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"You don't have to worry about it," BJ breathes as he loops a finger through the edge of Sidney's belt, gives him the tiniest tug forward—one that, notably, Sidney resists. "I'll take care of you."
The older, smaller man sways forward slightly, but his arms stay crossed over his chest, and when BJ relaxes his pull, Sidney simply comes back down off the balls of his feet. It's as though he was a strong tree rocking with the force of a hurricane, but ultimately unmoved. "That's an interesting suggestion," he points out. "Though I think you might be missing the preceding question."
Instinctively BJ flicks his gaze over Sidney's eyes, his expression, even the tendons in his neck, overanalyzing him as deeply as he can to get an answer to a question he doesn't yet feel like he can safely ask. This is uncertain. Unconfirmed. There's gin on their breath and a lock on the door of the VIP tent. He shouldn't be here, and Sidney shouldn't let him be.
But the longer he stares, the more certain he is that there's nothing warning him off.
This is part of the fascination he has with Sidney. In regards to himself, BJ knows who he is, how he looks. He's an attractive man. He catches as many nurses mooning over him as those who simply watch from a distance, similar to Peg's fellow cheerleaders while they were going steady in high school. And while BJ's more than a little familiar with the way men will orbit him with a careful rhythm when they're assessing how dangerous he might be to chase, there's none of that from Sidney.
There's a simple watchfulness. Perhaps not even a true interest. He's a man who's made a study of being perfectly neutral when he needs to be.
In a lot of ways, it's a massive fucking shame given how handsome he is when he smiles.
He's different. He's interesting. He doesn't shy away from how BJ towers half a foot over him, but he doesn't lean into him or buckle from a nudge or a companionable graze.
Maybe it's because he's older. As many men as BJ's fucked around with in his lifetime—when he's been long-distance from Peg, when she's fucked around with just as many women—they've all been in his age bracket, tucked so safely in that same four-year span that he found so plentifully at Stanford. But Sidney's got a decade on him, maybe even closer to two, and he clearly knows exactly what role he intends to play during propositions like this.
But Sidney hasn't broken the silence either. If he intends to rush BJ away, he's not showing it.
Charmed, fascinated enough for the both of them, BJ's lips quirk. He keeps his fingers tucked right there against his belt, the heat of Sidney's slim belly burning through his fatigues. "Penny for your thoughts about that," BJ finally says under his breath.
Sidney's dark eyes narrow ever so slightly, so faint that it wouldn't be noticed if BJ hadn't been so accustomed to watching every nuance of an older man's expression to see how much trouble he might be about to be in. "Well." Sidney holds his gaze, doesn't blink. "For instance, most men would typically lead with asking if someone wants to be taken care of."
"Now, I find that interesting." BJ comes one step closer, suddenly fascinated by the gleam of the light on Sidney's eyes, by how he tips his head back to maintain this steady stare. "I don't know. Maybe I'm letting my mind wander a little too far off the path—"
"No, by all means." Sidney waves one elegant hand through the air.
"Think about it. Think about who we are, where we are." BJ taps his chest first. "See, if someone needs me to take care of them, they're gonna find their way into the 4077th and end up on my table, right? They come to me. Whereas you..." This time when he lifts his hand, he hesitates. With two fingers still caught in his belt, it feels almost too much to touch him anywhere else. So perhaps that's precisely why he does. BJ rests just his fingertips on Sidney's undershirt, above his buttons, right below his bare throat, and this time he gets to watch those dark pupils swell ever so slightly. "Well, you pretty much have to go to them, don't you?"
Sidney tips his head slightly in acknowledgment. "An anticipated twist of the trade. It's far easier to see you need help when your intestines are spilling out of your gut than when your skull's full of bees."
He's not sure how he feels about the way that Sidney still hasn't looked away, especially when he makes that kind of statement. Dr. Freedman's visits to the 4077th are few and far between, considering how often they could really use somebody like him around, but every time he arrives, he sinks into the camp culture so seamlessly that it's as if he's always been there. And maybe BJ's got an edge of paranoia—maybe they all do, when it comes to Sidney, to the power he actively holds by nature of what miracles he could make happen or take away—but he does sometimes feel as though Sidney can read beneath the surface in a way that no one else can.
