Either BJ's gone completely 'round the bend, or he's drunk and
therefore not thinking clearly, or he's well and truly bored. He
is, you see, standing on his head in the middle of the Swamp. His
face is pretty red, and he has a look of intense concentration on
his face.

"Hey, Beej, I just --" Hawkeye is paused in whatever anecdote that
was about to be by the sight that greets him on entering the
Swamp. He checks back outside again, looks down at the ground, up
at the sky, and ducks back in. "Okay, it's definitely you and not
me. What are you doing?" Still wearing bloodied scrubs and now
lightly mud-splattered, Hawkeye hesitates a moment before thinking
the hell with it and flopping into his bunk.

"I'm bored," replies BJ, opening one eye a crack, then closing it
again. Oo, he's pretty good at this. He can't be drunk, if he were
drunk, he couldn't stand up on his feet without weaving. Steady as
a rock, he is. "Very bored. But you just gave me a fantastic idea.
The only problem is the still. How would we get the still to stick
to the roof?"

Hmm. "We could just put it outside. He'd never notice." Hawkeye
links his fingers behind his head and regards the ceiling. One
foot taps restlessly at the air.

BJ Hunnicutt finally falls, rather gracelessly, but it's not a
total loss of control. He does manage to end up on all fours,
instead of falling over like a board. Big earth-shattering thud.
"Ow." He crawls over to his cot, dragging himself up onto it like
a drowning kangaroo, then lies there breathing heavily and trying
not to pass out. "We should find a way to fortify the ceiling
without having it visible from the outside."

"We could fit a false one underneath, made of something else."
Hawkeye glances over at BJ. "I spoke to Dickey." As you may have
noticed from that fact that I did not come home last night.

"Oh, I was wondering whose tent you were in last night," grins
Beej indelicately, even as he weakly reaches up to put his hands
over his eyes. Still pink. No longer red, but still pinker than
normal. "Well, good for you. Went well, huh?"

"Yeah." Hawkeye looks away, directing his grin at the ceiling,
which is used to it. "She's gone now, though. Off to the front.
She said to give you her love."

"Woo. As long as it's platonic." A beat. "But somehow I get the
feeling you covered just about everything else, so I don't have to
worry." Grinning, Beej finally looks over at Hawkeye, dropping his
arms to his sides. "Where do they come up with people like her, I
want to know?"

A slight shake of the head. "I have no idea." Pause. Hawkeye's
doing rather less of the cheerfully good-natured bragging and
rather more of the wistful gazing at the ceiling. "She took that
blood donor double-picture, y'know. Of that Marine."

"She did? Wow." BJ pauses, finally feeling steady enough to sit
up. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and does so
carefully, yawning. "Wow. That picture convinced -me- to give
blood. But I still hate needles."

"I thought you hated haystacks." Hawkeye spares BJ a brief glance,
smiling. "I still don't like the idea of cameras in the OR. But
she..." She. What about her. He looks back to the ceiling again.
Wouldn't work out, she said. Drive each other nuts, he agreed.
Huh. "She's been doing this since before we even qualified."

Laughing quietly, BJ gets to his feet, stretching, rubbing the top
of his head. "And she'll be doing it long after we're committed.
She take any pictures in post-op?"

"Don't think so." Hawkeye pauses a moment. "She also said it'll
end. She sees an end to it." That was almost the last thing she
said to him. "Though not to your bizarreness. I don't think that's
how you make your moustache curl up at the ends, Beej."

"Well, if anyone would, she'd probably be able to tell," grants
BJ, padding over to snag his bathrobe from the floor, pulling it
on. He ponders the still for a moment, then turns and heads back
to his bed. "And how do you know? You don't have one."

"My dad did, when I was a kid." So there. Hawkeye watches BJ,
expression turned thoughtful. Take care of him, she said. "Have
you told Peg about it or are you planning a surprise meeting for
her and the Tash Of Doom?"

She did -what-? But Hawkeye's the one needs taking care of! Good
thing neither doctor is a mindreader. "I'm planning on a surprise
meeting, but I'm taking my shaving kit with me in my small bag,
just in case I chicken out on the train from Frisco."

"What's the first thing you'll do when you get there?" They must
have had this conversation before, but it recurs. And Hawkeye is
trying to distract himself from the idea that he should have made
Dickey stay.

BJ Hunnicutt starts talking, then eyes Hawkeye suspiciously. "You
don't have a tape recorder going this time, do you?"

A chuckle. "Not this time." But maybe next time, so look out,
ahaha.

Okay, that's all right, then. Beej settles into his cot, hands
behind his head, gazing at the ceiling. "The -very- first thing?
Peg'll probably meet me at the station with Erin, so the very
first thing...I think Erin's big enough for a sandwich hug." He
gets this silly grin tugging at his face, and his eyes are far
away. "There're so many things I want to do. But half of them have
to wait until Erin's in bed. When we get home, I don't know. If
it's late, maybe Peg'll let me put Erin to sleep. I hope she still
likes lullabyes..." Oh dear.

No, that's all right. Let him talk. He's got it all planned out.
And back when the whole thing started, back when Hawkeye first
arrived, he had it all planned out too. I'll get there, I'll get
off the plane, I'll be met by such and such a cousin, I'll drive
home... but that's all been seeming very distant and ridiculous
lately. When I get home. *If* I get home. "I think I'll probably
take a bath." He looks down at himself and blinks. "Why didn't you
tell me to collapse on Charles' bunk?" Now mine is all dirty.

