A/N: Thanks to all those who read and to those who left me feedback and votes for what was coming! Without further ado, here it is!
CHAPTER 11 – MASSAGE IN A BOTTLE
"Yeah, that's the spot. Right there, Major."
Two candles flickered in the expanse of Margaret Houlihan's tent, casting a dim light onto the prone figure of a woman. A man's large hands kneaded the flesh of the woman's back, rubbing the skin on either side of the spine in wide concentric circles.
Major Winchester was certainly knowledgeable in the art of massage, Margaret had discovered to her utter surprise and delight. He was certainly intent on having more of her champagne, based on the quality of the rubdown she was getting. She shifted her body around on the layer of clothing beneath her, a hasty mat consisting of Charles's jacket and coat. He'd claimed to have been unable to stand since being kicked in the gut and so he offered to administer a champagne-worthy massage from his spot in front of her door after pulling on his short-sleeved shirt. Margaret's shirt, however, had been tucked up under her chin to expose the flesh of her back. All he could do while awaiting the taste of that exquisite champagne was admire by candlelight the musculature in Margaret's back as he gently tended to it with the most skilled of handiwork. For almost twenty minutes now he had administered the massage without a word, listening to her low moans of enjoyment.
"You have such good hands," she murmured, the champagne warming her innards and softening her stance towards Winchester. "Both as a surgeon and as a masseuse."
"Thank you, my dear," he replied curtly, smiling in the dim light. "I aim to please."
"And please you have," she practically purred. "This is the best massage I've ever gotten."
At the compliment, he merely smiled down at her, enjoying the fact that she'd completely calmed down from earlier. She really could be rather pleasant when she was in a good mood. Perhaps more massages were in order.
"You can pour yourself a glass of champagne now," she said, moving her head to indicate the bottle. "And there's more where that came from, if you keep this up."
He removed his hands from her back to pour himself another glass. After taking a languorous sip, he put the glass down again and returned to the massage. She melted under his touch with a satisfied moan, feeling his fingers now working their magic at the base of her spine.
"Give me a minute," she murmured, taking her own glass of champagne and downing it in one gulp. Charles paused in his task as she did this, silently tsking as he watched the glass empty in no time. She poured herself yet another glass, lifting it to her lips.
A hand blocked the drink from touching her mouth—Charles's hand.
"What do you think you're doing, Major?" she suddenly spat, glaring at the offending appendage. "Why did you stop with the—"
"This champagne must be savored, my dear. Sip it slowly. Taste the bubbles as they form. This is not the type of alcohol to be guzzled."
"This is my stuff and I can drink it how I want."
"Please, Margaret, for both our sakes, attempt to enjoy it a bit," he explained, removing his hand from her glass. "One doesn't come by a 1947 Dom Pérignon every day, you know. Especially not in this fetid swamp of a country."
"Fine," she said with an unseen scowl. "Could you work my mid-back now? I think I pulled something slapping you earlier."
"Ha, on which one," he deadpanned, moving his hands into position.
She sipped the champagne more slowly this time, yet still too fast for Charles's taste. He bit his tongue this time, focusing instead on the massage he was giving the essentially topless blonde nurse on the ground in front of him.
"The one you enjoyed," she replied, lowering her face back towards the floor. "Oh, wait… you enjoyed them all!"
Though her face was buried in Charles's coat, she was smiling deviously. His mouth hung open as he attempted to conjure a response.
"Margaret, I—"
"Have another glass of champagne." As he immediately set about refilling his glass, her smile only grew. The evening she'd planned was not quite finished yet.
"Ow ow ow."
Hunnicutt winced at Pierce's sounds of distress as they slowly heated their frostbitten hands in the surgery prep scrub sinks. Even though the water was not warm and emerged as little more than a trickle, it helped immensely. They dumped the snow out of their boots and walked in socked feet to warm their toes. Soon the pair found a flashlight and walked through the surgery and pre-op wards into Klinger's office. Klinger met them at the door, wide awake.
"Hello, Sirs," Klinger announced with a smart little salute. "Guess you couldn't sleep either."
"Did you try to get a hold of I-Corps?" B.J. asked. "We need to inform them of our power outage."
"Phone lines are dead," Klinger replied. "Boy, am I glad you're here! I was about to go into the post-op ward but then I thought—what can I do? Read 'em a bedtime story? I can't do much else."
"We understand," B.J. replied with a smile. "We're here now. Do you have a better light than this flashlight? Just in case."
