Chapter Text
BJ’s shaking Hawkeye awake. It’s still much too dark for his eyes to be functional, but he cracks one open regardless, with the intent to glare but accomplishing only a vacant sort of gaze.
“No,” he says thickly.
“Yes,” BJ says, gently tugging the corner of his blanket down. “Go on.”
Hawkeye rolls over, saying some choice unintelligible words into his flat, scratchy, very inviting pillow, but his mutinous legs pull him up off the mattress of their own accord.
“He’s doing alright,” BJ reports, sounding just about as weary. He pulls his stethoscope off his neck and tosses it into Hawkeye’s lap. “He’ll probably still be asleep. Hadn’t woken up by the time I left.”
“He’d better wake up after your handiwork.”
Hawkeye’s mastered the art of getting his pants over his feet without opening his eyes. He waits til BJ’s lab coat is inevitably thrown at his face to stand, barely tugging it on, while BJ falls into his bed without undressing.
He leaves without saying anything, rubbing no sleep whatsoever from his eyes. It’s 0150, BJ’s been in surgery since 2300, Hawkeye’s been in bed since 2310, and the nurses since 0000. No matter the lineup, he finds it unfair.
The camp’s silent and cold, and the walk to post-op is too long, but when he pushes the door open to be blinded by the fluorescent lights, he can hear low voices, speaking calmly and steadily, and it nearly lulls him back to sleep. When the bright yellow-white strain fades from his eyes, he realizes it’s only one voice. It’s not coming from his bed, which is occupied by the sleeping, anesthetized form of BJ’s patient, but two beds down and one across, where someone else is awake and being spoken to quite soothingly by Father Mulcahy.
Mulcahy looks up, and he smiles. He’s still in uniform, and he’s got a book on his lap, open to almost the very last page. He sings, “Oh, hello, Hawkeye,” like it’s not the middle of the night.
“Morning, Father,” Hawkeye says hoarsely. He trudges to the other patient, trying to make sense of what BJ’s scrawled on his chart. “Don’t mind me,” he adds over his shoulder, when he notices they’ve stopped talking altogether.
“Not at all. We’re nearly done, here,” Mulcahy says gently; when Hawkeye looks over, the soldier he’s reading to is drooping to his side. Hawkeye offers them an amused smile, or he thinks he does, anyway, he’s not sure that he physically formed it.
The patient, Pvt. Daniel Kimball, 24, five-foot ten, 180 pounds, snoozes peacefully in his cot, blissfully unaware of just how many stitches BJ’s meticulously weaved into his posterior abdominal wall. When Hawkeye lifts the bandage, it’s already pink, but barely, like he’s so far under that his body’s forgotten to bleed. BJ’s work is painstakingly thorough for someone who hasn’t slept in 20 hours. Hawkeye would be annoyed if he had the energy.
Mulcahy continues his reading, and his voice is like white noise behind them, soft and pleasant and hypnotic enough to Hawkeye’s ears that he’s almost got to grip the bed frame to remind himself not to fall asleep standing up. He still couldn’t tell you a word Mulcahy’s said so far, though; he doesn’t even notice when he’s finished, until he hears Mulcahy’s boots squeaking across the floor.
“Night, Father,” he says drowsily, letting the pages he’s tried to read three times now flutter back to their clipboard.
Mulcahy appears next to him rather than at the exit, startling him. “I could watch him,” he says politely, holding his hands, and the book, behind him. “If you need. You’re tired.”
Hawkeye smiles, too tired to argue or feel self-conscious or whatever he’s supposed to do when Father Mulcahy, Agent of God feels compelled to serve his fellow man.
He shakes his head. “No, no. Beej’d have my head if I went back to bed.”
“Lay down in here, then,” Mulcahy suggests. “You look exhausted.”
“I’ve been exhausted for a year. You’re the only one here without your name on a chart.”
“I was staying with Roy.” He gestures to the soldier now snoring up against the wall behind them. “I really don’t mind.”
