ifeelbetter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ifeelbetter) wrote2010-12-10 12:23 am
ifeelbetter) wrote2010-12-10 12:23 am
Holiday Post #9: M*A*S*H*, BJ/Hawkeye + cider
Title: Old Acquaintance
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ifeelbetter
Disclaimer: I own nothing of value.
Summary: Hawkeye thinks back on BJ and Korea and finds the memories not nearly as painful as they once were.
Notes: Tiny thing of concern: I remember something in Coleridge's journal about a lemonade recipe that required fricking barrels of rum but I have no memory of where it was or any other details. I am not going to go research this because that would be (a) weird and (b) faaaar too much like work. But trust me: STC loved him some rum.
Allscreamlet asked of me was that BJ not have his scary pornstache. And...it's screamlet, y'all. I feel compelled, on behalf of the internets and joy, to come through for her. And she immortalized my city, guys. The least I can do is pretend BJ was never incepted* to grow a mustache.
* OBVS, no one would come up with that idea naturally. I think this, right here, was the idea-bug Cobb was thinking of when he phrased the mind-biz in such creeptastic terms to Ariadne. He was thinking of your 'stache, BJ. Yeah, I'm looking at you.
There came a point, just like everyone promised him there would, where Hawkeye could think about Korea and not cringe with his soul. There even came a time--and they'd told him this one too but he'd always laughed at the absurdity of it--when he'd feel this odd twinge of nostalgia for something. He'd smell bleach and think of the lighter-fluid they pumped out of that still or that time he ended up in SoHo by accident and he could have sworn one of the pairs of broad shoulders under mink and chiffon was Klinger and--just for a second--he'd miss Korea.
Those moments made sense, in a way. He was a lonely guy in his old age (he liked to say you could be either not lonely or sane but you couldn't be both) and he'd never made connections in civilian life like those ribcage-to-ribcage, iron-core-to-iron-core connections he'd made in the 4077th. Nothing had compared and nothing had lasted.
So Christmas of 1972 was spent under a tree in his dad's backyard in Crabapple, Maine. There was snow a good foot or more deep all around him, but Hawkeye didn't care much. He was fixated by the one branch directly above him, as green as a thing with "ever" in its title ought to be, and the way the sun was making the snow glitter like something rare and precious. It wasn't, of course. It was completely common and--in the technical sense--completely worthless. No one seemed to have informed it, though.
He'd said he'd never see BJ again. He'd said it and he'd been shouted down. But it had been true.
Why was he thinking of BJ, he wondered. Something about that branch.
It didn't hit him until after he'd stood, dusted the snow off, and grabbed the flask from where it had sunk into the snow.
It was the smell of apples, the smell of the cider in his flask.
* * *
* * *
But the cider just made the rest of the day the slightest bit off. For the first time in over a decade, he half expected to find Korea around every corner. He'd done this bit right when he got home, back in '53. He'd ducked at loud noises, gone running towards anything that sounded like an intercom (even in the grocery store and airports), and just generally shown the world his bleeding wounds, the tracks of his "service."
He'd gotten over it, too.
This time was different, though. It was like the years had been carefully compartmentalizing those memories of Korea into Good and Bad. He spent all day spooling through the Good and hoped--really hoped--he wouldn't have the revisit the Bad in his dreams that night.
It was funny how much of what was Good was BJ. He'd always assumed, when he'd let himself think it, that it was Trapper who'd leave the ache behind. He'd just assumed it.
But Trapper--good though he was--wasn't what made the Good tinged with a hungry ache.
Trapper wasn't who he realized suddenly he'd missed for almost twenty years. Missed and missed and never said a word.
* * *
* * *
Hawkeye picked the book off his dad's shelf--the house still felt like his dad's even though it had been Hawkeye's for so many years--and opened the cover.
S. T. Coleridge's Journal, vol. VII.
He'd kept it, of course. They'd told Charles that it was "lost" and that they'd never even seen it to begin with. No one had bought it, but no searches had turned up anything incriminating and it eventually went into the giant expanse of Things They Got Away With. So Hawkeye had flown out of Korea with it tucked in his bag, a testament to what they had been when.
He flipped to the page with the lemonade recipe. He was surprised at how easy the book opened to the page. His list was still there, tucked into the crease of the book. BJ must have slipped it in later.
