(no subject)
Title: Sober Man
Author: zekkass
Requested by: spankmonkeyjack
Fandom: MASH
Prompt: Trapper, Stateside, dreaming of the 4077.
Pairing: Trapper/Hawkeye
Spoilers: No specific ones, but set after Trapper leaves the 4077th.
---
To start, he isn’t wearing the dog-tags. Louise tucked them away, and he didn’t ask for them back.
-
“Stop writing me.” That’s the only thing Trapper is getting, from the absence of letters. He can - could - read Hawkeye, could tell when he was dropping a girl, or keeping her, or when he was serious at all.
Now all he’s getting from the silence is the repeated tick of the needle on a Dear John record. (Hawkeye will never send it, nor a letter. He’s not that kind of guy, and at one time Trapper liked that.)
Now he doesn’t know if he should stop writing, keep writing, or call. In the end, he simply gives up and eventually stops sending the letters.
There are no letters, no calls, asking what happened to him.
---
“Who is it?” Louise is suspicious, as always, and he glances up from his magazine, surprised.
Since when does his wife ask, except when she has proof?
“No one you know.”
“She’s from Korea, then?” She crosses her arms. “One of the nurses?”
“No. I left them all there.” A slight admittance, and she might just drop his case.
It sounds like he’s lying, sort-of. Or not. He left a lot behind, when he left the war, and in ways he is a different man, simply because he took off those dog-tags.
“I think you’re lying, Trapper John.” She knows he isn’t. It’s just that she can’t/won’t drop the lingering fight. He’s been away from too long, and now, even though he’s here, he isn’t here completely.
Trapper lifts the magazine again, deliberately ignoring her.
She almost, almost slaps him, but instead she storms out.
Before the war they were suspicious but loving and good together.
Now, here, in America, she doesn’t know what to do, and the suspicious side of things is reigning. He isn’t the man she loved, and she knows he knows that.
---
The truth came out late at night, when he wasn’t drunk (never touched a drop, anymore - stuff never tasted right) and when she was.
“It isn’t a she, is it?” The scandalous thought of it! - it fit her husband too well. Louise was just drunk enough to get it right.
“No.” He was still reading a magazine, and she was washing dishes tiredly. The radio pattered out a stream of nonsense news, and the kids were asleep.
She nodded once, and finished the last dish quietly.
Trapper didn’t look up until she walked over.
“It was the letters.”
“Yes.” For a sober man, he was finding it harder and harder to react. Here, in bright, shiny America, he wasn’t quite living. Without the edge of fear he had lived with for so long -
“React, damn you!” She was the one screaming.
He gazed up at her. With her blonde hair, she didn’t look a bit like Hawkeye.
One outburst, and she left. Upstairs, downstairs, back to the table. With an angry screech, she throws his dog-tags on the table.
“The army got you, Trapper John, and you aren’t the man I married. Get out.”
He rises, not looking at the dog-tags. He is honestly concerned, but he can’t quite reach for the panic. “The kids - “
“You don’t know them. They aren’t yours. Take your tags and go, army-man.” They argue for long moments, for the first time since he got back, and he puts on the tags and feels free, and after it all he feels alive. Hawkeye, in his mind, is obscured behind the clank of the tags and the feel of his wife’s fingers on his side.
It doesn’t take her long to accept him back.
(Nor does it take long before she starts leaving a Bible open to Leviticus on the kitchen table.)
-
When a call finally does come, and when Hawkeye’s voice reaches out for him, saying Hello, Louise says wrong number and hangs up.
---
Author: zekkass
Requested by: spankmonkeyjack
Fandom: MASH
Prompt: Trapper, Stateside, dreaming of the 4077.
Pairing: Trapper/Hawkeye
Spoilers: No specific ones, but set after Trapper leaves the 4077th.
---
To start, he isn’t wearing the dog-tags. Louise tucked them away, and he didn’t ask for them back.
-
“Stop writing me.” That’s the only thing Trapper is getting, from the absence of letters. He can - could - read Hawkeye, could tell when he was dropping a girl, or keeping her, or when he was serious at all.
Now all he’s getting from the silence is the repeated tick of the needle on a Dear John record. (Hawkeye will never send it, nor a letter. He’s not that kind of guy, and at one time Trapper liked that.)
Now he doesn’t know if he should stop writing, keep writing, or call. In the end, he simply gives up and eventually stops sending the letters.
There are no letters, no calls, asking what happened to him.
---
“Who is it?” Louise is suspicious, as always, and he glances up from his magazine, surprised.
Since when does his wife ask, except when she has proof?
“No one you know.”
“She’s from Korea, then?” She crosses her arms. “One of the nurses?”
“No. I left them all there.” A slight admittance, and she might just drop his case.
It sounds like he’s lying, sort-of. Or not. He left a lot behind, when he left the war, and in ways he is a different man, simply because he took off those dog-tags.
“I think you’re lying, Trapper John.” She knows he isn’t. It’s just that she can’t/won’t drop the lingering fight. He’s been away from too long, and now, even though he’s here, he isn’t here completely.
Trapper lifts the magazine again, deliberately ignoring her.
She almost, almost slaps him, but instead she storms out.
Before the war they were suspicious but loving and good together.
Now, here, in America, she doesn’t know what to do, and the suspicious side of things is reigning. He isn’t the man she loved, and she knows he knows that.
---
The truth came out late at night, when he wasn’t drunk (never touched a drop, anymore - stuff never tasted right) and when she was.
“It isn’t a she, is it?” The scandalous thought of it! - it fit her husband too well. Louise was just drunk enough to get it right.
“No.” He was still reading a magazine, and she was washing dishes tiredly. The radio pattered out a stream of nonsense news, and the kids were asleep.
She nodded once, and finished the last dish quietly.
Trapper didn’t look up until she walked over.
“It was the letters.”
“Yes.” For a sober man, he was finding it harder and harder to react. Here, in bright, shiny America, he wasn’t quite living. Without the edge of fear he had lived with for so long -
“React, damn you!” She was the one screaming.
He gazed up at her. With her blonde hair, she didn’t look a bit like Hawkeye.
One outburst, and she left. Upstairs, downstairs, back to the table. With an angry screech, she throws his dog-tags on the table.
“The army got you, Trapper John, and you aren’t the man I married. Get out.”
He rises, not looking at the dog-tags. He is honestly concerned, but he can’t quite reach for the panic. “The kids - “
“You don’t know them. They aren’t yours. Take your tags and go, army-man.” They argue for long moments, for the first time since he got back, and he puts on the tags and feels free, and after it all he feels alive. Hawkeye, in his mind, is obscured behind the clank of the tags and the feel of his wife’s fingers on his side.
It doesn’t take her long to accept him back.
(Nor does it take long before she starts leaving a Bible open to Leviticus on the kitchen table.)
-
When a call finally does come, and when Hawkeye’s voice reaches out for him, saying Hello, Louise says wrong number and hangs up.
---