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mash_slashMMKAY SO. I haven't posted anything in six months, which I think for anyone else would be indicative of the fact that they'd found a new fandom, but for me means that I haven't written a blessed word in six months, save for this piece which I wrote for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hashbash, meant to post here, and then never did. Yeeeeah organization! ANYWAY the point is that:
a) I really like this story. I read it over, changed a few teeny tiny little things from back in October, and declared it one of my personal favorites, out of the things that I've written for M*A*S*H. (AHAHAHA I have written a grand total of FIVE things though so that doesn't really mean anything at all.)
b) I would like you to read this please and then offer some criticism if you've got it! Pretty much anything would be cool short of, "this revelation should be punchier please!", because really for me this piece is about style. I'm going to be showing it to my father in a few days, and his opinion really, really means a great deal to me, and honestly I just want to show him the best little story I can. YOU KNOW HOW IT IS. (Ahahaha also sekritly we're going to pretend that it's relatively new because hehe he thinks I wrote it for Mike Farrell's birthday. Hopefully he will not realize that the name "BJ" does not appear in here a single time?)
So, without further ado, here you go!
Title: A Hazy Shade of Winter
Pairing: Hawkeye/Sidney
Disclaimer: This show is obviously not mine because Hawkeye and BJ never engaged in anything even remotely mistakable for what my grandma refers to as "getting sexy". :(
Rating: Let's go ahead and slap a PG-13 on it and be done with it.
It’s early, early morning in New York City, the only place in the world where the sun rises gray. The trains roll in, noisy and dirty across chunks of salt-and-pepper snow, bringing America into one place for the first few hours of the morning.
Upon Sidney’s advice, Hawkeye Pierce has checked himself into the Rosemont, which is a nice little bed and breakfast located in the heart of Greenwich Village, and which, at fourteen dollars a day, is also a nice little excuse not to get himself an apartment. Every morning he walks outside, pretending to be looking for a job, a home, or a life (take your pick), and every afternoon he comes home and sleeps, fourteen dollars poorer than the day before. Across the Hudson are factories, shooting sharp curls of chemical air into the sky, and the ice on the river drifts northward into Maine and Canada, toward fisheries and snow hills and home, and the last time he was happy.
Back in Maine, there was a time when he loved things just because, and the last time he can remember feeling this way is in the company of one Sidney Freedman. It only makes sense, then, that that’s why he’s come halfway across the world chasing a psychologist who never really seemed to need him.
It had been no secret that Korea hadn’t been what he wanted, but neither is New York; for all of Sidney’s talk about “the greatest city on earth”, it’s actually vaguely disappointing.
“Things are happening there,” the shrink had said. “Things that people like you would appreciate.”
By “things”, of course, Sidney had meant an explosion of culture and talent; he’d meant Kerouac penning his travels and Dali streaking color where it hadn’t ever been before. He’d meant things that he thought people like Hawkeye would appreciate. Somewhere along the line (he forgets when or how or why it happened, but it definitely did), Hawkeye had managed to lose the carefree spark that had defined him back in the States and acquire a weariness that Sidney, and probably all of Korea, had mistaken for worldliness.
In any event, Manhattan at seven in the morning on Christmas Eve isn’t where he wants to be. He wants to be home, sitting in bed and eating toast but not the crust, listening to the radio in the morning right before going off to work every day. He wants to have a job where death rarely occurs, and the exceptions aren’t his fault. Instead, he’s about two blocks away from the hotel he’s been staying at for the last two weeks, wondering what the hell there even is to do in New York.
(“Shopping.” The word flits across his mind, in Radar’s high, childish, absurd tone. “When Ma goes to the city she goes shopping.”)
(“There is nothing better,” he can hear Potter saying over a card table, “than the roast beef you’ll get in the Big Apple. If you’re ever in the city, you’ve got to get some of that roast beef.”)
(“When Peg and I go to the city,” BJ echoes, “we go out dancing together.”)
When Hawkeye goes to the city, he mopes.
