If you recognize it, it is not mine.
The following chapter contains references to the episode Ping Pong.
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"Hello lady, looking for some company?" Hawkeye said, stepping inside Claudia's tent.
"Hi. How are you?" Claudia looked up from the letters that were lying in front of her and gave him a beaming smile.
"Good, good." His eyes ran up and down Claudia's body while his brain provided some distracting memories from last night. She looked relaxed and settled in, like she was just about to go to bed.
"Someone's deep in thought… What's up, Hawk?"
Little embarrassed she noticed his gazing, he searched for words longer than usual. "I do need a date for a wedding." He said finally and then walked around Claudia and sat down on her cot, kicking off his boots.
"Wedding? Who's getting married?" Claudia turned to face him and saw him getting comfortable in her bed.
"Cho. He is marrying Soony, a Korean orphan from nearby village, or ex-village to be more precise."
"Seems like the champ's hitting homeruns all around… Or whatever you hit in ping pong." She weighed down the letters with a pencil case, so they wouldn't fly away and then walked over to sit next to him. "Ok, I'll be your date if I'm not on duty. Otherwise you'll need to ask someone else. And that would be difficult for you right now."
"What are you talking about?"
"Nurses have been complaining that you are kinda cold and distant with them."
"Compared to the usual, you know, before you maybe." Hawkeye put his hand around her waist, pulling her closer to him and planting a kiss on her nose. "But I didn't notice any frosty relationships."
"Well, they did." Claudia wanted to talk to Hawkeye about this for quite some time, but never knew how to breach the subject. He might have been a notorious womanizer, but she felt in her heart that when Hawkeye was doing something, he was all in, no holding back. It was part of why she was so scared of getting involved with him in the first place.
She hated to be the reason why he was pushing all other women in the camp away, after all, she wouldn't be around for much longer. It felt wrong to see him sacrifice so much of his social life for her. She didn't want to leave knowing Hawkeye was about to be alone for the rest of the war, struggling with the aftermath of her death.
His refusal to commit was the main reason why she resisted his temptation for so long and the irony wasn't lost on her. Now that he wanted to be with her, she felt guilty for allowing it. Maybe she was just overthinking things again. He had enough friends who'd look after him. He'd be fine.
The silence in the room woke her up from her overthinking slumber. Hawkeye was staring at her with raised eyebrows and expecting look on his face.
"Sorry, what did you say?"
"What's in all those letters? Am I naïve to hope for some happy news?" He leaned back, pulling her on the bed with him. A little chuckle escaped her lips as she landed on top of his body.
"Actually no, you're not." Claudia bent her knees and untied her boots. They landed on the floor with a loud bang, but the two occupants of the tent couldn't care less. She cuddled even closer to the warm body taking up space on her cot, sighing in satisfaction. "Do you remember Soon-Teck Oh, or Syn Paik as you called him?"
Hawkeye chewed on his lip, breathing out a hesitant 'Ah'. A big frown appeared on his face.
"The North Korean you tried to pass as a new surgeon." Claudia said, putting him finally out of the misery.
"Oh yeah." He exclaimed loudly, throwing his arm around Claudia and pressing them even tighter together. "Has he written from the POW camp?"
"Not exactly. Through my correspondence I've heard that in D.C. some brass were cooking up a little propaganda thing and they needed a defector to parade around - someone who spoke English, but wasn't dangerous."
"They picked Soon-Teck?"
"Yep. He'll be out of Korea sooner than you…"
"Nice for him, but it sucks for me." Hawkeye laughed, capturing her lips in a passionate kiss. "Although, I like it here right now." He then said, leaning his forehead against hers. Kissing her like this always took his breath away.
'Attention all personnel, incoming wounded!'
"I just stopped liking it here." Hawkeye murmured with disgust at the same time Claudia let out an annoyed growl.
Hawkeye never met anyone as attentive, caring and unfortunately also as hard-working as Claudia. She was the first one who Colonel Potter asked to cover his shift and she agreed, so she was working Post-Op at the time of the wedding. If life was fair, it would be Frank who missed the ceremony, since he was all tied up in knots because of it. But no, his good angel had to be the one working.
Recently he made real effort to be more kind and charming with every female in the camp, but somehow it felt empty. Every women's lips made him think of Claudia's and every flirtatious remark felt odd when it was delivered to someone else than her.
And immediately after he watched Soony run away due to Burns' insensitivity, his instinct was to get Claudia's perspective. It was her brilliant idea to distract the bride-to-be with some work before the situation resolved itself.
Despite Frank's resistance to hire Soony, they urgently needed help with big pile of laundry. And the cook's assistant tripped and fell in the kitchen and sprained his ankle. Soony then cleaned the kitchen instead of him and only took a break once -upon Claudia's insistence-, when she couldn't see for the tears. Meanwhile Radar was running around and trying to locate Cho. Claudia wasn't there when Soony was told Cho's back and relatively unharmed, but she did see Radar in the wedding dress, which was apparently also a great sight to behold.
Hawkeye himself breathed a big sigh of relief when he laid eyes on the bloodied ping pong champion and concluded it wasn't serious. An orphaned bride losing her groom on the journey for the engagement ring would be too much tragedy even for this place. Thankfully.
The ceremony was beautiful, if unnecessarily quiet for him. He would have welcomed some loud singing or something, because this way it were his thoughts that he heard screaming in his head. Weird unusual thoughts. For a moment, just as newlyweds caught a little breather from all the congratulatory hugs and handshakes, he noticed Claudia standing at the entrance to the Post-Op, staring in his direction. Her shift was ending shortly and he planned to save some of the wedding food for her and bring it to her tent.
