Chapter Text
October 1951
R&R—Seoul, not Tokyo, and only for two days, but an escape was an escape, so Hawkeye had accepted, slapped a pass into BJ’s hand, hailed a jeep, and started on getting them cheaply and efficiently drunk from the moment their boots hit asphalt.
Three streetside drinks in and BJ was looking disoriented already, garrison cap sliding off sideways as he narrowed his eyes at a sign overhead. It was his first R&R trip. Poor guy, Hawkeye thought, not too steady himself. He slapped BJ’s back. “Hangul.”
BJ’s cap slipped all the way off. Hawkeye bent down for it. His head swam and he stumbled forward, his nose contacting the back of BJ’s knee.
“What’d you say?” BJ asked him, when he straightened up.
He tucked BJ’s cap into the front chest pocket of his Class As. “Hangul,” Hawkeye repeated, patting the cap. It drooped sadly over the lip of BJ’s pocket.
BJ grasped him by the shoulder. He looked stressed. “I can’t think about dial—” he paused, tucking his chin. “Dialectics,” he managed.
“Who wants you to?” Hawkeye raised his head and sniffed. He’d caught a whiff of something frying. The air was hot and thick with humidity, unseasonably warm autumn weather setting him sweating through his uniform. He wanted out of it, felt constricted by it, the way its structured lines made him look officious and anonymously formal.
“You said Hangul,” BJ registered, minutes late.
“Uh-huh.” Hawkeye got him by the sleeve and pulled him down the street, laughing to himself about nothing much. Real alcohol had a real kick, and didn’t leave him with sore sinuses like their homebrew did.
“Where are we going?” BJ asked, grasping Hawkeye’s wrist, taking an active part in the holding.
Hawkeye tapped his wrist approvingly. He liked that BJ always reached back for him. It lit something up in him that he was just disinhibited enough to bask in.
“Food?” BJ asked, cap flapping in his pocket, a funny little counterpoint of motion to all six-feet-something of him ducking under hanging signs.
“You can’t rest or relax if you’re hungry,” Hawkeye said, following the scent of something savory and spiced, thinking indistinctly of a good meal, another few drinks, the possibility of seducing or being seduced into somebody’s hotel room and ending the night completely sated. What was he in the mood for? A few appealing images flickered by: filling up on noodles and rice liquor, making eyes at some pretty typist or soft-faced clerk, somebody civilian and yielding who’d want him to be expansive and confident and appealingly wild, the sort of lay he’d leave sweaty and wrung-out and sleekly pleased. Or something lazier, less effortful—more food, more wine, and somebody who wanted to bend him over or ride him as he sprawled and let it happen, focusing on feeling good and working as little as possible. BJ would understand him wanting their shared room to himself for an hour or two. Married BJ. Unavailable BJ, stuck half a world away from the only person he’d allow himself to hold.
“Poor guy,” Hawkeye let slip aloud. He ought to avoid thinking about BJ and who he was and wasn’t allowed to sleep with when he was three drinks deep on an empty stomach. Nothing good would come of that.
“Who?” BJ asked, bumping into him as Hawkeye stopped in front of a busy-looking place, wood-paneled exterior with low tables visible through the propped-open window.
“Me,” Hawkeye said, bundling BJ ahead of him through the door. “You swept me at poker last week. Means you get to buy.”
BJ laughed and drew some stares, but attention had mostly receded by the time they’d been sat at a low table in a far corner, a folded wooden divider giving them a semblance of privacy as they folded down to sit, BJ struggling with his coordination and laughing at Hawkeye laughing. There was more clear liquor, some sort of inexplicable European beer that BJ made a face at, menus that Hawkeye did his limited best to explain, and then a mutually drunk decision to order with abandon.
“Is this yours?” Hawkeye asked, tapping BJ’s bowl with an extended chopstick. They had started across from each other, but had migrated to sit on perpendicular edges, their knees knocking under the table. They each had a bowl of a noodle dish, and a spread of banchan populated the rest of the table space: vegetables, fish, rice, kimchi, scallop-cakes, the smell of fresh, real food a physical force. It was hard to know where to start. He reached for BJ’s bowl again, chopsticks extended. “I can’t remember what I asked for. Is that mine?”
BJ pushed his chopsticks away with his own pair. Hawkeye went right back in, trying to get a scoop of whatever was in BJ’s bowl. “Is this yours? What is that?”
“Hawk,” BJ said, breaking and laughing at him. “It’s ours. We can share.”