“You’re already first in line for salvation, teacher’s pet.” Hawkeye reaches for the crystalloid IV hanging over Kimball’s bed, tightens it, reducing the flow a bit. Kimball will probably rouse himself within the hour, if he’s hydrated enough to produce anything for the bedpan, and as tempting as it sounds to leave that for Mulcahy to deal with, he’s not keen on whatever spiritual fallout might plight him from it, if any. Either way, certifiably, it isn’t Mulcahy’s duty.
“God offers salvation freely,” Mulcahy’s telling him brightly.
“Good, ‘cause I’m broke.” Hawkeye pulls the stethoscope off, but instead of unbuttoning Kimball’s shirt, he presses it to his own chest. “Oh, damn. I’m still here.”
“Hold on,” Mulcahy says. He tosses the book on the adjacent bed, like collateral, and disappears out the door.
All Kimball’s vitals are unalarmingly boring, so Hawkeye allows himself to at least sit on the bed next to him, but with the fight to remain upright. He glances at the book Mulcahy’s been reading from. It’s in Latin, Hawkeye’s got no clue how anyone can tell what it says. Maybe Mulcahy just makes the shit up. He watches the IV drip ever so slowly, and it’s so quiet he can almost hear it, and just as he’s about to curl up and use the fluid bag as a pillow the doors open again.
Mulcahy offers him one of two steaming little mugs he’s holding. “Cocoa,” he says, “with coffee in it. Well. I think it was cocoa.”
The exhaustion filters out Hawkeye’s need to feel any liability. He just feels a bit less cold. “You make a good nurse, Father.”
Mulcahy grins and returns to the other patient’s side, book in one hand, mug in the other. He folds his legs on his cot and starts the entire book over for himself.
By the time Kimball wakes, it’s 0300, and he hardly even opens an eye, forms a word, groaning and trying to roll over and groaning louder when he realizes he can’t. He doesn’t do much else, lets Hawkeye check him out and help his muscles choke down a bit of morphine before he slides right back into whatever state of drowsiness he’s been suspended in for longer than Hawkeye cares to think about.
He’s about to ask Mulcahy what kind of prayer he should use to thank the powers-that-be, but when he turns to the other bed, he sees Mulcahy’s nearly given up on his book in favor of kicking back and letting his eyelids flutter. Hawkeye feels a little bit of relief that he doesn’t need to say anything after all.
He edges over to Mulcahy and the other patient quietly and pulls the chain dangling from the lightbulb over the bed. The room is basked in near darkness, save for the light just outside the window. A stark, rusty sort of glow settles across the ward.
Mulcahy’s eyes suddenly open again, surprised, but when he looks up at Hawkeye, he collects himself. “Oh,” he says softly. “Thank you.”
“You’re gonna sleep here?”
Mulcahy nods. “I’d prefer to be awake, but I might be getting a bit too old for this.”
“Father, I can watch him til the nurses get here. He’s doing fine. Take a break. Go to bed.”
Mulcahy shakes his head firmly. “Roy’s lost one of his friends. He didn’t want to be alone.”
Hawkeye checks his chart. Leroy Bayley Jr., 22, five-foot eight, 159 pounds. All he’s got is a busted-up tibia and a twisted ankle, not bad, but maybe just enough to get him a discharge, or at least a few weeks at Tokyo General. He wonders what the other guy got. He wonders what Mulcahy knows. It’s enough to keep him shivering in post-op all night. Then again, knowing him, he’d do the same for a paper cut.
Mulcahy won’t raise his voice much higher than a whisper, so Hawkeye mirrors it. “I guess we’re at an impasse.” He lets the chart dangle again, watching it spin slowly in a perfect little circle.
Mulcahy smiles, like he knew they would be. “I could grab more coffee.” He looks down at his hands. “Or a deck of cards.”
Hawkeye considers. He’s just delirious enough to say, “Or both.”
“Ah. Both it is.”
