Summer in the City

by rosiesbar

Part 7 of my 'In all kinds of weather' series. Boston, June 26th 1952. The hottest day of the year. Having been discharged from the army and dismissed from their jobs as surgeons, the boys have been struggling to make ends meet, and have been forced to sell Hawkeye's apartment. They have just moved into a cheap rented room downtown and are trying to survive a heat wave. Slash.

Boston, June 1952

Trapper groaned and rotated his pillow for the fiftieth time in an attempt to find the cool side. Damn, he was sweltering! The temperature had hit a hundred degrees today, and the battered old 1920s ceiling fan that was whirring away noisily above them wasn't doing a damned thing.

Beside him, Hawkeye was sprawled out naked like a sacrificial offering to the gods in a desperate prayer for rain, and taking up more than his share of the bed.

Well, it wasn't really a bed so much as a mattress on the floor. Just as the room they had just begin renting couldn't really be called an apartment, but it was all they could get in such a rush.

Hawkeye's old penthouse had sold quickly, a prime investment opportunity to somebody who had the cash to splash around fixing the place up and footing the repair bills. It was helped on its way by the fact that Hawkeye was in so deep with his mortgage lender that he was willing to take an offer well below the market value just to keep the bailiffs off his back. They'd had to move fast, and, as they had predicted, most landlords did not look too favourably upon housing a pair of unemployed former draftees, especially two whose military discharge papers read as little more than an innuendo for homosexuality, stamped with an Army crest. With only days to go before they had to be out, they'd found this place. It was a dive, and the neighbourhood was rough, but it was the only place willing to take them. They had paid an oversized security deposit and signed on the dotted line.

The building had once been lavish and extravagant – some sort of hotel – but at some point in the earlier part of the century, its rooms had been sold off and its larger entertainment space carved up into smaller units. The ground floor now served as a casino, where late night revellers and cabaret shows would now keep Hawkeye and Trapper awake into the small hours.

The space they called their own was nothing more than one single, if reasonably sized, room – a third of what had once been the ballroom, judging by the ornate crown moulding which bordered the ceiling in one corner – with a cheap kitchen installed at one end and a shared bathroom in the corridor. The fittings were antique, the drapes faded and musty, and the closet had a slight hint of mildew, but there was a large full length pair of French windows that opened out to the city, with a low set of black railings that were just perfect for leaning on and enjoying the night air. Those windows were now flung open, the once-white voile wafting in what little breeze there was.

The room had no furniture when they had moved in, and they had sold much of their old possessions to pay off various debts, but faced with little choice, they had to make do. Hawkeye had danced about the empty room as if it was still a hotel ballroom, and had made some noise about home furnishings and décor. The next day Trapper had found a table and three chairs – none of which matched – in a thrift store, and Hawkeye had found his own contribution to their new home: a mattress. The one they were now lying on.

It had been propped up in the dirty stairwell at the back of the building – the main route of entry or exit for the residents of this part of the building – and Hawkeye had hauled it up the stairs and down the hall single-handed.

"It's disgusting," Trapper had said, finding the whole idea of sleeping on someone else's cast off mattress utterly abhorrent.

"Oh, like the floorboards are much better!"

"I bought a rug!"

"I bought a mattress cover, and disinfectant!" Hawkeye had tossed his newly-acquired bedding down triumphantly. "Enjoy your floor."

"Enjoy the many bodily fluids of strangers!"

Despite his playful taunting, Trapper had awoken half way through that night with a pain in his back, and had, eventually, succumbed to the need for comfort and crawled into in the makeshift bed. It hadn't bothered him so much after that.

Now, it was the heat that was bothering him. He rotated his pillow again and punched it. "This is unbearable."

"Take off your shorts." The comment was made with exactly the tone and expression Trapper would expect. Hawkeye had, of course, stripped down to his birthday suit as soon as they had completed their emergency run the grocery store for ice and cheap popsicles, while Trapper had preferred to retain some decency.

"With you around? I'll get eaten alive. An' it's too warm for that."

"I'm not being filthy! I'm serious, take your shorts off. It helps."

Reluctantly, Trapper peeled his shorts off and dumped them on the floor next to his empty glass and three popsicle sticks. Hawkeye was right – it did make a difference – and he sighed with relief at the arrival of a most refreshing breeze around his nether regions, but not before glancing over towards the French windows to check nobody could see in.

"Nobody's looking." Hawkeye seemed to read his mind. "Trapper, you're such a… Oh! That's heaven!" Trapper turned. He wouldn't have been entirely surprised if Hawkeye was doing something obscene. But, no - he had grabbed a handful of ice out of his drink and was massaging his own face and neck with it.

