Chapter Text
B.J. woke up to Silas watching him from the other side of the bed. He was mostly in shadow, making his movie-star strong features into a series of strong angles, but B.J. could still see the fond smile on his face.
“What time is it?” B.J. asked. He’d set his alarm, since today was a court day, but he was pretty sure it hadn’t gone off yet.
“Almost six,” Silas said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I don’t think you did,” B.J. said. “I’m just so keyed about this.” He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Sorry.”
Silas shook his head. “I’m anxious, and I’m not the one who’s fighting the government.”
B.J. let out a bleak laugh. Sometimes he felt less like he was fighting the government and more like he was losing a long, slow argument with one particular lawyer. “Still,” he said, running his hands through his hair. He’d not had it cut since he’d been fired. “I appreciate you being around.”
Silas kissed him, long and slow and tender, which eased some of the tension in B.J. chest. They sat together in the dim light, Silas’s arms around B.J.’s chest.
Eventually, B.J. turned in the circle of Silas’s arms so they could kiss, then let the other man deepen their embrace. As Silas kissed him, B.J. reached between them with practiced ease.
Afterwards, they lay on the bed together, until, inevitably, B.J. got tired of the the feeling of drying semen on his stomach and prodded Silas in the shoulder. “Time to get up,” he said. “Unless you want me throwing you off the bed.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Silas said. Still, he sat up. “You’re infuriatingly good at that.”
“You’re even madder when we have more time,” B.J. said. “Will you be joining me in the shower?” The two of them mostly didn’t shower together, but Silas seemed to have a knack for knowing when B.J. didn’t want to be by himself.
Silas shook his head. “I think most of mine ended up on you, too,” he said, his pleased smile bringing out his dimples. “So, go clean yourself, and I’ll make breakfast, and then I’ll shower.”
“Sounds like a plan,” B.J. said. He resisted the urge to salute, since Silas probably wouldn’t take it the right way.
The warmth he felt watching Silas head towards the kitchen wasn’t going to get him all the way through the day, but he was glad he’d woken up early. It was easy to argue that there was nothing wrong with him when this part of his life, the part of his life that should have stayed his business and no one else’s, felt pretty good.
-
Standing stiffly in his old Class “A"s, B.J. once again found himself wondering why the hell he'd let Hank and Bill talk him into wearing them. Sure, it made it clear that he was a veteran himself, but they didn't fit right anymore and were a constant reminder of the worst years of his life.
B.J. didn't like thinking of himself as a veteran, not when he'd escaped Korea unscathed. A decade working at the medical center had made him intimately familiar with everything the U.S. had ever done to its own soldiers, and B.J. had gotten off more than lightly in comparison to his patients. But Bill and Hank had been adamant; this judge, Gerard Haversham, was more likely to take their moral arguments seriously if B.J. emphasized his service record.
“Mr. Hunnicutt.” B.J. didn’t like Harrison Palmer, the government lawyer in charge of defending Colonel Desmond Mooney and the hospital he ran, not at all. It wasn’t because of his looks, which were fine, if a bit watery. It wasn’t because of the way he looked at B.J., because there was always the chance he looked at everyone like that. It was the way he called B.J. “Mister,” as though he’d lost his medical license, when in reality the California board had been substantially more understanding than the VA.
B.J. didn’t try to correct him.
“Captain,” Judge Haversham corrected. He might not have been terribly sympathetic to the rest of B.J.’s arguments, but he took this one small matter seriously.
“Captain Hunnicutt,” Palmer said. “During your draft board interview, you were asked whether you were a homosexual.”
That had been one of the worst days of his life. The medical examination was humiliatingly thorough; B.J. could’ve told the doctor, a bored-looking man in his mid-fifties who very obviously wasn’t remembering his name, that there was nothing wrong with him. He wished there was, that this was the day he found out he was secretly asthmatic, or had flat feet, or a heart condition. Unfortunately, the same general good health that had seen him through every long shift as a medical resident now made him useful to the U.S. Army.
There had been a list of questions. B.J. wouldn’t remember any of his answers twenty-four hours later, not like Klinger, who could recite every failed gambit to get out, and had once alphabetized them in song form. He’d only recall the specifics when they were read out to him a decade later.
They’d also asked him if he was a communist, or Quaker. Somehow, neither of these questions were coming up in this lawsuit.
“Yes,” B.J. said.