What he sees when he looks at BJ is anybody's guess, but not one he's ready to ask about. He learned a hell of a long time ago that you don't ever bring up questions when you know you couldn't handle the answers.
Instead, he hard pivots, throwing on a grin. "This probably isn't what you were expecting when I was trying to find a pretty veiled way of saying I'll make sure I get you off—"
"No, on the contrary, I knew you'd be a talker." Finally there's a little spark in his unfathomably lovely eyes, that twist of amusement like orange peel in a cosmo. "You wouldn't be able to keep up with Hawkeye, if you weren't."
As the relief floods him, he lets it take over, bubbling up in a laugh that burns off these nerves and uncertainties all at once. Now it's just the delicate edge of adrenaline, something that drugs him but stirs him in such a delicious way. It has to. Otherwise, their kind of men would've never risked cruising in the first place.
Maybe it's because they've summoned the influence of Hawkeye Pierce into the tent with them both. Maybe he can't keep his hands to himself. Hell, maybe he's simply sick and tired of pretending he doesn't want the things he craves. But whatever the reason, BJ lightly toys with one of the pins on Sidney's collar, rolling it between his fingers while his other hand slowly, slowly, slowly creeps over the leather of his belt all the way to the buckle. "Well. Since I'm not paying to sprawl out on your couch and talk completely in metaphors, why don't we get down to the brass tacks of the situation?"
"By all means," Sidney drawls. His arms might still be crossed, but BJ catches the slight flex of his digits, and it emboldens him further.
"So when I said I was gonna take care of you, I was suggesting you let me...be on top." Bluntness isn't something BJ often goes in for, but as he meets Sidney's gaze again, he knows it's the only thing that the other man's going to respect from him right now. "But I'm getting the sense that you don't let people do that."
"Not someone new, no, typically not." Sidney quirks one dark brow, tipping his chin back a little further to make sure the stare stays strong. "And I'm getting a similar read on you."
"No, typically not," BJ parrots with a small smile he hopes reads as self-deprecating as he wants it to. He could be honest—say that he took cock for a year straight as a freshman at Stanford, that once he successfully flipped the script that first time he knew he wasn't ever going back to naively trusting his fraternity brothers to handle him and sometimes finding out otherwise—but if there's a chance nothing's gonna even happen here tonight, he really doesn't see a point in sharing.
He's curious enough that he still hedges, one more step forward, so close that their bodies are almost touching. "And furthermore, I don't suppose you're seduceable."
That charms a full blown grin out of Sidney. "Well, never let it be said that man won't stop trying to achieve the impossible. They sometimes even manage to succeed."
BJ lets out another chuckle, but this one is more demure, tinged with wistfulness and understanding. "Uh-huh. I hear that."
What's really interesting right now is how oddly crestfallen BJ actually is to know this...won't be happening tonight. Maybe when he was younger, he was easier at dealing with the rejection, but for years past, he had the love of his life—his soulmate—right there by his side, as ravenous for him as he is for her. He's gotten worse, it seems, at not having that ready source of pleasure, at having an invitation turned down.
The other implication would be that it's less curiosity that he has toward Sidney Freedman and more a puppy dog crush, and that's something he's really not happy to entertain, so...unfamiliar rejection it is. Forgetting how to laugh it off and move on.
It's time to get back in practice. Who knows how long he'll be here? Who knows when he'll next feel bold enough to make a move on a man who won't immediately shatter BJ Hunnicutt's carefully constructed temporary world if he isn't interested?
Reluctantly, he finally lets Sidney go and backs up two steps. He lets his gaze settle somewhere on Sidney's forehead. "Well, I can't say I didn't give it my best shot, huh?" BJ asks in bright humor.
"Are you sure about that?" Sidney's words are shaped by a half-laugh.
"Eh!" With a flick of the wrist, BJ waves him off. "It's no big deal, seriously. Sometimes two guys just aren't compatible, right?" He even manages to chuckle himself as he turns, heads for the door, gets ready to go lick his wounds somewhere in private, maybe drink himself to silence and return to his longings for his Peggy.
"Oh, you are young, aren't you?" Sidney asks softly.
