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mash_slashUmm I am a feedback monster and I am rearing my ugly head! Here's some PG-13 Hawkeye/Trapper! Emphasis is fun!
(Cross-posted! To![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teapot_yo and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
mash_challenge! I am not kidding about the emphasis thing!)
(On a more serious note, this is the first Trapper-related thing I've ever written, and I kind of like it. So here you are!)
Seasons come and go in Korea, and until it snows, there isn’t much difference. Everything is too dead to change.
“What do you think of the sky?” Trapper asks one morning, in what Hawkeye supposes would be autumn anywhere else. The weather is clear, brisk. When the doctors inhale, the air is sharp against senses dulled from hours piled upon hours of surgery. Nine in the morning, and the two are dead on their feet, heading for what may amount to only minutes of sleep before they do it all over again.
“I’ve never really considered it,” Hawkeye replies truthfully, and Trapper cocks his head and replies with an “okay”, because Trapper’s never ever made Hawkeye think about anything that wasn’t immediately pressing, and the polite conversation fades into an old, faded silence.
Silence with Trapper is comfortable. Hawkeye is an appreciator of the language -- he spins ideas into words like straw into gold and he never thinks anything of it, and this is incontestably part of his charm – and as such he has never known what to do when there aren’t any topics for conversation that fit into that particular minute’s niche. Part of the reason he kisses so much is simply having run out of words with which to fill a silence.
It isn’t like that with Trapper. Trapper looks at you and he knows, he knows what you’re thinking and what you’re hoping and what you’re dreaming and what you’re fearing. That’s why he leaned a little too close that night. That’s how he knew he didn’t have to worry about Hawkeye not wanting it. He can say as much as he wants about the gin having weird effects, but Hawkeye knows that their relationship has a lot more to do with Trapper’s senses sharpening into razors than with Trapper’s senses getting dulled.
“I have to sleep,” Hawkeye continues. No jokes. No banter carrying them back to the Swamp. “Right now.”
“Yes.” There’s no time for survival anymore. Here in Korea, where existence is barebones – you eat, you drink, and occasionally you sleep – you’re thankful for when the laughter comes, but when it doesn’t, your day is not wasted. Trapper, though, smiles every time he says something to Hawkeye, and this is largely the reason Hawkeye has not formulated the defenses required to stave off loneliness.
+
Toward the end of October, the afternoons are long and golden, and Hawkeye looks at Trapper through eyes tainted with the promise of a fake peace. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Well, it’s me or Ferret Face, and at least I won’t give you nightmares.”
“I don’t dream about you at all, actually,” Hawkeye replies. His breath hangs in the air. “I just think about you. All the time.”
“Even with all them pretty girls all over the place?”
“Sometimes even when I’m with them.”
It’s hard to tell exactly what Hawkeye means by this (Trapper doesn’t think he’s ready to picture Hawkeye fucking some nurse and imagining Trapper’s face, not yet), but there’s no way to deny that it means something.
“Sometimes I think about you, too,” Trapper says, thoughtfully, slowly, and, above all, awkwardly, and again Hawkeye's fears catch up to him. Please don't let that be a justification.
He turns this around in that steel-trap mind of his, examining all possible meanings of that, and stalls for time. “Okay.”
“Hawk, what are you trying to get out of this?”
“I don’t know,” he concedes. “I kind of just wanted you to know. And I wanted to know how you felt about it.”
“I don’t know.” Trapper sits down next to him, and he can hear him breathe.
“I just... I kind of feel like you understand me more than anyone, you know?”
“Hey, Hawkeye, don’t get all sentimental on me,” Trapper warns.
“Oh, knock it off — how many other people have you stood next to, buried up to the shoulders in guts, and still smiled with at the end of the day?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Shut up, Trap,” Hawkeye snaps, and stands up, but not before Trapper grabs his wrist and yanks him down so hard he can hear the bones pop.
“This is going to hurt you,” Trapper hisses, pressing his lips to Hawkeye’s. Teeth worry his lips, and Hawkeye murmurs back, “I don’t care.” (Lie.)
“Okay.”
+
It snows first on December fourth, long after everything’s gone gray and sparse. The changes outside seem to be inadvertently reflected by Hawkeye, whose hair is shot with tiny bits of steel.