“That’s nice,” Hawkeye decided. His vision was a little unsteady, but he was feeling very good. He turned his attention back to his own bowl, and after a false start managed to get an appreciable amount of noodles into his mouth.
He was surprised for a moment to find that he’d ordered a cold dish, but immediately acclimated: it was refreshing in the unseasonable heat, and anyway the taste—he slapped his palm against the table, rapturously pleased, startling BJ and rattling the cups of yakju they’d ordered to follow up the beer.
“That good?” BJ asked, thankfully amused by him, instead of put off.
Hawkeye nodded and inelegantly managed to fold more noodles into his mouth. They were pleasantly spicy, flavorful, savory-sweet and thinly cut. Garlic, sesame, beautifully forward hit of vinegar. He moaned, and then reached over, slapping at BJ’s wrist.
“What?” BJ asked. He hadn’t touched his food yet.
Hawkeye rolled his eyes and scooped kimchi-pork-rice off a dish and towards BJ’s face.
“I’m getting there.” BJ pushed his hand away, spilling a little kimchi in his bowl. Hawkeye shrugged and ate what he’d offered, letting his eyes close in appreciation. He moaned again and ignored BJ staring at him. If he said he didn’t recall the last good meal he’d had, he’d be lying. It had been several months ago: Trapper and Henry—a sting of pain—at Rosie’s, a hot noodle dish, fresh vegetables, copious amounts of beer and rice wine, ending the night happy and sloshed and sated. He allowed the immediate aftermath to fade and instead focused on the fact that one couldn’t get that sort of meal at Rosie’s anymore. Just another thing that had changed. Military havoc, resulting civilian exodus, and finally a food shortage. And then what he was making in scrip wasn’t enough to afford going off-ration when the rare opportunity presented itself. He was spending too much as it was on liquor.
His mind drifted unwillingly back to Trapper—the lack of contact, the unreturned letters, the silence stretching out into uneasy permanence. He wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong, what had caused the abrupt and total revocation of friendship. It pained and embarrassed him.
Hawkeye tried to wash the thought away with a swallow of yakju and some sort of fritter with scallion. It was replaced by a sharp pain of anticipatory loss. Two more days on R&R, and then it’d be back to rations. Waiting months for the next time he’d have the chance to eat something he really, genuinely liked, something hot and flavorful and carefully prepared that would leave him satisfied instead of nauseated and still hungry. Hell, when was the last time he’d actually left a meal content? Rosie’s, probably, the same visit. It had to be bad for a person, but he couldn’t bring himself to manage more underheated rations than necessary to stay upright. He’d lost weight he’d preferred to have kept. How much he didn’t know, but it was evident in the baggy fit of his fatigues and the harrowed lines of his face in his shaving-mirror.
BJ didn’t understand yet. Hawkeye had a year on him, and knew intimately how tough it got, the lack of choice or control, bad food, a narrow few options in repetition, staring down liver or fish for two weeks straight and feeling something crack in response, memories of a lobster roll or scoop of pistachio ice cream starting to carry a thread of anguish… BJ’d already be missing home, good food, choice, no question. But it’d take longer for the lack to start hurting on a level more than physical. It made a person start to think differently. Maybe, he thought hopefully, the whole damned thing would be over and they’d be sent home before BJ had to experience it.
“You okay?” BJ asked him. That time Hawkeye was the one neglecting his noodles.
“I’m drunk,” Hawkeye deflected, and then realized it was true. Too much beer mixed with rice wine on a mostly empty stomach. Nausea threatened. He was having a hard time keeping his thoughts under control. His good mood had evaporated, the chasm between himself and home had stretched a few thousand miles wider. He poured and drank more yakju without really meaning to.
BJ slid his cup towards the center of the table, and pushed his bowl closer. “Noodles will help. Unless you want to stay drunk.”
“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye agreed vaguely. Not with anything in particular. He just felt like trying to inject some positivity back into the evening. BJ tapped his bowl, so he bowed his head and took another mouthful of noodles. The realization that the food was good—good, and real, and plentiful, more than enough for both of them—finally registered in earnest. It had been months. He brought the bowl to his mouth in order to down his noodles more efficiently, aware of his expression twisting between relief and distress. How was a person supposed to enjoy something when he knew that it was inevitably going to be taken away? Maybe it would have been better to stay in camp. Being reminded of a world where there was good food, choice, and relaxation made their inevitable absence harder to take.
