Michael Ginsberg (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
just_displaced) wrote2014-03-10 06:01 pm
just_displaced) wrote2014-03-10 06:01 pm
Entry tags:
Wow things
Hey remember that one time I wrote a really self-indulgent fic about two of my characters meeting and then I put it here because what else was I supposed to do with it? Yeah, me too.
Hawke is warned about Michael Ginsberg before he meets him. Frederickson has finally finished up his tour of duty (early, and with enough shrapnel in his knee to get him a medical discharge and likely a permanent limp, but finished nonetheless, the lucky bastard) and Bravo Company is in desperate need of a competent medic.
"He's loud," they say, when they're telling Hawke all about their new guy. "He's loud, and outspokenly liberal, and he's got this ridiculous mustache that he refuses to..."
Hawke runs a finger across his own large, red mustache, and the guy giving him the info visibly winces at his misstep. "Sorry, sir. It's nothing like yours, sir. It's a very liberal mustache."
Hawke wants to know how exactly anyone tells the difference between the political ideologies of mustaches, especially in a place like this, but he keeps quiet. He's become more cautious, lately, having survived the attempt on his life -- or rather, the attempt on Cassidy's life that he'd been, as they say, "in the wrong time at the wrong place" for. "So, he's irritating, some kind of anti-war nut, and he doesn't follow orders. Great. What else? He's a fucking coward and incompetent too? Don't hold back. Tell me all about this little shit, so I can figure out the best way to send him packing."
"Sir," the other fellow says (he can't remember their names, but who the fuck cares? They're just here to give him the good news about his new medic, they won't be sticking around.) "He's actually, apparently, one of the best medics Delta Company's ever had."
"So why the fuck is he getting transferred over here, if they like him so much in Delta Company?" It's a relevant question, he figures.
"He requested the transfer, and I guess they gave it to him. Rumor has it that he was pretty shaken up after Liuetenant Douglas got blown up. This kid--" Hawke takes a moment to appreciate the irony of someone who must be about nineteen, tops, referring to anyone else as kid "--this kid needed a change of scenery, but he's still got seven months in country to go."
"Oh, good, a fucking new guy," Hawke says, practically spitting the words. It's not that he truly detests new guys, it's just that they usually manage to get themselves into the shit quicker than anyone else. He's found that the longer people manage to survive around here, the more likely they are to survive overall. It seems contradictory, maybe, since the longer someone's out there, the more danger they're in, but then, what the fuck isn't contradictory around here?
"Well, no, sir. He's already been here a year."
The image he'd been forming in his head of a terrified, new, rabid anti-war protestor is forced to change with that intel, because he knows what that means. The guy voluntarily took an extra six months. People don't usually do that, and Hawke should know, because he'd been one of the ones that had.
"Well, shit," he finally says, scuffing at the ground with the toe of one tattered boot, "Bring him over, and we'll see how he handles himself."
***
When they first meet, they take a moment to stare at each other, quietly assessing, identical analytical gazes on both of their faces, made more matching by their surprisingly similar facial hair.
Hawke finds himself almost unsettled by the way he can feel Ginsberg staring straight through him, piercing him with dark eyes. Ginsberg shouldn't be the one doing the judging here, Hawke thinks, with no small amount of irritation. Hawke is the XO. He makes the rules (a little voice in his head reminds him that this isn't entirely true. Fuck, it's not even half true. He's not the only one leading these men -- he's grudgingly accepted that Mellas does a pretty damn good job -- and he's certainly not the one handing down orders from on high.) Still, he doesn't need that quiet intensity directed his way from someone he doesn't even know.
Ginsberg is the one to break the silence. "I've heard about you," he says, shifting his duffel bag from one shoulder to the other, as Hawke will soon learn he does almost compulsively. "I've heard," he continues, not waiting for Hawke to take the bait and ask about it, "That you're the one I have to impress around here. That everyone here likes you, even when you kick their asses. That if I fuck with you, I'm probably going to get more shit from the rest of the guys than I get from you yourself. That you've been out here longer than just about anyone else and that you're going to stay out here as long as you need to."
Hawke wants to know where he's heard all of that, thinks maybe he should be angry about all of those forward statements, but... The guy's right, about pretty much all of it, and he can't keep the smile off his face. It starts reluctantly, then grows to its full, charming potentiality. He raises one hand, gives the hawk signal, nods.
"Welcome to Bravo Company, Doc."
***
At first, they don't encounter each other all that much. Hawke observes Ginsberg enough to realize that while he's friendly with everyone, and while people gravitate towards him when they need help, he doesn't really have a designated group of friends. He wanders between them all, doling out medication and bandaids, offering a characteristically blunt comment or a surprisingly gentle reassurance, but never does he connect himself to anyone. Hawke had assumed he'd fall in with the more rebellious men in the platoon, and he's surprised when Ginsberg doesn't particularly fall in with anybody.
