Spontaneous Mash Slash FTW!
Aug. 4th, 2011 01:39 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
fear3loathing.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mash_slashA surprise MASH disc hiding in my room gave me an urge to pick up an old oneshot I started way back when, and I was enjoying writing it so much I finished it by mistake.
Hawkeye/Trapper, because seasons 1-3 have a special place in my heart. Rated T-ish, I guess. Let's not fuss too much and just get on with the fic, eh?
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Survival
It's all too easy to become familiar with someone when you live under their feet for thirty-eight hour days week-in week-out. When the entire camp is so tightly knit you're like a family, your roommate and best friend is more like an extension of yourself than another person; being with them is like being alone – one person split between two bodies.
It all starts simply, innocently even. Exhaustion removes the ability to care about whose shoulder you slump asleep on during a post- all-nighter breakfast; fatigue robs you of dignity when you stumble semi-conscious from the O.R., hanging limp like a doll with all the stuffing pulled out, so he has to drag you back to the swamp and literally drop you in your bunk. You slowly become as familiar with the other's body as you are with your own, because you are around it so much that sometimes you really can't tell the difference – whose foot is that among the mash of toes clustered around a poker table? You know it's one of yours, but there's a moment where you honestly don't know which.
It doesn't help that the war wears away everything but the most extreme emotions, so you both pinball from place to place like a rickety arcade game; elation, depression, anger so strong you could pick up a weapon and kill someone, anyone, even yourself. Then there's crippling, crippling loneliness, so sharp it hurts like a scalpel straight through the chest, just like your patients lined all the way up the hall.
You know he feels these things too, because you're almost the same person so of course he feels the same; just as you will sit down beside him and drape yourself over his meaty shoulders like a scarf, he sometimes comes to you and lays a boot across your knees as he stretches back and lounges, or slings a hand around your bony neck and jostles you close – you don't need to explain it, because you just understand. Together you're some kinda two-legged tripod, and about as stable too.
To you it seems normal – you're best friends, of course you're relaxed around each other – and in your playing, you act at flirting, all chuckles and grins. It's fun scandalising others – Frank especially – and you can't resist a joke; you're so accustomed to him that there's never any question. You know the boundaries perfectly well, so you can be as daring as you want without awkwardness or misunderstanding.
Others seem to think differently, though, because you start to get strange looks eventually; for some reason, they don't think sticking your tongue in Trapper's ear when he steals your coffee is an appropriate reaction – but when were you ever appropriate in the first place? You're so close that feeding him feels the same as feeding yourself, so if the situation fits you do it without a second thought. Your pretend flirtation is taken too seriously by people, even though you do mean the things you say, just not in the way that everyone else interprets them.
So there are strange rumours about the two of you 'degenerates' as Frank puts it, but neither of you pay a damn bit of notice because you both understand exactly what's what. You're not lovers, just close. You don't lust after Trap – the very concept of it makes you roll around with laughter – but there are times when you can't stand your half-complete self any more, and you just need to be touching someone, so that you can staunch that stab-wound of loneliness that bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.
When that happens, it's always Trapper you want, because he is the one steady aspect in the minefield of chaos that is this war for you. He will never reject you or misinterpret you, never expect anything of you, and he is always there whether you want him to be or not. When the war has pulled you apart so much that you feel like you're tearing open at the seams, you can sit with Trapper and drink and pretend it's not going on outside. Or, if it's even worse than that, you can come to him wordlessly and sit beside him, sink your forehead onto his shoulder and stop everything; stop being Hawkeye for a while. You can just be raw and hurting, and he won't mind, because when it's him you do the same, throw your weary aching arms around him, and just keep him close as he silently fumes away a hundred lifetime's worth of anger, worry, jealousy and guilt, all crammed into one tiny little police action.
You know him better than you've known anyone else in your life, because you've been through things most normal people will never experience, and you need him so much because being close to him calms you. Whether you're happy, sad, or anything in-between, he will be right along with you, and if you're going to go too far, he'll either stop you, or go sailing all the way down by your side – and they always say two's company.
That's not to say you don't fight, or occasionally imagine suffocating him in your sleep and stealing all his nurses, but when you're slap-bang in the middle of the biggest fight of all – the big W.A.R. – there's not much room for petty argument. You could be at each other's throats one moment, and then you there the next moment for entirely different reasons. It helps to be so close you can feel his pulse, pressing your face into his neck so you feel his heartbeat right through your cheek. So you feel something alive that isn't a stomach-churning handful of guts, all peppered with shrapnel like cake decorations.
When you do get time to relax, it seems natural for Trap to read over your shoulder, because sharing's caring, and you'd be bored if you had to wait for him to read and/or vice-versa. So the two of you sit on one bunk, his legs around your waist, his arms shadowing yours as one of you holds the pages open and one turns. His head is a warm, familiar weight on your shoulder, and you feel safe for just a while, until Frank comes in and starts screaming blue bloody murder about what you both get up to.