He set his bowl down, newly empty of noodles, and went for another, some sort of seasoned braised pork and rice they’d ordered to share. Hot, still steaming. The first bite burned his tongue. He pushed his forehead against his hand and swallowed roughly, going misty-eyed at the feeling of being warmed from within. He moaned softly—and again BJ turned to look at him. It didn’t matter. When had he started considering hot food a luxury? How long until he could take it for granted again?
“Damn it,” he managed, the back of his hand pressing against his forehead. What a miserable life he was trapped in. Everything good that came into it went right back out again, swirling down the shower drain. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, abandoned his chopsticks in favor of a spoon, and shoveled rice into his mouth. The heat of the dish had tapped into something he couldn’t articulate or control, and he was abruptly possessed by a sort of starving-dog instinct. He got through half the hot dish, a piece of rolled omelet, more of the scallion cakes, some sort of pan-fried fish, and most of their plate of seasoned vegetables without really tasting them, without really meaning to, feeling as though he were watching himself from the outside, his movements automatic.
BJ touched his thigh under the table as he reached for the fish again. “Slow down, Hawk. Nobody’s going to take it away from you.”
Hawkeye looked up. Unbelievably, he’d forgotten BJ was there. BJ smiled at him, reassuring, so he smiled back, and then winced.
“Okay?” BJ asked him. He was having some trouble handling his chopsticks, but was working at it gamely, his pace significantly slower.
Hawkeye nodded. He took up his cup of rice wine but didn’t drink from it. Whatever odd impulse that had come over him had receded. He was awake again, and newly aware of the fact he was full. Uncomfortably so. BJ was right, he’d eaten too quickly. He’d probably made a spectacle of himself in the process. And he hadn’t even enjoyed doing so.
Disappointing. A waste of a meal. He defiantly worked his way through more omelet, scallion cakes, and a couple offered bites of BJ’s noodles at a slower pace, determined to taste them thoroughly to make up for his earlier lack of appreciation. He played up his enjoyment, moaning and describing everything at length to BJ because it helped him focus and he figured, guiltily, that he owed BJ some nicer dinner commentary after months of listening to him compare C-rations to muddy socks.
BJ listened to him obligingly, carried on their usual caliber of easy conversation, and, while Hawkeye was distracted relaying med school mischief, ordered dessert. It was a sweet, block-pressed cake of rice with sugar and dates and nuts, cinnamon-scented and covered with honey. Too pretty to pass up, even though Hawkeye had a mild side-ache and wanted badly to lie down.
They split it evenly down the middle. Hawkeye ate slowly with his eyes mostly closed, trying to identify individual flavors, letting the soft, sweet rice melt slowly in his mouth until he was forced to acknowledge he’d overdone it. He was too full to move. The high belt that banded his Class As was uncomfortably constrictive. He was stuck leaning back from the low table on his palms; sitting forward compressed his stomach. He stalled for time by ordering hot tea, which he drank in slow, even sips, between answering BJ’s idle questions about visiting Toyko, about wartime medical conferences, their strange mundanity.
“I think you’ve got somebody’s attention,” BJ said suddenly, his tone easy, the arrangement of his hand against his face neatly covering the movement of his lips. His gaze shifted pointedly to the right, his head angling with it.
Hawkeye followed the gesture and caught the eye of a smallish woman, her brown hair in pin-curls. Her red-lipsticked mouth twitched into a smile before she turned away, touching her hair.
“Hm,” Hawkeye said, and inhaled slowly. He identified her by uniform as WRAF. The restaurant had become significantly populated with military uniforms. That made him uncomfortable. He ignored a drunkenly-hopeful imagining of his name in an English accent, of lipstick on his collar. She’d probably volunteered to be there. Meanwhile he was trapped. BJ, too, both of them stuck there against their will and moral compunctions, trying to make the best out of two days of relief from duty. He frowned and turned away to find BJ looking at him, chin balanced on his hand. He’d been watching Hawkeye all night. All month. All war, insofar as the war had existed for BJ. Hawkeye had to work not to read into it, all the looking BJ did.
“Not your type?” BJ asked. “She’s been looking over here for the last ten minutes.”
“How do you know she’s not looking at you?”
“At me?” BJ’s eyebrows raised: amusement, surprise.
“You have a very clean face,” Hawkeye told him, because he did. Clean-shaven, big blue eyes, boyish-faced without the sort of wear a person got used to seeing in their circumstances. Hawkeye felt scruffy and unattractive next to him, stubbled, lank-haired, skinny.
“Hm,” BJ said, glancing over at the woman. “I guess it’s possible. You think clean is what she’s after?”
