple,” he tried, not knowing any other way to explain himself. To make clear the problem was him—the monstrousness of his needs.

Mulcahy’s expression softened. “May I make another assumption?”

Hawkeye lifted a hand into the air, undirected. 

“If this is about you,” Mulcahy began, holding up a hand to stay Hawkeye’s knee-jerk, frightened denial, “you ought to know you deserve more than simple survival.” 

“No,” Hawkeye said, distraught. The Father couldn’t know what he was giving him permission to do. How he was sanctifying something so hellish. 

“Listen,” Mulcahy said. “Whatever the blood in your metaphor represents—kindness, maybe, or love—Hawkeye, you deserve it. As much as you need. You give so much to everyone; don’t you think you deserve to do some taking of your own? And the fact of the matter is, care is not a limited resource. You won’t run us dry asking for it.” 

Hawkeye reeled slightly, finding himself incredibly uncomfortable. “I don’t know that’s really what I meant.”

“The Son of Man was quite a storyteller. I know an allegory when I see one,” Mulcahy said, with an expression that might’ve been smug, if the Father wasn’t too good for the emotion. “And if yours has anything to do with your and BJ’s falling out? I’m certain if you two talk it through, you’ll settle the issue. You always do.” 

“He’s too forgiving,” Hawkeye said, morose. “He sees everything I do and then he comes back anyway.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Mulcahy tilted his head, looking over the rims of his glasses. His eyes, Hawkeye noticed, were a wonderful shade of blue. “To have somebody care for you unconditionally.” 

“I don’t believe in it,” Hawkeye said automatically, and then shut his eyes in consternation. He was sick of being so open, of tearing out his viscera and laying them across tables for carrion birds to pick through. Why couldn’t he ever control himself?

“That doesn’t matter,” Mulcahy said. “You don’t have to believe. Something won’t be made any less real just by virtue of your not believing in it.” 

“Alright,” Hawkeye said, not believing him. He’d never been very good at having faith. Hope, he could do. Idealism? Absolutely. But faith… he’d never found it easy to trust blindly, to throw himself unreservedly behind the unseen, the unknowable. “I guess I should let you get back to the mass.” 

Mulcahy glanced around the empty tent, inclining his head. “I suppose so. Somebody’s got to give a sermon.” 

Hawkeye paused on his way out. “Do you really run a service? Even when nobody’s here?” 

“It’s good to keep in practice,” Mulcahy said serenely. “And, besides, there’s never nobody here. Or, rather, there’s always somebody.” 

“Oh.” Though the Father had turned his eyes briefly skyward, Hawkeye was nevertheless struck by the image of Mulcahy, alone at his pulpit, addressing a crowd of ghosts. The spectre of spectral spectators. Who were they? Where had they come from? The ghosts of the boys they hadn’t managed to save—or other things less human?

“Bye, padre,” Hawkeye murmured, unheard under the beginning of Mulcahy’s sermon. Something on the spirit in everything, always, all places, creeping in everywhere you couldn’t see, all the places a person wouldn’t think to look. Behind him, and above. 

Hawkeye stepped into the morning light, looking blankly outwards. The low mountains surrounding the camp were limned in blue, the sun still low, the air cool and damp. The sky was cloudless and pale, the color a shade he’d seen most often over the Atlantic the day after a Nor’easter had cleared Crabapple Cove. Blank. An erasure of bygone violence. False innocence. 

“Stop,” Hawkeye told himself quietly, shaking his head. His mood was souring, a morose weightiness attaching itself to his ankles. 

He moved, leaden, across the camp. When he pushed open the door of the Swamp, Frank was already there, polishing his boots. 

“Morning,” Hawkeye said, picking his way across the mess on the floor. He’d always been the worst contributor to the tent’s disorder, but it seemed BJ had been more than making up for his absence. His foot knocked into something that went rolling across the floor—an empty bottle. He frowned. 

“You wouldn’t dare,” Frank responded nonsensically. 

“BJ around?” Hawkeye asked, even though he knew the answer already. He could hear BJ making his rounds in post-op as clearly as if they’d been in the same room. He tuned out BJ joking with a burn victim, the geniality of his bedside manner painfully affecting, and focused back on Frank. 

Frank leveled him with a flat stare, and then said, “Yes, actually. I hid him in the teakettle.”

Hawkeye’s eyebrows edged up a fraction of an inch. As far as quality went, the joke was in the bottom decile. But as far as jokes went, Frank never made them. Ever. 

“I guess that probably tea’d him off,” Hawkeye returned, like somebody testing the solidity of ice frozen over a river.

“Practically steamed,” Frank said, and then, absurdly, giggled, kicking his feet, bootlaces dangling. 

Okay, Hawkeye thought, and sat down on his cot. After a moment he laid back, content to stare at the canvas ceiling and cycle through his collection of miseries. 

“I haven’t seen you in the mess,” Frank said. 

“Hmm?” Hawkeye sat up, leaning on his elbows. 

Frank was bent over at the waist, drawing a cloth across the toe of his left boot. “I said I haven’t seen you. In the mess.” 

“Oh.” Hawkeye watched him polish the same spot, over and over. “I got robbed there.” 

“Really?” 

“The army stole my appetite right out from under me,” he said, just barely keeping his jaw from dropping when that, too, drew a small laugh out of Frank. “Why’d you bring it up? Did you miss me at mealtimes? Finally realize Hawkeye Pierce is the best spice of all?” 

Frank went back to polishing his boots, this time working the cloth across the middle section of the right shoe. There was a formal name for that part of a shoe, he was sure of it. Not the instep. Not the collar. The vamp. “I just noticed I hadn’t seen you. That’s all.” 

“Alright,” Hawkeye said. 

The cloth worked back and forth. He could really only see the top of Frank’s head. “Not for a while,” Frank said, almost to himself.

Hawkeye half-grinned, brows drawing together in confusion. He couldn’t work out Frank’s angle. They weren’t this amicable by half. 

“But everything is just fine?” Frank asked his shoes. “With you.” 

“Um,” Hawkeye said. He stared at Frank, who, apparently deciding his protracted pause was cause enough for concern, began to speak.

 “Before I married my wife,” Frank said, still polishing his shoes, “I went with this girl.” 

Hawkeye bit back on the urge to make a joke, any joke, sensing the fragility of the moment. He had no idea what was happening. Drawn to the fore of his mind was a memory of being seven, holding oats in the palm of his hand, softly clucking his tongue in an attempt to coax an elk at the edge of the woods closer. Maybe Frank was feeling the same way. 

“She was an artistic type. Sweet girl. She played the violin very well. We met, it was very—it was the day before classes my junior year at college. She reached for a textbook the same time I did. The prettiest black hair you’ve ever seen. Blue eyes. Tall. I didn’t have to lean over to kiss her. I liked that. And she was funny. Roaringly funny. A joke a minute.” Frank stopped polishing his shoes, the rag hanging loosely from his hands.

“She got sick,” he said bluntly. “Got it into her head that she didn’t look—I can’t explain it. But if you work in cardiology you see enough of her type eventually. They stop eating, and then…” Frank cleared his throat, and rearranged his feet, bringing them together. His shoes gleamed blackly. Perfectly regulation. “Man to man, Pierce, you should know you haven’t got anything to be concerned about. And if it’s a path you’re going down, well, I can’t help you. I don’t know anything about insanity. But there are people who do.” 

“Insanity,” Hawkeye repeated, and then shook his head, stopping Frank’s attempt to reply. “I’m not offended. I just never thought you’d be the person to see me.” 

“I say you’re crazy to anybody who will listen,” Frank said, lacing his boots up. 

“And I thank you for it,” Hawkeye said, even as a twist of discomfort laced through his belly. He knew he was crazy. Or else he figured he was the only sane person in all of the army. He didn’t like to know other people thought of him in those terms at all. “Look, Frank, I hate to admit it. But I’m touched.” 

“I’m expressing my professional concern,” Frank said, starting to lace his other boot. 

“I’m fine,” Hawkeye said. “Really I am.” 

“Well, then.” 

“Well.” 

Frank nodded once, decisively. 

Hawkeye mocked the nod instinctively, and then softened the gesture. “Thank you for asking.” 

“Yes. Well. Yes.” Frank straightened up, his fingers dark with shoe polish. 

“And was she okay?” Hawkeye asked. 

“Hmm?”

“Your girl. Was she okay?” Hawkeye leaned forward, trying hard to picture it, a young Frank Burns, not even in medical school yet, bowled over by a funny black-haired girl with a violin and a million jokes. He wondered if he’d been very different. What the girl had seen in him. 

Frank looked at him, his watery blue eyes so blank, his expression so carefully guarded, Hawkeye knew the answer more certainly than if he’d screamed it. 

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. 

Frank shrugged, his message clear. It was a long time ago. Nothing to be done about it. Still, Hawkeye wondered how much she stayed with him, if it was ever her image superimposed over the body of a kid he was pulling shrapnel out of, the same way he saw Tommy Gillis everywhere he wished he didn’t. 

“Pierce,” Frank said, so quietly the sound was almost lost under the stirring of a breeze outside. 

“Hmm?” Hawkeye asked. 

“Can I ask you a question?” 

“Sure.” 

“A very personal question,” Frank clarified, face open and nearly frightened. 

Hawkeye’s brows drew together. Whatever this was, he wasn’t sure he liked it. “Uh-huh.” 

Frank frowned at his hands, wiping them on the thigh of his khakis. They left dark streaks of polish behind, thoroughly unmilitary. “While you were…wherever you were, for that day. Where did you go?” 

Hawkeye tilted his head, a silent request for clarification. 

“I mean,” Frank said, sounding annoyed, though with what Hawkeye wasn’t sure, “was there anything after. I mean after. Was there anything there?” 

“I was in a coma. I wasn’t dead,” Hawkeye said, the lie coming instinctively. 

“Sure. That’s why I had to prescribe Hunnicutt mepromobate. After we tranqed him.”

Hawkeye cast his gaze towards the ceiling. He turned his attention, briefly, towards the mess tent, and Mulcahy’s service for unseen things in the shape of men: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you…”

“Do you want the truth?” Hawkeye asked, a last-ditch effort at kindness. “Frank, do you really want to know? Or is it better for you to never have that question answered? I’ll tell you if you want. But I can’t un-tell you.” 

Frank’s expression vacillated. His lips parted, then came together again, his eyes darting around the corners of the tent. Finally he said, eyes on his bookshelf, “I’d like to know.”

“Okay,” Hawkeye said, trying to find the right words. “Well. The first thing you’ve got to understand is that Maine, when viewed from the air, doesn’t really have a coast.”

“What?” Frank asked. 

Hawkeye spread his hands in the air, trying to overlap his fingers in a way that implied variable densities of space. “When you fly out of Bangor, south towards Boston, you move partially over the coast of Maine. But it’s not so much a coast as the word might imply. What it is, really, is a gradient. There’s a part that’s all water. And there’s a part that’s all land. But in between, there really isn’t a hard coastline. Not like there is somewhere like California. It’s more like…when you spill something. Like a bag of almonds. Right out of the bag, there’s a density of almonds. Right? And farther away, there are no almonds at all. But in between, the density decreases as a factor of distance from the source. But you can’t really say, can you, at what point the almonds have an edge. You can’t find the coast of the almonds. They just sort of disperse into the non-almond space. And that’s what the coast of Maine looks like. Like something dropped their landmass and it spilled out into the ocean. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?” 

“No,” Frank said. 

Hawkeye sighed. “What we call Maine, what we call the ocean…there’s not a hard dividing line, land and sea. It isn’t so simple as one or the other. What it is is a spectrum. I’m saying the border is permeable.”

“Some party,” BJ said from the doorway. 

Hawkeye and Frank both jumped, exchanging a silly, guilty glance. 

“You’re welcome to join,” Hawkeye said genially, quicker to recover from the surprise.

“You two make a good pair,” BJ said, moving to rummage through his belongings, his back turned. “I think I’ll leave you to it. Not the sort of company I like to keep.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hawkeye said, feeling irritable. It was the first time he’d exchanged more than a perfunctory shift report with BJ in a week or more. 

BJ shot him a look over his shoulder. 

“No, tell me.” Hawkeye looked at Frank, who had found a handgun to nervously polish. The man might’ve had a complex. “If you have a problem with me, I’d like to talk it through.” 

“No problem,” BJ said, lying, obviously lying, or else why was Hawkeye sleeping on a lab bench with a pillow of gauze?

“Liar,” Hawkeye said simply, letting the word carry all the multivalent resonances he could shove into it, intimating not just the local issue but everything he’d come to observe about BJ and his white picket fence life: all is not what it seems. And here’s somebody who knows. 

BJ rounded on him fast, expression hurt. “I’m the liar?” 

“Did that strike a nerve?” 

“You fellows never fight,” Frank said, speaking up for the first time. He was still frantically polishing the barrel of his gun. Definitely a complex. 

“Mommy and Daddy are spending some time apart,” BJ quipped, mean, gesturing between himself and Hawkeye. 

Hawkeye saw Frank flinch at that, and filed it away. More importantly:

“Mommy and Daddy?” Hawkeye parroted back. “I’m not your wife.” 

“It’s a joke,” BJ said, enunciating offensively slowly. “I thought you of all people would know that, when you’re incapable of speaking in anything else.” 

“I’m serious when I need to be,” Hawkeye said. “We can talk. We need to talk.” 

“Not while your friend’s here,” BJ said. “I don’t want to interrupt the two of you getting close.” 

“What are you implying?” Hawkeye asked, sharp, standing abruptly. “Listen, I’m trying to have a civil conversation here. I’m trying to offer you an olive branch.” 

“And I’d better take it?” BJ interrupted. “Is that what you’re telling me? Is that a threat?” 

“A threat? Why would you—?” 

“I think you know why.” 

“I think you’d both better calm down,” Frank said, clutching his gun. 

“Stay out of it,” BJ said, voice rough. 

“You don’t have to be so hard on him,” Hawkeye said, surprising himself. 

“So you really are getting friendly with him. Watch out,” BJ said to Frank. “Believe me, you better watch out.” 

Hawkeye scoffed, and then—

Later he’d swear time stopped, like a projector caught on a single frame. His gaze shifted from BJ’s face, his jaw taut with suppressed emotion, back to Frank, whose hand was twitching nervously against the handle of his revolver. A thought crystallized in his mind, icy and detached: That gun is about to go off . And even as he thought it he saw the trigger depress, saw the ignition give way to a muzzle flash, as yet detached from the soundwaves following behind it, and then— 

“Ngh,” Hawkeye said, stumbling back to lean against the still, bringing his hand up in shock. 

BJ stared at him from his cot, where he’d fallen after Hawkeye had bodily shoved him out of the way.

Frank looked between them both, hand still tight on his revolver. 

The tableau would be nearly comical, if it hadn’t been so terrible: Frank, nonplussed, gun in hand, BJ flat on his back in utter disbelief, and Hawkeye, leaning against the still, shot clean through the stomach. 

Frank broke the picture, throwing his hands into the air as though he was the one who’d been shot. BJ was up just as fast, pulling Hawkeye off the still. 

“Exit wound?” Hawkeye asked, strained, a hot agony beginning to assert itself over the numbness of shock. 

BJ’s arm was firm across his front, taking his weight easily. “No. Are you bleeding?” 

Hawkeye looked down at his shirt, and the hole pierced through it. It was baggy, not clinging to his skin, but he could feel the slow, regular pulse of something warm leaking out of the wound. Mentally he pulled up his list of potential symptoms, and scribbled out invulnerable.

“Yup,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to!” Frank cried, his hands up. “I didn’t!” 

“Shut it,” BJ said, shifting to draw Hawkeye’s arm over his shoulders. “Keep pressure on that.” 

“I’m not going to bleed out,” Hawkeye said, trusting Frank was too rattled to think too deeply about anything he might hear. “Remember? I’ll be okay.” 

BJ shook his head, looking away, and continued to pull him towards the door of the Swamp. “Do you want to keep the bullet?” 

“What?” Hawkeye asked, and then swore, breathing through the pain of BJ’s hand pressing hard against his middle. Pressure applied. 

“No exit wound,” BJ reminded him. “I don’t…” he huffed. “I know you.” 

“Yes,” Hawkeye said cautiously. 

“The Hawkeye I know,” BJ said, dragging him across the threshold of the tent, “wouldn’t be able to handle carrying a thing like that with him for the rest of his life. I know how it looks as a symbol to him. And I know he wouldn’t want it.” 

“I don’t,” Hawkeye said, tightening his grip briefly on BJ’s shoulder. “I want it out. I don’t want to carry a—carry the bullet. Carry Frank’s bullet, either. Too on the nose.” 

“I thought so.” 

“Thanks,” Hawkeye said as they reached the OR. “And I’m sorry.”

“Then again,” BJ said, ignoring him, “maybe it’d be a better symbol than most. Hawkeye Pierce, carrying the weight of the thing that wounded him until he dies.”

///

“You know, you were right,” Hawkeye said, looking at BJ’s back. His shoulders were squared off, incredibly tense as he fetched his tools from the autoclave. 

BJ cocked his head slightly over his shoulder, silently asking for clarification. 

“We’ve been in this position far too often lately,” Hawkeye said, and then made a low noise of pain. He couldn’t get his shirt off without jostling his wound. He struggled out of it slowly, peeling the blood-slick fabric away from his stomach.

BJ didn’t answer him.

“No nurses, I guess,” Hawkeye said, mostly to himself. “But it’s just the one bullet.” 

“Is it closing?” BJ asked. 

Hawkeye looked down at himself. There was still a hole in his gut, but it looked to be trying to heal over. 

“Slowly. But yes.”

BJ tossed him a box of gloves. “Keep it open.” 

“Keep it—?” Hawkeye looked down at the box, and then up, at BJ’s back. “God.” 

“I’m sorry,” BJ said, very quietly. “This isn’t going to be pleasant. I’ll anesthetize you as soon as I can.” 

“Hell,” Hawkeye said, and pulled on a pair of gloves. He laid back and stared up at the fluorescent round of the surgical lamp. 

Slowly, tentatively, he rested a gloved hand on his middle, fingers spread on either side of the bullet’s entry wound. He could feel the skin straining closed, trying to knit together over the intrusion. He slid the edge of his ring finger over the margin of the wound, hissing through the pain, trying to paper over the distress of his own injury with doctoral intent. Trying to be more Dr. Pierce than Hawkeye.

Just a retraction, really. It would hurt. Probably a fair amount. But it’d be for the best. 

He clenched his jaw, and pressed his finger into the wound, just far enough to keep the skin from closing over. 

“Aghh,” he said, and fought every instinct he had telling him to pull his hand back. Instead he spread the wound margin open, the flesh warm against his gloved fingers. 

“Almost ready,” BJ said, his tone thawing for the first time in weeks. “Hold on.” 

“Holding on,” Hawkeye said, his knee coming off the table involuntarily when another jolt of pain kicked through him.

BJ hurried over with his tray of instruments and ducked behind him to retrieve a face mask. He paused. “We should have an anesthetist here,” BJ said, tight and upset. 

“You could do a local,” Hawkeye said, even as he winced at the prospect. “You’re not going carving. I could handle a local.”

“It might not do enough,” BJ said, not looking at him. “But I don’t want to have you inhaling sodium thiopental completely unmonitored. Besides, you could wake up in the middle.” 

“That’d be worse.” 

“You can handle a local?” BJ asked. 

“Even if I can’t,” Hawkeye said, “it won’t kill me.”

BJ shook his head, leaving to retrieve, assumedly, procaine. 

“Field block?” Hawkeye asked, closing his eyes again. 

“Field block,” BJ confirmed. “Breathe.” 

“Need me to move my hand?” Hawkeye asked. 

“Yeah.” 