Maybe that lets Hawke overlook him a little. Sure, he can't tune out the sound of Ginsberg's voice, and he never really stops talking, to himself or to anyone who's willing to listen, but it's either background noise or, at most, a mild irritant. He hears the same shit from most people -- complaints about the food (though never complaints about the coffee he makes, because it's well known that the Jayhawk is the best coffeemaker in the whole damn Marines, probably,) wishes to be home, lamentations about some new and mysterious rash, or blisters, or an upset stomach. He assumes that's what Ginsberg talks about, mostly. The same bullshitting everyone out there indulges in.
Truth is, Ginsberg doesn't cause Hawke all that much trouble. He's got a quick temper, and that's obvious enough when Hawke gives him orders that he doesn't like, but he very carefully treads the line of expressing his displeasure and getting himself into serious trouble by exploding, and Hawke's inclined to give that kind of thing a little leeway. As long as he patches up the men he's meant to and calls Hawke "sir" when it's appropriate, his emotionality can be written off as a frustrating quirk, not worthy of strict censure.
It's a stiflingly hot day in December when Hawke is forced to stop overlooking Ginsberg and ignoring his temper, his spontaneity, his rebelliousness.
They're on patrol. It's meant to be routine, but then, routine things around here have a way of going poorly, and planned assaults have a way of petering out into nothing at all. Maybe Hawke should have expected them to stumble into the shit, but even Mellas, genius strategist as he was (and this was only half sarcasm, on his part) hadn't figured on there being an encampment of NVA in the area.
There's no warning, no preparation, no careful "Hawke, you take half the men around this way, and I'll take half mine that way, and we'll flank them." One minute there's nothing but the sound of tired shuffling through the jungle, punctuated by the occasional gripe about the heat or a wisecrack about sore feet, and the next minute there's an eruption of gunfire, extremely loud, very close.
Hawke is possessed with quick reflexes after all this time in the bush, and he's immediately seeking out cover, all the while trying to figure out where they're being shot at from and how many people are shooting at them. It's incredible that his brain can do all of this and keep his feet moving and his gun going on full-auto, but, as he'd always say, 'there it is.'
It can't be more than thirty seconds before all his men are scrambling into cover, unloading their weapons -- one triumphant cry of "I got the fucker!" assures Hawke that, at the very least, they're aiming in the general direction of where the gunfire's coming from.
It's pandemonium. It's chaos. It's what Hawke handles best. So far, none of his men have been injured, none have... shit.
The dust kicked up by all the bullets starts to clear, slightly, and that's when Hawke sees him: one of his men, one of the very young ones, lying supine on the ground, bullets thudding around him. Hawke can't tell whether he's dead or not, and apparently, neither can the NVA, since they're mostly aiming their bullets at his boys who are alive, well, and returning fire eagerly.
But Ginsberg can tell. He's at Hawke's shoulder in a second, a sudden presence that Hawke can't ignore, infused with jittery energy in his eyes, but an odd calmness in his movements. Hawke has never seen him so collected, and for a brief moment, he feels oddly reassured. That reassurance fades the second Ginsberg speaks.
"I need you to give me cover fire. I'm getting him."
"He might be dead, Ginsberg. You go out there and get your ass shot, too, then you don't do us any favors. You fucking stay right here."
"He's not dead. He was shot in the shoulder twice, and he's playing dead right now because he's not a fucking idiot, so either give me cover fire or don't, but I'm going to get him."
Hawke grabs ahold of Ginsberg's sleeve, an attempt at a preventative movement, but Ginsberg wrenches away, turns towards the man lying on the ground, prepares to bring himself out of cover and expose himself to however many goddamned automatic weapons just to try to save a guy who most people would have written off as, for all intents and purposes, a lost cause.
Hawke will look back at the situation later and be surprised at the strength with which Ginsberg had tugged himself out of his grip, and then surprised again at the speed with which Ginsberg launches himself from cover, running with what seems like an incredible quickness. Hawke knows that the most rational explanation is that Ginsberg is fueled by pure adrenaline, fear and excitement warring in his brain, pumping through his legs, but in that instant, he could swear that the only thing driving the man is a bizarre cocktail of rage and compassion.
It doesn't make sense, but there it is.
And it doesn't make sense how Ginsberg seems to be able to run fast enough that he's dodging bullets and it doesn't make sense how quickly he manages to make it to the wounded man but Hawke's yelling "Cover him! Cover him!" before he even knows what's coming out of his mouth.
And they do, because goddammit, he's got the best boys any XO could ever hope to have.
And then Ginsberg is dragging the man back, moving almost as quickly as he had when he was burdened by nothing but his duffel bag and rifle, and shit, Hawke is practically holding his breath now (holding his breath and still methodically reloading his M4, still returning fire, eyes still darting around, checking on everyone) expecting him to be torn apart by the bullets at any moment and...