“I don’t care what she’s after. You’re too married, I’m too full, and we’re both too drunk.” Hawkeye set his tea down and thought very hard about being sober. He blinked repeatedly, telling himself this time, this time, now: sober. Dead sober. It didn’t work. He sighed and rubbed his face. Too much food, too much drink, and as a result no sex. Hedonism was a delicate balance, sometimes.
“Let’s get to bed,” Hawkeye said, and laughed at his accidental implication.
BJ stood, flicking through a wad of crisp, fresh-changed bills. He left a generous stack on the table. “I guess that’s only fair. Seeing as I’m paying.”
“What’s fair,” Hawkeye started, and stopped before he could say something beyond the pale about relative positions. Instead he focused once more on the concept of sobriety and pushed himself to stand with a hand braced against his back, the other resting against his middle.
“When are you due?” BJ asked, indicating his posture.
Hawkeye endured an embarrassed shock of warmth and dropped his hands, ignoring the way straightening his posture worsened his stomach ache. “I’m not due for anything but a nap.”
“Right,” BJ said, looking back over at the WRAF for some reason. Hawkeye got him by the lapel and started to pull him along until they were stumbling in step, arms around each other’s shoulders for balance. They had a room somewhere, Hawkeye was sure. With four legs and two heads between them, they were bound to find it soon enough.
—
“I ate too much,” Hawkeye complained, letting BJ lower him to the edge of the bed. If he was less drunk, he might’ve been more embarrassed, but as it stood it felt good to carp, even if it was about the consequences of his own actions. Bellyaching about his bellyache, he thought, and grinned.
BJ slipped out from under his arm. His face was pink, his expression open. He was drunk, too, and probably flush from the effort of dragging Hawkeye up the thoroughfare to their hotel. Nothing too luxurious, its tenants mostly lower-ranking officers, but the beds were real and the showers hot. “It’s R&R. You’re supposed to eat too much. You told me that on the trip up.”
“I don’t think I said that,” Hawkeye decided, though he certainly had. He toed his shoes off and flopped backward onto the bed, getting his legs up, feeling better immediately. Horizontality soothed his stomach ache to a mildly strained feeling that only really hurt if he breathed in too sharply. That was nice, in a complicated way. The disappearance of pain clarified the pleasure. He was warm, pleasantly weighed down by a good meal, sleepy and comfortably drunk, well-sated.
“I haven’t felt this good in a long time,” he told BJ candidly, working to unbelt his uniform jacket. That improved matters even more, so he dispensed of his slacks, too, getting undressed down to his underthings while trying to stay sprawled mostly flat on the mattress. He folded his hands over his belly and breathed slowly, trying to ignore the feeling of the room turning slow circles around him.
“Good,” BJ said, just as candid. He sounded unaccountably pleased about it. Hawkeye turned his way and smiled. A happy, light feeling bounced invisibly between them. It was good to have friends.
“Need any water?” BJ asked him, getting up off his bed and making his way towards the sink set into the far wall, the paper cups arranged at its side. “I’m getting water. You should probably drink something.” He mumbled to himself for a while about water and oxidative pathways before presenting Hawkeye with a cup.
Hawkeye waved him away, still focused on breathing.
BJ stayed insistently in place. He swayed a little, expression kindly. “Water now or headache tomorrow.”
“You’re in league with the Marquis de Sade,” Hawkeye accused, cupping his stomach. He’d really overdone it. BJ kept standing over him, though, clearly committed to his cause, so Hawkeye sighed and worked to come up onto an elbow. His stomach complained, so he finished off his water as quickly as possible and fell flat again, feeling a little silly and undeniably overfull, and at the same time increasingly relaxed. There was nothing else for him to do with his night, now, except lie down and sleep off dinner. He hoped BJ wouldn’t be too disappointed with a quiet evening in. They could both use the sleep.
“Happy?” Hawkeye asked BJ, letting his eyes slip closed as BJ shucked his own clothing.
“Uh-huh,” BJ said. His bed creaked under his weight as he settled in. “You?”
“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye replied. He shifted, trying to get more comfortable with the unfamiliar feeling of being full. It was almost too hot in the room, even with his uniform kicked off.
“We’ll have to find somewhere we can get eggs for breakfast.”
Hawkeye winced. “Please. Give me at least an hour to digest dinner before we try to plan breakfast.”
“Okay,” BJ agreed, mood irrepressibly up. “Just wanted to suggest it.”
