Chapter Text
They walk home from the clinic every night. Hawkeye keeps his hands in his pockets— there are some things he’s still working up to— but he lets Trapper throw an arm around his shoulders when they’re mostly alone. They take the longest possible route home. As they walk, Hawkeye leans in and points to all the different landmarks: his initials in the sidewalk from when he was twelve, the tree he had his first kiss under, the road he crashed his first car on. Trapper hangs onto every word. The streetlights come on around them, and when they look through the windows of the houses they pass they can see all the families having dinner.
He tells a lot of jokes. Not like the kind he used to tell. Real ones, that make him laugh as hard as everyone around him. He tells them kind of quietly, leaning into Trap’s shoulder as they round another corner, like it’s part joke and part reminder: “we’re together and alone, and there isn’t any space between us.”
Trapper knows he never knew Hawkeye the way he is now, so there’s no way he could’ve missed it. But seeing Hawkeye happy like this, somehow he’s coming home to something. And he’s glad as hell to be back.
Their house is small and blue, and the shelves are crowded with two lives’ worth of books and all the photographs they could find of the 4077. Every night, Trapper unlocks the door, and the two of them take off their shoes and kiss, long and deep, like they’ve got all the time in the world. Hawkeye makes dinner, usually, spends the entire time warning about his cooking abilities, about how it’s going to be burnt to a crisp. It’s always good. At least, it’s always edible. They eat and laugh until their stomachs hurt, and then they turn the radio on and dance. They keep the curtains closed— there are some things they know from experience it’s better to hide— and they step on each other’s feet a lot. But they dance.
Almost every night, these days, they sleep until morning, a tangle of limbs and the smell of shampoo, a real mattress underneath them. It won’t ever be perfect; there are still nights where one of them wakes up shaking, covered in blood or dust that takes a while to fade back into memory. But it’s okay. There’s a pair of arms around them the whole time, and a voice telling them they’re safe. So it’s okay.
On Friday nights, they close up the clinic and walk the opposite direction from their house, up the front steps of Daniel Pierce, MD. This part took a while. At first Hawkeye came alone. At first, he didn’t even go inside, just stood on the porch until he was sure no one was coming to the door. And then, when he was finally allowed in, the visits never lasted long, and they always ended in screaming. It was slow. Sometimes it was so slow that Hawkeye thought giving up might be better for everyone, and Trapper was inclined to agree with him. But they had time to wait. And now, once a week, the three of them eat dinner together. Daniel asks Trapper about his football days and teases Hawkeye about his quickly-graying hair. And they revel in it: at the time they have together, at the life they’ve come to have.
Hawkeye still gets tired sometimes; the heavy white web of exhaustion doesn’t stop looming right behind him. Sometimes he wakes up and just the idea of the effort it would take to get out of bed scares him half to death. He can always pull it together long enough for a shift at the clinic, but sometimes he lays down on the kitchen floor the minute they get home, and he doesn’t get up until the next morning. Sometimes Trapper hides all the knives and empties the medicine cabinet and sits up all night while Hawkeye talks to Sidney on the phone. Sometimes it comes to a head, standing on opposite sides of the bedroom shouting at each other.
But Hawkeye makes it through another October.
And even when he thinks about dying, even when it feels close and easy and tangible, he’s still standing on firmer ground than he ever stood on before. Even when the sensation in his chest comes back, and the world looks a whole lot better without him in it, there’s enough in the life he’s living, between the Maine coastline and the clinic and Friday nights and Trapper, to overpower any death he might be interested in.
So he’s okay. That’s what he tells Klinger when the war ends, and they’re sitting in a Toledo bar together. That’s what he tells Potter when he calls, and Radar when he writes. That’s what he tells BJ when he shows up at Hawkeye’s doorstep one day, looking a little more worn-in than the last time they saw each other, and greets Hawkeye with a handshake that quickly turns into the longest hug either of them ever had. After a while, after he says it enough, “I’m okay, really,” everyone believes him.
“Peacetime’s a good look on you,” Klinger says.
“Wish I could say the same about your civvies,” Hawkeye replies, gesturing at the other man’s suit. “This is a nice place, you could’ve at least put on some heels.”
Every night, Hawkeye and Trapper take out all the space between each other, arms around waist, legs woven together, hands through hair and tracing cheekbones and chins. It’s quiet, and they can hear the ocean. They have both stopped waiting for the sound of ambulance wheels, stopped hearing chopper blades. By the time they remember to be grateful for the quiet, that they haven’t always had it, they’re both mostly asleep.
“Goodbye,” Trapper will murmur into Hawkeye’s hair.
“Goodbye,” Hawkeye will return, and he’ll sink into the sheets and the Crabapple Cove air coming in through the window.
He falls asleep that way. And in the morning, he wakes up.