BJ stops in his tracks and blinks. That's an interesting thing to say, he finds himself thinking in an incredibly familiar cadence that's more akin to honey than anything else. He'd been expecting a good night, maybe. But not that. He slowly rotates back around. "And why do you say that?"
Sidney's eyes burn with good humor and that beautiful, curious hunger. "Your best shot? Come on. Open up your mind a little more, BJ. There's still a few ways we could play."
The first urge is to snap out a quick, I know that, make it plenty clear that he's not that same college kid fumbling in somebody else's pants, but he learned to bite back a smart mouth a long time ago—and for the first time tonight, he wonders at how many times he's made this instinctive connection to little him, to an older man, and he's sure Freud would have a million and a half things to say about that if only BJ was willing to hear them.
But listening means not acting, and if he has a choice between the two, then...
"I thought you were turning me down, full stop," BJ points out, not making a move to close the gap.
As though Sidney can read his mind, he comes forward instead. "Saying no to one thing doesn't mean the whole affair's called off."
"Uh-huh." BJ's lips begin to quirk once more. "If you're not gonna give me a yes, and, at least give me a no, but."
"And what if I do?" He's still not reaching out, but at least he's closer. At least he chose to approach this time. "Are you open to it, even if it means you're not the one who's completely in control?"
After a beat, BJ replies. "Would you be?"
"Not at all. We'd share it." Sidney straightens up a little taller, his voice dropping to a delectable level. "Let's bring each other off. Together."
BJ takes a long, slow, deep breath through his nose, keeping his expression under control even as fire licks through his veins. "How so? Hands?"
Sidney shrugs as though he could care less, but he seems to have given up on hiding secrets in his gaze. "Sure. Your hand on me. My hand on you."
BJ carefully nods, full of thought, like they're consulting over a patient together rather than their own pleasure. "I could be amenable to that." He even catches himself speaking in that careful way that he did sometimes in residency, before it was interrupted with barely a year to go by this damn war. God. The things Sidney brings out in him really are curious. He falters in his realization of it and clears his throat, pulling on another smile where this time, he doesn't have to play at the self-deprecation. "I mean, if you're sure it works for you."
Sidney's laugh is so unexpected that BJ's lips part in surprise. "Honey," he murmurs. "I'd keep you awake all night in my bed, if you were keen on it. Believe me, what I'm suggesting right now isn't a consolation prize. Not by a long shot."
Sidney punctuates his sentence by resting his hand right against BJ's waist, his thumb drawing a dizzying pattern at the curve of a rib, and for some reason the contact is utterly unexpected. There was a part of BJ that was so fucking sure that they'd keep doing this bizarre dance, in and out, back and forth, before finally laughing it off in the end and calling it a night. Heat actually rushes to his cheeks in a way that it hasn't in years.
This isn't the rhythm he's used to. God, Sidney almost makes it easy to give that whole offering-him-control thing a try again. This isn't a kid who sees BJ as a hole and a way to take out the frustration of his day. No, it's a man who is watching BJ like he's worth more than gold, and like he'd love to have the opportunity to show him.
Next time. Fuck, he hopes there's a next time.
He wants to pivot. Wants to shift his weight into something that makes more goddamn sense than this, because the longer he stays here, the less certain he is that he's gonna be able to put himself back together again the second he leaves this tent. And that's the trouble with Sidney, isn't it? That he's so good at making you feel safe. And the safer you feel, the more you're going to drop your shield and risk an arrow right to the chest.
So he's going to pivot, because he has no other option, but that doesn't mean he can't be honest first, just so Sidney knows to play soft. BJ speaks slowly, breathily, every word chosen with care. "You are doing things to me tonight that I haven't felt in a decade."
Sidney nods in silence at first, and BJ half-thinks he'll leave it at that, but he doesn't. "You're making me bolder than I've been since I set foot in Korea. There's something so..." As he furrows his brow, BJ rediscovers a taste of what drove him in here in the first place, and he lightly wraps his hand around the back of Sidney's neck with an experimental squeeze. That's all it takes to make Sidney tighten his grip on BJ's shirt, then begin leading him slowly back toward the center of the tent. "You can let yourself be whatever you want to be right now. I won't take advantage of it."
Safe. So fucking safe. So monumentally in danger.
"Noted," BJ simply murmurs with a slow smile as he slips an arm around Sidney's waist. "Do you kiss, Sidney?"