"I'll look around," Klinger offered. As he slunk away, Pierce and Hunnicutt entered the post-op ward. It was pitch black but quiet. Thankfully the patients were not moaning—it was good that this blackout had happened at such an hour. They strode past each patient bed, shining the flashlight through their clothing to dim the bright light as they ensured each patient was sleeping peacefully. Klinger soon returned with another flashlight and a candle.
"Should we fire up the emergency generator?" Hunnicutt whispered to the company clerk.
"I dunno," Klinger admitted, looking thoughtful. "I don't know how much gasoline is around—and even if I did, it's probably buried in a tank under the snow."
"It may be best if we keep it off for the time being," Hawkeye commented. "Post-op is still warm and none of the patients are awake. If we get incoming wounded tomorrow, we're gonna need all the electricity we can get."
"So what should I do?" Klinger asked, looking at the dark-haired doctor.
"Try to get through to I-Corps. We need to let them know as soon as possible about the blackout. They need to send out their techs to fix whatever broke."
Klinger nodded but looked unconvinced. He wrung his hands in the ensuing silence. "Are you guys going back to the Swamp now?"
"Not right away, no," Hawkeye replied. "We're gonna keep an eye on the patients for awhile, make the daunting trek over worthwhile."
"Great!" Klinger replied. "If you need me, I'll be at my desk working through the night to connect to I-Corps. Speaking of which, can I have the candle back?"
"Better yet, here's the flashlight," Hunnicutt said with a smile, holding out the battery-powered object. Klinger shook his head.
"Nah, just the candle will do."
"It looks like it'll only last for another hour or so," Hawkeye remarked, glancing at the wax nub in Hunnicutt's hand.
"Exactly!" Klinger said with a devilish grin, pointing at Hawkeye. "Keeps me from overworking!"
Once Klinger had left the post-op ward and was presumably putting through the first of several phone calls to I-Corps, Hunnicutt seemed to make a decision.
"I think, just to play it safe, we should stay here tonight," he murmured. At that, he sat on an empty bed. Hawkeye smiled at him knowingly.
"That's your extremities talking."
"Maybe so," B.J. replied with a shrug. "If we go back to the Swamp from here, we'll have no way to rewarm our fingers."
"Speaking of which, I should've followed my instincts and stayed in the nurses' tent tonight."
"Awww, I would have had to break into the post-op all alone," B.J. replied with a fake pout, sticking out his bottom lip exaggeratingly. Hawkeye took a seat next to him.
"I mean, no offense, Beej, but we're not needed here. I could've been there for the nurses in their time of need. I would've been their beacon of hope in the darkness—like a lighthouse along the Maine coastline."
"Oh really?"
"The only difference would be, I'd be docking in their ports after they'd move towards the light."
"Fantastic… a superb champagne," Charles mumbled with a distinctive slur, finishing off the last of the bottle of Dom Pérignon. The candles Margaret had lit were nearly burnt to their nubs at this point, with only about a half inch of wick remaining. Margaret and Charles sat on the floor with backs against the door, their empty glasses in their hands. After Charles's massage had slowly become more and more inconsistent with each glass of alcohol he consumed, she had adjusted her shirt to normalcy and sat against the door beside him. "Do you have any more, Margaret?" he pleaded, his face dipping in far too close to hers as he spoke, yet neither seemed to mind. It was a stupid question; someone of the likes of Margaret Houlihan could not afford two of such a vintage.
"Of course I do," her voice slurred right back.
"Really?" he said, blinking with confusion. "How did you manage that?"
"The hotel gave us a second bottle on account that we never spend the night there again."
"Why would they do something like that?" Winchester asked, scratching his head. "That makes no sense at all. Hotels love their customers. My Aunt Anastasia, the owner of a five-star hotel chain, tells me that investing in guest satisfaction is its own form of advertisement."
"Oh, we were plenty satisfied," Margaret blurted. With eyes narrowed at her, he opened his mouth to speak, utterly confused.
"Then what did you—I mean, why did they do that?"
"We never left the room," she muttered, shrugging.
"Ha, I highly doubt that the prolonged inability of the maids to enter the room for housekeeping would be an occasion for—"
"I wasn't finished," she said with a little giggle. "While we were there, Donald and I got everyone else to leave their rooms."
"How did you manage…" Suddenly it dawned on him. Of course—this was Hot Lips Houlihan on her honeymoon. "Right," he muttered. "You kept yourselves occupied."