“How did you answer?”
“No,” B.J. said, suppressing a sigh. He had been very strongly advised this was not the time for every single joke he'd bitten back so far.
“Why?”
“It was the truth as I understood it at the time.” B.J. now had a lot of practice at staying calm in the face of these kinds of questions, but he was sure at some point it was going to give him an ulcer.
There was a difference between fooling around with another guy in college and being a homosexual, and the B.J. who had answered “no,” had every reason not to lay claim to that identity. None of those reasons mattered now, but that B.J. hadn’t known that six thousand miles away, the most interesting person he would ever meet was mourning the loss of Lt. Colonel Henry Blake.
“Are you saying you have become a homosexual in the past decade?”
“Yes.” B.J. didn’t like that answer, but the truth would’ve been incomprehensible to most of the people in the courtroom. “Something like that.”
The examination continued. B.J. hated it, as he hated every single previous day in court, though the days he had to sit quietly were worse than the days where he had to speak. For the sake of the point Hank and Bill were trying to make, B.J. had explained every part of his service, his life--and still Colonel Mooney’s lawyer pushed this idea that he had been damaging his patients, or had deceived the VA, and worse, the judge seemed to be buying it.
As though the draft board was so choosy as to turn avowed homosexuals away! Klinger was proof that you could limp your wrist and dress up like Marilyn Monroe and the Army would still keep you around as long as you did your duty. Then there were all the kids who should’ve been 4Fed, and all the children who’d snuck in.
If he wanted to go back far enough, Potter was a goddamn Colonel, and he’d joined up with a fake age and ended up drinking in a hole in France, listening to horses scream.
If he had told the truth as this lawyer saw it, they probably would’ve taken him anyway. It was hard not to laugh, sometimes. Here was the government, doing everything in its power to keep a doctor they’d forced into service from staying in service, just because an undercover cop had regretted getting handsy in a men’s room that stank of cigarettes.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to be honest, and get out of the Army? You had a young child, after all,” Palmer said, apparently immune to his own absurdity.
“I wanted to serve my country,” B.J. said, somehow biting back the sarcasm. That had been true when he was first drafted, before he’d seen what that actually meant.
It was why he hadn’t taken the dodge when offered, and why he still mostly didn’t regret going along with the Army. All his escape would’ve meant was someone else going in his place, and it was even odds that that other man was a Frank Burns instead of a Hawkeye Pierce. He couldn’t stand the thought of it.
“Did you lie to the draft board about anything else?” Palmer asked.
“No,” B.J. answered. He bit back any further comments. He wanted to reiterate that he’d been completely honest, but getting angry would only make him look worse. He knew that because he’d been set off once before, and all it had done was make the judge reprimand him, and not Palmer.
-
Overall, that day’s court session seemed to mostly annoy the judge, which could mean anything in either direction. Perhaps he was annoyed at Palmer’s grandstanding. Perhaps he was annoyed at B.J., or B.J.’s lawyers, or a combination of all of those things.
All they’d really communicated was that B.J. had answered no to a question he had no reason to say yes to.
“Did you really not know, before?” Hank asked that afternoon, the three of them sitting in diner near the courthouse. The walls were stained from how many people smoked inside, the food was barely better than mess tent fare, and the uniform B.J. was still wearing made him expect a leggy brunette with sunken blue eyes to walk in at any second. They ate here anyway, because no one paid attention to what they talked about.
“I figured I'd gotten it out of my system,” B.J. said. “I was wrong.”
Bill laughed. “What, like a quota or something?”
“Sure,” B.J. said. “You and your fraternity brothers fool around, but it’s not serious, and then you’re married and you have a kid and you just sort of stay in that world.” Bill had been out since he was a child, apparently, which was a hell B.J. couldn’t begin to imagine, and Hank had a wife he didn’t talk about much, so their backgrounds couldn’t be more opposite.
“Right,” Hank said. He ate a fry, an odd expression on his face. “I still think this is our best strategy, though, because it’s hard to argue with the fact that you’re a decorated war hero.”
B.J. covered the wave of nausea that hit him at Hank’s words as best as he could, though the greasy half-eaten burger in his stomach wasn’t helping matters. He’d already told his lawyers about how they’d asked him if he knew any other homosexuals at the hospital, or in the army, but apparently they couldn’t lean on that in the lawsuit because it was still considered acceptable practice.
