Disclaimer: JAG and its characters are the property of Belisarius Productions, CBS and Paramount. No copyright infringement intended.
AN: This story is AU. This story takes place in the April before the Christmas episode "Jaggle Bells".
IN HIS DREAMS
By: fananicfan
TUESDAY MORNING
JAG HQ
After three nights of not being able to sleep because of the strange dream that he'd been having, Harm was exhausted as he plodded towards the conference room for this morning's staff meeting.
In the conference room, the admiral began the meeting by asking Harm about the Winestock case.
With his report given so soon after the meeting had begun, Harm needed to keep himself from falling asleep or yawning, either of which would get him into hot water with the admiral.
Normally, he'd look at Mac in a situation like this.
Whether he was able to hold a silent conversation with her or if he were only able to study the details of her features, Harm could focus on Mac, and it would go unnoticed by the admiral that he was having a hard time paying attention. However, looking at Mac wouldn't help this time since he was sure that seeing her four days ago at the BX had triggered this dream.
Harm twisted into a new position every few moments to keep from falling asleep in front of the admiral, but during his fourth move, the admiral asked, "Commander, do you have some place more important to be?"
"No, Sir."
"Are you in pain?"
"No, Sir," Harm answered.
"Didn't make your morning stop at the head? Is that why you can't sit still?" the admiral asked impatiently.
Harm was sure that the admiral's last question was supposed to embarrass him. He was equally sure that it had been done to drive home the point that his squirming was distracting
It was either that or he was letting Harm know that his body movements reminded him of a young child who needed to go to the bathroom.
Definitely the first, Harm quickly decided.
Confidant that telling the admiral that he was fighting fatigue that had been caused by three nights of tossing and turning would undoubtedly lead the admiral to ask him 'why,' and that would lead to Harm having to confess that he, a grown man, was being awakened by a dream.
"I'm good, Sir," Harm replied, hoping that this would be the end of the questions.
"I'm glad to hear it. Now, where was I?"
"You'd ask me about the Harrison case, Sir," Bud answered dutifully.
Harm winced as Bud spoke his client's name.
Harrison started with 'har' as in hare, and that was the animal that had been appearing in his odd dream.
Mac noticed Harm's look of discomfort when Bud spoke.
She watched Harm, waiting for him to look in her direction so that she could inquire with a raised eyebrow why he was acting so oddly, but he never looked her way.
Thinking it odd, she gave his behavior some thought.
He hadn't looked in her direction since the meeting had started today, and now that she was thinking about it, they hadn't had a conversation in the last few days and, when they'd been in the same room or passed each other in the hall he hadn't looked her in the eye then either.
In fact, the last time that she could clearly remember him speaking directly to her and looking her in the eye had been four days ago when she'd seen him in the BX.
She'd been there to buy a few things for an Easter basket. He'd approached her and spoken to her, teasing her that he was surprised to see her outside the shoe department.
They hadn't fought. They'd had a pleasant conversation, and he'd even asked her to have lunch with him.
Maybe that was it. He was upset with her because she'd declined his invitation to lunch.
It wasn't as if she'd turned him down flat. She'd told him that she already had lunch plans, but that she'd take a rain check.
Surely he understood that she had a prior commitment and couldn't have lunch with him.
She'd have to test that theory and ask him after the staff meeting ended to have lunch with her today.
Harm tried to conceal a yawn by covering his mouth with his hand, but he'd drawn his commanding officer's ire early on this morning, and the admiral had been keeping his eye on him, so he'd noticed.
The staff meeting ended five minutes later, and Harm stood, thankful that he didn't have to try to cover his fatigue in front of his CO any longer, when the unmistakable voice of said CO bellowed, "My office, Commander ... now!"
"Yes, Sir!" Harm replied, wondering if he was going to be forced to explain his restlessness.
If that were the case, at least he'd be able to tell him in the privacy of his office and not in the public forum of the conference room during a morning staff meeting.
Harm left the conference room on the admiral's heels, following him to his office.
MAC'S OFFICE
Mac had been waiting for Harm to emerge from the admiral's office to ask him to lunch, but seven minutes and fourteen seconds had passed, and she hadn't seen him.
How long did it take for the admiral to admonish him for his apparent lack of interest in this morning's staff meeting?
