NEW FIC: "Marigold Wine" 7/? by Aura218

[aura218.livejournal.com]

Title: "Marigold Wine" part 7/?

Author: aura218

Pairing: Hawkeye/Trapper, Hawkeye/others

Genre: Drama, romance, longfic, postseries, 60s

Summary: In the 60s, Trapper visits his old army buddy at a hippie commune, where Hawkeye has retreated to find peace.

Rating: R/M

Read: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5| Part 6

Read on for: Part 7

When Lena assigns us essays for school, she says we need an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. So here is how to write an essay on fishing:

My name is Jeremiah and sometimes I like fishing and sometimes I do not. There are three reasons for each of my feelings.

I like fishing when I catch something. I like fishing when Daddy and Hawkeye fish with me. I like fishing when there are lots of other people to fish with. I do not like fishing when it is hot. I do not like fishing when I don't catch something. I do not like fishing when the other people I go with yell at each other.

In conclusion, fishing is an important part of our commune because it gives us food without hurting the earth except for the fish but that's okay because God says all animals are supposed to eat each other and we are animals too.

This is a very good essay because it is more than a hundred words.

*

Lena was proving to be a supportive but practical woman. The goal of the afternoon was to catch lunch, so naturally she brought three kinds of salad and a basket of bread and fruit. Trapper helped her secure the salads in the cool lake while the more sportsmanlike men started to catch the protein.

The lake was gorgeous. Carved by a glacier and enclosed on its eastern side with mountains, their spot was shady in the morning but warm as lunchtime approached. The water moved swiftly over the calico bed, and Trapper could feel little sunfish nipping at his toes as he sat on the wide, flat, warm boulders that served as a perfect fisherman's wharf. Jeremiah had high hopes for more than sunnies, which even Trapper considered bait; Hawkeye told jack tales of actual trout or even early salmon.

No one wore shirts at the lake, even Lena, which caused Trapper to mentally recite "sophisticated, grownup, those things are for feeding Sunny" over and over until he could look Lena in the eye without so much as a leer. Bisexuality was becoming less of a fuzzy theory and more like tangible reality, as his hormones were torn between Lena tanning tits-up on the rock and Hawkeye's fingertips sneaking teasing caresses on his hands, spine, neck, thighs . . .

 Coastal men by birth, Trapper and Hawkeye took a natural lead in all things ichthyoid. The poles were handmade but strong yew. Jeremiah had dug up the most promising bait that morning.

Jeremiah, perched on Siva's lap, tolerantly let his father help him hold "his" pole. "The fat yellow worms that live under rocks are good for trout," he was saying. "But so are cricket worms."

"Cricket larvae," Siva corrected.

"You did a good job, kiddo," Trapper said.

"I'm the best worm digger because I have a secret worm place that no one knows about. What to know where it is?" Jeremiah peered up at Trapper and nearly dropped his pole. Siva grabbed it.

"How do you know you can trust me?" Trapper said.

Jeremiah pondered that. "Nevermind."

Hawkeye howled. "You see? He's a genius. You are a gossip fiend."

Jeremiah grinned.

"That's my boy," Siva said.

By two, they hadn't caught catch any fish, and while conversation hadn't lagged, the kids and Trapper were whining. Lena declared lunchtime -- otherwise the salad dressings would turn, and anyway Sunny wanted feeding and if she was nursing, she was eating.

After lunch, the crickets buzzed a low drone as the afternoon sun shone straight across the bright lake water. To really cement that fishing was a done deal, Siva and Jeremiah scared all the fish away with twin rolling cannonballs. The boys shrieked and whooped, calling Lena in. With a put-upon sigh, Lena followed them delicately into the lake.

Someone had to watch the baby. In the shade, Hawkeye stretched out in the grass, head in Trapper's lap, Sunny tucked up against his hip. Hawkeye lined up a few river stones and gave them names and sound effects. They had personalities and political aspirations. There was an acorn interloper named Flagg from Russia.

"That's quite an accent on the lady double agent," Trapper observed.

"All pinecones are double agents," Hawkeye said. "They get more obvious the longer they stick around."