He isn't.
He returns the semi-conscious man to safety, and Hawke finally recognizes him as the kid from Maine named Green, and the fight must end at some point, because they all make it back to camp alive. Hawke doesn't remember those details. All he remembers later, a realization that comes to him several nights later, is that Ginsberg hadn't stopped speaking the whole time, through the whole firefight, through his whole dangerous, ill-advised dash into the middle of the gunfire, through his time spent dragging Green back, and then as he'd begun to treat Green's wounds.
What had he been saying? The gunfire had drowned most of it out, or maybe his voice had been purposefully quiet. Hawke hates to admit it, but fuck if he isn't curious.
***
Ginsberg doesn't ever expect Hawke to extend the branch of friendship (god, what a ridiculously cliched phrase -- he'd sneer at anyone who used it in the context of advertising, so why does he even allow himself to use it in his own mind?) to him. Not because he thinks Hawke dislikes him (he doesn't, does he? Hawke seems to like everyone just fine, or at least gets along with them well enough) but because he and Hawke are inherently different, different to the extent that he supposes Hawke probably has very little to say to him.
Hawke is commanding in every sense of the word. He exudes confidence, authority, but manages to do it in the way that Ginsberg can't hate him for it. He's effortlessly good with people, and even though Ginsberg wants (and god, he does, he wants so badly) to hate Hawke when he reminds him to call him 'sir,' he just can't.
He'd like to call him Jayhawk, like some of the other guys do, like Hawke does himself, but they've never shared a real conversation, and he thinks it might be a little presumptuous. So he does what Hawke says (mostly, except when he directly ignores his orders in favor of saving Green's life, but he figures he can be forgiven for that, and if he can't, he'd rather save someone than be approved of, anyway) and he never expects anything more.
That's why, early one Friday night, on a day that has been a combination of stressful and boring, like almost every other goddamned day, he's sitting off on his own, trying to perfect his coffee-making ability, cursing the heat-tabs that come with the C-rations because they never heat up quite enough to get the coffee right. He doesn't expect anyone to approach him unless they need a dose of antimalarial pills or they need a bandage change.
And then, out of fucking nowhere, like he swooped down from the sky, is Hawke.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey." What else is he supposed to say? Is he in trouble? Is Hawke here to tell him that he's gone too far on something or another? It feels very possible.
"Listen," Hawke says, crouching down beside him and making a disgusted face at the coffee Ginsberg's attempting to brew, "There's going to be a mystery tour tonight. You want in on it?"
It's on the tip of Ginsberg's tongue to say that he doesn't do a whole lot of drinking (because he's been around here long enough to figure out what a mystery tour is, and knows that it usually culminates in someone making an incredibly dumb drunken choice and nearly getting shot) but then he reconsiders. He hasn't made a whole lot of friends. He serves a purpose, but that's the extent of it. And getting asked to join Hawke and his friends has that distinct sensation of getting asked to sit with the popular kids in high school.
Except these popular kids have a whole lot of alcohol and loaded weapons.
There's really only one answer.
"Yeah," he says, and he does nothing to disguise that thousand-watt smile that occasionally (but so very rarely) spreads across his face. Maybe he'll finally fit in with somebody, somewhere. Maybe he and Hawke have more in common than he'd thought. Maybe he'd had to come halfway around the world to meet people who could really like him.
Or maybe he's just going to make an idiot of himself. He goes back to trying to make coffee, and Hawke wanders off to extend the invitation to a few select others.
***
It's with some trepidation that he ventures into Hawke's tent. He can already hear laughter coming from within, and he feels suddenly terrified; dressed as he is (meaning dressed just like everyone else) he has nothing to hide behind, no bold face to put forward. He's just himself, just the quirky medic who can't seem to shut the fuck up, and now he's supposed to socialize with a bunch of guys who'd probably scorn him, if they met him in real life.
"Real life." What a strange concept.
But he screws up some residual courage ("you can run into the middle of a firefight but you can't walk into a party?" mocks a voice in his head, one of those many voices he constantly tries to drown out, and it's enough to push him forward) and when he enters, he manages to do so with a half-smile on his face.
He's immediately greeted by a cry of "Doc!" and a smiling -- and heavily bandaged -- Green.
"Good to see you up and about," he replies, but his attention immediately shifts to the open bottle of beer Green's holding, and he frowns. "I'm not sure you should be drinking that. I mean, you got shot not too long ago, and..."
His medical advice is met by resounding laughter from all parties, who seem to think he's kidding, or perhaps playing up his reputation as excessively concerned about everyone's health, and after a minute, he goes along with it. It's pretty fucking stupid, he guesses, to be so concerned about a guy having a drink or two when he could get blown to bits at any moment. Any of them could.
