FIC: "Letters Home" (Hawkeye/Winchester)
Jul. 9th, 2005 10:33 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
likethesun2.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mash_slashSorry to come so late to this party. But it's still the ninth! I made it in under the wire.
Title: Letters Home
Author: Epigone
Rating: PG-13...ish. It was supposed to be R, but I just didn't have it in me. (Sorry.)
Summary: “I wrote so many letters home this month… while I was away… but I never sent any of them. They were always wrong.”
Words: 1,569
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teapot_yo's ficathon by request of siggen1, who wanted Hawkeye/Winchester and angst/homesickness (OTP!) Thanks a million to loneraven and minttown1, who can turn out good betas so fast it makes my head spin.
Letters Home
“This isn’t Mozart.”
“No, it’s not,” says Charles from his cot. “Very good catch. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Hawkeye stands in the gloom at the door of the Swamp, peering in. There isn’t that much different in him, Charles thinks, at least not when you look at him head on. It’s when he doesn’t realize that he’s under scrutiny—there, as he throws a glance back over his shoulder, obliquely—that you see a faint flash. The white of the eyes, the twitch of the lips. It’s when he turns away that you see how he’s going away, and away, and away.
“Where’s Hunnicutt?” asks Charles shortly. “Will I be having the pleasure—my cup runneth over—of both of your company tonight?”
“That’s hostility,” Hawkeye observes. “You should have that checked out, or it could turn septic.” He leans against the canvas wall of the Swamp with his weight back on his heels. “He’s out having one last nightcap with Potter. He’s no good at saying goodnight.”
“Pierce,” says Charles, “I’m going to be brief—”
“Oh, good.” Hawkeye fairly bounds through the Swamp to his bed and drops onto it with an extravagant sigh. “I’ll be boxer.”
“Get. Out.”
“Charles, this may be news to you, but I do still live here, too,” says Hawkeye, suddenly tense. Charles looks at him at length without speaking, then reaches out and turns up the volume on his record player. He can still barely hear it, which puzzles him in an abstract way. Far back in his head, at a threshold below true noise, lingers a percussive roar like the sound of the sea in a shell. The sound of a shell bearing down. Or the rumble of a jeep’s motor beneath him as he looks down and recognizes a face through the blood.
“So,” says Hawkeye after a while, as though addressing a third person, “what happened to Mozart?”
“I lost it.”
“Did you,” says Hawkeye. A smile slips across his face like a shadow. “Everybody’s losing things these days. So!” He gives an abrupt flourish. “We’ve resorted to Beethoven.”
Charles inclines his head. “Two for two: it’s not Mozart and it is Beethoven. I thought you didn't like real music like this.”
“I’m usually not crazy about it.” Hawkeye shrugs and then cocks his head, as if hearing the echo of his words. He laughs, and Charles looks away quickly, embarrassed. “Or not crazier than I am about anything else, anyway.”
“I think you should go to sleep.”
“I don’t think so. I’m very awake.” Hawkeye lies back in his bed and stares at the ceiling, his eyes wide and dark. “I have a soft spot for Beethoven. My parents loved him. My dad used to listen to him every Friday night after he finished with work—I mean officially finished, because sometimes people would come to the back door in the middle of the night; premature labors, high fevers, bats in the belfry.” His teeth shine in a half-smile. “He’d turn off the lights on the front porch, though, and pull down the shades, and he and Mom would sit in the living room playing Beethoven. They loved the masses.” He pauses, folding his hands on his chest. “Then… for a while after my mom died, I’d follow Dad in there and listen, too. I’d lie on the floor and absolutely mangle the Latin; I used to think that singing the masses was a way of talking to her, when I couldn’t talk to her anymore. Dad used to sit there with his eyes closed. Once he said, ‘Isn’t it funny, how music and medicine are written in the same language?’ I don't think he was talking to me. That’s all I remember of home anymore. That, and that smell of rubber and soap. You wouldn’t know the smell of a country doctor, but that’s it.”
Charles says, “No, I don’t know it.” He massages his forehead, trying to knead away the drone in his ears. “I grew up hearing Beethoven in concert halls.”
“He still listens every Friday,” continues Hawkeye, not giving the impression of having ignored this contribution, but rather of speaking on a different frequency, overlying Charles. “What’s the time difference between there and here again? I bet he’s listening right now.”
“It’s Monday,” says Charles levelly.