And good thing that he did. She was obviously hungry, because she gulped down even the barely edible round sweet things. Then they settled on her cot, all snuggled up underneath the army blanket.
"Claudia?" He stopped sucking on the sensitive skin on her neck and waited until he was sure she heard him.
Her eyes opened after she gave a disappointed sigh, letting him know she didn't approve of his actions. While still blinking away the haze of their make-out session, Claudia licked her lips seductively. "What?" She whispered.
"What would you say…?" Hawkeye planted a chaste kiss on her left cheek. "If I were to say…" He pressed his lips to the other cheek, lingering there a little longer.
"Yes?" Claudia said impatiently as he started running his tongue over her lower lip. As she opened her mouth, they ended up in a passionate French kiss, which took him by surprise enough to render him speechless.
Only a little undignified squeak left his lips. With a smirk, Claudia slid her hands from his back to his behind and squeezed hard. That got his attention so he willed his brain to finally find the right words.
"Will you marry me?" He said it loudly, louder that was necessary because if she didn't hear it, he wasn't sure he had the confidence to repeat it for the second time. It was crazy, of course it was. On the other hand, he had done much loonier things regularly.
"Hawkeye!" Claudia said and her voice sounded like a reprimand. "I think you just got caught up in the excitement of Cho's and Soony's wedding."
His chest was tightening while he listened, then he quickly blurted his denial. "I swear that's not it."
"Don't do this to yourself, Hawkeye. It doesn't make sense for us to get married." This time her tone of voice was more like a hug, nice just-friends, no hanky-panky hug.
He took a shallow breath. "I want everyone to know how I feel about you. I want to shout it from the rooftops, but there aren't any and there's a lot of snipers, so let's do something different. Come on, you can't deny we're good together." Instinctively he tried to bring her closer, but she resisted, putting some space between them so she could look into his eyes. But at least he threaded his fingers in her hair, lightly caressing her scalp. "Let's do this, Claudia. Please, say yes."
They were still only inches apart, but it felt like miles. Her slightly parted lips were practically begging him for a kiss, but he wasn't sure about the attitude of the rest of her. The blue eyes that were staring right into his soul looked darker and without its usual sparks. His eyes dropped briefly, but then he caught her gaze again and his creased brow tightening even more.
Claudia leaned on her elbows and lifted herself up, planting a kiss on Hawkeye's cheek before speaking. "Hawk, you get married when you're absolutely sure you can promise forever. It's easy to promise six months tops without having to plan for the future, without the need to combine two lives into one and worrying about the million other things that come with long married life."
"No, Claudia, it's not easy at all. At least it isn't for me. But I still want to do it." He rose to a sitting position, frowning majestically and energized with barely hidden anger. His heart was racing since he proposed and the ragged breathing wasn't helping. He sighed with despair. "Why are you so against the idea? I mean, should I take it personally?"
"Of course not. I-…" She took his hand, hoping he'd look at her. But he continued looking at their joined hands, even after she brought them up and kissed his. "Hey, look at me." She whispered patiently. Letting go of his hand, she tilted his chin so their eyes met and then gently put her hands on his cheeks.
The long, deep kiss brought the usual adrenaline rush, but didn't chase away the knots in his stomach. He swallowed hard as his libido screamed at him to just give into the passionate kiss and leave the talking for later.
"Benjamin Franklin Pierce, I love you. And if circumstances were different then my answer might be, too. But I cannot marry you."
The atmosphere in the tent was so filled with raw emotions, he thought he was going to cry or yell just to ease the tension. Being with her, even here in Korea, was the best thing he ever experienced.
"It's probably not even possible to do it so quickly since I wasn't born in the United States. So let's skip the argument."
"That's only an excuse."
"Yes." She answered in a condescending tone, as if both the fact and the reason behind it were blatantly obvious. When he stayed silent, she continued. "I need to know you'll move on after I'm gone. And that'd be harder if you'd have to explain to every date that you are a widower."
"That makes me want you even more."
"Hawkeye." Fully aware where they were headed, she warned him not to continue.
"Can't we fully enjoy this while we can?" He asked quietly.
"Yes, we can. Speaking of which…" She leaned closer to him, going for his lips again.
"Stop and listen!"
Her eyes widened at the harshness of his voice, but her hands still embraced his body and started soothingly travel up and down his back. He fought against the nice feeling for a moment, but still the tension went on seeping away from his body.
"There's no changing my mind, Hawkeye. Please accept that." The whispered voice came from right next to his ear, that's how close they were.
His body started sending him urgent messages to give into the temptation. And, he sure wanted to, but there was a little sense left in his brain that protested. "I never ever wanted anything more in my life than you right now."
"Well, someone is being cheesy." She smiled and started planting kisses down his neck. Warm feeling spread from her chest throughout her body when a long moan escaped his lips.
"I know it's a cliché, but what else to say when a cliché fits so perfectly?" He drew back a little to look into her eyes only to find the sparks in them returned stronger than ever. Damn, that took the wind right out of his sails. She looked magnificently beautiful and he told her so.
"You're so sweet."
Her quiet words almost didn't register with him. Their lips collided again, with enough force to knock him off his feet if he wasn't lying down. This woman was incredible! No one ever aroused such strong feelings in him as she did.