Chapter Text
She steps out on the porch, and the warmth of the August evening feels like an embrace.
She locks the door behind her. Hawkeye and Daniel have told her she doesn’t have to, there are no burglars in Crabapple Cove, but old habits of padlocked tents and footlockers and a city apartment die hard.
Hawkeye is waiting on the lawn, Bonnie dancing around his feet, as always so very excited to be going wherever.
“We need to put her leash on,” she says while walking down the stairs. “You know she will just run around wild otherwise, getting strangers to feed her and then throw up all night.”
“I know,” he says with a smile.
“I’m serious, she can get hurt.”
Still smiling, he hands her the leash, and she attaches it to Bonnie’s collar.
“There. Be a good girl,” she tells the dog and kisses her head.
“No words of advice for me?”
“No.” She reaches up and gives him a quick kiss. “You are incorrigible, and I have given up on you.”
He laughs and takes her hand as they start to walk.
“So, have you gotten used to it yet,” he asks, lifting her hand, making the ring on her finger sparkle in the setting sun.
“Not really. But I love it.”
And she does, she loves it so very much. It is still so very new, it wasn’t even a week ago they went for a walk on the beach. The morning was overcast and windy, finally a bit cooler than it had been for the last weeks, and the wind had a salty tinge to it. They walked in silence for a while, and when he stopped and spoke, she was busy watching Bonnie, making sure she didn’t go too far into the water. When she looked back, he was holding the ring in his hand, and it took her a few seconds to realize what it meant and what he had just said.
She will forever remember the way he looked at that moment. The way his hair - way too long, she has told him a thousand times to go to the barber - was blowing in the wind. The way his eyes looked. Happy and a bit frightened, and with that twinkle they always get when he catches her off guard. The way his hand looked, holding the ring. Back in Korea, she spent so much time watching his hands. Amazed at how they could repair those who seemed broken beyond the comprehensible. She has seen him hold human hearts. Scalpels. Martini glasses. Nurses. And on many occasions his own head, in futile attempts to hold it together. On that cloudy day on the beach, his hand looked so real, so beautiful, and also frail, somehow.
He repeated the question, her response was no more than a croak and a nod, and then there were hugs and kisses and a dripping wet Bonnie getting water and sand all over them.
When they got back to the house, there was a shout of joy from Daniel, more hugs, quite a few tears, and celebratory champagne at 10 in the morning. It was a perfect day.
The weight of the ring on her finger still feels foreign. The one she got from Donald never had any real weight to it, in any sense of the word. This one does, in every way. She has been very reluctant to take it off at work, it stays safely inside her locker in a satin bag, and she can’t wait to put it back on. While driving, she has to force herself to stay focused on the road and not let her eyes wander to her hand there on the steering wheel.
Now, in the warm August sun, it shines and sparkles and makes her hand look complete. Feel complete.
He brings her hand up to his lips, kissing it.
“Oh, you do know that dad is down at the festival right now, preparing some sort of engagement celebration?”
“I know. He has such a bad poker face.”
“This whole town does. Everyone I’ve met this week have been smiling these incredibly creepy smiles, making ever so light conversation about the weather, all looking about ready to burst.”
“Oh, did you see Mrs. Miller practically vibrating yesterday? She couldn’t get us out of the clinic fast enough!”
“I don’t want to alarm you, but I overheard dad on the phone the other day, and the word brass was uttered. I think, nay fear, he might have assembled the Crabapple Cove Brass Quintet, and let me tell you – there is a reason they never made it onto the big stages. But what they lack in talent, they make up for in enthusiasm, so at least there will be no way of stopping them. If you thought Charles was bad on the French Horn, you will now get to experience Mr. Carville on the tuba, playing every note known to mankind and possibly some new ones, and your life will never be the same. Are you okay?”
She has stopped walking.
“This is the real world,” she says, looking up at him.
He looks confused, but then he smiles, bends down, and kisses her. She yelps as he slides his hand down and pinches her butt.
“Hey! Keep those hands to yourself, Captain, or I’ll tell General Clayton!”
He throws his head back, laughing that big, open mouthed laugh of his.
“Just making sure you were real. And you are. You are my real, really beautiful fiancée. This is our real, really excited dog. And waiting for us is a whole town ready to celebrate and admire that really expensive ring on your finger. And if we don’t get going soon, I think several of them will implode, and I don’t want to deal with that tonight, I’m off duty. So what do you say, Houlihan, are you ready?”
“I really am.”
They keep walking down the street, and she does her best to burn this moment into her mind forever. The sun shining through the canopy up above. The way the breeze makes her dress billow around her knees. Bonnie dancing happily in front of them, safe on her leash.
The man next to her. Hawkeye Pierce, her Ben, the bane of her existence back in another lifetime. The man she came to respect. Then like. Then love. Forever love.
Voices of people talking and laughing drift through the warm August air, and as they approach the festival, she sees a crowd waiting under a big banner, and she can see the sun reflecting on what most likely is a tuba.
And somewhere, her father is smiling down at them. She scoffs to herself. No, she doesn’t believe that. Wherever he is, Colonel Howitzer Al Houlihan is stomping around mad as hell, face red and probably a drink in hand. It is what it is.
The real world still has claws and fangs, but it also has gentle hands that soften the claws and kisses that keep the fangs from biting down too hard. Whatever Korea took from them, it also gave them this, this moment. This life. Some of the marbles are still rolling around, maybe they will never settle, but that’s how it is in the real world.
She can’t wait to walk further into it.