“Oh.” For a moment Hawkeye’s upturned face narrows out, the cheeks drawing in cadaverously, the lips pursing. Charles’s can’t make out his expression, but he knows it, because he felt it on his own face when he stood over that jeep with blood dripping onto his shoes: a concussed expression, one of irreparable loss. But in a moment Hawkeye sits up again and says with a cryptic, strained smile, “I guess I lost some time somewhere this month.”
“Pierce—”
“But let’s not talk about me,” says Hawkeye ingratiatingly. “Wasn’t Beethoven the one who cut off his ear?”
Charles frowns. “That was van Gogh.” He heaves a sigh to signal the end of this conversation and bends over, beginning to unlace his boots.
“Van Gogh! I can’t keep the unstable ones straight; they all blur together. Anyway, van Gogh: cut off his ear and gave it to a prostitute. That always used to remind me of Radar.”
Charles pauses midway down the first boot. With a lace hanging from one hand, he repeats slowly, “Van Gogh?”
“No, the prostitute—yes, Charles, van Gogh.”
“Let’s stop talking now.”
“This was before your time, of course, back during the reign of Good King Frank. Radar had the bright idea of sending a jeep home to his family through the mail, piece by piece. Trapper and I found out about it after a while.”
“And naturally this reminded you of Vincent van Gogh,” says Charles.
“Every week another piece. The steering wheel, the exhaust pipe. On and on. Like sending home souvenirs, messages in a bottle. Front right tire: I’m still here. Windshield wiper: I’ll be coming home soon. Seat cushion: please don’t forget me.” Hawkeye draws his knees up to his chest and sits there awkwardly, off-balance, rocking just perceptibly back and forth as if in a parody of grief. In a smaller voice, he says, “Please don’t forget me. Please understand me.” Charles takes off the boot, avoiding Hawkeye’s glance, and starts on the other. He can feel Hawkeye regarding him, vacant-eyed. “Handing pieces of his life out into the ether, see? And I got to thinking: actually it was a terrific joke. He was sending that jeep home as if his family had the first idea what to do with it. What do Iowa farm people know about Army jeeps? They wouldn’t have any idea how to reconstruct it. They wouldn’t recognize what it was.”
Charles removes his second boot and places it on the floor beside the first. His hand shakes a little as he does, so that the boots bump up against each other. He can see the caked, rust-red blood come off in flakes.
“See?” says Hawkeye in an odd voice: constricted and hollow, from the chest.
Charles doesn’t answer; merely continues trying to line up his boots. Hawkeye leaves the bed in silence and kneels next to the record player. He puts his hand on it and looks up at Charles, wide-eyed and pale. Charles can hear him begin to hum in the back of his throat, a thin but resonant noise: Kyrie eleison....
Charles thinks of that jeep with its motor running and running; thinks of the blood drying on his boots; thinks of Hawkeye driving through the wall of the officers’ club with thousands of miles behind his stare. Thinks: please understand me: Kyrie eleison.
And then he stops operating on thought. Without premeditation he touches Hawkeye’s throat, feeling the vibration of his humming joined with the vibration of the record player, as if Hawkeye is simply a conduit for the music. His pulse drives like a fist, pounds like a metronome. Charles slides his hand up so that it rests under the hard ledge of Hawkeye’s jaw. Then the other hand. Dulce, dulce.
Into his cupped palms, Hawkeye says, “I wrote so many letters home this month… while I was away… but I never sent any of them. They were always wrong.”
Outside, the last stragglers from dinner are returning to their tents, their shadows walking along the wall in the final glow of the floodlights. Somewhere over the hills, the brush fires are still blazing long seams of lightning through the night. Nothing ever ends—least of all the war.
“Let’s stop talking now,” says Charles again.
“You're right,” says Hawkeye. “It’s always wrong.” He rises up farther on his knees, and Charles sinks back—not surprised, because if five Chinese musicians can die in a jeep, nothing is impossible anymore—and lets him. Lets him give of himself, piece by piece; the arch of the foot, the hollow of the knee, the ridge of the spine, the blade of the shoulder.
“I’ll write to you,” says Hawkeye once, softly. “When this is all over. I’ll make it right.”
“Will you,” says Charles, and it’s not a question, and there is no answer.
No answer except this: the back of the neck, the palm of the hand. Messages in a bottle, letters home: please understand. Whatever I’ve left behind, please welcome me back.
Charles does.