Six minutes later, Harm had been in the admiral's office too long for Mac's comfort. Now she was jumping up out of her chair every time someone passed by her office and cast even a small shadow on her office window.
Walking back to her desk after checking to see who the last person was who'd passed by her office, Mac spoke openly to her empty office.
"He's a big guy, MacKenzie. If he comes by your office, which he has to do to get to his office, you'll see him. Relax … take a breath … you'll find out why he's upset with you," Mac said as she reached the front corner of her desk.
She sat behind her desk and reached for a file folder that she should've been working on instead of chasing shadows, hoping to catch Harm going back to his office.
She opened the folder and started to read.
Forty-three seconds later, she was reading the same sentence again.
Knowing that she wasn't going to be able to concentrate on anything until she'd mended her relationship with her best friend, Mac stood and straightened her skirt.
She had no idea what she was preparing to do. It wasn't as if she could barge into the admiral's office and ask Harm to lunch or ask the admiral to order Harm to tell her what she'd done that he felt that he needed to distance himself from her.
Surely it wasn't the fact that she couldn't have lunch with him last Saturday, since they'd had to turn each other's invitations down in the past for various reasons.
Had she missed something in his demeanor on Saturday that would've clued her into the fact that, for some reason, he needed her company?
She stood straight and tall next to her desk as if she'd been called to attention by a superior officer.
Lost in thought, she allowed their meeting on Saturday to replay in her head.
Her recollection was disrupted only seconds later by her sense that Harm was near.
Snapped out of her thoughts, she looked up in time to see Harm passing by her office at a hurried gait.
She moved quickly in order to catch up with him.
If he was going to his office, she wanted to get in there before anyone else claimed his attention, and if he was headed somewhere else in the building, she wasn't going to let him get away before she had the opportunity to get a commitment for him to have lunch with her today.
HARM'S OFFICE
Mac reached his office door moments after he'd entered.
He hadn't taken the time to close his door and he was standing behind his desk, shoving files into his briefcase like he was in a hurry.
His actions leading her to believe that he wouldn't be staying long, Mac stepped into his office without knocking and began to speak. She wasn't going to waste time. She wanted to know if her relationship with her best friend could be restored, if not immediately, then by no later than lunch today.
"Harm," she began, pausing only long enough for him to look up. "If you're free, I was hoping that we could have lunch today."
She kept the invitation simple.
Mac just hoped that prefacing it with "if you're free" didn't spur him into a 'payback' decline of her invitation.
Hopefully, he'd be mature and agree to lunch, but she was already preparing for an answer of 'no' and planning the words that she'd use to get him to agree to dinner with her tonight instead.
"Lunch with you would be nice, but I can't today. The admiral has other plans for me," he said before tilting his head back over his desk and resuming the task of putting files into his briefcase.
"It went that bad in his office that he's sending you TAD?" Mac asked.
Harm looked up at her again.
"It didn't go well. It started with "Commander, was I boring you in there?" and got worse from there … but he isn't sending me TAD. It's much worse. He's sending me to Bethesda for a checkup. That's why I can't have lunch with you. I'm to report at 1100 for a complete physical."
"Then how about I buy you dinner?" Mac asked.
The caring in her voice didn't go unnoticed by Harm, which made him determined to move past this hiccup in their relationship, get back to sleeping and, with time, back to his preferred dream of Mac in a Playboy Bunny outfit.
That bunny dream he understood – under the unflattering lines of her uniform, Mac was all woman, and a beautiful one at that.
"I don't know how long it's going to take and, then with the drive home, I couldn't hazard a guess as to a time that I'd be available for dinner. Can I have a rain check?"
Now a little worried about Harm's health – what had he told the admiral about his obvious fatigue that had the admiral ordering him to the doctor – Mac was now more determined than ever to see him tonight. She didn't want to worry all night about the results of his physical.
"I'm sure that you won't be there all night, so I'll bring dinner to your place so that I can check on you to make sure that the doctor didn't find anything wrong ... say 1900?"
She'd almost given him a hint of how she felt about him by asking, "Anything for me to worry about?" However, she'd caught herself and phrased it more generically.
Because he didn't want her to think that they weren't still friends – he just needed some time to come to terms with the information that he'd gotten from her on Saturday – Harm agreed.