When nurses Baker and Mitchell arrive promptly at 0400, they find Hawkeye and Mulcahy have quietly pushed two of the patients’ beds together in a makeshift Texas Hold ‘Em tournament that’s hushed, but far from over. If Margaret had been on the roster, the sight alone would’ve cost Hawk his relief from his shift. She’d never believe it was all Mulcahy’s idea — Hawkeye nearly doesn’t, himself, and he was the one helping to carry the cots.
You’d think Mulcahy to be a holy man of a few too many vices, but in Hawkeye’s humble opinion, trotting back to his church of a tent with a hat full of money won while performing his heavenly duties is just a way of balancing it all out, isn’t it? Hawkeye can’t exactly throw stones. He’s a bit sad for it to end, really, though he’s tired of feeling mildly tense without anyone else conscious around.
“Thank the big guy for me,” Hawkeye tells him, smacking his terrible hand down for Mulcahy to see.
Mulcahy rolls the cotton balls they’ve been betting from the center of the blanket to his side. “Believe me,” he says, rather wily, “He should be thanking you.”
Hawkeye stands, stretches, and then frowns. “You know what? This isn’t over. Come by the Swamp tonight, I’ll assemble my troops.”
“Certainly,” Mulcahy says. “Be sure to get them up to speed with how badly you were losing.”
Hawkeye’s just awake enough to remember not to cuss at a priest. “Night, Barbara Stanwyck. Thanks for keeping me on my toes.”
“Goodnight, Hawkeye.”
As Hawkeye departs, teeth chattering in the night winds, he hears Mulcahy begging to help the girls with the linens, and the way he speaks to them sounds like someone’s captured sunlight in a bottle and dumped it in his coffee. The scales level out eventually.
“Ladies,” Winchester announces, loudly shuffling the cards like he’s tapping a glass to get his crowd’s attention. “The next inhabitant of a full house is responsible for the financial reimbursement of R-and-R trips for the rest of us.”
BJ eyes the cards he doles out in front of his neatly-stacked chips, brow raised. “I’d watch your words.”
“Shut up, Beej.” Hawkeye fans his cards out happily in front of his nose. “I, for one, would whole-heartedly welcome a Winchester-sanctioned Tokyo tryst.”
“Please,” Winchester says, not sparing either of them a glance. “I won’t be bringing either of you.”
“For that to work, you’d have to make peace with several proclivities very quickly,” Hawkeye says, which earns him a pretty good laugh, even from Mulcahy.
“Now, now, you are talking about Chuckles,” BJ says, elbowing Hawkeye in his side. “I think we’d all be surprised.”
“Hm. Perhaps I will take you after all,” Winchester tells him.
“Really?”
“Not a chance.”
“I stand corrected.” Hawkeye slides his bet across the tabletop. “In all of American militant history on foreign soils, there’s yet to be an R-and-R trip that’s, well, not unquestionable.”
Then he uncertainly peeks to his side, at Mulcahy, but he’s got just enough gin and common sense in him to double down. “Hm, no, I bet you get up to some wild shit, too, Father.”
“I’ve never gone,” Mulcahy replies.
BJ looks up from the poker chips he’s stacking. “Never?”
Mulcahy shakes his head. “I fold.”
They lay down their cards and Hawkeye’s the one to scoop up all the chips, incredulous. “You’ve been here longer than me.”
“You’re the chaplain!”
Mulcahy shrugs. “They’ve stopped offering.”
“They don’t have to offer, you’ve got to fight for it.” Hawkeye doles out the messily-shuffled cards, not taking his eyes off Mulcahy.
“Yeah, only with as often as you like to go,” BJ interjects.
“I deserve it.” Hawkeye jerks his head in Mulcahy’s direction. “So does he. Really, never?”
“Never.”
Hawkeye’s aghast. “Have you ever been to Tokyo?”
“Twice,” Mulcahy says, examining the cards he then holds to his chest. “Once, when I was being stationed, and one time— that was for the orphanage. Both were quite a while ago.”
“So, no fun had, then,” BJ says.
“You think making sacrifices for foreign orphans is no fun?” Hawkeye ignores the cards he’s dealt himself, and shoves his whole pile of chips at Mulcahy. “Take this, and tell Colonel Potter you need a day off.”