+
The change jangles in his pocket, pressing into his legs with every step. He’s gained some weight since leaving Korea, and his pants fit more snugly than they used to. The original thought had been that he wouldn’t be able to eat, but apparently your stomach forgets war when they set a roast, dripping with butter and garlic, in front of you and instruct you to “tuck in”.
“Sidney,” he mutters, ducking into a pay-phone booth and pulling out a dime. “Sidney,” he mumbles, sliding the dime into the slot and punching numbers furiously. “Sidney,” he breathes, as the phone rings, and, finally, when a vaguely Jewish and plainly tired voice comes onto the line, the name just tumbles out of him, even though he’d only meant to say hello. “Sidney.” He’d meant to be restrained.
“Yes, Hawkeye?”
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“What are you doing?”
“I was sleeping.”
“Can I help?”
“Not now.”
“Can I eat breakfast with you?”
Sidney groans on the other end of the phone. “Yes. Give me a few minutes. Where are you?”
“57th Street.” Hawkeye’s breath hangs in the air and collects on the panes of phone-booth glass. “I can see your building.”
“Okay. Five minutes, okay?”
“I’m in the mood for eggs.”
“Five minutes.”
“See you then.”
“Yes.”
+
He carves his way through the buildings, staying in the middle of the sidewalks, exactly the way he has done for the last week. “Hey, spare a dime?” asks a man with a thick beard who clearly has just woken up. Hawkeye looks down at the vagrant, stares with a kind of disbelief at the bag he’s slept in the night before, and keeps walking. “Hey, man,” the other man repeats, “it’s cold,” just as Hawkeye’s boot kicks away a chunk of snow, and suddenly Hawkeye is running back to him and throwing all the money in his pockets at him. “Thanks, bud,” the guy says, counting the change greedily (he doesn’t even wait, Hawkeye notices bitterly), and pulls his dirty garbage bag closer around him.
Hawkeye doesn’t remember the subway fare until he gets to the station.
Damn it, he swears, and looks up at the lengthening rays of morning sun hitting the metropolis. It’s almost blinding, the reflection from the windows, and so he decides to walk over to Sidney’s. The tube is crowded and dirty and slow, anyway, he thinks, climbing the stairs back up above ground, and I could use some exercise.
He gets to Sidney’s apartment building in forty-five minutes. There are omelets waiting.
+
“How come you always keep me waiting, Hawkeye?”
“I don’t.” A sip of black coffee is the first thing he’s had all day, and it’s like a punch to the stomach.
“Five minutes, I said. Actually, I think I said it twice. And an hour later, you show up, sweating and shivering. What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know. Hey. Aren’t you going to make me eat at the table?” Sidney’s bringing his breakfast to the coffee table, having seen Hawkeye stretched out on the couch, and all of his lectures about “a meal being best enjoyed at the table” run through Hawkeye’s mind.
“No.” Sidney shrugs. “I’m lightening up.”
Hawkeye raises his eyebrows. “Okay.”
The two of them sit silently on Sidney’s rose-patterned sofa, and Hawkeye thinks about saying something, a little good old-fashioned teasing, but decides not to. Sidney’s not quite so well off, he vaguely remembers, and so a joke about his furniture – especially when his apartment is, practically, home, or at least more so than that stupid bed and breakfast – would probably be in poor taste.
“So, you doing any better?” Sidney questions. His brow is etched with a little bit of concern. Not too much. Not “friend” concern, Hawkeye doesn’t think. No, his forehead has “psychologist” concern scrawled all over it.
“Um, ah, what do you mean?”
“You gotten an apartment yet? Anything?”
Hawkeye makes a face. “No. I don’t know if New York is for me, Sidney. I really don’t.”
“Well the hotels aren’t cheap, so I suggest figuring it out pretty soon.”
“I will.”
“You got any money?”
“On me?”
“Well, I meant at all, but I guess, yes, on you?”
“Nope.”
“What? Why? How are you going to get home?”
“I’ll walk, same way I got here.”
Sidney shrugs. “Well. I guess you won’t get mugged, then.”
Hawkeye shoots him an indulgent smile. “No.”