"Sometimes," he fires back right away.
"Where?"
"Where do I kiss?"
"Yeah." BJ finds himself wondering at the texture of his curls, remembers a second later that he can find out. They're tight, but so soft between his knuckles.
Sidney goes on amiably. "Oh, in bars, in my living room, on the fire escape. But I find my favorite is somewhere out under the night sky, far from the city."
"Where you can give your lover a kiss for every star you can name overhead?" BJ teases, utterly charmed by the meandering journey Sidney's taking him on.
"You know, that's a good line," Sidney murmurs. "I'll have to remember that."
BJ laughs as he leans in, then second guesses right at the end, brushes his mouth over his cheek instead. "Do you kiss here?"
"Mm, that's a lovely place." Sidney sinks his fingers into BJ's hair just as carefully, and it makes his eyelashes flutter.
"Where else?" BJ whispers.
"You really want to tease yourself like this?" he replies in amusement.
"Yeah, why not?" Little by little, BJ eases back to the front, trying to leave the vulnerability behind him. "Tell me. Get me hard."
Sidney chuckles. "I enjoy taking a long, winding path." As he speaks, BJ hunches over further, craning himself to wander leisurely along Sidney's neck. "The scenic route, so to speak. If I'm having an experience, I want to savor it."
BJ's eyelashes flutter as he catches Sidney's earlobe between his teeth, feels a surge of arousal when he makes the older man gasp.
"So I might start at the cheek, yes," Sidney goes on, his voice becoming more raw as BJ sucks and tongues at his lobe, the shell of his ear. "But I think I'd wander down your jaw. Your neck. The lift of your collarbone. You know, I have the strong suspicion that by the time I reached your chest, I might need to settle in for a while."
Without thought, BJ grabs one of Sidney's hands, puts it right on his left pectoral over his heart.
Sidney hums, first simply fondling the shape of him there, but starting to work to a more purposeful knead. "This is one of the few places on you that's soft, isn't it? You're a powerful man. Strong. But here..." Sidney thumbs along slowly until he rolls over BJ's nipple, and the moment that BJ gasps, he brings the edges of two fingers around it and gives a more purposeful squeeze. "No, you'd be hard-pressed to get me to move on."
Starting to be driven slowly mad by the shocks shooting through him with each tiny tweak, BJ rolls his forehead against the top of Sidney's head with a weak groan. He pants, unashamed, against his hair, grabbing a fistful of Sidney's shirt.
"But eventually, I think I would have to. I'd see everything else waiting for me, and I wouldn't be able to resist." His other hand runs up BJ's stomach, pressing in here, then there, as though mapping out the exact topography of his rectus abdominus. "I imagine I'd tongue my way over these."
"Fuck," BJ whispers, barely audible.
"Every one of them. Find the lines that separate them. Maybe leave a little mark."
He's coming so dangerously close to letting Sidney have him, and there's a trickle of fear there like a drop of water through a breaking dam. It's enough to make BJ chuckle through the heady lust as he sets his hands on both of Sidney's slim hips. He's so much smaller than BJ that he half-thinks he could probably just pick him up by them right now, drive Sidney straight back into his cot without so much as breaking a sweat. "I thought these were kisses," he points out.
"Oh, man is always evolving, BJ."
It's unfair for him to sound so goddamn erotic no matter what he says. Almost out of self-preservation, BJ lets his touch wander around the sharp cut of Sidney's iliac crest, all the way to his pelvis, and the ragged relief at feeling how hard Sidney is brings him vividly into clarity. It's not only BJ going out of his mind. They're twirling around each other together, like Sidney promised. Maybe he's the one charming BJ deeper and deeper into aching need with his words, but it appears that just thinking about it is enough to get this man right there with him.
It's been too long. Too fucking long. As BJ rocks the heel of his palm slowly down Sidney's hardness, he fights to remember how to do it from this angle, how it's been half a decade since he had the right to try. But the quiet hiss against his throat tells BJ that he's doing a hell of a job recalling, and that emboldens him to really focus, to map out exactly how massive the cock under his hand is.
It takes a grand total of two seconds before he is practically frothing at the mouth to see, because surely not...
Sidney chuckles. "Are you that bored of hearing about my mouth already, BJ?"