Title: Letters Home
Author: Epigone
Rating: PG-13...ish. It was supposed to be R, but I just didn't have it in me. (Sorry.)
Summary: “I wrote so many letters home this month… while I was away… but I never sent any of them. They were always wrong.”
Words: 1,569
Notes: Written for
teapot_yo's ficathon by request of siggen1, who wanted Hawkeye/Winchester and angst/homesickness (OTP!) Thanks a million to loneraven and minttown1, who can turn out good betas so fast it makes my head spin.“This isn’t Mozart.”
“No, it’s not,” says Charles from his cot. “Very good catch. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Hawkeye stands in the gloom at the door of the Swamp, peering in. There isn’t that much different in him, Charles thinks, at least not when you look at him head on. It’s when he doesn’t realize that he’s under scrutiny—there, as he throws a glance back over his shoulder, obliquely—that you see a faint flash. The white of the eyes, the twitch of the lips. It’s when he turns away that you see how he’s going away, and away, and away.
“Where’s Hunnicutt?” asks Charles shortly. “Will I be having the pleasure—my cup runneth over—of both of your company tonight?”
“That’s hostility,” Hawkeye observes. “You should have that checked out, or it could turn septic.” He leans against the canvas wall of the Swamp with his weight back on his heels. “He’s out having one last nightcap with Potter. He’s no good at saying goodnight.”
“Pierce,” says Charles, “I’m going to be brief—”
“Oh, good.” Hawkeye fairly bounds through the Swamp to his bed and drops onto it with an extravagant sigh. “I’ll be boxer.”
“Get. Out.”
“Charles, this may be news to you, but I do still live here, too,” says Hawkeye, suddenly tense. Charles looks at him at length without speaking, then reaches out and turns up the volume on his record player. He can still barely hear it, which puzzles him in an abstract way. Far back in his head, at a threshold below true noise, lingers a percussive roar like the sound of the sea in a shell. The sound of a shell bearing down. Or the rumble of a jeep’s motor beneath him as he looks down and recognizes a face through the blood.
“So,” says Hawkeye after a while, as though addressing a third person, “what happened to Mozart?”
“I lost it.”
“Did you,” says Hawkeye. A smile slips across his face like a shadow. “Everybody’s losing things these days. So!” He gives an abrupt flourish. “We’ve resorted to Beethoven.”
Charles inclines his head. “Two for two: it’s not Mozart and it is Beethoven. I thought you didn't like real music like this.”
“I’m usually not crazy about it.” Hawkeye shrugs and then cocks his head, as if hearing the echo of his words. He laughs, and Charles looks away quickly, embarrassed. “Or not crazier than I am about anything else, anyway.”
“I think you should go to sleep.”
“I don’t think so. I’m very awake.” Hawkeye lies back in his bed and stares at the ceiling, his eyes wide and dark. “I have a soft spot for Beethoven. My parents loved him. My dad used to listen to him every Friday night after he finished with work—I mean officially finished, because sometimes people would come to the back door in the middle of the night; premature labors, high fevers, bats in the belfry.” His teeth shine in a half-smile. “He’d turn off the lights on the front porch, though, and pull down the shades, and he and Mom would sit in the living room playing Beethoven. They loved the masses.” He pauses, folding his hands on his chest. “Then… for a while after my mom died, I’d follow Dad in there and listen, too. I’d lie on the floor and absolutely mangle the Latin; I used to think that singing the masses was a way of talking to her, when I couldn’t talk to her anymore. Dad used to sit there with his eyes closed. Once he said, ‘Isn’t it funny, how music and medicine are written in the same language?’ I don't think he was talking to me. That’s all I remember of home anymore. That, and that smell of rubber and soap. You wouldn’t know the smell of a country doctor, but that’s it.”
Charles says, “No, I don’t know it.” He massages his forehead, trying to knead away the drone in his ears. “I grew up hearing Beethoven in concert halls.”
“He still listens every Friday,” continues Hawkeye, not giving the impression of having ignored this contribution, but rather of speaking on a different frequency, overlying Charles. “What’s the time difference between there and here again? I bet he’s listening right now.”
“It’s Monday,” says Charles levelly.
“Oh.” For a moment Hawkeye’s upturned face narrows out, the cheeks drawing in cadaverously, the lips pursing. Charles’s can’t make out his expression, but he knows it, because he felt it on his own face when he stood over that jeep with blood dripping onto his shoes: a concussed expression, one of irreparable loss. But in a moment Hawkeye sits up again and says with a cryptic, strained smile, “I guess I lost some time somewhere this month.”