"How come you never went into pediatrics?" Trapper poured himself a cup of lemonade from the thermos. "You used to say 'There's gold in them thar diapers'."

Hawkeye's cars fell silent, except the clacking as Sunny ran them into each other (the best part of playing Cars.)

"I just lost the interest," Hawkeye said.

"You love kids."

Hawkeye shook his head against Trapper's thigh. "I love my kids. Kid. Sunny's mine, I can control what happens to him. And believe me, it took me almost ten years to get to that point of acceptance of my uselessness in regards to the greater disasters in the world. I couldn't deal with an endless parade of sick and hurt kids, knowing that some of them wouldn't get better and there was nothing I could do about it."

Hawkeye was getting awfully hot about it. Sure, there were a lot of civilian wounded in Korea, that would probably mess with anyone's head.

Trapper scritched the back of Hawkeye's neck. "Sorry I asked."

*

Out in the lake, the ripples were gold in the sunlight and Lena could see clear to the bottom. The mountain water was cold but glorious to play in, just like the spring in the little English town she grew up in. The air was probably around eighty-eight by now, even though it had started closer to sixty-five this morning. It never got this hot in England. She hoped Hawkeye remembered to keep Sunny's hat on, even though he said it looked stupid.

With a roar, Siva leaped out of the water, Jeremiah lofted high above him. The boy seemed to know just how to move his body to fly incredibly far when his daddy threw him. He landed with a graceful splash.

"That always looks like such fun," Lena said.

"You want a go?" Siva said, coming at her.

"No!" she cried.

"Get Lena!" was the last thing Lena heard before Siva had her in his arms. They plunged into the cold lake. Well, honestly. Now she'd have to do her hair.

She came up sputtering for good effect, to make Jeremiah laugh at her. Siva held on, pulling her close.

"That was horrid," she said.

Jeremiah swam to her side. He hugged her around the hips, feet kicking behind him. "You were funny, Lena."

She hitched up the cotton shorts she wore to swim in. "Thank you, dear heart."

"I could warm you up," Siva whispered against her neck. His arms were warm underneath her bare breasts.

She uncircled herself from both sets of arms and sent Jeremiah paddling away.

"Don't do that in front of him," she said to the bigger, less simple problem in her life. "You'll confuse him."

"Sweetheart, he was drinking last night," Siva said.

"Jeremiah was?"

Siva made an irritated noise. "When are you going to give up on Hawkeye?"

*

"Was the bonnet a gift?" Trapper said.

"My Aunt Bitsy," Hawkeye said. "It's practically Victorian, isn't it?"

Sunny looked like some sort of foundling. He lay in the grass on a receiving blanket made of two old shirts sewn together, wearing a cloth diaper and an enormous, lacy, cream sunbonnet.

"I don't know why Lena insists on covering his head but not the rest of him." Hawkeye's broad, tan hand covered his son's belly. The kid giggled and grabbed it.

The heat really got into your bones, made thinking or moving just too much work. Hawkeye lay on his side beside the baby, half lounging on Trapper, who was barely holding his sleepy head up on Lena's big woven bag stuffed with blankets and extra clothes. Hawkeye traced the soft hills of Sunny's chubby arms and legs, fingers and toes, while Trapper absently rubbed Hawkeye's bare back. The wind high in the trees stilled as the temperature climbed, bees hummed in the blueberry bushes at the wood's edge, and an occasional splash or giggle rose up from the lake. Behind them toward the camp someone was playing a guitar. What if all of Boston shut down like this at two p.m. and took a siesta? What if the whole world got into a hammock or a day bed with their wives and babies and just breathed each other?

Trapper leaned over and kissed Hawkeye, upside-down.

"What was that for?"

"Serenity looks good on you," Trapper said.

Hawkeye smiled. "He sort of looks like me, doesn't he?"

"Sure he does."

"And not only the hair?"

"'Corse not. There's the eyes. And the unfortunate nose."

Hawkeye poked Trapper in the belly, gently. "His nose is perfect. He's perfect. Now if only I don't break him."

"You won't." Trapper massaged Hawkeye's neck reassuringly.

"Or let anything else break him."

"It won't."

"You don't know that," Hawkeye said, fear and wonder in his voice.

