Chapter Text
“Oh, soldier? You forgot your purse.”
Corporal Klinger gives him such a look as he takes the purse and strides from Blake’s office that Sidney can barely hold on to his smile until the door closes between them. He braces his hands behind his neck and shakes his head up at the ceiling. The irony of the situation does not escape him, and it amuses him more than it used to. He’s learned to let it, to let himself laugh about it; indignation serves no one, least of all himself.
From the adjoining clerk’s office Sidney hears an upswell of voices, male, one in particular raised above the others in such an overblown parody of discontent that Sidney catches himself straining to pick out his words, to craft a narrative to go with this young man’s wail. It’s Doctor Pierce, he thinks, though he’d only been introduced to him in passing earlier in the day.
“I never thought it could happen to me – me! Do I look the type? Tell it to me straight, Henry, am I the kind of girl who gets left at the altar?” Sidney hears him say, and feels his eyebrows lift. If Klinger’s serious about a discharge he should leave off the dresses and start emulating the way this boy speaks.
“Oh, I, uh, I wouldn’t know, Pierce, I try not to listen to nurse’s gossip,” comes the CO’s more subdued response.
“Would you cut it out about your stupid girl problems, Hawk?” Another loud, rowdy voice, and Sidney stands up from Blake’s chair, picking up Klinger’s rejected file as the three men burst through the door.
“Oh, Doctor Freedman! I forgot you were in your office – my office – I hope we’re not intruding on your office time in my office, Doctor.”
Blake stumbles around his words, and the oft-mentioned office, as the dark-haired doctor – Pierce, Sidney was right about the owner of the first voice – goes directly to the liquor cabinet and pours himself a belt. “For my sorrows,” he mumbles, before tossing it back.
“Aw would you lay off?” The other doctor, McIntyre, throws Pierce an exasperated look and then stage-whispers to Sidney, “He has these problems like clockwork once a month. You know, women’s complaints.”
“Oh, they’re just joking around,” Blake interrupts with a nervous chuckle and a glare between the doctors that completely fails to be subtle. “Fellas, this is Doctor Freedman, the psychiatrist they called up here for Klinger.”
“Ohhh yes, darling Klinger,” Pierce croons. He’s already on the other side of the desk, seems to be the kind of body that’s in near constant motion. He lifts the box of his CO’s cigars and makes to pass them around. “Are we celebrating? Is he a she?”
Sidney lets himself look right at Pierce until Pierce notices he’s being scrutinized and is fascinated to see that the only notable reaction is a little flicker of self-satisfaction across his handsome, mobile face. Then he gives Sidney a big, theatrical wink and leans in close to tuck one of Blake’s cigars into Sidney’s breast pocket.
“There is nothing the matter with your Corporal Klinger,” Sidney says, retrieving the cigar and turning to offer it back to Blake. “He’s just a man who doesn’t want to be in the army. Unfortunately, that makes him saner than most of the generals I’ve met over here.”
“Well, gee,” Blake says, fiddling with his cigar. “That’s just really…well, I guess that’s just what it is.”
“In the immortal words of Henry Blake,” Pierce says with a grin and a wink that is, this time, for his fellow surgeon. Sidney watches the little group, quietly appraising, while Pierce continues to joke around with McIntyre and Blake carries on fretting about what he’s going to tell Burns and Houlihan.
“Yes sir, here Colonel!” calls out the little company clerk, bursting through the office doors at the same moment Blake turns toward them and continuing to speak over his CO. “Right away sir, I’ll alert Majors Burns and Houlihan and there’s a jeep just pulled up into the compound, yes sir I’ll fetch Captain Pak’s things to the VIP tent and tell him the conference will begin at 2200.”
“You’d better push it back to 2200, Radar,” Blake finishes, apparently unaware that Radar has already bustled right back out of the room after predicting every single one of his orders. Sidney is well aware that he’s gaping and doesn’t even care to try and stop. That was the most remarkable display he’s seen outside of a circus and he is delighted.
“Not a bad little party trick, eh, doc.” Pierce’s voice cuts through his whirling thoughts and Sidney turns to see the doctor smiling at him, big and warm and matched by the sparkle in his sky-blue eyes and Sidney finds himself smiling back even as he’s thinking suddenly, nonsensically, of Coney Island in the summertime, a glass of cold lemonade on a hot day.
“Come on, Hawkeye, let’s go get the game set up.” McIntyre pushes at Pierce’s shoulder, then tugs on his sleeve when Pierce doesn’t move.
“Hawkeye…” Sidney says quietly, watching Pierce, and he can feel that ice-cold glass, slick and smooth between his palms.