+
“I’m a little worried,” Sidney states at nine thirty. The sun is finally high enough in the sky to pierce through his windows, and the stark, colorless light illuminates Hawkeye and makes him look so old that finally the shrink goes over to his window and snaps the blinds shut, flicking on a lamp on his way back to the sofa. “About you. You seem a little... unhealthy.”
“Um. I think I’m about what I expected.”
“War stays with you,” Sidney says quietly, leaning forward. “It wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t pretty, and you will probably dream about it for the rest of your life. In effect, part of you is ruined. The part of you that hadn’t ever seen a senseless slaughter that extended to an entire nation will never surface again, because it doesn’t exist anymore. But all the same, Hawkeye,” and he leans in even further, and his hand stops just short of Hawkeye’s shoulder, “you’ve got to learn to make something of yourself anyway.”
“I’ve already made something of myself. I’ve saved the lives of hundreds of people – hundreds of children – but it’s not like anyone gives a damn, at the end of the day.”
“I give a damn. Your father gives a damn.”
“Hahaha, I’m two for two billion.”
Sidney makes a face and turns the television on low, to the local news. There is a reporter onscreen, talking about Christmas in New York, and behind her is Rockefeller Center, in shades of black and white and gray. “Check out those two,” he says quietly, as a man and a daughter skate by. The little girl’s earmuffs have mistletoe on them, and she laughs when her father grabs her hand, pulling her faster around the ice. “You don’t think anything horrific’s ever happened to him? Why do you always think that your problems are so much worse than anyone else’s?”
“I don’t know,” Hawkeye mumbles, thinking about how he sticks around in New York so that he can see Sidney every day, even though all he ever gets is a monologue detailing all the ways that Hawkeye is completely useless as a person, and more often than not, he agrees. “I need a goddamn cat or something.”
“You need a job.”
“I need a life.”
“You’ve got a life. And you’re wasting it, talking about how much you need a better one.”
“I need...” he begins, and then laughs and shakes his head. “Oh, I don’t even know.”
After a few seconds, Sidney laughs too, real laughter, not tinny or sorry or made-up. “I don’t even know,” he says, “and it’s my job to know.”
They laugh together for a few more minutes at what is arguably the least funny moment of Hawkeye’s life, before finally Hawkeye is leaning forward and kissing the life out of Sidney so the shrink doesn’t see him cry.
+
Hawkeye’s heart is rusty and out of shape for now, but he will learn, he will remember, the same way a pianist comes to his instrument years later and pours arpeggios and arabesques from his fingers. That night he will go to sleep dreaming Sidney, and the next morning, he will rise, watch the ice on the Hudson drift northward to Maine, and then probably get into a taxi and go home, after these two endless, meaningless weeks. His father will say, “Why are you back here so soon?” when he means, “Why did you take so long?” and pull his son into a loose hug. “I don’t know,” Hawkeye will reply.
He doesn’t ever want to leave Crabapple Cove again. He did it once, three years ago, and after only nine hundred some days, he doesn’t recognize his life anymore. Between blood and war and cold and Sidney, every little thread in his heart ended up tangled into some huge mass.
+
The next morning he does, in fact, wake up next to Sidney, and when he looks down at the man sleeping beside him, he immediately knows what he should have said yesterday.
“I need to be somewhere the strings don’t tie to you.”
Above Sidney’s bed there is a window, and he looks out of it to see the entire city celebrating Christmas. People are hugging on the sidewalk, carrying packages and glowing with cold and happiness. There’s a huge Christmas tree on the end of Sidney’s block, and the lights reflect onto the sidewalk and cast patterns that essentially translate into innocence.
