Chapter Text
BJ Hunnicutt wasn’t a nostalgic man.
He wasn’t melancholic, or mournful. He didn’t consider himself to be, at least.
He had a method to deal with things, a terrible reaction he wasn’t proud of, called R&R —Repression and Rage. And it had served its purpose for most of his life. He pushed any and all negative emotions down to pretend he had a nonexistent ounce of composure to keep and, when it all became too much, he shied away from society and let hell break loose.
Peg, on the other hand, was much more committed to her sanity. After bad news, she gave herself ten to twenty minutes to cry, scream or fight, and then she got back up wordlessly and tackled the world. She was stronger than mostly everyone he’d ever met. She just refused to lose, so when life got her down on her knees, she brushed off the dust and spat in its face. She was determined like that. Strong. Resilient.
And BJ respected and admired her for it, because instead of crumbling down, she assessed the situation and decided on a course of action. She accepted it or fought it. She would embrace a dark reality if necessary, but she would defy the darkness by not allowing it to dim her light. And she did.
“Ten minutes, darling. Give me ten fucking minutes.” She said, the day BJ got drafted. After comforting him and cradling Erin in her arms for a few more seconds, she disappeared into a room.
BJ heard her sob, but he didn’t go in. She wouldn’t appreciate it, and he was in shock, looking at his little girl and trying to get it in his head that he had to leave her, her rosy cheeks, her chubby hands, her little toothless smile, her crying in the dead of the night, the warmth that she made his heart explode in. He had to leave her for something as stupid and senseless as war.
And Peg.
Peg who had locked herself up and whose quiet sniffles made it past the paper walls. Who he had promised his life to.
He had to leave her too.
Her laughter, her comfort, his heart and soul.
God, he had to leave them.
Ten minutes later, not one second more, he heard her heels against the wooden floor, the click-clack approaching him. She sounded determined. Her pace wasn’t desperate, but neither was it dubious. You could know a lot about a woman’s state of mind by the sound of her heels, and BJ knew that she meant business. It was confirmed as soon as she appeared at the doorstep, her eyes red-rimmed but her cheeks dried, sniffling but not pouting, her lips a straight line.
“You’ve been crying.” She noted, the first step towards a conversation that neither wanted to start. She walked up to the couch in front of the armchair BJ was rocking himself in, trying to keep himself from falling apart, and smoothed out her dress before taking a seat.
“That makes two of us.” He replied, resting his chin on his fist.
He looked at her in the eyes, waiting. He saw the way she mustered up the courage to speak, how she pursed her lips, then straightened out, then interlocked her fingers and started playing with her wedding ring.
She let out a deep breath and slouched, defeated.
“I love you.” She said.
“I love you too.” BJ replied.
“And I have been thinking. I want you to promise me something.”
Oh, no. Not this.
BJ had heard the horror stories, all the ‘Dear Jane’ letters that destroyed marriages before they even got a chance to begin, the lonely soldiers breaking vows and hearts all around, the lonely housewives letting men into a house that no longer felt like home and starting the end with a ‘Dear John.’
BJ had heard the horror stories, and he refused to be one.
“I’m never cheating on you, Peg.” He replied, almost indignant, hurt that she could think he’d ever let go of them, no matter how tough things got.
Her brow furrowed in slight confusion as she chuckled. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“That’s not—“
“Not what I was gonna say, no.” She confirmed, a sad smile on her lips.
“So what was it?” He felt hot blood rush to his cheeks in embarrassment.
“Well… I know you’re not big on talking, but I need you to write, honey.”
Write.
BJ used to write her tons of letters, especially throughout med school. His hands were so cramped from taking notes in class and endless study-sessions, but he still made an effort to write thousands of promises, millions of ‘I love you’s.’ But those were love letters.
Those were easy, despite the pain.
How do you even write home about war? BJ couldn’t believe ever wanting to make her go through that.
“You’re the author.” He tried to gently get away with a soft no, “I don’t know my way around an Oxford comma like you do.”
“And you’re smart enough to know when to test me.” She snapped, not allowing BJ to talk his way out of a serious conversation. Not this time.
He settled, averting his eyes as he thought. Of what, she didn’t know, but she didn’t really care either. She needed him to promise.
She shuffled closer, took his tight closed fist in her hands and searched for his gaze.
“You’re also brave enough to go where demons fear to set foot, strong enough to survive it and I have no doubt you’ll be lucky enough to come back in one piece.” She said, her words revering as she squeezed his hand, mourning the fact that she couldn’t sound more reassuring. “You… you’ve always been honest with me, and the day we took those vows I knew you meant it when we said we were going to share our lives with each other. I know you to be a generous man, BJ, so share. Your thoughts, your fears, your heart… and I’ll share what little light I can shine upon a dark place.”
She noticed that her words had an effect on her husband, but it wasn’t the one she was hoping for. BJ’s hands started trembling as he let out a shaky breath, he gulped audibly and tensed his jaw in a useless attempt at trying to compose himself.
He looked one blow away from shattering… and Peg feared she would throw him over the edge. Although that might be exactly what he needed, a catalyst to let out some of the feelings he was trying to bottle up.
“This isn’t just dark, Peg.” BJ finally squeezed back, his teary eyes finding Peg’s hopeful ones. “It’s war.”
She pursed her lips, knowing that nothing she said would be comfort enough for a man about to leave his family. BJ started shaking in frustration, ashamed of the tears that were pooling in his eyes.
He was scared.
Terrified.
And there was something else… something lurking underneath his restless skin.
Share it with me.
“I don’t wanna go, I— I don’t wanna leave you.” He confessed, and he instantly hated himself for it. He had to be strong, brave, all the things Peg thought he was. He felt his heart constrict in agony.