"On the contrary, if I imagine it anywhere near my dick, this isn't going to last as long as I..." As he fumbles with Sidney's belt, a shock of humiliation shoots through him. He needs to be good. Needs to be perfect. He looks like he's a fucking kid on his prom night in the back seat of his car right now.
"Hey. Slow down," Sidney suggests quietly.
BJ jerks his gaze up to meet Sidney's, almost wants to tell him not to say another word—this is embarrassing enough—but in this moment of eye contact, Sidney seems to read enough behind his stare yet again.
"Come here, sweetheart." As Sidney lifts slightly, closing the distance between them, it has the effect of bringing BJ's mind to a very slow, gradual halt. "I kiss here too."
As their lips meet, BJ's fingers go loose against the metal, and he shivers as his eyes fall shut. Kissing isn't...something he does with everybody. Really. Back at Stanford, his dalliances with men were ways to expand his experiences, to chase away the loneliness of not having Peggy there. It wasn't meant to form long-lasting relationships. In the end, it was always safer to keep his lips far, far away from their own, and the few times he let himself have the simple pleasure of making out, it always made it hurt that much harder when he knew he had to break off from them for good.
He shouldn't be doing it here. What happens when he leaves Korea and goes home and returns to a life of perfect monogamy and never sees anybody he met here ever, ever again? Is he going to remember how Sidney Freedman tastes?
He's practically a stranger, his mind reminds him. Whatever this is isn't gonna matter at all.
But also, it means everything. Against all odds and logic, this is a brilliant gleaming gem in the middle of a burning garbage heap. Because of course BJ couldn't do something like this with Hawkeye—not when he needs him so fucking badly just to stay alive, not when the world would self-destruct if they fell out after BJ gave too much of himself there. So this peek into intimacy, vulnerability, and sensuality, something that makes him feel more tethered in his skin and sanity than anything else could, is all at once the most vital thing he's experienced since he got here.
And he's kissing him.
And it's going to be brutal when it's over.
And that means he should leave. Right now.
Instead, his buttery fingers work almost languidly at the belt, taking their time so that it opens without any more immature fumbling. And he doesn't even feel that bite of frustration when Sidney works his open in one smooth, effortless motion.
I have a lot to learn from him, BJ finds himself thinking, tipping over the edge into utter recklessness with absolutely no more thought for what will come after it all ends.
He manages to break the kiss once he's eased Sidney's pants and boxers down, and a glance at his cock has BJ taking in a deep breath. God. BJ got used to apologizing for the size of his cock over the years, of all things, but seeing the length and curve of Sidney's makes him suddenly understand one reason among many why he's so calm, so self-assured in moments like this. "Wow."
"Speak for yourself," Sidney teases. He runs the tip of a finger up BJ's length, and that alone is enough to draw a faint growl out of BJ's chest. "Gorgeous."
"I-I'm glad you approve." Fighting again to push forward, BJ grabs Sidney by the wrist, then holds his gaze as he lifts the palm to his mouth. After one filthy spit, he lets the arm go, then brings his own hand to Sidney's lips. There's a searing heat in those dark eyes as he does the same.
After steadying himself on Sidney's shoulder, BJ cups the older man's cock, and he doesn't so much as blink as he begins to tease him.
Sidney takes in a deep breath. He settles just his palm over the head of BJ's hardness, slowly applying gentle circles of pressure that coaxes slick precum to rush to his tip. "You have beautiful hands. Do you know that?"
"I try not to notice," BJ murmurs roughly. "Makes surgery that much harder when you keep falling in love with your own fingers."
Sidney smirks, something lovely and toothy that gives BJ the intense desire to bare his throat. "Have you ever read the tale of Narcissus?"
"Haven't found the time. There's a mirror right by my bookshelf and—"
"Oh, you are too cute, aren't you?"
"I try to be. Is it working?"
"I can still talk, so it doesn't look like it," Sidney murmurs in amusement.
Fair point. BJ tightens his grasp around Sidney's shaft, then gets assaulted by a rush of goosebumps as Sidney reciprocates. All right, so maybe he is a talker, but there's value too in silence. But only when there's such an insistent physical component that it makes the thoughts stay quiet.