"You bet your boots Donald and I kept occupied," she announced. "I had to squeeze two months' worth of marriage into a long weekend because of how little I was able to see him in those days."
"I get your point, loud and clear," he muttered, rolling his eyes. "Now, can you not spare a few drops of your second bottle? This is quite a remarkable occasion."
"Fine, fine. I'll get it," she replied, slurring her words, clearly tipsy. With a start she leaned forward, crawling on her hands and knees for her foot locker.
This time the corkscrew was much harder to insert, being as Margaret's hands were now unsteady. As the corkscrew missed the cork for the third time, Charles grabbed the neck of the bottle with a firm hand.
"Lemme do it," he mumbled. "I can do it far better than you."
"What are you talking about? You're far more—drunker than I am!" she retorted.
"We Winchesters have a profound tolerance to… alcohol. It also doesn't hurt that I'm roughly twice your size."
"I got it this time," she hissed drunkenly. With that, she jammed the corkscrew down again, missing the cork once again and coming within a millimeter of Charles's hand.
"Give it to me," he insisted, pulling the bottle away from her. "I will not let you harm this precious commom-ditty—it's all we have left."
Though he had successfully wrested the bottle from Margaret's grasp, she still held the corkscrew.
"The candle, Margaret," he indicated, pointing at the flickering length of wick. "We need to open the bottle before it's dark.
"The bottle's already dark," she replied knowingly.
"No, you silly ninny," he replied, leaning in tantalizingly close to her face once more. "There's been a blackout."
"I don't have amnesia; I'm just drunk, Charles," Margaret muttered, holding her glass out for him to fill. "Do you ever lighten up?"
"You can be assured that if I were capable of lightening up, I would've done so already, and far more effectively than the candles, anyhow." He held out a hand as he frowned at the flickering wicks. "Corkscrew please."
With his Boston Brahmin accent and with Margaret's level of intoxication, the word corkscrew spoken by him sounded like something else altogether.
"What did you say, Major?" she asked, fussing with her hair as she asked.
"Corkscrew, Margaret. Did you spill champagne into your cochleas?"
Another suggestive-sounding word. Margaret felt flushed and rubbed her neck.
"It is rather drafty sitting here, is it not?" he commented, forcefully ejecting the cork from the champagne bottle. "Why don't we move our seats over to your bed?"
"Just don't spill that stuff on my sheets," she warned him, attempting to lean against the door for support. "Can you help me up?" she asked, clearly unable to stand on her own.
"I am holding the bottle at present, and I do not wish to lap it up off of the floor, so no."
"Let me hold the bottle while you stand first then," she offered, holding out her hand. "You know, so it doesn't spill."
"Ha. Not a chance, butterfingers," he replied, a smug grin on his face. "I cannot leave such a treasure in the care of one lacking the alco-lol tolerance that good breeding provides."
At that, Margaret leaned over, breathing into Charles's face.
"Pompous prick," she spat. He smirked giddily back at her.
"Inebriated imbecile."
The words slid out of his uninhibited mouth. Never had he so blatantly smarted off to Margaret; this was the sort of immediate retort he'd give to Pierce or Hunnicutt. A slap suddenly landed on his face, more playful than vicious, but it still stung. He blinked several times to clear his vision. Margaret's face remained close to his, a strange devious smile on her face, as if she anticipated watching every detail of his response to the slap. He looked at her, his expression that of confusion and suspicion.
"Fine," he huffed, feeling defeated. "I shall stand up first and then, only after the bottle is safely placed on your nightstand, I will come to your aid."
He bent his leg at the knee in preparation to stand. Margaret hid her disappointment at his response. With his free hand, Charles shoved off from the door to give himself some momentum, and soon both feet were planted on the floor. Margaret watched as he took an unsteady step towards the bed, and then all of a sudden there came the sound of a bottle dropping, the gurgle of a fizzing liquid, and the hiss of the candles being extinguished.
"Damn it!" Charles yelped, dropping to his knees to collect the bottle. Margaret could smell champagne quite strongly now and felt the clothing beneath her legs getting damp.
"Did you just do what I think you did?" she asked, the volume of her voice increasing steadily.
He squinted apologetically in the darkness.
"Don't worry—it didn't break, thanks to…" he paused for a moment and then sighed, feeling the dampened fabric. "…my scarf."
"You idiot!" she raged, pulling herself to her feet. "You spilled it all over my floor! Why didn't you listen to me and let me hold it, you arrogant ass?" she fumed in a hoarse, high-pitched voice. "I should have never shared it with you! That was my last bottle!"