“Because you’re a good man.” Peg reassured him, kneeling before him as he tried to shy away from her. She cupped his cheeks, gentle yet determined. “Look at me, BJ Hunnicutt. You’re a good man. And you’ll come back to us.”
“You don’t know that, Peg.” He whispered, resigned.
His eyes were so beautiful, and so full of fear…
Hopelessness.
That’s what she couldn’t recognize.
Because BJ was resourceful. He was imaginative, proud, confident and ingeniously clever. He was gifted in so many ways and, above anything, he was proud. Proud enough to rarely ever admit that he’s wrong, confused, that there is no way out. He doesn’t give up.
And yet, he couldn’t find anything to hold on to in that sea of doubt. What was his fate to be, out where blood and guns reign over words, if he was already feeling so lost before he was gone?
Peg smiled sadly, keeping her own tears in. Her voice came out choked as she replied.
“I don’t doubt that, honey. And when you come back, we’ll be whole again. I promise, darling. I promise I’ll wait for every letter, and I’ll dream every night of your return. You’ve never disappointed me, and I know you won’t start now.”
BJ didn’t believe her, but he still nodded, finding in her trust the strength to try. He sniffled, and she kissed his forehead softly, keeping her lips pressed to his skin for just a second too long. She smoothed down the hair on his nape and looked at him one last time.
God, how she hated war.
And how she loved that man.
She found a little solace —just a smidge of it— in knowing that he wouldn’t go through it alone. That, despite the distance, she was going to be there for him, and that it had to be enough. That he was going to find people that cared about him, because he was friendly and generous, kind and supportive. He wouldn’t be alone.
When Peg fell asleep, BJ carefully unwrapped himself from her arms, walked around the house they’d built together through sweat and tears, and committed it to memory. He made it his mission to remember the exact placement of the furniture they’d inherited from his late parents, the white crib they’d put together between yelling and laughing, the black, long eyelashes that rested on his daughter’s rosy cheeks. He promised himself he’d never take this for granted, because it could be taken away any moment, and so he scanned all the pictures they’d hung on the walls, as if they could travel with him if he focused hard enough and tried not to forget the color-palette that painted them.
But BJ wasn’t a nostalgic man.
Hawkeye was.
He loved the past. He lived in it half the time, although that might just be because, when BJ met him, his present was hell and his future was looking dark and grim.
So Hawkeye got drunk, had sex, and joked around until it inevitably escaped in the form of tears and self-deprecation. And he hurt himself, and his brain supplied terrifying images, and his mind played tricks against him in his nightmares, and his body betrayed him when he felt like he couldn’t breath and gasped, he tore up his skin and was pulled under by the weight of the blood on his conscience.
And when mail made it through the barriers, and he received outdated copies of Crabapple’s Cove newspapers, he ate them up. He cherished every letter his father sent him, often reread them out of pure boredom or what he thought was a subtle method of escapism. He listened to the same old music, hooked up with the same old people, and laughed at the same old jokes until he felt like the person he used to be.
A person who could sleep and laugh and feel.
A person who was whole.
When BJ hugged him for the last time, he held to him like a lifeline. His fists tightened in his jacket, he couldn’t force himself to let go. And BJ didn’t know it back then, but he was trying to make every agonising second count. He tried to seize every millisecond, and counted the freckles on his neck. He observed carefully, and made a mental note, forced himself to remember how the wind ruffled his greying hair, how his voice choked up with emotion, how he opened up his heart to leave with no regrets.
Not when it came to him.
He remembered the way Hawk’s pulse beat like crazy, how warm his wrist was under BJ’s fingers. How his cheeks smelled of Tokyo’s cheapest aftershave and his breath smelled of Korea’s cheapest martinis, the still they’d built together abandoned in the tent they’d never come back to.
They’d divided their belongings, a while earlier. The trinkets and knick-knacks they’d been collecting for years, that had made the primal space feel more like a home. Hawkeye took the dartboard, some posters, and the clock that had two waxed legs in heels pointing at the numbers.
BJ wouldn’t miss them.
But what hurt him more than any bullet, and he didn’t understand why, was watching Hawkeye take his red bathrobe from the hook it lived in and put it away. What he mourned above it all was that Hawkeye had left and had taken his smile with him. His incessant touch. His terrible jokes. He’d taken part of him.
And BJ would be crazy and compelled to drive himself to a psychiatric institution if he dared to admit he missed anything about that godforsaken place.
He wasn’t nostalgic.
He wasn’t melancholic.
But still, he found himself walking up to the attic, climbing the stairs hesitantly but surely guided by the ghost of a friend who gently pushed him towards his footlocker.
That’s where he kept anything related to Korea, as if hiding it and letting it collect dust would somehow separate the two parts of his life. As if the war wouldn’t bleed into his Mill Valley fantasy as long as that Pandora’s box stayed closed… because who would want to remember any of that?
BJ didn’t look at the past.
He stayed in the present, however bad that was. And he looked to the future, always hoping for another day. A different one.
BJ didn’t look at the past.
Unless his best friend in the whole world had suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth, no letters for months, no news to share, no handwriting to replace his voice, leaving BJ with no chance but to relive memories instead of creating —expecting— new ones.
So fuck Hawkeye, for making him sit in front of the engraved ‘Captain B.J Hunnicutt, U.S Army’ inscription. Fuck him for making him open up the heavy lid with a heavy heart, grab the letters he’d never thought to read, and hold them in his hands as if somehow that made them a little closer.
Fuck Hawkeye, he thought, for taking away his smile, and his touch, and now even his words.
In Korea, BJ had sometimes wished that the other man shut up, but the silence was deafening, maddening.
And BJ couldn’t bear it.
And so he went back to the times where they were together, to the letters he addressed to Peg Hunnicutt.
And he read.