“Noted and deferred,” Hawkeye said through a yawn. He closed his eyes and drifted comfortably. After a while he stuck his hand up his shirt, rubbing idly at his stomach, not minding that BJ might see. There wasn’t anything wrong with overdoing a good meal, he decided, spreading his legs across the mattress to get more comfortable. If BJ thought he looked silly, that was his business.
BJ’s bed creaked, breaking the silence. “I’m surprised you turned her down.”
Hawkeye opened an eye, peering at BJ, who was lying on his back, looking at the ceiling. He’d been almost asleep, and needed a second to reorient himself. “Who? The WRAF girl?”
BJ nodded.
Hawkeye shrugged. He didn’t want to explain the aversion he’d started to feel towards volunteers. There was another explanation anyway, just as true. He patted his middle, indicating its shallow curve, the tighter fit of his undershirt. “I wasn’t exactly in the right state to impress her.”
“You look good,” BJ defended, oddly fast.
Hawkeye turned his head. BJ turned in the same movement, making it impossible to know what he’d been looking at. Something else he liked about BJ: he was hard to get the picture of completely. He was a complicated person. Hawkeye liked complicated. It was never boring. “I meant that I’m not exactly in the state to do anything other than lie here,” he explained, trying to figure out what BJ was doing, why he cared who Hawkeye did or didn’t sleep with. There was an impulse towards hope, a sting of attraction, which he pushed away. He’d been getting good at ignoring those feelings when it came to BJ. “What’s the use of bringing a girl up to bed if I can barely move?”
There was a pause. It was undeniably tense, overtly odd. “That’s not very imaginative,” BJ said mildly, as though the line of his body on his bed wasn’t ramrod straight.
Hawkeye raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Really.”
“What would you have suggested I do?” Hawkeye asked, leaning up on an elbow. That compressed his stomach uncomfortably, so he laid down again, soothing a hand over it. No curl-ups for a while, then. His head swam, too, making it only sensible to stay down.
“You really want to know?” BJ asked, his tone shifting: fantasy game, Hawkeye recognized, even through the blunting effect of alcohol. There was the feeling of not really being there, or not entirely. Nothing that was happening seemed very serious or consequential. He could do just about anything and he doubted it'd stick.
“Yeah,” Hawkeye challenged, though it felt electric here in a way it didn’t in camp, with the lights low and Hawkeye down to his underthings, BJ speaking softly, both of them with hands unoccupied.
“Well,” BJ started, conversational, only a little slur in his diction, “she seemed pretty eager. Didn’t she? Eyed you up first, gave you the smile and the hair toss. She wanted you. That’s the hard work over with.”
Hawkeye smirked. “Maybe the way you—”
“That’s the hard work over with,” BJ repeated, interrupting, “in this arrangement. Somebody who wants you that badly would probably be happy to do all the work afterwards. Maybe she’d even prefer it. She’d get you how you are now, flat on your back, and use you exactly the way she likes.”
Hawkeye tongued at the back of his teeth. He tensed his thighs, and let himself imagine it. A warm, living weight settling into his lap, the pressure of hands on his shoulders. Mouth on his neck, teeth scraping his earlobe. He shivered as heat shot through him. “Yeah?” he asked. “What would that look like?”
“It would look like her riding you. You could just lie there and let her,” BJ said, the blankets on his bed shifting. “She’d probably even tell you to keep your hands to yourself. It’d be the perfect arrangement. You wouldn’t have to do a thing, and she wouldn’t want you to.”
“Huh,” Hawkeye said, every inhalation spreading warmth through his limbs. He imagined pressing his hands into a pair of thighs, squeezing, watching his fingertips indent. He shifted his hips and splayed a knee to the side. “Might get boring. What if I wanted to participate?”
“Easy. She’s not shy. She’d pin you down and get her thighs around your head. Let you do what you do best. Use your mouth.”
Hawkeye smothered a gasp of genuine surprise. BJ was still speaking conversationally, if quietly. The nonchalance of it was dragging a different sort of intrigue up Hawkeye’s spine. Yet another side of BJ he was still learning. With all his public appearances towards reservedness, his boyish scrubbed clean-cut appearance, his willingness to say obscene things to his male bunkie with no variance in tone seemed even more shocking by comparison. He was more than half-hard in his shorts, and only partially because BJ was drawing up a very appealing image. It had more to do, he knew, guilty, with the fact that it was BJ saying it. He had a good voice, and Hawkeye liked to hear him say terrifically dirty things.
“What else?” he asked, his voice scraping raw. It might have been a good idea to make some sort of joke, to bail out of the game. But he felt good and excited and daring. He wanted to take a risk.