"I'll call you if it doesn't look like I'll be home by then." He let his voice trail off.
"Then I'll see you tonight," Mac said before quickly leaving his office. It was as much so that he could be on his way as it was that she didn't want to be standing there if he changed his mind about letting her stop by his place this evening.
BETHESDA NAVAL MEDICAL CENTER
"Commander Rabb, we've been sitting here in silence for almost five minutes. On your referral from upstairs, it says that you aren't sleeping, but they can find no medical cause for it. If you aren't ready to talk about what's keeping you awake at night, will you tell me why you don't want to talk to me at all?" Dr. Jordan Parker asked.
"I'm an aviator. Seeing a shrink could keep me from flying."
"Aviator … your insignia says JAG officer. That would make you an attorney, correct?" Dr. Parker asked curiously. Was this why he was here ... because he was having delusions of being an aviator and not a lawyer?
Harm lifted his cover that he'd been clutching with one hand in his lap and used the brim of it to point out the aviator wings that were pinned to his uniform above his service ribbons on his chest.
"I'm a lawyer who flies," Harm responded, the bill of his cover making a tapping sound as they made contact with the metal wings.
"Having to maintain high standards in not one but two high-pressure jobs could be enough stress to cause someone to have insomnia," Dr. Parker offered.
Silence once again filled the room.
Dr. Parker was waiting for her patient to give her some inkling of what was going on inside his head.
Harm was internally weighing his options.
He could continue to sit here without speaking and hope that his inability to sleep would go away on its own before the admiral bounced him from working on cases, or he could talk and hope that it wouldn't cost him his wings … maybe there was a middle ground.
"It isn't either one or a combination of my designators that's keeping me awake. It's a personal issue," Harm confessed.
"Perhaps if you talked about it, you'd be able to work through it."
There was a different kind of silence between them now, but it was the type that she thought that she recognized. It happened a lot with first time visitors to her office.
"This is a safe place, Commander Rabb. Anything that we discuss is kept between us."
Along with his worry that this encounter could keep him out of the air, part of the problem with him feeling comfortable about opening up in her office was the fact that Dr. Parker was a woman.
The idea of talking to a woman about a woman, especially when neither knew the other just didn't seem right, making him feel awkward about having such a conversation.
"Since Saturday night, I've been having this reoccurring dream." Harm stated flatly.
"So you can get to sleep, but you just don't sleep well. Or does the dream wake you, keeping you from getting a full night's sleep?"
"I wake up and then I can't get back to sleep," Harm explained.
"What is this dream about?" Dr. Parker asked.
Harm thought that, since he'd started talking, shutting down now might be detrimental to him getting a clean bill of health and thus keeping him from getting back to work.
"I can't say that it's about anything really. I'm just in a room surrounded by rabbits, or maybe they're bunnies … I don't know which ... all sizes, all shapes." He paused. "What's the difference between a rabbit and a bunny anyway?"
'If he was trying to avoid sounding crazy, that hadn't come out sounding sane,' he thought.
His question went unanswered. His conclusion was that she didn't know either.
"I don't know that what's in my dream is all that important. It shouldn't be a big deal, so I think that the bigger issue is why I'm bothered by it so much." Harm threw that out there to avoid too much time lapsing between his jabber and a sane statement.
"You mentioned that your dream started Saturday night. Have you ever had this dream before?"
"No," Harm answered.
"Tell me about your day on Saturday. What did you do that day?"
Harm knew that she was looking for the trigger for his dream, and though he knew what it was, he was going to make her work for the answer. That way, when she uncovered it, she'd feel as if she'd cured him, and he could get out of there.
"I got up and went for my usual morning run. When I returned to my apartment, I took a shower and had breakfast. Then I grabbed my grocery list and my dry cleaning ticket and went out to do some shopping and pick up my uniforms. I got home about mid-afternoon and then I spent the rest of the day at my apartment."
"Did anything unusual happen?" The commander looked puzzled by her question, so she asked a more specific one. "Did you meet someone new or bump into a friend while you were out?"
Harm thought, 'This doctor is pretty good'. He'd expected that it would take longer to get to this part of the conversation.
"I did run into a close friend of mine," Harm answered.
"Had you not seen this person recently?"
"No, I'd seen her on Friday. We work together," Harm replied.