“It’s freezing!” Trapper complains on December fifth. The snow isn’t twenty-four hours old. “Radar, can’t you get on the horn and get us some blankets?”
“I’m sorry, sirs!” Radar says, shaking his head. “I tried and tried, but Sparky says all the rations got used up by units who got there first!”
“Well, get there first next time, will ya?” Trapper demands, but Radar looks at his face and finds a good-natured smile. Allowing himself to relax a little, he nods.
“I will, sir.”
“Let’s go, Hawk,” Trapper says, grabbing Hawkeye by the arm and ushering him out of the tiny little office with the frosted windows. “Thanks anyway, Radar.”
“No problem, sirs,” the tiny boy says, and turns back to his work.
Crunching over the snow, Trapper kicks a little bit to the side. “Geez, the snow’s brand new and already I hate being cold!”
“Ah, shut up,” Hawkeye remarks, “it can’t be as bad as the summertime. ‘The snow’s just melted’,” he quotes, “ ‘and already I’m sick of being hot!’”
“Well I can’t help that the weather we get isn’t quite as temperate as I would enjoy.” Trapper rolls his eyes. “We can’t all be mountains of stoicism, you know.”
“Try harder!”
Trapper stops walking, closes his eyes, and stands still, wrapping his arms around himself. After a few second, his eyes fly open and he laughs, shaking his head. “Nope! Still cold.”
“You are obviously not cut out to be a stoic,” Hawkeye observes.
“However,” Trapper objects, opening the door to an empty Swamp, “you’re no stoic yourself, Mr. Pierce. And this is something I know for a fact.”
“What. I am completely offended.”
“So you’re telling me you’ve never reacted to anything?”
“Never in my life.”
“Ah.” Hawkeye’s heart speeds up a bit as a predatory glint comes into Trapper’s eyes. “I’m sure I can expose that dishonesty soon enough.”
Trapper’s confidence is alarming, and normally it drives Hawkeye up the wall. Today, though, he is forgiven, as he kisses up and down Hawkeye’s collarbone and pushes him down onto his cot.
The mattress’s springs creak under Hawkeye’s weight, and the squeak brings Hawkeye out of a Trapper-flavored reverie and up to reality. “I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore?” Hawkeye ventures.
“I don’t know, I kind of enjoy it.” Trapper looks down, breathing hard onto Hawkeye’s forehead. “Do you really want me to get off of you?”
“Um, no...”
“Well then shut up, all right?”
“All right,” Hawkeye agrees, silencing the part of his mind telling him that Trapper’s leg shouldn’t be hooked around his own, that Trapper’s pushing against him too hard, and acknowledging that this patchwork friendship will probably end in misery, but no more than its avoidance would bring.
+
Springtime brings sunshine, flowers, and warmth, but it takes Trapper, and Hawkeye reflects that he’d take all the icy pseudo-love in the world over this artificial vibrancy, which really just highlights what he doesn’t have anymore.
“I talk because I know someone’s going to listen,” Hawkeye mutters one Sunday to the only pair of concerned ears in the camp, “or at least, I used to.”
Mulcahy clucks sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Hawkeye.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter enough to bring him back, does it?”
Silence.
“Because let me tell you, nothing’s mattered so much to me in a long time.”
“I really, really, am--”
“And all I want is a goddamn – sorry, Father – a goddamn goodbye! It’s not like I wanted to MARRY him, I just wanted him to say, “HEY. You meant something to me too, you know.’ I just wanted him to acknowledge that he owes me a little bit of his sanity. I wanted him to do for me what I would do for him.”
More silence; all the seminary schooling in the world didn’t teach Mulcahy what to tell a middle-aged man who, through no fault of his own, has lost his summer and, slowly but completely, his heart.
Korea’s winters are bitter, but the cold had ended up something Hawkeye had hardly noticed. Now, during the spring, he’s acutely aware of everything, waking up every morning and dreaminghopingpraying that maybe it was a dream. Please. All of it.
It wasn’t. Hawkeye never kisses anyone quite the same way he kissed Trapper, and he never figures out why he wasn’t worth a good-bye.
(Cross-posted! To
teapot_yo and mash_challenge! I am not kidding about the emphasis thing!)(On a more serious note, this is the first Trapper-related thing I've ever written, and I kind of like it. So here you are!)