“Well, I’m sure she’d pay you back eventually. There are plenty of ways for that to happen that don’t involve you doing anything. Mouth, hands, thighs, back to riding you. All it takes is a little imagination.”
“Mm,” Hawkeye agreed, picturing it all as BJ said it. He was blushing, was aware of his face going hot. His shirt rubbed frictively against his nipples, the sensitive skin of his stomach. He bit the inside of his cheek, considered not saying what he knew he would: “What else? Is that all you can come up with?”
“Is that not good enough?” BJ asked.
The room was very, very warm, Hawkeye thought, raising a hand to his forehead, pushing his hair back. He needed to keep his hands occupied. They were shaking with restrained arousal.
“Fine,” BJ said. Hawkeye was attuned to his every word. His tone was so even it betrayed an immense effort to stay balanced. “I guess you could just take care of yourself. Maybe she gets off on watching. She was looking at you a lot, you know.”
Hawkeye fisted the material of his pillow. It was impossible to pretend he wasn’t tenting his undershorts, his whole body liquid-hot with arousal, a deep, indulgent pleasure of a different tenor than he’d been able to access lately, when relief was usually fast, utilitarian, mostly a way to de-stress. His body was inundating him with happy chemicals, rewarding him for finding good, nutritious, well-made food, trying to bribe him—poor synapses—into eating and resting like this more often. Not something he had much control over in his current circumstances, but while it lasted he’d enjoy the contentment of a full stomach, the comfortable weight and sleepy warmth of having been well-fed. He stretched, arched his back, and ran his hand down his chest, over the sensitive skin of his stomach, down to the line of his waistband. He let it linger there.
“You’re always talking about pleasure,” BJ said, a waver in his voice. He paused. When he resumed speaking, it was gone. “You know yourself best. You could take it as fast or as slow as you wanted. Tease yourself if you wanted to. She’d watch.”
Hawkeye raised his chin. Slowly, hardly believing he was doing it, he slipped his hand beneath his waistband. The heat of his palm against his cock made him gasp. He held himself firmly, closer than he’d expected to be from the sound of BJ’s voice alone.
“And you could touch yourself,” BJ said. He had to have seen—if he was looking, there was no way to miss what Hawkeye had started to do. And Hawkeye had gasped loudly. But he was still talking. “Wherever you like. Put on a show for her. Or maybe you’d rather be alone. Not showing off for anybody. What’s better, Hawk? You’re always showing off. Might be nice for it to be all about you. Nobody watching.”
Hawkeye exhaled through pursed lips, pushing his hand down his length, setting up a rhythm. Both, he wanted to tell BJ, but couldn’t manage it, didn’t want to break their delicate assent. He didn’t want to perform. Nor did he want to be alone. Intimacy, maybe—that’s what it was when he could be himself and liked for it. He pushed his shirt up, dragging his unoccupied hand over his chest, down to his stomach, not caring if he looked ridiculous or unappealing, trying to wring every ounce of physical pleasure he could out of the moment: BJ’s voice, soft and sonorous and ever so appealing; the just-right drag of his palm over his cock, no time pressure or awkward need for secrecy—he moaned, enjoying that he was allowed, and caught a half-gasp from BJ’s side of the room; the evening’s valiant attempt at a bacchanal kind of pleasure in the middle of a long dearth of it, drunk, about to sleep on a bed instead of a cot, well-fed and indulged. He felt great—that was it. He pictured in scattershot a few ideas BJ had proposed, lost hold of his willpower—the girl in his lap transmuted to BJ, his lean thighs around Hawkeye’s waist, his chest in Hawkeye’s face, his big hands holding Hawkeye flat as he rode him, telling him teasingly to stay there and be lazy, looking up at the point of BJ’s chin as he sank back into the mattress and let himself feel good.
He moaned sharply and came over his hand. He tried not to breathe too hard, still aware of his sensitive stomach, the stretched feeling that settled across his middle if he breathed in too deeply. He wiped his hand haphazardly on his shorts and let his arm fall to the side. Getting up to wash off was an impossible effort. Distantly he could hear BJ doing something or other, walking around, a door opening and then closing, but decided to ignore it. Everything could be deferred to tomorrow. Maybe the next morning would be bad, waking up in the hard light of day with stained undershorts and a hangover one bed over from BJ’s, what had just happened an unavoidable presence between them. But that was hours away. For now the only thing he had to do was close his eyes, let comfort and contentment wash through him like a rising wall of radio static, and fall asleep.