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The kiss Hawkeye presses to BJ’s lips when he returns to the Swamp from his date is an odd-tasting one. It’s not the usual gin-laced, minty freshness of his constant, metered toothbrushing to cover the taste of the mess tent food. Neither is it the rich, tobacco-taste of the rare occasions the two of them will split a cigar, or when Hawkeye will occasionally share one with Klinger. Instead, it’s faintly… meaty.
“What were you eating?” BJ demands, following Hawkeye to his cot. “Were you hiding steak from me so you could have it on your date?”
Hawkeye breaks into a fit of giggles as he picks up his shower kit and starts changing into his robe, shameless. “You’re just unhappy that kiss made Nurse Baker and Peg eskimo sisters.”
The gears in BJ’s head grind for a moment. He puts them to rights. “I’ve never heard of a kiss counting as sex.”
Another peal of laughter. Then Hawkeye, half-dressed, sleeves only pulled up over his forearms and boxers still slightly damp, freezes. “Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me, Beej. You, BJ Hunnicutt, inveterate wife-pleaser…”
The look on his face is nothing short of horrified. It’s like when a boy not more than seventeen who lied about his age to join the Marines comes in with a hole in his belly that’s going to take three hours and countless units of blood to patch. No—worse than that. It’s the look he had on his face when Leo stopped by, disgusted and humilated for BJ’s sake at their familiarity.
Suddenly, Hawkeye closes the distance as he ties the belt of his robe with all the practiced dexterity of a heart surgeon. “I made a suggestion three weeks ago.” His voice is dark and deep, exactly the tone it takes when he’s spurring someone to live with his hands in their chest. It stirs BJ in a way it shouldn’t, but that he’s accepted it does since the first time they tumbled together something like a month and a half ago. BJ roots through the card catalog that serves as his memory and comes up with nothing. “A very personal suggestion, that you return a certain activity–“
BJ gags before he can stop himself, covering his mouth as a last effort not to be embarrassing. He knows, logically, that trading those… fluids is no different from swapping spit or licking the sweat from Hawkeye’s collarbone, but the idea repulses him. “You kissed me with– with– with–“
“Come on, Beej, it’s just ejaculate.” Hawkeye wipes his lips with the heel of his hand, staring patiently at BJ like he’s waiting for something. What is he waiting for? He’s just going to the shower, and–
BJ turns away and begins to gather his own things for the shower, despite the fact that he took one while Hawkeye was on his date, and the roots of his hair are still damp. All he really wants to do is brush his teeth. He can still taste the aftershocks.
Hawkeye laughs at him again. BJ keeps his head down in his foot locker to hide his reddening cheeks. “You’ve really got a problem with it, don’t you?”
“I don’t have a problem.”
“You do!” When Hawkeye presses the back of his hand to BJ’s elbow, BJ bucks him away without thinking. “Well gee, pal, if you’ve got a problem with sodomy, you should have–“
“I don’t have a problem!”
The look, out of the corner of BJ’s eye, changes from offended to hurt. “Alright, you don’t have a problem. Very mature, great way to solve your conflicts, insisting you don’t have a problem.”
Hawkeye’s like a dog with a bone when he gets like this. He refuses to listen to anyone, stuck in his own head about what other people’s problems are until he’s solved them. BJ recognizes it well, because he knows he does it himself, even if he can’t see it until after the problem’s been solved.
“I tried, alright?” BJ huffs. “With Peg. And I just– I couldn’t. My fingers, fine, but…”
Hot, sticky, gummy, muggy, like the summer trip his parents had taken him on to New Orleans when he was so small that it was his first memory. He hadn’t been able to escape the oppressive, treacle humidity as it soaked into his hair and his skin and clothes and left him uncomfortable for all twelve days without a single outlet for it other than hiding in the cold shower until his mother dragged him from the hotel room back into the horrible, tacky, clingsome, repulsive weather.
The one and only time he tried what Hawkeye was proposing with Peg, he’d made it five seconds before he could feel the moisture beading on every inch of his skin. It was New Orleans all over again, sticking to him, making him want to scratch it off of him if only that wouldn’t expose his muscles to the aerosolized glue that he couldn’t get off no matter how hard he’d tried.
Hawkeye’s next bump against his elbow is more concerned than insulted, and an impish flash of teeth shines across his face. “Your fingers?”
BJ laughs, the press of his fatigues against his skin making the gears tremble. Maybe another shower would be good for him. “If we stop by Supply, I’ll show you.”
Hawkeye, as easily distracted from anything that isn’t surgery as ever, grabs his wrist and tugs him out of the Swamp.