InsaneJournal

MirrorM*A*S*H: part 1
This wasn't the kind of house Hawkeye liked to visit. It was Major Burns's pick, and Trapper said he'd been there before and it was fine: but Major Winchester stayed in the ante-room, sipping tea from a gaudy, fragile cup and looking down his nose at the furnishings, and Hawkeye was genuinely beginning to wish he'd stayed with Winchester.

The whores were in rooms off the hall: you could have any one whose door was open, and when you decided on your choice for the evening - or rather, for the hour - you closed the door behind yourself. It was a rational and efficient system, but not a friendly one.

Trapper and Burns had already chosen their rooms: Hawkeye picked one almost at random. The man lying on the bed sat up, and the lamplight lit his chest with gold. Hawkeye stared. Almost unconsciously he kicked the door shut behind him.

Gorgeous. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, solidly-built, light hair on his chest thatching downwards to his groin. Blinking at him with an expression of hopeful idiocy, but with a face and a body like that, you didn't ask them to be bright.

"Are they all like you, or do you come special?" he said out loud.

The man gave a sudden, huge start. His head jerked forward and he peered at Hawkeye as if - Hawkeye frowned - as if he were shortsighted. No glasses, of course. Curious now, Hawkeye came forward from the doorway, and as he entered the pool of light from the lamp, the man shrank back, looking horrified, looking fearful.

Maybe he was a specialist, of course, but for that there would surely have been a sign. Hawkeye sat down on the edge of the bed. He wasn't used to having whores stare at him as if he were their worst nightmare come true. "Hey," he said. "You speak English?"

The man nodded. He was clutching the thin sheets up to his chin.

"Okay, you savvy: Not going to hurt you, got it? We're going to have some fun. Me - " He tapped his chest, and pointed at the man. "No hurt you."

"Please don't," the man said out loud, in unaccented English.

"Hey, that's good," Hawkeye said. "Yeah. I'm not going to hurt you."

The man was still staring at Hawkeye with the same look of unbelieving horror. "Please don't," he repeated. His voice was trembling. "If - I can't explain, but it would be much - much easier for me if you chose someone else. Anyone else. Please. Tell them - tell them you didn't like the look of me."

"What?" Hawkeye stood up again. He'd liked the looks of this man, but it wasn't doing anything for his libido to be regarded as terror incarnate. "Sure. You get to pick your own customers, right? Even under this setup?"

The man shook his head and nearly laughed and really sobbed. His fists let go of the sheets they were clutching, and he put his face in his hands. "Please, Hawkeye," he said, in a muffled voice. "Tell them you didn't like the look of me - "

Hawkeye caught at his hands and pulled them away from his face. He stared at the man's face for a minute or so: he didn't recognise it, and would have been surprised if he did. It was just possible - not plausible but possible - that Trapper had mentioned his friend Hawkeye when he'd been at this house before, and that this man had put two and two together and figured out who the army captain must be - but what kind of yarn had Trapper been spinning to make this man terrified of the sight of him?

The bracelets on the man's wrists were not decorative, or not only decorative: they were held together by a solid steel chain. It was fastened to one bracelet with a solidly forged ring, led through the other bracelet, and down - Hawkeye pulled the sheet away - to a chain fastened to the shackles locking the man's ankles together.

[sketch by digitalruki - spoiler warning: don't scroll down further than the first sketch]

"You're a slave, aren't you?" Hawkeye asked. He didn't expect an answer, and got none. "God damn it, Trapper knows better than this! Are all the whores here slaves?"

The man was naked, but for the chains and shackles. He reached for the sheet, apparently intending to pull it over himself, but Hawkeye caught it and held it away from him. "Hey, you spoke English before, answer the question."

The man's hands fell back by his sides. "No," he said. in a small voice. "Not all of them."

"Okay," Hawkeye said. He dropped the sheet and took hold of the man's head, tilting it forward into the light. The slave ID number was tattooed on the nape of the neck - the man looked to be about Hawkeye's age, but the tattoo looked fresh and recent, easy to read. Hawkeye read it through silently, memorising it, and left.


Hawkeye had a certain amount left himself. He interrupted Trapper, and got the rest of his drinking money and his wristwatch. He borrowed the rest from Winchester, who insisted on the promise of an extortionate rate of interest. By the time Trapper and Burns had finished and come out into the anteroom, Hawkeye was done bargaining.

"We're heading back for camp," he told Trapper.

"Why?"

Burns looked sleepily indignant. He would pass out in the car.

"Ask Major Winchester," Hawkeye said, and went back down the hallway after the proprietor. The man was still sitting on the bed, sheets clutched to his chin. He looked, if possible, even more terrified than before.

"I've just bought you," Hawkeye told him. "Shut up," he added, though the man showed no sign of saying anything. The last thing Hawkeye wanted was to have to go into explanations here, or in the car.

