Sorry it's been so long between updates! Uni takes much more energy than anyone led me to expect :) Can't promise anything with regards to this story being finished soon, but we'll see how we go.

And so they went and picked Chloe up, and they took her to the nearest parlour for ice-cream. They were halfway to the door of the shop, lit up with halogens in the dark, cool evening, when Chloe turned, smiled, and reached her hands behind her once more. One fell into Mac's and the other was clasped in Harm's and suddenly, as they kicked at loose pieces of gravel in the tarmac and marvelled at how the town felt like an abandoned industrial park with everything shut for the night, they were together once more.

Harm looked at Mac, and in a flash like the flickering streetlights he realised something. He'd thought they were stabilising Chloe. In the car on the way to DC he'd felt the responsibility drop heavily in his stomach - it was they who had to buy her clothes, and organise her schoolbooks, and comfort her when a boy broke her heart. If she was lost or lonely or hungry or sad it was they who were liable. He'd comforted himself with the thought that they were doing a good thing, and hoped that love would make up for their mistakes.

But now, as they once again formed the strongest shape with Chloe at its head, he thought it was really the other way round. Practically, of course, they were looking after Chloe. But the casual domesticity he was experiencing with Mac, the ease that replaced the acid turn of his stomach when he thought about their future, the apprehension with which he regarded TADs which might take him away from his family - that had all entered his life with the blonde girl who led him fearlessly toward the ice-cream parlour. As much as it was them adopting her, it was her who brought them together and forged their unbreakable bond into something closer, more sincere - more important. He had thought it was his job to make life stable for Chloe. But in reality, it was her who had stabilised him.

"Chloe," he said suddenly, the questioning moniker crisp in the dark evening air.

"Yes," she responded, looking back at him with a twist of her hips and a sparkle in her eye. "We wanted to say thank you," he said without thinking, and the words came as easy as breathing after that. "You've been incredible about this whole thing, and we can see how hard you're trying to make it work. We know this won't be easy, but you're making it easy for us, and we appreciate it."

Chloe twisted fully around without letting go of either hand, but neither Harm or Mac noticed the pain blooming in their arms. "I want to make this work," she said assertively and with a larger dose of seriousness than Harm ever could have imagined. "I love you two." She sighed, gulped. "I love you together, and I love you with me. And I," her eyes sparkled and Harm thought they matched the emerging stars for lustre, "…I think this could be forever."

Mac closed her eyes, wishing for something to give her strength and stop the tears from falling. "Chloe," she said finally, an ache in her chest not from impossibility or pain but the beauty of the moment and all its implications. "Chloe, we're going to be so upset if we don't get forever."

Harm looked over at her with a flash of something deep and honest in his eyes. "I said that to Mac this morning, honest to God. I…" Mac could see him forcing the words past the wall in his stomach, the wall which warned all emotion was weakness. "This is it, Chloe, we love you. And losing you…" he gasped, feeling the pain in his chest. "It would hurt like nothing on earth."

Chloe looked from one to the other, tears gathering in her eyes but somehow defying gravity. "How do you do it?" she asked to no-one in particular.

"How do we do what, Chlo?" Mac answered, and both Chloe and Harm could hear the emotion in her voice.

"How do you love each other," her voice caught as if on ragged wire, "when you know you might not get tomorrow?"

"The only way you can." A car left the carpark, and the streetlight rolled its shadows across Harm's face. "With honesty, intensity, and everything you have."

Chloe looked at him, tracing the side of her eye with a graceful finger. Harm suspected the it came away wet. "How hard is it, knowing that the next investigation might be the last one?"

Harm squeezed his eyes shut and his Adam's apple bobbed at the thought. He and Mac were still holding hands, but now he pulled her closer, his arm finding its way around her waist to press her against his side and assure him of her presence. Mac tipped her head silently into his shoulder. "Impossible," she said slowly. "And I think it's worse when you admit it to each other after so long. When you're dancing," she shot a glance at Harm, thinking obliquely of the ball, "you can pretend it's no big deal. But now," she took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the thirst-quenching, tree-flavoured air, "we can't deny it any more, and I think it would break me."

