A/N: Thank you so much for all your reviews. I love hearing from you guys. I hope you enjoy this chapter!
Though she'd been none too thrilled with the assignment in the first place, Margaret was even more bothered by her failure to complete it. If there was anything one could say about Margaret Houlihan, it was that she succeeded in any endeavor she set her mind to.
Except, as it seemed, this one. Coaxing B.J. out of his turtle shell.
In fairness, the actual task set to her had merely been to convince the 4077th to be friendly with B.J. again. In this she succeeded spectacularly. (If only because they were too afraid of her to disobey her orders.)
But it didn't matter how many people she talked around because, as it turned out, B.J. was having none of it. When the nurses sat with him at lunch, he made polite apologies and excused himself. When the enlisted men invited him to join their games of basketball, he politely declined and returned to the Swamp. So even though she'd done exactly as Hawkeye had asked, failure continued to gnaw at her stomach lining. After all, if the objective hadn't been achieved, how could her efforts be considered a success?
Finally she decided to pull out the big guns. Perhaps what B.J. needed wasn't merely the forgiveness of all, but for someone, anyone, to put B.J. first. To choose B.J. over Hawkeye.This was a job that could not be given to anyone who had already made clear an allegiance to Hawkeye. It had to be a previously-neutral party.
There was only one man suited to the task.
Charles Winchester III was in the shower when Margaret cornered him. Amid his indignant splutters and attempts to cover his bare chest, Margaret explained the reason for her visit. Namely, the ongoing feud between Captains Pierce and Hunnicutt, and Charles's thus-far neutrality.
"I prefer not to involve myself in the squabbles of children," he told her, clearly of the mind that the sooner he cooperated, the sooner she would leave.
"I'm afraid that's not an option anymore."
His jaw unhinged. "Are you telling me I have to pick sides?" Somehow, the way he uttered 'pick sides' made the words sound like a pedestrian phrase that caused him offense merely by coming out of his mouth.
Margaret gave a smile that chilled him to the bone. "I'm telling you you've been assigned a side," she said. "Welcome to Team Hunnicutt, Major."
She left the stream-rolled surgeon to finish his shower alone.
Something sharp jabbed him in the abdomen. Charles turned to glare at the woman behind him in the lunch line. She gestured with her eyes.
"Go on," Margaret said. "I have complete faith in you, Major Winchester."
"I wouldn't hold my breath," he grumbled.
Nevertheless—after one more jab, anyways—he took food tray in hand and approached a table that was empty save for one person.
Dr. B.J. Hunnicutt. Unwilling Captain of the United States Army, and current pariah of the MASH 4077th.
B.J. didn't seem surprised when Charles sat across from him. Neither did he seem to care.
"Is this seat taken?" Charles asked, his overly polite tone at clear odds with the sarcastic question. He winced.
"Not at all," B.J. said, taking a bite of mixed greens.
"Lovely."
Silence fell over and around them. B.J. continued to eat his lunch, for once making no quips as to its quality or lack thereof. Discomfort settled inside of Charles like a bug, a many-legged insect scurrying around his intestines. His buttocks fidgeted on the bench.
Clearing his throat, Charles said, "So. Hunnicutt."
B.J. looked at him, nothing in his manner to indicate that this was anything other than a normal day in Korea. Charles's mouth opened and closed. He cleared his throat again.
"We've had very fine weather of late, don't you think so?"
"Sure have," B.J. agreed. He went back to eating.
"It reminds me of springtime in Boston," said Charles, rather pointed, he felt, in his intention to carry on a conversation.
But B.J.'s only response was a smile and nod. Charles felt his patience already beginning to disintegrate. If I wanted to pull teeth, I'd have become a dentist, he thought irritably.
"Does it... remind you of home?" he prodded.
"Not enough fog," was B.J.'s answer. Charles's eyelid twitched as he battled to contain an eye-roll.
Just as he opened his mouth once again, Charles was mercifully spared from further exercise in the art of monologuing.
"All right if we join you folks?" asked a jaunty voice.
This time Charles did witness a flicker of surprise across B.J.'s face, as Hawkeye and Margaret sat with them. The look was gone in a second. For a moment it seemed that B.J. was going to allow this new development to occur. But then, as it so often did, Hawkeye's mouth kept running and ruined a good thing.
"You looked so bored with only Major Snorefest for company," he said, full of mirth, "Margaret and I thought you could use some rescuing."
Oh, B.J. gave the appropriate smile in response, certainly. But Charles saw too as a light went out of his eyes.
