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Most of the stuff Hawkeye and Trapper told Henry about what they got up to in Tokyo didn’t approach the truth. So what? It was fun to razz the guy, and they’d be losing their image if they admitted they spent most of their limited time in Tokyo wandering around markets, getting massages that didn’t actually end more happily than they were required to by law, and having the kind of slow, lazy joining in their hotel room that there was never enough time for at camp, not to mention the lack of privacy.
Trapper lit up in Tokyo. He was bright and cheery enough at the MASH, always a big, crooked smile for Hawkeye just when he needed it, but it was a different kind of lightness when they weren’t in constant danger. He was the Trapper John McIntyre there that Hawkeye liked to believe he was at home—still quick with a joke, still a total lech, still looking at Hawkeye like he’d hung the moon, but with an air about him less like he was doing all that because the only other choice was to lay down and die and more like he actually believed that good things could happen. He threaded his fingers into Hawkeye’s belt loop—the closest they could get to holding hands—while they were pressed nearly against each other to stay out of the way in the street, or smiled lazily at him across a table in a ramen shop, or grabbed his arm to drag him down the street to watch a parade with stars in his eyes. He watched so intently at a tea house, asking question after question about everything from the names of utensils to the best kinds of matcha to what each step in the ritual was for, that Hawkeye was honestly starting to worry they might end up the first customers to ever get kicked out of a tea house for being too enthusiastic.
Hawkeye put in for plenty of his own shenanigans in Tokyo, of course. They ate the best food they could get their mouths on, tangled together under the sheets in a king-sized bed, chatted with any local who could speak English about what they did for a living and how badly they wanted the war to be over. They caught a stray dog just to take the splinter out of his paw. Hawkeye insisted they separate for a little while at an outdoor market to find presents and could barely keep his excitement under wraps about the matcha set he’d bought for Trapper until they got back to camp, especially considering Trap couldn’t very well hide the tote bag full of hand-spun yarn he’d found that would kill a good few hundred hours of boredom while being turned into a sweater.
Trapper kissed him for the matcha utensils right in front of Frank, though considering it was on the cheek rather than the lips, they got away with it with only a little sneering and a comment about degeneracy. Trap’s tongue stuck out from between his lips as he took a closer look at everything in the plain black box: the bowl with a fish painted on it and the matching tea caddy, the little bamboo spoon for scooping tea, and the whisk that Hawkeye sure as hell hadn’t understood the instructions about how to keep clean.
It was a special treat to get it out, the same way anything that wasn’t provided by the Army was a special treat. Hawkeye managed to identify quickly enough that Trapper went for the matcha when he needed something to cool his brain. A rough patient, a rare shouting match with Frank, a letter from home that reminded him his girls were growing up without him. He’d get out the set, go sit in a quiet corner of the mess tent, and make tea with the kind of dedication and attention he usually only put to surgery or making it good for a nurse. He didn’t talk to Hawkeye, if Hawk insisted on coming with—only occasionally and silently offered a sip. He came into making tea with furrowed brows, every muscle pulled tight, hands sometimes trembling slightly, and drained it all out of himself with every practiced motion. It was an ability that Hawkeye envied. If there was any ritual out there that would calm him so thoroughly, he’d never stop doing it.
Hawkeye never suggested that Trapper get out the matcha to calm down, no matter how riled he was. No matter how rough the patient. He’d given it as a gift, which meant it wasn’t his place to try to enforce when it was used.
Some patients were rougher than others.
He had to do something when he found Trapper in the VIP tent with the prisoner who’d killed his patient. But there was nothing to do. Nothing that would bring Trap’s patient back, at least, which was the only thing that would fix the anger threatening to boil over.
“I’m sorry, Hawk,” Trapper mumbled as Hawkeye guided him out of the VIP tent, breath shaky. “I dunno what came over me, I just… I just thought that– if I could do something, y’know, I could…”
Trapper turned away from Hawkeye when he dipped in to look him in the eyes. “Trapper, look at me.”
Trapper took another hitching breath and wiped his eye with the heel of his hand, making a visible effort not to be caught crying. “I don’t wanna hurt nobody.”
“You didn’t.”
“Only ‘cause you stopped me!”
The optics were bad, standing around in the middle of camp and shouting while Trapper struggled not to cry. Hawkeye fumbled to find somewhere that wouldn’t be inappropriate to touch him if they were caught and landed on putting a hand on his shoulder. “Go wait in the mess tent for me, alright?” he murmured.
Trapper huffed. “I’m not hungry.”
“Neither am I, but let’s not tell the cook. Go on.”
A little nudge was all it took to get Trapper headed in the right direction, still scrubbing at his eye like he could dam the tears inside if he tried hard enough. Hawkeye waited until the mess tent door clattered shut behind him before going to the Swamp, finding the key Trap kept under one of the bigger pieces of the still, and opening Trap’s footlocker.
He was careful to avoid disturbing anything where he could. The damn thing looked a mess—letters from Trap’s girls strewn everywhere, Hawaiian shirts unfolded in one corner, the box of matcha supplies somewhere in the middle beneath a half-full bottle of scotch and on top of his once-pressed dress uniform—but Trap was meticulous about his mess. He could find anything in his corner of the Swamp in just a few seconds, provided Frank hadn’t been playing spymaster for some General. Hawkeye extracted the box of supplies, turned the bottle of scotch so it wouldn’t leak all over Trapper’s dress uniform, and made off for the mess tent with it tucked under his arm.
Trapper had his head resting on the table, buried under his arms, in his usual misery-handling booth in the corner. Hawkeye set the box down just un-gently enough to make it clank to pull Trapper’s attention.
Trapper blinked at him over the fold of his arm. “Told ya I’m not hungry.”