Trapper fell silent. He worked his hand into Hawkeye's hair, rubbing the base of his skull, the way Louise sometimes had done for him after a long day. Hawkeye looped one long arm across Trapper's middle and snuggled into his stomach. The man really did crave affection, or at least the reassurance of another person liking him back. Trapper put one arm behind his head and let all the tension melt out of his body.

*

Lena bobbed in the water, looking anxiously back at the rocky bank.

"Do you really think he'll stop drinking?" Siva said.

Lena turned. "Not today, please."

"When? Lena --"

"I don't know, Siva!" Lena stood full height in the water, so it milled around her waist. Siva looked up at her, for once. "How about after a party, or when I'm on my way to school, or in the middle of dinner, or two seconds after you met him, or when you were breaking up with him, or any of the five hundred other times you tell me what your problem is with Hawkeye instead of telling him?"

Siva was looking over her shoulder. Lena turned. Jeremiah was treading water behind her, watching them both with saucer eyes.

Lena gave Siva a Look and dove under the water.

*

Hawkeye wasn't really asleep. Trapper was whuffling and making the hairs on his goofy mustache wiggle. Sunny still made his newborn noises as he slept, little snorty gasping that sometimes scared the hell out of Hawkeye if he listened too closely. Sometimes Hawkeye turned the baby on his side, just in case.

Was he an overprotective father? Yeah, maybe, if only to make up for his days of utter neglect. A baby was fragile, an disaster took seconds, and for a year he was more interested in a bottle of homemade wine than his own kid. When he came back to himself, Hawkeye wanted to make it up with as much quality time as he could. Sunny amazed him, every new skill he learned, every sound, even the new way his hair grew or when he learned to say his favorite word (currently: "no").

Hawkeye had screwed up, big. He knew that. He'd apologized fifteen times. But apologies were easy. Laying off the booze was hard. Personally, he didn't think he should be expected to abstain one hundred percent for the rest of his life. What that normal? Just because he spent long periods of time dealing with boredom or life change by cowardly drinking away his feelings. Just because he was checked out for six months of his kid's short life by being drunk or unconscious all the time. Just because he spent months getting close to Jeremiah only to check out on him, too, and was only now making it up to him. He used to do things with the kid, take him fishing or hang around in Lena's classroom. Just be there for him, fill the hole his mother left when she went AWOL. Jeremiah didn't run to Hawkeye as quickly as he used to, he asked his father for things instead of Hawkeye. Hawkeye wasn't his favorite person anymore. Well, maybe that was how it should be.

Hawkeye knew he hadn't always been this dependant, this unable to exist in the real world. He drank a lot in college and in the service. Was this the man he'd grown into? He didn't have to be so . . . afraid of things. Afraid of disaster. He knew he had a real self to get back to. He saw that self in the memories Trapper had of him.

If Trapper would have him, Hawkeye truly didn't believe that Trapper and Lena posed a conflict between one another. He used to have a hang up about that, that he had to date sequentially, one woman at a time. Back in the war, he thought had to only date women and had a big guilt hang up about being attracted to Trapper and, well, maybe there had been other  men he'd admired a bit more than society dictated. Ten years, Lena, a lot of books, some experimentation. When they'd first arrived at the commune and fallen in with Siva, well, that had been more than a mistake, he'd been a disaster; the philosophy that 'fall in love with the person, not the age' had been well enough when Siva had developed a crush on him. Hawkeye hadn't reciprocated at first, not really. It had been an ideal to strive for, to see if the three of them really could be a family.

Well. Perhaps he and Siva were more like competitive cousins than spouses. Hawkeye didn't like what had happened with Siva. Suddenly he started pulling away from both of them, intimating that race had something to do with his sudden disinterest in Hawkeye romantically, which baffled Hawkeye, who never thought of Siva or Jeremiah as Black other than in the bare factual way. But now his piecemeal family was in limbo. Hawkeye still loved Lena and she said she loved him. Sunny and Jeremiah needed parents, and Hawkeye suddenly found himself in love with his oldest friend.