And, as usual, your logic dictates you try to make everything worse rather than better.
“Frank, if you don't mind,” you say cattily. “We don't come barging in on you and Hot Lips, do we?”
“This is MY tent too!” he squawks, and its warm and wet as Trapper licks your ear; he's probably just acting out, because you've stopped turning pages to give Ferret-face his daily session.
“Ah yes, our little corner of heaven,” you sigh; finally Trapper's tongue becomes distracting, and you let out a childish shriek. “Trap, that tickles!” you gush, and Frank goes several shades more outraged.
“Sick! You're both sick!” he yelps, and Trapper heaves a sigh behind you; you feel his chest against your back, and it's safe and calming – you wouldn't move if General Clayton rolled up and asked what the two of you thought you were doing.
“Frank,” you groan, and your ear tingles as it dries – Trapper's given up, and slumps down over your shoulder lazily. “We're just trying to read.”
“What I can't imagine,” he scoffs, his non-lips twisting into a disgusting sneer. “Perverts.”
“Medical journals, Frank!” you snap, flinging your hands up and showing him the study you and Trap are trying to keep your medical skills from rusting on. When you get back you might be a fantastic butcher, but you did always dream of going back to a hospital, not into another chop shop.
“Oh that's rich,” whines the slug in the Officer uniform, and you feel Trapper tensing up.
“Frank,” he warns. “If you don't put yourself on the other side of this tent in the next three seconds, I am gonna get up and put it there for you.” Frank fumes, fusses, flares his nostrils and then leaves.
“You're so powerful,” you accolade. “That big, booming voice. I'd do anything if you asked me right.”
“Turn the page,” he lilts in his rolling Boston accent.
“Forget it!” you caw. “Turn it yourself.”
And eventually the lines are forgotten, rubbed out, there aren't any lines and you wind up wondering if there ever were. He sits there chewing like a cow one afternoon, grinning his self-satisfactory grin as usual, because he got a package from Louise that morning; you imagine the sweet taste of bubblegum in your mouth – if only you'd had the forethought to marry a woman who could send you candy when you were drafted. None of this army-grade tyre cuttings, she's sent him real, melt on your tongue, juicy gum that just begs to be blown into bubbles bigger than your head. Which he does, popping one after the other as Henry stumbles blindly through his latest orientation lecture – an irony not missed by the intuitive. Your patience wears out at last, and you turn to him like your head spins on a ripcord.
“Hey Trap, you gonna chew that gum all day?” you hiss under the drone of Henry's voice, and envy seethes from you like a kettle boiling – you'd whistle if it'd help.
“I was kinda plannin' on it,” he replies cheerfully, because he knows how much you want it. “Why, you wanna chew?”
“Oh do I ever,” you groan, and without thinking he closes his mouth over yours and pops it onto your tongue, thoughtlessly licking his lips after he pulls away. You let out a delighted murmur and masticate furiously, so it isn't until you've popped a bubble and realised it is the only sound in the room that you notice something is amiss. The entirety of the tent are staring at the two of you, and when you furrow your brows you honestly can't figure why.
“What?” you ask incredulously. “What?!”
“Y-y-y-y-y-y-youuuu!” Frank screams at glass-shattering pitch, but seeing as there aren't any windows in the tent his voice just tries to slice through linen. “You coupla-sick-dee-GENERATES!” You realise Trap is staring too, and it finally clues you into what the hoo-hah is about.
“Oh that,” you exclaim, and realise unsettlingly how it looks. “That wasn't what it- I mean, we didn't... we're not...”
“What Hawk's tryin' to say,” Trap intervenes, not that he sounds much more legitimate than you do. “Is, uh... oh gee, I shoulda thought this through...” he mumbles, and you both try to work out when it became acceptable to kiss Trapper, even if it is only to pass over gum.
“You two, my office, NOW,” Henry orders, and for once you come over all G.I. Joe – anything to get out of that tent, repapered with a new covering of accusing stares.
While the two of you sit there and Henry does his best attempt to chew you out, which wouldn't even soften the gum that's getting stiff in your mouth, you sit and try to work out what it meant. You didn't even think, it was an honestly innocent act, and Trap seems just as puzzled. In the end, Henry tells you kidders to leave off before he's forced out of his nice comfortable groove of inactivity, and you let it slide because it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to explain yourselves. You silently agree, after that incident, that you'll have to be a little more careful about what you do in public, or it'll hurt both your chances with the nurses.
And you try to point out you two can't be in some kind of romantic situation because you'd spend all day and night talking about nurses if you didn't have to go out and fool around with them sometimes to get fodder. You're jealous sometimes if he lucks in with someone who lucked you out, but never of the girls – why would you be? You hardly envisage Trapper as your dream catch, even if he does have reasonably cute dimples. Radar has cute dimples, and you certainly don't want him out of uniform breathing down your neck.