He also didn’t mention what exactly had earned him his medal. If he could help it, he would never talk or think about that day for the rest of his life. If he was asked about it in court, he’d talk about it, but otherwise--otherwise everything that mattered was in his service record, and he wasn’t the one who had to read that out.
“I shouldn’t have to be a decorated soldier for them to take me seriously,” he complained, feeling a bit like Hawkeye was feeding him lines. “I’ve been as good a surgeon here as I was in Korea, that should be enough.” He was probably an even better doctor here, since he wasn’t being made to operate assembly-line style for thirty hours straight.
“I agree with you,” Hank said. They’d had this conversation before. At this point, it was a way for B.J. to expel his nerves more than it was actually useful to the case. “But, fitting a certain image helps your case.”
“I look straight,” B.J. said. He’d used to be proud of how much he fit a particular image; then he’d grown a mustache, and taken up drinking, and he fit a different image entirely.
“You look straighter than me,” Bill said, which was fair. Bill’s hair was properly long, not just longer than military standards, and he kept it tied back in a ponytail that made B.J. think of the founding fathers.
B.J. finished the rest of his burger. “Am I going to have to keep talking about the worst day of my life?”
Hank shook his head. “We’re on to character witnesses,” he said. “Colleagues who are willing to testify you didn’t try to get with your patients, or them.”
“See, this is what gets me,” B.J. said. “If I was trying to get with my lady patients, no one would care.”
Hank stopped, looking more serious than he had in a while. “Were you--”
“No!” B.J. said, more loudly than he meant to. “It’d be inappropriate either way, that’s my point.”
Hank’s shoulders dropped from around his ears. “That’s a relief to hear.”
They finished their meal, and B.J. set off towards his apartment, leaving the lawyers to plan without him. He was lucky; Hank had a real practice, somewhere, that made him money, so they were charging him much less than their time was worth. He was a vehicle for the two of them to argue a point, even if the lawsuit ended up going nowhere.
B.J. had to believe he was going to get his job back, or at least get some sort of compensation, or else there'd be no point to any of this. Sure, Kameny had been rebuffed by every judge he'd fought his way in front of, but--
When B.J. had been in Korea, with Hawkeye, he'd developed a strange conviction that as long as Hawkeye was around, things would work out. They wouldn't work out happily, but he'd keep his job and his life and the future he clung to with his bare hands.
That, of course, hadn't been the case in years. But it was still hard not to feel like he could take on the system and win at least one more time.
-
B.J. was wearing that old dress uniform of his when he came home. He looked exhausted, as he always did after a day in court, and Silas got up from where he'd been reading to fuss over him.
“We can put this back in the closet so you don't have to look at it,” Silas said. B.J. was very careful with the uniform, even though half the time he looked like he'd rather burn it.
Silas thought he looked handsome in it, like one of the guys on Combat, but it was clear B.J. did not take that kind of comment as a compliment.
“You just want to get me out of my clothes,” B.J. said, a faint smile flickering across his expression. “I know your type.”
“Yeah?” Silas asked. He unbuttoned the jacket as B.J. undid the trousers, so B.J. could shrug and step out of both pieces at the same time.
Silas would be the first to admit that as grim as their little ritual was by implication--B.J. wanted out of these clothes as fast as possible, so he stripped out of them the minute he came through his own front door--he didn't mind the chance to get an eyeful of his lover's body.
B.J. liked to call Silas his Hollywood librarian, but Silas did not put nearly the same amount of work into his body. You didn’t get a shape like that being a surgeon, though B.J. only seemed to want to exercise when Silas wasn’t looking.
“It helps that you’re cute,” B.J. said, leaning down slightly to kiss Silas on the mouth. “How was work?”
“Work was fine,” Silas said. “Slower day than usual, so not so many people.” His hands roved over B.J.’s chest, then settled under his collarbones. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” B.J. said, dropping his head to rest his forehead against Silas’s. He put his hands on Silas’s hips. “It was horrendous. You don’t want to hear about it.”
“I do, actually,” Silas said, wondering when he’d finally get it into B.J.’s head that he wasn’t just saying this to be kind. “Not just this. Anything that’s on your mind.”
B.J.’s smile was sad, and made him look much older than his late thirties. It surprised Silas, sometimes, to remember they were about the same age. “There’s nothing pleasant to say,” he said.
