Chapter Text
After three years of cursing the distance to the helipad, ever-worried about getting there fast enough to help torn-up kids off the medevac choppers, Hawkeye Pierce suddenly found himself wishing the journey was miles longer.
His time left at the 4077th was measured in minutes—time cut shorter by BJ’s offer of a ride. Hawkeye counted them with his hands on BJ’s sides, fingers curling into the olive drab fabric of his jacket, fighting the impulse to say fuck it and pull BJ tight to his chest. But he hadn’t spent ages toeing the line of how-much-is-too-much just to cross it now, just to have his last memory of Korea be BJ shrugging him off or pushing him away. So instead, he kept his hands where they were and his knees locked around BJ’s yellow deathtrap as their final moments together ticked down to nothing.
He was going home. Next stop: Crabapple Cove. And yet, he couldn’t drum up a scrap of the joy he’d expected. Everything was turned sideways—a surreal dream. The kind that wasn’t a nightmare, not quite, but stuck with him like the chill of October fog.
Tomorrow, he’d wake up in a bed instead of a cot. Three thousand miles would stretch between him and the man who’d been under his skin since “Rudyard Kipling.” The man who, like so many who’d drifted in and out of Hawkeye’s life before him, refused to give him a proper goodbye.
When the motorcycle rolled to a stop, Hawkeye swung off, but stayed close. The chopper’s whup-whup-whup kicked up a breeze that tugged at his fatigues.
“Look,” he said, pitching his voice over the rotors, “I know how tough it is for you to say goodbye, so I’ll say it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we will see each other again, but just in case we don’t . . .”
He took in the lines of BJ’s face. His hair, shaggier and greyer than the fresh-pressed Captain Hunnicut who’d shown up in Kimpo, so eager to help. He could hardly picture that version of BJ anymore. Would a day come when even this BJ would blur in his mind and he’d no longer remember the cornflower blue of his eyes? The slope of his nose? The timbre of his voice?
Impossible. It had to be.
“I want you to know how much you’ve meant to me. I’ll never be able to shake you.” Too close. Don’t let it slip now. “Whenever I see a pair of big feet or a cheesy mustache, I’ll think of you.”
BJ’s smile was tight. “Whenever I smell month-old socks, I’ll think of you.”
“Or the next time somebody nails my shoe to the floor . . .”
“Or when somebody gives me a martini that tastes like lighter fluid.”
“I’ll miss you,” Hawkeye said, and damn, wasn’t that an understatement?
BJ softened. “I’ll miss you. A lot. I can’t imagine what this place would’ve been like if I hadn’t found you here.”
He stepped forward, and their chests collided, and they hugged hard. Not the quick, shoulder-thumping sort, but the kind that left no space between them. The kind where a hand ran up the curve of his spine, and he cupped the back of BJ’s head, and if he tried hard enough, he could pretend that the warm press of BJ’s nose against his neck was a brush of lips, instead.
Hawkeye turned as they broke apart, but pulled up short when BJ caught his arm.
“Wait.” BJ rucked up his own sleeve and tugged at the buckle of his watch until it slipped from his wrist to dangle between his fingers.
“If you’re trying to tell me to get a move on, you’re not the only one. Pilot’s been drilling holes in the back of my head ever since we got up here.”
But BJ, in a move that left Hawkeye blinking dumbly at him, flipped open Hawkeye’s front pocket and dropped the watch inside.
“Something to help you keep track of time,” he said.
“Keep track of—Beej, what? You’re giving me your watch?”
“Loaning,” BJ corrected, a grin growing beneath that war crime of a mustache. “I’ll take it back a year from now, when you come find me in Mill Valley to return it. With interest, of course.” He patted the pocket, grin fading to something earnest. “That way you know I mean it when I say we’ll see one another again.”
Hawkeye tried to answer, but couldn’t push words past his tightening throat. He laid a hand over the pocket instead, and this time, when he turned for the chopper, BJ let him go.
The blades were deafening now, and he climbed in and gave the pilot a thumbs up before he lost the battle and turned right back around. As the chopper took off, Hawkeye twisted in his seat to watch BJ sling a leg over the motorcycle and loft the San Francisco sign high.
“With interest!” BJ shouted, inaudible beneath the roar, but easy enough to lipread.
Hawkeye laughed in spite of the weight in his chest and lifted a hand in return. And then he saw it. Down near the helipad, laid out in white stones.
GOODBYE.
Of course BJ hadn’t just come out and said it. Saying it would have been too easy.
Hawkeye pressed his hand harder into his pocket. The face of the watch dug into his palm, its bite helping him fight the sting in his eyes. The camp fell away beneath him, but BJ’s words kept him tethered.
One year.
With interest.