Hawkeye withdrew his hand, wincing. 

“That’s going to need debrided,” he said, trying not to pay attention to the evaporative cool of the sterilization BJ was carrying out. A needle went in, and then out, and then another went in, and then out, and again, until BJ had marked out a four-pointed square around the wound. 

“Thank you, Doctor,” BJ said belatedly, reaching for a scalpel. The blade glimmered, putting light off like something diamond-edged. “I’ll take it under consideration.” 

“Aren’t you going to wait for the anaesthetic?” Hawkeye asked. “I’m still feeling it.” 

“I don’t think I can,” BJ said grimly. “It’s closing too fast. You’ve got some cloth in there I don’t want to see healed in.” 

“Ugh.” Hawkeye closed his eyes, and then, after a moment, hooked his hands under the edge of the surgical table. “Okay. Okay.” 

“You’re going to be just fine,” BJ said, slipping easily into his bedside manner. “Everything’s A-okay.” 

“Just fine,” Hawkeye repeated, staring into the pale pink of his eyelids, the surgical lamp bright beyond them. BJ’s hand was steady on his stomach. He felt the press of the side of the man’s right palm settling next to his wound. And then, horribly—

“Aha,” Hawkeye said. “Mmphhghhffffuck.”

“Sorry,” BJ said, sounding like the process was just as painful for him as it was for Hawkeye. “I’m so sorry.” 

“Doing what you have to,” Hawkeye said, gripping the sides of the table hard. His knuckles popped. 

“Sorry, sorry,” BJ said. “Sorry.”

Hawkeye kept his eyes shut, his hands locked firmly onto the table. He was not going to move. He could live through this. It wouldn’t kill him. He might wish it would, but it wouldn’t. He’d live. He would. 

His hearing went out, his vision greying, his perception narrowing to the sharp agony of somebody waltzing through his gut with a knife. It gave him a horrible sense of deja-vu, and he might have panicked, if he had the wherewithal to do anything besides hold on and hope BJ would bring him through it. He thought, momentarily, that there was no way he could make it through, that the pain would shock him into a state of complete disconnect from reality, that this might, finally, send him over the edge of a mental cliff he’d been clinging onto for only God knew how long, that he’d disappear down into himself, go AWOL, change apartments without leaving a forwarding address, but then—

Slowly the pain muffled itself, not leaving, entirely, but becoming less all-consuming. 

His hearing edged back in, followed quickly by the rest of his senses. 

He loosened his grip on the table slightly, and heard the metal groan. 

He opened his eyes and tilted his head to the side. He’d left hand-shaped imprints in the steel. 

“Huh,” Hawkeye said. 

“I take it the anaesthetics kicked in,” BJ said. “Sorry it took so long.” 

“Not your fault,” Hawkeye said. Or slurred. He was feeling muzzy. It wasn’t the anaesthetics, those were only local—the pain was doing something odd and slinky to his brain, stealthily disassembling his signal transducers and patching them together all wrong. 

“Not your fault, either,” BJ said, eyes focused intently on his own hands. 

“Never said it was.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh.” Hawkeye watched his face, and then focused on the ceiling, trying to ignore the pain-pressure of BJ’s scalpel-work. The silence stretched out long and awkward, full of the slippery organic sounds of surgery. “D’you want to talk about it?” 

“Talk about what?” BJ asked, saccharine. 

“Any of it. There’re plenty of options.”

“I don’t like to fight while I’m trying to drive.” BJ’s tone was dangerously upbeat. Precipital. 

“Who said it’s got to be a fight?” Hawkeye asked. 

“You think it won’t be?” BJ pressed something metallic into his wound, the skin stretching. 

Hawkeye winced, more at the psychological discomfort of feeling his body opened than any physical pain. “I won’t fight you.”

“Now who’s the liar?” BJ pushed the flat of his elbow into Hawkeye’s diaphragm. “If you’re going to talk, try to move less.”

“Is that what this is about?” Hawkeye asked, reevaluating whole swaths of things. “I’m sorry I called you a liar. I am. Ad hominem—that was below the belt.”

“It’s true,” BJ said, detached. “I am.”

“A liar?” Hawkeye tried and failed to catch his eye.

“Always have been, always will be.” 

“Not about your credentials, I hope,” Hawkeye tried to joke. “Because that makes our current position a little uncomfortable.” 

BJ sighed, his brow creasing. He closed his eyes briefly, and then opened them, the set of his shoulders suddenly decisive. “When you’re a liar,” BJ said, going back in with his scalpel, “you get very, very good at certain things. At certain justifications. At believing some things, so other people believe them, too.”

“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye said, not sure where he was going.

“When I was a kid, I lied all the time. Had to.” BJ was shifting defensive, his tone faux-casual. He didn’t want whatever he was about to say to bear any real weight. “My parents. They expected certain things. A certain level of deference, let’s say, that I was not always prepared to give. A certain amount of obedience, and blind respect. There was a right way to be, and God help anybody who fell off the path.”

Hawkeye watched him carefully. “You never talk about your parents.”

“No. I don’t.” BJ dropped the scalpel, and picked up a retractor. “I guess you could say deception was my birthright. I got so good at it I even fooled myself. Sneaking out at night, skipping school, scrapping with other kids… My parents… my father never knew. And so none of it was real. I got great grades. Varsity track. Student council. I lied about being the ideal son so completely I believed it myself. I played my part to perfection.”

“That’s not playing,” Hawkeye said. “You did those things. So what if you were sneaking out. Every teen does. That doesn’t take away from the fact you were a good kid, too.”

“You don’t understand.”

“What?”

“I’m saying that I’ve been a liar my whole life. I had to be. I took somebody else’s image of what a man should be, and lied to myself that I was it, that I wanted to be it, until I was. I’ve lied and I’ve lied, and I’ve come out of it all with no idea what it is that I really want. I don’t know where to start looking. I don’t know where the pressure, the expectations of other people, the image ends, and where I begin. Who am I? BJ Hunnicutt. Family man. Stanford-educated surgeon. Wife and a kid. Obedient son. But how much of that is what I want? And how much is what I’ve…?” BJ shook his head, and then, with a mildly painful wrench, brought something out of Hawkeye. He held it up to the light: a bullet, retrieved. 

Hawkeye relaxed against the table abruptly, an undercurrent of anxiety he hadn’t realized he was nursing dissipating in a rush of relief. 

“The point being,” BJ said, “I don’t always know how to know what I want. In fact I’ve built a life on it.”

“BJ,” Hawkeye said, feeling light-headed with the cessation of pain, the heady splash of endorphins. He reached out and tried to touch his elbow, but missed. “It’s okay. Things are hard. Did you know that? Nobody ever says, but it’s true. It’s hard. All of it. Some people live their whole lives and never know what it is they want.” 

“I’ve been thinking about death a lot recently.” BJ turned, and then came back with a bottle of saline wash. “For obvious reasons.”

“Apologies,” Hawkeye said. “I don’t like that it’s happening to me either.” 

“I’ve been thinking about death,” BJ continued. “And what comes after it.”

“Nothing,” Hawkeye said. “I thought we agreed on that. It’s the great big anticlimax. The enormous nothingburger at the center of all human philosophical efforts. The shiny river of cessation at the bottom of the cliff we’re all dangling off of.” 

“Do you believe that?” BJ asked. “You’ve never felt something… holy, or sacred, in a person’s last moments?”

“There’s no fanfare. You’re there one moment and then gone.”

“There’s something reverent about a graveyard,” BJ argued. “At a funeral. At an open casket. Or a closed one. Some sense of reverence, or fear, for the process. A universal acknowledgement of the absence of a being.”

“That’s not supernatural,” Hawkeye argued back. “It’s not spooky, unexplainable, or spiritual. It’s just humans. Humanity. Secular emotion.”

“Death is different. No matter how irreligious you are, or claim to be. There’s something in it that draws us all. That sets us wondering. Pulls our focus, captures our imaginations, our fears, our very humanity.”

Hawkeye shivered, feeling suddenly the death-chill of inevitability, the oldest truth of life descending on him, unshakeable: it ends.

“Death rips the fabric of secular society,” BJ said. “Inspires in all of us some degree of magical thinking. It’s the last great unknown. The plains frontier of human experience. All of us covered-wagoning our way until we disappear, alone, into the horizon.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Hawkeye said. “This is morbid.” 

“I’ve been thinking about death,” BJ reiterated. “About mine. And yours. I realized, I mean I’ve always known, but losing you, and then getting you back, and watching you take that scalpel to your arm—you could have killed yourself, you know that?—I realized how short it is. Everything, I mean. I’ve got two-thirds left to go, and that’s if I’m extremely lucky. There isn’t much of it. Not much of it at all.”

“No,” Hawkeye agreed. “It’s fast.”

BJ fixed him with a look. “Fast. Too fast to waste. And I’ve decided you mean too much to me to waste it. Time, I mean. I was horrified. Scared. But then I see you are, too.”

“I’m always scared,” Hawkeye said. “This is no exception.”

“You don’t mean it,” BJ said, almost to himself. “You never meant it. You’d never hurt anyone. Not on purpose. Not maliciously. Sort of like a starving dog, biting at anything. And the man… I believe in humanity. In the good at the heart of everyone. At the value of every person. But then again, I wonder… if it had to be anybody…”

“It didn’t have to be anybody,” Hawkeye said, wincing through the remembered image of Bailey, bloodless, on an exam table. “There’s never an excuse. Murder… there’s never, never could be…”

“I care about you,” BJ said. “You mean more to me than I thought it was possible for a person to mean. That scares me. And I’m scared for you. For what’s happening. But I figure there are worse things—losing you, for one. I don’t want to live in a world without you in it. For whatever reason, that’s the truest truth I’ve allowed myself in a long time. You and me, we—fit. I guess. And whatever you need to do to keep yourself here…” BJ trailed off, dampening a cloth. He set the bottle aside and swept the fabric across Hawkeye’s stomach, his wound evidently closed over. The blood on his skin lifted easily, red disappearing with every pass of BJ’s hand. 

“I’ll help you,” BJ said finally. “We’re always together. In everything. This isn’t any different.”

Hawkeye sat up, looking down at himself, running his hands across his middle. There was no scar. No blood. And no more bullet. No indication he’d ever been so much as wounded.

“You’re a very good doctor,” Hawkeye said, meeting BJ’s gaze, intense, icy and blue. “Have I ever told you that?”

Chapter End Notes

CW: Somebody's conscious during, and briefly participates in, an operation on their own body. It's portrayed as distressing, but they're fully aware of and consented to the procedure; this isn't a waking-up-during sort of thing.

///

Yo hold my beer [humanizes Frank Fucking Burns, somehow]. Also my preoccupation with the coastline paradox rears its head once more. Chapters are all about this long from here on out as we come up on the last week of the fic. Times, they are a-changin'. Thank u all so so much for reading; I'm so so happy anybody besides me is enjoying this insane little story!!!!!!

///

Next up: Tectonic plates collide, with all requisite earth-shaking.

"Aesthetic Appreciation"

Chapter Summary

That old saying about the way to a man's heart, or: blood is the new chocolate.

Chapter Notes

NSFW, clock the rating change. If you know me in real life, this entire chapter doesn't exist <3
To the rest of you....uhhhhh I got nothin. I'm not good at writing this stuff and uhhhhhhhhhhhh. head empty no thoughts. enjoy. don't perceive me or I will burst into flame

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“I’ll come with you,” BJ said.

“Hmm?” Hawkeye paused at the Swamp’s door. “You’ll what? Why?” So far the extent of BJ’s help had mostly been fudging the numbers on some of the patient reports, adding a few units of blood to charts here and there to keep the supply records consistent, and not telling anybody about Bailey. 

BJ shrugged, not quite meeting his eyes. 

“You can,” Hawkeye said. “I just don’t know why you’d want to.”

“I get bored without the company,” BJ said, and stood, patting his pockets, as though he was checking for his keys, or maybe wallet. It was a ridiculously domestic gesture, and Hawkeye blinked, suddenly seeing the overlay of the man BJ might be in ten, no, twenty years—almost fifty, misplacing his keys, wandering out to the garage to tinker with a motorcycle.

“Alright?” BJ asked him.

Hawkeye shook his head. “Yeah. Fine. Let’s go.”

They walked together to the storeroom. The moon was high, the sun long since set. The air was cool, and night birds cooed in the forest beyond the camp. It’d been a long day in surgery, but there was talk of a coming lull. Hawkeye hoped it was true. They all needed a break. 

“You two headed somewhere?” asked a nurse in passing. She was pretty, smallish and narrow-shouldered, with cropped brown hair. Nurse Collings, Hawkeye remembered.

“Why, you looking to join?” Hawkeye leered instinctively, slouching closer. 

BJ went ramrod straight at his side, practically vibrating with palpable discomfort.

The nurse shied away, smiling politely, and Hawkeye backed off, grimacing. “Sorry. Joke in bad taste.”

“That’s alright,” Collings said, her real grin returning. “You two have fun with inventory.”

BJ visibly relaxed as Hawkeye watched the nurse walk away, feeling inexplicably morose. 

“Inventory,” BJ said. “That’s handy.”

“You know, I used to be something of a Casanova,” Hawkeye said, shouldering his way into the storeroom. “And even when I struck out, people thought I was good for a flirt.”

“She didn’t mean to step on your ego.” BJ followed him in, latching the door behind them. It was dark. BJ didn’t turn the light on. 

“I don’t mind that she did. She has all the right to. I just wonder what it is about me that changed. Is it ‘cause I’m going grey?” Hawkeye tugged a hand through his hair. 

“No,” BJ said.

“Then what?” Hawkeye said. He leaned his weight onto a shelf, and then pushed off, restless. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” BJ said. “The grey is fine, I mean. It suits you.”

Silver beau . An echo of BJ’s voice from weeks ago. Hawkeye cut him an appraising look, knowing it was dark enough BJ’s eyes wouldn’t have adjusted yet. 

BJ was looking in his direction, but not quite at him, and Hawkeye realized that he must be basically invisible in the darkness. Hidden. 

His legs tensed instinctively, his weight centering, ready to leap forward. He bared his teeth, scenting the air, tasting the animal heat of an alive thing only an arm’s length away, flush with blood—

“I mean you look—not that I’ve looked, but—” BJ sighed, aggrieved. “If there’s anything at all, it’s just that you’re awfully thin.”

Hawkeye wrested control of his body back from whatever primal thing had wrenched it away. He straightened up slowly, unsure of what had just come over him.

“And we’re fixing that. Ideally, at least,” BJ finished, shaking his head. “One unit at a time.”

“Ideally,” Hawkeye said, forcing himself to turn away from BJ and towards the storeroom fridge. He tried to keep his voice steady. “What’s on the menu tonight?”

“Two units of O positive, and an A positive,” BJ said, briefly consulting a slip of paper. He had to hold it up to the single, narrow window to read. 

“A very positive day,” Hawkeye quipped, and then stopped, his hand resting on the fridge door. “Really? Three, this time?” 

BJ shrugged, pocketing his paper. 

“You’re trying to feed me up,” Hawkeye said, palming his own sharp jaw. He needed a shave. 

BJ didn’t say anything, but something about him shifted, the amount of heat he put off, maybe, and his heart rate. 

“Hang on,” Hawkeye said. “Wait a minute. I was kidding. Are you really?”

BJ blushed, visible even in the dark. “I said you’re too thin. People are worried.”

Hawkeye moved close enough to poke him in the chest. “BJ, I’m endeared. How domestic.”

“Shut up,” BJ said, and shoved him gently back towards the fridge. “Eat.” 

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I already established I would.” BJ crossed his arms. 

“Fine.” Hawkeye pulled open the cooler, taking a bottle of O positive. It was easier to control himself around it, now that he’d started eating regularly. He’d even managed surgery without too much effort. He could feel BJ’s eyes on him as he cracked the bottle’s sterile seal. He tightened his grip against the glass in spite of its sharp chill, and raised it to his lips. 

The first sip hit him hard, and he sighed, dropping his head. He hoped BJ wasn’t too put off. 

“What does it taste like?” BJ asked him suddenly. 

Hawkeye paused, and considered the question.

“Blood, obviously,” BJ said. “But besides that.” 

“Like…” Hawkeye took another small sip, contemplative. “Rich. That’s the best word for it. Half sweet, half savory. Metallic. Sort of like a sugar-seared steak.”

“Salt, fat, sugar. Doesn’t sound so bad.” 

“It’s really not. The psychological block is the worst of it.”

“It’s hard?” BJ uncrossed his arms, and then, after an awkward beat, rested his hands on his hips. “Knowing what it is, is it difficult?”

“Yes and no.” Hawkeye looked down into the collection bottle. “It’s worse when I think about it. When I don’t, it’s just like anything. You know? Sort of an animal thing. It’s just food. Food’s good. You think about the process of eating anything, the digestive process, it’ll put you off. It’s like anything.” 

“Sure.” BJ crossed his arms again, tapping his fingers rhythmically against the soft fabric of his jacket. 

“What?” Hawkeye asked him, shirking slightly under the intensity of his gaze. “I know it’s not appealing. You didn’t have to come along.”

“No, that’s not it. I’m just thinking.” 

“About what?”

“It’s cold,” BJ said.  

“You have a jacket,” Hawkeye said. “I should be cold. I’m braving it in my shirtsleeves.”

“No. I mean the blood.”

“Oh.” Hawkeye tilted the collection bottle, readjusting his grip. “Yeah. So?”

“So…” BJ said, shrugging. “So what. I just figure I prefer my steaks hot. It’s alright how it is?”

“It’s fine,” Hawkeye said. “It’s alright. It’s fine.”

“Uh-huh.” 

“I mean it. It’s fine.”

BJ put up his hands. “And I believe you. But I also figure there’s probably nobody in the kitchen right now. If you wanted a hot drink, instead of iced.” 

Hawkeye narrowed his eyes. “It’d denature,” he said at last. 

“If you boiled it directly, yeah,” BJ said. “Of course it would.”

“It’d take a while to get to room temperature.”

“Also true.” BJ was acting cagey. “But maybe there’s a different method here.” 

“Yeah?” Hawkeye’s resolve slipped, and he went back for another swallow of blood, his attention too divided to fully track BJ’s half of the conversation. 

“Maybe if we heated water up to body temperature, and then partially submerged the bottles? If we stirred it we wouldn’t have to worry about coagulation or curdling.”

“You’ve thought about this,” Hawkeye realized. “You’ve been thinking about this for a while.” 

BJ shrugged again, laconic. 

“It could be worth a try,” Hawkeye decided. “It’s late enough. We could probably make it.”

“Would it be better?” BJ asked, earnest.

Hawkeye resealed his jar, and took another two from the fridge. “I guess we could find out.”

///

It was better. 

“Oh, God,” Hawkeye sighed, just barely holding off on pounding the entire bottle as fast as he could take it. 

BJ was still looking at him. The kitchen was better lit than the storeroom; a single lantern gave the place a homey yellow glow, and set his edges glowing. Hawkeye squinted at it owlishly. 

“Too bright?” BJ asked. “I can turn it down.”

“Maybe a little,” Hawkeye decided. When BJ turned to the lamp, he tipped the collection bottle up and killed the last swallow easily. He sighed again, a soft, satisfied noise, and accidentally locked eyes with BJ. It was dimmer, now, the light more gold-tinged, and the corners of the room were warmly shadowed. 

“Better, I guess,” BJ said, breaking eye contact to glance at the stove. He’d set up a pot of water, and had it gently warming, the two remaining collection bottles carefully heating to body temperature. It ought to have been morbid, but the abstraction of the significance of the temperature, the oddly culinary setup of the warming process, and the soft light all combined to make it seem practically domestic. The burner underneath the pot glowed red, putting off light of its own that cast BJ’s face a rosy shade. His army green looked an inoffensive beige. 