Trapper eyed him enviously. "Gimme some!"

Hawkeye gave him a look that would have been sultry, were he not bright pink and sweating profusely. "You mean the ice or…" He wiggled his eyebrows Groucho-style.

Snatching a handful of ice, Trapper copied his technique, shooting Hawkeye a look. "You're unbelievable. You know that?"

They lay there for some time, making the most of the ice and the breeze and idle, summer conversation. It was strangely liberating lying naked in the breeze from the window, no sheet over them, nothing sexual about the situation. It was just… pleasant.

"Hey, Trap?"

"Mm?"

Hawkeye's hand brushed his. "Are you happy?"

Trapper didn't quite know how to respond. He blinked at the ceiling a couple of times before a nervous laugh escaped him. "Oh, Jeez! Why you gotta ask me these things when my brain's meltin' outta my ears?"

"Because I'll get an honest answer that way."

Turning his head, Trapper was met with appealing blue eyes and the hint of an imploring smile. A smile that said 'humour me'. It was not a smile he could lie to. He returned his gaze to the ceiling, where stains of damp were blooming in great yellow circles on the cracked and ancient plaster. "I gotta admit, Hawk – this ain't exactly how I pictured my life turnin' out."

He knew this probably wasn't exactly what Hawkeye wanted to hear, but he also knew Hawkeye was fishing for honesty, not compliments. "I know what you mean," was the quiet, thoughtful reply. "What was it that you pictured?"

Trapper shrugged. "The usual – you know."

"No, I don't." Hawkeye pondered his answer, addressing the ceiling, his fingers swirling in delicate patterns along the back of Trapper's wrist. "See, I never pictured my life turning out any way in particular. I always knew I wanted to be a doctor – except for the summer of nineteen-twenty-four when I wanted to be a beaver – but other than that… I just never knew. I was a 'seat of the pants' kinda guy, you know? Live for the moment, seize the day. I never planned to get married; kids were those things that were fun to play with until they started screaming, and then you handed them back to their parents and hit the bar."

"Really? You never wanted a family? Never planned to settle down or nothin'? I mean, before…"

Hawkeye shrugged. "Not really. Nearest I got was…" A sorrowful expression flickered across his face and he dropped his gaze. Even now, the memory stung. "Carlye Breslin. Now, that was a disaster! I fell into a relationship at the worst possible time in my residency, worked myself half to death, screwed it all up, moved out, bought an overpriced apartment on a whim and… well, you know the rest."

Trapper smiled. "I do. But I'd kinda like to hear it from your point of view."

Smirking, Hawkeye rolled closer. "Well, then I went to Korea… and I met this real handsome specimen of a doctor…"

"Oh you did, huh?"

"A married man, no less!"

"Scandalous!"

"And I fell head over heels in love with the cocky little devil. And then I lost my career and my apartment and I'm currently living in a sweatbox! You really think I had any of this planned?" Hawkeye rolled onto his belly, propped up on his elbows and gazing adoringly at his still-married man. "How about you? I know your marriage was… something of a shotgun affair, but…"

Trapper chuckled – partly at the thought of five-year-old Hawkeye wanting to be a beaver, and partly at the thought of his own childhood. "Oh, my folks had it all figured out."

There was a hint of bitterness in his voice, and Hawkeye glanced at him. Just as he rarely mentioned Carlye, Trapper rarely mentioned his parents, except for the fact that they stopped speaking to him once Louise had announced the reason for his discharge from the army. Hawkeye had already formed something of an opinion on Mr and Mrs McIntyre, and it wasn't too favourable. He figured from Trapper's tone that they were about to go down even further in his estimations. "Oh, they did, huh?"

Trapper went on: "We were a poor family; they had a bright kid. All those A's on my school reports were nothin' but dollar signs to them. They knew what they wanted for me, an' I didn't get no say. I ought'a be grateful, they told me: I got extra classes, the best tutor they could afford, an' on top of that they got me playin' football three times a week – because the only way some poor kid from the slums was gonna make it into the Ivy Leagues was if he got a scholarship."

Hawkeye frowned. He hadn't given much thought to Trapper growing up in poverty. His estranged family were rarely spoken of, and neither was his background, unlike Hawkeye who could barely get through a conversation without waxing ecstatic over the beauty of Crabapple Cove. "They were proud though, right?"

"I don't know about proud. My dad never stopped findin' somethin' to be disappointed over." He rolled his eyes, chewing in his lip. "Do you know," he murmured, squeezing Hawkeye's hand, "how much of my life I spent tryin' to impress people? I worked hard so my dad wouldn't beat the snot outta me! I boxed in high school because the other kids looked up to the athletes, an' then my ma made me quit an' take up football because the scholarships were better. Didn't cut loose 'til college – an' boy did I cut loose! I partied a lot, y'know, went with a lot of girls."