“How was your hot date?” he likes to ask you when you roll into the Swamp looking like a patient wandered out of post-op and collapse on your bed. Sometimes you regale him with your successes and the nurses that'll make you memoirs of an a, b, c and de-generate, but today is not one of those days.
“I oughta have bleached my hair, stuffed my bra and taken my chances with Frank,” you groan. “Either that or someone swapped her in the dark. Maybe with a Labrador,” you theorise.
“Ohh,” he hums. “No good?” You sit bolt upright in bed, and walk over to his cot, stopping to pick up a martini with three parts gin and one part gin, and slump down by his side.
“No good doesn't even cover it!” you exclaim, and take a heavy swig of your drink before you set it down. “Here, words can't even describe, I'll have to show you,” you instruct, and he sets down his own drink to entertain your enthusiasm.
“Shall I loosen my bra?” he suggests, and you pull a face.
“On a first date? Your mother would be ashamed,” you slander, and then climb half-into his lap to be able to reach his neck at the angle you need to. “Here, turn your head,” you tell him, and he does, allowing you to demonstrate on him exactly what your date did to you in the last minutes you spent in the supply closet with her.
“Oh, oh Hawk,” he groans in agony. “You can't be serious, she did- aaaw, well, that's just awful...”
“I know,” you rush, pulling back a little and wiping off your mouth with a scowl. “Then when I tried to give her a little constructive criticism, she turns me out in the cold! I thought about barricading her in there for the good of all mankind.”
“Oh, hey, if you don't want her,” he remarks wickedly.
“Take her, by all means,” you offer freely. “Just don't expect to put that filthy mouth of yours anywhere near mine ever again.”
“Aaaw, but I'm such a looker,” he purrs, pouting his lips up at you. For some reason you think it's okay to press yours on top of his, drop a playful kiss on his mouth because it's not like you can catch anything from him you don't have already, You're in his lap anyway and you did just lose out on a date – sometimes it doesn't always matter who you're wrestling tongues with.
Trapper seems to agree, because he's the one who opens his mouth, doesn't shove you off and tell you to stop being a wise-guy.
“Ohh, I bet the girls love that,” you murmur when he pulls a trick on you, takes his teeth all the way across your lower lip and then sucks you deep into a kiss.
“You bet they do,” he replies proudly between mouthfuls of you.
“All right, how bout' this?” you challenge, and twist further into his lap so you can give him all your best moves.
“Not bad, not bad,” he evaluates coolly, and somehow his hand has ended up under your shirt soaking up the warmth of your skin like it's the most natural thing for it to do. “You gave her all that, and she still threw you out?”
“Not just that, I threw in a little ear-nibbling, too,” you lament, and demonstrate accordingly. Trapper gives the first indication you've started playing with fire, because he tenses up like an overwound spring.
“Uhuh, now that I like,” he remarks thoughtfully, and his fingers make tiny circles against your back, and it doesn't feel like you're trying to impress him or get something from him, you're just... feeling, and if it feels good, it can't be too wrong. Not in this war, where most things feel so wrong you wake up screaming in the middle of the night from watching too many young men die.
“I mean, who could resist me?” you posit, and he shrugs those big, heavy shoulders.
“Hawk, you know I can't,” he replies without guile, and his tone is only about a third serious. “Forget the nurse, her loss,” he consoles cheerfully. “She was too good for you anyways.”
“Hey, don't you mean I was too good for her?” you correct.
“I mean what I say,” he replies coolly, and you give his ear a particularly vicious bite. “Easy, jaws, easy,” he coos. “You keep up like that and mom and I won't let you sleep in with us tonight.” He threatens, but you know he'd never enforce it, because if you slink over to his cot cold and lonely, he just sighs and lets you sleep on top of him like a cat, doesn't even feel it through his big barrel chest.
It's a habit that proves harder to kick than you imagine, because you've both finally won a weekend of R&R in Tokyo, and the entire Geisha population unanimously tied their obis on extra tight in preparation for the two of you. Your hotel room is like a heaven, a sweet-smelling, wallpapered, soft bed-filled heaven, but when your hostess has taken her money and clucked off to find some more business, you lie in that big, soft, sprung-mattress bed and toss and turn like you're being rolled down a hill.
You give up the fight eventually, grab a robe off the hook and storm out of your room, heading straight up to his to see if he's as restless too – maybe he'll come out to a gambling house with you, maybe you'll go pick up some more girls, if you feel like it again.
When you knock, there's no answer. “Trap,” you say softly through the door, and then hear the sounds from within. The door opens, and his sleepy, dilated eyes greet you.
“Heya Hawk,” he drones. “Can't sleep?”
“I think my body's forgotten what a real bed feels like,” you reply, massaging your aches grimly. “It's punishing me as a result. Your girl gone?”
“Long gone,” he answers, and steps back, letting the door open. “Come on in.” You amble into his room and notice the half-stocked minibar.
