Untitled for now
Jun. 22nd, 2005 08:35 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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mash_slashOK, this is my first attempt at writing fic in this genre - so any brickbats, comments, etc. are all welcome.
B-eye, I'm afraid - damn I'm predictable!
Cross-posted to my livejournal.
It isn't that Hawkeye is averse to touch. Far from it, in fact, he is the master at leaning that bit too close, squeezing himself into too-small places on a bench, offering a brush of a hand in support as he passes behind BJ in the OR. It is that he cannot bear someone else to initiate it, that he is constantly moving smoothly away, even from the slight weight of a hand on his shoulder, that he is always flickering looks about him to make sure that no-one has come too close before he makes his own move.
He is always passing equipment to a nurse who touches his shoulder, making sure she needs both hands, pushing the contact away as quickly as possible, his jokes and biting wit as effective a barrier as his continual movement, always pushing that little too hard when he seems to be getting near to the much-vaunted success he never - quite - attains with the nurses, always that too-sharp-edge with Margaret when she might move towards even the preliminaries of friendship.
Even when he is still, for once, his bag packed and lying on a bench intended for a corpse,
What kind of friend would I be if I didn't hold you a wake?
he flings up words like walls, his arm over his eyes to blank out - what? His own expression? The fact that he is needed?
Trapper went home and they're still coming.
He says he is leaving, but even his own momentum cannot save him from the truth - that he cannot - and he comes back, trudging into OR with the world back on his shoulders and an absence of jokes that somehow makes as much noise as his wit and Frank's objections to it combined.
*
The reasons for this self-created distance would be a damn sight easier to stand if they were not rammed down BJ's throat every time something goes wrong, if the rather strange memories of his arrival in Korea (which had, when he awoke the next day, somehow combined themselves into a peculiar melange of jeeps, shooting and drunkenness) were not now over-laid with the image of a man standing in the middle of a war with no interest whatsoever in his surroundings, and conveying a sense of loss that even then, BJ had known was not connected to death -
Ten minutes! I missed him by ten minutes!
He had reasoned at the time that death, after all, does not tend to drive someone to an airport and talk about missing someone else by ten minutes - although given Hawkeye's ability to fence around whatever the real problem happened to be, he was rapidly forced to revise that opinion.
It might have been Henry Blake, of course, but - it isn't Henry that Hawkeye kept coming back to, even though he remembered him with an affection that sat oddly on his stooped shoulders, struck a cracked note in the lightly sardonic tones with which he discussed everything else. It's the man BJ has replaced, Trapper, John McIntyre, still lamented in every damn glass of whatever-the-hell-it-really-is that Hawkeye pours from still to vase to glass to mouth.
BJ has come to realise that he can replace Trapper as surgeon, Swamp Rat, drinking companion, even as a sounding board for Hawkeye's occasional rants against everything, and perhaps he can find his own niche in Hawkeye's life as a friend of sorts, but replace Trapper? It's never going to happen. It couldn't, it can't, and every time Hawkeye moves away, smiles, turns sideways, lets his eyes flicker somewhere else - the doorway? - the knowledge is reinforced.
*
It takes him a while to realise that he can be something else, instead, that even if he can't take away Hawkeye's innate restlessness, he can focus his attention, bring it to a point of interest or amusement, catch and hold the flickering gaze for more than a mere second of time. He sees Sidney's far-too-assessing eyes on him, though, the weekly poker games now a tournament of catch-and-deflect as he bats away Sidney's attention with practical jokes that distract him, draws Hawkeye back with the same motions.
He stops wondering why this has become so important. That it is has become too overwhelming for that.
*
He learns that there are times when Hawkeye does not slip away, that whatever it is that sets him spiralling into his days of incessant motion and talk is also lulled by alcohol. BJ tries to forget where the Swamp gin originates, and contains his private snort of laughter when Hawkeye claims to have played Hamlet once, because isn't the 4077 his own private Denmark, and Hawkeye its uncrowned prince?
We will teach you to drink deep ere you leave here.
Drunk, Hawkeye never seems to object to BJ leaning on him, using him as a prop, holding his arm as they laugh. After all, he does the same.
And as he says as yet another lover - call it by its name, accept who and what you can never replace - leaves him, he doesn't mind. The about anything, as always, remains unspoken.
Sometimes, when Hawkeye is so tired that even his restless eyes have stopped moving, and his feet have given up on the last few steps across the Swamp, BJ puts him to bed, covers him in the ratty old bathrobe, and hopes that his sleep is deep enough to last until morning. He never thinks about how much it frightens him that he wants Hawkeye to start caring again.