“Yo-o,” Pierce sings his reply, throwing in a limp-wristed salute for good measure.
“Would that be after the character in ‘The Last of the Mohicans’?”
The smile that transforms Pierce’s face is so broad and genuine it makes Sidney wonder how he’d mistaken the teasing expression of a moment before for the real thing. The laugh lines around Pierce’s eyes, which would speak to a life well lived on a man twice his age, crinkle and deepen and almost crowd out the blue of his irises. “Say, doc, do you play poker? We’ve got a nice little weekly game going and tonight’s the night. Stick around, we’ll have some laughs.”
“And some drinks,” McIntyre calls from the doorway, evidently done waiting for Pierce to follow. “If there’s any left for the rest of you after I drown my sorrows.”
“So you’ve read it? ‘The Last of the Mohicans’?”
“Can’t say as I have,” Sidney had said, ten years ago, to the boy perched on the barstool next to his with gangly legs folded up and his toes tucked under the footrest, knee bouncing, eyes darting around the room like he was looking for someone only to return to Sidney’s face every couple of seconds. “Is it a good book?”
The boy – Hawkeye – had shrugged and then grinned. “My dad loves it, so I guess I’m predisposed. He first read it to me when I was way too young, I remember my mom scolding him about it. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know how the story ends or a time when I didn’t love it.”
“Nice to have a nickname you feel so good about. Most people just call me ‘Sid’ and there’s not much latitude there to like it or not.”
Hawkeye had laughed and his knee stopped bouncing for a handful of seconds while he looked right at Sidney. “I want to thank you,” he said suddenly, the words bursting right out of him, and while he still had that big grin on his face his eyes were perfectly serious. “I don’t know how you spotted me but if you hadn’t, I don’t know if I would have got up the courage to come in here, and I came all this way just to…just to see.”
Sidney had ‘spotted’ him, to use Hawkeye’s word, loitering on the corner opposite the club, watching the people coming and going with a look of such furtive longing that Sidney had all but stopped in the middle of the street just to watch him. It was obvious at a glance that he was from out of town; there’d been a number of raids on this and similar clubs around the city over the summer, and no one who knew better would have been loitering like that, practically carrying a sign begging for a policeman to take notice.
“I picked it up a few years back,” he tells Hawkeye now, about ‘The Last of the Mohicans’. “On the advice of a friend. Good advice, too. It’s quite a story.”
Hawkeye grins and claps him on the shoulder, leading the way to the poker game.
They’re two hands in before Hawkeye starts sneaking looks at him like he’s trying to place his face. The third time he does it, Sidney gives him a wink. Caught, and caught off-guard, Hawkeye does what Sidney remembers he’d done so well even back then; he turns on the charm. Recounts a tale from their last game that has the other players in stitches and Sidney laughing along even if he only follows about half of it.
When Sidney’s glass runs dry Hawkeye pours him another and hands it over. “So where you from, Sidney?”
“Brooklyn.”
“Ah, truly one of the better boroughs. I spent many a happy day and night cavorting there in my youth. I remember this little gem of a nightclub—”
“The St. George?” Sidney asks, leaning forward under the guise of picking up his cards, speaking low enough that only Hawkeye, next to him, could have heard. Hawkeye hears, and chokes on his drink.
McIntyre – Trapper John – leans over and claps him on the back as he coughs but Hawkeye waves him off, croaking out, “Down the wrong pipe,” and holding out his glass for Trapper to refill. Sidney would almost feel bad about it if he didn’t catch Hawkeye aiming a small, delighted smile at him as he dealt out the next hand.
They’d never actually set foot in the Hotel St. George together, but somehow over the course of that long weekend it became a joke between the two of them. Hawkeye had been sure they wouldn’t let him in and Sidney had known that they would but been sure that Hawkeye wouldn’t like it. He’d taken him around to his favorite spots, instead, introduced him to his friends, watched as everyone they met fell in love with the young man on the spot, expecting at every moment that Hawkeye would slip away with one of them but he hadn’t. He’d stuck to Sidney like a burr in a wool sweater that first evening, a veritable fountain of good humor and limitless questions, until agreeing when Sidney said it was time to turn in and then looking crestfallen when he realized that Sidney hadn’t meant that as an invitation. Sidney had helped him navigate the subway and then walked with him to the corner across from the YMCA where Hawkeye had a bed for the weekend. With his hands in his pockets Hawkeye had asked, in a voice that said he’d already been let down one too many times in his short life, if Sidney really meant it and would meet up with him again the next day. He’d promised, and they did, spending Saturday afternoon at Coney Island drinking lemonade and flirting outrageously and by the evening there’d been no question that Hawkeye was coming home with him.