“Pierce—”
“But let’s not talk about me,” says Hawkeye ingratiatingly. “Wasn’t Beethoven the one who cut off his ear?”
Charles frowns. “That was van Gogh.” He heaves a sigh to signal the end of this conversation and bends over, beginning to unlace his boots.
“Van Gogh! I can’t keep the unstable ones straight; they all blur together. Anyway, van Gogh: cut off his ear and gave it to a prostitute. That always used to remind me of Radar.”
Charles pauses midway down the first boot. With a lace hanging from one hand, he repeats slowly, “Van Gogh?”
“No, the prostitute—yes, Charles, van Gogh.”
“Let’s stop talking now.”
“This was before your time, of course, back during the reign of Good King Frank. Radar had the bright idea of sending a jeep home to his family through the mail, piece by piece. Trapper and I found out about it after a while.”
“And naturally this reminded you of Vincent van Gogh,” says Charles.
“Every week another piece. The steering wheel, the exhaust pipe. On and on. Like sending home souvenirs, messages in a bottle. Front right tire: I’m still here. Windshield wiper: I’ll be coming home soon. Seat cushion: please don’t forget me.” Hawkeye draws his knees up to his chest and sits there awkwardly, off-balance, rocking just perceptibly back and forth as if in a parody of grief. In a smaller voice, he says, “Please don’t forget me. Please understand me.” Charles takes off the boot, avoiding Hawkeye’s glance, and starts on the other. He can feel Hawkeye regarding him, vacant-eyed. “Handing pieces of his life out into the ether, see? And I got to thinking: actually it was a terrific joke. He was sending that jeep home as if his family had the first idea what to do with it. What do Iowa farm people know about Army jeeps? They wouldn’t have any idea how to reconstruct it. They wouldn’t recognize what it was.”
Charles removes his second boot and places it on the floor beside the first. His hand shakes a little as he does, so that the boots bump up against each other. He can see the caked, rust-red blood come off in flakes.
“See?” says Hawkeye in an odd voice: constricted and hollow, from the chest.
Charles doesn’t answer; merely continues trying to line up his boots. Hawkeye leaves the bed in silence and kneels next to the record player. He puts his hand on it and looks up at Charles, wide-eyed and pale. Charles can hear him begin to hum in the back of his throat, a thin but resonant noise: Kyrie eleison....
Charles thinks of that jeep with its motor running and running; thinks of the blood drying on his boots; thinks of Hawkeye driving through the wall of the officers’ club with thousands of miles behind his stare. Thinks: please understand me: Kyrie eleison.
And then he stops operating on thought. Without premeditation he touches Hawkeye’s throat, feeling the vibration of his humming joined with the vibration of the record player, as if Hawkeye is simply a conduit for the music. His pulse drives like a fist, pounds like a metronome. Charles slides his hand up so that it rests under the hard ledge of Hawkeye’s jaw. Then the other hand. Dulce, dulce.
Into his cupped palms, Hawkeye says, “I wrote so many letters home this month… while I was away… but I never sent any of them. They were always wrong.”
Outside, the last stragglers from dinner are returning to their tents, their shadows walking along the wall in the final glow of the floodlights. Somewhere over the hills, the brush fires are still blazing long seams of lightning through the night. Nothing ever ends—least of all the war.
“Let’s stop talking now,” says Charles again.
“You're right,” says Hawkeye. “It’s always wrong.” He rises up farther on his knees, and Charles sinks back—not surprised, because if five Chinese musicians can die in a jeep, nothing is impossible anymore—and lets him. Lets him give of himself, piece by piece; the arch of the foot, the hollow of the knee, the ridge of the spine, the blade of the shoulder.
“I’ll write to you,” says Hawkeye once, softly. “When this is all over. I’ll make it right.”
“Will you,” says Charles, and it’s not a question, and there is no answer.
No answer except this: the back of the neck, the palm of the hand. Messages in a bottle, letters home: please understand. Whatever I’ve left behind, please welcome me back.
Charles does.
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Date: 2005-07-11 02:28 pm (UTC)youthis fic! I'm not coherent right now, will comment at length later.no subject
Date: 2005-07-11 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-11 11:07 pm (UTC)And no worries about the fic; I can be patient. :) (How funny that we got each other....)