Postoperative Complications
The sequel to Face The Music. Charles and Margaret have to navigate the unpredictable waters of their fledgling relationship in the face of familial expectations, new emotions, and a pressing letter from one Hawkeye Pierce. Please notice the change in rating. It is no longer K+ like Face the Music, but is now T.
Disclaimer: I do not own any characters from M*A*S*H.
CHAPTER 1 - NIGHTMARE
A cold chill shot through him as his blanket was unceremoniously snatched off of him, leaving him exposed in the dark. He reached blindly into the void, gooseflesh running over his skin as he neglected to find his quarry. It was then that he heard the voice, prompting him to jerk his hand away as if burned. The voice cut through the darkness, a voice that was once incredibly familiar yet particularly unwelcome at this time.
"I gotta thank you for saving my place, but I'm here now," the voice suggested, the accent unmistakable. "Take a breather, Charles. Take ten, even."
Charles's eyes widened in the darkness as he flipped over to face the aggressor, his Winchester night vision affording him a sharp view of Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce standing next to him in Margaret's bedroom, clad in his ruby red robe and army boots.
"Geesh, get yourself some clothes, will ya?" Hawkeye muttered now, covering his eyes. "I'd expected to see Charles Winchester the third, but not the third-and-a-half!"
"What in the world are you doing here?" Charles retorted, peering up at Pierce now, ignoring the request to cover up.
"Like I said, Margaret and I have some… unfinished business, as you might have guessed. You've unmade the bed, now it's my turn to lie in it."
Charles rolled his eyes, pulling himself into a seated position, shifting his pillow to cover himself.
"I don't think that's quite how the idiom goes."
"Are you calling me an idiom?!" Pierce said laughingly, prepared to begin some humorous bantering. "You better watch who you call an idiom!"
"An idiot is more like it," Charles shot back. "Now, get the hell out of here!"
With that Charles gripped the pillow in his lap and viciously chucked it right in Pierce's smug face.
Something large and glass, perhaps a lamp, shattered to the floor. Charles winced as he looked in the direction he'd thrown his pillow, feeling another cold chill as he realized he'd been acting out in his sleep.
"What the hell was that?" Margaret exclaimed, sitting bolt upright in bed, her eyes still partly shut.
Charles turned his head to gape at Margaret, swallowing as he did so.
"I believe I was… sleepwalking," he commented, bowing his head contritely. "Whatever broke, I will purchase you a new one—I promise. My apologies, Margaret."
"It's probably just that hideous orange lamp Clyde insisted I buy," she grumbled, lying back down and shutting her eyes. "Ugh, don't worry about it…"
Now Charles was gaping even more blatantly at Margaret. So she'd gone furniture shopping with Clyde?! She'd valued the man's opinion so much as to buy a lamp she clearly thought was hideous?! The implications of her half-asleep utterance shocked him to his core. Could it be that this very bed was tested in the store by Margaret and O'Rourke? He could picture them now with obnoxious little grins on their faces, lying on their backs side by side on the bed in the showroom, Clyde's stupid freckled face mere inches from Margaret's as he rattled off the pros and cons of this particular mattress model.
Charles had presumed that waking from his nightmare in imagining Hawkeye Pierce in this very room would assuage his anxiety, but it was this half-asleep mumble by Margaret that had put him back on high alert. Unlike Pierce, Clyde was very much present in Margaret's life. Heterosexual or no, Clyde had a bond with Margaret, a bond forged by friendship, long hours together in the O.R., and common heritage. Furthermore, Clyde lived somewhere in this very neighborhood and by reminding Margaret of their continued façade of a romance, he could steal her away for impromptu dinners, shopping or some other staged encounter at the insistence that she would be protecting him.
It was enough to make Charles seethe as he leaned his sweaty back against the cool headboard, his skin completely exposed in the chilly room, yet the sensation of being cold was long-gone. Frowning, he tugged a section of blanket from Margaret's ironclad grip to afford him some modesty as he considered if it was even possible to go back to sleep.
Besides the discovery of Pierce's letter, the night had turned out so very perfectly, considering. As much as it had pained him to place that needle on the Chopin record, memories of Korea hemorrhaging from his mind at the contact of diamond to shellac, he'd somehow stifled his visceral reaction enough to convince Margaret that the tears she'd seen in his eyes were from joy alone. Oh, God… her phonograph….
He listened intently now for the familiar sound of hissing as the needle endlessly scratched on the inner ring of the record, the very fate of his own phonograph needle mere months before leaving Korea. Yet Margaret must have purchased a phonograph that would automatically stop when reaching the end of the grooves, for he heard no such sound.
How could he not be completely satisfied with how his nascent relationship with Margaret was progressing thus far? She'd confessed her feelings for him, he'd proposed their relationship become official, and they'd now made love more times than he had during the entire course of the Korean War.
Why should Pierce and his stupid unread letter trouble him? For that matter, why should Clyde trouble him? Charles was Chief of Thoracic Surgery, and highly intelligent, witty, and wealthy, to boot. Pierce was in Maine. Clyde was a man was apparently more beholden to his family than even he was. And yet somehow, the events of the past couple of months—nay, the events of the Korean War, had begun softening Charles's layers of unflappable self-assurance to expose the feelings of unworthiness that were currently hijacking his thoughts.
Feeling a chill pass through him, Charles cautiously slipped out of bed, his bare feet stepping on the discarded items of clothing haphazardly strewn across the floor. Holding his breath now, he quietly opened Margaret's bedroom door and departed her room. Further sleep was now an impossible achievement.