“Very much better,” Hawkeye said. He wiggled his fingers towards the stove, and BJ snorted, handing him a second container. It was already open for the purposes of stirring, so he took a drink directly, savoring the heat of it. 

“So how are you?” BJ asked, his back to Hawkeye. 

“How do you mean?” Hawkeye asked, around mouthfuls of blood. 

“I mean how are you?” BJ asked again. “You holding up alright? It’s been busy.” 

“Yeah. I’m alright. You?”

BJ shrugged. 

Hawkeye eyed him over, trying to get a read on his mood, mostly only ending up with an appreciation for the lean shape of the guy, the tapered width of his torso, his narrow-hippedness. 

“Been better,” BJ said, stirring at the remaining bottle of blood idly. The wooden spoon would probably stain. They’d have to throw it out. Or boil it. Or silo it off, to be used for only this. “But then I figure that’s true for all of us.”

“You can talk to me,” Hawkeye said. “You know that. Whatever you have to say, I’ll bear it out.”

“You’ve always been better at it than me.” 

“Talking?”

“No. Saying something.”

“What’s the difference?” Hawkeye asked. 

“For all your flash, there’s substance, too. I think I lean towards facade.” 

“A fine defense,” Hawkeye said, feeling the need to stick up for BJ. So he wasn’t always the most forthcoming. Nothing doing; he liked the guy the way he was, even when the puzzle of him drove Hawkeye half-crazy.

BJ readjusted the pot of water. “Sure. But the thing about forts is they keep everything out. And in. Even if you want to have some crossover.” 

“It’s a process,” Hawkeye said. He raised the bottle to his lips, and then lowered it, uncertain. “I wish I could tell you it wasn’t easy for me, to be all out in the open all the time. But I’ve always been that way. I don’t know how not to be. But I know it’s hard, too. It’s hard to live that way. It’s harder to choose it.” 

BJ sent him a small smile over his shoulder. “For all the walls I put up, it feels like you’ve got just as many ladders.”

“I’m an emotional peeping Tom.”

“Only emotional?” BJ raised an eyebrow, teasing. “I’m shocked. Your lechery knows one bound.”

“Aha,” Hawkeye said, and raised his bottle in a toast. To the return of laughter. He took a long drink, savoring the warmth of blood and BJ’s attention.

“So. That morning,” BJ said, unprompted, and cut off when Hawkeye nearly choked. 

“Warn a guy,” Hawkeye said, coughing. He swept the back of his hand across his lips, and cringed when it came away red. He cast around briefly for a napkin before giving in and lapping the blood off his hand. 

“Sorry,” BJ said, sounding somewhat conflicted.

Hawkeye waved him off, and finished the bottle. He set it down softly, cushioning the impact with an extended pinky. “That morning? What about it?”

“I said you looked good.”

Hawkeye’s throat clicked as he swallowed, on edge. BJ was looking at the stove, unfocused, so affectedly casual-looking he had to be unbelievably nervous. “Uh-huh.” 

“I meant it,” BJ said. His knuckles were white, his hand clenched hard around his wooden spoon. 

“Oh,” Hawkeye said carefully. He checked in with his brain: are we sure this is real? His hands tingled, static-fuzzy. He felt a little like a prey animal, and a lot like he was in explicit, physical danger. “I see. Well.”

“Well.” 

“Well,” Hawkeye said, doing the intellectual equivalent of prodding his brain with a big stick, hoping against hope it’d wake up and find something clever to say. “Well. Well, how do you feel about that?”

BJ loosened his grip on the spoon, and then set it aside. He rubbed his hands together, like he was trying to dust something off. “All men have an aesthetic appreciation for each other. To some degree.”

Hawkeye quirked a mildly manic grin, and then schooled his expression. He thought he might be sick, but then that would send utterly the wrong message. “Aesthetic appreciation?” he settled on asking, not touching the connotation of the statement, not willing to explicate anything implicit.

“You know. There’s some pleasure in looking. Seeing how a person’s body moves. Their face in profile. I’ve always had a… I guess you could call it a visual appreciation of the male body. Everybody feels that way.” 

Hawkeye thumbed the edge of the table, watching his shadow shift. He remembered being twelve or thirteen, maybe, young, wondering what it meant that he blushed just as much when James from down the street shoulder-checked him as he did when Anna from school bumped his knee under his desk. “I don’t know if that’s necessarily true.” 

BJ wouldn’t look at him. “I just meant to say that you looked good. Better than usual. Like something was radiating out of you. Like I could sense the difference, somehow.”

“The difference.”

“Like I could tell you were on the ups. That you felt good. It was… magnetic.”

“Magnetic.” 

“Uh-huh.” BJ cautioned a look at him. 

Their eyes met, and a warm shiver rolled up Hawkeye’s spine.

“You were right. I felt good,” Hawkeye said, walking out over an unseen ledge with a confidence he could almost convince himself to feel. “I feel good.”

“Yeah?” BJ asked.

“Yeah. Always feel better on a full stomach.”

BJ clicked off the stove, the sound sharp in the nighttime quiet. He picked up the last collection bottle, and then turned, swift and decisive. He handed Hawkeye the bottle, but didn’t return to his spot by the stove. Instead he sat down next to him on the bench, straddling the seat, leaning in.

Hawkeye palmed the bottle, passing it between his hands, feeling the heat of it sink into his bones. Ninety-eight point six degrees Fahrenheit. BJ’s gaze was pointed, a palpable pressure on the side of his face. If he had a heartbeat, it’d be speeding up.

“What are you doing?” Hawkeye asked, quiet, his voice running roughshod, low and hoarse. 

BJ’s eyes flicked to his mouth, and then to the bottle, and back to his mouth, and then, finally, met his gaze. “Watching you,” he said simply. 

Hawkeye blinked, slow, breathing through a sudden onset of physical warmth: it radiated in from his hands, and out from his belly, and was slinking, feline, down his spine. Something in his perception was shifting. The edges of things took on a golden lustre, reds intensifying, shadows blackening, like somebody’d overdeveloped the film reel inside his head. His mouth watered. 

He held BJ’s gaze and took a long pull out of the collection bottle. He probably could have stopped at two and felt just fine, but he was striving for a remembered feeling of latent power, of total wellness, a lazy, sated warmth that burned low in his belly, coals waiting to be stoked. He leaned into the feeling, taking another deep pull of blood, letting himself drink faster, not caring that his teeth—fangs—were scraping against the glass rim of the bottle, not caring that BJ was watching him, not caring that his lips were wet and slick and red with somebody else's blood. It felt like shaking off an ill-fitting skin, like peeling out of a too-tight tuxedo: liberating. 

He slammed the empty bottle onto the table with a hard, heavy clatter. He was aware that he was panting. He dropped a hand to skim over his stomach, bodily satiated, sinking into a very physical sense of pleasure. 

BJ’s eyes were wide as he followed the gesture. His pupils were dilated, heady and black, his irises a narrow rim of blue. 

Hawkeye grinned at him, crooked and sharp. Fangy. 

BJ breathed. The camp was quiet. The lamp glowed, casting weighty shadows. The tension in the air pulled taut, taut, tauter, until Hawkeye was sure it would shatter like a hammer meeting glass, like a gunshot meeting silence, like a bullet meeting bone, and take the both of them down with it, their pieces scattering to the wind. He was drunk on satiated heat, the heady rush of anticipation, the thrill of the narrow space between them, the air-gap tight enough he could swear there was heat transfer happening, BJ’s warmth seeping into him from inches away—

And then BJ’s mouth was on his. 

Hawkeye closed his eyes and let his hands rest on either side of BJ’s waist, languorous. He had no reason to rush. He leaned back slightly, bodily shifting BJ up and forward—it wasn’t hard. He was strong. He barely noticed the man’s weight. He leaned farther, then, feeling somewhere between sleepy and desirous, wanting BJ’s heat and weight on top of him. He turned his head, sighing when BJ licked tentatively into his half-open mouth. 

BJ pulled back abruptly. 

Hawkeye looked up at him, confused, annoyed under the sedative effect of a full stomach and simmering arousal.

“What the hell?” BJ asked, craning around. 

They were in the middle of a forest, on a bed of peat and moss, the moon above barely more than a sliver. 

“Did you do that?” BJ asked. 

Hawkeye shrugged. If he did, he didn’t mind. The where seemed far less important than the what. He laid back on an elbow, tugging BJ closer by the collar, catching his lips in another searing kiss. 

BJ pulled back again. “This isn’t right.” 

“Come on,” Hawkeye said. “Who cares?” Something about it was bothering him, too, some quiet voice in his head asking if this wasn’t just a bit abnormal, if this wasn’t a tad inhuman, a little impossible, but he shoved it down, uninterested. He had better, more interesting things to focus on. 

“How’d we get here?” BJ asked. “I didn’t feel anything. Did—you can’t, can you? How did—?”

Hawkeye sighed, looking around. It was a little chilly in the forest. And a tree root was digging into his lower back. He pressed up under BJ’s weight, flipping them easily, and they landed on his cot back in the Swamp. 

BJ shoved out from under him, looking panicked. “This isn’t possible.” 

Hawkeye leaned back on his side, disappointed. “BJ. Who cares?”

“Who cares?” BJ got to his feet, and hit the ground pacing. “I care. So should you. It isn’t possible. My God. I’m dreaming. I must be. There’s no scientific explanation for it. You can teleport—you don’t see anything wrong with that?” 

Hawkeye rolled onto his back, contemplative. He figured he ought to be bothered. But he wasn’t. That was all there was to it. He felt a little like he had when BJ had first found him in the storeroom so many months ago, and more than that how he had the morning after Bailey. 

He abruptly recalled BJ’s weight on him, his calloused fingertips on Hawkeye’s bare chest, the scrape of his nails on the tender back of his thigh, and shifted in reactive pleasure, rolling his hips just once against the air. He must have made a noise, too, because BJ snapped around to look at him, his face flushed. 

Hawkeye stared at him openly, letting himself look how he always wanted to, dragging his gaze up the length of his legs, the shear of his waist, the curve of his ribcage into the width of his shoulders, and finally up to his face, a stare so intense it probably felt nearly tangible. “Does it matter?” Hawkeye asked again. 

“It matters,” BJ repeated, not sounding very certain. “Of course it matters.” 

“Sure,” Hawkeye agreed. “Okay. It matters. Why don’t we test it out.” 

“What do you mean?” BJ asked. “Test? What is there to test? There’s no—”

Hawkeye rolled to his feet, thinking vaguely of Dracula, movement through shadows, impossible feats, and found himself behind BJ, close enough to plant a soft kiss on the nape of his neck. 

BJ jumped, turning sharply. “This isn’t possible.” 

“No,” Hawkeye said, curiously unbothered. “But it’s happening.” 

“Those can’t both be true,” BJ said. 

“No,” Hawkeye said. “They can’t.” He reached forward, holding his hand in the air between them. 

BJ looked at it. “What are you doing?” 

“Come on,” Hawkeye said. He didn’t miss the way BJ’s gaze moved up and down his body in furtive darts, as though he was afraid to let himself look. “Come on, I said. Let’s test it.” 

“I don’t understand,” BJ said, even as a confused grin asserted itself across his lips, his heartbeat audibly quickening. He took Hawkeye’s hand, tentative.

Hawkeye smiled, and clasped it tightly, feeling his pulse, his warmth. He fell backward, letting his weight ragdoll, and BJ, caught off-guard, fell with him, and they landed back in a pile of peat and moss. 

“Okay,” BJ said, laughing in breathless incredulity. “Alright. So it’s happening.” 

“It’s happening,” Hawkeye said. He leaned up for a kiss and, delight of delights, got it, their noses bumping slightly before they readjusted, finding a better, more intuitive angle. BJ slipped his hand underneath Hawkeye’s neck, supporting the base of his head, his fingers sliding gently into his hair. 

Hawkeye grinned, and BJ pulled back to look at him and grinned, too, and then laughed. 

“What?” Hawkeye asked. “There something in my teeth?” 

“More teeth,” BJ said, reaching up to touch Hawkeye’s fangs, which had apparently decided to make a reappearance.

Hawkeye pulled away instinctively, and then covered the motion by standing up under their combined weight, hooking his hands under BJ’s knees. 

“Whoa!” BJ said, gripping his shoulders. “Jesus, careful—”

“I’m not gonna throw out my back,” Hawkeye said. BJ weighed just about nothing. Or, rather, he weighed plenty, but it didn’t seem to bother him any. He hefted BJ up and pressed his back against the nearest tree, leaning into him for another kiss, this one deeper, the pace faster, sped along by the urgent twist of BJ’s hand in the fabric of his shirt, the press of his heel in Hawkeye’s lower back. He pressed in harder, but backed off when BJ made a sound a little different than the quiet, pleased sounds he’d been making. 

“Okay?” he asked. 

“Your back may be fine, but mine…” BJ grimaced, flexing his shoulders against the tree. His spine clicked audibly, and Hawkeye frowned. 

“Sorry,” Hawkeye said. “Would it be better if…?” He leaned into BJ again, but this time there was no tree to catch him, just the space above Hawkeye’s cot in the Swamp. Hawkeye landed on him, their chests briefly connecting. 

“God!” BJ’s fist was still tight around his collar, but he was smiling, eyes bright. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Absolutely unbelievable. How far do you think you can—”

Hawkeye hooked his hands around BJ’s waist and tipped them off the bed, where they landed with a thump on a slightly sticky hardwood floor. 

“Where—”

“Seoul,” Hawkeye said, breathless with the impact. “A favorite little bar of mine. Men’s room.”

BJ’s nose wrinkled. “And you had to put us on the floor?” 

“Picky,” Hawkeye said, rolling his eyes. He sat up off the floor and leaned forward onto the bar’s counter, finding himself and BJ transported onto a pair of tall stools.

The bartender startled, dropping a glass. 

“Sorry,” Hawkeye said, and waved. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“How are you doing this?” BJ asked. “My God. How far do you think you can go?” 

Hawkeye thought about it. Escape , he thought suddenly, the plan lighting him through, electric. He pictured Tokyo, the airport, an instinctive choice, and let his weight slide off the bar stool, only to land on the floor in an awkward crumple of overlong limbs. 

“I’m cutting you off,” the bartender said, peering down at him over the counter, as BJ roared with laughter. 

“You didn’t cut me on,” Hawkeye complained. So there were limits. He filed the information away, even as its importance became fuzzily uncertain, the nearly gravitational pull of the man beside him reasserting itself. He took BJ’s offered hand, but instead of allowing himself to be pulled up, he yanked BJ off the stool and onto a futon. A yo? He couldn’t remember what they were called in Korea. 

“Where now?” BJ asked breathlessly. He looked around, his hands planted firmly on Hawkeye’s shoulders, as though to keep him from shifting again. 

“Still Seoul. Hotel they give the GIs for leave. You don’t recognize it?”

“I do now,” BJ said, still looking around. 

Hawkeye touched his chest lightly, looking up at the bottom of his chin. 

BJ looked down at him, face alight with wonder. “I don’t understand.” 

“Me neither,” Hawkeye confessed. “But I’m having fun.” 

“No kidding.” BJ kissed him again, brief and thrilled. He shook his head, pulling away again, a calculating expression coming over his face. “Hey. Do you think…”

“What?” Hawkeye asked. He was working incredibly hard to focus on BJ’s words, on pushing down the rising, animalistic urge to rut up against BJ’s weight. It wouldn’t be polite, while they were trying to converse. 

“Well, the accommodations are good enough, I guess. But I wonder if it wouldn’t be possible…” 

Hawkeye blinked through the haze of his arousal, trying to read into whatever BJ was implying. “You want a better room?” he asked.

BJ shrugged, suddenly shy. 

Hawkeye poked him in the chest. “You’re devious. You’re using my powers for evil.” 

“For fun,” BJ corrected.

“Okay,” Hawkeye said. He sat up and pushed BJ over onto a thick mattress, the duvet fluffy and clean, the four-poster bed frame hung all around with heavy dark curtains. The light was low, the air sweet-smelling and cool. One of the high-class, expensive suites at the same hotel—he’d only seen one once, when he’d been invited back to a general’s room to give his medical opinion on an off mole the guy was worried about. “Better, Your Highness?”

BJ shook his head, awed, and drew Hawkeye in for a gentler kiss than Hawkeye might have preferred if it hadn’t held a spark of real heat, the promise of something that could be stoked into a blaze soon enough. 

Hawkeye leaned down, bracing himself on an elbow, running a hand up and down BJ’s chest. BJ’s hands hovered for a second before they settled on Hawkeye’s waist. 

Hawkeye shivered and sat up, pushing his hands up under the hem of BJ’s worn shirt, the fabric soft and pilled. BJ grabbed his wrist. 

“No?” Hawkeye asked, quiet, suddenly aware of the room’s intimate silence. The walls were thick. 

“No, it’s okay. I just,” BJ shook his head, and looked down at his hand, wrapped around Hawkeye’s wrist. “I got scared. All of a sudden. But it’s okay.” He released Hawkeye’s wrist. 

Hawkeye pushed his shirt up, and pulled it over BJ’s head, with a little helpful readjusting from BJ. Hawkeye ran his hands over BJ’s chest again, pleased, and then knuckled softly at the mild push of subcutaneous fat under BJ’s navel. “You’re a great looking guy. You know that?” 

“Uh,” BJ said, watching Hawkeye’s hands shift over his torso. “I don’t really…”

“What?” 

“I don’t know what to do,” BJ said. “Like I said. I want to make you feel good. But it’s… new. To me. You know, I’ve only really ever been with…”

“I’ll lead,” Hawkeye told him, gentle. “I’ll take care of you. You’re always looking after me. It’s my turn. Hmm?” 

BJ dropped a hand to Hawkeye’s thigh, and squeezed once, uncertain.

“What do you want?” Hawkeye asked. 

BJ shrugged. He was going shy again. His gaze landed on Hawkeye’s face for half a second, like a nervous bird, before it took off around the room again. He tugged at the hem of Hawkeye’s shirt. 

Hawkeye pulled it off obligingly and sent it off the bed to join BJ’s on the floor. He braced himself against BJ’s shoulders, imparting a kiss, before he slid off the bed. He popped the button on his khakis and stepped out of them easily, the fabric sliding unimpeded to the floor, and then bent over to pull off his shoes.

“Too much?” Hawkeye asked, pausing with his thumb hooked into the waistband of his shorts. 

BJ was bright red, his arm thrown over his eyes. 

“Too much,” Hawkeye decided. He rolled his shoulders, then stalked over to the door, ensuring it was locked, before he hit the lights. He navigated easily through the dark to the single bedside lamp, which he turned on and then placed on the floor, the light diffuse and low, barely illuminating the room, the space more shadowy than not. On his way back he tugged at the bed’s curtain ties, sending the velvet fabric cascading down on each side. When he settled back onto the mattress, the light was significantly dimmer, the space small and intensely private, the air quickly warming with their combined body heat. 

“How’s that?” Hawkeye asked, moving to hold himself over BJ, carefully not touching. No matter how much he wanted to.

BJ slowly slid his arm to the side, taking in the changed surroundings, and Hawkeye’s state of near but not complete undress. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why it’s so difficult for me. I’ve always been a little shy.”

“It’s sweet,” Hawkeye said. “Believe me, it is. Take your boots off, though.”

BJ sat up, and Hawkeye moved aside to let him, smoothing his hand over his back as he moved. He took in the subtle power of his musculature appreciatively, watching the shift of his shoulder blades under smooth skin. He wondered how it was that BJ was always a little tan. 

“Okay,” BJ said, setting his shoes down with twin thumps. 