He doesn’t leave that afternoon. He stays with Sidney. The two of them make hot chocolate and stay inside and begin to untangle Hawkeye’s heart. The last time he felt like this – the last time his laughter crinkled the corners of his eyes – he was also with Sidney. This time is different, though; where in Korea there had been doubts and worries and abstract will-we-be-here-tomorrow thoughts, now there is the very real promise of tomorrow twinkling in Sidney’s eyes. Over the course of the day, Sidney gives Hawkeye all the smiles and the unassuming, familiar touches that he couldn’t spare in Korea, and this happiness that is finally rooted in reality is far superior, in both magnitude and longevity, than it ever was the last time around.
hashbash, meant to post here, and then never did. Yeeeeah organization! ANYWAY the point is that:a) I really like this story. I read it over, changed a few teeny tiny little things from back in October, and declared it one of my personal favorites, out of the things that I've written for M*A*S*H. (AHAHAHA I have written a grand total of FIVE things though so that doesn't really mean anything at all.)
b) I would like you to read this please and then offer some criticism if you've got it! Pretty much anything would be cool short of, "this revelation should be punchier please!", because really for me this piece is about style. I'm going to be showing it to my father in a few days, and his opinion really, really means a great deal to me, and honestly I just want to show him the best little story I can. YOU KNOW HOW IT IS. (Ahahaha also sekritly we're going to pretend that it's relatively new because hehe he thinks I wrote it for Mike Farrell's birthday. Hopefully he will not realize that the name "BJ" does not appear in here a single time?)
So, without further ado, here you go!
Title: A Hazy Shade of Winter
Pairing: Hawkeye/Sidney
Disclaimer: This show is obviously not mine because Hawkeye and BJ never engaged in anything even remotely mistakable for what my grandma refers to as "getting sexy". :(
Rating: Let's go ahead and slap a PG-13 on it and be done with it.
It’s early, early morning in New York City, the only place in the world where the sun rises gray. The trains roll in, noisy and dirty across chunks of salt-and-pepper snow, bringing America into one place for the first few hours of the morning.
Upon Sidney’s advice, Hawkeye Pierce has checked himself into the Rosemont, which is a nice little bed and breakfast located in the heart of Greenwich Village, and which, at fourteen dollars a day, is also a nice little excuse not to get himself an apartment. Every morning he walks outside, pretending to be looking for a job, a home, or a life (take your pick), and every afternoon he comes home and sleeps, fourteen dollars poorer than the day before. Across the Hudson are factories, shooting sharp curls of chemical air into the sky, and the ice on the river drifts northward into Maine and Canada, toward fisheries and snow hills and home, and the last time he was happy.
Back in Maine, there was a time when he loved things just because, and the last time he can remember feeling this way is in the company of one Sidney Freedman. It only makes sense, then, that that’s why he’s come halfway across the world chasing a psychologist who never really seemed to need him.
It had been no secret that Korea hadn’t been what he wanted, but neither is New York; for all of Sidney’s talk about “the greatest city on earth”, it’s actually vaguely disappointing.
“Things are happening there,” the shrink had said. “Things that people like you would appreciate.”
By “things”, of course, Sidney had meant an explosion of culture and talent; he’d meant Kerouac penning his travels and Dali streaking color where it hadn’t ever been before. He’d meant things that he thought people like Hawkeye would appreciate. Somewhere along the line (he forgets when or how or why it happened, but it definitely did), Hawkeye had managed to lose the carefree spark that had defined him back in the States and acquire a weariness that Sidney, and probably all of Korea, had mistaken for worldliness.
In any event, Manhattan at seven in the morning on Christmas Eve isn’t where he wants to be. He wants to be home, sitting in bed and eating toast but not the crust, listening to the radio in the morning right before going off to work every day. He wants to have a job where death rarely occurs, and the exceptions aren’t his fault. Instead, he’s about two blocks away from the hotel he’s been staying at for the last two weeks, wondering what the hell there even is to do in New York.
(“Shopping.” The word flits across his mind, in Radar’s high, childish, absurd tone. “When Ma goes to the city she goes shopping.”)
(“There is nothing better,” he can hear Potter saying over a card table, “than the roast beef you’ll get in the Big Apple. If you’re ever in the city, you’ve got to get some of that roast beef.”)
(“When Peg and I go to the city,” BJ echoes, “we go out dancing together.”)
When Hawkeye goes to the city, he mopes.
+
The change jangles in his pocket, pressing into his legs with every step. He’s gained some weight since leaving Korea, and his pants fit more snugly than they used to. The original thought had been that he wouldn’t be able to eat, but apparently your stomach forgets war when they set a roast, dripping with butter and garlic, in front of you and instruct you to “tuck in”.
