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1.
One moment Trapper’s lips are at his glass, the next they’re on Hawkeye’s mouth. It’s so sudden that when Trapper lets go and they’re both swaying out of each other’s immediate orbit, anchored only by their asses still planted on Trapper’s cot, Hawkeye squints at him and asks, “How drunk are you?”
Trapper knocks back the last of his martini and smiles like he’s got a good secret. “Drunk enough.”
He’s barely even wobbly, or maybe Hawkeye just wobbles in precise harmony. Hawkeye will take that, either one. He’s never been able to resist a good mystery, least of all if it comes wrapped in easy wit and curly hair and dexterous hands.
*
2.
They tumble out of the officer’s club and Trapper grabs his sleeve and pulls him around to the back of the building and kisses him wild and hot like lightning in the cool of the shadows, and then Trapper leans back just enough that they both go cross-eyed trying to look at each other and says very seriously, hands still holding Hawkeye pinned to one of the only moderately sturdy walls in town, “You taste terrible.”
Hawkeye pretends – hopes to God he’s pretending – to melt into Trapper’s arms. “Aw, you smooth talker. You know just what to say to a guy.”
Trapper kisses him again and doesn’t say anything at all for a while after that, but his tongue and teeth and hands do scores of talking. With every point he makes, Hawkeye can’t help but agree wholeheartedly.
*
3.
You don’t get drunk at a poker game unless you either have been or want to be fleeced, but there’s no reason to hold back after, when your fellow players have dispersed and the supply tent happens to be blessedly empty. It’s child’s play to smuggle a pitcher of gin across the compound, and if anyone drops by to visit the rats and happens upon more human men than expected, Frank’s snoring coming from the Swamp provides a deafening explanation for why they had to relocate.
There are other advantages to leaving their actual supplies behind for a tent that purports to carry such. “This is our last olive,” Hawkeye says. Won’t find any of those around these parts. There’s a box, safely stashed under Hawkeye’s bed back in the Swamp, that carries a monopoly on green olives from red China.
Trapper is lounging across a stack of crates like a very large wildcat in a yellow housecoat that happens to know how to sip a martini glass. He doesn’t seem particularly distressed by the news. “How will we cope without?” he asks, loftily. “Martinis with no olives? That’s barbaric.”
Hawkeye doesn’t rise to that, too intent on plucking the skewer from his drink. “Wanna share it?” he asks, maintaining eye contact with Trapper while he takes the olive between his teeth. It’s the oldest trick in the book, but between them it’s new.
Trapper grins, wide and wicked, and leans in.
*
4.
Frank has granted them the gift of invoking a three-day pass for himself, and if that isn’t a reason to toast, nothing is. Which is why it’s particularly worrying that Trapper seems to be lagging behind almost as soon as they get started.
“Hey, come on. This is a party.” Hawkeye drains his glass and gestures at Trapper to follow suit so they can get going on the next refill. “If you leave me to drink alone, I might start to think I have a problem.”
But Trapper doesn’t follow. He gets up from his cot and sets his full glass aside and sits down next to Hawkeye and leans in and- “I’m drunk enough.” A hand slips onto Hawkeye’s khaki thigh. “Are you?”
Hawkeye looks at Trapper’s hand and Trapper’s mouth and Trapper’s eyes, and it’s been a long, long time since he regretted a second drink. It’s never happened once since he came to Korea. “Perpetually,” he quips, because he’s just buzzed enough to admit it, just clear-minded enough to know it.
When Trapper’s lips touch his, he’s not sure if Trapper got that the way he might have meant it; not sure if he wants him to. There’s a fine line between humor and heartbreak.
*
5.
Hawkeye stands just outside the shower cabin, hair dripping too slow, world spinning too fast, heart and stomach and assorted entrails pooled on the floor around his feet. He can still feel Radar’s furtive warm lips on his cheek. He can see it, see the truth of this new Trapperless reality in Radar’s shifty look.
Hawkeye’s head pounds, and the first thought it rams into his brain is this: that’s both the first and the last time Trapper McIntyre has ever kissed him while sober.