Fandom: M*A*S*H.
Author: Epigone.
Pairing: Hawkeye/Trapper unrequited
Rating: PG.
Warnings: Present tense. Spoilerish for "Abyssinia, Henry" and "Welcome to Korea."
Archivists: Ask first.
Summary: Trapper doesn't leave a letter at the 4077th, but he leaves other things.
Date Written: November-December, 2003.
Author's Notes: A holiday fic for Carmarthen, who posited a theory of Hawkeye/Trapper that interested me. Many thanks to Raven for beta.
Feedback: Can be sent to kmaru1701 [AT] hotmail [DOT] com, and is much appreciated.
Leaving Traces
It's late when Trapper leaves post-op and makes his way back home. The strange blank glare of the floodlights blooms in the narrow spaces between tents, and despite the heat, it reminds Trapper of his breath on a frigid evening. He, too, is cold; chill branches like frost in the pit of his stomach. Today, after the main O.R. session, he discreetly did an exploratory on a kid who had been going downhill since his arrival at the camp. It didn't take long: Trapper soon found a shell fragment nestled under the bend of the bowel, Sgt. Simmons's private little time bomb. Hawkeye had overlooked it the first time in surgery.
They're all tired; it's easy to miss such things. Trapper forgives it, almost without thought. But when he recalls the way Hawkeye flinches with only his eyes, the way he drowns himself in gin to stay afloat, it seems incomprehensible that war can creep into a man this way; incomprehensible, forgiven and unforgivable in the same breath.
He opens the door to the Swamp to find two suitcases at his feet. Hawkeye is standing in the middle of the room, one hand against the center pole, shaving into the helmet-basin with as clean a motion of the wrist as he uses to wield a scalpel. He turns as Trapper enters and is illuminated by the overhead lamp.
"Trap," he says, offering a small smile. "Couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd make myself presentable."
"What, you have a date?" asks Trapper, finding the correct bantering tone with difficulty.
"At this time of the night?"
"What other kind of date is worth having?"
But Trapper cannot help letting his glance stray to the small stack of bags on the floor. Hawkeye notices and, leaning closer to the mirror to get at the underside of his jaw, says in an offhand way, "Frank's authorized me for a week's leave in Tokyo. Didn't even have to sell him what's left of my soul. He just offered. You think he's turning human on us?"
"Hawk," says Trapper, "maybe he thinks you need it."
"Why would he think that?"
Trapper averts his eyes.
"Sergeant Simmons. I opened him up again, and there was a shell fragment left in."
A hiss of indrawn breath; the ringing sound of metal against metal. Trapper looks up and sees a line of red beginning to creep up the curve of Hawkeye's jaw where the razor slipped. Hawkeye, blinking dazedly, is still standing in the same position, though he's dropped the razor into the helmet. That's when Trapper knows the depth of his exhaustion, because not even a stupid surgical mistake would normally knock the fight out of Hawkeye. Then the stream of light from the lamp is broken by Hawkeye's arm: he's raising a hand to his neck and saying in a distracted, oddly distinct voice, "Klinger said he'd improved since this morning... the fever was just a complication...."
"Jesus, Hawk," Trapper explodes, and crosses the room to him. He finds the towel above the helmet with one hand while with the other he leads Hawkeye to the nearest cot -- Trapper's own. "Siddown."
"I missed it?" asks Hawkeye with a fixed look, trying to fend Trapper off. "I didn't miss it!"
"Siddown and shut up," amends Trapper, catching him off guard and clamping the towel to his gash. "That's a deep cut."
With odd resignation, Hawkeye falls silent, slumping into the pressure. Trapper stays very still beside him, trying to gently probe the extent of the wound through the cloth. When his examination becomes too insistent, Hawkeye stiffens and shudders just perceptibly, so that by instinct Trapper takes his elbow and holds it, murmuring, "Sorry." He turns his head to find a shirt, a pillowcase, something -- a small red stain is blossoming in the towel under his fingers -- and in his peripheral vision he registers a swift flicker of movement. He glances to the right and sees the two of them hanging in the sheer dark pane of the mirror, like a window facing the wrong way, opening to a room he has not seen before: his hands on Hawkeye, and Hawkeye with an intent, oneiric expression holding himself against the touch. It is a tableau that Trapper has never really known, not in all the clandestine years of back seats and hotel rooms. He stares at it for a long time, the chill in his gut dissipating; and then abruptly he becomes aware of the stark lamp lighting them both, the solidity of Hawkeye's hip beneath him, and the rough brush of leftover stubble as Hawkeye shifts in his grasp. He tears away from the mirror, his eyes burning, the acrid taste of fear rising on his tongue.
Fumblingly, he removes the towel and focuses on the cut. It's bleeding slightly, but not enough for concern. Hawkeye seems to awaken from a prolonged trance, and he tilts his head to peer sideways at Trapper, his face slackening in the shadows. He looks pale, but these Army-issue bulbs wash the color out of everything.
"We ought to get some sleep," says Trapper at length.
"Yeah," says Hawkeye vaguely, and makes as if to stand.
"No, stay there." Trapper pushes him down smoothly, realizing as he does that his hand is still on Hawkeye's elbow. He removes it quickly. "You're still bleeding a little. Hold the towel to it." He demonstrates again, although Hawkeye is a doctor and knows as well as he.
Trapper gets to his feet, avoiding the mirror, and there is a brief moment where Hawkeye watches, wide-eyed, unguarded, and his free hand clenches on the blanket. They freeze there, Trapper with a hunted look, Hawkeye stripped bare as a patient laid out on the table, and they do not speak. Trapper is the first to move, switching off the light, leaving the bed, but before he turns he sees something in Hawkeye's eyes swell and spread, diffuse, like a shadow passing over water. He finds Hawkeye's vacant bed and lowers himself onto it, facing the wall.