Mulcahy laughs. “Raise or fold?”
“Call.” Hawkeye slides his bet from Mulcahy’s new pile to the middle of the table. “I mean it. No wonder you’re so uptight.”
Mulcahy pushes the chips back towards him, but after an apparent second thought, takes two back for his bet. “No, my son,” he says lightly. “That’s the Catholicism.”
BJ’s trying politely not to laugh but he fails the moment Winchester snorts, and Hawkeye slaps him on the back a little harder than necessary, leaning over in his chair.
“Do you want me to ask?” he presses Mulcahy. “‘Cause there’s no way Potter would ever turn you down. I think he can’t, legally. As in, spiritually-legally—“
“Hawkeye, I don’t even know what I’d do there.”
“Take a load off!” Hawkeye exclaims. He tosses his cards down on the table in disbelief, displaying his whole hand. “I mean, I wouldn’t expect you to get up to… ‘mischief’ — not that I think you can’t — but even just to sit in a hotel for a few days? Have a real shower, with knobs and warm water?” A look spreads across his face that’s both dreamy and a little sad. “Father, you’ve got to.”
Mulcahy, to his credit, looks more disbelieving than uninterested. “But what if somebody needed me here?”
“I’ll have Radar wire them to the hotel,” Hawkeye says determinedly. “You can have communion sent by room service.”
Mulcahy laughs again, but it’s simple and cordial, hypothetical. “Very funny.”
He’s about to tell Hawkeye to pick up his mess of a hand, which Winchester’s already placed a bet on, but BJ cuts in, managing to draw his always-rapt attention.
“Father, we’re all needed here. But we’re also all human, and humans aren’t particularly meant for…” BJ gestures to the tent walls, which roughly translates to the whole camp in general, “All day, every day. It’s okay to let yourself take a breather.”
Mulcahy watches him curiously as he speaks, the corner of his mouth curling up ever so slightly. “I suppose I’m not of much use here, anyways,” he says, and his tone doesn't quite match his face.
“What?” BJ starts, but before he can say anything further, Hawkeye scoots his chair out from between them in a rush.
“C’mon.” He tugs decisively on Mulcahy’s jacket. “We’re going to Potter.”
Mulcahy instinctively hunches over his cards, like Hawkeye’s trying to look at them. “Hawkeye, no. I. Well, I’m all in—“
Hawkeye leans to his other side and peeks at BJ’s hand before BJ snatches it childishly away from his eyes. “You’d lose. Come on. This is for your own good.”
Mulcahy turns with the intent to glare at him, but when he looks up, he just shakes his head, lays his cards down gently, and rises obediently from his seat.
“Aw, gee, Father, I think you should go,” Radar tells him brightly, dropping files into the filing cabinet in Potter’s office, alphabetically, seemingly without looking. “It’s loads of fun. And that’s from one, uh, you know… ‘nice’ guy to another.”
Mulcahy can’t help but smile widely as Hawkeye demands to know why he’s not considered “nice.” “Thank you, Radar. I suppose we’ll find out shortly whether it matters.”
Radar darts off, out the double doors, and they’ve barely swung closed when he’s returned, with two more armfuls of paperwork and Colonel Potter in tow. Hawkeye hears Mulcahy swallow audibly. He grins.
“Padre!” Potter booms. “How the hel— heck are ya?”
Mulcahy straightens up, removing his hat, and smiles half-heartedly. “I’m quite well, Colonel, thank you—“
“Yeah, yeah,” Hawkeye horns in, waving his hands impatiently. “We have an important question.”
“He’s got an important question,” Mulcahy corrects.
“It’s regarding an R&R reservation—“
Potter smacks one of the piles of folders down onto the desk particularly loudly, startling both nervous Mulcahy and Radar, buried in the filing cabinets. “Pierce, not a day goes by that I’m not rejecting your God-blessit forms. Don’t I have enough paperwork?”
“Not for me!”
Potter glances between the two and a grin spreads across his face. “Padre,” he says, his rough voice suddenly rather warm, “You’re ready to leave the nest?”