Goodwill for a man. Just for me, it said. BJ had drawn a dinosaur underneath it. It could have been a signature too. No one could read BJ's chicken scratch.
He took the book over to his desk and found a piece of scrap paper.
Apples, lemons, let's not discriminate according to genus. Yours, Hawk, he wrote on the scrap. He closed the book around the note--BJ might not even remember it, might not even look for it--and wrapped the whole thing in brown paper. He tied it down with twine that he had to search every drawer in the desk for.
He knew BJ's address. He'd always known it, wherever BJ might move. They sent Christmas cards, that had always been Hawkeye's excuse. You have to know an address for something like that.
But he had to look up Radar's every year. And he had to dig through old letters and make a couple of calls when he dropped Hotlips a line. And he never sent anything to Trapper.
But BJ's he knew by heart.
* * *
He got a tiny parcel two weeks after he mailed the book. It was a bottle of apple cider, carefully wrapped. The box said "FRAGILE" in big, scrawly letters.
Yours, was all it said on the card. No name, no message.
That was when Hawkeye picked up the phone. His hands shook a little when he dialed the number, but he couldn't stop the silly grin from spreading across his face.
Author:
ifeelbetterDisclaimer: I own nothing of value.
Summary: Hawkeye thinks back on BJ and Korea and finds the memories not nearly as painful as they once were.
Notes: Tiny thing of concern: I remember something in Coleridge's journal about a lemonade recipe that required fricking barrels of rum but I have no memory of where it was or any other details. I am not going to go research this because that would be (a) weird and (b) faaaar too much like work. But trust me: STC loved him some rum.
All
screamlet asked of me was that BJ not have his scary pornstache. And...it's screamlet, y'all. I feel compelled, on behalf of the internets and joy, to come through for her. And she immortalized my city, guys. The least I can do is pretend BJ was never incepted* to grow a mustache.* OBVS, no one would come up with that idea naturally. I think this, right here, was the idea-bug Cobb was thinking of when he phrased the mind-biz in such creeptastic terms to Ariadne. He was thinking of your 'stache, BJ. Yeah, I'm looking at you.
There came a point, just like everyone promised him there would, where Hawkeye could think about Korea and not cringe with his soul. There even came a time--and they'd told him this one too but he'd always laughed at the absurdity of it--when he'd feel this odd twinge of nostalgia for something. He'd smell bleach and think of the lighter-fluid they pumped out of that still or that time he ended up in SoHo by accident and he could have sworn one of the pairs of broad shoulders under mink and chiffon was Klinger and--just for a second--he'd miss Korea.
Those moments made sense, in a way. He was a lonely guy in his old age (he liked to say you could be either not lonely or sane but you couldn't be both) and he'd never made connections in civilian life like those ribcage-to-ribcage, iron-core-to-iron-core connections he'd made in the 4077th. Nothing had compared and nothing had lasted.
So Christmas of 1972 was spent under a tree in his dad's backyard in Crabapple, Maine. There was snow a good foot or more deep all around him, but Hawkeye didn't care much. He was fixated by the one branch directly above him, as green as a thing with "ever" in its title ought to be, and the way the sun was making the snow glitter like something rare and precious. It wasn't, of course. It was completely common and--in the technical sense--completely worthless. No one seemed to have informed it, though.
He'd said he'd never see BJ again. He'd said it and he'd been shouted down. But it had been true.
Why was he thinking of BJ, he wondered. Something about that branch.
It didn't hit him until after he'd stood, dusted the snow off, and grabbed the flask from where it had sunk into the snow.
It was the smell of apples, the smell of the cider in his flask.
"You know that's a recipe for lemonade, right?" BJ said. It wasn't intended as dissuasion. Nothing BJ said was every really intended to dissuade Hawkeye. He made token gestures of dissuasion but he pulled in along side any antics that might be afoot before long.
"Let's not discriminate according to genus," Hawkeye said wryly. "I like to think my father didn't raise a bigot."
"You're right. Apples, lemons, it's all one to the great melting pot of the U.S. of A.," BJ agreed. He pulled the book closer. "This isn't even a recipe."
"Not as such, no, it's more of a...diary," Hawkeye said.
"This is Charles's copy of Coleridge's journal," BJ said. "It calls for three barrels of rum."