BJ's not the only one with perfect hands. He watches almost with desperation how Sidney's smaller grip fits around him, how his sensitive skin gleams in the lamplight around Sidney's capable fingers, how the touch was so necessary that he's twitching every few seconds. Before he realizes they're there, soft and aching sounds of pleasure rush out of BJ with every other breath.
He's so caught up in Sidney's care that BJ almost forgets to ask, until it slips out, "Is this good?"
"Perfect," Sidney murmurs without hesitation. He steals another kiss, nothing but a quick peck, but before he can go on, BJ crashes down like he needs to eat him whole.
The physical feedback of Sidney leaning into the kiss with all his might is everything BJ needs, and his mind finally shuts off completely as he moans. BJ squeezes Sidney's shoulder hard enough to bruise, and Sidney holds him perfectly still by the hip, and there's not a single hurricane that could make BJ move away from that grip. He stands as stock still as he can, even through the ravenous liplock, even through the feverish rush to jerk Sidney off to utter perfection.
It's actually laughable that BJ thought he could've taken any measure of control over Sidney, he realizes now, because in the span of barely minutes, he's right goddamn here at the edge, and no matter how much he fights, his body screams its need to let go. He breaks the kiss with a gasp. "Sorry. Sorry, I'm close, I—"
"Give it to me, BJ," Sidney commands so gently, the heat in his tone a potent aphrodisiac. All at once, his grip seems to refine itself, and he overwhelms BJ with such an easy skill that it's as if he saved something for this exact moment just to make sure he gave BJ a taste of heaven itself. "That's it, be good and come for me."
"Ohh—" It's like rocketing to the top of a rollercoaster in seconds when he thought he'd already reached its peak. All at once, he's scraping the cosmos, dragging stardust in waves behind him as he comes with a groan he can't be bothered to silence. Sidney works him through it, the hot slick of BJ's own cum making it all the more easier, and only when he's at the point of whimpering does Sidney loosen his fist.
There's something to be said, at least, for getting your own overwhelming rush out of the way. In the moment before he might've tipped into exhaustion, BJ harnesses the emptiness of his mind and leans into Sidney. "Now it's your turn," he murmurs, the words slurring as they drip from his lips. "I bet you're gorgeous when you come."
"Oh, you've thought about it?" Though it sounds like Sidney's trying to drawl at him, he can't convincingly pull it off. The man's back to kneading BJ's hip, his knees beginning to wobble.
"Mm-hmm." There's still a growl on BJ's tone from his satisfaction, and he leans into it, playing it up for show as he grins crookedly down at Sidney. "I jerked off to you last week in the shower. Hope you don't mind."
Sidney shudders, his jaw dropping. "Not... Fuck, not at all. Fuck, don't stop. Keep doing that."
Everything in the entire camp goes silent at that quiet bit of direction. As though this is his final exam, BJ locks his gaze on Sidney's stunning face, refusing to blink so he won't miss a moment of this. That hyperawareness comes right back into play. Suddenly it's the easiest thing in the world to keep this perfect rhythm, this tight grip. Brilliant, incredible, powerful man, one who slips so constantly into the background, the only person keeping half of this country tethered in their skulls. He deserves this. He deserves everything BJ can give.
BJ has one second to think, oh, I need to walk that back fast, don't I? But then Sidney seizes up, and a glorious, strangled cry breaks from him as he comes in heated waves, wiping the thought away so succinctly that it's like it never existed in the first place. There's a vivid moment of perfection where Sidney actually looks beautiful, he's gone so soft in the face, and BJ completely forgets to breathe.
And then Sidney catches his wrist, a silent command, and BJ lets him go.
If there is anything BJ knows about hookups like this, it's how quickly they can go awkward, if one lets them. And sure, maybe he could let Sidney lead with his age and experience, but in all honesty, he'd rather not risk it. So BJ steals one last quick kiss before he can second guess it, and then as the two of them sway slightly in place and watch each other, he speaks softly. "See? I told you I'd take care of you."
Sidney's still catching his breath, but he looks at their filthy hands, their ruined shirts, and barks out a stunned sort of laugh as he shakes his head. "That was quite an astute prediction of yours, Hunnicutt."
Easy, relaxed as anything, completely fine and in control, BJ smirks.