Now he's starting to realize why they drink.
Someone hands him a beer, and he stares at it for a second, trying to figure out how to open it, until he realizes that the little can-opener that hangs on the same chain as his dog-tags would probably serve as a bottle opener. He's proud of himself for his ingenuity. Beer isn't his favorite thing -- no alcohol is -- but at the moment, it tastes pretty damn good, even if it is warm.
Hawke, who had apparently been halfway through regaling everyone with an exciting tale in that quintessential Bostonian accent of his, looks at Ginsberg for a moment. His expression is, to Ginsberg's eyes, somewhere between approving and questioning. Nobody else seems to notice it. Again, there's that moment where they simply stare at each other, sizing each other up.
This time, it's Mellas who breaks the silence. He's reclining on the ground, lazily swigging his own drink (strange, Ginsberg thinks, he'd expected Mellas to be far more uptight than he seems to be right now.) "So, Ginsberg, we hear you're a hero. We hear you're getting a medal for it."
Ginsberg listens closely for any sign of sarcasm in his voice -- there would absolutely be sarcasm in Hawke's voice, if he were to say anything like that -- but he doesn't sense it. Strange. Everyone's looking at him like they want a response, so he just shrugs. "Just doing my job," he says.
This response garners an eyeroll from Hawke, as he'd almost expected it would. "C'mon," he says. He's already opening his second beer, drinking fast, like he'll win a prize if he gets to the bottom of the bottle in less than two minutes. "You get your medal, I get my medal, Mellas gets a thousand medals because he gives a fuck about that kind of stuff, we all get medals. Maybe even you, Green, since you get a medal for getting shot to shit. We'll be highly decorated, if you care about that shit."
"Highly decorated dead men," Ginsberg mutters, and then immediately wishes he hadn't. This is supposed to be a party -- or at least, as much of a party as they can have around here -- and he doesn't need to bring it down with his gloom. He does that enough already. This is why he keeps to himself, this is why he shouldn't ever...
But they're all raising their bottles to him, in a kind of mock-toast, and nobody's asking him to leave. And that's something, isn't it? It's a start.
***
Three hours have passed, and they're all drunk. Maybe drunk is putting it charitably; it might be more fair to call them all completely hammered. Mellas keeps staring at nothing and laughing, the color of Green's face matches his name a little too well, and Ginsberg... well, he's fallen into that state he always does, that state which explains all too well why he doesn't drink, why he doesn't get high, why he doesn't let himself be altered by chemicals in any way because all it does is increase how he already feels and now... and now...
He's seized by a despondant melancholia, and maybe that's because Hawke is quietly singing a mournful song, or maybe it's because they're out here in the middle of nowhere (but no, it's not nowhere, because if it were, it would be safer than here.) Or maybe it's that he's possessed by the knowledge that this, that this attempt at a celebration is really just an attempt at oblivion.
"You sing well," he tells Hawke, though he can't quite tell whether he really says it or whether he just thinks it very strongly. He recognizes that there are tears dampening his cheeks but he doesn't bother to wipe them away. Any physical exertion seems like too much of an effort.
Hawke doesn't break his singing, doesn't stray from the familiar tune and melody, but he looks down at Ginsberg from his perch on his mattress, and he smiles, and it's a beautiful, almost sweet grin, but his bright blue eyes...
It takes Ginsberg a long time to realize that Hawke's eyes chill him so much because it's like looking into a differently colored mirror.
***
Five hours have passed. Everyone has fallen asleep in whatever semi-comfortable spot they can seize amongst the beer bottles and residue of a night well spent. Only Hawke is still awake, determined to keep watch over his boys until they awaken with their pounding headaches.
And there's his medic, sleeping fitfully on the floor in front of him, and a little notebook has slipped out of his pocket and lies beside him. Hawke knows it's wrong, knows he shouldn't look, but he's picking up the notebook before the sensible part of his brain kicks in and reminds him that whenever someone snoops where they shouldn't, they always find things they don't want to see.
Each page has a name on it.
Under each name is a description. Some are vague, simple things: "Andrew King: Private, 20? years old, blond, Southern accent, died of gunshot wound to back of head." Some are a little more descriptive, sounding more like stories than anything else: "Allen Hall: Private, 23 years old, dark hair, from Ohio, liked to talk about sports, liked to dance, terrible singer, but always made up songs anyway. Insisted on going to the front of every line. Died by stepping on a mine."
Hawke's blood runs cold, because he knows what this is. This is a list of all the people that Ginsberg had watched die, that he couldn't save, that he had undoubtedly put everything into reviving, only to see them slip away. He keeps turning pages, not knowing why he's doing it, not knowing what he's looking for, until he comes to one near the end:
"Lieutenant Douglas."
Hawke realizes he's holding his breath as he slowly looks down the page, because he's looking for a story, some kind of description of how Ginsberg had, apparently, been "pretty shaken up" by the guy's death.