“Okay,” Hawkeye said, and drew him back. He was steadily falling into his earlier, heady haze, arousal and fullness and warmth settling him firmly into his body, all thought condensing into lazy desire, the sort of total relaxation that came from the knowledge nothing in the world could threaten him. 

He pressed BJ into the bed, hands on his shoulders, and dipped to kiss him hard. He broke contact to swing his leg over BJ’s hips, pinning his torso with his weight, and caught his lips again, licking into his open mouth. He rubbed his thumb over BJ’s cheek, and dropped his other hand to his neck. He felt the hard rush of blood through his carotid and gasped, arousal spiking. 

BJ’s hands came up, less tentative than before, to trace down his spine, lingering lightly on his lower back. 

“Mm.” Hawkeye shifted backwards to lay out over BJ fully, settling between his legs, sealing them together from chest to thigh. He kissed the corner of his mouth, and then the cut of his jaw. He scraped BJ’s cheek with his own stubbled one harder than was necessary, simply because he liked when it was done to him. BJ sighed under him, the tension melting out of his body, and then abruptly returning when Hawkeye stopped to breathe hotly against the pulse point in his neck. 

Hawkeye gave his neck a tentative lick. The skin there was thin, and hot, the pulse obvious, fast and hard given the activity they were currently engaging in. His skin was salty. He wondered if he was imagining the tang of iron. 

“Hawk,” BJ breathed, gripping the back of his neck, pressing his other hand hard into Hawkeye’s lower back. “God.”

Hawkeye licked his neck again, more boldly, lathing the flat of his tongue across the sternocleidomastoid. He dragged his cheek against his neck, and nosed at it, and licked it again, until the skin was pink. He could definitely smell iron, now, and taste it. He groaned quietly, and pressed his mouth against BJ’s pulse, his teeth aching. Subtly his hold on BJ’s shoulder shifted, his forearm moving to press down across his chest. Confining.

“God,” BJ said again, stroking his hair. He pressed up against Hawkeye’s torso, like he wanted to be closer, even though they were already skin-to-skin. The heat building between them was nearly unbearable, and Hawkeye shuddered with it, achingly hard, well-fed but feeling, increasingly, that he could go for something else, the same sort of feeling one got after a long night of drinking, when the bar fries looked practically ambrosial, days-old cake in the fridge calling out an irresistible siren-song…

BJ started rolling his weight up against Hawkeye’s, and Hawkeye shifted against him, moaning against his neck. It was ridiculously teenage, deeply adolescent, getting off with three layers of clothes between them. He broke away to spit in his palm and then reached down between them to undo BJ’s fly. He took BJ’s length in hand, stroking him firmly.

BJ breathed in sharply, arcing into his hand. His hand fisted in Hawkeye’s hair, and then released just as fast. He petted the back of Hawkeye’s head apologetically. 

Hawkeye pressed down on his chest and settled his teeth against BJ’s neck, gently, not breaking the skin, the points apposed carefully over his jugular. 

Under him BJ went still. 

“Hawk?” he asked.

Hawkeye growled, animalistic, low, saliva dripping onto BJ’s skin from the razor-sharp edges of his fangs. He was blinded, focusing on nothing except the heat and the steady pulse of the thing under him. He wasn’t hungry. Not really. Not by much. But he could be. Was he? Maybe he was. All sorts of desires were knitting together, all physically compelling, dragging him into their seductive depths. He kept up the rhythm of his hand, stroking down BJ’s length, thumbing lightly across the head of his cock, spreading precum down the shaft. Days passed. Or minutes. It didn’t matter to him. He had all the time in the world. 

“Hawk,” BJ said. His hands flexed erratically against Hawkeye’s shoulders, his thighs tensing, apparently having given up trying to hold still sometime in the last few minutes of heated silence. His voice was wrecked. 

Hawkeye turned his wrist, drawing another gasp out of the man under him. He could feel the beat of BJ’s pulse conducted through his teeth directly into the basest parts of his brain, amplified a thousand-fold, like the needle on a record player. He thought suddenly, nonsensically, of the fable of the scorpion and the frog. I can’t help it , a voice in the back of his head said, sinisterly sibilant. It’s in my nature.

BJ returned his hand to Hawkeye’s hair, his pulse spiking. He shoved up against Hawkeye’s weight, but Hawkeye pinned him easily with his forearm, and BJ let out a quiet moan, his hips jumping, his belly heaving in reactive pleasure.

Hawkeye opened his mouth wider, teeth scraping against BJ’s skin. Not breaking it. Not quite. Not yet. It wasn’t time. 

“You could kill me,” BJ said, a gasp, a revelation. 

Hawkeye growled again, possessive, baring his teeth, spit smearing across his chin, slicking BJ’s neck, blood running hot just below the skin. He could. It would be easy. The first time was simple. And that had been a hunt. But this time, with the thing laid out underneath him willingly, open, inviting, baring its neck to him, completely submissive, deferential to his sheer power? It’d be the simplest thing in the world. 

“But you wouldn’t,” BJ breathed. “You wouldn’t, would you? You could, but you’d never—” BJ’s pulse was picking up, his hold on the back of Hawkeye’s neck intensifying, until, with a shattered gasp, he came, and tightened his grip so suddenly Hawkeye’s fangs punctured BJ’s neck. 

Hawkeye instinctively sealed his lips around the puncture, lapping at the blood, rutting against BJ’s thigh, drawing as deeply as he could manage from the minute wound he’d opened on the side of BJ’s neck. It’d be easy to deepen the injury, easy to rip out his jugular, to drink his fill. But he was already full. Wasn’t he? Was he? He wanted something. He knew that much.

BJ gently pushed at his chest. “Hawk.” 

Hawkeye growled, angry at the interruption. He swallowed another mouthful of blood, and rolled his hips hard, thrilling, his nerves on fire. BJ shifted, baring his neck more fully, giving Hawkeye better access, and Hawkeye lapped at it, at the exposed stretch of the tendons there, fumbling a hand under his own waistband. The interior of his wrist brushed the sensitive skin of his stomach and he gasped, his own arousal burning higher. 

“Let me,” BJ said, his hands trailing clumsily down Hawkeye’s front. He traced once, and then twice, over the subtly convex curve of his stomach, evidently trying to mimic the touch that had got him to gasp. His left hand lingered there, his thumb pushing into the skin over Hawkeye’s prominent hip bone. He gently pried Hawkeye’s hand away and replaced it with his own. He didn’t move it, though, only cupped the weight of him through his shorts. 

Hawkeye pushed his hips against BJ’s hand, seeking friction. He could hardly breathe, too focused on the rich hot cloy of blood on his tongue. He whined, abstractly overcome.

BJ pulled his hand away for a moment but brought it back the second it dragged another whine out of Hawkeye. He struggled awkwardly for a second with the waistband of Hawkeye’s shorts, but eventually managed to get a hand in. His palm was newly slick with spit, and slightly cool, but it warmed up fast as BJ started to stroke down his length. 

“This okay?” BJ asked, uncertain. 

Hawkeye braced his forearm against BJ’s chest more firmly and rocked his hips faster, thrusting up into BJ’s slick palm, not taking his mouth away from BJ’s neck for so much as a second. He felt sweat collecting in the hollows of his knees and the edge of his hairline, dripping off the end of his nose. BJ’s palms were sweaty, too, the hand clamped around his hip palpably damp. As Hawkeye registered the thought, BJ moved to palm blindly at the slight arc of his middle, the undeniable physical sign BJ had taken care of him—was taking care of him. The proof he was looked after. 

The thought shoved him over the edge, and a punched-out groan escaped him as he spilled over BJ’s fist, hips jerking irregularly as BJ stroked him through the aftershocks. 

BJ raised his hand uncertainly, and then wiped it off on the duvet.

Hawkeye gave one last parting lick to the wound on BJ’s neck, and then dropped his head to BJ’s chest, breathing hard. He was hot, flushed, completely relaxed. 

BJ’s arm settled around his shoulders, warm and reassuring, and pulled him down to curl into his side. 

They breathed in tandem for a while, soaking in each other’s warmth. BJ’s heartbeat was loud in Hawkeye’s ear, resonating through his own chest cavity, and he wondered if BJ noticed the absence of his own pulse. 

Hawkeye let his eyes slip closed as his breathing slowed. Fucked out and sated, on top of the caliber of bed only ever afforded to men who didn’t deserve the privilege of a night’s untroubled sleep, the warm weight of a body at his side, he was more relaxed than he’d been in years. He felt almost synesthetically at ease, images of jungle cats and velvet chaise lounges and magnolia trees overburdened by blossoms combining into some overwhelming sense of decadence. Luxury. He stretched, arcing his spine slightly, and then melted into BJ’s side. 

“Hawk,” BJ whispered, after a long stretch of silence. 

“Hmm,” Hawkeye said, fighting sleep.

“Are you awake?” BJ asked. 

“No,” Hawkeye said, lips barely moving against BJ’s shoulder. “I’m dreaming.” 

“I don’t want to interrupt.” BJ’s hand had come to rest on his waist. His palm was hot. 

Hawkeye tried to drag an eye open, but failed utterly. Something deep in him, a long-buried apex predator instinct, maybe, was telling him now was the time to conserve energy. To rest. 

Time moved strangely: it was syrupy, elasticate, the quiet drawing out interminably. “Will this change things?” BJ asked him eventually.

Hawkeye didn’t speak, too caught up in the irresistible pull of the velvet dark behind his eyelids. He had the sensation of sinking, or maybe free-falling; whatever it was, it was weightless. And so, so easy. 

“Hawk?” BJ asked again, barely articulating the word. 

Hawkeye breathed deeply, scenting the iron edge of fresh-spilled blood. He considered the question, discarded it, and opted for the most obvious answer: “Things have already changed.” 

BJ didn’t respond to that, so Hawkeye kept his eyes closed and let the dark drag him under.

Chapter End Notes

n e way uhhhhhh. hope this wasn't too terrible .
get ready for a triple feature: last two chapters and the epilogue are going up W/Th/F this week :)

Next up, the news: neutral, bad, and even worse.

Kansans and the Fountain of Youth

Chapter Summary

Time reverses, pulls taut, and then, terribly, moves on. No turning back now. Not that anybody ever could.

Chapter Notes

10K chapter uwu

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Somebody was hammering something in the hall. Loudly. 

“Oh, Christ,” Hawkeye complained, burying his head in his pillow. “Carlye, it’s the damned super again.”

The warm body next to him shifted, and a low, distinctly un-Carlye voice said, “Wrong blonde.” 

The world tilted nauseatingly as he remembered all at once where and when he was. So much for his little New York apartment. 

“Sorry, BJ,” Hawkeye said, reaching out blindly to touch him. 

BJ caught his hand halfway and held it fast. 

Hawkeye turned his head to squint into the dim morning light. The hotel room looked less plush in the daylight, the rich red curtains more of a dull pink, the finish on the four-postered bed frame obviously peeling. BJ was the only beautiful thing that hadn’t faded with the sun. 

“Good morning,” Hawkeye said, when he couldn’t come up with anything else that wasn’t provocatory in any number of directions. 

BJ was still, his brow furrowed. 

“What? Something on my face?” Hawkeye asked through a yawn. He rolled over and stretched. He felt patently incredible. His joints moved easily, the ever-present pain in his upper back completely absent. 

“What the hell happened to you?” BJ asked him. 

“What?” 

“Stay still,” BJ said, grabbing and pinning him, his wrists above his head.

“It’s like that?” Hawkeye asked, pleasantly shocked, even as something sharp reared up in the back of his head, snarling at him to rip his hands away and take control of the situation, to not leave his vital organs undefended, his neck bared. He took in the way BJ’s gaze flitted across his face, down his torso, and then back up to his face again with a shiver of excitement. It was always nice to be wanted. 

“What happened?” BJ asked again, shifting his grip so both of Hawkeye’s wrists were pinned under one of his hands. The other hand he dropped to Hawkeye’s face, tugging at the skin on his cheek, and then his hair, rough. 

“Whoa,” Hawkeye said, tilting with the motion. “Easy. I’m not really into that. Well, I could be. But we should talk about it first.” 

“Is this shoe polish?” BJ asked nonsensically, with another tug on his hair. 

Hawkeye pressed up against BJ’s weight experimentally. It’d be easy to buck him off, and the realization calmed the snapping nervous thing in his head appreciably. “Is what shoe polish?” 

“And your face. Your everything.” BJ dragged his thumb across the thin skin under Hawkeye’s eye, and then reached down and tweaked his side. 

“Easy,” Hawkeye said again, caught halfway between ticklish and pained. “What’s wrong with my face?” 

BJ released his wrists, and then, after a nervous beat, pulled him to his feet and towards the en suite. 

“What?” Hawkeye asked him, stumbling blearily into the bathroom. At BJ’s gesture, he turned, tired, to face his own reflection. 

It took a few seconds to register, but slowly it came together—it wasn’t his face. 

Or it hadn’t been for a long time. 

Hawkeye leaned in. He took tentative hold of a lock of hair, and let it slip through his fingers. It was black. Jet black. His third-morning beard growth was thoroughly dark, too, no hint of grey anywhere. 

He touched his own face. Under his fingers his skin was smooth and taut, his cheeks fuller, the angle of his jaw softer. The permanent creases that had begun to engrave themselves in the corners of his eyes and around the turn of his mouth were gone. 

He trailed his fingertips down his neck, over his collarbones, down his chest, taking in the changes empirically. He felt stronger, more well, physically stable in a way he hadn’t felt since he’d been shipped overseas. He’d regained some degree of muscle tone, or mass, his arms and shoulders thicker and better defined. He dropped his hands to his waist and noted that that was thicker, too. He pressed a hand into his side, gauging the depth of the subcutaneous fat covering his ribcage and smoothing the previously severe angle of his hip bones. 

“I’m twenty-five,” he declared to the room at large. 

His reflection regarded him blankly. He reached up to palm at his chest, getting more of a handful than he anticipated. It wasn’t just his waist. He was softer everywhere, more pliant, body gentled with pre-war safety and comfort and health. Something in him relaxed all at once, something taut and horrible that he hadn’t realized was a problem until it was gone. He swayed with the relief of it. 

BJ stepped forward, reaching out to support his shoulders, and Hawkeye leaned his weight back into BJ’s chest. 

“What do you mean, you’re twenty-five?” BJ asked.

“My body is,” he clarified. He looked himself over again, taking in the undefined soft of his abdomen, the width of his shoulders, the musculature of his arms, still waiting for shock to set in. He hadn’t exactly aged well, over the last set of years. Stress, chronic lack of sleep, and the fact he’d been living off of practically nothing but gin had taken their toll. Twenty-five looked younger on him than it had any right to. 

“That’s not medically possible,” BJ said. 

“I know.” 

“The hair alone. It’s dead protein. It doesn’t change unless you dye it,” BJ argued, half-hearted. 

“I know that. And yet.” 

“And yet,” BJ said. 

“And yet.” Hawkeye squeezed curiously at his right hip, and watched his reflection do the same. His shorts were tight, indenting the soft flesh at his side and under his navel. He’d have to borrow a pair of BJ’s. Or maybe Frank’s if he could steal them. Somebody’s, until he could get Radar to requisition him a set or two of new fatigues.

“You’re taking this very well,” BJ noted. “Given the impossibility of it.” 

“It doesn’t feel impossible. Or unnatural,” Hawkeye said, trying to gauge the turning of his own thoughts. Why wasn’t he frightened? He didn’t know. It felt like the traveling. Something about him that happened to be true, now. Natural as anything else. He squeezed his hip again, and then reached back to repeat the motion over his glutes.

“Can you quit that,” BJ said, tone rough, “while I’m trying to have a conversation with you?” 

“Quit what?” Hawkeye asked, touching his chest again, thumbing at the slightly fleshy peak of his nipple. 

“Touching yourself,” BJ said, face reddening.

Hawkeye watched his reflection curiously. He lifted his other hand to his chest, slow, telegraphing the movement, and grinned when BJ grabbed his wrist. “Why?”

“It’s distracting.” 

“Why?” Hawkeye raised the hand not currently restrained to card through his hair, the black vivid against the corpse-pale of his skin. He settled his weight more fully against BJ, sighing when BJ dropped his wrist in favor of wrapping his arms around his waist. 

“You’re always distracting,” BJ said, burying his face in the crook of Hawkeye’s neck. His chest was warm against Hawkeye’s back. 

“Yeah?”

BJ didn’t respond except to knead his palms lightly into the give of Hawkeye’s waist. And then again, harder, pulling Hawkeye flush against him from hips to chest with a content huff. 

“You’re going to start something I’m not sure we have time to finish,” Hawkeye said, even as he leaned into the touch. 

BJ eased his grip, patting his side. 

“Cradle-robber,” Hawkeye added, for good measure. 

“Hey,” BJ protested. His face was hot against the cool of Hawkeye’s shoulder. “I liked you how you were.” 

“Yeah?” Hawkeye asked again. He brushed his fingertips up and down BJ’s forearm, tracing through thick whorls of body hair. 

“Yeah,” BJ said. He raised his head and caught Hawkeye’s eye in the mirror. “You look healthier. I like that. But I miss the silver.” 

Hawkeye frowned, for the first time weathering a pang of unease. Was this a permanent change? Had he regained five or more years unequivocally? Or was it a temporary effect of last night’s activities; a sort of hyper-intense afterglow in the wake of food and sex and rest that would dissipate in time? Or… was it possible…

“What?” BJ asked, tightening his hold on Hawkeye again. He kissed the back of Hawkeye’s neck chastely.

“Nothing,” Hawkeye said, picturing his ridiculous checklist. Teleportation , he mentally checked off. And what of the rest?

“Not nothing. Something’s wrong.” BJ released him and moved to stand at his side. They looked at each other through the mirror. 

“I just think we’d better get back,” Hawkeye said. “They’ll be declaring us AWOL any minute.” 

“And then things would really be FUBAR,” BJ replied, running a hand across his face. “You know, suddenly I feel ancient?” 

“You look good,” Hawkeye said, a trace of fondness infiltrating his bout of dread. “You’re a good looking guy. I mean that. You are.” He patted BJ’s flank as he passed back into the main room. He raised his arms over his head, stretching backwards until his spine popped. “God. I think something bad happens to your joints at thirty. I feel incredible.” 

“Brag all you want,” BJ said, groaning as he bent over to retrieve his shirt from the floor. “But respect your elders.”

“I’m still older,” Hawkeye reminded him. “Even if I took a dip in the Fountain of Youth.” 

BJ paused, his shirt halfway on. “The Fountain of Youth.”

“It’s a joke,” Hawkeye said, pulling on his own shirt. “Remember jokes?”

“We met at a party once,” BJ said. “The Fountain of Youth. Look… I don’t believe in this sort of thing. I’m having a hard enough time accepting it’s happening in front of my eyes. But traditionally, in these sorts of stories…” 

“Spit it out,” Hawkeye said. He stooped to grab his khakis. 

“Immortality,” BJ said. “I mean, traditionally.” 

Hawkeye shook his head absently. He pulled his khakis on, one leg at a time, and then stood, the fly unbuttoned, in the eerie silence of the room. 

“I’m not saying that’s what’s happening,” BJ said quickly, catching on to the tense set of Hawkeye’s posture. “There’s the healing, of course, but invulnerable doesn’t… it doesn’t have to mean immortal. Neither does this. Nothing’s immortal, I mean.” 

“And if I am?” Hawkeye asked. “What does that make me?”

BJ shrugged, affectedly casual. 

“I’m worried,” Hawkeye said, and then trailed off. There was no good way to end the phrase. The beginning was broad enough to serve his purposes, anyway. 

“It’ll be okay,” BJ said softly. He stepped forward, into Hawkeye’s space, warm and reassuring. 

