HAHAHAHA bj hurts everybody. all the time.
Title: Misplaced Emphasis
Author: teapot_yo. HOLLA.
Fandom: MASH
Medium: television
Genre: slash
Pairing: Hawkeye/BJ, but also a whole hell of a lot of BJ/Peg. It’s um POST-WAR which normally translates to BAD but I think I did this pretty well. It’s not really what I WANTED per se but it’s pretty awesome in its own right. (HAHAHA longest pairing answer ever.)
Theme: B is for bric-a-brac, which I pretty much took to mean: “knick-knacks with sentimental value”.
Disclaimer: I OWN HAWKEYE AND HE IS TIED TO MY BED WHICH IS WHY HE’S NOT TECHNICALLY IN THIS um I got nothing.
Aaand a note to Kelly le mod: I fail at tags, so if you could cover me on that... *thumbs up*
“BJ we cannot POSSIBLY keep all of this and I hope this is something you understand,” Peg admonishes, staring at two boxes of belongings from a war that probably should have robbed him of more than it did. “I mean... aside from the fact that we don’t have any room at all, some of this stuff is just gross,” she adds, holding up a framed picture of a man with dark hair and a Hawaiian shirt, completely oblivious to the fact that if that little bloodstain in the corner came off, it wouldn’t mean as much to him.
“But... it’s my stuff.”
“I know, darling, but...” Peg trails off, and BJ wonders when Peg became someone who would think something that horribly wrong. “You need to forget him,” are the words that hang in the air between them, the ones that have been hanging for a month and a half before BJ has allowed her to touch anything. And it’s not that he blames her.
He knows how it should have been. He knows it should have been a homecoming to love and laughter and swinging Erin around as he gives Peg a meaningful glance. He knows that first night should have been amazing. He knows that he should have shut the door and shown her how much he missed her and needed her and loved her. It wasn’t amazing, though, and it can’t be that way with boxes of Hawkeye occupying the living room and refusing to leave.
“I will make it up to you,” BJ had said that first night, with Peg lying next to him and crying silently. “I promise you that someday I will be who I was.”
“You won’t,” she’d answered in a rush, too flustered and scared to figure out words to tell him that he didn’t have to be, “and it’s okay, but please BJ will you still try to love me?” And after she’d said it she’d realized that once he started trying, it was just a race to the finish, a steady journey to the divorce papers, and before she could stop herself, she had said no. Don’t try. And so he hadn’t, not really, until today, when he looks at her and sees how hard she’s trying to save this marriage, sees how much love illuminates her face when she looks at him, even though lately, more often than not, she looks at him with eyes that are tired and sad.
“I love you,” she says now, with a real smile and with misplaced emphasis on the word “love” that should have been directed to the word “you”. She always knows everything he’s thinking.
“I love you too, Peg,” BJ says, fake-smiling until he feels that his mouth and his conscience will split in two. “Since I was seventeen.”
When BJ, who is carefree with everything except emotions that represent letting go, measures his love, he realizes that the affection he feels for Peg underlies everything he could ever feel for anyone else. Hers was the mouth that he learned to kiss; hers was the body he awkwardly found his way around on a warm May night after prom, with her long blonde hair falling around his neck, and even though he was fucking everything up and ready to cry with the frustration of knowing he couldn’t give her what she needed, she was breathing words of encouragement and phrases that, untangled, meant something along the lines of “I love you.” And he had known she was telling the truth.
But here is the kicker, the part of the truth that Peg knows but won’t acknowledge for fear of losing the only life she knows how to live: even though whatever BJ has with Hawkeye has an undercurrent of Peg, the unmistakable flavor is nothing but Hawkeye, and this dissolution of his marriage is why BJ spends hours and hours running his fingers over a Hawaiian shirt, and why he hasn’t even unpacked all the pictures of Peg she gave him before he left.
Author: teapot_yo. HOLLA.
Fandom: MASH
Medium: television
Genre: slash
Pairing: Hawkeye/BJ, but also a whole hell of a lot of BJ/Peg. It’s um POST-WAR which normally translates to BAD but I think I did this pretty well. It’s not really what I WANTED per se but it’s pretty awesome in its own right. (HAHAHA longest pairing answer ever.)
Theme: B is for bric-a-brac, which I pretty much took to mean: “knick-knacks with sentimental value”.
Disclaimer: I OWN HAWKEYE AND HE IS TIED TO MY BED WHICH IS WHY HE’S NOT TECHNICALLY IN THIS um I got nothing.
Aaand a note to Kelly le mod: I fail at tags, so if you could cover me on that... *thumbs up*
“BJ we cannot POSSIBLY keep all of this and I hope this is something you understand,” Peg admonishes, staring at two boxes of belongings from a war that probably should have robbed him of more than it did. “I mean... aside from the fact that we don’t have any room at all, some of this stuff is just gross,” she adds, holding up a framed picture of a man with dark hair and a Hawaiian shirt, completely oblivious to the fact that if that little bloodstain in the corner came off, it wouldn’t mean as much to him.
“But... it’s my stuff.”
“I know, darling, but...” Peg trails off, and BJ wonders when Peg became someone who would think something that horribly wrong. “You need to forget him,” are the words that hang in the air between them, the ones that have been hanging for a month and a half before BJ has allowed her to touch anything. And it’s not that he blames her.
He knows how it should have been. He knows it should have been a homecoming to love and laughter and swinging Erin around as he gives Peg a meaningful glance. He knows that first night should have been amazing. He knows that he should have shut the door and shown her how much he missed her and needed her and loved her. It wasn’t amazing, though, and it can’t be that way with boxes of Hawkeye occupying the living room and refusing to leave.
“I will make it up to you,” BJ had said that first night, with Peg lying next to him and crying silently. “I promise you that someday I will be who I was.”
“You won’t,” she’d answered in a rush, too flustered and scared to figure out words to tell him that he didn’t have to be, “and it’s okay, but please BJ will you still try to love me?” And after she’d said it she’d realized that once he started trying, it was just a race to the finish, a steady journey to the divorce papers, and before she could stop herself, she had said no. Don’t try. And so he hadn’t, not really, until today, when he looks at her and sees how hard she’s trying to save this marriage, sees how much love illuminates her face when she looks at him, even though lately, more often than not, she looks at him with eyes that are tired and sad.
“I love you,” she says now, with a real smile and with misplaced emphasis on the word “love” that should have been directed to the word “you”. She always knows everything he’s thinking.
“I love you too, Peg,” BJ says, fake-smiling until he feels that his mouth and his conscience will split in two. “Since I was seventeen.”
When BJ, who is carefree with everything except emotions that represent letting go, measures his love, he realizes that the affection he feels for Peg underlies everything he could ever feel for anyone else. Hers was the mouth that he learned to kiss; hers was the body he awkwardly found his way around on a warm May night after prom, with her long blonde hair falling around his neck, and even though he was fucking everything up and ready to cry with the frustration of knowing he couldn’t give her what she needed, she was breathing words of encouragement and phrases that, untangled, meant something along the lines of “I love you.” And he had known she was telling the truth.
But here is the kicker, the part of the truth that Peg knows but won’t acknowledge for fear of losing the only life she knows how to live: even though whatever BJ has with Hawkeye has an undercurrent of Peg, the unmistakable flavor is nothing but Hawkeye, and this dissolution of his marriage is why BJ spends hours and hours running his fingers over a Hawaiian shirt, and why he hasn’t even unpacked all the pictures of Peg she gave him before he left.