“Do you have to be for tea? Teach me how, come on.”
“What?”
“I got you this wonderful present, and you haven’t even proven to me you know how to use it!” Hawkeye argued. He started to climb in over the bench, thought better of it, and went to fill a mug with water from the kettle. “It seems to me, fella, that that’s not a particularly useful thing to do with a present.”
“You’ve watched me make tea plenty,” Trapper mumbled, barely audible through wood and fabric and flesh. Hawkeye momentarily considered grabbing him by the hair to make him lift his head, but that wouldn’t look great to Igor and his nurse friend in the opposite corner.
“Yeah, well, I want to learn how.” Hawkeye set the mug of water in front of Trapper, waited in vain for a few seconds for him to do something with it, and started unboxing the supplies himself. “Trapper, if you don’t look at what I’m doing, I’ll pour everything in that mug over your head.”
Trapper, reluctantly, shifted so his chin was propped in one hand. There were bags under his eyes that Hawkeye didn’t think had been there an hour before, though they were less obvious than they might have been with red rimming to distract from them. Trap’s curls were pressed to his forehead and beneath his nose was red and raw.
Hawkeye had never seen him cry before. He supposed he still hadn’t.
He wondered what kind of a childhood a guy must have had to cry completely silently.
“What are we doin’, Hawk?”
“Making tea, but you have to show me how.”
“You should report me to Henry.”
“Why? You didn’t do anything.”
“I was gonna,” Trapper snapped. He took the matcha bowl when Hawkeye pulled it out of the box and scraped it along the table to spin it between his hands. He sniffled once, wiped his nose on his shirt cuff, and winced at the rough fabric against raw skin. “You hadn’t stopped me–“
“So you’ll get me back eventually,” Hawkeye interrupted, easing out the little whisk on its drying rack as carefully as he could so he didn’t break any tines. “Tit for tat. You go crazy and I stop you from hurting anyone, I go crazy and you stop me from hurting myself.”
“You’re saner than the rest of us,” Trapper grumbled. He poured about half the water from the mug into the matcha bowl, let it sit for a few moments, and dumped it out on the floor to make a little patch of mud next to their table. “You’re the one who keeps us from goin’ nuts.”
“How’s that?”
Trapper shrugged and reached across the table to yank the box of supplies to himself before Hawkeye could take out the tea caddy or the spoon. He fiddled with the utensils, running his thumb over the bend in the spoon, and carefully wiped it off on the hem of his shirt before setting it on the likely-filthy table. “You’re like a canary.”
“Oh, good, I’ll be the first to drop dead when we get gassed.”
“C’mon, Hawk, you’ll hold out longer than the rest of us.” Trapper opened the lid of the tea caddy, held it over the bowl, and portioned out two scoops of powder, holding his breath so he didn’t spill any with an ill-timed exhale. “Somethin’ bad happens, mostly I just lie down and take it, y’know?”
Hawkeye had to bite his tongue to hold back a comment about what he’d just found Trapper doing, but he didn’t miss the pointed glance from Trapper that reminded him to keep holding it.
“Took it when it was just me and Frank and Oliver,” Trapper huffed. “Let him say nasty shit to Ollie that you put a stop to the second you got here. Took it when Louise got pregnant. Took it when my sister died and my old man blamed me ‘cause he didn’t have no-one else to blame.”
Trapper poured the rest of the water from the mug into the bowl, as slowly as he could, and took a ragged breath as he picked up the whisk. “But you, you don’t take a lickin’ sitting down, y’know? You– you scream and fight and make sure everyone knows somethin’ bad’s happenin’.” Trapper scraped the whisk along the sides of the bowl, freeing the powder that had gotten stuck, and started a zig-zagging motion back and forth. “You’re good to us. You keep Henry’s head outta his ass and me from doin’ impulsive shit I’d regret the rest’a my life.”
“We don’t do impulsive things?”
Trapper chuckled, mouth going crooked at one corner. “Oh, we do plenty’a impulsive shit. Just not the kind that sticks with a guy.”
A few more whisks back and forth, bringing the tines closer to the surface, before Trapper slowed to a stop and rotated the whisk to remove it, then set it back on the drying rack. He turned the bowl so the fish design was facing Hawkeye and slid it across the table. “Happy?”
Hawkeye took the bowl, warming his hands on the sides. “I thought you were gonna show me how.”
“What the fuck did I just do?”
“You didn’t explain it!”
“Drink your goddamn tea,” Trapper said through a laugh. “You don’t finish it, we’ll hafta tell Henry you don’t appreciate the accommodations.”
“I think if I don’t finish it, it’s a slight against the man who made it.”
“Yeah, but it’s funnier to blame the old fart who’s in charge.”
There was a little bit of spring back in Trapper’s step as he went to rinse the matcha whisk with more water from the kettle. His eyes were still red-rimmed, but he no longer looked distressed. Hawkeye waited to take a sip until Trapper was looking at him again, closing his eyes to savor the rare taste of something good.
The bench creaked as Trapper sat back down. He put away the supplies Hawkeye wasn’t still using as carefully as organizing an instrument tray, nestling every item exactly into its place with slow, controlled breaths.
Hawkeye took one more sip before wiping his mouth and pushing the remaining half of the tea to Trapper. “Drink some.”
“You’re the one who asked me to make it for ya!”
“But it’s your present!”
Trapper rolled his eyes but took the bowl, keeping the design facing Hawkeye rather than turning it back to himself. He was silent for a moment as he ran his thumb over the rim, a smile showing only in his eyes as he brushed over where Hawkeye’s lips had rested. “Thanks, Hawk.”
“For what?”
“You know what,” Trapper said with a grin. “Sing me some tunes, canary.”