"I tripped," he murmured ever so quietly in response.
"On what?" she raged. "I keep a clean house!"
Carefully he placed the mostly empty champagne bottle on what he hoped was her nightstand, being as it was pitch black again. As soon as he had done this, he felt Margaret run into his back.
"Oof!" he groaned, as her body forced his upper body over her bed. His face hit the mattress, being as he hadn't had enough time to put his arms out to catch himself.
"You tripped as well! Some woman you are," he spat viciously in the process of straightening his back, "unable to keep a tidy home!"
"I didn't trip," she growled. "I'm just putting you in your place!"
His breath caught in his throat.
"On your bed?"
"First you insulted me earlier about my love-life and now you tell me I can't clean! What am I to you, some kind of dirty whore?"
"'Course not, Margaret," he said, half amused. "I would never use those words. Rather, if I had to convey the same meaning, I'd probably say 'sordid strumpet.' Rolls better off the tongue; wouldn't you agree?"
Margaret's rage was boiling over. She'd never been so insulted in her life. Not only was her moral compass lying dead in Tokyo, but now the pompous pariah of the 4077th was calling her a dirty whore in so many words!
"You better bite your tongue because I'm not gonna take it anymore!" she raged. "And now you've led me to do this!"
With that, Charles felt a sharp tug and a sudden new draft as his pants and drawers were fiercely yanked down. His eyes went wide in the darkness.
"What the—Margaret, stop it this instant!" he hissed, reaching behind him to fix his pants. Huffing angrily, Margaret grabbed his arm and wrenched it behind him, pinning it to the center of his back at an awkward angle.
"You're going to break my arm!" he cried, unable to free his arm from Margaret's grip. "Let go, Major! Don't make me do something I'll regret!"
"Like what?" she asked, leaning her face close to his and shoving him back down towards the bed once again. Grinning in the darkness, Margaret felt the palm of her hand striking bare skin. The resultant yowl of Winchester and his fidgeting indicated she had hit her target.
"Unhand me this instant!" he roared, fighting to stand up as she shoved down on his back with a sharp elbow. He winced at the pain as her elbow dug into his spine and refrained from struggling further. "You will be court-martialed for this!"
"Then why should I stop now?" she asked, giving him another stinging swat to his backside. He jolted again, a little whimper escaping his lips. Before he could say another word, she administered another swat, her palm connecting with bare skin. She could feel his muscles tense up as she struck his skin, his upper body jerking up involuntarily at the sensation. "You spilled my champagne and then have the audacity to insult me twice," she growled, smacking him again with no intelligible response from him. "You deserve way more than this!"
"No one deserves this humil—lilation!" he growled, his words still slurring together, his voice strained as if he'd been gritting his teeth.
"You do," she seethed.
All the frustrations of her past, of never being good enough for her father or for any other man for that reason, had driven her to this explosive climax of anger. The generals and colonels she'd slept with had only helped her attain the mere rank of major. Frank never left his wife for her. Hawkeye had scorned her after one night. Donald had cheated on her more times than she could count. Jack Scully had callously rejected her after she'd been disappointed in his demotion. Her father had never made her feel like a success. And now, to top it all off, Charles Emerson Winchester the third was calling her a dirty whore!
Normally Margaret was the type to gently massage her lover's fears away, comforting and complimenting her man. She had been the typical sweet submissive woman when she was one-on-one with her husbands or boyfriends and suddenly Winchester had caused her usual tough-as-nails façade she had built up around her to cross over into her personal life. Why had this happened? And what did it mean? She was finding this whole process simultaneously stimulating and shocking and yet, she found herself wanting to know more about Major Winchester.
No longer was Winchester huffing angrily through the swats as he had been when she'd first yanked his pants down, but rather, his breaths were quick and shallow. His free hand was being used to support his upper body and yet, his back was practically parallel with the floor. He had submitted to her.
"Major," he blurted breathily, fidgeting again in an attempt to straighten his back. "Stop this immediately. You are being illolic…illogic-illal… illa—not smart, just as you were earlier today."
"Ha, and just like earlier, you're being turned on," she retorted, reaching her arm around to confirm what she'd suspected. With a yelp of surprise, he slapped her hand away.
"Wanton wench," he muttered, to only flinch when yet another slap landed. "I'll pay you—thirty dollars for what was spilled, if you'll stop this this instant!"