“You can’t know that.” Hawkeye pressed the back of his hand to his forehead, abruptly overcome. The high of last night, the brief and unfettered joy he’d found in his ability to, for the first time in years, have total control over his life, his location, drained away, replaced by an increasing despair. What was he? What was wrong with him? Was he more than human? Less than? Something entirely new? 

“I can’t,” BJ acknowledged. “I can’t know. But what I can know is that I’ll always be there for you. I’ll stick by you.” He dropped his hands to Hawkeye’s hips, and then reeled him closer by the belt loops. “And I’ll take care of you.” 

“I don’t know,” Hawkeye said, miserable. “I don’t want you to. You shouldn’t have to.”

“I don’t have to,” BJ told him. He tugged the two sides of Hawkeye’s fly together, having to put a little effort in to make the fabric contiguous before he slid each button home. The waistband pinched, and Hawkeye winced. “Sorry.” 

“It’s alright,” Hawkeye said, looking down at BJ’s hands. He breathed in, and then out, watching the slow rise and fall of his own torso, its gentled and unfamiliar topography only adding to his growing feeling of disconnect from reality. 

BJ smoothed a thumb across the soft skin under his navel, and then repeated the motion with the back of his first two fingers, knuckles sweeping along the edge of his waistband. He imparted a kiss to Hawkeye’s forehead, and then stepped back. “I don’t have to take care of you. I don’t. I want to.” 

“Quit it,” Hawkeye said, waving him off. He paced to the far end of the room. “I can’t take that.” 

“That’s alright,” BJ said. “I’ll keep offering until you can.”

Hawkeye rolled his eyes at nothing in particular, feeling like somebody had punched a hole through his chest, right to his useless unmoving heart. 

“D’you want to go back?” BJ asked him. 

“No,” Hawkeye said. “But we have to.” 

He turned and shoved his feet into his boots, not bothering to tie the laces, before he offered BJ his hand. 

“Okay?” BJ asked him. He was in an inquisitive mood, evidently. 

Hawkeye shrugged, holding out his hand more emphatically. BJ took it and Hawkeye smiled at the warmth of the contact before he turned, pulling BJ out of the hotel room and into the glaring sun of the compound. 

The camp was quiet. No surprise casualties overnight, it seemed; the lull had held. Hawkeye dropped BJ’s hand and focused in, listening. Mulcahy was writing something at his desk. Margaret was making rounds in post-op. And Frank—Frank was—

“That’s a problem,” Hawkeye sighed. “Frank is trying to have us hanged for treason again.” 

“And the world turns on.” BJ stuck his hands in his pockets and started off towards the Colonel’s office. 

“For reference,” Hawkeye said, jogging briefly to catch up to him, “where were we last night?” 

“Can’t remember,” BJ said brightly. “And neither can you. We got blotto. Total blackout. Woke up in the woods.” 

“Clever,” Hawkeye said, and followed him into Radar’s office, which was conspicuously absent its usual tenant. There were raised voices coming from inside the Colonel’s office, and he and BJ exchanged an exasperated look before pushing through the swinging doors together. 

“Come in, thanks for asking!” Potter barked, obviously at the end of his rope. He stopped short when he caught sight of them.

Frank looked over his shoulder, and then back, and then over his shoulder again, shocked. “You!” 

“Me!” Hawkeye said, dramatic. 

“You!” Frank said to BJ. 

“Me!” BJ parroted. 

“You!” Frank said to both of them, volume rising. 

“Us!” Hawkeye said, throwing an arm around BJ’s shoulders, mincing. 

“Perverts!” Frank cried, drawing his shoulders up defensively. 

“Prove it,” Hawkeye challenged. 

“You, you—” 

“Fellows,” Potter said, short and sharp. “This is getting us nowhere.” 

“In a hurry,” BJ agreed. “Hello, Colonel.”

“Don’t hello me,” Potter said. “You’re in deep.”

“AWOL!” Frank said. “Treason!” 

“I don’t think I’m AWOL,” Hawkeye said. He looked around. “In fact I feel pretty PCAE.” 

“P—”

“Present, comma, as expected,” Hawkeye clarified. “Colonel.” 

“Much as I hate to throw this dog a bone, Frank is right,” the colonel said. “You can’t just disappear without notice. What if a call had come in? We’d be down to two surgeons. Where the Sam Hill were you two?” 

“No clue,” BJ said. “Bad gin. Or something like it. Woke up in the woods.”

“In the woods?” Potter’s expression was trending towards apoplectic. “You mean you were wandering around the minefield? Drunk?” 

“Well,” BJ said, his confidence flagging. “Around the minefield? Who’s to say, really, what counts as around?”

“Deserters!” Frank proclaimed, pointing between them. 

“Clever plan, BJ,” Hawkeye said. “They’d never think to look for deserters in their C.O.’s office.” 

“You’re not helping anything, Burns,” Potter said. “Cool it.”

Frank drew himself up further, practically vibrating with indignation. “I can’t! These two get away with everything. All the time. Why? Just because they’re clever? Because they’re well liked? So what? Why should they get to go wherever they please, when I’m stuck here same as the rest of everybody else?” 

“Burns,” Potter said again. “Ease off. I’ll handle them.”

“You could let me,” Frank said. “I’d see to it they were prosecuted to the fullest extent of martial law.” 

“Marital law?” Hawkeye asked, feigning the mishearing. “Oh, BJ, better watch out. He’s gunning for a husband.”

“He already got the M.D.,” BJ said. “I guess the MRS. degree was next on the ten-year plan.” 

“I bet he cheated on the entrance exams for both,” Hawkeye lamented. “Fellas these days haven’t got a lick of honor.”

“I don’t have to stand for this!” Frank said, red-faced. “I don’t! I’ve stood it for years. And I’m getting pretty sick of it, you know that? So the Colonel doesn’t care. So nobody cares, because you’re both so clever. So fun. Well, I know who would care. I can go up the line. Right up the chain of command. You won’t be laughing at me then.” 

“Burns!” Potter snapped. “Mind making your plans to use my head as a stepping-stone somewhere I can’t see the bottoms of your shoes?” 

Frank sputtered like a faulty tea kettle, and then snapped around to leave, shoving roughly past Hawkeye on his way out. “You’ve got it coming,” Frank said, low, as he passed. 

“In that case I hope it’s wearing protection,” Hawkeye called after him. “I’m too busy to be a single mother.” 

Frank howled in indistinct disgust, and then stormed out, the doors clattering behind him. 

“Thanks for that, son,” Potter said. “That’s a whole week’s pouting you just guaranteed me.” 

“I do what I can to do what I can.” Hawkeye mock-saluted, and then dropped his hand. “Sorry, Colonel. About disappearing on you. It won’t happen again.”

“It had better not.” Potter eyed them both intensely. “I don’t want to think what would happen if a whole shipment came down to Burns.” 

“Our bad,” BJ said. “Anything I can do, now?” 

“You can—” Potter cut off, and squinted at Hawkeye. 

“What?” Hawkeye asked. 

“Did you put shoe polish in your hair? Or have you finally decided to start eating something besides that lighter fluid you call gin?” Potter asked. “You look off. In a good way. Better. You’ve got a glow about you.”

“We’re expecting,” Hawkeye said glibly, grabbing BJ’s hand and setting it low on his stomach. 

BJ pinched him and then pulled his hand away, rolling his eyes. 

Potter squinted at him. “You make so many of those jokes I’m half-convinced I ought to sit you down in front of the VD tapes again.” 

“Ah, the worst VD: a child.” 

“You don’t believe that,” BJ said, eyes wide and hurt.

“No, I don’t,” Hawkeye said, realizing his mistake immediately. “Love kids. Kids are great. The best. Little beacons of hope, if you ask me. Which nobody has. Sorry. Colonel, what can I do to make it up to you?” 

“Stop dyeing your hair, it gives us old folk a complex,” Potter said. “And come have a cup of coffee with your colonel. Not much else to do, anyway: There’s a lull for the next week.” 

“Hope it holds,” Hawkeye said, following BJ and Potter out into the compound, peering at the sky like wounded were weather, somehow discernible from the set of the clouds. And then, reflexes whipping into action so immediately he hardly knew he’d moved until after the fact, he snapped a hand out and grabbed the person who had been attempting to sneak up behind him, lifting them bodily by the front of the shirt. He bared his teeth on instinct, turning to see what petty creature had decided it could try to hunt him, the apex of—

Radar. 

“Sorry,” Hawkeye said, setting him down. He fixed Radar’s collar, and stepped back. “You startled me.”

“That’s okay, sir,” Radar said, looking pretty startled himself. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on ya or nothin’. We’ll announce ourselves better next time.”

“The royal we?” BJ asked, eyes flicking between Hawkeye and Radar.

“He’s a little prince,” Hawkeye defended. “He can be we.” 

“Three? I’ve heard it’s company.” 

“We being me and the mail,” Radar said. “Paper for the colonel, your colonelness, and a letter for B.F. Pierce, and two for BJ Hunnicutt.” 

“Somebody’s loved,” Hawkeye said, sliding the letter into the pocket of his khakis. BJ did the same with his, an odd expression crossing his face. 

Hawkeye gave him a questioning look, and BJ smiled tightly, waving him off. The colonel tucked his paper under his arm and continued on towards the mess. Radar trotted off to continue the mail run. 

“Something’s going on with you, Pierce,” Potter said, when they’d reached the mess. “You want to tell me why you can lift our company clerk like a bag of lawn clippings?” 

“Been trying to take better care of myself,” Hawkeye said. “Eating my poison. Lifting jeeps. The works.” 

“Uh-huh.” Potter wandered off to find coffee, and BJ followed him, saying something under his breath about breakfast. 

Hawkeye settled down at a table and pulled his letter out, turning it over in his hands. It was from his dad, of course. He rarely got other mail. Not never, but rarely. Lately they’d been playing a long-distance game of hangman in the margins of their letters, complicated by the fact that Hawkeye never remembered which letters he’d guessed, and the sneaking suspicion his dad changed the word every time he got too close to figuring the puzzle out. It was maddening, but only in a small, fond way. The sort of trick they’d play on each other at home. 

He cracked open the envelope, huffing when he noticed it’d been resealed. Probably not Radar; more than likely some MP having a boring afternoon. Still, the invasion of privacy rankled on principle. Shaking his head, he started to read: 

My dearest Ben:

First, to answer your question: the secret was mashed potatoes. No kidding. A cup, right in the dough. I guarantee you’ll never taste better cinnamon rolls. I’ve written the recipe on a separate sheet for you. 

I admit I don’t understand your recent preoccupation with recipes. No way to make these where you are; no way to get half the ingredients, and if you did, certainly it would cost more scrip than you could part with, no?

Regardless, I’ll send as many as you ask. Cinnamon rolls this week. Lobster bisque last. Let me know what you’re after next. If I can’t make it for you, this paper facsimile will have to do. 

I try not to mention it, I don’t want to upset you, but I admit I have a very specific image of your coming home. I’ve been keeping track of everything you say you miss (I can’t help it; when one’s child feels the absence of something, it’s in the nature of a parent to want to provide) and I thought I’d bring it all together for you. You’d come in the door to the most poorly coordinated dinner in history: banana bread, pistachio ice cream, bacon, barbeque ribs, lobster in eighty different iterations, fresh bagels and lox, and, of course, our French toast. 

I can’t imagine what you’re going through, and now, knowing you’ve been ill, I find it very nearly too

—

Sorry, Benny. Was called away to see to the newest Abrams kid. He’s got a cold, been fussy. Nothing like the sort of medicine you’re doing out there. Surgery. I was so proud of you, you know that? Still am. Your old man’s a country doctor. I’m no Columbia surgeon. My little Hawk, perched in Manhattan… and now look where you’ve flown. Not that you had a choice, this time. I like to think you bring some of our small-town warmth with you everywhere you go. Into ORs and foreign bedsides, everywhere it’s needed. Everywhere you’re needed. I hope the world gives the same warmth back to you. 

Forgive an old man his sentimental rambling. Spring is in the air, and, as always, I’m missing you. The magnolias are blooming. You won’t believe how tall the tree out front is, when you’re home. Which, if there is any justice in the world, will be soon. 

Love love love, 

Your Dad. 

“Ugh,” Hawkeye said, hastily wiping his eyes as BJ and Potter returned. He couldn’t help it. He missed his dad. 

“Okay?” BJ asked, sliding onto the bench next to Hawkeye. Potter sat down across from them both, laying his paper out across the table. 

“Just getting misty over this recipe,” Hawkeye said, gesturing with the second page in the envelope. 

“You’re just torturing yourself, now,” BJ said, even as he grabbed for the paper. He read for a beat, and then looked up, perplexed. “Mashed potato?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

“My God,” Potter said, setting his coffee down. 

Hawkeye took the paper back from BJ. “He’s out. Would you like to leave a message?”

BJ made another halfhearted grab for the recipe, and Hawkeye fended him off by holding the paper over his head. 

“Boys,” Potter said. “A moment, if you don’t mind.” 

“Sorry,” Hawkeye said, flattening the recipe against the table so both he and BJ could read together. 

“Cream cheese frosting,” BJ sighed, wistful. “I’d eat it out of a bowl with a spoon.” 

“Boys,” Potter said again. 

Hawkeye frowned. “Something wrong?” 

Potter shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what the world is coming to.” 

“What’s the matter?” BJ asked, his smile slipping away. 

Potter shook his head again. “Horrible thing. There’s somebody—I don’t even want to say it.” 

Hawkeye exchanged a worried look with BJ, before he reached over and took Potter’s paper. The Kansas City Star .

On the front page, in a massive font: 

SERIAL KILLER TERRORIZES NORTHWEST KANSAS

A spate of recent killings in northwest Kansas have been dubbed the work of a serial killer, according to police in Thomas County; ten victims have so far been identified. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Joe Berrie, undertaker and owner of Berrie Funeral Home in Colby, KS. “The first two we got in we assumed was some sort of wild animal attack. Maul injuries. And—can I say this in the papers? Drained of blood. Completely dry autopsy. Never seen nothing like it in Kansas.”

Police have instituted a nine PM curfew in Thomas, Rawlins, Decatur, Sheridan, and Gove counties until the killer is apprehended. Sheriff Jennings shared the following safety tips…

Hawkeye shoved the paper towards BJ. 

“I read it over your shoulder,” BJ said, eyes wide and searching. 

“Kai,” Hawkeye said, though he didn’t need to. 

“Who?” Potter said, taking his paper back. 

“Nothing. I gotta make a phone call,” Hawkeye said, gesturing BJ towards the door. 

BJ responded by shoving an entire piece of toast in his mouth. He said something, too, horribly muffled, so Hawkeye waved him off. “Find me when you’re done.” 

///

“Hi,” Hawkeye said, for the eighth time. “Can you get me Colby, Kansas?” 

And, for the eighth time, he heard, “Where?” 

Internally cursing American geography education, he cast around for the nearest large city. “Can you get me Omaha, then? Nebraska?” 

“What do you want out there, sir?” asked the operator, with a distinctly Bostonian drawl. “Got a cow you forgot to tell you shipped out?” 

“Watch it, city boy,” Hawkeye said. He might’ve been coastal, he might’ve spent a formative series of years in the beating heart of Manhattan, but he was still a rural kid deep down. “Can you get me Omaha or can’t you?” 

“Sure, sir,” the operator said. “Say hello to the corn for me.”

“The gall,” Hawkeye muttered. 

“‘Lo,” somebody said.

“Hello?” 

“Yeah,” said the voice on the other end. Male. Low. 

“Hi, is this Omaha?”

A brief pause. 

“Not strictly,” said the guy. “Who’re you looking for?” 

“Well, who have I got?” 

“Um. I don’t think I ought to say.” 

“What?” Hawkeye pressed a knuckle into the bridge of his nose. “Look, I’m trying to reach Colby, Kansas. Can you direct me there?” 

“This is, uh, this is, this is John Grant. From Fullerton.”

“Hi John Grant from Fullerton,” Hawkeye said patiently.

“Who is this?” 

“I’m Captain Pierce, calling from Korea.” 

“A soldier?” John Grant from Fullerton sounded abruptly displeased.

“A doctor,” Hawkeye said. “And I sure wish I was calling from closer to home.”

“Draftee?” 

“Yes,” Hawkeye said. “Look, I’m trying to reach—”

“Colby. Yeah, I heard you. You a Kansas boy?”

Hawkeye cast his eyes towards the ceiling. “Sure,” he decided. “Yes. Kansas boy. That’s me.” 

“Well, I figure it’s the least I can do, get you a call home. Thanks for your unwillingness to serve. Best wishes from ‘braska.”

“Thank you,” Hawkeye said. The line clicked.

“Hi,” said a woman’s voice. “You’ve got Colby, Kansas, emergency dispatch.” 

“Oh,” Hawkeye said. “Sorry. Can you direct me to a non-emergency line?” 

“Sure thing. You’ve got Colby’s non-emergency line.” 

“They’re both you,” Hawkeye surmised. 

“Yep. I just always open with emergency, in case it’s urgent.”

“Clever. Can you get me, uh, I’m looking for a Kai John? Short for Kaiaphus, maybe.” 

A long pause. 

“Hello?” Hawkeye asked. The door to his left creaked open, and he waved at BJ. 

“Got him?” BJ asked. 

Hawkeye shook his head. “Hello?” 

“Who is this?” the voice asked. 

“Captain Pierce,” Hawkeye said. “I’m calling from Korea. I’m a doctor. Kai came through my unit a couple months back and I patched him up. I wanted to check in on him.” 

“Right,” the woman said. 

BJ hopped up on the desk, leaning close. 

“Is he alright?” BJ asked. 

Hawkeye shrugged.

“I can get you him,” the woman said. “I can try. Just…”

“What?” Hawkeye asked. “Just what?”

“Well, I don’t know how well he’ll take it,” she said. “He doesn’t like to be reminded of it. The war. And… his girl…” 

“His girl?” Hawkeye asked. 

“Sir, I don’t know that it’s my business to say. Just that there was a tragedy. His girl’s been missing since last week.” 

“I’m sorry to hear,” Hawkeye said, dread lancing through his gut. “I’ll be tactful.”

“Putting you through,” the woman said. “Thanks for your service.”

Hawkeye cringed, and saw BJ do the same. 

There was a long pause, long enough Hawkeye was concerned the call might have dropped, before a familiar voice said: “Hello?” 

“Hi. Kai?”

“Who’s this?”

“Dr. Pierce. Hawkeye. Remember me?” 

A pause. “Doc-Hawk?” 

“Yeah, that’s me. You owe me a postcard, kid.” 

“Sorry.” Kai took a long breath. “Why’re you calling?” 

Hawkeye blanked. He didn’t have a plan. He’d called in a focused panic, and had no idea what to do now that he’d got the kid on the line. 

“How are you?” Hawkeye settled on. “How’s life at home?” 

BJ kicked him. The girl , he mouthed, and Hawkeye shrugged, gesturing widely. 

“Not so good, sir,” Kai said, his voice pitching suddenly up. 

“Oh,” Hawkeye said, leaning forward, accidentally bumping his and BJ’s foreheads together. 

“I’m sorry,” Kai said, audibly starting to cry. “It’s not good. Not good. And after you did all that work to get me home.” 

“Don’t apologize to me,” Hawkeye said. “It’s okay. Hey, hey. It’s okay.”

“Sorry,” Kai said. “I’m sorry.” 

“What’s going on?” Hawkeye asked. He reached out, and set a hand on BJ’s knee. BJ covered his hand with his own. 

“It’s just not so good right now,” Kai said, sounding soggy. “My girl, she—”

“What happened?” Hawkeye asked, measured.

He heard nothing but hard breathing and a few choked-off sobs. 

