TITLE: Life Happens While You're Making Plans
AUTHOR: VIDZ
SPOILER: Season 3, ep "Blind Side"
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc of the TV show JAG are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this fic. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: a new approach to JAG fiction for me, it was inspired by a friend's comment on the episode in question. Okay, I always found Schiparelli's character overwhelmingly amusing and wanted to write something, but until now never had inspiration.
SUMMARY: He hadn't planned for this, hadn't even intended for this to happen. His life wasn't perfect, it was barely in the scope of what he'd had in mind for himself, but if it stayed like this for the next, oh 50 or 60 years, he wouldn't be complaining.
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"And then Janice said her doll can cry and you can..."
After that Harm tuned out the incessant chatter of his daughter as he concentrated on the road, absently wondering for the upteenth time why couldn't have even one of his kids taken after him when it came to talkativeness. He should've known, though, that their mother's oral ability gene would've proven dominant over his quieter one, just like for the first time in decades a male Rabb would not be looking like a clone of his father.
How had he come to this? was a question he'd asked himself many times, still bewildered over the turn of events, in the end always coming to the same conclusion.
It was all his own fault.
The tenacity that made him such a great investigator and attorney unfortunately translated into his private life as well. Harm sometimes just simply did things or pursued courses of action he knew he shouldn't, that he didn't even want to himself, but for some strange reason as much as he knew he shouldn't (and was telling himself that quite clearly) he just couldn't stop or help himself, like he was not in control of his own self. Not like he's a car that's being driven by someone else, but by something deeper inside him, a part of him, sometimes being stronger than his conscious will, taking over. He just couldn't help himself.
I just couldn't help myself, your honor, honest! ... The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth... So help me Werner.
A great trait for an officer of the court, eh?
It had been a sequence of events he had been completely unable to stop, leading to the same result he'd been incapable of preventing, like dominoes where they fall one by one until all of them are wiped out.
Nothing he had done had averted this fate and everything he'd done had insured it.
He still didn't know, not even now, 7 years later, how they had gone from checking the health of each other's tonsils to having sex in the back of her convertible. Heck, he didn't even know how they'd gone from TALKING to making out! She was NOT the type that usually attracted him, quite the opposite in fact. Too wild, too reckless, too horrible a driver, too talkative, her voice's pitch was almost painful and so on, but they'd started kissing and then having sex in the backseat of her car like a pair of horny teenagers.
And that without even getting caught or arrested!
That in itself was a feat. A feat that should've been impossible, because they'd been parked right in front of the bar's entrance, it was evening - the busiest time of day, and there'd been military personnel milling about every second before and after their moment of Conduct Unbecoming and the bar itself was pretty popular among the military crowd, so not some behind god's back hole. Hell, had she not done that thing with her hips that caused the end... well, suffice to say, they would've been caught in the act by the Hypocrit of JAG.
Conduct Unbecoming, Indecent Exposure, etc. would've not escaped them, the self-proclaimed Jeanne D'Arc would've no doubt gladly been the first one to throw the torch on their bonfire and gleefully watch as they burned tied to the stake.
His feelings in the aftermath of this impromptu endrophins injection, as Tina drove behind Mac's car, were mixed. The honestly quite incredible sex itself and the afterglow had him dozing on Cloud 99999 somewhere with a dopey grin on his face, besides this confirmation of his own sex appeal despite his own too quickly approaching middle age and the fact it was a much younger, beautiful woman who'd given this confirmation, was stroking his ego like nothing else. Yet, there was also the awareness just how close they'd come to torpedoing their careers. The charges that would've been piled up would've no doubt make him pathetically grateful to ever be able to practice law in the Navy again. Which would've been just a dream he would have while staring out his cell doors.
There was also the guilt, remorse and self-recriminations over having sex with someone he'd just met. Harm just didn't do that kind of shit and it was eating at him badly. There was no future for this relationship, they served in different commands, lived different lives, that themselves weren't meshable.
True, he'd had sex with a woman outside of an strings-attached relationship before, but he and Kate had been friends for a long time before that weekend and had been heading in that direction for a while. Their weekend hadn't been planned as "let's have sex for the hell of it and then go our separate ways", but as an attempt to see if there was more between them once they cleared the fog of sexual tension or if that was all they had. With the fog removed and things much clearer they realized they just didn't have enough to base a relationship on. With that clear Harm regretted being so focused on the [empty] sparks that had flown between them that he'd ignored his contemporary partner's growing feelings for him in their favour.
After that weekend he'd decided that in the future he would decide on romantic relationships (with special emphasis on relationship) solely with his upper head and not the lower one or even the middle one, settled in his chest. Any prospective relationship candidate would have to pass a checklist of what the society, the Navy and no doubt his mother expected of the wife of an officer with a distinguished pedigree.
Which had all fallen apart when he and Bud had been picked up by a former cabbie. Yeah, he liked flirting and he flirted with women a lot, but there was a big difference between innocent flirting and having reckless, sweaty, steamy, quick sex in the back seat of a convertible. He wasn't a teenager to do crap like that, for crying out loud!
The fact he'd refused Mac's offer for a ride in favor of airing the incriminating smells off himself with a ride in a convertible, thus accidentally siding with the woman who'd moments later had just beaten Mac to a pulp in that brief pissing match that clearly showed who was better (besides that, Harm was sure there was more to the glares and the hostility between the two women than just the inter-service rivalry, but couldn't figure out what) had definitely pissed off the Marine.