“Hey!” you crow. “You got a mini-bar! Mine was empty when I arrived.” He shoots you a look so guilty it ought to be shot.
“Well, you let me check in, so I, ah, cleared you out on my way up,” he reveals with a flash of teeth through his cheesy grin. You lunge for the bed and hit him with a pillow, and he gives you a shove so that you fall down on the bed.
“Your bed is comfier than mine,” you announce as you stretch out like a cat and tuck yourself round the pillow you were using as a weapon. “Why is your bed comfier than mine?”
“You know what they say,” he remarks. “The grass is always greener on the other side of the mattress.” He flops down beside you, and your fatigue settles over you again like silt on the bottom of a riverbed – this is what you were missing, and it feels like you're asleep in seconds, the two of you shuffling in the night to tangle like twisted bits of barbed wire. It's the best night's sleep you've ever had, and you wake in the morning peacefully, no fear, no cursing, no grasping desperately for a drink to drown out the world.
“You up?” you ask when you feel him stir.
“No,” he answers grumpily. “Go back to sleep.” You toss and turn, and eventually throw yourself half-over him, your chin sitting in the groove of his spine.
“I'm hungry,” you proclaim.
“I hear food's good for that,” he replies, his words muffled by the pillow his face is buried in. “I'm writing you a prescription for one breakfast. Now get the hell out.” Full of energy, you spring out of bed, don a robe, and set off down to breakfast like a man possessed. You're sure you can hear him start to snore before the door even closes behind you.
When you return bearing coffee – real, ground, rich coffee that has fresh milk in it and dances on your tongue like so many showgirls – the beast of grumpy mornings has arisen, and water beads down him fresh from the shower.
“Open,” you command as you approach, and he lets his jaw hang slack. You stuff a pastry in it, and he closes obligingly.
“Mnmmphnm,” he mumbles through a mouthful of breakfast.
“You're welcome. Coffee too,” you reply, setting his down on the bedside table. Your plane is this evening, and even if you try to miss it every bar in the area is going to have MPs around it ready to roll the two of you up in carpets and ship you back to Korea in the cargo.
“So, two young bachelors,” Trapper begins when he finishes his mouthful.
“You're married,” you remind him.
“One young bachelor and one young stud breaking the shackles of marriage,” he corrects, “with eight hours left in Tokyo. What's our plan of action?”
“Well,” you say thoughtfully. “If you take the West side of town, I can take the East. We meet for lunch in the South, then head North by evening and don't stop til we hit Hokkaido.”
“I like the sound of that,” he concurs, and you get to your feet, snatching his towel from around his shoulders and heading to the shower.
“Your SHOWER is even bigger than mine!” you yell as you enter the faux-marble tiled room.
“Envy is one of the seven deadly sins, Hawk,” he comments aloofly, and you slump against the doorframe.
“Right,” you agree. “So we just have six more to tackle by the end of the day.”
When your bodies are deposited back in the 4077 at the end of the weekend, they have a couple of stretchers waiting for you already; nurses take you both straight into post-op and put you both on an IV, for which you are both unconsciously thankful for. By the end of the day you're both back in O.R., slicing bodies like a sushi-chef and sweating like pigs in a slaughterhouse.
The morning rings in the end of the night, and you slump back to the Swamp; you fall back into your chair, and Trap onto your cot, throwing his feet over your knees as he lets out a long hiss like a punctured tyre. You rest a hand on his leg and sigh; you can't imagine getting through this war without him, without whatever strange thing you've built up between the two of you. If he leaves – if you leave, if you both get stolen by the North Koreans and sent to make your fortunes, you know it'll be hard learning to cope without him. That you'll miss him like a great big pocket of flak's ripped a hole clean through your chest.
But you don't think of that time, don't worry over it, because you're giving your entire being into dealing with now. What you and Trapper have is based on now, so you can't think about then with the same set of rules. You give each other what you need, and maybe back in Maine you won't need this familiarity so much. You hope you'll see him – of course you'll see him – Maine and Massachusetts are almost next-door anyway, and it'll all keep on going. You keep him close, pass him a martini, and know that somehow you'll survive.
That's what it's about, what war's always been about – survival, by any means necessary.
Hawkeye/Trapper, because seasons 1-3 have a special place in my heart. Rated T-ish, I guess. Let's not fuss too much and just get on with the fic, eh?
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Survival
It's all too easy to become familiar with someone when you live under their feet for thirty-eight hour days week-in week-out. When the entire camp is so tightly knit you're like a family, your roommate and best friend is more like an extension of yourself than another person; being with them is like being alone – one person split between two bodies.
It all starts simply, innocently even. Exhaustion removes the ability to care about whose shoulder you slump asleep on during a post- all-nighter breakfast; fatigue robs you of dignity when you stumble semi-conscious from the O.R., hanging limp like a doll with all the stuffing pulled out, so he has to drag you back to the swamp and literally drop you in your bunk. You slowly become as familiar with the other's body as you are with your own, because you are around it so much that sometimes you really can't tell the difference – whose foot is that among the mash of toes clustered around a poker table? You know it's one of yours, but there's a moment where you honestly don't know which.
