Fandom: M*A*S*H.
Author: Leigh.
Pairing: Sort-of Radar/Hawkeye, if that's the way you want to interpret it. Mention of Hawkeye/BJ and Hawkeye/Trapper.
Rating: PG.
Warnings: Dark subject material. Second-person narration (aiie!) Some present tense.
Archivists: Ask first.
Summary: Radar learns what it really means to get your hands dirty.
Date Written: March 30, 2003.
Author's Notes: Written for Raven's 3/28/03 five-minute challenge, "Nobody ever--". I broke the rules a little, though: this took me forty minutes. Oops.
Feedback: Can be sent to kmaru1701 [AT] hotmail [DOT] com, and is much appreciated.
Entanglement
Nobody ever told you to put your hands into someone else, the way the doctors do, and it's a good thing. 'Cause somehow, that sort of thing never works out.
The doctors go in and out the OR doors endlessly. Sometimes they eat or sleep or cheat or golf or drink -- a lotta the time they drink --, but there's always that blood on them like they've never left. When they lose a kid, you know it; they all go around dead themselves for a while, soaked with him. That's normal, probably, 'cause it's hard not to pick up that smell, that look, when that's all there is, day after day. But even when they save one, there's something changed, and they walk stiff-legged, smiles only on their lips. It's like they've got their fingers still all caught up in the wet dark spaces of that body under the bright lights, and when that guy ships back out to Hill 207 or wherever, some part of them goes too, till you wonder what they're running on, emptied like they are of themselves.
Sometimes it's not even that easy to see. Sometimes it's like Hawkeye and the flutter of his eyelashes on your cheek, soft and surprised, as you gave him Trapper's goodbye. When you stepped back, there was a moment between thinking and saying, and all he could do was look at you, and you looked at him, and you saw in his eyes how something went out after Trapper, snarled up but unraveling.
And now there's this one time, the one time it really matters. You stand on tiptoe and put your hands against the heavy, familiar door, and through the dirty glass you can see Hawkeye working beneath the lights like always, except already he's halfway gone, pretending he doesn't see you, he doesn't remember you're leaving. A little to his left, BJ notices you and says something to Hawkeye -- you can't hear the words through the door, but you understand them, quiet and easy. BJ's easy with the words, sometimes, like Hawkeye only wishes he could be, 'cause with BJ they always mean something -- and Hawkeye looks up, at BJ first, his glance all twisted in on itself, like the way they move in the Swamp and find each other, hearts beating, in the weird glow of the moon through the mesh. And he looks at you, and know -- knows -- because you forgot to close it off in your own eyes. He smiles under the mask (you know, because how can you not know?) and raises his hand out of that kid's belly, all red and limp-gloved. You make some helpless movement and turn away, 'cause he's got enough to worry about, and you, you're going home, even though maybe you'll see that look some nights, before you fall asleep, that says he knows, and he cares, but he won't.
It's funny: while you sit in your cushy seat on the plane, Korea vanishing under the wings, it's like you're not leaving, like you'll never leave at all. 'Cause even though nobody ever told you to put your hands into someone else, somehow you're all tangled up anyway.
~Fin~
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