“I don’t need pleasant,” Silas said. He brought his hands up to wrap around the back of B.J.’s head and kissed him. “You don’t need to protect me. I can handle it.”
“I’m trying to believe you,” B.J. said, pulling away. He picked up his uniform from the floor and hung it carefully in the closet. “The problem is I won’t play their game, so now they’re getting me on a technicality, which is that I lied.”
“They’re not just going to say you’re a homosexual, get out?” B.J. was less cagey about the events leading up to his firing from the hospital than he was about whatever else was in his head, at least.
B.J. shook his head. “That just makes my case stronger, I think. Instead it’s I lied to the government, or I didn’t disclose information about my arrest soon enough--I know for a fact none of them gave a shit about what I told the board until now.”
“That’s awful.”
“It’s why I do the tin soldier routine,” B.J. said. He sighed, and the thundercloud gathering in his expression dispersed. “I get so mad--” He shook his head, cutting himself off.
That was another thing Silas had yet to tease out. B.J. would get angry, and then he’d shut down like it scared him. “I’m mad, and I’m not the one who has to go to court,” Silas said. He also worked for the government, but a different part of the government from B.J., one that was willing to ignore his private life as long as he did his work, at least for the moment.
“Yeah,” B.J. said.
He put on the clothes Silas picked for him and left in the hall closet for that purpose. The change wasn’t extreme, but it was noticeable. In jeans and dark blue shirt, he looked less like he wanted to peel off his own skin.
“I received an interesting phone call,” Silas said, once they’d both settled themselves in the living room. “Hawkeye sounded almost exactly like I expected him to,” he continued. “I think you do an impression of him without realizing.”
Silas though B.J. would be excited to hear about the phone call, and while that did seem to be a little bit the case, he honestly seemed more worried than eager. “Peg must’ve given him this number,” B.J. said. “Wow, uh--what did he say?” He looked over towards the kitchen, where the phone was, but didn’t leave his spot.
“He’s in Chicago for the night,” Silas said. It had been difficult to follow Hawkeye, especially since he’d hung up as soon as he’d given Silas what felt like extremely minimal information. “You hadn’t given him this number?”
While B.J. was relatively open about his arrest and subsequent move to the city, his relationship with his wife was much more mysterious. Silas had never met her--and didn’t feel any particular need to--and B.J. hadn’t such much about her, beyond that for now they weren’t getting divorced and that she worked in real estate. Silas had met B.J.’s daughter, the single time so far that he had brought her to San Francisco for the day, and she was cool, but B.J.’s wife always made him sad when she came up.
“No,” B.J. said, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “I was going to, but--Christ, I know he said he’d be coming soon but if he’s already in Chicago that means he left yesterday.”
He honestly looked kind of terrified.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Silas asked. “It says he wants to see you.”
“I thought if I could sort all of this out in a way that made sense, and explained it to him--are you really okay with him staying in your room?”
“I’ve told you already,” Silas said. “That’s barely my room. It’s fine.” It was strange just how upset B.J. seemed by the phone call. “Why hadn’t you given him this number?” Presumably it was for the same reason B.J. hadn’t told Hawkeye he was gay until a newspaper had forced his hand, but it wasn’t like you could guess the apartment was in Polk’s Gulch just from the area code.
“He didn’t know I’d moved out,” B.J. said. “I wasn’t--” He shrugged helplessly. “I was going to tell him.”
“I believe you,” Silas said. “I think I surprised him.”
“He should be fine,” B.J. said. “He doesn’t have a problem with men like us.”
That was, Silas thought, as good as outing Hawkeye, and B.J. probably knew that, but considering he hadn’t demanded Silas move back into ‘his’ bedroom either, that ship had long since sailed.
“You’re a lot more upset than I expected,” Silas said.
“I’m not upset!” B.J. said, then stopped and looked off towards the phone again. “It’ll be good to see him. Thank you for telling me.” He exhaled slowly, trying to calm himself down. “The train to San Francisco takes about two or three days, so I have time to make plans.”
“You know,” Silas said, hooking a finger through B.J.’s belt loop. They weren’t going to get anywhere if B.J. started obsessing about Hawkeye’s visit. “I’m really excited to meet this guy. If he’s anywhere as good looking as he is in those photos you have, then I’m in for a treat.”
“He’s aged a lot better than I have,” B.J. said, seemingly without thinking. “He actually looks good with gray hair.”