It doesn't help that the war wears away everything but the most extreme emotions, so you both pinball from place to place like a rickety arcade game; elation, depression, anger so strong you could pick up a weapon and kill someone, anyone, even yourself. Then there's crippling, crippling loneliness, so sharp it hurts like a scalpel straight through the chest, just like your patients lined all the way up the hall.
You know he feels these things too, because you're almost the same person so of course he feels the same; just as you will sit down beside him and drape yourself over his meaty shoulders like a scarf, he sometimes comes to you and lays a boot across your knees as he stretches back and lounges, or slings a hand around your bony neck and jostles you close – you don't need to explain it, because you just understand. Together you're some kinda two-legged tripod, and about as stable too.
To you it seems normal – you're best friends, of course you're relaxed around each other – and in your playing, you act at flirting, all chuckles and grins. It's fun scandalising others – Frank especially – and you can't resist a joke; you're so accustomed to him that there's never any question. You know the boundaries perfectly well, so you can be as daring as you want without awkwardness or misunderstanding.
Others seem to think differently, though, because you start to get strange looks eventually; for some reason, they don't think sticking your tongue in Trapper's ear when he steals your coffee is an appropriate reaction – but when were you ever appropriate in the first place? You're so close that feeding him feels the same as feeding yourself, so if the situation fits you do it without a second thought. Your pretend flirtation is taken too seriously by people, even though you do mean the things you say, just not in the way that everyone else interprets them.
So there are strange rumours about the two of you 'degenerates' as Frank puts it, but neither of you pay a damn bit of notice because you both understand exactly what's what. You're not lovers, just close. You don't lust after Trap – the very concept of it makes you roll around with laughter – but there are times when you can't stand your half-complete self any more, and you just need to be touching someone, so that you can staunch that stab-wound of loneliness that bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.
When that happens, it's always Trapper you want, because he is the one steady aspect in the minefield of chaos that is this war for you. He will never reject you or misinterpret you, never expect anything of you, and he is always there whether you want him to be or not. When the war has pulled you apart so much that you feel like you're tearing open at the seams, you can sit with Trapper and drink and pretend it's not going on outside. Or, if it's even worse than that, you can come to him wordlessly and sit beside him, sink your forehead onto his shoulder and stop everything; stop being Hawkeye for a while. You can just be raw and hurting, and he won't mind, because when it's him you do the same, throw your weary aching arms around him, and just keep him close as he silently fumes away a hundred lifetime's worth of anger, worry, jealousy and guilt, all crammed into one tiny little police action.
You know him better than you've known anyone else in your life, because you've been through things most normal people will never experience, and you need him so much because being close to him calms you. Whether you're happy, sad, or anything in-between, he will be right along with you, and if you're going to go too far, he'll either stop you, or go sailing all the way down by your side – and they always say two's company.
That's not to say you don't fight, or occasionally imagine suffocating him in your sleep and stealing all his nurses, but when you're slap-bang in the middle of the biggest fight of all – the big W.A.R. – there's not much room for petty argument. You could be at each other's throats one moment, and then you there the next moment for entirely different reasons. It helps to be so close you can feel his pulse, pressing your face into his neck so you feel his heartbeat right through your cheek. So you feel something alive that isn't a stomach-churning handful of guts, all peppered with shrapnel like cake decorations.
When you do get time to relax, it seems natural for Trap to read over your shoulder, because sharing's caring, and you'd be bored if you had to wait for him to read and/or vice-versa. So the two of you sit on one bunk, his legs around your waist, his arms shadowing yours as one of you holds the pages open and one turns. His head is a warm, familiar weight on your shoulder, and you feel safe for just a while, until Frank comes in and starts screaming blue bloody murder about what you both get up to.
And, as usual, your logic dictates you try to make everything worse rather than better.
“Frank, if you don't mind,” you say cattily. “We don't come barging in on you and Hot Lips, do we?”
“This is MY tent too!” he squawks, and its warm and wet as Trapper licks your ear; he's probably just acting out, because you've stopped turning pages to give Ferret-face his daily session.
“Ah yes, our little corner of heaven,” you sigh; finally Trapper's tongue becomes distracting, and you let out a childish shriek. “Trap, that tickles!” you gush, and Frank goes several shades more outraged.
“Sick! You're both sick!” he yelps, and Trapper heaves a sigh behind you; you feel his chest against your back, and it's safe and calming – you wouldn't move if General Clayton rolled up and asked what the two of you thought you were doing.
“Frank,” you groan, and your ear tingles as it dries – Trapper's given up, and slumps down over your shoulder lazily. “We're just trying to read.”
“What I can't imagine,” he scoffs, his non-lips twisting into a disgusting sneer. “Perverts.”