No, it was the thing - what if Erin's too old to be rocked to
sleep when Beej gets home? "My eyes were closed and you were
standing on the ceiling anyway," he replies. "Why were you
standing on the ceiling? You could fall. And get a concussion."

The mind not attuned to matters of small children missed that
entirely. "Wouldn't want that. Then I wouldn't be able to dodge
when the stove fell on me." Hawkeye turns his head and props
himself up on his elbow. "Hey, if I end up a sad and lonely old
man, will you invite me to your place at Thanksgiving?"

"How about I invite you and your dad to Thanksgiving anyway?" BJ's
perfectly serious, but not Serious - he's looking back at Hawkeye
with one of those perfectly open, honestly casual looks. It's not
a big deal. Just a Thanksgiving invite.

Eyebrows raise. "To California?" Wow, that doesn't seem likely.
But it's possible, they got him to New York that once. Still,
there's the whole issue of how much the whole relationship will be
strained once Hawkeye and Daniel Pierce can't actually avoid each
other any more and have to get back to not really dealing with
each other...it's a big deal, but in a good way. "That'd be
great."

Who knows - maybe all the letters back and forth will have made
everything go away in the wash of a bigger perspective. One can
always hope. It'd be one good thing to have come out of the war,
anyway. "Suuure, to California! Peg would love you. Erin would
hang all over you, I'm sure. You'd be, y'know, the Weird Uncle or
something. And we can probably convince her your dad is Santa on
an early tour."

It's a long way, though. Hawkeye flops onto his back again. It's a
*very* long way. But it's worth it. Always worth it. "If I can get
him to go, sure. I'll go anyway. Or you could come to us. Has Erin
seen snow?"

"Of course she hasn't! She's a proper Californian," answers BJ
indignantly, with a very opinionated swish of his mustache. "She'd
probably think the sky was falling," he grins. "But she'd get over
it. Oh wow, and I'd have to go with Peg to get her a little
snowsuit - Peg would never believe how cold this stuff gets."

'This stuff'. Hawkeye grins. Snow is an integral part of his
childhood and a simple fact of existence. Which just goes to show.
"There you go. I'll teach her to ice skate."

Panic button! "What, on ice? Where you can fall in? I don't think
so! Snowmen, sure. Ice skates? I didn't realize how badly you
wanted to kill my daughter, Hawk."

Amusement wins out over indignance. Hawkeye sits up in order to
properly stare at BJ. "I went ice skating every year until I was
seventeen and the worst that ever happened to me was...well that
was an unfortunate coincidence. Won't happen again."

Wait. He fell in. He actually fell in! "You fell IN? And you want
ERIN to go ice skating -anyway-? You teach me first, I'll test the
ice. If I don't fall in, then okay. Erin probably weighs more than
you do anyway." There's a moment of deadpan, and then BJ just
*grins*.

Blink. Blink. Hey! "What are you saying exactly? We can't all be
elephantine." Hawkeye lies back down again. Hmf. "I hear there's a
new limit on the Empire State Building, no more than three
Hunnicutts in the elevator at any one time."

Oh now, that's hitting below the belt. "You've seen Peg! You saw
her on film!" protests BJ, turning over to glare at Hawkeye. "And
Erin! You saw them both! I wasn't saying Erin was a baby wooly
mammoth, I was *insulting* you! Come on, get it straight."

"Oh, of course, of course." A beat. "I hear they've had to stop
using baby Hunnicutts as bowling balls, anyway."

"They deemed it inhumane, like using Pierces as scarecrows." Beej
sounds sulky. But only mildly. He did start it, after all.

Yes he did. "You're probably right about the skating. Even in
January the ice isn't *that* thick."

Rarr! "When's it thick enough to skate on for a guy like me?" This
time BJ actually sounds interested, if grudgingly. Ice. Snow. Ick.
Fire in fireplace. Hot chocolate. Those things that are nice to
have when you're indoors if it's cold outdoors, like it's got here
a couple times.

...weeell. "You'd be fine all winter. Ice is stronger than it
looks. That one time was a fluke. Course considering I weighed
less then than I do now, and according to you that's not enough,
we could be looking at some kind of safety harness for you. Hang
you off a tree."

"Very funny." There's no amusement in that voice, is there? No.
Not a bit. "Do you have any trees around the lake, or whatever it
is you skate on?" Oh man, he thought you were serious.

"Oh, yeah, lots of em. In Maine we have these things called
forests." Good, serves him right.

Oho. Forests. You think you have forests. "You have not. You
haven't seen trees until you've seen redwoods. These things are so
big you could make a two lane highway through 'em and there'd
still be tree on either side to spare." Smirk. One up.

"And they're good for what, exactly? Can you climb them? Build in
them? Cut them down and bring them inside come Christmas? Or are
they just for people from Sausalito to drive up and look at on
their days off?"

BJ grins. "Philistine. Thinking of trees in only their usefulness
to you. Can't you just enjoy their majesty? And the fact that
they're thousands of years older than you are?"

"Sand is thousands of years older than I am, Beej, and I still tip
it out of my shoes when I get back from the beach."

BJ Hunnicutt says very sadly, "You're a bad, bad man. I'm going to
have to warn Erin not to believe a word you say."