Hawkeye's disembodied voice floats across the space between them, a hollow and depthless noise like an echo without end. He is already half-asleep, and his question is one from that gray border between slumber and sense:
"Why haven't I seen you with Nurse Griffin lately?"
"Why do you--"
"Jus' wondering."
Trapper pauses, closes his eyes.
"It was getting... a little too serious," he says lightly, feeling the press of the pillow on his face. Hawkeye's bed is unfamiliar, but not uncomfortable, and he drifts. "Look, Hawk, can we talk about this later? I'll see you in the morning...."
He will not. In the morning, he wakes late to the uneven stammer of chopper blades and is momentarily frightened to find himself warm and secure in a stranger's bed. When he regains his bearings and sits up, he notices that Hawkeye's bags are already gone, leaving an imprint in the floor dust that will last no more than an hour.
The following afternoon, Frank hands Trapper the orders that will send him stateside.
* * * * * * * * *
On the day he leaves, Trapper moves without sight, without awareness. A hangover still throbs behind his eyes, and there will be so much noise and motion: the flurry of goodbyes, the sweltering drive to Kimpo, the long-awaited plane, the stopover in some strange city, and then the landing in Boston, a city equally as strange, the long sterile echoing terminal where Louise and the girls will stand waiting, and the sound of Louise crying. Perhaps he will cry a little, too.
Someday, he will look back on these interim hours and find them on the whole as insubstantial as the shadows that swooped across the walls of the Swamp at a certain time in the night (a time when he should have been sleeping but wasn't, and he knew that in the next bed Hawkeye wasn't either). It is all reduced to smudges of dimness cast by the light, and one moment in sharp relief, around which his mind gathers and solidifies--
There is no letter he can write to Hawkeye, because language cannot locate the precise place where Korea entered him, where the shell fragments, blood, dust, sideways glances found a hold. He seeks out Radar and finds him in Henry's old office after he has taken his leave of the others.
"Hey," Trapper says, lounging against the doorjamb with strained casualness. Radar does not turn; only straightens in his chair, his shoulders rising in discomfort.
"Captain McIntyre," he murmurs. "I haven't been able to reach Hawkeye."
"I know." Trapper moves across the room to Radar and touches his shoulder, though he doesn't know for whose comfort he does it. "You tried. He'll understand. I actually just came to see you before I leave." A pause. "My jeep's outside."
Radar finally swivels in the chair to face him, his hand on Henry's desk, and says quietly, "Everyone's leaving."
"You and Hawk could try two-player poker. Maybe it'll be easier to cheat." But Radar looks so desolate that Trapper squeezes his shoulder awkwardly and says, "Hawkeye'll be back later today. That's something, anyway -- not being alone with Frank."
The strident blast of the jeep's horn comes between them, separates them in the small room. Trapper grimaces and begins to turn away, mumbling about how it's been a pleasure, if anything in Korea can be called that. Radar's voice catches him at the door.
"Trapper, he won't understand. Hawkeye, I mean."
"No," agrees Trapper in a weary, muffled voice. "Of course he won't."
"Is there something I can tell him, uh, in your place?"
Again there is that curious garbled quality to Trapper's words when he says, "No, thanks." Radar rises from the chair and follows him a few paces, helplessly. A moment passes, and more distinctly, Trapper corrects himself: "Wait. Yeah, there is something."
Radar looks up as Trapper, the pulse leaping hard and round in his throat, closes the distance between them. He hesitates, dreading this surrender, wishing he were still drunk at least; then he tentatively rests one arm on Radar's shoulder, leans in, and kisses him on the cheek. The contact is cool, almost impersonal, but Trapper feels his hand trembling on Radar and the surprised stirring of Radar's eyelashes against his skin, and he knows that he is caught. It's a stupid fancy, but it seems as though somehow Radar, even as he shrinks back, dips into Trapper and recognizes with a blind man's impossible acuity the passing of those submerged shadows, that sliding change between light and dark as Trapper leaves some trace of himself in their touching. Radar pulls away in the next instant, and although the whole idea is ridiculous, one never knows exactly what is accessible to Radar.
The silence rings with a hollow sound that reminds him of Hawkeye's razor hitting the metal helmet in the half-light. Finally, Radar, blushing, says breathily, "Oh, sir, I can't give him that."
The second squeal of the jeep is shattering. Trapper, standing alone in the middle of the floor, drops his hand and says, "Neither can I."
* * * * * * * * *
That's the end of it: the single moment bright and lucid as a flare before numbness descends again. Trapper navigates like a somnambulist after he leaves Radar, so that when he wakes in a plane with his cheek cooling against the window, he doesn't know how long he's been there.
Through the glass, the Sea of Japan unfolds in ceaseless blue-gray, soaring without end beneath their wings. Henry's down there somewhere. The thought fills Trapper not with fear but rather with empathy, empathy for the leaden pressure of water settling in his chest, for the whiteness closing in, for that last pocket of oxygen suddenly imploding. For going home to the wrong place.
The reflection of his plane skims sleek as a gull over the blue. It is only upon seeing it that he can contain the whole of Korea in his mind, briefly, breathlessly; secondhand images in a mirror, obscure dreams racing in penumbra along the walls... Hawkeye just feet away, in the dimness that makes them unfamiliar and intimate.
It's early when Trapper leaves Korea and makes his way back to Boston, but the sun is high enough to cast a momentary imprint of his departure upon the Sea of Japan. In the morning gleam, he is no more than a shadow passing over water: swelling, spreading, and swallowed by the waves.
~Fin~
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