He quirked a smile, and Hawkeye smirked. "I bet you did, you rebel."

Trapper shrugged. "But I guess, when ya think about it, rebellion ain't nothin' more than showin' off to a different kinda crowd. I might'a been drinkin' an' gettin' laid, but I never stopped lookin' over my shoulder. I always went for the popular girls, the cheerleaders. Louise was head of the debatin' society, an' popular too. Couple'a my fraternity brothers set me up with her. We were like this golden couple – everybody wanted to be us." He smiled, almost euphoric in the memories of his glory days. "All the other guys in my med school thought I was the luckiest guy in the world for marryin' her."

Hawkeye snorted. "Were you?"

Trapper's expression darkened. "I cheated on her less than a year after Becky was born. What does that tell ya?"

Hawkeye fell silent. The fragility of Trapper's monogamy was not a subject he liked to dwell on, and he flopped onto his back to stare at the ceiling again.

"But everyone thought we were so perfect. The perfect athletic, ivy-league doctor, an' his perfect, eloquent, pretty wife, an' their perfect baby daughter… born less than six months after the weddin'." He gave a sigh that was somewhere between wistful and disdainful as he gazed up at the ceiling. "God, I love my kids though. Put my heart an' soul into 'em, just tryin'a be the kinda father I would'a liked growin' up. Tryin'a… be somethin' other than my dad."

He paused, sniffing and pressing the back of his hand against one eye.

"An' now… I'm livin' in a shit-heap of an apartment where the hot water only works one day outta three; I'm sweatin' my ass off in a heat wave because I can't even take a bath, an' I'm lyin' on a mattress that my boyfriend dragged outta someone's trash pile; I got no job; I got legal bills comin' outta my ears thanks to Louise draggin' this divorce out, an' my kids are livin' on the other side of town an' I don't get to see 'em 'less Louise says so!" He glanced back at Hawkeye. "But I got you."

A warm smile spread across Hawkeye's face. "Am I really worth all this?"

"I don't weigh it up like that. It is what it is – I don't get to make the call. But I guess you must be, seein' as I knew what I was riskin' getting' involved with you, an' yet we're still here."

Hawkeye reached out for him, tender this time, rather than sexual, his earlier crassness forgotten. "I sometimes wonder," he admitted softly. "Sometimes I feel like… I just screwed everything up for you. I knew you were married. Normally that's enough to make me back off, you know. Margie always said I didn't know how to keep my hands to myself!"

"Hey." Trapper tapped him under the chin. "I kissed you, remember?"

Hawkeye almost blushed, smiling and dropping his gaze a little, and Trapper felt his heart soar. How many people ever got to see this brash, loud, flirtatious man at his most vulnerable? How many people ever saw that sweet little smile that he only ever bestowed upon somebody he really cared about? "That you did."

"Right." And now, Trapper kissed him again. "An' I don't regret it for a second. Truth of the matter is, bein' with you is the only thing I ever did purely because it was what I wanted. An' I had to lose everythin' to get the guts to do it! I'm not gonna lie, I miss my girls somethin' crazy, I hate havin' no money, an' call me shallow, but I miss the looks I used to get when I took Louise out on the town. Between you an' me, these past two years have been sheer hell. But I couldn't'a got through 'em without you."

Hawkeye managed to conjure up a weak smile. "Well, I try…"

Trapper smiled back. "What was it you said to me once?" He grasped Hawkeye's hand and pulled him a little closer. "You make it bearable."

And Hawkeye's smile turned into a broad grin that lit his face up as he leaned over and gave Trapper the tightest hug ever. It was sweet for all of two seconds, whereupon the heat from his body became intolerable and Trapper had to push him away.

Pouting, Hawkeye returned to his side, scooped up another handful of ice and lay on his belly once more, casually rubbing the ice cubes across Trapper's sweaty torso. "You never struck me as a people pleaser."

"Only certain people. An' never if it meant failin' to do the right thing."

Hawkeye kissed him on the cheek and snuggled closer. "I knew there was a reason I liked you."

Trapper lay back, folding his arms across his chest as the water from the melted ice cube pooled at his sternum and cooled his skin. "You know, I didn't even want to be a doctor at first, but once I got into it, I cared about it. When I was doin' my residency, there was this top surgeon – brilliant doctor, a genius, but a real jackass. Like he couldn't get through a session without yellin' at somebody. I mean, we've all had our bad days an' kicked off at a nurse or an orderly, but this guy made it his hobby."

"Someone ought to introduce him to needlepoint."