“Kai. What happened?”

“I had a dream,” Kai whispered, tone flat with dread. 

Hawkeye tightened his grip on the phone. His hand twitched against BJ’s knee. “What kind of dream?

“I had a dream,” Kai repeated. “In it, I was chasing somebody. Through the fields. Not ‘cause I wanted to catch ‘em. But because I could. Like a rabbit hunt, or something. For fun, more than food. They were scared. And tired. And I just kept running. And so did they. And then they tripped and I—” he choked off another sob. “I bit ‘em. I sunk my teeth right into their throat. Ripped it out. And I—” another choked noise. 

“Kai,” Hawkeye said, deadly calm. “What happened?” 

“When I woke up I felt real good. I wasn’t hungry any more. And nobody could find Missy.” 

“Missy. That your girl?” Hawkeye asked. 

Kai made a series of horrible, distraught sounds, miserable animalistic noises, before he wailed, simply, “I ate her.”

“Oh, God,” Hawkeye said, closing his eyes. He thought he might be sick. BJ squeezed his hand. Hawkeye ripped it away, finding the touch unbearable. “Kai. Listen to me. Was it a dream?”

Kai was sobbing, incomprehensible. 

“It’s okay. Kid, it’s okay,” Hawkeye said, even though it wasn’t. Not really. 

“I killed her,” Kai sobbed, breathing so hard it reminded Hawkeye abruptly of his residency rotation through emergency medicine. Of a poor young kid who’d been in ketoacidosis when they brought him in on the ambulance.

“Calm down,” Hawkeye said. “Calm down.” 

“I killed her,” Kai repeated, snuffling loudly. “I killed her and I ate her and I can’t die.” 

“What?” Hawkeye asked. “Kid. Don’t do anything stupid.” 

“I killed all of ‘em,” the kid said. “I killed and I killed and I didn’t want to and I did and I’m so—Doc, I’m starving all the time and nothing I do makes it stop except just one thing and I can’t even die, I’ve tried and I can’t. I come back every time.” 

“What do you mean you come back?” Hawkeye turned away from BJ, rubbing the back of his neck hard. “Every time?” 

Kai breathed. 

“Kid.” 

“I can’t die,” Kai said. “I tried. Over and over. Shotgun. Hanging. Drowning. Knife in the bathtub. Doc, none of it sticks. I just keep coming back. I’m a monster and I can’t do anything about it, I’m stuck this way, no matter what I do, I starve and then I dream and I’m a monster again, or I don’t and I’m a monster still, and there’s nothing I can do, doc, nothing, I’m stuck, I don’t know what to do—”

“Calm down. Okay? Kid, listen to me. Listen.” He listened to Kai’s breathing slow slightly as he struggled to control himself. 

He turned and eyed BJ, before jerking his head towards the door. 

“You sure?” BJ whispered. 

Go , Hawkeye mouthed. 

BJ shrugged, and left, trailing his fingers down the arc of Hawkeye’s spine as he passed.

“Okay, kid. Listen to me. Listen.”

Kai sniffled into the phone. 

“Kid, I know what you’re going through.” 

“You don’t,” Kai cried. 

“I do.” Hawkeye sent a directionless prayer off against any wayward operators listening in. “I do know. It’s happening to me, too.” 

That got Kai’s attention. “To you?” 

“Yeah. To me. Whatever you have, I caught it. And I… I know what you mean. About the dreams that aren’t. Do you understand me?”

“You—somebody? You did?” 

“I did,” Hawkeye said. “I did and it’s killing me.” As he said it he realized it didn’t feel very true. He felt more guilty for his lack of guilt, the fact that he thought of the killing as some sort of necessity, as an extension of hunting for sustenance. Bailey hadn’t been a good man. But that didn’t make it alright to kill him, either. To cannibalize him. And yet some sort of moral connection in his brain just wasn’t catching. 

“Right,” Kai said, sounding just as sure as Hawkeye felt. “Me too.” 

“How many?” Hawkeye asked, bracing himself. 

Kai paused, a long, drawn-out beat. Finally he said, “I don’t know. It was only the hospitals, at first. And then old folks. Death-bed types. But lately it’s been blurring. And faster. Every night, I think. I don’t know. Fourteen? Sixteen? I don’t know. I don’t know what’s real anymore. I can’t believe it’s me doing these things. I don’t know how to quit. I don’t want to do this anymore. I wish they never sent me over there. I never wanted this. I just wanted to be me, and home, and doing what I thought I’d do, farm some, have a family, but instead they took me away and sent me back wrong, and I’ll never be right again. I miss—I miss my girl. Miss Missy. Oh, God—”

“I’m sorry,” Hawkeye said, meaning it. Meaning it terribly. “You never asked for this. It shouldn’t have happened to you. And I’m sorry. Look, kid, I’m so, so sorry. But you can’t go on like this.”

“No,” Kia said. “No, I know. I tried to get out of it. Believe me I tried. I ain’t never been this kind of guy before. I always—I felt bad for the plow horses, you know? Always worried if it didn’t hurt their shoulders some, with those harnesses. But now there’s all these attacks, and I don’t even believe it’s me, that I’m doing it, because it doesn’t feel anywhere as bad as it should. What’s the matter with me?”

“Look,” Hawkeye said, fixing his gaze in the middle distance, as though he could stare straight through space into Colby, Kansas. “Look. Listen. Pay attention to me.”

“I am,” Kai said, sniffling again. “I’m trying, doc. Honest.” 

“Listen,” Hawkeye repeated. “Listen. You’re a farm boy, huh?” 

“Yeah.” 

“You spend a lot of time around animals. D’you have chickens?”

“Yeah. Got a coop. Yeah.” 

“Okay,” Hawkeye said. “And you probably have coyotes, too. Out there on the plains. Right?”

“Right,” Kai said. “Yeah. Lots.” 

“Bet you have to spend a lot of time keeping the coyotes out of the coop, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Because the coyotes don’t know any better. Right?”

“What do you mean?” Kai asked. “Know any better? It’s what they’re built for.” 

“Exactly,” Hawkeye said, punctuating the word with a pointless mid-air gesture. “Precisely. It’s what they’re built for. A coyote doesn’t feel bad when it kills and eats a chicken. Because it’s doing exactly what it evolved to do. If coyotes felt bad about killing to eat, they’d be vegetarians. Huh?” 

“I guess,” Kai said. “I don’t really get what you’re trying to say.” 

“I’m saying,” Hawkeye said, working through it, “you and me, kid, we’re like the coyotes. Okay? Some part of us is, at least. The part of us that’s starving, that part can turn off the other part that worries about things like morals. That feels things like guilt, or fear.” 

“I don’t want that,” Kai said. “I should feel guilty. I should. And I don’t. And I wish I did.”

“I know,” Hawkeye said. “And that’s the human part of you. That’s the stronger part, okay? That’s the part of you with willpower. With control. And that’s the logical part of you. Now listen to me. So you don’t feel guilt. But you think you should. Intellectually you still subscribe to certain social mores, like ‘murder is bad’ and ‘cannibalism is repulsive.’ You believe it intellectually. And that’s what you have to stick to, even if you don’t feel it anymore. That’s the best part about being a human. You’re a brilliant, beautiful, organic thinking machine. And you can think your way out of your body. To a degree, you can. And that’s what you have to do here. Okay, kid? Do you understand me? You don’t feel it. Okay. But you believe it. And that’s what matters. As long as you hold yourself to that.”

Kai was silent.

“Okay?” Hawkeye asked, voice edging into desperation. 

“I tried,” Kai said. “I tried, is the thing. And then the dreams take it out of my hands.” 

“No, no, no,” Hawkeye said. “I know. There are concessions you have to make.”

“I thought I was supposed to stick to my moral code completely.” 

“Well, close to it,” Hawkeye amended. “Look, have you tried animals? Animal blood?”

“It doesn’t work,” Kai said. “It comes close, but it still makes me sick.” 

Hawkeye fell back in his chair. “Oh.”

“So it’s human, or… human, but not under my control.” 

“There’s a way around it,” Hawkeye said. “Blood banks. Blood drives. Might be hard, in a rural spot like Colby. But if you find your way to a city, you might be able to get a consistent supply. Get work as a janitor, maybe. Or put yourself through a medical program. Figure out how to cure the both of us, while you’re at it.” 

“Doc,” Kai said, no longer sobbing. “I’ve killed sixteen people.” 

Hawkeye touched his forehead, and then levered his hand into the air. 

“I think, if I can’t get out of it,” Kai said, slow, patient, “I think I best just turn myself in.” 

“Yes,” Hawkeye said. “Yes. But no.”

“No?” 

“No,” Hawkeye said. “Think about it. Morally, yes. Morally. But logically, think it through. What’s going to happen if you do? What’s the first thing they’ll do? They’ll take you in for questioning. And then they’ll put you in holding. Behind bars. Maybe alone. But how long do you think a jail would hold you? Once you’re starving enough that you’re not all the way you anymore?”

“It wouldn’t,” Kai said. “I’d be out. Shadow-walk right out. Or bend the metal.”

“And if it did hold you?” Hawkeye asked. 

“I’d hurt somebody,” Kai said softly. 

“Right. So jail isn’t an option.” 

“And out here… I tried to—”

“Also not an option,” Hawkeye said firmly. “It just isn’t. Do no harm. I can’t advocate for it.” 

“Okay,” Kai said. “So my only option is…?” 

“Blood bank,” Hawkeye said, at the end of his rope. “I think that’s the best you can do. Take as much as you need to make sure you’re in control. To make sure you’re never in a position where you’d hurt somebody. I think that’s the only way forward. The way that hurts the least number of people. Or puts them at risk.” 

“This is horrible,” Kai said. “You realize? This is ungodly. Unnatural.” 

“And yet, it’s happening,” Hawkeye said. “How long can you go between…” 

“Meals?” Kai asked, bitter. “Not long. Day or two, maybe.” 

“God,” Hawkeye said. “Was it like that from the start?”

“No. At the start I went a couple weeks. Miserable but I did it. And then another week, and then a few days, and now it gets just as bad after a day or two as it was after two weeks. The more you have, the more you need.” 

Hawkeye slumped over, resting one elbow on his knee. He absently tried to tally the total number of pints he’d gone through in the last span of weeks, tried to recall the last time he’d gone without eating for more than half a day, without BJ pulling him aside and slipping him a collection bottle, or a mug that in low light looked very nearly like it might contain coffee. It’d been a while. Even now, only sixteen hours after he’d sunk his teeth into BJ’s neck, he was starting to feel a sharp and uncontrolled edge of hunger, uncomfortable in its intensity. 

“Could you train yourself to go longer?” Hawkeye asked. “If you stopped, could you push the interval wider?” 

“No,” Kai said. “Don’t try. You’ll do something you regret.”

“Noted,” Hawkeye said, a dark feeling seeping into him, up through his bootsoles. “Duly. And truly.” 

“Doc,” Kai said. 

“Kai.”

“Thank you,” the kid said, choked up again. “And I’m sorry.” 

“What for?”

“For if I gave it to you,” Kai said, voice growing thicker by the second. “I didn’t mean to. Honest. I’m sorry. I’m sorry if you have to live like this ‘cause of me.”

“Oh.” Hawkeye looked at his hand. He flexed it, remembering the distant sting of a needle piercing his palm. “It’s not your fault. It’s part of the job. One of the risks of my kind of work. I’d never blame a patient for that. Honestly, it never even occurred to me to be upset with you. It’s not your fault. And neither of us wanted to be over here. If it's anybody’s fault, it’s President Truman’s.” 

“I’m sorry,” Kai said again. “Really I am.” 

“Don’t be,” Hawkeye said. “Take care of yourself. Try to…” he thought of sixteen families, all of them in their dress blacks. “Do something. Give back, somehow, if you can. I know you didn’t mean to. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Kai said. “I don’t…” 

“There’s nothing to say,” Hawkeye said. “Go on.”

“Doc?” 

“Yeah?” 

“How many…” Kai sighed damply into the receiver. “How many of us do you think there are?” 

Hawkeye paused. He hadn’t considered it. He had a sudden picture of it, of what it would mean, a million and a half American draftees spirited away by the hand of the military, baptized in blood, returning sharp-fanged, empty-eyed, carrying on their conscience the shadow of unrestrained violence, foisted on them, and then they’d only be a single percent of the population. Less than a percent. Would anyone notice? It wasn’t all of them, he knew that much, but how many were there? Would they know each other, back home? Would Hawkeye one day stop in a supermarket, overcome with a feeling of kinship as he looked at a stranger he nevertheless recognized by the man’s pallor, his stillness, the memory of violence in his posture? 

Not likely. He’d have no reason to be in a supermarket. Neither of them would.

“I don’t know,” Hawkeye said. 

“Do you think they know?” 

“They?” 

“The military,” Kai clarified. “The guys up top. Do you think they know that this stuff is happening? That this is happening to people?” 

Hawkeye paused again. He hadn’t thought he’d been underestimating Kai, but the kid was bright. He had questions Hawkeye hadn’t considered, had been too focused on his immediate problems to think about. Did the military know? Was anything being done? 

“Probably not,” Kai said to himself. “Probably they don’t know. If they knew, they wouldn’t keep sending people out. They’d take care of us when we went home, to make sure nothing bad happened to us. If they knew, they’d try and fix us up.” 

“Hmm,” Hawkeye said, noncommittal. 

“Then again,” Kai said, “I’m not so sure that’s the case. Maybe they know. Maybe they’re keeping careful track. Maybe they have everybody up on lists. Maybe they’re watching all the time. Maybe they’re worried, and trying to cure it, without creating a panic. Maybe they know and want it to be happening. Some sort of experiment gone wrong, or right. Maybe they know and don’t care. Maybe we’re all expendable. Maybe nobody gives a damn what happens to discarded weapons. But if nobody ever does anything at all, I guess it doesn’t really matter either way.”

Hawkeye closed his eyes.

“Thanks, doc. Can I call you again? If I have questions?” 

“Sure,” Hawkeye said, voice weak. “Of course. Take care of yourself.” 

“You too,” the kid said, and hung up. 

Hawkeye set the phone down and leaned forward, letting his hands hang loosely between his knees. He stayed that way for a while, minutes, maybe, before BJ stuck his head back through the door. 

“Everything okay in here?” he asked. 

Hawkeye shook his head. “BJ, my friend. I’ve got to say, it’s getting harder to see the light.” 

BJ moved to kneel at his side. “That’s alright. I can be your sentry. For a while. If you need somebody to do the looking for you.” 

“Why?” Hawkeye asked. “Don’t you see me? See what’s wrong with me? Before all this there wasn’t anything I had going for me. I’m strange. Sad. I feel everything too deeply. And now…” 

BJ gently clapped a hand to his cheek. “You’re not going to get rid of me.” 

Hawkeye brushed him off and buried his face in his hands, leaning on the desk. 

“Come on. You’ll feel better if you talk about it.” 

“The kid,” Hawkeye said, pressing his palms into his eye sockets. “He tried to… he… it was what we thought. And he didn’t want to deal with it, and so he tried…” 

“Oh, God,” BJ said, quiet, touching his knee. “Hawk. I’m sorry. Is he…?” 

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “He’s fine. No matter what he tries. He’s fine. He… I… immortal. Can’t die.” 

BJ didn’t say anything. 

“Can’t die, you understand?” Hawkeye asked, cracking over into mild hysteria, the implication sticking into him all at once. “And what does it mean if it’s… what if I never age?” 

BJ’s hand tightened on his thigh. “Eternal life?” 

Hawkeye shook his head, still covering his face. “That’s the thing. It isn’t eternal life. What I’ve got is eternal death. I’m fixed in time. Like a moth on a pinboard.” He dropped his hands, desperately feeling the absence of his own heartbeat. “What I was was a reel of film. Spooling out, linear, frame by frame, towards a predetermined end yet unseen. I knew the reel would run out eventually, and that was what gave the whole thing worth. Knowing moments are only frames, and frames are all I am, transient snapshots of Hawkeye Pierce at five, ten, twenty, twenty-eight, on until the picture ends. But now the reel’s caught. All I am is a single frame. A still. Forever the same image, projected. I’ll never change. I’ll never go grey again or get bad knees. I won’t—I’ll never get old with somebody. With everybody. Fifty years from now, when every person I’ve ever known is dead or wandering, misplacing their keys, wheelchaired and white haired, looking back at their story, I’ll still be this. Some bloodhungry monster in the shape of a man.”

BJ hovered at his side. Eventually he asked, “Should I get Mulcahy?” 

“Out of your depth?” 

BJ shrugged. “I’m good at the physical. You understand? The emotional, the, the amorphous…” 

“You’re plenty smart,” Hawkeye said. “Come on, Stanford. Don’t discount yourself.” 

“No, no. I know. I’ve taken plenty of philosophy. I follow your argument. I just don’t know that I’m the right person to argue against it.” 

“Who said we have to argue?” 

BJ shrugged again. And then, oh-so-delicate, ridiculously offhand, he said, “Maybe not. So… you want to die? Is that it?” 

“Yes,” Hawkeye said immediately, offended. Then he revised. “I mean I don’t want to die. Sometimes I do, but only because I think I’d like a break. But in a real way. In the way that matters the most I don’t want to die because it’s not a break. It’s inhuman. It’s the opposite of humanness. Poets and philosophers talk of raging against it, or giving into its naturalness, but I can’t do either. I want to rage against it, precisely because it is inevitable, and so inhuman, but I can’t. All I can do now is linger on. Forever the same. Inhuman because I am death now. That’s the worst part, don’t you see? I am death. Of all things on Earth I am part of the only inevitability. I will never change. I will never tire. I will never stop taking.” 

“So maybe that’s the way it is now,” BJ said, tone too casual for how uncomfortable he looked. 

“It was taken from me,” Hawkeye said, feeling hollow. Hungry, too. Already. Again. 

“What was?” 

“Me!” Hawkeye stood up, and paced in the narrow space between the desk and the colonel’s office. “Stolen. I’m never getting it back.” 

“Calm down,” BJ advised him, raising his hands. 

“Why?” 

“Because,” BJ said, arms still raised, placating, “there’s no reason to bring out the teeth.”

Hawkeye touched his lips. His fangs were fully extended, sitting over his bottom lip. 

“God damn it,” he said, exasperated, despairing, full of a simmering rage at the injustice of it all. He threw his hands up, at wit’s end, and when he put them down he was in the middle of the woods. 

He turned around a few times, confused. He had no clue which way the camp was. He hadn’t meant to leap. The sun was bright overhead, even through the trees, and he groaned, a headache taking root behind his eyes. He stumbled for a few minutes vaguely in a direction he suspected might have been west, before he paused, shaking his head at his own stupidity. He closed his eyes, and opened them in—

Seoul. The hotel room.

“God damn it,” Hawkeye said again. His headache flared, and he took a second to slide to the ground while it leveled off. He was feeling abruptly unwell. He’d overshot the jump. He wasn’t sure what had brought him back to Seoul. He figured it was the last time in a while he’d felt uncomplicatedly good. 

“What a goddamn disaster,” he said to nobody. And then, for no good reason, “Calm down. Jesus.” 

He watched dust motes swirl in the square of sunlight pouring through the window for a while. His headache wasn’t easing off any. 

“Okay,” he told himself. “You’re AWOL. Again. For the second time in a day. Go home.”

He didn’t seem to have any good arguments against the idea, so he sighed, leaning back against the bed, and opened his eyes in the Swamp.

Frank screamed. 

“Jesus,” Hawkeye said, bringing a hand to his temple. The world swayed, and he fought back a rising tide of nausea. It was the same sort of feeling he got when he’d overexerted himself on a shift, twenty hours into the work with no break for a meal or a nap, and then had to run for a code. Apparently warping space-time was something he only ought to do on a full stomach. And / or at night. “Frank. Shh. Shh. Please. Shh.” 