In love with? Hawkeye hadn't meant to think that. Trapper surely wasn't in love with him.  Except for that time Hawkeye caught him at the Go table with a muscular geisha on his lap, kissing "her" neck and getting hands-y. . . . And, okay, that time on the road back to camp that was a collision outside time and space, but all other evidence suggested Trapper was straight. Straight men might on occasion sleep with other men, but fall in love? Statistically, Dr. Kinsey may have found one or two, but what's the likelihood that Trapper was that one guy?

But since when did Hawkeye want more than a shack-up? Since when did he think about the future? That wasn't his M.O. Since he had Sunny, that's when. Trapper would be a good influence on Hawkeye, keep him steady. Keep him sober.

Was his interest in Trapper self-serving, then? Was that why he wrote his friend for the first time in years and invited him to the commune? Hawkeye felt a little embarrassed now, seeing it from Trapper's perspective, how out of the blue it must have seemed. They hadn't seen each other since the reunion almost ten years ago. What kind of claim had Hawkeye thought he'd had on Trapper's time and emotions, not to mention his love life? He could be honest with himself now: he had designs on Trapper when he invited him to come to the commune. Being accused and convicted as an alcoholic had put Hawkeye in a nostalgic frame of mind, making him second guess everything he'd ever done. Everything he didn't do.

Why had he avoided Trapper at medical conferences for years, but not B.J.? Because Trapper was a possibility, Hawkeye realized now, and it didn't matter that B.J. was married too because with B.J. there was no way. Hawkeye had been afraid of confronting that part of himself and of showing it to someone he really trusted, someone who he knew he couldn't hide his 'gay' side from, or whatever he should be calling it. Someone who had seen it once before and almost brought it out.

So Hawkeye could thank Siva for one thing. The man had had a crush on him and Hawkeye knew about it and even reciprocated for a while and he hadn't died. It had made him a better man. It hadn't invalidated all his jauntings with women, either. It took a little fearful part of him away and replaced it with someone he liked a lot better.

*

Siva swam backwards, away from Lena, pulling Jeremiah in front of him. If he ever had to leave this place, everything that mattered to him was right here, right now. He could probably convince Lena to leave that drunk she called a husband and they could be a normal family.

Siva didn't hate Hawkeye. That would be wasting energy. Can you get angry at a hurricane? He knew from his mother there was no use fighting someone else's addiction. You just had to get out of its path before it destroyed everything you loved.

Of all the guys to ruin himself over. Too much pot, too much open-mindedness, too much letting go of his hang-ups. Some hang-ups were useful, appropriate. Siva wasn't gay. Hawkeye was a big disaster that came into his life and he was going to be a man and get Lena out of it.

If only women knew when to cut and run instead of committing to a lost cause.

*

Trapper reached over Hawkeye's waist and took Sunny's hand. Sunny wrapped his fist around it and grinned. Hawkeye watched Trapper watching the kid.

"Thought you were tired of babies," Hawkeye said.

"He's cute."

Trapper made a face. Sunny made an O with his lips, fascinated.

"He likes you," Hawkeye said.

"You didn't tell me why you and Lena decided to come here," Trapper said.

Hawkeye paused, wondering how much to tell.

"It wasn't a great romance. We were in Hartford, she was teaching English to the underprivileged. I was schmoozing my way into the chief surgeon position at a trauma center that was better funded than God. And I was bored. Miserable. But I hid it well, at least until I tricked her into moving in with me."

Trapper propped his chin on Hawkeye's shoulder and listened.

He'd been in bad shape before they came to the commune. There was something broken in both of them, obviously, or she wouldn't have put up with him as long as she did.

So at around seven one evening, Hawkeye was in the bedroom while Lena cleaned up dinner and listened to the radio in the front room. He was outlining his novel on a legal pad. Actually, he was supposed to be working on his charts, but he had pulled out the legal pad to write down an addendum to a chapter. Across the header, he'd written: "M*A*S*H 4077th: Best Ca" except the 'a' was now a blot. He flipped the pages -- he'd impressed that 'a' through a centimeter of paper.

"Shouldn't use a fountain pen for notes," he muttered.