“Medical journals, Frank!” you snap, flinging your hands up and showing him the study you and Trap are trying to keep your medical skills from rusting on. When you get back you might be a fantastic butcher, but you did always dream of going back to a hospital, not into another chop shop.
“Oh that's rich,” whines the slug in the Officer uniform, and you feel Trapper tensing up.
“Frank,” he warns. “If you don't put yourself on the other side of this tent in the next three seconds, I am gonna get up and put it there for you.” Frank fumes, fusses, flares his nostrils and then leaves.
“You're so powerful,” you accolade. “That big, booming voice. I'd do anything if you asked me right.”
“Turn the page,” he lilts in his rolling Boston accent.
“Forget it!” you caw. “Turn it yourself.”
And eventually the lines are forgotten, rubbed out, there aren't any lines and you wind up wondering if there ever were. He sits there chewing like a cow one afternoon, grinning his self-satisfactory grin as usual, because he got a package from Louise that morning; you imagine the sweet taste of bubblegum in your mouth – if only you'd had the forethought to marry a woman who could send you candy when you were drafted. None of this army-grade tyre cuttings, she's sent him real, melt on your tongue, juicy gum that just begs to be blown into bubbles bigger than your head. Which he does, popping one after the other as Henry stumbles blindly through his latest orientation lecture – an irony not missed by the intuitive. Your patience wears out at last, and you turn to him like your head spins on a ripcord.
“Hey Trap, you gonna chew that gum all day?” you hiss under the drone of Henry's voice, and envy seethes from you like a kettle boiling – you'd whistle if it'd help.
“I was kinda plannin' on it,” he replies cheerfully, because he knows how much you want it. “Why, you wanna chew?”
“Oh do I ever,” you groan, and without thinking he closes his mouth over yours and pops it onto your tongue, thoughtlessly licking his lips after he pulls away. You let out a delighted murmur and masticate furiously, so it isn't until you've popped a bubble and realised it is the only sound in the room that you notice something is amiss. The entirety of the tent are staring at the two of you, and when you furrow your brows you honestly can't figure why.
“What?” you ask incredulously. “What?!”
“Y-y-y-y-y-y-youuuu!” Frank screams at glass-shattering pitch, but seeing as there aren't any windows in the tent his voice just tries to slice through linen. “You coupla-sick-dee-GENERATES!” You realise Trap is staring too, and it finally clues you into what the hoo-hah is about.
“Oh that,” you exclaim, and realise unsettlingly how it looks. “That wasn't what it- I mean, we didn't... we're not...”
“What Hawk's tryin' to say,” Trap intervenes, not that he sounds much more legitimate than you do. “Is, uh... oh gee, I shoulda thought this through...” he mumbles, and you both try to work out when it became acceptable to kiss Trapper, even if it is only to pass over gum.
“You two, my office, NOW,” Henry orders, and for once you come over all G.I. Joe – anything to get out of that tent, repapered with a new covering of accusing stares.
While the two of you sit there and Henry does his best attempt to chew you out, which wouldn't even soften the gum that's getting stiff in your mouth, you sit and try to work out what it meant. You didn't even think, it was an honestly innocent act, and Trap seems just as puzzled. In the end, Henry tells you kidders to leave off before he's forced out of his nice comfortable groove of inactivity, and you let it slide because it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to explain yourselves. You silently agree, after that incident, that you'll have to be a little more careful about what you do in public, or it'll hurt both your chances with the nurses.
And you try to point out you two can't be in some kind of romantic situation because you'd spend all day and night talking about nurses if you didn't have to go out and fool around with them sometimes to get fodder. You're jealous sometimes if he lucks in with someone who lucked you out, but never of the girls – why would you be? You hardly envisage Trapper as your dream catch, even if he does have reasonably cute dimples. Radar has cute dimples, and you certainly don't want him out of uniform breathing down your neck.
“How was your hot date?” he likes to ask you when you roll into the Swamp looking like a patient wandered out of post-op and collapse on your bed. Sometimes you regale him with your successes and the nurses that'll make you memoirs of an a, b, c and de-generate, but today is not one of those days.
“I oughta have bleached my hair, stuffed my bra and taken my chances with Frank,” you groan. “Either that or someone swapped her in the dark. Maybe with a Labrador,” you theorise.
“Ohh,” he hums. “No good?” You sit bolt upright in bed, and walk over to his cot, stopping to pick up a martini with three parts gin and one part gin, and slump down by his side.
“No good doesn't even cover it!” you exclaim, and take a heavy swig of your drink before you set it down. “Here, words can't even describe, I'll have to show you,” you instruct, and he sets down his own drink to entertain your enthusiasm.
“Shall I loosen my bra?” he suggests, and you pull a face.
“On a first date? Your mother would be ashamed,” you slander, and then climb half-into his lap to be able to reach his neck at the angle you need to. “Here, turn your head,” you tell him, and he does, allowing you to demonstrate on him exactly what your date did to you in the last minutes you spent in the supply closet with her.