Silas had spent a lot of time looking at B.J.’s hair. He wouldn’t call it grey, exactly, though it was certainly lightening, especially since B.J. still reflexively described it as brown when it really wasn’t. He also wouldn’t say that B.J. was aging badly, or even poorly. “You’re not so old,” he said.
“I feel ancient,” B.J. said. “He’s older than me, but he doesn’t look it.”
“You’re not changing my mind,” Silas said.
“If this ends with the two of you running away together, then I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.” It wasn’t hard to see the jealousy lurking under B.J.’s words, which was ridiculous, considering he was the one with the crush visible from outer space.
“Don’t worry,” Silas said, pulling B.J. closer. “You’re stuck with me.”
-
The phone rang just as B.J. was remembering that he didn't like My Living Doll whatsoever. He got up, leaving Silas to first change over to The Patty Duke Show before giving up entirely
“B.J. Hunnicutt speaking,” he said, hoping it wasn't one of his lawyers calling. Sometimes they did call him at late hours if they had new ideas, though usually they were pretty good about respecting his time.
“B.J.,” Hawkeye said. Even just hearing the other man say his name was enough to make B.J. feel like he'd been shocked. “This really is your new number.”
“Yeah,” B.J. said. “Silas told me you called.” There were other things he wanted to say, but he was at least self-aware enough to know all of them would come off wrong.
“He seems nice,” Hawkeye said. There was a beat of silence B.J. badly wanted to fill, then Hawkeye continued. “I'm at Sidney's right now. He said you called him to ask for advice.”
Hawkeye wasn't asking “Why didn't you tell me?” directly, but he didn't need to.
“I know he's well-connected, and I was looking for lawyers,” B.J. said. “He just pointed me to people I could call locally.” It was a more roundabout route for information than he'd really needed. It had still been good to get that confirmation that Sidney was still in his corner, though really that shouldn't have come as a surprise.
What he didn't say was that Sidney had also offered to listen if he needed to vent his feelings. B.J. had declined, of course. He just needed to keep following the path he was setting out in front of him, and Sidney had more important things to do.
“Oh, thank God,” Hawkeye said. “I was worried you were representing yourself.”
B.J. snorted. “I don't have your way with words, Hawk, I wouldn't stand a chance.” He had thought about Hawkeye's ability to dodge court martials at the very beginning of all of this, but B.J. was going to have to go about this the regular way if he wanted any chance at all.
“You know, I only ever got away with that stuff because they didn't have enough doctors,” Hawkeye said. “I'm nowhere near as indispensable in regular practice, as Charles loves to remind me.”
“People aren't exactly lining up to work for the VA, either, but here we are,” B.J. said.
“I think they made a huge mistake,” Hawkeye said. “You're a good surgeon, Beej, and they're throwing you away over nothing. You made a mistake pretty much everyone of a certain type makes at least once, that's all.”
B.J. knew a lot about Hawkeye's past. He'd always been more forthcoming about it, and knowing him for a decade meant that B.J. now had a whole personal biography of his friend just from anecdotes.
He'd never heard this. Why would he? Why would Hawkeye tell him those parts of his past, when B.J. had been more than happy to play heterosexual too?
“You--”
“Not me. Friends.”
If only Hawkeye would just come out and ask. Maybe then B.J. would have to figure out the answer.
“The weirdest thing happened to me yesterday,” B.J. said, the events with Neil falling out of him before he could stop himself. Maybe it was the uncomfortable silence. Maybe it was because Hawkeye would actually know what he was talking about.
It was easier than waiting for Hawkeye to ask “Why didn't you tell me?” or worse, “How are you?” This story had a beginning, middle, and something close to a happy ending.
“Wow,” Hawkeye said. “I remember that operation. I guess he recovered, if he had a kid.” He blew out a breath loud enough that B.J. could hear it. “That sounds like it was really weird. I have no idea what I would’ve done in that situation.”
B.J. did. Hawkeye would know what to say to keep the mood up, a joke that would get him out of the circumstances, and he wouldn’t throw up in the sink after. That part, B.J. was keeping to himself.
“Has that never happened to you?” B.J. asked.
“Not outside of reunions, and those weren’t patients. No one else drafted from Crabapple Cove--there wasn’t a reason for any old patients to find me, after. Guess San Francisco is smaller than Boston after all.”