“Sidney,” he mutters, ducking into a pay-phone booth and pulling out a dime. “Sidney,” he mumbles, sliding the dime into the slot and punching numbers furiously. “Sidney,” he breathes, as the phone rings, and, finally, when a vaguely Jewish and plainly tired voice comes onto the line, the name just tumbles out of him, even though he’d only meant to say hello. “Sidney.” He’d meant to be restrained.
“Yes, Hawkeye?”
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“What are you doing?”
“I was sleeping.”
“Can I help?”
“Not now.”
“Can I eat breakfast with you?”
Sidney groans on the other end of the phone. “Yes. Give me a few minutes. Where are you?”
“57th Street.” Hawkeye’s breath hangs in the air and collects on the panes of phone-booth glass. “I can see your building.”
“Okay. Five minutes, okay?”
“I’m in the mood for eggs.”
“Five minutes.”
“See you then.”
“Yes.”
+
He carves his way through the buildings, staying in the middle of the sidewalks, exactly the way he has done for the last week. “Hey, spare a dime?” asks a man with a thick beard who clearly has just woken up. Hawkeye looks down at the vagrant, stares with a kind of disbelief at the bag he’s slept in the night before, and keeps walking. “Hey, man,” the other man repeats, “it’s cold,” just as Hawkeye’s boot kicks away a chunk of snow, and suddenly Hawkeye is running back to him and throwing all the money in his pockets at him. “Thanks, bud,” the guy says, counting the change greedily (he doesn’t even wait, Hawkeye notices bitterly), and pulls his dirty garbage bag closer around him.
Hawkeye doesn’t remember the subway fare until he gets to the station.
Damn it, he swears, and looks up at the lengthening rays of morning sun hitting the metropolis. It’s almost blinding, the reflection from the windows, and so he decides to walk over to Sidney’s. The tube is crowded and dirty and slow, anyway, he thinks, climbing the stairs back up above ground, and I could use some exercise.
He gets to Sidney’s apartment building in forty-five minutes. There are omelets waiting.
+
“How come you always keep me waiting, Hawkeye?”
“I don’t.” A sip of black coffee is the first thing he’s had all day, and it’s like a punch to the stomach.
“Five minutes, I said. Actually, I think I said it twice. And an hour later, you show up, sweating and shivering. What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know. Hey. Aren’t you going to make me eat at the table?” Sidney’s bringing his breakfast to the coffee table, having seen Hawkeye stretched out on the couch, and all of his lectures about “a meal being best enjoyed at the table” run through Hawkeye’s mind.
“No.” Sidney shrugs. “I’m lightening up.”
Hawkeye raises his eyebrows. “Okay.”
The two of them sit silently on Sidney’s rose-patterned sofa, and Hawkeye thinks about saying something, a little good old-fashioned teasing, but decides not to. Sidney’s not quite so well off, he vaguely remembers, and so a joke about his furniture – especially when his apartment is, practically, home, or at least more so than that stupid bed and breakfast – would probably be in poor taste.
“So, you doing any better?” Sidney questions. His brow is etched with a little bit of concern. Not too much. Not “friend” concern, Hawkeye doesn’t think. No, his forehead has “psychologist” concern scrawled all over it.
“Um, ah, what do you mean?”
“You gotten an apartment yet? Anything?”
Hawkeye makes a face. “No. I don’t know if New York is for me, Sidney. I really don’t.”
“Well the hotels aren’t cheap, so I suggest figuring it out pretty soon.”
“I will.”
“You got any money?”
“On me?”
“Well, I meant at all, but I guess, yes, on you?”
“Nope.”
“What? Why? How are you going to get home?”
“I’ll walk, same way I got here.”
Sidney shrugs. “Well. I guess you won’t get mugged, then.”
Hawkeye shoots him an indulgent smile. “No.”
+
“I’m a little worried,” Sidney states at nine thirty. The sun is finally high enough in the sky to pierce through his windows, and the stark, colorless light illuminates Hawkeye and makes him look so old that finally the shrink goes over to his window and snaps the blinds shut, flicking on a lamp on his way back to the sofa. “About you. You seem a little... unhealthy.”
