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The Swamp is a little quieter than usual. Radar’s long gone for the night, the stillness outside broken only by the occasional snap of a jeep door or the distant cough of someone’s bad cigarettes. Inside, it’s dim. A low bulb buzzes above Trapper’s head as he leans over a tattered medical journal, glasses sliding down his nose, brow furrowed in something like concentration.
Hawkeye’s on the cot behind him, half-dressed and restless, shifting around like he’s trying to get comfortable on a bed made entirely of elbows.
“Hey, Trap,” Hawkeye says suddenly, voice too casual to be innocent. “I’ve got a date tonight.”
Trapper doesn’t look up. “Tell her you’re contagious. With poetry disease.”
“I’m serious.” There’s the sound of Hawkeye’s boots thudding to the floor, then the unmistakable creak of him standing up. “Got invited out. Nurse with the braid. The one with the sharp elbows and better taste than sense.”
Now Trapper does look up, just a flicker of his gaze. “You mean the one you struck out with three times and called a ‘walking wartime metaphor’ last week?”
“She forgave me,” Hawkeye says sweetly, already crossing the room like a man on a mission. “Besides, I’m trying something new tonight. Thought I’d soften her up with some verse.”
Trapper groans. “Christ, not the poetry again.”
Hawkeye plants himself right next to him, close enough that Trapper can feel the warmth of him radiating through the thin cotton of his undershirt. He leans down, lips suspiciously close to Trapper’s ear. “You mind if I practice on you?”
“Yes.”
Hawkeye doesn’t move. “Great. You’re perfect. Great ears, tragic soul. Very muse-like.”
“Do it and I’ll stab you with this pen.”
“And yet you won’t move away,” Hawkeye murmurs, already brushing a hand over Trapper’s shoulder as he stretches lazily across the back of the cot, breath warm against the curve of his neck. “That’s consent.”
Trapper mutters something that sounds like “unbelievable” , but he doesn’t push him off.
He never does.
Hawkeye inhales dramatically, like he’s preparing to deliver Shakespeare at a sold-out amphitheater instead of bad sonnets into the crook of Trapper’s neck.
“O Trapper,” he begins, reverent and ridiculous, “your chest is a battlefield—scarred, noble, and full of weird little hairs I want to get lost in.”
Trapper snorts. “That’s not even meter.”
“I’m free-form tonight,” Hawkeye says, kissing the slope of his shoulder like a punctuation mark. “War poets don’t always rhyme.”
He shifts so he’s straddling the edge of the cot, back bowed just enough to lean into Trapper’s space. One hand rests loosely on Trapper’s thigh—more grounding than teasing. Hawkeye’s eyes are soft, even if his mouth is pure trouble.
“Your eyes,” he continues, “remind me of… overripe olives. Briny. Complicated. Probably good in a martini.”
“Jesus Christ,” Trapper mutters, but the corners of his mouth betray him.
Hawkeye presses on. “And your lips. Oh, your lips—they’re like—like stolen hospital gauze. Soft. Questionably sterile. A little bit dangerous if applied improperly.”
Trapper closes the journal, drops it facedown on his chest like a shield. “You’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to poetry.”
“You wound me,” Hawkeye says, with exactly zero sincerity. “But not as deeply as your clavicle wounds my soul .”
He punctuates the line with another kiss, just beneath Trapper’s collarbone. This one lingers.
“Trap,” he says, quieter now, less theatrical, “let me keep going.”
Trapper exhales through his nose. It’s the kind of sound a man makes when he knows he’s already given in. “Fine. But if you say anything about my kneecaps, I’m setting your tongue on fire.”
“No promises.” Hawkeye grins. “Your kneecaps are quite lyrical.”
He keeps talking, the words slowly softening as he goes. The verses blur—less satire, more sincerity disguised in his usual nonsense. He talks about the exact color of Trapper’s skin where his shirt opens. The mole on his neck shaped like a comma. The way his ribs rise and fall when he’s trying not to show he’s enjoying this.
It stops being a bit somewhere around the line:
“I want to memorize you like a med school cheat sheet. Hold you in the back of my throat till I know every damn line.”
And Trapper, despite himself, turns his head and murmurs:
“You’re not going on that date.”
Hawkeye hums. “Didn’t think I was.”
He kisses him, finally. Not for punctuation, not for flair—just because he wants to.
Trapper pulls him in by the front of his undershirt, a sharp tug that says stop talking and don’t stop anything else. Their mouths crash together with the force of something overdue—like rain after a month of dust. Hawkeye moans low in his throat, surprised by the intensity, delighted by it.
He shifts until he’s straddling Trapper’s lap completely, knees braced on either side, weight settling in like he belongs there. Their teeth click once, a little too hard, and Trapper huffs a laugh against Hawkeye’s mouth.
“This is still the worst poetry I’ve ever heard,” he mutters, hands sliding under Hawkeye’s shirt like he’s searching for a better stanza.
“Then I guess I’ll have to let my body do the rest of the reading,” Hawkeye murmurs, grinning against his cheek. “Spoiler alert: it's a love story. In two very sweaty acts.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah, but I’m your idiot.”
He kisses down Trapper’s throat slowly, reverently, each press of his lips like another line. No rush. No destination. Just worship. He mouths at the pulse point under his jaw, licks a lazy path to his shoulder, and noses beneath the collar of his shirt.
“You taste like,” Hawkeye starts, then pauses dramatically, “regret and iodine.”
Trapper’s fingers curl hard into his hips, nails scraping gently over bare skin. “You wanna be poetic? Fine. You taste like chloroform and church wine.”
Hawkeye snorts. “Romantic.”
“Better than gauze.”
They’re both grinning now, flushed and half-hard, caught in that slow, golden gravity that pulls when you stop pretending you don’t love someone. Hawkeye bends low, tracing Trapper’s ribs with kisses, hands smoothing over his sides like he’s trying to memorize the shape of him.
He breathes the next part, barely audible.
“You’re the only thing in this place that doesn’t feel temporary.”
Trapper doesn’t answer—not with words. He just pulls Hawkeye up and kisses him again, slower this time. Like punctuation at the end of a page.
They stay wrapped around each other long after the heat of it fades. Hawkeye is curled loose against Trapper’s chest, his forehead tucked into the space just below his jaw. Trapper’s hand moves slowly over his back—barely there, but steady. Like a lullaby in motion.
Outside, the camp hums. Somewhere, a jeep rolls by. Someone laughs too loudly, too far away to matter.
Inside, it’s just breath and heartbeat and cotton sheets that smell faintly of antiseptic and something warm. Something real.
“You’re really not going,” Trapper says eventually, voice a low rumble in Hawkeye’s hair.
“To the date?” Hawkeye shifts just enough to blink up at him. “No. I never was.”
Trapper snorts. “I figured.”
There’s a pause. It stretches long and comfortable.
“You never rehearse for the ones you mean,” Trapper adds, a little quieter. “Never bothered warming up for me.”
Hawkeye looks at him, eyes soft with something private and unspoken.
“That’s because I didn’t have to,” he says. “You already knew the words.”
Trapper rolls his eyes, but it’s fond. “You’re lucky you’re pretty.”
Hawkeye grins, eyes fluttering shut again. “You’re lucky I didn’t make it a sonnet.”
They don’t say anything else for a while.
Eventually, as the lamp flickers low and the outside world slips further away, Trapper threads his fingers through Hawkeye’s hair and recites—half-asleep, almost to himself—a line of poetry he actually likes.
Something about two bodies, a single shadow. Or maybe it was about home.
Either way, Hawkeye doesn’t respond.
He’s already asleep.