“How long were you standing there?” Frank demanded. “I see your game. You’re waiting around, trying to scare me, well, it won’t work, mister. I saw you first. I really won’t stand for your behavior anymore, I won’t. And I know what you’ve been up to.” 

“What’s that?” Hawkeye asked blearily, settling back onto his cot. He really was terribly dizzy. And out of nowhere. 

“Fudging the numbers,” Frank snapped. “You’re stealing blood.”

Hawkeye watched him carefully, feeling his stance shift subtly from exhausted to poised. His teeth ached. 

“Now what would a couple of freaks like you two be doing with that sort of thing?” Frank asked. He bent and retrieved his straight razor from the shaving kit on his bunk. He started lathering his brush, too, before applying the soap to his cheeks. “I don’t know. I’ll say that much, I don’t know what you’re doing with it. Some sort of communist blood-magic, I’m sure. Whatever it is, I’m sure I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” 

“So don’t,” Hawkeye said, a growl edging its way into his voice. An implicit threat.

“Believe me, fella, I don’t want to stick my nose into your business.” Frank started shaving, drawing the straight razor down his cheek. “But if you’re stealing from the army, that’s my business. You and that Hunnicutt. If I had my way, you’d both be up against the wall, know that much.”

Hawkeye stood up off his cot and found himself directly behind Frank. 

Frank jumped violently, his razor slicing across his jaw. Blood started flowing out of the wound immediately, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. The soap around it slipped and started to run down his neck, tinting pink with blood. 

“How’d you do that?” Frank asked, eyes wide. He was stock-still. Frozen. Like a rabbit. A little prey animal. Weak. Defenseless. 

Kai, Hawkeye thought, and then shook his head. Kai was different. Kai had hurt innocent people. It wasn’t like that with Frank. Frank wanted to hurt him. To hurt BJ. And, really, who would miss the guy? 

“What’s the matter with you?” Frank asked, staring at him in the mirror. His rabbity pulse was speeding up. “You look wrong. You dyed your hair, is that it? Can’t stand looking your age? None of the nurses would look twice at you anymore, I bet that’s it. Hard to be a man with no personality when your looks wear out, isn’t it?” 

“What do you know?” Hawkeye asked quietly. His voice came out with a certain degree of seductiveness, a compellingly charismatic tone that insisted, quietly but firmly, on the truth. His headache intensified. 

“I,” Frank said, eyes going wide. “I don’t know. I just know that Hunnicutt’s been fudging the numbers. For you. I don’t know why. Well, I don’t know what for, but I know why. I saw you. The two of you. One morning, after I showered, I saw you through the tent canvas. He was on top of you.” 

“And you didn’t say anything to anybody?” Hawkeye asked, pushing again for truth. His headache peaked sharply, his vision blanking, and when it came back it dragged with it a tsunami of intense hunger, worse than he’d experienced since his first weeks of unintentional fasting. He was overexerting himself. He knew that for a fact, now. But that wouldn’t be a problem. Not for long. 

“I was saving it,” Frank said. “I was going to use it as blackmail. Next time you tried something, or went over my head, or endangered the sanctity of the Army of the United States of America. I’d blackmail you.” 

“You thought you could blackmail me?” Hawkeye asked, starting to circle Frank. Slowly. Predatory. Cat-and-mouse. It wouldn’t be too bad, he thought. Hypocritical, a little, with what he’d just said to Kai. But the rules were different for him. He was a doctor. He knew better. He could make these sorts of calls. 

“Not you,” Frank said. His eyes flicked to the straight razor he still had clutched in his fist. “Hunnicutt.” 

“Is that so?” Hawkeye asked. He kept circling, ever closer, incapable of stopping, the animal part of his brain, the hungry part, the angry part, winning out over the shred of intellect begging him to look at what he was doing objectively. At the advice he’d given not more than an hour ago. 

Really, who cared about objectivity, anyway? It was a stupid thing to tell the kid. There was no way to separate yourself into body and mind, animal and intellect. It was all the same. And the animal that was Hawkeye Pierce was feeling more than a little rage, more than a little clawing hunger, more than a little devastating unfairness, at the current facts of his unlife. He never asked to suffer. So why should he? The world owed him. How many kids had he pulled back from the brink? How much would it matter, really, in the grand scheme of things, to put a tally in the other column? He was owed that much. In self-defense. In defense of his ideals. In defense of BJ. 

“I was going to write a letter,” Frank said. He was shaking, now, clearly sensing the danger in the air, the fact that something in Hawkeye had fundamentally shifted. The sheath had come off the scalpel. “Lots of letters. I was going to tell his wife, his college, his hospital, and everybody up the chain of command he was a perverted little queer—”

Hawkeye leapt.

Chapter End Notes

UGH long one today folks. tomorrow's the last chapter before the epilogue :).... lmk what ur thinking.... what you like.... who ur rooting for..... im so excited to hear what ppl think is gonna happen...... I spent an absurd amount of time plugging away at this in stolen moments between doing a thesis and trying to graduate and I'm glad that it's finally, finally seeing the light of day. labor of love. see you all in the finale <3

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Next up: the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.

Full Circle, or: You May Ask Yourself

Chapter Summary

An act of violence, an act of mercy, and a Thracian bard... or perhaps only a pillar of salt.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

It was only when he found himself sprawled out on the floor of the Swamp mere inches away from a fresh cadaver, licking blood off his hands like so much boysenberry syrup, that he realized he might have a serious problem. 

Or—

Well—

The thing of it was—

That wasn’t precisely true.

The tape was stopped. The reels were reviewed. And there he was. Exactly where he was at. Sprawled out, fresh cadaver, licking blood off his hands—all that was still the case. But having a problem—not so much.

The truth was he felt phenomenal. 

He turned his hand over, tongueing at a stray drop of blood making its way down his wrist. 

It was cool. Some time had passed; night was falling again. He had to have missed a shift in post-op by now. It was possible BJ was covering for him. It was possible nobody had missed him. It was possible there was a search party looking for him. It was certain he didn’t really care. None of it concerned him. 

What did concern him was the thing on his floor. The body. It had lost most of his attention when it had run out of blood. But his interest was slowly turning back in its direction. He couldn’t leave it there. It’d rot. Putrefact. It wouldn’t be healthy, to leave it there. And it would cause problems. People might get the wrong idea—that Hawkeye was a killer. He wasn’t. Not in so many words. 

Killer implied injustice. Cruelty. Pointlessness. But Hawkeye was well motivated. 

After all, a guy’s gotta eat. 

He sat up straighter at the sound of familiar footsteps. He made no move to hide the body. He wasn’t ashamed. He’d only done what came naturally.

“Hawk?” BJ whispered from the doorway of the Swamp. His eyes flicked, unseeing, over Hawkeye and the body on the floor. 

Hawkeye looked around and realized, belatedly, that it was too dark for BJ to see. “I’m here,” he said. His voice was smooth, collected, perfectly calm. It radiated reassurance. 

“Where’d you go?” BJ asked, stepping into the tent. He let the door clatter shut behind him. “Everybody’s looking for you. I couldn’t tell them you probably weren’t even within twenty miles of camp.”

“Sorry. I’m here now,” Hawkeye said. He watched BJ search out his shape in the dim. 

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” BJ asked. “Can you turn a light on?” 

Hawkeye snapped his bloodwet fingers. The lights came on instantly. 

BJ startled backwards, throwing himself against the door. “What—?”

Hawkeye snapped his fingers again, and the lights went out. 

They both waited in the dark and silence. 

“Hawk,” BJ said, quiet. “Explain.”

“What’s there to explain?” Hawkeye asked, genuinely baffled. 

“What’s—” BJ appeared to be trying to peer through the dark. “Is he dead? Just tell me.”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said, and nothing else. He listened to BJ’s vitals, clear as speech: his heart rate rose, his breathing came faster: fear. And then a series of intentionally deep breaths, followed by a slowing of his pulse. Fear, conquered. 

“Why?” BJ asked. “Tell me why.”

Hawkeye shifted in the dark. “He was going to blackmail you. About us. Tell the military. And your wife. And the board. Force you out of work.” And I was hungry , he didn’t say. Honesty wouldn’t win him any approbation here. Not in the moment.

BJ’s hands clenched so hard his knuckles audibly popped. 

“You’re always taking care of me,” Hawkeye said, by way of explanation. “I wanted to protect you.” 

BJ breathed out sharply. 

“I’m sorry,” Hawkeye said, not because he meant it, necessarily, but because it seemed like the right thing to say. 

BJ breathed out again. He inhaled slowly, loudly, and then breathed out, audibly attempting to remain calm. “Turn the lights on.” 

“Are you sure?” Hawkeye asked. 

“Do it.” 

Hawkeye snapped his fingers, and the lights came on. He wasn’t quite sure how he was doing it. He didn’t really care. Something at the edge of his attention locked on to the open circuit in his bedside lamp and, with a minimum of effort, closed it: let there be light.

“Okay,” BJ said, breathing hard, evidently trying not to panic. “Okay. Okay. Okay.”

“Are you?” Hawkeye asked. He stretched a leg out, accidentally bumping the corpse on the floor. It jostled, clothes rustling. 

“No,” BJ said, closing his eyes. “But I’ll have to be.” 

“Why?”

“We have to do something about this,” BJ said. He opened his eyes again, looking Hawkeye over. “You’re a mess. If somebody finds us…”

“Us?”

“Us,” BJ confirmed. “Always us. Come on. We have to clean up.” 

Hawkeye licked his palm again, and then stuck his index finger into his mouth, sucking lightly. 

BJ watched him impassively. 

Hawkeye watched him watching him. 

“Come on,” BJ said again. “You’re a mess.” 

“Where are we going?” Hawkeye asked. 

“I don’t know,” BJ admitted. “But we can’t stay here. Not with…” 

“No,” Hawkeye agreed, looking at the corpse. He’d been exceptionally clean about it. He hadn’t lost a single drop of blood to the floor. He’d been less efficient with keeping it off his own skin. 

“Come on,” BJ said, for the third time. 

“Where?” Hawkeye asked. His eyelids were heavy. He figured it wouldn’t do any harm to wait until the morning to take care of things. All the people who would have cause to come into the Swamp in the middle of the night were already there, in various ways. He yawned, and let his eyes slip closed, leaning his head against his cot. 

“Christ,” BJ muttered. The door creaked open, and then shut. Hawkeye listened to his footsteps move around the camp. The light was irritating him even with his eyes closed, so he willed the lamp off. 

Neat trick, he thought to himself, and then drifted off.

He woke up to the door opening. 

“Are you awake?” BJ asked out of the darkness. 

“Mm,” Hawkeye said, keeping his eyes closed. Lately he’d been sleeping like a four-star general.

“Let’s go,” BJ said. “When we get back you can clean up and knock out.”

“Get back from where?”

BJ didn’t answer. Something metallic scraped tinnily against the doorframe. 

Hawkeye cracked an eye open skeptically. BJ was holding a shovel.

“Right,” Hawkeye said, and sighed. BJ. Always practical. 

/// 

They worked in silence. 

The pit they dug was somewhere far north, in a wooded area, certainly within what the Army liked to call enemy territory; Hawkeye had transported himself, BJ, and their luggage effortlessly. 

It didn’t take long to carve out a swath of earth large enough to hold the cadaver. When they pushed it in, it fell face-down, the legs bent and resting at a high angle over the head, like it was caught mid-swan dive. 

BJ had to pull away to retch. 

Hawkeye buried it, his shovel sure, raining topsoil and clay and earthworms down onto it until it disappeared from view. He packed the earth down, and then spread a looser layer of soil overtop, and scraped their tracks away with a fallen bough. 

BJ watched him, silent and expressionless. 

When Hawkeye caught his gaze, BJ turned his head away. 

///

They showered in silence, too. 

BJ stared blankly, resolutely ahead as they both scrubbed dirt out from under their fingernails. He was conducting himself with immense gravity, an utter stoicism and economy of movement that spoke to an intense and hidden inward conflict. It was possible he was making a decision; Hawkeye had seen him less serious over bodies he’d failed to pull back from the brink.

Hawkeye hummed under his breath and watched water the color of rust disappear down the drain. He thought it ought to bother him, but the part of his brain that cared about things like that had been firmly padlocked behind the pure and simple animal drives that guaranteed his survival.

He was shockingly relaxed, disturbingly at ease; he had the unmistakable feeling of having fallen off a cliff. Everything was out of his control. He was hurtling towards some unseen, inevitable end, powerless to the pull of gravity. Falling was treacherously easy. And horribly permanent. 

///

Back in the Swamp, BJ still refused to meet his gaze, lost in some inner labyrinth. 

“Do you want to talk?” Hawkeye asked neutrally. He couldn’t tell what BJ was thinking.

BJ shrugged reticently. 

“We can if you want,” Hawkeye said. 

“What’s there to talk about?” BJ asked. 

“Well, plenty, by my estimation,” Hawkeye said, though he didn’t really believe it. What good would conversation do them, now? They’d burned too many bridges together. Things were how they were. A talk wouldn’t change that. 

“Yeah?” BJ asked, flat. 

“If you want,” Hawkeye said. He sat on the edge of his cot, looking out the side of the tent. A cool breeze caught the canvas and sent it flapping mildly, tensioning and detensioning with elastic thrums. The air smelled of spring flowers. Somewhere a mourning dove cooed. 

“You could apologize,” BJ said, his tone bitingly ironic. 

“I’m sorry,” Hawkeye said agreeably. 

“Uh-huh, but you aren’t, though,” BJ said. “I know you aren’t.”

Hawkeye shrugged.

“What happened to you?” BJ asked him, like he really wanted to know. “What changed you? Where’d you go?” 

“I’m right here,” Hawkeye said. He felt as though somebody was beginning to erect a wall of ice dead center between his brain hemispheres. He was aware there were things he ought to be feeling—regret, fear, despair, guilt, horror. But they were distant, unimportant, and unaccessible. He couldn’t remember why it had seemed so important to hang onto them, before. Why he’d gone to all the trouble to tell the kid to stand by his ideals. None of it mattered, really, when one got down to it. It was all a matter of perspective, and Hawkeye was finally settling into a new one.

He’d changed. 

No—he’d been changed. It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t had a choice in the matter. What good would it do to fight it?

“I know,” BJ said. “I guess. I guess. Who else would it be? But—”

“But what?” Hawkeye asked. 

“It’s wrong,” BJ said, their gazes at last locking with a thwip of tension. “It’s wrong. It’s immoral. Unconscionable. Wrong. It’s all wrong. But it’s you.” 

“Just me,” Hawkeye agreed. “It’s never been anybody but.” 

BJ took a step closer, and then another, until he was within Hawkeye’s reach, a new resolve passing over his face. He’d evidently reached an internal decision. “And you’d never hurt me.” 

“No,” Hawkeye said. “No, no. Never. Not you. Never you.” A lie? Maybe. He wasn’t sure anymore.

BJ reached out, his hand trembling, a barely-perceptible unsteadiness that Hawkeye’s attention latched onto instantly. He couldn’t help it. He was wired to sense weakness. 

Still, he forced his body to relax, to feign submission. 

BJ came another step closer, hand still outstretched, like he was trying to let a street cat catch his scent. 

Hawkeye tilted his head minutely, watching. Waiting. 

BJ crept closer. Finally he brought his hand to the side of Hawkeye’s face, his pace glacial. 

Hawkeye leaned into the touch, letting his eyes flutter closed. He didn’t need to be on his guard around BJ. BJ would never hurt him. He wouldn’t. And if he tried, well. He wouldn’t get far. 

BJ stroked his face, like he really was a feral tom cat he’d found on the side of the road. After a few repetitions he shifted his hand down until his thumb rested against the curve of Hawkeye’s lower lip. 

Hawkeye parted his lips willingly, keeping still as BJ traced the razor edge of his fangs with the pad of his thumb. 

“You’re dangerous,” BJ said, like he was trying to convince himself. He wrapped his hand around Hawkeye’s jaw, pressing his thumb deeper into his mouth, pinning Hawkeye’s tongue. Hawkeye closed his lips around it, sucking lightly, and BJ tightened his grip on his jaw. 

“You’re dangerous,” BJ said again, louder, and Hawkeye hummed his agreement, a low, hoarse sound. He let the edge of a canine brush against the thin skin on the inside of BJ’s thumb.

“But not to me,” BJ said.

Hawkeye hummed again, biting down delicately. It was a practically surgical maneuver; he stopped the press of his fang a micrometer above the artery, capillaries bursting and imparting a few weak pulses of fresh blood before the wound clotted over. And BJ was really a very good doctor. He’d recognize the gesture for what it was. A love bite. 

BJ hissed, but kept still. His heart rate increased, an uncontrollable stress response to the pain. 

Hawkeye stood, letting BJ’s hand fall from his mouth. The blood on his tongue was a perfect aperitif, urging his appetite back to the fore. He held himself straight, correcting his typically abysmal posture, so he came eye to eye with BJ. He moved forward. 

BJ stared at him, and then moved back instinctively, uncertain, his body language deeply prey-like, conveying a vulnerability that Hawkeye immediately catalogued, his confidence rising, his control slipping.

He pressed forward again, and BJ stumbled backwards over something they’d left on the floor. The shovel. 

“What are you doing?” BJ asked. 

Hawkeye frowned. What was he doing? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t care, either. He took another step forward, and watched BJ flinch with clinical interest.

Stop this, a voice in his head said, urgent. He ignored it. And something—clicked. 

“Hawkeye,” a shivering prey animal said, voice small. 

He bared his fangs. He wasn’t really sure what a Hawkeye was. Something about something called Maine, something about a large spatial difference between where it was and where it wanted to be. Something sad and half-sweet. That felt like Hawkeye. But he didn’t really care. He wasn’t Hawkeye. The only thing home now was whatever he was. And he had a very narrow and particular set of skills, of goals, of interests. 

“Hang on,” the prey said. “I don’t understand.”

Stop, cried the unnecessary thing in his head. A miracle humanity had managed to survive at all, with a conscience complicating resource allocation decisions. The world would be far more efficient if everybody could do as he was doing, and just switch their humanity off.

He stepped forward again, and picked the thing up by the collar. He turned the prey this way and that under the light, curious. 

The prey made a noise when he moved it, so he shook the thing, and smiled when the noise repeated. Lively thing. They could have a fun hunt together. A nice evening’s distraction. 

He set the prey down and pushed it gently, urging it to bolt into the night. He’d give it a minute or two before he made chase. A bad habit he’d retained since childhood—always playing with his food. 

The prey was visibly shaking, but otherwise made no movement to exit the tent or flee. 

He frowned, vexed. Fight or flight, the saying went, fight or flight. And here was an inexplicable third response: freeze.

“Wouldn’t you like to play a game?” he asked the prey. “It’s easy. All you have to do is run. I give you a five minute head start. If you escape, you escape. And if I catch you... Well, then I catch you. What do you think?” 

The prey continued to shiver, locked in its same position. 

“Come on,” he said, trying not to be frustrated. He had all the time in the world, after all. “Run, why don’t you?”

He took a sudden, sharp step towards the prey, hoping to startle it into motion. 

The prey let loose a hell of a right hook, its closed fist ripping through the air inches from his face. If his reflexes had been half a second slower, the animal might have actually snapped his nose. 

“Easy,” he said, tightening its grip on the prey’s hand. He’d caught the punch easily. 

The animal threw a left-handed jab towards his unprotected diaphragm. The hit landed, but he didn’t flinch. 

“We can fight if you want to fight,” he said, pleased to finally be getting a reaction. He lifted the animal by the neck, and tossed it down against the cot. 