“Um. I think I’m about what I expected.”
“War stays with you,” Sidney says quietly, leaning forward. “It wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t pretty, and you will probably dream about it for the rest of your life. In effect, part of you is ruined. The part of you that hadn’t ever seen a senseless slaughter that extended to an entire nation will never surface again, because it doesn’t exist anymore. But all the same, Hawkeye,” and he leans in even further, and his hand stops just short of Hawkeye’s shoulder, “you’ve got to learn to make something of yourself anyway.”
“I’ve already made something of myself. I’ve saved the lives of hundreds of people – hundreds of children – but it’s not like anyone gives a damn, at the end of the day.”
“I give a damn. Your father gives a damn.”
“Hahaha, I’m two for two billion.”
Sidney makes a face and turns the television on low, to the local news. There is a reporter onscreen, talking about Christmas in New York, and behind her is Rockefeller Center, in shades of black and white and gray. “Check out those two,” he says quietly, as a man and a daughter skate by. The little girl’s earmuffs have mistletoe on them, and she laughs when her father grabs her hand, pulling her faster around the ice. “You don’t think anything horrific’s ever happened to him? Why do you always think that your problems are so much worse than anyone else’s?”
“I don’t know,” Hawkeye mumbles, thinking about how he sticks around in New York so that he can see Sidney every day, even though all he ever gets is a monologue detailing all the ways that Hawkeye is completely useless as a person, and more often than not, he agrees. “I need a goddamn cat or something.”
“You need a job.”
“I need a life.”
“You’ve got a life. And you’re wasting it, talking about how much you need a better one.”
“I need...” he begins, and then laughs and shakes his head. “Oh, I don’t even know.”
After a few seconds, Sidney laughs too, real laughter, not tinny or sorry or made-up. “I don’t even know,” he says, “and it’s my job to know.”
They laugh together for a few more minutes at what is arguably the least funny moment of Hawkeye’s life, before finally Hawkeye is leaning forward and kissing the life out of Sidney so the shrink doesn’t see him cry.
+
Hawkeye’s heart is rusty and out of shape for now, but he will learn, he will remember, the same way a pianist comes to his instrument years later and pours arpeggios and arabesques from his fingers. That night he will go to sleep dreaming Sidney, and the next morning, he will rise, watch the ice on the Hudson drift northward to Maine, and then probably get into a taxi and go home, after these two endless, meaningless weeks. His father will say, “Why are you back here so soon?” when he means, “Why did you take so long?” and pull his son into a loose hug. “I don’t know,” Hawkeye will reply.
He doesn’t ever want to leave Crabapple Cove again. He did it once, three years ago, and after only nine hundred some days, he doesn’t recognize his life anymore. Between blood and war and cold and Sidney, every little thread in his heart ended up tangled into some huge mass.
+
The next morning he does, in fact, wake up next to Sidney, and when he looks down at the man sleeping beside him, he immediately knows what he should have said yesterday.
“I need to be somewhere the strings don’t tie to you.”
Above Sidney’s bed there is a window, and he looks out of it to see the entire city celebrating Christmas. People are hugging on the sidewalk, carrying packages and glowing with cold and happiness. There’s a huge Christmas tree on the end of Sidney’s block, and the lights reflect onto the sidewalk and cast patterns that essentially translate into innocence.
He doesn’t leave that afternoon. He stays with Sidney. The two of them make hot chocolate and stay inside and begin to untangle Hawkeye’s heart. The last time he felt like this – the last time his laughter crinkled the corners of his eyes – he was also with Sidney. This time is different, though; where in Korea there had been doubts and worries and abstract will-we-be-here-tomorrow thoughts, now there is the very real promise of tomorrow twinkling in Sidney’s eyes. Over the course of the day, Sidney gives Hawkeye all the smiles and the unassuming, familiar touches that he couldn’t spare in Korea, and this happiness that is finally rooted in reality is far superior, in both magnitude and longevity, than it ever was the last time around.
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