“It’s not exactly my idea,” Mulcahy mutters, eyes fixed on the floor. He clutches his hat between both his hands, huddles it to his front.
“Pierce was due for a good one.” Potter takes his seat, leaning forward over the mess of paperwork that Radar periodically plucks a sheet from. He motions for Mulcahy to sit. “I’ve been tryin’ to get you to go for… How long we been here?”
“I...” Mulcahy’s bending folds into the brim of his hat. “I would hate to disappoint the unit, is all.”
“I think the only way you could do that would be to endorse Truman for Pope,” Hawkeye says.
Potter ignores him and beams at Mulcahy, genuinely pleased. “I just can’t believe it took you til now to wave the white flag. You’ve got to teach me how to come about that level of self-discipline.”
“The army, sir.”
Potter chuckles, but Mulcahy still looks rather uncomfortable, so he prods, “What is it?”
“I’m just…” Mulcahy tries nonchalantly to pull himself out from where he’s slid deeper down into his seat, “not entirely sure I’d really like to go.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Hawkeye asks abruptly.
“No, Pierce,” Potter starts, but Hawkeye ignores him, crouching down to settle eye-to-eye with Mulcahy.
“I’m serious. We’d have fun. I mean, I’d force you to have fun, and then you’d have some fun. Father, I know you know how to have fun.” He searches Mulcahy’s face for any semblance of desire for the idea. “Going alone without the intent of visiting several brothels might be a bit of a drip, wouldn’t it?”
Mulcahy laughs despite himself, and he lays a hand on the arm Hawkeye’s got on the chair. “Thank you, Hawkeye, but I really don’t think…” He looks from Hawkeye to Potter. “Would we… I mean, we couldn’t both be gone, could we?”
Potter looks ruffled by the idea until Mulcahy looks at him for just a moment too long, and something in his face flattens a bit. “Suppose it’s not unheard of,” he says, and then adds, “Under the right circumstances, of course,” directed at Hawkeye.
Mulcahy blinks. His unease suddenly re-settles. “Really?”
“We were just saying, he doesn’t really do anything,” Hawkeye says. “Neither do I. So what’s the worst that can happen?”
Potter glares at Hawkeye, glances at Mulcahy, and then turns around to Radar, like the other two are no longer in the room. “Well, what d’you think?”
Radar, confused that Potter would bother to include the fly on the wall, stammers quickly, “Oh, oh, well I, uh— Father definitely shou— Given that the front lines have got the leeway, which I think they have, uh, on account of the Chinese defenses not shoring up, not yet anyway, but I can make a few calls to I Corps just to be sure, if you want, ‘cause Father, you should really go!” He watches Potter watching him, like he’s expecting something else. “I mean, er, I’d offer to go with you myself, but, well…”
“We’d die without you,” Hawkeye finishes for him, eyeing the four separate open filing cabinets.
Potter smacks his desk again with the heel of his palm. “Well, then, Padre, I think you should go,” he declares. “Go ahead and take Pierce with you. Maybe you’ll knock some sense into him.”
“Or vice versa,” Hawkeye says cheekily, shooting up and clapping Mulcahy’s shoulder. “Oh, Father, this is gonna be the hootenanny to end all hootenannery.”
Mulcahy’s eyes dart through every person in the room until he settles for a half-bewildered, half-helpless smile. “Thank you, Colonel.”
“Be nice to him,” Radar tells Hawkeye sternly. “Really, Hawkeye.”
“I’ll treat our father like a prince,” Hawkeye says. He squeezes Mulcahy’s shoulder tightly. “Sherm, you just let us know when and we’ll beat feet.”
As they emerge from the office into the dim, waning light, Hawkeye can’t help but notice that the spring in Mulcahy’s step doesn’t quite match his own.
“Hey, Father,” he says, slowing a bit to fall in line with him, “I was joking about you not doing anything. Just, by the way.”
“I know,” Mulcahy says.
“‘M serious. I mean, Roy can attest. They’re gonna miss you around here.”
Mulcahy doesn’t look at him. “I know.”