It’s well past any kind of civilized bedtime when the game breaks up, and Hawkeye ambles out into the night alongside him, waiting until all goodnights have been said before he sticks his hands in his pockets and lets loose the kind of full-watt smile that is probably illegal in this man’s army. “Buy you a drink, sailor?”
Sidney hums. “Where do sailors drink around here?”
“My tent, mostly, but it’s a little crowded in there. May I escort you across the street to Rosie’s Bar?”
“Lead on,” Sidney says, and they fall into step. In the ramshackle little bar Hawkeye pays for a bottle and ‘two glasses for the road’ before leading the way back outside, his long legs striding along the potholed path with an easy confidence even in the dark that Sidney finds very interesting.
“You bring all the visiting psychiatrists here?” he asks when Hawkeye bows him into a sheltered little spot, two walls and half a roof providing shelter from the road, obviously well-known and well-used.
“Only the cute ones,” Hawkeye tosses over his shoulder, setting up two folding chairs side by side and sprawling down into one. “So, doc, it’s been a while.”
“That it has.” Sidney settles in at his side and takes the proffered glass.
“I didn’t know you were a head doctor.”
“It’s not something I go around advertising in certain social circles. Hey, that’s not bad,” he adds, taking another sip of whatever’s in his glass.
“It’s only fair, cheers, last time we went out you treated me. I bet some guys might be worried you’d turn them in.”
“Some guys are, though most realize that it’d be pretty goofy for me to condemn others for something—”
“—something you also enjoy?”
Sidney smiles. “Yes, there’s that, too.”
“There’s something else?”
“Well, just the fact that while the current trend is to label homosexuality as a disorder, I’ve found nothing in my private or professional life to corroborate that.”
Hawkeye lifts his eyebrows, surprised. “No?”
“No. What’s disordered is when we ignore our inborn tendencies and preferences or, god forbid, try to change them. And what’s more, I believe that progress is inevitable. It’s not fast and it’s not linear, but positive change is inevitable.”
“Are you saying there will be peace in our time, Sidney?” Hawkeye asks with the sweet smile that Sidney remembers from all those years ago.
“I’m saying that I remain an optimist. Hey, how’s your father doing?”
Hawkeye beams. “Great! He’s great, thanks for asking. Oh, I suppose he’d be better if his favorite son weren’t stuck in Korea, but other than that he’s great.”
“Did you ever come out to him like you wanted to?”
Hawkeye groans and rolls his eyes, kicking his legs out long. “I did. And do you want to know what he said? Get this. So here we are, right, a fine summer afternoon in Crabapple Cove, he’s relaxing on the porch with his newspaper and after about five hours of stuttering I finally get the words out. And you know what he says?” Hawkeye arches his eyebrows and shakes his hands out in front of himself like he’s rustling a newspaper and says, pitching his voice deep, “Oh yeah? No kidding. Say, it’s supposed to be nice this weekend, how’s about we head up the Saint Croix and go fishing?”
Sidney laughs until his sides ache, and it’s the lightest he’s felt since his boots hit Korean soil.
They have another drink, or at least Hawkeye drinks while Sidney mostly turns the glass around in his hands. He thinks about the way Hawkeye had said, ‘Oh, I don’t really drink that much,’ ten years ago under a big beach umbrella on Coney Island, thinks about kissing the taste of lemonade from his lips afterwards, and shakes his head when Hawkeye offers another refill.
“Seeing you sure brings back a few things,” Hawkeye says like a confession, leaning back in his chair with his head tipped up to the stars.
“You too,” Sidney murmurs, and can’t help the smile that breaks out over his face when Hawkeye rolls his head to one side to look at him. “You’re one of a kind, Hawkeye. You were then and you are now. I’m glad to see that hasn’t changed.”
“Aw, shucks,” Hawkeye simpers but his eyes crinkle up with genuine pleasure.
“I’ve thought about you a lot over the years, if you believe it. Sometimes I regretted that we didn’t exchange addresses or even last names, and sometimes I was grateful we didn’t, that we could keep that weekend kind of…” Sidney cups his hands together, like cradling something precious and delicate and, more importantly, contained. “You were so…vibrant. I’d never met anyone quite like you. Such a free spirit but still so focused, the way you talked about your plans and your ambitions.”
“Yeah,” Hawkeye says, but then he sighs and pulls himself up in his chair and his expression turns almost somber. “I remember we talked about a lot of stuff, I talked a lot of bull, I know I did. About wishing I was already through med school so I could join up as a surgeon and help people. I was a baby. A baby with delusions of grandeur.”