Trying to tie in the meeting with a friend to his dream, the phrase "doing it like rabbits" came to the doctor's mind.
Had these two had a chance meeting outside the work environment that had led them to an afternoon sexual encounter, the regret for which was causing him to have a reoccurring dream about rabbits?
"Did something happen between the two of you that could have anything to do with rabbits or bunnies?" Dr. Parker asked. "Did you talk about going to a petting zoo for instance?" She added that last for an innocent possible answer to her first question.
"No. However, she was trying to find the perfect toy bunny for an Easter basket that she said that she was putting together for a little girl."
The exact phrase that Mac had used was "for a very special little girl," and it reverberated in his head in her voice as the doctor jotted something down on the pad in her lap.
"So, she was there buying items for an Easter basket for her daughter?" Dr. Parker asked with some confusion since he hadn't used the word 'daughter' nor had he said 'her' little girl.
"I assume so, but I didn't know that she had a daughter," Harm answered.
"You mentioned that you and this woman were co-workers and friends. Did you think that you were close?"
"Close enough that she wouldn't keep the fact that she had a child from me," Harm snorted.
"I think that we may have stumbled upon the cause of your dream." The doctor had Harm's complete attention. "A shock to your system such as someone who you thought of as being a close friend was keeping a big part of their life - the fact that they had a child - a secret from you, and that left you feeling overwhelmed with emotions that caused problems with your sleeping pattern."
"So, I'm not crazy?" Harm asked with a charming smile firmly in place.
"No, you aren't crazy. In dreams, being surrounded by large numbers of any one thing is often a sign of one's feelings of being overwhelmed. Because your friend was looking for items for a basket, your mind probably fixated on bunnies and rabbits because of their association with Easter."
"When will I be able to sleep again?" Harm asked.
"Tonight because I'm going to give you something to help you sleep." Dr. Parker said reaching back for a prescription pad on her desk. "It isn't a long-term solution, but I also don't think that you need on-going sessions either," she continued as she scrawled out something on the pad. "Among other emotions, I'm sure that you're feeling hurt or betrayed that she didn't tell you."
There was silence as she finished writing out the prescription.
Finally looking up from her writing, she said, "Here are my discharge orders for you." She pulled the top sheet off the prescription pad. "I've given you enough for six nights. Use these to get some sleep so that you can think clearly and then talk to her. You may find that she had one or more good reasons for not telling you that has nothing to do with her trust in you or your friendship. It's my belief that, once you find out why she didn't tell you, your dreams will stop and you'll sleep fine. I want to see you again a week from today so that we can touch base. I want to make sure that her answers helped and that you're sleeping again before I release you from care completely."
OUTSIDE HARM'S APARTMENT
Mac sat in her car, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of the song on the radio.
She'd been sitting outside in her car for nearly an hour, fifty-three minutes, if she were being accurate.
Focusing on the music and keeping her hands busy seemed to help keep her calm as she waited to go up to his apartment.
It was only 1830. It was too early to go up to his apartment when he wasn't expecting her until 1900.
Mac had arrived early because she'd thought that she'd uncovered the source of the problem between her and Harm.
She had gotten some work done, but the nagging feeling that she'd done something that had put Harm in the shape in which he was in had eaten at her all morning.
Every time Mac had had a few moments, her mind had replayed the scene in the BX on Saturday.
However, it wasn't until she'd taken time during a break for lunch that she'd had a moment of clarity about the situation.
Instead of replaying the scene as she remembered it, she'd tried living the scene from Harm's point of view.
Mac was sure that she'd revealed the answer then, though it had done nothing for her ability to focus on her work because then she'd been agitated that, if that was the reason, he hadn't just asked her about it.
Mac was eager to see him, to explain that he'd jumped to the wrong conclusion about her use of the phrase, 'a very special little girl'. Then, if that had been the problem, she was planning to give him hell for not just asking her about it instead of avoiding her.
How long had he planned to keep dodging her, anyway?
Mac decided that she'd wait ten more minutes. Then, whether he was ready or not, she was going up.
She focused back on the music that was being piped into the interior of her car.
HARM'S APARTMENT
Harm paced his living room.
Mac would be here soon.
What was he going to say to her?
The doctor's advice had been to take a pill, get a good night's sleep and then talk to Mac.