It's then that he realizes there's nothing else on the page. A name, and a gaping blank space. That's all there is.
Hawke is warned about Michael Ginsberg before he meets him. Frederickson has finally finished up his tour of duty (early, and with enough shrapnel in his knee to get him a medical discharge and likely a permanent limp, but finished nonetheless, the lucky bastard) and Bravo Company is in desperate need of a competent medic.
"He's loud," they say, when they're telling Hawke all about their new guy. "He's loud, and outspokenly liberal, and he's got this ridiculous mustache that he refuses to..."
Hawke runs a finger across his own large, red mustache, and the guy giving him the info visibly winces at his misstep. "Sorry, sir. It's nothing like yours, sir. It's a very liberal mustache."
Hawke wants to know how exactly anyone tells the difference between the political ideologies of mustaches, especially in a place like this, but he keeps quiet. He's become more cautious, lately, having survived the attempt on his life -- or rather, the attempt on Cassidy's life that he'd been, as they say, "in the wrong time at the wrong place" for. "So, he's irritating, some kind of anti-war nut, and he doesn't follow orders. Great. What else? He's a fucking coward and incompetent too? Don't hold back. Tell me all about this little shit, so I can figure out the best way to send him packing."
"Sir," the other fellow says (he can't remember their names, but who the fuck cares? They're just here to give him the good news about his new medic, they won't be sticking around.) "He's actually, apparently, one of the best medics Delta Company's ever had."
"So why the fuck is he getting transferred over here, if they like him so much in Delta Company?" It's a relevant question, he figures.
"He requested the transfer, and I guess they gave it to him. Rumor has it that he was pretty shaken up after Liuetenant Douglas got blown up. This kid--" Hawke takes a moment to appreciate the irony of someone who must be about nineteen, tops, referring to anyone else as kid "--this kid needed a change of scenery, but he's still got seven months in country to go."
"Oh, good, a fucking new guy," Hawke says, practically spitting the words. It's not that he truly detests new guys, it's just that they usually manage to get themselves into the shit quicker than anyone else. He's found that the longer people manage to survive around here, the more likely they are to survive overall. It seems contradictory, maybe, since the longer someone's out there, the more danger they're in, but then, what the fuck isn't contradictory around here?
"Well, no, sir. He's already been here a year."
The image he'd been forming in his head of a terrified, new, rabid anti-war protestor is forced to change with that intel, because he knows what that means. The guy voluntarily took an extra six months. People don't usually do that, and Hawke should know, because he'd been one of the ones that had.
"Well, shit," he finally says, scuffing at the ground with the toe of one tattered boot, "Bring him over, and we'll see how he handles himself."
***
When they first meet, they take a moment to stare at each other, quietly assessing, identical analytical gazes on both of their faces, made more matching by their surprisingly similar facial hair.
Hawke finds himself almost unsettled by the way he can feel Ginsberg staring straight through him, piercing him with dark eyes. Ginsberg shouldn't be the one doing the judging here, Hawke thinks, with no small amount of irritation. Hawke is the XO. He makes the rules (a little voice in his head reminds him that this isn't entirely true. Fuck, it's not even half true. He's not the only one leading these men -- he's grudgingly accepted that Mellas does a pretty damn good job -- and he's certainly not the one handing down orders from on high.) Still, he doesn't need that quiet intensity directed his way from someone he doesn't even know.
Ginsberg is the one to break the silence. "I've heard about you," he says, shifting his duffel bag from one shoulder to the other, as Hawke will soon learn he does almost compulsively. "I've heard," he continues, not waiting for Hawke to take the bait and ask about it, "That you're the one I have to impress around here. That everyone here likes you, even when you kick their asses. That if I fuck with you, I'm probably going to get more shit from the rest of the guys than I get from you yourself. That you've been out here longer than just about anyone else and that you're going to stay out here as long as you need to."
Hawke wants to know where he's heard all of that, thinks maybe he should be angry about all of those forward statements, but... The guy's right, about pretty much all of it, and he can't keep the smile off his face. It starts reluctantly, then grows to its full, charming potentiality. He raises one hand, gives the hawk signal, nods.
"Welcome to Bravo Company, Doc."
***
At first, they don't encounter each other all that much. Hawke observes Ginsberg enough to realize that while he's friendly with everyone, and while people gravitate towards him when they need help, he doesn't really have a designated group of friends. He wanders between them all, doling out medication and bandaids, offering a characteristically blunt comment or a surprisingly gentle reassurance, but never does he connect himself to anyone. Hawke had assumed he'd fall in with the more rebellious men in the platoon, and he's surprised when Ginsberg doesn't particularly fall in with anybody.
