In Your Eyes

M*A*S*H
Hawkeye/BJ
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Sequel to In the Darkness.

Things are back to normal.

Well, more or less. There's no real residual awkwardness between the two of them, much to B.J.'s relief. He and Hawkeye banter, joke, and laugh together, just as they've done ever since he came to Korea. The two of them work side by side to take care of the wounded, and then they relax together, sipping martinis in the Swamp, or wandering over to the mess tent to grab a coffee together. Things between them are perfectly normal.

Except... except...

B.J. knows that despite all his efforts to put things back on the friendship level, there's a certain tension underlying the easy banter. Not a bad sort of tension, not at all, but rather something that adds a certain spice to even the most ordinary conversation.

The tension is a sort of echo of what the two of them did together in the rain a week ago. Sometimes, when a quiet falls between them, he glances at Hawkeye, and in his blue, blue eyes he sees...

Well, he sees exactly what he knows is in his own eyes.

He tries to avoid silences for that reason, because seeing his own feelings reflected in Hawk's gaze scares him a little. Maybe Hawkeye feels the same way, because there's a hell of a lot of joking between the two of them. When they aren't talking, B.J.'s writing a letter to Peg, and avoiding Hawk's gaze.

He's written an awful lot of letters over the past week.

And not a single one of them tells what he's really experiencing, here in the drab grayness of Korea.

Lost a kid to peritonitis. Found a rat under my cot, gnawing on my socks. Had something precariously close to sex with my tentmate.

Most of what he's gone through here is awful, but some of it is strangely wonderful. But he can't share any of it with Peg. He keeps it all to himself, because none of it is the sort of thing he can load onto his wife's fragile shoulders.

She couldn't possibly understand any of it. She couldn't possibly forgive him for what he's done.

Hell, he can't understand it, or forgive himself.

Still, she's his wife, and he has to write her something, so he keeps his letters as light and funny as he can. And he writes, and writes, and writes...

Because it's safer than looking into Hawkeye's eyes.

-The End-