"That bottle was priceless, as you well know. You can't buy me."
"Sixty dollars?"
With that, she gave him another swat, this one twice as hard as the last. An embarrassingly high-pitched moan escaped his lips. She could feel him shifting his hips in front of her and wished she could see what she was doing to the blue-blooded surgeon. Surely his skin was beginning to redden by now.
Another swat, this time not only stinging his skin but her hand as well. He whimpered yet again, his breathing erratic. Her own anger had been channeled into arousal as well. Here she was, stuck inside a pitch black tent administering a hide tanning to Major Charles Emerson Winchester the third. Her throat went dry and she swallowed in an attempt to rewet it. If Major Winchester was capable of obeying these kinds of commands, perhaps he could also be coerced into dropping his haughty façade, that major aspect of his personality keeping her from getting too close to him.
"Let me up, Margaret," he murmured, barely above the sound of his own heavy breathing. "Stop this—this thing you're doing—you are above this."
"Didn't sound like that earlier," she hissed, laying another one on his behind. "I'm far below your level of breeding," she added, administering another slap as she spoke.
He bit his lip as the slap landed, shutting his eyes tightly as conflicting emotions and sensations threatened to drive him insane.
"True—" he yelped, "—but far above that of a heathen," he added, voice quavering. The hand that had been supporting him was trembling now as well, and Margaret found that his face was nearly touching the mattress now.
"Stop talking," she warned him, delivering another swat. He bowed his head lowly, his forehead skimming the surface of her sheet. She was tired of restraining his hand behind his back and wondered what he'd do if she released it. Would he spin around with fiery eyes and yank her over his lap to administer a similar punishment? Would he run at the door with full force in an attempt to escape? There was no telling what Major Winchester would do; he'd already shocked her to the core with his response to her slapping him earlier in the day. However, to stack the deck in her favor, she had to have him further along than this. Perhaps some talk would help move things along…
"You've been very bad, Major. So unbelievably arrogant," she spoke lowly, sensing gooseflesh as she ran her fingers over his freshly-slapped skin. He fidgeted uneasily, letting out a long-held breath and placing his forehead firmly on the bed.
"Don't forget clumsy," he heard himself mutter. Eyes wide at the sound of his own vocal response, he bit his lip in an attempt to keep any further thoughts inside his head. The smack that followed was enough to make him yelp and jerk his head and shoulders upwards. His lower body made contact with the sheet as it bucked against the mattress, and he gaped in the direction of his legs, seeing nothing but darkness but knowing what could happen. This had to stop. He had to rationalize with her, use his powers of persuasion to make this end amicably but spotlessly.
"What do you think? Should the next one be harder?" Margaret murmured, her bosom pressed up against his back. A chill went down his spine and he exhaled forcefully, shutting his eyes in an attempt to regain his sanity. He was losing control completely. The drink was clouding his judgment, as proved by the last thing he'd said. He had to swear off drinking when this was all over, if only for his own self-preservation. When he allowed himself to over-indulge, he ended up in the oddest of predicaments: developing pneumonia from swimming the Charles River in his cap and gown, "marrying" a nurse in Tokyo, and last but not least, getting his hide tanned by Major Houlihan. Margaret's voice floated into his consciousness. "Remember all the instances where you'd been itching for this, Major."
His heartbeat thudded in his ears. Not only could he hear his own labored breathing, but he could feel the rapid rising and falling of Margaret's chest, perhaps even her pounding heartbeat as she held her body against the arm that she'd pinned behind his back. She was enjoying this as well! The darkness had afforded him a great deal of privacy in terms of her inability to see his response—and yet, it had also made this moment possible.
"Margaret—I must implore you," he said, dragging out his words as he spoke in an attempt to stall what he was about to say next. He had to slow himself down and he had to ask the question that had been nagging him ever since she'd appeared in the Swamp this morning and jarred him from his slumber. "You mention instances—and yet, only now are you addressing them," he muttered. "Why the sudden change of heart?"
"What are you talking about?" Margaret chided, suddenly feeling self-conscious. She'd careened into a different persona, what with all this corporal punishment, and it irked her to know that Winchester was acutely aware of this difference in her usual M.O.. "I don't know what you're—"
"Let me be succinct," he interrupted, irritation in his voice. "Why are you interested in me?"
A/N: I've incorporated your feedback so far into the final product! This chapter ended in a different way before, but I like this way better. What a cliffhanger, eh? Please let me know what you think of things so far!