He never stops watching to see whether Hawkeye has.
*
B-eye, I'm afraid - damn I'm predictable!
Cross-posted to my livejournal.
It isn't that Hawkeye is averse to touch. Far from it, in fact, he is the master at leaning that bit too close, squeezing himself into too-small places on a bench, offering a brush of a hand in support as he passes behind BJ in the OR. It is that he cannot bear someone else to initiate it, that he is constantly moving smoothly away, even from the slight weight of a hand on his shoulder, that he is always flickering looks about him to make sure that no-one has come too close before he makes his own move.
He is always passing equipment to a nurse who touches his shoulder, making sure she needs both hands, pushing the contact away as quickly as possible, his jokes and biting wit as effective a barrier as his continual movement, always pushing that little too hard when he seems to be getting near to the much-vaunted success he never - quite - attains with the nurses, always that too-sharp-edge with Margaret when she might move towards even the preliminaries of friendship.
Even when he is still, for once, his bag packed and lying on a bench intended for a corpse,
What kind of friend would I be if I didn't hold you a wake?
he flings up words like walls, his arm over his eyes to blank out - what? His own expression? The fact that he is needed?
Trapper went home and they're still coming.
He says he is leaving, but even his own momentum cannot save him from the truth - that he cannot - and he comes back, trudging into OR with the world back on his shoulders and an absence of jokes that somehow makes as much noise as his wit and Frank's objections to it combined.
*
The reasons for this self-created distance would be a damn sight easier to stand if they were not rammed down BJ's throat every time something goes wrong, if the rather strange memories of his arrival in Korea (which had, when he awoke the next day, somehow combined themselves into a peculiar melange of jeeps, shooting and drunkenness) were not now over-laid with the image of a man standing in the middle of a war with no interest whatsoever in his surroundings, and conveying a sense of loss that even then, BJ had known was not connected to death -
Ten minutes! I missed him by ten minutes!
He had reasoned at the time that death, after all, does not tend to drive someone to an airport and talk about missing someone else by ten minutes - although given Hawkeye's ability to fence around whatever the real problem happened to be, he was rapidly forced to revise that opinion.
It might have been Henry Blake, of course, but - it isn't Henry that Hawkeye kept coming back to, even though he remembered him with an affection that sat oddly on his stooped shoulders, struck a cracked note in the lightly sardonic tones with which he discussed everything else. It's the man BJ has replaced, Trapper, John McIntyre, still lamented in every damn glass of whatever-the-hell-it-really-is that Hawkeye pours from still to vase to glass to mouth.
BJ has come to realise that he can replace Trapper as surgeon, Swamp Rat, drinking companion, even as a sounding board for Hawkeye's occasional rants against everything, and perhaps he can find his own niche in Hawkeye's life as a friend of sorts, but replace Trapper? It's never going to happen. It couldn't, it can't, and every time Hawkeye moves away, smiles, turns sideways, lets his eyes flicker somewhere else - the doorway? - the knowledge is reinforced.
*
It takes him a while to realise that he can be something else, instead, that even if he can't take away Hawkeye's innate restlessness, he can focus his attention, bring it to a point of interest or amusement, catch and hold the flickering gaze for more than a mere second of time. He sees Sidney's far-too-assessing eyes on him, though, the weekly poker games now a tournament of catch-and-deflect as he bats away Sidney's attention with practical jokes that distract him, draws Hawkeye back with the same motions.
He stops wondering why this has become so important. That it is has become too overwhelming for that.
*
He learns that there are times when Hawkeye does not slip away, that whatever it is that sets him spiralling into his days of incessant motion and talk is also lulled by alcohol. BJ tries to forget where the Swamp gin originates, and contains his private snort of laughter when Hawkeye claims to have played Hamlet once, because isn't the 4077 his own private Denmark, and Hawkeye its uncrowned prince?
We will teach you to drink deep ere you leave here.
Drunk, Hawkeye never seems to object to BJ leaning on him, using him as a prop, holding his arm as they laugh. After all, he does the same.
And as he says as yet another lover - call it by its name, accept who and what you can never replace - leaves him, he doesn't mind. The about anything, as always, remains unspoken.
Sometimes, when Hawkeye is so tired that even his restless eyes have stopped moving, and his feet have given up on the last few steps across the Swamp, BJ puts him to bed, covers him in the ratty old bathrobe, and hopes that his sleep is deep enough to last until morning. He never thinks about how much it frightens him that he wants Hawkeye to start caring again.
He never stops watching to see whether Hawkeye has.
*
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