By ten o'clock, he'd be drunk, the charts wouldn't be finished, the legal pad would be filled with junk, and he'd have spent the whole evening ignoring his girl. He could see the whole evening stretched out before him, and hated it. He'd prefer to be at work, but they kicked him out after twelve hours a day. Twelve hours felt like nothing after Korea. How he wished for physical work, real exertion, that turned his muscles to noodles and shut off his mind.

Disgusted, Hawkeye kicked his legs off the bed and launched himself out of the room. He needed air. He needed to drive into the city, find a decent martini, music, people. He needed to find a woman to temp him and give him a big, difficult decision to mull over all night. Maybe he'd attract a fistfight, or at least a citation for public drunkenness.

Lena looked up, startled, when he stormed out of the bedroom.

"How's the book coming?" she said.

"What? Fine," Hawkeye said from inside the coat closet.

"You haven't shown me a chapter in a few weeks."

Hawkeye looked at her in the mirror inside the door. She was barefoot, blonde, in a low scooped dress with no hose on her legs. If he saw her across a martini bar, he'd be making his way over to her already. But then, in a martini bar she wouldn't be looking at him with such suspicion and disappointment.

"Not tonight," Hawkeye said. "I've, ah, got plans."

"Which are?"

Hawkeye looked down at his hands, flexed them in his leather gloves. He didn't want to lie to her, though a smooth one formed on his tongue and just begged to slip out. He could make her trust his untrustworthy side, if he wanted to be that guy to her, that mischievous, immature Cpt. Pierce.

"Sweetheart," she said. His heart hurt.

"I'll be home ear -- "

The phone rang.

Hawkeye lunged to answer it, ignoring Lena's eyes on him.

"Dr. Pierce, please?"

Hawkeye winced. His secretary. He wasn't on call tonight, she should be calling Dr. Wycoff, and he told her so. She said Mrs. Travers was complaining of a stomach ache again and said that Dr. Wycoff  said to take an aspirin and just show up for her usual appointment.

Hawkeye leaned against the wall. "Look, Wycoff knows what he's doing. If that's his orders, then she should follow them."

"I'll pass that on, Doctor, if you're sure."

"Of course I'm sure." Hawkeye hung up.

He drove into Hartford and found a piano bar, ordered a string of martinis and found another veteran to talk to all night. He slept it off on the sofa in his office rather than drive home blitzed, which was why he got the news bright and early that Mrs. Travers was brought into the ER hemorrhaging into her GI tract, temperature soaring, and BP dropping fast. He didn't work on her, but he heard later about the septic ulcer.

Dr. Wycoff didn't know what he was doing because Mrs. Travers didn't tell anyone she usually took three aspirin several times a day because of her fibroids. She'd thought the pain from the stomach ulcer was just more GYN pain. So for several days at least, she added to her aspirin habit a whiskey habit, the latter of which Hawkeye had suspected but didn't put down on her chart because she was the wife of the hospital's director and it was hospital policy to protect Travers from himself out of interest of one's job. Wycoff hadn't gotten the patient's full history because when the secretary called Hawkeye the previous night, Hawkeye had forgotten what he hadn't written down.

No one got in trouble. After all, the woman had poisoned herself and withdrawn information from her doctors. There was some discussion about locking down the records so doctors could feel comfortable putting embarrassing details on important patients' charts, but nothing much came of it. Sitting there in the smoke-filled doctor's lounge, Hawkeye pondered how this would have played out in the Army, if some general had drank himself septic, and he knew what he and Trapper would have done. They wouldn't have been cowed by the brass. They would have told the general to stop drinking; they would have put the guy in surgery and done the damn hysterectomy to relieve his chronic pain, even if standard practice said that a general of twenty-three years can't have a hysterectomy because he might want babies later and sue the hospital.

Hawkeye told Wycoff he was taking off a year to write, letting the nervous department head think his best doctor was writing a medical publication that would earn the hospital prestige. Lena soothed his concerns, worried about money, and finally found them the Sipsis commune. They needed fresh air and real people, she said. She was going whether Hawkeye went with her or not.  

As Lena skipped them down her yellow brick road paved with good intentions -- onward to meet her solid Tin Man -- Hawkeye the Cowardly Lion slipped further into isolation.

~*~