"We're going to need more rum," Hawkeye said, surveying his materials. He had, currently, sixteen apples and a still. "Scratch that, we're going to need a new recipe."
"I bet we can preserve the apples until they ferment," BJ suggested. "Like the still but with fewer moving parts."
"I knew you were a genius under all that hair," Hawkeye said, grabbing at BJ's head and pressing a kiss to his forehead.
"I knew I had a genius under here somewhere," BJ agreed, grinning.
It always felt like sails filling with air when they got their bearings straight and were off on an adventure.
But the cider just made the rest of the day the slightest bit off. For the first time in over a decade, he half expected to find Korea around every corner. He'd done this bit right when he got home, back in '53. He'd ducked at loud noises, gone running towards anything that sounded like an intercom (even in the grocery store and airports), and just generally shown the world his bleeding wounds, the tracks of his "service."
He'd gotten over it, too.
This time was different, though. It was like the years had been carefully compartmentalizing those memories of Korea into Good and Bad. He spent all day spooling through the Good and hoped--really hoped--he wouldn't have the revisit the Bad in his dreams that night.
It was funny how much of what was Good was BJ. He'd always assumed, when he'd let himself think it, that it was Trapper who'd leave the ache behind. He'd just assumed it.
But Trapper--good though he was--wasn't what made the Good tinged with a hungry ache.
Trapper wasn't who he realized suddenly he'd missed for almost twenty years. Missed and missed and never said a word.
"Cider?" Hawkeye asked, clipboard in hand.
"Check." BJ flourished the bottle. It was coated in duct tape. They weren't scientists, but they'd decided that was what one did when one wanted something to ferment.
"Christmas tree?"
"Check." They had really done it that year. They'd taped toilet paper rolls together and used Charles's socks--the Christmas wool ones--unraveled to give it the appearance of an evergreen. And then they'd decorated it with Hotlips's earrings collection.
"Holiday cheer?" It wasn't on the list, but Hawkeye liked to dot his i's and cross his t's. Well, occasionally he liked to. For novelty's sake if nothing else.
"Check and check," BJ said, grinning widely. "The extra check for the extra goodwill towards men."
"I knew this list was missing something," Hawkeye said, scribbling "goodwill" into a margin. "Is that to all men or any men in particular?"
"Maybe it's just to you," BJ said. Hawkeye let himself glance up, meet BJ's eyes for just the slightest of seconds, before they agreed silently that it was a joke.
"I get all the goodwill," Hawkeye said, making another note. "Just me."
Hawkeye picked the book off his dad's shelf--the house still felt like his dad's even though it had been Hawkeye's for so many years--and opened the cover.
S. T. Coleridge's Journal, vol. VII.
He'd kept it, of course. They'd told Charles that it was "lost" and that they'd never even seen it to begin with. No one had bought it, but no searches had turned up anything incriminating and it eventually went into the giant expanse of Things They Got Away With. So Hawkeye had flown out of Korea with it tucked in his bag, a testament to what they had been when.
He flipped to the page with the lemonade recipe. He was surprised at how easy the book opened to the page. His list was still there, tucked into the crease of the book. BJ must have slipped it in later.
Goodwill for a man. Just for me, it said. BJ had drawn a dinosaur underneath it. It could have been a signature too. No one could read BJ's chicken scratch.
He took the book over to his desk and found a piece of scrap paper.
Apples, lemons, let's not discriminate according to genus. Yours, Hawk, he wrote on the scrap. He closed the book around the note--BJ might not even remember it, might not even look for it--and wrapped the whole thing in brown paper. He tied it down with twine that he had to search every drawer in the desk for.
He knew BJ's address. He'd always known it, wherever BJ might move. They sent Christmas cards, that had always been Hawkeye's excuse. You have to know an address for something like that.
But he had to look up Radar's every year. And he had to dig through old letters and make a couple of calls when he dropped Hotlips a line. And he never sent anything to Trapper.
But BJ's he knew by heart.
He got a tiny parcel two weeks after he mailed the book. It was a bottle of apple cider, carefully wrapped. The box said "FRAGILE" in big, scrawly letters.
Yours, was all it said on the card. No name, no message.
That was when Hawkeye picked up the phone. His hands shook a little when he dialed the number, but he couldn't stop the silly grin from spreading across his face.