Maybe that lets Hawke overlook him a little. Sure, he can't tune out the sound of Ginsberg's voice, and he never really stops talking, to himself or to anyone who's willing to listen, but it's either background noise or, at most, a mild irritant. He hears the same shit from most people -- complaints about the food (though never complaints about the coffee he makes, because it's well known that the Jayhawk is the best coffeemaker in the whole damn Marines, probably,) wishes to be home, lamentations about some new and mysterious rash, or blisters, or an upset stomach. He assumes that's what Ginsberg talks about, mostly. The same bullshitting everyone out there indulges in.
Truth is, Ginsberg doesn't cause Hawke all that much trouble. He's got a quick temper, and that's obvious enough when Hawke gives him orders that he doesn't like, but he very carefully treads the line of expressing his displeasure and getting himself into serious trouble by exploding, and Hawke's inclined to give that kind of thing a little leeway. As long as he patches up the men he's meant to and calls Hawke "sir" when it's appropriate, his emotionality can be written off as a frustrating quirk, not worthy of strict censure.
It's a stiflingly hot day in December when Hawke is forced to stop overlooking Ginsberg and ignoring his temper, his spontaneity, his rebelliousness.
They're on patrol. It's meant to be routine, but then, routine things around here have a way of going poorly, and planned assaults have a way of petering out into nothing at all. Maybe Hawke should have expected them to stumble into the shit, but even Mellas, genius strategist as he was (and this was only half sarcasm, on his part) hadn't figured on there being an encampment of NVA in the area.
There's no warning, no preparation, no careful "Hawke, you take half the men around this way, and I'll take half mine that way, and we'll flank them." One minute there's nothing but the sound of tired shuffling through the jungle, punctuated by the occasional gripe about the heat or a wisecrack about sore feet, and the next minute there's an eruption of gunfire, extremely loud, very close.
Hawke is possessed with quick reflexes after all this time in the bush, and he's immediately seeking out cover, all the while trying to figure out where they're being shot at from and how many people are shooting at them. It's incredible that his brain can do all of this and keep his feet moving and his gun going on full-auto, but, as he'd always say, 'there it is.'
It can't be more than thirty seconds before all his men are scrambling into cover, unloading their weapons -- one triumphant cry of "I got the fucker!" assures Hawke that, at the very least, they're aiming in the general direction of where the gunfire's coming from.
It's pandemonium. It's chaos. It's what Hawke handles best. So far, none of his men have been injured, none have... shit.
The dust kicked up by all the bullets starts to clear, slightly, and that's when Hawke sees him: one of his men, one of the very young ones, lying supine on the ground, bullets thudding around him. Hawke can't tell whether he's dead or not, and apparently, neither can the NVA, since they're mostly aiming their bullets at his boys who are alive, well, and returning fire eagerly.
But Ginsberg can tell. He's at Hawke's shoulder in a second, a sudden presence that Hawke can't ignore, infused with jittery energy in his eyes, but an odd calmness in his movements. Hawke has never seen him so collected, and for a brief moment, he feels oddly reassured. That reassurance fades the second Ginsberg speaks.
"I need you to give me cover fire. I'm getting him."
"He might be dead, Ginsberg. You go out there and get your ass shot, too, then you don't do us any favors. You fucking stay right here."
"He's not dead. He was shot in the shoulder twice, and he's playing dead right now because he's not a fucking idiot, so either give me cover fire or don't, but I'm going to get him."
Hawke grabs ahold of Ginsberg's sleeve, an attempt at a preventative movement, but Ginsberg wrenches away, turns towards the man lying on the ground, prepares to bring himself out of cover and expose himself to however many goddamned automatic weapons just to try to save a guy who most people would have written off as, for all intents and purposes, a lost cause.
Hawke will look back at the situation later and be surprised at the strength with which Ginsberg had tugged himself out of his grip, and then surprised again at the speed with which Ginsberg launches himself from cover, running with what seems like an incredible quickness. Hawke knows that the most rational explanation is that Ginsberg is fueled by pure adrenaline, fear and excitement warring in his brain, pumping through his legs, but in that instant, he could swear that the only thing driving the man is a bizarre cocktail of rage and compassion.
It doesn't make sense, but there it is.
And it doesn't make sense how Ginsberg seems to be able to run fast enough that he's dodging bullets and it doesn't make sense how quickly he manages to make it to the wounded man but Hawke's yelling "Cover him! Cover him!" before he even knows what's coming out of his mouth.
And they do, because goddammit, he's got the best boys any XO could ever hope to have.
And then Ginsberg is dragging the man back, moving almost as quickly as he had when he was burdened by nothing but his duffel bag and rifle, and shit, Hawke is practically holding his breath now (holding his breath and still methodically reloading his M4, still returning fire, eyes still darting around, checking on everyone) expecting him to be torn apart by the bullets at any moment and...
He isn't.
