NEW FIC: "Marigold Wine" 8/? H/T by Aura218

[aura218.livejournal.com]

Title: "Marigold Wine" part 8/?

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

| Part 7

Read on for: Part 8

 

Trapper opened his eyes to the sound of childish yelping and a lot of cold dripping on his person. Hawkeye, still half draped on his belly, started, and clipped Trapper in the ribs with his pointy wizard's chin.

"What's wrong, what's -- who's hurt?" Hawkeye stumbled to his  feet.

Trapper grabbed up Sunny so no one tripped on him.

"You lump," Trapper growled at Hawkeye.

"Hawkeye, look!" Jeremiah, the drippy one standing over them, skipped around the pebbly beach. "My pole caught a fish!"

Hawkeye scrubbed at his face; Trapper knew that look, it meant he didn't entirely know where he was. Sunny fussed. Trapper tried not to jostle him as shoved Hawkeye off his lap so he could sit up. He was going pink all over the parts of his skin Hawkeye hadn't covered.

"What do you mean, your pole caught a fish?" Hawkeye asked.

"He left his pole stuck in the rocks while we were swimming." Siva pulled a towel out of Lena's bag, which Trapper had been sleeping on.

Hawkeye said to Jeremiah, "You could have swam into the hook. It could have made you sick."

Jeremiah's face fell.

"Hawkeye," Lena said. She wrapped a blanket around Jeremiah's shoulders and chuffed him warm.

Siva said to her, "This is what I mean."

"What did I say?" Hawkeye said.

Trapper subtly stepped back, heading for quieter ground with the still wubbling baby in his arms.

"Look," Hawkeye said to Siva, "I don't mean to insult you, but it is my medical opinion that impaling oneself with a dirty, rusty fishhook is hazardous to one's health."

Siva padded slowly away, chuckling at the sky in a way that made Trapper nervous. "Don't you hear yourself? Do you seriously think I'd let my son or my girlfriend swim with a dirty fish hook?"

"Excuse me --" Hawkeye started.

"I am not your girlfriend!" Lena said.

Jeremiah stood backed up against the boulders, clutching his fish in a dish towel, looking scared.

"That fishing line is six feet long, six feet," Siva said. "You think I'm so stupid I can't figure out how to keep my kid out of a six foot circle of water? You think I need an old drunk tell me that a fishhook is dangerous?"

Trapper looked up into the trees. So it was going to be like that.

Hawkeye turned white with just two spots of color on his cheeks. Trapper had never seen him so angry he actually couldn't speak. Lightening seem to gather in his dark blue eyes. Trapper considered that if it came to blows, Hawkeye didn't have a chance against a guy half his age and twice his weight. Hawkeye may be a scrappy survivor, but he relied on his mouth to get him out of physical altercations.

"You two are disgusting," Lena took Jeremiah by the hand. "One of you bring me my bag before nightfall. Trapper?"

Trapper handed over the baby, not daring to speak or even make eye contact. Not since Margaret had he seen a woman cut through the bull with a surgeon's precision.

Lena led Jeremiah to the woods path back to the camp. "Dear heart, let's go fry up that fish. It looks delicious, we'll have a feast. Hawkeye and your daddy don't want any, they'll be eating crow tonight . . ."

Her voice drifted through the trees, admonishing them on the breeze.

Hawkeye and Siva stared at each other across the grassy bank. Trapper, without a baby to give him something to do, moseyed over to the flat rock bank and picked up the lunch dishes. He kept an ear to his friend and the scowling manchild glowing at him.

"I'm sorry," Hawkeye said. "I just, I got worried. I didn't mean to step in like that."

Siva kicked the pebbles. "I'm sorry I called you names. It was childish."

"It was also true," Hawkeye said.

Siva looked away, across the lake. Trapper pretended he didn't know he was being noticed. Siva crossed his arms up over his head and seemed to physically shake the argument off. Hawkeye watched him warily. Trapper kept them in his peripheral vision, ready to leap in as a buddy or a jealous lover, whatever he was in this strange situation. Siva still seemed capable of throwing a punch.

"You're with him now?" Siva shrugged one thick shoulder at Trapper.

Hawkeye nodded. "Looks like."

"Don't you ever stay in one place for a more than five minutes?" Siva sounded annoyed, a touch of whine coming into his voice.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. I just -- It was much easier before."