Arm clenched tight around his partner's waist, Harm weighed in. "It's the paradox of everyone with a dangerous job, I think, Chloe. The good of yourself and your family, or the greater good?"

"And which is it?" Chloe questioned tentatively, tipping her head so her eyes met his.

"I'm going to be honest with you, Chlo. I don't know absolutely. But for a while there I thought it was an easy question, and now I'm not so sure."

Chloe released his hand abruptly, and Harm registered that pain had been shooting up his arm through the entire conversation. Then she let go of Mac's and took a wobbly step back. Harm knew that Mac's face mirrored his own; deprivation, confusion, worry. That was, until Chloe barrelled forward and in one movement put one arm around Harm and one around Mac, burying her head in the juncture of their chests. "I've got you, right?" She asked without certainty.

"Always," Harm and Mac said in unison, and then nearly banged their heads as they looked up to match eyes. Harm looked at Mac then - at the deep brown orbs he'd fallen for heart-first, at the worlds they promised and the stories they told. "Always," he whispered slowly, not breaking his gaze, and "forever," she just-barely answered back.

If there was one thing everyone in the military agreed upon, it was the importance of routine. And so getting home that night was met with ground rules for Chloe: she would start doing her homework as soon as practicable after school without her phone in her room, dinner would be at 7.00 and lights out at 9.30. She made them promise that she would be allowed to go out later with her friends on weekend nights, and then reluctantly left her phone on the ledge outside her room as she worked.

"She's a smart kid," Harm said, coming up behind Mac where she worked at the table.

Mac blushed. For some reason, the first thought that had come to her mind was that any kid of theirs would be. Of course Chloe wasn't their kid, but it got her thinking how much she felt like it. "She is," Mac finally said, looking up slightly with the flush still plain in her cheeks.

"What's got you all embarrassed?" Harm asked as he pottered around the kitchen grabbing ingredients for dinner.

Mac was caught out again, this time subtly appreciating the view from behind. "Ummm…" she shook her head, trying to clear the cotton wool which seemed to pervade it. "Oh, just a stupid thought when you said Chloe was smart."

"Tell me?" For a moment, Harm tilted his head back to look at her, and Mac knew she couldn't resist those puppy dog eyes.

"That any kid of ours would be," she said in a low voice, determinedly going back to her work.

Harm smiled slightly. "I'm going to take that as a compliment." He saw the slight rouge of Mac's cheeks and her decisively bent head and added "but you know they would, Mac. And the nurture bit is going for Chloe as well."

Mac nodded appreciatively. "Thanks, I didn't think of that."

"Mac?" Chloe called as she wandered in from her bedroom, where they'd installed her desk. "Having trouble with this trig. Can you help me?"

Harm shot a glance at his partner. "I've got dinner, you're free to go."

Chloe watched the dynamic she could never get bored of with a smile. "Chlo, just let me finish this form, and then I'm with you," Mac offered, working on the bottom of a bit of paper with an inky black pen.

"'Kay," Chloe responded, "I'll be back in there when you're done."

So this is what it felt like to have a kid, Harm thought idly as he browned leeks in a pan. He suspected he wouldn't have as much time for work as he used to, but this comfortable closeness with Mac and Chloe - cooking dinner in the kitchen while Mac helped Chloe with trig, knowing he loved and was loved - more than made up for it. For the first time, he seriously wondered how Bud balanced being (by all accounts) an excellent and attentive husband and father, with the demands of the job.

At least he and Mac didn't have toddlers. He wasn't sure he could manage that and Chloe and JAG, he thought, and then the ache in his chest began, and he remembered that was what he wanted most. A child with her looks and his brains, or his looks and her brains - honestly, he'd settle with Mac's looks and her brains if they could have something they'd created together. Just the thought of Mac in a hospital bed, exhausted, greasy-haired, with an ID tag on her wrist and holding their little person made him shudder. He didn't think he could be any more in love with Mac than he was already, but he suspected that moment would seal the deal.