He returns the semi-conscious man to safety, and Hawke finally recognizes him as the kid from Maine named Green, and the fight must end at some point, because they all make it back to camp alive. Hawke doesn't remember those details. All he remembers later, a realization that comes to him several nights later, is that Ginsberg hadn't stopped speaking the whole time, through the whole firefight, through his whole dangerous, ill-advised dash into the middle of the gunfire, through his time spent dragging Green back, and then as he'd begun to treat Green's wounds.
What had he been saying? The gunfire had drowned most of it out, or maybe his voice had been purposefully quiet. Hawke hates to admit it, but fuck if he isn't curious.
***
Ginsberg doesn't ever expect Hawke to extend the branch of friendship (god, what a ridiculously cliched phrase -- he'd sneer at anyone who used it in the context of advertising, so why does he even allow himself to use it in his own mind?) to him. Not because he thinks Hawke dislikes him (he doesn't, does he? Hawke seems to like everyone just fine, or at least gets along with them well enough) but because he and Hawke are inherently different, different to the extent that he supposes Hawke probably has very little to say to him.
Hawke is commanding in every sense of the word. He exudes confidence, authority, but manages to do it in the way that Ginsberg can't hate him for it. He's effortlessly good with people, and even though Ginsberg wants (and god, he does, he wants so badly) to hate Hawke when he reminds him to call him 'sir,' he just can't.
He'd like to call him Jayhawk, like some of the other guys do, like Hawke does himself, but they've never shared a real conversation, and he thinks it might be a little presumptuous. So he does what Hawke says (mostly, except when he directly ignores his orders in favor of saving Green's life, but he figures he can be forgiven for that, and if he can't, he'd rather save someone than be approved of, anyway) and he never expects anything more.
That's why, early one Friday night, on a day that has been a combination of stressful and boring, like almost every other goddamned day, he's sitting off on his own, trying to perfect his coffee-making ability, cursing the heat-tabs that come with the C-rations because they never heat up quite enough to get the coffee right. He doesn't expect anyone to approach him unless they need a dose of antimalarial pills or they need a bandage change.
And then, out of fucking nowhere, like he swooped down from the sky, is Hawke.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey." What else is he supposed to say? Is he in trouble? Is Hawke here to tell him that he's gone too far on something or another? It feels very possible.
"Listen," Hawke says, crouching down beside him and making a disgusted face at the coffee Ginsberg's attempting to brew, "There's going to be a mystery tour tonight. You want in on it?"
It's on the tip of Ginsberg's tongue to say that he doesn't do a whole lot of drinking (because he's been around here long enough to figure out what a mystery tour is, and knows that it usually culminates in someone making an incredibly dumb drunken choice and nearly getting shot) but then he reconsiders. He hasn't made a whole lot of friends. He serves a purpose, but that's the extent of it. And getting asked to join Hawke and his friends has that distinct sensation of getting asked to sit with the popular kids in high school.
Except these popular kids have a whole lot of alcohol and loaded weapons.
There's really only one answer.
"Yeah," he says, and he does nothing to disguise that thousand-watt smile that occasionally (but so very rarely) spreads across his face. Maybe he'll finally fit in with somebody, somewhere. Maybe he and Hawke have more in common than he'd thought. Maybe he'd had to come halfway around the world to meet people who could really like him.
Or maybe he's just going to make an idiot of himself. He goes back to trying to make coffee, and Hawke wanders off to extend the invitation to a few select others.
***
It's with some trepidation that he ventures into Hawke's tent. He can already hear laughter coming from within, and he feels suddenly terrified; dressed as he is (meaning dressed just like everyone else) he has nothing to hide behind, no bold face to put forward. He's just himself, just the quirky medic who can't seem to shut the fuck up, and now he's supposed to socialize with a bunch of guys who'd probably scorn him, if they met him in real life.
"Real life." What a strange concept.
But he screws up some residual courage ("you can run into the middle of a firefight but you can't walk into a party?" mocks a voice in his head, one of those many voices he constantly tries to drown out, and it's enough to push him forward) and when he enters, he manages to do so with a half-smile on his face.
He's immediately greeted by a cry of "Doc!" and a smiling -- and heavily bandaged -- Green.
"Good to see you up and about," he replies, but his attention immediately shifts to the open bottle of beer Green's holding, and he frowns. "I'm not sure you should be drinking that. I mean, you got shot not too long ago, and..."
His medical advice is met by resounding laughter from all parties, who seem to think he's kidding, or perhaps playing up his reputation as excessively concerned about everyone's health, and after a minute, he goes along with it. It's pretty fucking stupid, he guesses, to be so concerned about a guy having a drink or two when he could get blown to bits at any moment. Any of them could.
Now he's starting to realize why they drink.