Hawkeye nodded. "Do you miss that?"

"No," Siva said. "You're a jerk when you drink."

"Ah." Hawkeye slung his thumbs in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

"I just wish it was easier. I wish my kid didn't like you."

Trapper was glad he didn't see that expression Hawkeye put on often. That "I don't care what you have to say, I'm completely innocent" expression. It was completely affected and didn't fool anyone who knew Hawkeye intimately.

Hawkeye put his hands up over his head, breathing in the hot summer air. "I'm involved with his mother."

"Yup," Siva said. "You're not a Hindu, either. I'm trying to raise him right."

Hawkeye laughed, flopping his arms at his side. "You can raise him Hindu or Jewish or Sacred Cows of the Latter Day Druids for all I care."

"You could be a little more respectful of my ways," Siva said. Hawkeye snorted. "And you could show up when you say you will, and stop drinking when you say you will, and you could make up your mind about Lena and stop sleeping around with other guys."

Hawkeye looked him in the eye. "I'm working on my promises to Jeremiah and Sunny, and the drinking bit. As for Lena and Trapper, I'm starting to think that's something you just won't ever understand."

Siva stood high, throwing his shoulders back. "I'm starting to think you're right."

Hawkeye stared at him, confused. At last, he shrugged. "Okay then."

"Okay?"

Hawkeye gestured in the air, at a loss. "I don't know, you tell me. Are we okay?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

Trapper watched the two men part ways. Siva loped into the woods, pride and masculinity radiating off of him. Hawkeye followed Trapper to the water's edge, thumbs in his cutoffs, confused and thoughtful.

"I swear I don't know what's gotten into him." Hawkeye sat beside Trapper. He picked up a clean dish and washed it.

"C'mon, Hawkeye." Trapper stacked the bowls in Lena's big basket. "What were you at twenty-four?"

Hawkeye shrugged. "A smart-ass cutie pie. But that was another time. It was a lifetime ago. A completely different war was on."

Trapper cinched the bag and shook out the drips. "Siva is twenty-four, he had a kid at nineteen, and got involved with someone else twelve years older than he was."

"That was his choice, you know." More of that innocence. "It would have taken more effort to keep him out of my bed."

Trapper believed him that much. Youth bred confidence, or the affectation thereof. "I'm just saying, when you sleep with people in their twenties, you have to deal with twenty-year-old bullshit."

Hawkeye shook his head sadly. By the way Hawkeye fussed with the silverware, lining them up by type just to throw them in the net bag, Trapper knew this wasn't the first time he had thought such a thing. But it was the first time he'd thought it live in front of a studio audience.

"Are you okay?" Trapper said.

Hawkeye flipped the silverware into the net bag, seeming to take private glee from the cacophony.

"Sure. Fine. It's just. Some of what he said was really below the belt, wasn't it?" Hawkeye was nearly pouting.

Trapper fought a smile. "Sure. He didn't have to get personal-like."

"I'm not a drunk, I'm an alcoholic."

"The first step is admitting you're not a drunk."

Trapper slipped his arms around Hawkeye's waist, wanting to soothe away the despair beneath the clowning. He rested his chin on Hawkeye's shoulder.

With utter sincerity, Trapper whispered, "You're just taking a minute to catch your breath. Lots of veterans do. You're even being productive, you're writing a book. How many people can say that?"

Hawkeye pressed his forehead against Trapper's, closing his eyes. "I can't tell you how glad I am you're here."

Trapper kissed him there on the rock with their toes at the bottom of the lake, their thighs knocking against each other when the current swept them. Hawkeye buried his hand in Trapper's curls, drawing him closer, deepening the kiss. Trapper still couldn't believe that this crazy thing between them was less than twenty-four hours old, yet felt so right and normal. It felt like home. He could fall in love in this vacation outside the world, if he let it happen.

He was just about to suggest they hie they ho back to Hawkeye's cabin, when a branch snapped behind them. Trapper pulled away from Hawkeye's lips with an audible pop. He detangled himself from Hawkeye's arms and legs -- truly, the man was part squid -- so quickly they both almost fell in the lake. Behind them, a pebble clattered to the shore.

Trapper had a strange, out of body experience that he might be in the pictures. Standing behind them, staring with wide, dark eyes, was a little Indian child dressed head to toe in hand-sewn leather trousers, a beaded necklace, and leather moccasins. Trapper could only guess it was a girl by the corn husk dolly clutched in the child's hand.