“Oh, oh Hawk,” he groans in agony. “You can't be serious, she did- aaaw, well, that's just awful...”
“I know,” you rush, pulling back a little and wiping off your mouth with a scowl. “Then when I tried to give her a little constructive criticism, she turns me out in the cold! I thought about barricading her in there for the good of all mankind.”
“Oh, hey, if you don't want her,” he remarks wickedly.
“Take her, by all means,” you offer freely. “Just don't expect to put that filthy mouth of yours anywhere near mine ever again.”
“Aaaw, but I'm such a looker,” he purrs, pouting his lips up at you. For some reason you think it's okay to press yours on top of his, drop a playful kiss on his mouth because it's not like you can catch anything from him you don't have already, You're in his lap anyway and you did just lose out on a date – sometimes it doesn't always matter who you're wrestling tongues with.
Trapper seems to agree, because he's the one who opens his mouth, doesn't shove you off and tell you to stop being a wise-guy.
“Ohh, I bet the girls love that,” you murmur when he pulls a trick on you, takes his teeth all the way across your lower lip and then sucks you deep into a kiss.
“You bet they do,” he replies proudly between mouthfuls of you.
“All right, how bout' this?” you challenge, and twist further into his lap so you can give him all your best moves.
“Not bad, not bad,” he evaluates coolly, and somehow his hand has ended up under your shirt soaking up the warmth of your skin like it's the most natural thing for it to do. “You gave her all that, and she still threw you out?”
“Not just that, I threw in a little ear-nibbling, too,” you lament, and demonstrate accordingly. Trapper gives the first indication you've started playing with fire, because he tenses up like an overwound spring.
“Uhuh, now that I like,” he remarks thoughtfully, and his fingers make tiny circles against your back, and it doesn't feel like you're trying to impress him or get something from him, you're just... feeling, and if it feels good, it can't be too wrong. Not in this war, where most things feel so wrong you wake up screaming in the middle of the night from watching too many young men die.
“I mean, who could resist me?” you posit, and he shrugs those big, heavy shoulders.
“Hawk, you know I can't,” he replies without guile, and his tone is only about a third serious. “Forget the nurse, her loss,” he consoles cheerfully. “She was too good for you anyways.”
“Hey, don't you mean I was too good for her?” you correct.
“I mean what I say,” he replies coolly, and you give his ear a particularly vicious bite. “Easy, jaws, easy,” he coos. “You keep up like that and mom and I won't let you sleep in with us tonight.” He threatens, but you know he'd never enforce it, because if you slink over to his cot cold and lonely, he just sighs and lets you sleep on top of him like a cat, doesn't even feel it through his big barrel chest.
It's a habit that proves harder to kick than you imagine, because you've both finally won a weekend of R&R in Tokyo, and the entire Geisha population unanimously tied their obis on extra tight in preparation for the two of you. Your hotel room is like a heaven, a sweet-smelling, wallpapered, soft bed-filled heaven, but when your hostess has taken her money and clucked off to find some more business, you lie in that big, soft, sprung-mattress bed and toss and turn like you're being rolled down a hill.
You give up the fight eventually, grab a robe off the hook and storm out of your room, heading straight up to his to see if he's as restless too – maybe he'll come out to a gambling house with you, maybe you'll go pick up some more girls, if you feel like it again.
When you knock, there's no answer. “Trap,” you say softly through the door, and then hear the sounds from within. The door opens, and his sleepy, dilated eyes greet you.
“Heya Hawk,” he drones. “Can't sleep?”
“I think my body's forgotten what a real bed feels like,” you reply, massaging your aches grimly. “It's punishing me as a result. Your girl gone?”
“Long gone,” he answers, and steps back, letting the door open. “Come on in.” You amble into his room and notice the half-stocked minibar.
“Hey!” you crow. “You got a mini-bar! Mine was empty when I arrived.” He shoots you a look so guilty it ought to be shot.
“Well, you let me check in, so I, ah, cleared you out on my way up,” he reveals with a flash of teeth through his cheesy grin. You lunge for the bed and hit him with a pillow, and he gives you a shove so that you fall down on the bed.
“Your bed is comfier than mine,” you announce as you stretch out like a cat and tuck yourself round the pillow you were using as a weapon. “Why is your bed comfier than mine?”
“You know what they say,” he remarks. “The grass is always greener on the other side of the mattress.” He flops down beside you, and your fatigue settles over you again like silt on the bottom of a riverbed – this is what you were missing, and it feels like you're asleep in seconds, the two of you shuffling in the night to tangle like twisted bits of barbed wire. It's the best night's sleep you've ever had, and you wake in the morning peacefully, no fear, no cursing, no grasping desperately for a drink to drown out the world.
“You up?” you ask when you feel him stir.