Someone hands him a beer, and he stares at it for a second, trying to figure out how to open it, until he realizes that the little can-opener that hangs on the same chain as his dog-tags would probably serve as a bottle opener. He's proud of himself for his ingenuity. Beer isn't his favorite thing -- no alcohol is -- but at the moment, it tastes pretty damn good, even if it is warm.
Hawke, who had apparently been halfway through regaling everyone with an exciting tale in that quintessential Bostonian accent of his, looks at Ginsberg for a moment. His expression is, to Ginsberg's eyes, somewhere between approving and questioning. Nobody else seems to notice it. Again, there's that moment where they simply stare at each other, sizing each other up.
This time, it's Mellas who breaks the silence. He's reclining on the ground, lazily swigging his own drink (strange, Ginsberg thinks, he'd expected Mellas to be far more uptight than he seems to be right now.) "So, Ginsberg, we hear you're a hero. We hear you're getting a medal for it."
Ginsberg listens closely for any sign of sarcasm in his voice -- there would absolutely be sarcasm in Hawke's voice, if he were to say anything like that -- but he doesn't sense it. Strange. Everyone's looking at him like they want a response, so he just shrugs. "Just doing my job," he says.
This response garners an eyeroll from Hawke, as he'd almost expected it would. "C'mon," he says. He's already opening his second beer, drinking fast, like he'll win a prize if he gets to the bottom of the bottle in less than two minutes. "You get your medal, I get my medal, Mellas gets a thousand medals because he gives a fuck about that kind of stuff, we all get medals. Maybe even you, Green, since you get a medal for getting shot to shit. We'll be highly decorated, if you care about that shit."
"Highly decorated dead men," Ginsberg mutters, and then immediately wishes he hadn't. This is supposed to be a party -- or at least, as much of a party as they can have around here -- and he doesn't need to bring it down with his gloom. He does that enough already. This is why he keeps to himself, this is why he shouldn't ever...
But they're all raising their bottles to him, in a kind of mock-toast, and nobody's asking him to leave. And that's something, isn't it? It's a start.
***
Three hours have passed, and they're all drunk. Maybe drunk is putting it charitably; it might be more fair to call them all completely hammered. Mellas keeps staring at nothing and laughing, the color of Green's face matches his name a little too well, and Ginsberg... well, he's fallen into that state he always does, that state which explains all too well why he doesn't drink, why he doesn't get high, why he doesn't let himself be altered by chemicals in any way because all it does is increase how he already feels and now... and now...
He's seized by a despondant melancholia, and maybe that's because Hawke is quietly singing a mournful song, or maybe it's because they're out here in the middle of nowhere (but no, it's not nowhere, because if it were, it would be safer than here.) Or maybe it's that he's possessed by the knowledge that this, that this attempt at a celebration is really just an attempt at oblivion.
"You sing well," he tells Hawke, though he can't quite tell whether he really says it or whether he just thinks it very strongly. He recognizes that there are tears dampening his cheeks but he doesn't bother to wipe them away. Any physical exertion seems like too much of an effort.
Hawke doesn't break his singing, doesn't stray from the familiar tune and melody, but he looks down at Ginsberg from his perch on his mattress, and he smiles, and it's a beautiful, almost sweet grin, but his bright blue eyes...
It takes Ginsberg a long time to realize that Hawke's eyes chill him so much because it's like looking into a differently colored mirror.
***
Five hours have passed. Everyone has fallen asleep in whatever semi-comfortable spot they can seize amongst the beer bottles and residue of a night well spent. Only Hawke is still awake, determined to keep watch over his boys until they awaken with their pounding headaches.
And there's his medic, sleeping fitfully on the floor in front of him, and a little notebook has slipped out of his pocket and lies beside him. Hawke knows it's wrong, knows he shouldn't look, but he's picking up the notebook before the sensible part of his brain kicks in and reminds him that whenever someone snoops where they shouldn't, they always find things they don't want to see.
Each page has a name on it.
Under each name is a description. Some are vague, simple things: "Andrew King: Private, 20? years old, blond, Southern accent, died of gunshot wound to back of head." Some are a little more descriptive, sounding more like stories than anything else: "Allen Hall: Private, 23 years old, dark hair, from Ohio, liked to talk about sports, liked to dance, terrible singer, but always made up songs anyway. Insisted on going to the front of every line. Died by stepping on a mine."
Hawke's blood runs cold, because he knows what this is. This is a list of all the people that Ginsberg had watched die, that he couldn't save, that he had undoubtedly put everything into reviving, only to see them slip away. He keeps turning pages, not knowing why he's doing it, not knowing what he's looking for, until he comes to one near the end:
"Lieutenant Douglas."
Hawke realizes he's holding his breath as he slowly looks down the page, because he's looking for a story, some kind of description of how Ginsberg had, apparently, been "pretty shaken up" by the guy's death.
It's then that he realizes there's nothing else on the page. A name, and a gaping blank space. That's all there is.