During his days as a full-time pilot, he'd learned to push through pain because medication impaired one's ability to fly. He didn't take pills, not even an aspirin unless he was all but forced.
He wasn't going to be flying any time soon, but the mentality was still embedded in his psyche.
He didn't want to take the pills, but he did want to be able to sleep.
Harm believed that the doctor had been right about one thing. Knowing Mac's reasons for withholding the fact that she had child from him would help to ease his mind.
He needed to talk to Mac...ask her about her daughter.
So lost in his thoughts about Mac, her daughter and if knowing her secret would change their relationship in some way, the knock on the door caused Harm to jump.
A quick look at his watch let him know that, if it was Mac, she was twenty minutes early and that he hadn't been lost in his own little world for very long.
Harm made it across the room to the door in three long strides, just as the person on the other side knocked for a second time.
He didn't check. He just opened the door, assuming that it was Mac and that she was just early.
He hadn't been wrong.
"Hey," he said. Noticing that she was carrying nothing, he added, "Did you forget something?"
He was referring to the dinner that she was supposed to bring, but Mac didn't make the connection. She was completely focused on what she wanted to say to him.
"Harm, we need to talk," she said, passing him to enter his apartment.
"On an empty stomach?" he questioned.
It wasn't that he was really hungry. It was a means of stalling, avoiding having a difficult conversation.
Mac either still hadn't made the connection that she'd said that she'd bring dinner or she didn't care, because she ignored his question.
"First, what did the doctor say? Are you all right?"
"Other than needing a good night's sleep, I'm perfectly healthy," Harm replied.
"Good. I'm glad to hear it. I wouldn't know what to do without my best friend," Mac commented sincerely as she took a seat on a stool at his counter.
"Are we best friends? I mean, don't best friends tell each other everything?" Harm inquired.
'It seemed like a good warm up question,' he thought.
"I think they tell each other the important things, but sometimes there are things that don't seem important to share, yet I've found out recently that if you haven't mention it before, it could be revealed in a way that's misunderstood," Mac stated.
Harm was sure that they were both warming up to talking about Saturday. However, he was appalled at the thought that she was referring to her daughter as something that didn't "seem important" and was no longer sure that talking to Mac was going to make him feel better.
"It sounds as if you're thinking of a specific occasion," Harm commented apprehensively.
"I am ... Saturday!"
Harm said nothing. He just waited for her to finish.
"I brought a picture." She pulled a photo from her jacket pocket.
Harm reached for the offered photograph.
"Her name is Chloe," Mac began.
Harm scanned the features of the little girl in the picture who was standing next to Mac, each in a matching blue tee-shirt with "Big Brothers & Big Sisters" printed on the front.
"I didn't think that my volunteer work was important to anyone other than me, so I hadn't mentioned it to you or to anyone else, for that matter."
Harm's stomach started to unknot immediately.
"She's your 'little sister'," Harm said with a smile of relief.
"Yes." To avoid any further misunderstandings, Mac quickly added, "Figuratively, not literally, she is my little sister."
"…And a very special little girl," Harm added.
"Yes," Mac said with a smile.
"Did you get everything that you needed for her basket on Saturday?" Harm asked.
"No. I wanted to get a stuffed animal, but I can't seem to find the perfect bunny."
"Easter is this Sunday, so let me help with that. There's a shop in the mall that specializes in stuffed animals. Let's go there to buy a bunny for Chloe's Easter basket and then grab some dinner," Harm suggested.
"Dinner! I was supposed to bring dinner," she said. Her smile was replaced by a frown.
"No, problem. I think that a trip to the mall and dinner out with you will be just what I need to get a good night's sleep tonight."
Three hours later, Harm rested his head on his pillow and closed his eyes as his mind started to fill with pre-sleep fog.
The image of Mac in bunny ears, cotton tail, high-heeled black shoes and a black, skin tight Playboy Bunny outfit began to form, becoming clearer as he got closer to the point of REM sleep.
A smile started to appear on his face.
This dream was one that he understood.
Mac was an attractive, desirable woman – one who he wanted, but working together made it a complicated relationship.
In his dreams, there were no complications.
She could be a Playboy Bunny, the Easter Bunny … his wife or the mother of his child…anything he wished … in his dreams.
THE END