“You had good reasons,” Sidney counters, and reaches over to clasp his shoulder, give him a little shake. “It was a difficult time to be…”
“It was a difficult time to be,” Hawkeye says when Sidney hesitates, and then reaches out, fingers gentle as they probe beneath the collar of Sidney’s shirt, disentangling the second chain from his dog tags and rubbing his thumb over the tarnished Star of David.
He’s breathing quietly through slightly parted lips and his eyes are fixed on what he’s doing so Sidney lets himself look at Hawkeye’s face, lets the memory roll through him. Hawkeye, naked and sleepy and sated, rolling onto his side with a smile and a joke that died on his lips when his eyes caught on the hollow of Sidney’s throat. How he’d reached up to lay one finger against the star and then lift it from its resting place. He can remember the way it felt, the little tug and bite of the chain against his neck, Hawkeye’s breath raising gooseflesh on his sweat-sheened skin and the tingle of guarded anticipation that broke under a wave of surprise when Hawkeye said quietly, “My mom was a Jew. But she died when I was ten so I don’t know what I am.”
He lays the star back against Sidney’s chest now, his hand lingering for a moment over his heart before it retreats. “I just wear an X on mine,” Hawkeye says, tapping his chest, making his dog tags clink against each other.
“No preference?” Sidney’s eyebrows go up. “That surprises me.”
“Father Mulcahy calls me a crazy agnostic but even that seems a little too specific for me these days.”
“Are you still wrestling with your feelings of guilt? Maybe you felt like you didn’t deserve to have that J stamped on your tags because you feel you can’t relate to what most of the other J’s have been through?”
“I’ll tell you what it feels like I don’t deserve and that’s the right to feel guilty in the first place. I mean, I know what I said back then during the war but I was…I mean isn’t feeling guilty about it a little self-involved?”
“You were living a safe life, passing as a Christian in an idyllic town in Maine while folks who could have been your mother were being slaughtered halfway around the world. Of course you felt guilty. I felt guilty, I still do. And angry. We wouldn’t be fully human otherwise.”
“If I’m being honest, Sidney, I think anger is the extent of my emotional range these days. If I’m not getting off with some nurse or drinking myself under the table or goading Trapper to join me in some insane plot to make our corner of the war just a little more livable, it’s all I can do to keep a lid on this…this constant rage. If the war doesn’t end soon I don’t know if I’m going to be able to… I don’t like it. I don’t like being this angry. I thought it used to make me mad when I heard a couple of guys calling each other fags and fairies. These days I almost think I’d find that relaxing.”
“Is that why you seem to be going out of your way to invite those terms on yourself?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean the way you joke around with Blake and McIntyre, you sound like…” Sidney shakes his head and laughs softly, he can’t help himself. “You talk like a pansy, and none of them bats an eye.”
Hawkeye gives a demure little shrug but he looks a little taken aback and Sidney quiets his amusement, waits him out. “I don’t know,” Hawkeye says after a minute, and then drains his glass again. He sounds like he means it – he doesn’t know. “I just…I just talk like I talk and I act like I act and around here we’re all just trying to stay alive so I guess nobody…” He blinks a couple of times and then looks up at Sidney, a small, incredulous smile toying at his lips. “You know I hadn’t thought of it like that before but this is probably the first time I’ve ever been someplace where as long as you’re not hurting anyone else nobody really cares what you’re doing. All the stuff that seems so important back home just kind of comes off as trivial over here, you know? Race, religion, sex…”
“Hygiene, privacy, recognizable food…” Sidney prompts when he trails off and Hawkeye repays him with a laugh that seems to echo up to the stars.
Hawkeye finishes Sidney’s drink and then he stretches, yawning so loud it probably gives away their position to the enemy. “We should head back,” he says, “before you have to carry me back. Don’t want my bunkie to worry.”
“Ah, yes. Your bunkmate,” Sidney says, getting up and then reaching down to offer Hawkeye a hand up. “How do you feel about him?”
“Ohhhh no, I’m not falling for that!” Hawkeye laughs, throwing an arm around Sidney’s shoulders and jostling him as they stumble back up the road.
“All good, Hawk?” Trapper mumbles as Hawkeye trips through the door of their tent.
“All good, Trap, go back to sleep. Here, Sid, this one’s for you.” And he actually goes and turns down the covers on the spare cot before collapsing fully-dressed into his own.
Sidney strips down to his undershirt and shorts, and falls asleep moments after his head hits the pillow.