"Hullo . . ." he attempted.

The kid grinned and hid her face behind her dolly. She was perhaps five? Trapper glanced sidelong at Hawkeye. He was swallowing hard, Adam's apple bobbing, a sure sign of too many thoughts clicking by in his overactive head.

"Did you lose your mommy?" Trapper asked. "Or maybe your, uh, spiritual babysitter?"

"I don't know this kid," Hawkeye said quietly.

Trapper glanced at him. "So? Maybe there's more visitors today."

"I don't think so."

Trapper looked him over, curious.

"Look." Hawkeye nodded up the coast.

Like something out of an apocalyptic movie, more of them were coming. They were in skins, woven fabrics, or bare skin. The men walked ahead, the women behind, the children who couldn't be carried walked behind them.

Hawkeye maneuvered the little girl between Trapper and himself.

*

High up in the trees, a pine plank bird blind hung suspended above the forest. The Robinsons, the elderly artists, were strapped into lawn chairs, which were themselves bolted to their treehouse floor.

"Mrs. Robinson," Mr. Robinson said, "do you see a group of Indians by the lake?"

"No, Mr. Robinson," she said without looking up from her watercolor of a yellow-rumped warbler. "Antelope Hill was your father's war."

Hastily, Mr. Robinson unbuckled his belt. The whole platform shook. Mrs. Robinson's paints rattled in their tray.

"Mr. Robinson, do be careful!"

He shoved his binoculars at her and scampered down the pole shockingly fast for a man who had given up the stress of weekend trousers in recent years. Mrs. Robinson recovered her husband's discarded binoculars. She focused the twin lenses on the lake.

"Oh dear."

On the ground, Mr. Robinson darted into their cabin. The shuffling of paper could be heard from within.

*

"Are they an army?" Trapper asked. He stood with Hawkeye on the wood's edge, behind a blueberry bush. Lena's net bags of clean dishes that lay disregarded on the dirt trailhead.

"An army of ideas," Hawkeye said. "Which is harder to fight."

The group was approaching from the east, seemingly growing in numbers as more emerged from the woods. They congregated on the bank in small groups. They weren't actual Native Americans. Trapper saw more white bodies and fair hair than any other ethnicity, although there were enough Black and middle tones to balance out the group. The men looked older than the women, although a wild-man beard and xylophone ribs could add age to any kid.

They seemed disorganized, a mingling band of people waiting for a bus, until the women started lining up at the water's edge. Children were called, bags were unpacked. Trapper felt like he was seeing nomadic life as it had been lived thousands of years ago. Perhaps as old as it could get. The men kept walking up the bank until they found a spot they appeared to like. They stripped and dove in.

"Mr. and Mrs. Robinson told me about them," Hawkeye said. "They came here about two summers ago. They're bad news."

A woman called "May! May!" into the clear air. The child between Hawkeye and Trapper dropped her dolly and ran, meeting a teenish looking girl at the water's edge. The child burst into tears as they were reunited. By now, the women had made serious headway setting up camp at the water's edge. People were building fires, kids were getting scrubbed.

"They're fundamentalist hippies," Trapper whispered.

"Yeah," Hawkeye said. "We should tell someone."

As Trapper turned to go, he took one last look. There were maybe sixty, seventy? There were a lot of little kids, but then it seemed almost every woman was attached to a few of her own -- except . . .

"My God," Trapper whispered.

Hawkeye scurried to gather up Lena's bag. He threw a glance at the salads in bowls they had forgotten in the river, but didn't bother to collect them.

Trapper couldn't move. There, hanging back from the bank, rooting through a goat cart. He watched her work. A young woman with wavy, strawberry-blonde hair.

"Trap, let's go." Hawkeye tugged on his elbow.

As she leaned over, a necklace slipped out of her shift. The sunlight caught on the charm.

"We need to warn the kids," Hawkeye said.

"Huh?" Trapper took one last look, and followed Hawkeye away.

Hawkeye ran ahead down the path, barefoot, while Trapper shoved on his sneakers and tried to keep up despite his racing thoughts.

Thank god she was wearing regular clothes. Trapper probably wouldn't have recognized Becky dressed like an Indian, despite his college caduceus charm around her neck.

~*~