#the chaplain

PG, 7,470 words

"Didn't you know you were naked?" asked the chaplain, who was confused all over again. "I hadn't given it much thought," said the man in the tree who was probably Yossarian. "But then, I've been avoiding fruit on account of my liver, so I haven't eaten any of these." He proffered a juicy, red fruit that the chaplain recognised, to some alarm, as a cherry tomato of much the same species that he'd been so cruelly accused of stealing from Colonel Cathcart's office, even by Colonel Cathcart, who had been the one to insist he take it in the first place. "Want one?"

Honestly, my plans for this year's Yuletide were to check out any prompts for The Lost Boys or maybe Dracula too with the aim of writing some treats, depending what turned up. Which I still did ‒ but then I randomly spotted Catch-22 on the sign-up summary, and never in my life have I gone from 0 to omg I have GOT to write something for this! nearly so fast. (Did not hurt that the request was, of course, exactly the pairing I knew it would be.)

See, Catch-22 is one of my favourite novels. It is by turns mad, hilarious, horrifying, utterly gut-wrenching, absurdist, cynical, humanist, and somehow still hopeful at the end of the day. When I tell you how hard Catch-22 begs to be queered, I need you to understand that despite the most gleefully gay opening lines, I warn you this thing was penned by one of the horniest heterosexual men I have ever encountered in writing (and that is saying a lot). It's narrative voice is so strong and unique that the first time I read it, I found it leaking into my fecking CLAMP fic (no regrets). It's the novel I reread deliberately while looking for inspiration for A Unified Theory of UNCLE (my own attempt at questionably-heterosexual absurdist historical government-regulation-drama). This thing gets in my head in the best way.

Despite all the above, I can't say I've ever seriously considered trying to write fic for Catch-22 itself before. But it turns out all I really needed was the excuse.