Seasons come and go in Korea, and until it snows, there isn’t much difference. Everything is too dead to change.
“What do you think of the sky?” Trapper asks one morning, in what Hawkeye supposes would be autumn anywhere else. The weather is clear, brisk. When the doctors inhale, the air is sharp against senses dulled from hours piled upon hours of surgery. Nine in the morning, and the two are dead on their feet, heading for what may amount to only minutes of sleep before they do it all over again.
“I’ve never really considered it,” Hawkeye replies truthfully, and Trapper cocks his head and replies with an “okay”, because Trapper’s never ever made Hawkeye think about anything that wasn’t immediately pressing, and the polite conversation fades into an old, faded silence.
Silence with Trapper is comfortable. Hawkeye is an appreciator of the language -- he spins ideas into words like straw into gold and he never thinks anything of it, and this is incontestably part of his charm – and as such he has never known what to do when there aren’t any topics for conversation that fit into that particular minute’s niche. Part of the reason he kisses so much is simply having run out of words with which to fill a silence.
It isn’t like that with Trapper. Trapper looks at you and he knows, he knows what you’re thinking and what you’re hoping and what you’re dreaming and what you’re fearing. That’s why he leaned a little too close that night. That’s how he knew he didn’t have to worry about Hawkeye not wanting it. He can say as much as he wants about the gin having weird effects, but Hawkeye knows that their relationship has a lot more to do with Trapper’s senses sharpening into razors than with Trapper’s senses getting dulled.
“I have to sleep,” Hawkeye continues. No jokes. No banter carrying them back to the Swamp. “Right now.”
“Yes.” There’s no time for survival anymore. Here in Korea, where existence is barebones – you eat, you drink, and occasionally you sleep – you’re thankful for when the laughter comes, but when it doesn’t, your day is not wasted. Trapper, though, smiles every time he says something to Hawkeye, and this is largely the reason Hawkeye has not formulated the defenses required to stave off loneliness.
+
Toward the end of October, the afternoons are long and golden, and Hawkeye looks at Trapper through eyes tainted with the promise of a fake peace. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Well, it’s me or Ferret Face, and at least I won’t give you nightmares.”
“I don’t dream about you at all, actually,” Hawkeye replies. His breath hangs in the air. “I just think about you. All the time.”
“Even with all them pretty girls all over the place?”
“Sometimes even when I’m with them.”
It’s hard to tell exactly what Hawkeye means by this (Trapper doesn’t think he’s ready to picture Hawkeye fucking some nurse and imagining Trapper’s face, not yet), but there’s no way to deny that it means something.
“Sometimes I think about you, too,” Trapper says, thoughtfully, slowly, and, above all, awkwardly, and again Hawkeye's fears catch up to him. Please don't let that be a justification.
He turns this around in that steel-trap mind of his, examining all possible meanings of that, and stalls for time. “Okay.”
“Hawk, what are you trying to get out of this?”
“I don’t know,” he concedes. “I kind of just wanted you to know. And I wanted to know how you felt about it.”
“I don’t know.” Trapper sits down next to him, and he can hear him breathe.
“I just... I kind of feel like you understand me more than anyone, you know?”
“Hey, Hawkeye, don’t get all sentimental on me,” Trapper warns.
“Oh, knock it off — how many other people have you stood next to, buried up to the shoulders in guts, and still smiled with at the end of the day?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Shut up, Trap,” Hawkeye snaps, and stands up, but not before Trapper grabs his wrist and yanks him down so hard he can hear the bones pop.
“This is going to hurt you,” Trapper hisses, pressing his lips to Hawkeye’s. Teeth worry his lips, and Hawkeye murmurs back, “I don’t care.” (Lie.)
“Okay.”
+
It snows first on December fourth, long after everything’s gone gray and sparse. The changes outside seem to be inadvertently reflected by Hawkeye, whose hair is shot with tiny bits of steel.
“It’s freezing!” Trapper complains on December fifth. The snow isn’t twenty-four hours old. “Radar, can’t you get on the horn and get us some blankets?”
“I’m sorry, sirs!” Radar says, shaking his head. “I tried and tried, but Sparky says all the rations got used up by units who got there first!”