That was, if the glare she'd shot them, the slamming of her car's door and the spray of gravel, followed by quick, angry driving were any indications... He knew that to placate Mac he should've immediately jumped to his feet and out of the Lieutenant's car, falling over himself to drive with Major PMS instead.
Hm...
Major PMS. Sounded catchy... and pretty accurate. Harm decided he liked it and it was a pun well intended.
Anyway, that would've been a bad idea because it not only would've sentenced him to a drive made either in stone cold silence as she gave him the cold shoulder as she was indicating she would or being berated about his conduct, the UCMJ and all those nice things; plus with their proximity in the car the game would've been up. Mac was sexually quite experienced woman, he knew about her regular evening visits to bars, plus a woman who dresses like that, either off-duty to emphasise how she oozes raw sex; or on-duty (Harm was sure those fuck-me-NOW heels were NOT Corps issue); she would've immediately detected the smell and correctly identified it. And the Courts-Martialy City wouldn't have been far behind.
Either that or her service weapon and a shovel.
The case had gone off after that as awkwardly as one can imagine. As if having to be the one to take your old flight instructor's wings, the man's whom you've admired and respected greatly, wasn't enough, there was this new tension to his and Schiparelli's previously unproblematic interactions that had him on edge like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
With the case closed Harm had no reason to further stick around, what with being expected to report for duty in Falls Church the next day. After tap-dancing around each other a couple of times and beating around the bush, they both suddenly decided to rather drop whatever they'd wanted to talk about and face the inevitability of life. Especially of life in the military: people leave your life, SOON. Either by getting killed or medically/dishonorably/honorably discharged or, much more frequently, because your duty stations have changed, this eventually ending all contact. Even if they wanted to try and see what they had, duty would've nullified that desire, so they were satisfied with being able to continue their lives without any changes or upheavals.
And that was that.
Or so Harm thought.
A year later he was sent there for another case and accidentally spotted the now-full-Lieutenant Schiparelli carrying a baby from the base's daycare to her car. It only then occured to him that in their unexpected and definitely unplanned time they hadn't even given a small consideration to protection and, no matter how condemnable it was in light of this revelation, Harm wasn't in the habit of carrying condoms in his wallet, like teenagers and young people do for that "just in case".
Frozen to his spot from shock, he absently noticed the lack of tire-screeching and honking of other drivers as she pulled away from the curb. There could've been another explanation, from her baby-sitting to doing a favour to a colleague by picking their child up, but Harm had a sinking feeling that things were as they appeared, especially if he took in the manner with which she interacted with the child. It was motherly. A discrete inquiry soon confirmed these suspicions.
There had to be reason why she hadn't notified him. She knew his rank, name and family name, plus his duty station, it would've been easy for her to let him know he had a kid.
Then that damnable part of him took over due to his awakened curiosity and perhaps even dread and he'd started nosing and snooping around the young woman, until finally they'd bumped into each other. Okay, more like, crashed.
There was a confrontation (thankfully only when they entered her place of residence so it wasn't a public show), tempers flared on both sides, things were said, truths admitted. Schiparelli admitted without hesitation she hadn't planned on telling him, she didn't need him, didn't want to be accused of entrapping a guy or frankly have to suddenly have such a close relationship with someone she didn't really know, plus the last thing she wanted was his money. Harm knew he should've been relieved and most if not all men who'd had a one night stand would've thanked their lucky stars if the woman they'd knocked up was like that. However, Harm was a strange one, kookie even. He was offended by this revelation and another row ensued.
At one point even the MP came knocking on her door because her neighbors had called them. Only to be subjected to the full barrage vocabulary of an experienced ex-cabby. Harm was sure that particularly burly Marine actually paled at the words used.
Final score?
Harm managed to get visitation rights (verbal agreement only of course) and then with a tenacious research and pulling some strings achieved a new billet was offered to her at Norfolk Navy Yard. Not a naive person, Tina was of course suspicious, but of course couldn't prove anything.
The office went into an upheaval when they found out he had a kid and some of the reactions weren't that pleasant. Like getting only second-rate cases for a while from the JAG for daring to pass on the Rabb genes.
Eventually Harm nagged Tina into agreeing to marry him for the good of the kid. Meshing two lives so different wasn't easy and there were quite a few disagreements (these are two strong-willed people we're talking about here), before things finally settled into some kind of a comfortable routine. Once things were ironed out they cooperated surprisingly smoothly. Most of the time. They just weren't in love.
But it wasn't all that bad.
True, there was no romantic love between them, but as ironic as it may be that fact made for a much stronger marriage than those of his or her friends. After all, there was no love to possibly turn into hatred, they were just partners in raising their kid. Er, kidS. As it turned out, sex was one thing they were quite compatible at. After all, their son needed someone to play with. And then it was: three can't be much harder than two, right?
And they all liked to talk. A LOT. Well, at least now that the oldest was old enough Harm didn't have to take all the burden of his wife's verbal attentions. Though, he was quite glad he and Tina got along well, cause those verbal attentions were mostly quite amiable, he didn't even want to imagine what it would be like if they didn't get along...
And sometimes those verbal attentions turned into the other kind of attentions...
Which was the reason he'd just tripped over a toy left by one of the kids on the front lawn as Gina ran ahead towards the house.
His life wasn't perfect, it was barely in the scope of what he'd had in mind for himself, but it honestly could've been worse, a LOT worse. If it stayed like this for the next, oh 50 or 60 years, he wouldn't be complaining.
.
.
.
Not that his complaints would go noticed in their constant chatter.
THE END
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