"So I get this kid in the O.R. to have his appendix out, and he's cryin' his heart out, an' I'm tryin' to calm him down. Becky's teethin' at this point – screamin' kids are my forte, y'know? – an' this guy is just comin' out of surgery, sees me with this kid, an' just…"

"Yells at him?"

"Slaps him." Trapper was actually angry now, gesturing wildly as Hawkeye sucked on an ice cube. "This grown man walks over and back-hands a six year old boy, holds him down an' forces the mask over his face. An' then to top it off, he says: 'It's alright, he won't remember'."

Hawkeye shuddered. He'd seen some pretty unpleasant senior doctors himself – those people who seemed to have traded their compassion for knowledge somewhere along their career path.

An angry sneer crossed Trapper's face, as he trembled with suppressed rage, even now. "Told my dad about when I went home for Thanksgiving the followin' week, an' I said, 'I'm gonna write a letter an' report this guy for what he did to my patient.' You know what my dad said? 'These people sign your pay-check, John. You keep your mouth shut, and your nose clean, an' you respect the authority of your betters.'" He snorted and shook his head. "That's my dad for ya."

Crunching his ice cube, Hawkeye pondered on the story. Trapper rarely spoke of his family, and Hawkeye didn't like to press, but a lot was seeming to become clear. "Hmm. I can see why you haven't suggested I meet the parents."

"He wanted me to be a doctor but he didn't want me to give a damn about my patients!"

"Clearly a man unfamiliar with the work of Hippocrates."

"I think all he'd read on surgery was the askin' fees!"

"Ah, the Frank Burns school of medicine!"

"Exactly! He wanted Frank Burns!"

"Well, somebody has to. Maybe he can adopt him once the war's over?"

"Hell, he didn't want me – maybe he's lookin' for a replacement?"

The joviality seemed a welcome epilogue to a tough conversation. Hawkeye knew Trapper's rejection by his parents had cut him deep, and his jokes were hiding a lot of hurt. But it felt good to laugh about it for once. Trapper took the opportunity to heave his tired body off the bed and take a stroll to the refrigerator.

"Damn. We're outta ice."

Hawkeye made a face, looking guilty as he fingered the last ice cube out of his glass.

Trapper returned to the mattress, flopping down in an exhausted, sweaty heap. "Have it," Trapper told him with a wave of his hand.

Popping the ice cube into his mouth, Hawkeye smiled. Then, a thought occurred to him. He made a muffled sound and leaned over, first giving the surprised Trapper a kiss, and then playfully passing the ice between their lips. Trapper chuckled, his eyes sparkling as he clasped the ice between his teeth and bit down.

"I got an idea," Hawkeye told him. "Give me your shorts."

When all he got was a confused look, Hawkeye grabbed them himself and stood up, pulling them on. Trapper watched, confused, as he dressed – if wearing underpants alone could be called that – and raced out of the apartment, leaving Trapper alone. For an awful moment, Trapper wondered if he was planning to go to the store in nothing but his – well, Trapper's – underwear. As time passed, he became genuinely convinced that he had.

Rolling over, Trapper glanced up at the door – which was open. The door was open and Trapper was naked. Half amused and half embarrassed, he covered himself with a pillow.

"Hawkeye, you'd better be out there!" he hissed down the corridor.

Then, just as suddenly as he had vanished, Hawkeye emerged once more, racing down the corridor in something of a clumsy gallop, ducking inside the apartment and slamming the door behind him.

"What the hell–"

Trapper didn't get any further in his sentence. As soon as he was within range, he was pounced upon, and found himself with an armful of very wet, very cold Hawkeye.

"Oh, God!" It was an expression of almost orgasmic pleasure as much as it was surprise, as Trapper wrapped both arms and legs around him and held on. "Where have you been?"

"The shower!" Hawkeye gasped, his teeth chattering. "I figured it was a good idea – and it was, for the first ten seconds. I'm so cold! Hold me?"

Trapper rolled onto his side, carrying Hawkeye with him. "I'll warm ya up." His words were innocent. His smile was not.

"I'm such a moron!" Hawkeye shivered and nuzzled closer, relishing the warmth of Trapper's embrace.

"Yeah." Trapper brushed his wet hair off his face. "But you're my moron."

They settled into their favourite cuddling position – Hawkeye curled up with his head on Trapper's shoulder, while Trapper wrapped around him – their bodies gradually conducting heat and restoring a comfortable equilibrium. Hawkeye watched the voile at the window over Trapper's shoulder as the breeze caught it. "This is nice…"

"Yeah, that it is."

"Well, that's good," he murmured against Trapper's chest, his wet hair sticking to Trapper's clammy skin. "Because once we've warmed up again, it's your turn in the shower."