“Hawkeye,” the prey said again, scrabbling backwards over the cot. “This isn’t you. Come on. I know you’re in there. You wouldn’t hurt me. This isn’t you.” 

Stop, stop, please, you have to stop, begged the voice in his head, distant and quiet behind a wall of ice. 

“This is me,” he said, perplexed by internal and external insistences to the contrary. He was what he was, and had always been: pure survivalism, untainted by ethics, by moral considerations, by guilt and fear and love. He was whatever it took to keep himself alive. He’d always been himself. It was just that he’d finally been put in charge.

“It isn’t,” the prey insisted, putting as much space between them as it could manage in the small tent. “Hawkeye, this isn’t you. Please don’t let this be you.” 

He shrugged, campy, and then gently shifted time and space aside to place himself behind the prey. 

The animal lunged forward, rolling over a cot, and came up wielding a piece of glassware. 

“What are you gonna do with that?” he asked, sauntering forward. If he could corral the animal towards the door, he might get the chase he was after.

“Whatever I have to,” the animal said, voice betraying its uncertainty. 

He shifted again, reappearing directly in front of the animal. 

The animal hesitated, still unwilling to swing the glass at his face despite the stakes being its continued survival. Weak. Sentimental. Human.

He wrenched the glass away and sent it arcing across the tent, where it burst into a spray of silver sound and shrapnel. 

The animal flinched, and tried to duck away, but he caught the thing by the neck and threw it to the floor. 

“Please,” the animal begged, even as he planted his knee firmly into the prey’s diaphragm, cutting off its air. He caught the animal’s wrists as it tried to claw at his eyes. 

“Calm down,” he told it. “I’m a doctor.” 

“Yes!” the animal cried, desperate. “You’re a doctor! You’re Dr. Pierce. Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce. Hawkeye. You’re my Hawkeye. You have to remember. Please remember. Please.”

“Remember what?” he asked, and drove his teeth deeply into the animal’s neck. 

The voice in his head had given up on imploring him to stop. Instead its commentary had devolved into a constant, anguished scream. 

“Remember,” the animal said hoarsely, no longer struggling. The thing brought a hand to the back of its head, jerkily burying its hand in his hair. “You’re a pacifist. You’d never hurt anybody. You never could fire a gun. Not even to save your own life.” 

He paused, a pressure building in his skull. His ears popped sharply, and he gasped, weathering sudden pain. The pressure built endlessly until he had to release the animal, his hands going to clutch at his temples, waiting for the unbearable pain to ease off. The pressure only continued to build until he thought he might die then and there from a ruptured eardrum, or an aneurysm, or just from pure unadulterated agony, and then, with a sickening snap—

Hawkeye threw himself backwards, head cracking against the edge of a bedframe. He savored the pain, let it sharpen his resolve. He grabbed hold of abject horror and held on.

“Run,” he gasped, blood seeping out of his mouth, hot on his face. “BJ, run. Now.”

BJ sat up, ripping a clean shirt out of Hawkeye’s trunk. He pressed it to his shoulder, stemming the flow of blood. “I’m okay.” 

“Run,” Hawkeye said, scenting the blood in the air, barely catching a movement forward he hadn’t intended to start. “You have to run.”

“It was shallow,” BJ said, holding pressure on his shoulder. “Shallow wound. I won’t bleed out.”

“I don’t know if I can control it,” Hawkeye said. “It took me once. I don’t know how long I can hold it off. Could be forever. Could be minutes. You have to run. I’m dangerous. I’m lost. Get as far away from me as you can, and keep running.” 

“No,” BJ said. “I made a promise. I’m not breaking it now. Not this far in.”

“Sunk cost fallacy,” Hawkeye said. “BJ, I can’t be saved. There’s nothing left of me to be there for. Look at what I’ve done. What I tried to do. This isn’t me. Not anymore. We both know it. You have to run.”

“I’m not leaving you,” BJ said, stubborn to the last. “We can work it out. You didn’t mean for any of this to happen. And we can—cure you, somehow. We can. I know we can. We’re doctors. I’m a doctor. Who am I, if not somebody duty-bound to care?” 

Hawkeye closed his eyes, reaching back to hold onto the leg of the cot, as though that might, somehow, restrain the thing inside him that wanted to eat the world. He saw, suddenly, how things would go. BJ could never leave him. Not here, not now. Not while the war was still on. He could never leave Hawkeye like that. He’d never stop looking back. Something else had to be done. 

“You said you’d do anything for me,” Hawkeye said. 

“Yes.”

“Did you mean it?” Hawkeye asked.

BJ answered instantly. “Yes.”

Hawkeye tightened his hand around the cot’s metal leg. “You have to kill me.”

“What?” BJ pushed to his feet, backing away, looking to the door like he wanted to bolt. 

“And now he runs,” Hawkeye said to himself. He shook his head, eyes starting to water. “BJ. Listen. Please. My sidearm—”

“No,” BJ said. “No. Not this. Anything. Not this.”

Hawkeye reached beneath the cot, and withdrew a small, locked box. He snapped the padlock easily, the metal twisting away like taffy. Yet another reminder of his inhumanity. He held the open box towards BJ. He was on his knees, posture nearly supplicant: in offering. 

“No,” BJ said. “You can’t give up. We can fix this. We can fix you.”

“It’s too late,” Hawkeye said. “And I can’t do it myself.”

“No, no,” BJ said. “No. Hawk. No. Please. No.” 

“You said it yourself,” Hawkeye said, grim with resolve. “I never could fire a gun. Not even to save my own life.”

BJ turned, shaking his head, tears starting to streak down his cheeks. “You’re here now. You’re still here. We can still cure you.” 

“BJ,” Hawkeye said. “I don’t think you can. I don’t know that I’m me anymore. I don’t know how much of me is left—the one you knew. The one you cared about. He might be gone. Or mostly gone. If you ever—” Hawkeye cut off, and tried again. “If there was ever anything in him you loved. You’ve got to do this. He would want it this way.” 

“No,” BJ said. “It isn’t fair. He—you’re the best man I ever knew. The single best. Finest kind. You know that?” 

Hawkeye offered the gun again, apologetic. BJ was a doctor, too. He shouldn’t have to go around inflicting wounds he couldn’t cure. But somebody had to. 

“I don’t know that the shotgun will do it,” he said, trying to regain, for maybe the last time in his unlife, a veneer of doctoral detachment. If he was going to go out, he was going to go out himself: Dr. Pierce. “The kid implied it wouldn’t. It’ll slow me down, take me out for a while, and in the meantime you’ll have to finish the job.” 

“Finish the job?” BJ said, pitch vacillating, distraught. 

Hawkeye looked at the gun in the box in his hands. “Well, the legends vary. Sun doesn’t work, obviously. Fire might. But, as a surgeon, I’m qualified to recommend a more particular course of action.” 

“What are you talking about?” BJ was getting angry, now. “You can’t possibly mean this.” 

Hawkeye shrugged, and briefly tightened his hand against the remembered weight of a scalpel. “We’re both doctors, you and I. Surgeons. It seems only fitting. Cut my heart out.” 

BJ turned his head away fast, reacting to an unseen hit. 

“Ignore the symbolism,” Hawkeye said, ironic to the last. “If you narrativize it, we’ll never get anything done.” 

“People change,” BJ said, turning, beginning to pace. “So you’re a little different now. Everybody is. We’ve all been changed by this. Nobody’s leaving here unscathed. That’s what war is. And love. Things change you, but you’ve got to keep going. You might come out somebody entirely different. But you’re still you. And we’re still together. Hawkeye, we can weather this.”

“I can’t,” Hawkeye said. “This is a mercy. I think I knew I’d never really come back from the war. Knew it from the second I got that envelope in the mail. I’d never make it home. Whatever came back from the war wasn’t going to be me. The Hawkeye Pierce that stepped onto a plane in the States is long dead. He was always going to die. It was only the method that was up for debate. No matter how I return, I’m not coming back. You can’t go home again. That’s the only true thing, now, BJ. I can’t go back.”

BJ paced forward and grabbed the gun, harsh, and threw it onto his cot. He continued pacing, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry,” Hawkeye said, at a loss for what else to say. 

“It’s an execution,” BJ said, quiet under the weight of horror. 

Hawkeye tried to smile at him, aware that the blood coating his fangs must have made him look ghoulish. Good. Better to have the outside reflect the rest. “Every death is an execution.” 

“No.”

“Yes.” Hawkeye sat back, feeling the dirt beneath his hands. “Yes. Every death is an execution. Every last life is cut off. It ends. The blade drops, the heart stops, the spirit flows out and is no more. Every time. Every last time. It’s cruel. It comes before its time. It’s sudden. Maybe the lead up is slow, maybe it’s illness, old age, but the stopping? No. That’s always abrupt. It’s always an execution. Why should mine be any different?”

“I can’t.” BJ dragged his hands through his hair, grabbing onto the back of his own neck, like if he just pulled hard enough he could lift himself out of the situation, out of the country, kitten-like, by the scruff, until he was a thousand miles away from the monster in the shape of his best friend. 

“You can,” Hawkeye said. He tried to catch BJ’s eye. “You can. You have to. And you will.”

“Why?” 

“Because,” Hawkeye said, trying to be tender, trying, trying, and failing. Probably failing. “You can. You will. Because I need you to. You need to do this and you need to run. As far and as fast as you can. You can’t look back. Not even for a second. You’ve got to get out of here. Or you’ll never be rid of me.”

“I can’t leave you,” BJ said. “You’re the best friend I ever had. You see me. You don’t look through me, you look right at me, and I can’t let you go. I can’t, I can’t, Hawkeye, you’re all I have.” 

“You have to.” Hawkeye brought his hand down through the air, cutting a hard line through the space between them. “You have to. You can’t take me with you. You shouldn’t. You found me in a war zone, BJ. There’s nothing you could pick up in a minefield you should take home to your family. I’m no exception.” 

BJ let out a sound of complete anguish. “I know that! I know and I still can’t leave you behind. I’ll never be able to shake you.” 

“You have to,” Hawkeye said, beseeching. “Please, BJ. I can’t do this. I can’t be what separates you from your happy-ever-after. This place changed me. I can never go back. But you still can. If you go now you can get it back. The American Dream. BJ, you’re exactly it; you’re what the Dream looks like. If you can’t get it back, what does it mean for the rest of us? For everyone? If this place changes you, it’s changed all of us. If you can’t get it back, none of us can. Don’t you see? You have to go home. You’re the only one that can. BJ, you can’t take it with you. Or we all do. Go. Go. You have to go. Now.” 

BJ tore himself away, throwing himself bodily against the door of the Swamp, yelling in pain and despair. He beat the board of the doorframe with a fist, twice, thrice, an inhuman bellow of rage piercing the night. 

He stopped, then, abruptly quiet. Composed. 

He turned and picked up the handgun. He methodically turned off the safety and cocked the hammer. Click. Click.

He turned ninety degrees on his heel, soldier-like, and slowly leveled the gun at Hawkeye’s head. 

Hawkeye looked away, finding it unbearable to maintain eye contact. He hoped BJ would appreciate being spared looking into his eyes. 

He looked at BJ’s shoes instead. Ratty old Chucks. The toes were scuffed, the undersides muddy, the white gone long grey. One of his shoelaces was unraveling at the end, little frayed edges of fabric dragging in the dirt. 

Hawkeye squeezed his eyes shut against an all-consuming wave of fondness, regret, despair, and love. He’d had a pretty good time of it, all-in-all. He’d been sad, true, but frequently happy. Unlucky in love, but lucky to have loved at all. He gave freely of himself, and took when others offered, and spent too much time in libraries and never enough on the beach and cared for every last person he met and tried to do, as far as these things went, as little harm as possible. 

“Okay,” he breathed, his voice choked off, every nerve in his body firing together in cacophonous harmony in the face of imminent death. He tried valiantly to be at peace.

He opened his eyes as the muzzle of the gun met his forehead. This close, he wondered if there’d be time to hear the bullet.

BJ breathed out, his face directed to the sky. 

And then, on the next breath, slowly, fatefully, inexorably, as the myth must always go: he turned. 

Their gazes met.

Chapter End Notes

:)

///

Up next: An ending, and a sea: both through a glass, darkly.

Epilogue. /// California Dreamin'

Chapter Summary

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

BJ eased the car around a curve in the highway. On one side rose the rounded peaks of the Santa Lucia mountains, a verdantly rolling line pushing into the clear and perfect blue of the sky. On the other the sandy loam cliffs fell away into the Pacific, which stretched to the horizon, the late afternoon sunlight catching on its surface and setting it glittering like a thousand shards of glass. The highway shimmered in the haze of reflected heat, but the sea-breeze was cool and smelled of salt.

Big Sur. California 1. The ever-present mist along the route had burned away under the atypically intense force of the August sun. It was a good day for a drive; he was glad he’d put the roof of the convertible down. He’d bought a little Porsche a week and a half after he’d shipped back home, and—

No. After he’d shipped to the States. 

After he’d shipped to the States, he’d bought a car. A Porsche. It was a deep red. With racing stripes. It had two doors. And two seats. Only two seats. He’d already made his decision by then.

Ahead of him and behind the highway cut along the rolling faces of the mountain range, a lateral, even slash through the landscape. He frowned, briefly disconcerted. The view was beautiful, but at what cost? Were there going to be long-term ramifications, environmentally, for cutting seven hundred miles’ worth of tar into the untouched coast? Was the beauty of the scenic drive marred by the visible black snake of the highway strangling the base of the mountains? And, if so, did he have a right to complain? To worry?

After all, he’d chosen to drive this highway himself.

He shook his head and breathed in deeply, the maritime air tugging at something in his chest. It brought him back to his childhood, to long summer drives up the coast on the then-newly constructed highway, to hot white-sand beaches and sea spray. There was a tang of iron in the air, too. Imagined. Maybe. 

He glanced over at the passenger seat under the guise of checking the rearview mirror. 

Hawkeye was staring down the highway, his eyes unreadable behind his black-lensed sunglasses. His skin was pale. His crow-black hair blew attractively in the breeze, swept back from his forehead. He was beautiful.

Like he could sense the direction of BJ’s thoughts, Hawkeye turned and smiled slowly, a liquidly seductive smirk. “Enjoying the view?” he asked.

BJ smiled back, and offered his hand. 

Hawkeye took it, interlacing their fingers. His hand was lukewarm. 

“Always,” BJ said, aiming them straight and true down the highway. The steering wheel’s leather was hot against his palm.

Hawkeye leaned back, kicking his long legs up onto the dashboard. BJ didn’t bother to tell him not to. What good would it do to indulge his knee-jerk reaction to conjure up images of shattered tibias, car-wreck victims, long nights in a Palo Alto ER? There was no point. 

The sun was very, very bright. 

“Doing okay?” BJ asked. “Need me to stop and put the top up?”

“Nah,” Hawkeye said, turning his face into the sun. “Feels good. Warm.” 

BJ stroked the back of his hand with his thumb. There was no traffic. The Porsche was eating up the miles of highway smoothly, propelling them down the coast towards L.A. Towards home. 

(“Are you sure?” BJ had asked him. “L.A.’s hot. It’s desert down there. I think you’d like it better back east.” 

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” Hawkeye had asked in return. And that was the thing of it—BJ wasn’t. It might have been better if he had. But, for better or worse—and BJ tried desperately to ignore the voice in his head that informed him in no uncertain terms it was for worse—Hawkeye was a part of him. Would be a part of him forever. He was strange and silent and dangerous and eerie, the living shadow he’d dragged back from the war, the thing he knew now he’d never be able to shake.) 

“And you? You doing okay?” Hawkeye asked him, gaze piercing, even hidden as it was behind mirrored lenses. “We can stop if you need a break. There’s good sightseeing out here, anyway.”

BJ shrugged, watching the world go by. 

There was good sightseeing, Hawkeye was right. They rounded another curve, trending slightly downhill, and the coastline opened up before them, green- and umber-covered hills rolling down to meet the water, where waves dashed themselves into oblivion on the rocks. Another sports car passed them, headed in the opposite direction, its brief silver flash minnow-like against the merging blues of the horizon. 

BJ let his mind wander, briefly, imagining himself free of his body, existing only as an observer. He skimmed out across the sunlit and sapphire water, out to the place the sun would recede behind him, and leave him hurtling across the silent and night-blackened ocean, pitch-dark except for, maybe, the far down galaxial glimmer of bioluminescent sea life, algae, jellyfish, worms, and stranger things, then farther, farther, and, yes—abruptly out of the black there would rise a glimmering coast, a lambent network of gold—Tokyo, Nagoya, and then the black water again—the Sea of Japan, far below it the corpse of a plane and a colonel he’d never known, and before very long he’d arrive where he’d always known he was going, the place he was beginning to suspect he’d always been from, where he’d been born and where he’d come of age and learned and loved and, he figured, died—War.

“Hey,” Hawkeye said suddenly. “Would you look at that?” 

You could leave War. But War would never leave you.

BJ followed the direction of his pointing. Off in the distance, at the top of a hill, the highway’s heat-shimmer had refracted the sunlight so dramatically that, as they passed over the peak of the incline, cars seemed to climb vertically into the air and then disappear all at once into the depths of the sky. 

As he watched, another car, a little blue thing, rose into the air and vanished. 

Hawkeye laughed, his feet coming briefly off the dashboard. 

“What?” BJ asked, watching cars float up into nonbeing. 

“Nothing,” Hawkeye said. “It’s only that there’s so much beauty in the world.” 

BJ looked at him again, at the smooth, unwrinkled skin of his face, the jet black of his hair, the lissome shape of him. At the light catching on his teeth. His fangs. He wondered if anything would ever be alright again, and then figured that things were more or less as good as they could ever be. After all, he was happy. Few could ask for more. 

So he couldn’t go home again. It wasn’t a special tragedy. Not any literary, arresting sort of sadness. It wasn’t even unique. So he couldn’t go home again. Nobody could. That was the universal truth of it. The hell of it. To hell with it. 

“What are you thinking about?” Hawkeye asked him. 

BJ looked at him, and then looked away, up towards the top of the hill where the car soon would lift, ferried effortlessly by the hand of God or fate or who knew what else, into the infinite blue above. 

Death, BJ thought. Inevitability. Continuity. Meatball surgery. Bloodwet boots. The fact he couldn’t look at a pair of Chucks for longer than a minute without feeling ill. Arable land. Iowa. Old friends. The things we leave behind. The things we try to, and can’t. The things we wish we could. The things we’d like to hold forever. Forgeries. Dear John letters, and Janes, and the ones who never heard anything at all. Kansas. The plains, strange and changeable as the ocean. Sun. Rain. Gravity, and other states of perpetual falling. The axial tilt of the Earth. Time zones. Black water, and blue. Forest fires. Mountains, local and global. Environmentalism. Imperialism. Colonialism. The end of the world, and what happens after. The Protestant work ethic. Politics. Personhood. Life. Laughter. Love. Korea. But most of all death. Among other inevitabilities.

“Taxes, I guess,” he said, and when Hawkeye laughed, the sound whipped away with the wind, out over the Pacific’s shining sunlit surface and its submerged darknesses, where all manner of the alien and unknowable lurked.

Chapter End Notes

And here we are. Can't believe it's finished. Thank you so much to everybody who came along for this weird ride up and down the coast. I can't say how much I've appreciated all your comments, I'm really so so so so so truly grateful to everybody who has taken the time to read this silly little story. Hope you all are safe and well. Much love. See you in the next one, whatever that ends up being. <3 <3 <3

Afterword

End Notes

Also, if you like MASH, meta, and overanalyzing the hell out of this little sitcom, you might enjoy my blog: https://parkercomplains.wordpress.com/. Join me as I react to and analyze each episode in order. It's gonna be fun, y'all.

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