“Well, get there first next time, will ya?” Trapper demands, but Radar looks at his face and finds a good-natured smile. Allowing himself to relax a little, he nods.
“I will, sir.”
“Let’s go, Hawk,” Trapper says, grabbing Hawkeye by the arm and ushering him out of the tiny little office with the frosted windows. “Thanks anyway, Radar.”
“No problem, sirs,” the tiny boy says, and turns back to his work.
Crunching over the snow, Trapper kicks a little bit to the side. “Geez, the snow’s brand new and already I hate being cold!”
“Ah, shut up,” Hawkeye remarks, “it can’t be as bad as the summertime. ‘The snow’s just melted’,” he quotes, “ ‘and already I’m sick of being hot!’”
“Well I can’t help that the weather we get isn’t quite as temperate as I would enjoy.” Trapper rolls his eyes. “We can’t all be mountains of stoicism, you know.”
“Try harder!”
Trapper stops walking, closes his eyes, and stands still, wrapping his arms around himself. After a few second, his eyes fly open and he laughs, shaking his head. “Nope! Still cold.”
“You are obviously not cut out to be a stoic,” Hawkeye observes.
“However,” Trapper objects, opening the door to an empty Swamp, “you’re no stoic yourself, Mr. Pierce. And this is something I know for a fact.”
“What. I am completely offended.”
“So you’re telling me you’ve never reacted to anything?”
“Never in my life.”
“Ah.” Hawkeye’s heart speeds up a bit as a predatory glint comes into Trapper’s eyes. “I’m sure I can expose that dishonesty soon enough.”
Trapper’s confidence is alarming, and normally it drives Hawkeye up the wall. Today, though, he is forgiven, as he kisses up and down Hawkeye’s collarbone and pushes him down onto his cot.
The mattress’s springs creak under Hawkeye’s weight, and the squeak brings Hawkeye out of a Trapper-flavored reverie and up to reality. “I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore?” Hawkeye ventures.
“I don’t know, I kind of enjoy it.” Trapper looks down, breathing hard onto Hawkeye’s forehead. “Do you really want me to get off of you?”
“Um, no...”
“Well then shut up, all right?”
“All right,” Hawkeye agrees, silencing the part of his mind telling him that Trapper’s leg shouldn’t be hooked around his own, that Trapper’s pushing against him too hard, and acknowledging that this patchwork friendship will probably end in misery, but no more than its avoidance would bring.
+
Springtime brings sunshine, flowers, and warmth, but it takes Trapper, and Hawkeye reflects that he’d take all the icy pseudo-love in the world over this artificial vibrancy, which really just highlights what he doesn’t have anymore.
“I talk because I know someone’s going to listen,” Hawkeye mutters one Sunday to the only pair of concerned ears in the camp, “or at least, I used to.”
Mulcahy clucks sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Hawkeye.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter enough to bring him back, does it?”
Silence.
“Because let me tell you, nothing’s mattered so much to me in a long time.”
“I really, really, am--”
“And all I want is a goddamn – sorry, Father – a goddamn goodbye! It’s not like I wanted to MARRY him, I just wanted him to say, “HEY. You meant something to me too, you know.’ I just wanted him to acknowledge that he owes me a little bit of his sanity. I wanted him to do for me what I would do for him.”
More silence; all the seminary schooling in the world didn’t teach Mulcahy what to tell a middle-aged man who, through no fault of his own, has lost his summer and, slowly but completely, his heart.
Korea’s winters are bitter, but the cold had ended up something Hawkeye had hardly noticed. Now, during the spring, he’s acutely aware of everything, waking up every morning and dreaminghopingpraying that maybe it was a dream. Please. All of it.
It wasn’t. Hawkeye never kisses anyone quite the same way he kissed Trapper, and he never figures out why he wasn’t worth a good-bye.
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Date: 2005-07-05 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 01:58 am (UTC)Painful, but good.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 09:15 am (UTC)Sorry I can't be more coherent. I'll try better later, okay?
PS I would lose the "tiny boy" reference to Radar: he's really not that small. Aside from that... perfect! and *whimper*
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Date: 2005-07-06 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 12:18 am (UTC)I don't know how else to say it.
-Grem-
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Date: 2006-03-14 03:44 pm (UTC)