In silence, the man cooperated with the proprietor, who was unshackling him - ankles first, then his wrists - and stood up from the bed, staring at Hawkeye, still silent.

"I'm taking a sheet to wrap him in," Hawkeye said.

"No," the proprietor said. "Sheets extra."

"I can't take him out of here naked."

"Clothes extra."

"Okay," Hawkeye said, and shrugged his jacket off. He was taller than the man, and it was just barely decent on him. Hawkeye buttoned it up for him, as he showed no signs of doing it for himself, and caught hold of his wrist. "Come on."


"You did what?" Trapper greeted him.

"Pierce, you have surpassed yourself," Winchester said.

"You're going to get in so much trouble for this," Burns said, wobbling a bit on his feet.

The man was shaking, and his pulse was racing. Hawkeye went past them all with a look of insoucience, keeping a firm grip on the man's wrist. As he'd thought, deprived of an explanation, they followed him.

There was a quick round of who's-most-sober on the sidewalk outside, won - or lost - by Winchester. They folded Burns, who was all but asleep on his feet, into one corner of the back seat, and Trapper got into the front passenger seat. Hawkeye pushed the man into the middle of the car, and got in himself. closing the door with relief: it was cold enough at night that he wanted his jacket. Trapper turned around and stared at the man, hunched and trembling. "Why'd you do it, Hawkeye?"

"Let's get back to camp, okay?" Hawkeye said. Winchester started the jeep without comment.

Trapper reached out one hand - the man flinched back, but Trapper's hand followed - and cupped the man's chin, lifting his face into the light. He whistled. "Sweet God, he's gorgeous. You know the Colonel's going to make you get rid of him, don't you? Can I have a go on the way back?"

"I cannot prevent the two of you from polluting the air with discussion of your disgusting ardours among the unwashed," Winchester said, "but if I may point out the obvious: I am driving, and there will be no stopping to let either of you indulge yourselves with this - this creature."

"The Colonel let Radar keep pets," Hawkeye pointed out.

"Yeah, if he could fit them into a rabbit hutch," Trapper said. He was still eating the man with his eyes. "There's no way you could shove this one in there. Anyway, you owe me: you borrowed all my drinking money for the next three days and a perfectly good wrist-watch. I get first dibs."

"No way - " Hawkeye reached out to shove Trapper's hand away " - you owe me, okay? You'd been there before, you should have warned me it was a slave house. You know I hate that."

There was a loud snort of laughter from the front seat. "Pierce, that would sound infinitely more convincing if you were not at this moment in possession of your own slave. Or rather, since I loaned you the main part of the cash to buy the thing, in part-ownership of your own slave. If I had the slightest interest in it, which I do not, I would point out that my loan was significantly larger than the trivial amount you sponged from McIntyre. So if anyone gets 'first dibs', it would be me."

"No one gets dibs," Hawkeye said.

The man turned around and seemed to burrow in against Hawkeye's side, wrapping his arms round Hawkeye and burying his face against his uniform shirt. It was a wholly unexpected and oddly touching gesture, especially as Hawkeye could still feel the man shaking, and not, he thought, with cold. Hawkeye put his arms around the man and said again, "No one gets dibs, okay?"

The drive back to camp took hours. Hawkeye dozed part of the way: he slept and woke and slept again. Whenever he woke, the man was clutching him firmly, pressing tightly against him. At one point he woke to find that Major Burns had fallen over against the man and was handling him - and, since he was doing it in his sleep, Hawkeye too - with a kind of moronic persistence. Hawkeye pushed him away to the other side of the jeep, and he flopped against the door and went out again.

Trapper and Winchester were talking, too quietly for Hawkeye to hear. At no point did Hawkeye ever get the feeling that the man had gone to sleep. He started tense and he stayed tense.



No one had expected them back that early, and at five in the morning, with no incoming wounded, there was no one but the sentries to see them get in. Major Burns was poured into his bunk, Major Winchester collapsed into his, and Hawkeye and Trapper retreated to the Swamp with the man. "I tell you what," Trapper said. He fell on to his cot and started to heel his shoes off.

"What?" Hawkeye was tired enough without dealing with Trapper's sense of humour.

"You need to make sure he's dressed before he sees the Colonel in the morning." Trapper kicked off the second shoe. "He's got nice thighs, but I don't think the Colonel's gonna appreciate them."

Hawkeye muttered. The spare cot in the corner was used for visiting physicians who didn't qualify for the VIP tent. He steered the man to it and pushed him in. The man went down easily, staring up at Hawkeye with wide blue eyes.

"Okay," Hawkeye said. "Look, just stay there. Okay." He went across the tent to his own bunk.

"Aren't you going to make sure he doesn't run off?" Trapper asked.

Hawkeye turned around. "Hey," he said to the man. "Don't run off. Because if you do, you're likely to get shot. Okay?" he added to Trapper.

"Okay," Trapper said. "Don't forget if he does get shot, you still owe me my money. And my watch."

TBC...

To part 2