tell it like you still believe

[teapot-yo.livejournal.com]

This is some B-eye. It's about PG and actually rather nice in spite of being completely harmless. The lovely, lovely sarcasticsra looked over it for me to make sure everything was good. And on the seventh day she rested, and it was good. Basically she's lovely. And I hope that you like this.



He loves the rain. Always has. He says he feels most alive when everything around him is soaking wet and he's beneath a blanket, staring at it all. And now, as he drifts into the tent, shaking out rain-drenched hair, I can't help but agree, because he is lovely when he's dripping.

"Hi," he says breathlessly. "Have you been out this morning?"

I shake my head and smile. "No. Not yet."

"You need to." He flops down on his bed and favors me with a tremendous smile. "There's raindrops on the snowdrops."

"How poetic, but there aren't flowers in Korea that aren't of the tumbleweed variety."

"I know." He rolls over and keeps grinning. "But my dad used to say that."

"Mmm."

"Would you live forever if you could?"

"What?"

"I've been thinking about that all morning. You know how people always say, 'no, I wouldn't know what to do with forever'? Well, I think I could figure out a way to spend forever."

"How would you spend forever?"

He smiles. "Watching rain."

+

Hawkeye's got me thinking about spending forever now. I know what we'd do, if he picked me to squander an eternity with. We'd go to San Francisco, and ride cable cars through the city, up and down the hills until he got sick, and you know he would. And the second we'd get off, he'd say, "Oh, BJ, I want a corn dog." And I'd stare at him, but I wouldn't have to say anything because he'd know how incredulous I'd be just by looking.

No one's ever been able to read me like him before. It's amazing. Even more amazing is that I just know that when that street car took us by the edge of the ocean, his hair would be wild, thanks to the never-ending San Franciscan wind. He'd stand at the edge of the dock and look out on a bay grayer than any morning he ever had in Maine, and he'd take deep, gulping breaths of salty air, and then he'd grin a mile and stretch his arms out and just take everything in. And he'd be the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and then he would turn and make me a part of it.

He's always talking about taking me to Maine after the war ends. He talks about how we'd sit in the corner ice-cream store and wax nostalgic. Well, maybe it's just me, but Hawkeye belongs in California. Not because that's where I am, but because it's where everything he is starts.

I'd like to live with him, him and I by the ocean.

+

"Hey," he asks, any time of day, in all kinds of weather, "do you want to go watch the sunset?"

Most of the time this question is posed at about three in the morning, with him giggling over me until he collapses and I shove him out of the cot. More often than not he is drunk. But always, inebriated, exhausted, or otherwise, I am sure that he really does want to watch the sun set over Korea. So one day, Radar tells me choppers aren't expected until the next day, and I pack a picnic basket, and we are off.

"Where are we going?"

"That hill over there." I am essentially pointing to a mountain range. I take small delight in being vague with Hawkeye, who must have been a nightmare on family vacations as a child, with his meticulous attention to the most negligible detail of anything.

"Which hill?"

"The light brown one."

"You're obnoxious."

"Well, you're stupid," I giggle.

"AHA. Yes, you're mature, BJ Hunnicutt. It's a wonder you eluded MENSA. Truly."

"What's MENSA?"

"It's an organization for pseudo-intelligent people, such as yourself."

"If I were you, I would die now, so as to avoid later humiliation," I suggest, and it is reinforced that I am indeed sort of an idiot. But he just smirks at me, and I know that he knows he’s won.

+

"Will you remember me?" he asks later, when the sun is setting, and his skin is a sun-lit orange, a welcome change from blood-spattered red.

"When?" I ask, and I honestly don't know what he's talking about. In any event, how could I forget him? He's trailing his fingers in the grass and picking every miserable excuse for a flower in Korea so that he can make me a daisy chain as the sun sets in the foreground.

"When we go home."

"I couldn't."

It's true. We've been though so much together, and so much of it was hell, but that's the only part I really remember. I don't really remember the conversations we've had about Frank and his latest objection to the still. I remember his arm around me after we spent another day chasing the devil away from people too young to recognize him anyway.

+

I used to think that the reason he looked away when I kissed his hands was that he wanted to play the coy little fox. I mean, it's classic Hawkeye, isn't it? To make someone fall in love with him and then resist their advances? Yes. That wasn't it, though. He used to look away because he didn't think he deserved it, and this has always amazed me. I never kissed Peg's hands, even. The urge just never struck me. But with Hawkeye... it seemed natural to clasp his hands as close to me as I possibly could and then kiss them until he giggled like a kid and hit me.

"Don't," I whisper tonight, staring at him in an effort to make him understand. "Quit looking away."

"I'll look wherever I want," he says lightly, but his eyes don't stray from mine.

"Will you be with me tonight?"

"Oh, shut up." More teasing that doesn't mean anything. "You know I will."

"Right." I want to make him understand. It isn't fair that he means so much to me. I want him to know that even though I love my wife, even though my daughter's face makes me cry in my sleep, it's him that I want right now, and not just because he's the one in front of me. "Thanks."

"The pleasure's mine, really." He makes a face at his own bad pun. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it." My arms go around him, and I can't stop peppering him with kisses. "Don't worry about anything, okay?"

"I won't." He closes his eyes and looks genuinely happy. "Believe me."

I do.