Disclaimer: The quotes belong to Einstein, Lewis Carroll, and Mark Twain, in that order. I don't claim to own them, or the MASH characters.

- In Love And War -
Chapter Four: Seeds of Jealousy

It was a lazy day, one of those days where a man could lay in his bed in peace, wearing his favorite bathrobe, drinking his favorite martini, and not have to worry about anything. At least, that's the kind of day it would have been if it hadn't happened to be night. I, man, lay contentedly on my bunk in my bathrobe, martini in one hand, the other hand tucked behind my head, and proclaimed, " 'The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.' "

"Einstein," BJ said promptly from the other corner of the tent.

"Right. Your turn."

"Let's see…" He raised his voice to a falsetto and whined, " 'But I don't want to go among mad people.' "

I propped myself up on one elbow with a grin, and said mischievously, " 'Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.' "

" 'How do you know I'm mad?' "

" 'You must be. Or you wouldn't have come here.' "

"Will you two ninnering nancies shut up?" Frank squealed from his own bunk, where he was busily pretending to read a newspaper by the light of his lamp. "Some of us are trying to concentrate." I always enjoyed Frank's sporadic enunciation.

"Here's one for you, Frank: 'It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.' "

BJ laughed. "Mark Twain."

Frank put on his peeved face and hid back behind his papers. He and Margaret were still smarting from the fact that BJ had shunned them and joined Trapper and me, and was doing swimmingly under our tutelage. He'd adapted to life at the 4077th very well over the past week, his good looks and ready smile making everyone take an instant liking to him. There were a lot of similarities between him and Trap (I found myself unable to not compare them), but there were just as many, if not more, differences. Trapper didn't have the patience for reading or chess; BJ didn't seem to understand (yet) the value in just going crazy for an hour or two, in throwing inhibition to the wind. Trapper was energy itself, all explosive force; BJ had just as much energy, but it was more contained. He enjoyed a good practical joke as much as Trapper and I, and he was wonderfully quick-witted and intelligent; but he was a little more reserved, quieter, more mysterious. He was married and had a baby daughter, and was completely devoted to them both—not devoted like Trapper, who'd started sleeping with nurses almost the moment he'd arrived; BJ said he would never cheat on his wife, and I believed him.

And his eyes.

Eyes had always fascinated me. "The eyes are the mirror of the soul," as the proverb went, and if that was true, BJ's soul was the most beautiful one I'd ever seen. It was a wonder the whole camp didn't drown in those pools of blue.

Just to make Frank paranoid, I got up and went to sit on BJ's cot and whispered in his ear, "Pretend to be surprised." He caught on fast and started laughing softly, with a very nice expression of shock on his face.

Frank's eyes appeared over the top of the newspaper just as I looked very pointedly in his direction.

BJ cupped his hands around my ear and whispered, "What else?" I snickered loudly into my elbow.

"You two are talking about me again, I know it," Frank snapped, crumpling his paper into his lap in anger.

I pulled away from BJ, acting affronted. "How dare you suggest it."

"I take umbrage at that," BJ said defensively.

"I took umbrage once, and I couldn't sleep for a week."

A tap at the door, and Radar stuck his head in. "Cap'n Hunnicutt, sir, Cap'n McIntyre wanted me to come remind you that have post-op duty now, and uh, that he doesn't…you know, he, uh, he doesn't want to be there all night…"

"Is it my shift already?" BJ asked, surprised.

"Yessir," Radar said, "2100 hours. And Cap'n Pierce, Cap'n McIntyre said he wanted to talk to you, and if you weren't too busy he wanted to see you in post-op. He said it wasn't no emergency, there was just somethin' he wanted to ask you about."

Sighing, I rose and followed BJ out of the tent. "I wanted to check on that Simmons kid before I went to bed, anyway. Radar, did Trapper mention what he wanted to ask me?"

"No, sir, just that he wanted to talk you about somethin'."

"I hate mysterious 'somethings'. They're so…"

"Mysterious?" BJ offered.

"Exactly."

"Well, it's about time!" Trapper exclaimed the moment we stepped into post-op. He gave BJ a semi-serious glare and a stern frown. "You have to keep track of when your shift is. I can't stay here all night. I have things to do, too, you know?"

"Sorry, Trapper," BJ said with an unsorry grin. "It's Hawkeye's fault."

"Isn't it always," Trap said sourly, turning the glare to me.

I turned my back to both of them in a huff, and grabbed Simmons's chart and sat on the edge of the kid's bed. "How're you feeling, Tom?"

Simmons smiled sleepily. "Not too bad, doc. I can wiggle my toes now."

"You'll be wiggling the whole leg in no time," I said, ruffling his hair. "Try to get some sleep."

Trap was just finishing going through the patients' stats with BJ, so I waited for him to finish and made a pass at Nurse Able while waiting. It wasn't a very serious pass, so I wasn't too hurt when she turned me down, and the minute or two of casual banter took up enough time that Trapper was ready to go when Able walked away from me with a shake of her head. "Have fun," I called over my shoulder to BJ as Trapper and I left. Outside, I said to Trapper, "You're being a little hard on him, aren't you? He needs a little time to adjust to everything over here."