“I guess so,” B.J. said. “I have no idea how he recognized me, I look completely different.”
“It’s the mustache,” Hawkeye said. “He was so enchanted by it, even in his darkest hour, that it stuck in his mind for all those years.”
“It’s certainly popular,” B.J. said.
“I still can’t imagine why,” Hawkeye answered, the same conversation they’d had a hundred times, if not more. “Nobody has any taste anymore.”
“If you asked me to shave it, I would,” B.J. said. Hawkeye had complained about it, he’d pulled on it, he’d insulted it, but he’d never really asked him to remove it. Not really.
“Did I ever tell you about a patient named George?” Hawkeye asked. “From before you showed up, I mean.”
“No,” B.J. said. “You’ve mostly told me the fun stories.” It was Trapper John who’d told B.J. the really dark stuff, years later when they were the last two awake at a reunion. Trapper had seemingly banked on B.J. not remembering the evening, at least judging by how honest he’d been.
It had turned out they both got more attached than you should to a child named Kim. Go figure.
“This one’s sort of fun,” Hawkeye said. “Okay, it’s not fun at all, but no one died.” Hawkeye was right. The story wasn’t fun, though there were parts of it that were funny. He just hoped the kid was fine once he got back to his unit. The story also didn’t put Margaret in her best light, though even she would admit that she’d been a different person around Burns.
The part that was kind of funny and kind of awful was the revelation about Frank. “I can’t believe he’s allowed to see patients,” B.J. said at the end. “Or run a hospital.”
“Not the most surprising news in the world, is it? But it was weird. I had to tell George he was safe without giving anything away about myself.”
“Did you ever tell anyone?” B.J. asked. “While you were over there, I mean.” He’d probably told Trapper, which wasn’t at all what B.J. wanted to hear, but what could you do?
“Sam Pak figured it out. Henry Blake knew, but I think he thought I was doing the same thing he was, just killing time until we went back to the real world. Sidney knew, but I think Sidney knew about you, too.”
“Yeah,” B.J. said. He’d never told Sidney anything, but he hadn’t needed to. At some point, apparently, Sidney had made it a pet project to figure him out, and part of that involved being scarily perceptive.
At the time, B.J.’s relationship with Peg was straightforward and monogamous, so that conversation had mainly been a series of increasingly strained euphemisms, but it meant when B.J. had called Sidney for advice the other man had not been terribly surprised.
“Wait,” B.J. said, realizing the full implication of what Hawkeye had just said. “Henry Blake?”
“It was definitely just fooling around for him,” Hawkeye said. “So was everything else he did.”
It was at that moment that Silas walked into the kitchen, and B.J. was brought back to earth and out of the world that contained only one other person.
“Just a second,” B.J. said, and covered the receiver with his hand. “Yeah?”
“Ask him when he’s going to arrive,” Silas said. “Also, Dick Van Dyke’s on in ten minutes.”
“Right,” B.J. said. “I’ll be done soon.” He took his hand away. “Silas reminded me I should probably ask when you’re going to be here.” It struck him that he’d ended phone calls with Hawkeye in much the same way, but with Peg having to remind him to wrap things up.
He could even guess the answer. About two days, and Hawkeye would be tired after the long train ride.
“Tomorrow,” Hawkeye said, with forced lightness. “I’ll take a cab from the airport.”
“You’re flying?” The last time, to B.J.’s knowledge, that Hawkeye had been on a plane, it had been his return trip to New England, in 1953.
Eleven years, and he was getting on a plane to San Francisco, to see B.J..
“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “Train’ll be too long.”
“I should give you my address,” B.J. said, trying not to let his voice shake.
“Right,” Hawkeye said. “That’s what I was calling about, after all. I hung up before Silas could tell me.”
B.J. told him, avoiding eye contact with Silas.
“Bye, Hawkeye,” B.J. said. “See you tomorrow.”
“See you,” Hawkeye said. “And good luck.”
The line went dead.
“He’ll be here tomorrow?” Silas asked.
B.J. felt himself blink rapidly. “Yes,” he said. “If you’re back before me--”
“I’ll make up the room,” Silas said. “Are you okay?”
“I will be,” B.J. said, reaching out to take Silas’s hands in his. “As long as you don’t make me stay up for the Cara Williams Show.”(1)
“Eventually you’ll tell me why you hate it so much,” Silas said.
“You’ll be the first to know, after me.”