AN: Thanks so much for the reviews, lovely people, glad people are enjoying this :) Updating from now on will hopefully be the same time each week 💜
It's still dark when Margaret is jolted back to consciousness. She keeps her eyes shut, though, even without sight there's too much reality getting through. She doesn't remember all of the night before, but she remembers enough of a who and why her tent smells like sex, and the fact that he's the one tickling her forehead with his stale alcohol breath. She's sure she doesn't smell much better. She should probably wake him and get him to leave before anyone sees, and before he gets too comfortable. The last thing she needs is for this to get any worse. A thought occurs to her and she snaps bolt upright and turns on her lamp.
Hawkeye groans, "Turn that thing off will you, Trapper."
She ignores him, frantically scanning the floor looking for any sign of a used condom or wrapper, any sign they didn't do what she thinks they did. But they did, Oh, god. They did. As if to confirm that fact her hip comes into contact with a sizeable damp spot. She freezes.
"Pierce!" She hisses, elbowing him in the ribs.
"Margaret, it's too early for this kind of abuse," he groans, muffled into her pillow.
"How dare you!"
He lifts his head up, the gears in his mind whirring, "How dare I?"
"How dare you take advantage of me like that!"
"If I'm not mistaken, Margaret, you were the one who put your tongue in my mouth first."
"Not that, you idiot," she waves her hands, her voice rising, "You didn't use a thing!"
"A thing?"
"A condom!"
He's perfectly still, eyes wide, the blood draining from his face. They really hadn't. He'd been so wrapped up in her that the thought hadn't even occurred to him. He'd never done that before, "Margaret, I'm sorry, I don't know what to say."
"Do you make a habit of going around leaving women in a precarious state?" she demands. If her voice gets much louder she'll be yelling
"No, this has never happened to me before!" he stammers, trying to find the right words, "and in the unlikely event that you do end up…" he gestures towards her middle, "...pregnant, then you have my word that I will do whatever it is you need me to do."
"Out, get out!"
Hawkeye scrambles out of bed and starts trying to find his clothes, tossing aside her much smaller fatigues. She looks like she's about to start throwing things and he wants to be gone by then. Margaret pulls up the blanket to cover her breasts and stares determinedly at her tent wall as he hurriedly gets dressed.
"We'll talk about this later, okay?"
She doesn't respond, she can't take any more of this right now, and he leaves without another word.
Margaret flops back onto her bunk and starts punching her pillow."Idiot. Idiot idiot idiot!" she says to nobody in particular.
The post coital bliss from this one was even shorter than she expected. Forget that he'd forgotten, she hadn't noticed his oversight either. Her blood runs cold as she considers the potential fallout.
Pregnant. Pregnant to that man
Her career would be over, and she wasn't sure whether him wanting to be involved would be better or worse than the scenario she considered more likely: being left alone holding the hypothetical baby.
No. It wasn't going to happen. It wasn't allowed to happen.
She was going to go on like none of this had ever happened and never think of it again.
What on earth had possessed her to sleep with him in the first place?
But she knew. She'd been eyeing off those talented hands of his for quite some time, and something about the look in his eyes told of his ability to make good on their lecherous promises, and oh boy had she craved those skills last night. Her bedroom life with Frank had cooled significantly since they'd first become an item, and the existence of his wife was starting to hang over them like a bad smell.
She doesn't completely despise Hawkeye as a person either. She respects him as a surgeon, and he has the ability to pull through whenever he's needed the most. But he's still an immature jackass who gets a kick out of mocking her and the army.
She lies still for a moment, willing sleep to return, but there's no point, it's not going to, now now.
With a heavy sigh she gets up and puts on her robe before angrily tearing the bedding from her bunk. She's not sleeping in anything that smells like male and things she wants to forget. She'll pay someone to get it done today.
She sniffs her shoulder and winces. She needs to clean herself, too. If Frank gets so much as a whiff of her in her current state he'll know she's spent the night with someone that's not him, and it'll be only a matter of time before he finds out with who. Though if half of the things she remembers about the night before are true, it'll be a miracle if he doesn't already know. Everything feels so...sordid.
With an inward groan she grabs her towel and toiletries and heads for the showers.
When Hawkeye gets back to The Swamp he sits down on the edge of his bunk but makes no effort to get in.
Trapper squints into the darkness at what he assumes is the source of his waking, "You just gonna sit there 'til morning?"
"Seems like one of my better ideas"
"What's the matter?"
"I had sex with Margaret."
"Oh, well that's old news, tell me something I don't know."
"I had unprotected sex with Margaret."
Trapper props himself up on an elbow, "Hawkeye, what is wrong with you!"
"It was an accident, okay!"
"Aren't we a little old for accidents?"
"Look, I don't know how it happened. We were both so caught up in how good it was and neither of us realised."
"So she's good, then?"
Hawkeye grins despite himself, "Everything we'd hypothesised and more."
"Sounds like she won't forget you in a hurry, either."
Hawkeye's face darkens, "Well especially now that I might have given her something permanent to remember me by."
"How'd she take it?"
"Well she woke me up to yell at me, screamed at me to get out, and before I left she seemed to be ignoring me."
"You might have to marry her."
"Yeah, that'd be a great foundation for a marriage: We don't like each other, I ended your career, killed your rabbit, and now we're stuck together and have a kid."
"But the sex is great."
"But the sex is great."
"It'll be fine, then."
"Hey, what are the odds of a woman getting pregnant anyway?"
"I think it's about 25 percent, something like that."
"That's way too high."
"Better than 75 percent. I'll order some cigars, just in case."
"How about you order me a coffin instead." He sighs, looking utterly deflated.
"It'll be right."
"Is it too early to start drinking again?"
"You're gonna need your wits about you if Hot Lips is out to get you. Try sleeping."
"Ugh, fine!" he says, flopping town into a horizontal position, but he doesn't sleep, he lies and stares at the ceiling and waits for the sun to come up.
Morning comes all too soon. Margaret's just finished tucking in her spare set of sheets when There's a knock ather door, "Margaret, sweetie, are you in there?"
She sighs, "What is it, Frank?"
"Well, my shift just finished. I just thought we might catch breakfast together before I go to bed."
"Okay, give me a minute." She rushes to her mirror and makes sure she at least looks normal. She sure as hell doesn't feel normal, and Frank's being so sweet and nice this morning, too.
"Everything alright in there, Margaret?"
"Coming, Frank!
She plasters a smile on her face and goes to greet him,
"Margaret, sweetie!"
"Oh Frank!" she says, throwing her arms around him with just a little bit too much enthusiasm.
"Are you okay, sweet cheeks? You look like hell."
"Oh I'm fine, I just had a little trouble sleeping after that session in the OR, y'know? Let's go get breakfast." She hurries him off the the mess tent and keeps talking before he can ask her too many questions, "How was Post-Op, any of them give you any trouble?"
"Oh just one cry baby babbling on about how he's not going back to the front. I sure showed him."
Margaret nods and smiles in what she hopes is an approving way as they walk across the compound. Frank continues babbling on about patriotism and whatever else, but she's not really listening. Her heart's not really in it this morning, and her mind is somewhere else.