“No,” he answers grumpily. “Go back to sleep.” You toss and turn, and eventually throw yourself half-over him, your chin sitting in the groove of his spine.
“I'm hungry,” you proclaim.
“I hear food's good for that,” he replies, his words muffled by the pillow his face is buried in. “I'm writing you a prescription for one breakfast. Now get the hell out.” Full of energy, you spring out of bed, don a robe, and set off down to breakfast like a man possessed. You're sure you can hear him start to snore before the door even closes behind you.
When you return bearing coffee – real, ground, rich coffee that has fresh milk in it and dances on your tongue like so many showgirls – the beast of grumpy mornings has arisen, and water beads down him fresh from the shower.
“Open,” you command as you approach, and he lets his jaw hang slack. You stuff a pastry in it, and he closes obligingly.
“Mnmmphnm,” he mumbles through a mouthful of breakfast.
“You're welcome. Coffee too,” you reply, setting his down on the bedside table. Your plane is this evening, and even if you try to miss it every bar in the area is going to have MPs around it ready to roll the two of you up in carpets and ship you back to Korea in the cargo.
“So, two young bachelors,” Trapper begins when he finishes his mouthful.
“You're married,” you remind him.
“One young bachelor and one young stud breaking the shackles of marriage,” he corrects, “with eight hours left in Tokyo. What's our plan of action?”
“Well,” you say thoughtfully. “If you take the West side of town, I can take the East. We meet for lunch in the South, then head North by evening and don't stop til we hit Hokkaido.”
“I like the sound of that,” he concurs, and you get to your feet, snatching his towel from around his shoulders and heading to the shower.
“Your SHOWER is even bigger than mine!” you yell as you enter the faux-marble tiled room.
“Envy is one of the seven deadly sins, Hawk,” he comments aloofly, and you slump against the doorframe.
“Right,” you agree. “So we just have six more to tackle by the end of the day.”
When your bodies are deposited back in the 4077 at the end of the weekend, they have a couple of stretchers waiting for you already; nurses take you both straight into post-op and put you both on an IV, for which you are both unconsciously thankful for. By the end of the day you're both back in O.R., slicing bodies like a sushi-chef and sweating like pigs in a slaughterhouse.
The morning rings in the end of the night, and you slump back to the Swamp; you fall back into your chair, and Trap onto your cot, throwing his feet over your knees as he lets out a long hiss like a punctured tyre. You rest a hand on his leg and sigh; you can't imagine getting through this war without him, without whatever strange thing you've built up between the two of you. If he leaves – if you leave, if you both get stolen by the North Koreans and sent to make your fortunes, you know it'll be hard learning to cope without him. That you'll miss him like a great big pocket of flak's ripped a hole clean through your chest.
But you don't think of that time, don't worry over it, because you're giving your entire being into dealing with now. What you and Trapper have is based on now, so you can't think about then with the same set of rules. You give each other what you need, and maybe back in Maine you won't need this familiarity so much. You hope you'll see him – of course you'll see him – Maine and Massachusetts are almost next-door anyway, and it'll all keep on going. You keep him close, pass him a martini, and know that somehow you'll survive.
That's what it's about, what war's always been about – survival, by any means necessary.
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Date: 2011-08-04 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-04 02:58 pm (UTC)As for the late night forays, my challenge in this was to try and write something about intimacy and being unbearably close, but without any kind of sexuality or lust to it. That said, it has a few little undertones that sneak in here and there, so what goes on behind the scenes is our little secret ;)
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Date: 2011-08-04 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-04 11:54 pm (UTC)More importantly, I LOVE your icon. Like, so hard I could explode.
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Date: 2011-08-12 10:36 pm (UTC)And I adore the way you've portrayed Hawkeye and Trapper's friendship, too - so close, so dependent on one another, so easy-going and casually physical that they don't even realise what they look like to everybody else (and I have to say, that's one of the most plausible ways to blend the slash in with the canon portrayals I've seen in fic) - any other pairing and there'd be confusion and guilt, but when it's just Hawk and Trap, they don't think about each other, they just are. It's one reason I really like them, as friends and/or potential lovers, and this fic's got it down really well.
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Date: 2011-08-18 12:57 am (UTC)The show gives me the impression that they're very close, but I don't feel like they're sleeping together. I wanted something that still appeared as if it could fit with canon.
As for the second-person perspective, it honestly just HAPPENED. I was writing it and then out of nowhere it was 'you' as in Hawkeye and I was like 'Oh right. Okay then' and just ran with it. As I've said above, MASH seems to bring out a lyrical streak in me.
Truth be told, dreamingjewel's icon has given me a big welping plot bunny about what if Hawkeye was bi, which I think he plausibly could be, and how that would play out realistically. For me, it wouldn't involve relationships with Trapper or BJ, but more casual affairs as he has with women, only with a select few guys who come through and he pegs out as gay/bi. (It's like, 6k long already or something and isn't even done. Also oh god it's smuuuuuuttty as heck.)