"He's had a week," Trapper said sourly.

"What's eating you, Trap?" I demanded, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him to a halt. "BJ's a great kid—you said so yourself."

Trapper scuffed his boot in the dirt, shoulders hunched and eyes fixed on the ground. He finally mumbled something of which I heard nothing. "I can't hear you when you don't move your lips," I pointed out, and he lifted his head to glare at me.

"I said that I'm—" Eyes back to the ground, and voice lowering almost to inaudible. "—jealous."

"Jealous?" I repeated incredulously. "Of BJ?"

Defensively, he said, "Well, you're spending more time with him than you are with me."

I knew it wasn't nice, but I couldn't help laughing a little. I slapped my hand on the back of his neck and said, "Trapper, BJ is like a…like a new puppy. An adorable new puppy. You have to take time to train the puppy, and make sure it settles into its new home. You have to make sure the puppy knows it's loved. But you, John McIntyre, are the faithful old hound dog who already knows it's loved, and whose duty it is to help make sure the puppy is happy."

"Everyone loves puppies more than old dogs."

"At the beginning, yes, because they've already loved the old dog for a very long time. But the puppy will grow up and settle in, and very soon, it won't need the constant love and attention. But if we don't create a caring environment for the puppy now, he'll end up wetting in both our beds."

"That makes a weird sort of sense, you know."

"I do my best."

"Well, the old dog's still feeling a little ignored," he said, his eyes slanted suggestively at me.

There was no one around, but it suddenly felt like the whole camp was staring at us—one set of eyes in particular boring into my back, accusing, condemning. And despite the shame I felt at the thought of those eyes, those blue eyes, watching us, watching me, I could feel the heat pooling to my groin under the intense stare of brown, not blue, eyes. Trapper smiled knowingly and, without a word, turned and walked toward the supply tent. And I, the trusty, obedient old dog, followed.

We'd managed to restrain ourselves for the past week—with BJ around, there wasn't much time for us to sneak off on our own anyway—so we had a week's worth of built-up tension to release. Trapper pulled me roughly into the tent and shoved me back against the door, crushing his mouth against mine, our hips grinding. I tilted my head back with a gasp, his mouth attacking my throat as he fumbled to untie the belt of my robe and, finally succeeding, shove the bathrobe off my shoulders. It landed in a sad little pool of red on the floor, soon joined by the green pond of my pants; then the white river of Trap's lab coat and the olive drab seas of his own shirt and pants; and, finally, two matching puddles of army-regulation boxer shorts.

His mouth returned to mine for a brief, forceful kiss before he flipped me, pressing my front against the door and pressing his own front against my back. His fingers digging into my hips, he buried his face against my neck, breathing heavily, preparing… I was trapped (not unhappily), and about to be Trapped. I moaned softly when he finally entered me, pressing my face against the solidity of the door, one of my hands snaking down to wrap around my own solidity.

It was lust, pure animal lust, and nothing more—it just happened that, every once in a while, we each wanted something more interesting than a nurse. A whole new meaning to the phrase "comrades in arms."

His hand reached around me, his fingers wrapping around mine, joining me in my quest for personal satisfaction. It was the least he could do, considering I was giving him most of what little dignity I'd managed to maintain in this place. Not that I really minded giving it up, because damn it felt good… I arched my back, throwing my head back against his shoulder, and moaned his name softly into the silence of the room. I felt his smile against the side of my neck, and I brought my free hand up to grab his hair, lifting his head and twisting my face around to bring our mouths together, hungrily, as he moved in and out, steadily in and out, back and forth, like the waves of an ocean, a sea of blue—pure, beautiful blue—

I bit my lip to keep from making too much noise as I came into our overlapping hands; Trapper shoved his face against my shoulder to achieve the same ends. I leaned heavily against the door, gasping slightly, Trapper leaning heavily on me and making an uncomfortably warm spot on my shoulder; we stood there until we'd both gotten our breath back, and then moved away, redressing in silence. There was no need for words, and Trapper wasn't good with words anyway. I merely had the need to wonder aloud, "Do you think this place will ever be clean again?"

"Do you think it was clean to begin with?"

"Probably not. But I doubt the rats have ever had so much entertainment."

"I think the cockroaches are enjoying it more. They've started crawling into my bed at night and asking for a midnight show."

"Those dirty cockroaches. Speaking of dirty, I'm feeling the overwhelming need to shower."

"Don't let me keep you. I was gonna go see if Nurse Grant needs anything inventoried, and then I was thinking about tormenting Frank for a bit…"

"You really know how to live," I said with a grin as I tied my bathrobe and slipped out of the room. I stopped in the Swamp just long enough to grab my toiletries, and then I took a nice, long shower, scrubbing parts of me I didn't even think could get dirty. Being with Trapper was always satisfying, but it often left me feeling less clean than usual, which I had no way of explaining. And, with the thought of blue eyes flittering in and out of my mind constantly, I was feeling particularly dirty.

I really wished I came with an instruction manual. I'd like to know why the hell I acted like I did.

TBC