"Well, I appreciate the thought," B.J. said, smiling. "But I was finished anyhow. Enjoy your lunches, everyone." At which junction he took his (still half full) tray and left, dumping the food in the trash as he exited.
Margaret whacked Hawkeye's arm.
"Ow!" he protested.
"And what was that for?" she demanded. "You just had to make it sound like we were taking pity on him."
"I'm sorry! I wasn't thinking."
"Is that meant to be news?" Charles snarked.
Hawkeye spared him the half-second necessary for a glare, then, "I got nervous, it just slipped out." He dropped his chin miserably onto his hand.
Margaret pointed a finger at him. "If that man's ribs start to show through his shirts"—Kindly, no one mentioned the fact that all his shirts of late were green or beige, never pink—"I'm holding you responsible, doctor."
"Believe me, so am I," he mumbled.
Suddenly Margaret's gaze was on Charles, fierce and expectant. He nearly leapt from his seat.
"What, Major?"
She gestured towards the mess door.
"Well, go after him!" she said. Charles harrumphed at her, but stood up nonetheless.
With a slight jump, he caught the apple tossed at him without warning.
"And take that to him," Margaret said. "He needs to eat."
Smiling smugly, Charles tossed it back. She caught it on instinct, but her lips began to pucker with displeasure.
Before she could speak, Charles said, "Any attempts to baby Hunnicutt will go over about as well, I should think, as Pierce's inadvisable attempts at speaking."
Thus, sans apple, he trailed B.J. back to the Swamp. The younger man was just settling in to darn a pair of old socks, seeming placid as a lake. What sea creatures and whirlpools might be causing mayhem below the surface, Charles did not know.
Daring to hope that simple logic might be the cure for the cancer which had infected their little pocket of the war, Charles decided to get right at the heart of the issue.
"You know, Hunnicutt, I do believe Pierce genuinely desired your company at lunch."
B.J. looked up with a startled blink. Charles used the opportunity to go on.
"There is no reason that I can see, certainly, why you should continue to ignore the olive branches he extends to you. Clearly it is what you both desire, to be once more in each other's cahoots, driving the rest of the camp mad with your inanities." He smiled, but a quirk of the lips turned it into something closer to a smirk.
B.J.'s hollow eyes stared at him a second longer. Then back to his socks. "He doesn't. Trust me. Colonel Potter is probably putting pressure on him. Or he feels sorry for me."
Like a twig had been snapped, Charles immediately abandoned any attempts at mediation. If he had to play babysitter to Pierce and Hunnicutt for the rest of the war, he would well and truly lose his mind. So why try? B.J. was obviously not interested in listening to sense. Better, then, merely to do what Margaret had asked—demanded—of him in the first place. Play on Team Hunnicutt.
He held back a snort. That wouldn't be hard. Pierce was an unmatched pain in the derrière, and Charles didn't care who knew it.
"If you say so, then I'm sure you are right," he said equitably. "Guilt, most likely. I have no doubt that whatever transpired between you was his own fault. Truly, the man is like a child dressed up in his father's clothes. Heh," he huffed, grinning at his own description and the image it inspired of a young B.F. Pierce wearing a suit ten sizes too large.
Suddenly a hand was fisted in the front of his shirt. Charles emitted a loud cry as he was pulled face to face with an enflamed behemoth. All of the emotion that had been absent from B.J.'s eyes in the past two weeks came flooding back all at once, and the emotion of the day seemed to be rage.
"You don't know a damn thing about it, Winchester!" B.J. growled, giving him a shake. "Hawkeye didn't do anything wrong, you got that? It was me. And for your information, he's not a child. He's the best damn surgeon in this whole damn outfit, probably this whole damn war, and he deserves your respect!"
Chuckling nervously, Charles threw up his arms in surrender. "You are absolutely right. Of course! I don't know what I was saying! Dr. Pierce is a wonderful asset to our little unit. I, for one, hardly know what we'd do without him!"
B.J. released his grip on the older man, shoving Charles back a step. Jaw clicking with controlled anger, he took several paces backward, still glaring at his tent-mate. Then the door crashed open and closed behind him.
Charles sagged, sucking in relieved air.
At that very moment, he spotted a certain nurse making her way across camp. Teeth grinding together, he stomped out of the Swamp.
Margaret came to a halt when her path was intercepted. Her eyes went wide at the sight of Charles, her mouth falling open to ask—
"Consider me officially off the team!" he yelled, then spun on his heel and stomped away.